My friend was a shameless playboy who laid any woman who wanted to, whenever he wanted to. Because I was single, alone, envious, I learned to follow him around like I too needed him to kiss & cuddle me. But I was a man whom all what he needed on this earth was a woman eager to be in love with me.
I didn’t even think about falling in love because of my experience of what falling does to people. Before he got very sick, before his sickness came out in the open for everyone to feel it, I was angry and no longer willing to talk to him after I having heard that a girl I had just met and wished to introduce to my parents had been to his bedroom.
He disliked me for the fact that; he wanted to be my competition on any young woman before he died.
I was at home alone like I did most of the time whenever I realised; how much this world has changed, how it could no longer be able to accomodate honest people like me. When all of a sudden an old man, or I should rather say, my father’s friend came knocking on the door, slumped his tired self on our couch like he its head. And commanded me to make tea for him while he kept his weary eyes glued to our tv screen.
‘You don’t only kill people using a murder weapon !’ he blurted out. You also kill them with your use of your tongue through lying.’
He wasn’t talking to me but he talking to himself surprised me because I wasn’t sure as to why he was speaking loudly to himself.
After I had brought him a cup of tea and sat down on the couch beside him, he scowled at me like police officers do to suspects in our neighbourhood. Cleared his throat and spoke;
‘I know you’d like to know why the reason why I was talking to myself. I’ve come hear not to harass but warn you that people out there are no more happy that you’re still alive. People out there are baying for your blood and have been scowling at your elders like you’re the reason he had died.’
He took his eyes off me and kept quiet.
I then decided to get out off his sight to go listen to the radio in the kitchen. While I was there my parents came back from the night vigil. I spent some time with them and assured them that I had done all that they had asked me to do, that it was now time for I to go see what’s been happening in my absence by the streets.
But lit a front porch’s light and sat on a chair under its glow. People who had come to pay their last respects to the boy whom they knew since he was of a very young age, looked at, sneered and jeered at me like I was the cause of his death. It then dawned on me, that the old man inside the house, who had come to chat with my parents, was right about everything that he had told me. I was no longer loved and that depressed me more as; I was still single and looking for a darling to lay down and kiss.
Before his last breath left his body, he called my name out in gross monopolistic whispers of nous to his parents, whoever cared to listen was then present at that moment in time, how I was a reason for his demise, how they should keep their eyes and ears open, for he knew how much I liked to brag about my passionate crimes, how the belligerent police were never interested in whatever he always had to say.
In the early hours, I watched them dancing disgustingly in the dark like they were supposed to. I again kept quiet and sat on the front porch. Now wearing a thick winter jacket like my bed was no longer fit enough for me to sleep on it. Early in the morning about two hours before my friend was to be laid down at his final resting place.
I walked past his friends and girlfriends again and they laughed at me sadistically. Felt like scolding them but decided not to as I didn’t want to cause a scene and stood under a tent next to the wall where the sun couldn’t harm me and listened to the eulogies.
Talking about how our neighborhood would feel the loss of a very good, young & educated man. When he said those words I looked down because I didn’t want to be shamed. Because I had long quit my career path; in pursuit of wild fantasies which never came to pass.
On my return from the cemetery I was tired in mind, body & soul as all I ever thought was for it to come to end so that I should go home, open my bedroom’s windows both sides, sleep tight and wake up feeling refreshed. I did none of what they accused me of.But went to go hang with them after his burial. Tears streamed from the crews’ eyes’. I knew they were going to dislike my sudden appearance in their tear-soaked after-tears social gathering. Since I had never before showed any interest whatsoever in how they lived their lives.
Despite how they felt about me being a bad person; who should’ve died before our dear friend did, I had nothing to do with it. If they choose to forgive me for whatever wrong I had done, I’ll forever be thankful as I’m of the view that; I got nothing to lose going forward in this life. My future looks bleak.
Since time immemorial or I should rather say, since I got to know them; I never got a chance to live my life like I’m supposed to. As they always tried to be me.
–END–
