GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT

It looked like a girls’ night out. You know this thing about how women look to empower themselves by all means possible. It’s a good thing. Only until peer pressure pushes feminism off the stage. They walked into the club as a trio and left the same way. The only difference in their coming in and going out was how hyper they were. For boys, it would have been said to be rowdy. But it’s the same thing since both behaviours occur best when mjangos are high.
In the first round, they agreed to order something common. Something they would make a toast to. If they would make a toast after their sixth or seventh round, chances are they would get in trouble with the bouncers for breaking glasses. So they ordered the new coconut flavour of Vodka. The bill? The bill was on Tracy. Tracy seemed to be the lioness of the trio. She called the shots among them. Even those shots of Tequila and all mixtures of cocktails, she is the one who always called the bartender to pour them. The drinks for that night were all on her simply because she had made the greatest sales in her office that year, 2018.
“The record I have set through days and nights of working my ass off should remain unbeatable for the longest time possible,” Tracy says. She lifts up her glass and the other two girls, Claire and Nina follow. “Cheers to my success.”
Claire and Nina say, “To your success babe.”
They make a toast and sip. Even their beauty betrays them when they swallow the sip and the look on mjangos’ faces after a sudden sip of alcohol appears on their pretty faces. It renders them not pretty for a while. It’s like those people who say you don’t call her beautiful until you see her immediately after she wakes up in the morning. You’d exclaim like a Nigerian actor.
“And it doesn’t go without saying that you two girls have been my motivators and the nurses of the bruises I got in the process. You have been the suspenders that held my pants when they lost grip. And just in the same way as someone would be embarrassed when their pants fall in public and all that is not meant for public viewing is exposed, I would be embarrassed if I had failed because I opted to give up. But you two did not allow me to give up. Thank you and I love you two so much.” Tracy said with tears dancing at the cliffs of her lower eyelids. Tears are infectious. They are communicable through sight. So Claire and Nina had theirs threatening to fall by the corners of their eyes.
The moment passed quite fast and they managed to save their makeup that had been made up for the night. (You must have seen what I did there.) One thing with girls is that whenever they are together in a clique, they are like birds of the same feather that will always chirp together. Talking about everything to anything is what they will do best. Perhaps when booze is running in their bloodstreams, they will even talk the more.
Their table was strategically positioned. It was at the corner of the club and they could see almost everyone. They were not afraid to look back at the dudes who ogled at their bare feet running curvaceously from the enclosures of their very miniskirts posing like sculptures from underneath the table. You know ladies do say they dress in the manner of their choice solely because it’s their choice; true. But mjango do you think it doesn’t hover around their minds even for just a second that how they’ve dressed will boil the blood of one man or two and that will feed the pride of their beauty? If you ask me, as much as ladies act uninterested whenever men drool, ogle and sometimes yell in desperation over how hot they’ve dressed, they fancy at the approval that they are killing it!
The three girls would talk about those dudes and burst into laughter until they quit ogling. They stood up to dance once in a while whenever the DJ played their song. They learnt how to shake what their mamas passed down to them in high school. Well, they are better than this generation’s kids that learn how to twerk at five years of age. Take a walk in the digital jungle of social media and see for yourself. The boys who were confident enough with their looks, height and might went over to dance along with them. Some boys after receiving a good treat of the girls’ waist material (again, please see what I did there) – did comment saying that the girls looked like The Bold Types. (It’s a feminist series. Go look for it!) They would have tagged along with those boys for the rest of the night but they stuck to their rule that it was a girls’ night out.
“Now those are real boys,” Nina said. “Boys who don’t force themselves into ladies.”
Claire says, “Yeah aki! You hear it’s a girls’ night out and you tell your ‘soldier’ to back off for the night! Show some respect for the girls for one night.”
“But being a girls’ night, it doesn’t stop me from giving him my number if I like him,” Tracy says. “I’d give him this look,” she slightly spreads her legs with one hand on her knee and she bites the other, “And say, “Make sure you call me baby!”
They laugh to that loudly. You could hear the mixtures of cocktails in the loudness of their laughter and the effects of Tequila in their slurring speech. They were now officially drunk!
“Girls it’s 4.24AM. We should leave aki.” Claire says.
“Yea I wish I had told the cute guy I twerked for tonight to pick me and…” Nina says, “Wah is this how I sound when I’m tipsy?”
“Yes, that is how you sound girl!” Tracy says and laughs, “Nina feels like getting laid whenever she is high.” They all laugh and argue over that for a while.
“Anyway, I will drive y’all today to my place. It’s my treat, remember?” Tracy says.
“That’s so sweet of you babes,” Claire says.
“But si we just call an Uber.” Nina says.
“And who will drive my car home? You girls lets go.” Tracy says as she stands. She picks her bag and leaves as the other two follow. She even doesn’t notice that she has overpaid at the counter. They stumble by the stairs of the club as they laugh at each other.
Tracy fires the engine and drives out of the parking as if she had only water to drink. The fact that she hasn’t collided with anything at the parking gives her confidence that she is good enough to drive home. Claire sat at the passenger seat and blacked out almost immediately she got comfortable. Nina sat at the back, freed her feet off her velvet wedges and proceeded to wonderland or the world people shift to when drunk.
The stereo of Tracy’s BMW is playing Grenade by Bruno Mars. She sings along loudly. It was the first song she did at a Karaoke back then in her second year of campus. She was not cognitive of the fact that the speedometer was reading 125 Km/h at the time. The speed seemed normal to her or even slower. That’s why she kept on accelerating as if her foot had turned into a rock. She was getting fascinated at how she was overtaking vehicles like they were not moving. Maybe she even asked herself, “Why have these cars stopped in the middle of the road? Oh well, I have a home to go to with my girls. Just look how sweet they look when blacked out.” She then lets out a peal of evil laughter. The evil laughter that is made with your eyes closed.
She must have opened her eyes after the evil laughter and the first thing that greets her is shining headlights and terrific hoots of an oncoming vehicle. At such a time mjango, I hear your blood sugar shoots to heaven, your adrenaline comes out in fountains like whatever else throws very nice fountains when properly triggered and the alcohol in your brain drains to your bladder with immediate effect! Then your senses kick in but then you only have the time between blinking to make a decision. That must have happened to Tracy and her sudden sobriety must have shown her to swerve the wheel to the other side of Mbagathi Highway. She did that only to hear a bang on her bonnet followed by the shutter of her windscreen to a million fragments and finally a sudden crash on something hard.
The forces of inertia had no mercy! Had she woken up after ICU and the massive blood donation that was done for her, she would have learnt that she had run over a man who was jogging by the roadside and he died on the spot. She would have learnt even further that none of her girlfriends made it either. She had driven into a tree and Nina, who was in the back seat was thrown through the windscreen. What about Claire who was just next to her at the passenger seat? Claire was crushed beyond recognition by the impact. Maybe had she made it, she would not be able to live with the truth about everything that had happened. But she would be glad that they had the best girls’ night out ever, with the best of friends she has ever had.