He Does Not Remember

His name is Mike. He is bordering thirty, or at least pretends to. He seems older than that.

He looks like the type of guy that follows Andrew Kibe’s advice closely, noting just how exactly women should be treated.

He uses words like you guy, my guy in his sentences; he has a baby momma who calls constantly for child support.

He hates his job at the company he works at.

He doesn’t own a Probox but if he did, it wouldn’t surprise her.

He has an incoming kitambi which he clothes with big sports t-shirts.

He likes hats, the ones that belong to the old school rap artists.

He has a friend, a girl, his neighbor at the crappy apartment he lives at, who sleeps in his bed and who he has never touched, not even a kiss. She is way younger than him, around twenty-two perhaps. Her name is Vicky and its obvious she likes Mike.

He likes drinking, and he likes drinking with girls younger than him.

That’s how they met.

She had come, accompanied by her pretty and young girlfriends, to Vicky’s house for the weekend.

Drinking and partying was the vibe she threw his way, and like a moth to a flame, he was captured.

He greeted her when he was introduced to her by Vicky, and she gave him a shot of whiskey. She liked drinking too, she insisted, downing her own shot.

It was a Friday night, and if he could recall Vicky’s words correctly, she and her friends will be staying the weekend. He had time, he assured himself.

Friday night passed without incident.

He drank, spoke, watched her and her friends dance and sing along to Ethic and Sailors, and then went to bed with Vicky whom he didn’t touch.

Saturday morning, he didn’t see her. Vicky and her sister took her and her friends around the High-rise Canaan estate. They bought another bottle of whiskey on their way back. A bottle he didn’t get a chance to taste because these girls could beat him at his own drinking game.

Saturday night also passed without incident.

Sunday morning, when the Christians were religiously walking to church, they woke up with another bottle of whiskey.

He joined them later that afternoon. Perhaps he too had gone to church that morning, or maybe he had gone to see the child he rarely talked about.

It doesn’t matter because he found them drunk and ready to drink again. He took few of her friends to buy another bottle. These girls had money and he wasn’t one to refuse free liquor.

They came back with a bottle of JB, a name neither of the girls had heard before. They drank it though, oh how they drank it.

That night, she passed out. He remembers seeing her stagger towards the bedroom in her ragged jeans and a crop top. Perhaps he had a smile on his face as he watched her. Or maybe a smug.

He doesn’t remember those details. What he does remember is the feeling in his chest, the need to regain his power, to claim something forbidden.

He laughed with Vicky that night while she remained passed out in the bedroom.

He sang along to Wamlembez.

He danced with a few of her friends.

He drank more whiskey.

In the wee hours, when everyone had tired of the parte after parte, when Vicky was asleep in his bed, when the dogs had ceased barking into the night, he went into the unlocked bedroom.

The light was dim, but even then, he could identify her. She way in the bed with one other girl; both were passed out.

Perhaps then he did smile. Maybe he stood there for a few seconds, maybe he even called Vicky’s sister to make sure she was asleep.

What he knows for sure is that at that moment, he felt powerful. Here she was, passed out, unable to fight back.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew that in normal circumstances this girl lain here so tempting in her perfect young form would not let him touch her.

But here, here she had no control. He had all of it, all the control.

He remembers removing her trousers, and gasping at the smooth thighs she possessed.

He remembers inserting his finger past her black lacy panties, and feeling her moist.

He remembers grinning at that, then quickly unbuttoning his trouser.

He remembers the first time he entered her, the moan he let out at how tight she felt.

He remembers the rhythm in which he violated her, how when he couldn’t get enough, he removed her panties.

He remembers when he came and how he felt like a god then.

He remembers going out of the bedroom, locking the door behind him, leaving her to darkness.

He remembers every excruciating detail of it.

He went back to his apartment. First he went to the bathroom, washed up, then slowly slid into the bed Vicky lay. Vicky whom he didn’t touch.

Then he waited.

One hour was what it took, and then the phone call came. Vicky’s sister was frantic, confused.

“Did you do it?” she asked to which he strongly denied.

I had passed out, he said. I do not remember.

“Mike, did you do it?” Vicky this time, her eyes pleading, begging for this to be just a nightmare.

I had passed out, he said. I do not remember.

He took her number from Vicky’s sister. He said he wanted to get things cleared up. Nothing had happened, and if it did, he had passed out, he did not remember.

He called her once, then twice, then thrice. All times she refused to pick up.

Maybe she knows what she did, she knows she deserved it, walking around in slutty clothes and downing more whiskey shots than he could count, he convinced himself.

Monday morning found her and her friends back home, her in shambles because she could not yet believe that happened to her; her friends in shambles because they could not believe they had failed to protect their own.

Tuesday afternoon found her in a VCT center, narrating to the nurses what happened, being scorned for engaging in acts that led to this case, testing her HIV status.

Tuesday evening found him in his place, drinking and laughing, dealing with his baby momma, covering his kitambi with baggy shirts, talking, using sentences that had you guy, my guy in them, sleeping next to Vicky whom he had yet to touch.