POOR COCK

“Kijana wapi ID?” A bouncer with a body like a wrestler asked him. The bouncers looked like they would launch a heavy blow on the face of anyone that seemed to waste their time. On that day specifically, they were not in their usual moods. Rumors had it that the club manager had scolded them and nearly slapped each of them if not for their able bodies that were twice his size. The club paid a handsome fine last weekend to the authorities for allowing minors into the club. What pissed the bouncers is not the probability of a slap for that would only be as painful as a peck to them. It was their weekly salaries that was partly chiseled by the manager for the compensation of the money they lost to a bloody fine.
“Iko mahali hapa kwa mfuko,” a young mjango with barely a beard on his face said. It was his second time in a club but it was pretty much like his first. His friends had told him that bouncers never really check IDs. Guess when he was prompted for his ID, his first thought was that he had fake friends. They also didn’t tell him that there was an entrance fee for boys. A whooping 400 bob! While the ladies went in for free. He didn’t understand the logic though he just had to pay. That’s equivalent to the upkeep amount for an average student in a hostel for four days. So someone would soon call back home and lie that his money was stolen or they’re required to buy a physics manual for a practical session in the lab. Dear parent, if you have a child in campus and you think they have been genuinely asking you for money all the time, ah, think again. But these things happen. That 400 bob was however exchanged for a coupon worth Ksh. 400 of alcohol at the club’s bar.
And so he went in. So many familiar faces all over but none that counts him as familiar too. He has not been ranked under the cool kids’ league, yet! That makes it a little harder to prospect for any females to go ‘dundaing’ with for the night. You should know how the vibing game works mjango. It is much easier to make an approach on a girl if you are in the company of fellow boys. Again, it is much easier to make an approach on a girl when you’re confident that you’re her type and her chances of resisting are similar to the chances of missing your mouth while eating in the dark. And lastly, it is easier to make an approach on a girl when you’re somewhere in between drunk and sober. (Not speaking out of experience however). He spots his two weeks old friends from the hostel. They had already secured a table that looked beautiful to him. Of course you cannot call a table beautiful if you haven’t been intoxicated yet. It was beautiful to him because of the girls that sat there. Girls one could only dream of. Some of the boys were busy ordering and ferrying bottles of whatever everyone was going to intoxicate themselves with that night – to that high table.
He passed that table, feeling lesser esteemed than he came in. He sat on a white leather couch that seemed not have been discovered yet by the patrons. The couches were at the far end of the club. That place felt cold, maybe because nobody was seated there but him. A thought passed his amateur mind that perhaps when mjangos get drunk and tired of shaking their particulars, that’s when they’d come to sit on the couches. He rebuked that thought by telling himself that he would just find his fun spot that night. All he had to do was, wait. He felt wise. If only he knew he looked like a douche bag sitting there alone. Poor boy was also in shock. Back in high school not so long ago, he was the guru of plots and ladies at the same time. He felt like superman who had just lost his powers after being exposed to the kryptonite stone. The cock of high school is now unable to crow in the university. Neither is he sure of a high ground he could stand on and at least try to crow in the club. Is it the dance floor? His moves are not that sic. Is it one of the high tables? He might be sent off with a bottle smashed on his skull.
These thoughts were chain sawing him slowly but surely. He was spiraling into depression and boredom and all that was left as an option, was the coupon. He thought of drinking to his stresses for the night. Besides, the 400 bob had to spent in some way. Just when he was about to say, “Oh hell” he sees her. She is seated by the balcony and doesn’t seem to have any company, for now!
The pride in his cockerel nature, that always looks to dominate, shoots up like the way fares to shagz will do this festive season. For a moment, he saw an opportunity to own the night. He was now praising himself for being patient and praising the god of the club (it can’t be the God in Heaven, mjango) for denying him all the chances everywhere else. Even without the command of his brain, he marched towards her.
He sat at the opposite side of the small table she was at. The table had nothing but her phone that lay silently. That’s when he cursed under his breath for not thinking that he should have first gone for a drink before descending upon the damsel.
Him: Hi gorgeous.
She was indeed gorgeous. If beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, then we are all beholders of this particular one. She had crowned her gorgeousness with a black strapless mini-dress and a blue fur coat.
Her: (Smiling.) Hi there.
Him: I hope you don’t mind me joining you.
Her: Yea, I don’t mind.
Him: (Chuckles then goes blank. Perhaps lost in the adoration of her beauty. He swears in his head he has seen her in the hostels.)
Her: You look familiar.
Him: (Snaps.) I… I do? Thank you.
Her: (Laughing.) It was not a compliment.
Him: Oh ah! Sorry. I just didn’t expect. You look more familiar.
Her: How can someone look more familiar?
Him: Well… Uhm, maybe because I have seen you quite a number of times. And I’ve also heard about you from my friends.
Her: Who are your friends?
Him: (Silent for a while. He tells himself that he will not share this jackpot with those fake friends even through mentioning them.) They don’t matter. I’m Mark by the way. And you must be…?
Her: You tell me, since you say you’ve heard about me from your friends. What do your friends call me?
Mark: (He says damn under his breath.) Kipusa! They call you kipusa.
He’s lied! He cannot start telling her that they call her ‘madiaba.’
Her: If my Kiswahili background serves me right, kipusa is a beautiful girl?
Mark: Correct! (Laughs.)
Her: Oh wow. I’m flattered.
He thinks he’s winning by the way.
Her: So my name is Esther.
Mark: Esther? Nice! It is a pleasure to meet you.
Esther: Likewise.
Mark: Would you like a drink?
Esther: No, thank you.
Mark: Come on, I insist.
Esther: Well, since you’re such a gentleman, okay.
Mark: Great! So what will you have?
He was praying under his breath that she wouldn’t go beyond the amount in his coupon.
Esther: Just a Guarana would be nice.
Mark: I’ll be back with your special order in a while, mamacita. (Winks at her and leaves.)
He comes back four minutes later. He hurried up to curb the chances of another mjango grabbing his seat on their table. He was not willing to pick up a fight with other boys. Not that night especially.
Esther: Back so fast.
Mark: Yea I had to. Here you go.
He places a can of Guarana and a glass in front of her. He bought himself a smaller can of Guarana but didn’t have time to pick a glass for himself.
Esther: Thank you. You’re nice.
Mark: Oh! You don’t say. So Esther, which course are you doing?
Esther: Environmental Science.
Mark: Wow. Do you like it?
He sips his Guarana.
Esther: Kinda. But I love Chemistry. So it’s not really a big deal.
Mark: I hate Chemistry. (Slightly slapping his cheek.)
Esther: (Giggles) Why? But it’s interesting and fun and applicable to day to day life.
Mark: Oh good Lord! Applicable? Where in my house will I titrate? Or maybe tea can be titrated eh?
Esther: (Laughs.) Of course not. You’re a funny one.
Mark: I’m being real you know.
Esther: But enough of studies now.
Mark: Yea right.
Takes another sip.
Esther: Is this your first time in the club?
He nearly chokes.
Mark: Uhm! Well… Do I look like it’s my first time?
Esther: Come on now, there’s nothing to be ashamed of if it’s your first time. For me it’s my second time.
Mark: Well that makes me confident now. It’s not really my first time but in a way still, it is.
Esther: How now?
Mark: The first time in a club, my two elder brothers sneaked me in. It was a club in Nairobi…
Esther: You from Nairobi?
Mark: Yes. Kwani you?
Esther: Ukunda.
Mark: Where’s that?
Esther: In coast.
Mark: Ouw! Pwani eh? So yea, our parents were not around and they couldn’t leave me home like that. They also said I was going to go to campus someday, so I had to start learning how things go. Their friend was hosting a bash. They couldn’t miss. You know my height makes me look so young. But I was in form three by then anyway. So they had to sneak me in unlike most of my peers who just looked eighteen or twenty. They would just enter clubs like their mothers’ houses.
He paused when she started laughing.
Esther: And then?
Mark: They sneaked me in, but they had to hide me. They thought the bash was in a VIP lounge where it’s not easy for someone to interrupt and find a minor. So they had to hide me in the loo.
Esther: You’re not serious!
Mark: I wish I wasn’t. I stayed in the loo like for four hours. I even slept.
Esther: (Laughing really hard.) You’re crazy. I can’t believe that really happened to you. You didn’t eat anything?
Mark: I ate chips in that toilet. I even didn’t enjoy it. But I had to because I was hungry.
Esther: Why? Who doesn’t enjoy chips?
Mark: The people who don’t enjoy chips are those that are forced to eat in the toilet while some niggaz make love to each other in the next toilet.
Esther: (Carefully wiping her eyes). Ey! You guy, don’t make me ruin my make up with these tears of laughter. But that was not nice. So now I get why this is your first time.
He takes a third sip and nods. He figures that he has to fasten up his game. He convinced himself that the boy child will not be a loser again that night.
Mark: Yes. And I am enjoying it so far, thanks to your company.
Esther: Aaw that’s so sweet of you to say.
Mark: By the way, you’re a first year?
Esther: Yes. Just like you.
Mark: But I didn’t tell you that.
Esther: You cannot hide some things. It’s easy to know a fellow first year in the club, especially if he is a boy.
Mark: I’m quite embarrassed though. So, Esther, uhm… What do you say after we’re done here we go to my room? Or yours if you like.
He swallows something hard. His toes are crossed. She laughs and stops midway.
Esther: Mark! Mark! Mark! You were doing so well, until you asked me to go to bed with you. Anyway, I don’t roll with first years!
Just then, her phone rang and she picked it almost immediately.
Esther: (On phone.) Yes babe, I’m at the balcony.
She hangs up. Mark was still stuck between shock, dismay and a handicapped esteem. Just then, a man shows up. Yes a man, not a boy. Looks like he’s in his forties. Dressed the way people in their forties dress but a little more expensive. Esther jumped in ecstasy like she had seen her father, except, she was not her father. How does Mark know that? Because you don’t call your father babe, mjango!
Esther: Nice knowing you Mark.
She locked her arms into the ol’ man’s, and just like that, they left the club. Mark looked at the Guarana he had bought her. She hadn’t touched it!