Simps Will See Dust 06

As could be expected, my eremitic tendencies led me to the solitary and farthest corner of the library, where I sank into a seat and sat without moving, suddenly subdued by the torpor of death. Without was the silence of a graveyard, within was the irrepressible din of a football stadium. When I made up my mind to come to the library, it was to do anything but study. I had come to mull over what my standing on the table of love was, and if anything, I knew I was at the precipice of relegation. Speaking of football, it felt as if my misfortunes had something to do with me being surrounded by friends who were Chelsea fans, for Chelsea had, quite clearly, established itself as a dependable source of disappointment and bad luck. As we had a Pharmacology paper in two days time, I got to see some of my classmates struggle to squeeze value out of the slippery evening hours. Even in a bid to salvage the semester, their efforts could be nothing more than the frantic kicks of a dying horse, for they had the innocent determination but clearly unattainable goal to study in a single night what was meant to be studied in a whole semester. 

I was supposed to be worried as well, for I could make no claims of preparedness, and even if I was a little ready for the paper, I could not confess that to anyone since as medical students, we had taken a silent but invariably binding oath to vehemently deny and dispel with any claims whatsoever of having studied, leave alone being ready for an exam. Affirming that you were prepared for a paper was tantamount to submissively walking yourself to the gallows, but we were ready to fight for our freedom with every ounce of energy in us, so no! I wasn’t ready for my Pharmacology test. But the terrifying thought that I had done the unthinkable thing of asking the wrong lady out nagged at my heart and seemed to rack my nerves with such unremitting insistency that left me miserable and wanting to bang the table. In that moment my mind was a simmering hodgepodge of emotional turmoil and academic anxieties that threatened to tip me into madness.

“Huh?” Ashley had asked, surprised at such an unforeseen request. A little unflinchingly, Brenda and Ashley stared at me as I croaked an embarrassing and incoherent string of phrases meant to highlight the error. I quickly tried clearing my throat but some saliva must have gotten into my trachea for I suddenly burst into what might have been the most terrifying fit of coughing. When I came to, the mortifying look of pity on their faces made me rethink the earlier defense I had intended to enact. I opened my mouth but only air proceeded from it. As it were, the universe had conspired to thwart and utterly decimate every iota of hope I had in me, or in the world, of ever winning, or even just getting close to winning the heart of the lady my heart bled for ( I beg clemency from the medical fraternity, for a bleeding heart would certainly be the most worrying case of a hemopericardium, and I am certain if it continued unabated, my love could only continue in a grave ).

“I wouldn’t mind a chat over coffee,” Ashley, deft as she was with any conversation, adroitly picked it up when it became glaringly apparent that I was struggling to reign my thoughts and convert it into a meaningful form of discourse, “Brenda will certainly come along, right?” she went on to ask in the most courteous way that for a moment, felt like salvation from the tormenting nightmare I had been in for the few minutes I had stood before Brenda. It was precisely for that reason that I had intended to leave the Microbiology practical immediately, before Ashley intercepted me and set me up for the most embarrassing moment of my life.

“No, I won’t come.” Brenda had replied in a manner that to me seemed to, strangely, bear the most disarming and breathtaking nonchalance that suddenly made her even prettier, and then with a demure smile that bore in it the potential of grabbing my whole being and tossing it off a cliff into the sea, she added a little emphatically, “it’s you he asked, and…” she continued while looking into my eyes, probably to tease me, “spoiling Henry’s date is the last thing I would want to do.”

“Brenda!” Ashley lamented as Brenda suddenly burst into a hearty but very brief laughter. I had wanted to explain myself, to swear it with my life that I could never take any lady aside from her out, as long as she walked the earth, but my heart had been all over my body, and my voice was on a holiday of sorts.

I was clearly living for a day that would never come, and I thought of what could possibly come from my infatuation. The poignancy that came with facing the reality that however great I thought my love to be, it could never make Brenda adore me if she never did. Brenda was too perfect to have me in her life. It was only years later, when I was happily wedded to L―,  that I would come to what would be the most counterintuitive realization, that I as well, had been too perfect for Brenda to have me. I might have foreseen this forthcoming awakening about a decade later as I sat there, pensive and with a crushed spirit, bemoaning my misfortunes, for I made up my mind to cut-off Brenda from my life. I had been dancing on this show of love with every sap of effort I could master, yet my audience of one had declined to come up the stage and join me. When I got home that evening, I was going to block Brenda, and delete her contact. It was time for me to leave the stage.

“Henry,” 

“Huh!” Startled, I looked up. She stood right beside me, with the most incapacitating smile painted upon her countenance. As you would expect, I was mute, and I believe I wore the most blank and confused look at that moment. Had Brenda followed me to the library?

“Can I give you a call later tonight?” she asked as she bowed her head a little, pressed her lips shut and raised her eyebrows. The cue, meant to confirm my affirmation, made her look glorious.

“Sure!” I snapped.

Flowering our Garlands - Adam's Sunday; Medical School Christian Union

When it comes to Medical School Christian Union, memorable moments of brouhaha, as our Luo brother quite candidly put it in his famous supplication, is certainly not something you could leave without, even if you wanted to. The third day of the third month of the year saw the Adams, the young men of the union known far and beyond for their stentorian roar “Ahuu!”, put together what would be an unprecedented gesture that was, as I gather, a little unforeseeable to our precious sisters, the Garlands, as we have proudly come to call them recently. And garlands they truly are, for I am convinced that anyone who saw them today could never dispute. They all looked radiant, resplendent in dresses that dazzled in a blindening coruscation of blue, as though they had been subconsciously attuned to the

main event of the day right from their wardrobes. I hear that ladies know when it is going to be a good day, yet not quite when it will be a bad one. Isn't that pleasurable, to live through each day positive and happy, unwearied by the troubles of humanity? “Rejoice, again I say, rejoice.”

The idea of gifting the garlands with beautiful yellow roses could as well as turn out to be the most ingenious move of the season. It is one thing to show kindness and love as a community of men driven by the passion to treat every young lady in purity as a sister(1 Timothy 5:1-3), as Paul exhorts us through Timothy, but to have to stand alone before the same lady in a different setting even with the pure intentions of Scriptures is a wholly different story, for it calls forth faculties and resources that have proved to be lacking in the typical comrade today. Such chickening out, might have been the result of the embarrassing dust these comrades have gathered in their simping escapades. Had they heeded to my imploration that they read Joshua Harris’s remarkable book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, the story would be different. Wading through the murky waters of attempted love was the option they were willing to stomach.

At the first look, it seemed as if the Adams hadn’t come up with, or even figured out the strategy they would use to give their roses. Yet in a few minutes, virtually every lady had a flower they were either sniffing at contentedly, pressing closely to their bosom, or beautifully placed on their laps. Some even had two roses! How the Adams were able to enact such a feat in a matter of minutes is probably incomprehensible, but maybe they have just been underestimated all this while. Talking of underestimations, my fly-on-the-wall observation of the whole activity probably gave me the honor to take a keen look at our brother Henry Madaga. Several MSCU members chant MDG everytime they have to make a reference to him, (eh mailod) I wonder what the acronym infers. I hear he has a blog he calls Litnerd Letters, which I am definitely having a look at after my observations today.

Henry was clad in a shirt that had to be the brightest shade of blue. Yes, it's blue, even though he was innocently convinced, even a little embarrassed, that the shirt was green, when the dress code was supposed to be shades of blue. How disappointing! He held the rose and looked at it with a little more passion than his counterparts who seemed a little carried away by the idea that they were even holding roses in the first place. To him, there was something personal about that yellow rose, and the card he carried in his other hand. A pleasurable smile settled on his face after he had surveyed the congregation of graceful garlands, and then after he seemed to have settled on his target, he took off with what appeared to be calculated and sure strides, quick strides they were. My own rose dropped from my hands and as I picked it up, I ended up missing the moment I had really wanted to see for myself. We had been praying for our brother, and seeing things finally play out in his favor would be such a pleasurable thing.

He walked briskly back to his seat and settled in it with such a peaceful and serene look on his face. The calm and contented look slowly transformed itself into a dazzling smile that was unlike Henry. The peculiarity and poignance of the whole thing made me silently wish I had seen the lady Henry had ‘flowered’.  Henry could be quite discrete about such things, and I was sure no amount of persuasion  and coercion could make him reveal who it was he had gifted the rose, yet the wise man I am, I tactically explored the environment of his mission and took note of the potential recipients of his kindness, for lack of a better word. I am not sure about the state of my own affairs when it comes to romance, but world, stay alert because I am certain of one thing, Henry is cooking!

Simps will see Dust

From the look in her eyes, I could tell that it was bad news. The expression on her face was disturbed and anxious. Her lips were half asunder as if she meant to speak; and she drew a breath, but it escaped in a sigh instead of a sentence. She raised her winsome eyes to mine and gave me a kind of solemn and distressed gaze that immediately sent tendrils of paranoia down my spine. My heart exploded into a frantic crescendo of beats that forced an embarrassing gasp out of me. The world around me had descended into the sadistic and stifling silence of a graveyard at midnight. I desperately searched for assurance in those dove eyes that seemed resolute on dashing and annihilating whatsoever form of equanimity I was struggling to evince.

Still, I was unable to understand how fast I had moved from detesting this angel of a person to desperately yearning for her in every second of my existence. The first day we met at our Anatomy Dissection Table, I loathed with perfect passion the sight of her imposing figure and the impressive mien of control she exuded. In contrast to her riveting poses and carefully worked out intonations that made her explanations astoundingly succinct and wonderfully apt, I hated how I would drone on incoherently while struggling to put together the scrappy and expatiate points in my argument. Her smile and graceful nods then were unsettling and would plunge me into an abasing abyss of discomfiture, as if to emphasize her own indubitable composure set against the backdrop of my pitiful confusion.

Even though I had expected her to be haughty and hubristic, her replies to questions from our table mates were kind and down-to-earth. She was witty and humorous in a manner that disarmed every soul that engaged her in a conversation and made it impossible not to love the salubrious and rejuvenating air she effortlessly infused into her surroundings.

“Henry,” she calmly called out to me one afternoon while I tried to clarify the difference between Crohn's Disease and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. I grunted something close to a reply as I tried to find sobriety at a moment that suddenly seemed so critical. Excepting her glossy hair that was usually held by a black velvet band with a spray of white pearls in front, she preferred to showcase her beauty au naturel, jilting all the overtly adorned features, outfits and elaborate ostentatious styling that was typical of the repulsively coquettish ladies in our class. I did not know for how long I had been lost in the heaven of such incomparable beauty until I had that sweet and familiar voice again.

“You agree with me, right?”

“Yes!” I whispered in my mind, unaware of what she meant. “I agree that I am in love with you!” I shouted silently as a sheepish smile spread over my face and drew the flabbergasted gazes of my colleagues.

For six years of Medical School I surrendered myself at the mercy of insatiable riptides of love and infatuation that lurked beneath the veneer of what seemed to be a placid demeanor. I saw Brenda return her adoration for me in furtive glances that lingered and brief smiles that became the highlight of my long, arduous and exerting days in Medical School. I was only starting to realize how wrong and blind I had been while I knelt before her, having voiced out a proposal that was not a little bit romantic as I had envisioned now that I was being roused to a horrible awakening of my unrequited love and the misery that would mark all my forthcoming days. She shook her head apologetically and I watched her lips settle in shape as I prepared myself to confirm her say the “NO” I dreaded hearing.

“Yes!” She enthused, “I will marry you Henry!” The heart-rending surprise at my sudden felicitous turn of fortune was enough to startle me out of the dream I had been having.

“Oh my goodness!” I gasped involuntarily as I sprang out of bed. When I realized I was an hour late for my Pathology end of year exam, I knew it wasn't Brenda's pretty face I was staring at but the unnerving grin of a Supplementary Exam.