All of us

So?

Calm down a bit. Even though Betty’s here now, I won’t spread sheets on my bed or brush my teeth before I dig into morning pottage and wash it down with Camel milk. I’m still walking around the castle, barefoot, half naked, singing off key, and looking like an accident. Me is Me.

I might change with time, get a little culture when her friends come over? Actually comb out the bush on my head? Dig out one of my stained white tees from the laundry room? Use some of the dead mint paste on the dresser? Stop spending so much time in front of the huge mirror at the tapestry room rehearsing a noisy crowd of swordplay in old, rusty armor, wielding a broken mopstick and a stolen cooking pan cover? Naaaaa!

The important thing is that I do what I do, channel the goddess.

She’s been packing up things for a weekend in the lower country: loose fitting fabric, repellent sprays and things. We talked at length the night before, about life, and hope, and desires and disappointment; how you want something you can’t have and you still lunge for it, even though you have a reality, a reality that your desires would end in a disappointment.

You love the chase, the thrill, the wishy moments that make you believe for a flimsy second that your dreams would actually come true. Sometimes, you don’t let your hopes get so far as to escape beyond your gathering hands, but sometimes, you let your hopes wander away, to discover a most wonderful journey, and you begin to have faith. The kind of faith that tells you to stop admiring the beauty of the ocean and actually put a foot out. You’re not stupid enough to jump out, no you’re not. It’s just a foot. But you forget that once you trust your weight on that one foot, you go crashing into the deep. Your salty tears, mixing with the watery mass, a smile on your face…

Deep is deep, let us be happy; today we mock reality! Our goddess shall soon be off on a fling with an English Duke that’s somehow from Betty’s world of prim and proper. The mustached man is waiting outside the cold stone walls, proclaiming love and valor and yarning unusual nonsense. AfroMuse is having a hearty laugh and blowing him kisses. Betty is laughing at them both. The goddess’s pain shows through her smiles for the quarter of a second and it’s gone like it was never there. Maybe it was never there?

She shall let her golden hair (Yes! she grew and dyed it) down the window for Mister Duke to climb up. It’s not like I didn’t open the huge doors to let the man in, the same doors they would exit later on, to mount his wooden horse drawn carriage… he does own a fleet of Italian cars…

Oh! the goddess and her kind!

I have errands to run. Allow me to beat something that sounds like a Don Jazzy tune, merry merry tongolo imitations, mixed with scape-goat synth vibes on the gong, only because AfroSays:

MOMENTS

...we are who we are...

He looked at her and she looked at him.

No expression both ways.

He had no qualms about what he was about to do, it was what he did, it was who he was.

She kept her gaze for it seemed she could not think, or say a prayer, or even move. She was lost in his mighty presence. She was his.

She sat there looking at him. At first he didn’t move. He just stared at her, rarely blinking his eyes. After a few seconds, it seemed, her lungs remembered to suck some air in.

As soon her chest movement gained rhythm, he picked himself from the floor and began to saunter towards her in the most casual manner.

As he moved closer, he began to appear larger and more intimidating. He emerged from his dark corner into the dim light, muscle lines etched on his every feature. The evil of him was plain to behold.

Everyone started screaming.

“Quiet!”

We all hushed again as we were commanded. The lion dipped his head and lifted it in a terrifying roar, then he leaned back in a spring-crouch position.

Panic murmurs and anxious ‘voicings’ rippled through the crowd in recurrent sine waves.

“Kill am!”

“Shut up!”

Ka-blaaaam!

There was smoke. And blood. And a more shocking roar. The lion was not yet dead.

“Kill aaaaaam!”

“Shut uuuuuup!”

Ka-blaaaaaaaam!

The smoke cleared lightly and behold, the lion lay dead at the feet of the innocent little girl. Someone else was there too, hidden in smoke of his shooting and the dust of his hurried arrival.

Everyone started clapping, and doing cat-calls. Some ‘osheeeys’, some ‘whoop whoops’.

Then the man shouted again, “You Nigerian people are crazy! This is a cinema house, not a theaturr!”

We all laughed at the American man with his funny accent.

“Chairman, abeg, relax jooor!”, Someone replied. Everyone laughed heartily at the retort. Someone’s chinese phone started ringing a extra loud, extra lousy, Nokia-imitation ruckus somewhere to my left. I shook my head and smiled at the interesting cinema culture of my fellow citizens.

The movie would end in a few minutes. I picked up my half-filled coke bottle and left the cinema room to wait at the exit passage. There was this delicious girl I saw as I walked in and I wanted to chat her up. Maybe I could even get her to see another movie with me. I hadn’t really come all the way from my bucolic local government to downtown lagos because I wanted to see overage lions hunt little girls. After all, Emelex or whatever they call him sells this movie, along with all the other new titles the cinema would be showing this week in a DVD collection for a paltry N250, right in front of my house.

I ditched the Coke bottle on last-minute, first-impression mathematics.

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