… It was a pool party.

And they were there.

Men who have achieved.

Money, power, and fame.

Men in their prime who tell time to hold still since they have refused to age and it grudgingly obeys in detente and in temporaneous.

They dress young, they dance young, they act young.

They are current on all fronts.

Most of them married with children but mentally and emotionally single.

At this party they threw in a high-brow residence in an exclusive neighbourhood in Ikoyi there was an abundance of food, drinks, drugs and real youth.

The youth came exclusively from the girls that were in attendance.

Girls in their late teens and early twenties.

Well spoken and extensively traveled.

Daughters of the materially blessed.

All of them students.

All of them naked.

Some were in the swimming pool, some at the bar, some danced under the cabana, others were hobnobbing with the swimming trunks-clad men at various places in the specially lit pool area that stood under the starry night sky.

And I sat with one of them.

She was caramel smooth, finely contoured, delicately featured and doe-like.

She was twenty going on twenty one.

And a sophomore at Babcock University.

To every question I asked, she took a drag from the reefer in her hand, blow out the smoke through her mouth and nostrils, took a sip from her glass of Hennessey and coke on ice before she responded.

Her voice was sweet.

And her smile was rapturous.

“I heard students need permission to leave your school. How could you get out this late and stay overnight?”

“We have our ways.”

“We?”

“Yeah all of us.”

“From Babcock?”

“Not all. Some from Covenant, Redeemers, Madonna, ABUAD, Pan African and stuff.”

“No Unilag or UI?”

“They ain’t boujee.”

“Boujee?”

“Yeah. They are crass. Men like you guys don’t want to roll with local cats like those right?”

I looked at her silently as she took a drag from her reef.

The aroma assailed it. It was caustic yet not aggravating.

“What’s that?”

“Comorado.”

“What’s that?”

She laughed.

“It’s good stuff. Hits you slowly and then make you soar like Superman.”

I looked around and saw the girls doing one thing or another in their nudity.

She was staring at me.

“Is this your first party?”

I nodded.

“No wonder you are asking all these hang questions.”

“Why do you do this?”

“I’m young. I need to live life before it becomes to serious and I have to be all grown up.”

“But why the drugs?”

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“Because this is how we roll. Everyone has their poison. If you not on reef, you do codeine or cocaine or heroin or speed or AZT or ecstasy or rophynol or fentanyl or meth or oxy or worst case you inhale glue and get your high.”

I stared at her as she inhaled and exhaled languidly.

“Why the parties?”

“You get your hit for free here. You have fun. You make good money.”

“But for you to attend those schools you must be rich.”

“My parents are not me.”

“But they give you money.”

“They pay the tuition and all. Not like they can give me a million in cash.”

“Do you get a million here?”

“Well, two or three parties can make me that.”

“Aren’t you afraid of running into your Dad at places like this?”

“Naaaa… my dad is too square and busy but even if he is not then it is his problem, after all, he came here for what I came here for so he can’t tell me nothing.”

I fell silent and watched her inhale and exhale smoke.

“But you know, your folks put you in schools like that to protect you?”

“To protect me?”

“Yes.”

“They are too busy to even bother.”

“No, they are not.”

“Yes, they are. They think the school will be both my teachers and my parents.”

“I think they are just worried about you getting corrupted.”

“I was balling like this under their nose and they didn’t even notice. Funny thing is that even the innocent Jane get influenced in school, so what was the use of all the headache of keeping us locked up in all these secondary schools that front as universities.”

“They did it out of love and with the belief that those schools are way better than the public ones.”

“Well, they fucked up.”

“Fucked up?”

“Is this an interview or what?”

“No, I am just intrigued.”

“And I am horny.”

I fell silent.

She dragged, exhaled, took a drink from her glass, sucked on one of the ice cubes in her mouth and asked in a whisper.

“Are you going to do anything about it?”

Written by Jude Idada