BROKEN JOYSTICK

I got this call from Davis on Thursday evening about 8 pm. I was a bit hesitant to pick the call, the timing didn't seem right or there was just a way the phone rang louder than usual, like 'you have to pick this!'

“Where are you Osano?”

That sounded alarming. These are the questions you get when someone is about to throw some bad news at you. I was in my house of course, just about to get myself some shower. I had been smelling my armpits for the last two hours and I wasn’t happy with the results I was getting.

“Roy has had an accident!”

There was silence, it must have lasted twenty seconds or less, but it felt like a minute.

My “Where…?” and his “You know Jane?” came at the same time.

I knew a few Janes, but when it came to Roy, I knew this girl he was seeing from Roysambu.

“You mean Lato?”

“Yes, Lato”

We nicknamed Jane, Lato, because of her big breasts, something common in women Roy sees. At times we used to suspect he might have not had enough of his mother’s milk when he was growing up and decided to continue with the expedition in his adulthood.

“What about her?”

“My friend, that lady has finished Roy.”

“I thought this was an accident Davis?”

“It is. Roy has lost his penis!”

“He has lost his penis to what? To robbers? To an accident?”

“No, Bwana! That girl has bitten off Roy’s thing!”

That took me back. What! So he tells me to go to M.P Shah hospital where Roy has already been admitted before he hangs up.

Before he hang up, I had thought of telling him that I had all along been skeptical about Jane’s teeth and even thought of discussing it with Roy at some point but I had not found the right words just yet. Her teeth looked a bit sharky. Honestly, I had also thought to myself that given chance for Roy to leave a woman for her teeth or keep her for her breasts, Roy would go for the latter.

After weighing my options between taking a quick bath and going to see Roy, I decided to go mourn the penis first.

I call on Uber, get my sneakers, pick my jacket and on the way out pass by the mirror, my hair is horrible. Since COVID came I’ve shaved twice in ten months, I put on a cap. Better, huh? I lock the door, throw keys in my pocket, the bachelor signal; only bachelors walk with their house keys. Forgot my mask, the new kitambulisho that police want to see lately, so I unlock the door again, pick two masks from the box, one for emergency. My ears have gotten used to the pain that come with long wearing of the masks, maybe at the very initial stages of wearing is when I had a lot of questions, including if g-strings are as uncomfortable. As I dash outside the house, I can see from the app the driver has already indicated he has arrived when for sure he is still 5 minutes away, this one will know me today.

I had not even realized it was raining until I got out of the gate. What difference would it make anyway even if I knew? Carry an umbrella? I have none. I don’t like anything that makes me look like a husband material. Men walk in rain with their jackets on their head, period! The Uber guy had parked some 200 metres away. Apart from riding to hospital, I also have intentions of confronting this driver and teaching him some manners on how he should have some level of integrity. I don’t plan to pay more than expected just because he indicated that he arrived five minutes earlier. But guess who is in the car? Asha. Not the Asha with Hijab, this one has none. So, from my guess it’s Asha Wanjiru or Asha Mueni because of the complexity, I’m certain those light skinned Giriama ladies can’t come all the way from Coast to drive taxi in Nairobi and our beautiful ladies from lakeside are only light skin on filters. My anger evaporates. Every woman’s sins are forgivable, with the exemption of Roy’s case, yeah, cannibalism is a special case.

She did ninety percent of the talk. The remaining ten were me laughing or just agreeing. Either she was funny or she had laughable experiences. She told me how she worked in Bahrain, then Qatar then Saudi Arabia, which was her last. Her stories of Saudia as she called it were genuinely funny. She says she worked for 23 hours a day as a house help. If any death was to kill her, she says, it would have been the utensils she washed in Saudia. They were bitter stories told with humor, she swears she would never go back to Saudia even if her work would only be to brush the teeth of the Royal Prince. I laughed along, because behind those tears of her laughter, I thought to myself, there were real tears of pain marinated not to look real. I would find her some other day so that she could tell me the real story, because we were already at MP Shah.

Roy glanced at me when I came through the door to his room, then looked away like my presence startled him. There he was, dressed in a green Johnny gown, staring at the ceiling as if looking for answers from the skies above his head. I had a lot of questions I had wanted to ask but I got stuck half way. I stammered on every single sentence I tried because I totally couldn’t relate to my friend in his condition. I wanted to ask him how he was feeling, that didn’t come out, I thought to myself this was more of a psychological pain on his side other than physical. He might have already overcome the physical one before he had been taken to the theatre. I wanted to look at it. I wanted to assess Jane’s work, that carnivore.

“I’m sorry man.” I finally found some words.

I sat next to him and held his hand in mine, cold as hell! It’s like the bite went with his heat.

“What happened Roy?”

“She was angry.” He began. “I told her Susan is becoming suspicious… uhm… that we should stop this.” Susan is Roy’s wife.

“I told her we’ve been trying to get a baby with Susan for four years… and now tha.. that she… she… she is pregnant, I wouldn’t want to hurt her.” He broke down. Shit! I don’t know how to calm men down. Men cry like babies when given chance, they even suck their fingers when they do. I tightened my grasp in his palm…

“I was just trying to do the right thing man...” he sobbed.

“So how did you end up this way?” I was also trying to sugar coat my words.

“She was furious a little bit, but she is always a silent woman, you know.” I don’t know. Do I even care?

He goes ahead and tells me Jane went to her balcony and did something like crying or laughing, he really can’t tell what it was, because he was peering from the window and Jane had her back to him. He had not wanted to interrupt her, he wanted her to think through this properly. They had dated for a year and was imagining how hard it was for her, but it had to be done. Susan had gone to her parent’s home for a week, that would be her last day home, then she is supposed to be back to Nairobi the following day, he only had tonight to close this affair. Jane comes back into the house an hour later. Roy had become tired of peeping and had gone to rest on the Couch. He follows her movements with side of his eyes, half of his eyes is on the National Geographic program of Animal fight Club, there’s a buffalo chasing a lion, he’s amused and he says Jane frowns when she sees his amusement, he kills the smile and makes a serious face to comply with the current standards.

Jane then goes into the bathroom, all this time she has not said a single word. Roy starts to feel the results of his proposal, the distance, because she is the shower type, you know, they have always had sex in the bathroom, she liked it under the shower, then on the couch, then on the floor, and sometimes on the porcelain sink between the kitchen and the living room. The closest she gets to her bed is when she is kneeling on the side rail of the bed, her breasts on the mattress and rest of her body stretched to give a slightly imperfect seven figure for Roy to have her.

Jane asked him if he planned to do away with her just like that. No answer.

“You know I love you, right?” No answer. Roy says he just stared at her. Love was not the question here, he just wanted out. Something told him to just walk out of the house right away and not to look back, he had his own emotions to deal with, but he didn’t. Jane was standing in front of him, a white towel strapped above her breasts. He made as if to stand up from the couch, he really wanted to leave now, Jane pushed him back, he tried to get back up again, Jane pushed him back with two fingers, unstrapped the towel and sat on his lap. This was less dangerous, he thought. The fear that had engulfed him earlier was replaced with something better, it was not romance, but it was not fear. He let her open his fly to reveal a rock-hard penis, she pulled down his pants, he could tell she was a little rough this time, but he let it slide. She left his pants at the knee, didn’t bother to pull it all off and she slid in him. He can only remember himself ridden like a horse, too tired to lift his leg an hour later, and sleeping on the coach with his cheeks on Jane’s breasts. He could swear he woke up twice that night to see someone like Jane staring right at him, and twice he thought it must have been some faint dreams, but the third one with Jane pulling his penis with her teeth was too painful to be a dream. He cried so loud, just to scare the devil if this was in deed a dream. It was not. There was blood, and his penis hanging on a skin. Jane was crying with blood on her lips. She had said something like “If I can’t have you, we both won’t have you” then she ran out of the house.

He was not crying anymore by the time he finished his narration. He must have accepted his fate.

“They say there is a surgery they can take me through to restore my man.” He tells me.

“It’s called penile reconstruction surgery, but now my wife will have to be here.”

“You haven’t told her?”

“No, you will tell her”

“I will tell her about you losing your guy?“ I wasn’t really prepared for that. How do you even break that news? It is easier to break news of death than to break news of a lost penis.

This was going to be the greatest test of my friendship. Would I need to lie? Like “Hi Susan, Roy fell off the building today and broke only his penis, I’m so sorry.” Can’t work. “Hi Susan, there has been an accident, your husband on his way home was chased by a stray dog which bit of his penis, I’m so sorry.” Can’t work. Either way, this news had to reach Susan. Maybe I just needed to tell her that there is a witch her husband has been seeing who has decided to punish her family. Or I could just tell her “Hi Susan, I have to tell you something and please don’t panic. Roy has been involved in a domestic accident and he’s fine, there is a small missing part of his body but everything else is fine. Please come to MP. Shah hospital as soon as you can. That might work.

I knew on her way to the hospital she would be asking herself, what the f*** is a domestic accident? But the missing part would sink in slowly, I would let her imaginations drive her to sub-conclusions as she rides her way to the awaiting reality. Who breaks news of a broken Joystick to someone’s wife anyway?