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The moments that really define a man
What you need to know:
- You don’t want to put the book down, you want to know what albino meat tastes like, but then your phone pings again.
- “Harakisha.” She’s thrown a wink emoji there too, which only means one thing: The albino can wait.
- At this point, let’s put a marker here. There is a teachable lesson here, if you squint carefully
Say what you want, but very few moments in a man’s life can be truly defined as teachable. One is when his mother dies. A man’s mother is his Rosetta Stone, his article of faith, unquestioned and unquestionable. Two, when that girl, you know the one, breaks his heart, and he still has to go back to work. Perhaps the most crucial is when looking at the list of qualifications for a certain programme and them asking for people under the age of 35. They are not expressly calling you old, they are just saying you aren’t that young anymore.
But all three fade in comparison to what happened last Saturday, a lesson in humility. This is how it all starts – choosing to spend Easter holed up in your house. You will get a text, “Uko?” from that girl who has you thinking of making changes to your father’s will. The only feasible reply to an “Uko” is “Unanitaka wapi?” You will be reading Stanley Gazemba’s “Dogmeat Samosa” where he will be alluding to Chinese Cuisine, where the samosas are made from dog meat, and you wouldn’t be too surprised because “This was the city, and cutting corners was inevitable in pursuit of profit.” The anarchists in the book are just about to skin an albino when your phone lights up. “Home.” Anakutaka kwake.
You don’t want to put the book down, you want to know what albino meat tastes like, but then your phone pings again. “Harakisha.” She’s thrown a wink emoji there too, which only means one thing: The albino can wait.
At this point, let’s put a marker here. There is a teachable lesson here, if you squint carefully. Pay attention. The Insurance guys handed me a Toyota vitz for a courtesy car, and while I don’t want to be that guy, I am going to be that guy. A vitz is what you buy when they tell you, “Anza na Toyota.” It is your first car, your first girlfriend, your first everything. An accountant is expected to drive a vitz. Would you trust an accountant in a Mercedes? Would you? Exactly. One is expected to be heartbroken in a vitz. Getting heartbroken in a BMW is just sheer carelessness and foolishness and bozoness. The Germans are known for their engineering, and which engineer do you know who produces emotions? You won’t find them on this planet. In fact, aren’t the Germans responsible for mainstreaming, or to borrow a Gen Z term, “normalising” the word schadenfreude? Joy in another’s misery. If anything, one does not get heartbroken in a BMW, one must heartbreak several in a BMW. And do it with schadenfreude. I sense that I am losing you, so let me reel you back in. I do not look good in a vitz. It poisons my aura, kills my aesthetic, weakens my gangster points.
There is nothing wrong with driving a vitz, of course, as long as you know you are driving a vitz. At the traffic stop along Denis Pritt Rd, just as I was about to join Cotton Avenue on my way to someone’s daughter’s house, I was reminded of this fact. Si you guys know the acrobatic dancers that entertain you during the 90-minute stops or whatever time the lights decide to use? They only do it on major highways by the way, or on feeder roads that have people with loose change to spare, which means anywhere on Ngong Rd and Westlands and Kili-Kile-Lavington axis. It doesn’t matter how hot the tarmac is, they just bend over and take their shafting like men. For God and for family.
On this Sunday, on account of Kenyans nursing hangovers from Judas’ betrayal of the Messiah, I was the only one on the road. I swear this is the truth. They eyeballed me, surveyed my vitz, did a salient head shake, and went back to their phones. They didn’t even give me a nod. Nothing! I wish they could even have asked me, “Unapick ama unadrop?” which is what the gateman at someone’s daughter’s house asked me, another story I don’t want to get into, despite him seeing me there countless times. Was it the car? The dreadlocks? The man? My people say the man who bargains for the price of underwear is capable of walking without one, and today I walk away, with my dignity shaken but not shattered. Isn’t it strange how material possessions, or the accumulation of it, not only define us, but limit us?
For the sake of world peace (and word count), I’ll hurry this story along, skipping past the police officers who waved me ahead despite breaking two traffic laws. They stared at the piece of metal and realised this guy had nothing to bribe them with. They probably must have patted themselves on the back, self-congratulatory on their restraint, a thief considering himself an honest man because he has no opportunity to steal. For me, this was crucifixion as well as coronation.
I get to somebody’s daughter’s house, and she is in nothing but a long T-shirt with her breasts straining against the legend imprinted on them: WILDCAT. It’s Sunday for Chrissake, Eloi Eloi, Lama Mashetani? My God, My God, what is this devil? She asks me if I notice if something’s different. Why do women do this all the time? I say, did you get a haircut? She says, no dummy. Try again. Her eyes meet mine, and I think about the albino in Gazemba’s book—when skinning a human being, would one start with the legs or hands? If she is from Murima, I would start with the forehead, and I chuckle to myself. “What’s so funny?” She is twitching. Not a good sign. I tell her, her behind has grown fatter, which if you are a man reading this is what you should always say, even if it has not. Earns you four Bonga points. Gets you off the leash. Sitawafunza kila kitu.
She takes your hands and puts them on her breasts and wallahi, Can-cheat-can-die, kalamba-down, Bible-red. I could hear the heavens open up, and I scoop the delicate blue sky with my fingers. Blood is rushing to fill every capillary, and I blurt out my MPesa Pin 9635. I wait for the feelings to subside, but they don’t. She says, My breasts are larger. I say, Yaaay. She says, My period is late. I say, wait. Three weeks, she says, and she thinks she is pregnant. You say nothing. She says, Are you even listening to me? Huh? You say. It’s that darn vitz.
In the movies, the man usually shrugs it off and says, ‘Everything will be fine, baby. I can’t wait to be a dad.’ In the movie, they have it all figured out, the picket fence, the suburbs, the baby cots. Here, you are a fish out of water, a businessman rather than a president, a mercenary rather than a missionary. Plus, you drive a Vitz. And at that moment, for reasons you will never quite understand, you are overcome by the feeling, the premonition, that something in your life is about to change. You become light-headed, and you can feel a throbbing in your blood, a rhythm, a drum. You don’t know how or why you know this thing, but that you know it cannot be doubted.
To this day, you don’t know how long it lasted. You just remember her saying she’s gone for the test kit—she hadn’t done the urine thing—and you saying sawa. It must have felt like 20 traffic stops with no acrobatic dancers, but when she's done, she betrays not a flicker of emotion. She comes holding the test. She looks at you. You look at her. She throws it to you. You glance at the offending stick. “It’s negative,” she says. You feel relieved. Then sadness washes over you, engulfs you. You can’t explain it. Have you ever lost something you’ve never had? That’s how it felt. Hole in the heart. What? She says. Nothing, you say. It’s just that darn vitz.