I woke up today feeling hopeful, happy even. That was until I stepped out of my room and tripped on Jake, my roommate’s shoes. What are those old things doing here, I wonder? I don’t take one more step before I bump into my roommate and his unconventional sauce drenched French fries breakfast. There’s only so much I can do. We’re related by blood, so I give him a three-second long disapproving look as he apologized for staining my pajamas and then I moved on.
The only reason I put up with him aside from being related to him is because he cooks like a professional chef and sews like a high fashion designer – no, he’s not gay. If we weren’t related, I might have considered marrying him. Any aspiring performer could do with a designer in their own house; so as annoying as I find him, I consider myself lucky to have him.
This past weekend, I played at a show in Nairobi. The turnout was…well let’s just say there were a bunch of bands playing for other bands. But one thing rocked though, the costumes and the makeup were awe-inspiring. The morning of the show, I had trouble deciding what I would wear. I laid out a number of t-shirts and jeans on my bed and decided to take a walk, hoping it would help me gain some clarity of mind. The smoky Nairobi air does that sometimes; help you gain clarity.
Two hours later, I’m walking into the house and there’s the sound of slashing and tearing. I run through the hall to my room where the sound is coming from and what do I find? Jake holding pieces of the once whole t-shirts, trying to fit one rag to another. I’m about to curse my head off until I see one of my shirts, now sleeveless, rippled with what looks like patches of white, green and denim material. The work of a master artist, I think to myself. He notices me and immediately holds up the nearly finished product confident that I shall be impressed.
I am. Impressed and utterly confused because one, Jake is an accountant by profession and two, naturally, or by virtue of growing up rich turned out to be an unfathomably lazy adult. I can hardly get him to take a shower on a normal day, and then he goes and does this; transforms a perfectly mundane outfit into a glorious award winning wear-only-once kind of garment. It was hard work and painful, judging by the bloodstains on the white parts of the new shirt. He even frayed one of my pairs of jeans to make them look a little trashy for stage. Not only that, he also ‘super-glued’ one of my boots’ gaping soles and all in two hours. Of course, the audience (other bands) loved it.
Later that evening, he came home early from a date so he could moose my hair into a punk-rock Mohawk and transform my face into vampire like shades and shadows before the show. Sometimes he will do absolutely nothing at all, even on his days off or when he’s in between jobs and I have to support him for more than three months. Sometimes he’ll say annoying things that make me want to throw him out of my house.
Sometimes he’ll eat a week’s worth of food in one day. Sometimes he’ll use money intended to clear the electricity bill to buy himself a completely useless secondhand gadget. Sometimes he’ll complain about (how dirty his room is) things that he can fix himself. But then sometimes, he goes and cooks me a meal like he knew I would come home really hungry, or he’ll do my laundry or clear all the bills himself. For that the fire in the pit of my stomach dies out and I can live another day with him in my house forgiving him for every time he raised my blood pressure.
Heck, if he does turn out to be gay, I’ll eventually forgive him, and I won’t even be surprised.
