Enter Gretel. A lovely girl living surviving in the city under the sun. She waved at me from the rooftop beckoning me to come up the building. By my assessment, she was a fine young lady. An eye candy that would warrant boys and men alike to turn their heads when she passed by. I could already picture a dozen chats in her DM telling her she was the shit.
And so I entered the dingy looking apartment having parted the curtains to reveal a rather minimalist interior by circumstance rather than design. A bed on the corner, a screen on the other, kitchen on the furthest side. No seats in sight and as such I was offered a suitcase covered in a Maasai shuka to sit on – It is actually more comfortable than you’d think. By all rights, a modest space for a girl trying to make a life for herself and her own. She works as a receptionist in a hospital during the night. Her baby daddy is deadbeat.
“You look tired.” I said as a matter of fact. There were lines on her forehead that made her seem older than she actually was. In honesty, she looked like she was chewed on the previous night by a military man who had gone two years without expelling his seed, a man on a mission. She was left to nurse her ego and whatever else that was bruised.
“I am. I’m taking time off work to rest and figure out my life. That’s why I called you here, to hear me out because I can’t tell anyone else what is on my mind. I need to let it out before it consumes me.”
Her conundrum begins on Facebook. She reached out to this lady who claimed to have connections to potential wababaz from the United States of so called America. She reached out and a connection was made.
“He is a living piece of shit. For someone living in the USA you’d think their manners are as good as their English. This guy was the embodiment of usherati and was so daft he couldnt know his left from his right even if his life depended on it but he had money.” That’s all that mattered at that point.
” Aah yes, the root of all evil.” I interjected.
She scoffed as she took a sip of water while trying to look very remorseful. I had seen that look before. She had lost something. I wasn’t sure she’d get it back. I took a bite of the cold rice she had served me. It needed salt.
“How far are you willing to go to secure the bag?” She asked suddenly looking up from her fixation on the cup.
“Probably anything that doesn’t require me to lose my ass virginity and have blood on my hands, unless it’s slaughtering an animal.” I answered albeit absentmindedly.
I saw a coy smile play on her lips from the corner of my eye. I took another bite of the rice. “Where is the damn salt?!”, I wondered.
“I thought I could do anything too. That was until I tried something and I realised I’ve gone too far and I’ve crossed the line. It’s blurry but it sure is there. With the shit I’ve done I can’t even look at myself in the mirror. I have new found respect for sex workers!” She barked.
Instinctively, I remembered the days gone that I have perused the streets of Nairobi in search of eye candy. And I found them. Petite ones, plump ones, short hair, horse hair, brown ones, soot black ones, your mom’s age, your youngest sisters age…. The list goes on and on.
“So what exactly did you do? What line do you think you crossed?” I asked letting my curiosity get the best of me.
She looked at me knowingly. As if I had taken a sip from the fountain of knowledge and I knew more than I was letting on.
She had bought a dildo and consequently done several videos for the said client. Less glamorous than onlyfans but erotic nonetheless. The ones where your moan is as fake as your accent and the video quality is in the gutters. And after each video the client claimed that it wasn’t enough for him to send her the alleged money. He wanted more and she had no say in the matter.
And so she kept doing solo editions until he eventually asked if she could get a man to make things interesting.
“It was good money. It really was. Not life changing but good money for a start nonetheless.” She sighed then continued, “I offered a guy forty thousand shillings to come over and do the live video.”
I swallowed a huge lump. Forty thousand buns. One, two, three, all the way up to forty. Yeah that would get my three inches to eight. “Did he come?” I asked innocently.
“It’s the funniest thing ever.” She said. “He showed up bringing some weed with him at my request and we got it on. The client wanted me to work on the pipe with no hands involved….”
I watched her lips move as she uttered word by word listening keenly to what she was saying. I was painting a picture to myself and it was exhilarating to say the least. I could see it all. The back and forth nodding with the guy looking at the mirror with grin ascertaining dominance to himself, his head becoming light since blood was rushing to his other head…
“He didn’t get hard, he just stood there. It was like he had some sort of dysfunction” She said softly cutting my imagination.
“Hehe..what?” I wondered.
I’d imagine that as a man you’d have a lot of trouble thinking properly if someone stripped naked in front of you and proceeded to play with your family jewels. That man probably is an anomaly of the human species. An evolutionary error of the unfortunate kind.
“You heard me. He failed to rise to the occasion.”
“Camera jitters perhaps?”
“That’s what we thought. But, we were not even attracted to each other romantically so he probably didn’t foresee getting one off with me. It was the most miserable sex I’ve ever had. No emotion, no enjoyment, no fun, no love. Just nothing.
The client then got this twisted idea to have her to lick his..his.. uhm his business end of the digestive tract and I clenched all my cheeks in dismay. She says she found tissue residue from a previous wipe that she pinched out and were it not for how high she was, she would have inadvertently puked her guts out
“Oh I’ve been told it is quite pleasurable. A girl once told me she understood why people engaged in anal sex but claimed she has only ever been licked.” I said and I regretted it as I was met with a -did you actually just say that stare. I took another bite of the rice. The next few minutes were of awkward silence.
“I took another day off work to try and secure that bag. We meet with the same guy in a different place. He had brought a Viagra pill with him this time in the hopes that it would temporarily resolve his inability to stand for himself.” She said this and let out a little chuckle of mockery at the memory.
Now personally I can’t blame the poor guy. He was forcing issues just as any man in the same shoes would. “Did he rise to the occasion this time round?” I asked wanting to know if the man represented the boy child honourably.
Meanwhile, I thought to myself. “If this man came at all this time round, it would be a dishonourable discharge”. Fancy.
“No, he did not. Same as last time. I guess it’s because there was no sexual chemistry between us. Even the pill failed. He licked my armpits though. And my butt too perhaps to return the favour I did last time. It was a whole other level of weird.” She commented.
“Damn! Even with the pill he still managed to be a consistent disappointment?” Mind over body perhaps.” I muttered.
“Perhaps. We never got the money. The pervert said he wanted more videos. Claimed he wanted to help me because he liked me. The sheer audacity of the guy!” She laughed at her own comment. “The client claims he’ll send the money after a video with myself getting off a big black woman. He’s just full of fantasies and I can’t do it any more.”
“Do you sleep at night?” I asked. I’ve learnt from countless experiences that that people who are not at peace with themselves have a hard time doing the most mundane of things, like sleep.
“I try. It certainly wasn’t easy the first night. I hugged my kid and cried myself to sleep convincing myself that I was doing it for our sakes. I had to give out my mirror to my neighbor because every time I looked at myself in it all I saw was how far into the abyss I had fallen. I don’t even try to do makeup anymore. I just feel ugly inside and I can’t look at my reflection for fear I’d see what I had become. You’d be surprised at how many truths you can hide behind powder and lipstick.” She finished philosophically.
“So you are both the protagonist and the antagonistf of your life story?” I asked.
“That.. plus the feeling that perhaps I’m suffering from the worst kind of disability, disability of the mind. That if I cannot make something out of myself in this life the world turns its back on me .” She said sombrely.
“Do you regret ever doing it?” I asked again deciding that it’s better to just lay all the cards on the table and be blunt.
Among the biggest emotions going around humanity in our day and age is regret. Was she just another mere statistic or had she crossed that threshold, to the point of no return, the point where all bridges are burnt and London has essentially fallen. The point well versed as “Kesi baadaye”.
“I don’t. If the money is right I’ll let you slide it in whichever hole you want. You just have to get to my magic number of zeros. And besides sex is overrated.” She finished off.
“Do you believe in love? I asked.
She let out what I decide to label as a mockery of laughter and said almost choking on her saliva, “You live and you learn and that’s all I’m going to say on that!”
******
The lady in question represents a moral dilemma of astronomical proportion. How much is enough? How can a rich man teach humility to his seed? How far should you go? Hell. How far is too far? And what degree of being pushed to the wall can and should you endure. After all, everyone is capable of being a total narcissistic killer if given just enough shove in that direction.
And in a bid to critically examine ourselves, can you sleep well at night having crossed the threshold? Can you look at yourself in the mirror and face your absolute arch nemesis- yourself? Or is your heart made of ice cold freaking stone?
Will human nature prevail or fail?
This is the beauty of literature. Science can tell us how but not why.
Buy her coffee, will you? And leave a note. It'll get to her. I'm an honest man. Lmao.
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