Thats what friends are for

As part of the activities leading up to my girls' wedding, Goldie hosted her shower. Is a bridal shower meant to be a surprise for the bride? We initially intended this one to be one I think, but the bride ordinarily has been described ‘difficult to plan with’ and in the weeks building up to her wedding she was beginning to be downright slippery, so we had to tell her in order to consult with her calendar. Nowadays it’s kind of expected to have a bridal shower, I should ask Princess what the practice was back in her day. I must confess I have never really enjoyed the bridal showers I have attended, all two of them. One was at a fast food joint on Allen about 4 years ago and the other was actually at my house about two years ago. I left both with the impression that somehow we all really weren’t being our real selves. I know everyone affects some level of ‘forming’ once the are in the company of others, and the less familiar you are with these people, the greater the level. When planning the shower, Goldie and I decided that to really enjoy ourselves it would be best to have as small a group as possible and we should have it at someone’s place. The guest list (is that what people at a bridal shower are called, guests?) including the bride and organizers was 8. (I have often wondered why it is that only girls attend bridal showers. If it’s the bride’s friends that organize and attend, why leave out her guy friends? I would like my guy friends to attend my shower, all organizers take note!) We didn’t want the conventional Nija shower where participants (!) drop 2k eat, BS each other and leave, we wanted it to be all about the bride. We pooled money to enable us do the following: get a nice wedding gift and organize correct food. I must admit that liver fail me at the thought of hiring a male stripper! We had initially planned that it would be a sleep over with the option to maybe go listen to a live band at Thistle Bar, but the bride couldn’t take out the time(!!!) so we planned to be together for 4 to 6 hours. So what will we do apart from eat and get all up in the bride’s business? Goldie suggested getting a movie and having music. The music for me was a given, but the movie … I wasn’t sure. Then it occurred to me KARAOKE!!! I know someone who has PlayCDG installed on his laptop and I was sure he would loan it to me (he did). Once I mentioned karaoke, everyone was like ‘yeah’! Goldie was a little worried about my plans for providing the music. For her, music is played on your car/house deck, you need to own like a gazillion cd’s, iPods are for ‘personal’ consumption/enjoyment of music and mp3’s are … Martians?!? I told her to relax let the Funkmaster handle the music. The grub. I didn’t know any caterers (I am not really good with that kind of stuff) I wanted to order take-out from Chinaville (best Chinese in Lagos period) Goldie was like ‘lai lai’ (never). Her argument, it’s bad enough we are not cooking the food; if we are having the shower in a home setting we should have home food. Me I was game, seeing that the last time I ate anything cooked was when I was on vacation. She suggested we ask the lady who runs the canteen at Resourcery. Let me make a declaration right here, right now – you haven’t lived till you pay a visit to the Resourcery canteen. Her jollof rice is like party rice (you know the one cooked over a wood fire in a huge iron pot, which will take 5 days of continuous soaking to wash), her moin-moin (steamed bean cake)is just divine, and a friend swears by her ‘asaro’ (yam pottage not porridge). As with all Yoruba cooking I must warn you the food might be just a bit oily, my igbo brothers and sisters (parents, etc) refer to us as ‘Ofe Mmanu’, I am told it means ‘people who cook oily soup’! They also refer to us more often as ‘ngbati ngbati’ people. ‘Ngbati’ means when in Yoruba and it seems our conversation is often punctuated with the word hence the name. Before I forget, I have noticed that people have started using ‘bay leaf’ a lot for making jollof rice. Princess has made a mean spaghetti sauce and for as long as I can remember, it was a treat to find the leaf in your serving (I don’t know why!) She told me it’s a good seasoning for sauces; anyway it also adds a little extra oomph! to jollof rice. So Goldie hooked us up with the Resourcery woman for the food and we got ‘Saheeto’ (small chops king) to bring small chops (snails and prawns). We made no plans for chicken on the menu! We bought drinks and planned to raid Goldie’s husbands bar for the strong stuff.

Saturday is here, I got to Goldie’s place for 2, so I could set up all my gear (na laptop, projector and deck o!) Shower was supposed to start at 4. The bride arrived fashionably late but still got in before everyone, (Nigerians have no sense of time whatsoever). On came the water works when she saw all we had planned. Everything kicked in like 6 and we had a rocking time, the karaoke was the hit of the shower. You know everyone has that little part in them that wants to be singer, and somehow we all just reached in and let that part of us loose. We had good singers (mistaken for the original artists) and awful singers whose appeal was just that – how awful they were. I think it helped that most of us were really good friends, the others just flowed with the vibe. After murdering all the songs on the karaoke list at least 3 times each, I kicked in my carefully prepared mp3 play list. At one point I was concerned for Goldie and how all this noise we were making would affect her relationship with her neighbors. We had to force everyone to the ‘buffet’. I have never seen people eat so fast! Before you could say ‘jack’ someone was screeching in the mic and everyone was getting their groove on.

We had the traditional ‘talk show’ segment of the shower with the bride in the hot seat and us asking all manner of questions - ‘how did ya’ll meet’?, ‘are you a moaner, commentator or silent observer’?The latter question got us talking about orgasms and one of the girls stated she wasn’t ‘orgasmic’. Out came the specs and pipe. All sorts of positions were suggested (I had to take notes at one point, although I am celibate now, yup it’s a long story), oral sex, even solo and mutual pleasuring. She had tried everything, although she said she hadn’t tried having someone pleasure her (you can guess what must be ranking very high on her list of to-do’s!). Would you look at the time, it’s almost 11 pm! Out came the wedding gift, and on came the water works, then we did a finale – That’s what friends are for’. After many hugs and kisses and group hugs, everyone left for home and I stayed to help Goldie get her house in order. I got home way past midnight, tired and just knowing it would ache to move in the morning. I went to bed with a smile on my face, I had finally attended a shower I enjoyed.