Booty Call (excerpt) We rolled out of the barracks and into Nakasongola town. At night, the rural-set town had eddies of night-concealed persons shuffling here and there while trying to stay awake as the rest of the town shut its eyes. Most shops were closing for the day. There were no street lights so the dull fury of the darkness reigned like a misbegotten despot. The scene was, generally, on a rough par with a ghost town. We thus pulled up to a snooty, by Nakasongola’s lights, roadside bar that was one of the few establishments still doing business at this papa-don’t-preach hour. As we stepped inside past the plate-glass entrance, a different world materialized. It was a fairly hip joint bubbling over with folks chattering over strangely synthesized techo-beats. Being new to a night out on Nakasongola town, I let my friend, Richard, squire me to a seat in one corner; out of earshot of some drunken dude that was crooning, off key, to the song that started to play. A jowly bartender came over and took our orders as my inhibition devolved to a less buttoned down pose. After an hour, give or take, the party was slamming! Richard had stepped out a little after getting a call and now re-emerged with two comely ladies on each arm. Meet Fifi and Winnie,’ he said, as he presented them to me. After introducing myself, I started a conversation with Fifi since Richard clearly took a twinkle-eyed shine to Winnie. The two ladies looked uncannily alike: petite of frame; aquiline-faced with cream-coffee skin tone; bee stung luscious lips that readily broke into broad, winsome smiles. They were a sort of tweedledum and tweedledee. But that was skin deep. On the inside, they were as different as night and day. Winnie was the clammed up introvert and Fifi was the zestful extrovert. In a way, they played off each others’ differences and thus amplified each others’ appeal; perfect foils for one another. As Fifi spoke about herself, I learnt that she had finished her A-levels, completed a diploma in secretarial studies and worked at Save The Children, Nakasongola, as an administrative assistant. She was born and bred in Nakasongola but was a Ugandan of Rwandan extraction. After every sentence, she would ask ‘you get?’ even when what she had just said was straightforward. As the night wore on, this speech mannerism went from off-putting to charming. So I was cast down when it reached 1:00am and they announced that they had to leave. After we had dropped them off and I exchanged digits with Fifi, I crossed myself. That’s because I knew with Richard’s car we needed Divine Intervention to get home without it breaking down. Thankfully, someone Up North heard my prayers and we got home without incident. The following Friday of the succeeding week, I was preparing to go to Kampala when I got a call. It was Fifi. ‘Can I come over and see you? I am bored,’ she confessed. Quickly, I thought about what I would be doing in Kampala that Friday night and weighed it against Fifi’s proposed visit, hmmm. I then gave a deceptively spontaneous ‘Sure’. I really didn’t have much to do in Kampala that day. And besides, this seemed like a booty call and I hadn’t gotten ‘any’ in months. My low-flying wing-man, Phil Jr, was now on duty. Since Fifi had never reached my neck of the woods, I charted out a map (on the phone) of where I stayed. And then, I waited. An hour and half later, she rang to tell me that she had reached; this was at about 7:00pm. I hung up and stepped outside my place to greet her but saw nobody. I promptly called her back. ‘Were exactly are you?’ I asked. ‘I’m here at the factory,’ she replied. At the sound of her words, I dropped a monosyllabic swear. This was all supposed to be a top secret ‘mission’. But now, it was no longer under wraps. Again, my reputation at work was that of a pen-pushing monk who’d upturn his nose to cheap thrills. Morally, I seemed like Gandhi to everyone. But secretly, I was Don Juan. Now, the lie was going to blow up in my face: there was a tart-tongued woman waiting to see me in full view of the prying eyes of other employees. A woman, people whispered, that had a past. Luckily, because Fifi didn’t want to come across as a painted target with the word ‘lay’ emblazoned on it, she told the guards at the factory gates that I was her ‘brother’. This of course was as witless as it was untrue. The guards, buying big into my Mahatma image, saw a big difference between her ass and my presumed class. Basically, they didn’t believe her hype. Plus, the bike on which she rode in on was gone. So I just bit the bullet and asked her to get a ride from the only guy on the premises at the time that had a vehicle: the village pastor!
Posted on: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 11:12:14 +0000
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