Self-portraits and serial monogamists

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Ordinary…

I read somewhere that you shouldn’t start a story with your characters in bed.

That’s exactly where my story begins. In a cozy bed sitter, butt to belly, limbs entangled trying to snatch up that adventurous strand of hair stuck on my tongue. She touches me; I flinch and say “not now love, but I want you later”.  You are probably saying, “I have heard this story before”. 

Kisses…caresses…pressing…rising…consuming…then one of you lights a cigarette, and waves the smoke away after each drag. Disgusting habit but that’s how the story always goes. No fancy pants sadomasochistic red room of pain or 7 acrobats and a Bengal tiger hanging from the curtain rails kind of sex. But isn’t that the story of sex, the kind of everyday ordinary sex that builds a relationship.

 In this warm bedsitter, we eat, we watch TV, gossip about the neighbors then gravitate towards the bed… to sleep or to talk; there are details the hurried hectic weekday pace has probably  let slip by. She chuckles, I giggle and we laugh. She talks about money, family, people, religion, government you name it. I believe her. Whatever she says, I believe her. I tell her my fears, hopes and dreams. She listens. I whine about my Sasquatch feet, impossibly high cheek bones and everything about me that is a source of embarrassment. She laughs, but she still listens. A tentative kiss…the way her warm hands and dainty fingers dance across my taut skin is a bonding. I spread myself wider for her, vulnerable, needing and she moans into my lips. You knew this was going to happen. It is happening. Just ordinary…

We are not making ripples in the outside world. Tiny whimpers, small shudders and her fingers positioned exquisitely. I arch for her, I arch to her, and I love her with my whole being as she worships my temple. I want more, I want it all! She has the good sense not to stop, but I tell her not to stop… just in case. Letting herself flow with the currents of my passion, she fondles, licks and sucks. My hips rock, buckle and grind with urgency. We lose our individual selves and find each other in this quivering mass of pleasure. Sometimes, if I withhold the moans, the feelings are intensified. Sometimes, I don’t have much of a choice. The sound comes from deep inside…out of this clenching and unclenching writhing intensity of pure unadulterated delight. She makes small affirming sounds as I cling tight onto her, imploding…and completely spent.  She cradles my head in her arms and smiles fondly down at me and teases, “how about that for ordinary?” She takes pride in pleasing me.

It is all part of the package; the ordinary stories, the ordinary sex, the coming and most importantly, a lovely companion to share it all with.

LESBIAN WRITER WANTED

…Must be a…it’s not Voldermort, you can say it:  lesbian. First article I get the cojones to submit and this is my byline… ”Lesbian writer”.  What is it that other lesbians say:  “most women cannot say the word lesbian even when their mouths are full of one!” So, lesbian…yes, I cannot stop saying lesbian now.  You lesbian! Submit your lesbian article to blah!  It’s almost…accusatory, eh?  Lesbian: a foreign word from books and sleazy websites and not necessarily from my experiences. That’s what growing up in a hetero-normative, homophobic society does to a young woman with strong Sapphic tendencies. So for today, you’ll have to pardon me, my sexual orientation is Alex Vause. 

 After mulling over it for a minute, I have reconciled the jarring fact that my love for words and women do make me a lesbian writer by default. This is the part where I am supposed to regale you with titillating lesbian stories…which in my case are always more like cautionary tales.  Seriously DO NOT become a lesbian; because apparently that’s how sexuality works. You just choose one when you get bored or the other becomes inconvenient. I am sorry ignorance just makes my breasts ache…with rage. #somebodyTellIgnorantPeople.

 It’s not as glamorous as L word makes it out to be…okay before they started killing each other. Working odd hours at some highly paying, ethically dubious job; waking up between noon and three to work on your poetry/performance art, easily shaking off the effects of stylish drugs and tragically hip clubs; punctuating your intellectual throes with some good pot and explosive sex with an array of women. Oh how I wish! The struggle is real!  For starters, you never get hit on by those soft oversexed beautiful women whose hemlines are enough to send your imagination on a permanent hiatus, just men. Not even the effeminate ones, the sweaty, aggressive nut scratching unapologetic egomaniacs whose sole purpose is to screw resistance and possibly lesbianism out of you! No thank you, Mr. Man I’m going to ignore your hostility right now because it comes from a place of shame. They call it corrective rape in South Africa. In the event you get lucky, you are in West-lands at 3am, and she’s drank as a skank, dressed like she has a pole in her handbag, stranded and as straight as cooked spaghetti. Picture a sexual experience full of clashing teeth, jamming zippers, fumbling fingers and searching for sexual organs that have been in the same location since the beginning of time.

Straight girls go on dates; lesbians get hooked up on blind dates by their friends with exes of their high   school exes.  One thing I have picked from women movement is that all women are “sisters”, not necessarily friends.  we lesbians love our “sisters” and I use that term loosely because we almost always end up shagging our” bffs” and these “closer than my blood sister” individuals …but there’s always alcohol involved…key word alcohol…a lot of alcohol…and maybe weed (pick your poison).  It doesn’t really matter, you still end up at some weird incest creek without a paddle. Every time you meet your “sisters” the toxic oversharing, grossly familiar tones and Gossip are almost enough for you to go, ”OI TATTLE TITS!! Wait…is that Jameson? NEVER MIND!”

The Kenyan lesbian scene; an unceasing onslaught of dysfunction, you have to love it though. Women can make you ball to the walls crazy! Crazy for a love you never thought existed. A love if lost would rip the marrow from your bones and leave you hollow. But what do I know, I just became a  ” lesbian writer”. ..Craving a black forest cake… Possibly hooked into an IV and attached to my arm.

Slices of death

You know when you’re playing scrabble on your techy thingamajig and it plays a word like “kibbutz”(39pts) or ”zydeco”(27pts) and you go like “ oh piss off! You totally made that up!!” then you play “frequently” (9pts). SERIOUSLY?! Start new game.

Well hello viewers, welcome to insomnia entertainment television, your host today is…<me>. “Battery low, connect your charger” drat!! Wasn’t wise Face-booking, WhatsApping, Instagraming, Tweeting, jamming to music & concurrently playing scrabble on a smartphone. It’s only been an hour? Huh…time sure moves slow when those little slices of death desert you. Laptops come in handy when android gadgets can’t handle it.

Game of Thrones, season 3, The Red Wedding. I did not see that coming then I couldn’t un-see it an hour after that scene. Talk of plot twists. Oh they said weddings were fun…and I am no stranger to blood and gore; hello Vikings! Rob’s mother all but sent us Morse code that shit was just about to get real stank for the Starks…but we still got shocked. You know a simple throat slice would have been nice. That gruesome abortion slash murder scene that went down in seconds stupefied me! C’mon George R.R. Martin-overkill dude!

Ever asked yourself just how many trillions of oral bacteria thespians have exchanged after hundreds of takes…I would make my first 3 takes count you know…especially if it’s a risqué scene...lots of fluids.

Speaking of kissing…I won’t go deep into that (pun right where it’s supposed to be) but I am tempted to call… most people have knocked out by midnight eh? Call and say what? Awkward phone call!

“Heeey …are you asleep? I cannot sleep...” She groans and grunts for a minute and says, “I’m sorry love, are you feeling okay? How can I help? Did you finish your alcohol?” you know those perfunctory questions where you can hear the other callers’ urgency to hang up in their voice. I don’t want any of that! To sort out that needy call itch, I call my broadband modem instead. Dialing. Redialing. Connecting…Signal faded! Call lost!

I am harboring a serious girl crush on her. (Yes, we are dating but I still do) She’s one of those people who just gulp life, certain of what they want and content with what they have so far. Very few people can attest that.

  She says not all heads can wear snapbacks…especially humongous oddly shaped heads then the front ends up facing the sky like the Mayor’s hat in Power Puff Girls. She’s not the type to open up the more you get to know her…seriously it’s like prying open the Jaws of Life! 

She would never look back at a traumatic experience 100years later and laugh…”Yo! That shit is still not funny; out with her head!!” Last but not least, this incredulous food thing she does where when you serve her, the peas SHOULDN’T touch the cabbages & etc. but the minute the plate is before her she mixes up everything because and I quote “they are supposed to go together! I don’t get people who say they will mix in the stomach!” and that’s not all folks, she likes her food piping hot… just when you’re about to set the table with the very hot food, she goes for a smoke only to come back and say ”Love, the food is not hot”. Most importantly, she can sleep. I envy that. I miss her. Dialing. Redialing. Connecting…Signal faded! Call lost! 0215hrs people!

I haven’t had a decent night’s rest in ages. I reckon I have been too scared, too cautious and too stuck in the same routine for four years now and now everything is catching up to my bony butt. This career path is draining the life out of me. No will to live. The weak antelope in the herd…Yup, the mangy fucker with the limp and the neon sign that says “eat me! I am a gimp.” 

 Shrouded in this foreboding thought that I will one day wake and the virile youth will have morphed into a semi geriatric two stepping fuddy-duddy with the social skills of a mole rat, knees swathed in a modest hemline, stuck in a job she wasn’t meant for and too old to start over. Then, I off myself eh? Wouldn’t that be an absolute skid mark on the pristine panties of my soul? Instincts dictate that crying is in order now but oddly, the tears don’t come. It does feel like prison, and that means only one thing makes sense conceptually…I have to break out. Am I too old to pierce my navel?

…Ahem! An hour later…forget avocados; a cocktail of misery, fear, isolation and existential dread is the best aphrodisiac.

I THINK I hear footsteps outside. Did I lock my door?

This is not HBO; I crawl deeper under the covers (Hey! I do not want to bear witness to my own demise). Okay, so I need to pee this very minute!? *palm face* It’s probably all in my head. This insomnia thing is messing me up good.

I’m hungry.Maybe when it dawns (safe to go outside) I will go treat myself to fancy Bohemian I-am-better-than-everybody else coffee…wage a racial croissant war maybe…get hit on by hairy Armenians.

 

I hate getting hit on pointblank 
period! More so by strange old men, 
male friends and overly aggressive 
butch dykes who just won’t quit!

 I know what I want/like…when it comes to that, so this idea that consent can be fucked into a woman is the moral rot in the society.

 No means no Pepe Le pew!

Your battery is running low. (10%) You may want to plug in 

your PC. Aargh no! ...wait... I feel a yawn coming 

on…that’s definitely a yawn! Finally!

  
27minutes pass

“Alarm goes off” it’s 6.30am.

Grrr...Little slices of death!

“Who gives this woman?”

We are in a perpetual state of transformation; a caterpillar changes into a butterfly thanks to a biological process known as metamorphosis. I am in the middle of a transformation of my own, thanks to a biological process known as being on a cruise-control relationship with the WOLF…(Now more like a domesticated white dire wolfthat prefers having her meal served to her…in a bowl…regularly… failure to which may lead to erotic asphyxiation). I might as well as be…married, Yes? Because getting hitched at 23 is like leaving the party at 9.30pm and that’s always fun! NOT.

“Who gives this woman?”

The ‘M’ word: marriage. Whilst it’s not for everyone, it’s ideal for the co-dependent, masochistic and criminally insane. Personally, the very thought unhinges me, something to do with being smothered in middle class conventions and perhaps something darker I can’t articulate. I wouldn’t even be having this soapbox moment if it weren’t for that damn Marriage Bill that has had men cradling their nut sacks in fear and women gleefully frothing at the loins for the past few days.

 “This Marriage Bill for excluding gay marriages, come we stay marriages, not allowing polyandry,for threatening to rule love with criminal sanctions of breach of marriage promise, this Marriage Bill is nonsense upon stilts.”-Eric Gitari, Human Rights Lawyer.

That bill has without a doubt also earned a standing ovation from my tallest finger.

True equality does not exist. Now that we all know that…What is better than marriage equality? Marriage freedom!  Government should not legislate relationships between anybody, period! Why should the government be concerned with what type of sex someone engages in or doesn’t?! A government that is not in charge of marriage, with exception of consanguinity (close blood relations), exploitation of minors, use of force and victimization and commercial trafficking of sexual favors. “Marriage” should not be a love license for adults but a structure for assigning and enforcing responsibility for the care of potential children produced/adopted to the extent of criminal prosecution and neglect. As a matter of fact, marriage is a religious term and therefore polarizes people. 

Awww, I love you so much right now!!!

A particular religion’s belief should not control secular law. The law should be changed to make every “marriage” a domestic partnership. This way, CONSENTING adults are not restricted from entering life-long commitments and religious individuals or organizations aren’t forced to acknowledge something they disagree with. Win-win..Yes? Those who choose to co-habit can formalize their arrangements through private contract process which the government can enforce but does not sanction. It’s not only about whose genitals are in whom. There are people who aren’t homosexual and have no family other than their“chosen” family. Shouldn’t they be allowed to form domestic partnerships that do not necessarily encompass sex?

Pipe dream huh? Kenya is not ready for separation of church and state. On the other hand, acceptance of the LGBTIQ community has risen from 5% to 8% …I think. That’s something.

Why would anybody want to get married anyway? 3 years down the line, you lie awake on the couch at 2AM cursing this icy, strident, self-important, castrating wasp you shackled your balls to as onion-sized mosquitoes wait for you to doze off…OR in “wedded bliss” with a beast, who according to the standards of his community, physical violence is forgivable in “men”: a natural response to having their virility stifled or thwarted, to the provocations of a shrewish wife.  “She pushed me over the edge, the bitch!!”

Every day, every month, every year should be a conscious decision, to stay with my domesticated dire wolf; my future stubby, whom I love. Not a legal binding suffocating agreement. Besides, what if she gets rabid and goes tots cray?? Lol!

“Who gives this woman?”

“I do.”

First things first though, I have to ditch the closet but…

 “You can’t call it coming out of the closet when the door was wide open, the closet was made of glass, and everyone could see you in there having gay sex.”

NB…PS..:A few years back in Saudi Arabia, a high ranking Islamic cleric issued a fatwa (Islamic legal decree) saying that female workers should breastfeed their male co-workers at least five times a day, to establish a family bond and preclude any sexual relations  and thus allow both sexes to be alone together at work. “A woman at work can take off the veil or reveal her hair in front of someone whom she breastfed.”*walks away*