SHOOT YOUR SHOT VII

I could see Mwamburi’s perspiration levels gradually increase as he spoke about the tail end of his life’s story. Recounting those events must be giving him the creeps. It’s the trauma you’d expect when the other halves of your heart tread on roads only the Lord knows where they lead to. One of them was still alive however as far as he knew. And he thought he was going to follow her to the dens of hell if he had to. That’s what it means to Shoot Your Shot mjango! Go get what you want even if it you’ll run into a flying bullet. 
(Read the previous episide here.)
                                    ****
I sat at that spot without moving for close to one hour. I snapped when the bartender came over to inform me that his shift was over. That some chap would be taking over incase I needed anything else. 
Well, he needed not to worry about what I needed. Because what I needed was definitely not on the other side of the counter. Nothing on that side had soft hair that I could caress until the nerves on my palm become numb. A smile that could stretch like a rubber band whenever I said something funny or tickled her side when she pretended not to find it as funny. Nothing on the other side of the counter had a soft skin and a light complexion enough to awaken the army of goosebumps. None had a shape so shapeful enough to be as sexy. Not even the most curvaceous of booze bottles posing akimbo on the shelves. Only Emily befitted those things and so she was all I needed. I had never imagined I’d be this desperate for a woman. 
So desperate to be touched the way she does when she feels like she has nothing better to do. My entire body was this close to going on a riot in demand for her caresses like when she assigns herself to count the number of beauty spots on my body. 
The one hour I sat still was one of the most thoughtful hours of my life. I had never sat to think to those levels of acidity ever since my mama took the highest way of no return. Tons of questions had left rail tracks on my mind after crisscrossing in pursuit of answers only Emily could have. What bugged me the most was that I had her on board on everything about my life only to realise that I have always been at bay in hers. Or had I not expressed and proven myself enough to warrant that she could trust me with all her demons? I felt stupid. Never having thought of asking her the hard questions. Now I was paying the price for my naivety. 
The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t take it anymore. I tipped the new bartender and took off. If looked at keenly, one would relate me with a fox; following wherever the smell of love in the air led me to. 
I had however given myself a pep talk saying that ‘atafutaye hachoki.’ But that motivation lasted only between where I was seated and the exit. I was smacked by two things, a child and another man! I stood at the exit door like a woman trying to sense whether labour is about to begin but yet still hoping it’s not labour. I never heard stress speak so loudly to me like it did on that day. 
                                        ****
“What did you hear it say?” I asked. 
“That I should stop trying to fight a lost battle. You don’t run after a lady who has got child and a man while calling her your lady.” 
“But you loved her.”
“Well that was misguided love, I thought. The river of love channeled through the wrong land. Emily had been someone else’s territory all that time. I had been playing American football on grounds that didn’t belong to me. And desertion like that was the price I had to pay.” He said. 
The weight of his words was so great. They had to be caught by a net before they could touch the ground. Otherwise an earthquake would be the ground’s new dancing style. He spoke like a man who had lost hope. The flame on his candle of hope had been farted on so hard that it went off. 
I can only imagine the pain and bitterness that was reborn during that season of his life. They must have been reborn in three triplets each this time. Picture giving birth to three triplets of pain and three triplets of bitterness. Intense huh? You’d be spending all your life chasing them around as they giggled in evil laughters while running in smelly diapers they’ve shitted in because they find it fun to run around with shit. They destroy everything in their path that belongs to you. Is it your friends? Those two nasty kinds of babies will shit around them until they run away from you. Pain and bitterness makes you have a bad breath. Everyone will be a victim after your speech. 
If you’re out there mjango, and you’re full of pain and bitterness maybe from someone who spelt your name badly. Or someone who stepped on your foot with the sharp heel of their nine inch high heels. Or someone who took advantage of you for their selfish reasons. Or you lost a loved one. Whatever reason it may be, you need help. Accept that you need help and go get help. Resolving to weird, crude or reckless means of relieving the pain and bitterness isn’t going to help, mjango. 
Mwamburi asked me to tell you that he chose the stupidest of ways to relieve his pain and bitterness and he suffered for it. Now he is advising you not to taste those waters. He did that for you so you would see the consequences and be wiser than he was. 
I sighed heavily and asked, “So what were you going to do?” 
“I told myself that I had to move on in the fastest way possible. In ways that if she heard or saw, she’d want to cut her wrists. I wanted to make sure I don’t feel the pain no more and she gets punished emotionally for offering me half of the bread that I deserved!” He said and wiped the sweat on his forehead. 
“How fast did you resolve to that?” I asked. 
“Funny that I decided all that when standing at the exit.” 
                                      ****
And just like that I went back inside. My loins that were as angry as my heart was calling out for one woman in that club. I knew who it was. 
I walked over to that table as if something of mine was there. There was a number of dudes and ladies. She was seated in between two guys with her legs crossed. Upon seeing that, it rung in my head that they wouldn’t remain crossed for the entire time. I must have been perceived by those at the table as a man who commands his respect. And one of his respects at the time was the lady in a tight up dress that was made with a material that twinkled brightly and even brighter where her body had curved the most. 
She placed the glass of what she was having on the table and stood up swiftly without question like the commander in chief was calling. She locked her hands in mine as I simply pocketed. I could tell she felt like the whole world was bowing down to her. Well, I was telling myself that she’d be bowing to me for the whole night. 
When we were out, she asked, “So you’ve changed your mind?” 
I scoffed. 
She seemed to slow down in protest for an answer. I had taken in enough nonsense on that day and I needed no more of it. So I turned and kissed her. In a French way you may say mjango. When our lips let go, she stood there as if she was under a freezing spell. 
“Boss! Mnaenda?” A taxi guy asked. 
I turned and left her there and responded affirmatively to the taxi guy. Just when I was about to board, a hand touched my waist. The kiss did speak some French into her. (See what I did there?) Because sometimes Kiswahili is not enough to convince a lady. I ushered her in and as soon as the engine was fired, her hands were all over me and she wanted mine all over her too. I wanted mine all over her just as much. Oh! Her legs were nothing close to crossed at the time. My hands made numerous trips to her promised land and none of those trips went without an oral response that sure didn’t involve words. 
That night went so fast. We barely said anything to each other. I even didn’t know her name. All I can remember is we got to the club house and began at the bar. She drunk but I didn’t. I wanted something harder than just a drink. And I had my arms wrapped around a lady who was bad a candidate than I was in the crack game. 
Mt. Everest was the next destination. Telvo was not around. The place was quite packed but everyone minded their own business. Seems I was not alone in the relieving of stress affair. We sat on a couch with all the crack we needed for the night before us. Rolls of weed I can’t remember how many, the pills I was seeing for the second time and White Walker. She introduced me to White Walker. White Walker and I had never had the chance to get acquainted officially. We paid for all those by the way. 
Not many puffs later saw her resolve to have me as her couch. She sat on my laps with both my legs locked in between hers as she faced me. I wasn’t handling the crack. She did. Blowing it all on each other’s faces and laughing like mad children. What she sipped, I sipped. What she puffed, I puffed. She began to feel hot and she wanted to strip. Hot both in terms of temperature and in the other terms. With her sitting on my laps like that wasn’t making it any less hotter for me. If she was to strip, she would strip only for me to see. 
“Let’s get a room then,” She whispered in my ear. As high as I was, I saw it well not to let her walk. So I carried her. In her hands was a bottle of White Walker and the pills. 
The rest is history mjango! But you bet she tapped out a million times. 
When the climax was over and done, our high selves began to talk because sleep was nowhere to be found in our members. In between our conversations the heat would rise again and we would help each other put it out. 
“By the way I even don’t know your name,” I said. 
“I was wondering when you’d ask. Turi,” She said.  
She confessed to having a crush on me. She was in the pool swimming on the first day I came to the clubhouse with Telvo. We sat by the pool. She wondered why I didn’t notice her. “I would, if you were topless.” I joked. The next thing she knew was I was grooving with Emily. “Light skins! Every guy is ever running for light skinned chics. I don’t like light skin girls.” She said. 
Even I went on a blubbering spree. I poured out how Emily and I began up to when she didn’t show up for the date. And just as you’d expect of a chic who you’re in bed with and has a crush on you, she began to mouth. All of which I found to be quite true sometime later. 
Apparently I thought I would be able to take it all in soberly. Emily and Turi had been good friends since campus. Their friendship took a nose dive when Emily got hooked up with a guy who was already working at the time. 
That tells us to keep our other friendships solid when we get into relationships mjango. But that shouldn’t be an excuse not to invest in the relationship as you should. 
There was no bad blood between them only that their friendship suffered a strain. Emily was not into the guy wholeheartedly. Call it for fun and prestige as young girls seek to have nowadays. It was all merry until she got pregnant. The child is now a three year old boy called Sunny. Then it clicked. Sunny and the sunflower tattoo on her thigh! The guy wants to fully claim custody of the child since he has been living with him for almost more than a half of the little boy’s life. He had connections in high places that’s why he was able to take the child away from her. Yet Emily didn’t want to live with him. 
“But her ghosting can only mean that she has gone back to live and maybe even be the man’s wife because of her son.” Turi said. “But if you want someone who will stay with you baby, you know you’ve got me.” She clang on to me. I could filter the desperation in her words. 
I was silent. Lost in thoughts. In the end I said it was well. But my actions didn’t show it. 
                                       ****
Silence. 
Sighs. 
“How did your actions not show that it was well?” I asked. 
“One, I pushed with Turi yet all I wanted was to make sure I had someone to shag. According to her, we were in a relationship. Lord knows how much we used to get drank, smoke and swallow crack together. Sex and drugs was the foundation of that relationship.”
“Damn! Two?” 
“That’s how I became an addict. I remember it became so bad until my relatives reported me as a missing person. Telvo came to look for me because I never went to the clubhouse anymore.” 
“Why?” 
“Turi’s doing. I think she feared that Emily would show up there someday and sweep me off my feet.” 
I giggled. “An addict you say?”
“Yea. Of booze, weed and at least everyday I’d do a bottle with that pill. I developed health conditions but they seemed to be minor. All that time I was not afraid of what would be of me. It was just at the back of my head that the longer Emily took to show up, the more I’d plunge myself.”
Silence. 
“I even deferred by the way,” he continued. “Everything that mattered didn’t matter to me anymore. Not even school. I would stay for long without seeing my relatives. They learnt about Turi and I can’t express enough how much they hated her. They believed she was the cause of my waywardness. She didn’t like them either. In fact she didn’t like anything that implied that it would take me away from her.” 
“Obsession?” 
“It’s even more than that. But I was okay with it. For all I knew I cared about nothing. I had Turi and I had booze and crack.”
“You lived together?” 
“Yea. In South B.” He said. 
“Where did the money for all that come from?”
“Turi. She’s a spoilt brat Mjango. If you’re going to ask me how come I didn’t feel intimidated to be sustained by a lady, then don’t ask. The answer is I just didn’t care.” 
“Jeez man!” I said. 
Scoffs, “I know.” 
“Didn’t you ever get tired of only being with her?” 
“I would have but she wouldn’t allow me to. Whenever she went for her nights with the girls, she let me go have nights of my own too. I’d just go do my thing sometimes alone and other times with boys.” 
I chuckle, “Sorry to ask bro, but just how did you not catch a disease?” 
“I don’t have an answer to that,” he laughs. “But if you insist, I’d say ni Mungu tu. My people must have been praying for me real loudly. But most of the time I went to just get high. No chics. I kinda began to get loyal.” 
I shake my head, “So where and when was the game changer? Because you being here speaking like this means the Red Sea parted at some point.”
Silence. His eyes began to drench from a far. 
“Those were about ten months ever since Emily ghosted. The game changer came when I had a near death experience. Because of overdosing.” 
                                       ****
I didn’t really have a phone. I had a mulika mwizi with a line only Turi had the number to. I carried it only when I was going out on my own. That’s how much I became antisocial too. Even I couldn’t talk to Telvo. I knew he’d try to save me from myself and I was still mad at him since I discovered that he had known all that about Emily but never told me. It made me change my perception about brotherhood. If anyone needed to reach me, they had to go through Turi. 
One day Turi brought up the issue about wanting a child. I found it funny because I wondered how she was able to picture us as parents. 
“I mean look at us babe, our lives are too messy to bring a child in between. We don’t wanna be unfair to that child.” I’d say. 
That was fine. But bringing it up for a second and third time was not. Something was not right somewhere. I knew Turi. She was a long way from desiring a child but why now all of sudden? It’s simple. She felt threatened. But the question is, threatened by what? I wasn’t showing any signs of leaving. If I wanted to leave I had a whole ten months to do that. Or even who? Aha. Someone was threatening Turi. And a child was her best way of securing me for herself. We’ve heard these cases before mjango. 
I had never been interested to go through her phone until then. I learnt her screenlock pin with time and I began sleuthing. 
My whole world that had already fallen apart fell apart even further to hell when I found threads of messages from none other than Emily. Emily had been looking for me for upto two months. Up to ten of her messages and two of her calls went unanswered. Her texts showed that all she wanted was a chance to speak to me. And the son of a gun responded to all that saying, “Mwamburi doesn’t need you any more. I’m the one who has been with him ever since you lied and ditched him for Lord knows what. So leave us alone. He is mine.” 
My judgement was impaired. The first thing that came to mind was to rain fire on Turi for hiding all that from me for two months! Then again I thought that wasn’t worth it. Then as if the devil had dropped a pin on me, everything that transpired between Emily and I came like a tsunami in my head. Her betrayal replayed and it undid the wound that booze, crack and shagging was so poor at healing. The initial plan to make her regret in the first place was revived. 
I left the house for crack joints. I left Turi’s phone in a manner she’d know I saw those messages. 
Soon I was lying on the floor, helpless. Not moving a muscle. Nerves senseless. Unaware of everything else going on around. In fact, not even aware of whether the world existed anymore. It was a limbo situation. In between worlds. Maybe the world of the living and the world that is the abyss in between the world of the living and the dead. In that state, nothing matters. No worries and no stress. Basically because totally no thinking was taking place. There is zero percent cognition. No response over anything. Cold water wouldn’t do the trick and neither would being thrown into a pool. Not even seduction by the most ‘booty-full’ lass would jump-start the body. You don’t need to be told where the jumpstarting terminals are located on the body, do you? The only thing that could be done was to let that mjango, me, lying on the floor in the manner of a corpse be! The body systems would soon restart after the effects of being high wear off! That’s how it goes but not on that day. 
Telvo’s friend discovered I lay wasted in the joint for upto nine yours with absolutely no response of whatever kind. I was lucky, again. Because I was rushed to hospital and the doctor said if I had stayed any longer, I’d have died. It’s even a miracle that I didn’t die within those nine hours. 
I got to know all that after waking up however. I stayed for two weeks in a coma until it was now believed that I’d not make it. My relatives and many of my old friends came to visit me. Even my dad came. Ever since that incident my dad and I grew closer than before. Bond’s still growing. Turi was too messed up to stay around. She wasn’t strong enough. She blamed herself. 
                                          ****
Very long silence. 
I cleared my throat, “Sorry about that bro.”
Silence.
“And Emily?” 
“She came.”
“She did?” I asked. 
“Yes. And stayed by my side for 36 hours. I don’t know how but, I woke up when she was sleeping next to me. I took about a whole hour trying to remember what had happened and figure out where I was and of course, figure out who was sleeping by my bed side. I touched her hair and immediately I knew it was Emily. That woke her up.” 
I fought to keep myself emotionally sober. 
He continued, “She had cried herself to sleep and had refused to leave the hospital. My Aunt Tina told them she was family. When she realised I was awake, she cried again for almost half an hour. Doctors came, checked me and said in less than 24 hours I’d be ready to be discharged.” 
“Did you and Emily talk?” 
“Yea. From about the time the doctors left at night till when the first visitor came on the following day. She apologised for everything. Expressed that she had already dressed up for the date and that night she had promised herself to tell me everything because she knew I’d propose to her. Nothing was fake and she did love me. She got news that Sunny’s dad wanted to leave with him for USA and they’d live there since the dad got a contract to work there for ten years. That would completely rob her off her son and so she had to leave to claim him. It was a tough and bloody case but the dad finally let go about three months before since he was running out of time.” 
“Wow. That’s touchy bro.” 
Silence. 
“And so happily ever after?” 
He chuckled, “Well it took me eight months to decide whether I should, whether it was okay and whether I was ready to rekindle things with Emily or not. Though she is the one who helped me through the traumas and recovery from drugs. I went for therapy for a year by the way. We both stopped doing booze and crack.” 
“Oh!” I giggle, “Eight months eh?” 
Mwamburi laughs, “I know what you’re waiting to hear. Okay Emily and I have been dating officially for four months now. Today marks the four months. Tonight we are going to Radison Blu Hotel to celebrate. For every new month celebration of our relationship, we celebrate it there.” 
I must confess I almost allowed a tear to fall there. 
“You’re gonna go with Sunny?” I joke. 
He laughs, “Nah! He will be there for our first year anniversary though. And by the way, he has started calling me daddy. Tricky but I’ll start getting used to it.” 
I was in stitches. 
“So Mwamburi. Sorry to ask but Emily is older than you and she has a child. Isn’t that a setback enough because it is for some men.” I asked. 
He said, “Mjango! Nothing beats love. Not age. Not distance. Not a child and not ever a grandchild. That’s why the big message from my story is Shoot Your Shot if you want to. Let nothing stop you. I’m now happier than I’ve ever been.” 
Mjango, you heard that, right?