What
is life but a series of complicated mistakes catalysed by half thought actions,
a myrid of emotional proclivities and a basic desire for the things that we do
not have. In reality, we are just material compounds of biological matter that
begins the long or sometimes short process of decomposition from the very day
we are pulled into this germ infested world. We live most of our lives like
boxers moving round and round in antithetical circle while in a square ring,
watching, hoping for that opening to swing one good punch in, one fatal attack.
But all the while what we are really doing is blocking, defending and
retreating most of the time. We think we are defending ourselves or like to
think that we are when in reality we are the ones responsible for hurting
others when we see an opening. You may call it whatever you like if it makes
you sleep well at night; self-preservation, truth, reality, pain... I simply
call it life.
If
life is just a string made long by time with no end and no beginning, then we
are just like the commuters on a bus who come on and get off the bus with no
idea who last sat in the sit we are sitting in, what he or she ate for
breakfast, if they cried that morning, had make up sex the night before with
some barely understood girl friend who like the morning fog can no longer
remember the depth of the commitment she thought she shared as she promised to
love you for the rest of her life. What neither of them knows is that they are
just an accident waiting to happen, just acquaintances
in familiarity. Would it then be bad to say that in most cases we stumble
upon our purpose in life by accident or some half chance or speculative idea
which just occurred to us only because of a past experience which equally
happened by the same odds of half chance? Maybe.... what if... why... how...
will I... ??? In the end, it only begins to make more sense when you don’t even
think about it, a conundrum of life’s dramatic sense of humour.
Maybe
in the end it will be better to just lift your hands and trust in some higher
power. Spontaneity, second chances, forgiveness, faithfulness, decisiveness and
love; these are the bane that condemns humanity because of its sardonic regard
for these concepts. The lack of even one of these is a miss that is as good as
a mile. Maybe God is the answer. But what if? A man who can find the answer to
this, is a man who truly has found the meaning of life. Until then, I would
take my chances at Anthony bus stop and dare to make the mistakes I was too
afraid to make only yesterday.
These were my
thoughts as I walked towards the bus stop like I had done every other morning
for the past seven months. I had been in Lagos since 2010. Nothing had changed
in all those years. Of course they had finally sanitised Obalende. The
Government had passed a ban on the popular Okada saying that no bike below
200cc was allowed on the Island –not like the so called LASTMA who were charged
with the enforcement of this law could really tell what a 250cc bike looked
like. If it looked like a power bike then it must be above 200cc –was their
thought. So the courier companies took advantage of this. They imported the
same low powered Okada with the same cheesy sounding brand names with cheap
parts from all over Asia. Only this time the bikes looked something like the
love child of an Okada bike and a power bike above 200cc. Not even the devil
himself would have dared to think of designing a chimera like that but trust
the Asians to out-design even the devil himself. And by some ignorant miracle,
people never thought to call the cheap Asian toys by their generic name of Okada and if they did, they never said
it out loud. Who said rebranding doesn’t work. Well, it does!
The road to Epe was now dualised and no longer
did it sound like you were having an unholy love affair with a mad person when
you said you wanted to buy land in Epe or even Ibeju-Lekki. They had successfully sand filled Eco Mega
City and built a man-made paradise that will further give the common Nigerian
one more reason to discover new ways to love his neighbours pocket more than he
cared for his life. Yes, something’s had changed but something’s never would.
Like the traffic that spat in your face like an unpaid prostitute as you passed
Keffi Street and turned left onto Awolowo road towards Falomo. Or the rumours
that was commonly passed amongst the common people of Lagos that Mudi the
fashion designer actually built his company on dealing drugs, that Tinubu was
the King pin who ran the Action Congress which was the ruling party in Lagos as
against the Nationally all powerful umbrella of the PDP, that Victoria Island
–popularly called V.I, was slowly sinking inch by inch into the sea and would
one day be the site of a big lake instead of the
once-Island-now-turned-peninsular by the insatiable desire to have more land
within the already over populated content of overcrowded humanity of all sorts
of languages, tribes and sexual habits that made up the inhabitants of this Economic
heartbeat of the country. “Eko oni baje O!” Beni,
something’s would always be the
same.
I was now a part of
this changing yet unchanging society. It had come over me like a Lagos down
pour, suddenly and without warning. I no longer donated buckets full of sweat
when I was having brief, guiltless sex. Oh yes, the guiltlessness was also a
part that this proud society had christened me with. I felt the heat less or
the humidity that once felt like I was being press at night by the demons that
famously mistake human beings for their stools. Or did they do that
intentionally, them being demons and all? I really do not know, but if by
chance anyone happens to meet a demon, on some random pedestrian bridge, with a
pot of draw soup swimming in palm oil, dried fish and kola nut, they should
please help us find out. Yes, you
know yourself and I say us because of the unfortunate victims who say they have
been or are being pressed at night. Maybe somehow in the midst of this demonic shit, this information will help them
find some sort of closure. Ha ha!
This was the life
which I now had. And so, after my NYSC (National youth Service Corps), I simply
slipped into the pool of festering unemployable, many qualified, some confused,
other dumb, illiterate and almost so post NYSC University graduates who obliviously
welcomed me with their stressed out stares, desperate stories which to them
sounded courageous and to me sounded like brouhaha and a tall stiff glass of
cheap 501 Chelsea whiskey downed too fast by an armature drinker. In time they
would learn to handle the liquor of unemployment. So, like many other mornings
before this, I crossed the busy, death courting dual road to Ojota that passed
in front of Anthony village. Under the bridge that stank of vestige urine and a
cocktail of fossilised dried excrement which laid in inanimate swirls or lumps
like beggars sprawled on the side of a tightly fitted street. Past the cheap
watch sellers, past the cheap Igbo man selling cheap substandard shoes and even
cheaper palm sandals, past the cheap watch repairer who was strategically
placed so you could easily find him after the cheap quarts knock off watch you
wore had stopped working. I even turned and stared for the briefest moment at
the cheap sun glasses which were in reality a memento mori of how they would
screw up your eye sights if they didn’t kill you faster by making the car that
was speeding like ten crazed baboons towards you look further than it actually
was. Lately I was beginning to truly appreciate the meaning of the expression,
cut your coat according to your size.
It had started with buying cheap hundred
naira sox, then the shoes which barely made it across the thresh hold of two
thousand naira –in fact, the speed at which the man sold the shoes to me had
left that bitter taste of buyer’s remorse and injured pride. As I had walked to
catch a bus that day from Obalende, I had felt like a cheap porn star who had
just accepted the lead role for a low budget porn movie for the price of what
would have barely bought a plate of amala,
ewedu soup and worse of all, without
meat! Only the shirts remained of the quality that was once a reminder of the
extravagant demand I had placed on my parent’s financial benevolence.
But that morning, I
decided to just glance at the cheap sun glasses, just glance. In reality, I
could not afford to buy any of them. The hole that a spontaneous and
extravagant decision like that would have created in my painful and choice less
financial intelligence would have cost me more than I was willing to allow.
Once upon a time, but not this time. So I passed and thought no more of it just
like I had trained myself to whenever I saw a really young man or woman barely
my age drive by in some new Japanese car or whatever flashy plastic toy the
company welfare package had wheeled into his or her life. I was a man out on a
mission. The text message in my inbox had debriefed me on the location of the
interview but not the name of the company hosting the interview.
The message
had read:
“You
are invited for an aptitude test by 9:00am at number 3
Kini
Olodo Street, Jibowu, Yaba. Applicants are advised to come
along
with an updated copy of their CV, their application letter
and
original copies of their credentials.
Be
advised that an interview will follow if the applicants are
successful
in their test.
Please
call Bumi Martins: 08023382550 for further information.
Thank
you.
I had been running
the message over and over in my mind, trying to remember which offer amongst
the so many applications I had sent was responsible for the text invitation. I
had read the message trying to read in between the lines like it was the first
question of the aptitude test which was tricked with a Trojan hint just to
tease you into failing. But I had not been able to decipher any inconspicuous
answer to my questions. Even after pondering all the way to Anthony bus stop, I
was no closer to solving my mystery offeror than scientists were at finding a
cure for the common cold. But as I thought and thought, standing in lost
thought and significance amongst the unknown circumstance hard faces of other
Lagosians, I caught myself really wondering about something entirely different.
I had actually first caught myself staring at the fair, scar less, stretch mark
free legs in front of me and was subconsciously wondering what sort of face
would carry such near perfect smooth legs. For some inexplicable reason, time
seemed to have slowed down except my mind which –at lightning speed, flipped
through archives of unremembered faces in night dreams and day time fantasies.
I could feel my black trousers feel tighter. Had I been the man I was pre Lagos
infection, I would have looked away in a realisation of self-inflicted
embarrassment and shame. Alas, I was not, I was no longer my father’s son or my
mother’s for that matter. Layers and layers of tectonic changes had taken place
in me over the course of time. Heart breaks, brief stints, cougars,
disappointments, hunger, pain, regret, distance, life, time, reality... the
list was as long as human faces are distinctively different.
So, I felt no shame
and embarrassment was just another smelly Lagosian armpit in a danfo bus which you could avoid by
simply turning your head towards the open window. And if gods were not on your
side and you were stuck in the middle with no open window to grant you
temporary escape from the fumes of another person’s bodily fluids which had
fermented over like old palm wine..., then the gods were surely not to blame
because you were on your own.
Slowly, I let my
eyes shamelessly wander up those smooth shaven legs and continued up past where
the suit skirt stopped, just millimetres above the caramel lines that signified
the back of her knees. That skin, my mind queried. And I recalled Sewuese, a
faint memory from my secondary school days now more vivid than any text
invitation. I recalled that Sewuese had had such fine skin as well. So fine
that there were days when just day dreaming about her silky looking skin had
also seemed more important than the first
chapters of my government text book “The Nigerian Parliamentary system of
government (1960 – 1964).” Amidst my voyeur distraction or in this case,
attraction, I mused at the ease with which the topic had come to me after so
many years especially when it was on account of a woman’s silky skin!
“You know, Tiv people
have very good skin,” Sewuese had once said as she giggled girlishly with
tinkling delight when I had mustered up the courage to tell her what I thought
of her skin. So, was she Tiv –this icon of bipedaled seduction standing just
barely an arm’s reach before me? Encouraged by memory and basic desire, I
continued my visual forage. I was like a
child who had just been brought into an ice cream parlour for the first time. I
stared until my eyes hit a further land mark.
There is a popular
saying which in my pre Lagosian days had seemed more like an urban legend than
a rumour. Like a vivid kaleidoscope, my mind was a myriad cocktail of emotions,
recollected thoughts and present thoughts.
I seemed to recall
the title of an old movie. “The Evil that men do...” I reckoned it was
called. Then the whole sentence came to
me, “The Evil that men do lives after them.” A Charles Bronson movie, it was
indeed a glorious day in my mind. I chuckled to myself, half amused at the way
my mind was working and half impressed. And I impressed myself further with a
twist of my own, “The evil that men do stands
in front of them.” Now I was truly impressed even though I was the only one
laughing at my pun.
All this while, I
took no notice of the happenings of the world around me. It felt like I was a
in a bubble. Like time had decided to take a vacation. I felt immune. Somewhere
an unseen hand tugged inside me. But it was weak. The guilt was gone, the
shame... further down the road. If my conscience was trying to make a last
ditch effort at a comeback then it was making an effort in futility at this
point. The truth was that I had never felt more alive, more lucid, more
empowered, more ... manly.
“The thing about sin
is that it tastes so good!” I could hear some distant voice interject over my
thoughts. Was it my pastor’s voice or my mother’s?
“It turns you away
from the light and love of God and condemns you to the roaring lion. But it must never win. Let Daniel tell you. Let
Joseph show you. Let Shadrach, Meshack and Abednigo explain to you for if you
will not heed my voice on this day then maybe, you will heed the signs of the
Gods wonders to those who are faithful! Let somebody shout HALELUYAH!” I simply
tuned it out like changing the frequency of a radio.
I stared now with a
lope sided grin on my face. Thinking back now I think I must have looked like a
man who was just told that he had the biggest asset in a men’s fellowship
meeting. The thing that makes a man proud to be a man, I guess that is why they
say men are from Mars. Yeah, I thought, I’d
rather be that single man in the men’s fellowship with a massive something from
Mars than to be that single man with a little something on Venus. All this
while I was trying to decide which it was, Tiv or Yoruba. I felt like a man
told to choose between two different designer fragrances from two different
companies with the same perfumer. Now I was staring at her back, her upper
back. While it was a fact that my physical eyes saw nothing, I could not vouch
for my minds eyes. Like Robin Hood staring at the red round dot in the middle
of a target, I had squinted my eyes due to the intensity of my stare. Not from
the glare of any sort of light but from the effort of concentrated vivid
imagination.
At that point she
turned around. Why? That was a question I would never in a million years be
able to answer. Was it because she felt someone’s eyes on her? You know that
feeling, the way you sometimes feel when walking all alone on a dark, quiet
street, and suddenly you feel like you are being watched from behind, maybe
that was how she had felt. What must have creeped her out. But even a creep
hates being caught on duty. I turned my head just in time to save whatever
self-respect I had left. In retrospect, that was what I should have done. If
you are a guy and I do mean any guy, maybe you can understand my current disposition.
I could not help the flood gates of name that came pouring out of some hidden
cess pool thesaurus that all men have. “Mellons, water melons, Rack, Oh boys,
mamma mias, milk factories, oboink’a boinks, pillows, boobs, twin towers,
babies, papayas... I could go on and on but I think I’ve made my point.
“Mstcheeeeewww...
useless man! Stupid basterd! Ori e da! Mstcheeeeewww....”
Was what I was
expecting, an impending bombardment of qualitative phrases and words alike. And
trust me, I would have taken it in good faith like ten kobo change chinking
together in my pocket. But just like we no longer hear the chinking of change
any more in Nigeria, so did I not hear what I knew I deserved to hear. In
retrospect, I think I would have felt better in the long run if she had uttered
some words of disapproval. Believe me, when
a Nigerian woman disapproves of something, especially a Lagos girl,
there is no way you will go home and not run those abrasive words over and over
in your mind wondering if a toilet brush was what she used to brush her teeth
that morning. No offense intended.
What had happened
was that she smiled at me! Can you
believe that?! After I had given her smooth silk legs a region in Nigeria,
given her bum a tribe and christened her norrs,
half expecting the blast of the trumpets of hell reign down on me... all I got
was a “job well done, would you like my name and phone number as well? If I get
to know you better and like you then I’ll text my BB pin to you and maybe see
how we can hook up this weekend... at your place of course. Thank you.”
So I went back to
Anthony bus stop the next day and the day after that and the day after. The
truth is I was so stunned by that smile that in the time it took me to recover
from my disbelief and put into action the open invitation, and she had turned
and ran after the yellow danfo Volkswagen,
gone ahead of all the men who had stood beside her including myself and took
the only available seat.