My new life had begun. I couldn’t believe what a difference a new image could make. Suddenly I was Mr Popular. The girl magnet I’d always wanted to be.
My phone was full of babes asking me to be their besties. It seemed like every girl on FB wanted to be my friend. Prinz’s friend. That profile pic of mine – his – was hard to resist. Even I got turned on looking at it. Just seeing the name Prinz switched something in my head, changed me into the someone else I longed to be.
It was so nice, you know. My phone going off every two minutes with friend requests from girls I’d never met. Message exchanges beaming back and forth through space, at all hours of the day and night.
The best thing was, I didn’t have to try to figure out what act to put on to impress them. I could just be myself: Prinz the Dreamboat.
Rubi stayed cross with me. She kept warning me that I was heading for trouble. In the little worry corner of my brain, I thought so too. Sometimes I’d dream that I was running through the streets naked, being pelted with rotten fruit and smelly vegetables by hordes of angry females. I’d wake up, panting in panic, check my phone for furious messages telling me the game was up. Then fall back asleep in relief that it was just a dream.
I couldn’t believe how easy it was to keep the lie up. Girls are so trusting. Some of them were in a rush to meet me; I gave them my story about living in a distant location.
But most of them just wanted someone to chat with. A boy they could trust, who wasn’t just a player, trying to get into their pants and then ditch them. The fact that Prinz lived in a different country took the pressure off and made it easier for them to be themselves.
They confided in him things they didn’t even tell their girlfriends. There was something about that face of Prinz that invited trust.
U so speshal Prinz. Wish I cud meet a guy lik u 4 reel
they said.
Wi du hav to liv so far?
they’d moan.
I couldn’t believe some of the things they told me. The losers they hooked up with. The way they got tricked and bullied into doing things with guys they didn’t want to do it with. I never realised before what a hard time girls had just being girls. Seems like every shark in town is wanting to eat them up, one way or another. Beyoncé got it right: “Pretty hurts”.
For the first time, I understood how much fear girls have to live with. They were all scared. Scared in the taxi, scared at school, scared walking in the streets, scared sleeping in their beds at night. They all knew someone who’d had some random bad thing happen to her or been the victim of some sick predator. Sometimes it was them who had been the victims. Their stories made me want to run out and punch someone.
Funny thing was, I wasn’t just putting it on. I really felt for them, you know. It seemed so wrong to me that they had to live that way. Being preyed on by every loser who felt like it. I genuinely cared about what happened in their lives and wanted to help solve their troubles. It was like I took on some of my brother’s identity along with his name.
they’d message me.
Cant u cum vist?
Mayb 1 day
I’d tell them, knowing it could never happen.
And then one day I opened up my phone, and there she was: Pretty herself. I knew the moment I saw that face of hers that I’d hit jackpot. She was sheer gorgeous. Beautiful eyes, beautiful smile, a face that angels had designed. Everything about her was my dream come true. Only one little problem – the three small words that went through my head: “Outta my league”. Then I remembered I wasn’t Magcina the loser. I was Prinz the charming, the guy that no babe could resist.
We started chatting and kept on going, late into the night. It was magic, you know, lying in bed and finger-whispering words to each other that no-one else could hear. Each little ping of a message coming through was like the chime of love bells. By the time it got to midnight, I knew I was in serious love.
Like everyone else, Pretty had her troubles. She didn’t like to talk about herself, I noticed. But what she did say made me think that income was scarce in her family. She was hoping to go to university next year but she needed to get a job instead, so that her family could eat. I wished more than anything that I could be finished school already and earning at a good job, like the real Prince, so I could support her.
I wanted so badly to meet her. Face to face, breath to breath, heart to heart. But how was I going to tell her that I wasn’t the Prinz she thought I was, but just another loser like the rest?
***
Tell us: Do you think Macgina is giving the girls something they really need? What is it?