It was called the slaughterhouse for obvious reasons. There was not one single evening that a sexual act was not being committed there. Originally it was just a three-bedroom apartment inhabited by three corper friends—Uyi, Ovie and Peter—who had put their resources together to rent and decorate the space to their taste; but Ovie and Peter had found a way, together with a couple of their other friends who lived next door, to turn the place into a den of sin. Uyi, the conservative among them, was upset that his home had been turned into a brothel and was highly irritated by the brazenness of his roommates and their utter disrespect for the female folk they constantly took advantage of. He had spoken to them severally about how uncomfortable he was but his complains fell on deaf ears. Ovie and Peter had even gone far enough to turn themselves into part-time pimps, collecting cash from the guys they helped get laid.
Many evenings Uyi stayed out late and came home when he was sure he was not going to be bothered by any raucous party or some screaming girl nearing orgasm. He consoled himself that it was going to be just one year and everyone would find their way after their service . Ovie and Peter on the flip side, considered him a strange fellow because he avoided any type of female company, including the ones at work that constantly threw themselves at him. Not that he was particularly handsome or much of a hunk but he was somewhat a mystery and ladies liked that type of thing. He never gave any of them any indication that he was even interested in as much as casual office banter. He always looked them directly into their eyes whenever he spoke with them and kept his discussions strictly on office matters. Most of them concluded he was gay; others thought that he was going through a heart break. But Uyi was just not interested in any other woman at that moment. He had a steady girlfriend, Vivian, on one side and one other girl he had his sights on. The other girl was totally out of his reach but it didn't stop him from fantasizing about having her. She was something out of a foreign magazine cover, skinny and lithe with very smooth skin and a tall frame that stood above his. She once was a model but had given up her career to please a dominating father and had taken up IT instead. Uyi wished she had rebelled but was grateful that she didn't or he wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet her. Hence, other than those two women in his heart and head, Uyi kept his business out of any girl's skirts and faced his career.
But things were going to turn sour for him. His girlfriend, the main one he loved and had plans of proposing if he ever hit it big, had called to say she was visiting Abuja from Abraka and was staying for a week. Uyi did his best to dissuade her but she insisted on being with him, so he invited her over. Before she arrived, he made preparations to keep her away from the slaughterhouse by asking his next door neighbor, Edet, to switch rooms with him for a week. Edet wasn't that much of a neat fellow and his living conditions were less than impressive but Uyi didn't mind; he just needed to get Vivian away from the monsters that were his friends.
The day came and Vivian arrived. As was the case with these situations, there was to be some form of long-time-no-see sex but when the moment of truth came and they got down to it, Uyi found out he couldn't 'perform'. Vivian was cool with it and didn't even bother because she was tired after a long journey. She went to bed and so did Uyi but they had no idea that what had just happened was going to occur again and throughout Vivian's entire stay.
Their one week of love turned into a nightmare for Uyi who had never experienced such a strange phenomenon and for Vivian it was going to be downright frustrating because she was one of those females that easily got turned on. One careless stroke of any part of her body and she was there, ready to go all the way.
On the last night of her short visit, she turned the heat up a notch and did everything by the book and even added some avant-garde techniques she learnt from an x-rated movie but she still couldn't get Uyi's little man up. With tears in her eyes, she gave in to her pent up frustration and angrily blurted out what had been on her mind all week.
"You're cheating on me, Omoruyi!"
"Wow," Uyi muttered after staring at her for a while. "Where is that coming from, Viv?"
"You are cheating on me!" she repeated. "If not, why am I not turning you on? Abi you don't find me attractive? Or am I smelling? Ehn? What is it, Uyi? For a whole week now! I left Abraka to come all the way here and you can't perform your duties as a man. No, I'm sure there's another girl!"
"Viv, you know you're the only one nau. See… these things happen. I think it's the stress of this NYSC. It's really getting to me."
"You're not the only one doing NYSC oh!" she reminded him. "I can't believe I travelled all the way for this nonsense!" She got off the thin mattress on the floor and marched into the bathroom, slamming the door.
Uyi scratched his head in aggravation and made to follow her but he thought against it and walked out of the room instead. He could hear his friends in their usual high spirits next door and an idea hit him. He shut his door and hurried up the short steps that led to his apartment and walked into the sitting room. First, he couldn't make out the faces in the glorious smokiness that clouded the room but their voices registered the persons present. It was a Friday evening and they were doing their usual Friday GHTYD (get high till you die) shindig but that day, there were no females present and it was all about marijuana. First, someone thought it smart to burn it as incense; then another suggested each person smoked a jumbo; one other fool put forward that they drank it as hot beverage with loads of milk and the last cooked it into a large pot of beans.
"When I travel go Jamo, the mat wen dem give us sidon, dem weave am wit kpoli!" Uyi's tall roommate, Peter, said and for some reason what he had just told was extremely funny and the whole room burst into laughter.
"Edet!" Uyi called above the laughter, searching for the guy whose room he had been inhabiting for a week.
"Yo!" Edet replied from where he was seated on the floor.
"Show!"
"I dey come!" replied Edet and he dipped his spoon into a large bowl of beans and pulled out a dripping mound of watery porridge. The spoon slid into his mouth and he chewed generously and swallowed before he asked alarmingly, "na who put water and sugar for dis beans nah?"
The room went silent and through the clearing smoke Uyi could see confused, dazed, blank faces trying hard to find an answer to Edet's question.
"Na Murphy!" someone revealed and all inebriated eyes turned to Murphy, a dark, tall guy with tiny tribal marks on his cheeks.
"Guy!" Edet tapped him.
"Mmmm?" Murphy looked at him with raised eyebrows that Uyi guessed had been static since his first drag. He was stirring from a marijuana trance. "Ow far? I add water and sugar for the garri nah."
And the sitting room roared with laughter. Someone got up and ran into the bathroom to handle a bursting bladder that couldn't hold his urine.
"Na wa oh! E be like say Murphy crase don ripe!" Ovie, the other roommate said but Uyi butt in.
"No be all of una sit daan dey watch am as im pour the water and sugar? Una stop am?"
There was more laughter and this time it was prolonged with a couple of guys rolling on the floor. Uyi was not in the mood for them as he waited impatiently and for a long time for the laughter to completely die down before he tried getting Edet's attention again. Finally Edet walked to him.
"Uyi, my main man!" He shook him. "Ow far?"
"Abeg, e get something I been wan ask you."
"Wetin?"
"Na about my babe."
"Ehen?" Edet blinked and wrinkled his nose distractingly and Uyi had to pause briefly to be sure he was with him.
"Wetin you dey look?" he followed Edet's distracted eyes as it led him outside. He was staring at a shrub in their neighbor's flowerbed. Uyi saw a thought gather around Edet's brows but he banished it away briefly and turned back to him.
"Ehen, you dey talk about your babe. The Abraka chick?"
"Ehn, she dey go back tomorrow and…"
Edet's eyes drifted again and began following the shrub.
"E be like say dat flower dey waka," he stated.
Uyi rolled his eyes.
"No, Guy, look am nah," Edet insisted. "The ting dey dat aboki side before and now e don waka reash Mama Odun window. You no see am?"
"My guy, you wan hear me abi you wan follow flower?"
"Dey yarn, dey yarn, I dey hear you."
"See, the ting be say, since the past one week wen Vivian come we just dey smoosh, dey kiss but we…"
"You never enter the toros," Edet completed with a momentary staid face.
"How you take know?"
"I know nah. I no be confam Calabar boy?"
"No be say I no fit but the…ting no gree act up."
Edet burst into laughter so loud and so hysterical he got the attention of the other guys.
"Dim your voice, nah," Uyi said through clenched teeth.
"Commot dia! You keep confam turkey for house you no fit blow. You too mushi mushi abi you wan make guys colombi the kele for you?"
"Wetin happen?" Ovie asked and Edet, avoiding Uyi's pleading eyes, explained their cultured friend's predicament. Out rolled loads of laughter with demeaning words used to describe his penis like krakpo, jaguda, limp bizkit, dingle-dangle and so on. By this time, Uyi was beyond being embarrassed and moved in for advice on what to do.
"You know say na my main chick and I no wan make she feel say I get anoda babe owside… I no fit gok. Abeg…" Uyi looked into his friend's eyes to get his full attention. "Abeg, help me."
"But me I no understand why young guy like you no fit perform…"
"E dey happen!" Murphy interjected.
Peter shrugged. "Ehn… e don happen to me before wit one babe wen my brother hook me up wit. The babe no make am at all. Basic B flat. She resemble Larry Coldsweat and she come gather hair for chest and for armpit and even for ear. Una don see dat kain horror setting? How my blokos wan stand for dat kain mixture?"
"Me, e no fit happen to me at all!" Edet bragged but immediately shifted his eyes to the mysterious plant again. Uyi shook his head. He was the one who started the myth about the moving shrub. After one full evening of alcohol, he had stumbled into the shrub and was sure the thing shifted away from him to the aboki's post by the gate. He told his story to his friends the next evening over beers and they swallowed it, probably for the same reason they swallowed the story about the pregnant goat that spoke to him on his way from work one night two months before. That one was for real though; the goat actually spoke.
"I get Buran Tashi," Murphy announced from his bowl of sugary beans which everyone had abandoned and he had placed before his spread legs.
"Wetin dat one come be?" asked Peter.
"Buran Tashi na local Viagra," Murphy explained and general exclamation came from the guys whom he ignored and concentrated on his food.
"My guy, no try dat ting!" Ovie warned Uyi. "Your blokos go die afta one round."
"I don try am," Murphy said slowly. "E work for me wella. I fire the gbekus in question from dawn to dusk sotey word go round and all the shenkiz dem just dey matrix for me."
"As a badt guy!" Peter hailed him.
"You know nah," Murphy replied with a conceited smile.
"I say no try am!" Ovie insisted and that was how an argument broke out amongst them—for or against Buran Tasho. Uyi stood confused and when he couldn't make up his mind, he turned to Edet who was still engrossed in his magical shrub.
"Edet, how far, nah?"
"Take am," Edet replied.
Uyi turned to Murphy. "Where the Tashi dey?"
"E dey my house."
Uyi frowned and grunted. Murphy lived in Kuje and at that moment they were in Wuse 2. Neither of them were mobile and Ovie was certainly not going to release his car into their care. Uyi gave a resigned shrug and walked back to Edet's, deflated.
He found Vivian asleep with an invisible sign that read DO NOT DISTURB on her arched back. She had also covered herself with the bedspread and made it clear that there was no way he was allowed near her.
He set his alarm for 7am, heaped a pile of clothes in one corner of the room, rested his head on them and went to sleep.
He woke up at the sound of his alarm and found that Vivian was all dressed up and packed to go. She was also carrying a long face.
"Viv?" He yawned and sat up. "You're set?"
She nodded curtly.
"But your flight leaves by two. Why are you in a hurry?"
"Uyi, let me help you and me here. This thing between us is not working . You're here, I'm in Abraka, we don't get to see each other all the time… And you're a guy and I know that you guys can't do without a woman every now and then, so…"
"So, you're dumping me?"
"No. I'm ending the relationship. Obviously, I don't do it for you again…"
Uyi sprang up and held her. "Viv, I am still attracted to you."
"You're not." She shook her head and looked down at his crotch area. "Clearly, you're still a full-blooded man because your morning wood proves it but I'm the one who is not welcomed here again."
Uyi stepped away from her. "I have a surprise for you. Please, don't go. I promise you, you'll love it! Just wait here!"
"Where are you going?"
"Ehm…to the office," he lied and pecked her cheek. "I'll be right back!"
He grabbed his wallet and a pair of Edet's palm slippers and rushed out. He ran to his apartment and there in the sitting room, he found Murphy still snoring.
"Murph!" he tapped him. "Wake up!"
Murphy sprang up and looked around dazed, speaking in some strange language.
"Oya come carry me go your house. I want that Tashi ting abeg!"
Murphy shot up on his feet like he had been awake all night. He looked around for his phone and having found it, led the way out.
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