I miss my friends. Now they have gotten steady women in their lives, some have even thrown in babies, and ceded power like Raila’s brother, to their wives/girlfriends/situationships (or sijuiships as my mentor calls them).
Even the oldest amongst us, K—, now spends his weekends in baby shops along Moktar Daddah Street in CBD, in blue sagging jeans and that my-wife-picked-for-me-flowery shirt, looking, at thirty-four, like the type of man he’d once claimed he would never resemble.
Worse, we’ve mostly, with the exception of one or two, started letting ourselves go. Little by little. The paunches are settling in—kitambi ya wadosi, dad bods, kipara, greying stubbles. All the troubles we’ve been carrying in our bodies. The resignation to ‘this is just how things are.’
The sedentary lifestyle is setting in, a cushioned job with a boss who thinks you are after his job, which you might as well be. Sundays are family recovery days, going to the mall to placate the toddlers and hang out with more dads who are wondering how they got here.
Parents too start to tackle you a little harder—when are you coming home, when are you building here, they want to touch your children with their eyes before death claims them; asking questions about the part of our lives they are not witnessing. They ask about your friends, how old they are, and, if they are married, whether they have children. They want to know about your plan for the future, hoping you understand the urgency of the situation, not caring that you call yourself a ‘high-value man’ on Instagram.
That could be true about most women. But it’s definitely true about all men. Men just seem to let themselves off the hook as they age. Drowning in responsibilities, getting further from the shoreline of who they are, what they love. And all this for what? To end up with an enraged feminist in her mid to late thirties, who is always angry about this or that, or this and that.
That reminds me. I was recently at a Christian Singles event, or as my church friend described it, ‘The Christian Auction.’ I wanted to say, that happened 2,000 years ago, and Judas already covered that part when he sold Jesus, but the Lord held my tongue. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a Christian Auction, but it’s not what they advertised in the movies.
The people were all right. Nobody caught my eye, not that my eye was in need of catching. It’s just that something felt off, and I feared something about it I cannot name. The women, especially, had made an effort, flowery dresses, red lipstick, cologne—was that Christian Dior?—but in every one of their faces were the war marks of relationships in Nairobi: Look where Pinchez said he would never leave but left.
Look at the imprint of Dantez’s strong fists. Look when Dimore said his mother doesn’t like murima girls. They had the practical faces of Christian girls, their girlishness erased by life and time. The men? Jeans and shirts, and it seemed like they were all a shill. Like the real them was back in there somewhere. Like they were Christian, and they were single, but they were not always both at the same time.
That’s the trouble with men, I reckon. After a while, we sort of just give up. The potential we had in our early 20s—when we were the future, remember that?—drifting off and becoming just another could-have-been. I remember reading in The Known World, this historic novel on slaves, about the difference between men and women.
“A man does not learn very well,” the book said. “Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose.”
Men live like they have another life to live. Women know that this is the only life they have. I usually chuckle to myself when I meet men who put pictures of a lion as their profile picture, or some have it as a tattoo, others even call themselves Lion. But do you know in the jungle, lions actually eat first, followed by lionesses and then cubs.
Eating first ensures they remain strong to protect the pride, be on the lookout for potential kills, and mate longer. Okay, I added that last part, but you get the point. Not so with men who want to eat last because of some posturing moral code; sacrificing themselves to prove a level of piety that is, when you think about it, not even founded on altruism but selfishness. “I am a good man because I am suffering.” No, you are not. You are a swindler looking for likes, and to be liked.
My daddy used to tell me that to get anything in this world, you gotta learn to blow your own horn. “Because if you don’t blow your own horn, ain’t nobody else gonna blow it for you.”
Oh, and did I mention that it is actually lionesses who do the hunting? It’s that thing the wise men used to say: The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets the publicity. Maybe the problem is that there are no wise men anymore, just high-value content creators. Maybe my friends have changed, and I haven’t. Maybe they have grown up; maybe I haven’t. Maybe I just miss my friends.
