HONESTY is the Best Policy…

Growing up, I heard and learnt lot. For example my grandma used to say that if you told a small lie, you had to tell a bigger one to cover the small one and then eventually you’ll be caught in the biggest one that will drown you. I didn’t want to drown in my lies so I made a point to keep things simple. I will tell the truth; after all it set you free.

So growing up I believed in honesty being the best policy.

This particular night however, this policy wasn’t working very well for me. Somehow I had come to understand in my adult life that the truth didn’t always set you free. In fact more often than not it puts me into even bigger troubles. I was accused of being brutal and unfeeling. Heartless! But I wasn’t about to give up the one true trait that my dear grandma had instilled in me. At the end of the day when all was said and done, I was the ‘free’ one.

But I wasn’t having any such luck this night.

On a long business trip to Canada, I started chatting with this fine dude of Ghanaian birth and Canadian citizenship. We talked at length, shared jokes, exchanged numbers and promised to hook up in Toronto.

After my business was done, I wanted to see the city so I called my Ghanaian/Canadian pal who was more than happy to show me the ropes. As the night wound down I felt light and silly. I had had quite a bit to drink but I was also ready to let my head down. So I did. I went dancing.

When my pal dropped me off I asked him to come in for a nightcap. He didn’t refuse. We started kissing from the door, down the hall—

‘What!’ My boo was livid.

I was apologizing for my indiscretions in Toronto. I had been back three days, and the guilt of what I had done was killing me. At first he said he didn’t want to know, and he couldn’t bare the thought of me kissing some other guy. A few minutes later he came back with a barrage of questions…

Who was he?

Had I been seeing him the whole time I had been with him? Dude I just met the guy.

He wanted to know what he looked like, what we talked about, what he smelt like, how he kissed, what he wore, if he saw my birth mark, what he ate, where he held me, how many times we texted, if I had spoken with him since I got back, if I had sex with him…

As I tried to explain these things away I felt like I was on trail for my life. Suddenly I felt like the worse person on earth. I hadn’t slept with him and wouldn’t have. I could barely remember the circumstances that led to the kiss. Honestly it meant nothing…

I had to go over that night a zillion times trying to give a second to second account of what happened. I was forced to remember details that I hadn’t previously thought off. Even his kiss had to be analyzed on three different levels. Was it on the mouth, tongue-tied, deep throat?

Later that night as I lay down to sleep after my ordeal I knew it was time to give it up, my honesty policy was failing me miserably. I decided honesty was never the best policy.

My new policy… ‘the less you know, the less it hurts’

Plus for the first time since my return I was really thinking about him. I had spent the last five hours reliving him and every spec of hair on his body. I reached for my bag and found the scantily written number he had given me on the flight.

Suddenly he was microscoped into my brain. His kisses, his laughter… it was all beginning to mean something.

“Thelma Louis” is a new GhanaCelebrities.Com weekly column with no borders on the speed and distance it will take your imagination, while tackling some of our everyday issues—in reality and in fantasy.

All Thelma Louis’ write up will be filed under her name column-Thelma Louis.