My father loved reggae music. It was our way of bonding. They called him Tosh. Peter Tosh. He’d wake up early to spruce the compound, at 6am, which is when he would start playing Glen Washington on the stereo, sometimes because he liked Glen, most times because there was an air of sadism to it.
How can you still be asleep at 6am? Do you know what reggae sounds like at 6am? Like an alley cat scratching corrugated iron sheets. Still, that’s how I learned of Yellowman and Gregory “Cool Ruler” Isaacs, and “Gal, you are too young to be my lover, my lover, check me two years later.”
That was by Cocoa Tea, one of the reasons I like cocoa tea, and how I also knew that I would never date anyone who identifies as a Gen Z.
But if ever there was a song we both loved, it was the one by some Jamaican brothers from St Catherine—The Jolly Brothers. Conscious Man was the title of the song, and boy, those boys had a voice like warm chocolate, like warm cocoa tea.
Samson was strong and deceived, oh yes
My father used this song as a stick to swirl his theory – that women will always be the smarter gender. He was a bombastic man, who spoke in bombast. He was a salesman who could sell milk to a cow—full price, plus tip.
He was certain, even authoritative. As a younger man then, my father’s word was law. This is not to say he was myopic, nay, he was a worldly man, blessed with a lulling tongue, and he often used language to communicate not judgement but rather knowledge. Alikuwa mhenga.
So I talked to him when I talked to him. School, career, life. You know, things. I even talked to him about women, or, to be more exact, he talked to me. Told me not to lose myself in love. Told me, “Follow your heart but take your brain with you.” Told me I can never outfox a fox.
But I was 22, still young and skinny and handsome and hopeful. That means he was preaching 8-4-4 and I was hunting for a hyena’s eggs in CBC. Ananishow? I wasn’t listening.
It was the kind of mistake young men make, the same mistake my younger brother is making at 23. I thought he wanted to control me. Kunipimia hewa, we would say. But me ni ule msee. I am that guy. What guy?
The kind of guy that jumped in the dating pool with no life jacket. I had nothing to offer other than Nonini’s lyrics, terrible puns, and raw, aching libido. That’s how miserable I was at dating then—charming female friends, classmates and neighbours into sleeping with me.
I was driven by a bloody mixture of lust and longing. I never thought of the consequences of my actions. It was not how long I could go, it was, how many could I go with? Which never really amounted to much, because I left the scene—or the bedroom sometime later—feeling like I didn’t have to burn all that fare to go to Ruai just to, well, erm, come.
Granted, I had learnt how to seduce a bird out of trees but I didn’t think it was enough. I didn’t think I was enough. So I overcompensated. Flashy clothes. Flashier words. Subaru boys understand what I am talking about.
Anyone with a 2014 Audi too. It worked anyway. Where I come from, we say, “Let the young man in his desperation go out and hunt. If he kills the elephant, his poverty ends. If the elephant kills him, his poverty ends.”
Recently we were talking with my old man and he asked me when he would be meeting his grandchildren. Ignoring his question, it hit me that most of those women were either older than me or in relationships. And the more I think about it, the more I am reminded that I have never been ‘in charge’ of any relationship.
I was a vassal state. Negotiated romance. She had the real power. There is a certain remorselessness that women have, that is both brutal and seductive in its beauty and pain.
Have you seen a woman cut off a man? It’s a work of art, a bloodbath that leaves the poor son of Adam with nothing but his anger, and if he is lucky, a YouTube channel. Cold-blooded. The grace she gives you masks an assassin-like ruthlessness. Heck, maybe women are what men think they are.
“Imagine a husband and wife in the village sleeping,” Professor Egara Kabaji would start his lesson back in campus. “The man will tell you that he is the one in charge of the home. But, the wife will hear something outside and she will gently slide the words in his ears, ‘Is it just me or did I hear something strange outside?’
The man, tired and wanting to catch his sleep would frown, dress up, and leave the bed, his wife gently snoring. He would check the perimeter, make sure all the doors were locked then slide back to bed.
Now, to know who is really in charge of that home, he will, out of his own volition, give a report to the wife. ‘I have checked everywhere. I have locked the doors. And the windows. We are okay.’
“Yes,” he would say. “100 per cent.”
And with that, she would go back to sleep, like a boss. Like the boss. Because she is. Because you can never outfox a fox. Eventually, I understood what all men come to learn at some point in their lives – you have to cede higher ground to that which you desire.
I never respected my father as much as I do now. Today, I don’t turn on the charm the way I used to years ago. I sounded smart, yes, but to someone dumb. These days I make a conscious effort to mellow my words, and thoughts, and actions.
I thought I was ascending to the apex of manliness, only to learn that I was mimicking the manners of the bonobo. One conscious man to another: You will never outsmart a woman. Ni me nakushow.
