Well, I’m dating.
And it’s about as lovely as you’d expect.
You know, long walks in the
mud, experiencing behavioural segregation, having dinner with my roommate,
listening to a rat die in the next room...
Dating, for me, is a 5-step
program.
Step 1: Desperate Avoidance – Most men are thwarted
here.
Step 2: Determined Friend-Zoning – I have a permit and
I am not afraid to use it; trespassers will be told they look just like my brother.
Step 3: Casual Abuse – Sarcasm and subtle feminism erode
at fragile egos until a single idio victor emerges.
Step 4: Violent Cynicism – All the worst stories
about love are presented; this serves the dual purpose of a punishment for
having bested me in battle and a foretaste of our future.
Step 5: Acceptance – All the hugs.
I told Butters, Carrottop,
and BFG about the tender blossoming of my relationship at Step 1 in order to
have the support of my community in evasion, but only Butters knew I had joined
the program. When I finally admitted –
perhaps 10 months later – to Carrottop that I was dating, she advised me to
stop being such a secretive loser. I
took this into account and, a few weeks later, admitted whom I was dating (let’s call him Joseph). At that time, she and BFG issued an open
invitation to dinner for me, my commitment phobia, and our +1.
Soon after this, I put
myself in a situation of relative safety alone with Joseph, and this was
classified as An Incident for my organisation as a whole – I have recurrent
nightmares where the ensuing report is shared at a fundraising meeting for
preppy teens in Nebraska. Since then,
our dates have consisted of sitting at the dinner table in the living room of
our 4th-floor apartment while Timbit learns to play guitar in the
darkness of her room and Butters eats dinner in front of the computer in
his.
I am destroying our family.
In addition, the 1st-floor housemaids
regularly ask me how my cheri is
doing.
This sort of indignity is
not to be borne.
In a desperate attempt to
leave the house, I gave up my Saturday of Braless Solitude to tromp through the
mud in Rwanda to reach a spotless new home with a fabulous studio for a DJ with
a passion for gospel music – which Joseph is incredibly skilled at
playing. Later, we went out for lunch
and Joseph had a first-class taste of mzungu
life when the sweet server, Clementine, wiped my plate with a napkin, washed
my mud-sodden shoes, and left him to his own devices. So my darling Clementine and I talked while
he ate off a dirty plate and washed his own sandals, quietly musing how his
life might’ve been different if he’d been Indian. Clementine, meanwhile, was doing up the top
buttons on my shirt and crooning over my penchant to say Thank you to everything.
Since Joseph’s skills are
not restricted solely to preaching, patience, playing various instruments, generosity,
leading a choir, kindness, training interns, self-control, planning, implementing,
and monitoring agricultural projects, etc. he also advised Butters and I about
our rat problem (i.e. to kill Ratilla or face the horde), carefully fixing a
peanut onto each of our traps while struggling with PTSD from a rat pooping in
his newly-washed sheets twice or thrice upon a time. In honour of this good fight, Ratilla waited
some time before consuming each skewered peanut without incident.
One lazy Sunday afternoon,
when Butters saw Ratilla shoot past his room and into the kitchen, he decided
we’d had enough. With his usual
impulsive commitment to random acts of idiocy, he was certain he would be able
to harpoon Ratilla with a broomstick handle.
When I pointed out the incongruity of an Anabaptist man being able to do
any such thing, I was given the job title of Murderer. So we blocked most of the exits (doors, traps,
covering gaps etc.), and began the hunt.
In retrospect, we were both so frightened of moving appliances and bags,
and so prone to screaming (okay, that was me – I have no idea what Butters was
doing whenever Ratilla was visible, but it had to be quieter than me) that it
was a lost cause from the start. Ratilla
was stuck for a brief moment at his usual escape route (blocked by our doormat),
but somehow managed to squirm away while I was occupied with shrieking and
ineffectually waggling the broomstick handle in the air.
Soon after, on date night,
Butters had just finished his supper with us when there was a small commotion
in the kitchen. Assuming it to be just
another day at home, home, on the range stove, where the vermin and the ant
play, I was surprised when Joseph patted my hand and congratulated me on the
end of our time of pestilence. The
Phoenix, in his magical way, had finally found a way to outwit Ratilla, and we
were at the end of this months-long impasse.
So first there was the cha-cha
of the trap snapping shut on Ratilla’s neck, then slowly weakening struggles as
she (as it turned out) tried to
escape, deep wheezing as she fought to breathe, two final, pained screams, and
it was finished. The next morning, I
would hear the squeaks of what I imagined was a desperately hungry little rat
family, unable to send the little ratlings to school because Mommy wasn’t home
from work.
 |
| Victory is less sweet than you would think |
Butters, Joseph, and I
watched parts of her final moments – sometimes with Joseph’s arm around me – like we were at
a late night show. The mood, such as it
was, was basically shot (though apparently not from Joseph’s point of view),
but that left a part of me free to mentally catalogue the details of my hot
date set to the soundtrack of a rat asphyxiating in our kitchen in the Congo.
It’ll be something to tell
the children, that’s for sure.
After Joseph left, I tried
to advise Butters to just throw the little corpse somewhere it would be found
by a bird. He accused me of poisoning
the city’s water supply and left it on the path to our water supply as a clear sign of what he thought of my
ideas.
I was supposed to deal with
it the next morning, but decided to leave it for the man of the house – like
any good feminist.
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