A part of me always knew that I could not continue living this double
life of mine indefinitely; it was a disaster waiting to happen. The situation
was like a balloon being inflated unrelentingly by someone’s puffed up cheeks.
Soon the inevitable happens: The balloon bursts
in the face its inflator, with a deafening bang; its flimsy latex walls unable to cope with the
pressure exerted on them.
My newly found happiness became intertwined with anxiety and depression.
I was torn between two very different worlds - the world of my reality and the
world of my fantasy; the world of my prefrontal-cortex and the world of my
emotions and drives.
To compound matters whenever I saw her I
had to pay! After all she was a hooker, this was her profession. To a hooker,
sex is a commodity; it is not an expression of affection or love. This is the
way they feed their families. There is an unwritten law in the hooker industry:
If a man meets a
hooker through the business, then he will always remain a client. This
title never leaves you; it sticks to you like an infectious, incurable disease
and stays with you for as long as you live. The consequence of having this dreaded
label is that you will always have to pay for the lady's time no matter how
much love the two of you feel for each other, a client, is a client, is a
client!!! That’s it, end of story. I had met my lady through the business
and therefore I was her client so whenever I visited her, even just to chat, I
was required to pay for her time.
Yes, I understood that she had a family to
feed and a huge house to look after for which she needed a good flow of income.
She also knew how to spend money on herself and this too needed to be financed
from somewhere. I was
happy to help her, I wanted to give her money, but on the other hand to keep on
seeing her regularly was costing
me a fortune and beginning to strain my resources and drive me into debt.
My life was becoming unmanageable and so, on
a fateful day, less than two
months into the saga, things came to a head. We had made up to meet that day after I
had finished teaching. In
anticipation of our meeting I was so anxious that I could not concentrate on my
teaching, the agony of my internal struggle was just unbearable. I
felt like I was the rope in a tug-of-war, the two teams so powerfully strong
that the rope begins to fray. The pain of this tear was so profound that I felt
that only death could cure it and I wanted to die.
I excused myself from the class, telling my students that I needed to go
to the library to look something up. As soon as I got to there, I texted her:
I’m not feeling well, I don’t know if I should come today?!
I placed the facts in-front of her, hoping that she would make the decision
for me. But I was not so fortunate; she replied: It’s up to you baby,
just let me know what u decide ok?
What my heart really wanted was for her to
say that she was expecting me and that I should still come. This would have made
things simple; if she wanted me to visit I would have had no choice in the
matter, to please her and fulfil her wishes had become my greatest joy. But
that was not her way; one of her rules was that since I was the paying client I
had to decide and I decide I did; I could not stay away, I felt compelled to
see her and I texted her back: Ok I’m
coming, see u soon.
After school, with great heaviness in my
heart, I drove to see her. When I arrived I found her wearing a short reddish
silk gown with absolutely nothing else on underneath. The belt was neatly tied
into a bow across her sexy slim waist, her body almost threatening to reveal
itself from behind this scanty attire. My mind though, was too distracted to be
aroused by this inviting sight, which must have disappointed her somewhat.
She was in a very strange mood today and I do
not recall ever seeing her like this. She seemed confused and her laughter was
uncontrolled and wild. When I questioned her, she confessed that she was still
a bit high from a marijuana drag.
This was the first time that I learnt about her drug habits, but again I was
too pre-occupied now, to think about what this new revelation meant for me.
We entered her room and she lay on her bed,
I kneeled on the floor beside her. I brought my face close up to hers, wanting
to feel her warmth and arouse her sympathy as I confessed and pleaded with her:
I’m so torn up inside babes, I love you and I want to see you so badly but I
just can’t I don’t have enough money to keep this up, I have a lot of financial
responsibilities these visits are draining me!
Expecting her usual compassion and
understanding, I was totally caught off-guard when she sprang to her feet suddenly,
her eyes burning with rage. She began screaming hysterically: Put my money for
this booking on the table and get the hell out of my house, don’t ever come
back if you know what’s good for you. I tried to calm her down but my efforts
just added more fuel to the fire, she was now totally consumed by anger and I even
sensed a deep hatred emanating from those piercing red hot eyes. Leave me
alone and get out right now, don’t test me or you will be sorry, you will see a
side of me that you’ve never seen before, you don’t know what I’m capable of,
she continued to yell. I don’t want to ever see you again, get the hell out
now or I’ll call the cops!
I had never seen her like this before; the
angel I had come to love and adore had turned into a vicious a tiger. Totally
perplexed and full of fear of the unknown, I immediately obeyed and made my way
to her front door in a panic, feeling my pockets for my car keys as I went. I quickly
climbed into my car and sped off feeling very fortunate to have escaped the
clutches of this wild beast, unharmed and alive. This was a narrow escape, if
ever there was one.
When I gathered my thoughts further and had
more time to think; it dawned upon me that she belonged to a totally different
world to mine. I now realised that I had brought myself to the threshold of a
dangerous underworld and almost sucked in to its dark abyss, swallowed up forever
never to resurface. Luckily I had escaped before it was too late.
Wow what a narrow escape! I thought,
as I drove. What a relief! I mumbled again and again. This is exactly
what I needed, she has done for me what I was not man enough to do for myself. This
madness has now ended. I felt a wave of calmness come over me, a sensation
that I had not felt for some time now, I wished that it would linger with me, for
a while longer so that I could enjoy it. Thank God it’s finally over!
Yet, to my utter dismay, long before I
arrived home, I began pinning for her again. I could not control my own fingers
as they held on tightly to the little cell phone that I used only for her, as
if it was some sort of magic charm that reminded me that I could still have a
life. Then, as if they possessed a mind of their own, my fingers began punching
the digits of her phone number onto the tiny keyboard with haste and precision,
like those of a piano maestro playing his most beloved concerto, using only the
memory imprinted in his fingers, from hours of practise. They no longer need to be commanded
as to what they should be doing, by the conscious brain; in fact they pay no attention to its
wishes as it impedes the fingers, by its slow intellectual thought process. By following only their own memory, they are able to produce a flawless performance, releasing the most beautiful and
perfect melody into the cosmos, to grace its sound-waves.
Her phone rang, but she did not answer, instead
she rejected the call. Frustrated and annoyed by the busy signal I was getting
from her phone, I tried again and again and again……, but she was just as
adamant as I was and she just kept on rejecting my calls.
Strangely though, once again I felt relieved;
her behaviour simply reinforced the fact that our relationship was finally over
and this pleased my cortex.
My feelings of relief and calm did not last
long though; for as I arrived home, my anxiety levels started rising again. Desperate
to feel normal again, I struggled to calm myself down, constantly reminding myself
that this was for the best and that it had to end. I ate lunch with my wife as
usual, battling to hide my anguish, she sensed that something was amiss; she
asked me a few times why I was so deep in thought. Her probing annoyed me, I
told her that it was nothing in particular I was just having a bad day, which
lately, was not unusual. Her suspicion sent me further to the edge, why
can’t she just leave me alone, I complained, all wrapped up in my selfish
world.
As soon as I could get free of my wife’s cross-examination,
I went into the garden and tried to phone the lady again; I needed to settle
this matter to regain some sanity. But again she kept on cutting me off, I
called again and again and again………
Then to my relief a texted message from her
finally came through but it was not what I had hoped it would say:
Stop
harassing me or u’ll be sorry, i will send my brother to ur house, so leave me
alone, its over i will never see u again.
Yet once again I was relieved: So
it’s over then, don’t take any chances with this woman; I said to myself,
she is threatening me again and I should really take her threats seriously. I
don’t know what she is capable of; it’s time to just leave it alone.
The next five days were torture, I wanted
to call her so badly but yet I wanted our relationship to cease to exist and
stay the way it was at the present moment, broken and with no reconciliation in
sight. There was a constant battle taking place inside of me, I wanted to be
with her but yet I didn’t. My mind kept on vacillating between two different
thought patterns. I could not arrive at any clear decision as to which
destination I should be headed. Only one thing was clear, I could no longer
bear this double life.
On the fifth day my cortex gave way to my
emotions; I texted her: “Can I call u
please?” My heart began to pound in anticipation of what might happen next;
then to my utter dismay a few minutes later I received her reply:
“Yeah”
is what it said and was all it needed to say to put our relationship back
on track!
