AND THAT'S HOW IT BEGAN...

OH LOOK, I STARTED A BLOG.


I held up my Samsung phone, tapped on the gmail icon, I refreshed the inbox page; Nothing. No new mails. Ok, there's a promo message from asos, but that's all.

This is the fiftieth time, today. In truth, I wasn't counting. I had expected to be selected for the 'Creative Writers' Workshop' this year, I think not. The possibility of it eludes me.
I read, one time, that "expectation is the mother of all dissapointments." I think the "olodo" who wrote that was right. I heave a hiss.

I close the inbox page, tap on sent messages, go through the story I had submitted: syntax and grammar, check. I count the words, they add up: one thousand, three hundred and thirty six. A shake of the head.
The required amount? 'Eight hundred words'. These judges could use anything to nail a brother.

I flip the phone's cover over, slid it in my pocket, step outside. I try to consume as much air as possible. Suddenly, the atmosphere has a shortage of oxygen. My lungs cringed a tad in my rib cage.
Arrgh! The frustration roiling. It was a good piece, or so I thought. I had taken time to write it; maybe, just maybe I had edited too much. Could it be that the story lost steam? That was my shot at making it official. My one shot at freedom.
I don't feel right. I stand on my doorstep, it looks like it's going to give way if I don't move. A sort of vertigo. I need a drink. There's a pub down the street, I pass there often and they play good music. After what seems like a series of boggling contemplation, I choose. It's going to be rendezvous point with dear muse, I have questions to ask. I saunter on.

The air inside the cubicle is heavily scented with perfume oil, laden with wafts of whiskey fragrance and tobacco smoke - smoke halos forming over few smokers' heads, and that of beer guzzlers. I check my watch, wrist is bare - I've never been used to those strap-ons.
The pub is scanty, Roxette's 'It must have been love' playing softly in the background. The speakers, out of sight, buried in the walls somewhere, letting off the tweets and the bass, equalising congruously.

Roxette's pitch; crisp, sweet melody, massaging the warm blood flowing through my veins, calming, soothing, easing the nerves.

'What do you want, sir?'

Its the waitress. I look her in the eyes,
'Star. Ice cold', I say. She returns in seconds. I'm thinking an escalator slid the beer across to her. I chuckle at my own queer thoughts, not of the impossibility of such an occurence but, "na for naija that one want happen?"

I skink myself a glass from the bottle served, take a sip, drop the glass and watch as the froth dissolves into a kaleidoscope of gold - diffusing into golden green or golden brown or golden amber, I don't know. I heave. A sharp, balmy taste smooch my palate. I pull out the device again, I don't go to gmail. I check Facebook. I'm looking for my virtual friends: Hymar, Ude, Pearl, Ukamaka, et alia. The ones who write. The ones who write with good stuff.
Ikhide says I should 'buddy-up' with a fellow writer. I haven't, not yet. Perhaps it's the shell, I'm trapped in. I still don't believe I can write. Skeptism. A lot other things. I shrug.

In the pub, there's a kerosene lantern hanging from the ceiling. I know it's part of the interior decor, amidst a number of old-looking, used-up, house ornamentations: a bicycle sprayed all grey, made to hang on the wall; a hunter's rifle hanging by it; a box guitar; grandfather's clock by the counter; a bust of an old guy carrying a tray with a small alarm clock on it. The clock tells the time, I look at my phone's digital clock. The time corresponds.

I return my gaze to the swaying lamp, unlit - an irony: a perfect representation of a country that has all it takes to give its masses electricity round the clock, everyday, but the profound corruption won't let it. It has eaten deep into the liver of the nation. Hours of darkness is a normality. It's a mix of awe, bewilderment and relief when a light bulb flicks on, and, is not powered by a generator.

My attention is veered off of the lamp; a raucous laughter from a corner in the bar where three girls sit, smoking Benson and Hedges, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label dons their table. One looks at me. A wink. I look away.

I'm startled by my phone's vibration. It's Ikhide on Twitter, taking on APC, and the first lady's watch. They say it's an expensive Cartier; Thirty-four thousand dollars, or so. Didn't the man (The President, her husband) just declare his assets a short while back? I'm thinking the watch is part of the asset. "Make una laugh na. Na una know."
Everything is a lie. These opposition party guys will send a blood hound to sniff out everything, even a watch bought from an "aboki" by the wayside.

Like I said: everything is a lie. Even claims of fighting corruption when the leaders of your party are the kingpins of corruption.

We are watching. I know the same voices that spoke, collectively, against the other party, will speak again when rubbish smells. I trust.

Enhe!
I'm still vexing. I didn't make it to the workshop. Wait, I still have till midnight. They said successful applicants will be notified by mail on June 2. Hiss. I've downed the bottle of beer. Muse didn't show up. I pay and leave. Back home, I grab a copy of Khaled Hosseini's 'The kite runner.' One of my orders from AMAB bookshop. I scan the first chapter, I can't read. I close it, drop the copy on my table. I pick up the device, again, tapped on 'Google keep and after series of typing that looks like it will take eternity... I wrote this and started a blog.

I'm still checking my mails.