I just got back from a fantastic trip to bida. I drove down from Abuja with two friends and spent two days on the road (to and from) and one night in a hotel where we were the only occupants. It was fun, it was crazy, it was familiar and new all at once.
We went over there to chase a woman. More accurately I went girl-chasing and they followed like faithful friends. I’ve been dating this girl for three months and for the last month we have fought and been on the precipice of the end of the relationship. I consider myself a pretty lousy boyfriend. Too much clumsy romance and not enough love. So I went off to bida to prove my stuttering attempts had some form in something real and immediate and useful.
We had other reasons. The trip through Niger state, the photographs waiting for our eager clicks, the love of the road trip. But I went for the woman, mostly
We set out late on Saturday. Kalat overslept, Steve needed to stop by the office, and I had a hangover from a night of purely mental bingeing with Bukar and then Nakama. We left Abuja at noon. The first thing to be known about driving to Niger state is the bad roads. The potholes are the real danger. I felt sorry for the car. We did not know our way but we did fairly well. We stayed within the country.
At minna we stopped over to spend a few minutes at the university. Kalat‘s cousins are in their final year there and the female of the two is very, very easy on the eye. My protests about the stop-time were very, very mild.
45 minutes from bida and I had to face my own reasons for being there. My friends chatted on about the road and the landmarks and the distance and the closeness of the clouds to our patch of earth. I was worried because my love interest had moved from a thousand texts a day to one word replies to five hundred previous texts from me. It was the great unloving. It was all too familiar. My relationships seem to blow hot and cold. Perhaps on both sides but I am from that part of the gene pool that wants something the more it is out of reach. I think.
I thought of the last time I broke up, the sudden drawing away, the discomfort in even the most innocent physical contact. I thought about this because I fully expected to be dumped. I could almost see her refusing to hold my hand, deciding that since I am a man and men do not listen then she must rude as well as firm, to be strong and not give in to the desperate pleading of the about to be discarded. I was not excited. I was numb or steeling myself with numbness.
When we arrived we waited for her at a petrol station and while my friends took in the sights and bought sugar cane I scanned the arrival of doom. Doom arrived looking beautiful. I do not know what principle this follows but it always seems that women grow more beautiful at the moment they start becoming the grass on the other side.
She gave me one of those side hugs you give an untrustworthy boy you suspect of trying to feel you up. I am not a hugger but a holder so I did not mind. I did mind that she covered Steve in a full embrace and that he winked at me over her shoulders. I think.
As we drove to the hotel where three of us would spend the night I held her hand and this was different. She held me back. I played with her hand and she played with mine. It was not the perfect scene. I could feel the tension in her fingers and she was on the phone a bit, ordering a life that did not have me in it.
At the hotel we had a debate with the manager so we could share a double room and not have to get a spare room. This was a financial not an ethical decision.
As the evening drew closer to the night she said the words that signal, always, the end of the affair:
“I have to go home soon.”
My friends went looking for fish. I pulled her close and she came. I had much to say but my words left me. I was closed up and so I just held her and asked her to explain why we had to end. She talked and I talked and we got nowhere new. I gave her gifts: a c.s. Lewis devotional, a night gown, a cake from kalat and some candy she liked. She gave me gifts: boxers. This was not a good sign. This was a good sign. It was not a good sign because my last girlfriend bought me clothing before she pulled the proverbial plug and my last semi-girlfriend bought me a bottle of perfume. “It is about what I lack.” I thought.
When she left I was more conflicted. All the body language was the old love but her words were the same: I want to end this. I talked it over with kalat and tried to pray. I slept in that haze. The next day was no better. She could only spend two hours, I was at a loss for words and she was quiet and sad and we kept kissing and saying we were breaking up. we promised to pray about it.
She left. I stood on the road with kalat and Steve. She told me to stop being cold and to be her friend. I did not want to. I wanted to let her be and seek a new adventure. A little ambivalence will follow and then a few months of pining and then some other arms. But it did not seem right, for once.
As we left bida I was really numb. I have been listening to the audio book of “blue like jazz” by Donald Miller. A good book, a perfect book gets under your skin and heart and tells you, shouts at you how much more you have to travel to the real you.
It was on this trip: reading, listening, sleeping getting angry at Steve for blasting the radio and insisting on Christian music over my tuface idibia album. On the way back I saw my own folly, this need for my own way, to be desired and praised and respected and full of love.
I saw that Steve was playing and having fun and being himself and I was just offended. I saw that the woman I claimed to love was struggling with many doubts and fears and all I wanted to know was why she didn’t close her eyes anymore when we kissed.
I am selfish through and through and in need of God in every second.
From bad roads to bad heart, this is the legacy of a wonderful trip to bida.
I am growing.
Amen.