Can You Survive Against All Odds?

I was talking with one of my ex-girlfriends recently, and she said something that I’d probably never understand. She said to me “You know how I can always talk to you and just communicate and feel that you really understand?”

I didn’t know really, because at the curtain call even though we did fall in love, that love couldn’t keep us together and I had to learn how to exist and live life without us being a couple. Maybe she was right, because I did keep ties with her after all. Distant ties maybe. We have been separated for just over a year, and we had started dating on February 14th, 2024. Officially.

I’d never forget. It was the craziest thing to happen that year. We were sitting out on the balcony of my one-bedroom apartment, smoking pot and just chatting about whatever. She worked at the hotel where I had leased my stay for a couple of years and my one-bedroom apartment was situated at one of the far ends of the premises very far away from the main reception and administration offices. So she often snuck out on her night shifts to hang around in my place, smoking pot, just laying idle on my mattress, watching movies or sitting outside in the balcony like we were on that day.

I had a garden out front and a set of chairs arranged around a round table with a hole in the middle and a giant umbrella stuck in it for in case it rained. Instead she preferred that we sat on the two seater sofa placed in the balcony. We talked about epic and insanely laughable topics and had a blast just being with each other.

I knew she wanted more, I could see the signs that day. For goodness sakes, it was on the night of “Valentine’s Day” and we were so stoned and couldn’t be bothered by the rest of the world. So into each other that we were curled up on the Sofa till about 10:56pm talking about all kinds of topics and sharing with each other a knowledge of things that we had experienced in our life time and a knowledge of each other.

I couldn’t bear that I liked her too much and I didn’t want to be like one of the guys who would lodge into a hotel apartment and start sleeping with one of the service. Besides, I was in a kind of relationship with a very beautiful and particularly busty, fair in complexion and tall, sexy and lust inducing creature of the female human species.

We weren’t particularly in love, this great and beautiful Nigerian woman I was dating then, if it could be called that. Born from the great Bini Kingdom and as beautiful as a dark sky filled with stars on a warm summer night. We had a kind of agreement going or situation-ship based on convenience sake, where she’d come once in a while to spend a night or two at my place and I’d get to play host. I’d provide take out meals because she couldn’t be bothered to cook. I mean the beauty that is the art of her physical appearance was too priceless to be stored under the duress of the work that it is having her prepare a meal, and I totally understood and concurred. Her favorite drink was Smirnoff’s “Double Black” so I always made sure that it was always stocked.

Even her very presence in my apartment any time she paid me a visit felt golden, because I could stare at her for hours just amazed at the magnitude of her overwhelming beauty. Especially after a bout of unimaginable orgasmic sexual intercourse. I’d collapse exhausted besides her and we’d stare into each other’s eyes for minutes, just looking at each other and saying nothing, and I’d always think it in my awe dazed and faintly conscious mind, “how can one person be so beautiful?”. And sometimes when morning comes, she’d rush into the shower to take a bath, I’d send her some money, just for having a little finance boost and she’d disappear into the wild for weeks and that one time when she disappeared for months, before she’d gracefully announce to me either through a phone call or a Whatsapp text of her intention anytime she wanted to pay me a visit. The times when she would spend more than a night at my place, I always left her in bed whenever I was going off to work in the morning and by the time I’d get home from work late in the evening, she’d be sleeping. She wouldn’t cook and the house would appear littered with empty and torn biscuit wrappers or half eaten noodles in plastic take away plates and plastic soda bottles littered around the floor. I would look around the place stunned at the mess she’d made before attempting to clear up the trash, without so much as making a noise, to avoid waking her up. I knew trolls were said to be messy, but I never heard it said that they looked like angelic beings. So she couldn’t possibly be compared to a troll.

She was so good for so many other things, but housekeeping wasn’t her best talent. I knew what I had signed up for, because she had asked me a question at the beginning of our awkwardly successful codependent relationship which since inception had lasted for roughly 8 months until that fateful night of the “Valentine’s Day” in the year of 2024.

“Can you survive against all odds?”

At that time, I had imagined that she had meant if I could survive being in such a relationship where we were great lovers who never ever pretended to be in love or wanted to be more.

Co-incidentally said beauty worked at different hotel located at the other end of the town. And was a recognized face in the hotel where I had lodged as the only female guest that visits my apartment, save for Amanda, the hotel stewardess who seemed to have a crush on me. And whom I could not seem to stop enjoying her company.

“She knows my girlfriend. If I could even call her that.” I’d think to myself.

I didn’t want to cross any line so I played the gentleman and always kept it civil. Until that particular night on “Valentine’s Day” in the year 2024 when we sat on the sofa in the balcony of my one bed room apartment for hours getting stoned and talking seemingly like we’ve known ourselves for decades.

It was past 11am and I could see the flames of desire burning in Amanda’s eyes, and I could feel my body responding but still I didn’t want to be caught in the wrong. It could be that I was hallucinating, besides I had been smoking weed and it could all be in my head. I chided myself. I looked at the temptation that I saw burning within the flames of her desires and I could feel the gulp in my throat as I swallowed, my throat suddenly dried up from an unexplainable thirst.

“Don’t you want me?” She suddenly asked.

I almost laughed out loud. Could it be that I had just imagined that she had just asked me that? I wondered. I curiously stared at the burning stomp of what was left of the blunt of weed I had earlier rolled up. This one seemed particularly strong I mused silently to myself, then curiously stared at Amanda to see if there was any particular visible toll of the weed on her character that I could put my hands on.

Amanda was a beautiful woman no doubt and it seemed at that moment that I was truly seeing her for the first time.

“She was a vision to behold, but not as beautiful or stunning as my then codependent partner.” I mused.

But the swelling in my pants was screaming “Yes.” To the question that I had imagined that she had asked me. I had within a few seconds managed to convince myself that I had imagined hearing it. But I couldn’t deny the beauty of the woman that I beheld seating so closely besides me on the sofa placed in the balcony of my one room apartment.

As if in a dream, I suddenly felt paralyzed to the spot as I watched her face draw closer to mine as she slowly leaned into me and placed the gentlest kiss I ever did feel touch my lips. Then she repeated the question.

“Don’t you want me?” I froze and could only just stare in response, dazed for about half of a minute, just staring in disbelief.

“I hadn’t imagined it after all.” I said to myself.

Again, I watched as if in slow motion as her face drew closer, but this time I was ready it seemed and a little less paralyzed because I raised up my right palm to caress her left cheek as our lips locked again for the second time.

We quickly rushed into the house in a sex crazed frenzy and it was one of those sexual experiences for the record books, one that would most definitely win multiple nominations for a prestigious award like the Grammy’s if ever there was a category for awarding recognitions for accounts of intimate and soul captivating sexual experiences. She was fire, and I felt consumed. I didn’t need to be told after we had sex that I was in love with her.

Afterwards it wasn’t awkward or weird in any way, it wasn’t the intense awe dazed silent stare that I was accustomed to and we talked for hours afterwards and laughed half as much as we talked recounting childhood memories, interrogating each other, and making silly jokes, and kissing. There was a lot of kissing and a lot of trying desperately to merge our bodies into one entity. When we finally slept it was past 3AM the next morning, that was the last memory I had of what the time was before I had settled comfortably besides her, one arm folded beneath my head while the other wrapped around her waist like it confidently belong there.

Looking back down the memory lane of our lost love, the first night we spent together was so epic and was deeply intimate and soulful that it birthed the feeling of a very beautiful emotion, which I can only describe as the feeling of being in love. Suddenly in just a night spent together she meant a lot to me. A love I couldn’t believe was real because often times it felt like being stuck in a very engaging dream.

Funny enough my codependent partner didn’t fret when a few days after the night I spent with Amanda, I broke the news to her about meeting another woman who I wanted to be more with when she had called like usual to announce her intention of paying me a visit. She wished me luck and barely ever called or reached out to me afterwards.

I sometimes remember the question she had asked me then. The first time we had talked about being lovers.

“Can you survive against all odds?” She had asked.

I guess I ended up proving in both her case and that of Amanda’s, that I could not survive against all odds being in a relationship that when it started, seemed destined for the fairytale bliss of happily ever after, until the tables turned and destiny was denied.

Loving Amanda was a beautiful experience, until somehow it morphed into something that wasn’t particularly pleasant. The doubts, insecurities, accusations of infidelity and demands for money and attention. It eventually fell apart when I got transferred to a different state because of work.

And I particularly remember thinking to myself on the bus ride out of town to a destination I had never been to, while trying to imagine the possibilities of what the responsibility of a new position in my work career would become, trying mentally to prepare myself for whatever awaited me in the city where I was headed, located faraway across the country, in a different state from the one which I was leaving.

“Can you survive against all odds?” I wondered thoughtfully, realizing a new interpretation of the meaning of the question.

Leaving behind the trail of a heart breaking love lost, and moving head on towards the uncertainties, amidst the promised adventures of the soon to come future.