Everyone was laughing and crying. I think even the floor was slippery with my friends' tears. I was in pain, I was in shame. I am finished! I thought. I felt like a rotten potato at the KFC factory. Yet I was the righteous one, the pious one among the pack. For the eighth time I asked myself why I hung out with him, with her, with them.They were savage, loose, savage! I ran out of words which was something rare for me. This world is so broken that even poets run out of diction and resort to fiction to try and mend it. Everywhere there are broken glasses, broken hearts, ugly faces, broken economies. Earth! Eliot must have been depressed after writing the Wasteland. But here I was, in the Wasteland, without hope. The laughing got louder. James coughed. I am sure he had coughed blood. I couldn't look up. A drop of water escaped from my eye. It was not a tear, I was a man and men don't cry. At last l shouted at the brutes who had invaded the room I was :You bunch of Mongrels!
I had always been a quiet, disciplined and ambitious young man. I wanted to be a lawyer and was sure I could perform the feat. Everyone thought I was either super smart or super crazy. It is only now that I realize that these words mean the same thing. As I said, I wanted to be a Lincoln, to stand for the forgotten, the down-trodden and the voiceless. The funny part is that I was also in that bracket of society. It was a bracket written on a dirty paper by a jugged dirty index finger. I was poor, my parents were poor and everyone I hada personally met was poor. It was a rotten dark circle of poverty filled with smaller green circles smelling like sewage. If I was asked to draw a perfect portrait of my life I would say, "I can't draw." But if I was a Michiengelo, I would draw a dark skinned, shirtless boy with a big head and a swollen, cagey stomach. Hopkins was wrong, It is a sin to be poor. All the girls from my ghetto are either harlots or married to tramps with a bunch of naked kids. The boys are no better, they are the husbands. It is only me and Ticha who are not married yet. The guys didn't know they were ways of preventing unwanted, unwarranted Kunta Kintes. Bataí is now a father of three yet he is only twenty one. He dumped his family at his father's five-roomed bangalow and went to work at a mine in Shamva. I am not sure if he found it,( jobs are scarce!) but he was suited for the task, grotesque, hairy, hard-handed, mindless man. He bullied me and my friends before I got my scholarship. Now life was bullying him. Simba drank until he messed his pants. Vengai had died of drug overdose.
Growing up was hard. I had two tattered shirts and a trousers which I had inherited from my brother. They had no colour. I think the once long sleeved one was sky blue and the other one was yellow. Now they had two buttons each and stains. Brown stains. This is before I went to school. I would play with anything we got from the dump pile. We would make cars from empty milk containers and drive them. We didn't care about the big green flies we called green bombers or the songs the sang. They sang mostly "Green like me garden" and some sungura melodies. Rangaí knew how to make cars from wires so we would trade food for cars. His family was as poor as the rats at our house. He ate in the evenings only. So we gave him sadza and salt, sweet potatoes and Maheu for the cars. We named the cars Datsuns. That was the only car in our street and it was owned by Mr Katsuro. He owned the local bottle store. He sold death. I had a friend who didn't the reception of the school (he never paid fees a single day) because his father drank beer all day. I hated him as soon as I understood poverty. Sometimes we played pada or nhodo or tsoro or soccer on the dusty road of my street.Still,childwood is my happiest time. My father got a job as a clerk at a government school just before I was due for education. What luck! Things at home got better : We ate bread twice a week, meat for the first ten days and better clothes. I had eaten sadza for breakfast, for lunch and supper. Sadza cubed. Now life was easier. If our house had not been destroyed because my father had been scammed by a house cooperative of a famous businessman, I would have a rural background yet living in Harare. I lived at Epton Park. I grew up seeing crops and cattle. I heard that our neighbour 's maize had been eaten by baboons.
At school I was intelligent. My English teacher called me Einstein. I didn't know who he was, I thought he was probably a war veteran who worked closely with the late President Mugabe. When I knew who he was I laughed hard and long, He was a Physics genius! I failed to see the link. Maybe she had read that he came up with the theory of Relativity and started relating everything to her subject. So there I was at this one-blocked primary school being an Einstein at English. I won prizes each year. I won Nobels each year. I was not the brightest in my class though, there was Thomas and he was very light skinned. Anyway my father moved me to a state school after he discovered that Grade one and twos shared the same class. I was Grade two. I then learnt at Hamandishe Primary and finished the first term on fourth position. It was tragic. I then realised that being on top doesn't mean you are best, It only means you are better than the rest. I recovered but I was never number one again. It was always Sekai. I guess it was her looks that gave her the edge:She had a dark boxy face, a huge flat nose and overstretched light red lips. I hated and loved and envied her. My twin sister became a bit jealousy of me because she was always being compared to me. She thought my parents loved me more because they never scolded me or gave me too many chores. I had to read. In a way they did, I think l was their spring of hope in a dry and thirsty desert. I wonder why deserts are associated with thirst, Dubai looks marvelous. Like a picture from the future. And Here, we are like an old school jazz song video recorded in the sixties. Maybe sang by Neil Armstrong, no, sang by amateur with a banjo and a light brown afro. We are a cacophony.
The last year of my primary was the best. I was selected to be the Head boy. The interview involved five stupid guys beside myself being asked one simple question in front of a gang of teachers. The teachers all struggled with our kindergarten math. One day we struggled with a mensuration problem. Mrs Ravi, our teacher used a simple technique for revising, the answer of the majority of the top ten students was correct. (She was a qualified teacher). This time the method did not work, everyone had a different answer. Mine was closer to that of Denzel, the dummest in my class. I was enraged. After we failed to agree she told us to go to other teachers and all of them could not solve it. Teachers! Education! The answer was never found and we all got free marks. In other words, whatever answer you got was correct. Liberal Math! Wow. So the question they asked was why you wanted to be the Head boy. The question was wrong, you would be "a" headboy and not "the" headboy. Taurai said it would be a present for his mother. I fainted. The next ones said things along those lines. It matters to be the first even if it's nonsense. They behaved like goats after a sheep has shown the way to freedom. My turn came. I said, "I want to be the headboy because from First Grade till now I have been winning prizes and showing that l have the qualities to be a leader." The teachers clapped their hands furiously. I imagine how red hands looked after Martin Luther King delivered Life's Blueprint. I had uttered nonsense but here they were clapping and tapping as if at a rally. I became the headboy and passed my Grade Seven with flying colours. I do not have any idea what they are but I know they will be with you when you pass. I thought if you passed something out of the ordinary would happen like :Not feeling hungry for a week or having extra-terrestrial energy for a day but nothing. Nothing. I was depressed. People overestimate success. It adds nothing and takes away nothing to your soul. It may even destroy you by inflating your ego. Thank goodness, I recovered.
One dark day I stood outside the lightless little house thinking. The Ordinary level results were coming out in a week.What if I failed?What would I do for my A level? What if my uncle refused to pay for my Advanced level?Who cared? The questions pierced through the guts of my mind. They were like knives being thrown randomly at my hairy chest. Just then I was called in the house, "Charlie!" It was my father's gruff voice. I went in. Apparently another candle had been either bought or borrowed and now provided the dow yellow light. "Do you think you passed? Your results are out, I saw it in the Newsday. " he said. "What about Herald?" He frowned and his red eyes frowned too. "They are the same thing." I didn't argue 'cause a thong of trapidation moved through my spinal chord. My pelvis felt like plastic, my knees like jelly and my stomach like a rich man after eating from a trash can or even at our house. Did I think? Results are results and it doesn't matter what you think. You can't think your way out of HIV or herps. I collected the results the following week. My mother cried. I had nine "A"s and was the second highest at the school. My father suggested that I go to some foundation and look for a scholarship but I refused. I had never seen or heard of anyone getting a tuition paid by " Lowlife" foundation. I had gotten a scholarship from a little known organisation but kept it a secret, I still needed to get at least seven "As". I told them now and so I went to learn at Heinrich College. It was a private school with multi-racial students. I was doing History, English Literature and Divinity. A tiny grain of love for writing had germinated, I wanted to be an african Shakespeare and write the African experience. I felt out of place. Small creepy voices whispered in my ears, "You are poor, You don't belong here." I felt kinchy. Like an alien on earth, figuring you were the ugliest creature on earth and you were making frogs feel good about themselves. I felt my skin tingle, like the guy in Marechera's Black Skin What Mask. I think that it is in our African DNA to feel inferior to Whites for I was ready to polish their shoes, clean their desks or even wash their uniforms. (They never asked me to do any of this). As the clock turned, I got used to the school, to their money, to whites and to their language. I had never cussed before. I made a lot of friends from all races: British, Asians, Greeks, Boers, Coloureds and those like me. My accent began to change. I bathed thrice a day so that my skin would get a shade lighter. I was happy. My mates called me Plato because they thought I was philosophical.
I always talked about capitalism, colonialism, socialism and Utopia. I barely talked about politics though, for I was afraid of Boogeyman. I still am afraid.
Trevor was the quietest of my friends and he had no sense of humour. He would often say something like, "My father beat my brother like Van Damme." and notify us that it was a joke by a burst of laughter. He laughed at his own jokes, only his.Those were the only ones he understood. We would force laughter out the way I forced flies out with a towel in the ghetto. One day I coughed a glob of blood. We had to laugh, we had no option-He bought us lunch and took us for movies with his car-father's car and paid Sterknikor for us. He paid for us to see Hobbs and Shaw and we all decided that it was almost, almost poorly done. A poor man cannot afford to have opinions. No one listens. He invited us to his friend's party. I had a moss of apprehension. Garai was a Gatsby. He hosted parties every week at his father's place until it was nothing short of a trap house. Loud music, Alcohol, Drugs, Girls, Sex. I didn't want to go-I couldn't say no.I had no experience with parties, even simple ones 'cause our poverty didn't allow it. It would laugh like one of King's scary, heart stopping monsters.This is what made me think, "I will be a writer, but not a King." But I had to go to his friend' s birthday. I learnt to appreciate from my father. "After all I have done for you?" I loathed the statement but I saw its power. That's how girls are slept with, the boy friend comes and says, "You can't say no after all I have done for you, unless of course, you are a gold digger." That makes the launch you bought her seem like you bought her the mansion in La Tomenta. She decides to be "faithful". Women are martyrs. They die for McDonald's and Steers and Nando's or even from these one night cheap hotels.
We went there on a terribly hot and sunny Saturday.It was an epitome of the destructive consequences of Global Warming. I felt hot and cold - hot from the weather and cold from the anxiety of attending Belteshazzar's party in a Morden Babylon. Trevor called and the ginormous black gate was opened by a little dark boy. He was the gardener's son. The gate exposed our eyes to a lovely two storey house. It was not a house, it was a mansion, painted cream with wooden and artistic doors. The impression I had I'm sure is like that a person with skitzophrenia have when they see an Egyptian mummy across the street drinking Vodka. The music got louder and louder as we walked to towards the house. I thought of the bangalow I lived in and murmured something about the unfairness of life. Its always the empty-headed, pleasure loving jerks that get the nice things in life. My heart started sounding like a foot drum being played by Tony Royster. I had lied that I was going for study. My father was pious. I was pious too. In Zimbabwe there is no word "fun."It's called mischief or worldly pleasure. Here I was, in hell, burning my heart to ashes. The song was" Under the Influence". I went in behind Trevor. There were couples seated on sofas, chairs, rags, cushions and on tables. They were all kinds of people of all kinds of races, wearing all kinds of clothes, with all kinds of voices. Some were singing along, mostly girls, some were flirting and some were making out.The lounge smelled like the devil's belch. Alcohol and spirits. All these teenagers were singing and drinking, I was thinking. My eyes turned red. I was not this kind of person. Garai saw Trevor, then me and greeted us in a burlesque, drunken Vín Diesel-like voice. Twenty forevers later,two girls came in. I didn't know them but they looked beautiful , with the make-up and grey woodies and ripped jeans and pure white Adidas sneakers. They saw us and came towards us. By this time, Trevor was jolly and drunk and errotic. Two Keys had opened his dark purple door to Ecstatic oblivion. He knew them. He grabbed Tracy's waist and whispered to my ear:Have Fun. Here I was on a table, with my Coke and a beautiful girl smiling seductively at me. I was lost. I don't know what happened from there, how I got into a bedroom and how I had told her I had never made love and was not going to until marriage and how she had tried to initiate the process and how I had shouted at her whilst removing her now semi-naked body from me and how she had gone to tell all the others that I was a coward and how they were in this bedroom laughing at me. I didn't belong here. I was in Lucifer's nose and was being sneezed out in a ball of yellowish- green mucus. I hated Trevor . I hated myself. I hated her. I hated them. I hated Coke - that Coke and I hated life. I was in the barren paradise of a burning conscience and a breaking ego. I heard sirens and tokoloshies laughing at me. My brain snapped like an old,foolish, empty, barren twig. I didn't know who I was or where l was, but I knew my enemies. All of them. Everyone at the party was crouded in my room laughing and crying and spitting blood. I now know what life is, Life is blood and tears.