When You Don’t Belong: Rants of a Lonely Being

The joke was harmless. The tricycle is a small vehicle with the driver and one passenger in the front, three others at the back. Then came the request:

"Dude… since you’re the shortest amongst us, you should be at the front seat."

It didn’t matter you already sat comfortably at the back before three of them waved the driver to a halt. To them anyways or more specifically Desmond, the big head who made the request.

“You are not serious.” Comes the short reply as a tiny whiff of tensed breath leave your nostrils.

It takes few awkward seconds for Benjamin – the calmer of the three – to realize you weren’t going to give a fuck, then volunteer to occupy the uncomfortable front spot.

After doing the needful, the pilot ignites the tricycle to life although the creaks of its rusty metal parts have a swell time betraying the healthy state of the vehicle. In no time, Desmond dives into the latest updates of the Bros world.

This coming Saturday, Prisca will be hosting a birthday party. You know P of course. One of the slay queens in your class. May be the Queen bee herself. You did exchange unavoidable good mornings once in a while but you were never interesting enough to hold an actual conversation.

Desmond rattles on though.

Next up is the sexcapades. Jane, Rose, Thea etc. The name-count goes on till he loses interest and switches to how big the backside of the girl whom the tricycle just zoomed past was. He makes a dirty remark and even spices it up with a dirty line from a dirty track. That’s a lot of dirt. A thought flies in; how do girls still manage to fall in spite of these glaring wildness and promiscuity?

You can’t even process that thought till the end because hello, our dear friend has steamed on to the weekly gym sections on Saturday mornings, admonishing his comrades why missing out would damage their flow.

Oh, how you hate those bars and metals and every one of those shirtless hunks putting more work in showing off than working out. As a sucker for simple body stretches and natural exercises – pushups, jogging etc. – you wonder how it doesn’t occur to them that without proper diet – which most of them lack – continuous lifting leaves them with torn muscles and poorly healed ones.

“Gee, I want to land Open Source lounge this weekend, hope you guys will show?” the third member of the Fun gang finally speaks.

The famous night clubs. What do they even gain? Horrible tasting beers, sweaty floor dancers and music too loud for your ears to enjoy.

You can’t keep track of it all. The latest price of John Foster shoes. Is Tropicana Film house still standing by their price hike from the just concluded festive season? And of course the repetitive pleas to Oluwa (God) to bless their “hustle.”

How can you keep up with what you can’t relate with?

The driver climbs over the last road bump and slows down for a security check at the main school’s gate. Weaving past the officers leads him into a final parking corner. The alighting ensues while wriggly pieces of naira notes struggle out of respective wallets.

Getting cleared to go, not even a “later guys” is exchanged. The evening breeze coos you away from the familiar strangers. After the breeze, awaits your world, couple of poles away, somewhere down the street, your one room apartment. The walls are humming an entrance hymn, their patience ever intact and Lady Loneliness lying on the bed, warms up for an embrace to remind you it is okay to tell the world: “fuck you.”

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References: #1

ImageSources: #1 #2

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