There are two types of men in this world, my Uncle D used to say. Men who give advice, and men who take advice. Which one are you, he’d ask. A man who ignores them both, I’d say. And he would laugh, a staccato laugh because that’s just the way Uncle D laughed, like a pirate with stage three throat cancer, and then he’d say, “Well, I guess there are three types of men then.”
He wasn’t wrong. I’ve always been suspicious of people who give advice. Not suspicious, resentful. It could be a cocktail of anger, disgust, and contempt, garnished with a lemon wedge of repugnancy. Who would I prefer between men who give advice or those who take advice? It's maggots and worms on the menu. An unpleasant choice. So that means no choice, I guess.
I once read in a book, or maybe I heard it on a podcast, I don’t know, but it said that the key to life was the ability to ignore other people’s imaginary problems. I do a pretty good job at that. Especially when I have my headphones on. Or even when I don’t. But as luck would have it, this time on a flight, I had forgotten them. Well, not really forgotten them. I went out the previous night, left at around 1am, in Kahawa Sukari! I live on Ngong road. I got home just shy of 2 AM because my Uber driver was chewing khat, and I am not sure what that is supposed to say about his driving skills.
What I am trying to say is my flight was 6:30am, and I woke up late, 5-something AM. By the time I got to the airport, on a nduthi, I had left behind my earphones, books, my favourite underwear (hey, you never know who you’ll meet), and carried the wrong manifest. There are benefits, though, to living in a slightly dysfunctional country. The flight was delayed because the pilot had also partied hard in Kahawa Sukari the previous night. They didn’t say that, of course, but they didn’t say that either. Educated guess, which I am also good at.
Now that you have the backstory, si me I get into the plane. I let those guys who must record every flight they are on take the runway, selfies here and there, and I am openly judging them. When I get in, someone is in my seat. I say, Sir, you are in my seat. He says, “No, I am not.” I say, Sir, it says here I am on 7D. This is 7D. He checks his ticket. He is on 6D. “Sorry, son,” he says. In case you can’t tell, I am not having a good day.
I sit, do the seatbelt thing, let out a small fart to bless the plane (yeah, I am one of those), then pat my pockets for my earphones. They are not there. I check my hand luggage, nada. This is not good. My friend Z—, he tells me that because of my week of bad luck, I need to go buy a pig and cook it. Or maybe he said pork. Advice which I ignored, of course. “Nguruwe huondoa swara,” he said. Pigs get rid of bad spirits. If that’s true, then why did it not work with any of my exes? I didn’t say it, but I thought it.
We take off, and maybe it’s something about the shape of my face, or the curve of my mouth, but this wily old seatmate turns to me and starts talking in my general direction. I am considering jumping out of the plane; my head is still throbbing from all that DJ Lyta mixtape that had one song with over sixty instrumentals. You would think that would be enough to deter the man.
Wapi! He gazed at me frankly, as if he had a right to me. He was touching a crucifix chain, silver in colour, and every time he would talk, he would place his hand on it, as if being good with the thing was a key to the meaning of life or something. He was 67, and of that age, so obviously he was good at dispensing advice. “68, in two months,” he said. With the draw of my luck, he was inevitable. Shave that hair was something he’d suggest. Also, remove that stud. There was accusation in his voice. “Men—real men—don’t wear rings,” he’d tell me, “Especially when they are fathers.”
I was not a father, not to the best of my knowledge anyway, but his counsel made sense in theory. “Do you know what I’m talking about, son?” he’d asked. No, I didn’t. “Yes, I do,” I said. He seemed moved by this. He tapped my shoulder with something like fondness.
He reminded me of this book I picked from my mom’s shelf back in the day. ‘Become a Better You’ by the charismatic Joel Osteen, a man who could talk a snake into growing legs. But what’s wrong with me now? I asked my mother while reading the book. “Just read it!” she said. And that was that.
That’s when I noticed that his hands and feet were massive, too big for his frame. A useless detail, really. He conceded, though, as a younger man, he’d often ignored his elders. He’d taken them for granted, he’d written them off as irrelevant. In fact, he’d even had a reputation as a womaniser, even fathered a child outside, until he realised that the feeling is the same. The women are the same; it’s the craziness that’s the only variable, and I am not sure I should say that.
I was not going to argue the point; I still had feelings about some of the things he had said, of course, beyond resentment, that is. It was good advice. Some might even say great advice. If I had asked for it.
