The Gamer

I met him one Saturday morning. He was going about his business. Garbed in specs, he glanced at the console on his right.

“Chemosi,” he said, “Where have you been bru?”

“I got scandals bru,” I said, “I am in a situation I might not be in a position to unfix.”

“Ngori.”

He motioned to a sofa. Further, a polypropylene chair sat in wait. I pulled closer and sank in it. Deep in thought, I powered the console on. I was a gamer. So was he.

“Unasema ngori,” he said.

I knew he was about to say something baleful.

“Another girl impregnated?” I ask, whilst throwing a surreptitious glance.

“Not necessarily.”

 I could sense some apprehension in his tone.

“Wifey is due soon. I already have a tentative figure of the bill. Wifey folks will manage half of it.”

“So, the other half the bill is whatchu looking at?”

Yeah. [A retort]

He was tall and wiry, with eyes that furnished some sleep, and some shash, perhaps. He wore a 6-foot frame, a pair of haggard eyes, and a neatly kempt afro - with a slight trim on the temples. On his wrist, a watch rolled time away. His lissome frame bore some cream khaki pants and a sweater. I can't recall what color. He had some small beard that was taking off. Some small tufts of supple hairs scattered on the deck of his chin. Suave and deferential, he beamed all day, except he wasn't.

He had reached me for an advance. I was in dire financial straits- I told him. He was surprised not. I mean, you could have a plum job but still have nothing to show for it at the close of the month. Loans, advances, and bills could eat the life out of someone's pay.

“What are you on and about?”

I had asked myself for the umpteenth time. Many an evening, I fantasized and craved for the clean waters from silent fortunes to clean me to a fine sparkle.

“I will have to grind even more. Grind till I have reached Mount Pisgah's lofty heights. There's no stopping now, son.”

He had two degrees in separate disciplines. But a couple of job applications later, he hadn't that one stroke of luck that he believed would change his fortunes forever. His parents were a taciturn couple that cut off some substantial amount of support when my guy impregnated a girl. His father, particularly, was not into his chill and vibes, and only his grizzled whiskers scared his very existence. To mitigate unnecessary confrontation with his folks, he moved into some apartments on the outskirts of the town where rent was within his reach. He would cycle to town, sometimes, and park up like any tenant in the establishment would. He had set up a gaming shop.

His gaming shop was a venture he had decided to undertake. He wanted to try and disprove his parents eventually. It was not doing well, and rent payments killed his vibe and mojo. Many times, he contemplated quitting. But he couldn't. His pregnant wife was some motivation to not throw in the towel just yet. Their two-year daughter - with a voracious desire for candies- was extra motivation.

He hardly rested because sijaomoka [he said]. He wanted to work all day and stay away from his wife in the process. He preferred it that way.

“Staying with your people, all day means you could easily slide into an argument and things might fall out of place.”

Keeping wifey at a safe distance during the day was the fabric that held his family together. And he was planning to keep it that way in the long haul. In the evening after closing shop, he would cook meals all by himself. He did not mind getting his hands wet whilst waxing the glue that kept his family together.

Many an evening we would walk down the street and stroll into the open-air market. Here, he would carefully select his groceries and pack them into a plastic bag that he carried with him all the time.

He was raised in a family of five girls. And culinary art was the second thing he learned after his name. When he broke his voice and grew a few hairs on his chin, his sisters thought he would relent. He did not.

In college, he became a jack of all trades. He would prepare presentations for his lecturers and classmates alike, learn to compute, buy and sell software, hack codes, forge transcripts, play cards and pool games for money, run a printing bureau, and peddle marijuana. He called it ndom, fondly, because it sounded about right with his clientele. I had never met someone who raved about ndom as he did. He was in his true element - he attested - when he smoked on silent nights while holed in a dingy studio, and with the company of his customers. They would smoke late into the night, and he would be gratified by the puffs that dissipated into the air like a thin veil.

In college, he had as many entanglements as he wished. His women loved his playboy antics.

He had 150 or 200 for what netizens call body count.

“I stopped the count at some point.”

Among his peers, such numbers were legendary. Kiongos, they called him. He was a gamer and he was not about to hand over the mantle yet.

As we play Fifa 20, I ask him if his kind of entanglements involved friends.

“I have savored women and their friends. Believe me you, with your women being friends, you are as safe as you would like.”

I was not taking cues.

“But I have a couple of reservations to make.”

“Bru,” [he pats me in the back]. “The game is the game.”

“Wifey does not have an iota of your clandestine ways?”

“Maybe she does. Maybe not. Once I am home, I am the husband my wifey wants me to be. I shall not fear.”

When I met him that Saturday morning, he was exasperated. I knew it was the money that bothered him.

I finessed a shot on goal.

“Bru,” he said. “I have another girl pregnant. I am done in.”

I looked at him and his canny eyes. I looked at the console again. I was moving players down the flanks.

“I hate this game,” he submitted.