A campus love

I will see you first along the corridors of the School of Arts, books in hand, gliding to some class, with a gaggle of your friends drifting reverently behind you. I will see you again at various spots throughout the school after that, because I will have memorised your look, your smile, the gentle swell of your rear.

It will take me a year to muster the nerve to ask you out, and when I do, I will have the backing of a trusty wingman. We will not take no for an answer. We will corner you one rainy afternoon and ply you with compliments and lies. I will come out of the encounter thoroughly shaken, but with your contacts burning a hole in my pocket.

Our first date will be in your room. We will be perched precariously atop your bed, whispering so as not to invoke the ire of your roommate, who will be pretending to study. I will move closer and closer to you, until my lips are right by your ear. Then, I will tell you of the love I have nursed for you since the moment I first saw you. I will place my hand over my heart and beg for a chance to make you happy. You will blush and change the topic. But when my hand strays and settles on your thigh, you will not pull away.

Your roommate will not be around the next time I visit. You will dismiss my feeble attempts to leave. It is late, you will say, pulling back the covers to your bed and motioning for me to join you. I will snuggle in with you, aware of the blood jettisoning from my brain. Minutes later, when we can no longer ignore the throbbing apex in my shorts, you will slip an arm around me, and bring your lips to mine.

We will make it official soon afterwards. By mutual agreement, we will assign each other pet names, depending of course on current trends. We will conduct a tour of the campus hand in hand, pausing regularly to gaze into each other’s eyes and frolic in deserted spots. We will, at reasonably appropriate points in time, say the words to each other; I and love and you. Angels will sing and daisies will rain from the sky.

The rest of the world will fall away. Slowly but surely, we will relocate your essentials to my room, much to the chagrin of my roommate, who is violently Christian. Fornication is a sin, he will mutter under his breath when he digs up your lace undergarments among his clothes. Neither of us will hear him. You will be lying in my arms, your fingers trying to unknot the tendrils on my chin, mine making languid motions around your lower back. The room will be awash in the gentle glow of the coil and the heady scent of lust. We will be in love.

But they don’t want me to say that.

They want me to say my academics will suffer, that we won’t last.

They want me to trash our love just because it is a campus love. They want me to denounce its viability. They think that because we come from polar ends of the country, and are probably not going to meet once this semester is over, that we are delusional. They are all hopelessly myopic, never mind them.

But I have gotten ahead of myself. What I meant to ask is, will you go out with me?

 

Brian Guserwa is a student at Moi University, Eldoret.