Runs girl 6B

Johnny is… Well, first, Johnny is not Nigerian. He’s Lebanese. He’s a shorty, stout, 40-something year old Lebanese man so in denial of his balding head that he wears what remains of his hair in a long shinny mass pulled back into a juvenile ponytail.
I met Johnny at a party he had supplied drinks for. That’s what he does; he sells booze. He’s actually like the biggest importer of French wine into Nigeria but you wouldn’t know it from the way he dresses like a small boy, in his baggy jeans and football club jersey tops, and from the way he behaves like a tout. In fact, he’s a tout.
Johnny is as much a Naija boy as any Lagosian born into anIsale-Ekofamily. His parents, he claims, were born in Nigeria, as were his grandparents. But it’s Johnny, you can never tell when he’s joking and when he’s been serious. He once told me he was dating Babangida’s daughter, only for him to have forgotten completely about it after I’d spent a whole week telling my friends how I knew Babangida’s daughter’s boyfriend and how he was Lebanese. Anyway, I met Johnny at this party about four years ago. I was there as an usher.
He was pouring wine into glasses and placing them on trays for the ushers to take round. I walked up to him with my own tray of empty wine glasses but he pulled me by the arm and told me to stand by his side.
He kept on pouring his wine that he kept telling one guy was the best wine he had, and I kept standing there balancing the tray on my palms and wondering why he made me stand next to him.
When all the girls had been sent out with wine that the party organisers hadn’t paid for but Johnny wanted to promote, he turned to me and said “Fine girl, it is you and me this night.”
I’d never been so insulted. He read the look on my face and quickly explained himself, sort of.
“Omoge,” That’s been his pet name for me since then, “I want you to help me take some people’s contact details.”
As he spoke, he poured red wine into the glasses on my tray.
“This is very, very good wine. I import my wine in special refrigerated containers, that’s why they’re so good. Not like all those people who just ship wine in ordinary containers. Those things are like ovens. By the time the wine reaches Nigeria it would have cooked. The taste would have changed.”
I followed him round the party as he mingled with guests and charmed them into tasting his very, very good wine. He had a way with people.
In between forcing alcohol on willing strangers and taking their contact info, he kept talking to me about wine. He told me about grapes and regions and vintage. All, things that were totally lost on me at the time.
He did not talk to me in a condescending way, or even in the manner of one person lecturing the other. No. He talked as if the difference between Beaujolais and Beaujolais nouveau was something we normally discuss as a matter of everyday talk.
We became friends that evening and my love affair with red wine began.
He told me I was hisaburo, and in fairness to him he treated me as one. I’ve lost count of the times he’s been there for me. He moving to Abuja was one of the most devastating things that have ever happened to me because we stopped keeping in touch as much. But every once in a while he’d pop up out of nowhere and we’d start talking and calling each other again, till life gets in the way again.
And another thing about Johnny, he seems to have a sense for when I’m in trouble. No matter how long we’ve not seen or spoken, he seems to always reach out to me just when I need him the most.
He just did it again. I saw his name on my ringing phone and I prayed he was calling from Lagos. I could do with a friend right then.