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By UBA A. C.

Intoxication

Written by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Monday, 02 February 2009

I was certain it was not the beer, I was keeping count. The waiter just replaced the fourth and from experience, I required twice that to knock me off. So effectively, I was not drunk or so I thought, but I felt myself floating softly like a piece of paper blown by a whirlwind, ascending unsteadily, the rest of the world as I knew it at a standstill, like I would when I was eight bottles up.

Perhaps it was her voice, not trained like a master singer’s, something between tenor and soprano, almost coarse yet melodious, at least to me. She was singing a popular song by a white singer, either Celine Dion or Mariah Carey, I wasn’t thinking straight- it didn’t matter. What mattered was the sound in modulated wave lengths from the loudspeaker causing a tingle-almost a tickle on my ear drums, my entire anatomy quivering, like her every word, from that love song was to me.

My eyes followed her every move as she twist danced like a strip star on stage, her entire body- head to ankle- gliding sensuously to the rhythm, like some kind of serpent from an African folktale. She was doing it with such ease, wetting the appetites of most or all of the men around. It had a message, something like; if you’ve got it, use it to effect. She really ‘got it’, the effect on me like the measure of all the sand on Bar beach and gosh, I was loving every second of it.

Her eyes were tiny, fitted into equally miniature sockets which reminded me of the fishes in my boss’s aquarium. Her hair coloured blond, flowing freely like a water fall down her sloppy back. What more could beauty be? I thought, with that nose pointed like a cattle’s horn, not at the heavens, but at me. No wonder they called her Queen and as I sat there, the chilled glass with a million golden bubbles in simple harmonic motion in hand, I could think of just one thing…a wish, a desire, a prayer…to wrap her- her beauty, her voice, her body- around me like a cloak.

It was the same the week before, and the week before it and the one before and as far back as I could remember. I sat at the same table unaccompanied. My mission, not just to quaff, but to let my world melt like candle wax into hers. I never said a word to her, I never had a chance to, and I heard she didn’t take likely with men making passes at her. But I wished I could…I longed to, not to taste of her in the carnal sense like most of the other men are want to, but to appreciate her with adjectives, special and uncommon.

But then I also felt pity for her. Beneath the charm was pain, frustration and fear, I was certain, for what else could have driven such a damsel to such a job if not poverty. She wasn’t singing just because she loved to. It was what put food on her table, a job much more honourable than warming the beds of countless men, who came to unwind, away from their matrimonial beds at the hotel every weekend.

She was like one of the waiters I tipped had been generous enough to offer, an orphan who was paying her way through school. She was a student for much of the week, and by weekend, a stage singer. When I asked what she earned, the waiter had after running his fingers through his hair and scratching at nothing in particular volunteered a number which I knew was false even before he said it. False not because it was a lie, but because, he obviously didn’t know. But I could imagine that it wasn’t much.

“Right about now ladies and gentlemen, we wanna change the rhythm a lil bit as we want to go African” her voice rang out on the MIC jolting me from my thought. I think I heard the excited audience clap or cheer, I wasn’t sure. Then the beats changed and there she went again in her tenor adulterated soprano doing Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s Umqomboti and throwing my being, every cell that made up the fiber of my person into wild excitement.

I was at the point where I was contemplating rising to my feet and running up stage to her when the waiter arrived with another bottle. “This is the ninth sir” he said respectfully, bowing slightly like a seasoned Catholic Priest.
“The ninth?” I sounded like I had not heard him right.

“Yes sir” a smile accompanied the reply for effect.

I looked from the bottle to the stage where Queen was now singing something from Onyeka Onwuenu and then back to the bottle. At that point, as I fished for my wallet to pay off the waiter for the night, I couldn’t quite say what I was intoxicated of, the beer or Queen.

Sylva Nze This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Comments (2)

	1. 07-02-2009 12:44
	Intoxication This is a short story that is witty and good. I learnt something from this story just now as a writer myself. Comb your quill well, Sylva!! Your ink from your pen was well economised. This is a story that could be more sassy than this. Cyprian Ekwensi opened the door for us, thank God that some of us have walked in.