…a few months before I turned 17, I noticed I had cultivated an intense but gradual love for music. Not the regular sounds that blast through the speakers of a barbershop but slow, soothing songs that were usually played by radio stations at night, only interrupted by phone calls from listeners lending their voices to a relationship issue.
I did not listen to those songs because I was beginning to enjoy singing or because the lyrics touched my soul. I listened because the melody played effectively with my imagination, and the lovers’ quarrels reported on the radio flourished the vision of my mind’s eye. At that time in my life, my secret desire was to be kissed. So, with music from the stereo, my mind ran through the scene of having my face cupped in a masculine grip, then some soft lips would run over my already itching mouth, locking tongues and devouring the sweetness of our saliva. Music was my succor. I was a teenager; everything conspired to cause turbulence in my emotions.
When I eventually got kissed two years later, it was nothing like I had ever imagined or seen. It was bland. After night class that day, when students retired to their hostels, my boyfriend held my hand and walked me through a field that led to my hostel. We were supposed to do a simple hug and bid each other goodnight, but somehow our lips met and we kissed. A short, simple, and dry kiss. It ended too quickly. We were too shy to say any words, so we left immediately. It was without the sweet taste I expected; it didn’t have us inhaling our heated breath or me closing my eyes to enjoy my tongue being licked. It lasted less than a second, and it went like “muah!”—like my mama was running behind us holding a garri turner and we just had to kiss fast.
That kiss didn’t match the music that played from the stereo, especially when I had fantasies of being kissed to Celine Dion’s “Every Night in My Dreams.” My first kiss was empty, it was rushed and it tasted of “nothingness”.
Notes By Emmanuella 