A bad lunch.

She doubled as a waiter and manager in the little restaurant or more accurately: ‘mama-put’, tucked between the laundry mart and the liquor bar in a low down part of town. I had gone visiting the bar with a couple of friends when, between drinks, someone had suggested getting a quick lunch. The meal had been terrible; the beef was hardly cooked and my friend had discovered strands of blonde hair in his plate-synthetic, of course. After a few beers, it wasn’t difficult to cause a ruckus and by God we did. The regulars did not like that we city boys raised so much hell and, by and by, they got aggressive too. The management of the ‘mama-put’ consisting solely of this very attractive, curvy, young woman with close cropped hair, large earrings and animal print pants, stepped in to quell the erupting melee but things only got worse. A friend, suitably tipsy, had called her a”fuckin’ bitch” and may have groped her too. While I doubt the regulars had any idea what said friend had said, her reaction got them all up in arms. It was war, and, when it was over, I was nursing a black eye and a bleeding lower lip which was nothing compared to what my friends ended up with.

A week later, I was back at the restaurant sporting a Von Dutch trucker cap pushed low over my eyes. I ordered a plate so as not to arouse any suspicion then sat down to wait. I had to be sure that she was as beautiful as I remembered and maybe to tell her that I was sorry for the mess we caused- or my part in it at least, and consequently, take her to lunch at a decent restaurant. You see, I had it all figured out and I was the man with a plan. I have a thing for women in close cropped hair, beautiful, shapely, ones too. You cannot but notice the graceful contours of the neck and other such sublime inducements. (I reckon it is why I fancy CNN’s Becky Anderson, even though she looks like a character best suited to the Simpsons animation.) She does not turn up that day or the next. I should know, I was there the next day. 

After a week, I run out of improvised disguises and have become something of a regular myself. Folks ask me to buy them lunch rather than just stare at my order. They either are a forgetful lot that they do not remember that they beat up my friends and I days ago or, they are more interested in the culinary experience than I had cared to observe. But then, a clean shave works more wonders than the best Nollywood make up effort.

At the end of the second week, I resolved to ask the real regulars about her and one of them, Oga Kofi, indicated his willingness to talk to me after a hefty double lunch on my tab and couple of beer bottles. Kofi is a large, pot bellied, local mechanic in his mid-fifties and, a rather loquacious one too. He would cut me off abruptly to launch into long, witty, flamboyant narrations of his ordeals especially when they bordered on shared interests. For instance, when I told him I was in town to register for a professional driving course, he made a face and asked if I did not know how to drive. I told him I did (even though I hardly drive as a conscious choice) and attempted to explain that it was a little above regular driving, a sort of marginal utility on the traditional driving experience. He grunted his interruption, took a swig of his beer and said with what I suspect was a slight measure of condescension:

‘What do you want to teach me of cars, Charlie? I know folks that can drive from Kaduna to Zaria with the gear in reverse. Myself, I do it at 120Km/h all the while dodging potholes, and overtaking trucks, thank you very much.’

It did not take long to figure that I would benefit little if I tried to make the conversation a two way street. It was better I let him talk on. After all the beers he had downed, I suspected when I finally told him what it was I wanted, he would spill his guts nonstop. As I sat there listening to my new acquaintance; sipping on my pear Fayrouz, a burning Rothmans stick in hand and bitter Kola in mouth, I noticed that I had come to like this fellar and his queer Ghanaian accent. His English was good- surprisingly so – and his manners, although gruff and rather aggressive, was a refreshing difference. I was entertained and felt obliged to buy him more bottles- and I did. Then I asked if he was married. He told me his woman was late and that he had four kids. Three boys and a daughter, the boys had all moved down south while his daughter decided to stay behind which was good because he did not want any of these little boys trying to “spoil” her. He vowed he would hack to death any “born-bastard” (whatever that meant) that tried. In return, he asked me if I had any “woman” (funny how he used the gender description ‘woman’ instead of a functional description, a wife or girlfriend) and when I said no, he looked up at me and asked why. At this point I figured I’d tell him what I was up to but I did not want him discovering what nuisance my friends and I had been up to in the next door restaurant a fortnight ago. Even though I had not noticed him there that night, we had probably punched some of his friends and, with these folks, there was no telling; he could be honour bound to break me up in two. Instead, I told him I saw a lady around that had stirred my interest but I had not walked up to talk to her. When he probed further, I told him I had been somewhat shy to as I did not know the town proper and I didn’t want to disrespect anyone. He looked surprised, scratched his throat then spat out on the floor. He wiped his mouth and turned to me, pointed a finger and said, solemnly:

‘Of all things, do not be shy. To be shy is to be cursed. What is shy, Charlie?’

 I tried to make a reply but he continued- almost philosophically, with a wave of his strong, muscled arms, apparently, the question had been a rhetorical one.... 

‘No one really knows but, everyone thinks they know what it is not. Me, sitting out here, I think I have figured it out. To be shy is to be cursed. How could it not be? A shy girl, nervously enjoying a lover’s touch, might be mistaken for a prude. Heavens forbid she runs away when he leans in for a kiss! And mind you, that may not have been her intent. You say you were shy but, that girl you saw probably thinks you are a stand-offish city prick.’

 

 Then he lit his Benson and Hedges cigarette, dragged deep and continued:

 ‘You see, shy is a crazy curse. We really cannot tell when the next person is shy. Rosy cheeks might be a sufficient indicator in some instances but, never always. Hence, the odds are, a supposedly shy person is quickly mistaken for whatever suspicion occurs to our fancy.’ 

 He probably noticed that his little speech had me perked up so he leaned back into his seat for grand effect. I listened with rapt, unfeigned, attention. This here was a conversation I did not bargain for but it was worth the drinks. Wait, was he drunk already?

‘....so folks look at your “shy” self and say he is high, or confused, or arrogant, or imbecilic, probably autistic. Look here my boy, shy is often a time-specific character vacuum we are all too willing to fill with our own projections...’

The table rocked slightly as he spoke because he kept swinging his legs. The alcohol was kicking in apparently. Already, there was a slight slur to his speech and I was forced to cover my drink as drops of spittle shot out of his mouth like heat seeking missiles towards me. Now he broke into pigeon English:

‘Abi she no fine? Na only woman wey no fine naim person dey shame for. Any woman wey fine, wey set wella, person no dey shame o. Infact, na with plenty ginger dem take dey follow that kain matter. Tell me the honest-to-God yarn Charlie, she no fine?’

Clearly, this last question was hardly rhetorical and so I answered otherwise, quite emphatically too. He smiled but continued that line of questioning:

‘She no set?’

‘Set?’

‘She no sexy?’

‘Bros, she sexy die.’ Then I made an exaggerated hourglass shape with my hands, let my tongue hang out and, rolled my eyes for greater emphasis. He laughed.

‘All you city boys wey like big, big, Ikebe so. No worry, as long as na this town you see am, I go help you fine am make you fit cure that your konji...’

He slapped my shoulder awfully hard as he said so and my almost finished cigarette fell to the floor. When he noticed what he had done, he stamped out the stub and laughed even harder. I felt the cold, uncomfortable wetness of a drop of spit on my face. Clearly, the dude was wasted or borderline close. Soon enough, I got up to ease myself, figuring I had better chances of finding the girl on my own without getting drowned in a pool of saliva. At the door that housed what passed for the gents, I turned back to look at Kofi and found him holding his head in his hands, looking out in space and muttering to himself. That part of the male psyche that takes delight in leaving his companions an un-sober mess took over and I found myself smiling, as if I had accomplished some mission known only to my subconscious. 

When I stumbled out the smelly hole that masked for the gent’s, I could swear Kofi had performed some sort of David Blaine like magic trick because; there she was, standing right next to him and in a heated argument too. You could not mistake her curves, the large earrings, the cropped hair and the delicateness of her neck around which she had a gold chain with a crucifix pendant. She wore a plaid shirt that burst loose at the front where the fullness of her chest defied the constraints put up by her buttons. Oh goodness. I caught myself, wondering just exactly what was going on. No matter, it was my lucky day, or night, I concluded. I walked over to the table-they were, of course, totally unaware of me – and sat down awkwardly. Kofi was in a rage, his saliva missiles deployed at random. I wondered, briefly, how he still had any body fluids left. He was saying to her:

‘..No bloordy bagga daughter of mine gonna tehl me what to do! Go home now and lock deh door maza-maza. If I hear say you branch anywhere to talk to any born-bastard, I chop off im head. Infact, I chop off im prick. Now, commot this place becorz I get guzzling to guzzle.’

Daughter, ke? I had my jaw sagging for quite a while and for good reason too. This scene was moving too fast for me and I knew trouble was lurking after the cut. But she was so fine that it was impossible to break the stare or shut my trap regardless of the fact that I risked getting drenched in someone else’s digestive lubricant or even swallowing some. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that she was clearly unhappy with Kofi’s present condition. Her eyes glistened like she would cry but she fought back the tears with effort, clenching her jaw as she did so, her rage so barely contained that she seemed to throb with its passion. Then a tear dropped and she made to wipe it. It was then our eyes locked. I think at that moment I had on my face one of those smiles that indicate that the wearer is clueless, those ones that mark you out to the world as irredeemably stupid. I swear, I did not know what else to do. She smiled too, but hers was a cold type. The type women are rumoured to wear when hell freezes over in comparison. There was also something else; recognition. She turned back to Kofi and said;

‘Only you get guzzling to do, only you wan cut prick. See am here naah, cut am.’ She was pointing a finger at me.

Kofi only noticed me then. The bar had gone quiet, the general attention focused on us now. She did not stop there though; God knows I fervently wished she did:

‘Mumu, talk talk papa like you..’ Kofi’s eyes shot up. Drunk or not, he clearly was not accustomed to being spoken to that way. He was seething.

 ‘..see am right in front of you. As them dey buy you beer now you dey jolly. You told me, swore to Jesu, that you would find the person wey scatter mama restaurant, and deal with im an im people but, see yourself? You siddon here with am, the same person wey call me ashawo, wey siddon dey look me like say im wan use eyes take fuck me, drinking his beer and shouting at me, embarrassing yourself in public. Na im be this. You must cut am today o...!’

Kofi, mouth agape, turned slowly, and looked at me anew.

I finally shut my mouth as I forced saliva down my throat.

  

  

Diary Cultivatin'

I am flirting with keeping a diary henceforth, and, that I write this is clear indicator of the heady signs of that romance already afoot. I really do not know why this is necessary. Are memories not opened like a page? Or, I do not trust my own memory. That is a weighty conclusion and I am horrified to push it any further. At least not right now.

What should I write? Who should read it? Who could read it? Sigh.

It is a tough love thing this diary business. All cloak and daggers too. Still, I shall try. This is my written conscience, mine and mine only, to be seen by any of my choosing or unseen by all; my choice. Let the world be forewarned and pry not, for ignorance grants none immunity from this law.

But deeper still, why write a diary at all? catharsis? The one you could not attain in the place that mattered the most- your mind? Naturally, the question of what to write is at once settled once you begin, the decision already been made, to write. You would write about what drove you to write- even if subconsciously, wouldn’t you? So, what drives you now man? Why would you put your days into record, into note? What drives?

You seek to put a perspective to things, a spatial frame of reference from which you survey your galaxy of chaos. You must recount your ABCs or no Twain.

                               Swim down Chaos’ Mississippi.....

And is that it? Merely? You need directions to Ohio? Not entirely. You need to see a mirror, a special type of mirror; a word woven reflector of you and yours, days and all.

Ah! So we compare the scribe and his writ, the real and the reflected. We measure, yet, to what end? To be consoled by the average result or be utterly damned by it and maybe, just maybe, be compelled to excel the average? Hah! Emancipation!

You would meet yourself- your gaoler or liberator- would you not? Now look, it is no days’ job. You would first seek yourself, writing out your truer reflection until there you are; noble or beast. The actual you. You. Real. Alive. True. You.

Oh, you write for you then...?

How nice, you narcissist little fuck! So then you write and voila! There you are all grand savage in your bestial glory. What do you do then? Most probable would be you; the beast, ripping up the diary to live unencumbered, a Jackal of Chaos’ wild. What then? Would you embrace that you? Or, excel that average, a greater beast perhaps?

                        Are you afraid of what you could find?

This is a diary, or the makings of one at the very least, so, what would you record? What choice parts to write or preserve? Questions, questions, questions again.

I hear my name, its Orgathun! I awake from my reverie, slowly. I open my door but he is out the gate by the time I am done...

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.