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By: Eskerdar Y.
Flowers are nice to get. But a whole vat full of orchids delivered to the office…?? Hmm. Now, that is class. Too bad this whole thing was part of an intricate head game being played by two people who should know better.
I wanted to like the orchids. I wanted to call the guy who sent them to me, put on my sweet, little girl voice and purr on the phone. "Teddy, yene geta… they are splendid. Let's do dinner…"
Teddy is Tewodros*. (*Not his real name) Teddy was/is presiding officer of the "Bad Boys" club. He is striking. Eyes adorned with thick, forever eyelashes, selkek yale nose, lips that pucker when he laughs, chiseled features... he is the type that when he leaves a room full of older women, women my mother's age, they all stay quiet for a long while, then let out loaded sighs and whisper "Ay Qumena… ay Qumena…"
Back home, in high school, he was one of those guys who you hope 15 years down the line would be fat, short and bald. The guy you would peer down at from your Bottega Veneta eyewear, and with voice tinged with triumph and awe say, "Teddy? Is that you? You look… so… different. Tinnish weferk?"
Not this cowboy. He was still as flawlessly charming, witty, and (hello) dibign bilo memot gorgeous as the day he brushed against me at a school dance. I was obediently lounging around the "annoying ChuCHay" ghetto of the dance hall, the dark corners we "outsiders" were relegated to, behind the spider webs. He was shashaying in between the cool and the ubër cool crowd, nodding at his various constituencies, shaking hands, air kissing. He made embodying suave look effortless. He was the quintessential superintendent of the in-in, really "in" crowd.
Teddy was not a person, he was a phenomenon. Lucky for me, he had exactly zero time for mousy geeks. (That would be me.) If he had, I would have been an insignificant blip on the "Weren't you and Teddy…?" graph/demographics/pie chart.
Then came sidet, college and graduate school in America. My early 20s were spent either at the library or, when I was feeling real wacky, at the research library. If I wanted to walk on the wild side, I would take the train downtown and sneak into the NYU library. I would live vicariously through the folklore of wild stories of Ethiopians in DC during summer.
Dating was done sporadically, but I was pretty much happy with the intellectual types who'd take immense pains to point out and get analytical pleasures from obscure cases… Wayne vs. Commonwealth of Virginia, 1876… Discuss among yourselves. A couple of serious relationships, and a near walk down the aisle.
I was on cruise control in the career/life path when I saw Teddy again. This time in the city I live in, years later, at a very boring, very "your chance to schmooze and be schmoozed" function my firm was throwing. Actually, there were four of us Ethiopians at the function, and fump! we somehow found each other and took up a corner to trade war stories.
And then, in walks in Mr. Ay Qumena . Tall, confident, impeccably dressed in an unmistakably Boateng suit. Giddy up!
We were, surprise, surprise, in the same field! He was successful, well traveled and reasonably intelligent, though not intimidatingly so. Surprisingly sophisticated. (The orchid stunt was after an evening talking about Thailand. Nice touch.)
He was still a playboy. His reputation uglier than he was beautiful. The vistas of women slain by him littered his pathway, be-gira, be-qegn. I know this because we have friends in common, even though I am still thrice removed from his crowd.
We all ended up going for cocktails after the event that night, and at around midnight it was just Teddy and I. He tried to remember me from back home, but I was too obscure.
"You went to so-and-so school?"
"Yes."
"Were you in so-and-so's class?"
"No, two below."
"So-and-so's?"
"No, she was much older."
"Hmmm. Did you ever go to such-and-such?"
"No, my parents would not let me."
And so it went. He, spinning his magic around me. Me, basking in the glow of his attention… dying to ask him whatever happened between him and the myriad of girls he had been associated with. "Whatever happened to…?" "Weren't you and…?" "Is the story about you and … true?"
I was 13 all over again, attracted to the danger and myth of him. Him! Esu! Half the time I was hanging to his every word, the other half I was listening to imaginary background music playing softly as his lips moved. The kind of music that starts to play in the movies right before lovers slowly bring their faces closer. Stringy, violin music. Any moment now, I said to myself, he would start singing an aria from Aida for me. That aria right before (or after?) the Great March… daaaaaaaaaaaa, rum te dum… dumpty-de-dum. "Anchi qonjo…" tar-um… da dum.
I called my best girlfriend that night, as I cradled his business card in my hands.
"Guess who I was slapping down Sambucas with tonight?"
"Not your watchmaker. It's two o'clock in the morning."
"Teddy X."
Silence.
"Who?"
"Teddy X. And he is… lemme tell you."
20-minute discourse on how he looked, sounded, ate, drank.
"Is he still with so-and-so?"
"I dunno."
"So-and-so?"
"I dunno."
"You remember so-and-so? "
"Yeah. We're having dinner tomorrow."
"He's not on drugs, an alcoholic or both?"
"No…"
"Damn."
"Is he…?"
"Yes."
"Did you…?"
"No!"
"Are you… will you…?"
"I'll talk to you tomorrow."
"Wait…"
"It's three o'clock. I gotta go."
He called me the next day to confirm dinner, one of many in the next several weeks. We accompanied each other to office functions and some abesha ones. Before I knew it, I was the "who's she?" in Teddy's arms.
This was fun, I keep telling myself two months later. Really, it was fun. Yep. Fun. Good, clean fun.
Creeping inside me though was that queasy feeling of boredom. That debzaza bulb of a fading spotlight. "Hey," my subconscious knocked on my brain. "Hey, you! Why can't you take me anywhere nice? He is still charming, witty, and finger-lickin' cute. Just shurrup and have some fun." Mumble, mumble, mumble. "And… and he has started wearing those cute suspenders."
He had.
But at the heart of me, I was still a good little girl. And I realized that I really liked good little boys. Boys who were honorable, decent and honest when they were growing up, and boys who had grown into Men who live with clear consciouses. My DNA was not made to keep up with former playboys. I'm still a geek, in a different body. Someone please, tell the empress she has no clothes.
How do you break up with him/Esu? Besides, we were not even dating, dating.
"Er, Teddy… I really got over my bad boy curiosity. You may leave now…"?
"Ah, let's meet for dinner…at half past never"?
"It's not you, it's me" ?
Arfo meQemeTin yemesele neger iyale.
I just wanted life zip back pre-Teddy. I missed my seemingly boring life. No looking at him wondering how many women he had said those exact words to; no being on guard all the time in order to avoid being swept away; no calculating my every nuance and move; no playing coy …Echhech. I just wanted a good, old-fashioned courting and love affair: including but not limited to sweaty palms, stolen glances, dingiT malet and carefully orchestrated touches.
I was unfair to him, yes. I judged him by his past. Even though he showed no signs of "playing" me, I wanted to see evil in him. I would pretend to see fault in his subtle moves. I would deliberately misconstrue and misinterpret his sentences. I'd hunt his eyes for non-existent duplicity and/or double entrandes. I cruelly dissected and deconstructed his objectives: to finally settle down, marriage, kids... I secretly scoffed at his dreams of finding a "good girl" to build a family with. Ha! Sure. Play around with loose women, then come back to the respectability fold by setting down with one of us?
It was exhausting. Damn. Being a bad girl, even pretending to be one, was a lotta work.
What are you, I screamed back at my subconscious, The Great Avenger of all the jilted women in his life?
I behaved reprehensibly. I didn't return calls, emails or pages. And when he did catch me on the phone, I flirted with him outrageously and made plans with him I knew I would break.
"Lunch on the 10th sounds great! I am writing it on my calendar," I'd chirp. I was writing it down. Problem was, I was also flipping over to the
9th and on the 7:00 a.m. line impersonally scratching in "Cancel tomorrow's lunch plans with T."
I felt sleazy, immoral and sub-human. It was great. It was liberating, and if were not for those damn puritan tendencies sewn to my brain lining, I would have lingered around in my newfound freedom. The more I became unavailable, the more he steadfastly pursued. "Wow. This is how the other half lives."
Reality sunk in eventually when I saw those beautifully arranged orchids. They are the most beautiful flowers in the world, yet the most difficult to maintain. They are temperamental, prone to attract weeds, too fragile, and without constant attention, they'd turn ugly.
I didn't want to be Teddy's "good girl" trophy. But more importantly, I didn't want him to be my "bad boy" one.
My assistant had to go all the way down to the lobby to get them because the prissy flower delivery guy didn't feel "right" leaving orchids with a burly security officer "with a Brooklyn accent". She wasn't too pleased, so she had just slammed them on my table and huffed out. Gosh. They were even a pain in the ass to deliver.
Poor orchids. They were too beautiful to be part of this inane game. I heard my phone ring. I didn't answer it. I saw my message button light up. I knew who it was. Poor orchids.
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