‘When alcohol dissolves a stiff comrade into tears’ – best thing you’ll read today

Cut to the chase, a friend, a hardened campus political aspirant, was buying drinks that evening. (I don’t warm up to free booze by the way. I’m told the people I’m named after have and had an alcohol problem).

4.00 pm. The keg hole was empty. Save for two twenty-five looking ladies whose battle with and triumph over intoxication (I’ve never seen any of them drunk) should be broadcasted live. Oh, they were seeping Kenya Cane. Does Kenya Cane have a slogan? Say, something like, kinywaji moto cha wenye damu moto? I don’t know.

The Rastaman DJ was polite that evening. He kept ‘putting’ rhumba hits after rhumba hits meaning we kept knocking down mugs after mugs of Senator Keg. And the stiffness of being a man, dissolved by alcohol, translated into a loose tongue. Then the DJ changed the track from Azoni by Franco to Fatimata by Sam Mangwana. The senator alcohol cruising in me became an MCA. I let out a tear.

Hehe! Hold up! I didn’t cry. I mentioned in passing, an occurrence, a text from a Moi University lady friend — who by the way — writes as beautifully as she smiles.

It read; I have no time for you and your daddy issues. What I did is a story that drowned in…

Then seven descended and darkness crawled into the pub like a street urchin angling for a carelessly placed handbag. The music got louder. The keg mugs too much, and my friend, let out a drove of tears.

His wounded words were; ‘imagine my mother cheats on my father! After everything he did for her… na babangu anashika panga anakimbizana na mama, and I’m a kid Osanya, mimi ni mtoto najaribu kuseparate wazazi wangu… ah! It’s painful bana! I’ve been a victim of domestic violence Osanya. ’

There are men who might never heal because they saw dad beat up mom or vice versa. There are good men in campus who are depressed, who put on ties of pretence, coats of sorrow and shirts of anger.

These men look themselves in the mirror and convince themselves that they like what they see. They are hurt. They carry a beast of burden within and they refuse to let it out. To simply, cry