by Joy Isi Bewaji

          

Call up the shrink if you must ‘cos I am certain anyone  who consistently struts on the red carpet week after week in Lagos needs help!

Here’s the familiar red carpet scenario: there’s an event coming up. Katie, a student and a part-time groupie, is working towards getting the ‘strictly by invitation’ VIP card. She calls the bank manager she spent a night with last week if he can help out. He can’t; in fact he’s not sure how a fashion/music event is any of his business, he has three children and a greedy wife to take care of.
She sends an SMS to the local government chairman whom she gave a blow job in his SUV a month back for assistance. He doesn’t respond.

She pings her boyfriend – the one she spends time with when the other one is not in town, he is not sure how to get the invites but would like to tag along when she figures it out. She sends him an angry emoticon!

Then she calls her girl who is currently dating a club owner on the Island. Her friend has one extra invite for the gig but would like to know what Katie would be wearing.

“I’m not sure yet; I’ll probably get something from Mobos. But I’ve got killer Loubs to die for.”

“Hmmmph!” her friend snorts.

Invite now sorted, Katie sprints from one end of Lagos to the other.

Pedicure/Manicure: Check!

Makeup artiste: Check!

Body magic: check!

Hermes-bag-borrowed-from-an-acquaintance: Check!

Brazilian-weave-money-shagged-off-Alhaji: double Check!!!

She wakes up on the morning of the event. She casually tweets about being invited for this gig but isn’t so sure she has the time or can make it there today.

“got loads of work to do…” she tweets, and the devil is impressed.

The invitation card states 6pm as the kick-off time. By 7pm, Katie heads to the shower then pours herself into her body magic.

She slithers into her dress – an outfit that can barely contain her boobs, wears her perfume, and then her Louboutins.

Nothing is yet as outrageous as her makeup. Long flickering lashes, layers and layers of foundation, bright red blush, full red lips, and a deliberate messy Brazilian weave. She’s trying to achieve the Kim-Kardashian-rolling-out-of-bed look.

At the event the hall is still being arranged. And it is 8.30pm.

The red carpet has turned to burnt brown as everyone wants a spot on it. Katie poses with every celebrity in sight, and manages to pour her breasts on Tuface. If only she could…

But he was gone before she could proceed with any reasonable plan. Now she is asking Jesse Jagz for a picture with her phone in that excruciating accent people come up with the minute they step on the red-carpet:

“hoiya, I’d luuurve to ‘ave a pinshure wid yeu.”

Champagne is scarce on the red carpet, yet people are supposed to remain standing for more than 3 hours! And the idiots, they stand and wait as if their lives depend on it.

Finally it is time to go in, and you suffer another round of discrimination/humiliation. The first round was, of course, before the red carpet – at the main gate with the bouncers. To get into the auditorium/hall, you have to have a recognisable face cos those bouncers like angry policemen take delight in making you wonder how dumb you must be to leave your house in the first place.

After 5 hours, Katie finally gets into the hall. Her feet burns like hell, but she’s going to suck it all in and pray that, may be, Dr. Sid’s publicist (at the least) looks her way…

It takes another hour to finally get the event on the roll. It’s now past midnight. Everyone is falling over one another to get a good glimpse of MI. Only then did she realise she ‘forgot’ to put on her underwear.

The show ends by 2 am. Katie is tired and unfulfilled. But she’ll do it all over again next week. There’s this pair of  Jimmy Choo’s she saw at The Palms…