The Dreamer

Dressed in a white corporate shirt, a black tie and suit, I take my laptop bag in my hand, shut my bedroom window, switch off the light and step out. Locking my door, Father’s bedroom door clicks open and I turn around to find Miss Winifred, in a pink camisole, barefooted with her hair dishevelled.
“Is this the time you leave for work, every day?” she asks.
“Yeah. I’m running late. Bye.” I run down the stairs.
Walking down the street, no longer perturbed by the new life Father has found with Miss Winifred, I realize I have come a long way. Sometimes, I feel that I am floating through life while everyone else has everything figured out. On the roadside, flagging taxis, a fancy black jeep reverses towards me, nearly running me over when I curse at the driver. “Are you mad?!” The tinted windows come down, revealing my boss, sunshades in her eyes and a black headscarf over her head. She gestures, asking me to get in. I pull the door handle, enter and shut the door.
We ride for a few minutes, saying nothing when, in a bid to break the silence, I say, “I’m sorry I called you mad, ma.” She is silent. “How is the family?”
She turns to look me in the eyes, derision in her gaze. “Am I boring you?”
“Not at all, ma. Just thought to—”
“Then, keep quiet so I can focus on the road.”
“I’m sorry, ma.”
Taking the bend down The Dome, unlike the regular route I am accustomed to taking through Federal Secretariat to work, I want to tell her she has missed the route and is headed the wrong way, but I am too scared to cut through the thick air surrounding us. In front of Green Hotel, she parks and gets down the car. Leaning over the driver window, casually posed, she says, “I’ll be with you, shortly,” and heads into the hotel.
Alone in the vehicle, I run my eyes through the back seats, front seats and glove compartment. Beside the driver seat, tucked between the gears, I find a pack of condoms. I take it out, open it, and find some have been used. Heels clicking on the asphalt behind me, I tuck the pack back where I found it and adjust in my seat. She gets in, ignites the vehicle, and we drive. Occasionally, she turns to look, suspiciously, at me, then softens her gaze as she shakes her head with a smile.
“You went through my things.”
“No, I didn’t, ma.”
“If you didn’t then you’re a fool.” She starts to whistle. “Had breakfast?” she asks.
“Not yet, ma.”
“Do you mind I buy you something?”
“I’m not hungry, ma. Thank you.”
“It’s a yes, then.” She takes a bend, parks in Finger Licking Good, and it’s nostalgia thereon for me.
It’s as if no matter how hard I try I cannot escape my past with Franklin. He comes to hunt me every time I’m most afraid to remember him—when I look in Aliyu’s eyes, and now, with the DG in this restaurant. It’s as if his ghost is trying to tell me, “You mustn’t forget me.”
Standing at the corner where food is served, “What would you have?” she asks.
“It’s pricey here, ma.”
“I’m not complaining. We’re here already so, what would you have?”
To the server, I say, “I’ll have fried plantain and a fried egg, please.”
She places no order for herself and, tray in hands, I shy just a table away from where Franklin and I once sat.
Lost in the spice of the sauce, the sultriness of the plantain, she says, looking at me like one who’s adopted a stray dog and all she wants to do is do right by it, “When you first walked into my office I had no expectations. Thought you were a fine boy with no brains, but”—she plops her chin on her interwoven knuckles—“you’ve proven time and again you can deliver, whatever the task.”
Mouthfull, I say, “Thank you, ma,” then take a bottle of water from the table and drink.
Hands on the table, she slides her fingers towards me and holds my free-hand, squeezing mildly. I recall it’s the same way Franklin touched me a couple of years ago in this same place. I recoil.
“I’m sorry.” She withdraws. “I shouldn’t have.”
I stay silent for a while, then say, “It’s all right, ma.”
Eyes dancing around my face, she says, “What happened to you?—since you started working at my office I’ve noticed how distant, at times, you can be.”
Wiping my hands against a serviette paper, I respond, “Ma, I don’t think anything is out of the ordinary with me.”
She exhales. “I really want to touch your hands. Can I?”
I nod and she reaches for me, her butterfly tattoo glistening on her wrist. Rubbing her thumb back and forth through the palm of my hand, I sense she is trying to tell me something, perhaps that where we go from here is nowhere near the office. I am broken and ready to be used. I start to imagine this is all I have needed since Franklin’s demise—to be taken, callously, without consent—because only then, I feel, will I be able to put a stop to my immeasurable grief. She would rape me and I would have my self-inflicted pain to live with for the rest of my days. At least, I will say to myself, I no longer live in the past but dwell in the present. Plate empty, she gestures with her eyes, asking if I am ready to leave, and I gesture back, head cocked towards the door. We stand up and leave.
Driving down the road before Green Hotel, I am surprisingly calm. Before now, the thought of having sex with a woman terrified me. I used to wish I was bisexual, that besides that one time with Feyisola I could at least boast of having had sex with countless women. We park in the hotel’s car stall.
The world, all of a sudden, slow-motions as we approach the door. We get in and the male and female receptionists smile at the DG, like this is something she does often. Room 606, a digit shy of the mark of the beast. She swipes the key card, the door unlocks, and immediately my feet step in the air-conditioned room she locks the door behind me and kicks her stilettos off. Walking towards me with the swagger of a thug, I cannot believe society stereotypes men as being the alfas.
“Take off my jacket,” she whispers in my ear, her teeth glistening under the orb.
I tuck my hands in her jacket and pull it off, then go on my knees, hands reaching behind for her zip, and pull down her skirt. She firmly takes me by the skull and presses my nose to her nicely trimmed labia. Smelling of lemon and honey, I start to wonder if she treats her pubic hair the same way she treats the hair on her head. My tongue tastes something sweet and I rise to share the taste with her, kissing her well-fleshed lips as we make what, with Feyisola, I referred to as ‘lost’, a paradise that never gratified me.
We lye face up in bed after coupling. She is all smiles and her chest, in the last four minutes, wouldn’t stop rising and falling heavily. Then she stands to her feet, playfully pulls my penis on her way to the bathroom, saying, “Thank God. I was starting to think you’re gay.” I take a shower after her, and she leaves a thousand naira note on her way out, saying halfway through the door, “I must not get to the office before you.”
Riding in a cramped bus to the office, I am animatronic, the things happening before my eyes—passengers arguing with the conductor for their change as they alight the bus, and the driver enthusiastically bobbing his head to the music on the radio—are slow and vertiginous. Replaying my time with the DG in the hotel room, I am puzzled by her approach—neither seeking express consent nor asking of my sexual orientation. It’s amazing, I think to myself, that she should assume I’d want it, that she should assume I’d be straight by nature. It’s amazing how, throughout, I imagined Franklin, a deceased man, to gain erection to satisfy her. Worst off, it’s amazing how, for fear of being exposed, I desperately clung to a memory. It’s a tiresome life, and I am starting to wonder how long I can keep up pretences.
Seated in my office cubicle, staring at the papers clipped to the wall, I remember my dream from last night, a dream I haven’t stopped having since adolescence: I am falling from a cliff, my arms flailing desperately and my lips dreadfully mouthing on mute. I never hit the ground. The fall, as far back as I remember, has always been endless. Perhaps what this dream tries to tell me every time is my sexuality is a secret I’d take with me to the grave.

M. Ogah