MOONY IN MOMBASA

AN ABDRIDGED VERSION OF THE POSTSCRIPT TO MY SIXTIES BOOK, ‘YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE’ ME’, AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON AND AS AN AUDIO BOOK FROM AUDIBLE.

November 1969 was cold, so I took a weekend break in Mombasa - guaranteed sunshine and no time-change to upset your system. But I'd gone alone and got bored.

The end result was that round midnight on Saturday evening I found myself in a dingy tenement building somewhere in the old Arab quarter. It wasn't the sort of place you found for yourself; I was there because I'd drunk too much whisky and been persuaded by a Chinese girl that my evening needed a proper finale.

In the bar she'd introduced herself as Lolita and said, 'You and me making love. I drive you crazy.' Then she took me back to the tenement building and up an outside staircase to the second floor where she had a tiny room. She turned on the light and gestured towards the bed. 'Sit there, darling.'

I'd had too much to drink so I slumped down without a second invitation. She turned on the single light bulb and a gecko ran across the wall.

'I must paying landlord,' she told me. 'Not paying rent for ten days now. Fifty shillings please, darling. If not, landlord maybe come turn us out.'

I handed her fifty Kenyan shillings and thought, ‘This is a maximum hundred-shilling experience - that's half of it gone already.’

She went out of the room. There was a single bed and three feet of space. Bare floorboards, a wardrobe, a fluffy white rug, two pictures - one of Marlon Brando, the other of the Virgin Mary.

She came back and shut the door and I saw her face properly for the first time. Maybe half-Chinese, half-Arab, and early twenties. 'You want to see my wedding dress?'

I nodded, 'Why not? When are you getting married?'

She opened the wardrobe and pulled out a long white dress. 'Wedding not fixed yet, but still hoping.'  She looked sad. 'You want me put on wedding dress?'

It seemed to be what she wanted so with whisky-induced indifference, I nodded.

'That'll be fifty shillings extra,’ she said. ‘You pay now.'

The way things were going it would be another fifty shillings to make her take it off again, so I told her, 'Forget it. We'll do it as you are.'

'OK, darling.'

She didn't care, just got on with the business in hand, sat on the bed next to me and put her hand in my crotch.

I kissed her cheek.

'You like kissing?' she asked.

‘Sure,’ I told her, and pecked her cheek again.

'I don't usually kissing,' she explained. 'For kissing, I think fifty shilling extra.'

I was losing patience. 'Look, sweetheart, let's just screw. How much will that be?'

She pursed her lips and considered for a moment. 'I give you a nice blow job. How about that?'

'How much?'

'One hundred shilling.'

'That's ridiculous.'

'Eighty.'

'OK, eighty.'

It seemed best just to get on with it so I started unbuttoning her blouse.

'No, no, I do it,' she insisted. You take off own clothes.'

I got undressed to my underpants. She was slower than me but finally got down to her knickers, which stayed on. She stood directly in front of me and I took hold of the top of her panties. I thought she was going to stop me or suggest another surcharge, but she didn't; she let my fingers slip inside the elastic and I pulled gently downwards.

Underneath was a jockstrap clearly containing a trio of wrongly-sexed genitalia. Considering the modus operandi we’d just agreed upon, it didn’t seem to make much difference. And anyway, I’d half expected it, so I smiled.

She seemed put out, 'You not mind?'

I shrugged. 'We've come this far, why stop now?'

'But I not like man who not mind. Real man should mind very much. Real man would beat me for making fool of him. I think I prefer real man.'

I was getting bored with all this so I snapped at her, 'All right then, you silly cow, I'll beat you if that's what you want.' And I pushed her forwards on to the bed and laid a smart smack across her right buttock.

She spun herself round and sat up in a flash. 'You want beat me. That cost fifty shilling extra.'

I decided to abandon the whole project. I started to get dressed but she ran round me shouting, 'Mister, you make me undress, you make me shame. You pay.'

I guessed there might be someone unpleasant hanging round to deal with awkward customers so I gave her another fifty shillings.

'Not enough, not enough,' she yelled.

As I pushed past her to go out the door she screamed something in Arabic and a nasty-looking thug appeared in a white robe and a checkered headcloth. And he was holding a knife.

'Mister,’ he said, ‘You gonna pay three hundred shilling for my girl.'

I told him, ‘I don't have that much on me.'

Lolita screamed louder, ‘You make me undress, you make me shame.' And the unpleasant character in front of me waved his knife slowly from side to side.

Then, from across the passage came a crash and a door burst open - a superbly dramatic entry, worthy of a theatreful of applause. And jumping through the doorway, pulling up his trousers and zipping away his belongings, came Keith Moon.

He saw me cowering in front of the man with a knife and stopped dead. 'Blimey! Simon Napier-Bollocks. What are you doin' here?'

'Trying to leave,' I explained. 'But I haven't got the exit fee.'

There was a young girl hanging on to Keith but he brushed her aside like an insect, lifted his right arm straight up in front of him like a sword, and flung himself at the Arab with his fingers rigidly extended. 'You daftly-dressed bastard.'

The man was too surprised to move and Keith's hand hit him at the top of the throat.

Then we clattered down the outside staircase into the protective darkness of the tropical night and ran off in opposite directions, back to wherever we'd both come from.

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