There is a boy next to me making love to his Smirnoff Ice. Smirnoff Ice tastes like expired antibiotics, but I don’t tell him that. A girl and her lover make way to ask for a matchbox. They reek of Dunhill cigarettes. I haven’t smoked in years mostly cause I end up choking, and ladies don’t like it. Weak, they say.
I told my friend, Elvis, I find women who smoke fascinating. It’s the way the cigarette butt sits on their lips, the way they blow the smoke, it’s a sexy scene, believe me. Certain things can never be explained. It’s like looking at pornography, minus that moment of release when whatever you’ve been looking at explosively becomes absurd. There are lots of reasons cigarettes are different from vaginas, but that’s one nobody ever talks about.
I would definitely kiss one, but I would never marry one—not the vagina, the smoker. My mother wouldn’t approve is my excuse. Truth is cigarettes are expensive, and my mother really wouldn’t approve.
I am at Mwenda’s, at the corner of Utalii Street. I am here to people-watch, perched nicely at the bar counter with Ryan, the bartender. It is here that I have advised women to dump boyfriends; watched others cry over being ghosted, and seen that desperate empty look in men’s eyes when they find the bottom of the bottle is always dry. They always go crazy. Why not? What not many people know is that Mwenda’s is not its full name. They left out the “wazimu” part. For marketing reasons.
Ryan recommends that I try the “mugash”. I am a city boy, on a budget, and anything that can short-circuit my brain is gently encouraged. Mugash is lethal. Whiskey, vodka, tequilla, gin. Equal parts. It’s also cheap. Money is not everything. They tell you that when you’re little and you believe it. Then you grow a little older and you don’t believe it. They’re right. Money is not everything. But what they don’t tell you is that everything is money.
The mugash hits my lungs like oxygen passing through the crease of a fat lip after a fight. If I have two of these, I will start spilling secrets of the revolution. My fear of heights does not restrain me from climbing the cliffs of my most vulnerable thoughts. I experience slight existential sobriety, where the alcohol gives you a clarity life couldn’t: needing closeness and freedom at the same time; that zone where economic policies are written, or you know, decisions to get married. What is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness. In vino, veritas.
The smoker lady and Ryan are engaged in a Mexican standoff. She wants a lighter. He says a lighter is 100 bob. I say nothing because I am tall, dark and broke. Plus, I have a strict policy of keeping my day times out of my nights, and vice versa. Like nearly everyone else here, she’s from someplace else, and she has a story. She speaks like a pirate with Stage 4 throat cancer. Her lips are charred with smoke and beer and a certain knowledge. The touch of her hand fills me with a wild loneliness. She pretends not to see me; I pretend not to have been seen.
I throw my eyes around the bar. That one could—and would—kick my ass, should my ass be in need of kicking. You know how it is. There is something in the nature of man that encourages him to pick a fight with other men for no reason. There is also something in the laws of man which prohibits him from picking a fight with other men for no reason. The nature of man always trumps the laws of man. I am a man. I can probably take the Smirnoff “lite” city boy. Easy. I can take that lightskinned one too at the corner. I can probably take that stronzo over there, that big one with a box haircut if I catch him unawares. Otherwise, I’m dead. That may sound like self-deprecation. It’s not. It’s self-awareness.
I have to get back to my drink now. The only way to appreciate the present is to pretend it’s already past. I got that from a book. I read something else too: The gods envy us, they envy us because we’re mortal. I jump from the cliff of my thoughts. It’s dark in there. I look around the bar one more time. Billy Joel’s line hits like a motherfucker. We are all sharing a drink called loneliness, but it’s better than drinking alone.
