The famed millennials are now too busy making memes, creating a storm online and tinkering with the internet and things that support the internet. Everything is on the internet now; jokes, houses, movies, series, medical consultation, food and girls. The invention of the DM has cocked up seduction. Grabbed it by a fistful of hair and dragged it to the river and then drowned it. A whole pack of marauding men roam the landscapes of social media- Tinder, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – hiding behind the veil of the DM, selling dreams and romance and whirlpools of passion. Then when the bait is bitten they yank it to Whatsapp. Once it’s done on Whatsapp it’s taken to a loud bar where it’s hoisted onto a high stool and then chemical warfare is left to drive the last nail in. Charming.
Nobody talks anymore. Not in person. Talk is cheap. By the year 2020 the phrase Face-to-Face will be dead. Men will not sit at tables across women to present their case because they will have no language for that. I shudder to imagine what Kim and his ilk will be doing in 2032 when out with girls. I think they will be conversing using real-time dating apps.
Back in the 90’s mothers used to lock their girls indoors. Not like in a dark basement kind of thing, but they were not exactly allowed out to mingle freely with boys. You had to have a reason to leave the house, which left you with few options if you liked the girl in House 34. You had the option of getting her school address and writing her a letter when school was on, which was probably the last option because letters took a week to be delivered. Sometimes you could wait and wait for a reply, and if it didn’t come it would leave you confused. You could not be sure if she had received it and hated it, or if she had actually replied but someone else took it, or if the letter boy had dropped it or if the postman had even sent it in the first place! Your fate was left in the hands of many small unpredictable gods. Too many moving parts.
The other option would be to wait for the said girl to leave the house in the evening to go buy bread or eggs or tomatoes in the nearby kiosk. This was a cliffhanger because you had a small window of about 10mins to either stop her or walk beside her as you present your case. You didn’t have the pleasure of 140 characters which you could craft and re-craft until they were perfect. There were no smileys. You didn’t have a meme to make her laugh, you told a real joke (which you didn’t pick off Facebook). Of course you were nervous and your hands got sweaty but you had only this chance because you never knew when she would be let out next. This option was particularly arduous because mothers drilled it into their daughter’s heads that when you spoke to boys you got pregnant. That boys were infected with babies and that the very act of GREETING a boy might render you pregnant and you would drop out of school, bring untold disrepute and shame to the family and you would be ferried to shags where you would give birth and you life would be over. Over! So girls didn’t suffer us. The duel, then, became us against mothers’ propaganda. How do you overturn that cock and bull that the mother had fed into her head?
The other option would be to call her landline. If their father picked up you would hang up. If their mother picked up you would hang up. Sometimes mothers would pick up the extension in the bedroom and listen in on your conversation. Then she would be given a long lecture at night and the next day she would not even know your name. Let’s just say that mothers were serial cockblockers.
The other option was to befriend her brother. That guaranteed you easy access to their house. You always made sure that you had new things to give her brother; like recorded music on those TDH cassettes. If you had the new Immature or Naughty By Nature cassette you would be very happy to share it with him. You have Rambo 2 VHS cassette, maybe you can come over to his house to watch? Then you were in their very house, your shoes removed at the door (in the 90’s shoes were always left at the door) and you would slowly get friendly with his sister. She would get comfortable with you. But often mothers saw through this foxy move and curtailed you at the next corner. Mothers were always a step ahead and you never won.
Of course such things never really ended up anywhere. The most she did was kiss you as she headed for home from the kiosk in the cover of darkness. It was hurried and you were lucky if she didn’t break your tooth. But then we would all graduate high school and she would realise that talking to boys actually didn’t make anyone pregnant. Mother lied. (Teren teren).
That window between high school and college was when you had a better shot. So you did what everybody else was doing in the 90’s; you bought her chicken-in-a-basket, a concept that was just taking shape, and you took her to watch a movie. Of course you didn’t care about the movie one bit. You could have gone to watch a movie about men who plant and water trees for all you care, but the very thought of sitting there next to her for two hours was heady. Maybe she would be gracious enough to reach out and hold your hand, or lay her head on your broad, strong shoulders, or if your stars were aligned and the gods were on your side she would let you kiss her.
The movies were romantic. You bought popcorn, a soda and a hotdog. Never mind that she had eaten chicken in a basket. Back in the day girls ate. This nonsense about counting calories wasn’t there. Carbohydrates hadn’t found their way into the doghouse. Nobody skipped dinner ati because it would make them fat. So she ate a hotdog. Happily.
The movies weren’t just cultural beacons, they were meeting points as well, like landmarks. You either waited at 20th Century or at Kenya Cinema. Saturday you would find guys waiting there. People knew what to do with themselves when they didn’t have a mobile phone in their hands to distract them. You stood and you waited. And you waited. The cruelest thing a girl can do to a millennial now, I guess, is to block unfollow him – unfriend him and then block him . Oh boy such heartbreak. Back then it was to wait at Kenya Cinema until you realise that she had stood you up.And you would only know after you had waited for three hours past the agreed time. Three hours standing on your feet! You couldn’t even leave to grab water lest she came and didn’t find you.
After three hours you would call their landline and their Lunje help (the one who shouted into the phone like she was speaking to someone far away in Ikolomani) would pick up. You would ask if Sally was home and she would shout, “NGOJA NIMUITE!” You would hear the receiver being dropped onto the table and then a brief silence followed by sounds of footsteps – Sally’s footsteps – and then the sound of the receiver being picked up and Sally’s voice, small and brittle, saying, “Hello?”. Without sounding accusatory you would ask her what happened and she would say that visitors showed up abruptly and her mom asked her to help cook. Again, mom the cockblocker.
Then the movies died. Or we grew up. I don’t know.
Now we all have movie guys. Kina Charlie, Mutua and Freddie. We binge on series. We bought home theater systems and brought the theater to our homes.
I got an invite from the Crimson Multimedia, they distribute movies from major studios to all cinemas in East and West Africa. They wanted me to go watch Eddie The Eagle which premiered last week and I thought, ‘Movies? Do people still actually go to movies?’ I asked a friend of mine if people actually went to the movies anymore and he said, “I think Indians still do.” (Haha. Ignore him). I said I would rather watch Batman VS Superman (showing now) because a movie like Eddie The Eagle sounded like one of those movies you watch from the DVD not in a theater. But he said, “Come on, this movie is very good”, so I attended the premier at 11am. I remember how surreal it was sitting in the theater with some journalist (it was a media invite) seated behind me, actively having a conversation with someone. I told myself I’d not fret because we play for the same team and I’m a child of God and I seek peace in my heart, but at some point I had to turn around and ask him if he didn’t awfully f’ckin mind!??
Eddie the Eagle was a fantastic movie. If you are battling self doubt, if you are at a point in your life where you want to do something but you are riddled with guilt and insecurity, watch this movie. If people keep telling you that can’t do something, watch this movie. If you want to do something but everybody keeps saying nobody has succeeded in it before, watch this movie. If you like popcorn, watch this movie. It doesn’t sound like a big screen movie, but try it on a big screen, it will surprise you in many ways and it will leave you feeling hopeful and rooted onto something grand.
For me, going back to the theater just brought a lot of good post-teenage memories. Sitting there in darkness in a cool room. It was like sitting in a train of nostalgia that is going round and round and round.
The movies shouldn’t die. We shall keep our Charlies and Mutuas but once in awhile we will go watch something special. Take someone special because the theater gives you major points. It says you aren’t all about drinking and eating nyama choma. Take someone to the movies. If you are in your 30’s, come on, have a crack at nostalgia. If you are a millennial, all you have to do is sit there and act like a gentleman. How difficult can that be? You can lean in and whisper in her ear, “ What scent is that?” even if you can’t smell shit. She will smile in darkness and try remember what she wore, like she has fifty scents and she will say, “Uhm, Narciso Rodriguez, you like it?” You will say, “On you.” Then look away. That’s many bonga points, my friend. Many.