Evening
#nontransparentthings 019
foreword: fiction
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Whenever Ms. Ann felt the urge for sex, she’d take a cold shower, as it had become a way for her to quell it for as far as she can remember, although she never recalls how she got into the habit in the past, her younger years, when she was a beaut and wondered why she never seemed to have anyone sexually pursue her, and that now, sadly at her age, men probably assumed she wasn’t interested in being sexual, even though she had tried — hadn’t she? — to give greenlights or signals, as they say, to her rather absentminded coworker who she felt respected her too much, not because she felt he thought she was out of his league, but by the stupidity that was men’s manner of not sexualising a woman they deferred to and believed should belong to someone other than them, even when she’d casually, playfully say to his face that she was not taken, which he didn’t disguise his disbelief, because why not, such a beautiful woman as her, caramel, glass skin, shaped in all the right places, forbidden for men like him, could not not have a man, and so she was left to herself, not just with this coworker, but with the lowly-thinking men who existed within her circle or whom she was fated to meet, not even younger men or boys who sometimes had more guts to pursue women her age, as she heard from some of her friends who had such discreet arrangements, seem to find or notice her, for which she recently became more outgoing to break outside her usual circle and meet more humans, boys, men, being more frequent in church, but could not keep up because some people are just fated to live a slow, uneventful life for which they remain content even as discontent eat them inside for what could have been, which was Ms. Ann on some days, forever living between the dream of being and the reality of not being — to be or not to be? — such that during the fiery hot month of March 2026, the heatwave of the city of Abuja began to mess her up so much, coalescing with so many other things in the manner the human psyche can be attacked by inexact things, as with a rushing libido that permanently rocked her, so that her cold baths increased every day, making her wonder if it was the heat or the desire to get laid, one or the other, one or the other, blurring, blurred, or the godforsaken crashing out of having lived alone for too long, not being touched, that haunted her, or as the poet once said, just the hooves of things kicking her world around, no, twirling it, vortexing it, withining and withouting it, as the heatwave continued, as the baths continued, as she continued being beautiful, oh, she was, yes, yes when she said to that boy one time, and she wasn’t proud of this at all, the boy whom by rare chance crossed starlight with her, yes, as she’d held him and taught him movement, she moving as he moved, saying yes yes, until in the corner of her eyes the tears that had been waiting there began to streak, that the boy thought he’d done something wrong, or that she had done something wrong, or that it was the world itself which was wrong, had wronged her, placing her to choose the devil or the deep sea, so that now it all came back to her, that day, in the cover of God’s night, the coincidence of rain, the gift of sweat and pulsating hearts and bodies, so sacred, so carnal, so divine, so mundane, so sweet, so animal, so radical, tempest, and the tranquil after; this was the way the world was supposed to be, she thought, standing under the shower one more time today’s evening, the cold water pouring, her hands touching and shaping things all over her body.++
You can now Google the unique hashtag #Nontransparentthings, a photography writing project which you just read, to find out all the posts, stories, and reviews of the project. Catch up here with this link to entries 1–10. You can read the last entry no. 18 here, or the introductory essay here. Recommended reading for today is a short personal review of the Netflix series Black Mirror, the episode “Hotel Reverie.”
