-HER MASCULINE SELF-

Dating? I stopped doing that a long time ago.  As much as bado nimo sokoni, I got over the need to hawk or keep shop open since, wanunuzi ni wale wale; one bad potential buyer after the other.

 A few months ago though, I reconnected with an old Facebook acquaintance and for the first time in a very very long while, I had a good date, great one to be honest, with a gentleman.

Single - tick, never married - tick, no kids - tick, good job - tick, age appropriate - tick, good looking - tick.

Traffic was hectic that day, which is an excuse I’ve since quit using, so, I was late, but guess what he did?  He waits at the sidewalk so we can walk in together.  The guy even pulled out the chair for me!  It was meant to be a lunch date so I’m thinking, I got to order something easy, and cheap, snackish probably so he can dash back to the office in time.  You know what, he had a colleague cover his shift so he could take the whole afternoon off.  We order very different foods and he lets me dig into his plate, and says if I like his better, we can switch…or just help myself as much as I wished.

He still remembered my many names, where I went to high school, and college…the dude had never lost my number for all those 10+ years!

He also got my jokes…you know, like when I said he should go wash his hands first so I can be left alone to add ‘kamuti’ in his food?  If you get that kind of humour, you’re my type of a person.  If not, we swipe to the left.

You know when they say it only takes 5 minutes for a lady to know?  I second that.  5 minutes before, I was just meeting a friend of a friend.  Now, I could see the prospect of having him become more than a friend.

And, it was mutual.  A date that starts shortly before 2 and runs way past 6.  Not once, okay, maybe just once, did he touch his phone.  The one instance is when he looked at the phone screen, apologized, and said he’d call them back later, then put it on silent.  Ooh, and of course, he paid the bill, no 50-50 BS, and tipped the waiter.

The second date was as fruitful, longer, more intimate, not perfect, but who’s after perfection?  Perfection is so overrated.

We bumped into a colleague of his and he introduced me as his special friend.  His brother called once and he tells him he’s on a date he’ll call back.  Another ‘important caller’ was put through and I swear I heard him call them Makena, at which he must have sensed a change in my demeanor.  He explains that it’s his business partner Ken, I ask why then did he call him Makena, he says I must have heard it wrong, he shows me the caller ID, it’s Ken.

I’m a happy girl.

I invite him over my house over the weekend.  He says he makes the best fried beef.  I make awesome butternut chapatis.

He knocks at my door, I give him the biggest hug.  I love how well I both fit and get lost in his embrace.  He smells so good.  This is going to be magical.

I take him on a short tour around my small apartment, and it’s at this moment I sense him detaching.  By the time we sit to sip and Netflix, his mood has already done a 360.

He needs to attend to some emergency.  I question his sincerity, and that sure gets him pissed.  He gives me a cold hug, and lies that’s we’ll talk soon.

Boy, I knew I should have thrown away the key when I padlocked my heart.  The hurt HURT!

One afternoon, a couple of weeks later, I’m in town and still aching over the loss of what could have been.  Deleting his chats and photos and voice notes and unfriending him don’t do no justice when you have his phone number engraved in your memory.

I decide it’s time I say something angalau initoke.

I send him a text; that I’ll be at Savanna, if he’d mind joining me for a cup of coffee. I’ll be buying.

He shows up 15 minutes later.  I still feel the butterflies, and the electric current shocking my heart as he walks over.  I can’t tell if he’s excited to see me, or annoyed.  Guess it a bit of each.

Apparently, I lied.

He’s alleging that I must be married, or cohabitating with a guy, that I invited him over to some guy’s house, which is very disrespectful to the both of them.

We’ve got to bring this to an end because I just don’t do that.  Arguments, confrontations, accusations…  If it’s not a discussion, I don’t engage.

I have too many red flags, he says, things he shouldn’t have dismissed.  I drive a black car, with leather seats.  I have an L-shaped brown leather coach, a beige carpet, charcoal black drapes, beige beddings, no throw pillows, no personalized décor, oh, and he saw the tool box. It’s like my home is straight from a man’s cave magazine.  For Pete’s sake, I wear a sandalwood scented men’s cologne. 

At first he thought it was kind of sexy that I preferred Vodka to Wine, that Goodfellas is my all-time favorite movie,  that on the second date I was late because I had to stop and change a tyre, that I like to keep my nails short and un-manicured, that I kind of give this tom-boyish vibe.  Clearly, it’s either that I’m married, cohabiting with a dude, or simply too masculine.

‘Can I ask you one question, and promise to answer it truthfully?’  He asked amid the lecture.

‘If you were gay, I mean a lesbian, you obviously get what I mean, and were in a relationship with  some other girl, do you see yourself as the girl or the guy in that relationship?

I don’t intend to tell you how to live your life, or want to change you, because you’re perfect the way you are.  I just want to let you know that you can be a lady and do girly stuff when you’re with me.’

He said that having been brought up singlehandedly by his mum, he’d seen how she had to forgo her femininity and embrace masculinity in order to fit in, and make it.

It’s not just me, or his mother.  So many women have had to forgo their feminine selves and adopt masculine traits due to a failed patriarchy society where men don’t play their roles and/or step up.  Absent fathers, abusive partners, deadbeat baby daddies, controlling boyfriends, misogynist leaders…  So as much as one exhibits a female physique, mentally, they’re more male than female.  Not that they like that, but circumstances have forced them to step up where men have stepped out.  I theorize that the situation somewhat rewires a woman’s brain to an extent that it changes her worldview on so many different angles.

At the end of the coffee date, I’m all regrets for asking for a meet-up.  There’s no way this is going to work out, not with him.  He’s definitely the controlling type, a mansplainer, the Mr. Know it All, a walking Red Flag.  I wait outside Naivas when he dashes in to grab something on our way to evidently very different destinations.

He gifts it to me.   A packet of face tissues.  A flowery box of face tissues.

‘I thought your car would appreciate some color.  Some warm feminine energy.’

We parted ways, and didn’t talk for another long while, and I was almost forgetting him.  Then, I had to attend a baby shower and didn’t have a nice dress or pair of heels or a cute handbag to match.  All I owned were denims, shirts and tees in different shades of dark blues, grays and blacks and a bunch of comfy flats.  It’s like I was living in a black and white movie.

When I finally got me a nice strapless floral dress and cute wedges, then got my nails done, looking in the mirror, I looked different.  I felt different.  I snapped a photo and sent it to him.

It’s almost an year now, of us being together, and for the first time in my life, I can proudly say I love Desperate Housewives, and Love is Blind, and 27 Dresses, and Adele, and Lionel Richie, and India Arie, and hair appointments, and gel nail polish, and makeup tutorials, and gardening, and babies, and being the other half.

I’d hate to come across as a cliché of another woman saved by a man, but this man did me some good, healed me so well that I can proudly be a girl again.  And I hope that there’d be more of them, so that when we celebrate International Women’s day, and other similar days, we get celebrated not just because we are such strong and industrious iron ladies but also because we love, embrace, are proud of and feel one with our femininity.

Boy, it sure does feel good to be a woman!