ANOTHER DAY AT ANTHONY BUS STOP.

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.