“Why don’t you want to go on TV, Biko, you know your forehead can fit in the screen right?” someone told me this past heady week of Jadudi’s drama.
I think once you go on TV you can’t do what normal people do. You stop being normal. I mean what you would you think if you saw Mark Masai peeing on a trench along James Gichuru at 10pm? Of course you would tweet about it. Or take his picture. Of course nobody will care that perhaps he has a bladder problem and that he was super pressed and his bladder was going to literally tear and his house was another 25mins drive away. Nobody will care; all people will say is that it’s completely “unlike” him to pee by the roadside. That it’s “unbecoming” and “uncultured” and the puritans and the goody-two-shoes on twirra who do no evil, who wear priestly clothes to bed, will castigate him and make him feel like he’s scum of earth. Nobody will care that he did what any normal guy would do, has done or has thought of doing, i.e. pull over on a deserted part of the road and pee because you just can’t hold it any longer. I do it when I have to do it. You got off the bar and thought you would pee at home, two minutes later you are so pressed you can’t even yawn. You go if you absolutely have to go. That’s how God intended it.
There are chicks reading this who have done it before. It’s the ugliest thing ever for a woman to pee by the roadside not only because they are unsuitably equipped to do it, biologically but because it’s just ugly to hear a woman pee, because it’s so loud and unsexy. How they pull up their dress, spread their legs very wide apart and pee. You can’t even watch, but you can hear the stream of urine hit the earth, which if you measure will hit about 4.2 on the Richter.
Do you know who Johnston Keti is? No? What about Sammy Lutta? I don’t know these guys or even how they look. Johnston is a Nation correspondent from Samburu, according to his byline in last Thursday’s paper. Lutta also wrote about property in last week’s Nation. They are writers. They can pee by the roadside. They can scold their kids in a supermarket when they are being complete eejits. They can ask for a manager in a restaurant and complain about the service without anyone feeling that they are using their face or name. They can be normal. TV makes you un-normal.
I don’t go on TV because I find TV overwhelming, but mostly I find it intrusive. Once you go on TV, especially prime TV, you will get people walking up to you to say hello and ask you to tell them again what you already said on TV and you have to tell them again or they will say that you are a snob and you are proud and that you feel good. So as you engage them, your lunch will be getting cold and you will have to call the waiter to warm it again. TV makes you lose your true identity. You become like a public park where people can just swing by with a picnic basket and have apples and pie. I want to be a private property with signage that reads, “Trespassers will be shot…and their pies confiscated.”
Plus you have to find nice clothes to wear on TV. I have nice clothes but I don’t have nice clothes for TV. People will expect me to dress up like Larry Madowo in his “bespoke” suits and thin ties. The only bespoke thing I own is my beard.
I don’t wear suits or ties. I own one tie. It’s a gaudy tie that I wore to my brother’s wedding. Dreadful tie but family is family. However, I have a very cool blazer which I can’t wear too often because people will notice that it’s the only one. By the way, have you ever met someone for a meeting for the third time and they keep showing up in the same dress? If it’s a man it’s OK, I’m talking about a chick. Hehe. Of course it’s a strange coincidence, that the very day they meet you again is the same day they wear that same green dress? They don’t know that they wore it the last time so they sit there with long hairless legs folded and you are dying to tell them – again – that you love their dress but you can’t because they might remember that they wore it the last time and they will get all awkward. Of course you know they have loads of other clothes in their closet but it’s just that they love that particular green dress because there is a way it curves their hips and hides their love-handles and people always compliment them the day they wear that dress and tell them that they look young and glamorous and come on, who doesn’t want to be told they look glamorous even if they pee by the roadside when they are super pressed?
OK, fine, let me get this peeing thing off my chest.
Once upon a time, when I was younger and stronger, I went for a drink with this chick. Pretty bird with a small birthmark at the base of her neck. She wore a lovely grey dress and a nice pendant that looked like something from Lord of the Rings, and through the evening it dangled and glittered there just above her dangerous cleavage, sparkling the whole evening like a Northern Star. She was one of those proper girls who delicately dab the corner of their mouths thoughtfully with a napkin and always wait until she has completely swallowed her food before saying something. It doesn’t matter how long she takes to chew and swallow, you just have to wait. One of those chicks who drink rosé and always removes a small mirror from their clutch to see if their teeth are red. It’s hilarious. Let’s just say that at some point this fair lady drunk a little too much. I guess she was happy, celebrating life, etc.
Anyway, her car was down so what does a gentleman with a forehead do at the end of the evening? You offer to drop her home. En route she kept saying that she was pressed and as soon as we got to her estate, she got off and went to this area between her house and the next and she peed there in darkness. I couldn’t see her but I could hear the stream of her furious urine hit the ground; 7.6 on the Richter scale. It was the most unbelievable thing I have ever seen or heard; a well cultured woman, turning into a complete ratchet in a time span of three hours. It’s always stayed with me, that evening.
Back to TV and my one beloved blazer. The last time I wore it was to Charles Njonjo’s interview. That morning Tamms looked at me strangely and didn’t say anything. Maybe she said to herself, “God help us all.” I remember how fast she kissed me and bundled out of the car when I dropped her off at school, as if she didn’t want to be seen with me. Like she was embarrassed of me. Can you believe that shit? I thought I looked dapper. I didn’t care though. It’s not like she has better taste in shoes herself and sometimes I’m embarrassed when she insists on wearing these pink plastic sandals from Bata that she absolutely loves but which I think look hideous, but do I show it? Nope. I don’t because I’m the bigger person. Maybe she should go on TV instead.
I don’t know how TV people survive in public. I once saw this news anchor or is it newscaster (what’s the difference? They all don’t have beards) in the boarding lounge at the airport. He walked in and since all the seats were taken he had to stand and wait with everyone else for his flight to board. People stared. People really stared. Kenyans can really stare at you. Some don’t even blink. Others won’t even pretend that they are looking at the signage above your head; they just stare directly at you. I was fascinated how people stared at this guy, as if he was an artefact from 1860. It was even more fascinating how he stood there seemingly unperturbed, his bag wedged between his feet, staring at his phone, probably going through his mentions because I suspect TV people are secretly obsessed with their mentions. I always imagine that the first thing a TV journalist does when they wake up is to go through their mentions and see if perhaps Jesus finally mentioned them while they slept.
But people really watched this guy’s moves even though he wasn’t moving. He was just standing there in his cool, blue loafers. Some pointed at him with their chin saying, “Si that’s so-and-so from so-and-so TV? He looks fatter/shorter/taller/ than he is on TV.” The other person would lie, “I know him, we have met briefly. There was a time he came for Brenda’s party, si you know Brenda my pal who sells those weaves from India? Yah, her. Anyway, he had on a hat with a feather on it. It was so shady.” Then the first chick will go, “Aki? He looks like the kind of guy who likes feathers.”
Of course this guy knew the whole room was staring at him but he acted ever so cool. So cool, ice developed on his blue loafers. I wondered if he enjoyed all that attention, all those eyeballs on him. I wondered how you can live your life like that, knowing that wherever you go you can never be just some Kenyan. You can never just do you. You can’t even pee on James Gichuru road at 9pm when you are super pressed. What is life if you can’t even pee when you want to pee because you are on TV?
I mean let’s say you are standing somewhere minding your own bizworks and this blind guy is led over to you by those minders of theirs and he extends this old tin towards you for change. I mean sometimes those guys are a nuisance and I always just shake my head dismissively when they put that old tin under my nose. But if you are a hotshot TV guy, standing there in your nice ankara shirt and shades stuck up your forehead, how can you send that blind man away even if you want to? Won’t people say, “Ahh, that TV guy hates blind people!” I mean if you saw me dismiss a blind beggar you would not even bother, you would only say, “That guy with a big forehead doesn’t like beggars,” and forget about it. But if it’s a TV guy you might tweet or tell the story to someone else, and you know how stories evolve in this town. You will add that he spat in the poor blind man’s tin because it makes for a better story and so the TV guy will one day wake up, reach for his phone to read his mentions and someone will have said how he spat in a poor blind man’s tin and when he goes online to defend himself it will only get worse when another liar says he saw him one day take a piss near a church fence and that’s it, people will always look at you on TV and not get past your habits of pissing on churches and spitting in tins belonging to blind poor people. Then you won’t be able to go heaven.
There is this time I was interviewing Jeff Koinange for the Business Daily so we agreed he would pick me up at Java Adams Arcade and we’d drive to his house for the interview. I got there before him and when he showed up and weaved through the tables, the chemistry of the restaurant suddenly changed. It was like Moses had suddenly parted the Red Sea. I mean people literally looked up from their lattes and from their meetings and really stared at him and Jeff being the charmer he is smiled at some, nodded at others, and even stopped to shake an extended hand of some of the people he knew and said things, like, “Good to see your ma brother,” in that voice of Abraham. Later I asked him, “My God, isn’t that too much, having to play nice and say hello to everybody who stops you and wants to talk about The Bench, or get on The Bench or just take a selfie?” And he said, “It’s part of the job, man.”
I don’t know. I wouldn’t want a job like that. I couldn’t live like that. I’d feel violated and intruded upon and so exposed and the thought of having to tell everyone, “Good to see you again ma brother,” or “Looking good, sweetheart,” to someone wearing the same blue dress you saw them in last time is just too meech, as South Africans would say.
So please, no TV for me. If you ever see me on TV I would have won a Pulitzer. Or rescued a child from a burning house. I love it here, in my little bubble of obscurity. Flying under the radar. I love to observe people, not to be observed. In a room I will stand at the back of the room, my back to the wall, never in the middle of the room. Once you go on TV you can’t even pee on James Gichuru Road at night. What’s left of life then?