CHARLY BOY MYSTIQUE AND GOSSIPS

Charly Boy mystique and gossips
NUTS & SCREWS With CHARLY BOY
Saturday , March 13, 2010
By K. ONWUCHEKWA
I like to think of the sun and time as two elements of reality, two elements that the earth has. These two things tend to expose everything. You see, it's just a matter of TIME before the SUN glazes over the dark surface. The sun burns off the already weakening cover of every secret we keep and with time it's open before the world, like a gangrene wound, a sore; like a bare woman. Everything someday will get to see the blinding sunlight.

The reason I write this is that I've seen another stupidly funny headline surface on some papers: something about Charly Boy and Lady Di losing their age long bond. Well, I don't know where that is from and I'm not some eyes in the wall peering into his life, looking for any bedroom quarrels Charly Boy and Lady Di have. I am not also looking into a crystal ball to see his 'new Jamaican love.' I read that Charly Boy is leaving his '30 years long' wife for some Jamaican. What a thing! Where did that come from?

It's amazing how Nigerians have been driven into loving and drooling over damaging talk. Some want their mouths to become like those of a cursing prophet, most people want to pour black sewage water right over white fabric. Yes, it's that bad. We enjoy shooting darts at people; we almost hope for bad situations; we enjoy watering bad seeds. The average Nigerian person is like an evil ear waiting for bad news to carry. Then they sit in the bus and talk about it. Some write about it. Others start their mornings with political and celebrity thrash talk instead of sitting back for a while to brood over the day and how to bring the best out of it. They rather enjoy this poverty-laden, defeated-state of picking on who they feel are the rather successful individuals and judging them. They try to pour that black water over everything. They want to make a bad situation even worse. This evil state of mind that comes because of over-exposure to painful and unfortunate circumstances.

But this new one caught me, because I'm trying to think logically and a little reasonably. A 30-year relationship doesn't just go burst like that. Most of the time it's gone beyond that; it's either the couple are now too entwined and intricately knotted or they are together just to keep the family heritage, then again, then in some extreme cases some don't know where to go.

I know some folks have this thought pattern because they even felt Charly Boy couldn't be married! I've heard people ask if he's married. I don't completely blame them. It's the pattern and the thinking pattern. Shortly, we'll be talking about this pattern. Yes, some even feel there's hardly a woman who can stand Charly Boy and his many crazy tendencies. So it might even sting some in the ears to hear that a lady has been his wife for 30 long years. Now isn't that challenging? Some sharp suited smoothies haven't been able to do that. They haven't even been able to manage two years! What you folk should be asking is: How can I get to warm up my lady for that long? How can I keep my man happy for that long?

I've had the opportunity to see this couple 'in their love' swing. They're friends. Like I said before, skin in skin. They exhibit public love. Shamefully, there are several people who can't even clasp their wives or fiancé's hands in public. They can't just hug her for appreciation, because they are so self-conscious; they love themselves too much to show love for their wives; they have too much pride! They are too small to be called men; too shallow to know what it is to 'love' and 'be in love' with a woman.

At the 30th anniversary of Charly Boy and Lady Di, it was a jealousy inducing blitz at the Sheraton Hotel Lagos. He gave her a public showing; no holds barred, no reservations, 'I-owe-no-man-an-apology' style celebration. Think of it this way: Everyone simply has somebody that could hold their hands, even if it's like a hot pot's handles; they have the right hands. Your patterned thinking tells you there's NOT a woman that could be with Charly Boy, or there's not a woman Charly Boy could endure for a long while. But he's done it for 30 years. Beat that!

This 'pattern' of thinking is like something I learnt in engineering: When you want to make a pattern, you take two parts of the shape of your desired object. After sculpting it and making a hole on to,: you pour in molten liquid and when it dries, viola! You have something in that shape. Most of our thoughts have been patterned by a seemingly streamlined and limited set of ideas, it starts at home; we are raised with a limited, caged-in set of ideas; some superstitious, some unrealistic and more: impractical. So a child grows with a rather biased, unrepresentative view of the world and is now met with surprise at diverging thought patterns. Nigerians have this strong sense of self-righteousness without any power.

That's the reason for the entire judgmental attitude. It's the I-am-good nature, and it's that attitude that plays down others to look good. It's more like this; 'push down the head of another man to keep yours higher,' but have you really grown then? Won't someone figure out that you are putting up a stupid façade?

Thirty years! Certain nations have seen a full revolution in a fraction of that time. It's such a long time, by God. Anyone in such a relationship will truly be in the skin and soul of the other person. Someone definitely is giving the man a boost. I just look back at the brand; how it all started. What I see is a young man, who needed a face, popularity and fame. He gunned for it. Soon it became a brand. One people found pretty hard to understand due to that pattern of thinking, burnt into the Nigerian skull like molten rubber. Then he became a reference, a kind of an icon. He put out his head in the midst of chaos and people couldn't understand the rhythm. They always looked at the chaotic scenes and missed the purpose, the rhythm and essence of the situation. Soon in the typical pattern-'istic' way of thinking, they get into criticisms; they simply can't see the reasons.

I see the brand Charly Boy as something that was inspired to jolt Nigerians out of that boxed-in, impractical and unrealistic way of thinking. The philosophy alone is enough to surprise the moles to stare. People couldn't understand it. Till this day people still stir superstitious talk. I hear of demon worship, cultism, Satanism, etc. Now it's a Jamaican woman whose name is too funny to mention that you would laugh your lungs to burst. Nigerians love superstition, so they feed it more than anything. Everything that goes wrong in a person's life gets blamed on some external enemy. So they now go for the battle,. They now 'love' God so much. All of a sudden, they are super givers, bribing God. What are you doing that for? It is as if God is some fat-bellied government official behind a desk. What about the simple decision you couldn't make? What about the cool opportunity you passed for fear? What of that risk you couldn't take? Also what of that warning you couldn't listen to? All I'm saying is: Nigerians are so dark and conscious of satanic presence that they label everything according to that pattern. What are those things for which Charly Boy has been labeled with? The dressing, the rings, the mystic designs in the house? These could simply be imaginative. The man's an artiste. Artistes are creativity. It's easy for such a person to think up a new thing to get you talking and watching. The amazing thing is how we can't get a simple message even when it's like a hand before our eyes.

I feel that whatever you see around Charly Boy is a deliberate message and it keeps the brand alive; it keeps the shallow man confused; it keeps the hypocritical dazzled. That's what the brand is about: constructively questioning the mind, subtly passing a message to those who are wise enough to catch it. It's not the norm.

Most times we want to only relate to what we understand in plain, 'pictorial' terms. I remember the Charly Boy show. It contained deep messages. It didn't come in that default way, but it had a message. Folk couldn't bite it. I think somehow the show found out that people weren't getting the message. They enjoyed the show and they picked the fun. Though that was like scratching the surface. Then there was Zoom time. This one got the brand talking with the usually 'respected' influencers; now people listened, they got the message. But why couldn't they hear anything amid the noise of the show? Simple it was too deep for the simplistic mind, too outlandish for the boxed-in person.