To begin in the beginning, the signpost announced, Come in! Come in! The decision had been taken from me. So I went in. It was really a shebeen whose crevices were filled with shysters, gigolos, hustlers, dregs and all manner of cretin. No place for dandies. And I won’t tell you where it is but it’s right off Ngong Rd, hapa Lenana.
The sun had been drilling my head the entire afternoon, and in the morning, like in the evenings, everywhere would be enveloped by fog or smog or whatever they want to call it. Nairobi weather is the perfect simulacrum for life.
I’m not going to admit that I am having a drink at 12 something PM; but I won’t deny it either. The service is impeccable…if we can loosen the definition of service, if we can ignore the definition of impeccable. Some patrons are drunk like it’s the end of the world and maybe it is, but it’s certainly the end of the month and one of them said, Kila mtu apewe! You know what they say, the only thing better than cheap beer is free beer. Mama Pima knows how much everyone needs, not a drop more; and I remember thinking to myself how you can easily spend your mortgage asking for more gauge (Millennial joke).
I want to say I came here to watch the world pass but the truth is, and without going into detail, I had some work that would’ve helped me realise my ‘potential’ but my prospect cancelled while I was on transit and after wishing them a 1000 years of bad luck, I saw the sign, figured I had time to kill and said, Why not? The days fucked already and life has its finger up my skirt. Big mistake.
A man scrooched over, asked me what I do and I told him, “I am a freelance writer,” but then I figured he, like most clients, would choose to focus on the free part more so I said, me hupiga shughuli moja mbili. Kujaribu tu. Considered telling him I am a sharp boy, trying to make a living from a dying career.
Taking that as consent to spew unsought rehearsed counsel, he says do this, do that, ng’ang’ana. Oh shit, I thought, he’s one of those assholes. There was a possibility he’d said this all before. The words weren’t much and I had heard better in my time but I indulged him because scripture says always turn the other cheek. And I did. And I had for some twenty minutes now and counting.
Yet I didn’t need company. I was enjoying having myself to myself, but he loomed over me and in his eyes I could see my pastor’s disapproval, my primary school teacher’s admonition that I’ll never amount to anything, my ex’s auntie asking me if I have a ‘real job’. I was being berated and I hardly deserved it or needed it either.
The drinkers drank local spirits, quarter or nusu, with hot water, or dry, and they drank them to great excess. I’d ordered a Pilsner, colder than your ex’s heart but guess what there were no lights so I get warm beer. Just my luck. I consider the bottle. That “original” seal on the neck is kind of ingenious. Really reassuring if you are in need of reassurance.
My demons, ever punctual, are circling and I remembered a rich girl who dated me because she believed with me in my potential and liked me partly because of it. All I had to do was be myself, whatever the fuck that meant. Like many of the artistically inclined rich, she wanted to own in someone else what she could not own in herself. But this I did not mind because how else would I know of duck l’orange and foie grass and that food can be aesthetic. Gee. If she could see me now?
I have to leave now since Lil Mouthy over here wants to recount his private catalog of political observations. Obnoxiousness really is the new charisma. This is how God punishes me for tithe evasion? I want to stab him (not God, Lil Mouthy) for selling me stories and memories cheap, as youthful time is cheap. There should be a German word for wanting to yank out your own ears when someone can’t shut it! Time to call it a day. Or night. Or whatever.
Not before Lil Mouthy asks for my number. Insists actually. Boss, 07…? Fuck it. Things ain’t never so bad that they can’t get worse.
