Before I left my village for the city I already knew things about the United States of America than I knew about my own community and could even argue effectively and reel off names of cities, streets, people, cultures, fashion, music and talk Hollywood as if I lived in California. Guess what? I have never been to America! The fact that the internet is a very powerful tool cannot be over emphasized. The internet user is exposed to information and people…hmm people. This write up is based on what I call virtual people.

A couple of days ago, some of my peeps and I were at a joint having fun and swapping tales and after we had finished discussing money and how to make more of it legally, the gist flowed naturally to the issue of babes and relationships. One of the guys claimed that over a six month period he banged over 50 babes from some social networking sites like Facebook, Naijapals, Nairaland, MySpace, Badoo, etc! Another guy boasted that with his BB he no longer hassle babes on the streets in the cinemas or in the malls anymore; all he does is stay online and form big-boy and the chicks come running…lots of stories were flipped around. Of course, I couldn’t just sit there listening and soaking it all in without contributing so I shared my own internet adventure…

But before I tell you my story, here is what I observed.

• Peeps believe that the grass is greener out there instead of mowing their own lawn: For instance it is easier to give up on a tested relationship and commit to another person who has social networking swagger. We swallow everything they say about themselves hook, line and sinker…though we have not spent time with them outside the virtual network.
• Peeps share intimate details with their virtual friends than they share with their present significant others.
• Peeps spend more time talking to their online pals than they do with their colleagues, spouse, siblings, etc. For any relationship to succeed, communication is key.
• Most of the people we meet on social networking sites lie! Especially, the ones who sent you friend requests though you don’t recall ever meeting or knowing them.
• Most of the people who spend all day and all night chatting on the internet are actually very shy and lonely people with split personalities. Confident and charming on the internet but in real life a loser.
• The list is exhaustive…
   
Back to my story:

It’s 2008 on a social networking site and I was busy posting comments and photos and also feeling cool; until I encountered a divorcee in her mid forties, with three kids who claimed that I was the love of her life. She pestered me with calls and emails and I enjoyed all the attention until she traced me to Lagos apparently to marry me and take me to her home country! Obviously she needed a father for her kids and somehow I seemed to fit her desired husband profile. Chei! I ran away, changed my phone numbers and abandoned my email and for a while I behaved myself…

Then last year, probably because I was younger and silly I left my mobile number on my profile page. I was heading home after a very hectic day at work when my phone rang and a very sweet female voice was on the line. She introduced herself but I couldn’t place her. She said it was obvious that I have not read the mail she sent to me on a social networking site and suggested I read it as quickly as possible as she had an offer for me and would call back in ten minutes. My heart did somersaults! I couldn’t wait to check my inbox as I foolishly believed that I might have landed a blue chip job with lots of zeroes in the salary amount!

however, the mail turned out to be a profession of love. She had been visiting my profile page and viewing my pictures and decided to summon courage and confess her love for me… anyways, she seemed serious and I was curious so I browsed her profile, viewed her photos and what I saw looked pleasing to the eyes and since I was single, ready for an adventure and felt I had nothing to lose we began to communicate virtually and frequently. She kept going on and on about how much she loved me and within a few days we were talking like childhood sweethearts and I began to have the illusion that maybe we were soul mates… She once told me on phone that I was her treasure and that she will never trade me for anything. Sweet! In less than two weeks after she initiated the transaction I was talking to her siblings on phone and we were planning her visit to Lagos and swapping ideas about our impending Royal wedding…

Though I was really interested in going on this adventure I wasn’t carried away with all the mushy talk even as we were moving at a very scary pace I was wondering if I was jogging willingly into something that I might not live to tell the story. Hmm a very hot and seemingly smart babe like this dropping into my laps out of the blues? Damn I am blessed! I always knew I was favored but I didn’t expect to acquire a seemingly perfect life partner so easily so I became a little suspect. After all I once read in a wise book that ‘when something is too good to be true, then it’s not true’. It’s actually a small world and with the little info she gave me in between the ‘I love yous’ I decided to do some investigating of my own and what I found out put me on enquiry but not enough to make me disconnect.

It seemed that back on campus she was really sought after by Abuja big-boys and had dated a couple of big shots and broken a few high profile military hearts in the process. I scrutinized  myself from head to toe and stared endlessly at my account balance but I didn’t find much of what she was said to be attracted to. Maybe she imagined that I was a big-boy but I didn’t ask her. My mum always told me I was cool and that I’ll make a good husband but this was unbelievable! I had watched a lot of movies where the prettiest lady always ends up with the Robin Hood character. Could this be love? I had been so busy working and surviving that my love life went poof! Maybe she saw the James Bond  in me and has been sent by divine forces to put the 007 in my swag! Maybe this angel was sent to get my groove back!

Back to the gist: Two weeks after we started talking, she came to Lagos by road and my friend and I drove to Ojota to pick her up. However, a week before her arrival I already designed and activated my love experiment. First I stopped sweeping my house and left soiled plates in the sink. I went to the attic and retrieved my old boxers, singlet with holes in them and a pair of baggy jeans. Way-back when I just started work and couldn’t afford a decent suit I bought coats from an under bridge merchant in Oshodi; I retrieved a couple of them too and hung them proudly in my closet. I also shaved my hair!

At Ojota park we waited for over an hour before her bus came. She looked bigger in her photos than in person and she came with four boxes! Good things as they say, come in small packages abi? We loaded the luggage into the car and my friend drove while we sat at the back checking each other out and winking…my friend was under the impression that she was my childhood love and I didn’t do anything to disabuse him. In between the mushy talk she said she was hungry and since we were passing through Maryland and my friend I know one coded Amala and bush meat joint tucked behind one coded street in Maryland we decided to stop by and eat. My friends loved that joint. Clearly my guest was disappointed when we got there and she saw the thatched houses and the huge blackened pots used in making the Amala  and the Ewedu soup but she tried to mask her feelings. She declined eating but asked for a soft drink which she sipped reluctantly. Needless to say we devoured our Amala and licked the soup on our fingers happily. Afterwards I dropped off my friend and we headed home. Home is in Egbeda not Lekki, Ikoyi or Gbagada and with a cute babe beside me I drove stylishly and happily. I was certain that with the kind of love she claimed to have for me she wouldn’t mind living in a cave with me and raising a dozen babies that look like smaller versions of us!

Eventually we got home. Hmmm. Home is climbing three winding flight of stairs to the fourth floor of a block of sixteen flats! The only guy I know who enjoys climbing stairs is me. The door to home is through the kitchen door; the kitchen sink is close to the kitchen door and in the sink is a welcome committee of dirty pots and pans marking time and oozing ‘for he is a jolly good fellow’! I grabbed the boxes and tried my best to get them through the kitchen door into the spare bedroom…in all these, my visitor tried to keep a straight face however, I noticed that sometime in the night while I was watching cartoons in the living room I heard sniffling noises and went to check it out. The whimpering turned out to be my sweetie pouring waves of tears into the pillow…her phone had been ringing ceaselessly and I thought she might have received news of the death of someone very dear to her…

That was the beginning of disaster….

First I tried to make her tell me what the problem was but the more I tried the more she cried so after a while I left her in her pool of tears. But I was concerned and confused and didn’t know what to do or think. Stories of strange women turning into snakes and striking down their victims flashed through my head. It didn’t even occur to me that the drama was related to me and my surroundings not meeting her expectations…after a while she sat down beside me, held me close, looked deeply into my confused eyes and with tears trickling down her pretty face she asked me why I betrayed her…I became more confused.

Anyways, a few days later when I got back home from work the house was much more habitable; my kitchen  looked better and my dead singlet and boxers were nowhere to be found! I was impressed. However, she complained tirelessly about how someone like me should reside in a swanky neighborhood and wear better clothes and buy better furniture and get my walls painted with cheerful eye catching colors and how I should stop listening to people who say I was cool and face the truth and bla bla bla

She’ll call me at work and nag and complain about the potholes in my area and after a while I got scared of coming back home from work… I understood that she was frustrated because she already told her peeps about her prince charming without even meeting me in person and I felt for her but I observed with disguised amusement. Little did I know that there was more drama to come. She decided to cut her stay short but there was no money for transport fare…. Hmmm. A day after she came into my house and rocked my world, she threw away my funny plates and spoons and used the money she had on her to buy befitting cutleries. You can now see why this transportation fare thing is going to be an issue abi?

Earlier, as part of the love experiment I had withdrawn five thousand naira only from my savings account and put my debit cards under heavy lock and key but I stocked my pantry with food. The idea was to make her stay in my crib as prudent as possible to eliminate all doubts that our love was not built on material things and would stand solidly on its feet when confronted with the ill winds of austerity. If she fell in love by merely looking at my image on a computer screen then money shouldn’t be an issue, abi? However, I planned on smashing my piggy bank, stepping up my game and lowering my financial firewalls if she as much managed twenty percent cut off from my love test. In the interim, calls were also coming from her family and friends who knew she was coming to Lagos to have a good time with her heartthrob and for every call she received, I winced for I knew that nobody here was having fun. Not me not her. However, the nagging intensified and became insults. She said I’d betrayed and misled her but I don’t remember ever saying anything to encourage this love. I have sown a fair share of wild oats in my time but I have never used love flippantly. I don’t tell people I love them when I don’t mean it and I believe people when they say they love me because I assume that they know what it means to love. It mustn’t take the pronouncement of ‘I love you’ before two consenting adults can come together in a tango and it bores me silly and turns me off totally when folks just go about spitting love indiscriminately. Am sure you now understand why this love experiment is so very important to me. Whatever happened to ‘for better and for worse’?

Come to think of it I assumed she must have done a background check on me before embarking on this fruitless love quest that is clearly coming off at the seams. What if I was a despoiler or at worst a human spare parts collector? As for me I had solicited mutual friends on the social network to get information about her but she was so in love with my pictures that she didn’t bother to find out nothing! If she wasn’t complaining about me then she was either on her laptop chatting or on the bed reflecting soberly…

She couldn’t pack up just like that and leave because she already planned on making my house a home. What was she going to tell her peeps who have been talking to me on phone and assumed that we had a good thing going and were only waiting to hear the wedding bells ring so they can come marching with us as we journey towards nuptial bliss? And again there was no money for her TP since I had invested everything I had in a business that was supposed to pay off before she leaves! This is not funny at all….               
 
Hmmm….

In response to some questions raised here:

Guys! guys! guys! Let’s not get this twisted. Here is my point: I believe in love and the sacredness of it and it’s sad that these days you find young people bandying love around without understanding the full implications of it. If she had told me I was handsome or cool instead of saying she was in love with me there wouldn’t have been any life sharing experience here. We probably would have been tangled up in the sheets and going hard at it 24/7 instead of messing up my apartment in the quest to prove that what she had for me was a far cry from love. Do you guys understand what unconditional love means? I bet it’s easier to fall in love with a guy who is tall, dark, handsome, rich and organized? I wonder what will happen if this tall, dark, handsome and rich guy falls ill and loses his wealth as well as his legs? He’ll probably lose his lover too abi? I once encountered a lady who said she loves my face. She saw my photo in a mutual friends album and fell in love with my face. Today she is one of my best friends and you know why? Because she was honest with me and I know that we will remain best friends as long as my face doesn’t get smashed in. I believe in love and I know that love could be found even on the internet but I don’t believe it comes in an instant. Love should be experienced by all and sundry. Love shouldn’t come with a price tag or in a package designed by you and I. The beauty of love is that you have no idea about what form it is going to come in. Ugly, poor and disorganized people have a right to love and be loved too. One would expect that a relationship built on love should be able to stand the test of times, isn’t it? Maybe I was wrong but I expected her to make efforts in reorganizing the organized confusion in my apartment and in my life, if she truly loved me.

Before you crucify me and get the point of this story muddled up, I want you to remember that before she came to my house I already did due diligence on her and knew where she schooled, grew up and even where her folks reside. That was why I could leave her alone in my apartment without batting an eyelid. I expected her to do the same and at least check out my background…my parents live in her town. We even have mutual friends! She led me into this and honestly I was attracted to her but I had to hold something back just in case she wasn’t being true to me. If I had fallen for her instead and made a fool of myself I bet you all be cracking your ribs and calling me names now!

NEW UPDATE: 2:15PM

You see, true love can never be selfish. Love can never go wrong. For love to be true it must be blind and in a clime like ours where poverty, survival and media influence has made it increasingly challenging for human beings to uphold the values handed down to us by our ancestor such as honesty, fidelity, respect and discipline it has become very necessary to develop careful instincts when interacting with people, most especially if they have questionable pedigree. I work in a bank and bankers get taken for granted all the time by acquaintances especially in matters related to money….(I’ll come back to that later) I have dated chicks who are not impressed by looks or how cute you are but by how much you are spending and we bounced along just fine because the objective of the relationship was clearly understood by both parties from hello: No trips no tango. Gbam! I am far from being a saint but I don’t go about deceiving ladies and luring them into my accommodating vitafoam. I don’t expect to be deceived too. Any of us here who has experienced the pain of betrayed love and loving someone who doesn’t love you back no matter how hard you try can at least relate to this somehow. So it would have been okay abi if I had taken her to a classy restaurant to eat instead of the amala joint that I loved? Life is very unfair and will not always be as rosy as we would want it to be; and it is at the point in time when things are not so cool that the true nature of the beast is revealed. Let us all step back and look at this situation objectively while I consider the necessity of completing this story…

UPDATED 3:48PM

When you fall for someone you have never met, you don't love them any lesser if they end up in a wheelchair. Or do you? She came into my life unexpectedly bearing promises and singing love songs. Songs that appealed to my emotions but I had to be sure I understood the steps before jumping to the dance floor. Again, if she had bothered to check my background she would have figured out that I was faking but she didn't, Before and after meeting her I never said or did anything to stimulate her interest in me, Her interest in me seemed so genuine, so surreal and so heavenly that I had to step back from it just a little…
In this time and age, how could someone who went to the same university that my siblings graduated from, someone whose parents reside in the same state where I hail from and who have mutual friends not bother doing a research on me? If she was so in love with my image that she was willing to go deaf and dumb then she should be willing to go blind to my little staged imperfections. It is clear that most of us don’t know how powerful and spiritual true love is, and maybe that is why we inflict so much pain at every touch point. I bet there are ladies out there who will fall and die for me even if I am dirty, unkempt, disorganized, ugly and penniless?  I think I am the victim here,

18th May 2011

back to the first day in my shack:

After crying her eyes out in the bedroom, she came into the living room where I was watching a cartoon dressed in shorts and a tank top with the tip of her perfect unmentionables struggling for air and sat down on the floor beside me, held me close, looked deeply into my eyes and asked why I betrayed her? Back then, I had no idea of what she meant and I was truly confused. I searched my mind for lies that I might have told her but nothing came up. Eventually she said she was never going to leave me but that I should have told her that I was broke and poor and bla bla bla,  hmmmn. I was amused but pretended I was angry! This girl was really beautiful, sexy and seem so real that I began to question the wisdom of my little experiment. But then I remembered that before we met she had all the time but she never asked me anything; not even where I worked or if I was married or had a girlfriend or whether I lived alone or with a dozen guys in a one room apartment? She didn't ask me anything and I didn't volunteer any information because I assumed she knew exactly what she was doing. If she had bothered to ask I would have told her but she didn't and that was why I activated my love experiment to prove that she really loved me and would stay with me even if I was jobless and poverty stricken!

Anyways, she ended up falling asleep in my arms and I carried her to the bedroom and while I was trying to drop her on the bed her lips reached out for mine and we made magic happen till the early hours of the morning, there after I went to sleep peacefully with the honest intention of confessing my staged drama but it wasn't a good morning that I woke up to, hmmm.

3:25PM

A strange noise woke me up and with an agility born of instinct I reached out for the club concealed in the linings of my Vita foam but it turned out to be the purring sound of a very expensive smart phone that we must have flung carelessly when we were carried away in the throes of our of our nocturnal tango; it was Amaka’s phone. I was so drained after the previous night’s activity that I didn’t even notice when she left the bed. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor tapping rhythmically at the computer keyboard with her right hand and held closely to her bejeweled left ear was another very expensive looking mobile phone which she talked animatedly to someone on the other end…I heard my name been mentioned and I closed my eyes and pretended that I was still asleep so I could gather snippets from the call and figure out what it was about. From what I gathered, she was telling her friends how she intends leaving my place soon and how I didn’t meet her expectations….so many ugly things were said on the phone. And then I realized that from what she saw of my photos, she had concluded that I was well-to-do and very handsome. You see, a couple of my profile photos were from snapshots taken when I traveled abroad on work related trainings, seminars and workshops… I began to see things clearer and the clearer things got, the angrier and more perplexed I became…

Questions like what do women really want ran through my mind. I was not expecting much from a lady who professed love by merely looking at an image on a computer screen but still I was disappointed. So if I was gullible enough to believe all her promises of love and at least made effort to meet her desired expectations she would have gone on living this lie and leading me along in foolish disbelief until it rains and she would not be there to hold the umbrella over my head… at that moment I wanted her out of my house and far away from me because I was disgusted at her obvious cosmetic conditional love. I wondered about how many guys out there were trapped in relationships with people who preached love but did not hesitate to turn tails and run at the first sign of hard times! This was never love! Love is my mum shaving off my daddy’s hair and doing his nails. Love is my parents riding on a motor bike to church on a Sunday morning and teaming up against us kids even after 32 years of marriage!   

19th May 2011 4:49pm

Before I encountered this pretentious sexpot I was already tired of been lied to by the daughters of eve and resigned myself to the fact that real love has become obsolete and taken over by the shameless quest to acquire material things ostensibly to oppress acquaintances and escape the ever groping hands of poverty! Yet I had hoped that Amaka would prove me wrong by ignoring my experiments in the name of true love and giving me a reason to believe again. Like a spent condom I felt used, miserable and angry that she was dumb enough to pick on me and waste my time. However with the way her bosom jiggled with each fluid movement of her body, I felt a very familiar stirring in my groin and though disappointed at the turn of events I knew I wasn’t done with her yet. It dawned on me all over again that there was no future in this charade and that the wise thing for me to do was to play along and get as much booty as possible. You see, you don’t need love to enjoy sex and with the way she moaned, screamed, twisted and scratched when we were going hard at it last night there was no doubt in my mind that she enjoyed doing the canine and not even the disappointment of finding me with a monks hairstyle and living in a disorganized apartment would stop her from giving it to me again and again and again. It’s a thin line between love and hate and we have crossed that boundary when we found ourselves very different from the virtual representatives we saw on the internet and spoke with on the telephone!


This is getting steamier but I got to take a leak….brb.

Not bad. . . Keep going, we're reading

@poster you dey fall my hand ooooooooooo i dey enjoy gbadu the story

Captivatingly interesting!

Interesting!

**posted on the wrong thread i think**

Pls continue the story. I think it's better than most Nollywood scripts.

Poster, great story. Don't keep us waitinfor too long ooo.

nice 1
d part2 pls

poster where are you?

this you stori is very captivating

Babylove1:

poster where are you?

this you stori is very captivating

i telly you,way better than super story.

Guys, the story continues today, Tnx.

Be fast jor!

***strolls in, looks around runs to d door & shouts; IINKIRU come o! see beta home video! this one looks intresting.***

takes vantage position, brings out Alomo and sips it.

Oya OP whia u na? u talk say u go continue today. Pls come jooo!!!

did he fu[i]c[/i]k  her,

thats what im interested in knowin

quit all this tori   


damn, im silly

This is sweet, please continue and keep us posted on this development. Great guy you are

man keep the story coming, i love it.

Beautiful!!

Beautiful!

U shlda told er u were poor na

Guys, this is a real life story and for the record I am not poor
Enjoy the read,

Nice one. The tory is suspending me.

Den u decieved er yh

Poster where u dey? I love this

This experiment is going to blow up in your face. She isn't mad because you are not rich. She is mad because she thinks you are a fake who is using borrowed clothes to portray a false lifestyle. There isn't anything worse than thinking the person you liked is a pretender. She is probably asking herself, what else is he being deceptive about. She is sitting around your house doing nothing while you could be taking her out more. There are plenty of free ways to show her around.

And, she cleans your place and buys you new dishes and you are complaining? You are lucky she stayed. She was greeted by stinking dishes the first time she came to your place that showed her that you didn't even care enough to clean up the place, not that you were poor.

And, you knew from day 1 that she 'fell in love' over some photos. Likewise you also thought she could be your soulmate after 2 weeks.

I'm waiting to see where this goes. I'm sure she must have gotten alot worse for you to have drawn the conclusions you did about her. . .

Nekai:

This experiment is going to blow up in your face. She isn't mad because you are not rich. She is mad because she thinks you are a fake who is using borrowed clothes to portray a false lifestyle. There isn't anything worse than thinking the person you liked is a pretender. She is probably asking herself, what else is he being deceptive about. She is sitting around your house doing nothing while you could be taking her out more. There are plenty of free ways to show her around.

And, she cleans your place and buys you new dishes and you are complaining? You are lucky she stayed. She was greeted by stinking dishes the first time she came to your place that showed her that you didn't even care enough to clean up the place, not that you were poor.

And, you knew from day 1 that she 'fell in love' over some photos. Likewise you also thought she could be your soulmate after 2 weeks.

I'm waiting to see where this goes. I'm sure she must have gotten alot worse for you to have drawn the conclusions you did about her. . .

umm. . . i dont think that's why she is crying and annoyed. I think it's cause she wasn't expecting the poster to live such a lifestyle. She made an assumption which turned out to be wrong (well its appears wrong anyways). I think the poster is tryna make the point that love shouldn't be thrown around without a solid basis. For example, the gurl (according to the poster) is in "love" with his image (little knowledge of his background) and also in love with the character she imagined based on his picture. I think he is saying that if she is truly in love with him, then she should be able to love everything about him.

At least next time the gurl meets someone online she would tell them that she is attracted to them or that they are handsome and not profess love to them rite off the bat.

and except the poster made mistakes she probably doesnt kno he is faking . . .but of course if she had done some research on him, then she may have figured that out

@OP I can't let an unknown person enter my haus talkless of leaving them athome. What if she sells ir stuffs b4 u get back? Think about wha ur doin

The poster should be brought back to this thread sane or insane now!
[s]Why would he just start up something and walk away, na so dem teach am?[/s]

Waiting too. . .

Everybody is salivating, OP don't let us run out of saliva.