Choosing a whore

For those who have never visited a brothel or wives who wonder why their men are mystified by the daughters of eve like Okot p’ Bitek’s Lawino, maybe this would give you an insight.

Maybe you’ll find like we have human beings where we expected beasts, or I expected a beast. I walked down Latema road late one evening. I was tipsy or I would have never dared, Dutch courage you know it makes you grow balls, literally. As I passed Tsavo lane I went to a hawker or someone who was selling a few assortments in the open.

You know my predicament whether he was a hawker or not lay more on his open shop. Hawkers shops are more mobile, more of boxes so huge they must have carried analogue TVs. These are easy to fold and make a run for it. And their merchandise are similarly mobile, easy to carry goods, like take away food. But this gentleman was selling cigarettes, sweets, gum, water and all brands of condoms, Sure, Trust, Deluxe, Bull and all other assortment that I could not remember.

I bought a cigarette, I have developed a behavior of smoking whenever am drunk so I can always deny that am a smoker (blame it on the alcohol). I lit it and sucked hard, after estimating through three deep puffs, I squeezed the butt and popped the menthol on the Switch. Just as I sucked the sweet tobacco adrenaline, she came to me from an alley way and blurted to me.

“Buy me a cigarette,” She was fat and motherly, her huge hips glowing in the damp street lights. She also had huge breasts, unbridled, no bra. Her only asset was her brown skin, so brown she almost looked European or Albinish. I ignored her but she reached out and pulled at me. I staggered towards her, she was strong. She had a musk which I could not decide if it was her perfume, the cologne of the man that had just had been on top of her or her own body odor (I blame my sinuses).

“Not interested,” I told her bluntly. I saw her cringe and curse in her eyes. She must have decided not to call me Kihi she had decide I was Luo. She took my cigarette as if I could not protest and rushed to another man who was coming down the road.

My cigarette gone I trudged on, past the night watchman who was crouched sleeping. There were other girls who chatted away in the cold Nairobi air. There was also a police man. I was jolted back to reality like a child caught with the hand in the sugar jar. I knew prostitution was illegal in Kenya. And even though I had not been caught in the act I felt being found in the presence of Delilahs’ was enough to have me arrested. But he didn’t even look at me. He was standing right at the corner opposite the ‘Iko’ toilet where Latema road bends into Duruma road. Two Delilah’s came to him and chatted him up a bit. I was too afraid of him to know what they were doing, so I walked fast past him.

I walked past the Kampala Coach offices and entered Duruma Lane. It was crowded, most men were seated outside closed shops around someone making coffee. They were chewing Khat through the night. Below them lay endless clippings of the plant pinched at their thump and first finger before being chewed. There was also plenty of groundnut husks about them and once in a while one of them would rub the groundnuts between their palms and blow a cloud of chaff into the air.

A man was selling bittings. Not the kind that is passed around during cocktail parties’ coiffed by the well to do. He was basically frying the remnants of the animals that made their way to up-town. Like the necks of chicken or the gullets of cows. He also had boiled eggs. He would let a buyer pick a part and then he would fry it in black re-used oil. Squeeze it as it frothed, turn it and then place it on a meshed wire to lose the oil. Wrap it in newspapers (under the president’s instruction to use newspapers only as meat wrappers) and offer the client.

There were few retail shops too. The sold mostly mineral water, Big G bubble gum, groundnuts, sodas, mostly sprite and fifty and twenty shillings phone scratch cards.

And then there were a whole assembly of Delilahs like they had a called a meeting. Some were buying khat, some huddled around the chef some loitering, some visibly drunk. One came at me and I liked her curvy body, she was either wearing thong or had no panty on.

“How much?” I asked anxiously. And she must have assessed me. Rule number one when you go to down-town be down town. You will be charged by the way you have dressed. She must have said in her head, one he is a first timer, two he is dressed well, three he has a news paper, mmmh. “One thousand,” she retorted as if not really interested.

She had made too many misjudgments. I walked past her into the bar, she tried to hold onto my arm imploringly, ‘How much do you have,” I disengaged it and went in.

Whatever these buildings were made for is left for a research into Nairobi history. The flight of stairs steeps upwards towards the door like the stairs that Jacob saw that led to heaven or the beanstalk that Jack farmed. They open up to large spaces where the bars selling keg and cheap gin and vodka are renovated into the old buildings. They still maintain Indian grills on their windows though, the two scimitars and Indian temple emblems. Perhaps the legacy of some prayer rooms when they used to be second class citizens and had the Ngara Eastleigh set aside for them apartheid style, a level just above Africans.

I enter the bar are and scan through the crowd. Here they are so many using their physique as a criteria is just dumb. They are all naked save for short fabric around their bodies. They all have thighs peeping into the disco lights that tease you with momentary glimpses of their thighs. All their breasts are propped up by bras they look succulent and teenager like. They all walk around just so you see them like an overpopulated market.

It makes sense though to use price as the criteria, so I ask a few just to know the range that is being charged. Sh500, sh200, sh300. I then think it probably depends on whether they have been successful in getting laid, and thus getting paid. Am tempted to find those that are desperately watching morning approach and they haven’t made a kill. But as you would expect the reason they have not gotten themselves laid in the first place is because they are not appealing. They are either too fat, overdressed or plain drunk. Those that look professional, who do not drink and sit up like they are attending a lecturer or are from a lecture anyway, charge sh500. Those who want you to buy them a beer first and are not shy about ordering Tusker in the blink of an eye, consider the expenses and charge sh300.

Now how to choose. Then I decide to talk to one of them. Maybe if a find a little humanity in them I wont feel so guilty about my actions. Maybe then I might afford an erection. I am sure if I take any of the blatant sales women I might not even rise to the occasion.

So I ask her to sit with me. She looked out of place over dressed and selling alcohol more than her flesh. I asked her to get me alcohol, Pilsner Ice, chilled. She brought me change. Now Like Matatu touts remember when you are in down town the waiter will pretend he has forgotten your change. If you do not insist he bags it. If you insist he asks for more time and hopes you forget which you will, especially coins. So if you can carry extra change good for you, if you can’t don’t expect to get change.

So she had caught my fancy. So I bought her a beer. She laughed a lot, shrieked even or giggled above the din of throbbing music. She lived along Ngong road. I wondered why she was giving so much detail. She was tired with this job. There goes the rhetoric I said to myself. She wanted to start her own business. To sell Pastries, I liked the way she said Pastries. It whispered past her lips I almost missed it. Whenever she laughed, it went to her eyes and she looked like a human in a doll shop or people in a mannequin making shop. I assume that there must be a lot of mannequins in such a shop that they dwarf human population like the Krest, Obey your thirst advert that ran on TV long ago. I told her she was beautiful, very beautiful. She smiled looking away. It felt almost childish. She told me I should see her inner beauty.

That was deep. It’s like when I went to a swimming pool for the first time. I did not want to look stupid so I did not ask for which side was deep end or shallow end. And I just dived. And after I was rescued by a girl, being laughed at I was glad I had bit more than I could chew. Next time, I knew where to swim.

And I was unable to haggle for her wares. I felt that asking how much it would cost me to lay her would be insulting. Of course I wanted to but it no longer felt right. So we talked a bit and when I left I said I would come back.

I had chosen a whore wrongly.