There’s
something undoubtedly superior about The Modern African Man. He attends
Red-Blue-Green Carpet events religiously and maybe the occasional Church,
Mosque or even Shrine too. Always thinking about starting a blog to pass on his
pristinely evolved and elevated ideas to faithful “minions”. And yes, he is
really into “new-age Afro-centric philosophies lately”. He has a favorite
microbrewery (that’s if he ever deigns it fit to hobble down from his well
refined palate pedestal of dated vines and cognac snifters that is). The beer
he drinks is mostly because of it’s hoppy taste- whatever that means. He has a
fun twitter handle and pretty rad theories on how the next episodes of “Game of
Thrones” and The National Assembly saga will play out.
Although he had a Spanish grandfather, Onye possessed all
the marked makings of a Modern African Man. A self professed Social Thinker and
Intellectual. His twitter handles always on point with his insightful, acerbic,
witty banter. And when he drank beer, it was always the locally brewed dark
stuff. Always present at every jiving party
in his signature bad boy tees and faux leather jacket , excitedly
pontificating his views whilst feverishly puffing on one of those weed vapor
thingies. He insisted on managing the music at these hang outs too, saying,
“Guy , you’ll see this artist jumping off not-just-ok –dot-com unto the MaMas
stage soon , I dey tell you!”
Onye was
well groomed, well read, and funny and me maah, I take special pride in dating
a guy that’s in one word; Cool. But like most Modern African Men, “MAM” if you
please? When confronted after months of regularly hooking up with mild
enquiries regarding commitment, like dominoes, he crumbled. The MAM is “just
not into labels” and really is “only trying to live the life and have some fun
while at it.”
When I asked
Onye what that was supposed to mean, he said “Chill out.”
Yet Chill I
no gree.
Out , later
with some friends for lunch. “Onye and I have broken up” I announced.
“Were you
guys ever together?” was the comeback I got.
“Well, we’d
been shagging for months on end na.”
“Yes, but it
wasn’t on Facebook, and he never used you as his “main chick” DP on his BBM,”
they respond.
“It’s only
real if he does both.”
Devastated
can hardly describe what I felt when Onye and I stopped seeing each other. Only
it was difficult not to stop seeing each other as we were not only friends on
Facebook, our Instagram and Twitter handles followed each other as well. So I
saw him all the time, suffering through the hurt as his grinning profile
constantly shadowed my feed.
“Unfollow
him joor!” my loyal band of supporters would roar.
“You’re
never going to get over that guy until you block every link you have with him.”
But I
couldn’t. Honestly, there was something mildly titillating not to mention
enthralling about being linked with Onye still, getting to track his social
life. Was he missing me at all? Dating someone new? Or old ke? Had his village
people finally caught up with him and given him some herpes dose at the very
least? Or even the sack?! I had to know. Besides, unfollowing him was being too
dramatic and felt like I had lost this mental “war” as well. As if I were
proclaiming , “I can’t handle this!” To my thinking, remaining friends on
Facebook said I too was “Modern”, independent , unmoved and unfazed, suave like
those cool James Bond Martinis; “shaken not stirred”, whatever.
But I wasn’t
like any of those things I discovered. Unashamedly, I doggedly trolled his
pages , scrolling, stalking, shoving my phone with pictures of him with other
females into my friend’s faces asking, “Is she prettier than me?”
One stormy
morning, it’s 4:57 a.m., long drawn, drunk, insomnia filled hours had been spent
trying to decipher if some random, innocuous Wale lyric he tweeted could
somehow be related to me as a possible admission of affection. In a flash, I
have an epiphany. Quickly, I “unfriend”, “unfollow”, and block. With this tiny
act of defiance, I was finally free. “This is closure”. I tell myself. “This is
moving on.”
After that
dip into the pool of romantic failure, I drew wisdom from Okonkwo. In a classic
quote from Chinua Achebe’s , ‘Things Fall Apart’ (are there any nonclassic
quotes?!), Okonkwo, realizing that his way of life was decidedly going extinct
valiantly decides like the birds to the hunters who prey on them, to adapt and
adopt anti-social ways to survive.
With this in mind, I decide to swear off
modern African men, their foibles and affectations. No more Instagram dissections,
Twitter games or Facebook predation. I needed someone more evolved, someone
mature.
Bashorun ,
-“Bash”, was 10 years older than me and so mature he constantly said things
like, “I’m 10 years older than you, you know?”. Refusing contact lenses, he wore
his thick-rimmed glasses with the jaunty swag of a university prof. , along
with his grown up shoes. He hated “Vampire Diaries” and described things as
being “soft”, “like jazz” , “get better oil” or simply “make sense.” He didn’t
have a favorite gin distillery , hardly attended any coloured carpeted event by
choice, and was completely off the social media grid; no Instagram or Twitter.
He didn’t even have a Facebook account.
How sexy is
that?
Bash was
old-school.
We knew each
other from way back when, when we lived on the same street as kids. He moved
away. And so did we. Though we vaguely moved in the same group, we barely spent
time together at the time. We reconnected through a mutual friend. I always had
a feeling he could barely tolerate me, which I of course found to be an
irresistible challenge. When we started to get to know each other, because we
somehow knew each other, it felt like all the most exciting parts of a
relationship had been combined with the ease and familiarity of an old friend. He
was like a cup of hot chocolate spiked with tots of vodka; warm, comforting and
wildly intoxicating.
Our
correspondence was mostly physical. We engaged in face-to-face, eye-to-eye,
conversations about books (actual hold-them-in-your-hands books!) and about our
ideas and hopes, unencumbered by the need to take selfies, use filters or hash
tags or stare at our phones. We went to shows, lounges, watering holes and
restaurants not because some “local rappers” celeb or “Twitter-Chef” was billed
to perform or cook.
Simply just because it had a good vibe. It was at once
nostalgic and refreshing.
My Instagram
feed had become a vehicle for acquaintances to announce their engagements,
celebrate their partners and activities with hashtags like “#BONNIEnCLYDE”, “#engagedlife.”
Sitting at our favorite “point and kill” spot, slurping on some fiery catfish
peppersoup and cool glass of palm wine, I couldn’t help but think they were
trying too hard. How much time can you be spending together if so much of it is
spent taking pictures and writing captions?
Today’s
equivalent of “shouting it from the rooftops” is adding a “Life Event” to
Facebook, a proclamation of your undying love. Until your love dies and you
have to painfully switch your status to “it’s complicated” or worse, “single.”
To me, Bash
was not a life event; he was just sweetly in my life. For a while, as long as
we lasted, I wanted, and got, something more intimate. I wanted and got,
something too big to be contained in a simple hashtag or 140 characters. Something
too big to be improved upon by filters or upgraded by an app store.
And then,
suddenly, it was over for us, too. I adored him deeply, but in the end that
wasn’t enough. Like fire crackers on New Year’s Eve, there was a brilliant
explosion and then a slow fade.
When we came
to an end, my instinct was to gain closure in the ways I had in the past: to
rid every semblance of Bash from my hemisphere, my apartment, my devices.
But he was
already gone. There was nowhere to avoid him because he was nowhere to be
found. His online presence was nonexistent. He left nothing in my apartment- no
toothbrush, boxer shorts or even the odd Old Navy polo. I combed through my
life painstakingly only to find no trace of him.
Except in
one place. I gingerly held my phone in my hands and for hours reread months of
texts, all that remain of us. Lingering lovingly over the ones I found uber
funny or sexy, clutching my heart and sighing with deep longing at the ones in
which he called me “Ife.” But after savoring them, I decided to erase these
traces, too: Swipe, Tap, Delete.
Now Bashorun
was really gone. Yet I thought about him every day. He had left no carefully
chosen picture on my screen saver, but he was all I longed for. Indeed, I had
wanted, and lost something that couldn’t be deleted.
Before Bash,
break ups had produced for me mere heartache- a dull pounding, bruising of the
spirit and yes, personal pride. The loss of Bash had rendered me heartbroken.
This was not just a glancing blow; I bled. Yet it was the kind of pain that
curiously seared so cleanly it made you feel more alive, like the emotional
equivalent of a tattoo. A pain so grand, you couldn’t bear but hold it all, so exquisite;
you couldn’t help but not want to.
There was
something miraculous in caring for someone so deeply in an age where it’s
considered prudent to appear detached. It occurred to me then, in the musky
trenches of my rumpled wrapper, enveloped by Orange Is The New Black,
surrounded by bunched clouds of tissues, that this was love.
Then I downloaded
Mingle.
I walked up
to my first (and only) Mingle date with lead feet and slowly burning regret. I
spent the most part of the date wondering what Bash was doing and calculating
how much cosmos I had to chug down for the evening to be less awful. My date
spent the most part of the evening checking out the restaurant in hopes to
catch a glimpse of any of the celebs that had been rumored to dine here often,
tweeting that the weather was humid, and posting pictures of his main course on
Instagram.
Finally, at
the end, he looked up at me with eyes I only just discovered to be a startling
black (the glow of the phone had thrown off their true colour) and said the
four words that broke this camel’s back: “Do you have Snapchat?”
“No,” I
said. “I’m old-school.”
Heading
home, I bought some stationery. It had been months since we last spoke and
although I had no hope for second chances, I missed him too much not to say so.
That night, I sat down and wrote Bash a letter: a hold-it-in-your-hands-letter.
Sent that heartfelt missive to him via FedEx.
Days later,
because letters sometimes take days, his name flashed on my phone.
“Hey,” his
text read. And then, after a long pulsing ellipsis: “I miss you too.”
