Rejected by a Prostitute.

           It has been a few years apart. Today is our first re-union in almost a decade, the five of us.

K.K. is a little more reserved than when last I saw him. I heard that he married immediately soon after college.  Whatever happened, he does not say much of his married life. He just nods and grunts. A man of few words.

Guru, on the other hand, is his mirthful self. Happy, easy-go-lucky.

Kababa keeps staring at his watch. At some point, Guru nudges me and quietly tells me that those are the signs of a man whose wife carries his balls in her clutch purse. I laugh nervously.

Joseph met Jesus. He is completely transformed, Jesus is a complete miracle worker. He has been dating for three years now, and we are officially, from that moment on, organisers of his wedding. We cheer and applaud the man, he smiles with the humility of a true believer. “It is by God’s grace,” he replies holding the forefinger of his right hand towards the skies. All of us look up towards the skies and nod as if in approval of the good works of God above. 

One can tell that life has treated us all differently. Guru and Joseph have gained weight. Joseph the kind of “I-am-Happy-because-Jesus-Loves-Me” kind of weight, Guru’s is that of a satyr, a bachelor with enough to spend on goat-meat and roasted gazelle kidneys. A closer look would tell a keen observer that there are those among us who, by now, earned more than they had dreamed back then, while some earned less than they had hoped. That is life, but here we were. Here we are friends, friends who have had each other’s backs through thick and thin.

Our conversation has turned to money.

Joseph remarks that God always provides. We nod.

K.K, with a seriousness that borders melancholy, advises Guru to take care of his money while he was still unmarried lest…

At this point Kababa bursts into laughter. At first, one would have assumed that he is laughing at K.K., only that we know he is kind-hearted to be so cold. Looking at K.K.’s sad eyes, Kababa starts waving his hands in the air in an attempt to let us know that he is not laughing at anyone in the group.

“No…” he manages to interfere his own mirth. “I am not laughing at anyone of you,” he continues, “I have recalled Guru and his first paycheque.”  

The four burst into laughter. I do not know the story, and at my bewilderment they laugh even more.

After the laughter, Guru narrates his story, the story of his first cheque:

“My first payment,” Guru starts.

“It had been months of hustling. No pay. My landlord had become impatient of demanding rent from me. He had threatened to throw me out of his room. Frothing at the edges of his mouth, he had cursed me and my “useless” ancestry.
“’Do you think my plot belongs to your ancestors?’ he had asked me.

“Well, I had survived those insults and threats for the last couple of months. How? I cannot say. I think it was because I was fasting, though compelled by being broke.

(Here he nods towards Joseph and remarks, “Prayers and fasting work my friend!”)

“Believe me prayers and fasting work. Or, may be, my landlord was not such a bad feller after all. Maybe beneath the veneer of unscrupulousness, and the threat of the huge belly which had his belt facing upwards, he was a kind man who, being a landlord in the city, had mustered the art of being no-nonsense. 

“Anyways, at the end of all these, there I was with my cheque. I had received my first reasonable pay in more than two years of odd jobs. I had a cheque and had cashed it in. I was with the money. I was no longer broke!

“I had managed to pull out of being desperate.

“Ever been desperately broke that all your friends flee from you?

(Joseph almost wants to plead Guru and tell him that had we an idea of what he was going through then, we could have helped but chooses not to)

“Yeah, I was at that point. I know you guys had your own battles to fight, but you know that at that point one has very few friends, especially female friends.

            “In fact, the only female friend I had was the single-mother in Room 12. She often invited me over to her house to watch TV series, especially 24. Looking back, I think she invited me so that I could have a decent meal.  Well, she was good and all, I even was friends with Sophie, her three year old daughter, but I had been avoiding her at that time. I had been too broke to accept her generosity. A man has to have a sense of pride. Right? A sense of saying no to a decent meal, even though he is starving. A man has got to look a woman in the face and say, “No!” Even though he has to sleep on an empty belly. I had done this for the last two week. And then, now, Hallelujah! My first cheque was finally here.

“There was no way I was going home early that day.

“I was going to have my lunch at Mama Oti’s Fishmbolls. I had to treat myself.

“But hunger was not what had pressed me for so long – that a man can survive. Worse was not the hunger of the belly, but hunger of down there – past the belly.

“See, I had been broke for over a year now. Even the ladies I had been eyeing after college had stopped eyeing me, they had decided to move on to something better than the brokeass me. There was this unquenchable desire to get laid, and of course, I had to get myself a pair of shoes. My last had yielded to the laws of use and abuse.

“See… by then, I suspected that the kingdom-down-below would turn vestigial, today was the day to check the system, but how now?

“I did not know where to start. Mama Sophie in Room 12, had always been giving me the eye, I could tell, but where would I begin? Where would Sophie be while we were at it?

“So, off to Uncle Sam’s.

“I had heard a good juicy stories from this place. I knew this was the place I could afford after paying my rent.

“So, off to Uncle Sam’s I was.

“Someone should have told me that, in spite of the appealing name, this was actually a den – a small Sodom and Gomorrah. Here everything found a new use that you could not otherwise imagine. It is here that I realised that the behind of a woman would do more than just sit down, a bottle more than just hold beer, a cigarette more than just be smoked. Here I realised that men worshipped more than in churches, here men prostrated themselves before Candy as she gyrated and spun round, and strutted across the tables. Here men wept, crowed, sighed, begged, and threw their hard earned cash into Candy’s lap. Not me. I was a man on a mission!

“I will not go into the details of how I began spending my coins…that is a story of another day. Anyhow, I managed to get myself a young woman. Well, not that young but hunger does not allow one to be choosy. She was enough, enough to remind me that there was a purpose in life, if not a higher one then maybe a lower one. How we ended in one of those dinghy little lit rooms I will not tell. All you have to know is that it was past a few open sewers and floating dead rats. My new pair of shoes were soaked already, running after the girl with whom I had settled on a fair price was not easy as she weaved her way through the open drainage. But this was not going to deter me from the Earth-forming goal I intended to fulfill. My sight was set on the target – the voluptuous target ahead of me that jiggled with every skip on the tiny rocks that paved the way on the open sewer. This, truly, was the road to Emmaus, the road to Damascus. It did not matter if I were to ride a horse or a donkey, the entry, the grand entry was all that mattered. And enter I was determined to. Oh! Lead Me Oh Great Jehova… (the look from Joseph stops him midway in his blasphemy)

“I could already see myself at it. But first I had to tuck the remaining money safely in my socks. I had heard stories of men waking up with nothing on their bodies. That is why I was determined to not spend the night there.

“I was only intent on seeing whether the carburetor still let air into the system, whether the alternator charged the batteries and if the fan-belt was tight enough. Being broke for more than a year would, like I said, render these parts useless. Let’s say I was going in for a “routine” maintenance, but there was nothing “routine” here. This was the classic case of “simba akikosa nyama hula nyasi”, the goat grazes where it is tethered, and my cheque tethered me to affording only this.

“There I was, a few hops, skips and a door was pushed in.

“The room was simple yet functional. A tiny bed that told of it purpose; not comfort but simply business. There was not a blanket on the bed, just sheets. Like I said functional: only business and then leave. But business is what I wanted. I was not here to cry on anyone’s shoulder or let anyone weep on mine.

“Business:

            “In an instant all she had lay on the floor and she was seated on the bed – business.

“There was no way I was going to delay in this business transaction. There I was struggling to kick off my new shoes but, on second thought, I decided to let my shoes be, because of the money, remember?

“There I am rushing to undo my Maasai belt which I had previously used to tighten my stomach and reduce the biting hunger when fasting. Like the devil would have it, the belt would not let me free. From the corner of my eye, I saw her check her watch. Was I wasting her time? I wondered. Wait till I get loose this freaking belt she would know that in my village they didn’t call me “Baba wa Múrio” (Father of Sweetness) for nothing.

“All the while I was tripping on my trousers I kept telling myself that soon I would be in the Garden of Eden. I could feel the serpent slither and wriggle itself on the trunk of the tree of life. Knowledge oozing, hearts racing. Today would be the reward of the thousand curses and barbs from my landlord.

“’Is it your first time?’ she asked.

“I was hesitant to answer. I did not know what to say. I was not going to declare myself a newbie in this, but then if I said I was a pro would I be insulting her sensibilities and her work?

“I mumbled some inaudibilities.

“When I finally freed my pants she stared at me from foot to crown. I could feel her stare dissecting me, dividing me into minute members, into muscles, and veins, into bones and knees like knobkerries. Her stare rose from my feet which were still in the new pair of shoes. Up the stare went, past the rungu-like knees which were more prominent than the thighs, then, finally, she settled on the alternator…

“Her look did not betray her feelings.

“‘No, I am not going to have that!’ she said calmly pointing at my member.

At first I was astonished that she could be scared of…well…I have always known I was blessed down there, but…you see...she was a woman of the night, right? And, therefore, I suppose in her line of business she had witnessed a few unbecoming physical features…stalactites and stalagmites.  I believe she had seen a few landscapes in varied degrees of formation and erosion, small ridges, potholes and sand dunes…and now there she was saying that she would not handle my sand dune. But her stare turned even more sarcastic than afraid. At first, I thought that it was the heath and moorland, the grassland savannah, down there which turned her off. You know, being broke can make you let everything grow untrimmed, right? Yes, so they we were. A complete Mexican standoff – gun blazing, angry and pointed. There was no way I was not to enter Canaan. 

But, suddenly, she burst into a deep laugh. I do not know what she was laughing about. I mean, the savannah was not funny at all. She raised her finger and pointed at my….well….Her laughter turned into derision. Soon, she was sucking her teeth like the women in Nollywood movies. At this, my member began to shrink shamefacedly, this was humiliating. Why would she be laughing at my…? Like a scared snail it withdrew back into its shell, the grand entry to Damascus had been stopped by the laughter of a prostitute. This was the most humiliating experience of my life. It was better when the landlord was sneering at me in the Plot, at least then Mama Sophie would empathise. But can you believe it? There she was naked! Naked like in the Garden of Eden, yet she had the balls to laugh at my alternator? She had the balls – while mine looked like two tiny radiators, wrinkled and all, withdrawn like retarded thorn melons.  

“There was no way the engine would start, even with her lying there.

“All I had to do was to pick my clothes and walk out of the room.

“I was about to leave when she asked me for her money.

Ta imagini!

“I had to part with the money even though I had not tasted or tested anything! Because there was nothing I would do, the sun had refused to shine down there!

“Nothing!

“Nada!

“Wach!

“Gútirí!

“Nothing would work, no point beating a dead horse. The donkey had gone to the river and refused to drink due to the laughter of the frog! What can a man do?” Guru asks us.

“She was a professional, man!” Joseph confirms for us.

 Rejected by a Prostitute by Macaria Wa Gatundu.