http://bikozulu.co.ke/2011/08/01/high-school/

See you on the other side.

Her name was Taffy.

That’s her real name by the way. I’m not trying to protect her identify because she has become a ghost in my life and ghosts don’t read blogs. Anyway, when your mommy decides to call you Taffy you got to be a piece of work. You got to be able to make men feed off your palms. A femme fatale. And Taffy was the poster child for all things fetching. She was tall, she had playful eyes, she was chocolate and she was sweet. Back then – in the late 80’s and early 90’s – the sweetest thing was this candy called Toffi, but that’s before you had cast your eyes on Taffy.

They lived in a corner house, six houses from ours. They were the wealthier than the neighborhood. Her mother drove a Mercedes. She and her brother –Junior – went to an expensive school. Her mom was hot (that apple and tree thing) and just about the only mother who constantly wore tight jeans in the neighborhood. I suspect that other mothers prayed for her during their prayer meetings. Taffy was older than me by a good two years, that seems like 10yrs when you are only 13yrs old. Older guys came all the way from other estates to pay homage to her, to see the beauty from across the hill. I could tell she was going to be a complete knock out in her 20’s because even in her mid-teens she had a bright future behind her (if you know what I mean?). I was over my depth but I was crazy about her. I mean totally cuckoo about her.

I was easing into teenage, escorted by the idealism that defined that time; music. New-age jam to be precise. Mint Condition. Color me Bad, New Edition. Brandy. Raphael Sadique. Shai. And somehow music brought us together with Taffy. She loved Salt N Pepa and to prove it she always wore checked shirts and tied the front in a small knot. And if you looked closely you could see her navel through the knot and you can’t image how many days that sight would take me. It flamed my dreams.

She knew I liked her and she used me to get her “dubbed” tapes. But I know she didn’t feel shit for me; I wrote her letters on expensive stationary but she only replied a few of those. But I didn’t care that she wasn’t mad about me, I was only too happy to go over to their house during holidays and breathe the same air she did.

Then one day without warning she took away my virginity. Yes. It happened at their backyard in one of her dad’s un-used blue Volkswagen Beetles. It was a KDF something 7 something, I think. The whole ordeal lasted 2 minutes but I think I lasted a little over 30secs. The rest was spent by me fumbling with her knickers like an idiot, me trying to find room for my long legs, me wondering where her long legs would go and most embarrassingly me asking –over the noise of my thudding heart – the dumbest question of all time; “Are you sure you want to do this?” Damned Volkswagen Beetle crumbed my style (literally and figuratively hehehe)

We became a bit closer after that. But we never had any more happy endings after that, I think partly because I didn’t know how to ask but I suspect because she didn’t offer again. She replied to my letters more though. And we kissed a few times. And when she was feeling philanthropic she allowed me to feel her bum. Those days were as rare as Christmas though.

One morning I pressed their gate buzzer. Pressed the damned sucker so many times and nobody answered. Their neighbor later came out and told me they had moved out the previous night (when growing up people moved out at night, it was fashionable) I was like hell no, the previous evening I chatted her briefly outside their gate and she didn’t mention anything about moving out. But turned out they had moved out. I was horrified! It was mysterious and hurtful. My mom later told me that her father had taken a second wife and her mother had decided to pack it in and leave him. So she took her and Junior away to a place nobody knew.

That was 18years ago. I have never met her since. I have never heard of her. It’s like she never existed, a phantom who initiated me into “adulthood.” She should be 35yrs old now. Maybe she is in the states (she always was fascinated by Uncle Sam), maybe she moved to Abuja where she runs a curio shop. Maybe she is a teacher in Jakarta. Maybe she is a community health worker in Laos living on rice and good intentions. Maybe she is married with three kids who are not privy of their mother’s colorful history with Volkswagens. Maybe she lives 20mins away from my house. If she is in Nairobi I’m certain that, unbeknownst to us, we have shared a pub. I don’t know if I would recognize her if I met her. I don’t know if I would want to. But if I’m ever to meet her I will ask her one question; “Why the hell didn’t you say goodbye, Taffy?”

When you come here next week, don’t press the buzzer.  I won’t be here. I will have moved, but I will have left a forwarding address, a link. Unlike Taffy, I won’t make you come here only to bounce. I’m saying goodbye…or rather, “see you on the other side.” This is my last post here on WordPress, I’m moving. This blog is growing up; it’s going to high school. I could decide to turn this into an emotional charade and go on how WordPress and I have forged a lifelong bond, but I won’t. No speeches. No tears. No nostalgia. Have a drink.

But first, figures.

Recently, at a media function, I shared a table with some blogger who I shared with some very pretentious conversation. She said she didn’t care about stats. She said didn’t care if two people read her blog. She said she did it for the art. That the satisfaction of writing itself was enough for her. I totally understand that bit for doing it for oneself. She then asked me if I felt the same way and I said I used to but the mechanics changed when I realized that at some point the blog gets a life of its own. I got greedy, I told her. I told her I wanted to build a huge community of readers, and the stats are the only way of knowing if I was on the right track or if I was wasting my time. She shook her head sadly. I almost felt like a turncoat, almost, but thankfully my wine saved me from that path.

My first post here was on 28^th February 2010. That post was read by 25 people. 21 commented. I didn’t know where the blog was headed. I didn’t have a plan. All I wanted was to write. Stats didn’t mean much. I didn’t push it on Facebook as much as I wanted. I figured if it was any good people would pick it up and bookmark it.

To date I have done only some 85 posts, some odd 170,000 words. Only a paltry 2% of the people who come here comment, the rest are ghost readers…picture many eyes peering back from darkness. The rest stealth into the house every week, open the fridge, bite something and leave without leaving much of a trace of their visit. The 2% kick in the door in, open drawers, knock down the trash bin, make an omelet and leave the dirty dishes in the sink. Sometimes they even leave me a note saying, “Why do you insist on buying that milk, Biko? It tastes like crap!”

The 85 posts have attracted some 6,500 comments. I have probably spiked some 500 or so comments over time. They were comments that were either ethnically divisive, abusive, plain foolish, overtly flirtatious or sexual. But generally people who show up here are well mannered…even though they use coasters.

I have always typed all my posts on Word document first before copy pasting here. Until last month I typed using Georgia font, size 12. I find this font very timid. I love a timid font which I can intimidate, I have control issues. But I got bored of Georgia’s submissiveness, now I use Book Antiqua because it’s a delicate font (especially on size 11) It’s a font that seems to bruise easy. You know, like you can easily hurt its feelings?

There were countless themes to choose from; I picked on this one because it’s clean. I like all things clean and fresh. I’m not into frills and things. This theme here breathes with its white open spaces. But I also loved the image. It’s broody and mysterious; the ghostly branches that reach out like a witch’s willow fingers. The misty tableau expunged of life. The still ominous river and bridge that steps over it. What’s missing is a sad woman wearing a long flowing dress standing at the bridge staring down at her reflection in the water, searching for answers and trying not to cry.

Having done away with that dull stuff, allow me to kiss your ass for a minute.

Truth is, what I bring here is only a measly 30%, this blog would be nothing without you. You guys, the Gang brings in the much appreciated 70%. I could choose to delude myself that I’m a well-oiled machine and that I can buoy this ship up alone. I can’t. But you do, every week. You come here and you read and you say something sensible. Sometimes, when you are inspired you share with your friends. Some of you even plagiarize my whole post and pass it off as your own on Facebook, a most cheap and invertebrate behavior, but one that somehow is flattering in a way. I won’t sue you, life will.

You come here every Monday not because you owe me something but because you want to give me a chance. And what’s life without chances anyway? Even though you can be mean and vindictive – as perhaps I rightfully deserve- you still have the heart to make a call here.

In March I walked into some building for a meeting, a most random of places and after the meeting one of the ladies asked me, “Are you bikozulu?” I said yes and she said she started reading when I wrote about the lady who found out her mother was not her real mother (“Abandoned” I think) She said the comments on that blog post “healed” her. She proceeded to thank me like I had donated my kidney and you should have seen me standing there undeservedly taking all your credit. So there, Gang, you guys “healed” a woman. Your good deed for this quarter.

I thought of doing a tribute to some of the familiar guys who come here regularly and comment but they are too many and if I left out a few, I certain some will sulk(*coughBencough*) But thank you for stopping by. Thank you for reading and for taking time to comment whenever you can. Thank you for picking out my typos and for correcting my grammar. Thank you for subscribing and for bookmarking. Thank you, ever so much, for sharing with your pals. Thank you for your erect sense of humor. But most importantly, thank you for being here every week.

It’s been 1 year 4months of doing this. Nobody broke a limb. We all had a decent inning. I would be honored if you joined me again on the other side. Shall we?

The people who come to this bar come here not because they can’t go to the more uptown bars which place your drink on a coaster and serve you complimentary olives. They come to this bar because they all speak the language of art, a most conflicting language. They come here because they find comfort in the lack of paintings on the walls and the smell of old paint. They come for the tale. These guys are my friends, or friends of my friends. Which makes them my friends.

Backstage is small drab windowless room stripped bare of furniture. On the wall are two hooks from which hang a black hat and a black trench coat, my official storytelling thread. The fact that the room is bare and void tells a story about my own quest for something bigger than myself.

The back door leads into the street. I have a key. Every week I ease into this room, throw on the trench coat on my back, perch the hat on my head and stand in the middle of the room for a moment or so, perusing through a small book- the only thing I carry to the stage. The book contains all these inscriptions that lead me to a story. I belong to this room.

I will, at some point – using a small door at the edge of the stage – saunter onto the stage. Well, not exactly saunter, more like appear on the stage, like a dark night. There, I will perch on a high stool and before these thirteen or so friends, tell stories. I will tell stories about myself, stories about other people and sometimes stories about animals; like pigs and cows. Never about poultry. I avoid eye contact while I tell these stories because eyeing this small crowd would mean (at least in my world) that I’m begging for their approval. And I don’t beg. But I tell these stories earnestly and with as much honesty as I can muster. Sometimes I make up bits of these stories, but only as a structural aid. I thrive on hyperbole. I embrace grandiosity. I welcome, with wide arms, literary prostitution.

I come on this stage every week in spite of my state of mind. I come on when I’m blue, when I’m not ready or I’ve over prepared. I come here when I’m in excellent mood. Sometimes I come when I have stuff on my mind; those are days I come bearing a weak story. Then there are days that being on stage feels like the only thing that matters but other times getting off the stage matters more. But the stage still remains my only lair because it accepts me wholly, like a woman in love.

This room always sinks in loud silence as I tell these long tales and my voice – disemboweled and alien – always feels like someone else’s voice. In this room I speak in petite paragraphs but also in long rhetoric. In this room I try to create commas with a nod. Once in a while spasms of laughter run down the spine of the room. Other times the rapt silence becomes my only ally. I come here and tell stories with my heart worn on my sleeves. I wear it on my sleeves because I’m a storyteller but also because I’m the company of those who care about my heart and I do it once a week because that’s how it was intended to be by the gods of Amadioha. After I’m done, I get off the stage with no fanfare because I hate exhibitions, because I hate ceremony. I’m the guy who quietly slips out back, an “Irish Exit.” So I don’t wait to hear the applause or the long uncomfortable pause of dissatisfaction. I get off, remove my hat and coat backstage and I ease out of the room and into the street. Back to my life.

Then one day I come onto the stage and everything has changed.

I find myself in a different bar. A bigger room.  And everything in the bar has changed; drinks sit on coasters, there are bourgeois paintings on the wall, and are those table cloths? And who is that waitress rocking a sideburn? Where is Roda?  And the crowd is different; it’s bigger and louder. A boisterous crowd. Strangers. Hundreds of them. Insatiable lot. The Gang.

Later, after I’m done with my story, and I’m clumsily stuffing away my small dog-eared book into my pocket and I’m adjusting my hat and climbing off the high stool, something interesting happens. Someone at the back of the room, shouts, “Oi Jackson! Oi! Is that it, mate? Is that the story? Come on Jackson! Come on!” There are a few reluctant and almost embarrassed chuckles in the crowd. A few people nod in agreement while some are caught between loyalty and the truth. I’m concerned of course, concerned that he dared to call me Jackson!

I step from the stool and shuffle silently out of the room, into the backstage where I find an elderly man wearing a black suit and a red bowtie waiting backstage. He smells of Yolanda pomade. He takes my hat and my coat and hangs them in a closet because things have changed and now there are no hooks. “Tough crowd, eh?” he mumbles avoiding my eye. I grunt a thank you and ease out of the building. Back to my life.

Here is what happened. While I was busy telling stories things changed; the crowd grew bigger and the bar moved uptown to a much better address where people speak up – even if they have nothing much to say. I woke up one morning to a daunting realization that the crowd also had a share of claim to the stories I told. That it was their story too. I woke up to the harrowing awareness that the crowd had grown teeth and that they weren’t shy to use it. I had created a monster.

Because the crowd does not consist of my friends anymore they are more adept to voicing their true feelings because now they use coasters. People who use coasters have a sense of entitlement – real or imagined. And for me, the pressure to pander to the whims of this new animated crowd has become a real danger because that threatens the way the story is told.

However, although a lot has changed I haven’t changed. I can’t change. I still wear my black hat, I still wear my black trench coat and I still tell my stories the way I want to tell them. I tell them for an hour and I tell them in my prose. I tell them seated on the same long stool and I still avoid eye contact. Even though the bar has changed I continue to come here every week to tell my stories; weak stories, strong stories, funny stories, sad stories, clean stories, dirty stories, stories about people and animals but never about poultry. I don’t come on the stage to impress or to entertain. I don’t crave to be loved or to revile but only to be listened to. I don’t seek notoriety or pursue irreverence. I come to “free” myself. I come to belong.

But I could decide not to come on the stage the days that I’m not “feeling it” the days that words feel heavy on my tongue and my heart is weighted with angst. But I come regardless. On those days, I don’t say, hell, the stage can wait another week  when I’m in my element because I then I would be missing the biggest (and only) point of this stage because coming on has never been a thing I do when I’m up for it or when I’m in my element. Coming on this stage every week has always been about commitment, not to the crowd, but to myself. It’s a covenant I made with my pen.

If you see Roda, tell her I want her back. Tell her the bar has never been the same without her. Tell her she is the only thing that can bring me comfort in these strange times of coasters and paintings on walls and of aged men who help me out of my trench coat. Tell her that I’m sorry I never bothered to inquire about the profound sadness in her eyes. But if she is not convinced by my earnest call to have her back, mention to her that they are abusing her profession by hiring women in sideburns to wait on tables. If she ever cared about her job then she will come back upon hearing that -if only to shave the sideburns off that waitress’s face.

It’s not that Kenya Power did a number on me. Or that I had a long weekend and I’m hang-overed. No. Neither did my laptop die on me. I didn’t travel. I’m not depressed. I’m not in a bad place in my life. I don’t have sleepless nights, or nightmares. I’m not in debt up to my knees. I’m not hallucinating. I checked my BMI over the weekend and it’s fine; I’m in sound health. The dog didn’t eat my homework. I had an excellent weekend, one marked with laughter and a new belated discovery; shawarmas. My mind is crisp like an apple bite. I’m in mint condition (remember that 90’s group?). I feel good about myself. I feel good about you, insatiable gang. I feel good about the world. And about my brothers in South Sudan. Life is good and it’s as promising as a revelation of nakedness.

But I just won’t write shit.

(Note that I didn’t say can’t)

Here is how this cookie normally crumbles. I never really latch on something to write about here until Sunday afternoon. But throughout the week it usually comes in form of spurts of ideas, little quirts of themes that are dying to be garnished into a story. Most of them are usually rubbish only a few hold a flicker of promise. Normally I would pick on one of those ideas, sit down and bang it into shape. Usually I’d get excited about an idea but sometimes I approach it with the same enthusiasm you would accord going for a root canal.

However I’m never worried when by Sunday morning I haven’t latched on any solid idea because I eventually it usually comes to me like a spasm up my spine. Sometimes it comes to me late Sunday night and I bang it into the night then clean it up Monday dawn and post it up here by 10.30am. Or thereabout.

But it’s Monday and I don’t have a first draft, much less an idea. I have zip.

It’s not that I don’t have a topic to write about, I do. There are always tons of things to write about. In fact sometimes you run into something a writer wrote and you wonder why you hadn’t thought of it sooner- like The Wag’s well written Minimalist story in today’s gazeti. I have ideas, it’s just that I’m not stimulated enough to put it out. I’m not excited enough to translate them into words. I think excitement is a big part of writing. In fact excitement is fundamentally the only part of writing.

Because I have monthly and weekly columns to fill I – like any writer out there really – have this animal called an Ice Box. I have mine on my phone, in my Notes. Old school journalist used to walk around everywhere with a notepad and a pen stuck behind their ears incase an idea popped in as they are cutting through steak. Now we have phones. And phones have notepads.

My Ice Box lives in my phone.

This is where all the clutter in my head is preserved. Half thought out ideas. Nice quotes I pick from people. Books I need to buy. Movies mentioned somewhere that are worth checking out. Names of writers I need to google. Websites I need to visit. Sexy sentences I read somewhere. Idioms. Similes. Phrases. Intros I wrote in moments I was though I was in my element, intros that always seem worthless and bland much later. My Ice Box is like a modern woman’s bag; large labyrinths full of stuff that only they understand. A smorgasbord of bits and things.

Whenever I’m not inspired to write (like now) I normally peep into my Ice Box and check out what can be turned into stories we could tell with our eyes closed. It’s my way of seeking excitement.

In fact let me show some of the things I have in my blog Ice Box. There is Bravia, high definition men. Ass. This is a piece I have always wanted to write about Ole Polos which I visited not too long ago. The first time I heard that word was from my pal Amos, a gigantic chap with six tattoos spread on his arms and his back. He was showing me something (contraband) in his car boot when some drunken fella staggered by lugging a bottle of beer in one hand and a hot giggly woman on the other -a much normal Ole Polos tableau. As they passed us we turned to look because she had- under her very short skirt – long lovely legs which drastically ended up on a flat ass. A terrible terrible tragedy. Amos, in his signature rabid sarcasm shook his head and muttered, “A Bravia.” I didn’t imagine he was talking about a television set so I asked what a Bravia meant and he said nonchalantly that a bravia was guy euphemism for a flat ass. It immediately went into my Ice Box.  I hoped to write something about how the woman you are with defines you as a man. Men will judge other men by the female company they keep. You either lose points or you gain. A bravia, in my side of the pond, makes you lose points -unless she is your sister. Or cousin.  I planned to write a piece why my kith and kin bow to this part of the female anatomy.

Then there Fish & forty thieves. This is a note I wrote the last time I was in Kisumu, en route to Kakamega. It’s about the lousy Luo business acumen, which is in reference to the carwash guys at the lake who, while they wash your car, siphon off your fuel: the best way to have repeat customers. I’ve never come around to writing it because it’s ranty and has a weak structure. Plus I’m afraid the temperamental chaps from Kondele will get onto a Akamba and come looking for me lugging fake Louis Vuitoon (yes, made and re-spelled in Kirinyaga) bags bearing stones.

Then there is a note about taking my daughter to hospital at 2am and meeting a young clueless Asian doctor intern, four prostitutes and a chap called Tom, their pimp or someone they care for greatly. Then there is an idea about my encounter with a Kenyan “celebrity”, a most annoying and shallow encounter. Then there is one on Mother’s Day which I sort of ended up writing for the main stream. Then there is a note about a one year anniversary blogging, which sort of passed without my noticing. Some notes don’t make sense to me because either I wrote them in a bar or when I was headed there. Others are alive but require excitement.

Hell, I could have written about the amount of emails I have received from campus students over this weekend whining about something I wrote over the weekend. Emails that were vitriolic, generally badly written and with the customary street grammar. Emails that generally called me many names; illiterate, useless, shallow, irresponsible, uninformed, fake, imbecile and one which even crossed the line and mentioned my mother (that I couldn’t resist replying to) But largely I was amused by them and I was tempted to lift them and paste them here (without the names of course) and make a literary collage of them to showcase how decorum, common decency and civility are virtues that have long been banished from our institutions of higher learning. But you need to be a real idle person and one who loves drama to do that. I’m neither.

So there, I have lots to write about but zero willpower to see it through. It would be nice to blame the cold, but that would be too easy.

Let’s keep it warm and together, gang.

But – just like Galileos – parking is shit at Sailors. After three Vitz and five Mitsubishi Lancers have parked nothing much is left. Thankfully because the watchmen are cool guys, they normally open this black gate behind the club and let me park in this filthy backstreet that teems with dirty puddles of water when it rains, alley cats and other dregs of the night. The staff-only backdoors of the club spill into this alley and once in a while you will find a uniformed member of staff sneaking in a quick cigarette while the alley cats linger in the shadows, wary of secondhand smoke. I belong to this alley – the higher quest for debauchery has never been dissuaded by a little discomfort, gang.

A few weeks ago, I reversed into this alley at around 11pm with noble intentions of having one drink…in the club, not the alley. There was a couple leaning on this nice black Toyota Harrier. Or rather, the bird was leaning on the Harrier and the man was leaning on her. She was very light, so light she glowed in the dark. She wore a black dress, this massive, colorful beaded necklace and a large belt that embraced her waist. She wore short hair dyed brown (or peroxide) and not many women can pull off that short hair look well. In fact I can only think of two; Toni Braxton and Jean Wanjiku. Google them. Anyway, she looked divine and you would – fleetingly – understand why the guy was breathing down her cleavage.  I can’t remember what the guy was wearing though, but in hindsight I think he was wearing Desperation.

He had had a few. So had I. Hell, everyone in that alley had had a few…except the cats.

When I stepped out of the car, I realized that he was trying to feel her. You know in that way that a guy would touch a woman in the hope of convincing her to come home with him? Yes. And his voice was low and tender; like a rustling leaf in the wind. He sounded like a guy trying so hard to convince a child to take Scots Emulsion.

Problem was she wasn’t feeling him that way, I could tell from her body language as soon as I glanced over at them. It’s not like she hated being groped about in the alley like a woman of wobbly morals, I suspect she really just wasn’t ready to take it home. Anyway, as I’m locking up the Alley Whisperer spoke up to me; “Boss, I’m just leaving, do you mind letting me pass?”

I said sawa. I was blocking him, or rather a dustbin was, so I had to move ahead and let him maneuver around it.

He then raised one finger, “In a moment please, if you don’t mind.”

I didn’t mind, for two reasons; one, he was effusively polite and I like people who are polite. Secondly he was a man on the hunt and we have all been there. I mean when a guy is trying to score – out of respect – you step aside and let him close the deal even if the odds are stacked against him. We all share a common fate, men. I have never seen a guy go through something and thought, “Ha, that can never happen to me,” because I know it can. So I stood against the wall and pretended to make a phone call when all I was doing was eye them from the corner of my eyes.

He wanted to take her home. He wanted to take her home badly and she kept saying it was too soon. I wondered why she had come all the way to his car only to say she wasn’t ready to rumble. Did she see the alley cats and change her mind?

But he was unrelenting; he tried all the tricks in the book to convince her. He tried tracing the contours of her face with one finger- the finger he had held up at me asking me to wait. That finger- unfortunately – wasn’t going to break the ice. It had been beaten by the wind and was now cold. A mummy’s finger. I bet she felt like someone was running frozen fish-finger down her face because she kept pulling her face away whenever he run that finger down her face. Then he tried to kiss her neck…like that would make her knees turn into jelly. But she stood sturdy, like Goliath. I was beginning to enjoy this spectacle.

The fact was, the night wasn’t his. I’m no love guru, but I could tell that girl wasn’t going to get into that car. Hell, the alley cats knew the bird wasn’t getting into that car if there was a free pedicure and manicure in there!

But he seemed ignorant of this fact, even when anybody who had a pulse could tell the sheer futility of his mission.  And he was getting desperate and women can smell desperation though your Azzaro Chrome…hell, as it turned out, so can cats because at some point one of the alley cats shook its head and sauntered away, ashamed of being a part of the charade. But even in the face of this blatant disinterest (of the girl, not the cat) he really thought he would turn the tables. He thought the stars would align themselves suddenly and she would say, “OK, let’s go but I will sleep in the spare room.”

To tell you the truth, at some desperate point I started rooting for him, not because he had asked me to wait politely but because he was a guy. I really wanted him to turn everything around. I wanted the night to be his. I wanted him to triumph because he was at least trying (albeit too hard) even though his horniness was pressing the mission (was that a pun?)

But would you blame him? Maybe the girl had touched the back of his neck the whole time as they drunk. Or maybe she had stroked his thighs with her soft hands and said something like, “These thighs remind me of the thighs in the movie Troy, have you seen the movie Troy?” and he had nodded even though he hadn’t seen the damned movie. Maybe at some point she had leaned into his ear and whispered compliments about his dreadlocks (“I loooove you locks, you should do a Pilsner ad, Pilsner Mfalme, grrrh.” Hehehe).  How could he not believe her? Tell a man anything while he is drinking and chances he will believe you, but only if you lean in his left ear and whispers it…s.l.o.w.l.y.  The devil lives in the left ear.

So I bet at some point of the evening he thought the girl was in the bag. In fact he had played the last scene scenario in his head; how he would switch on the lights to his pad as they walked in and he would herd her to his aquarium where he would introduce him to Doshi, – his 3-month old Goldfish – and act like he bloody cares deeply about fauna. As if he is kind to animals. Hehe. He had pictured how he would sit her on the sofa and pour her a small drink and act like ripping off her dress with his teeth was the last thing on his mind. That all he wanted was to talk, like he is the kind of guy who only wanted to listen to her first, to know who she was and what her dreams were before he had his way with her. Like he is just the kind of sensitive guy who loves to stare into a woman’s eyes and really listen to her at 11pm in the night even with booze and lust soaring through his veins.

Then unpredictably it ends in the alley, with cats as an audience.

But we have all been there. We have all been led to the watering hole; dizzy with lust, a throbbing vein running down our forehead, our throats dry with anticipation and then at the final hour the carpet is yanked from under our feet! Wham!

Anyway, he kept planting these small baby kisses on her forehead and she kept pushing his head away in a way that would have broken a baby buffalo’s neck. He then tried sweet words and when that also failed, he tried reverse psychology: “You don’t even like me, this must be a game to you,” he said. I looked away and smiled hard. And when that also failed he stood back and glared at her. I mean really glared at her in such a way that made the alley cats that were enjoying this free entertainment slowly step further back into the shadows with fear.

They stood there and stared at each other; her hugging herself against the car and him half a meter from her, poring a hole in her with his wrathful and disappointed eyes. At this point he sort of embraced the possibility that she wasn’t coming with him. I wondered what he would have said to the author of the book The Secrets, which states that if you want something so bad the universe will conspire to give it to you. He would probably laugh bitterly and use the pages of The Secrets to wrap matumbo. It was 10.30PM, the universe was asleep, and that was no secret.

I felt sorry for him if you want to know the truth, not because he had come to the jarring realization that he would go home alone, but because he wanted to cry. As he stood there glaring at Miss Thing, I honestly thought he would use his last card and start weeping and perhaps the girl would hold his head to her bosom and he would softly weep between her breasts but with a small wicked smile. But that girl was Idi Amin’s distant relative because she did no such thing. She leaned back adamantly and shook her head and called him by his name for the first, “Mark, I can’t. Not today.” And I wanted to walk over and ask her: why not, lady? Why not today? What if today was all Mark had? What if tomorrow Mark falls down a staircase and breaks his back and is unable to raise as much as that cold finger thereafter? What if tomorrow Mark wakes up and forgets who he is or who you are? What if tomorrow Marks wakes up and develops an erectile malfunction? What if tomorrow Mark wakes up and realizes he is gay after all? Or worse, what if Mark turns into an alley cat tomorrow? Eh? Then what lady? Then what?! Why don’t you work with Mark here, throw him a bone (damn, these puns). Why don’t you save him from himself, come on, what do you say you do your good deed for the day tonight? Then I’d turn to Mark and say, “Isn’t that right, Mark?”

“Correcto Mundo!” he would holler, Samuel L. Jackson style.

But I didn’t, instead I pretended to be getting impatient at waiting because it had been 3mins after all. Between you and me, I find desperation shockingly entertaining. I think for anyone to get to a point where they toss away their pride and make an ass of themselves is beautiful material for dark comedy. We have all been there.

Eventually Mark got into his car, slammed the door so hard the cats got ulcers and I got into mine and moved out of the way for him to pass. He then sulkily drove out, past the dustbin, and left her standing there. The stench of desperation and anger hung in the air in his wake.

As I walked away I heard an alley cat sigh loudly, or was it a giggle?

You can tell where this is headed, eh? Me too.

Since I try and make a Monday commitment here, I decided to wait it out. I read a book, then cut my nails, then made some tea, then played with my lil’ girl – a morbid game where she opens her eyes wide then comes about an inch from my face. Whoever blinks first is the loser. I let her win, but only because she had eaten these boiled eggs (she loves ‘em, I hate ‘em) and I wasn’t too hot about her breath. Then I got on Twitter the land of the t-witty and roamed my timeline, later I got on Facebook and read those “tunga sentensi” jokes, which gets old very quickly. Then I sat and intensely stared at a spot on the wall and my spirit floated out of the room and then the house and the estate and I went to some KPLC hot shot’s house, found him shaving his chest, and I took a hot iron rod and pressed it against his chest, singing hair as it burned into his skin. He wailed. Boy, did he wail!

By 9pm power had not come back. My phone died. I was left in the living room, sitting there in semi-darkness, staring at the candle. Then the candle died. Then I sat there in complete darkness, occasionally reaching out and munching on some peanuts. I love peanuts; peanuts are man’s best friend. If you were to illustrate this on a cartoon strip you would have a character that looks like one of those black red lipped natives in Asterix series sitting with his hands on his knees. In fact you would only see red lips in darkness, opening and closing, chowing his life away in darkness. I finally gave up and retired at 10pm. Power was back when I woke up at 5am, and I would have written something then only I had to go jogging because, let’s be honest with each other, my mental and physical health is more important than 2,000 words.

In short; I didn’t write anything today. Ok, I did, 17 words. What good is that?

I know how this will play out. Someone will come on and comment calling me a slacker. Or ask, why didn’t you charge your damned laptop? Why didn’t you carry it to a pal with power and write from there? Have you run out of ideas Biko? Who do you think you are? You are becoming big headed. We shall burn you! We hate you!

But thankfully most of you will understand. Most of you will know that you can’t write with an unpowered laptop. You will know that when things don’t turn out the way you hoped they would you look for a silver lining. You eat boiled eggs. You open your eyes wide. And you don’t blink.

Good week gang.

His name is Simon. But the five of us call him “Daddy.” We have always called him daddy. Simon never keeps his hair. He shaves close to the scalp. He wears stubble, peppered with white hair. He has always worn Gillette Aftershave, never cologne. He has worn Gillette since God was a boy. I can smell out Gillette Aftershave anywhere in a crowded street and it always reminds me of the old man.

He wears spectacles – a rogue gene all the men in our family picked from him. He turned 61yrs in March this year; I didn’t call him to wish him a happy birthday. I didn’t call him because I didn’t know it was his birthday. You see, growing up we didn’t cherish birthdays. We didn’t go hoo-haa over birthdays. We didn’t blow candles or cut cakes. We didn’t buy each other gifts and cards during birthdays. It was not a part of our socialization process. It was never in the constitution of my family. Consequently I have never thought much of the whole birthday brouhaha. If you forget my birthday I will not get a hernia. I will not demand for a white forest cake bearing my picture or threaten to kill a hostage every half hour. I’m easy, it’s just a birthday.

My father is a scholar- an academician. He’s well read. His specialty is history and literature, that’s all he has lectured all his life. That’s all he has known all his life. I know nobody who reads voraciously, I know nobody who is fascinated more with Karl Marx and Lenin and Elechi Amadi. Growing up, while most households had a huge wall-unit (those relics which housed those cutlery for “wageni” hehe) we had a huge bookshelf creaking with novels and memoirs and bland history books that smelled of another era. He arranged those books meticulously and he would know by just standing before the bookshelf if one book was missing from that forest. And he encouraged us to read those books. The presence of that bookshelf, a simple wooden structure, intimidated me more than he did. It was a constant reminder of what I had to top and although he never came out and created a career path for any of us, that bookshelf represented the mountain we had to climb to be half the man he was. It was a monument of Simon, it embodied the man. I felt pressured.

My father has never laid a hand on me, or any of our siblings. Our neighbor when we were growing up – an irate Kisii man – always flogged his boys whenever they erred and I was always grateful for my old man for not being like him. He left the dirty work to my mother who I think got a self esteem boost from beating us up, Hehehe. That woman would beat you up as if you were venomous.

But at 6’1’’ tall my old man is an intimidating guy. He has the look of a man who is only two heartbeats from violence. He has large hands. He has wide shoulders. Since he is a teetotaler he never really grew a paunch. He swam. He played squash. He played soccer. He was always fit. He is a man who could take you on. And he has cold eyes. You knew you were out of line when he shot you a cold snake-like look. He would coolly look at you for a few endless seconds, then he would slowly look away. Then you knew better than not repeat whatever you did. I never once thought I could step up to my father, not when I was a cocky teenager, not when I was a young adult, and certainly not now when I’m a father because Simon is a different kind of animal. His presence might be silent but fills a room, his authority is subtle but obsolete. He’s a man’s man.

I have a friend of mine who has twin boys. The two rascals are two years old now and together they wreck havoc in that house. They tear down anything that was built by man. They stick cookies in the DVD player. They try to feed the dog their mom’s heels. They pee in the potted plant. They are a twin force of nature. And they are fat. I always tell my homeboy, “Chief, you are 35yrs old, join a gym for chrissake, trust me you will thank me later because trust me those boys will one day hit puberty – weaned on Youtube and Terrific Tuesday pizza – and one day, one fateful day, one of them will step up to you and stare you down. Then what? Then what when you are fat and wobbly and you throw a punch like a female dog? But if you are a fit sonofagun you will be able to draw the line on the sand when that happens, you will make it clear as to who runs that ship, as to who pays the damn rent in that house and if you miss that opportunity to stamp authority the politics of power would have irredeemably shifted in your household and things will never be the same.”  He always laughs when I tell him that, saying I’m being too dramatic, but you wait. Pato, you wait. You’re going down.

My dad is retired. He’s happy in shagz. Happier than anyone thought he would be. We thought he would wilt. He wakes up and drives his battered – but much loved – 1984 Peugeot 505 some odd twenty clicks to some teachers college where he lectures part-time. He fills his days tending to his trees, he loves trees. He fills his days pruning flowers or cutting hedges. In the afternoons, when it’s hot, he sits in the verandah reading a book or listening to BBC or Ramogi FM, while my mom lies on the matt (or par, as we call it in Luo) trying to get his attention with some measly village gossip. He ignores her. And as the sun goes down, he helps the herds-boy herd in the cows in the kraal.

My old man doesn’t suffer small time, something I picked from him. He doesn’t know the art of small talk, so invariably – and perhaps because he’s a teetotaler – he hardly leave his home to visit other homes, maybe to visit his mother across the hill, or go to church.  He talks only when he feels that the exchange will bring him value. He has the sense of humor of an exhaust pipe but he is nice to talk to because you always learn something new something deep. I have never heard him say he’s sorry, a very proud man and a bit of a snob. But everybody respects him. And the few who don’t respect him fear him.

I’m not close to my father. I’m not close to him because he handled fatherhood like it was an aristocracy. There was always a cloak around him, an air of supremacy. He provided. He was there. But he was never a friend. I don’t know how to be my father’s friend. I admire him immensely, I love him but I don’t know how to be his friend. To his credit he made an effort; every Sunday he took the whole family for lunch and we sat around the table and he asked us about school (he always asked about school) but those conversations, those meetings felt so sanitized, so stripped off warmth. I guess my mother always saw the weakness and filled it with her irrepressible humor and irretrievable sarcasm. But still I always wonder whether I would have turned out differently had the old man treated us like his pal, you know, bit more open to laughter. Me not being my father’s friend is not as hopeless as it sounds, I can assure you it’s not it’s just that I wish I could talk to him, confide in him, like I talk to my mom. I desperately want to be his friend, but I don’t know how to at this age.

There was a time Joseph Bonyo (business writer) and I were having a chat in Maasai Mara about our fathers and I remember telling me how close they are with his father, how they talk on phone for long, how they often go to the bar together and drink like they are brothers and I felt like pushing him in the swimming pool. I felt a little loss. I envied him. I have always suspected that men who are close to their fathers always posses a slightly stronger compass for finding the heart of their manhood. That those men posses more pronounced traits of manhood. I don’t know, I’m no Dr. Phil.

There are only three occasions my dad has betrayed emotions before me. One was when he hugged me (for the very first time) when I graduated. Second when I saw tears in his eyes when my mom was in ICU and lastly this time I was 11yrs old. It was on a Saturday, we were dressing up for church when my zipper caught my foreskin. Shit. A heartbreak is not painful; in fact the only thing more painful than a zipper on your foreskin is cancer. I yelled like a little girl. I didn’t call my mom, I called him. He came and spent half hour trying to free my foreskin from the blood zip, dabbing it with cotton wool dipped in methylated spirit. I have never seen him more worried. Two years later – iwe funzo kwa foreskin wengine wenye tabia kama hayo*- I went under the knife to the damned foreskin chopped off.

My old man always banged on two drums; the importance of education and the power of self discipline. He believed that as a man you were nothing if you didn’t have any sound education, if you lacked in education you invariably lacked in statue. But also he felt that if you didn’t respect yourself as a man, if you don’t have self discipline then you have no reason calling yourself a man. Once in a while when we go down shagz he will always roll out some nugget of wisdom. He’s always rolling out stuff like, “The only way you are going to get wisdom from your woman is if you pull your weight.” Or “The moment you stop paying your rent and sending your kid to school, that’s the day you will lose your voice in the house. Never lose your voice; it’s all you have as a man.” Or “Never look at the floor when you are walking, it’s weak.”

But it’s naive to sit here and bang on about my father and review his style of fatherhood because fatherhood is complex.  He raised five, I’m struggling with one. But the little I’ve learnt is that like everything else in life, fatherhood is about finding the right equilibrium. And to find it you have face questions like; how much do you love and how far can you go in love before it starts being toxic to the kid? And how the hell do you instill values?  When do you punish and how? And what the hell is quality time? How do you balance it when you leave work at 11pm and when you have a moment you just want to close your eyes for a shut-eye? How do you want your child to remember you? And when you take her to the hospital and the pediatrician asks you, “how does her stool smell like?” What are you supposed to say? I mean, what does stool smell like where you come from Doc? Does it smell like fresh grapes? Because where I come from stool smells like shit.

So jana as I drove old man around, he asked about the new job and I handed him the latest magazine. He studiously perused through it, reading and occasionally grunting.

“What’s your readership?” he growled. I told him. He continued reading occasionally taking an interest in a particular article before flipping over a page. Finally he announced, “Good edit, it’s a sound read.” But what about my forwarding piece, read my forwarding piece, I whined. So he went back and read my piece, more closely. He nodded at some point then finally closed it and said, “It’s nice, but always remember that you have to capitalize the first word after a colon only if it’s a proper noun or the start of a complete sentence and also not that colons go outside quotation marks unless they are part of the quoted material.”

“Huh?!” I asked.

“Watch that matatu, they are mad.”

Happy belated Fatherday to all the struggling fathers reading this.

His life has – since childhood- orbited around Nairobi. He suffers from the same affliction that most Americans suffer from; that appalling ignorance that beyond the borders of America is nothing but endless sea and aliens. He too has grown up believing that nothing substantial exists beyond Nairobi. Now he is in Busia of all the godforsaken places, population, what 50,000? Now he has to stop for cows and goats to cross the road. And God keep your soul well should you even dare run over a chicken. Suffice it to say, he is bewildered by his new existence..

Their Busia office is small, he told me. They are seven in number; five Luhyas and a jang and himself – the Fresh Prince from Kabete, Hehehe. The official language in the office is a terrifying blend of Lunje and English, although he says he can never tell the difference. Behind their office, he told me, is a small shamba which he realized the accountant uses to grow pilipili, sukumawiki and peas. “One afternoon she actually nipped out during office hours to go work in the shamba,” he told me. That killed me!  Tea is drunk in the office all the time…even at lunch time, he told me (not that that is in itself shocking)

The tea girl/messenger/chapati seller is a woman he has never seen without a leso, he emailed me, a most disturbing choice of office wear. When I suggested that perhaps he should look at the bright side of it, he asked, what could possibly be the bright side of one of the workers wearing a leso to work, I told him that there is always a pearl of Swahili wisdom inscribed at the bottom of the lesos, like “mwanamke sio urembo, ni tabia.” Or something along those lines. I told him to fill his days reading those sayings from her leso, who knows it might be therapeutic for him. It might bring him peace and tranquility.

Now my pal didn’t end up in Busia because he is a sharp pencil who is going to add value to their Busia office. He didn’t get the transfer because Busia office needed him there, or anyone else for that matter. Busia office is fine.  No, he is convinced that he was taken to Busia because his boss wanted him out of the way. His boss wanted him out of the way because he was having too many drinks with a certain girl the boss was having too many lunches with. It’s not a love triangle…no, there is no triangle, yet. It’s at the stage where everyone takes their application papers to be reviewed; it’s the stage where small interviews are conducted in bars and coffee houses and in the parking basement.

He noticed a problem when the boss’s attitude towards him started becoming somewhat frosty. The boss, normally an otherwise pleasant chap, stopped cracking jokes the usual jokes with him, stopped stopping by his desk for a tete-a-tete. I remember him asking me what I made of the whole situation and in my naiveté I advised him to dig in his oars because his boss clearly had the cards stacked against him; he’s married, heavily bearded (think Al Shabaab) and worse he’s the kind of guy who first pours a little beer in his glass to clean it. My friend on the other hand is single, is great friends with Gillette and doesn’t clean his glass with his beer.  I really thought it was a no brainer. “That girl is yours for the taking chief,” I told him.

And that’s the problem with underestimating your rival; you don’t see him sending the curve ball. And By Josh, we didn’t see this move; with one stroke of the pen and wham! My friend was being shipped to Busia. Now that’s power ladies and gentlemen, that boss is a born guerrilla.  And I mean you can’t afford not to be impressed by the sheer genius of this move; send the pesky guy to a village somewhere to grow old and miserable.

The boss is hoping that my pal will either run mad from the lethargy of village life, or impregnate a village girl and get locked down there for life, or worse get gored and maimed by a cow suffering from Foot and Mouth disease. And he gets to seduce the prize back here without any pressure. Brilliance! However, I don’t even know why I’m so surprised because this move has always been employed by the great players of the Bible; like King David who would send you to war to get your heart speared so that he could have your wife. The things men do to win will move you.

His boss is 43yrs old, or thereabout, my pal is 34. But clearly age and experience counts for something here. I bet this boss sleeps using Nicollo Machiavelli’s book – The Art of War- as a pillow. I bet Hitler, Mugabe and Zuma are his idols, hell throw in Onyancha in there as well for good measure. I bet he has a huge aquarium full of piranhas in his house. The bastard’s cunning. I like him!

My pal is not taking being outfoxed very well. I thought he would get over it, but I guess watching cows and goats graze from your office window is gravely traumatizing. He called me on Saturday. He’s nostalgic, he misses Nai, he calls to find out if Nairobi has moved an inch towards Nakuru. After every three seconds in our conversation he keeps asking, “So what’s happening back there, what’s new?” Nothing is new damn it.

“So what does a programs co-coordinator do on a loose Sato in Busia, watch a bullfight perhaps?” I mocked him.

He sighed heavily. “I could go to some bar across the street and drink in some seedy bar and listen to them trash Mudavadi, but I did that last weekend and it wasn’t all that.”

“So where are you now?”

“In my hotel room, watching TV with mchele mchele.” He said glumly.

“You are on which floor?”

“Third floor. Why?”

“Don’t try and jump, you will only break your ribs, at worst your ego. You need to go beyond eight floors and above to kill yourself.”

Tired chuckle from his end.

“Hey, why don’t you drive to Kisumu, it’s only, what, 90kms away?” I sparked trying to save his life.

“Boss, I know nobody in Kisumu.”

“Well, I do. I could give you some phone numbers of a few boys and girls you can call; they are good company- if you are buying at least.”

He laughs. “Achieng and Anyango, eh?”

“You know.”

“Nah. I will be coming Nai next weekend.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How’z Mukami anyway?” I ask. Mukami is the chick who got his ass exiled to Busia.

“She is fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You still think it’s still a two-horse race?” I ask.

“It was never a two-horse race, the other one was an ass all this time.”

Hahaha. Do you feel the bitterness in this guy’s talk, or it’s just me gang?

He continued after I had stopped coughing in the phone. “But seriously, I dunno man; she says she likes me a lot and all. I dunno. I don’t think it will go anywhere. What do you think?”

[By the way, that’s male code for “I like that girl and I still think it can go somewhere.” ]

“Well I think your boss is a genius, that’s what I think.” I say.

“He’s an @#$hole.”

“He won. Come on admit it, you would have done the same thing. Hell, if I was him I would have sent you further, like to Mbita or Rusinga Island.”

“Hahaha, where is Mbita by the way?”

“Mbita is Otieno Kajwang’s hood. From Kisumu you jump into those mats where people sit facing each other to a place called Luanda Ko’Otieno where you jump into a boat full of jabbering women, a boat that you will often share with a goat or chicken or a sewing machine. In Mbita your best bet of entertainment is watching fishermen haggle with big bummed women at the beach. So be grateful you are in Busia.”

“Haha, yes, remind me to send my boss a “Thank you” note.”

“But seriously, you could fly down every second weekend, but proximity is key and this lizard has the edge now because he is with her not in the same town but in the same damned building, the damage he can do while you watching pilipili grow in that garden behind your office is massive. But even if he stands no chance with her, there are a whole bunch of sharks out here who are constantly sending their resume. Take my advice, look for a nice Luhya woman there and live your life, back here we shall do or best to remember you as a fun, respectful, God fearing young man, albeit who tried washing his hands in the same bowl as his boss.”

We laugh, but it’s a hollow laughter from his end, I realize that I’m taking the joke too far. Thing with us men is that we never want to show vulnerability before other men, we want to thump our chests and exhibit bravado. And we should. So my pal was just keeping a brave face. He is to be in Busia for a year then he head back. That’s more than enough time his boss needs to sink his ship even if he sucks so much at dates that all he does is sing her hymns.

The conversation drifted to something interesting. I jokingly mentioned that I have interesting minds in my blog, guys who can give his situation a better perspective than I was. Hell, even go further and suggest how he can still keep Mukami interested all the way from Busia. We can still change things around, we can show this boss who’s the boss, I said unconvincingly. He was skeptical. He thought that was desperate, something he’s not, but I convinced him that it would be interesting to know what people thought of it. Besides he didn’t have much option as it were.

“Hang on,” I said, “Does your boss read this blog?”

“My boss can’t read!”

“Hahaha, nice one. What about Mukami?”

“She doesn’t read your blog, that much I can bet.” He stressed.

“Tell her I’m hurt.”

“But what if someone from my workplace reads this blog and puts one and one together?” he asked.

“So what? I mean what’s the worst he can do, deploy you to Turkana next?”

“Okay then, but don’t use my name. Or where I work, or what I do.”

Fine, I said. We hung up and he went back to his mchele TV.

Gentlemen, is this guy’s goose cooked or he can still pull a caper?

Felicia is my laptop.

She is a HP Pavilion with a wide-ass screen. I bought it off my boy, Emmanuel Jambo, who is easily the best photographer in Kenya (you’re welcome big boy). The best 45k I spent that year. I bought it off him a few days after I had lost my job. I lost my job on Friday 13th, November 2010 on a bright morning which soon turned misty with uncertainty. The closure of the magazine rushed us like a rogue wave. I was a new father, lost in a sense of career invincibility, dutifully feeding off the hands of vanity and debauchery – the undisputed deceptive gods of modern living. I didn’t see the sucker coming, knocked my wind out. It inoculated fear in the deepest corner of my stomach and almost robbed me of my manhood. Almost. At the time of closure I still had a stack of business cards written “Jackson Biko, Senior features writer.” What a bloody laugh. Senior my ass, I wrote three measly feature stories a month. An average of 4,000 words a month! Nothing senior with that, I’m sure a clerk in City Hall wrote more words than I did, and we all know how those clerks avoid doing anything. If there is anything the magazine made me was lazy.

For one and half years I have stayed afloat as a freelance writer and I can’t tell this story without talking about Felicia. In the thick of things – in the deadlines and pitching for stories and banging copy – was Felicia, ever so faithful, holding my hand even though they were sweaty from self doubt. My Felicia – the woman who stares at the moon – has literally fed me through this time, me and my dependants. I might get a tad dramatic; please don’t knock the wind off my sails just yet. This is a rolling stone.

For one a half years I have driven with my laptop in my car…every single day, except Sundays. I have always kept my laptop half-wedged under the driver’s seat. You know the myth around the driver’s seat, don’t you? Apparently the safest seat to sit on is always behind the driver because in the event of an accident, the driver will always instinctively save his “side” of the vehicle.  And so I unconsciously kept Felicia under my seat. When you keep your livelihood under your ass you are always fearful, fearful that some miscreant will break into your car and nick it.

And so for one and a half years I parked under well lit areas when I’m out drinking. For one and a half years I paid a little more to a street boy to keep an eye on my car…even when I was driving the Vitz (Hehehe, sorry hon’). Wherever I would park I would always tell the security guy, “Chunga huyo msichana” and he would imagine I was talking about the car. Hell the car is insured, take it, just leave Felicia.

I have a special relationship with Felicia. I know her. I know the feel of her kiss…er, keys. For example, the quotation key is faulty so I always have to punch it twice before I get a reaction. Also, the backspace key is a bit rusty, which means it sometimes jams on me – I guess that means Felicia hates to dwell on the past. Felicia also take a while to come alive, to boot, she is a woman who loves to be slowly eased into anything. So I have to give her a bit more time to warm up, to get in her element. You don’t rush a good woman but when she is ready you will know it. She is also brilliant with multimedia. And sound. Felicia makes sounds and everyman needs a woman who makes sounds, good for the ego, even if you are as good as a cadaver.

My daughter touches everything in the house, everything except my laptop. My laptop is a sanctuary. I could leave my laptop on the table for an hour and she will create such distraction around but leave the laptop untouched. That laptop is the food on her spoon and the clothes on her back.

And Felicia and I have travelled. I have banged copy in the fading light of Samburu, woken up to a problematic piece in the rising heat of Shaba, written an almost blasphemous piece about Mount Kenya as I sat on the porch of those ridiculously priced condos at Mt Kenya Safari Club while I stared down the home of Ngai. I carried her in a leaking boat when I crossed Lake Victoria – a scary one hour stretch – so that I could get to Rusinga Island. While my luggage sat at the bottom of the boat getting wet, I hugged her to my chest. I was with her in Amboselli as I watched- for the first time- Elephants mate, the clumsiest pornography I have ever watched. I was with her in Zanzibar and in Isiolo and Ngorongoro Crater, and in Laikipia, and in Lake Manyara – the home to hippos that smell like decaying pizza- and in Watamu and in Malindi and in Kiwayu and Lamu, and…

But last week it all ended-ish. I started a new job.

For the first time I left the house without my laptop. That morning the house help called after me, “Umesahau laptop,” and I said it was fine. It felt wrong, leaving her behind (the laptop, not the house help, you buffoon). As I have done every day since January I dropped my little girl off to school then drove out to my new posting in Westlands. It’s a nondescript building, a building expunged of any personality. The security guy (a Lunje, I swear) peeked into the car and said there was no parking inside, that I should park outside. Stamping his authority. I told him it was my first day. He let me in eventually. The parking is tight- I parked under a tree.

I have a kidney shaped desk. I have a red swivel chair. I have a phone. My back faces a window, with shutters always drawn down to keep out the zealous light. Thankfully I share an office with two people, a graphics designer (who has nice canvas shoes I will steal after I have dragged him) and a young bright talent whose title is Editorial coordinator. I liked her immediately; she is respectful on top of being a good writer. My business card – when I finally get it – will read Managing Editor. Keep your shorts on, it’s no biggie, many people in this city walk around with business cards bearing huge titles but really they mean shit. I’m one of them.

I will be managing a bunch of writers, thus my post last week. If you wrote in, thank you very much. As of this morning I had received a staggering 362 emails, yes, 362 emails, some horribly written, some brilliant, some so touching (“My father’s shirt” by Sandra Bwire comes to mind),  some heart wrenching ( Muthoni Njuguna, her who submitted a piece that brought a golf ball to my throat) some scared me while most made me smile. Then there were the jokers, particularly one who wrote a whole email in pink fonts (you forgot to spray the email with perfume Felix K. Sigh.). Unfortunately I won’t respond to all of them, but thanks and don’t give up.

However I feel like a fish out of water. For one and half years I was my own boss, I did whatever I wanted now I will have to sign a damned leave form. Now I have an outlook email address. And a landline phone. Here is how surreal it is. On Friday as I sat hunched over my laptop reading some copy the phone started ringing; only I didn’t hear it ring. No, I heard it ring, but i didn’t process the ringing. In my frame of my mind, I wasn’t in an environment where landlines rang; you see, I was still in the freelance mode. So it rang and rang until the young talent sort of called out and said, “Biko, the phone?” I picked up the receiver like an archeologist would have picked a precious bone.

Every time I have met someone and they asked me what I do for a living and I have told them that I write they have always asked, “What else do you do?” As if writing is not a career. As if writing is some bothersome trade that you do on the side to appease the loins of your creativity. But that’s all I have done all these time and I have not lacked anything over that time. I haven’t made a pile of money from it, but I haven’t starved either; a living testimony that God takes care of his own. But it hasn’t been easy, oh, far from it. Some months were simply from hell. But as a man you never show when you are in the trenches, you wear a clean shirt and a smile on your face and you face the world even though in your stomach leaps pangs of fear. You suck it all up because this is not a freakin picnic. The guys who can afford to give up are in Langata cemetery.

But I have eventually traded my freedom for this. For a desk, for a phone, and a pay slip. But how could I not? Fuel went up and everything else followed. It had to happen, so I cashed in my chips and leaped into the capitalist bandwagon, a vessel of such senseless hope.

They gave me a laptop; a Compact, she is black and sexy. But she’s not Felicia. She can never be Felicia. Her kiss, er, keys feel different- they don’t yield under my touch like Felicia’s does. She takes a shorter time to warm up which you might think it’s a good thing, but it’s not – I need time to do my press-ups after all, to work up a nerve. Her cursor keeps jumping backwards when I type, she is too sensitive I guess a most annoying habit. Also her face (screen) is smaller, which must feel like dating a Chinese. She is not Felicia, her who stares at the moon. Her who takes her time to embrace me. Her who knows the struggles of my art, the uncertainty of my dreams and the sheer purposefulness of my ambitions. Oh Felicia, she sounds like a woman who takes ages to oil her long legs, legs that many a dreams are born, but also legs that have killed many a dreams of men.

I have a friend called Kagame, or Putting in Appearances. Campus chum. I disliked him the first time I saw him in class; a one week stubble (fashionablly knackered,as Pierce Morgan would say), shirt tails untucked and a personality of an African despot. He was highly opinionated, very argumentative and insolent. An overbearing Tutsi prick. Somehow we became friends, we started the campus magazine with him together with Roy (mentioned here last week) and one Maseme Machuka who now does communications for ODM (chief, if you are reading this, send me an orange). I edited that campus rag and Kagame was my deputy editor and we sort of became very close. He is widely knowledgeable, reads ferociously, writes quite well and has no qualms throwing anyone under the bus. Qualities of a lizard.

We had one thing in common; the obsession for the written word. We were mad about it; we shared links and literature. We criticized our own work with such naked brutality because we secretly felt intimated by (or is it with?) each other. Kagame gave me a book that shaped me as a writer and a person; Fools Die, Mario Puzo. It’s largely about manhood and choices and morality and about a great writer. I’ve read that book many times since, it’s ageless. Kagame now lives in Canada. We don’t talk on phone, we email. And our emails run into pages; windy prose.

When Kagame writes an email it reads like a shortlisted Cannes story. I normally read those emails twice, or sometimes thrice. They are witty, full of imagery and an always climbing creative trajectory. I read them like a woman would read a love letter and I always wonder how anyone would have written that email better. Point is, even though our lives have taken different paths, we are still held together by our passion for words and most importantly we still dream to be writers of note one day.

To my point.

If you have a rich dad with connection and you want to write for mainstream media and your father meets some hotshot media mogul in a country club and says, “My son is a brilliant writer give him a shot and i will scratch your back.”  You will get the job but soon it will become very apparent that you write as well as a penguin, and thats when your will hear the death bells ringing.

But writing well is only half the battle, the other battle is getting someone to give you a chance. And nobody will hand you the chance because nobody gives a damn about you and your writing. You are on your own. The world doesn’t owe you squat. It’s cold out there, you need a jacket – or a water bottle. I guess it’s the same in every industry, but it is hard for a writer because when you write you basically replicate your soul on paper. But I believe you have to want it badly to keep trying, passion opens doors and if that is taking time then God will call Angel Gabriel’s extension and say, “Come on Gabby, he has tried enough give him a chance, will ya?”

And Angel Gabby will giggle into the phone and say, “Come on G.O.D, let’s make him sweat it out for two more months, you know, just for shit and giggles?”

God would groan into the phone,” I don’t know man, he’s a nice kid.”

“Okay okay,” Gabby would say, “You are such a pansy, I loved it when you were tough. You are getting old.”

“Please” he would reply, “I don’t grow old, I’m God!”

I remember knocking on Uganda’s Monitor newspaper’s door for a seven months before they gave me a chance. True Love – for two years – didn’t even bother acknowledging receiving my articles when I sent them, and I would send them a piece every month. Getting my first byline in Nation was even harder. But you keep at it because you believe in yourself even though in most days you can’t. You keep at it because there is nothing else you would rather do with your life, you don’t have an option B because your option A is also your option B.  But most importantly you keep at it because you are hungry.

I’m confident there are tons of people like that out there, writing or trying to write well, knocking on doors, believing in their art even though the odds are stacked against them. Guys who are nursing a passion and burning with words. I love such people. And I need you if you fall in this category. I’m looking for hungry passionate writers for something I’m going to be engaged in. If you are interested or know someone who is interested please email me on bikozulu@gmail.com

All I need is a paragraph of your bio and a sample of your work. Don’t send me poetry. Don’t send me a love letter you wrote to your man/woman some time back. Don’t send me a resume. Don’t send me a promise. Send me 350 words on anything other than a relationship piece. You could review a movie, a song, a person. You could write about your home pub or your pet or your struggles with alcoholism or masturbation. You could write about your least favorite road or your crush on your dentist. Look, take it any where you want. I’m afraid I won’t able to reply to apply to every email, but to the ones I reply to we will all meet in a group for a powwow, talk money and what not. So how about it gang? Let’s go.