PREVIEW, KIM+14, (THE LAST PART)

The day Fiona called is the day I left my house on the hill in Ntinda. The day Fiona called is the day I never went home again. The day Fiona called is the day I stopped using my first Mango line. The day Fiona called was the first evening I did not walk Kampala road, my workday done, my friends all gone, but I did not want to be alone in a room thinking. The day Fiona called is the day I finally realized how much I had needed her to call me but had never admitted to myself just how much. And the day Fiona called me, a phone call I did not want to answer, was like the first day of life after death. My heart in my fingertips in the seconds paused over the faded YES button of my ringing Samsung phone. In the ticking seconds, hearing before I had picked up, what I had for months waited to hear breathed out, “Yes, today, if it’s okay, we can meet. City Square, yes, then we can decide.”  

Thursday, busiest day of my week, in the afternoon after a snack of warm glassed orange juice and two big oily doughnuts, working through lunch, she calling. The Beethoven Ode to Joy startling the napping room in my direction. Angry glances urging me to pick up. I lived and died and came back to life in the seconds my eyes staring at Fiona’s caller photo flashing on my screen, ascertaining that the glare from my computer was not making me see a number I had willed myself to stop hoping was flashing on my screen whenever my phone vibrated before the crash of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy forced me to pick up. A willing that had taken me months to achieve and then when it was done, she called.  My stomach was gone, a cliff fall yawning emptiness there. I could not feel my legs; my knee caps all that were left. I was sure I did not have any voice left, a dry croak surely all I could summon from my parched throat if I tried answering. But beyond all this, I was certain that getting up from behind my old black Dell desktop computer facing the gray wooden door into the partitioned office meant never coming back here, on that Thursday afternoon when she called. After ten months, wanting to see me again.   

Fall Of The Goddesses

Crash my naivety some more. Prove to me again and again that there are no goddesses. That I have been fooling myself. I have come to you over and over, like the dog that loves to be kicked, to be shown again how false are all my illusions. This is the year when I lose all my innocence and it seems I’m fated to learn from you who I love the most. I have grown beyond jealousy, beyond sad reproach, beyond gagging nausea, I have gone beyond the shell shocked survivor’s silence. All my tics have ceased.

 

Inspite of all this, I cannot say goodbye to my dream, kiss the last of you and accept goddesses do not exist anymore. I have tried and tried. God knows how many raised glasses in the night I have raised promising with the last bitter swallow that burns my throat, I will not be a fool anymore, I will not be a believer longer. I will delete your pictures, remove your number from my phone book, stop answering your mail because I know, I know, you show me everyday, there are no goddesses left. Yet still I look. Still I search. I come back. I keep coming back.

KIM +13

(This Post is for Scotchbiscuits, Dennis Matanda, Ishta, Jackfruity, Magintu and my new notebook. You guys brought me back in more ways than you’ll ever know.)

“I’ll try to make the sun shine brighter for you. I will even play the fool, if it makes you smile…After all is said, after all is done, I would do anything for you. Come in here, close your eyes.”
Come With Me, Phil Collins

This is like the beginning, again. Only then it was in different rooms, different years, different us, me nervous. This is like the beginning. But there was no end. Really. For I never stopped thinking of you. Not once. Fiona. Not a day, not an hour, were you never on my mind. I could never forget you. So here we are again. You asking me, seated in my Kitchen hard-backed chair, hands grasping mine in your laps, asking me, and I telling you, again, what I never got to tell you. How it was, how it sometimes still is, now that we are no longer together and you have come back to see me, in my house on the hill, Ntinda, Saturday, afternoon turning into evening. Will it make you happy to know that….

When it rains, these are the hardest times, in the morning, in bed, no electricity on, no kerosene in the unlit lantern, nowhere to go but remain in bed, resolutely on my back, my blanket pulled to my chin, watching the peeling wall, trying to think of the day ahead, trying not to turn onto my side. Because this is when it happens. This is when it all comes rushing back, like you never went away, like I have not been alone all this time, in this bed, in the mornings that have become worse than nights, after I took finishing the airtime on my phone every evening and not buying more until the next day was safely began so I should not be tempted to text you in the night or call you in the morning to say, “Hi,” “Just hi,” and my longing and loneliness come tumbling out soon after with all the promises of how much I miss you and how I now make my bed when I get up in the morning before I leave the room that used to be our bedroom and how I pray, how I never forget to pray, like you always wanted me to learn how to and how I never pray for myself alone anymore. No airtime on my phone because I did not want you to know how much, though it is I who left, how so soon I was missing you, how in fish frying restaurants all over the city watching her, my horror sunk in more and more of the awful mistake I had made, would try to undo unsuccessfully, uselessly remorseful now, you would never listen to me now, now when my trembling lips in stuttering hesitation tumbled out more truths than I had ever spoken all my life with you for you.

So I took to going home with a phone that did not have calling or texting credit though I was alone in my house on the hill most of the time, alone even sometimes when she was over, in my mental rooms on my own even when she wanted me to be with her, thought I was with her, thinking of you much of the time, how only you knew how much I loved to sit in silence in the evening after work, the lights off, my smoking habit given up, listening to the wails of blues men and women 1950s and 1960s Uganda coming to life and how she could never understand that; but no credit on my phone to tell you, that I had since begun the habit again, home for an hour, before I went out to meet her and the ipod on my Samsung was loaded with Eclas Kawalya so he was with me even when I was in angry late evening taxis honking furiously for the traffic to move which I did not hear.

I had stopped loading my phone with credit because I did not want to tell you anymore. Because I did not want you to know about the mornings, before dawn, in bed, gentle drizzling, with you coming back. Coming back. Oh Lord! Coming back. Coming back so, I was terrified of turning on my side to face you not there. Because to turn on my side, Oh God, you were almost there, in bed with me again, the morning sleepy head I was kissing reluctantly to wakefulness. One hand of mine on your curved sleeping hip, my other hand under your neck my palm nestled between your breasts, blowing hot breath into your squirming ear, kissing your warm ticklish neck to hear your indistinct murmuring protests, the giggle like a ripple not far beneath.

To be in bed in the morning, the drizzle coming down outside, no electricity, hours before dawn, awake, with you, the day belonged to you, my day belonged to you. And I, lying in bed alone knew this. For months I knew this. Even when I now believed you would never come back, I still knew this, a musing man in bed alone in the morning with memories more living than all the rest of the yet lived day could ever be, I knew this.

You were more with me when you were gone, more as I tried to forget you. You were with me. But especially in the mornings, hours before dawn, no electricity on, rain drizzling outside, you were with me. You were with me. It’s been months and months, Kim’s coming over, and you are here with me.

KIM +12

“Let me take your life and make a song out of it.”

I knew a girl once. A wonderful girl I met one day who was the most beautiful girl in the world. A girl everyone I knew wanted to go out with. A girl who until me had not gone out with any of the people who had wanted to go out with her, kept to herself and kept herself above all her admirers, like a true goddess. I knew that girl once and when I met her, I fell in love with her because everyone was afraid of letting themselves fall in love with her because though no one around had gone out with her, somehow she has acquired the reputation of being a heartbreaker. The kind of girl who drove a teetotaler to drink and become a sad living example of instruction in bars around the city after work as he sobbed soberly in front of his three Johnny Walker Whiskey bottles, his envious job no consolation for the ragged refugee status of his heart. The kind of heartbreaking girl who took the laugh of joy out of a natural life lover until his friends were passing him crouched on a street corner with a glazed distant look in his eyes that could no longer see them and he could not even smile back at the pure smile of a child. An awesome reputation of heartbreaker had grown around her like that no one could explain and that she had never tried to explain. Until I met her and I fell in love with her. And I thought she had fallen in love with me.

And falling in love with her, I begun to discover the girl she used to be, sometimes, in flashes, before she became the heartbreaker, the goddess of pain. Moments that showed me that before kissing her pouting full lips and lying in her strong arms, listening to her crooning to Chris de Barge songs, I had not lived before her. That my life had been a mirage before her. Moments that privately made me want to go away and weep for the deprived life the boy I had been had lived while all the men who had loved her before had been living while I survived on a scourging diet. Not just made want to go away and weep, but there were indeed many moments when we were out and bladder full I used to excuse myself from our table full of mirth filled laughter to go into toilets behind establishments that were open air and I could look up at star filled night skies with distant unheard crickets, pissing into discoloured bowels, and I would laugh sometimes in near drunken glee at the full life I was living, sometimes I would clear my throat many times spitting not to sob at the non-life I had lived before her, and the new life I was discovering with her and because of her, in love like I had never been in love!

Before her, before Kim, I was Teflon, life slipping over me with no trace. With Kim, every street, every bar, every taxi, every word, every song had a story behind it, a life of its own and a memory of us in it and every time I was there, with or without her, she was there with me. Wandegeya was no longer Fiona’s the night I will never forget as long as I live. Wandegeya became Kim’s and the night she got me involved in an altercation that concluded with me staring into endless barrel of a pistol. Wandegeya became hers the night to no dare or provocation she turned a hotel renown for staidness into a heaving hive of bawling and singing when she convinced the manager to let her sing for the love of her life, her boyfriend in the hotel, a song, her favourite song and his, at least in karaoke version because tomorrow was his birthday and it was 2 minutes to midnight and he could only guess that she had not gone out to buy him cigarettes and not to beg with batting eye lashes the manager of the most prestigious hotel in Wandegeya and one of the oldest in Kampala to allow her a rare honour, to sing to her boyfriend, the man who would be her husband the father of her children. Wandegeya was Kim’s, 2am, our grinning cab waiting, standing in front of a grilling chicken and chips stand, Mwebase insisting he had never given a customer his full special without including his ebigenderaako and insisting that his wife in bed with a lactating infant would not mind him waking her up to inquire where the freshest onions were and Kim miraculously purchasing airtime from a pharmacy calling me to say that she was sorry for her craving, she had been in a clinic, they had proven she was not pregnant, but nevertheless though she still wanted those chips and chicken, she had fallen in love with me again because I was in the cold, 2am, Monday night, when I had to be in the office 5 hours later, making sure she had what she desired the most in the world at that moment, and while she was going to give me the most mind blowing love making, she just wanted to say, before she crossed a single lane and came over to me, she knew she had been difficult that night, she appreciated what I was doing right then, and she loved me more than she had ever loved anyone. She was in love, when she least expected to be in love. Wandegeya became hers, when she already had my heart and I had not told her. Wandegeya became hers, while she was mapping regions of me that I had never dared let any girl explore, on a night when I had least hopes of her, my life, or living, Wandegeya became hers and I was hers, in the seconds of taking her call, Mwebase at a distance hailing me triumphantly with his ebigenderaako hoisted above his head, I became hers as my Wandegeya became hers too. That Kim I was ready for, prepared by the lion eating Tsavo Game Park rumours. I was ready.

But there was another Kim. A Kim no one had told me about, warned me about, or even fantasized that she existed. A Kim in sudden glimpses, of Rimbaud illuminations, that had no calling card or business location, a Kim even she could not control, that came of her own bidding and thrilled not just me but thrilled her too. A Kim I did not just fall in love with, a Kim who kissed my soul, looked in the depths of me, was not horrified, and extended her warm living hand to grasp because she understood, such murkiness was in her too, and she was offering my lost soul to twin with her lost soul, there was still hope, we could make it.

Kabalagala became our town too. For a different reason though. Before Kim, I had never known a girl who could not only convince a boda boda rider to be her unofficial ‘chauffeur’ often for free, but could get someone like Hakeem, stingy and money hungry as he is, to fuel up his bike so that on Saturday night of all nights when Kabalagala roads are murder, Kim should decide that she wanted to practice how to ride that bike. With me as her first passenger! The curses of the taxi drivers’ denting their fenders on hastily reversed into pavements, horns blaring, would never drown my screams as I wondered, holding on, why I had not taken Hakeem’s very dirty white helmet when he winked and insisted that I would need it!

But that was not all. I had never met before a girl who had a head of business like Kim. Once when we were at Punchline and I was scowling at my gambling machine which had swallowed more of my tokens, Kim cheerfully laughing said, “If you want a real gamble, why don’t you do something real?” I was pissed, “Like go out more with you?” she had laughed again, “I have been the one doing the gambling going out with you. Now it’s your turn. I want you to rent us a room in Kabalagala, just near Kampala International University.”

The Bell beers I had been gulping had evaporated immediately, me gagging, “Do you know how much a room costs here? You crazy? Why?” A Kim answer came back, “Just just.” I had imagined that because we had been hanging out too much in Kabalagala, Kim wanted a place where we could, you know, dash for a quickie, whenever we felt it. It was, for a while, and I remember those dawn love making mornings, music pumping into the room, but not for long. For the 150, 000 shillings room I rented, we were soon raking in five times that amount because Kim had figured we would not be the only ones needing such a room on short notice yet not wanting to use a hotel. With peephole lessons thrown in for learners. That girl was crazy! And I was crazy in love with her, like I had never known Fiona. Fiona who one afternoon, I returned from work early, Saturday, and found seated on the stairs of my house, waiting for me, a year nearly since we had last loved. A year ago, that brooding beautiful face back, Fiona on my door, again.