30/01/2019
Ten years ago I went to interview a famous guy. I was just starting out, just winging it, so I was intimidated. Those are the days I wrote my interview questions down; safe questions that would not offend him. I wanted to impress him. I wanted him to like me. To validate him. To say, “his forehead distracted me initially, but we had a good interview.”
We met at Cedars, his local on Lenana road. After lunch. Real classy guy, the type who smelled good, spoke well and had the right titration of arrogance. He was a dandy; clothes fell on his bones well, they resigned to his structure.
I was nervous, you’d think I was there to ask for his hand in marriage and I only had a goat as dowry. He had a loose gait, sat back with a confident smile. Of all the things I remember clearly that day were his shoes, they seemed to say, “this is my moment.” They were brown like the ones above but not quite. But the two shoes could have been first cousins. The two shoes could have been circumcised together.
He told the barman, “Makau, can I please get a Fernet Branca.” Then turned to me and asked, “would you like one?” I had never heard of Fernet Branca. It sounded like an expensive brand of lingerie. Or something that you couldn’t leave in the sun for too long.
I wasn’t about to ask him what that was. Are you mad? I was a “senior writer” (oh titles!) for a men’s magazine, I was expected to know what that was. Plus, remember I wanted to be liked. I wanted him to find me cool and bohemian like he was. So I said, “sure, I’ll have one” like a spy in a movie.
The Fernet Branca ended up tasting like tar. (Great for digestion, though).But I learnt something new. Sometimes you will learn something new from a man who wears better shoes than yours.
