Guilty of Innocence

By Jake Breck

Campus life, college humor, some idiocy, sensibilities and sensitivity; elements of love - as well, and... a good laugh all through...

His is a hazy world, understandable only through his eyes. Fresh in the university, everything is bewildering, and he tries to make a bewildering sense of it; sorting the issues out into a set of a life system that is strange to us - certainly it must be strange to him too, though he tells it all in a way that is casual about it, as though nothing is amiss. But believe it or not, it does not appear strange to him. To him, it is only bewildering, extremely bewildering, as he strives to achieve the 'cool'.

"...Guilty of Innocence is in the order of Portnoy’s Complaint and Fools Paradise. Its aim: to give them people a chance to relive it again, to rejuvenate the past." But eventually, it is a mix-up against cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana and drugs, etc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781105643996

Book preview

Guilty of Innocence

Guilty of Innocence/Jake Breck

"It was incredible. I got lost between heaven and earth –so high in the air – and when I landed she was a step ahead. And the shock of it threw me many paces behind; I could not remember we were not even acquaintances. I don’t know what froze me. It must have been the way she looked at me. There was every question in her face and huge eyes, as she took it. She wasn’t as scared as I was…"

GUILTY OF INNOCENCE

Published by Lulu.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

GUILTY OF INNOCENCE

A Lulu book/ published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2012 by Silas Wainaina

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

ISBN: 978-1-105-64399-6

There is nothing more frightful than Ignorance in action – JOHANN WOLFANG VON GOETHE.

Dedication

In this awkward way I pay tribute to my roots, to them people and to my indecision – WITHOUT IT THIS BOOK WOULD NOT BE.

To the girls I had numerous opportunities to love and did not – I love you.

And to Soni, I wish to meet you again.

Foreword

You get into the world it’s clear daylight

But immediately you are staring at a bleak sight

Makes you long so much for

That innocence

That makes one addict to

Newness.                                            

- From The Wake Of Dawn

***

I found Dan in Room 23 of Hall 4. He was on a chair in the balcony. There was peanut crusts strewn all over and two empty Iceberg cans inside a bucket of his which he’d turned into a dustbin (of course I didn’t know the bucket was his, but certainly the dustpan full of crushed cigarette butts wasn’t). Another unopened can stood on the other chair and another one was in his hand on the way up to his mouth. Sure, he did take that swig and when he put the can down on the chair, I too discovered I was in the room. He had.

It was not a normal meeting of strangers. I was hotheaded myself and his cheerful intoxicated self spurred me on; it was like the meeting of old friends. We shook hands and heated up a great deal. He shared a bit of the peanuts and offered me a few leaves of muguka. I munched the peanuts and contemplated another swig, in which time he discovered that we were of the same tribe and he erupted up saying "ni msapere, ni msapere (in Gikuyu) – which of course means it’s a Mugikuyu". I marveled. I had never had myself celebrated because I was of this tribe. I’d never seen it before.

I gave up the temptation for another swig of the Iceberg, lest my father should get the scent of it or lest I got drunk and it showed. Not that I feared but I didn’t contemplate him finding that of me - though of course I was not a drunk. Fact is, the whitish spirit that tasted between a Sprite and a Crest and abominable, when it had gone into the guts, the taste came back up. And it made me sick. I braved it though and maybe I winced, but Dan was probably too drunk to tell that I was a novice.

I learned that only one of the room-mates had not shown up. One was and he was out. Out where? - I guess I wondered. Lots of places, as I was to find out.

I left. I’d come back later.

***

Jack was different. He was six feet and a head shorter than Dan. He was more heavier looking in a plump kind of a way though in real sense Dan was broader and the heavier. But they were well matched – while Dan had the space and the drive- and momentum- Jack compensated his lack with wit and cleverness, like a street kid (though he was not. He was ghetto). They told a tale of a brawl that happened a few days before I packed into campus. They were drunk of course with Dan much more drunk. He swung an arm which Jack caught and bit and refused to let go. Dan had to push him towards the balcony. Jack caught a hold of the leg of one of the double decker beds and angled aside as Dan ploughed on spurred by momentum and drunkenness. He hit the bolted glass balcony doors and they swung outwards in a resounding boom! The doors didn’t fit exactly ever afterwards.

They’d come from the same school and they shared jokes we could not join in. Dan always said to Jack when their turns to wash crockery at the washing room coincided (Jack was in another room); so Dan would turn aside from washing a pan and look at Jack and say

what a nice ass – which indeed he did have. (And with a lot of everybody else around, too). Of course no one laughed, they thought it queer.

And jack would respond with a more queery pert of his own.

So I came and met these two splendid fellows, and Onesie. He was the room mate that was in and out the day I reported.

***

Onesimus was a cheerful chap who I was joke-fully inclined to think of as one-arse-mess- after a character in a Meja Mwangi novel who had been thus aliased by another character. But this Onesimus was not like that other Onesimus. He was no mess at all. He was the one I found in the room when I came back with my luggage a week later. I felt much more free with him than I felt with Dan and I confided to him more than I would to a brother – of course in a jovial way (and he encouraged me in a jovial tone and an ever present smile and lots of grins). And he liked that word – jovial. And he was jovial too. Gals took to him like moths to light. He was a plenty honest lot and pious in a not so pious way. And a model for any self-respecting sober person – even myself until I lost the little sobriety I had. You could precisely describe him with a measure of these words: thrifty, ribald, honorable, and no philanderer.

And he was a splendid fellow, too.

He showed me the mess and I had my first Ronaldo, or number nine - a plate of ugali and vegetables which cost nine bob.

The next day I had my first tour of the place. And I liked it, except that I felt slightly inadequate. Onesie had on a pair of brown tailored trousers and a white shirt. I had a black pair of jeans and a red shirt. He had leather open-shoes and I had them of fabric. And we walked in the sun, shirts un-tacked. Girls passed by, their chins on their boys‘chests. And there was a lot of faded jeans and white sneakers that passed by. I was in the wrong company, I felt. And if not I was wrongly dressed.

***

It took time for me to discard my old clad. Not really old, but out of fashion in the new sense of things, of the surroundings and of me. The trousers in my wardrobe went first – the next time I went home I carried them away (was more use there – in the shamba) and left me the black pair of jeans and another one I bought. The shoes went next. I bought leather flat boots and a pair of white sneakers. The old pair of black shoes I charitably gave away to a deaf-mute. The