Things get more awkward each time she dances to dancehall or rap, and suddenly stops to wrap her hands around my neck and look into my eyes. It has been reassuring, this gesture, as though she shares my thoughts and strives to convince me that we aren\u2019t a mismatch. But I think we are two extremes struggling to fit into one emotional space. It hurts when I think that music, with all its overwhelming emotional force and spirit, is our primary object of difference. She loves almost all pop-genres save blues and soul. To her, I am the one who plays the cartoon music of dead men.<\/p>\n
Before I met Brenda, I\u2019d never thought of myself as someone who plays the music of dead men. It means nothing to Brenda that I play piano works of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. The highly-rated, technically-demanding works of these composers are nothing more than film music for cartoons to her. \u2018These men died decades ago. Forget about them,\u2019 she would say. She jokes about how people who compose and play my kind of music are cursed with long unpronounceable names like mine. This is the part that worries me the most.<\/p>\n
This will be the sixth week and her sixth visit to my place since we met at a poetry reading in Atlantic City. I had gone to read a new poem I had written about a knuckle-cracking piano work of Rachmaninoff\u2019s that had left me saddened because I was unable to play it after several attempts. It is strange how I feel that writing a poem about a failed attempt at something would somehow make me feel better. It never works. But I still do it anyway. I was welcomed on stage with applause, and laughter, after my name was mispronounced for the umpteenth time by Jon, the event anchor. I had spent some time teaching Jon how to say my name correctly. Yet, he managed to say \u2018Delunechoku\u2019 instead of \u2018Delunebechukwu\u2019. Everyone knew he hadn\u2019t said my name correctly. Even though none of them could pronounce it either. Once, Jon had asked me to use my last name instead. I wrote my last name on his list of performers. He looked at it and shook his head slowly. How can someone who couldn\u2019t say Delunebechukwu<\/em> be able to say Mmaduaburochukwu<\/em>? That must have been the day he gave up learning to say my name. I think about this sometimes and I\u2019m tempted to agree with Brenda that a long name is a curse. In my case, my first and last names\u2014being too complex for weak foreign tongues\u2014may be something worse than curses.<\/p>\n I finished the reading and raised my head to applause from the audience. One girl did not applaud. She sat cross-legged on the second row, looking unimpressed the entire evening.<\/p>\n After the reading I walked up to her.<\/p>\n \u2018Hi, good evening. My name is Delunebechukwu.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Brenda Bernard. You can call me BB.\u2019<\/p>\n We shook hands. My eyes stopped on a rose tattoo on her right arm. I complimented her tattoo and she managed a little smile, as though she was doing me a favor. She had the aura of someone who was hardly impressed by anyone or anything. I could have just walked out of the gallery and headed home. Instead, I felt the urge to satisfy my curiosity by asking what she thought about my performance. \u2018I\u2019m not really a fan of poetry\u2019, she said, and continued talking about how she had to escort an old friend to the reading. She had lived in Atlantic City for over eighteen years but it was her first time at the gallery. I introduced myself as a pianist and graduate scholar at Stockton University. Our conversation steered towards her musical choices and her penchant for dancing. That was the moment she came alive. I was about to answer her question on the kind of piano music I play when a tall lanky guy walked up to us. I recognized him as one of the poets who had read that evening. He had read a poem about ice-cream, chocolates, and a dancer lost in a song.<\/p>\n \u2018Oh, meet Bob Jones. We were classmates in high school. He brought me here to listen to him read from his forthcoming collection,\u2019 Brenda said. We shook hands.<\/p>\n \u2018I enjoyed your poem, man,\u2019 Bob said. \u2018Where are you from?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Mays landing,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n \u2018No, I mean originally.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Nigeria.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018That\u2019s cool. What\u2019s your name again?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Delunebechukwu\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Oh my days! That\u2019s a paragraph right there. How many letters now? Twenty?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018So, what does it mean?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Stay calm and focus on God.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Wow! That\u2019s way too cool, man. Too cool. For me, it is more like \u201cstay calm and do not forget to say my name correctly\u201d or something like that.\u2019 He laughed and nodded, willing us to join him. We didn\u2019t. He continued: \u2018But you know it\u2019s damn too difficult to say right?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018No. You haven\u2019t even made an attempt\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Right. Right. That\u2019s true. But what\u2019s the short way to say it?<\/p>\n I ignored the question.<\/p>\n He swallowed hard and excused himself.<\/p>\n I exchanged contacts with Brenda and promised to call. My doorbell rings and I turn to Brenda walking in with a black bag and a mischievous smile. I have learned to stop asking what she is up to. I like how she breezes in, like she owns my room. She drops the bag, jumps into my bed and makes to kiss me when she smells my breath, stops, and shakes her head slowly. I laugh.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s not funny, Del! It\u2019s past 9,\u2019 she says and snatches my laptop from me, and cuts off Lang Lang\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n I walk to the bathroom, stretching and yawning and farting loudly.<\/p>\n \u2018Yuck! You are just so bizarre. Gosh!\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s a sign of love.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018What sort of stupid love is that?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018It means I\u2019m not hiding anything from you.\u2019 I spread my arms. \u2018I am all yours; open to you like a cathedral\u2019s doors.\u2019<\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t say anything as I enter the bathroom. Soon, a rap song seeps into the bathroom. I open the door to a dancing Brenda, her back turned to me. She twists her waist this way and that, sways her hands, and jerks her head left and right to the rhythm. Her ponytail swishes across her bum. I swallow hard and nod my head to the rhythm. Attempting a dance move for any reason is out of the question for me. Brenda is the most appropriate metaphor for a house party. I both like and loathe the fact that she doesn\u2019t need anybody\u2019s company or influence to start a party. She turns, dances into my arms and wets my lips with a kiss. She reaches for her bag and brings out a bottle of Vodka. I say goodbye to my Rachmaninoff piece waiting at the piano. There is no point battling booze, a heavy rap beat banging around my ears, and the need to practise at the piano. The last time, I had rejected a glass of wine from Brenda and sat down at the piano, determined to perfect the last page of a piece, she had turned up the volume of her own music to the loudest and come to sit in my laps. She made a jest about how shameful it was that, as a Nigerian, I didn\u2019t know Jidenna. Eventually, I succumbed and took a sip from her glass, then a second sip, a third, a fourth, until she stood up and poured me a full glass. I closed my practice book and stood up. She had won.<\/p>\n We are in bed, naked and spent. This is the fourth time, yet, it feels like the first, like a doubt that has overturned in my favor.<\/span> Before I left Nigeria for the US, it didn\u2019t cross my mind that I would one day wake up in bed to a white girlfriend who will always be there. My friend and fellow pianist, Solomon, had joked that I would get all the girls once I had a successful recital. I argued and insisted on being celibate and focusing on my piano. He laughed and made a remark about how nice it will be to bring a biracial kid into the world. Solomon said I sometimes sounded like a catholic priest, and that I was letting myself be influenced by Father Dmitri, the Russian-trained pianist who had been visiting Nigeria on missionary work at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Don\u2019t you know that some of these priests don\u2019t even keep their celibacy vows?\u2019 Solomon asked me. \u2018Who has celibacy helped in this life, eh? These priests are getting laid more than anybody else!\u2019<\/p>\n I had lost interest in relationships after I broke up with Chinwe, my University classmate and first girlfriend. She had made me believe in love, until she didn\u2019t. In our third year, she began spending long hours in the department and this made me suspicious. One evening, I feigned illness and was lying in bed when she took her bag and left for the department. At about 11p.m., I got to our department and met a cold and deserted place. Although the hallway door to the piano rooms was left open for students who wanted to practise all night\u2014a departmental policy which saw students coming in their numbers until the enthusiasm died a slow death, I could have sworn there was nobody in the building. I walked down the hallway as silently as I could, until a soft moan stopped me at door 009 and I perceived Chinwe\u2019s perfume. I opened the door and there they were\u2014Dennis, a first year student of piano, pulling his dick out from Chinwe\u2019s pussy. She was pressed against the piano, which had pages of printed music displayed as witnesses to their newfound obsession.<\/p>\n I jammed the door and left.<\/p>\n The day I told Solomon about Brenda over the phone, he was indifferent. I lamented about how my new relationship had managed to be both a blessing and a curse, about how I rarely could practise for long hours without being interrupted by Brenda, about how I partied and fucked more than I practised, about how Brenda wants me to meet her father, about how she calls me Del, as if I\u2019m a laptop or some electronic gadget.<\/span><\/p>\n Solomon was quiet the whole time, a response that caught me off guard.<\/p>\n \u2018Delunebechukwu, a lot has been happening since you left,\u2019 he said. \u2018I managed to pass my final recital and it affected my GPA. I think about it sometimes and I blame myself for choosing to play Chopin\u2019s \u2018Impromptus\u2019. I should have known that Chopin was a mad fellow. I regret that I didn\u2019t choose Mozart. Professor Benson stopped talking to me, as if my poor performance would affect his salary. I\u2019ve chosen to ignore him, too. My only joy is that I\u2019ll be a graduate soon. And maybe, like you, I might be lucky to gain sponsorship and join you in America. You remember Adanna, right\u2014that short fair soprano in diploma class? She\u2019s pregnant for me. It still doesn\u2019t make sense why she chose to keep the baby and not flush it out like the other girls did. I think she\u2019s just being stubborn rather than na\u00efve. Her mother called last weekend, threatening fire and brimstone. I don\u2019t even want that to bother me. Nobody needs a prophet to know that I\u2019m not ready to be a father. Not now. I have to go, man. I have to go. We\u2019ll talk later\u2019.<\/p>\n He dropped the call. \u2018So, will you follow me home today? My father is still eager to meet you,\u2019 she says.<\/p>\n \u2018Next weekend.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018That\u2019s what you said last week.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Next weekend, I promise. I\u2019ll visit on Saturday. By the way, I have a brief rehearsal in my department with my classmate in the next two hours. His name is Fred. Will you come with me?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Pleeeeaaaaseee.\u2019 She raises her head to search my face, holding my gaze for a few seconds, rests her head on my shoulder, and, with her finger, begins to draw circles on my chest.<\/p>\n The rehearsal rooms are almost filled by the time we arrive. I am dialing Fred\u2019s number when we sight a cluster of guys cheering in room 002. We approach the room to see an ensemble of choreographers, three boys and three girls in black tank tops and white pants, dancing to \u2018Man Down\u2019. Fred sights me and quickly picks up his bag from the floor. I quickly introduce him and Brenda to each other, and we walk down to the piano room attached to the Igor Stravinsky Lecture hall; it is less likely to be occupied, on a Saturday evening. I sit at the grand piano and busy myself with scales and arpeggios while Fred rummages in his bag for scores. Fred\u2019s second recital as a tenor is in four weeks, and I am his accompanist. He spreads the score of Mozart\u2019s \u2018Un\u2019aura Amorosa\u2019 and we begin. Afterwards, he sings \u2018Nessun Dorma.\u2019 All the while, Brenda is sitting cross-legged at the far end of the room, busy with her phone, and looking out the window. Fred brings out another score and starts arranging the pages when Brenda walks up to me, whispers, \u2018I\u2019m off to room 002,\u2019 and leaves.<\/span><\/p>\n
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\nMy alarm wakes me to a Saturday morning. It is 6am. I reach for my laptop and select Lang Lang\u2019s \u2018Rachmaninoff Concerto no 2\u2019 on YouTube. There\u2019s no better way to start my weekend than watching Lang Lang in bed and imagining myself on stage in Carnegie Hall. This is a dream I will not stop nursing until it happens. I don\u2019t know why, but I still think that being a concert pianist is akin to being a magician. You, on stage, filling the hall with memorized notes birthed by ten fingers while your audience sits there, hypnotized, following your journey, awaiting the last note. I have been learning a Rachmaninoff Prelude for the past four days, hoping to add it to my repertoire for my next recital on campus. I glance at my upright piano for a while and resolve to start practising in the next one hour.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/files\/2016\/07\/leave-image-1.png\")
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\nBrenda stirs awake, throwing her leg across mine so that her backside is facing up. She starts caressing my beard and chest, and breathing against my neck.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n