One

Ọyáwálé. My moonrise. I came to you at twilight, walked into your loving arms a broken man. I never understood your words that day, Ọyáwálé, or the days that followed. It never occurred to me what you were trying to teach me.

You asked how I became the man who stood before you that historic night. I who spoke before kings. The Sodiq Nasir of bestselling books. The one, you said, who Inspired you to rediscover you.

 How did I break?

Thoughts, Ọyáwálé. Recollections I fight to break free from. Memories you admonished I call to mind when faced with fear. Fear of being called a fraud. I think about it now, how it all started. How I came to you, scarred worse than patched-up porcelain.

It started with my mother. Sprung from the slow, innocent words of a troubled soul in need of an ear. I told you that humid evening while we sat in your rose garden, watching an agama lizard slither through your bed of grass. You scolded me when I shooed the lizard, got angry even. I hungered to kiss you then, a hunger that blazed through my soul the second our eyes met. But I digress. I’m letting you do what you do best with my head; run away with it. Still, I’ll get to my story. I’ll tell you like I did that somnolent evening, tell you how I came undone.

My mother. One would say she had the best of life, money, a husband, and kids in private school. Mother, however, wasn’t a smiling woman. She filled my days with tales of her disquietude, my nights with more sad tales. She said I listened better than my six sisters. If she only knew I indulged her out of the naiveté of a six-year-old.

You smiled a small, secretive smile when I told you her bemoaning was always about my father. Then you called it child abuse, for you felt it was inappropriate to be burdened with adulthood at so young an age. I disagreed with you, called it an early start to a career in psychology, and then Neurolinguistics. It did not surprise you when I told you I grew up listening more and speaking less. My sisters, when they came of age, joined my mother in borrowing my ears.

“Lend me your ears,” they’d say.

“Can I have your attention?” they’d ask.

“Have you got a moment, Sodiq?”

It was an endless litany of requests for my ears. Then they wanted my brain. To pick it, of course. As I grew older, learned more, and became wiser, my mouth joined my ears and brain in the cause. I gave, gave, and never stopped giving. Knowing it was all upon me to give, being told I had the gift of listening to unspoken words, nipping a pain in the bud even before the bearer was aware of it, proffering solutions that worked and were practical, forced me to be everything for everyone.

I’m a man, Ọyáwálé. A man forced to be nothing but strong. With all my wealth, education, and network, I could not afford one luxury, weakness. I had to be all for everyone. I had to keep my energy supercharged to sustain all the cables attached. I had to speak with power, exude positivity, and keep my batteries constantly charged.

 What did it matter if I needed more than coffee to supercharge my batteries? I’m the expert, the one who knows better. The trained psychologist and mental health coach. When I took the pills, they made it all go away. I owned the crowd once again, silenced the voices in my head telling me I was a no-good. How was I to know my body would outgrow the pills? Who was there to tell me I’d resort to taking more pills to numb the uncertainties? Or that I’d sustain what was to be a one-off recreation of snorting a line of cocaine?

Not my manager. He was excited I was back in all my elements. Not my raving fans, they loved me. My reviews were epic. I was a force of influence in helping them lead better lives.

So, tell me, Ọyáwálé, what was I to do?

The night I came to you, began like many other nights of an event—feeling the familiar crawl of uncertainty while watching a crowd of fans troop into the event hall, popping a pill, and waiting for it to replace my nervous anxiety with positive energy.

 Only it didn’t.

 I lined up a film of white powder, snorted it, licked some off my fingers, and waited. Nothing. The clock was ticking. My manager’s booming voice and the crowd’s cheerful voices floated into my dressing room. My anxiety rose sky-high.

I lined up more snort on the glass table, sniffed it, watching my reflection blur out. The blow finally kicked in, taking the edge off my anxiety. Only that wasn’t all it took.

It took me from me and led me to you.

Two

MY JOURNEY TO you was rough. I don’t mean the bumpy roads we traveled to get to the rural castle you call home. It wasn’t the tediousness of waking up with a start while the car skidded along the road pitted with endless potholes, only to return to a nightmarish sleep.

I mean the path I took to become a better man for you.

The man whose heart gonged louder than a Gangan drum the minute his eyes met yours. The man who couldn’t keep his eyes off you or hold back from sucking in your scent as soon as you walked towards his bed.

You held a tray laden with a floral jug and matching teacups. Your flowing, all-white gown, and matching turban gave you a goddess-like quality. I thought your smile shamed the sun. Thought I’d never seen a woman as reminiscent of a soothing balm as you.

“Hello, Sodiq,” you said. Your radiant smile unsullied. The fruity smell of your perfume sifting through the fog of my drug-induced head.

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice resonated with my cantankerous mood.

“I am Ọyáwálé Adisa. The woman who will help you find yourself again.”

“Did I tell you I was lost?” I pushed up from the bed, oblivious that I was naked. I came to when your eyes flecked with honey darkened as they toured my body. “I suppose you have my clothes?”

You tried not to laugh, placing a long-fingered hand on your lips, pulling me further into letting my lost eyes roam your body.

“Your clothes,” you said, handing out a pair of loose-fitting pants and a white shirt.

With my position in life and access to wealth, fame, and fortune, I was never lacking in feminine connections. Although kept private to maintain my pristine life of principles and order, I indulged in sexual orgies, loud parties, booze, and expensive drugs.

It all seemed right to me, a fitting reward for my hard work of getting people to believe the lie I sold them. Living a lie and being in the business of selling believable lies made it easy to blot out the emptiness I felt night after night of debauchery. It’s no wonder then, that the golden glow of your brown skin, the ethereal quality of your essence hit me with gazing upon truth.

“Now that you’re suitably covered, drink this,” you said.

I had the mind of telling you I didn’t need bossing around, throwing my social rank in your face, but I reached for the cup in silence and obediently tossed it down.

“What’s this?” I spat as the bitter taste of the brew slapped the back of my throat.

“It’s a special brew to help with your detox.”

“I don’t…”

You came upon me in a flash, intoxicating my sense of focus with blazing eyes and pert lips. My eyes dropped to your lips when they peeled back in a smile, and I soon forgot the bitter taste of the drink. Your face brightened when I emptied the cup. They were so bright I entertained a small hope you would reward my effort with a kiss. All you did was pat my shoulder like a mother would her child.

“We’ll have a good time, Sodiq,” you said, elevating your smaller height to whisper into my ears. “But first, you’ll need to survive the night.”

So lost in the sensual tingle of having your body touch mine was I that I lost the meaning of your statement. But as you predicted, I found the night. The nights of tossing and turning in a cold sweat as my body fought to dispel the toxins. Nights of craving something, anything, to silence the loud ring in my head. Nights I screamed so loud the crickets fell silent.

Horrendous nights of fighting my way back to you.

You came to me on some nights. Remained boisterous and happy. Hummed a tune while I hurled curses at you, called you names, and even resorted to bribing you into getting me a fix.

I called you a whore when you had men I never knew existed pin me down to the bed, so you’d flush your heathen brew down my throat. You laughed when I called you a fraud bent on ripping me off my money with your quack form of medicine.

“Do you even have a license?” I barked. “How dare you flush these herbs into my system without finding out if I’m allergic to them?”

Your blabber on being a pharmacist and certified herbal scientist, having doctors present, and carrying out all due diligence before admitting me into Rediscover Rehabilitation Center rang like a buzzing mosquito in my ears.

In all the eight weeks of being brought in and long, treacherous nights of having the drugs flushed out of my system, I never relented in my rebuke of you. And you never let on in your smile, uninhibited laughter, and unconsciously making me transfer my dependence on drugs to a desperate desire to possess you.

The feeling started as a pimple on my chest. Then blossomed like an angry rash with each nightly visit you made, each unknown tune you hummed while flushing your potent brew down my throat. I covered my inability to slake my thirst for you with expletives, vulgar language, and hating you more for being unfazed by my tantrums. Then I asked if you weren’t married. If that was why you enjoyed torturing men as payback for being an old and shriveled woman.

“Is that the way you see me, Sodiq?” You muttered, your smile quivering around the curved sides of your lips.

“What does it matter how I see you? You’ve taken my money and connived with my manager to obliterate me. That won’t happen, you hear me? Not as long as I live and breathe, or as long as I’m Sodiq Nasir. The world’s greatest orator and motivational speaker. I will rise again and by God, I’ll make you all pay for trying to break me.”

You clapped. The sound startled me and drew my eyes to your laughing mouth. You must have seen the hunger in my eyes, noticed my sudden movement. I hoped you would flinch, wanted you to back away. You didn’t.

Three

MY LIPS GRAZED yours. Slowly nudged them apart with the uncertainty of being worthy of you. Hesitant if I should kiss you. If you would allow my tongue to taste yours. Then you sighed, leaned in, nibbled, and sucked my tongue, and I lost my soul.

Of a body starved from drugs, alcohol, and a woman’s touch. My heart blew in my ears when our bodies touched. I lost my breath, pulled away to catch it, snatched your lips back when you started getting off the bed. If we could make babies just by kissing, Ọyáwálé, I’d say we made twins that night. With matched passion and gasping breaths, I held you tight, brushed off your turban, and fed my eyes with the wonder of you.

“I’m sorry I lost my head,” you said, taking your turban from my hand. “We shouldn’t have done that.”

Still caught up in the rapture of your magnificence, I nodded to whatever words poured out of your mouth, worked to steady my breath, and closed my eyes to a realization that I was winning the battle of drugs and losing the war of becoming obsessed with you.

Images of you, me, and our heated bodies tormented me that night. I awoke hour after hour with a bone-hard erection. My moans replaced my screams. They mated with the crickets, filled the loneliness of the night with songs especially made for us.

Crazed with a raging desire for you, I broke out of my room. The door didn’t open. You locked me in, Ọyáwálé. Why? I wondered. Weren’t we passionate that night? And the long hours you featured in my dreams?

Despite your wicked ways, I survived that night, hated, and craved you more for the wasted time we spent apart, hours I spent making love to you a thousand times. What I didn’t survive, couldn’t survive, was your passing me over to another, a smallish nurse in a starched cap. I found her voice unnerving; thought her wide smile worse than a glaring sun.

“Where’s Ọyáwálé?” I snapped.

“She’s busy with other patients.”

“Other patients?”

You will forgive me, Ọyáwálé, but I found your act of cowardice a tad childish. I think about it now, try to look at it as objectively as I can, and yet can’t come up with a better excuse for your treating me that way. You knew I would be jealous, knew I would want only you at my bedside after what we shared, yet you sent your staff to me while you ministered to someone else. Another man, perhaps?

“Is the patient a man?” I asked.

Your staff looked at me with unbanked amusement in her eyes. “She’s with a patient, sir. Please let me…”

I did not wait for her to finish whatever scripted line she planned on venting before springing up from the bed and marching out of the room. She ran after me, calling me ‘sir’ with a loud shrill that heightened my anger at being stood up by you. But I was faster, taller than her, you, and maybe most of your staff.

Your house took me by surprise. Its modern-style furnishing was visible from the top of the stairs where I stood. I spun my eyes around, counted and twisted the knobs of ten doors, then halted when I heard your voice.

Were you appalled by my action? You never let on, Ọyáwálé. You just stood there, staring at me with the sereneness of a warm spring.

“I tried to stop him, Ọyáwálé,” Nurse Shriller said.

Watching you stand there with flecks of sunrise in your hair, your face reflecting the morning sun, erased every anxiety I left the room with and hastened my feet down the stairs. Your face, as I’ve memorized, remained glistening in merriment. The reprimand I expected you would give at my unchecked desire to break my morning routine of herbs, shower, and breakfast stayed buried in the space between your heaving breasts.

You held your hand out to me. “I think a walk would do you some good.”

“I needed this,” I said when we stepped out of the stifling house into a rose garden.

I hungrily sniffed the clean air, ran my eyes around tall trees spotting chirping birds. Your hold on my hand loosened as we walked down a footpath. I held fast, needing more of your warmth.

“Do you remember the event you had in Ontario?” you said.

I’ve had many events, lost count of all, but I remembered the Ontario event because I met Les Brown for the first time there.

“I do, why?”

“I was one of the guests.” You smiled, a small secretive smile that deepened the twinkle in your eyes. “Your speech on speaking truth out loud until it reflects in our lives resonated with me.”

Feeling a sudden weakness in my chest at my charged run out of the room and half a minute walk, I stopped you in your stride and pulled you closer to me. Your eyes, when they bored into mine, burned a smokey hue. Your eyelashes fluttered to my mouth. I knew I had to kiss you again.

“How did you lose your way?” You asked.

“Ọyáwálé.” I sighed.

You placed a warm palm on my face, and, like a magical spiral of enchantment, its touch soothed my troubled soul. “I need to know, Sodiq. I need to know so I can help you.”

I wanted to tell you how I lost my way. Desired to unburden my deepest fears and hurts to you. But I craved none of those things more than I hungered to kiss you. The descent of my lips to yours was faster than the last, its intensity deeper, and the thumping of my heart, louder than it had ever thumped when you melted in my arms.

Four

YOU PULLED AWAY from me again; denied a dying man oxygen. Told me in bated breath and heavily dilated pupils, we shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be kissing.

“It’s unprofessional,” you said.

“I’m not your regular patient,” I replied. “I’m only here temporarily, which is fast ending. Hence, I don’t see why kissing me should be wrong.”

“Temporary or not, you’re still my patient.”

“What will it take to be more than your patient, Ọyáwálé?” I said, with the voice of one begging for a chance at life. “What will it take to be your man?”

You laughed, pinched my nose, and called me cocky. “Bold of you to assume I have no man.”

“I’m special, you said so yourself. And if I’m to judge based on how you kiss me, I’d say we’ve staked our claims on each other.”

Your laugh brightened the halcyon day. It led me into pulling you into my arms, wrapping my arm around your waist, and walking with you down the garden. I asked about you. You told me you were orphaned at thirteen and were made to live with your mother’s sister. Your life as an adolescent was nothing to be proud of. You were rebellious, angry at the world, mad at God for taking your parents, always looking for, starting, and getting into fights.

“I was the leader of a girl gang,” you said. “Our group, The Mad Daughters of Zion, was the talk of Mushin back in the ‘90s.”

“Mad Daughters of Zion?” I laughed. You laughed too, jabbing my arm for calling your group a cliché. “Did you guys, like, put on black berets, draw marks on your face and lips with liquid charcoal?”

“You can laugh all you want, Sodiq, but I’m thankful I lived that life. I may regret most of the havoc we wreaked and all, but living that life introduced me to the street. It taught me all I know about survival, getting back up when I fall, and finding my fighting spirit no matter what.”

“Fighting spirit, I like that.”

“I left that life when I got into Unilag, sha. Then I did a post-graduate course at the Obafemi Awolowo University, several short courses in universities abroad, and a top marketing position with a global pharmaceutical company.”

“What made you leave advertising?”

“I grew tired of living a lie.” You sighed, stopped moving, and looked me square in the eyes. “To keep my job and grow in ranks, I sold lies after lies in false advertising, endorsed products I had little faith in, and grew deeper into melancholia and insomnia.”

I had nothing to say to you. Maybe because in all the ways and beautiful narrative, you’d described my life, worded a better meaning to my fight with impostor syndrome.

“That was when I started using.” You chuckled. “It was just sleeping pills at first, then Prozac, Adderall, and whatever feel-good drug I could use to get me pumped enough to perform my job, stay ahead of my competition, and keep bringing business for my company.”

“Was that how you came to learn about my event?”

You nodded. “I saw you on television, listened to your speech on mindset, then subscribed to your newsletter. I can’t stress enough how your emails helped me through the tough years I spent battling my addiction.” You squeezed my hand and smiled. “I left my company and reimagined myself after attending your Ontario event.”

You looked with pride around the balmy lawn where your castle sat. “I quit my job, got a loan, and bought this place.”

“Looks like you won, Ọyáwálé,” I said, holding you close to me, soaking up more of your refreshing energy.

“I did.” You sighed, then dropped to your knees, and pulled off blades of grass. “Plants have always been my first love. It drove me to study plant science, then become a certified Herb scientist. I’m what some people would call…Herbalist.”

Your eyes laughed more than your lips when you got up to your feet and placed the shiny green grass on my palms. “It doesn’t matter how far we’ve fallen or think we’ve fallen, Sodiq, nature always has a healing for us.”

As profound as I found your philosophy, I wasn’t certain I believed it. I may have found peace with you, found joy in that out-of-town hideaway you called home, a place so disconnected from the world it had no Internet connection, television, or other avenues for patients to link to the outside world. But I was still buried deep in my fears. Still knew I would, if I left you, return like a dog to its vomit.

“Sodiq Nasir,” you said, clasping my face in your palms, seeing through my fears, and doing what you effortlessly do; soothe me. “You are bigger, better, and stronger than your fears.”

Your words didn’t soothe me this time, Ọyáwálé. Perhaps I’d built a high expectation of it, desired it so bad I’d made a mountain out of a molehill with it. Your words didn’t soothe me. They angered me.

“Don’t quote my words to me, Ọyáwálé, you know nothing about me.” I pried off your hand and walked away.

Walked away to save me from making you my next addiction.

Five

YOU DIDN’T STOP me from leaving, Ọyáwálé. Not even my causing a stir by yelling at the staff to fetch my things or my barking out orders that drew other boarders out of their quarters. I demanded to use a telephone, so I’d arrange transport, arguing that if the two months I’d spent in your center wasn’t enough to rid my body of its dependence on drugs, then your method was, as I’d once accused you of, steeped in quackery.

You waited out my raves and rants, walked away from me when my voice boomed at your refusal to allow me to use the phone, sat crossed-legged in a room that looked more like a greenhouse than an office, and waited some more with stilled patience as I ran out of tantrum steam.

“This is not how you do things,” I said. “You can’t keep people out of their free will in the name of rehabilitation. Doing that does not differ from having me locked up in a cell, beautiful though it may be.”

“Pardon our methods, Mr. Nasir, but whatever we do is for your good and the good of our patients.”

The steel in your voice woke me to my insensitivity. The lack of warmth in your calling me ‘Mr. Nasir’ flushed my skin with shame.

“And don’t call me Mr. Nasir, please.” I frowned, falling into an armchair like a petulant child and keeping a scowling face on your passive ones. “I didn’t mean to shout.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, Sodiq.” You smiled. “With all the herbs and drugs flushed out of your system, you’re bound to experience moments of mood swings.”

Says the botanist without a degree in psychology or medicine. I never gave voice to those thoughts. All I did was mull over them while keeping my gaze on you.

Were they visible on my face? Was that why you arose with a determined set of your chin, a forced smile on your lips that still pulsed from my kiss, and made a flat request that I follow you out of the room?

I don’t undermine your work, Ọyáwálé. I didn’t then or do I do so now.

I just felt you weren’t paying attention. If you were, you’d have noticed my frustrations were not borne out of the drugs as you purported, nor was it based on my disregard for the progress you’d made with me. If you were listening, you’d know most of my anger stemmed from sexual frustration. With every innocent brush of your arms against mine, every flutter of your eyelashes, every lingering of your gaze on me, I grew impatient to become one with you.

I tamed my impatience that day and two more days after that. Dutifully carried out all your bidding, attended to my health routine, and even networked with some of your patients. I learned from them that yours was an exclusive rehab, open to a select few.

A woman with roving eyes and raucous laughter jokingly called you snooty and said you only catered to celebrities down on their luck. I would have come to your defense had another, a man with feminine beauty and a sensual voice, not beaten me to it. He said you were selective because you were partial to people who strove to change the world. Seeing the vigor with which he defended you, I took a keen interest in him and asked questions about his station in life.

It didn’t surprise me that he was an actor, had featured on both local and international screens, and had released a few pieces of music that did well on the charts. I couldn’t place it then, and still can’t place it now, but there was something in the way he defended you. Something in his eyes whenever someone mentioned your name. I could tell the roving-eyed lady took a fancy to him, knew he was aware of her flirtations and loud laughs at his every utterance. Yet his regard never stayed on her. It kept flitting across the room. I followed his gaze when you walked into the room.

He had them on you.

I lost all interest in socializing that day. Misplaced my zeal for making friends with your patients, pretending I didn’t want more of our private sessions. It no longer mattered to me what your staff thought of my requesting more of your time. I no longer wanted to spend time with the medical practitioner you assigned me to, or the psychotherapist you mandated I spoke with occasionally.

All I cared about was snagging you before Mr. Pretty did.

Ọyáwálé. It was either I’d become rusty in my seductive wiles, or you purposefully deflected them. None of my advances were coy, none were obscure. I clarified I wanted time alone with you. Showed it in not-so-subtle ways that I craved a redo of our now four-day-old kiss. Yet, you remained blind as a bat.

Pretty boy got a better response from you. Even the woman with roving eyes, annoying laugh, and malicious gossip about you got a better reaction, repartee, and care from you.

“Whom should I report to if I find a service unsatisfactory?” I asked you when I could no longer tolerate your indifference towards me.

“You can write a complaint and drop it in the complaint box…”

“You’re in charge here, aren’t you? How about I tell you?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Privately.” I motioned outside the dusky night.

You suggested I go ahead of you, so you’d finish up what you were doing and join me. I acceded, walked with a spring in my feet at the chance of finally spending time alone with you.

I would have waited hours for you, years even, if I hadn’t turned on my way out and found you conversing with Pretty Boy.

Six

MEMORIES, ỌYÁWÁLÉ, MEMORIES of you and me. Memories of watching you laugh without a care. Memories of watching you help men, women, people find healing.

I knew then that I had no place with you. On a subconscious level, I’d crawled out of my dependence on drugs and latched on to you.

I found my healing that day, although not the sort I’d hoped to find. But the sort I needed to wake me to my reality. A realization that we were oil and water, fish and bird. We belonged to a life that could never be mixed. I, a man who lived off people’s pain. You, a woman who sought to eliminate pain.

My decision to pick up and go took flight that night. It flapped its wings with each angry pace I made in your scented garden. Flew higher with every inhaled breath of the peace and calm that was your world. It mattered not how I felt. I could never fit you into mine. Your tranquil world would fit into my chaos as light could with darkness.

With closed eyes, a mental reorganization of what I was familiar with, and a deletion of an imagined reprieve from being here, I stilled when the crunching sound of your feet stamping grass reached me.

“You’re progressing faster than I imagined,” you said.

“Means I’m fit to leave, then.”

“When you’re ready, yes.” You kept your eyes on me. “You can always stay if you feel…”

“Would it make a difference if I did?”

“A difference?”

You were still blinder than the three blind mice. How obvious could a man get? Surely, you didn’t expect me to spell it out, give words to my body’s need for yours. Perhaps it was for the best. Shaking your hand and wishing you well was the better route for me to take. So, I thanked you, shook your hand, and walked away. I won’t deny that I hoped you would call me back, hoped my leaving would wake you to what could have and should have been.

It didn’t.

Oh, well, it made my healing better. Made walking into my old life easy.

The crowd embraced me like I never left. They applauded, stood whenever I walked into a room, listened to my every utterance, made me feel what you failed to do; wanted.

The tours were endless. My voice rang louder and truer. I got better at selling lies. Weeks went by, then it became months, and half a year since I walked out on you that balmy night. It would be easier to say I outgrew you, better for my head to pretend I stopped thinking about you, wanting you, seeking the sweetness of your kiss on every lip I kissed. So, I did. I survived days without thinking about you. Lived through night after night in the open and willing arms of beautiful women.

My manager, the instigator of my meeting with you, felt I learned nothing from my rehabilitation with you. I laughed at his stupid reasoning. Of course, I learned a lot from you. Learned what it felt like to be unwanted. To appreciate my life, the life of being desired, and having people make me the core of their existence.

Your life was idyllic, Ọyáwálé. It had no room for me. You laughed freely, your mind liberated and unencumbered by the worries of life. How I loathed you for that, Ọyáwálé. Loathed your contentment and jarring complacency. A man like me had nothing in common with the likes of you. People like you were bad for business. You stopped reaching, stopped wanting more. If you did, you wouldn’t have let me walk away. You would have seen me for what I was; your ticket to owning the world.

Bravo, Ọyáwálé. If you did nothing, you helped me win the battle with drugs and threw me headfirst into the war of seeking validation in the arms of women. They adored me, fed my ego, and maybe… just maybe, a few specks of cocaine.

Who cares, anyway? It was just a few lines. The old Sodiq Nasir warmed up after emptying a pack of white ecstasy. Yet, I only snorted one line. Only took a pill per day. Only drank half a bottle of whiskey. My lifestyle had zero effect on my performance. Oh, wait, it did. I got better at masking my pain.

I was a drowning man, Ọyáwálé. A man sinking into his very own misery. I’d lived in my head my whole life. Thinking thoughts without saying them. I’d always rationalized, always found reasons to float my belief that life was pain. A simple life, an illusion; happiness, an unattainable drug. We weren’t put on this earth to be happy. We were built to embody pain, sorrow, tears, and a never-ending stretch of problems.

See why the world needed me? Why I couldn’t be me and be enough for them? My life meant nothing to me, Ọyáwálé. Not before I met you or after I left you. Heck, I’ll die anyway, we all will. Why bother slowing the process? Wouldn’t it make sense to make the best of it and keep it short? I say it does.

I took the drugs, Ọyáwálé. Damn, I took them. They helped me maximize my potential. Made me a better man. Maybe not for you, but a better man for them.

So, snorted multiple lines I did, and injected the cracks I did. And, like a never-failing alarm clock, it shot me straight into an abyss of rainbows and unicorns…roses and bloom.

Seven

 I WOKE UP to you.

“Do we need to save you a room, Sodiq?” You said. Your smile, still as unspoiled as I remembered. Your eyes, a brilliant shine.

“How did I get here?”

“Same way you did the last time, stone-cold in drugs and shit.”

My drooping head shot up at the reprimand in your voice. The drug haze sharpened like smoke in the wind at the steel in your eyes.

“Why do you keep going back to it, Sodiq?” You sighed.

“Why do you keep breathing?” I snapped, mad at you for being so mad at me I was getting mad and ashamed of myself.

“Then I cannot help you,” you said, turning away from me in disgust and marching to the door. “I can’t help a man so weak he compares drugs to air.”

“Don’t you dare use that tone on me, Ọyáwálé. You know nothing about my struggles.”

You whirled around, stomped towards me, and whipped me with a resounding slap. Words are inadequate to describe the sweet release I felt from the sting of your slap. All I reckoned was that I wanted more of it.

“Do it again,” I pleaded, edging closer to you, and snatching up your retreating arm. “Hit me, do it again, please.”

You hit me.

Pain, in all its pleasurable sweetness, laced my groin at the sting of your slap. It sent me to my knees, tempted me to drop my head to your feet and drink from your waters of ablution. You crouched, pulled up my head, and held my shattered body in your arms. “I’m a broken man, Ọyáwálé.” A dam of hot tears rushed to my throat. “A broken man in need of a quick fix.”

“We can fight this, Sodiq.” You cradled my head.

“You shouldn’t have let me leave.”

“You said you were ready. I didn’t think…”

Undone by the powerful pull of your aura, I swallowed the rest of your statement with a kiss that sent us gripping each other like a tightrope. You tried to pull away; I tightened my hold on you, wanting… Craving you would taste what my lips hadn’t been able to give voice to; the depth of my love for you.

“This is not the remedy, Sodiq,” you said. Your chest heaving, pink lips throbbing, and hands pushing me away.

“It’s the only remedy I want, all the help I need,” I said, pulling you back to me. “It’s better than all the herbs, Ọyáwálé.”

You pulled up to your feet, adjusted your hair, and left me groveling. “I don’t believe in quick fixes.”

“Love is not a quick fix, just a better drug,” I said, rising to my full height and taking you back in my arms.

“Love is not a drug I sell.” You brushed me off and walked to the door. “I preach hope, redemption, and fighting to overcome weakness. I don’t believe love fixes everything.”

“Then you’re a hypocrite!” I marched towards you, hauled you to me when you tried pulling the door open and once again left me famished with unfulfilled desire. Your eyes darted around, covered in fright. I loosened my hold on you, my heart breaking with want.

“What is life without love, Ọyáwálé? Of what use are your herbs, potions, and preaching if you do not believe in it?”

“What I believe or don’t believe is immaterial.” Your chest heaved; eyes darted to the door. I feared you’d leave. You stayed.

“You must love, Ọyáwálé.” I shoved my hands into my pocket to contain their feverish itch to hold you. “How else were you able to connect with nature?”

“Nature loves unconditionally. It gives and asks nothing in return.”

“Oh, please!” I spat. “Everyone and everything wants something back. There’s no taking without giving. It is nature’s very own law, the principle of action and reaction, cause and effect.”

“Maybe.” You snorted. “I find nature a better lover, then. It doesn’t cheat, steal, or break me, as people do. Like you did when you walked away and returned, without a blink, to your old and filthy ways.”

Oh, me. Oh, us. Now I know why your eyes glistened with disdain. You felt betrayed by me. You blamed me as much as I did you for leaving that night. I thought you made me leave. You thought I left you in search of booze, women, and a ton of nose candies.

“I thought you didn’t want me,” I said breathlessly.

“Of course, I didn’t. I just go around kissing crackheads for fun.”

The laughter started like a tiny bubble, then burst into a sea of mirth that sent me clutching my stomach. You laughed too. A rich boom of goodness triggered my feet into taking you back into my arms. When our lips touched, tongues mated, hands sought each other, you didn’t fight it.

Slowly, like one savoring a delicate package, I brushed your dress off your body. Ran my eyes down your bronze skin before trailing my tongue on them. The sound of your gasp stiffened my dick. It fevered my hands, powered my neurons with a sense of urgency. I lost my slowness and attacked your body with a pang of hunger that unleashed your inner lioness. You wrapped your arms around me, kissed me ravenously, allowed me to tear the lacy brassiere off your voluptuous breast, and sucked them harder than a famished baby.

You whispered my name, raced your fingers through my afro, pinched my back. I traced your lips, fed you my fingers, ran a finger wet from your kisses down your rapturous body, and followed its trail. It led me down south. Nourished my nostril with your luxurious scent. And, like a thirsty camel, I drank from your pool.

We fucked.

Hard.

Had sex.

Wild.

Made passionate love.

Did every euphemism man had used to describe the perfect bond that is you and me.

My transition from crackhead to sane man was smooth because of you. Thoughts of you, of us, and the heat of both our passionate bodies kept me sane while my body detoxed. Like a madman, I laughed on some nights when I recalled our argument about love. I curled up when my body shook from drug craving and immersed myself in the warmth of your love.

It’d been forever and a day, Ọyáwálé; a long time since you held me in your arms. You said it was necessary for my healing that you stayed away. Promised you would wait outside my door when I returned from waging war with my demons.

So, I slew every opponent, drank every herb, charged head-on into every brick wall of defense until the coast was clear and the path was smooth enough to lead me back to you.

Eight

THE MOUTH SPEAKS, ears listen, tongue tastes. But the soul… The soul expresses itself with music.

A symphony of ecstasy and Seal’s Love’s Divine broke in my head as I emerged from the drug war and found you waiting at the foot of the stairs. It gave wings to my feet and put all my feelings into perspective. Made me deaf and blind to the surrounding people. Yet opened my eyes to the healing that was you.

I took your hands, smiled into your beautiful eyes, and hurried our feet out of the house. In the relaxing ambiance of your garden, we helped each other out of our clothes. On a bed of grass blooming with scented roses, we became Adam and Eve before the fruit.

Flushed in both our love’s divine, I called out your name; you screamed out mine. Your eyes adored me; your lips set my soul on fire. I dipped deeper, deeper, and deeper into your nectar. Sucked in your scent. Memorized it. Sated my broken soul with it. I found, yes, Ọyáwálé, I found healing when my body trembled in sweet release and filled your womb with our babies.

“This is a better drug,” I said, raking my fingers through your head full of afro. “A healthier replacement for crack.”

You laughed but said nothing. I asked to know you more. You told me you were thirty-five, two years older than my thirty-three. Never been married, nor stayed long in a relationship, for your lovers always wanted to change you.

“They couldn’t relate to my ambition,” you said, a faraway expression in your eyes. “Didn’t understand my drive of wanting to make the world better than I found it.”

I didn’t say it, but I was glad your earlier lovers were stupidly blind. Their lack of sight kept you for me.

“What about you, Sodiq? Why do you do what you do?”

“I started out wanting to help remove, if not ease, people’s pain by listening,” I said with one arm wrapped around you and the other gently pinching and teasing your nipple. “It worked for a while. Until my team felt I needed to go industrial when my ratings dropped with my blunt suggestions.”

“How?”

“No one wanted to hear the truth. They found it quaint.” I laughed. “To stay in business, I got better at watering down the truth and selling perfect lies.”

“How did that help your rating?”

 “My telling them what they wanted to hear to ease their consciences or validate whatever vices they were dealing with kept them coming back for more. I, if you may, convinced them to deny whatever reality they found painful. Helped them in adding bricks, mortar, and limestone to their Pimper’s Paradise until my words became the gospel. And boy, they came in droves.” I snorted. “I became their beacon of hope, their maharaja, the bread of life. Take your pick.”

“Hence your need for drugs?”

“Hence my need to silence the voices in my head that constantly called me a fraud. Hence my need to continue powering the channel that fed their addictions to me.”

You sat up and cradled my face. “Now that you know where the problem lies, promise me you’ll find your way back to what’s right.”

My gaze dropped to your lips. “I will if you promise to be mine.”

You sighed, pulled away from me, and began covering your body with clothes. An instant ache of your absence filled me. A fear that you would soon render me fit to leave overpowered my senses.

“Say something, please,” I said, clutching your hand. Wanting you to stop putting on your clothes and hiding your body from me.

“I’m a free spirit, Sodiq Nasir. I belong to no one, nor do I seek to possess another human being.”

“I have no intention of possessing you. I just want you to belong to me and no one else.”

“Potato Potahto.”

“Don’t make me beg you, Ọyáwálé.”

“That you feel the need to answer my fears.” Your brown eyes moistened with a worried frown. “I won’t be a replacement for the drugs, Sodiq.”

“You’re not, I’m healed.”

“I can’t give you what you want.”

“You’re all I desire or would ever need, Ọyáwálé.”

“That’s what you believe, but it’s not true. You need a pacifier, something to replace your drug dependence.”

“Ọyáwálé.”

“I won’t be that woman, Sodiq. The woman you blame if you ever fall off the wagon.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this to me.”

“Wasn’t that what you just did with your tale? Didn’t you just admit you blamed your fans for leading you into drugs? When it was your greed, your need for fame and fortune that led you into living a lie.”

“Take those words back, Ọyáwálé.” I boomed, rising to my feet and pulling you in a tight grip. “You don’t mean them. Take them back.”

“The truth is always a bitter and tough pill to swallow.”

You wilted before my eyes that day. The glorious film that covered my pupils and painted you a goddess suddenly washed off. I saw you for what you were.

My poison.

Nine

YOU DID NOT come to me that night, nor the days and nights following my time at RRC. I asked about you; stopped asking when no one gave me a fitting response. It was as if you had erased me from your memory, discarded me like a used toy. My anger inflamed me. It drove me to speed up my recovery. I left your rehabilitation home an angry man, vowing never to return.

Knocked down twice, with a broken heart soaked in pain, I figured I had no place to go but up. I resolved to forget you and everything leading me back to you. I deleted my supplier’s number, flushed the pills, moved out of my Magodo apartment for fear I’d one day find a blow stashed somewhere, and bought an exclusive home on Banana Island.

Thoughts of you filled my nights. They kept me awake and fevered. Broke my skin in sweats as I sat crossed-armed on my bed, rocking back and forth in tucked legs, and calling to mind your last words to me.

The truth is a bitter and tough pill to swallow.

I’ve spent my entire life hiding away from my truth. Lived my days believing people were responsible for my bad choices. As bitter as the truth pill was, I swallowed it whole. No one led me into popping my first pill. They didn’t line up the coke or heat the crack. That was all me. I chose the drugs the same way I wanted to choose an addiction to you. Replace the purity of love with the stifling and toxic mist of obsession.

And there it was. My Eureka!

The moment I broke the chains of addiction. The night I took my first step in my long walk to victory. It was hard, Ọyáwálé. Hard. Still, I pushed on. I spoke my truth, came clean to the world about my battle with drugs, and shared my story with anyone willing to listen.

Pictures of me grazed the news. Only this time it wasn’t to sing my praises or concretize my lies. They, local and international newsrooms, newspapers, magazines, blogs, called me a fraud. A man known for preaching light and practicing darkness. A motivational speaker unable to motivate himself to live a better life. They laughed, made bawdy jokes, parodies, and funny skits about me.

Yet, I pressed on.

It’s a paradox, Ọyáwálé. An irony. With every bad media and publicity my story brought about, my fan base grew. People no longer looked at me like an infallible god to be worshiped. They’d seen me in my low, my vulnerability, my moment of weakness, and fully embraced me as one of them.

They opened up to me, sent me tons of emails with candid narrations of their battle with drugs and all forms of addiction. I found I could help them by speaking from a place of truth, sharing my experience with them, giving them a lucid view of my flawed existence.

It’s been a crazy ride, Ọyáwálé. A long time since I’ve seen your face.

I’m here now, thinking these thoughts, looking out the window of my hotel room in Calabar. Watching people come in from all walks of life. For the first time in a long time, I feel whole and complete and have none of the anxious feelings of the old Sodiq Nasir.

“Hey, man, you’re ready?” My manager says, pulling me from my view of the crowded entrance. Taking me from my trip down memories of you, of us, and all we’re soon to be.

“I am,” I say, turning to him.

He smiles and gives my back a friendly pat. “Just so you know, we’re all proud of you. Staying clean for three months straight no be beans, o.”

“No, na garri and groundnut.” I laugh. He laughs too, shakes my hand, and tells me to break a leg.

Fans maxed the room out. Spotlights beam on me as the MC announces my name. I walk through the curtain with my head held high, a big smile, and an unhindered wave at the sea of smiling faces and loud applause. It feels fantastic to be without guilt, Ọyáwálé, feels liberating to look people in the eye and know I’m one with them.

“Thank you all for coming out tonight,” I say.

They cheer, fill the air with celebratory whistles, and yell, “Go, Sodiq!”

“We love you, man!”

And so, I begin. I exude my truth, speak it into their lives, share my story with them, and encourage them to walk with confidence into their becoming.

My path is clearer now, Ọyáwálé. I’m more aware of myself now. Open to accepting I’m not perfect, admitting all my flaws. Hence, I know it’s time for me to see you again. Time for me to come to you, not in the delirious state of a crackhead, but in the bright light of day and a shiny Lamborghini.

Okay, wait… Back up. I can’t come to you in a Lamborghini. Seriously, your road is terrible. Sheesh, why did you have to situate your rehab center in the rural part of Lagos, though? I never knew a place like Mowe Ibafo existed in Lagos. You, like you did everything else, opened my eyes to finding peace in the simple things.

So, yes, Ọyáwálé. I’m coming to you. I’m coming to you in a Rolls Royce. I’ll walk through your aisle teeming with rose petals, knock on your door, take you in my arms, and tell you, after making up for the six months that we’ve been apart with mind-bending love, who I’ve become.

A man in love with you.

Ten

SHE’D WOKEN UP that morning knowing he would come today. The words came to her like a whisper. She’d recognize it because it differed from the recurring ones; her constant yearning from lucid dreams of making love to him.

“Sodiq,” she grins, feeling the aromatic waft of joy suffuse her spirit.

She’d been counting the hours until his return. Keeping tabs on him, cheering him on with every win, he added to his coffers and drinking to his success. Sucking in a cathartic breath, she checks her face in a mirror. Other than a thrilling shine in her eyes and a severe need to squeal, she sees nothing out of place. Patting her hair, she swallows a thick blob of nerves lodging in her throat, harrumphs to force them out, and shakes her head.

“Ọyáwálé,” she tells her mirrored self. “Do not lose your head to this man.”

That she believes her admonishing will be of any use is not a thought she cares to expand on. If she’s being honest, she’d recall the many times she’d had such conversations with herself. They had been firm one-liners like: ‘You’ve got this’ and ‘you’re a smart woman’ only to walk into his room and give in to the searing need to protect him. Help him find his way back.

When she received the request to squeeze him into her tight list of patients, her heart had broken for the man he’d become. She’d taken one look at his wild eyes and shaking body and wept bitter tears. She’d planned to help and lead him into rediscovering himself. How he made her lose her head with just one glance still leaves her stumped.

“I’ve loved him for too long,” she says, returning her gaze to the window, loving the confidence in his gait, wanting to have him look at her with those light brown eyes and reawaken her body with his kisses. She recalls her exhortation of belonging to no one, and a small frown mars her face. Her mouth may have said those words in the heat of anger, but her heart feels nothing of the sort. She desires to be his as much as she craves to make him hers.

“But I can’t let him know this,” she sighs, turning away from the window and working her features into a scripted one. “I must stay calm and collected. I mustn’t lose my head to him. Not again.”

The sound of knuckles hitting glass pulls her off her window-gazing. She smiles at her secretary, thanks her for informing her about what she already knows, and again arranges her features.

As Ọyáwálé walks towards the man whose lips still make her quiver, she takes more calming breaths and throws her eyes around her glass castle. To steady her thudding heart and calm her shaking hands, she forces her mind into a litany of affirmations: I’ve got this. I’m a woman in control of her emotions and a few other chants of the importance of a woman not losing her head, especially a woman in a business such as hers.

It’s bad enough her staff already assumes she’s Sodiq’s lover. They’d whispered it amongst themselves, giggled about it, and closely watched her whenever he came on television, or the paper carried front-page news of him. Those who were close to her had asked about her relationship with him. But she’d often shrugged them off with a vague, ‘He’s an attractive man, what’s not to like?’

Now, they all watch her in bated breaths as she makes the walk towards him. It is this, this curious need of her staff to see if she still has her head or had lost it to Sodiq Nasir, that made Ọyáwálé defiantly set her chin and walk head held high, and gait business-like towards the man whose lovemaking still throbs the space between her thighs.

“Welcome, Sodiq,” she says, stretching her hand for a courteous handshake. His magnetic gaze flits across her face, slides down her body, then returns with a deeper intensity to her eyes. He smiles a small sensual smile that burns down her walls brick for brick and causes her to swallow.

“Ọyáwálé,” he says, his smokey voice turning her mushy stomach into a gushing sea of wantonness.

“I’m happy to see you won the war, Sodiq.”

“I have you to thank for that.”

“Oh,” she smiles, “I did nothing, Sodiq. It was all you. You became a better man. You fought your way back to you.”

A winsome smile crosses his features, bringing to sharp focus the stunning glint in his large and expressive eyes, his small but straight nose that she’d always loved to stroke, and the sexy peel of his sinfully dark lips that sits on a firm jaw covered in close-cropped beards. He throws a casual look around, grins, and takes her hand.

“I don’t mind prying eyes, but, uh, can we go someplace private?”

“Oh?”

He motions to the small crowd milling about the lobby, their attention riveted on them.

“Oh.” She chuckles, pats her hair, throws remonstrating eyes at her staff, and rolls her eyes when some women wink and give thumbs-up signs. From the corner of her eyes, she sees them leaning against the glass even as she walks with him down the grassy path. Sodiq waves at them.

“Your fan base is growing,” she says.

“I think they’re more interested in us.”

“Right.”

He chuckles, a broad grin sitting nicely on his handsome face. “Did you miss me?”

“No.” She laughs, walking further into the garden with hands clasped in his. “When I saw you drive in, I feared you were coming in stoned again.”

“Not today, babe.”

“Babe?”

“Yes.” He halts and spins her to him.

“Sodiq…” Her words stay buried in his tongue as his lips part, close around, and suck hers in a ravening kiss. She laps him up, encircles his neck, goes astride, and wraps her legs around him. 

“Ọyáwálé,” he says in a breathy whisper. “Let me love you, babe. I’m a better man now, a better man for you.” When his lips reclaim hers, passion circles like a halo around them, and bodies lower onto the paradisiac garden, Ọyáwálé holds his face in her palms.

“I love you, Sodiq,” she says.

“I love you more, Ọyáwálé,” he moans, holds, fills, and becomes one with her.

And so it goes, that Ọyáwálé, a woman named after a river goddess, a lover of peace, simplicity, and a believer of nature’s healing power, lovingly opens her soul, mind, and body, to the wondrous feeling of roses, blooms, and the sweet ecstasy of love.