[Photo/Bellanaija]
BY SILAS NYANCHWANI
They were kissing. The man, passionately. The woman, indifferently. There was desire, love, lust, anxiety written all over the man’s forehead. There was nothing I could read on the lady’s face. I could deduce that the kissing meant more to the man and he had been looking for it for quite some time. The lady was doing it out of some obligation. It could be the money being spent on her. It could the man’s persistence that she was rewarding. Something about her body language that was just off.The man seemed to be fishing deeper with his tongue with some expertise that must have been acquired later in life, especially after he got the money. I could not establish about the lady’s skills, though, owing to her casual disinterest. When it comes to the bedroom and foreplay, most women will give a man the upper ground for him to feel important.Unless a man establishes that he is good, a woman will not let down her guard. Mostly, women are more qualified in these things than men. But subconsciously, they don’t want to scare the man away. In this case they like pampering our egos. If they told us the truth, there will be fewer men walking with their heads high and egos intact. But I digress.Seated on an elevated position in this private and swanky restaurant, I was fixated with this couple. Not so much for any voyeuristic intent, even though it is been long I was in such a situation. I was just preoccupied by something that I couldn’t put my finger on. I was half-smoking. Half drinking my Tusker that was becoming insufferably tasteless, having been on a drinking spree for four preceding days consecutively. At this rate, I am headed to the rehab. I was also half-watching them getting on with the foreplay and the man’s hand was now on her knees, going up her short black dress. Her thighs looked sumptuous.What is it that kept my eyes on them? It couldn’t be the man’s short-sleeved, checked-shirt and Khaki pants, my preferred fashion sense. It couldn’t be her extremely short and provocative dress. Women in Nairobi dress rather skimpily that men no longer hanker after such things as boobs and thighs. The curiosity of hiding those things has just disappeared. So what was it? I looked. There was something about the couple that was just off, as I was about to find out.A quick word on how I ended upon in this pricey, choicy restaurant. In my trade, part of the treat is meeting dignitaries, artists, celebrities and other well-known or infamous characters in hotels, behind the stage and everywhere they can be found. It is not an interesting task. After you interview a few you learn one thing, all this people in the limelight suffer from certain delusions. Very few are sober and sensible. Others are always making constantly stupid demands but we have to do it, so that you can read the ‘exclusive’ interview in the newspapers.So this evening I am meeting a certain female celebrity who insisted that we must meet here because it was closer to her home and we were meeting rather late into the night. She was now almost one hour late but she had called me and told me drink some more on her. She claimed to be stuck in traffic. That is a typically Nairobian excuse that we no longer take seriously. Either she wanted to get me drunk so that I can ask her silly questions or she wanted us to procrastinate the interview for the umpteenth time.Here is the drill. In our trade, there is never limit to the alcohol one can access. It just comes. You can’t help it. Few of us have trained ourselves to resist free booze. Sometimes you meet interviewees who will ask for the most expensive thing and push the bill your way, but those understanding always take care of the bill. Those are the ones I like. Like the female celeb boss I was about meeting.I lit another cigarette and watched the lovebirds do their thing, hoping that they were about to make love there as I watched. Save for the two seemingly bored waiters, there was only me and them in the dimly lit establishment. The man was on a green bottle. It could have been Heineken, Tusker Malt or Tusker Lite. Speaking of which, what is this LITE nonsense thing going on in town?Thing with green bottles is that they are slightly more expensive and communicate some quiet class that no self-respecting man gives a damn about. She was drinking from one of those funnel shaped glass, something that possibly goes for the price of two ordinary beers.They had stopped kissing and seemed like they were about to check off. I could see the car keys on the table and the lady wore some look of satisfaction or gratification from the side of her cheek that I could see. Then they arose to go and I was shell-shocked to see that the woman I have been watching all along was Emily. F**k! I actually mumbled almost audibly ‘What the F**k! And I sobered up. That was Emily. I almost wanted to call her but by the time I finished debating on whether to call on her or not she had disappeared in the arms of Mr Charmer.The romantic music from the 90s kept on playing. Some Mint Condition, New Edition and TLC had been the diet and now it seemed that I could not enjoy it anymore like I was doing before I saw Emily. Emily is the girlfriend to my boy Rodney.Save for the name, Emily is easily one of the most beautiful women I have seen in real life. If the beauty scale was 1-10, I would put hers at 9. And the missing one has to do with her terrible attitude ( towards me especially). She has it all. The height, the facial beauty but without grace, a body that is every horny man’s dream. She has a slight forehead, but her facial beauty makes up for it. She sort of reminds me of Tamar Braxton before she discovered plastic surgery. Emily has the best shade of chocolate in the world and can be the face advertising of just about everything; from a female banking executive to some body lotion.But Emily hates me. She thinks I am a big time prick, an opinionated chauvinist, irredeemably stupid and I think she silently wishes me a lifetime of impotence. I am not cooking up these. She has ever told me as much but with some sugar-coated language, but her attitude towards me says as much. She once told me that my blog is full of baloney and she stopped reading the newspaper that I occasionally write for. She disqualifies me to write anything on women, men or relationship. She thinks that I belong to another planet and age, preferably in the past.Why does she hate me? Frankly, I don’t know. I think I am fairly handsome. My mum used to tell me so and a few gracious female friends have told me as much, even though it happened when I was buying them beer and they were on the fifth one. She normally stops eating or drinking whenever I show up. If I stayed with them she will starve.I have tried to establish the reason for her scandalously unimaginable hatred but can’t. I once dated her in first year at university and she declined. She was in Law School and I was in Arts. Rodney was Business School where they obviously met and went on to set a good example that love can indeed blossom in campus. When she declined my advances, I left her alone. I never persisted. I never persist. Will never persist. The fact that she ended up with Rodney by sheer coincidence and I never made any bones about it can’t be the reason she thinks that God made one big mistake by letting me into this big, wild, wide world.Anyway, there I sat thinking deeply on what to do. Unconsciously, I picked my phone and I dialed Rodney who picked it in a slow, nerdy drawl that really wastes my airtime every time I call him. After the small talk, I asked him if I could say ‘Hi’ to Emily. He told me that she had gone visiting her parents. Clearly the man she was with could have been her father. Who knows very strange things happen in this town.Rodney sounded innocent and professional as usual. And he believed that Emily was visiting her parents. They live in together. I thought about slapping him out of his comfortable stupor with my findings this evening and I thought I needed to think about it.Here is the trick bit about it. Rodney is a professional. He is a cool guy and he loves Emily so much. He has ever confessed to me that Emily was the best thing that ever happened to him. Emily taught him love and (hopefully sex) even though imagining them making love is one of the motion pictures that has consistently refused to play in my head. Partly because Emily does not have any sex appeal at all, courtesy of her no-nonsense face that she puts on and partly because Rodney is your typically lanky, bespectacled lad working in the IT sector of a bank.I run a few things on my mind on what to do. Some were really beautiful ideas, like me trying to blackmail her to try my luck and see if I can sleep with her. I strongly believe that her ass can cure any cancer. It has a certain life and exuberance that I have never seen on any other chick. So I could imagine me blackmailing her but I was unlikely to succeed given Rodney is the one who needs the relationship more than she does in my own estimation.Something stupid was telling to just ignore and mind my own business but I would be breaking the 19th code that defines male friendship. So I was stuck and two weeks later, I don’t what to do or tell Rodney…Any help?
Editor's note: This article first appeared on Silas Nyanchwani's blog.