"Votre ." The guard at the door of the club held out a hand for me.
"What?" I asked.
"Votre identifiant." He repeated.
I placed my right hand in his palm, but he shrugged it off and pushed me hard. I couldn't tell what he was asking for, but I was willing to pay if he was asking for a ticket.
"He said your identity card." A voice said from behind, then, a man in a long suit walked past me and stopped before the security guard.
"Tu ne vois pas que c'est un homme blac?" The man grunted before the security guard. "Laisse-le entrer!"
The guard stepped aside, and the man turned to me and urged me to follow him in with raised brows. I smiled and followed him into the club.
"My name is Yapi." The man extended me a hand when we entered the club.
"Yours?"
"Alessandro." I shook hands with me the way gentlemen do.
"I could have liked to party with you, Alessandro, but I have an important meeting tonight." He announced and tapped my shoulder. "Enjoy the dancing, the alcohol, and most importantly the girls."
He turned and took a few steps away from me, but then, he stopped and turned to me, his face broken in a warm smile that seemed more friendly than I deemed necessary.
"And I forgot to say, you look nice, Italian, but make sure you don't make trouble." The man sounded his warning and continued with his walk into the VIP, I supposed.
I don't have funds for the VIP, and I don't want people I might not like to take notice of me in a VIP space in the club.
I talked to the barman, he was fat and mean, just waiting for me to get my order and get the heck out of their club so they wouldn't have to divert their focus to me.
"I need something hard." I took one of the long stools right in front of him and sat my ass down, waiting to be served, but the barman was waiting.
"Did you clean yourself before coming here, or have you come to spread the new version of the corona?" he asked with hate.
I looked around the clubhouse and saw some white men standing at various corners, grabbing the girls in the clubhouse.
I smiled and dipped my hand in my pocket, then, as though I was out to slip a hard substance across the bar, I passed the man a ten-dollar note.
His face broke into a warm smile and he wiped his palms by rubbing them together.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want something hard and hot, come on, you should have one of such," I added.
"Okay." Came his response.
It didn't take him anything to drop something on the desk, something I will call a concoction of drinkables and lime. Such concoctions don't come with a straw, it's just a few shots on a trey.
"You look like the men I watched in the Italo-American movie, Godfather." The man said.
I laughed. Is Godfather Italian-American, or was it because it featured an Italian mafia family on American soil?
Someone once told me that Africans never knew us this way, until the advent of the internet which scooped a large chunk of negative views of us on their plate, the very same way their colonizers scooped a large chunk of negativity about them into our plates through books, columns of pamphlets and newspapers, movies and documentaries.
"I'm American," I said shamelessly.
"Don't I sound American?"
"American with an Italian face." The man dropped me an extra shot. "Drink up and go dance to Snoop and Khalifa."
I narrowed my eyes. He seemed to have lived on American soil before coming down to settle here as the bartender. I took the shot and guzzled its content but I wasn't fast with scurrying off from his stand.
"You lived in Georgia?" I raised a brow. "Or Chicago, or New York?"
"Alabama, but let's not talk about it, Italian." He took a bottle of spirit and shook it.
"By the way, I was born Ugandan, I never knew I was black till I traveled away, and you, you will never know what one will think about you being Italo, till you set into the midst of some erudite fellows who would tease you of being mafia, and red room pervert."
"Um, how much is your...my bill?" I asked.
"You already paid a ten-dollar bill, that's more than enough for a night," he said with a smile.
That could be a friendly gesture, but I just don't like where his words were heading.
"Very well, and, thank you." I took off from his stand and made it to a different corner, with some fellas smoking and speaking hell of French. Very deep ones I had no business stretching my ears to pick anything out of it.
"Bonjour." A voice said beside me.
I turned. It was the voice of a lady, elegant but badly dressed.
I shook my head, at least, I knew Bonjour meant hello, but I was scared of what she would say next because I was sure I wouldn't understand it.
"Viens-tu de Paris?" She was staring me deep in the soul.
"Sorry, I don't speak French," I said respectfully.
"Alors, tu dois être de la CIA Américaine." She uttered with great intent.
I couldn't understand what she said, but I was sure I heard the CIA. What business does she have with the CIA?
Those CIA folks, I heard they are in every country of the world, spying and doing all sorts of things for our government, but I have no damn business with the CIA.
"Look, I don't speak French, but I don't know anything about your CIA," I replied.
She took a pack of cigars and fished a stick of rolled blunt out of it. I mean, how could she store a blunt in a pack of cigars? That was funny, but I was praying hard in my mind that the good lord would keep her from offering me that stick because I wouldn't take it.
"Je ne parle pas anglais, mais j'en connais quelques-uns." She lit the blunt.
"Hey, I'm a medical doctor, that stuff ain't good for your lungs." I reached out to snatch the blunt but she was fast enough to knock off my hand.
"Ne t'empare pas de ce qui ne t'appartient pas." She rose from her seat and walked away, leaving me behind, but not without turning to glance at me, she was heading to another man.
I sighed and relaxed in my seat. The DJ was playing Despacito, and the sound was really loud enough. I like it when music goes loud, and I like watching people dance and live a happy life, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I am their doctor.
Treat them when they fall ill, so they will stand and live their life to the fullest, but I knew it was also my job to warn them of doing dangerous things like burning their lungs with a blunt.
"Ouais, tu ne danses pas?" a man screamed at me from the other big seat.
"Entre, mec, danse avec les filles. Ta bite n'est-elle pas déjà dure?"
I looked over at him, smiled, and waved at him. Lord, help me. I didn't hear a word from everything he said, even though he shouted those words at me.
I watched him narrow his eyes and sit back in his seat, maybe he now knew that I was a novice to his language.
"Tu n'aimes pas comme si tu étais Parisien!" The Hollered one more time with a smile.
"Bienvenue à Abidjan. D'où viens-tu?"
I smiled and made faces, at least, that might be enough reason for him to stop shouting, even if it was another kind gesture from a cheerful Francophone African.
The DJ changed the music. I can't sing the song, but I knew it was from a Nigerian called Burna Boy, he had won a Grammy once and had been nominated three times, and young fellas over there in the US love his sound.
At least, that was enough for me, though he couldn't understand his lyrics because he sank his song with a mix of English and his native language.
"Je me débrouillerai bien avec toi ce soir, je ne demande pas grand-chose." A lady, as badly dressed as the other one who came first, sat beside me.
"Sorry, I don't speak French," I replied.
"Anglais? Vous Pariez Anglais." Her face broke into a warm smile.
"L'homme du bar a dit que tu payes un dollar." She said with more smile.
I heard a dollar, but the rest of what she said, I must confess, I didn't understand one bit, but I offered her one precious thing, a smile.