Levi Harris: A Guide to Middle School

Episode 37: Lust and Passion

Episode 37: Lust and Passion

          Erika Shaey was mixed-race like I already said but I didn’t tell you she was half British and half Tanzanian. Her father, John Mwanzi, was a Tanzanian man who went to England for university in 1995 at age nineteen. He fell in love with and English woman, Jane Shaey who was nineteen also. Within a year, on his twentieth birthday, Jane Shaey gave birth to their daughter and they decided to call her Erika because Jane’s Scandinavian grandmother had passed away a day before Erika’s birth. So they named their daughter after her.

Though Jane loved John, the feeling lost its mutuality after a while and when Erika was only three, in 1999, John decided to leave the family and go back to Africa. The pain of having her daughters father leave forced Jane to not give her her father’s surname but to give her her mother’s surname. Jane and Erika moved to France and began a new life there and lived there ever since. Until John wanted her daughter back and having fought for full custody, Erika and her mother were separated. Though Erika would miss her mother, she had someone to look forward to in Tanzania and gladly, that someone was me.

“You know, I wouldn’t mind us kissing right now,” she said, as she sat down next to me during our science lesson. I looked at her and smilled.

“Sorry but we’ve got to listen. Remember, we’ve got our checkpoint exams,” I replied.

I was still baffled. I knew that she was half-Tanzanian and that sort of helped me out in France. But for her to come to Tanzania was just too much of a dream. Honestly, at that time, she was perfect. She was adventurous and it seemed she had no fears. She wasn’t the type of girl you would cuddle but the one you would passionately kiss. Basically, she wasn’t one of those weak girls who couldn’t pull themselves together. She was completely different from Angelina and that made her all the more attractive.

“So that’s the bitch who done you over. And that next to her is the mate than went behind your back huh? Dickheads…” she whispered. I chuckled at this. She was very straight to the point and hardly held back her opinion. She was just really out going.

The best part of the day was that Mustafa and Angelina would just keep on looking back at us. I kept on hoping that the pain would burn her up. I remember my thoughts being between:

“I hope she realizes how stupid she was” and-

“I hope the jealousy burns her internally like a never ending fire blazing in her heart.”

As you can see, I wasn’t quite over her even though I was so madly in love with Erika. It was because of the history playing back in my mind; the times we would go out together, our kisses and the way she smilled at me. It was extraordinary what we had together. I loved her and she was a huge part of my middle school life. But things are not always as they seem and when that magician pulled that trick out of his hat, I was left feeling lonely and sad. Then Erika came in my life and filled it with a lot of passion and emotion. Erika and I were really intimate but it never seemed to fill the empty void left by Angelina. Angelina was… something else.

“Levi! You’re dosing off!” Erika shouted in my ear. My mind was slowly gaining focus and everything seemed a daze blur to me.

“Oh sorry it was… nothing.” I replied.

My thoughts of Angelina had carried me away. It wasn’t safe having a relationship with Erika if I hadn’t really gotten over Angelina. Yet Erika was amazing. She showed me how to not give a fuck. How to throw your life in the air and hope someone would catch it. She caught it for me. I was forever in debt to her. I was a wreck before meeting her. I was crying every night in St. Malo and I’m sure Corey knew about it. But then she came. She was overconfident and our egos clashed. And when they did, so much passion was created and I lusted for her. She was different but in a good way. She was a stranger, then a girlfriend and then my lover. I loved her. So what happens when your madly in love with someone but have some crumbs all over your face from another relationship? Well a whole load of shit happens and that’s what the form two was all about. Intense drama, break ups, jealousy, lust, sex. All of that mixed up into one bowl called my form two life. I never said I had it easy.