‘I Married Myself’

The first time I saw her was that Sunday I had stopped by this club to wind down for the weekend, and catch an English Premier League match on the giant screen. She looked very gorgeous, no wonder she was receiving generous tips from male patrons who could not help keep their eyes off her voluptuous bums each time she passed to take or serve a customer's order. Perhaps the reason those who invest in pub businesses hires good looking ladies is because of the magnetic attraction they have on men, no wonder you’ll find males making repeat customers to simply drool after the petite skirt wearers, and do their wallets damage in the process.

  When she came to my table and asked what I would have, I was taken by the innocence of her looks, and warmed by her soft voice that mellowed my heart. I found myself struggling to breathe as I appraised her quickly from the head to the toe, and realizing I was taking a bit long to respond, she leaned slightly and spoke to me across the table. “What will you have?”

  Her voice was a bit amplified, but nevertheless musical to my ears. I ordered our equivalent of Russian vodka and a soft drink to make myself a cocktail with, and as she marched for my orders, I could not help but to watch her ample derriere doing a rhythmic dance as she walked. Her work uniform was tight fitting, accentuating the bodily curves in an unimaginable artistic way.

  While placing my order on the table, she smiled at me. I’m sure I caught a whiff of body lotion or some kind of fragrant spray. But the looks of her eyes nearly gave me an instant hard on. The eyes were inviting.

  I drank slowly while following the proceedings on the giant screen as two English league heavyweights chased a ball across a well manicured stadium surface. By the look of the stadium, Kenya would take a century to build such a facility given the runway corruption, with no infrastructure of note ever constructed without providing room for huge percentage of kickbacks, with the end result being substandard projects to show for.

  When the game went into an intermission, I beckoned her to come over, gave her my phone and asked her to input the WiFi password. As she keyed in what I took to be a combination of words and numbers, I had a brief moment studying her at close quarters. To say I was immediately possessed with a bit of ufisi (carnality) is to be succinct with the truth. I’m not sure how women unconsciously know you’re looking at them in a way to suggest you’re having some kind of feeling and this gorgeous lady, by one look at me, knew what kind of thoughts I was harbouring!

  “Here you’re!” she said, giving me back the phone.

  “One moment please,” I said in a barely audible voice. “I need to speak with you later. May I have your phone number please?”

  She looked at me in a queer way. A smile broke at one corner of her mouth. I gave her the phone back and she quickly keyed her numbers on the dial pad.

  There was no need to ask her name as it was on the name badge pinned to the left of her breast. Mercy. That was her name. I simply saved the number under that name, but added the waitress for the sake of easier remembrance.

  When it comes to ladies, I’d rather they give me their contacts than the other way round. This is informed by the way some of those I had given my contacts before had this myopic view that a guy who is kind or treats them well is loaded and begins harassing one for finances. It doesn’t matter whether you helped them with the last of the coin in your savings, but, as the saying goes, if you yield to some people an inch, they will want a metre, then a mile, and so on.

  Mercy may have slipped out of my memory for close to a month, until the other day when I went through my phone contacts. In fact it was while scrolling down contacts in my social media account seemingly searching for an elusive contact when a profile face looking familiar arrested my fingers from scrolling further. It was then that it hit me smack on the face like a draft of cold air this was the lady who almost gave me an orgasm without my touching her.

  She was online at that particular moment, and I, apart from introducing myself, jogged her memory of that time and she was like, Oh, I recall. Ulipotelea wapi? (where did you disappear to?) and I was like surprised she had such a photographic memory as to recall one after that long. I had expected to hear she had moved on given many do not last long at same workplace in jobs of such nature.

  Without knowing it, we had become best of friends, chatting to the late hours of the night when she was off work. To say many a gentleman will want to sound nice in order to please a lady is not a lie. Perhaps my chat messages to her were embellished no doubt she was giggling at her end reading them.

  Then without knowing it we had moved to speaking about relationships. She asked of my marital status, and when I said I was not ‘tied down’, that’s when she took note.

  You lie! Her message screamed.

  I asked her to explain herself, and maintaining the same tone, she responded, I’ve heard such kind of lies before!

  I knew things were not going to be same again from that point.

  The best to do under such situation was to play dumb, and ask her to explain further what she meant.

  According to her, every man who had come into her life had come with a similar sounding script. First, they claimed to be single and searching. Then when she thought she had found her Mr Right, and asked the guy to commit by marrying her, the fellow would begin playing games or doing evasive tactics to avoid her. It is at this stage some would confess they had wives and kids, and abandon her for good. It was imperative they came to her life with one motive, to get sexual favours from her.

  And it was one guy who managed to fool her to the point of marriage that left her pregnant and she had been taking caring of the deadbeat dad's kid alone.

  I’m done with men! She chatted furiously.

  Why are you condemning the whole of menfolk for the crime of one? I asked her.

  Because there are no good men left. She said.

  I had to digest that hard. Then I asked her, not even me?

She seemed exasperated at her end. Then she typed what now I consider as her famous saying to date; All men are same. They come in different sizes but they all attended the same school of lies!  

  It was close to midnight and the sleep that was stealing in my eyes simply dissipated upon reading that. To keep conversation going, I asked, suppose you’ll want to settle down with someone in life?

  Her answer was fast in coming. I don’t want to get married! I married myself!

  I did not need a translator to know that she was content being single for life. As I was digesting this, and before I could type a reply, she wished me a goodnight and went offline.

  The same school of lies? Where is that located at?  Which ministry is it under?

Photo: Credit