₦airaland Forum

All who aspire to create works of art are really on a mission to recreate their images in the objective world.

Think about that.

I was thinking about that craving to recreate my image on my way home from work yesterday. I was pondering on what I need to do in order to put the finishing touches to my book in such a way that it would truly reflect my essence.

And as I thought of it, I saw images of a potter meticulously crafting his work of art until it achieves the perfection that he craves. Then I thought of the creation story-perfection was not achieved until God had recreated his essence in the physical world in the form of the Adam. And only then did he rest.

There’s a restlessness that haunt me as I chisel away on the words that I have created- as I trim the edges and throw away whole sentences; whole paragraphs-searching for the expression that completely expresses me. I cannot rest until I see my self reflected in my work.

And then I think: is it not the calling of all of us to create? Because even biological procreation is really a primeval craving to recreate ones image so that the procreator can peer at the reflection of himself as he beholds his offspring’s…

We are all-those of us who dare to be creators of art and those who dare to reproduce themselves-then gods. For it is in that pursuit to behold our image outside of ourselves that the admonition from the voice of the one who is called the Christ rings true: “Know you not that ye are gods?”

And there lies the true calling of man-to be like gods…

@ Orikinla
Good things come to those who dare. I dont know who said that but there's a ring of truth to it; at least you're there as proof.

Well done!

I have just checked out some of your poems.
You have a lot of depth and i have enjoyed the much that i have read; thank you for writing them.

Just read through your little excerpt.
Very interesting. A lot of people actually do read romance books even the "crappy M&B", so i think you're okay!
Great work and don't let the story die in you.

@Angel_empy
I apologise for the mispelling!
The reference I gave you the links for has really helped me in my characterization and plotting. I will also take some of their advice on avoiding cliches and other such things that makes for a good novel. Hopefully i should be starting on the final draft within the next few weeks.

@Orikinla
I'll do my best to make contact with the Nigerian novelists who are based here, as you have advised. I want to polish up  the book first and then i'll start reaching out to them-it will probably be through their agents though.

But thanks again for your encouragement and kind words.

@Angel_empty,

1. I find the following resource to be useful:
http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/resources.htm#writing

2.  I have been experimenting with different writing styles and i am finding that writing in the present tense allows me to express myself a lot better.

All the best and thanks once again.

The book should be out next year.

If romance and psychological thrillers are your interests, then I would advise that you wait for the book;the wait will certainly be worthwhile…I promise.

About the book:
Do people still fall in love at first sight or is it just an idle fantasy, which is found only in the make believe world of literature and movies? Or is love at first sight the acting out of an unconscious psychological narrative?

This story tries to answer these questions and gives a biographical account of a young man’s quest to be redeemed from an inexplicable guilt, in the process of which he also learns to resolve a distressing love conflict. The story is set in the late 80’s and begins in Nigeria but gradually unfolds in the Southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don during the last days of the USSR…

Here are links to some of the excerpts, which I have posted on this forum:

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-89244.0.html

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-93184.0.html

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-97249.0.html

If you feel up to it, you can click on my blog and you will be able to read a considerable rough draft of the manuscript there. The problem with that is;
1. The online draft is not properly edited.
2. Offline there’s been a lot of revisions from what’s on the blog
3. I have stopped posting on the blog because I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun for the people who would like to enjoy the book proper.

This is NOT an extract from my book!

In a recent post I mentioned that one of the motivations of the artist is an unconscious exhibitionistic streak-a desire to expose his "unclothedness" and that in doing so he will always find the Viewer who will engage him in that metaphoric tango, which he seeks…

Let’s pause for a while and capture the images in our minds.
Picture the exhibitionist and the Viewer both engaged in a tango-with the celestial music playing in the background-as they waltz away on a stage, which is bereft of the limitations of time and space.

I will not make any references to dictionary definitions of “exhibitionism” and “voyeurism” because that would be too pedestrian…too prosaic. I prefer instead to engage our fantasies-for that is the true calling of the artist-to transform the mundane with the tools of his trade into something exciting…something exotic.

So, picture for a moment longer the tango of the reader and the read.
The words speak to you across the limitations of space and time; the voice of it will be heard even unto tomorrow and will continue to echo in your soul’s way past the day, when the writer has taken his bow from this corporeal stage…

That is the metaphorical Tango I talk about-the tango, which inspires those of us who dare to call ourselves Wordsmiths…and who through our words, bare our souls to the world, not caring what really happens to the words once they have been created.

And that is why the Wordsmith is an exhibitionist; his pleasure is not really from being read, but in being able to set the words free…

Thanks Angel_empty!
It is a book-in-the making and is not yet out in the market.

@SMC
Thanks for your advice. But what exactly is repulsive about my posts? The fact that they're extracts from the manuscript (Guilt and Redemption) does not necessarily mean that the posts are continuous. As the titles of the posts suggest, they deal with different themes within the the bigger plot of the book-this one,for instance, is about crossing the Berlin Wall.

Of course, i would like to apologise if the posts were deemed offensive, but i don't see anything offensive in them. On the matter of others being repelled, i m not particularly bothered. You see, most writers-and indeed most artistically inclined individuals-in addition to the creativity "thing" are driven by an almost unconscious exhibitionism and they will always find voyeuristic partners who will engage them in completing the metaphoric tango.

With that in mind, i hardly care how many people actually read my posts, as nobody is paying me anything for them at the moment. And as long as my exhibitionist appetite is gratified  I don't really have a problem 

When the time comes and i need to make money from my work, i will do the right thing.

PS: I am almost through with this draft of the book anyway and will start on the real work, which people will have to pay for to read. So you won't be seeing any more extracts from Guilt and Redemption.

Extract from Guilt and Redemption

Our first stop was Brest, a little town in the Byelorussian Socialist republic, which has been a principal boarder crossing out of the USSR since the Second World War. The town has a population of less than 250,000 and was once a part of Poland until the area was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939.

Usually all trains leaving the USSR would stop at Brest in order to have their bogies changed since the Soviet Union uses a broad-gauge railway system, as opposed to the standard one used in the rest of Europe. Ours was no exception, so while the bogies on our train were being changed we had been asked to go through the border controls.

We were ushered into a hall where our passports and exit visas were checked by stern looking immigration officials that reminded me of the people I had met at Sheremetyevo airport on that very first day almost a year ago when i had first arrived the Soviet Union.

They appeared to be especially strict with the Soviet nationals and I wondered whether they were looking out for defectors…

After we passed through boarder controls and got back onto the train, we continued on the four hour journey to Warszawa Centralna, the main railway station in Warsaw, where we stopped over for about an hour before continuing on our Westward journey towards Berlin.

Berlin, the city with so much history. There is so much talk about the infamous Berlin wall, the Iron Curtain that separates the East from the West and I was very excited about being able to actually see it for myself.

But the reality of the crossing was not as I had thought it would be because a few hours later our train had pulled into the Friedrichstrasse underground station in East Berlin. This is supposed to be the crossing and here we were told to get off from the train and then were ushered through a little hallway where some stern looking armed boarder controls checked our travel documents before waving us on to the platform on other side. That was it-the underground changing of platforms at the Friedrichstrasse underground station, was our own experience of crossing the Berlin wall and as we climbed on to the train on this side of the station we found ourselves moving unceremoniously from the Communist world into the "decadent" Capitalist West.

Several minutes later our train slowly pulled into the Berlin Zoologischer Garten in West Berlin.

Extract from Guilt and Redemption

Drained of colour. That’s how she looked as she lay there in the foetal position with her uncombed long hair, spreading out on to the pillow behind her, while the rumpled white hospital bed sheet was pulled up to her chin. There was a drip stand on the side of her bed nearer the wall and a tube ran from the drip and disappeared beneath the covers of the sheet. Tanya’s babushka sat on a plastic orange chair at the other side of her bed and was backing me as I walked in.

My eyes met with Tanya’s. And I noticed that hers looked so swollen; these are the eyes of someone who has shed a lot of tears. They have started to well up again with tears as I approach. Babushka must have sensed that somebody is approaching because at that moment she had turned around to face me.
Tanya’s cracked lips started to open; those lips, which are usually full of colour now look so pale and almost lifeless. She almost killed herself…

“Kasi…” she called out weakly”….you came”
“But of course…”
“Babushka, this is Kasi…the person I talk about all the time…”
She looked at me. There was no anger in her pale blue eyes…there was no blame. Hers was the probing eyes of someone trying to understand something…trying to remember, as though she was staring inwards into the past.
“Have we met before…somewhere?”
“I don’t think so…”

“But I have seen your face before…I can’t remember where, but I have seen you before…”
“I don’t remember…”
“I will leave you two to talk, but I will remember…” she said getting up from her chair and as she did so I noticed that she was a very tall woman and was quite hefty in her body build. But there was no other physical resemblance to Tanya other than the height.
“Tanya, why did you try to kill yourself…?” I started saying once babushka left the room.
“I didn’t want to…I didn’t want to live anymore, I…”
“But why!”

“I saw you with that girl…that…” her voice sounded so weak, as If she was straining to talk” …excuse me, my throat is so dry … I need a glass of water…it’s on the table over there?
“What did you take?”
“I took all the tablets from my babushkas medicine cabinet…”
“But Tanya…”
“You told me that there was nothing between you and that girl…but I saw you”
“That girl is just my colleague…”

“But she’s that same person you had stared at…at that party and…”she started to cough.
“We don’t have to talk about this now you know…”
“No we need to…”
“It’s because of her that you can’t tell me that you love me anymore…”
“But…but even if that is true, that’s no reason for you to kill yourself”
“Is it true then? I cannot continue to live if you do not love me!”
“I care for you a lot. Honestly, but I…”
”You don’t…love me…!” she whispered “…say it”
“This is not just about love…I need to sort out the way I feel about myself. I no longer understand myself. I don’t even know what love is anymore!”
“But you told me that you love me…”

“Maybe I do, but we both need time away from each other…”
“You promised that you will never leave me…” the tears had started to roll down her cheeks again-tiny rivulets of crystal clear teardrops, rolling down her ashen face. She looks so fragile…and it’s all because of me…
“Tanya, please…try to understand”
“I understand and I can’t live without you…”
“I’ll be away for the next six weeks. I am travelling to England. You need the time away from me to recover and I will use the time to sort out my feelings. I am leaving for Moscow tomorrow…”
“Tomorrow?!” she whispered and I could sense the burden of fear in her voice.
“Yes, but…please don’t do anything to yourself again….I will not be able to live with myself if you do.”

At that moment, babushka popped her head around the door. “Are you two finished talking? I remember why I think I have seen you before!” she announced as she came in without giving us the opportunity to answer her question. “…I have seen those eyes before…I have seen them in some very old pictures. You will come around to my place and I will show you the pictures”
“Whose pictures are they?” both Tanya and I asked at the same time surprised.

“They are pictures of Tanya’s father…”

The Scent of Lust (extract from Guilt and Redemption)

Spring was fully upon us and Tanya was becoming almost inseparable from me. She would turn up at the hostel unannounced saying that she can't bear for more than two days to go by without her seeing me. On weekends we would spend the whole day together as she is always finding something new for us to do or someplace where we can share an adventure together.

The other day we spent the whole afternoon strolling along Pushkinskaya Boulevard and then we had sat at the bench next to the bust of Pushkin, where she recited some of his love poems to me. The poems sounded so beautiful in Russian as she recited them.

“Do you know that Pushkin’s grandfather was African?” she had asked me one day.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” And she told me of how his maternal grandfather, Ibrahim, who was later renamed Hannibal, is thought to have come from somewhere near Chad. He is said to have been abducted to the courts of the Sultan in Constantinople and from there he came to Russia…
“Interesting. But is it true?”
“Yes…”
“Who knows he may have come from present day Nigeria then.”
“Maybe.”

After Tanya told me of Pushkin’s African background I fell in love with his works all over again.
"Can you recite the one he wrote to Ms Kern?"
"Yes." She said and she recited the poem I had once given to Adelaide. It seemed like an eternity ago when I had stood shyly in front of her door-not knowing a word of Russian-and handing over to her the envelop, which had the love poem inside.

But as Tanya recited the poem, I was remembering that feeling and the reason why I know that my life is incomplete without Adelaide. And for the rest of that afternoon I thought of Adelaide and I knew, without doubt, that it was her whom I wished was sitting with me that late spring afternoon, sharing those lovely moments as the birds sang in the nearby trees…

Tanya has been wanting me to make love to her because she wants to show me how much she really loves me. But I am telling her that love can also flourish without sex and that I am not in a hurry to sleep with her; I have told her that i know she loves me and that she doesn't have to try to prove it. But she is now saying that if i truly loved her that I will not refuse to make love to her. I am very reluctant to cross that boundary with her because it just doesn't feel right-not yet. I don't want to spoil what is happening between us because I have started to enjoy her company and I look forward to the new things that she teaches me and the new places that we go together.

I have discovered Rostov with Tanya; I have discovered the many green gardens where she has taught me how to feed squirrels from my hands. I have discovered the beautiful Gorky Park, which though I had seen so many times because it is located in the centre of the city just off Engels Street, I had not really paid much attention to. We have taken long walks through the park holding hands and laughing to silly jokes as the music of Ala Pugachova played in the background.We have discovered the ice-cream parlours and the restaurants and have watched other lovers sitting and staring into each others eyes, whispering foolishness into each others ears. And we have laughed together and wondered what makes love to make children out of adults.

Tanya showed me the fountains and the wooden sculptures of the out-of-door museums, where we took so many pictures together and where we first kissed.

I think that it was on that day that my resistance to her started to erode; we had stood near the fountain, which is located at the bottom avenue of the park; the water from the fountain had sprinkled on us like a very light shower and seemed to lend the air a very heavy scent of romance.

Around us, a few other young people sat on the nearby benches, while others just walked by. And at that moment she suddenly she called for my attention.
“What is it?” I asked a bit concerned.
“It’s so beautiful, ”
“What is so beautiful?”

She didn’t answer but looked at me with a mischievous sparkle in her lovely brown eyes; I noticed how her lips looked so full and inviting and I felt the intoxication of the moment, which seemed to beg for something to happen…

“You want to kiss me don’t you?” she said.
I did not say anything. Instead I had drawn her closer and kissed her passionately.

And I remember that after the kiss she had started to cry.
“Was my kiss that bad?” I asked worried.
“No it was very good. It is just that this is the first time I have ever been kissed by a man…”

She had told me that the caress of my lip on hers made her to want me even more. And after that first kiss I knew that I too wanted her and that it was going to happen. But I was not sure that it was the right thing to do; it did not feel right to become iredeemably entangled with this lovely innocent girl who carried with her so much hurting-yet who was becoming more and more obsessed with me as the days of spring crawled by.

It did not feel right for both of our sakes because my heart still belongs to Adelaide.

Its the rough draft of my book.
You can follow this draft of the story in my blog (www.eliasbeneli..com). To understand it you need to start from the very beginning of the blog; and its quite a lot to read, but i can assure you that its readable and deep-if you ignore the occasional grammatical errors 

I didn't add the "unsafe theme" thing, so i'm guessing that its the administrators  handwork  ; Can you tell me why you think that this theme is unsafe? I'm comfortable with it.

Extract from Guilt and Redemption.

I wake up with a start. It is still very dark in the room as morning has not yet broken and I am finding it very hard to get my bearing. My head is throbbing with a pulsating ache and there’s somebody lying in the bed beside me…the person has just started to snore. I try to peer through the darkness to see if I can make out the form of the person and I notice-as I begin to edge closer-that the long tangling blond hair, which is slightly visible from beneath the duvet, belongs to a woman.

I move even closer to the warmth of the body and my groping hand connects with bare flesh; she is naked and I am suddenly aware of my own unclothedness. Where am I and who on earth is lying here beside me? The effort to remember the events of the last few hours is making my head to ache even more intensely-but I must remember. This is not the first time in the last few days that I am waking up like this.

What happened last night?…I am beginning to remember now:

Our winter holidays started almost 2 weeks ago and I’ve been spending a lot of time at the University since Ugo travelled to Moscow to meet up with some of his old friends last week. He heard that one of his class mates from College is studying at the Patrice Lumumba University and he‘s gone to discuss business with the fellow. Eddy travelled to Kharkov to meet up with his brother with whom he is to later travel to Turkey to buy leather jackets.

I have been finding the rest of the guys in my hostel to be too boring; especially my room mate Ade, who thinks that I am now “a lost soul”. I have also been finding Barry a bit annoying because he’s always talking about racism and the black cause. I am beginning to think that the guy has some serious issues because he is damned too rigid in his thinking and sometimes comes across a bit belligerent when anybody disagrees with him.

Clements and Ken have also travelled for the holidays but I have been hanging out at the University with Philip-a 3rd year Law student from Uganda who loves his Vodka and his women. He likes to call the women "fighters" and is not concerned about the fact that most of them have done the rounds of most other guys in the hostel. But he seems to be particularly successful with them as he is always having a constant stream of them visit him; to the point where people actually come to him for help. And I am beginning to think that I know the reason for his popularity with the women; the other day I had accidentally caught a glimpse of his manhood and the size of it has left me feeling very very insecure about mine ever since.

I am in Philips room now and I am sure that he is in the bed across the room with one-or two-of his fighters. Yesterday evening I had come round to the University to meet up with him and as always he was drinking in their company. And as always I decided to get drunk in order to free myself from my reservations about fighting-a freedom, which now feels like an even worse enslavement because as always when I emerge out of my labyrinth of drunkenness and I am confronted with the reality of what I am gradually becoming, I am overcome by a certain sickness of spirit. I feel like one who is held captive in the grips of carnality and who is completely yielded to seducing spirits who now lead me deeper and deeper into a dark pit of depravity from which i will not be able to come out…I am a lost soul, Ade says-a person in need of salvation.

But where lies this salvation that Ade talks about? How can I, by just listening to the words he tells me, be cleansed of the darkness that torments my soul? How can my polluted spirit be purified? How can the memory of my childhood injustice and the pain from this guilt, which gnaws away at my soul, be washed away?

What will fill this emptiness that seems to be ever enlarging with the passing of each day; this dark and encroaching emptiness that is seeking to completely engulf me…and which seems to always linger with me until I can find something to distract me?

I am now reaching towards the softness of the body that is lying next to me; I am edging even closer and I am beginning to feel the hardness in my loins as my hands are now finding her warm moist softness. She is turning towards me and is now beginning to part her legs as she begins to moan-I need this distraction…

@ Orikinla.

Ben Okri is accessible to the public only through his agent but she's on leave at the moment (until January), by which time I should be through with this draft of the manuscript. I will send her a copy of the manuscript once its come up to a satisfactory standard, though.

But do you know Ben Okri personally? I will appreciate it if you can suggest other contact options other than through his agent (You can PM me because of the confidentiality issues).

I really appreciate your encouragement. And i will work on the "greatness" thing 

Thanks.

@ Orikinla
Thanks again!

Like everybody who starts on the journey of trying to write a novel, I dream of writing THAT great novel And in my transient flashes of hypomania I wonder whether my book will not become the novel that the world is waiting for. But when i come down from my pedestal of grandeur and stare at my blank screen, waiting for those great words-which will nudge me over the borders of mediocrity-to flood my mind, i realise that greatness does not come that simply

So one asks, what is the ingredient for greatness that some writers have, while for others it remains eternally elusive?

Are great writers born? And if the answer is yes, then what happens to the rest of us?
If they are not born then what needs to be done to become one?

For sure, I will commit time-and other resources-to bring this work to the standard, which i will be proud of. But i wonder whether commitment alone is enough  

What say ye?

I'm thinking that this one may be a bit difficult to make into a Nigerian soap because of some logistic problems . But i do have ideas of the kind of stories, which i will like to make into interesting movies.. Heck we've not even started to harness the world of psychological thrillers!

But for now i need the ego boost from finishing this particular project. But thanks for the information.

@ Seun
Thanks I feel encouraged by your comments!
I know that script-writing is more lucrative!And I have been thinking about doing something along those lines but I want to get this project out of the way first; writing this novel has become like an addiction and is beginning to eat into my proessional work

Once i have brought the manuscript up to the standard that i want and sent it out for publishing, then i will channel my energies into learning how to write movie scripts.

@Soulthief
Thanks for your observation and corrections.
The current draft of the work is not the final one. I'm still working on the structure of the story. Heck i've not even decided on a title yet!

When i'm done with this draft i'll still go over the whole thing again and adjust the places that need adjusting. And only then will I be sending out the manuscript for editing by a professional .

I've been re-assured that most-if not all-best selling authors edit their works and then edit them over and over again until they achieve the final structure they want. And even after they have done that, they still get somebody else to look through the work before sending it out for publishing! So i'm not even near that stage yet

I'm only on my second draft. And i know that there are loads of spelling and grammatical errors in this draft as well. Its a lot better than the first draft which was just an experiment but it still has a long way to go. At this stage in the development of the book i'm more concerned about the story line and its readabilty. When i'm done i'll pay a professional to do the final editing for me; that's their job while mine is to write them a story to edit.

Before i used to wonder how comes some people say that they spend years trying to write a book. Now i know; i've already been on this project for about 3months and i'm sure that this draft will probably take me well into the new year.

But thanks anyway for your constructive feedback.

@ Orinkinla:
Thanks a lot for your comment. And I will take your advise. I have also seen the work you mentioned.

On the title for the novel I've been toying with this one and other such titles for sometime now.
The thing is, the more I work on this draft of the manuscript, the more it seems that the original titles ( first  "they called me nigger", and then "the memoirs of a marginal man" no longer seem the most appropriate. I've seen that there's need to explore the deeper psychological themes of guilt,  and of love (not of the superficial straight forward one, but of the more complicated type, such as the one that Oscar Wilde talks about when he said that "every man kills the thing he loves".

Yet the issue of prejudice is still there in the book. And so titles like "Guilt and Love; Love and Prejudice; Guilt and Prejudice" may be the one that i will eventually use.

But then, once i'm through with the editing and so on, I'll let the agents decide what title is the most marketable.

I need Adelaide even if, for now, she is unattainable. This is what I was thinking as I walked home later that day with Ugo and Eddy, as we came out of the Russian language class that we had just finished with Sergei Nikolaivitch. I couldn’t quite understand the strong sense of connectedness that I was starting to feel towards her; she didn't yet know me but it was as if I was developing a feeling of love for her! How can I love someone who already belongs to someone else and who, from the way she always looks composed and classy, I was starting to feel is out of my league? Yet i felt drawn to her; as if there is something about me that destines me to wanting those things that exist beyond my reach and which are able to hurt me.

The guilt started to flood back. The guilt has always been there really; lurking in the shadows, and waiting for that opportunity to present itself when it would remind me that I am less than a man: you see, real men do not become emotionally involved with prostitutes the way I did with Betty.

It happened at the University of Jos. After my registration on that first day-when I had crashed into Funmi near the admission clerks office-I was allocated a room at the Bauchi road hostel. This temporary accommodation was the only available space for most of the new students as the Naraguta hostel complex and the students village were already filled up. And it was located next to a noisy motor park on the very busy Bauchi Road. At the back of this hostel was a densely populated slum area where students visited for their groceries and for some leisure activities.

One Saturday evening, barely a week after I moved in, my room mate had invited me for a drink and pepper soup at one of the beer parlours that can be found on the long stretch of unpaved road running right through the neighbourhood. The beer parlour turned out to be a seedy brothel. And as we entered the large dimly lit hall we had been greeted by the oppressive smell of cigarette smoke and bodily sweat hanging thickly in the air. Loud music blared from the speakers, that hung at the four corners of the large hall and you could see men and women dancing lazily in the centre of the large hall, holding their bottles of beer in their hands as they danced. We sat at one of the few unoccupied tables and my roommate had ordered some beer. And while we waited for our drinks to arrive, two scantily clad women hastily made their way towards our table possibly to get to us before their competitors.

“Una wan f…ck?”The larger of the two women asked, wanting to know if we wanted sex. The one that spoke was plump and was verging on the boarders of being obese. Neither of the women would ever pass as being beautiful as they both stood trying to strike a pose, which i am sure they believed was seductive. I was speechless, never having been confronted with such boldness from women, but my room mate who had been glaring at them both hissed. “Make una commot here, useless ashawo!” he spat out at them asking them to get lost.

Our bottles of beer came and we finished them and then went back to our hostel without really discussing what had happened. It was as if my roommate was used to the whole scene so didn't see anything worth talking about. But the very next day I had gone back alone. And it was there that I made the acquaintance of Betty;the smaller of the two prostitute who had approached us the previous day. Betty was in her late 20’s and had been in the trade since her late teens. And it was she who dis-virgined me and introduced me into manhood, after she had collected her price for the privileges; leaving me also with a lot of guilt and a vow not to ever return to that brothel again.

But I did; again and again. And each time, I would feel even more defeated from the time I sneaked out of my room under the cover of night…with my heart forcefully pounding against my rib cage in beats of anticipatory excitement…hoping that nobody would see me in my moment of weakness and in its inevitable aftermath; an aftermth characterised by a lingering feeling of intense guilt, which would always remain until the very next time.

It was always on those days when I had a close encounter with Funmi that I would find myself craving the warmth of Betty’s embrace; on most of our lecture days I would sit at a corner of the hall from where I could relish in the flashes of her smile and in the fleeting caress of the gaze from her lovely brown eyes; rare privileges that she would dish out to me unconsciously but which always left me weighed down by a realisation that those endearing looks and the smiles were not inspired by me. And on those days, after the darkness of night had encroached, I would sneak out in search of recognition in the arms of Betty the prostitute; It was there alone, that I have come to know what it feels like to be accepted as a man. And it was there, in the warmth of that acceptance, as I was receiving my fix of flesh, that my guilt was birthed.

I was walking through the park with Ugo and Eddy who were now chatting away about “Russian babes“. I was thinking of how fortunate it is that we can not read each others minds and glimpse at the secrets that we all hide. But even with those secrets, it was the image of Adelaide that was the strongest in my mind. And it started to feel as if she is the one who holds the key that will liberate me from the guilt,which gnaws slowly away at the fabric of my fragile soul.

@ Princesa
NO! I wasn't reproaching you in anyway. God forbid bad thing!
How can i reproach you when you paid me a compliment?

I was letting you know that i'm not even half done and that in spite of the herculean task of completing the job, that i am smitten with the bug and intend to finish the book.

I am really sorry if i gave you a wrong impression anywhere in my post. But i honestly can't find the place in the post, which may have come across as a reproach

And like i said, you paid me a compliment and i appreciate it

Thanks Princesa, but the work is not yet finished
In the first draft i was just experimenting and the initial concept was for it to be more autobiographical than fiction, but i later realised that i could say a lot more by not limiting the story to just my experinces. So the second draft is coming out quite different from the first one. And even in this draft, i'm continuously changing things.

But it is moving along. I am committed to finishing the story. As you might be aware, people who have ever been bitten by the writing bug know that some stories already exist in the netherworld but are just waiting for those who are bold enough-and committed-to rescuing them.

I don't know which draft will eventually be the final one. But this novel will be published.

www.eliasbeneli..com

You can follow this draft of the story on my blog: www.eliasbeneli..com

Your comments are welcome.