The story so far…
“My friend and I had been ‘competing’ with each other in telling exciting stories about unusual turns of event in affairs between men and women.
My friend had been at his regular ‘beer parlour’ when a member of the informal club that drank there brought one of the most beautiful girls my friend had ever seen. My friend was filled with desire for the girl and envied the man who had brought her. But the man made it clear that she was not his girl, but his girlfriend’s sister.
Better still, he left her at the parlour to attend an ‘urgent Meeting’. My friend, of course, made advances to the girl and when she proved agreeable, he offered to drive her home whenever she felt like going, rather than wait for her sister’s boyfriend. She agreed, and true to his word, he conducted her to his car the moment she expressed the view that she didn’t want to wait any longer for her sister’s boyfriend.
Now Please Read on:
“When she said she must be getting home, I knew she would have ‘one for the road’ (my friend said) when I offered her another glass of beer. She took it with a wonderfully courteous smile. She won me over completely when she indicated good breeding by saying, with a smile, ‘But I won’t mind if YOU want to have one for the road!’ So, in addition to being so pretty, she was also considerate?
“I had a quick one, and then got up. As I walked her towards my car, I furtively placed my hand in hers.
Again, she didn’t brush my hand away. We were thus holding hands when we got to my car but I quickly let her hand go and went over to the passenger’s side of the car to open the door for her. This act of politeness on my side was rewarded with another angelic smile.
“Her eyes were shining as she settled in the car. She said, ‘Um!…Your car smells very nice! I like leather seats!’
“I had been fantasising for a long time that I would be blessed with hearing that type of admiration from a pretty girl one day, and now, it had happened to me in real life. I was just quite simply smitten.”
My friend took a longish gulp of beer and continued, “I was so euphoric when I heard what she’d said that I took it to mean that she was a car ‘buff’. So I decided to show off what I could do with the car. I put it in first gear and half-released the clutch, as I turned the key to start the engine.
“The car said ‘Ta!’ And immediately followed that with a VROOOOM! That propelled it forward in just two movements. At the same time, the rear tyres scraped the tarmac: Chah!…. Chah!… Chah!
“And we were gone. I’d learnt this from taxi driver friends of mine, and I looked at her sly manner to see whether she’d observed my display of driving skills. But she showed no signs of that.
“Maybe she needed more demonstrations? I hit the accelerator-pedal and in a couple of minutes, we were already doing 50mph.
I was soon in a racing driver zone. So intent was I on driving like a Formula 1 pilot that I forgot to look at her, to gauge what effect my ‘skilled’ driving was having on her.
“I drove in and out of the traffic, relying on my torque power to accelerate out of trouble between cars. And I grinned all the while, like a schoolboy getting some fun out of his father’s car.
“I used the accelerator-pedal to make rhythmic noises that I thought would sound musical in the girl’s ears. Very soon, we entered a dual carriageway that allowed me more room to overtake other cars. The car sounded great as I switched moved from gear to gear to obtain the maximum acceleration for each overtaking manoeuvre.
“In that mood, I drove as if I was possessed. My propensity to show off and obtain a new conquest through that, made me forget that I was driving a real person and that, being of the opposite sex, her reaction to fast, adventurous driving might, quite naturally, not correspond with mine. Men and women were different, were they not?
“Of course, I was careful enough not to get into Scrape, thank God, and we got to her house safely. I stopped the car. As I leaned over to open the door for her, I wondered whether she would reward me with a – a – kiss!
“But before I could reach the door-knob, she had opened it herself and was out of the car. She RAN straight into the house, opening the gate and entering it in a single movement. I recoiled and sat in my seat, trying to work out what had happened. Why hadn’t she allowed me to open the door for her?
“Why had she run off like that? Without even saying ‘Thank you’ Or ‘Goodbye’? Then, from behind the gate of her house, I heard a horrible sound that made me realise what a complete fool I had been: Wooooh!…. Woooooh!
“The girl was spewing! What I suspected was confirmed when I noticed that… that there was some liquid trailing down from the car to the gate of her house. My God! What had I done?
“She had thrown up because of the way I had driven her home? I’d heard that some women can’t enjoy a car ride, even if it wasn’t as speedy as what I’d put the girl through.
Was she going to hate me forever?
“I never saw the girl again. And her sister’s boyfriend never talked to me about the car ride I’d given to the sister of his girlfriend. All very mysterious. Had the girl NOT told him about the ‘crazy’ car ride she had endured because she didn’t want him to feel guilty about ‘abandoning’ her at the beer parlour? Maybe she didn’t want to make trouble between her sister and her boyfriend?
“I have no answers to questions like that and honestly, I’m too cowardly to ferret out the possible answers. Certainly, I am not foolish enough to delve too much into behaviour that could be seen to have been dishonourable. But whenever I remember the story, I feel totally ashamed.
“For I had driven the car so maniacally that the girl I was showing off to had thrown up! How could I have brought a pleasant outing to such a sorry end?
“I stayed in my seat and held my head in my hands. An angel had visited me and out of sheer stupidity mixed with vanity, and out of a lack of consideration, I had driven the angel away! I swear I was cured of showmanship forever.
“Yes I was!” (my friend concluded). “Yes and yes and yes!”
“I had driven like that because I was only thinking of myself! Myself! Myself! Myself and my desire for her. Was that all that should matter to a guy who considered himself a civilised person? Eh?”
By CAMERON DUODU