Lust smells. But when lust blends with desperation, it stinks like a hyena’s carcass. Here is how bad it smells. Once in a while my boy Kwame and I will end up at Sailors bar in Hurligham for a tipple. It’s a decent place; the music is grand, the crowd is grounded and the women dress up in flirty little dresses then hurdle in them booths where over a drink they cross their shaven legs and act like they are not being admired. It’s all good.
But – just like Galileos – parking is shit at Sailors. After three Vitz and five Mitsubishi Lancers have parked nothing much is left. Thankfully because the watchmen are cool guys, they normally open this black gate behind the club and let me park in this filthy backstreet that teems with dirty puddles of water when it rains, alley cats and other dregs of the night. The staff-only backdoors of the club spill into this alley and once in a while you will find a uniformed member of staff sneaking in a quick cigarette while the alley cats linger in the shadows, wary of secondhand smoke. I belong to this alley – the higher quest for debauchery has never been dissuaded by a little discomfort, gang.
A few weeks ago, I reversed into this alley at around 11pm with noble intentions of having one drink…in the club, not the alley. There was a couple leaning on this nice black Toyota Harrier. Or rather, the bird was leaning on the Harrier and the man was leaning on her. She was very light, so light she glowed in the dark. She wore a black dress, this massive, colorful beaded necklace and a large belt that embraced her waist. She wore short hair dyed brown (or peroxide) and not many women can pull off that short hair look well. In fact I can only think of two; Toni Braxton and Jean Wanjiku. Google them. Anyway, she looked divine and you would – fleetingly – understand why the guy was breathing down her cleavage. I can’t remember what the guy was wearing though, but in hindsight I think he was wearing Desperation.
He had had a few. So had I. Hell, everyone in that alley had had a few…except the cats.
When I stepped out of the car, I realized that he was trying to feel her. You know in that way that a guy would touch a woman in the hope of convincing her to come home with him? Yes. And his voice was low and tender; like a rustling leaf in the wind. He sounded like a guy trying so hard to convince a child to take Scots Emulsion.
Problem was she wasn’t feeling him that way, I could tell from her body language as soon as I glanced over at them. It’s not like she hated being groped about in the alley like a woman of wobbly morals, I suspect she really just wasn’t ready to take it home. Anyway, as I’m locking up the Alley Whisperer spoke up to me; “Boss, I’m just leaving, do you mind letting me pass?”
I said sawa. I was blocking him, or rather a dustbin was, so I had to move ahead and let him maneuver around it.
He then raised one finger, “In a moment please, if you don’t mind.”
I didn’t mind, for two reasons; one, he was effusively polite and I like people who are polite. Secondly he was a man on the hunt and we have all been there. I mean when a guy is trying to score – out of respect – you step aside and let him close the deal even if the odds are stacked against him. We all share a common fate, men. I have never seen a guy go through something and thought, “Ha, that can never happen to me,” because I know it can. So I stood against the wall and pretended to make a phone call when all I was doing was eye them from the corner of my eyes.
He wanted to take her home. He wanted to take her home badly and she kept saying it was too soon. I wondered why she had come all the way to his car only to say she wasn’t ready to rumble. Did she see the alley cats and change her mind?
But he was unrelenting; he tried all the tricks in the book to convince her. He tried tracing the contours of her face with one finger- the finger he had held up at me asking me to wait. That finger- unfortunately – wasn’t going to break the ice. It had been beaten by the wind and was now cold. A mummy’s finger. I bet she felt like someone was running frozen fish-finger down her face because she kept pulling her face away whenever he run that finger down her face. Then he tried to kiss her neck…like that would make her knees turn into jelly. But she stood sturdy, like Goliath. I was beginning to enjoy this spectacle.
The fact was, the night wasn’t his. I’m no love guru, but I could tell that girl wasn’t going to get into that car. Hell, the alley cats knew the bird wasn’t getting into that car if there was a free pedicure and manicure in there!
But he seemed ignorant of this fact, even when anybody who had a pulse could tell the sheer futility of his mission. And he was getting desperate and women can smell desperation though your Azzaro Chrome…hell, as it turned out, so can cats because at some point one of the alley cats shook its head and sauntered away, ashamed of being a part of the charade. But even in the face of this blatant disinterest (of the girl, not the cat) he really thought he would turn the tables. He thought the stars would align themselves suddenly and she would say, “OK, let’s go but I will sleep in the spare room.”
To tell you the truth, at some desperate point I started rooting for him, not because he had asked me to wait politely but because he was a guy. I really wanted him to turn everything around. I wanted the night to be his. I wanted him to triumph because he was at least trying (albeit too hard) even though his horniness was pressing the mission (was that a pun?)
But would you blame him? Maybe the girl had touched the back of his neck the whole time as they drunk. Or maybe she had stroked his thighs with her soft hands and said something like, “These thighs remind me of the thighs in the movie Troy, have you seen the movie Troy?” and he had nodded even though he hadn’t seen the damned movie. Maybe at some point she had leaned into his ear and whispered compliments about his dreadlocks (“I loooove you locks, you should do a Pilsner ad, Pilsner Mfalme, grrrh.” Hehehe). How could he not believe her? Tell a man anything while he is drinking and chances he will believe you, but only if you lean in his left ear and whispers it…s.l.o.w.l.y. The devil lives in the left ear.
So I bet at some point of the evening he thought the girl was in the bag. In fact he had played the last scene scenario in his head; how he would switch on the lights to his pad as they walked in and he would herd her to his aquarium where he would introduce him to Doshi, – his 3-month old Goldfish – and act like he bloody cares deeply about fauna. As if he is kind to animals. Hehe. He had pictured how he would sit her on the sofa and pour her a small drink and act like ripping off her dress with his teeth was the last thing on his mind. That all he wanted was to talk, like he is the kind of guy who only wanted to listen to her first, to know who she was and what her dreams were before he had his way with her. Like he is just the kind of sensitive guy who loves to stare into a woman’s eyes and really listen to her at 11pm in the night even with booze and lust soaring through his veins.
Then unpredictably it ends in the alley, with cats as an audience.
But we have all been there. We have all been led to the watering hole; dizzy with lust, a throbbing vein running down our forehead, our throats dry with anticipation and then at the final hour the carpet is yanked from under our feet! Wham!
Anyway, he kept planting these small baby kisses on her forehead and she kept pushing his head away in a way that would have broken a baby buffalo’s neck. He then tried sweet words and when that also failed, he tried reverse psychology: “You don’t even like me, this must be a game to you,” he said. I looked away and smiled hard. And when that also failed he stood back and glared at her. I mean really glared at her in such a way that made the alley cats that were enjoying this free entertainment slowly step further back into the shadows with fear.
They stood there and stared at each other; her hugging herself against the car and him half a meter from her, poring a hole in her with his wrathful and disappointed eyes. At this point he sort of embraced the possibility that she wasn’t coming with him. I wondered what he would have said to the author of the book The Secrets, which states that if you want something so bad the universe will conspire to give it to you. He would probably laugh bitterly and use the pages of The Secrets to wrap matumbo. It was 10.30PM, the universe was asleep, and that was no secret.
I felt sorry for him if you want to know the truth, not because he had come to the jarring realization that he would go home alone, but because he wanted to cry. As he stood there glaring at Miss Thing, I honestly thought he would use his last card and start weeping and perhaps the girl would hold his head to her bosom and he would softly weep between her breasts but with a small wicked smile. But that girl was Idi Amin’s distant relative because she did no such thing. She leaned back adamantly and shook her head and called him by his name for the first, “Mark, I can’t. Not today.” And I wanted to walk over and ask her: why not, lady? Why not today? What if today was all Mark had? What if tomorrow Mark falls down a staircase and breaks his back and is unable to raise as much as that cold finger thereafter? What if tomorrow Mark wakes up and forgets who he is or who you are? What if tomorrow Marks wakes up and develops an erectile malfunction? What if tomorrow Mark wakes up and realizes he is gay after all? Or worse, what if Mark turns into an alley cat tomorrow? Eh? Then what lady? Then what?! Why don’t you work with Mark here, throw him a bone (damn, these puns). Why don’t you save him from himself, come on, what do you say you do your good deed for the day tonight? Then I’d turn to Mark and say, “Isn’t that right, Mark?”
“Correcto Mundo!” he would holler, Samuel L. Jackson style.
But I didn’t, instead I pretended to be getting impatient at waiting because it had been 3mins after all. Between you and me, I find desperation shockingly entertaining. I think for anyone to get to a point where they toss away their pride and make an ass of themselves is beautiful material for dark comedy. We have all been there.
Eventually Mark got into his car, slammed the door so hard the cats got ulcers and I got into mine and moved out of the way for him to pass. He then sulkily drove out, past the dustbin, and left her standing there. The stench of desperation and anger hung in the air in his wake.
As I walked away I heard an alley cat sigh loudly, or was it a giggle?