A MAN’S WORLD

You didn’t know when the traffic lights turned green until the driver of the rickety bus behind you honked aggressively. You turned your keys, but the engine did not start.

“Perfect timing,” you muttered and tried again. This time too, nothing happened.

The driver behind you was slowly reversing to find room enough to drive past you. “Ézì,” he cursed as he drove past.

You did not mind him. In fact, you neither noticed his frustration, nor heard his insult. The third time you tried, the car started, and you turned slowly to Presidential Road. You were not going home. You didn’t even know where you were going, until you turned at the roundabout in Ọkpara Square and parked by the roadside.

You stepped out of your car, and started walking.

The words of the lady in red shorts at the club kept ringing in your head.

“Eiyahh, only 20 thousand? You’re funny oo.”

You were not a funny person. Your friends had often teased you about your morosity, and there was certainly nothing funny about what you had done. It was your first time at the club and you stood out like a sore thumb. You had come with Jidenna and Mike, both, professional clubbers.

“We really shouldn’t have brought you with us,” Jidenna said, observing your naïve shock.

“What were you expecting?” Mike added, visibly annoyed.

The two were old money. The sort that Gen Z’s occasionally banter about on X (formerly Twitter), where they mimic the idiosyncrasies of the upper class. Jidenna’s father was a professor of Medicine and Mike’s middle name might as well have been privilege. His grandparents have made an untold fortune from pharmaceutical distribution in Aba. So the stories had it, but you suspected there were some shady sides to the family business.

Your background couldn’t have been more different from theirs. You were familiar with deprivation. It was two years ago that you finally cleansed yourself of the fragrance of poverty. Your childhood was an affair of hunger, thanks to your father, a renowned drunk who spent every penny that he didn’t have on cheap alcohol. Contrary to the common nature of alcoholics, he was never violent. In fact, he was as gentle as he was understanding. But what use was his affectionate spirit when his descendants were constantly traumatized by hunger and lack?

You had sponsored yourself in the University through menial jobs. In your sophomore year, you had managed to save enough to start a miniature cyber café. Your one-room lodge at Zik’s Flat, doubled as your business space.

When you got a job at the Central Bank two years ago, you almost didn’t believe it. What had fortune and luck to do with a person of your background? But it was real, and your life was about to change.

In two years, you had transitioned from a broke nobody, to a comfortable somebody. You had put on some weight too, and your erstwhile scanty beards had finally merged together, full, and with a glorious sheen.

The truth is that there is absolutely nothing unique about your story. There are a number of people who shared your story. But there were also a number, who had come from backgrounds similar to yours, and who seemed forever stuck in them.

Your thoughts wandered to the lady who had mocked you inside the club. What was your offence? You had sent her 20k (twenty thousand naira). Now that you think about it, you cannot even identify the actual purpose of the cash gift. What did Mike call it again?

“See better babe wey dey reason you. Run her small something to appreciate her interest joor.”

It didn’t make sense, but you were not going to show it. At least, not before Mike. Besides, he had said “small something”, and as a man of means, you could do a little more than “small something”.

So there you were, asking a complete stranger for her account details, wiring 20k, and sitting back smugly, but uncertain of what to expect in return.

Your reward came soon enough. She glanced at her phone, saw the credited sum, confirmed that it was from you, and burst into laughter.

Jidenna explained the situation to you.

“Look bro,” he had said, gripping your shoulder. “Apparently, she’s a big woman. You do know that this is where the reckless elites wind down after a tough week of business yeah? Don’t think too much about it. Clearly, she’s loaded, so that amount must have been a huge joke.”

You nodded timidly, felt your pockets for your keys, and rose.

Nnékà

Five years ago, it was Nnékà. Your university girlfriend, and absolute love of your life. You had heard stories that romantic relationships in the university were often fleeting, and one must never take them too seriously, to avoid needles mental and emotional distress.

Also, you had nothing at the time to support the demands of a solid relationship, let alone marriage, and so relationships like yours were certainly doomed for a swift end. But Nnékà knew this already. You had no secret. She knew that you were struggling financially, but chose to stay.

That evening, in your finals, when you held hands on an evening stroll, she had said to you, “You worry too much for a man who has as much potential as you do. Marriage is not my priority, I am not asking you to be ready now. If your concern is that you have nothing, then I don’t know what to say to you because I believe things won’t always be this way for us.”

When things changed, and marriage became her priority, you did not know, for six months after you both graduated, Nnékà got married to a man who wasn’t you.

It was either she had stopped believing that things would turn around for you, or had come to realise that “potential” was not edible.

When you saw Dike, her husband, it all made sense.

He looked like money— with thick folds of skin around his neck, reflective of decades of good life. You didn’t attend the wedding. Not because you didn’t want to, but you had no decent shoes.

As bitter as it was, you understood her, but something died in you from that moment— belief in yourself.

You had come to the conclusion that unconditional love was mere hogwash. No one loved a man who had nothing to offer. And love certainly did not count as something to offer.

It was the first time you ever critically examined your life. And you found in every turn, evidence that the worth of a man is only as good as the depths of his pockets.

But the club experience revealed a new dimension to this. The bar is set ever higher. It is not enough to make money as a man. You must be able and willing to spend it. And no, 20k is not enough for a woman you do not owe a farthing.

It suddenly hit you that the plight of men was really no different from what women claimed was theirs. It struck you that while feminism argued that throughout history, women had merely been treated as objects of sexual compensation by the men, men could indeed argue something similar, namely: that throughout history, their value was intrinsically tied to their financial worth.

In that moment, you wondered if you had ever truly mattered to anyone. You would go on to become a cynic.

“Where you dey go,” a voice hollered.

You turned to see a policeman flashing a torch insensitively on your face and you raised you left palm to shield your eyes from the brilliant rays.

“Good evening, sah. I just dey pass.”

“Weh done, sahs,” you said to two others who stood by the police van across the road.

You had just noticed the van.

“You just dey pass by this time? Oya fine us small something.”

There it was again. Small something.

But you were already exhausted and so you calmly dipped your hands into your pocket and drew out two mint notes of one thousand naira.

The officer’s eyes shone with glee and he snatched the notes and slipped them into his pockets with equal speed. He smiled a crooked smile and you turned back.

As you walked back, you noticed that you had passed the gate of Unity Park without noticing, and it was locked. As you got into your car, your mind went back to Nnékà, and you realised that for the first time in years, you were truly and wholly grieving her. You were not really angry at the lady in the club. Neither were you disappointed nor hurt by your colleagues’ scorn. You were used to all of that.

It was the loss of your love story that you grieved. Love still works. Or maybe your heart still works. After all this time…

After all this time, it still works.