At Wanyee Rd, off Naivasha Rd, off Ngong Rd, was a peddler, first name Bo, last name Lo. He sold shirts and shorts and weed on the side. Or were the shorts and shirts on the side? Don’t matter. He was here on merit—he’d done all the right things, including bribing the police. He struck me as particularly odd, somewhat between avuncular and dispassionate, as if he’d long ago stopped expecting anything of life, and life, in turn, had stopped expecting anything of him.

Yet will you believe me if I tell you he was the kindest junkie I know? He’d stop me when I am cycling or walking or doing one of those things men do to feel like men and bore me with lores. Not one strain of hate in his heart. I always felt guilty when I left, like deleting text messages your ex sent you, but not her nude photos. Never those.

It’s at Bo’s where I used to see her, this lady whom I had grown partial to, in baggy pants, droopy eyes, and all that jazz, and I remember thinking: Shit, I wish I had a girl like that. Does that sound crazy? I was very much unsullied and parochial in matters drugs and she knew how to handle her smoke. I suppose you can call her a bad girl or something to that effect. 

I didn’t know her name till a few nights later when I was in bed with her. Besides, it was better not to know her name, or where she comes from, who else she was fucking, and so forth. To know means you care. I didn’t want to care. I wanted to know what a girl who takes weed tastes like. That’s all. That’s all I cared about.

Why me, I do not know. I wasn’t exactly the definition of Adonis, and my moustache was two years away from sprouting, skinny, diminishing chi. I was constantly on a budget, tight as a gnat’s arse. I suppose you could call me a typical man or something to that effect. Heck, I didn’t even bother with pickup lines. She’d heard it all before.

Her? She was a neat little thing with fine teeth. A silly little girl whose neck is probably what vampires have been looking for when they are looking for necks. That girl. But it’s her mouth I liked to watch. Up, down, up down. We’d gone to her place where she was reading We Need New Names and talking about a revolution or some shit like that. She had opinions, that girl. I watched her mouth, how she would speak, and “tssssssss!” between puffs, her lips, up, down, up, down and I wondered what it was like to taste the words from her tongue. Sometimes, she choked. Erotic asphyxiation—whatever the fuck that was.

That night, the world seemed to smolder around its edges as she ran the lighter back and forth, and sucked ever so gently, eyes squinting, squinting, cheeks pulling, pulling, orange flame on brown neck. And I was like, fuck me. Ya Allah. Such art. And then she put her lips on my bottom lip, her mouth on my open mouth and we met inside, and I could taste the chars of weed on her tongue first before I smelled them. I stuck one, two, three fingers up her skirt and the smell of her was everywhere. She touched me, and I could tell those hands knew their way around a man. When she pressed close, the heat of her body was vertiginous. I slid down and buried my head where her legs met. The warmth between her legs. I had all of it. I understand how that sounds. That’s exactly how I want it to sound. She was groaning, was I doing it right? Who cares. I pretended to know what I was doing, she pretended I knew what I was doing.

The reality is it’s hard to fuck when you are high, even if you are not. It’s like they say. You are there, and not-there. But I do remember how excited I was, which was partly due to the quality of the ganja, and partly because I don’t remember if she ever finished. Best not to know. To know means you care. And I didn’t care.