Mr Oreo

Four years after graduation and things seem to move from bad to worse. I am still my own boss and still a broke arse because ‘self-employed’ sometimes means jobless and penniless. No penny in my pocket, no Henny in the fridge but my penis is intact though it hardly gets erect of late. What used to be my weapon of mass destruction seems to understand that the economy has been in peril since the last election. My little man can no longer find moral justification for irresponsible erections since its master is suffering economic meltdown.

I went to visit my friend this Monday morning. While my mates were heading to work, I was heading to Eze’s house. We were never close friends during our school days but now finding ourselves in a similar phase, we had grown to become each other’s confidant. You know we jobless people often make friends with other jobless people. Even when we try to become or remain friends with those now ‘gainfully employed’, we notice they shy away from us. I am not even going to blame them; who needs friends that we ask for a loan every now and then? It was commonplace to see me pick my phone every now and then to call Eze.

‘Wetin your Mama cook today,’ I would often ask.

‘Na one ogbono soup wey no get obstacles,’ he would sometimes respond.

I often wondered how a 25-year-old who was still eating ‘Mummy thank you’ would have the moral right to complain about the absence of meat or fish chunks in the soup. Some other times, I felt jobless adults like myself had the right to demand anything from our parents irrespective of our age. Afterall, it was their generation that messed up this ailing nation.

As we sat at the veranda of Eze’s father’s house, we discussed about everything; the girls we regretted not shagging while we were still at UNILAG, the job interviews we attended recently, trending songs and all whatnot.

Eze who had suffered bouts of depression over the past few months was surprisingly in high spirits today. After much cajoling, he finally let the cat out of the bag. I could feel the excitement in his eyes as he told me of a popular club in Victoria Island where female politicians came to pick up guys of our age. He explained to me than one important criterion of being successful at the job was to have a buffed-up body.

‘Mehn, I wan get that kain Idris Elba body,’ he said.

I didn’t reply him because I was slightly disgusted that he already considered being a sex toy to women old enough to be his grand-mum as a ‘job’. I have personally wished for Idris Elba’s type of physique in the past but eba won’t let me be great.

He went on to explain that the first time he stepped into the club, a popular politician in her 60s was among the many women that catcalled him.

As I dipped another ball of eba into the bland ogbono soup he had served me, I understood while Eze had been spending most evenings at the local gym in his backyard.

‘Mr Oreo, jisii ike,’ I thought aloud.