In the UK we take our weekend seriously. What better way to wash off a week of hard slug than a Friday night out with friends in a dimly lit club where an experienced deejay could quickens the heart beat with a marathon seven hour of hard pounding and pulsating hardcore hip pop music? I am human and have my own fantasy side. To relieve my sedentary soul as a writer, what better way to answer to Bohemian in a while? This particular boho outrage had been long in coming. Then the breakthrough!
The circular Kokodome in Dugbe looks intimidating. Its sturdy, mean appearance is not for the faint-hearted. Each occasion when I found myself in Dugbe, I keep reminding my restless hedonist soul that someday he will challenge Kokodome and dare its meanness. Then tinder set ablaze my repressed faaji life! Gbade is the ultimate playboy. Dark, tall, rich and a man with such natural ease with women. He jeeps around in a awesome, beastly-looking, bull-ringed black VW jeep. There is a big leather-covered spare tyre at the boot door to compliment the fearsome look of his playboy machine.
The jeep wheezed and parked at my front door. A lady neighbour gawped in admiration for such a pretty wonder of a jeep. I learned a lesson. A deaf and dumb Casanova could chase a woman with his jeep. It is a machine that speaks and closes philandering deals by itself. Gbade had come from Lagos to hibernate with me for the weekend. Then, I remembered that in the UK, Friday night was always the night that Sodom came down to mother earth. I remembered my curious wanderings along the red light alleyway of Soho, Jeremy Street and Piccadilly Circus where life never sleeps.
Gbade had prepared my mind for a bumper, fun-soaked Friday night. We assembled our sorties, drew out target plans and began to drop our bomblet starting from soft target to the ultimate baddies. We dropped the first sortie on ‘The Place’ along Oluyole extension. We came, we saw and we overcame. On our way out, we commandeered a harvest of suya beefsteak delicacy while we seek out other hideouts. Then Sir-K, I mean Kankanfo joint along Ring road. Gbade drowned some bottles of Guinness and lighted some fags. When it was boring, we shipped out. No joy!
Upward, the jeep raced toward Molete and eventually the shimmying glamour of ‘Genesis’ seduced us. A fixer had been waiting for Gbade to distribute sexy, supple, seductive and dancing queens as companions for the night. Now the plot thickens! My mind began to race backwards to my night crawling days in Lagos. My chastity belt was burnt along the sin axis of Ayilara, Ojuelegba and Jibowu. These areas were the clubbing heartland of the early 80’s. You could waltz out from a club at Ayilara, joined the groove in nearby Ojuelegba and offload to Shrine to get ‘stoned’ for the night.
“Where do we go from here”? The girls chorused Kokodome. Yes, the dome! The biggest sortie in our arsenal had been reserved for Kokodome anyway! Gbade and I were odd fellows for the crowd at the dome. We wore Ankara, cut in the traditional buba and sokoto style. I needed the confidence and the audacity of an Obama to make good impression before starry-eyed, young and impressionistic babes in Koko. Gbade has no inhibition. He had been demolishing bottles of Guinness all along our target paths.
As I was getting inside the dome, I began to move body, tap my legs and shake the head to fit the youthful crowd. Gbade clasped the two girls in his large arms which mad it looked as if he was their daddy. He threw the taller, bony girl at me. Then I began to take hard, punishing lessons on how to dance to P-Square, Dagrin, Darey, Banky-W, Sound Sultan, Wande Coal, Bracket, Keefe, Terry-G, Djinee, Timaya, KC-Fresh, Omawunmi, Ashley Stephanie, D’ Prince, Sasha and Ojay. My old outmoded dance steps were out of tune but systematically, I began to adjust to the rigours of modern Nigerian hip pop moves. My companion for the night was pouting her lips, gyrating joyfully, shimmying the bum and dangling two huge breasts at me.
She cooed a popular song lyric to my ears that sounded raw, dirty and erotic. My dancing queen thought that I was a gamer, loaded and prepared to feed his hungry, carnal soul. I hid my inhibiting born-again persona, pretending to be a hedonist, playboy, philanderer and womaniser like the dude reading this piece. She held my hands as we waltzed out of Kokodome into the large car park. Gbade was in the jeep carrying out ‘ritual’ on his partner. I felt something stiffened in my sokoto. I released my hands from my night companion and dived for the jeep. “What happened sir?” she asked. “ Not in the morning light…..not in the morning light”, I stuttered.
“Come let us go jo….. these old men are timewasters”, she called to her estranged friend still under Gbade’s magic. Ah…that night at Kokodome!
