If...

It is not that difficult to develop a rabid hatred for another person. All they have to do - all he has to do - is rub you the wrong way, and we are off to the races. There is this character who has become quite my mortal enemy. The life of the party, or so he thinks - truthfully, he is quite the jack ass, all teeth and loud noises best confined to Ngong Road's best watering holes. He is recently come upon an opportunity to make himself an ass on a global scale - and boy has he taken to it with an ever-ballooning gusto.

I sense your hesitation about whether I am justified in hating him with what can only be described as a pathological desire to see him dancing on top of a thousand knife tips. Barefoot. Until he decided to play one too many head-games with yours truly, life was right as rain. The conviviality of the acquaintance was acceptably informal, though not informal enough for certain details to be disclosed about ones occupation, family-less situation, or affairs of the heart and of lesser places than the heart. A certain amount of respect was proffered and expected and, for the most part, this social pathogen was forthcoming.

Now it is many moons later and his death may yet come at the demented hands of a Citi Hoppa driver, the pointy end of a simi wielded by a mungiki madman bent on revenge or, my personal favourite, the rock-hard end of a rungu flung with zeal and accuracy by a recently-initiated Maasai moran out to prove himself in mortal combat. In ordinary circumstances a majority of the wage-earning nation of white-collar drones will pretty much let anything slide. Jibes, snipes, minor humiliations...in the desire to get along in order to go along, we will forgive much. But even dweebs, dorks and sundry losers have a point beyond which their spines will stiffen, their fists will toughen and their will will be imposed. It is the foolhardy who will refuse to acknowledge that he has hopped, skipped, jumped and flew way, way over that proverbial line that one should never cross with another.

Sadly I find myself in the unenviable position of having to impose my will. It will end in tears, more likely his than mine. And yet it could have been avoided, if only he did not take the excuse of being intoxicated to ridiculous heights. We may not be civilised, but in our convenient pretenses we have abjured alcohol-fuelled lunacies and acted as men with the capacity to hold our liquor in the face of temptations or Acts of God.

And so I now have a target for my frustrations. I will take out my anger on him. I may even reacquaint myself with finer points of operating a burdizzo. The irony is, of course, that I waste my time plotting intricate methods of causing this moron pain when I should really forget him, forget the slight, banish him from my universe and move on. After all the vessel that contains the hate is sooner or later consumed by it. (I can feel the bile in my mouth.) If life were easy...