Let’s call him Patrick. Patrick works and lives in Minnesota. Green card and all that jazz. Last time he was in Kenya was 9 years ago. Patrick and I grew up in the same neighborhood- a couple of gates from ours actually. We were good friends. Then he flew out and our lives took a fork, the emails trickled and the phone calls ceased all together. Life happened. I didn’t mind, such eventualities of life stopped breaking my heart.
Anyway for the longest time our friendship hanged on the thin string that was Facebook. We would inbox randomly, but we had largely become strangers of sort and our conversations were marked more by our peculiarities than similarities. We had grown apart; I was a father, he wasn’t. I was still obsessed with Toni Braxton and he couldn’t understand why. He thought Lil Wayne was the shit; I thought Lil Wayne was shit. He listened to T-pain, I listened to Kidum. You get? Life has a way of diabolically reaping out the soul of friendships.
Just before Christmas I received a call from a Safcom number. The voice had an accent. The voice said “gawd” instead of “God.” I thought it was one of my phony friends who say “twirra”. The type who would die if Blankets and Wine suddenly ended. But it was Patrick. A voice from the past. He was in town, he informed me. Let’s have that drink, he said. I suggested Slims bar because it’s unpretentious and you won’t meet anyone in skinny jeans there. But he wanted to meet at Bacchus. I don’t like Bacchus, hell, I don’t like any pub in Westlands. Westlands is overrated and it’s full of goons who thug you and drunks who scratch your car. But I went because I haven’t seen this guy in ages.
I rock up in Bacchus at circa 9pm. Since he’s the full jang I find him holding court with some yellow yellow in a short skirt which exposed about an acre of her yellow thighs. I’m so damned happy to see him. He rises from his seat. We hug for as long as straight guys are allowed to hug. He says I look fit, I say he needs to lose the gut. He grins and rubs his paunch, “The ladies love this baby.” He introduces me to the bird who smiles politely. We sit. He has changed. He is bigger, more boisterous and clearly made some money. We catch up. I order red wine which he calls “gay” (can’t a man drink red wine in this town without being called gay?) The yellow yellow sits silently and smiles politely at our loose conversation.
Patrick has an accent, which means he talks like P-Diddy…or whatever he calls himself now. Patrick is also a big talker. He prattles about his “assets” and his “hustle” and I’m cool with it. I understand that he is playing to the gallery. I understand that he is trying to impress the girl even though I can tell it isn’t necessary because the bird looks like he she doesn’t need any grand convincing; flogging a dead horse is what he’s doing. We reminisce. Guy stuff.
“By the way what happened to Lucy Gakuo?” he asks about some chic he didn’t
have a snow ball’s chance in hell with those days. Hell, neither did I, only difference was that I knew it. He didn’t.
“Married, two kids.”
“Damn! She still hot?”
“Well, her waistline isn’t the same.”
Miss Yellow chortles, obviously glad Lucy is off the race.
“How’s fatherhood?”
“I’m rubbish at it sometimes, but I try. You see kids in the future?”
“Yes, when I look with a real powerful telescope.”
Miss Yellow looks a bit stung.
“Hey, kids are fun!” I admonish him.
He laughs and asks sarcastically, “By the way, what time should you be back home, we don’t want to keep you past your curfew.”
Miss Yellow spews a patronizing giggle.
In my best Mandingo voice I growl a rejoinder “A lion goes back home when a lion is ready to go back home.”
Then I theatrically take a “discreet” peek at my watch. We all laugh. We are getting drunk.
Meeting Patrick makes me feel like he has made a million steps and I have made two. It does. I’m not insecure or unhappy with my life, but hell if you were in my shoes you would do a postmortem on your life. He seemed to be doing okay and he made sure all and sundry knew it. From experience I know that the guys who work hard at making impressions are not worth much… but still. Plus I was a bit tipsy and these things have a way of getting to you when you’ve had three glasses of Frontera.
At the end of the evening, we wobble out to the pavement outside and say our goodbyes and at that point I dunno what came over me, but I ask him a dumb dumb question. I ask him (and please don’t judge me): “Are you happy?” Which is a very weird – not to mention questionable – thing to ask a fellow man. Weirdly disturbing. Morbid. Filthy. Grotesque. Ugly. Look, that’s the kind of thing you ask a woman but only when you can make her happy. Unhappy women love being asked that question, they do. Their unhappiness begs it. But to ask a man that question? Come on Jackson, what, now you want to make men happy? Shit.
You ask a man questions like, “what timepiece is that?” or “what’s the engine capacity of your car?” or “what’s the story with that bird?” or “Are you sure you want another drink?” You know, guy stuff, not “Are you happy?!” Jeeeesus! But yes, it just came out and as soon as it was out I kicked myself. Hard. Anyway I asked him this when Miss Yellow was still inside powdering her cute nose in the washrooms so that his answer would be as close to honest as possible.
Patrick, in his almost drunken state, mulled over this peculiar query for about four seconds then said thoughtfully, “Sometimes you don’t have to be happy, you just need to be alive.” Of course he didn’t say it in those words, I mean he is a guy who listens to T-Pain and what not.
I’m a sucker for sound bites and that one stuck in my mind and got me thinking about life but most importantly about being alive. We pursue happiness with such vim that we often forget to live life. I instantly knew that his words would shape my new year in one way or the other. And it did.
After the New Year I stopped by Kisumu on my way to Rusinga Island where I was to do a travel piece. For those who come a stone throw away (Nyeri), Rusinga is in Lake Victoria, not off the Caribbean. In Kisumu I had a drink with my pal Gordie who showed up with his pal who works for a bank. Hot shot type, drives a sleek Subaru and all. His girlfriend had left him a day before the New Year (who said women aren’t capable of charm?). I know because he wouldn’t shut up about it and it was beginning to irk me to tell you the truth. It made him look weak. Men shouldn’t whine when they are left. If I was left by my woman and I was hurting like hell, I would sooner die than whine about it. My God, you would have to tie me to a pole in a market and threaten to singe my nipples with a hot rod before I’d admit that I was hurting.
Anyway, here is the thing. There are two things I constantly find puzzling. One is people- during a group conversation – telling me, “Please don’t write about this, don’t write about me.” Makes me look like a dishonorable spy. And two, people always asking me for relationship advice by the virtue of what I do. What do I know? And I feel sorry for them because my advice is always as useful as a broken watch.
Anyway after a brief moment this guy I’ve known for exactly twelve sips of my wine turns to me and asks. “What should I do?”
“About what?” I ask to which he looks at me like I’m a complete imbecile.
“My-girl-friend,” he says slowly in case I miss it.
“Well, she isn’t your girl-friend anymore, is she?”
“Yes, but well….look you know what I mean.”
“Don’t call her. Don’t stalk her. Don’t beg her. Don’t buy her best friend gifts.”
“But I love her.”
“And don’t say you love her, you might just start believing it.”
He looked more disturbed than he was moments earlier.
Now concentrate, you will see where this story crosses the same railway with Patrick’s story. So I tell him that I thought his girlfriend, er, ex girlfriend was pushing him around because he had given her many reasons to believe that he would be miserable without her. That his world would come crushing to a halt if she left. He had sucked up to her so much and in the process lost his pants. And she was now taking him to the cleaners.
“What do you do when you are in a hole?” I asked him. Funny how when you ask someone a question like that they imagine it’s a trick question.
“Er, I dunno, climb out?”
“Close. You stop digging.”
“Oh.”
I said “You will be fine. Don’t do a thing.” Then I added (and this is where Patrick’s story comes afloat), “Sometimes it’s not about happiness, it’s about being alive. And right now you aren’t living, you are killing yourself.”
See how phony I am? See the kind of con-artist I have turned out to be? How corny can a man get? Corny and shameless. Even more sadly he thought I was actually smart. And when I said this the chick who was seated across me had that look of someone who had walked into the Finger of God church; a bit of awe and disillusion. But anyway, the point is it shut up the guy because it gave him food for thought.
But the thing is we are too geared at being happy. Too poised for it. But happiness is very abstract. Life on the other hand is tangible and very present. It might not be the stellar of life at some point, you might not be very happy at some point but its life and it’s precious. This New Year I have made a pact never to whine no matter how low I’m feeling. Remember that expression “wake up and smell the coffee”? Forget it. It’s corny. Just live.
I got to Rusinga Island and checked into this amazing lodge called Rusinga Island Lodge. I must have been the only guest in their history to take a boat to the Island and show up at their gate on a Tuk Tuk, the rest land their chattered planes in their private airstrip. Pitching up abound a Tuk Tuk is not happiness, that’s living. Kirsty, the owner, sent me out to visit neighboring islands like Takawiri and Mfangano and at Takawiri I did something that was totally out of my character. I stripped down and swam buck naked at the beach. That is not even happiness, that’s nuts (excuse pun) but it’s living. I was taking Patrick’s axiom too far I realize, but that was the point; worry less and live more.
Over the weekend, I went to buy my daughter school shoes and there was this homeless blind man trying to cross Kenyatta avenue. He stunk…not at crossing the road, but as in hygienically. I held him by the hand and helped him cross the road. And I’m not saying this because I want reader brownie points, I’m illustrating something vital here. Helping him didn’t exactly give me happiness, but it made me
feel good. Not happy necessarily, but good. That’s living.
The heading of this piece – and the album title to one of Jason Mraz albums which I’m listening to as I write this rumbling- illustrates the mood of 2011 for me. Loose. Unhinged. Projected. Floaty. Carefree. We sing, we dance, we steal things.
Happy New Year gang!