First, a few things out of the way. Mum, if you are reading this, stop here. Two, I don’t spend all my time where I am spending all my time, it’s just that when I write it, it seems that I am spending all my time here, even if I don’t. You understand? You see, my work as a writer takes me places, me hata sitakangi kwenda . But I am here and you are here. I have said what I have said and, if someone’s daughter is also reading this, stop. Go spend time with mum.
If honesty is the best policy, the truth is that over the weekend I was driven to some keja in Nairobi’s Lavington. It’s an unassuming place, that keja . Its governing aesthetic is what I’d term “bored housewife just discovered gypsum”—a place I could but won’t tell you where it is exactly. It’s a men-only lounge, and they stop our car to double-check because I am “pretty for a man.” Okay, they didn’t say that, not exactly, but my mum did and mums are always right. Right, mum?
I’ll stop with the descriptions because it is easy to get sloppy with minutiae. This is not the story you want, just the one you are getting. It doesn’t matter how well stories are told: Details create contradiction and adjectives become anchors. But that is neither here nor there. We all make mistakes.
Inside, the ladies (of course) usher us in and tell us how good we (I) look (of course). One, whose every ounce of fat has been gleaned off her body tells us her name is Lucy the ThroatGoat and I wonder whether her name is an indicium of what she can do. I don’t ask her that because this is a family newspaper and the answer may challenge how I look at throats…or goats.
Why is she here? She has tattoos all over her body, and I do mean all over her body. She even pulls up her romper and I tell her that’s enough, I believe her. See what the president has done? We can’t even trust each other. Like we established earlier, the devil here is not in the details but the design so let’s keep it short. She has a son. Chris. His name is tattooed on her left hand – three years old. She is 24. No, 23, turning 24 in a month. Will I come to her birthday party? No, I say. But I wish you well. Where do you stay? Nakuru, she says. You come from Nakuru daily? No, we are accommodated by the company. All of you? All of us.
We segue into politics and talk of the revolution to kill time. She speaks only when spoken to, but maintains a lucid warmth—she is used to men speaking for her, or down to her. She didn’t have much opinion, her life was purely transactional, and on the rare occasions she proffered a deep conversation, she wouldn’t waste them here.
She’d post them in public. Her value was always accessible. Regardless, we both know why we are here, but it’s too early, like 10pm early. If you have to sin, make it a scene. I imagine that as what would go into my life report during Judgment Day. What part of yourself do you have to kill to do this job? She’s used to judgement, she says. That’s why she is always high, 24/7. You can’t do this job sober. Why do we do the things we do? Do we really have free will or are we wedded to fate? Years ago, I read a dissertation on the Mpemba effect, a phenomenon that occasionally (and inexplicably) causes hot water to freeze at a faster rate than cold water. The hypothesis: to justify that which can’t be justified.
What is that I feel? Pity? Anger? Sadness? I can’t tell. If we concede that life is not fair, we must also concede that it has to be unfair to someone else’s benefit. Maybe they deserve it, maybe they don’t. It doesn’t matter. I know you want to know how much they charge, but it’s somewhere close to Sh5,000, without tips, drinks or, you know, “accompaniments like toys.” You can go with as many women as you want, depending on how high your libido is, or how deep your pockets go. It’s not life-changing money and I ponder how many people one has to sleep with to make rent. Should we go? Lucy is ready now, she says. At which point I wonder in which gray zone of the law I am treading. Something here feels illegal, almost like sex trafficking. To what extent does a man have to go to pay for sex?
I tell her no; I am on a celibacy path. I am. She pulls the move Satan did to Eve, what I call the “Lucyfer” (see what I did there?) and she moves closer to my ears, forks her tongue and slips the things she can do to me if I say yes, and my eyes get progressively wider. I am not shocked, for it is impossible to shock me. But I am impressed. I do however have to decline because I am celibate and do have a strict policy of keeping my day times out of my nights and vice versa.
There are those who argue sex is spiritual, that once you become intimate with a person you get soul tied. Ati bad things happen to you. I ask myself, why is it that bad things are the only things that ever have to happen to you when you become soul tied with someone? Is there no reported case of being intimate with someone and getting their tender approved? Oh wait. Bad example, but the point stands. Still, there are those who consider sex just as a business transaction, the female organ is as much a body part as the duodenum or jejunum. Aside: When was the last time you thought about your jejunum? Perhaps it’s all meaningless drivel—the sex, not the jejunum—a way for someone to justify the unjustifiable—how they got here—their choices.
Sexual discipline is important, yes, but so is taking your fruits and filing your taxes. Does what I believe in make it a fact? If prostitution is the oldest profession, does that say much about it or about us? Does sex have to have meaning?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. I understand on account of where I have been I will never be canonised, or declared St Eddy the Last True Chaste. In our modern era of hookup culture, celibacy is akin to a demon loose at a holy rite.
See, when you are celibate, you realise how weak the foundations of most relationships are, how little we bring to the proverbial table, how boring most of us are. Friends with benefits, casual dating and situationships…aren’t we all just paying for sex, essentially? We lay in wait for each other, traders of ourselves, the goods we transact in are our bodies, and the mode of payment is sex. Rinse. Repeat. Kuoga na kurudi soko. But soko ni chafu, na mali pia si safi.
