It has been a long month of falling in love—a torrent of emotion eroding that which stood strong-hard; my heart, to a mash of swampy muscle I now call hurt. She asked, you see, that I wear a red shirt and black mascot trousers, and accompany her to some dinner.
She wanted to treat me, she said. To something special.
Special? What is special, I asked myself, about anything except your handiwork, Mr. Rolex Guy? If only my woman had beheld you at work before, then she wouldn’t presume to misuse the word special ever again.
The tomatoes you slice so marvelously, with a surgeon’s quickness and precision. The half-done eggs are nothing short of an enriching, almost medicinal soup. Special.
But Mr. Rolex Guy, your skill with the pan sneers upon the love I have for this woman of mine. I have loved her who stands before your altar of fire—that black frying pan on which the universe’s secrets spin once a flame is lit beneath them on a rattrap of a charcoal stove—like an expectant bride mouthing memorized vows under scented breath.
Let us now return to this thing called Lover’s Day. I hear it happened sometime after the last full moon.
Mbu Valentine’s Day!
Let me tell you, Mr. Rolex Guy, this is merely an overly celebrated day of flowers, wine and extra-expensive food bought from strangers who don’t deserve our money.
I would want to bring all my money to you, Mr. Rolex Guy. In fact, I want to have three rolexes a day for a month. Breakfast, lunch, and supper. Like any good balanced-dietitian.
But that’s merely wishful thinking, my friend. My doctor will come down hard on you, as A man hunts a rat in his house. It’s, of course, wishful thinking to also suggest that I could have a doctor! The only thing coming down on anyone, in my case, after a month of rolex-eating, would be congenital constipation.
But anyway, speaking truthfully, you should be more creative with this booming business. Why not set-up a mechanism where either, one may pay in advance and eat non-stop until their account runs dry, or eat and eat via the mouth and then pay through the nose later?
Valentine’s Day caught me with a longing of your rolex, Sir. A deep longing, akin to that of a pauper’s child hearing that unmistakable music from the ice-cream bicycle and pining for that contraption of food-colored frozen water supposed to pass for ice cream.
I had you in my plans, Mr. Rolex Guy until my woman stepped right athwart them with a pair of high-heeled stilettos. Which man with a woman whose thirst for red and black has ever carried out his plans independent of her?
These aren’t excuses I am giving, but a pain that drives me to write this letter. To ask, man to man, that you keep me a submarine of four eggs, and three chapattis—you know, the usual—while I silently suffer this war-ration-esque, expensive mockery of a meal otherwise called valentine’s dinner.
Man is only a conversation machine in these hard economic times. He starts the conversation and changes it if undesirable. You thought it’s only you forced to think of conversation for your waiting customers?
Even I have to improvise, Mr. Rolex Guy, though my customer is one. She demands more, but her pay is less. She likes my conversations to be full of only humor, laughter, and brave tales. As if I were simultaneously descended from Okonkwo and Chaplin.
To her, I am a conversation slot-machine.
Forgive my bubbly tendency today, Mr. Rolex Guy. Did I tell you about the tomatoes? I want two big ripe ones, juicy. So that things flow as I bite into my submarine.
Don’t get overly clean, as those upscale restaurants tend to do. This is a messy, dirty country, why be clean?
The entire country is bleeding with corrupt people. It is an open wound, and if that’s not dirt, then clearly I do not know what is.
I am still confused, amused even, by people who go to untold lengths to cover-up. Do not be like those people, my friend, whose kitchen is dirty but the eating place is all clean.
For I do love watching you get my rolex ready, seeing you touch money and touch my chapattis with the same unwashed fingers. Feeling the winds carry dust and dump it on my eggs.
If that is not continental seasoning, then kill me now, for I cannot and will not bear to sit in a restaurant and eat (or rather, watch the eating of) another valentine’s dinner!