Thiloshnee

An overgrown hedge. A small wood gate with three colorful balloons pinned to it as a sort of party beacon. We are late, Laurence and I. All the way there while hopping on and off buses and trains, we had been dreading her wrath, for being so late. I had told her we would be there at about 6. Laurence then said 8, and sure enough it was after 9 before we knocked on the door.

On previous weekends, there have been countless missed appointments and cancellations. Weekends over subscribed to engagements, many of which we could not make and many others we really never had any intention of attending. But typically she, Thiloshnee, tells us where to go. She buys the theatre tickets or sends us the link to the gallery. She tells us where to be, and we agree out of some sort of duty.

Thiloshnee and Laurence studied economics together on a masters program in London. I still see her as Laurence’s friend more than mine. Indeed, their friendship is a complicated one. Not only does she confide in Laurence, with long tales of insecurity and anxiety, but they also get at each others necks, each claiming the other to have proved to have been less than a friend. All this, however, does not transpire in front of me. Though Laurence will confide in me his frustrations with her, Thiloshnee is never less than charming in my company, all smiles and perhaps even a little coquettish, entertaining even my most daring of conversation turns which, to be frank, peeve many people.

One incident that did labour Thiloshneeand Laurence’s friendship was over one of her many organised events. Thiloshnee had bought two tickets to see a classic 1970’s film of Feodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment at the Barbican to see with Laurence. Laurence, less than thrilled at seeing this three hour epic, as usual we agreed to out of our usual duty to Thiloshnee’s events. However, Thiloshneewas subsequently offered a ticket to join her boss (she works for a big city firm) to watch a Chelsea football match that very Saturday afternoon Crime and Punishment was showing. Of course, though this movie outing was all her engineering, she had to oblige any social ventures her boss, from that important city firm, puts together. More over, these are Chelsea football match tickets, something so scarce and precious, often money cannot buy it and the professional classes of this city fall over themselves for them.

This is how I was roped in, to take her place on the two tickets for the film. And this is how, out of our duty to Thiloshnee’s social scheming, to which, to be honest, we owe much learned social enjoyment, Laurence and I found our selves booked to see a three hour long film neither of us were very keen on. On the other hand, Laurence and I, on our interminable hunt for better but affordable accommodation, had a number of houses and flats to visit that very afternoon, all across east and north east London.

It was of little surprise then to Laurence and I, given our itinerant ventures that day viewing possible accommodation, that we completely forgot about the movie, for which we had 2pm tickets. Only when Thiloshneephoned Laurence later in the day to inquire about the film did Laurence realise out transgression. Caught unawares, he was unable to straight out lie and claim to have seen the movie with me and enjoyed it (a strategy we thought belatedly would have been best). He was also too off gaurd to contain the emotional fall out on Thiloshnee’s part. An argument ensued between them, with both sides slinging mud. Thiloshneeclaimed to be an unappreciated friend for all she does and Laurence (he could not help playing this card) pointed out the irony in Thiloshnee feeling stood up over an event she herself did not attend after having organised it. I am sure there is more to thier rich friendship than Laurence relates, but Laurence assures me that is as plain as it seems.

That very day I phoned Thiloshnee, to try and placate her from what Laurence and I perceived to be her state of indignation. After a word throwing match with Laurence an hour before, to me by contrast, she was sweet and resigned. She sounded warn out by the issue and her only disagreement was that I would make an issue of it. She said it was not an issue at all .That I was the one making it out to be more than it was, though Laurence was in a definite state of panic when he related the argument to me. “This is between Laurence and I” she said to me, confirming to me that I would never really understand Laurence and Thiloshnee’s friendship.

The door opened revealing a lively party, well into its second or third leg. In a spacious, bright and square living room, girls were strewn over sparse furniture chatting and smiling. Some sat on the veneer wood floor. Boys in clumps of two or three, all with drink in hand, smiling away. Music playing not at all loud, but instead out powered by the noise from boisterous conversations where chums struggled to be heard over other chums.

The man who opened the door for us, was one of the three residents of the flat, a nondescript ground floor apartment in Hackney. We waded through numerous clumps of people, all clumsily sequestered about the room and made our way to the large and rectangular kitchen. Here, the source of the food and drink was the hub of the house party. New (and all white but Thiloshnee) faces abound, Laurence and I exchanged polite pleasantries with forced smiles as if our presence was tenuous and wholly depended on our reception among the party as a whole. A flurry of introductions with names forgotten the very instant they were spoken.

Thiloshneewas nothing less than stunning. This after all was Patricks party, the Irishman Lawyer working London, for whom Thiloshnee suffers an attraction. Indeed they have a budding relationship between them, though it seems it is struggling to get to speed given Thiloshnee’s controlled ways and her inability to judge Patrick by anything other than standards set by her long time German ex-boyfriend. But still, she likes him, and for him she was dressed in an agreeable mosaic of earthly colors, though admittedly still wearing trousers.

Seeing us, she fashioned a beaming smile that made the kitchen seem even brighter with its light cream color walls. She left Patrick’s side, stationary among a revolving constellation of conversations, side in an apparent haste to embrace Laurence and I as if we were long lost cousins finally safely returned from refugee camps abroad. Two generous cheek pecks for Laurence and two for me as well, even though I am not as good or complicated a friend. My eyes were feasting on her face and person with much gusto when her odor came into the range of my nose. As her cheeks brushed each of my cheeks, the sensation of touch was gentle and pleasant, but the nose was intoxicated and near panic. It was her perfume.

My pupils dilated and my tongue went dry. “Your perfume I said” I said “what perfume is that”. In truth I was not really that interested in the name of the perfume. What I wanted most was to smell it again. And indeed, right in front of Patrick, who had now walked up to us, pulled  Thiloshnee by the elbow and inhaled deeply with my nose in her hair. The odor seemed to me to be what I had been looking for all these months. Of late, every beer I have drunk and every meal I have chewed seems to have come short of satisfying a certain craving that stirs inside me that I cannot quite place. Just for that moment, when her perfume was racing through my sense of smell, it seemed to me that I had found what I had been looking for.

Pleased by these aromatic charms from me, Thiloshneesuggested to Patrick he take note of my agreeable appreciation for her dress and perfume. The compliments surprised even me. Frankly, my intoxication’s were ahead of me and I was not aware of the affect my indulgance would have on Thiloshnee. For indeed, this perfume just happened to be the perfume of my first girl friend. Though my memories of this first love are concrete, they are nevertheless incomplete and certainly lacking my appreciation for her smell. Under the duress of a quickened heart beat, I was already dreaming back to shady afternoons in the suburbs of Lusaka where I would be in the her company for sweet hours that always seemed too short.

Do we realise what our first sexual encounters do to us? Do we understand, when it happens, how it defines our sexuality? At the time, I did not know that I was hard wiring into myself a language of touch and sex. Countless hours spent dreaming of her. So few hours spent with her. Long journeys across town to see her, to touch her again. To convince my self that the memories I was building and hoping never to let go of were real. From then on, all would be compared to that experience. Other lessons will be learnt, but this stain will be the strongest.

 That perfume jolted me back to that hunger. Reminded me how sweet it was to satisfy that hunger. It was all so simple then, when I fell too far and was thouroughly hurt for it.

But I am in London now, in Hackney. At a party where no one has taken interest in me, but Thiloshnee, for the sake of being a friend with Laurence. And I have taken interest in no one but Thiloshnee, for being a friend of Laurence.