We are not bad guys. Yes, that sounds defensive, but I can explain. We are men, you see, and that means we tend to do some stuff that proves we should not be left with the nuclear codes. We are weak, you see, and to be honest, ni shetani aki. Ni shetani that’s why we are here at some club along Moi Avenue, looking for joy—the emotion, not the girl. “We” is K, O and M, and me. Me, I didn’t even want to come. But shetani ni nani aki. Shindwe!
This pub, mbele ya Ambassaduer Hotel, is the perfect hunting ground for those Nairobi girls who need a favour, urgently. I greet the bartenders with a “jambo” and they smile, strangely, while patting their pockets and checking for their wallets.
Nimejizatiti even though I am indisposed with the Nairobi flu while K counsels that you can’t drink all day unless you start in the morning. I am drinking a hot dawa and I feel like a virgin in a maternity ward. It’s a sticky wicket, this dawa. It’s the devil’s cocktail: a concoction that has everything—kitunguu, kitunguu saumu, honey, ginger, nails, the economy, snake ears, murima. Everything. A brew that would put out of business an African witch. It’s a malady for whiners and wimps. The ladies are skimpily dressed—in miniskirts that leave nothing to your imagination. A perfume that chokes you more than it embraces you.
I am in a hood because you never know who you will meet in this place. I sit next to the exit door. Yes, I am a coward. No, I don’t care what you think. I survey the room to see men of all ages. White. Black. Old. Young. Men with rings. Men with rings hidden in their breast pockets. Everyone is happy. And for a moment, I can understand why we are here. We are all chasing something…or running away from something. Some are here to forget; some are here to remember.
This is the kind of place where Jesus would come and save people. It’s one of those clubs where there is an “accidental” shooting every month after a drunk reveller is caught admiring the yellow-yellow beauty of a big man in government. The reporter will be sent there, with a lapel and ring light and the latest iPhone, going “live” from the ground, with even more drunk revellers in the background offering firsthand eyewitness accounts while she says, the situation here is very sad Larry. They just shot a reveller Larry. Allegedly, Larry. Sorry, Larry? I lost you there for a bit Larry. Back to you in the studio Larry.
The DJ is also (sadly) stuck on a loop, after every other song, he plays Jeraha by Otile Brown. Otile Brown is not even his name. Imagine. The boy is called Jacob! Jacob! That’s the real jeraha right there. Nameless is actually David. I understand why he was nameless. Me? Do you think my real name is Eddy? Bro!
Sex here is cheap, Larry. Say, Sh300. Sh100 if you were raised by a monk-level bargaining African mother who really should be the one negotiating the loans we take as a country. M pays for a round—not of beer—and he is ushered upstairs by a scrawny-looking baddie who looks like she is from the mountain and I pray for my boy because the DP cautioned against kuguza murima. Despite, or perhaps because of, it being that kind of bar and that kind of hour, he returns before Jacob finishes his verse in Jeraha and I don’t know whether to be impressed or concerned. He also seems…happyish.
There is nothing particularly revealing about paying for sex. Getting into a relationship for sex is like being told you will be paid after 30 days. Thirty “working” days. An apt microcosm of a wantaway lover. There has always been a curious ambivalence towards paying for sex, a shrug where you might expect a swoon. Like finding out your date is a lawyer, who does forex on the side. The thing with paying for sex is that it does not make sex better...or worse. It’s just…there.
K tells me we are now at that age where girls expect us to “facilitate”. You know, take her out. Buy her a drink or two, and Nairobi girls don’t drink for a living, they drink to live. Buy her some suspicious-looking Marabou Stork—what? You thought we ate chicken? In Nairobi? —which looks like it was alive just a few seconds ago, heck, even its poor marabou heart is still beating, and that’s what you start with. Take her home (the girl, not the Marabou Stork). In the morning after your obligatory performance, make her breakfast and give her cab fare—remember, cab drivers are also setting their fares, so give her extra vex money.
In high school, I did Utengano as my set book. And I remember this scene where Mama Jeni owned a sex den and it was at Mama Jeni’s that Maimuna, the protagonist, was reborn and met Kabi a decent and down-to-earth man whom she later marries, which instigates a domino effect that leads to everyone forgiving each other for their crimes. The iconic line? “Pesa? Pesa nini mbele ya utu?”
But in this Nairobi sex den, you cannot get sex with a deni (see what I did there?). Ask me I will tell you. Does it cheapen the experience when you pay money for it? Do you own the person, albeit for the minutes you’ll be in there? If prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, then is pimping the second? I am conflicted—is it a profession…or just a job? What do these girls dream of? Is this it? And I thought too, about the massage parlours—you know the ones—with happy endings and the vinyozis that ask you if you would like a “private room”. I believe that consent gained through money is not consent at all. Money is the most coercive of devices and coercive sex is rape.
Perhaps it’s not even the sex they are paying for. It’s the right to dictate the terms of the sex: I’m not taking you to dinner, I’m not going to put on nice clothes or wear cologne and listen to you all night, or I'm not going to ask your name. When I am done, I’m getting dressed, and I may or may not talk to you again. Since desire is absent, payment takes its place.
These are the things I think as I go to the restroom and get haggled. Am I any different? For as they prostrate themselves to the highest bidder, I too confirm my complicity with my presence. “Of course, I can get it, if I want it, if I have the money.” Explaining a man’s motives has always been like trying to catch a cloud in a butterfly net. Why are we here? To numb or to feel? The machinations of male insecurity are difficult to explain. We constantly need to be reassured, but we don’t want it to seem like we are being reassured. You get? It’s like being in a long-distance relationship with a beautiful woman you don’t deserve. You constantly need to check-in. You constantly have to convince yourself that nothing has changed.
Besides—the only people whose lives never deviate from their principles are those who don’t have any. As for the rest, many live out their days in a haze of unexamined hypocrisy, while wearing shoes and weaves that don’t go at all with unexamined hypocrisy.
Are we bad men because we are here or are we here because we are bad men? Why are we even here? I don’t know. Ni shetani, aki.
