SHE’S A BAND MANAGER

By Nyambura Mwangi

She’s got a fancy name everyone knows her by now. Something French like Genevieve or Angelique. (I mean it could just be simple like Juliette, but I am a little bitter and it is my story so tough luck for you). She works for a famous Kenyan music group now and I am honestly happy and proud of her. I think they’re called ‘The Noble Daniels’ or something like that. The name doesn’t ‘Eurythmics’ but I suppose you only get so many cool band names per millennia. She’s their Angelique but she will always be my Eva. My best friend, the first person I ever told about the voices in my head and she fell in love with one of them. My first muse, back when my biggest dream was to be a rock star.

I wanted to start a band in the early 2000’s in high school, when rock was truly rock, you know, pure and untainted by the pop influences that prevail today. It almost killed my mother when I told her about my great dream. The woman almost had a heart attack imagining the son she hoped would be something great like a judge might be distracted by a band playing the devil’s music (she saw me watching a Marilyn Manson video- there was no convincing her I wasn’t working for the antichrist). I almost died when she gave me a proper African-mother ass-whooping to get some sense back in me. It didn’t work but I never mentioned it again. My band had a good name too, I mean after rejecting Deviled Angels, Sick Puppies and several others, I finally had it: For Ever For Eva. Made sense to name my ‘child’ after my best friend.

I told her about it on a moonlit Saturday night, next to the Chemistry lab while everyone was watching a Tyler Perry movie in the entertainment hall. Then I kissed her and she kissed me back as ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ played in my head. It was so good, so perfect that we agreed it would never happen again. We would stay friends only because it was too big a risk going into a relationship with the chance that if it failed we would also lose our friendship. This is what made my Eva so special, she was the first woman I ever had a platonic friendship with. Well that and her infectious laugh, coupled with the fact that she sounded amazing doing backup vocals and playing bass as we did covers of Blink 182’s I Miss You and Nirvana’s Come As You Are.

Then the world got in the way, as it sometimes does and no matter how hard I tried to fight for us, one day she gave up. Life took the opportunity to happen and we drifted even further apart. I didn’t see her again until four years later but she still had that beautiful infectious laugh. It was never the same though and our band never got that platinum album we wanted. Angelique. I see her on Instagram happy, so happy I can almost hear that laugh coming off of the photos. I wish I could sing with her one last time. The world is very lucky to have her, but she will always be my Eva and I will always be her G.B. Forever.
For Eva