MY PAST
Men! They never cease to amuse me with the way they carry on. Most of them bestride the female world with arrogance, much like the legendary Colossus as Shakespeare of old did say. I wonder if they are really in control the way they try to make we all think they are. Can anything ever let them off guard? Ask me and I will tell you. This I have proved and today I narrate this tale.
I have been called all the bad names anyone can think of. Not that it bothered me. Like my Warri kindred would say, ‘Na today?’ I had worn negative tags for so long that I proudly introduced myself with some of them. Like: ‘My name is…………….I am the big bad girl of Warri origin.’
I was born a silver spoon kid if I can use that age old cliché. The spoilt, only child of rich, globetrotting parents, I was allowed to have my way and the way I chose was far from narrow. While my parents travelled all over the globe, they left me alone at the mercy of George, my ‘little uncle’ as I called him. He was not much older than I was at seventeen years of age. I was beginning to fill out and blossom, looking more sixteen than my ten years. I was almost tired of hearing that I was beautiful. Everywhere I went, both males and females commented on my lovely features.
George was the last child in my mummy’s family. My grandmother, so they told me, had him in defiance to the laws of nature. When her mates had given up on childbearing and were thinking of grandchildren, she was pregnant at almost fifty years old. At that time, my mother who was the eldest child, was in her mid twenties and as expected, he became the darling child of the family. He was especially attached to my mother who brought him along with her to her matrimonial home when she married my father. He was seven years at that time and practically assisted her to take care of me. We became inseparable and I wanted nothing more than to cuddle at his knee and listen to the sweet stories he told me.
A nanny was also brought in to take care of me and tidy the house but she went away at 6p.m, leaving me to George and his devices. George and I often cuddled close together in his room whenever my parents travelled. On the pretext of being scared to sleep alone, I would come to George’s room and sleep in his arms where I felt safe and warm.
One Saturday evening, just after I became ten years old, when I dived into George’s bed as usual, he tapped me gently.
‘Sharon, can I ask you something?’
‘What is it Uncle George?’ I threw my innocent arms around his neck and gazed at him adoringly.
‘I want us to sleep together.’ He said sheepishly, looking everywhere but at me.
A giggle worked its way up my throat and I released it, laughing with childish innocence.
‘What is funny?’ He asked me.
‘But Uncle George. We are always sleeping together.’ I said, laughter still in my voice.
‘No that is not what I mean. It is a different kind of sleep I mean.’ George said in a desperate voice as he looked straight into my eyes for the first time. His look scared me and I shifted, trying to get out of bed.
‘I want you to cooperate and I will make you happy.’
‘Cooperate? I don’t understand………You are making me afraid, Uncle.’
Uncle George reached for me and removed my flimsy nightgown before I could say another word. I tried to protest but he drew me closer. At that point, I knew he was no longer the loving uncle I had known. He had become a monster.
I could not pretend not to know what he was doing. I heard the older girls in my school talking about it and had caught glimpses of some of the films George watched when my parents were not around. I tried to scream and run away but my ‘bestial’ uncle threw me forcefully on the bed and had his way with me. I whimpered in pain throughout the act and cried for my parents but they were far away…………….deaf to my cries, oblivious of my pain.
*
That was my initiation into the world of immorality. Uncle George apologised after it all, cleaned me up and washed the stained bed sheets. I was bruised, battered and broken inside but he begged me not to breathe a word of it to anyone. My unsuspecting parents always thanked George for taking care of me each time they returned from their jolly trips. He sure was ‘taking care of me’ but not in the way that they thought.
Uncle George continued to ravage my body almost every week after that painful initiation and with time, I began to find the experience very pleasurable. He allowed me watch some of those damaging films that further damaged my innocent soul. I grew wild and began to sneak into his room sometimes when he did not send for me.
My parents were oblivious of the wild plant growing in their house. When my uncle George went away to the university, I missed him badly and we found a way to indulge ourselves. I was far gone on the road to immorality and there was no one to bring me back to sanity.
After a while, I was no longer satisfied with George alone. My mind had become twisted from the evil movies I watched. During my final year in the secondary school, I made friends with a group of girls who were as untamed as I was and we went on wild adventures together, hopping in and out of the beds of countless men. They taught me how to protect myself and my parents never found out about the shameful life I was living.
I got to a point where I began to go out to pick just any man whenever the urge came upon me. I just had to have a man or I would be literarily shaking. By the time I was in my first year of university, so many men had ransacked my womanly treasures and deadened my emotions for life. I was not interested in love. I did not mind if the men gave me money. I had enough of it because my parents gave me enough money to pay the salaries of two well paid graduates put together.
I became ruthless and saw men as toys I could play with when I was bored and discard when I found a more interesting pastime. I had curves that could drive the most saintly man insane and this I accentuated by wearing the most provocative outfits. Anywhere I went, my clothes screamed, ‘come and take me’ and I revelled in the attention I got. I saw the effect I had on men and the sense of power gave me great thrills. I was filled with the nectar of youth, ready to give any man who came around a taste. And like bees drawn to a honeycomb, they came in droves.
I continued in my amorous escapades and had no apologies for what I was doing. I had had affairs with as many men as I had seen but I saw myself as the queen of the world. With just one lethal look, I could bring any man to his knees and I was delighted at the sense of power I wielded.
There was only one male who tried to get past my icy heart to uncover the tender hearted person encased within. He was a new arrival to the English Department of the University of Lagos where I was and he was besotted with me from the first time he looked into my eyes. I could see he was a shy one but I was too ‘open-eyed’ to act coy around any man. I walked up to him after class one day.
‘Hi. I see you are new here.’ I smiled at him, licking my lips like a child that sights candy.
‘Yes I am.’
‘My name is Sharon. And yours?’
‘Tony.’ He barely looked me in the face.
‘I could teach you a thing or two about this school. You can feel safe with Sharon.’
‘That is nice of you.’ He seemed to light up. ‘You are so friendly. The people here are hardly like this.’
Poor Tony. If only he knew the type of things I wanted to teach him. I enveloped Tony with my feminine charms and he lost his ‘shyness’ within a month of entangling with me. He was so taken with me and followed me around like an obedient little dog.
Till the day he found out.
*
He came charging into my room in the off campus hostel where I lived large like a princess. I organised a lot of parties in that place which sometimes turned to orgies where men of all shapes and sizes had their fill of me and other ladies who were adventurous enough to join us. Men jostled to come to my parties where they had access to a healthy dose of female flesh.
That day when Tony walked into my hostel, I had just escorted one of my latest male conquests. I was about to lie on the bed and rest my tired body when he burst into my room.
‘What’s this I hear, Sharon?’
‘About what sweetheart?’ I asked, my hands already moving towards his trousers.
‘Stop that for once in your life and listen to me,’ He snapped ‘What is this I hear about your affairs with almost every man on campus?’
‘Oh! You are just hearing that? Stale news.’ I said unrepentantly.
‘So you are not denying it?’
‘Why should I? Do you think you are the only one that can set me ablaze? Many others have matches to light the fire.’
Tony stared at me as if he could not believe the words I have just spoken.
‘Are you this loose?’ He asked in a quiet voice.
‘When I was initiating you, what did you think? That you were a prize pupil and I a special needs teacher?’ I asked, still very unrepentant.
‘Sharon, stop this immoral lifestyle. We share something special. Let us stick to each other.’ Tony’s voice held an appeal that could have melted the heart of a normal girl but I was far from normal. My soul had been sold to the demon of depravity.
‘In your dreams,’ I sneered at him. ‘I don go since, Tony. Nor be today. It is too late. You are seven years too late.’
‘Seven years. You mean………………………….?’
‘Yes. I lost my innocence seven years ago and I do not know how to retrieve it.’
Images of Uncle George’s assault flashed before my eyes and before I could stop them, tears gushed out of my eyes as if a water pipe had been let loose. No one had broken the surface of my frosty heart the way Tony did and I tried to compose myself, resuming the part of the ‘hard babe.’
‘Tell me about it.’ Tony said in a voice I could hardly hear.
As I sobbed out my tale of woe, Tony held me in his arms and cursed the evil uncle who destroyed me in this manner. Tony tried. He spoke to me till he could not find words to use anymore. But words are not enough to ease a bruised body. I was too mentally dented to be repaired by mere words.
Tony often watched me with tears in his eyes as I wandered far away into the desert of depravity and his helpless hands could not help me.