Were it not for K—, I would have approached that girl. She was pretty, with just the right amount of sass and child-bearing hips.

The president is back in my ear, telling young men to marry, but he is all the way there in State House. He doesn’t see what we see every day in the streets.

K— catches my eye, sees the reflection of the girl in my iris and guffaws. K— didn’t trust women. He said all they were after was a working man’s money. But what woman doesn't want a steady man and a good provider?—which is what K— was.

But K— is also a great economist, the sort of talent found on the rota of the World Bank. He runs me through the numbers: date night, minimum 3K; fare from her place to yours 1,500; miscellaneous Ksh, 2500 and drinks on an open tab, because baddies believe alcohol costs less, for the same amount of time, than a psychiatrist.

The math, according to K—, was wanting, the kind of numbers that went from great to grating. Zebras may be beautiful, but it is the donkey which is taken home. I am nodding my head; he is some sort of black Yoda, and I an unassuming Padawan. There are other ways of dealing with a high libido. You could just pay for it. And nobody is watching.

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I would like to say I dismissed that conversation. I'd love to tell you that Tr Monica, my Sunday School teacher, who was also seeing Davy the choirleader and son of the pastor, was perched on my shoulder reminding me of the vagaries of this world and how a young man can keep his ways pure. But lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. K— knows a bit too much on the greasy side of Kanairo (sides that maybe the Magical Kenya board would prefer you not see); and he was now laying it on thick, talking about do this with a baddie, don’t do that, tell her this, don’t tell her like that, and I was minded to recite his gospel, for this was a man who had been with more women than he had fingers and toes.

But he could smell the doubt on me so K— fished out his phone, put his pattern password, then PIN password and a fingerprint and welcomed me to the promised land. And because he was the kind of man he was, he showed me how to navigate, and even sent a lion—or maybe it was gold?—which is a token for an amount, say Sh5. Then you ask the model to perform an act, only they are not really acting.

Later while Ubering home I’d go to the platform’s page and find out that one can be a King, “the highest tipper in a model’s room within the last 12 hours of streaming” and it completely made sense why men are starved of affirmations, these emasculated, low-value kings, and why prostitution cures it: they tell you what you want to hear, how you want to hear it. I created an account with the username “KingEdd” but it had already been taken, as was KingEd1, KingEd2, KingEddThe1…what I am trying to say is there are many kings called Ed out here.

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K—, is running me through the machinations of the chat. My mouth is forming an ‘O’ and it feels like I have been living in a different Nairobi, a sheltered Nairobi, the kind of Kenya that does not exist in the president’s mind when he talks about a “New Singapore.” K— is hysterical, shows me a few TikTok and Instagram influencers there, and says this is how people make money in Nairobi. Umekuja Nairobi kutafuta pesa ama kazi? He asks.

He insists that most of these influencers are not living the life they are living, that they are selling their bodies for cheap, that they are all faking it, a story as old as well: prostitution. Still, they are buying fancy, expensive GLE cars which must be good for the economy, or something. But these cars are only driven without number plates, and I never see them on Thika Rd, or Mombasa Rd, where the proletariat and wananchi wa kawaida are, which to me feels like a waste of swag. But that’s just me.

As these things go, we talk about that TikToker, something Gabriella, whose nudes leaked. We admire her mental strength, and we note that the price of ring lights has been steadily rising in the economy. She says brands pay well for promotion. We can see why.

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K— shows me other sites, shows me other influencers, how to pay for it, whatever “it” is in your mind, for less than you would book a bus ticket to Mombasa. All I am thinking about is my sisters, who are in campus now, and how they get by when I am not in the picture. I want to think their parents instilled moral values in them, and the world, especially the bad part of it, sensed that and left them alone. But I am nobody’s fool.

I wonder about the girl from earlier. To think that some man out there would spend 7K just to take that apparition on a date, while K and I would meet her on StripChat and negotiate her down to a miserly 1K, because who am I if not @KingggEdd? And we each would convince ourselves that we’ve got our money’s worth, because isn’t life just an exercise in self-deceit?

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