Six thousand kisses - Stella's riddle

Chance always dictated our meeting even though we individually cherished and adored such coincidences, we always were secretly overwhelmed by the desires that filled both of us during such encounters. Desires, which were written in the deepest innermost parts of our beings. Scripts, edited and titled by the longed for willingness of our affections and emotions.

You always loved it when I would suddenly meet you in a bus, or around the corner or at some fancy café and pretend not to notice the sweet scented perfume whose scent I loved ever since I first met you at the first year’s orientation. You always wore that perfume and even now I still believe you do. Or was it the profound effect of your permanent beauty that drew me to the illusion of believing in the effects of this rich girls smell that emanated from you and since then it has always haunted me like a doctors ignorance to the smell of ether in his lab or something therein.

You were indeed beautiful and I confided and struggled with this issue in my heart, for I had promised myself and parents and all who cared in life that my priority would be in studies. No involvements whatsoever with any affair that would distract me from this. To them all you were the perfect embodiment of this issue, the kind of affairs that would easily draw me from this commitment I had made to my studies.

Strange the casual effects that our emotions and chance have on us. Stranger still the reluctance and ease with which we let our thoughts drift into the marvel and wonder of how coincidence should bring us together. For in the same day we bumped into each other six times, I counted. None of these were as a result of any of my machinations, neither- I believe- were they yours.

For I remember you mentioning it in the fourth bump that one of us was following the other and I casually let you decide who it was.

On the sixth bump is when you betrayed the thoughts that you struggled to hide so much and declared your admiration towards my height and more especially my basketball sneakers, which were a present from my uncle for making it to university. I have always been thankful to my uncle for that. For the sneakers sparked an endless array of thoughts that lifted me to galaxies never yet conquered. Fathoms birthed by this irrevocable declaration of what mattered most in me that you had carefully noticed. My conclusions drifted to the resolve that it was more than the size ten sneakers that you admired in me.

I equally did admire the fifteen bangles on your left arm, (for I counted them) and the jingles they made (for they were made of some light shiny metal), were to be a source of cherished fantasies in my sweet dreams of a future together floating in an existence not yet explored by any who dares proclaim such a generous supply of affections that we had towards each other. 

These affections were to be a source of great assurance and even though I never told you, your smiles and laughter did carry me through many tempting and trying days. For it is to you that I did declare not to have another, a covenant that I have not broken till today for I still have none. This declaration you never knew of and thus it was even stronger, a testimony of my hearts devotions towards what I consider the most devout commitment in my life.

Coincidence or chance it was that dictated the next four years with you for we ended up signing for the same courses and units in mathematics and physics, evidence of the untold similarity in the general flow in our ambitions and goals to succeed.

There on you were closer to me and away from all who could have swept you away from me. For a combination of mathematics and physics was greatly dreaded by most of your gender and it was only four more of you in a class of forty-two of mine. Such was the confidence and patience of my commitment that it assured me that none of the forty and one could be a threat to our future union filled with joy and happiness. Fantasies not yet imagined or dreamed of.

We never did get to stray further in our conversations as you came to consult on difficult concepts from me, as the rest of the class did. For everyone admired my ability to grasp all the difficult mathematical and physics concepts, but it was your admiration that mattered through the years. For I greatly cherished and kept those moments hiding them so that none would notice the obvious affection that my heart had with deep fondness towards you.

Your laughter was always the first to be noticed in lectures as I unleashed one of my intelligent jokes that would leave the lecturers without reply at the tactful way in which I would challenge the concept so outlaid in class. It was an annoying laughter that was shot in high pitch towards the roof then gradually reduced into careless giggles and chuckles that would spark even more laughter from the class especially from those inattentive ones who did not know what they were laughing at.

It was one of these jokes that lead me into trouble with professor m who sent us both out of class me for my ‘ignorance to obvious issues that were determined by those in higher intellectual capacity than I’ and you for ‘provoking distracting behavior’ by ‘laughing like one possessed’. I had possessed you. I now thank professor m for he gave us thirty-six minutes alone in his office where he had sent us to wait for him.

In m’s office we did enjoy even more laughs and giggles as we chatted and chanted imaginary slogans borne out of mischievousness created by our idleness. Slogans advocating for m’s promotion and elevation for sending us out of his boring astrophysics lecture. The comforting solitude of his office filled with pictures of his family and long ago days in college was in deed a treat.

He did find us in a gay mood and flying paper planes, indulging in all forms of mischief, this was to our disadvantage. He also saw a picture of you that I had sketched in his office white board as you were swinging and rolling around in his ‘executive senior academic staff chair’ as he called it. I promised myself that I would buy you a similar one and went even further to imagine us seated together trapped in a world without m as we floated through fulfilled infatuations and fantasies, stars shining and twinkling in and endless sway of beauty to crown our union and companionship and all the beauty that surrounds such new found fondness as we had for each other.

His reaction was evident in the results that we both had at the end of the semester and even in subsequent results in any of his units that we took. Nothing did matter at all so long as we were in this together. We avoided any unit that smelled of m.

You drifted away with your second upper while I was left alone in the same department with m. for I had deferred one academic year to everyone’s surprise but you were among the few friends who understood that I needed my time and space to sort out whatever it was that was on my mind.

Chance has always ensured that we have met and in the few encounters over the days, we both still hold with great faithfulness the cherished secret devotion that held us and carried us through.

That day at the café I saw you with what looked like your colleagues, for you got a job as an administrator in an exclusive multinational Internet shopping company. I ordered my fries and a cold drink and went to seat further from your group to adore in solitude and eager admiration at what you had become. For it was the exact picture of what I had always had of you, always beautiful, always sweet, and always lovely.

Your laughter could still be heard above the music that was flowing from the high speakers and it was in one of the habitual movements of flinging your long braids backwards and sweeping the whole mass of hair with delicate pats that you saw me opening my drink with my teeth (an art that you admired and showed off to any of our classmates whenever we went out. You never let a waiter open your drink but always asked me to bite off the cap then you would growl in a mock feminine voice that was supposed to imitate a lion).

You didn’t hesitate as you hastily left your company like something was urgently the matter and to everyone’s surprise you flanged your arms, still filled with fifteen bangles in each, over my shoulders and hugged my frame spilling my drink in our clothes, table and floor.

It was only two weeks ago that I had written you a poem titled six thousand hills and emailed it to you which you confessed made you sob in tears and promise me six thousand kisses. You gave me one.

You pulled me to your group with the contents of my drink still in my trousers and shirt and you didn’t hesitate to introduce my as your ‘poet friend from campus’ you even showed them my basketball sneakers. One of your friends speculated they were the inspiration behind the huge basketball sneakers poster at the wall of you office. I was flattered.

A skinny guy in your group with a rather flat nose indicated his ambition to be a ‘poet friend from campus’ when he grew up if that was the kind of treatment that poet friends enjoyed. They all agreed that I was more than a poet friend.

You sought permission from your senior administrator (who happened to be in your party that day) to report a bit late for work that afternoon. You had to go home and change you sky blue top that was stained by the contents of my drink that you accidentally spilled while you were overcome by excitement when you finally saw me after a long time. That was what you said. He gave you the rest of the day off. You hurriedly gave flat nose your key to clear your desk for you and shut down your computer as we left for your apartment, which you eagerly wanted me to see, as you wouldn’t hear anything of me going back to my room to clean up.

You lived in a three-storrey block and to my precise guess your apartment was on the first floor for you hated lifts and stairs. Beige was the theme behind the furniture you had and everything was clean and smart in its simplicity. There was also a copy of the poster similar to the one in your office.

You showed me all the rooms and the tour was satisfying especially in the kitchen, where there was a campaign poster that was mine. It had mysteriously disappeared from the student notice board and this was part of the reasons I convinced myself of not winning he student elections. For though many students knew me they hardly knew my name as the all called me ‘tall’ or some other funny name whose record you kept.

I remember being angry at whoever had stolen the color picture then and even wrote a very threatening note and pinned it on the board. Promising to deal physically in the crudest way with anyone who was responsible for the poster’s loss for I suspected my opponent for that mischief.

I stayed for a moment in front of the poster, forgetting the light and radiance that it gave to your small kitchen and floating into my own memories of the disappointments I had that day the election results were out. I had got ten votes against my opponents two hundred and thirty two. You gave me the second kiss, which brought me to the reality of the moment that I was with you.

I easily let the anger related with the threats I had made regarding the poster fade, then disappear with the soft touch of the moisture from your colored lips as their soft touch left my cheeks. You still had that perfume, the sweet perfume from campus days. I was at peace, glad that the poster was taken. That it brought purpose and radiance to your kitchen and any other place that you had carried it along with you since that day.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wiping stains from garments, biting more caps off bottles, imitating m’s lectures, you wearing my size ten shoes in your pretty size six feet imitating my brisk walk which you did admired. It was nine at night when I left your place amid protests from you for you wanted me to spend the night and the night to last forever. 

I reminded you of the responsibilities that we both had at campus and the office and you reluctantly agreed to let me leave giving me your phone number and I gave you none for I had no phone. It was a rewarding day and my night was spent thinking of what could have been done to make our meeting more enjoyable and fun but I concluded that nothing could, it was six in the morning when I came to that conclusion.

Now am in my first floor flat in southeast London, where am pursuing my masters study in Astrophysics. Am expecting you in two days for you got transferred to your companies headquarters in London. I have a huge collection of posters of basketball sneakers I bought plus fifteen bangles made out of a shinny light metal that I got you out of my first savings from my job as a tutorial fellow in the university am studying in. I also have a beautiful beige card in it I have politely asked for five thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven kisses. You gave me the third one when you came to see me off at the airport that unusually cold September night, when I was flying out to proceed with my studies in Astrophysics.

The end.