The night was aging so quickly and it was really cold at the beach. The lit beach house shone its light onto the well-organised backyard that was terraced from the back exit to the sea defence rocks that divided the beach from the terrace of the beach house. The four men were seated on some of the rocks that had fallen unto the beach, and Nurudeen found some dried twigs, branches and tree stumps in the bush that was beyond the boundary of the beach house to start a little camp fire that kept going out. However, he managed to get more twigs and some alcohol to flame it up. The fire excited them so much because they had not really had something like that before.
'This must be the real By The Fire side,' Gerald said with laughter, bringing a nostalgic nuance with the most popular children's television show of their childhood and teen ages.
'But ah, Gerald? You expected them to do this kind of camp fire in the studios? I think the title was only metaphorical, or?' Gyasi said with a chuckle. Everyone giggled.
'Well, the cameras would have burned down,' Gerald added.
The fire was on and off. However, that brought them a lot of warmth as their conversations with one another about their boyhood and transition to manhood did not go as impressively as they would have expected. The illumination of the fire was significant of the fiery atmosphere that their individual stories had built up. Lancelot was still pouring his heart out, about the strange occurrence of his abuse. The others were listening in a lot of disbelief as their friend told his story. It was an unexpected story that was a distasteful discovery. When Lancelot let it lose, the reaction around the fire was remarkably of shock, despair and disappointment. Gyasi literally took a a brief walk of five steps away from the fire and back, rubbing his hands through his hair, over his face. Nurudeen's already bulging eyes were popping out as though he had been strangled. Gerald kept sighing and muttering a series of nos under his breath.
The three friends were stunned by the reality of Lancelot's story, as they gradually soaked it in and regrouped around the fire. It was a complex myriad of a lot of trauma and pain that had been lived in a closet of murkiness and pitch darkness which paradoxically oozed chills on their skin and burned their minds with the burden of truth.
'Lancelot, take your time on that,' Nurudeen was nervous about how their friend was about to open another bottle of alcohol after finishing the first one within thirty minutes.
'Mmmm? I don't think I can talk about this with my saintly sane mind. I have to lose my mind a bit ti tell it like it is, just like I have had to lose my mind in the dark to maintain my sanity. Funny how the same method works both sides very well,' he said and poured himself another tumbler of drink.
'What do you mean by that?' Nurudeen asked. The others were all fixed on Lancelot and listening attentively as the twigs and branches cracked in the bright orange flames that were dancing to the move of the wind.
'I think we will get to that section of the story and we will understand me better. But for now, I was raped for 10 years… 10 good years…'
Literally, Lancelot was a man who had caved in to a bottomless pit of sin, guilt, shame, pain and distraught a long time ago. He was just trapped in the box of the trauma of his past, the depression of his present and the almost endless discomfiture that came with it and how he felt his future was absolutely nothing to live today for! No matter how much they tried to convince him about how wrong he was, it was not an easy think break out of the trap he found himself in from what he had become trapped in. He had absolutely absolved himself so much in the mess that his only message was that his life too messy to move ahead anymore. He recounted to his friends how he had been entangled in a clandestine closeness with their long time house help who was a teenager at the time and stayed with them for as long as Lancelot could remember. He could neither remember the number of times he and his siblings were left in his care nor when things started getting sexual.
'She was older, I mean, she was… and it did not seem as if she could do any wrong. She would touch me inappropriately, she would do that in the bathroom and when she was prepping me for school. She would also allow me do same to her, I mean… I did. Playfully. It was fun to me in that context. She would touch me till I felt a sensation that would be so ecstatic- imagine I had to grow up to understand what exactly that feeling meant…' Lancelot said.
'Seriously, guys it seemed fun. It seemed like it was our thing. I really didn't get what was happening. It continued until my time at Rand's when boys will talk about sex and the naughty stuff they were up to at home or when the. Role bounds. That was when I realised that that was what was happening. I remember Gyasi used to be a bad man! Bad bad bad man,' Lancelot said with a giggle.
The rest snickered.
'Come on, I'm a changed man now. I mean those were boys' shenanigans and they were never the goal or the end game…' Gyasi said with a brief smile that was birthed from his reminisce of the times.
'Hehehe,' Lancelot laughed. 'Does Dee know these things?'
'Lance, she knows everything of me. I didn't want her to have any surprises. She also shared everything and we understood each other. Maybe that is why I am always of the view that couples need to know each other through and thoroughly.' Gyasi wanted to play it safe so he did not sound judgemental. To him, Lancelot was at a really critical point and he did not need to trivialise or be a judge and jury about it either. Neither serious nor funny - that was a strategy he learned from Denise in managing people crisis through communication.
'Probably she was willing to listen to you but my wife has not been that accommodating. I don't pride myself in this but I probably didn't watch her well before marrying. She has only been concerned about family status and glory and her ambitions. I told you, Nurudeen, right? Because I could never talk with her much even before we married. I think she was my enchantment against my addiction to that…' that last statement Lancelot made triggered a grimace.
'Okay okay let me explain. I did realise the abuse, I knew and learned it was abuse but it had become an addiction. It was like a dark cloud over me because I just wouldn't let it go. The pleasure - because I had heard so much of these things from being amongst the boys at Rand's - had become very intense. Unlike how Gyasi put it that his focus was never those stuff because he really understood that it was a lot of playing around, mine was a deep seated connection that had gone beyond playing around. Even when she had left our house, I managed to track her down first year in uni. She left while we were in final year at Rand's. It was as though I was never going to get out of it…'
'Well, I doubt I would…' another grimace from the boys made him gobble what was remaining in the glass. He poured himself another and that was Nurudeen's cue to snatch the bottle from him.
'Come on, Nuru!' Lancelot said, while failing to retrieve the bottle. He weakly got up and nearly fell into the fire in the middle. Nurudeen was swift enough to catch him midair and help him sit.
'You will not implode your liver in front of us because of the pain of your past and present… I don't even know why you never spoke to anyone about what was happening to you… Gerald was here, Gyasi was here… why?' Nurudeen complained.
'I didn't? I did. I did to a psychologist. I started seeIng one when… when she called me one day that she had become pregnant for me. I told her I was not going to continue the relationship anymore and I could not afford anymore risk of cheating on my wife. None of you should judge me because I am sure most of you have alternatives hidden somewhere.' The rest looked at each other and back at him in surprise. 'You don't? But every man is supposed to have a piece somewhere to give him some peace at home… or? Daddy did. Daddy had this girl and I caught them a number of times. I don't know if that's why he didn't like me and I didn't like him. He never talked about it after I had even caught him. And I hated him for it and the way he rather preferred my brother to me. Well, if you all didn't… then…'
Gyasi was standing. The heat was too much now for him to stay seated. He had known his friend for twenty plus years but he actually did not know his friend.
'So how come the engagement with the psychologist didn't help?'
'We had sex…' Lancelot said almost too quickly. 'We did after a heated argument with my father. He called me good for nothing in his office. I retorted with his sins of the past and… and a lot of… so I called her and she was at her office and… look, I couldn't speak to any of you because this life of mine? It had been a mess from the beginning. I had gone wayward while being silent about it. My peace of mind and the innocence that was foundational to my stability and discipline as a man was robbed way too early for me to act properly.'
'So the baby? She kept it? And you kept seeing her? And you still see her?' Nurudeen asked.
'I don't know what she did with it but after some months of staying away from her, I just slipped back because she's my safe space. I could tell her everything and be free with her but the dark side was that darkness that clouded my life. The whole issue intensified with my bad decision at work… that bad deal I brought because of the pressures to proving a point to my dad and to my wife. When the whole thing submerged my life, she was the one I could run to to pour out…'
'And what really happened? That deal? The one that got you sacked?' Nurudeen asked.
'Hah!' Lancelot had a hiccup and nearly threw up. 'So some people came up as key investors and their interest in Haynes and Co. was very high. They really wanted to partner. I scheduled meetings with them and Nana. Nana found them to be a bit sketchy but I convinced him because the deal was worth 350,000 dollars. That was exclusive of my cut. But they were frauds. How the managed to defraud us of about 100,000 dollars was even a surprise. They got access through me and…' he choked on tears.
The others realised it and they were silent. Nurudeen threw more twigs into the fire and it blazed on, with the smoke curling its way through the atmosphere.
No comments:
Post a Comment