But that Bonnie lass and her heart of glass
could not hold a candle to bumming around

The winter air in Kenya actually smells like cold dew in mid-fall in Ohio. There could be trick or treaters dressed up like Brutus Buckeye, for all my nose knows. I say, good.

But I was in downtown Nairobi before, which does not smell like Halloween or Thanksgiving or that girl junior year who dated me in the fall and dropped me like a sack of rocks in the winter. Downtown Nairobi smells like dust and armpits and Mos Eisley. Me and a reporter have agreed to leave our internet café and have a drink.

“I was thinking of going to get my jumper,” he says.

“I was thinking we’d go get those drinks.”

“I will go quickly and get my jumper.”

“You goddam Africans. You don’t know from cold.” Not a drop drank, and the old reliable You goddam Africans has made its appearance. Promising. He runs upstairs for his jacket and we walk.

“Ooh, Hulk.” I say as we walk past a posterboard for the upcoming movie.

“You want to see The Hulk?”

“I want very much to see The Hulk, but it’s impossible to figure out when it’s coming out here.” Where the posterboard would say 6-20-03 in the US, this one just says COMING SOON.

“I want to see the new movie with Mr. Bean.”

“Shut up. You do not want to see the movie with Mr. Bean.” We are still only just walking up the stairs to The Long Bar. Put a beer on a stick out in front of me, and you still get 90% of the drinkin’ speakin’ that usually follows. The brain starts firing endorphins long before what my nephew wonderfully describes as “Daddy Juice”—kid had comic timing at age four, swear to God—starts soaking the old cranial sponge.

“I don’t like Mr. Bean, but I like the actor.”

“You damned idiot. I’m an American. Don’t talk to me about Mr. Bean. A Brit laughs at Mr. Bean, an American asks what the hell this boring crap is.”

“Yes, but I think the British sense of humor is more” I can’t think of the word here, and I don’t want to put in his mouth, because it was the right word. It suggested witty, thoughtful, dry, “than the American sense of humor.”

"You’re right. But Mr. Bean is supposed to be idiotic, yet he refuses to be crude. Americans understand that if you’re going to be idiotic then you go all the way and be crude. Have the kid mount the pie. Just keep make Belushi scream ‘Holy Shit!’ again and again. Don’t just let Jerry hit Tom in the in his blue tookus with a driving iron. Hit him with the driving iron so that he goes running screaming and gets his head stuck in a beehive. Then have Tom run screaming from the bees and hide in a bush. Then have Jerry ride in on a lawnmower which shreds both bush and-"

He’s watching the TV. “Pete Sampras.”

“Tennis also sucks. Here okay to sit?”

“Let’s get a seat by the window. Maybe we will see a mugging.”

“If we see a mugging out front I’m not leaving.”

“This used to be not such a good area. There would be lots of family muggings.”

“So what, like mom and pop and son and daughter all jump out from behind a trashcan and mug you?” He laughs, but tells me No, it’s usually just brothers who mug. Too bad, I would have actually like to have seen that. We order two Tuskers.

“What do you drink?”

“I drink bourbon. But it is no fun looking for it here.”

“What?”

“Bourbon.”

“B-A-R-”

“B-O-U-R-B-O-N. Brown. Whiskey is here in the middle. Scotch whiskey on the left, and bourbon is on the right. It’s very hard to find here. I saw some for the first time the other night night, at a bar called Havana. So I started out drinking it the other night, and then the bad things happened. What do you like?”

“I like brandy.” I forget the brand.

“Good god.”

We toast two Tuskers, we talk plenty of politics, get two more Tuskers, go our separate ways, vow to get up today and kick the good ass.