Tèmítọ́pẹ́ Ọ̀jẹ́délé-Adéjùmọ̀

Today, I found myself reading Leviticus 18 again. The first time I did so was when I started falling in love with Beejay or more appropriately, when we both started falling for each other.

The first time I saw Beejay was in a group picture taken at Peju’s 18th birthday party, where my mum’s younger sister was smiling like she couldn’t believe she was among so many rich teenagers. In fact, the reason for that smile was the reason I got to know Beejay.

My aunt had long-windedly taken her time to tell me about everyone in the picture and their family tree from the fifth generation. Some of them I did know anyway, but she took her lecture of familiarity further to prove that she knew the “rich kids” better. I guess that is what happens to you when you have sadly accepted your parents aren’t good enough for your material fantasies and you try as much as possible to inhale the fading oozes of wealth from distant relatives or friends just to cover up your insecurities that are as prominent as the Millennium Dome.

“This is Olabanji Pierre, everyone calls him Beejay. You don’t know him?” She asked, pushing her left nostril up, creating an imbalance with the left; a constant gesture of her bereaved self esteem that has become a part of her.

“No.” I replied nonchalantly.

“Ahn.” She uttered curtly in a people-like-you-don’t -I’m-the-only-one-that-knows-everyone kind of way. Shioor!

“Well, he is Uncle Rotimi’s son, the one he had with Aunt Betty. Uncle has asked him to come stay with Big Mummy in Nigeria for a while, so he could at least familiarise himself with his people and culture. You know that’s a good decision. You know there is no place like home. You know… ”

My mind was far gone from my aunt’s “You know” syndrome and somehow, strangely, my thoughts were knotted around Beejay’s face. God knows since the sixteen years of my existence, Beejay struck me as the most handsome guy I had ever seen for real; my mind played that trick perfectly on me. Some years later, I would watch Tyler Perry’s “Temptation: The Confession of a Marriage Counsellor” over and over, because all I would be seeing would be Beejay, especially when Lance Gross smiles.

On the 26th of December of that year, the Olaremis celebrated their son’s 4th birthday for the first time in Nigeria, four months after my aunt’s verbose introductions. The party was less of the birthday party but more of the adults getting to say “Is this really you?” “How are my children?” “When was the last time we saw!?” and other hypocritical show of feelings that never existed, at least for many of them. But either ways, the party felt very boring for me, but as fate would have it, I was not the only one bored to stupor.

“Are you really enjoying anything out of this God damned party?”

I turned from where I had been standing alone at the balcony, sipping from a bottle of Coke, to meet Beejay’s piercing gaze, as he leaned on the wall behind me in all his grace.

I stopped breathing.