Him, Her - A Short Story by 'Namdi Awa-Kalu
- By 'Namdi Awa-Kalu
- Published June 19, 2009
- Fiction
-
Rating:
'Namdi Awa-Kalu
I am a law student at the London School of Economics, but I grew up in Lagos and have missed Nigeria for every one of the six years I have been away. I try to communicate this sense of displacement and relocation in all my work at present. I write for a generation not unwelcome abroad but nonetheless missing parts of the spirit that are forever entangled with home.
HIM, HER
The first time I saw Shankey he was illuminated in a shaft of lightning. It had been raining for hours on end- brilliant London weather- and we were standing outside one of those West End clubs that are so popular on a Friday night. A queue was formed from the rather auspicious front doors- engraved oak- right around to Piccadilly Circus. Everybody was huddled under what little shade the building provided at the side of the street, cursing the rain as it pissed down in fits and starts, never enough to really be called a downpour and never less than a steady drizzle. He was standing a few paces ahead of me with a group of chattering oyibo friends, flicking a stylish silver lighter open and shut as if keeping time, his left thumb and forefinger holding a roll-up cigarette that he smoked in long drags. He was tall, taller than I am but a lot leaner. His hair was in an unruly shock of almost-dreadlocks and facial hair sneaked up and down his cheeks and jawline in scraggly dots.
I was inexorably drawn to his aspect, the length of his shadow stretched almost unnaturally as he leaned nonchalantly against the concrete wall, the angularity of his features in a washed-out t-shirt and skinny jeans, the rugged calm about him. Just as the queue was about to move, the rain picked up and he stubbed out his cigarette quickly, glancing round in that quick flash that I remember like a camera shot. I was caught by surprise, staring at him almost in awe, embarrassed but still unable to tear my gaze away from him. He sent me a shy smile, (or perhaps that’s how I choose to remember it) and lingered a moment longer than he meant to before he followed his friends into the club.
It took considerably longer than I would have preferred before I was able to get into the club. I was filled with sudden brio and anxious to start partying. My girlfriend at the time was a smoky-eyed brunette who did not stop complaining about the fact that we were standing in the rain when we could be sitting in the swankier South Kensington club she had been invited to by her pals from Cheltenham who were visiting for the weekend. She was getting on my nerves and I wanted to be in the heat of the club where I would not need to sweat her whiny-voiced shit. Once we were in, I spotted Shankey again, in a corner of the club that he had, inevitably (as I would come to realize) colonised with an infectious groove that tailed through the joint like wild fire. He was shirtless, sweat-or-champagne slicking his taut, muscular chest. A bottle of beer was in his right hand swinging, presumably empty, in tune with the giddy wholehearted jig he was performing to the wild funk blaring through the joint. A group of girls danced around him and egged him on, unaccountably overwhelmed by his shut-eyed mania. He remained in his own world until he opened his eyes and saw me, my cautious eyes darting left, right, left, and surprised me as only he can. He made his way through the sea of gyrating bodies whose excitement was a by-product of the energy he had been expelling so freely in his corner colony.
“What a night!” His corneas were the bleary yellow of drug abuse and multiple malaria survival. His smile reminded me of Lil Ze in City of God, toothy and dangerous but very intoxicating. I shifted uncertainly at the proffered handshake. I do not normally subscribe to these random shows of camaraderie that most young people seem to indulge in. Especially not from an individual who is comfortable with removing his shirt in public. But there is something about Shankey that inspires anyone who stands in his silhouette to embrace the out-of-ordinary. So when the insistent strings of Keziah Jones’ “Million Miles From Home” kicked off, I did not resist his arm around my shoulder, and though I was still contemplating what this really was, I was unaware that my feet were already dancing.
That was how Shankey and I became fast friends even though we were so opposite to each other. He was constantly garbed in clothes and styles that spoke of his somewhat bohemian nature. I shopped on the King’s Road. He was athletic and had tried out for the university football team only to give it up prematurely upon being awarded the first team’s number nine shirt for his goalscoring prowess (he complained that English boys kick the ball instead of actually playing it, whatever that means). I, on the other hand, laboured for months until I finally claimed the position of President of the influential Debate Society at the end of a bloody (if I may call it that) hustings. Nonetheless, he was a first-year undergraduate studying Pure Mathematics at University College London whilst I took classes in Literature and African studies a stone’s throw away at SOAS so we managed to spend a lot of free time together on impromptu lunch breaks, doing touristy things, double dating, or sneaking off to his flat for my guilty pleasure of the occasional roll of weed.
The double dating was particularly satisfying. Shankey almost always had some new hot thing on his arm as we took in London’s more interesting restaurants (which I happened to have discovered in my time as a young London denizen), the cinema (our favourite pastime), and music- especially music. Once in a while, Shankey would get us surprise tickets to underground gigs through his rather dodgy connections in the London subterranean music neighbourhood. On these nights, as we stood next to our dates, drinks in hand, swept along in the musicianship of the artists onstage, I would look over at Shankey as I will always remember him, head thrown back, every wanton dreadlock frizzing with unchannelled electricity, his lids closed over those near-jaundiced eyeballs and shoulders sticking through his ultra- funky dashiki in all sorts of right-angles. The passion for music that till today remains unsettling to my memory but utterly spiritual in its fervour, made sure he was always moving his hand over the silver flicker of his lighter in the air, keeping time. He was always keeping time. Flick on and shut. Flick on and shut. Once in a while, Shankey would be invited to perform with the artist we’d come to see and he’d stride on stage and toss his dashiki to the platform in a gust of vim that would, in turn, blow over the audience. He was recklessly breathtaking with a guitar in his hands, always improvising. Once, the only night we ever fucked the same girl, we’d watched The Best Man and he saw Quentin sling a box guitar onto his shoulder and string out a three minute riff. Afterwards, he did the same thing in front of a hundred and fifty people at Medicine Bar in trendy Hoxton, strumming out a harmony that was as sensuous as a bedroom whisper yet with enough power to draw in the guys too. The crowd went mad for him and cheered wildly while Shankey stood there, the afterglow of musicmaking burnishing his bare chest.
That was the day I saw her. A simple turquoise dress stretched across her back and tapered into small, shapely hips. I was still staring at her legs, the slight curve of her calves, when she turned her head and caught me ogling her. She smiled knowingly, a dimple standing out in her left cheek, and inclined her head towards where she was standing. I was not entirely sure if she could really be beckoning me but, for once, I did not hesitate. It wasn’t hard to ditch the dates. They were enthralled by Shankey’s performance and did not even see me slip away. I pushed past a group that had stepped back into the space at the back of the joint to gain more dancing room. So I could not see her anymore until I bumped into her unexpectedly. She laughed and pushed a few tendrils away from her face. I was breathless.
“You’re exquisite” I stammered out. It was not what I would have hoped to say, in retrospect, say if I had more time to plan out my words. Such an uppity compliment. But she just giggled shyly again, her lips parting over even white teeth, eyes sultry in black eyeliner. Then she turned around before I could say another word and began to dance up against me, her arms up in the air, bum against my crotch, swaying in perfect synchrony with the song. I felt as if she were one with the music (Ok I know that sounds stupid). Every supple movement of her waist enchanted me. I was heady with the scent of her perfume. Michael Kors. There was no one else in the room, just me and her, dancing to the careless beats of her heart, the swish of her cascading curls, the tinkle in her laughter. She turned around to face me, looking at me like she could see all the helpless thoughts in my head.
“Who’s your friend?” Shankey was suddenly standing there. The music had petered out and the band was plugging their album to the crowd. I hadn’t even noticed when the music stopped playing. Shankey’s smile was firmly in place, dangerous and intoxicating, the fires of an untold past incandescent in his eyes.
“Kara” She was smiling differently now, in that way that people often reacted when they saw Shankey. There was an indefinable quality to him that held your attention. He took her in quickly and flourished his hand, ever the showman. She did not look overly impressed by him. Again, maybe that’s what I have forced myself to believe. But I saw a kindred flame dance lightly in the darkness of her make-up. She turned to me, though the smile was for Shankey “I’m here most Fridays. It’s a really good venue for fresh talent. I love music. You should come again”. Her eyes crinkled when she lengthened the “o” in love and I fell for her as hard as I had ever fallen for anyone. She hugged me briefly and I watched her walk out of the joint, vaguely aware of the open-snap of Shankey’s lighter mimicking the heeled click of her dainty feet across the nearly empty hall.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Winter in London comes in fits and starts, like a crazy temperamental lover. She hangs around for a while and the world seems warmer and then she disappears for weeks on end in a bitter freeze. Weather women predicted cold snaps every so often through the latter months of the year and for a week or two, the temperature would dip inconsiderately, wreaking havoc on my tropical conditioning. My first winter here, a fever hit me one night without warning or build-up and, as the winter quarreled with London, disappearing into a swirl of clouds and chill, I suffered as my own temperature shot off upwards leaving me feeling like a hot water bottle. Luckily, I haven’t felt that badly since then. Actually, since I discovered the pleasures of swimming from Haruki Murakami. After reading the very enjoyable South of The Border, West of the Sun, I decided to find an indoor swimming pool, like Hajime. I started swimming regularly, looking after my body, eating right, all that shit. At least it’s kept cold fingers from tickling the brim of my nose every time it gets a little foggy.
It is quite typical that I should imbibe mannerisms from fiction, as I am constantly indulging in fantasies inspired strongly by my favourite writers. And very often I catch myself imitating characters that are a figment of literary creation. When I consume myself in my work and theories- if you can call the scribbled philosophies that I paste higgledy piggledy on the veneer boards in my room theories- then I am Lord Asriel, disdainful of the conservative world around him, vowing to rid it of enforced myth and controlled reason. When I skip classes, which is rare, this wanton act of rebellion is not simply a student’s minor skirmishes, but rather my Achilles impression- I fight, work only for my self, only in the hope that my name shall be passed down the ages, a legend, so I do not need to join Agamemnon’s ranks in obedient toil. However, when I swim, there is no fantasy, no delusion. I cut through the water like a dolphin, like it’s my home territory. I am sure I could even swim in the Olympics if I trained hard. I once read that a swimmer’s wingspan- the length from fingertip to fingertip when the arms are spread horizontally- is the key to his ability. Mine is two inches longer than my five foot ten inch frame. So I can cut through the water with zip and speed, the way I used to see my mother scissor through wrappers. Even when I was a boy, back in Nigeria, when we used to visit the village every Christmas (the Igbo Man’s great Christmas Pilgrimage) the local boys would call me “mammywater”. Mermaid.
Today, I brought Shankey with me. We haven’t hung out together much since the start of this year. Mostly because I’ve been playing the ghost, white-sheeted in endless applications for a PhD and in the innumerable pages of poetry I’d been writing recently. I hadn’t even been to our usual haunts. Especially not Medicine Bar. Not since before Christmas when I argued roughly with Kara. I’ve been waiting sanctimoniously, and very childishly, for her to apologise to me. It’s not like we ever spoke regularly to begin with but as the winter deepened, we started to have actual discussions, almost as though the weather extremities pushed us to each other for warmth. The week before Christmas week when it snowed, an unexpected frosted topping on the exaggerated jolliness that seizes London like all big cities in the festive period, I had to pick her up thrice from Oxford Street where she was temping because Transport for London was also caught in a seizure: Trains could not cope with the snow on the tracks (all three inches of it!) and the buses took so many detours that London was completely re-mapped in their wake. I was still painfully shy of her: my lungs went through constrictions that had nothing to do with the snow and in turn restricted my thoughts to her mouth, like a blossoming bud ripening in the wrong season, and all the more beautiful for it; her hands splayed across the heating vents on the dashboard, petite and almost edible; her beautiful eyes like precious stones, iridescent in that perfect face. Talking to her made the blood flow smooth like honey in my veins, every part of me full up with delight. It was very different from talking to Shankey who had little handle on what the hell I was talking about most times and said little in return unless we were joking and talking about sports or music.
With Kara, it was different. We talked about food- our love for salmon- and red wine, English boarding schools, literature and London and life. She told me how she played the cello, how she wished she could play it professionally but her parents preferred that she did something more exactly professional and pushed her into medicine. She made sure to hit Medicine Bar most Fridays and get leathered in a small- and shall I say ironic- show of rebellion against her conservative parents. It reminded me of my own premature uprisings. Because we talked about her parents, the conversation segued into discussion about our roots. It was yet another thing we had in common, both being Nigerian. But that, in itself, was not as pleasant or surprising a discovery as the other things. Nigerians are, to borrow the words of one uptight pastor who used to lecture in Sunday school back when I was in Nigeria, legion in London. So many of them and so clannish. A whole separate species or at least a different race from other blacks. Uncouth, nasty people. There is an interior society of ‘Diaspora Nigerians’ in London that socializes together, everybody in everyone else’s arses, literally and figuratively, keen to smell each other’s shit and keen to put it out for public display. Ever ready to humiliate each other and themselves, devoid of the logic of live and let live. In short, bringing the many-headed beast of Nigerian nonsense into London.
Anyway, Kara convinced me to attend a Nigerian party even though I told her that I had sworn off these vulgar, barbaric affairs a long time ago. Me and Nigerians don’t really mix but it was her best friend’s birthday and she’d hired out a small club in Knightsbridge which seemed understated and classy so I did not see any harm in going. Seeing the place, only the oval- shaped bar at its centre pointed to its glamour, draped as it was in elaborate pale glass panels and exotic lighting. The rest of it was a toned- down mixture of dark leather and wood. I shouldn’t have relaxed though. The guests proceeded, as is their wont, to erupt in backslapping ostentation that belies the poverty crippling their countrymen. The guys popped open magnums of champagne and bottles of vodka nearly as tall as the vacuous girls who strutted around, clinging to the popular boys and sucking all the common sense out of them with empty eyes and adoring mouths. Kara seemed to be having a good time though. The music was very sexy, bass heavy variations of earthy afro beat fused with approximated hip-hop. I won’t lie; I wanted badly to join in. I wanted to feel the soft of Kara’s buttocks rounding into my crotch again. I wanted her heat pressed against my flesh, our souls set free by the music on the dance floor, a widening gyre. But my contempt for these people, supposedly my people, was my hubris.
“Let’s go” I whispered roughly to Kara, my lips closer to her ears than necessary, my voice, naturally deep, rolling off her face in a husky pitch.
She turned round to me, red wine had lent her starry eyes a stronger twinkle. It wasn’t merriment that was twitching her thyroid gland though. She was responding to this new-sprung rugged possessiveness. Or at least that’s what she had sensed. Stupid me, I fucked up the moment.
“I hate…this” I gestured at the madding crowd, searching for some familiar sympathy with my dreary estimations of Naija people. I missed the crystal edge her hardening eyes suddenly acquired and mistook the flutter of her lashes for agreement. “ I just want to chill with you”. I’d never really articulated a desire for isolated companionship with her before then and something definitely flashed lightning bright in her eyes that would have fooled anybody, not just me. Men are always miscalculating women, and I am a man. I could not have seen the thunder that followed coming.
The first time I saw Shankey he was illuminated in a shaft of lightning. It had been raining for hours on end- brilliant London weather- and we were standing outside one of those West End clubs that are so popular on a Friday night. A queue was formed from the rather auspicious front doors- engraved oak- right around to Piccadilly Circus. Everybody was huddled under what little shade the building provided at the side of the street, cursing the rain as it pissed down in fits and starts, never enough to really be called a downpour and never less than a steady drizzle. He was standing a few paces ahead of me with a group of chattering oyibo friends, flicking a stylish silver lighter open and shut as if keeping time, his left thumb and forefinger holding a roll-up cigarette that he smoked in long drags. He was tall, taller than I am but a lot leaner. His hair was in an unruly shock of almost-dreadlocks and facial hair sneaked up and down his cheeks and jawline in scraggly dots.
I was inexorably drawn to his aspect, the length of his shadow stretched almost unnaturally as he leaned nonchalantly against the concrete wall, the angularity of his features in a washed-out t-shirt and skinny jeans, the rugged calm about him. Just as the queue was about to move, the rain picked up and he stubbed out his cigarette quickly, glancing round in that quick flash that I remember like a camera shot. I was caught by surprise, staring at him almost in awe, embarrassed but still unable to tear my gaze away from him. He sent me a shy smile, (or perhaps that’s how I choose to remember it) and lingered a moment longer than he meant to before he followed his friends into the club.
It took considerably longer than I would have preferred before I was able to get into the club. I was filled with sudden brio and anxious to start partying. My girlfriend at the time was a smoky-eyed brunette who did not stop complaining about the fact that we were standing in the rain when we could be sitting in the swankier South Kensington club she had been invited to by her pals from Cheltenham who were visiting for the weekend. She was getting on my nerves and I wanted to be in the heat of the club where I would not need to sweat her whiny-voiced shit. Once we were in, I spotted Shankey again, in a corner of the club that he had, inevitably (as I would come to realize) colonised with an infectious groove that tailed through the joint like wild fire. He was shirtless, sweat-or-champagne slicking his taut, muscular chest. A bottle of beer was in his right hand swinging, presumably empty, in tune with the giddy wholehearted jig he was performing to the wild funk blaring through the joint. A group of girls danced around him and egged him on, unaccountably overwhelmed by his shut-eyed mania. He remained in his own world until he opened his eyes and saw me, my cautious eyes darting left, right, left, and surprised me as only he can. He made his way through the sea of gyrating bodies whose excitement was a by-product of the energy he had been expelling so freely in his corner colony.
“What a night!” His corneas were the bleary yellow of drug abuse and multiple malaria survival. His smile reminded me of Lil Ze in City of God, toothy and dangerous but very intoxicating. I shifted uncertainly at the proffered handshake. I do not normally subscribe to these random shows of camaraderie that most young people seem to indulge in. Especially not from an individual who is comfortable with removing his shirt in public. But there is something about Shankey that inspires anyone who stands in his silhouette to embrace the out-of-ordinary. So when the insistent strings of Keziah Jones’ “Million Miles From Home” kicked off, I did not resist his arm around my shoulder, and though I was still contemplating what this really was, I was unaware that my feet were already dancing.
That was how Shankey and I became fast friends even though we were so opposite to each other. He was constantly garbed in clothes and styles that spoke of his somewhat bohemian nature. I shopped on the King’s Road. He was athletic and had tried out for the university football team only to give it up prematurely upon being awarded the first team’s number nine shirt for his goalscoring prowess (he complained that English boys kick the ball instead of actually playing it, whatever that means). I, on the other hand, laboured for months until I finally claimed the position of President of the influential Debate Society at the end of a bloody (if I may call it that) hustings. Nonetheless, he was a first-year undergraduate studying Pure Mathematics at University College London whilst I took classes in Literature and African studies a stone’s throw away at SOAS so we managed to spend a lot of free time together on impromptu lunch breaks, doing touristy things, double dating, or sneaking off to his flat for my guilty pleasure of the occasional roll of weed.
The double dating was particularly satisfying. Shankey almost always had some new hot thing on his arm as we took in London’s more interesting restaurants (which I happened to have discovered in my time as a young London denizen), the cinema (our favourite pastime), and music- especially music. Once in a while, Shankey would get us surprise tickets to underground gigs through his rather dodgy connections in the London subterranean music neighbourhood. On these nights, as we stood next to our dates, drinks in hand, swept along in the musicianship of the artists onstage, I would look over at Shankey as I will always remember him, head thrown back, every wanton dreadlock frizzing with unchannelled electricity, his lids closed over those near-jaundiced eyeballs and shoulders sticking through his ultra- funky dashiki in all sorts of right-angles. The passion for music that till today remains unsettling to my memory but utterly spiritual in its fervour, made sure he was always moving his hand over the silver flicker of his lighter in the air, keeping time. He was always keeping time. Flick on and shut. Flick on and shut. Once in a while, Shankey would be invited to perform with the artist we’d come to see and he’d stride on stage and toss his dashiki to the platform in a gust of vim that would, in turn, blow over the audience. He was recklessly breathtaking with a guitar in his hands, always improvising. Once, the only night we ever fucked the same girl, we’d watched The Best Man and he saw Quentin sling a box guitar onto his shoulder and string out a three minute riff. Afterwards, he did the same thing in front of a hundred and fifty people at Medicine Bar in trendy Hoxton, strumming out a harmony that was as sensuous as a bedroom whisper yet with enough power to draw in the guys too. The crowd went mad for him and cheered wildly while Shankey stood there, the afterglow of musicmaking burnishing his bare chest.
That was the day I saw her. A simple turquoise dress stretched across her back and tapered into small, shapely hips. I was still staring at her legs, the slight curve of her calves, when she turned her head and caught me ogling her. She smiled knowingly, a dimple standing out in her left cheek, and inclined her head towards where she was standing. I was not entirely sure if she could really be beckoning me but, for once, I did not hesitate. It wasn’t hard to ditch the dates. They were enthralled by Shankey’s performance and did not even see me slip away. I pushed past a group that had stepped back into the space at the back of the joint to gain more dancing room. So I could not see her anymore until I bumped into her unexpectedly. She laughed and pushed a few tendrils away from her face. I was breathless.
“You’re exquisite” I stammered out. It was not what I would have hoped to say, in retrospect, say if I had more time to plan out my words. Such an uppity compliment. But she just giggled shyly again, her lips parting over even white teeth, eyes sultry in black eyeliner. Then she turned around before I could say another word and began to dance up against me, her arms up in the air, bum against my crotch, swaying in perfect synchrony with the song. I felt as if she were one with the music (Ok I know that sounds stupid). Every supple movement of her waist enchanted me. I was heady with the scent of her perfume. Michael Kors. There was no one else in the room, just me and her, dancing to the careless beats of her heart, the swish of her cascading curls, the tinkle in her laughter. She turned around to face me, looking at me like she could see all the helpless thoughts in my head.
“Who’s your friend?” Shankey was suddenly standing there. The music had petered out and the band was plugging their album to the crowd. I hadn’t even noticed when the music stopped playing. Shankey’s smile was firmly in place, dangerous and intoxicating, the fires of an untold past incandescent in his eyes.
“Kara” She was smiling differently now, in that way that people often reacted when they saw Shankey. There was an indefinable quality to him that held your attention. He took her in quickly and flourished his hand, ever the showman. She did not look overly impressed by him. Again, maybe that’s what I have forced myself to believe. But I saw a kindred flame dance lightly in the darkness of her make-up. She turned to me, though the smile was for Shankey “I’m here most Fridays. It’s a really good venue for fresh talent. I love music. You should come again”. Her eyes crinkled when she lengthened the “o” in love and I fell for her as hard as I had ever fallen for anyone. She hugged me briefly and I watched her walk out of the joint, vaguely aware of the open-snap of Shankey’s lighter mimicking the heeled click of her dainty feet across the nearly empty hall.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Winter in London comes in fits and starts, like a crazy temperamental lover. She hangs around for a while and the world seems warmer and then she disappears for weeks on end in a bitter freeze. Weather women predicted cold snaps every so often through the latter months of the year and for a week or two, the temperature would dip inconsiderately, wreaking havoc on my tropical conditioning. My first winter here, a fever hit me one night without warning or build-up and, as the winter quarreled with London, disappearing into a swirl of clouds and chill, I suffered as my own temperature shot off upwards leaving me feeling like a hot water bottle. Luckily, I haven’t felt that badly since then. Actually, since I discovered the pleasures of swimming from Haruki Murakami. After reading the very enjoyable South of The Border, West of the Sun, I decided to find an indoor swimming pool, like Hajime. I started swimming regularly, looking after my body, eating right, all that shit. At least it’s kept cold fingers from tickling the brim of my nose every time it gets a little foggy.
It is quite typical that I should imbibe mannerisms from fiction, as I am constantly indulging in fantasies inspired strongly by my favourite writers. And very often I catch myself imitating characters that are a figment of literary creation. When I consume myself in my work and theories- if you can call the scribbled philosophies that I paste higgledy piggledy on the veneer boards in my room theories- then I am Lord Asriel, disdainful of the conservative world around him, vowing to rid it of enforced myth and controlled reason. When I skip classes, which is rare, this wanton act of rebellion is not simply a student’s minor skirmishes, but rather my Achilles impression- I fight, work only for my self, only in the hope that my name shall be passed down the ages, a legend, so I do not need to join Agamemnon’s ranks in obedient toil. However, when I swim, there is no fantasy, no delusion. I cut through the water like a dolphin, like it’s my home territory. I am sure I could even swim in the Olympics if I trained hard. I once read that a swimmer’s wingspan- the length from fingertip to fingertip when the arms are spread horizontally- is the key to his ability. Mine is two inches longer than my five foot ten inch frame. So I can cut through the water with zip and speed, the way I used to see my mother scissor through wrappers. Even when I was a boy, back in Nigeria, when we used to visit the village every Christmas (the Igbo Man’s great Christmas Pilgrimage) the local boys would call me “mammywater”. Mermaid.
Today, I brought Shankey with me. We haven’t hung out together much since the start of this year. Mostly because I’ve been playing the ghost, white-sheeted in endless applications for a PhD and in the innumerable pages of poetry I’d been writing recently. I hadn’t even been to our usual haunts. Especially not Medicine Bar. Not since before Christmas when I argued roughly with Kara. I’ve been waiting sanctimoniously, and very childishly, for her to apologise to me. It’s not like we ever spoke regularly to begin with but as the winter deepened, we started to have actual discussions, almost as though the weather extremities pushed us to each other for warmth. The week before Christmas week when it snowed, an unexpected frosted topping on the exaggerated jolliness that seizes London like all big cities in the festive period, I had to pick her up thrice from Oxford Street where she was temping because Transport for London was also caught in a seizure: Trains could not cope with the snow on the tracks (all three inches of it!) and the buses took so many detours that London was completely re-mapped in their wake. I was still painfully shy of her: my lungs went through constrictions that had nothing to do with the snow and in turn restricted my thoughts to her mouth, like a blossoming bud ripening in the wrong season, and all the more beautiful for it; her hands splayed across the heating vents on the dashboard, petite and almost edible; her beautiful eyes like precious stones, iridescent in that perfect face. Talking to her made the blood flow smooth like honey in my veins, every part of me full up with delight. It was very different from talking to Shankey who had little handle on what the hell I was talking about most times and said little in return unless we were joking and talking about sports or music.
With Kara, it was different. We talked about food- our love for salmon- and red wine, English boarding schools, literature and London and life. She told me how she played the cello, how she wished she could play it professionally but her parents preferred that she did something more exactly professional and pushed her into medicine. She made sure to hit Medicine Bar most Fridays and get leathered in a small- and shall I say ironic- show of rebellion against her conservative parents. It reminded me of my own premature uprisings. Because we talked about her parents, the conversation segued into discussion about our roots. It was yet another thing we had in common, both being Nigerian. But that, in itself, was not as pleasant or surprising a discovery as the other things. Nigerians are, to borrow the words of one uptight pastor who used to lecture in Sunday school back when I was in Nigeria, legion in London. So many of them and so clannish. A whole separate species or at least a different race from other blacks. Uncouth, nasty people. There is an interior society of ‘Diaspora Nigerians’ in London that socializes together, everybody in everyone else’s arses, literally and figuratively, keen to smell each other’s shit and keen to put it out for public display. Ever ready to humiliate each other and themselves, devoid of the logic of live and let live. In short, bringing the many-headed beast of Nigerian nonsense into London.
Anyway, Kara convinced me to attend a Nigerian party even though I told her that I had sworn off these vulgar, barbaric affairs a long time ago. Me and Nigerians don’t really mix but it was her best friend’s birthday and she’d hired out a small club in Knightsbridge which seemed understated and classy so I did not see any harm in going. Seeing the place, only the oval- shaped bar at its centre pointed to its glamour, draped as it was in elaborate pale glass panels and exotic lighting. The rest of it was a toned- down mixture of dark leather and wood. I shouldn’t have relaxed though. The guests proceeded, as is their wont, to erupt in backslapping ostentation that belies the poverty crippling their countrymen. The guys popped open magnums of champagne and bottles of vodka nearly as tall as the vacuous girls who strutted around, clinging to the popular boys and sucking all the common sense out of them with empty eyes and adoring mouths. Kara seemed to be having a good time though. The music was very sexy, bass heavy variations of earthy afro beat fused with approximated hip-hop. I won’t lie; I wanted badly to join in. I wanted to feel the soft of Kara’s buttocks rounding into my crotch again. I wanted her heat pressed against my flesh, our souls set free by the music on the dance floor, a widening gyre. But my contempt for these people, supposedly my people, was my hubris.
“Let’s go” I whispered roughly to Kara, my lips closer to her ears than necessary, my voice, naturally deep, rolling off her face in a husky pitch.
She turned round to me, red wine had lent her starry eyes a stronger twinkle. It wasn’t merriment that was twitching her thyroid gland though. She was responding to this new-sprung rugged possessiveness. Or at least that’s what she had sensed. Stupid me, I fucked up the moment.
“I hate…this” I gestured at the madding crowd, searching for some familiar sympathy with my dreary estimations of Naija people. I missed the crystal edge her hardening eyes suddenly acquired and mistook the flutter of her lashes for agreement. “ I just want to chill with you”. I’d never really articulated a desire for isolated companionship with her before then and something definitely flashed lightning bright in her eyes that would have fooled anybody, not just me. Men are always miscalculating women, and I am a man. I could not have seen the thunder that followed coming.