Morality is a moving target. The difference between a good boy and a bad boy is where you belt your pants. Mine was steadfastly on my size 31.5 waist, above my butt but below my V-line as I boarded one of those matatus to Kawangware, pulling itself on Ngong Rd with difficulty like a forced marriage between that handshake pseudo-engineer and hustling PhD holder.
I always insist that ghetto is a mentality, not a place, because why were people in this bus taking yoghurt and throwing the tins outside? Anyway, the bus was packed up to here, and I *just* managed to secure a seat two rows from the conductor but behind the driver because my Mathematics teacher, Mr Ondieki, said in the case of an accident, the driver will make calculations to save himself so always sit behind him. Akili mjini.
Which is just as well because we stopped at All Saints’ Cathedral to pick up a hawker and pastor, who proceeded to engage in a brutal commercial war, each outshouting the other, me smiling as two men fought over me.
This is what it feels like to be a power bottom, innit? Don’t Google that. I was low-key rooting for the hawker, who sold everything from Tropicals, which he called “Tropikos”, chocolate, dawa ya mende na kunguni , all in one breath. What the hawker sells on your route says everything about where one stays. But of course, you already know that.
The pastor, meanwhile, was prancing up and down, warning us that these are the last days, and asking us for something small. I wondered why he needed anything small if these were truly the last days. We stopped again at Upper Hill, near Traffic HQs and picked up more passengers.
The irony isn’t lost on me that we were making a traffic offense near traffic headquarters, but that is why we are a third-world country. Laws are made for man; man is not made for laws. Now, the matatu was packed in a manner that would rival the population of a small British colony, before they started butchering us.
This middle-aged madam boards the matatu and proceeds to stand because, like I said, the matatu is full. The algorithm sends her my way, and she stands next to me as if her mother never taught her that when you stand next to someone, you drink their blood.
Anyway, African deference would behove me to give up my seat for her, but I was not raised like that. Besides, I am wearing white shoes, I cannot risk it. Sisi wote ni watu wazima hapa. I
I will be thinking about this, today, on International Women’s Day, one of those lip service days that to me, serve no purpose whatsoever. A meaningless holiday, like National Boyfriend’s Day [October 3], or Valentine’s Day [February 14] or your birthday [April 1].
I saw some men wearing high heels to work, like a badly shot episode of the real office husbands in corporate TV, in a bid to “walk a kilometre in women’s shoes.” I was like, that beats purpose because men actually invented high heels shoes—like everything else—before women appropriated them.
Similarly, to how Kenya’s foreign policy rests on an accent and thick-rimmed square glasses, International Women’s Day rests on ring lights, empty slogans, and plastic water bottles.
My criticism of IWD is like when your father takes you to Jamia Mosque to buy you kashata and ukwaju and achari from Salome Wambui or Chausiku Wanjiru because taking you to actual Malindi would be too expensive.
In other words, it’s a way out of guilt. Similarly, the modern woman—whatever that means—is more driven about being driven than actually being driven, with female leaders in politics and business posturing about the plight of women’s issues like abuse, whilst simultaneously owning what #girlbosses they are, and in turn, jeopardising the day to seem nothing more than a corporate Valentine’s Day. And just to be clear, I feel the same toward International Men’s Day. It’s on November something.
The dichotomy and the irony of the women’s movement is that it has benefited men more than it has women. “Strong, independent woman” has ensured that I no longer have to pick up the tab at the bar.
In fact, I actively discourage myself from picking up the tab. Especially if she doesn’t need a man to be happy. Which is like saying the Democratic Republic of Congo isn’t, erm, democratic.
Since she’s not in need of the help that I haven't offered yet, this “alpha female” can womansplain to me the benefits of the sexual liberation, and I am not intimidated at all, unless she threatens to hit me with a hammer or use a strap-on.
A lot of what we are enjoying now is down to women's liberation. And we're not talking about the liberation to make lesbian porn or pole dancing or going braless. The liberation gave us women as equals, not precious little flowers that will wither if left exposed to a Tequila Sunrise cocktail.
And if there is anything I have learned, it is that women have taught me one abiding, lifelong lesson: whatever I do, it will be wrong.
My first serious girlfriend—by serious I mean she took smiling [or showing teeth as she called it] as weakness—once threatened to leave me if I didn’t join the protests in CBD against femicide.
So I went to the march, joining thousands of baddies shouting, “Our bodies are ours!” We broke up because she found me collecting numbers from the prettiest girls at the protest “So I could organise another targeted protest march and support the movement with WhatsApp fliers!”
As you can tell by now, I am a big fan of women’s rights. I once had a fling with an iconoclast feminist [her words], who was studying the “ideological intricacies of intersectional feminism” (otherwise known as “liberal feminism”—I know I have lost half of you—but one of its core values is that feminism is for everyone.
She was talking about “decentring men”; “dissecting masculinity;” and “deconstructing patriarchy”—a lot of Ds really. I told her as a male feminist… She said there is no such thing as a male feminist. I told her I am a feminist for hire, which is essentially just most feminists.
We got into a fight. She challenged me to get a vasectomy “if I really loved her.” In my lifetime, without doubt, the two things that have done most for me, and for all men, have been safe, cheap, effective birth control and the right to treat a woman as an equal. So, I asked her for money for the surgery. She gave me. She has never seen me—or my balls—again. What? Morality is a moving target.
