This city is bigger than us. This city doesn’t belong to us. It’s a conduit, a tunnel, and we pass through it with dreams, hopes, disappointments, triumphs. By the way just so you know, this is not a poem. I don’t do poems because I’m not a romantic. I immensely respect people who write poems and have the knack to rhyme “jaw” with “raw”. It’s a colossal talent; unfortunately it’s not my cup of tea.
Anyway, this is about the city and how you shouldn’t allow it to consume you, how you shouldn’t let it own you. The thing with the city is that you will meet posers. As a way of basic definition, a poser is someone who wears shades in the club. A poser is someone who flashes the peace sign at anything, even a toddler. A poser is someone who thinks she or he is the shit and everybody else is not the shit. A poser is someone who buys one of them furry white dogs that odieros love and walk the poor thing in the middle of town on a loose Saturday while he wears shades with lenses the size of a pawpaw. The guy next to me just leaned in and informed me that those shades are called stunners. How aptly stunning. The other day I was walking in town, when I saw this brave fella in those colorful skinny pants that make men look like women on diet. And this guy was walking this poor dog who obviously was embarrassed of his master’s pants. You could tell the dog thought he was cramping his style. You could tell the dog needed the stunners more than the master to hide its face. Now that is a poser. This is not Amsterdam, London or Sicily. This is Nairobi and we don’t walk dogs in the middle of the streets, and if you really have to exercise this dog in the streets then have a skinny light chick hold the leash. Now that’s about right. About.
Now see, a poser is not necessarily a bad person but only if they are loud, brash and overbearing. Posers crave attention that’s why they play loud music from their cars and date women who drink strawberry daiquiri (and nothing else!)
Posers call tweeter, tweera.
We all know a poser. They live amongst us. They are our friends, they are our neighbours, we drink with them, they call us once in a while when there is a shindig going down, and some even owe us money. I recently, against my better judgment, attended my Uni alumni party. The only reason people attend such things is because they want to be told they look nice. For real. They want some sort of validation. They are so depressed from what the mirror constantly tells them they want a second opinion.
The alumni do was a brilliant sham. They served cake and they brought on Kayamba Africa guys, okay not the original guys but some amoebic arm of them. It’s no doubt that Kayamba Africa is talented, but I still can’t stand them. The problem is me obviously, I’m a depressive cynic. But to be honest I hate what they wear, those dreadful flowy African shirts that reach the knees. I find them corny. The only group that can pull off that look are the great Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Those folks will wear a sack and still look – and sound – good!
But it’s not the group that was wet blanketing the party, it was booze. It wasn’t there! So we all huddled in this hall at Safari Park like merino sheep, nibbling on biscuits (what posers would call pretzels) and sipped tea and caught up on lost time. Sure, it was a scream meeting old people, but soon it started feeling like I was at a Christian convention. Anyway, at some point I decide to step out for a cigarette smoke (I don’t smoke, but I’ve always wanted to say that) and there I meet this old chum from school, flashy guy; gold chain, nice thread and a decent timepiece. He seemed to be rolling, going by that watch…if it wasn’t some knockoff from Kirinyaga road. I’m excited to see him of course and so we catch fill the five or so years since we last met. He asks me what I’m up to, I tell him I’m unemployed (I love that). He says he is doing business. “Employment sucks,” he snorts, and I nod vigorously in agreement.
So we get talking, reminisce on the good old days, have a few laughs and all. It was obvious that he was doing very well with himself. That life was looking up. I was a bit envious if you would like to know, I wanted to hit him over the head with a rock from an artificial pond nearby and watch him bleed to death. I wanted to yank off his sexy timepiece and ran the hell out of the there. I wanted his life! Anyway, I ask him for a card and he suggests that we walk to his car and pick them up. Look, I really didn’t need the card, maybe just his phone number, it’s not like I wanted to send him an email of anything besides the parking lot was like three days away on foot. But he insists, and so I say what the hell, it’s a nice day for a walk anyway now that we all can’t get wasted. When we get there it becomes clear why he wanted me to walk him to the car because what he was driving was just not a car. It was a machine. Toyota, land Cruiser, Cygnus. 200 series. 2008 mode. Silver in color. Dark tint. Here is how cool this car was. It had a smart entry which meant you only needed to bring the remote close to the door and simply touch the handle for the door to open. It had no key for ignition, only a start/stop and the car is off. Throw in about 10 airbags. This is the kind of car that God uses to speak to man. If that car was food, it would be stir fried chicken with vegetable rice. If it was a politician it would be Sarah Palin.
Now in contrast: my car is a 10yr old Japanese joke. It’s not fully loaded. It’s a stick shift. For me to roll my windows I use that old system of rolling it with that knob thing, which is good because it develops your biceps. Now the other day this knob thingamajig yanked out while I was rolling up my window and the little sucker rolled and disappeared under my seat. So now to get fresh air, I take a deep breath before I start driving then jump in. That’s the kind of relationship I have with my car, so when I saw this Land Cruiser beast sitting in the parking lot like a little god of cars, you can imagine how impressed I was. Brother certainly done good for himself, I thought to myself as I inspected this sexy thing. I asked him how much he bought it for and he shrugged, “not much.” he said. Not much here, for your information is about 3m a pop, for a guy who I was with in school not too long ago, that’s a feat! So I open the back seat to check out the leather upholstery.
Here is where this gets interesting.
Under the driver’ seat, I see a shoe. A round-toe woman’s shoe. The type that look like Japanese shoes. I’m nosy okay, so I decided okay, why would a woman forget her shoes in his car? I’ve heard of women forgetting their knickers in men’s cars, but not shoes! This must have been one careless woman! There were some files on the back seat, and I flipped open one while he wasn’t looking, and some documents had a lady’s name on it. Hmm…Now I was interested. So I told him I wanted to test it around the lot and he handed the keys reluctantly, “Chief, please don’t scratch it.” he said. Well while I cruised around the lot in this hottie I flipped open his glove compartment and my suspicions were confirmed because therein was a scarf, some sort of make-up kit, shades and wet wipes. Bingo. Dude either had borrowed the car from a woman, was knocking this woman’s bones or was a cross dresser. Smooth.
Either way, that is a poser.
But to live in the city you have to have a bit of poser traits in you. It’s permissible to take a break from your usual beer and order a single malt whisky once in a while when you run into some greens. It’s even okay to call money greens when our currency in Kenya is hardly green. It’s okay to tell a woman that your favourite music is classical even though you are a rumba fun. It’s fine to claim you are a vegan because you saw someone on Oprah proclaim it. It’s fine if you borrow your woman’s juggernaut so that you can make Biko feel unworthy with his Japanese job that has windows that don’t roll. It’s all good because posing is the malady of the city. There is a poser in each one of us, and it’s cool, as long as you don’t wear skinny jeans and walk a poor dog in the middle of town.