I was twenty-two the first time I met Eric.
Nairobi is a city that so often feeds on contradictions — skyscrapers scraping the sky above, potholes waiting to swallow whole the matatus below. On one street you could find university students like me queuing obediently for chips mwitu at a kiosk, and on the next, pot-bellied businessmen in Italian suits sipping whiskey behind tinted glass doors.
Eric belonged firmly to that second Nairobi.
He was a lawyer, forty-six, with the kind of confidence that fills a room before he even speaks. I noticed him at a cocktail event in Westlands, one of those student-professional mixers organized by a law society club I’d only joined because they offered free food to newbies.
He stood by the bar, tall, well-groomed, his shiny-black designer suit perfectly cut. His laugh was deep, easy; the laugh of a man who was sure the world would bend for him if he demanded it.
When his eyes found me across the room, I froze. Men his age didn’t usually notice girls like me — second-year students in dresses bought from Gikomba, trying to look chic with borrowed lipstick. Yet he came over, introduced himself with a warm handshake, and within minutes had me smiling, sipping red wine whose name I couldn’t pronounce, and forgetting how damn nervous I had been.
He asked about it all: my studies, my dreams, and my family too. He listened with the intensity of a man used to dissecting testimonies in court. When I admitted I sometimes worried about paying fees on time, he gave me that half-smile—the kind that felt like a secret pact between two seasoned burglars.
“Nairobi is expensive,” he said. “But with the right friends, it doesn’t have to crush you.”
That night, when he offered me a ride back to Kasarani, I didn’t refuse. The oil-black leather seats of his Prado Cruiser felt like another world, soft and smooth under my calloused palms. The city lights blurred past, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to be chosen.
Our arrangement unfolded quickly. He wasn’t coy about it. Eric liked clarity; contracts, terms. He told me he was married–of course he was married, men like him always were–but said his wife Ruth, a thriving florist, lived mostly in Runda, wrapped up in her own world.
With me, he said, he felt alive.
With him, I felt visible… seen. Or at least, I told myself I did.
Dinners in Westlands rooftops, gifts wrapped in neat shopping bags, an M-Pesa message buzzing late at night with more money than I’d ever seen in my mostly dry five-year-old Co-op account.
Hell! The first time he pressed those ten or so once-folded brown notes into my hand, I almost refused. Almost. But I remembered my mother’s voice on the phone, calling from some one-room shack in Zimmerman, telling me the no-nonsense landlord Bwana Kahari had threatened again, and my residual pride hastily collapsed under the harsh weight of reality.
In return, I gave him my time. My laughter. My body.
It wasn’t love, not really. But it was something close; so dangerously close.
The night he first suggested it, we were in his apartment in Kilimani, a place that smelled faintly of expensive cologne and polished wood. Nairobi glittered through the wide windows, headlights snaking down Ngong Road, the hum of the bustling city completely muffled by really thick glass.
He poured me wine, the deep red kind that left traces on the tongue.
“You trust me, don’t you?” he asked.
I laughed lightly, stalling. “Why?”
“Because I want us to try something err…different.” His eyes gleamed, amused at his own audacity.
I tittered. “What?”
He eyeballed me, grinning sheepishly. “Anal.”
The word dropped between us like a stone. I choked on my sip of wine, coughing.
“E-ric…” I started.
He leaned closer, his voice dropping to that persuasive register all lawyers seem to have mastered. “Don’t look so alarmed. Couples do it all the time. You’ll like it. Tighter, more intense. I promise, once you get past the first time, you’ll wonder out loud why you hesitated.”
I shook my head somberly. “I’ve never… I mean, it sounds painful.”
“That’s because you haven’t tried it with me.”
I smiled thinly.
He stroked my hand. “Trust me, Hadassah. I’ll make it good for you. Just this once…”
“Uh—”
“—and if you hate it, we never have to do it again.”
Totally zonked, thanks to one of his pricey whiskeys, I wanted so badly to believe him. More than that, I wanted to believe myself capable of anything. Strong. Modern. Fearless.
A true Nairobian. Not a silly mommy’s girl.
I said nothing.
Silence, I realized too late, was as good as yes…
I don’t remember how long I hesitated when the moment came. Seconds, maybe minutes. But in my memory, the long-ass pause stretches into eternity—me on the edge of his king-sized divan bed, staring at the carpet, wondering if this was the moment my relatively small body would finally stop being mine.
Eric’s hand traced lazy circles on my back. His voice was soft, coaxing. “Relax, Hadassah. You’re safe with me. I’ll take care of you.”
The words should’ve comforted me. Instead they scared me some more.
Why?
They sounded rehearsed, like a line delivered to a crowd of super-eager journalists by some seasoned politician of our current evangelical president Ruto’s caliber: popular, charming, and oh-so-economical-with-the-truth.
I lay down, smiling thinly.
He was tender at first. Kisses along my shoulders, murmured reassurances, his hands stroking my arms. But when his weight pressed against me, panic flared.
“Eric, wait—”
“Shh. Breathe,” he intoned. “Breathe…and just trust me.”
The pressure built, sharp and unbearable. Pain shot through me like fire. I gasped, tears springing unbidden.
“Relax,” he whispered, though his raspy voice held more command than care. “It’s only bad at first.”
I gritted my teeth, clutching the fresh white cotton sheets. Every instinct begged me to try and push him off, to scream, to run. But instead, I froze, my body stiff, my fuzzy brain scrambling for somewhere safe to hide.
Still, the sharp pain tore through me.
I tried to tell myself I was strong; slowly, repeatedly. To assure my mind that this was, in fact, proof of my love for him, or at least of loyalty to him. That if women on the internet, young and old alike, swore that they’d learned to enjoy it with time, then maybe I could too…would too, given time.
But there was no pleasure. Only invasion. Only heat. Only the sharpness of the pain, the rawness of the humiliation.
Tears streamed silently.
Eric so tenderly kissed them away as if they were offerings to some ancient fertility goddess, hoarsely murmuring, “That’s it, you’re doing so well. Just a little more.”
His voice was a tide I couldn’t resist. My body betrayed me, obeying his rhythm even as my mind screamed ‘STOP!’.
At some point, the pain dulled; morphed into numbness. My consciousness floated above the bed, detached, watching the scene like a film: a nasty girl lay beneath a clean-shaven man twice her age, rigid, her face wet with tears, as I–Miss Hadassah Wanja Wamaitha–hovered near the ceiling, horrified, yet unable to intervene.
It wasn’t me down there. It couldn’t possibly be.
When at last it ended, I collapsed into stillness. My body, sore and hollow, trembled. Eric, sated, kissed my sweaty forehead; brushing my damp recently blow-dried natural hair aside as though he’d just given me a gift by doing to me–nay, with me–a sexual deed that was, indubitably, unnatural.
“See?” he murmured softly, satisfaction ripe in his tone. “That wasn’t so bad.”
I wanted to laugh, or scream, or both. Instead, I nodded faintly, because nodding was easier than explaining the truth: that something inside me had splintered. Died.
He rose, buttoned his shirt all the way down, poured himself another glass of his expensive whiskey.
Me? I curled on the bed, pulling the sheets around me like armour, wishing I could simply poof! Vanish…never to be seen or heard from ever again.
“Next time, it will be better…You’ll see.”
He said this with so much conviction I was almost inclined to believe him once more. Almost.
Next time. The words clanged like chains.
On the drive back to Kasarani, I sat in silence. The city lights blurred past—Westlands towers glowing, matatus blasting music, hawkers packing their wares along Ngara Road. Nairobi was alive, chaotic, and unapologetic. I felt like a ghost floating through it, invisible, unreal.
Eric hummed softly to the hugely unfamiliar pop tunes that were playing on straight from his blood-red Sandisk flash drive, tapping the steering wheel rhythmically. To him, it was just another night. To me, it was the night something shifted forever.
When we finally got to Roysambu and he dropped me right outside my hostel as was the norm, the Funyula-born-and-bred father of two leaned over, kissed my breeze-whacked left cheek, and said: “Sleep well, sweetie.”
I forced a smile, then sauntered up to my third-floor apartment, the phantom ache following every step.
Inside, I went straight to the bathroom, locked the door, and turned on the shower.
At first, it was just water. Then crimson. A slow trickle that swirled down the drain, spiraling like a secret I could never tell. Ever.
My knees buckled. I pressed against the tiled wall, letting the scalding spray hit my face until salt tears mingled with fresh water.
The bleeding didn’t stop. And neither did the tears.
An hour passed before the water ran clear. By then, I wasn’t sure if I was washing my body clean, or simply trying so damn hard to scrub away the shame.
I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in a white towel, though it felt like an insult—as if covering my body could restore some dignity to it…replace with some haste what had just been taken.
In the stain-filled mirror, I didn’t recognize the girl staring back at me: her face was blotchy, her lips swollen from biting down screams, her eyes hollow. She looked like someone who had crossed a line, and just couldn’t go back.
That girl wasn’t me. But then again, she was.
I collapsed onto my tiny unmade bed, curling into the cheap, badly crumpled sheets.
Soon, my just activated Techno phone–yet another gift from him, amazing and undeserved– buzzed incessantly on the nightstand: three messages from Eric.
Eric: You were amazing tonight.
Eric: Don’t overthink. Trust me, you’ll get used to it.
Eric: Sweet dreams, babe.
I stared at the glowing screen until the words blurred. Amazing. That was what I was to him—an amazing performance, like a case won in court, like a trophy earned.
Meanwhile, my badly molested body throbbed with pain. My mind replayed every second, every “Relax,” every “Trust me.”
And still, a twisted part of me felt drawn to him. The same part that remembered the uptown restaurants with candlelit tables, the perfectly wrapped gifts slipped across the seat of his Prado, the feeling of walking into a room on his arm and knowing how fast heads turned.
It was madness. But it was my madness.
It’s true what they say: Nairobi never sleeps. Even at 2 a.m., I could hear matatus rattling down Thika Road, their conductors shouting loudly into the night. Laughter from so obviously drunken students drifted up from the hostel courtyard, careless and loud.
How could the world be so normal when mine had tilted off its axis?
I thought of calling my best friend Akoth, but what would I say? He hurt me? I bled? I stayed anyway? No—she would never understand. She would tell me to run, to cut him off, to go back to living broke and invisible in Kangemi.
But could I?
Could I return to the girl who counted coins at the grocery kiosk, who envied her classmates in shiny wigs and fresh sneakers, who dreaded every call from home because it might be her mum asking, begging, for cash?
Eric, a dad so clearly accustomed to wowing four pre-teen daughters who adored him so, had unlocked another Nairobi—the city of rooftop bars in Westlands, wine shops in Lavington, perfumes imported from Dubai. A city of soft leather seats and quiet power.
Walking away meant giving that up.
And yet…staying meant giving up myself.
The next morning, the pain lingered. I walked stiffly to class, every step a reminder…that I was tainted; soiled. No one noticed. Or maybe they did, and honestly didn’t care.
See, Nairobi is a city of secrets—every college student here, be they male or female, carries a story neatly tucked beneath their nice little smile.
I sat through a lecture on African Political Thought, my favourite of all four History lady professors, Dr. Lyn Ogutu, droning about post-colonialism…my poorly scribbled notes blurred, as my hazy mind slowly drifted back to Eric’s husky voice: Next time, it will be better.
Next time.
Would there be a next time?
Part of me already knew the answer.
That evening, as the sun dipped behind the city skyline and matatus honked their way into gridlock, Eric called. I let it ring twice before answering.
“Hadassah,” he said warmly. “How are you feeling?”
I hesitated, the truth balanced on the edge of my tongue: heavy, and bitter. But when I opened my mouth, the words that came out were lighter, rehearsed. “I’m fine.”
A pause. Then his trademark soft chuckle. “Good girl. I told you, it only hurts the first time.”
I closed my eyes. His voice was smooth, confident; cocky, unshakable. A lawyer’s voice. A man who always won.
Always.
And me? I was just another case he had argued, another verdict delivered.
That night, I showered again. Not because I needed to, but because the water, scalding hot, provided me with what I knew I needed to cleanse my wretched body, to rinse the mortal sin off of my condemned soul; plus it was the only place, the only way, I could breathe.
I stood under the steamy spray, watching droplets race down my arms, and whispered to myself, over and over:
“This is my body. This is my body.”
But the more I said it, the less I believed it.
Because somewhere in Nairobi, Eric Wafula Wanyonyi, LL.M. slept soundly inside his Sudan-sized marital bedroom; while I stood bleeding, invisible in my matchbox-sized washroom.
Because in his mind, I had already succumbed.
Because in some cruel, twisted way… maybe he was right.
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Image: Mohammad Esmaeili Unsplash