Posted 8:10 AM by Anonymous

Note: This is an unedited entry taken straight out of my personal diary illustrating the candid beginnings with my first serious boyfriend. I was 20 and eventually lost my virginity to him; a hot-blooded Arab Muslim 10 yrs my senior. I’ve taken the liberty to change some of the names for this relationship became a tumultuous family outrage shortly thereafter. I was naive then and I probably still am now.

May 18, 1999

Things have invariably complicated themselves since I last wrote. Things and matters have unfolded and then raveled up again. Things have continued to harness me to ruin and victory- being consummately clear and cloudy. I never wrote about him in any other way than to mention him as an acquaintance-like one of the very many foreigners I meet whom I grow accustomed to writing about in excitement or fury. This one, I must be honest, was special and thence the reason I kept him secret so long. A secret I am disclosing and breaking open today, with a breath of fresh new air. I release the secrets of my life with Sayed.

I met Sayed in my SA store at school, a hazy lazy job for the most part because I usually get stuck with the late closing shifts and business is dead then. So I sat and I read. Why waste time? Dozens of magazines were scoured clean in those times. Sayed stopped by one day for an Oh Henry chocolate bar and never stopped coming back. Our raw beginning was quite hostile at first on my part, but still my sincerity sprouted its rays through my smile and so hence, he kept trying. One inherent quality that I instantly favoured was his persistency- the guy deserved a chance. That was after I specifically stated that I wanted a 6-foot tall man as a standard requirement, of which he probably thought made me a sick person. Well, the rest, we tried.

I met him in a bakery coffee shop, a Portuguese-run corner cafe at Essington and College, where I grew warm and fond of his brutal honesty and patience. I knew I had to decide then. I was taken by his deep moral thoughts and also by his spontaneously amusing and affectionate antics of silly nature, such as pumping his heart in a motion directed at me in silent gesticulation from across a window while walking by at school in the cafeteria as if indicating that his heart felt emotions. He had me when he zipped up Mellia’s coat, which I was wearing at the time and asked me when he can see me next. I cannot recall any of our early conversations, but I can only say without doubt that they were about life's history, existence, his family, religion and our expectations. There was also a lot of nondescript conversation that mostly involved me sitting there and him partaking in brain-searching space fillers about nothing or going on about some tangent specifically related to Islamic laws and culture. I remember how I enjoyed listening to him ramble on, I was mostly glad that the things he had to say were for the most part relevant, interesting and entertaining. He proved to me that a stalker can be a pretty decent and normal human, not some psychotic, potentially criminal, obsessed loser.

This is how I decided whether or not I should risk agreeing to give it a go.
I went home weighed my thoughts, analyzed and deliberated, then wrote out a pros and cons list. The cons outweighed the pros by a lot. I ripped up the sheet. I said yes.