Family Man

She first saw him in Malindi during a workshop organised by the company she worked for. He was a young entrepreneur looking for investment opportunities while she was fresh from college, still basking in the provisory world of sales. Somehow, he was intrigued by her project.

He was tall and burly, with broad shoulders. I think he looked a Dick. Let's all agree to call him D, to minimise the debauchery of it. D had an imposing aura. He had the impeccable ability to claim his space and command his surrounding. When he talked, he did so succinctly and with utmost precision. His communication was lucid yet discreet. Well, discretion is a rare quality.

When he approached her exhibition desk and shook her hand firmly, she knew he was the man. The bright pair of eyes he owned were like laser beams that penetrated her soul and exposed her vulnerabilities. He focused solely on business matters and yet, if her memory serves right, every word he said felt flirtatious. She fell for him head over heels. This earned her expungement from her sales work for breaking the company's cardinal rule; no fraternising with customers. But who cared? Having him was worth it, or at least it was then. After all he had hefty pockets and she would definitely not starve to death.

D got his newly found love another job soon. Courtesy of the friends he had in high places. It's nice to have friends in high places or 'tall brothers' as some of you would settle for. She started working at Price Waterhouse Coopers exactly a month after leaving her sales job and exactly four months before their wedding. The four months were evocative. Random dinner dates in some rooftop restaurants, weekend road trips, sunbathing in the white beaches of the Kenyan coast. He  had a nice sense of adventure.  When he finally got the wherewithal to propose, he chose a dimly lit tent in the heart of Maasai Mara at the Olare Mara Kempinski. The constellation of stars that engulfed the night sky provided a beautiful fetish for them to consummate their elopment. The crickets chirped sweetly as the wild hounds growled in awe, obliviously creating a beautiful orchestra for the making of the young couple's first born son.  

The wedding was glamorous. Held in an aesthetic green garden decorated with white flowers and white fluffy chairs. They managed to whittle the guest list to a meagre hundred. Half were her relatives while the other half were his colleagues from work and a battery of bearded men with bizarrely vague connubial partnerships. Of course there were gatecrashers who took the liberty of inviting themselves just for the thrill of it. They always come dressed elegantly, wearing cheap,richly fragrant colognes and eat the bulk of the food. It's always about the food. D and his bride spent the better part of their honeymoon eating grilled octopus and succulent koftas in Zanzibar.

Two decades later, her eyes look like water reservoirs when she remembers the good old days. She is alone. Their only son had grown into a fine young man and was swallowed by the bustling University life, rummaging among the pile of ribs in campus to find his own. His mother had given him a photograph of  herself during her late teenage for reference in his hunt. It was a marking scheme against which he would do his selection. Anything below her standards was mediocre and unacceptable. Often, she would invite some estate girls over and leave them to study with her son in seclusion. Or she would send him over to some neighbor with a pretty daughter to inquire about the water shortage she had been experiencing. A queer sense of insecurity engulfed her and she was in dire need to know her son's sexual affiliations. When one day he got caught up in the middle of a love triangle involving three estate girls, she condemned him mildly but her heart swelled with satisfaction. At least he was a man, in the real sense of the word.

Back to our guy D. Where in God's green earth had he gone to? It's complicated as she put it.They had gone to a club in town the night before his disappearance. There, he met some men. These were no ordinary people. There was one who particularly piqued her interest. He was an African-American, judging from the accent. He towered a few inches above her husband but had a thinner frame with some feminine features. His voice was shrill and his lips pink. The distance between him and her husband would have earned him a smack if he was a lady. But he was a man and they were discussing important business issues that could not get out of earshot. The other man in the company had a bald head and thick beards. Whether he was bald by default or by choice I can't say. His skin colour made him blend in with the dark corner he occupied. He spoke pidgin English with astonishing speed. Occasionally his mouth would pop open mid-sentence as if the brain was yet to process the words to be pronounced. In all of these one undisputable fact stood out. These guys were the cream of the crop. 

When she woke up and found Dick missing that morning, the first thing she thought of was maybe he had pissed off one of those guys. Maybe he was abducted and tied to a wooden chair in some incomplete building in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe he was pulling off one of his many romantic surprises. She decided to cling to the latter. On that note she woke up expecting a trail of scarlet red roses on the floor leading her to the backyard, to a breathtaking scenery of heart-shaped heap of rose petals, with him kneeling and confessing his unconditional love amidst a disparate of platitudes. The floor was cold and bleak. An eery silenced gripped the atmosphere. Trepidation creeped into her nerves and held her by the throat. A gust of wind blew from the slightly open window, over the bed side table and whisked a white piece of paper to her feet. She arched her back and picked it.

It was scribbled in a shoddy, masculine chirography. The little note explained vaguely the reason for his unceremonious departure. He had found happiness somewhere else and had left in pursuit of it. The kind of happiness that his wasp waisted wife and their son couldn't give him. 

The source of that happiness had a light complexion, lighter than her. Perhaps that's what got him hooked. But wait. No busts, no curves. Plane on the anterior and flat posteriorly. Apart from pink lips, all the other features were downright masculine. 

Dick claimed his feelings had been smothered by the society for far too long and he had finally gathered courage to break through the glass ceiling. After rigorous contemplation, they had decided to relocate to the United States, a society that had a slot for people like them. They had scheduled a wedding to inaugurate their union.

How did you feel? Was it hard to believe? No, it wasn't hard to believe. It was unbelievable, she says. There is a kind of heart wrenching pain that comes when you suddenly realise you have been living a lie half of your life. She couldn't believe she had exchanged wedding rings with a man who had committed his love to another other than her. The thought that she was ousted out of her marriage by another man makes her go berserk. The hours of going to the gym and dieting to carve the perfect shape for him,all for nothing. 

The little note he left behind raised more questions than it answered. There are a lot of couples out there who had since run short of love in their marriage but still stayed stoically 'juu ya watoto'. Couldn't he do that? But then maybe that's exactly what he did for over a decade, faking his love for her and numbing her sensitivity with gifts and lavish vacations....for the baby. Up until the baby wasn't a baby anymore.

How did she explain to his son that his father had ditched her for another man? She told him everything in detail on his eighteenth birthday, omitting the gruesome facts. He took it with a pinch of salt. It frightens her that her son had to go through teenage without a father figure but she's happy that he didn't grow up under the wings of a man with such uncouth moral constitution. 

It's disgusting to think she once shared an organ with the anal orifice of a man. Technically, their marriage was just a cover. A blindfold swathed against the prying eyes of the public. Eric, the best man at their wedding was the first man he had an affair with after their marriage. After that there was a long chain that ended in the bolted end of their relationship with his light skinned 'chick'. She had nothing against gay men, at least until she realised her husband had jumped into the bandwagon. Why would someone marry a lady and even sire a kid with her yet the whole time they have an eye for other men? Was he worried about the futility of his virile efforts if he had stuck to being with men?

She is scratching the bad side of thirty five now. Her wasp waist remains intact, accentuated by those bespoke curves. Her pulchritude is irresistible as ever. Beautiful eyes. Shallow dimples. Her heart aches for love, genuine love but she has purged the idea of getting into a relationship out of her head. The streets are dirty and plump though she is, she isn't a pig to delve in its filth 

Is she sad that he left? She was at first, now she's commiserating for her loss. She wakes up every day for her son. Some things are better not talked about. I therefore take this ghost and lock it up in its closet. If D comes my dear readers, you heard nothing; or read nothing in this case. 

Adieu!!