"Dont trust anyone "

His voice broke when he told me, this man that took me under his wings.

He was a single man now and he gave me this advice two months after finalizing his divorce.

"It can come from anywhere, betrayal, but it wont really be betrayal if it doesn't come from a close source, is it?"

It's a simple every day story, man meets girl, they fall madly in love, he claims he gave her everything, she claims it wasnt enough.

Then one day, he comes home early, hears moans from the bedroom, and rather than open the door, he peeps through the window and sees his wife's body contorted in a style he didn't even know she was flexible enough to fit into, her face twisted into a thousand shades of pleasure.

Naturally, he screams, the partner escapes and he, the husband, doesn't know who it is, doesn't care anyway.

She claims she wasnt happy, he says she never showed the signs.

"It broke me," he goes on, "because I was loyal to her, you know how many people I turned down?"

He said to teen years old me, and I saw the damage, he seemed to regret not cheating back more than the fact that she cheated on him.


He offered me another drink, and I was grateful. The wife was the one that moved out after the divorce, so he remained our neigbour before he moved out 7 years later.

He brought more women and treated them like shit, his experience deep and scarring.

And I looked at him and learnt, he was right about not trusting anyone.

I took his lessons and others too, I grew into a different young man, not just afraid of trust but extremely wary of inappropriate things, Learning to stop myself.

For it had started as a simple visit to his house in which I met his absence, she offered food, and then the next day we talked about how curious I was about sex, and it was down the rabbit hole from there.

What is forbidden is sweet, I'll come to learn that phrase years later. It will help me understand why I went on time and time again even when I knew it was wrong.

When he made the noise, I ran for my life and prayed, the years down when he would lecture about trust, it broke me more than it broke him, because everytime he finished I had to say

" na wa oo, take it easy sir, keep an open mind".

And he will give me a benevolent look that haunts me till today. I heard of his demise recently and I remember those words on trust and our last encounter.

I had met him again, a chance meeting before his passing and finally told him the truth i thought he didn't know,

He looked and said he knew, he suspected, but he knew later on. When I asked why he did not kill me, he said my guilt was punishment, even though he had considered it.

He also said to me


"You'll learn, that friendship isn't trust and honesty, and that betrayal and deceit isn't enemity.

You'll learn, that these traits are non existent, and that actions classified as such, are just people dealing with circumstances.

You'll learn, that conscience is a luxury of convenience, and people are just people, no traitors, no friends, not utterly dishonest, not utterly full of integrity. Just somewhere in between.

You'll learn that, we are only evolving.

And when you do, you'll understand these words supposedly credited to Tinubu

"I plan for betrayal, I plan for backstabbing, I also plan for reunion and forgiveness long before they happen. In life, I expect nothing, I expect anything, I expect everything".

It was the last time we spoke and i still remember that look.

EAG 2020