TO TRAP PAUL

 

 

 

1.

 

You met in your third year at the local Redeem Parish that you worshiped at. He was small, only a few inches taller than you. His stiletto-shaped fingernails grazed the notes on the keyboard so effortlessly that it seemed like magic. Paul was not like the others you had met before. There was something about him that made him distinctive. Perhaps, it was in the way he laughed, how he spoke slowly as if he were begging the words to fall from his lips. The way he paid keen attention to the choristers as they rehearsed was admirable. You wished he would pay attention to you the same way.

 

Paul was the type of guy everyone liked. The kind the akara woman would call, “Nkem,” and "Nwoke oma" by the lady who sold pepper and tomatoes at the market.

The first time you both spoke was on a Tuesday at the balcony of Kachi’s place. The media crew from church were meeting up for a small get-together and, he had tagged along. You had walked out of the room, to the balcony to look at the gigantic buildings and landscape that surrounded Hilltop (the university community where you all lived) and, he had joined you there.  

 

“You’ll be like the only Yoruba friend I have now,” he said to you with a calm look on his face after you had told him your name.

 

“Are we even friends?” You asked. Then he laughed and said you were a savage.

 

You took a small sip from the cup of Smirnoff you were holding. The head of your  media team had warned that some of you may cry home that night and walk with your heads of your feet. You were certain that you were going to be one of them. You had drowsed the alcohol into your system and, you could feel the tingling feeling in your belly. You were already tipsy.

 

“Are you an introvert?” he had asked.

 

"Err…," you trailed. "I don't conform to personality traits. I'm just not in a good mood at the moment that's why I'm not in there, dancing like the others. Most times, I am the loudest in a room, and other times, I'm the quietest. It just depends on my mood."

 

“So, why are you not in a good mood this evening?” he asked. He was looking directly into your eyes, and you were looking into his. He was so close to you that it was almost impossible to think that once upon a time, you only admired and watched him from afar while he played the keyboard or, conducted choir rehearsals. It is crazy how the things people thought were far from their reach, come right to them when they least expected.

 

You had imagined a thousand scenarios of how your first conversation with him would be but, the actual one you had that night at Kachi's balcony, never made the list. It was more romantic than you could have pictured it. He was holding his cup of Smirnoff and you were holding yours. You were tipsy but you weren't sure if he was but, it didn't matter if he was tipsy or not. All that mattered was that this boy; the one whom you had wanted to be with for so long, was right in front of you and he was asking you all the questions that mattered.

 

***

 

When you didn't receive a call or text from him Tuesday night and the whole of Wednesday, you reasoned that he may not have felt the same thing you did at the balcony. You had forgotten to ask for his number after he collected yours because you thought that he was going to call or send a text at the very least but, he didn't. On Thursday, you were at church early and when he arrived, he called you by your Yoruba name and greeted you with a warm smile, and all the anger you had from him not calling, was plucked out of you like feathers from a chicken.

 

You had handled the media that evening at church and he played the keyboard right beside you. You were exhilarated. Life couldn’t get any better. There you were, working in the house of God and sitting next to the person who could as well be the bone of your bones and flesh of your flesh and you knew it didn’t go that way because those were words for the man to say but, you didn’t care. God understood. He sure did.

 

After service ended, you both walked slowly down the road with the others while trying to have a conversation. It was futile. The rigorous teasing you both got from the others, made conversing almost impossible so, you asked for his number instead and when you got back home that evening, you were beyond elated. You called him at 9:00 pm and he picked up and said he was going to call you back and then he called back at 11:47 pm and you both spoke for 71 minutes and in your hearts of hearts, you know that when things were too good to be true, they usually weren't but, you with your insatiable need for love and affection did not dare hold back. You had found love indeed and, you weren't going to easily get rid of it. If Paul didn't love you back, he was going to have to learn how.

 

2.

 

You weren't always in a quest to search for love and affection. There was, once upon a time when you had them on your fingertips. Mother showered you with all the love and affection she had to give before she breathed her last breath and Father gave you his all until mother passed away. He became cold, withdrawn, and the opposite of the man you once knew. Then, you began searching for love and affection in other places. First, it was in the arms of your Auntie, -your father's new wife.- It was rosy for a while until she had her child. You were once again left to yourself and then, came Chibuzor. The dapper senior from SS2. He did give you love and affection until you caught him in a compromising position with Miss Chiamaka, the corp member serving at your school. Next came Austin, Bright, Maxwell, Jordan, Desire, Lotanna, Dave, Jonathan, Chigozie, Chidera, Nonso, Chika, Yomi, Bakare...

 

When one left, you found another and another and another until your body was a morgue for all the souls that had left. Each new person came with a promise to never leave. They all knew your deepest truths. They had vivid explanations of what happened to their predecessors. You would say, "Desire left because I refused to wash his clothes oh. Imagine, he is a student and I am a student and he wants me to be washing his clothes for him," and they would reply with, "Are you serious? That's stupid. Are you a washing machine?" You would smile and then laugh. This one seemed sensible but in the end, he would ghost you for two weeks. Leave all your messages unread, block your number from calling and then ask, 'What do you want from me?' at the end of two weeks.

 

Lotanna, what has gotten into you? Is this all you have to say after leaving me on radio silence all these days? You would text back almost at the border of tears. Then he would tell you that you were too ‘controlling’ and too ‘out-of-control’. And then you will call it quits after five days of trying to reason with him and he would say, ‘Thank God’ and leave.

 

When Dave came along, you knew he moved both ways but, you didn't mind. He treated you how you've always wanted to be treated —with love and affection. So, the Tuesday afternoon in July of 2021 when he texted, out of nowhere, 'I don't need a girl in my life right now,' you broke down in tears. He said he didn't need a girl which meant, he needed a boy instead. Another one bites the dust. And so, it was a circle of getting into new relationships after the previous one ended. You usually mourned them for three weeks or a month before you began hunting again.

 

The thing about Paul was that you weren’t hunting when you found him. You weren’t out looking for the next big thing after Bakare. Bakare who had just cut your heart like chin-chin but, was the most compatible person whom you had dated. Those two months with him were unforgettable. You had both ‘grown-in-love’ and not ‘fall-in-love’ which made it extra-special. What you two both had, had a semblance with magic.

 

Bakare gave each stroke with just the right touch of love and affection unlike the others before him, did. You had even bought the lotion and perfume he used just so you could smell like him at all times. The conversations you had with him in the mornings made you want to wake your mother up from the dead and tell her, 'Mummy, I have found the one. Bless us, oh Dear Mother.'

 

You and Paul had to work out. Didn’t he know that you had found him in the least expected place? At church? The place that was a literal portal to heaven? And when you weren’t even looking at that! Didn’t he know that he was the one for you and God had made no mistakes in leading you to that Parish? Didn’t he know all of this?

 

***

 

"You are walking too fast oh," you complained. It was past 7 PM, on Friday and you were both walking towards Hilltop gate. The gate that demarcated the school from the off-campus residence for students.

 

“This is just how I walk, oh. I’m used to it. What should I do?” Paul replied in his accent that had a hint of Igbo in it.

 

“Walk slower?”

 

You were both at the fruit junction now. The colorful display of bananas, oranges, cucumber, apples, watermelon, and the likes caught your eyes. You liked how the scenery looked. The umbrellas that protected the sellers from the rain and sun, stood tall above their heads, their oil lamps projected a dull orange glow in the dimness of the night and, it was so beautiful that you wanted to capture it in a photograph.

 

"Let's head to UBA. I want to withdraw," Paul said. The argument about the pace at which he walked had long died down. Now, it was just the two of you, under the moon-lit night, walking past the female hostels, OKEKE and ISA-KAITE  and, down the road that was covered by branches of trees dating back to the 1960s. Branches that Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda, and Akachi may have as well walked under. You were all under the same sky after all.

 

 

3.

 

You had brought the idea of hanging out together in person. The few minutes after evening services where one only had the luxury of asking, ‘how are you?’ ‘how was your day?’ wasn’t enough for you. You needed more time, in a cozy environment to ask other questions like,

 

“Is Capitalism man-made and, how does it affect the marginalized people of Ethiopia?”

 

“Do absolute truths exist or, are they just facts?”

 

You weren't going to ask him those exact questions. You were sure that he wouldn't have the answers to them. Paul didn't strike as an avid reader. He had expressly told you that he hated reading.

 

He had the same myopic sense of reasoning regular people had. You knew this from his response when you first told him that you were Yoruba but, couldn't speak the language. "Ah, you can't speak your language?!" he had exclaimed loudly. You marveled at how his brains couldn't process all the reasons you couldn't speak your language. Maybe environmental or physical factors? None of that crossed his mind. "You're Yoruba and, you can't speak Yoruba???" he had asked with folded arms and a look of unbelief but, in all of his shallowness, you were still attracted to him. You were going to teach him all you knew about being open-minded.

 

***

 

“Let’s go to S.U.B,” Paul suggested.

 

S.U.B was the center of the school. It was where everything happened. The good, bad and ugly.

 

"No, no. There are too many lights there."

 

“This girl,” he said exasperatedly with his arms akimbo. “You just don’t like anything.”

 

"It's not like that," you said in your defense. “The lights are just too much over there. And there are too many people. Let's just stay here where it's dark.”

 

“I thought you said you liked being seen?”

 

“Yes but, it’s sometimes.”

 

He looked around UBA. The Hall of Fame Building was just getting closed. A few people were chattering around. It was dark but not so dark that one couldn't see what was right in front of them.

 

“There’s no place to seat here,” Paul said finally.

 

“Fine, let’s go to S.U.B,” you sighed.

 

“You’ll like it there.”

 

“Yeah right.”

 

You both took the path behind ISA-KAITA hostel that lead to S.U.B. You looked up at the windows of various rooms at the hostel. Most rooms were painted in loud colors. You could hear some of the girls laughing. Their laughter pierced into the air. Some of them were living their best lives and they did not know that downstairs, on the route that led to S.U.B was a girl who was trying to trap a boy, a girl who was helping a boy fall in love with her.

 

***

 

You walked around S.U.B looking for a quiet spot. The area was crowded with young people just like you. It was a Friday night and everyone had their agenda. You both finally found a dimly-lit place to seat at the back of Ekpo Ref, next to the purple hibiscus plant. And there, he told you about his family, his life, and everything else in-between. They didn't intrigue you so much. He led a normal life and although it wasn't intriguing, it was fascinating. Finally, there was someone who didn't have a brutal past. One who didn’t have a drinking or smoking problem. One who wasn't broken in any sense of the word.

 

Here, was a boy who wasn’t sad. One who didn’t have demons.

 

4.

 

Minutes turned to hours and hours into days and, you could feel Paul slipping slowly out of your hands. You thought you had him where you wanted but, you had come to realize that all was not as it seemed. On a Thursday after church, you asked him, “Uh, are you going to attend that vigil, Night of Glory?” and he responded with an affirmative. “Cool, can we go together?”

 

“Err, no. I’ve already made plans with my friends. One of them who has a car is taking us there,” he replied.

 

"Oh… It's been a long time we hung out sha. I only get to see you when we have services and rehearsals at church."

 

Then he had replied in a strained voice as if he was trying not to hurt your feelings, "Is it bad?"

 

That was how you knew he’d never be yours. In all the stories you had read about how people met their partners, you had never read any that went the way you and Paul’s story was headed. The only thing he truly cared about was Barcelona, Music and the Skit Maker, Sabinus.

 

That same Thursday, you and Paul and a couple of guys from church converged at Chisom's house (one of the protocol girls at church). Of course, the teasing was unbearable. Wasn't it obvious that Paul didn't fancy you? Why then did they have to call your name besides his. Sure, your name was Paulina but, wasn't there a Victor and Victoria at your church as well? You had never heard anyone tease them before even though they were the perfect fit for each other. Victor was annoyingly handsome and Victoria was the literal Igbo goodness, tall, light-skinned, and, had all the contours in the right places. They complimented each other so much it nearly made you blush each time you thought about them together.

 

You didn't like how they were blind to your plight and to Paul's truth. You were sure that the poor boy had more love in his heart for Sabinus than he had for you but, why couldn't the others see it?

 

What would be a short visitation at Chisom's house, turned into a full-blown sleep-over. You wanted to go home but, you had lost track of time, laughing at the silly jokes they threw around. You had just learned for the first time that the word 'egg' was a synonym for a man's testicles. All the weird things you learned that night, you learned against your will.

 

You and Paul slept on Chisom’s small bed. You laid your head on his left arm, your arm was on his chest and, your left thigh was on his. So, what if you were cuddled up with him? It still didn’t mean a thing in the list of, Things-People-Do-When-They-Like-You. You were going to make the most of that night before you murdered all the feelings you had for him.

 

Even when he touched your face and caressed your arm that night, you still weren't inclined to believe that you had a higher rating in his life than Sabinus. The others teased about how you both looked good together.

 

“P-SQUARE 2025!”

 

“Wahala for who nor dey cuddle oh!”

 

“God when!”

 

Paul mostly responded with, “Thunder fire you,” or, he would simply laugh as though he enjoyed the teasing.

 

You woke up the following morning in his arms. You hated that you enjoyed it. Hated that it was perfect. Hated that it was never going to happen again.

***

The school's stadium was packed on Friday night and as you sat on the bleachers, you thought about how insignificant you were in the midst of all those people. You had estimated for the crowd to be nothing short of 4,000 persons. All men, women, and children. You were seated in the same row as a few persons from your church. Paul was there as well. He was two persons away from you. You didn't like how the girls from the row before yours, kept stealing glances at him. Didn't they know that he was yours? That you were having a hard time letting go? That they were making you so jealous, you wanted to rip their eyeballs out? Of course, they didn't know. They didn't care about you. To them, you were just another insignificant person in that assemblage.

 

You all left after Mercy Chinwe performed. Mercy Chinwe, the gospel musical powerhouse. Her voice gave you chills. The riffs she ran were nothing like you had heard before. It was mostly what you thought about as you walked back to Hilltop with the others, at 3:00 in the morning. You were walking ahead of everyone else because you had seen Paul running off and the others had said that he had gone to ask for a girl's number. You got angry immediately. Why did he do that? Didn't he have any respect for you? Sure, it was his life but, didn't he remember that you were in his arms barely 24 hours earlier? Had he forgotten the caressing? The conversations you both had that night? Suddenly, you became infuriated at how insignificant you were to him. Your mood swings commonly hit you like a wrecking ball you never saw coming.

 

“Paul, you leave Paulina make she dey waka alone?? No be so o,” you heard the others ask. It repulsed you. Didn’t they know that they were making things worse?

 

He listened to their advice, “Feranmi wait!" he called you by your Yoruba name. He was the only one at church who did so. Feranmi meant ‘Love Me’ so, every time he called you that, you wondered if he was openly telling you to love him.

 

You loved how he dominated you sometimes. How he would ask you to stop or wait with so much authority. How he would say, "Come here," and you will reply with, "What is it?" and then he would say, "Come here joor!" and then you will, like a sheep being led to the slaughterhouse, go to him. It was as if he knew, somewhere inside of him, that you would oblige to his every desire.

 

"Why are you walking fast? Do you want to go to Hilltop alone? I thought you said you don't like walking fast?"

 

“I am tired. I just want to get home.”

 

“Are you annoyed? Who annoyed you? Did I annoy you?”

 

“Why are you asking?” You questioned. There was no way you were going to tell him he was the cause of your foul mood.

 

“Because I care. What’s wrong?”

 

"It's nothing. It's embarrassing to talk about." It was embarrassing because you didn't exactly see him with any girl. It was a rumor that you had heard. You weren't supposed to believe rumors. But, this was Paul they were talking about. The bone of your bones and, the flesh of your flesh remember? You had every right to be angry but, none to ask him where he had run off to.

 

“Just tell me.”

 

“No, it’s silly.”

 

“You don’t want me to talk to you abi?”

 

“What do you mean by that? Of course, I do.”

 

“Then tell me what is wrong.”

 

“I said it’s silly.”

 

Then, he went quiet. He kept walking beside you, his eyes averted. His lips, sealed.

 

“Where are you going to sleep tonight?” you asked.

 

“Oh, so now you want to talk to me? You want to ask questions?”

 

“You’re not going to answer me because I didn’t answer you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

"I said it was silly. It's embarrassing."

 

“Just tell me.”

 

“Okay, I saw my friend earlier at the stadium and, he made a comment that got me pissed. See, it’s really silly,” you lied.

 

Paul sighed and, you were relieved that he bought it. “So, it’s just that?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Why didn’t you just say that since? You just like to complicate things. I thought it was something serious.”

 

“But I told you it was silly nau,” Then, it was silent for a while except for the chattering of the others and the crickets and the distant voice of the Pastor speaking at the stadium and then, out of nowhere you said, “I enjoyed the cuddling last night though.” It was a crime after all to be silent about the things that needed to be shouted out.

 

"Yeah, I'm good at that," he responded with a smile.

 

“Where are you going to sleep tonight?” You asked.

 

“Why are you asking? Are you looking for someone to cuddle with?”

 

“As a matter of fact, yes. Is this an open invitation?”

 

“No!”

 

“Ouch. Fuck you!”

 

“You want to?”

 

“Eww, no. I don’t do virgins,” you answered.

 

He laughed and you laughed. You and he had conversations like that all the time. Conversations that left something to be desired. You would never know if he liked you and, you would never ask him if he did.

 

You would never shoot your shot because someone once told you, ‘Igbo men don’t like to be chased. They don’t like it when girls confess their feeling to them.’ You were taking the advice. The last six relationships you had been in, started with you telling them about how you feel. They ended just as fast as they started. You were therefore tired of initiating things.

 

You were never afraid of rejections though. Better to be rejected once and for all, than to die every day on the inside, from being silent about something that needed to be shouted out but, when it came to Paul, you were sort of scared. You were pretty much sure he was going to reply with, "Wow, thank you," after you had confessed feelings of undying, unwavering, and unquenchable love for him.

 

With the others, you never cared about the friendship because there was none in the first place. They were people you only knew from a distance. Boys from your faculty. Boys from the internet. Friends of your friends. Random boys who walked the streets of Hilltop but, Paul, he was your… your friend.

 

You wanted something different with Paul that was why you tried to walk him through falling in love with you. Perhaps that, in itself was you initiating something. Feasibly, it was the reason it didn’t work out.

 

You would never know if he liked you. You would never be able to trap your newly found love. To trap Paul.