The Love Of Things

The love of “things” has always been my biggest curse, and probably yours too. 

You know when you can’t leave well enough alone and you give into the urges that your inquisitive nature demands of you.  I am a regular victim of my own gut instinct as well as a very active imagination. Yes, yes , yes  like Cole Sear’s or Haley Joel Osment’s charater in Sixth Sense…I (probably) see dead people.

I hear voices and I dream very vivid and at times graphic dreams. The stuff of horror movies; blood and gore as well as candy coated streets and fantastical nonsense. I have an over active imagination. I have always had issues with things not sitting well in my gut; I don’t just refer here to my late onset lactose intolerance. Women you know what I mean when the gut won’t let something sit well in it. It writhes within you and burns like acid and begs to be settled and no plain antacid will suit. Only answers and not your run of the mill bullshit answers will do.

This is about to get ugly and anyone with a weak constitution has been warned.

I have been hurt before and if you will, I can be referred to as damaged goods in areas of trust and faith. As you sit and tell your story I look at you and nod energetically at everything you say while slipping liberal pinches of salt from the 5kg bucket I keep in my handbag to all of your statements. This behaviour applies to everyone (but bear in mind that this does not take away from the fact that I believe in the inherent good of people) but I have developed this self-preservation technique in order to balance out my own naïveté .

Let me give a quick sample rundown of my past as regards relationships. I am going to edit this so that it portrays me in the best light possible as I have been around a couple of blocks a couple of times.

·       - The Identical Twins- Shayne and Wayne: I cannot for the life of me directly remember who was who and neither could Rumbi, the chick who laid claim to one or the other. This was kindergarten and these were hands down the cutest Caucasian dudes in the school. One day one of them didn’t come to school and this led to a massive showdown in the sandpit with Rumbi when break time food share was on and the one twin present was partaking in the normal festivities of sharing lunches with me and not her. That would be the first and sadly not the only time I actively got physical with another female over a man. He just walked away and went to call Ms. Hughes to break us apart ...sell out weakling

·        -Chubby: my first crush from the age of about 7, our mums were friends and we regularly went to their house or they came over to ours for dinners. Our parents referred to one another as in-laws and even though it was all a play I internally wished this dashing young man would father the 5 children I intended to mother someday. Thankfully we kid about it here and there and no pining or wishing for those childhood days exists. He has grown into a tall and still dashing career driven manly man, engaged if not already married so I wasn’t too far off the mark.

·        -String of nonentities, other guys who had crushes on me or I on them

·       - The Mayor’s son: I had the hugest crush on this chiselled young prefect, as did half of the school, female teachers, hostel matrons as well as wives of male teachers. He was athletic and mmmmm yummy. This boy I literally stalked, wrote him letters, snuck him glances and practised his signature if he so much as walked past me in the corridor (I have spoken of this before). Our parents were also really familiar and we would visit their farm they would visit us. He was a year older than me and we are cool right now, he has a family and a gorgeous one at that; we also share laughs about the good old days.

·      -  Bighead: this was my first “boyfriend” I was 14 and he is the first guy I kissed. For a whole 2 hours while I was on holiday under a street light in a town in the Midlands of Zimbabwe. Things fell apart when he appeared at my school’s dance with a hot girl who is now actually a great friend but was my unspoken arch rival at the time. I don’t know what happened to that new fool.

·        -Mr Chiweshe: body of a modern day Adonis full stop (.)

·        -Funny Valentine/ Big Head 2: our school had this terrible culture of having roses delivered on Vday by the Interact/Rotary club. The most popular girls would get bucket upon bucket and pimply me was among the awkward bunch that was at risk of marching out of that classroom with heads hung in shame unless we bought ourselves the things. So I recruited this guy from our church youth group solely for the purpose of getting even one rose. Soon as that was done I quickly disabused him of all his illusions of happily ever after and gave him his marching orders. He also had a big head. The only thing I felt bad about was that I actually gave him the money to buy me those flowers…

·       - Skinny Big Head: he deflowered me at the age of 16 one month and 4 days at Nyasha’s party, in a field under the stars on a fur coat that may or may not have belonged to my mother. A strong relationship that even resulted in me introducing him to my mum ensued for almost a year and ended when he cheated on me with a friend of his cousin who also had a big head

·     -   Zeus: I hit and run him to get over Skinny Big Head in a garden at a party and borrowed his khaki Levi jacket and never returned it

·        -Names elude me, places elude me but there was an incident in a hotel powder room on a Sunday morning he is also happily married to a gorgeous babe and their son thankfully looks like his mama. The guys at school dances- salute comrades. The one with the undescended gonad….all of the oral in elevator, teenage fumblings lol. More non entities.

·      -  Otis: he too had a big head that got cornrowed regularly, he smoked , drank flaming shots of Sambuca and dressed like a gangster with gaudy thick gold chains and form fitting vests. He never hit it. There was simply no way I was going to play with worms when I had handled anacondas. Yes Otis, you have a worm.

·        -Mr Mazda: would wait for me after school until I couldn’t ignore him anymore and boy have I never regretted that.

Like I said I am being conservative here. Mr  Mazda was to be the last before my marriage.

It’s always the same script and different cast. I will spare you the intricacies of it all because I am sure the conservatives among us are sanitising their eyes and spraying bleach over their screens in a bid to purge themselves of my teenage misadventures. Haha. But this is a reality a lot of us don’t want to face. Many children are sexually active long before they are remotely ready to deal with the emotional implications of a physical relationship not to mention the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. I paid attention in sex-education classes and I made sure my ass was covered.

One common denominator in all my past relationships and crushes is that I am very gullible when I am in love/ like/ lust. I put my own heels over my head and wrap the wool over my own eyes without help from anyone. Hell. I can catch you in the act and if you got up and started singing that it wasn’t you I would probably pick up your clothes for you and say let’s go home babe look at what the devil is trying to do to us. In short I love stupidly and whole heartedly even if that love is not returned in equal or adequate measure.

I have been deceived, cheated on, lied to, manipulated, used, and a great range of un-typable un-speakables. I am rabidly faithful and expect the same faithfulness to a degree where I always find myself sitting with egg on my face, tears streaming down my cheeks and an ever increasing distrust and dare-I-say resentment of the male species. Usually this is over things I will have seen and chosen to ignore in my love drunk state. Things that are so glaring and irregular that they need no introduction. Things that gnaw at me and latch onto my intestines, causing me insomnia and putting me in CSI mode. You do not want to cross me when I am in CSI mode and my gut won’t let it go.

Nemesis has not been spared from this fate.