I met an ‘alumni’ wannabe the other evening at my local – famous in Nairobi for its exquisite nyama choma – while waiting for the Juventus vs Real Madrid Champions’ League final to begin.
I was in my black-and-white pajamas (because they come in the colour of Juve) and bedroom slippers.
After all, the local is across the road, so why not dress comfortably, like one ready for bed?
This wannabe – let’s call him Billy – was dressed in those ‘Formula One’ padded jackets that swear loyalty to Hamilton, expensive Levis and buffed up sports sneakers that scream ‘Fubu’ or something like that.
I was on the way to my designated table – near the screen – when I heard: ‘Pssst: Tony, Tony, Tony.’
Now, I am normally thrilled to meet old classmates – whether from kindergarten to college – but I remembered Billy the Kid as a bit of a pain-in-the-ass wannabe.
Billy is that boastful (to the point of lies) character, the wannabe who makes out how ‘well’ they are doing in life, like they are in some competition in life with old classmates (in a life exam Matiangi has not approved) long after you all left college.
Very juvenile wannabe behaviour, if you ask me.
Because whether one classmate became a billionaire, and the other one is a pauper, the circumstances of both are not doing anything to either improve or downgrade the quality of your own life, innit?
I remembered Billy because he used to lie that he was an alumni of ‘Patch’ (Nairobi School), but he got busted as having come from some school in Western under embarrassing circumstances. This falls under The Unnecessary Lies of Wannabes.
In fact if you have made it from a silly school like Nyakeminchia to do a prestigious degree in university, you should be prouder of that fact than the guy from Alliance Boys who had all the academic advantages.
Anyway, Billy, who had once been a neighbour in South ‘C’ wasted no time in letting me know, once I had sat at table, that he had since moved on to an apartment in Kilimani – ‘although rents are a bit stiff there.’
“Have you joined Kilimani Mums yet?’ I asked, because discussing rents/residences are exactly the sort of topic a chap enjoys 15 minutes to the Champions’ League final you’ve waited for five months.
At that moment, a quarter vodka and coke landed on my table (because they know what we like before a game at the local) and Billy tried to shoo it away, screaming for a ‘Black Label for my boy, sio hii cheap cheap’, and I was almost apoplectic because this is the kind of guy, if he was a girl, would order the most expensive items off a menu not just because you are paying – but to show they have ‘class.’
Besides, people who repeat adverbs – like saying ‘cheap cheap’ – betray their cheapness.
Let me just say it right here for all wannabes. Choo haijui class! Whether you have eaten hio unga ya 90 bob or an octopus-oyster for nine thousand bob, the end product is a messy ending.
Laughing at my pee-jays (which I did not mind at all), Billy became a bit of a wannabe, though, when he got into talk about his collection of Clark shoes, colognes, watches and Formula One jackets.
This is now how a wannabe reveals how truly shady they are, beneath the pretensions to sophistication.
You can be an art collector, foreign coin collector, collector of rare books or a collector of motorcycles or vintage wines. You CANNOT be a collector of clothes or shoes or other things that you end up wearing.
So saying ‘I collect colognes’ (an exception being made for the Congolese) is patently ridiculous.
But Billy was not done with that particular brand of ‘alumni doing well’ wannabeism.
He told me the only reason he was in this well-known Nairobi local was ‘because he had come from Mombasa port to clear a car he has bought for his mother’ (yeah, I did not believe him either, buddy!) and recalled the local was near Mombasa road. ‘So which lounge in Westie do you like to hang at, Tony?’
‘Jeans,’ I said – feigning Nairobi West – because are we still in college to be bragging about bars, by Jove? Thank Jesus the match began, and Billy put Sh10,000 on Juventus to win (he would have won twenty eight thao) LOUDLY saying ‘I’m betting ten grand coz money ain’t a thing!’ (#PaydayWeekendManenos).
So why were his eyes wet at the end of the game after Juve lost to the Ruthless Madrid?
And people like Billy (later at the parking lot) really ought to stop calling cars like Passats ‘fuel guzzlers.’