Learning New Words, III
“Superpower”
Read: Part II “Misogyny”
“What’s that? A book?”
“No, it’s a menu, for a restaurant in town. It’s small, and it’s beautiful. Rustic even. Rustic! It looks ah, antique-ish, I’d say? It’s beautiful. I mean, look at this!”
“So… that’s their… menu?”
“Yes.”
“You stole their menu.”
“No, I just borrowed it. They’ll have it back. Or I’ll just give them money. One of the two.”
“Jesus, Sandra. You’re silly.”
She’s laughing this entire time as Harry speaks. We’re together at my tiny apartment on a Tuesday, late afternoon, in the kitchen cooking (or more thinking about cooking) and Candy is a no-show. She had exams, she said, that she needed to read for. We were all in the middle of our semester, so we were free(ish). To the least, we weren’t reading for exams.
“I want us all to go. Harry! We’re going, right?”
“What you say, babe?”
“Stop calling me babe.”
“What if I call you babe and tell you we can go?”
Harry throws a smile at her. Sandra throws him a glare, steady and fierce, until he retreats with a laugh and turns his attention to me, right next to him.
“Yo, what’s going on with your, wait…” He reaches out and snatches the phone in my hand.
“Hey!” I snap, and my eyes and fingers become slaves, following the phone being twirled in front of my face.
“Give me my phone back!” I shoot my hand out and grab it. And my eyes move to where they belong. In front of a tiny screen, stalking Nina on Instagram.
“You don’t even talk to us when you’re around us, cause of that… that block of device.”
I hear what he’s said, but I have not listened. “Yeah, yeah.” I say. “That’s very cool.”
“We should go to cafe Helena then, yea?”
Still not listening. “Yeah, yeah, that sounds cool — yo, look at this. Does Nina look, I don’t know, thicker to you?”
I push my phone to his face and he moves away from it, like it’s an insect. “Dude, I don’t want to stare at women on the internet so…”
Sandra catches the trail-off pretty quick and says mid-chuckle. “Really?”
Harry keeps his face to me and doesn’t turn around. “It’s my excessive loyalty to you, what can I say?” Then he mouths out to me, ‘You’re stupid,’ and flashes a thumbs up to me. He finally turns back to Sandra and whispers some things to her. Her face changes a couple times. She bites her lip, maintains that frown, pulls back and tries to smack Harry, who dodges really quickly, laughing.
“So you two, you’re like a thing now?” I ask them as they fool around.
Sandra looks at me. “Yep. We’re a thing now.”
I look at them, and it boggles my mind. One of them looks like she wants to kill the other, and the other looks like he just wants to play pranks. So much conflict between them.
I look back down to my phone and stare at Nina’s IG for a while, going off on a tangent of online memes, before finding myself on her IG again.
I can vaguely pay attention to things happening around me. Sandra and Harry still playing. They ask me something, I say yes. The net becomes bad at a point and I feel cold, like a breeze is on me, but my head’s too engrossed in Nina’s apparently new blog, and in particular her ‘Beta male ex,’ blog post, for me to really pay attention. The cold feeling goes away after a while though.
The blog title sticks. “The types of men you want to avoid, from experience.” With the first subtitle being the ‘Beta male’ ex thing. And it’s clearly about me. I know it’s about me.
Beta male? I don’t think I am a beta male. Am I?
“What?” I hear. I look up.
“What’s that?” I say.
Harry’s face is directly in my face, inquisitive. “You said something about beta something,” he says and moves his face back and the lighting is brighter than expected; it burns my eyes. I look away from Harry and I look around. We’re seated around some somewhat long table, I notice everything around him is different.
“Did we… move?” I ask him.
Sandra jumps up from her chair. “Aha! Pay up! I told you he had no idea what he was doing.”
“Damn it, man.” Harry moves back and takes a seat across the chair from me. Sandra is seated on the chair adjacent from him.
“Really?” he asks me as he removes Ksh. 200 from his pocket and places it on the table. Sandra picks it up and puts it in her purse, already on top of the table. “Your phone owns you that much?”
I look around. We must be in some cafe, I gather. A small one. We’re on first floor by I can see the door to exit from here. There’s a TV blaring right behind me. To my left is a small brown cabinet, and I can see other menus on there like the one Sandra had. I look around, and the place feels ancient, but in a good way. It looks like the taverns in Skyrim.
“This place makes me feel like I’m in 1850’s England,” I say. “Where is this?”
“Guess, man. Try guess tuko wapi,” Harry says, and his face screams mischief.
I look around. Never been here. Such a quaint place. Rustic even. Feels like I had been thrown back in time. Rustic. That word pops out in my thoughts. Sandra had mentioned it before.
“Is it the cafe you suggested at home? Ah, wait… Cafe something… Cafe… Helena?”
“Yes!” Sandra jumps up again in excitement. “Two for the win.” She looks at Harry and rubs her thumb to her first and index finger. “Pay up.”
Harry does so again, reculantly, with the same amount of money.
“Oi, you cost me money, man. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
“You guys bet on me knowing if I was coming here and if I knew where here is? That’s kinda sucky, man.”
“Yea, yea, you and Candy are married to your phones. That’s also sucky. For you, mostly. You deserve each other.”
A voice next to me says, “Ah, no thank you, I’m already married to my phone.”
I look to my right and Candy is seated there, also glued to her phone. She looks up as I look at her, and she smiles. I feel weird, and it takes a bit of time for me to think of smiling back, but Harry is already talking to her, and talking fast.
“I’m telling you, things are stacking up towards straight-up conquest from the Chinese.”
What?
“What, what?”
That was Harry’s voice. I look across me and both Harry and Candy are looking at me. I might have said that ‘what’ loudly.
“No. Harry, you’re talking about conquest in 2018. It sounds like a conspiracy theory.” Candy says.
“No, it’s not. It’s not! Look, I explained a bit of it to Candy, I don’t know why she’s so obstinate — ”
“No, I am not!”
“ — so now I will explain it you. So listen closely.”
Candy and I lean forward. Sandra leans back. I make a note of that. Harry might be playing us for mischief. Sandra usually can tell.
“Since the early 2000s there been a short in the powers of the world. Right? The US had the solid seat as a superpower. Them and them only. Then China’s growth becomes unprecedented. Their economy boomed and they were selling to everyone in the world, right? And a lot of it seemed to be copy-cat products of other existing products, but hey, people bought what they sold.”
“So, skip a few years later, the US is in trouble, right? Politically divided from the top to the bottom, shenanigans everywhere. From Trump to identity politics to literally cutting diplomatic ties and policies with other countries. All that, when China is loaning money to everyone, even the US, like on… levels!”
“He’s so excited about this.” Sandra says, clearly amused.
“He’s always excited. That’s the problem right there.” I say.
Candy lets out a laugh, and Harry continues. “Chinese people are everywhere creating their micro-communities. We know in Kenya their numbers have very much increased. In Canada apparently there’s even a town that has a crisis. The houses in Vancouver have tripled, even more than tripled in value cause of the Chinese coming and buying houses above the rate so the entire area becomes expensive.”
“I get what you’re saying and I’m getting bored, what’s your point? In a sentence.”
“I’m not done yet — ”
“Goddammit!”
“Be patient, man. Last thing. They wanna pass a vote where their president can go on being president after his two terms are up. China’s already totalitarian. This is straight-up dictatorship cooking. And now they become a superpower, and start pushing totalitarian policies the same way the US pushed democratic policies worldwide. They’re expanding greatly. And democracy has had a rough few last years, it feels like it’s no longer a solution of governance”
“OK, your point, Tom Mboya*. What’s your point?” I ask him again.
Harry maintains a silence, turns to Candy and says with absolute confidence, “It’s a good idea to learn Chinese. I don’t know why Candy is doing French. It’s dumb. There’s no need. Put your money where the money will be in ten years. That’s all I’m saying.”
We all just stare at him, Candy and I somewhat shocked. Sandra with a smile suggesting she had known of this ending.
“That’s your big reveal? Even the conquer thing was a by the way?” I ask.
“Not a by the way. Just straight up evidence. The next 50 years might be the dominance of the East. And their ethics. And their political alignings. Why are you paying for French? ‘Cause it’s cool?”
I feel like defending her, but Candy answers immediately.
“Yes! That’s literally the reason.” She laughs, and it comes out like a melody. Sing song. “I’m not learning all this for world domination. It’s just fun to.”
“Oh.” Harry seems to have not considered that a possibility.
Sandra laughs out loud. “I told you to drop it, didn’t I?”
“Well,” Harry says, his eyes locked onto Candy. “You should learn Chinese for fun.”
Everyone’s chuckling now, and even Harry seems to be smiling. It feels good to be around these nutcases today. A waitress comes to our table and asks if we’re ready to order. Harry was, apparently, which is weird since he was the most engrossed in his stories. We have to take a few seconds to decide.
I look around the table. Harry’s already done something to incur Sandra’s wrath. Candy laughing as she watches the two of them. It feels good to be around these nutcases today. My eyes move to check my phone again, palmed in my right hand, but I think about it, and I pocket it. There’s no need for it, really. Times like these, it’s wiser to be present.
