Crissy Ridin'

By the time you realize the world is a great spinning blue ball of hypocrisy you are already a hypocrite or very dead. Either ways, by the time you realise it, it is too late.

But not for everyone though. For some, that realisation comes a little before death or “the great conversion”. Your Eureka moment is pointless anyway. This blue ball does not become any less hypocritical. In fact, as soon as the realisation hits you, provided you do not drop dead from the sheer horror of it, you notice covert and not so covert attempts at converting you. How long? perhaps, all your life.

You cannot be against the world; this blue mass will chew you up and spit you out. No, you have to be for it and what other way can you be for the world than by being a big, multi-faced, scheming hypocrite? (Two-faced is for amateurs, you should go pro as soon as you can.)

Take it easy now, what is one to do? Would you rather be dead? What about your kids and or spouse? The questions pile up. Death is out of the question; you must live. Selfish, yes, but that is entirely beside the point. The point IS, on what terms do you accept life?

“The presidency and country was theirs. Not yours or mine, or even the neighbour’s across the street with whom we frequently disagreed on things political. Only theirs. The rest of us somehow neither relevant nor competent and the coffers of ideological purity kept full so the impure were blitzkrieged by money and buried at the starting gates of political contests. “

Robert Ludlum, writing under the pseudonym; Jonathan Ryder, in the introduction to his excellent work, Trevayne.

And if it occurred to anyone what great hypocrisy the whole goddamned planet is and that one said;

 ‘a great abomination indeed, I see the world for what it is but that does not make me so’.

 What then? Well, to quote that good man from Walden; 

“How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbour, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again.”

puppylove

She lives down the end of my street. I see her every time I walk past the big imposing house she lives in. I don’t like the house much. It is the biggest on my street and in the neighborhood. There are large dogs in it and her father lives there also. I do not like the house, the dogs and her father.

When I was younger, she invited me over one weekend so we could do homework together. By some stroke of ill-luck that I suspect I am born with, someone had let the dogs out and I walked in unsuspecting. I knocked at the main door for a while and after getting no reply, I decided to walk into the courtyard through a passage by the side of the main door- big mistake. A large growling dog-one of those foreign breeds vicious enough to swallow a man whole, blocks my path halfway through. I check myself and try to go back-pointless. Another great beast is coming up my rear, this one even larger. I suppose that I do not pass out as mercifully as some would because of the same rotten luck. Whatever fate has bequeathed it to me is determined not to allow me any reprieve. I am fated to witness my own doom it would seem.

She had probably heard the dogs making a fuss and rushed over because somehow she is by my side and that quietens the advancing dogs. We were little kids then, either dog bigger than us both but she walks over to the biggest one, the one she calls Rex and, smacks him playfully across his snout and he lays prostrate before her. She looks at me then, recognising the fixed fright on my face, smiles and says;

‘Walk with me, they won’t bite you now.’

I hate the house. I hate the dogs. I love her. 

We were both nine years old and she had just saved my life.

I do not say anything as we walk to the west wing of the house. It is hard to say anything when you have almost lost your dear life. I hold her hand, tightly, and try to force down some air. That does not happen easily because of my asthma. I can sense an attack coming and I try to fight it back. She notices something is wrong but I cannot talk. I just focus on breathing...

At the door, I sit down, wheezing hard. She is beginning to panic.

She uses my copy of Samuel Selvon’s Lonely Londoners-the assignment material, as a hand held device to fan some breeze at me. No luck! I am still wheezing. She holds me close, maybe because she does not know what else to do. I smell her-funny what one does in these moments, she smells of Malizia’s Vanilla bonbon-such a pleasing Ajebo smell. I must have closed my eyes as my olfactory senses do their thing because, (well, she is to tell me later; I thought you had fainted. I wanted to give you CPR...) I do not notice when she locks lips on mine.

Startled as I was, I do not open my eyes for fear that I ruin the pleasant surprise. Here I was; a shy quiet fellar practically kissing or being kissed by the prettiest girl in class. The long suffering admirer intimated of hidden but strongly shared desires. Well, maybe nothing so deliberate but think instead; Negro Alfalfa and his Darla with extra fries.

My eyes are blissfully closed for what feels like eternity until a loud ‘roar’ interrupts. It’s her parents and they’ve seen us from the balcony. She lets go and rushes inside the house. My eyes are open now, best to see what direction the danger is coming from perhaps. She runs to them and I can hear her explaining frantically;

‘He needs help; the dogs have frightened him terribly’

She starts off in English, breaks into Yoruba then some English again. I don’t see them anymore but I hear them clearly. Her father is having none of it. He roars, because I cannot believe that he’d ever condescend to mere speech; 

‘Young lady shut your mouth! I am disappointed...’

‘But daddy...’

‘Shut up I say!!’ 

 *Roars*

Her mum intervenes now; she is a kind pretty lady and cooks excellent fish stew. I should know, her daughter shares her lunch with me and my friends.
 

‘Dear, don’t you think you should check on the boy? He could be in trouble. ‘

‘He IS trouble! And I will have none of it! ‘

‘But dearie...’

‘Ko gbodo wo nu ile mi se! Look at what that street boy was attempting to do with my daughter, God forbid! What nonsense is going on here woman? I shall give him a good lashing and kick him out myself!’

I swear I heard him charging down the stairs, I had heard enough, I was not going to wait there for him to come finish me off. I got up and ran the way I came like a man in a daze, through the courtyard passage, towards the main gate. Then I stopped in my tracks or was forced to stop in my tracks. The gate ahead was open; just how I had come through. But before the gate are the two dogs from earlier. They also have three more friends. 

Five massive dogs now, all aware of me and, angrily so.

My cruel fate.

At that tender age, I understand what it really means to be between the devil and the deep blue sea. It is pointless to run because my small legs won’t get me anywhere before the dogs devour me. I can’t wait either. Also, an enraged father is coming for me, most likely with a battle axe clutched firmly.

Now, there is warm fluid flowing down my legs, probably urine. There is also a crushing weight down my chest, grinding hard-Asthma.  I am transfixed, unable to move backwards or forwards.

It was a realisation so intense that I passed out.

SlackJaw.

“Men? What good is any of you? Half the time you are all hanging limp, the only time you look any purposeful is when you are erect and even then you aren’t the type to give a top performance barely beyond two minutes before reverting to being almost lifeless. What good is any of you?  Heh? That is why you are so quick to start wars and be assholes. That is why you need to build muscles, and act tough. You can’t stand that it is always so limp, like a tail between your legs. It drives you crazy-it drives you all crazy, so you go displaying machismo all the time to not only deceive the world but deceive yourselves too. Coward men! Coward! After all it shrinks when you are intimidated; your cowardly 'manhood' shrinks when confronted!”

She paused now as if composing her thoughts, then started again, her voice an octave lower but not fully hiding the anger behind it. If anything, she sounded more intense, the venom dripping purposefully, calculated to do the maximum damage. She pointed a finger at him and said;

“Now you want me to pound your Foo-Foo, I will pound that and even take your drunken pounding. It is the woman in me that can take a pounding, you can only give a pounding not take one. I’d dare say, if I, woman is any judge, you men don’t know how to give a satisfying pounding.......!”

He rushed at her then, having latched on to the venom of her words but caught himself halfway, his raised fist suspended in mid air, a great looming tool of his anger, towering over all in its path. Then the fist dropped, slowly, a shrinking tool becoming....limp. She stood looking at him, a faint bored look in her eyes. She wasn’t flinching, she just did not care.

 He sighed and walked out of the room, he thought he could hear her calling after him; coward! Coward! Coward! And could hear it as he got on his scooter rode off. He was tired of the fights, for what? He could not remember what led to this one; the eruption of putrid pus from a long festering sore.

 

He rode the bike to nowhere really, feeling the breeze blow his robes into a billow; he throttled the little Vespa harder, seeking to get away from the familiarity of his surroundings. It gnawed at him- everything, everyone, everywhere- and his only reprieve was to get away. By the time he got to Giwa, it was dark and he had tears streaming out his eyes but only because of the breeze against his unprotected eyes than due to any peculiar occasion. His friend, Tamuno James, lived in this part of town and Tamuno was crazy. Everyone said basically the same thing of him; CRAZY. Tamuno James drank like a fish, smoked a lot of grass and popped a fearsome quantity of Tramol pills. Then he would talk a lot, the things that people said made him crazy. But for now, crazy was good. He needed the unfamiliar, the crazy, and the different; from the constant suffocating mundane his life reflected. He saw Tamuno James sitting outside his house, reading a book. Tamuno read a lot of books too. Plenty odd stuff, he had some smarts no doubt, interesting how the crazy ones probably had it up there than everyone else.

He parked by the side of the house and climbed up the Veranda stairs to meet his friend. Tamuno until then only looked up from his book, putting it away and reaching out for a hand shake. Then he burst into a long hard laugh as if only seeing the curio before him for the first time.

“DO you want to use my toilet man?”

Apparently something was very funny to him or was it the regular crazy?

“You look like you could take a shit, man” he continued, ”Why, you even come up here crying. What is the matter? Who died again? Wait, she finally poisoned you heh?”

More laughter.

Classic Tamuno James. Always, he hit you with words before you could say anything. With him, you could not go with the flow, you had to go with his flow. One time, as the legend went, Tam-James was sitting in an uncompleted building smoking some grass. Some nosey busy-body had noticed and reported to the police. When the men of the NPF came, Tam-James coolly told them he had no qualms following them to the station. In fact, he would be grateful if before getting to the station, they shot him in the head and dumped his body in the nearest gutter. He told them in no uncertain terms the plans to end his own life-as soon as he was done smoking this joint-he was going to jump off the community bridge. They had dared not interrupt his plans or he would commit to taking one of them along-he did not care! The bewildered men of the NPF naturally thought they were up against some regular stoner who would cower in dread before their black uniforms, not this. According to some narrations of the legend, one of them even offered his Calidon’s Varga gin tonic and some words of sympathy. Suicide, even if pretended was not the NPF’s forte.

“you got a drink?” he asked Tam-James.

“Sure, sure...”came Tammy....”some Alomo and Red Rose man”...he reached behind his seat and brought out two bottles. “So, what is the problem? If you are going to share my drinks you might as well share your problems. I don’t care.”

A few hours later, there is nothing left in the bottles, only the intermittent glow of a joint. Tam-James takes a long drag before passing it.

He says to his friend; 

“look man, you shouldn’t hit your woman. Am sure she loves you very much.”

“She has a big mouth”. Came the reply.” She just pisses me off so bad, and I can’t imagine why I love her so. Why can’t we just chill and talk, make love and smoke a reefer like all the other couples? Is that too much to ask? “

“That won’t happen because you beat her. You are always beating her. She is your partner man...”

“Oh please! Don’t give me that shit, Tamuno! You beat your woman too....”

“No, I fight with my woman not beat her. There is a major difference my friend.”

“You are drunk.”

“Yes, seeing as we have both been drinking, you are factually correct. Also, drunken people tell the truth so look here man, when my woman and I have a disagreement; we sit down and sort things out. I do not go beating her because she is a woman, she is my equal, or so she says. So, we have ourselves a good fight. Sometimes I win, sometimes she wins. Fair and square as they say.”

“You are crazy.”

“Crazy is not as bad as people make it seem.”

“You fight because she is obviously bigger than you are.”

“Of course....”

“Wait a minute, that time you broke your jaw and had to be at the hospital that was her right? “

“Shut up man! Look at this, you’ve gone and wet the joint butt. I should roll another and let this dry.”

Pause.

“She is smaller and softer, we couldn’t really fight you see. I’d run her over every time.”

“Then you shouldn’t beat her anymore. Hell hath no fury like a woman they say. One day, she’ll douse you in petrol and set you on fire while you sleep.”

Longer pause.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t enjoy beating her. I would rather she fights back even. Every time I hit her I feel like I lose.”

“It does not make me feel any better that you do not enjoy beating her. And who told you she doesn’t fight back? She doesn’t hit you and you are off on your scooter crying into the night. You’ve lost the fight and she knows it. She knows you hit her because you cannot win otherwise.”

“Hey easy man, I wasn’t crying.”

“Whatever. Pass me the lighter man, this Lamidi grass is some good stuff.

He lights up the joint he has just rolled then reaches for his cup to drain it. The cup is empty and he flings it away. It crashes in the corner; the sudden noise gets the neighborhood dogs barking furiously. A female voice from indoors, obviously angry cries out;

“Tamuno! You don shack again abi? You noh go compose yer sef? Noh make I kon buss bottle for your head o! You dey craze?”

Tam-James grins and calls out; “sorry babe”. “You see”, he continues in a whisper, “that’s a woman that fights back man. You have gotta apologise or else it could get messy. I remember when she broke my jaw. I couldn’t feed properly for weeks. Just fluids and smashed bananas man, mean left hook. We’d be in bed and I’d have to take it slow. Couldn’t eat it.”

It took a minute or more-with all the alcohol and reefer in his system but he finally figured out what Tammy  James meant by “couldn’t eat it”. He broke into laughter. Tammy James was laughing too. They both laughed hard. He felt lightheaded now, for a while he felt good.

He got home past midnight. Used his key and let himself in. The room was partially dark and he did not put the light on, there was no need. She was on the bed, turned away from him. Her body partly covered her figure defiantly sensual, alive, yet so resentful of him. Her figure rose with her breathing, almost imperceptibly, you had to look long enough to be sure she was breathing. There was a slight sheen from the humid air, forming around her neck and back and in the soft pale moonlight glow that poured through the open windows, as she lay there; bearer of fury and desire.

She must have felt him watching at some point because she turned and pointed to the table where a dying candle flickered.

“I have pounded your foo-foo.” She said simply, then turned back to sleep.

He wanted her, badly; he wanted to tell her that he was sorry and maybe more. But his jaw would not move to form the words. Or was he too drunk? She could probably see his desire, the desire of her animal, woman-a-thumping husband. The one she had crushed completely without raising a finger, she who took his pounding and pounded his foo-foo.

He looked at the table where the covered meal was, no, he could not eat that he realised. He looked at her for longer, reaching unconsciously for his jaw as he did so. What was the point? To what purpose? In two minutes he was over, Alomo be dammed.

He sighed softly, took off his robes and climbed into bed beside her.

The candle had long since burned out.