GENERATION Z (SN 2)

It’s 8.02PM. Pretty cold for a Wednesday, I tell myself. Well, it’s not as if there should be a specific weather for a specific day. That was just me being a little dramatic. Or maybe a little too dramatic for a Wednesday huh.
The sky looked like it was just about to piss all over the place. Trust me, here in the Western side of the country, you don’t want to be outside when it takes out its weaner however much you may like weaners mjango.
I hate the rain. For reasons 2009 can tell best. I had one heartrending incident with the rain on a month like this back then that has since caused grim in my school of thoughts. The children in that school press themselves against corners when they behold impending rain. All the rain has ever done especially in Nairobi is illuminate the shame in Kenya’s capital and cause a myriad of spoilt days for thousands of Nairobians. Apparently, swimming and boat riding skills will come in handy for any Nairobi resident. Especially those living along Thika Road.
It had been predicted that El Nino would once again make a grand appearance in Kenya in that year. Mjangos in this age only know El Nino from folktales. They narrated to us that it took Kenya by storm. (You should see what I did there.)
I am not sure I wanted to experience El Nino. Thank heavens she didn’t come but instead, her small sister did. Maybe that’s also why I consider small sisters as a pain in the you know where. I don’t know what she was mad about on that day.
I remember it was just before Christmas. Maybe she had just hit puberty and she swang her moods on us on behalf of her feared sister from 1998. Maybe she wasn’t happy that puberty was taking its course just before Christmas for Christ’s sake!
It was like a horror movie. In fact let’s call her Anabelle. She came with winds first from the North, from South and then what seemed like West and East at the same time. She must have been having crumps, for the first time, maybe. So she cried all over the region because she had never experienced that magnitude of pain in her lifetime.
By the time she left or maybe took her pain and moods elsewhere on earth, she had hijacked roofs off of houses, fell trees, caused floods, struck lightning on infrastructure and ultimately broke hearts. Especially there where she just had to hijack roofs!
Ten years down the line, she, another one, not Anabelle, was making me wait at some junction for her arrival at the brink of a downpour. But well, coincidentally, her name is also Anabelle. So now there is Anabelle the girl in a horror movie, Anabelle the sister of the dreaded El Nino and now Anabelle, my friend.
Waiting is never among my talents. You bet she found my guts having turned into a furnace. If it wasn’t for how apologetic she was immediately she alighted from a motorcycle, my exhalation of fire would burn her already beautifully dark face. She even knew that the secret lies in holding my arm gently; the trigger of compassion.
She spots natural, rugged short hair that does smell nice. Like a natural perfume from the jungle. She is dressed in all black, the colour that my friend Sonny says I look good in all the time.
“So what do you want to have for dinner?” I ask her.
“Are there options?”
“Options based on?”
“My appetities.” She says with confidence gleaming on her face. I nearly pass out because my mind bewilders at the realisation that there are several types of appetites. It all depends on what you regard as tasty.
“My mum says, “Eat what is there,” to innocently mean don’t be so picky when there’s evidently nothing to choose from. So Anabelle, you will eat what is there.”
A chuckle twines out of her.

****

Her back is leaning against the couch. Eyes glued to the screen before her as she picks popcorns from the bowl placed on the side of my head. My head is lying on her laps that are stretched on a puff adjacent to the couch. She’d often pass popcorns to my mouth in support of the lazy comfort I found in that position.
And so the screenplay begins. The scene is dated 2007. Like young girls her age; eager to find purpose but the world harshly showed her that money is what puts food on the table and can help her take care of her aging mother, Destiny is seated in the glamorous changing room of a posh club in Wall Street, New York.
She inevitably puts on a naïve face because she is a rookie in the business. I thought that perhaps she was also overtaken by disbelief because she had probably never been in the same room with many ladies in conspicuously displaying attires and some even bare to the uttermost parts of their being. I told myself that she should have attended a girls’ boarding school in Kenya for that matter. Especially in Eastern Province. Nothing of that sort would have been a guest to her eyes.
Destiny has no experience whatsoever in the job she had just taken up. Jobs like those are close to if not similar to freelancing. Your pay is determined by your proficiency.
There are good days and bad days at work.
A good day would be the day you’d make so much money. A bad day would be a day you would make peanuts and worse, have peanuts spilled on you. In salaried jobs, regardless of the state of the economy, you’d still laugh your way from the bank at the end of the month.
The first set of days for the young girl would be bad. No peanuts were spilled on her though.
She gets up and follows the rest when it’s announced that it’s showtime. The whole club that is basically teeming with an army of men sit in wait for the hotties to swarm in. They unleash an uproar and the hype man in the background goes even more bananas as they parade what Generation Z calls God given talents – on the dais. The supposed talents are barely held or covered by fancy lingeries.
In the course of the screenplay, word leaks one particular night that Usher was going to show up. He came in throwing money in the air like it was toilet paper. On stage were the ladies dancing ostentatiously in showy regalia for you never know who prince charming would pick for himself.
On stage and on mini-platforms around the club, were poles running all the way up to the ceiling. What we would dream to see from the lovers of our lives during our honeymoons and beyond is readily available in clubs like these but for a nerve wrecking price!
However power couples would tell you for free mjango, that the level of satisfaction you’d draw from the well of the one love of your life is nothing compared to what is sold in these clubs by those poles.
The highest earning member is Ramona, formally as Jennifer Lopez. Destiny at one point stands glaring in admiration at Ramona as she dances coquettishly on a pole. You could see confidence radiate from her. Her professionalism in the art would even inspire you to reach out for a tip but you’d realise it’s not live. But the band of men drooling, groaning and yelling like animals at the edge of the stage did it already. Thousands of tips more than you could be willing to give for a peep show.
Most men are in suits. That must be their way of letting loose after a day of battling with figures in the stock exchange.
Ramona walks off stage hugging leaves of money on her chest. Destiny still stands in amazement. She puts on a face that says she has found who would be like a mentor to her in the business.
Ramona takes her in like a daughter with cigarettes gracing their first interaction on what seems like the roof top of the club. Their relationship takes off blissfully and bears fruits for Destiny who begins to make mad money. More money than she would probably hold in her lifetime. She had been shown how to lap dance by Cardi B acting as Diamond, a fellow colleague also a pro in the men-entertaining business. Some of our very own here could borrow some lessons. I’m just saying.
My thought was that it never is easy and happy all the way. I expected a game changer. A sword that would cut through what seems inevitable and a new reality would play. A harder one. And in the course of the screenplay it happened as I thought.
A reality like the whole country’s economy taking a dive into a pigs’ sty and the club attendance suffers a major blow. Thus no clients for the business. And like being arrested afterwards for drugging male revellers and siphoning money out of their credit cards in private sessions. Their defence plea would be that they just had to make money.
Oh well.
The game changer is what I would call the risks that come with the job. Every line of work has risks. Seems Generation Z doesn’t realise that some risks are riskier than others. Rather, the favours that come with it are more glorious than the risks hence rendering the latter paltry. Overriden.
Fate cannot be overridden though. Anyway, I’m just saying.
To be continued!