The Price of Looking Neat and Clean

You have finally managed to land yourself the biggest deal of your life, in the form of a date.

This is no ordinary date, however. It’s a date with the lady whose profile is your living room and inbox your bedroom. She is not only a physical embodiment of beauty but a paragon of infinite intellectual capacity. A conversation with her leaves you clutching to your dick because you are hopelessly sapiosexual. Despite your clumsiness and general social mediocrity, you have somehow managed to land yourself a date with her, a one-time chance to make a good first impression. To show her that you’re not just an online gangsta but a smartmouth in real life too. A chance to rub your charms on her and give her a little taste of what she has tormented you with. The best thing about this date? It’s all on her. Yup, she footing the bills. Big girl like that. All she needs from you however, is punctuality. She’s Harvard groomed, not UNIBEN. “Don’t be like the typical African man, be punctual. I have a thing for punctuality,” she had warned emphatically. You read her clear. Now you are going on a date with the best thing since okpa and coke and all you need to do is simply get your ass to Salamander Café by 11am.

Being a Nigerian living in Nigeria, going on a first date with the girl that keeps you awake at night and she footing the bill is some sort of fairytale. So since you landed yourself this date, you lost sleep. Sleep is for the hopeless. The ones whose messages rest in the inbox of their crushes, unreplied. You? You’re different. You’re going on a date!

D-day comes slow, but it comes eventually. Salamander Café. 11. Be punctual. Your subconscious steadily reminds you. You wake up by 6 and you start to make sure everything is in place. Shirt, well pressed. Starched even. Trousers? Set too. Shoes, Watch, Corky smile, all set. You spend extra time in the bathroom in front of the mirror trying to make sure everything is in order. Every is. Or, seem to be, except the hair. Not that it’s rough, but it has started to grow too clumsy and it has outgrown its edges. Plus your chin is littered with hair and your teddy keeps growing irregularly, making you look like a malnourished wolverine. So you decide to get a haircut.

You get to the barbershop from across your street and there are two people on queue. A part of your mind nudges you to ditch the whole idea but the greater part reminds you that being cleanly shaven on a first date with Maliah Obama is a good first impression. So you sink on the sofa and impatiently wait for your turn. You check the time, it’s 8 A.M.
In what looks to you like four hours later, it’s finally your turn at 8:40. You tell him to make it look sharp. That you’re going on a date with this girl…”say no more fam”, he cuts you off in assurance. He starts. You busy yourself with the news on TV while taking a moment to monitor his progress on the wallsize mirror before you. TV playing, AC blowing, you are on course to transform from Elderson Ichejiele to Theo Walcott in one haircut. Life can’t get better than this.

A moment or so into the haircut, you realise the clipper is still buzzing, but it’s not touching your head. You look at the mirror and your guy is there, absentmindedly holding the clipper, attention pinned to the TV, nose scrunched and mouth parted carelessly in a generous display of his rainbow coloured teeth.

“Oga! I dey rush fa!” You say a little too loud. He doesn’t flinch. You nudge him roughly with your head and he flinches. He continues the haircut. Meticulously taking his time, a little more than necessary. You start to swell inside of you. You turn your attention back to the TV.
Not so long later, the clipper is buzzing away again, unengaged. Your guy is watching the news again, with so much attention it starts to seem rude to interrupt him. You swell a little more inside. He flinches again, and continues with the haircut. You go back to the TV. Shortly afterwards, a man comes into the shop. Short, dark, thick, man with a face like crumpled notes. Your guy greets him cheerfully and hit sits down. Not sooner has the man settled down did he engage the barber on politics. At first the barber goes on mowing your hair and answering at the same time, until the topic gets more interesting and he starts to lubricate your hair with a sufficient sprinkle of spittle as he engages the new man on salient political issues.

Now, you’re in it. You’re there, halfway shaven by a barber who seem to be active about everything else except your hair. It’s too late to leave as your hair currently looks like a physical representation of the current Nigerian economy. So you just boil and swell and swell and curse beneath your breath.

You check the time, and gasp. It’s 9:40 and he’s not half done with your hair. You’ve not had your bath. Wuse II is at least 40 minutes away. His hand is currently placed on your head, firming it to a position of convenience for himself, yet, his other hand holding the clipper is suspended while he’s looking back at the short dark man he’s talking to. Her words come rushing back to you: “Don’t be like the typical African man, be punctual. I have a thing for punctuality.” You remember a post she made about some guy who ticked all her boxes but failed to show up in time for a date and because of that she ditched him. You break down and start to cry, only that outside you are quiet and you not shedding tears yet.

9:55 AM, your guy is still decorating your hair with the clipper, in between serious arguments about whether or not IPOB is a terrorist group. He’s just past halfway and you are about shitting yourself in anxiety. Then this young man walks into the shop, fistbumps the barber and says “you see wetin Messi do yesterday ba? Later you go dey call Ronaldo name. Who be Ronaldo where Messi dey?”

You know where the talk is going and frankly you are done. You get up, crying aloud now, unpeg the apron, shove his N200 into his palm and walk out of his shop with your hair looking like the carcass of a decaying rat. It’s 40 degrees in Abuja but you are going to wear a head warmer to your Cinderella date because carrying last is not in your blood.