Chronicles Of A Kept Woman (II)


Who can lick a bone cleaner than a dog? A charged man.  
Who can turn you over like a piece of clothe that is wrung before it hangs in the sun to dry? A heated man.
I am my lover’s but my lover isn’t mine. He comes to me in the dead of the night. I know it is he when I hear the bunch of keys rattling, turning in the hole. I could be fast asleep and the only evidence of his visit would be my laps caked in the morning and all the while I’d think I dreamed the thing. Some nights I am involved and our smell would go up like incense, filling the room. Some nights, he could be sweet and say, I am tired, just lie beside me till I fall asleep, and I would speak softly to him, my voice hypnotizing him to sleep. Each weekend, he writes a check; he’d be bent over the side table, sitting on the bed, scratching away with his pen meticulously, handing it down to me with much ceremony. He is a liberal man, but his heart is not in his giving.
Is there some love between us?  This confounds me. But you can’t be with a person these years and doubt that there are some glimmer of love. Ours is more of the kind found between a stray pup and the rescuer who found him in a slimy gutter and loved him to bull dog stature. The servility such a love inspires.
I met him three years ago at the computer center where I worked, where I made thousands of photocopies for the clerks at the local government headquarters. I was beautiful but so ungainly. For a woman, beauty is an asset, sometimes a guaranteed advantage. But to be beautiful and broke is not a virtue at all. Neither is it a virtue to be beautiful, broke and unsatisfied with the little you had. Those days I stood so long and worked so hard for hours that my bum developed dimples and the ugly sound of the photocopying machine sapped my energy.
He had come in with starched and crisp clothing, clean and well shaven, looking bored beyond measure. My head reeled from the scent of his expensive cologne. He wanted his work down as fast as possible, and there I was running around, so bent to please. When his work was done, he left without his change and without his complimentary card.

(to be continued)

Comments

  1. "For a woman, beauty is an asset, sometimes a guaranteed advantage. But to be beautiful and broke is no virtue at all. Neither is it a virtue to be beautiful, broke and unsatisfied with the little you had".....I'm quoting u anywhere on dis

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's a difficult thing for a woman to be kept...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts