Dreams, Dreams about Death and Masturbation.

Have you ever woken up sweating? Your throat parched and the heart pumping like it wants to get out of your chest? (Remember Courage the Cowardly Dog Show? Man I loved that cartoon, Courage and how his heart pumped?). Well, that was me (this is not my first time to wake up scared stiff, another time I woke up blind, story of another day)
        

            It was a nightmare. See I had dreamt that a very good friend of mine had passed away. He is a great friend, we have been friends as far back as I can remember. I think from back when, instead of calling ugali, “ngima”, I called it “ndina” (buttocks). That was way back. Since childhood, but to the best of my knowledge I don’t remember our childhood together involving comparing, “Show-me-yours-I-show-you-mine”. We were a bit more civilised than that. Anyhow, now you can imagine the fear with which I had woken up with. I was shaking, but I was also glad it was only a dream.

          I sit up in bed and mumble a short prayer for my friend, and then back to sleep.
Early morning, I call my friend.
Three calls, he does not pick. The fourth, no. he picks the sixth (I am just caring, not paranoid).
I start: You guy, what the devil are you not picking phone or because you’re…

He: May be I was with woman…My friend, you are beating phone like forty times because?


Me: No. am fine. I just wanted to know how you are.

He: I am fine, but you… (he laughs) coitus interruptus…So what’s up?

Here I am not quite sure how to tell him that I dreamt he had died in my dream.

Me: Well, I….I…, well, I wanted…

Him: Spit it out! Or what is the problem? Have you been caught by wife cheating?

“No!” I reply quickly.

“Please, don’t tell me she has asked for a vasectomy, has she?” he is laughing hysterically now.

“No, of course not. We have some way to go,” I reply.

“Touché, my friend. Touché.” He says. “One day I may come to you and ask you, ‘Teach me your
ways Oh, Master’,” here he is imitating some Kung-fu scenario where a novice asks the Jedi Master to teach him the way of the Force. He is laughing still. I can tell he is still in bed from the guttural noise his laughter makes.

“Well, I dreamt you were dead!” I ejaculate.

“What?” he asks.

“I had this nightmare in which you were dead,” I say calmly. No need to scare the feller.
But I don’t think he has heard me right. He is laughing more merrily than I even remember. I can imagine he is bent double in bed choking in his own mirth.

“Who? Me?” He asks.

I nod. (As if he will see me from the other end, and I think he does because he keeps on laughing.)

“My guy! That is the funniest joke that I have ever woken up to,” he says. “Of course, apart from “Jecinta and the Wig,” he adds.

I am laughing now. He is laughing harder. I am laughing at the memory of Jecinta and her wig. Jecinta was a girl he used to date and…. (story of another day).

So, here we are laughing.

A few minutes later. After what I believe he is wiping his tears, he asks me, “So, how did I go out?”

Well, I don’t remember how he had died. What I remember is the funeral. I tell him some.
He is laughing harder now.

“Where was I buried?” he asks.

“Beneath the electricity transformer outside your home,” I say.

He is howling in mirth now. He laughs harder.

“Gatundu, you done kill me ohh!” he manages amid the laughter.

“Seriously, chini ya transformer?”

“Yeap,” I reply.

“Well, not a bad way to be buried, but my friend I can tell you for free that that was not me,” he says. “There is no way I will leave this world without a bang!” he adds.

I am laughing now.

“The transformer part is rather interesting. Why the transformer?” he asks.

“I don’t know, may…” I do not know why but he bursts into laughter. He is laughing, laughing and coughing, loudly. As if there is a joke in my ignorance.

“Pompeii!” he says, then goes on laughing.

                                            Quick History: Pompeii was a city which was obliterated within minutes

of a volcanic eruption. Everything destroyed. People caught 

unawares in their mundane businesses. Call it an Apocalypse of 

Biblical proportions. (P.S.: Read the Book of Revelations, my fren….) 

What has the sudden death of an entire city under volcanic ash go to do with my friend’s death? I wonder. Yet, I have to wait until his laughter subsides.

“Gatundu, bado huja get?” he asks.

I am not sure what the joke is. I may have completely missed the joke and this makes him laugh even harder.

“Gatundu, think Pompeii.” He is giving me hints now. I still do not see what transformers and volcanoes have to do with each other.

I am thinking hard.

“What do you know of Pompeii?” he asks. I tell him as historically as a teacher can be.

“Well?”

“What the Fudge?! I have no idea what you are hinting at,” I give in. He laughs even harder.

(Well, I am sure at this point, my dear, reader you are as lost as I was. But, I will save you the agony of being laughed at by a man whom you just buried in your dreams – under an electric transformer.

 “Gatundu, what do you know of transformers?” he asks.

I tell him everything that Ms. Karuri my Physics teacher taught me: direct current/indirect current, step-up and step-down transformers. He is laughing harder with every detail I give.

“Check your WhatsApp,” he says as he laughs.

I do not hang up. Quickly I turn on the data connection and wait for a message from him. And he sends me this picture:

Well, anyone who knows what is happening in that picture will tell you that that man, as ash and dust and molten lava was descending on Pompeii, this man decided to pull down his pants, lie down and masturbate.
I am laughing now. From the other end I still can hear the maniacal laughter.
“Talk of going out with a band!” He says. “Transformers and volcanoes and Pompeii….” I end the call.
My ears ring with his laughter. At least he is alive and has an idea of the kind of grand exit he may want in this life, I reflect.
“Do not go gentle into that good night.

Dreams, Dreams about Death and Masturbation.

By Macaria Wa Gatundu