Muheez Olawale
Today, Jimi shall rechristen himself into Richie Jay. The oversized Louis Vuitton shirt he squandered his life savings on is the ordained priest. And the baggy Jean trousers his buddy lent him is the baptismal water. Jimi spent some loose change on metallic gold wristwatches and necklaces—imitations of expensive ones worth ten times his father’s house. But trust him to forget the dilapidated two-bedroom apartment that houses his family. Today, he is all out to redeem his image.
His father, a sexagenarian battling arthritis, is probably on the anaconda queue at the front of the Ministry of Works & Housing, the heated rays of the sun ushering sweats and curses out of him. But his chants and placard for unpaid pensions is not to be remembered now.
His mother’s kinetic feet swing amongst the crazily fast-moving buses on the Lagos–Ibadan expressway to shove packs of cheese balls in the faces of travellers, yelling at them to buy. But he has wiped that off his memory for now. There is a more pressing issue.
After Jimi garbs himself in the chosen clothes and ornaments, he splashes some cologne all over him. Looking expensive equals zero if he doesn’t smell expensive. Thus, he has got the cologne from a roadside Mallam stall at Iyana-Iba and has rebranded it, pouring it into the empty vial of an expensive cologne he picked from the floor. For finishing touch, he thoroughly combs his fades and applies some gel. He poses in front of the mirror like a peacock and grins. Today will be the best day of his life.
***
Nifemi is one of the prettiest girls in the Faculty of Arts. Fairly complexioned, averagely heighted and moderately round, she is a correct figure eight. The woman of Jimi’s dreams. She possesses an angel’s face. Round with cute dimples. Complemented with eyes that drown you in ecstasy. Yeah. Those bright eyes with thick lashes caught Jimi’s attention the first time he met her.
As a freshman in Lagos State University, Jimi had gone to the faculty Admin Block to complete his registration. Although he got to the place as early as 7:35 am, he met an anaconda queue already lined outside the building. He joined the queue, waiting for a long time till the sun stood straight in the sky and gathered enough heat in its rays to torture the queuers. Jimi stood patiently as the queue remained immobile like a statue, drinking cold sachet water at intervals.
Suddenly, his eye caught pretty Nifemi as she ducked to prevent the sun rays from entering her eyes. Jimi marvelled at the immense beauty of this girl who had been standing before him all this while. She wore a chequered pink and white gown that reached only a little below her knees, and a pair of sandals that looked as huge as the super sneakers Jimi had seen in Subway Surf.
After contemplating for a long time, he tapped her shoulder and whispered, “Excuse me.”
Slowly, she turned to face him fully. Her bright eyes shone like a full moon as they scanned Jimi from his head to toe. That day, Jimi wore a threadbare Louis Vuitton shirt and a pair of black trousers, floored by time-worn black sandals—the ones from his secondary school days. Her eyes strayed to the phone in his hand. Addle-brained, Jimi slowly pocketed his rickety phone with a missing power button, a fuzzy camera and a broken screen. Mischief sparked in Nifemi’s eyes as she smirked and turned around.
Nonplussed, Jimi tapped her shoulder lightly again. “Fine girl, how are you doing?”
Spontaneously, Nifemi turned to him. And in the sassiest way Jimi would ever experience, she rolled her eyes and spat in his face, “I don’t do broke guys.”
Subdued laughs.
Nifemi held her breath for a moment, and added as an afterthought, “Why don’t you get the original of this shirt? It is Louis Vuitton and not Lois Victim.”
It was like the whole queue had been watching them. The people nearest to them laughed and the laughing spree spread so quickly, fingers pointing at Jimi as the object of ridicule. Jimi breathed not a single syllable nor moved an inch till he completed his registration and left. He only shivered in cold fury as eyes pierced him and laughs stabbed him. Sure, he was only a losing victim in this overwhelming, disgraceful circumstance.
Surprisingly, the humiliation did not end there. Jimi woke up the next morning only to find the hashtag #nobrokeboys trending on X. He clicked on it only to find a video of his interaction with Nifemi on the pages of the most popular bloggers in Nigeria. Definitely, someone had incidentally captured that moment on camera while filming the long queue. And the lunatic had proceeded to grow his page by posting the video online and tagging popular bloggers who quickly jumped on it like ants did to sugar.
Expectedly, this scenario earned Jimi a nickname. Broke boy. Everyone in the school who frequented social media knew him as the broke boy in Lois Victim shirt trying to ask a classy girl out. But all that ends today! Yeah. Jimi has the perfect plan.
***
“Do not judge a book by its cover,” Jimi sings, “but Nifemi here doesn’t know that.”
Nifemi watches patiently, arms folded across her chest. She is clothed in a striped pink & white shirt, and black Jean trousers, suited with a pair of black Nike sneakers. She also wears a smile that wields a mashup of confidence and mischief.
Jimi smiles smugly as he confirms his secret cameramen are at work. One is sitting under the nearest tree, acting like he is busy with his phone. The other is leaning against the wall of a building, the phone in his breast pocket doing the needful. This is Abè-Igí Faculty of Arts, the hotspot for students. Jimi knows more cameras will pop out when he starts dealing with Nifemi.
“Why did you stop me?” Nifemi inquires. “To dance around? To make a fool of yourself again? Broke boy?”
Jimi scoffs. “What happened the other day is just a matter of wrong timing. I won’t explain that to you. But I’m here to show you I’m no broke boy. You see my shirt—” Jimi tugs at his shirt— “this is an original Louis Vuitton. Girl! I am stinking rich.”
“Oh!” Nifemi pouts, “I guess that’s why the Mallam perfume you bought still can’t kill your body odour. ‘Cause you stink!” She quickly adds, “Plus you don’t show money. Money shows you.”
Jimi gasps in horror. How did she know that? Does she also use Mallam perfume to also recognise the smell? He shrugs the worry off, quickly pulling out a wad of naira notes from his pocket.
“You don’t know who you messed with, babe. This is Richie Jay!” he yells. He unstraps the wad and throws the notes at her. “Bathe in money, girl. Wash yourself with wealth. You reek of poverty.”
In the shower of falling naira notes, Nifemi throws her head up cockily as she sniggers. “You’d better pick up your life savings from the ground now. And if you even think of wasting money, why don’t you waste it on your father’s treatment instead of letting him queue for pension day after day? Or your mother? You can set up a shop for her and stop making her run after buses.”
“You!” Jimi’s lips sag in astonishment. “What are you? How did you know?”
“You’re nothing but a broke boy,” Nifemi spiels. “All these you’re doing is an evidence that you’ve forgotten your parents’ incessant warnings that you shouldn’t forget whose son you are. Stop flaunting what you don’t have. It’ll only scare your helpers off.”
Jimi freezes, wide-eyed, wide-eared, wide-mouthed.
“There’s a celebrity who’s thinking of helping you because of what happened the other day. What do you think he’ll do when he sees this?”
Jimi looks around. Apart from his own cameramen, almost everyone around them is recording with a phone. Jeez! Why won’t people just mind their businesses?
“You certainly need that money more than I do,” Nifemi scoffs, “so pick up the money and bathe in it ‘cause, like you said, you reek in poverty.”
With this, Nifemi sashays off, leaving Jimi watch her back in stark horror. Dewy-eyed, Jimi squats on the floor and carefully picks up every naira note he had flung in the air, ignoring the prying eyes of both humans and cameras. Done, he rises to his feet with a new resolution. Being poor isn’t a crime. He is just a little 0.0001% out of the large population of poor people. But he has called upon ridicule by not sticking to himself.
As he walks towards the school gate through a tunnel of jests and giggles, he wonders how Nifemi came to know everything about him, even the one he didn’t know. Left with no clue, he mutters in resignation, “That girl is a witch, original ogbanje.”
Muheez Olawale is an Nigerian writer. His poem won the 2024 Chief of Army Staff Literary Competition. He has works forthcoming or published in The Kalahari Review, Copihue Poetry, Synchronized Chaos, The Muse, African Writer, Arts Lounge, Writers Space Africa, Akewi, and elsewhere. His collection of micro-fiction will be published in January 2025. Muheez loves humour, action, and mystery. Asides writing, Muheez is an actor, graphic designer, and video editor.
Featured photo by Cottonbro Studio (Pexels)
