Member-only story
Psychology — Family — Money
How To Find Meaning
Letting go of who you were to become the person you need to be
This piece contains strong language
“Get that gun out of my face you fucking Nazi!” I remember howling, half-naked and sweating gin in Freeman’s dim, sulfur-lit Lagos apartment — a place that smelled like diesel smoke, black tea, and the last gasps of a dying empire.
Freeman, my best friend, muse, and talent agent, was a 55-year-old American who spent his childhood in Guam before becoming a punk rock skinhead in the 1980s. After a stint in Monaco selling yacht magazines to the rich, he decided to settle down in Lagos, teaching kids for two bucks an hour.
His choice of course.
If anyone knew how to find a job in this hellscape, it was him.
He was naked again, naturally
Slouched over like a broken puppet, fiddling with his deranged cathedral of Rolexes spread across a stained Ottoman divan like cursed relics. His gray hair clung to his skull in mad tufts, his penis a scarred, flaccid worm swinging between his thighs like something that had seen war and barely survived.
“I told ya, Peta. No peeking at my code,” he growled through the smoke, pupils like dynamite…
