Nakato’s Bar: Part 1
I t was late.
The night had thrown its pall of darkness everywhere.
And a mystic breeze blew hard.
When I followed the direction of this breeze, I was led to a charred structure that was enveloped by unrelenting shadows.
As I edged closer to it, I saw a neon sign that screamed ‘Nakato’s Bar’.
Situated deep in the growing belly of Kamwokya, it seemed forbidding.
Still, I stepped through its swinging doors like a cowboy from the Wild West.
Inside there was a low-lit, emerald hue that dimmed my vision.
Still standing at the entrance, the twin doors swung inside and brushed me forward. I thus reflexively walked to a smoke-filled corner of the bar where I saw some indistinct persons chatting away.
There were five of them.
They looked up at me impassively through whisky-shot eyes. Then, after a moment, fell back into their huddle of conversation.
A pungent smell wafted in from what must have been the toilet, while I settled uneasily on an empty table.
I looked down at my table and found a tumbler of liquor placed upon it.
Questioningly, I looked over to the bar tender and he nodded solemnly. Yes, the booze was free.
I quickly drank it before it became unfree.
When I placed the empty glass upon the table, I found another glass full of liquor waiting for me.
Hmmm, what’s wrong with this picture, I wondered.
Before I could unravel this mystery, a lady emerged from the black robed shadows of the place and walked over to me. All the while, her gaze fastened on me.
Like a goddess bathed in the unreal waters of my imagination, her ethereal beauty totally arrested my attention. Even the chattering dudes seated close by stopped talking and feasted their eyes on her.
By the time she reached my table, their tongues were hanging out like a pack of dogs ready to leap upon a hunk of raw meat.
She sat at my table, well aware that all eyes were addicted to her every move.
Her crimson billowy lips then broke into a ravishing smile.
“Is this seat taken?” she asked me.
“What? Yes…I mean No. No, definitely No,” I replied, love-stoned.
She sat down.
After those ice-breaking words, the atmosphere froze over anew with our silence as we both pondered what we would say next.
Then, at the same time, both of us broke out into words that clashed and sent us both retreating into sheepish Sorry, You Go Firsts.
But she insisted that I talk first, so I slipped into a tried and trite bio about who I was and what I was up to…right until that point in time I met her.
My words, however, were laboured as I tried to speak with Cupid’s arrow in my mouth. I wish somebody would give Cupid target practice, I thought to myself.
Anyway, this girl was just too fine: it was a deadly sin. And she looked even prettier as she blew a plume of smoke from a chic cigarette holder.
Her cleavage-revealing blouse fell off her left shoulder to narcotic effect, too. She was a teetotal, she said, when it was her turn to speak.
“I don’t like the bitter taste of alcohol, I have a sweet tooth,” she said, with a velvety soft voice.
But besides telling me about her diet, she volunteered precious little about who she truly was. And when I asked her about her unique-looking diamond-encrusted necklace (that carried the word: ‘Kuba’), she still refused to be drawn.
After a while, the less she said: the more I drunk. Soon, my head was doing somersaults all over the place.
I was Mt Rwenzori-high.
Also, I found myself visiting the toilet every so often as I became a urine dispenser.
Besides my failure to hold my water, the night went well.
My companion didn’t seem to care that I was in the little boys’ room more than I was with her!
In fact, she seemed oblivious to everything and everyone except me.
On yet another visit to the toilet, I bumped into some dude with cough-mixture wet eyes.
“Hi. Having a nice night? By the way, who is that babe you are with? No one has seen her around here before,” he said.
Before I could answer him, for some reason my mind travelled to when I went to a similar bar a few years before and met a lady. She was more attractive than a discount on Christmas day. So I sat with her and we talked.
A minute or so later, she received a call. Then she said, “Excuse me, I am going for a short call.”
I said “okay” and she set off toilet-ward.
After an hour, she came back with some dwarfish dude. Disappointed, I said: “I thought you said you were going for a short call.”
“No,” she replied. “I said I was going for a ‘Short Paul.’”
Thereupon, she and short Paul left together.
I shook my head to snap out of that memory, then answered the dude I met in the toilet…
