A weekend night out report

She was perched on a high stool in a club at the heart of the city. She was not immediately beautiful. Maybe passably so.  She was drinking a fairly respectable beer for a woman of her age. You can tell a woman is up to some mischief by what she is drinking. It is a bad way of profiling but it works most of the time.

 It is a Friday night and I’m out for a drink and try my charm out on any woman worth my fancy. Having been out of the game for quite some time, I was feeling rusty. But I was ready to try my slightly outdated lines. As we joined her, I noticed she was aloof in a professional way. She was dressed corporately and looked like she was waiting for someone. We took our seats in the same table.

Funny fear 

As we ordered our drinks, we surreptitiously sent two for her. I had some funny fear that she might turn down the beer and bruise our egos, but thankfully she accepted. Either way, she was young and younger women hardly turn down beer offers from experience. Thirty minutes into the laboured conversation above the din in the club, I gather she works for a restaurant in Westlands, Nairobi and she is 23. Again from experience, any woman who volunteers to tell you her age is a suspicious character. But I nudge her some more.

 Two more beers for her. She complains unconvincingly that she will be too drunk to get home. It is a signal they send in Nairobi to mean that in the event they black out, they have entrusted their life to you and hoping to God or to the deity they subscribe to that she will be safe. Where she will wake up is mostly none of her business. Granted, she finds a place where she can buy a certain pill. Not all women who throng clubs are this way but I am fairly familiar with this type.

 The beer thaws her some more and the distantly aloof self gives way to a reckless being I had not anticipated. This coincides with a high tempo Ugandan song by Radio and Weasel — I think Magnetic — and she surprises me with an unsolicited highly sexualised dance that leaves me gasping and drenching in sweat. Along the way, she is as playful as a familiar couple can get.

Signal number two.

Unspoken gesture  

 Two more beers and she turns them down. This time round more firmly. Time to play the good and principled girl in order to lure me. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. It is one thing women will try to pull; acting all innocent, sexually conservative to confuse you that they are not the debauched being who just rubbed her nether regions on your groin in a very suggestive way.

 She wanted to leave. I see her off to her stage. She gives me an unspoken gesture that she is open to a random one-night-stand.

But she is from Eastleigh. I pictured waking up to an empty house, foaming in the mouth, vaguely recollecting withdrawing all my salary from my account, I tucked in my tail and bade her goodbye.  And that is how a weekend night pans out in Nairobi. You can meet a genuine one-night-stander. Or you end up with a criminal who will take you to the cleaners. Play safe folks.  Period.

@nyanchwani

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