Read #1 here
The slaughterhouse was at it again. Somehow they had found a way to infuriate Uyi on Monday morning with a crude joke on him, one he wasn’t going to be laughing to in a while. Being an unusual character, poles apart from most people, he never allowed the things that normally got to others bug him. Having faced a lot of suffering in his life, he always cleanly found a way to replace disturbing thoughts with happier ones and moved on. Take the Vivian and Edet incidence for instance. By the time the sun had set that evening and he had been cured of his Buran Tashi issue by Doctor Ahmed, Uyi had totally erased Vivian from his place of affection and replaced her with the model chick in his office, refusing to take Vivian’s calls or reply her texts. Furthermore, he didn’t consider it necessary to confront Edet over what had happened when he felt he could easily act like the idiot didn’t exist. Having settled those issues on his mind, Uyi moved on, survived the weekend even with constant taunting from his roommates, and looked forward to a productive week ahead. But unfortunately for him, he was going to be reminded about that Saturday by members of the slaughterhouse the moment he walked into his office on Monday.
As a busy malware analyst, Uyi was constantly stuck to his computer screen and scarcely had time to bother about what new buzz was spreading around the web. Knowing he was valuable to Geek Elysium never stopped him from executing his duties with all earnestness and dedication. And such was the case with his colleagues in the network securities department. On a good day the place was dead quiet except for the sounds of fingers over keyboards and the occasional grunt, ahem, sigh and silent chuckle. Every now and then one would get a colleague asking another or two for help on a certain program but other than those, it was the most boring office in the whole of the IT firm and was termed the ‘original nerd nirvana’. Thus, Uyi found it weird when he showed up late that Monday morning and found everyone not at their posts but around his friend’s, Temi’s desk, all carried away by something on her screen and laughing in sheer heartiness. Putting aside his laptop carrier, he walked to her desk and tried to catch a glimpse of her screen but found his view blocked by a mass of hair that was redolent of damp clothes and cheap bathing soap. He screwed up his nose, pulled away and walked back to his own desk. Seconds later the crowd around Temi disappeared and each went to their duty posts, the office taking on its normal form of silence.
Uyi returned to Temi and she beamed at him with a huge smile. “Uyi!”
“Hi Tems.” Uyi smiled back and she pumped her lips to revive her lip gloss which was almost non-existent due to a bad habit of hers of constantly biting her lower lip.
“You’re late today oh.” She pushed her geek glasses closer to her eyes and adjusted her sitting, upsetting huge breasts that shook blatantly in Uyi’s face. He wondered why she never liked to wear strong supportive bras.
“What were you guys watching?” he asked.
“Oh! It’s a video on Youtube and you need to see it! In one hour it got like a hundred thousand hits,” she said excitedly and adjusted her sitting again. “It’s a five minute 2D animation like South Park and it’s called The Learner, His Girlfriend and His Boner. Want to watch?”
Uyi shook his head. He had a lot of work waiting for him, but he didn’t want to upset Temi.
“Gist me.”
“Seriously you need to watch it but it’s about this guy whose girlfriend visited him for the weekend and for some weird reason, he couldn’t have sex with her because his…you know…refused to act up.”
“That sounds familiar,” Uyi murmured, still unaware the joke was on him.
“So on the last day, when the girl was supposed to leave, the guy dashed to his friend’s house to get something to help him perform. You won’t believe what he got!” she giggled and clapped in excitement.
“What?”
“Buran Tashi!” Temi snorted and held her nose embarrassingly. “Sorry.”
Uyi didn’t reply. His countenance had turned into stone in an instant.
“You know what Buran Tashi is, right? It’s herbal Viagra. Locally made by all these mallams to help men…”
“I know what Buran Tashi is. Go on.”
“So by the time the guy got home he had already overdosed on the Buran Tashi, thanks to his friend who did it deliberately to have a good laugh. And by now, the guy was all charged up, ready to impress his babe but when he walked into his room, he found his neighbor banging her! But that’s not all. That’s not all…” She snorted again. “I’m sorry. It just cracks me up. The guy is a learner, I swear!”
“Go on,” Uyi murmured with irritation.
“So, the guy was obviously really upset but that wasn’t his problem. More than anything he needed to relieve himself of his konji, so he went to his next door neighbors because there were two women living there and he was hoping they would somehow help him with his boner issue. Sha the women invited him in and one of them wasted no time in asking him to strip. The guy was so geared up and did as he was told in full anticipation. Then from nowhere, one of the women brought out this humongous needle and while the other held him down, she used it to drain blood from the guy’s penis!” Temi held her side as she fell into a long laughing spell, occasionally interjected with uncontrollable snorts. Uyi remained standing, his blood boiling within his veins and a thousand thoughts racing through his mind. But Temi laughed on, so hard she cried. She fished for her hanky in her handbag and held it over her nose to clean her leaking nostrils as Uyi tried his best to repress his growing anger. When she had finally calmed, she took a last sniff and looked at him. “Seriously, you need to watch it.”
“Is the animation based on anyone’s true life story?” Uyi asked.
“No. It’s just comedy.”
“So what’s the moral behind the story?”
“Geez!” she glowered right away. “You’re so uptight Uyi. It’s just a cartoon. No one’s asking anyone to learn from it.”
Uyi smiled at the irony of her statement.
“But you like cartoons like Naruto, abi?” she asked defensively. “What are you learning from that one?”
“How to kill bad guys.” Uyi answered as he saw himself dressed as a Ninja with a sword, slicing off Ovie’s and Peter’s heads.
“Loosen up!” she nudged him with her elbow and pushed aside a lock of hair blocking her eyes. “So how did your week with Vivian go? Hope you guys had fun? She’s gone, right?”
Uyi couldn’t miss the jealousy in Temi’s tone but it didn’t stop him from hurting her further.
“Oh, it was great. We were in cloud nine the whole time. The learner in that cartoon should have come to me to be taught a skill or two.”
“Oh.” Deflated, Temi pushed her glasses up to her eyes and faced her computer screen. “Glad to hear you enjoyed yourself. I, em…have work to do. See you during lunch break? My treat.”
“Okay.”
Uyi walked back to his desk, faced his screen and used his usual fantasy of the model girl to keep him away from thoughts that consisted mostly of murdering Ovie and Peter. Come lunch break, he dashed out of the office and crossed the street from his office building to an expensive restaurant the evil duo loved to visit. There he spotted them with a bunch of guys who worked in a law firm and a bank that flanked their office. As it was always with them, they were in high spirits and hadn’t noticed when he walked in. Already seeing his plans of confronting them backfire in his face, he made to leave, but just as he was stepping out, he bumped into the girl of his constant fantasies, and had her iPad Mini, phone and purse falling to the floor. Immediately, he stooped down to gather the items but she remained standing, hands on her waist, a blaze in her eyes and with a tone that turned him off the moment she screamed.
“Are you blind or directionally challenged?!”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t see you coming.” Uyi rose slowly, his eyes sweeping fully the twin, smooth towers that were her legs. Then with a slight smile he handed her the items in his hands but she kept staring at him, glaring angrily and condescendingly into his face.
“I know you,” she said unhurriedly but with the same biting venom. “You’re a corper, right? At Geek Elysium? I work there too. Do you know me?”
Uyi’s smile petered out. “Am I supposed to know you?”
She looked at him as if stung. He could almost hear the words screaming out loud in her head. My name is Damaris Alechenu. Daughter of Chief Justice Anyebe Alechenu. My mother is the late Professor Damaris Alechenu, former minister for finance. I once strutted my stuff on runways in Paris, London and New York. You can find me on the pages of Essence, Ebony and True Love and on billboards all around Nigeria. I love to club, party and lazy about Abuja with my airhead friends all through the week. I’m a virgin but I date only rich guys. Unfortunately you’re not one of them…
“So, you don’t know me?” she asked again and Uyi shook his head. He really didn’t know much about her. All that information was Google talk.
“Then you’re more challenged than I think. I’m Damaris. Call me Dami.” She grabbed her stuff from him, fished out an eyeliner from her purse and wrote her Twitter handle on his shirt. “Follow me on twitter @rhodiumvee and who knows, I might follow back.”
She pushed past him and the feel of her sublime skin made him momentarily forget his humiliation. He felt his nipples harden and he quickly returned to his senses as he felt a ripple travel through his veins. He didn’t want blood being pumped to the wrong place again.
“Oh and God help you that something should go wrong with my phone or IPad mini!” She added.
“Rude.” he heard himself mutter as he stepped out under the burning sun. Just as he was making to cross the street, someone tapped him from behind and he turned. When he saw that it was Ovie, he frowned.
“Wetin?”
“Cool down. I’m not fighting with you nah.” Ovie laughed. “I know say you dey vex for dat cartoon.”
“How I no go vex? Which kain nonsense joke be dat one?”
“You sef, relax! Person no fit play wit you again? I didn’t even mention your name nah.”
“Come, the joke is too much abeg. Make una stop.”
“Oya, no vex.” Ovie scratched the nape of his neck and Uyi knew he wanted something.
“Wetin?”
“E be like say you be friends wit dat Dami babe.”
“Ehen?”
“Abeg, you fit arrange some kain…?”
“Some kain wetin?” Uyi asked heatedly.
“I like the babe.”
“She dey inside. Go yarn am.”
Uyi hissed, crossed the street and walked back into his building and to his office where he faced his computer screen again. However there was a snag in his thinking process. It had suddenly become filled with images of Damaris and there was no other thought to counter the disturbance. She used to be his haven, now she had emerged to take over his mind entirely and had left him helpless against her.
“You’re an ass!” Temi appeared before him, arms crossed over her massive breasts.
Uyi looked up. “Oh Tems…I am so sorry. I had business to handle.”
“You could have told me. I sent you a text but you didn’t reply.”
“I’m sorry, dear. You had lunch alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Is there a way I can make it up to you?”
“Walk me home today and let me make you dinner.”
The answer came out like it had been waiting around the corner. She bit her lower lip and waited for his reply. It was the first time she was inviting him over and he was not so sure he wanted to go, being that she had a doting boyfriend who had loaded her table with gifts on Valentine’s Day and always bugged her with endless phone calls during work hours.
“Um…is he going to be there?”
“Who?” she asked.
“Your boyfriend.”
She laughed. “Oh no. He’s not going to be around. Nothing to fear; we’re just two friends eating and gisting about stuff.”
“Okay, fine,” Uyi acquiesced. “I’ll walk the beautiful lady home and eat the beautiful lady’s dinner. S’that okay?”
She grinned and pulled her sweater over her breasts.
“What’s that on your shirt?” she asked.
“What?”
She pointed at the writing on his breast pocket.
“That…is a Twitter handle.”
“It’s Dami’s.” Temi frowned. “She wrote it on you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because… Well, just because.”
“Be careful.” Temi looked around as if someone was eavesdropping on her. “She’s a maneater. She uses guys and dumps them without a second thought. She’s dated four guys in this firm alone. Two in management.”
“O-kay…”
“I’m serious. She has like twelve boyfriends a year, one for each month. Be very careful.”
Uyi laughed. “Okay, I will. I don’t intend to date or even sleep with her but thanks for the information, though.”
Reluctantly, Temi scuffled to her corner. Uyi stared after her and wondered when she was ever going to stop being conscious over her weight and her vast female assets. She had now developed a slight hunch after years of trying to reduce the audacity of her breasts, and had fallen into a timid way of pressing her legs together each time she walked so as to avoid her backside from shaking excessively. Uyi wondered what her boyfriend was doing to up her confidence. Definitely, not much.
He fixed his thoughts back to his screen and picked up a less demanding job for a small client and began working on it. In a snail’s pace, time dragged by and when the closing hour approached, Temi appeared over his desk again.
“Ready?”
Uyi nodded and cleared his work area. They walked out of the building and with leisure steps began a stroll to Temi’s home not far from their office. Temi talked the whole way through and when they got to her house, she unlocked the door and let them in. Uyi found her sitting room surprisingly cozy and inviting. The place was neatly arranged and boasted of a swanky style that he never pictured her possessing. He had always considered her a full geek who never bothered about anything girly and stylish.
“Sit down while I microwave the stew and put rice on fire. And oh! Right under the center table is a couple of photo albums with pictures from school. Don’t laugh at me oh! I was really thin then!”
She disappeared into the kitchen while Uyi fed his eyes with pictures of her past and found himself looking at a girl who was very beautiful once. He mused over what happened to her as he put the photo albums aside and began going through a cosmo mag. Not long after she reappeared with two plates of rice and soft drinks and presented them to him. Uyi was shocked at two things when he saw her. One was how fast the food was made and the second was how sexy she looked in a pair of shorts and body-hugging top.
“Damn!” he exclaimed as he beheld her soft, smooth skin and beautiful feet he was immediately dying to kiss. He cautioned himself at once and pretended to face his meal but his corner eyes still rested on the curves on her that she always hid in clothes.
“Gas makes faster cooking.” She laughed, thinking his exclamation had to do with the food. Obviously, she didn’t know the effect she was having on him. She sat beside him and they began to eat silently. Halfway into the meal, she paused and looked at him.
“I have to tell you this, though I’m not supposed to.”
“What?” he put down his fork.
“There’s a secret website run by some of the guys at work who are betting online over whom will pop Dami’s cherry.”
“I don’t understand…”
“There are four guys that are currently on the list of whom they think could stand the chance of disvirgining her and they are making bets on them. And it’s not just guys at the office; they’re from everywhere. The person who opened that site is Dami’s ex, one of the guys at management and I won’t tell you his name but he’s doing it spitefully.”
“I see. Why are you telling me this?”
“You like her. Maybe you should tell her before she makes a fool of herself. Whoever gets to disvirgin her must show proof and you know what that means. He must film the whole thing. Anyway, I blame her. She flirts with guys a lot and when she chops their money, she dumps them the moment they try to get near her pants.”
“I see,” Uyi said again and picked his fork.
“Is that all you’ll say?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were crazy about her.”
“Crazy about Damaris? No, I’m not.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“So, can I kiss you?”
“W-what?” Uyi pulled back, laughing, but he was shocked at her audacity. “I have a girlfriend, remember?”
“Just one kiss.”
“And you have a boyfriend, Tems. And we are just friends.”
“Just one.”
“No.” He shook his head and she went back to her meal. Or so it seemed…until she jumped on him and covered his lips with hers. Uyi was taken by surprise but he wasn’t angry; he was amused. He didn’t stop her, not in the first few seconds that she was forceful and fiery, nor in the concluding seconds when she took her time to explore his Mirinda/curry flavored mouth. When she finally let go, he looked deep in her eyes and laughed; she covered her face and moved away.
“Are you satisfied?” he asked but she said nothing. “You are so going to hate yourself for what you just did.”
“I know.” Her face was still covered in her hands as she got up and ran into her room. Uyi knew she was going to have a good cry but it did not stop him from laughing his ass off. That was the only way he knew to get his mind off the news he just heard about Dami.
©Sally @moskedapages
- To Tame A Virgin (moskedalounge.wordpress.com)
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