Timmyz Tales - Whatsapp, Tango, Foxtrot

I had not seen Fela in a couple of days It felt like 2975years.

I am not sure why I am mad at him. I am not sure if it’s because I feel betrayed, or because it feels like I have been in a dishonest relationship. But I have consciously and intentionally avoided him. He sends me messages as though he saw me in the morning.

Yesterday it was “Hey babe, wanna do lunch”

The other day “I am going to Abuja this weekend, wanna come?”

Is he being cocky, ignorant, stupid or blindly persistent?

I decided to join the work crew on our bi-monthly movie break; it’s a thing we do every two weeks, where someone picks a movie and we all go to see it on a Wednesday. I’d normally skip it because of mid-week service, but then I started skipping it because of Fela. That wednesday, I chose to join the movie-wagon. 

My Work-Event Partner, Folarin couldn’t make it and he did something he probably shouldn’t have done. He looked over at a young man in the Finance Department and said to him “Take care of her and please give her a ride home”; Folarin and I secretly call this young man, Fat-boy-slim because he is chunky in a cute way and he is always eating salads and quinoa and all that kind of stuff.... still no difference.

Up till then, I had never really noticed this Chunky-young-mixed-race individual that everyone else calls Van Damme. I didn’t know why he was called Van Damme and I didn’t care.  I just knew his name was ‘Jean” pronounced (John, with an accent) and he was half Caucasian, half African and he was a healthy boy in a slightly chunky body.

Movie break, was a bonding period for co-workers and oh, did I bond? Jean and I established a rather circumstantial relationship. Within the 3 hours we spent together we exchanged quite a lot of personal information. His mother is French and his father is Yoruba, his name is actually “Jean-Claude Adeyinka” Hence the Van Damme. He moved to Nigeria from France when he was 9 years old, Secondary School boys won’t let him be great with his “Jean Claude" name, it morphed into Jean Claude Van Damme and now Van Damme. He speaks French, plays the guitar and the piano, appreciates art and listens to Opera in his vehicle… Hehe…. Stop thinking it, I am not swoon, he is just kinda cute in a "I want to pamper him" type of way.

Van Damme and I have since developed a whatsapp relationship. In the absence of Fela he filled my chatting void. It didn’t matter that he was only cubicles away. The Conversation was entertaining. From internal co-worker gossip, to other mundane stuff. 

It was (not particularly) funny (in a Ha-Ha way) when on Friday afternoon, after lunch, I had 3 different messages waiting on my whatsapp;

Van Damme: I haven’t made any particular plans for the weekend. Do you have a boyfriend that might object to me making plans with you?

Folarin: Madam T, you have not finished understanding your relationship with Fela, you are following Fat -Boy Slim... Whats up with you two? I can only handle one competition at a time o..

Fela: You never got back to me on this weekend in Abuja. I took the liberty of mailing you a ticket. I thought it might be a good time out to talk. How long are you planning on blanking me?  

thank goodness I turned off my read receipts a while ago, because those double blue ticks can like to gbegborun

Excuse me while I ghost on those messages.

Clearly I need to set Van Damme straight.

My name is Timmy...