Like Water Like Sea by Olumide Papoola

Author:Olumide Papoola [Popoola, Olumide]
Language: spa
Format: epub
Publisher: CASSAVA REPUBLIC PRESS
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

2.

The Swimmer

Crystal held me too tight. You couldn’t invite me to your party and allow your partner to offer me up as entertainment and expect everything to be cosy with me a week later. I broke away, standing in front of her.

‘I saw you talking with Be,’ she said.

I didn’t answer. Crystal cared who I slept with. Not in an obvious way, not in a she couldn’t be friends with me way, but I suspected it panged her to know.

We did have a threesome once, Crystal, Rahul, me. Crystal had looked at Rahul touching me and her eyes went wild. I thought one day she would have to come out in an entirely different way. She didn’t want it, him touching me, him touching her, me doing anything but lie under her and give myself to her while Rahul did not participate. We never did it again. Soon after it fizzled out between Rahul and me, and Crystal and I messed around a few more times. She never talked about that night and why it had been full of explosive tension instead of us just stopping. I had tried to speak to her about it.

I had asked her, ‘What was that all about? You and Rahul are happy, yeah?’

Nothing came of it. I also probed more generally.

‘How many women have you been with? Do you consider yourself bi, pan?’

She did that very annoying thing that people who held on too tightly to heteronormativity did: ‘All good. Rahul and I are very happy. I’m just into you babe.’

She pretended she wasn’t as far on the queer spectrum as she seemed to be that night. That I hadn’t seen jealousy in her eyes. And not about me with Rahul.

‘Nothing to name here, Nia,’ she said. ‘We are free. People are free to do and sleep with whom they want to.’

I hadn’t answered. It bored me when people claimed a freedom they were denying themselves.

We were meeting at a bar in Shoreditch. It was too trendy for me but Crystal loved the atmosphere.

‘The small table in the back is free, I think,’ she said.

We made our way through the crowded front room where tables had been pushed back to three sides of the room and stood against one wall.

‘There is live music sometimes,’ Crystal said.

‘We’ve been here before, Crystal,’ I answered.

I didn’t feel like being here. We hadn’t seen each other for a proper catch up in months. If not for Rahul being Rahul, being his insecure self, who needed his confidence boosted at my expense, we wouldn’t be having drinks or whatever it was that we were doing. If she wanted to catch up, like she had said, we could have met in my kitchen for freshly brewed hibiscus tea.

The table was free only because it was in the narrow hallway that led to the toilets.

‘How have you been?’ I started. Crystal’s hair was a burnt orange on the top, her roots black still. She wasn’t wearing any earrings, which was rare for her.

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