Chapter Eleven

Phoenix had decided to become an actor, and so he had to leave his life at the Drummer Club behind, and by the New Year 2000, he’d almost already forgotten that he was ever a dancer and a paid runs-man at that seedy club, that he had fed the fantasies of a thousand men and women. But yet, the brand of liquor and the hard sex, mixed with the odor of dank sweat and cheap perfume, with the touch of roughened hands and the wet tongues were etched deeply on his mind. The club had marked the beginning of his life as a fighter for survival; it had been the place where he’d been betrayed by the angels that were supposed to have charge over him. He was innocence betrayed, and that showed in the shadows that haunted him in the depth of his eyes, because in their depths burned a fiery wariness.

He had broken the vows he had made to himself, that he would never have to stoop so low as to get himself used for sex; he had become a veteran at the sex act. It was his job to give the men that came to him the pleasure they paid for, and there were those that had been the embodiment of sexiness and temptation. And he had had them all; they had fucked him, they had tasted him. And the truth was that he could never get their smell off of his skin.

On that fateful day after the New Year, when he walked into the salon, he was swaddled in fitted black silk, from neck to toe, and he could feel the eyes that were on him as he made his way in, a vision of beauty, and he knew it. He said nothing to those he passed on the street, his face a careful mask of blankness, and nobody said anything to him. But he knew that many of the people he passed on the street were aware of him, of his beauty.

Lawrence was heating up some needles in a steaming pan that oozed with hot steam, and he said succinctly to Phoenix, ‘You like someone in mourning. What’s with the black attire?’

Phoenix gave a non-committal shrug. ‘Nothing.’

But the older guy had gotten used to him, and he loved him, so he knew when to get past the bravado to get to the vulnerable person beneath. He was no fool about the issues regarding his younger friend. ‘I know that you want to go high up in this life, but then I want to ask if you’re ready to take all the heat when the time comes. You want to be an actor, I see, but what about what the society thinks? How will you cope? And will you be able to make to it there?’

Phoenix smiled, but it was a rueful smile that was devoid of all warmth. He knew what his beautiful friend was alluding to. He was the living, breathing stereotype of the gay male in the country. And in Nigeria nobody would really care about whether he was really gay or not because of his feminine looks and disposition. And if he were to take that look into the big screens like he was planning to, would he be able to stand firm under the crushing weight of the society’s criticism of him?

He said, ‘That’s a bridge I intend to cross when I get there. What’s really important now is for me to get there; let the tongues wag. I do not give a fuck about them. You’ll see for yourself that I have it in me.’

Thankfully, it was a Saturday, and all the hot women of the Island would be coming out to have their hair and their faces done for the following week, so the place was packed to the brim with gossiping women who had come to have their hair done, their nails fixed and lacquered, and receive the pampering spa treatments that left them glowing for their men, and their women. For everything had a price here.

Then Phoenix later stepped into the main parlor to work, with its pink leather chairs, hidden lights that made everything to sparkle, elaborate beauty equipment which the sexy male employees used on the women, and many of the women were receiving facials in tiny cubicles, with the guys using magnifying glasses to see every perceived imperfection in the complexions of the women and fixing them up. He was looking very slender and very beautiful, and also very flawless in his black attire. A hush seemed to descend on the room as he walked in, and there was expectancy in the air, like a hum in the cold, heavy air. He moved gently towards the chair on which reclined a woman who was a top executive in one of the top firms in VI. The hand he held out to her looked slender and ended in long tapering nails that had been painted a nude shade of nail polish.

His brown gaze shifted from the woman to the faces that were staring around him, and he felt them all being roped one by one. His eyes searched through their expensive couture for something he craved, and he could see that they were positively stunned at the sight of him. With a shy, tentative smile, he told the woman that he was sorry for having to keep her waiting, and he could feel necks almost cracking as they strained to catch every word. He could see Lawrence too was looking a little stunned, a hair brush held aloft in one hand, his body still and unmoving.

Phoenix knew that he had won; Lawrence would help him in whatever way that was needed.

That evening, as they reclined together in the living room, with plates of fried yams and vegetable stew before them for their attention, Lawrence flashed a dazzling smile through his cosmetically whitened teeth.

‘Chief Derek will be coming around this evening, and he knows the man that owns the famous Ethnicity Studios,’ he said, full of happiness. ‘I will try and pitch in a word or two for you, but you have to promise me that you will be on your best behavior, that you intend to do whatever it takes to achieve what you want, even if it means that you have to dance naked like an ape for him and his wife while they have sex in their room.’

Phoenix understood, for he knew that beneath the politely couched terms, Lawrence expected him to do whatever it took, that he had to score with Chief Derek when the man came around. And when the man finally came in his chauffeur-driven Toyota car from Okota where he’d gone to transact some business, Phoenix really studied the man for the first time. He knew that the man was loaded with juice, money that he spilled into the political game where he was a high player, a big wig who was good at making things happen the way he wanted them to. He was forty-nine, lacked the beer gut sported proudly by the average Nigerian man of his age who took such to be the sign of affluence, and he was perfectly groomed, with hair that was stylishly barbered and dyed, and aristocratic features.

The man had a very sterling reputation, one that he steadfastly maintained and upheld in the eyes of the public by presenting himself as the perfect husband to his wife, the perfect father to his children, and the perfect public gentleman who fought for his constituency with all his power. But behind closed doors, he was a thief who embezzled public funds and laundered them to foreign bank accounts in Switzerland, a bisexual who came around to have sex in the apartment Phoenix lived in with his benefactor and had sex with Lawrence two or three times a week before running back to the home front.

With eyes that were cold like that of murderer ready to devour his next victim, Phoenix watched Derek Ossai like a hawk, and the man in turn did get in a very good, long look at Phoenix when Lawrence had told him what they wanted from him. His presence really disturbed the peace of mind that Phoenix had because he could see what lay behind the man’s cool gaze; he knew what the man wanted. And he felt frightened, not because of the wrongness of it, but because it would be totally unfair for him to try to take what belonged to his benefactor.

Life is very unfair, a small voice hissed in his consciousness. Life is not fair; deal with it the way you see it and be done with it.

‘So you want to become an actor,’ Derek said.

Phoenix nodded, and he was thinking in his mind that this was just one man, right? So, what he wanted could be easily met and then they would be done with it. He would get what he wanted, and the man would also get what he wanted, and that was it. They would be done with each other. That was the rule of the game, and there was nothing to be done about it except to tow the line.

Derek threw his head back and laughed, and his strong throat muscles moved up and down with force of his laughter. ‘The man wey we dey talk about here na the man wey own Ethnicity Studios,’ he said, and there was the gutter man in his voice; gone was the polish of the public figure and in its place, was the gutter fighter that survived years of drudgery in Lagos Island when he was working as a book salesman. ‘He has a lot of directors in his pockets; he made stars like Liz Benson, Bette Soleye. There are so many people that would gladly eat his shit if he was to spew it out here right now. He is the most influential man in the industry, and I can get him to look at you. But the question is: are you ready to do what it takes?’

And so it was to be arranged, that Phoenix would get to meet the persons that would really catapult him into stardom if he had the skill and the talent and the good luck to survive where so many others had failed dismally. Phoenix knew that one day he may have to pay for this favor; soon, the good man with the four beautiful kids and the adoring public would turn to him.

One week later, Phoenix received a printed script which was delivered to him by Derek’s chauffeur. He took the day off from work at the salon, went home, and then he sat down to read the manuscript. It was a very horrific story, about a woman who had gotten her children with the help of voodoo, and one of the twins, a boy, had been dedicated to the goddess for the entire duration of his life. His service to the gods consisted of human sacrifice which he accomplished by working as a stripper-dancer in a club, feeding the unholy fantasies of the people that were out in the night for the good life of the night, and then smiting them down when they were in bed with their women, their whores. It was a story with a very tragic ending, because, in the end, both the woman and her children had to die. Then, the sacrifice she had made to get them would have all been for nothing since she was to lose all in the end.

Phoenix was touched by the tragedy of the story, at the desperation of a woman in the contemporary African society where a woman with no children in the home of her husband was considered to be nothing and had to sell her soul to the devil in order to be fulfilled. He knew that Derek had pulled strings so he could be auditioned for the role of the young voodoo boy, and he was ready for it.

He would do all it took to get that role. It was a game of blood, and he was ready to do what it took.