THE ICEQUEEN

Boy I can tell you I struggled to wake up today. Who switched bodies with me overnight? Hey I’m serious. If you’re the one just come for your body. But leave the manhood. That’s my souvenir. That doesn’t mean you should stay with my manhood. Bring that too. That way I will be having a double armor. I will be twice the man I was last night. My future wife reading this, I see you crossing your legs now. (Hehe) Anyway let’s just be honest. I woke up late because I carried over a hangover from Friday. As if dawa ya moto kwa kweli ni moto, I turned up again on Saturday. I can assure you it didn’t help. Sunday came and you bet I was in church alright. My friends didn’t make it to church. They give in too easily to hangovers. I heard they woke up at 2pm yesterday. Or am I the one who doesn’t turn up to the max? Or the one who turns up yes, but has double on the rocks for every glass of Delmonte mango flavor, two liters to be accurate? Okay both are true. Who am I kidding!
It served me well though. Being drunk with Delmonte all Saturday night (Maybe not really), of which is a substitute phrase for sobriety – was just the right state I needed to be in to meet The Icequeen. Who has ever imagined meeting one of their followers or ‘followees’ on the Gram? Not me. 
“Club Signature. The heaven of campus,” One patron amongst us said. I am sure The Most High shifted His sitting posture when he heard that. “Who said my whip of lightning cannot find its way to you in the club? Kijana!” Maybe He’d say silently. And maybe I’d reply saying, “Bwana, huyu ni patron wa kufa na kupona. Msamehe. Hajui asemalo.” We matched in and past the bouncer who is already used to us not presenting our ID’s. It’s definitely thanks to the ladies amongst us. They are cute and cuddly when persuading any mjango. I guess that is how they hypnotized the bouncer. Maybe there are other down and I mean down payments they made for the clique. I don’t want to know. Besides, even without the down payment, my beard would still speak for me. 
“Utaambiwa ndevu sio ID mwanaume.” I was made fun of once. 
Flickering lights and music loud enough to make the dead confuse it for the Trumpets of resurrection welcomes each one of us in different ways. Some start dancing immediately. For the ladies, the Kayamba in their waists activates and for the mjangos, well, I don’t know, the gun is cocked? Maybe! When they see the kayambas shake. I have never felt any of my guns cock. Though I usually feel like crowing like a cock that realizes it has been deported to a new homestead. True story. That’s the male species and territories. 
I have been in the countryside for long enough and I have studied the animal kingdom just this much. Sometimes a homestead may only have hens maybe because well, an important visitor was coming and they had to prepare a special meal for him. Of course the cockerel is the one to face the knife and the lava hot water. Maybe the cockerel had to be sold to buy some books and stationary for the school goer in the boma. Either way, when they discover the hens are now starving for a…, okay… aahm… a cock (Oh Lord! You know what I mean!) They’d borrow one from a neighbor for some time. So to my point, when the cockerel (that has the cock that the hens want – are you happy now you nasty mjango?) gets to the new homestead, he crows and begins to take charge immediately; marking his territory on every single hen. Yea, so I like to be the cockerel in the club. I consider other men mere cocks and not cockerels in that arena. I know I just started a fight in the club before we get back there this coming weekend.
The clique assembles at a table to discuss the menu for the night in accordance to the budget and who is buying who what. 
“Jameson!”
“Ah! Weh Jameson ni expensive. Utajinunulia.”
“K.C ibambe.”
“Ona huyu.” Laughter. “Na vile huwa unazima haraka.”
“Hatutaki watu wa kubebwa hapa.”
“Ehee! The likes of akina Shimmi…”
“Weh! Don’t mention names here. Ebu sema tukunywe nini.”
“Kwanza who is buying?”
“Sasa si ulisema weh ndo unabuy alafu unauliza nani ananunua aki,”
“Nani? Mimi?”
It would go on forever. I leave to sit by the counter of the bar.  
“Sema boss.” The bar attendant, a petite girl with a box haircut says. Box haircut and calls me boss? She is a tomboy mjango. I told myself careful not to think out loud. 
“Kama kawaida. Ikuje na double kwenye miamba.” I said while snapping my finger.
She smiles. That was when I realized she had done some make up this time. Some eye liner and black lipstick. Gothic. I would have crowed upon seeing that but she is a bar attendant for pity’s sake. What do you know about mjangos who roll with the barmaids and attendants? 
She then says, “Sawa boss.” Yea she just called me that again. But I’m used to her. My loyal bar attendant. She might just be the only lady, wait lady? Okay yea, lady who I can allow to call me boss without me feeling like someone pulled my pants down. 
 My eyes begin to take a stroll around though careful not to look desperate. Maybe the flickering lights would flash someone in particular for me. Everyone who sat by the counter like me were mjangos trying to have it easy like I was. As long as they don’t spot what I spotted first, we are good. 
My order is placed right before me. “There you go,” She says. I only smile back mildly since I was already seeing a dry spell ahead of me for the night.
“Buda kwani leo kumekauka aje huku. Sioni warembo.”A mjango next to me says. I would have asked him, “Where is your faith mjango?” I didn’t feel like he needed a sermon that night. So I held it back. I am glad I didn’t psych him up. He stood up and left. I was left with my cold beverage and my thoughts ranging from important life issues and nothing in particular.
“Would you leave me alone please?” I heard.
“Uskuwe hivo babe.”
“Don’t touch me!”
I looked back. It was too early for a scene in the club. It was barely midnight. 
“And who are you calling babe? I am not your babe.” 
Pause. The guy was quiet for a while. I saw the look in his face. It was a mixture of surprise, disappointment and heartbreak. Not that it made him ugly. He was good looking. Not my words though, it’s the bar attendant who said, “Mbona anakataa huyo boy mhot hivo?” I only chuckled. I couldn’t see myself agreeing to that. It would be like a cockerel bowing down to another cockerel. He looked like that because he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was being dumped in the middle of the night in a club of all places. When mjangos come to relieve themselves of stress in the club, he found his stress for the next two weeks or less still in the same place, the club. Yes, you expect a man to mourn and nurse a heartbreak for more than two weeks? 
Alright beat it, maybe he loved her so much, considering how beautiful she is (damn, I should have started off with that by the way) and now she was denying him in public – I hope to meet him somewhere next to me in a bar one day. Drinking to his problems and when he’d be in his tenth round I’d ask, “So how long do you think you will take to recover from the heartbreak over that girl who broke up with you in the club?” He’d answer in a sluggish tone, “I even don’t know mahn… I don’t see myself recovering. Do you have a rope somewhere I can use? A good rope.” “What do you need a rope for?” I ask. He looks at me like he expects me to know what he’d want a rope for. He is drunk I can’t predict the thoughts of a drunk man. Or am I supposed to? He says, “Si I want to hang myself. I want to die!” “Oh!” I pause. “Yea I think I do. Go to the loos, by the wall where the sink is, there is a white rope sticking out of a plastic box. Take as much as you want and use it. It works.” “I hope you’re not pulling my leg,” He’d say. And what do you know, he’d stand up and leave for the loo, staggering a bit of course. 
“Babe don’t do this to me.” He said. 
I turned and looked forward. I didn’t want to see a man go on his knees and cry. Not that night. 
“Ah leave me alone you son of a bitch! Can’t you hear?”
I had begun to like that chic. She got guts I say. Not just guts, I have gone to things I cannot see and left those that I can see unsaid. Before the guts, she has beauty written all over her jackpot body. Starting with the color that makes every manhood, both big and small, tamed and untamed, shaved and unshaved, cut and uncut – bow down in honor. That is none other than the brown color. Melanin cannot afford that rank of honor. Even in the not so bright club lights, I could see her eyes. They were soul seducers. Did I mention the shape of her body? Now would be a good time to sing Ed Sheeran’s Shape of you. I was pitying the mjango, but not anymore. A queen indeed mjango! I would have cheered the queen of the club to even smack him on the face and later I’d say, “Come to me baby.” Though we both know I am well-mannered eh? 
Two bouncers arrived at the scene. It should have gone for long so I’d keep on admiring this one hell of a woman who maybe was born on the dancefloor – as I calculate my moves after all would be said and a mjango would be thrown out of the club. There would definitely be no need for an explanation in situations like those. The girl child wins even without talking. Always the innocent one. Just as the mjango was about to be dismissed I spot a fishy look on her face. Did I just see her almost smile? Was she celebrating under the layers of her sexiness? Or what did I just see. She must be a bad one! I told myself. I was quickly overtaken when I realized the red flowery mini-dress she was in. My jaw fell but I was careful not to fall of the stool too. I think by then I was aware of her attitude. She wouldn’t care even if I developed a stroke right in front of her. She then walked towards the counter after she was sure that her problem for the night wasn’t going to come back. He was being carried by the edge of the back of his boxers by the bouncers, probably already halfway out. She got closer. I quickly turned my neck forward lest I should turn into a pillar of salt or a pillar of shit for ogling at her. 
Wait! Did I just see her cleavage clearly? No I am not a perv. There is just something on her cleavage. Okay the cleavage has my tongue out already but it’s not about that. It’s something else. 
She sat next to me. I pretended not realise that I had just received new company. In my head I’m thinking, is she who I think she is? I want to find out and be sure. Wait! I can’t just turn and stare at her cleavage. She will slap the nuts out of me. But that’s the only way to find out. I gave myself a countdown of up to three, then I’d look at what I want and the rest, the bouncers will know.
One… Two… 
“Niletee Jamesons please and two glasses.” She said to the attendant.
I thought, two glasses? 
Ah! Whatever! 
…Three!
I turned. I froze. She was looking at me already. But I wasn’t looking back. Not until my count reached three. 
She smiled. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I said.
The bar attendant came with a bottle and two glasses. 
“Give him one glass.” 
Within that short period of a chance, I took my time and looked at her left knocker through her cleavage. She had a tattoo on her knocker. Oh yes, it was who I thought it was.
“No you don’t have to. I’m good.” I said.
“Eiy come on. I can’t drink this alone.”
I swallowed something hard. “Do I know you?”
“How do you think you know me?”
“Aahm… Your left breas… aahm. I mean your left… Cleavage.” 
She stopped in the middle of pouring my glass. 
“Your tattoo I mean.”
“What about it?”
“I know it from… Sorry I know you from Instagram. @icequeen right?”
She slams the bottle on the table. Looks at me with sharp eyes. 
“Really? My cleavage? Is what you recognize me with? Really now Mjango? Or you think I don’t know you. I see you on Instagram as well. All of you are just the same it seems.” 
She continues to pour my glass, “Anyway. Let me not ruin your night. Do you have anything else to talk about apart from my cleavage and designated tattoo?”
You now should be seeing why I had to go to church the following morning.