Daisy is one insightful girl. It’s one of her most endearing qualities, and often times, her main source of headaches. How I forgot this little fact I still don’t know. Friday evenings would typically be either movie nights, game nights or a combination of both. It had always been an unfair arrangement since we would both retire at the wee hours of the morning yet I had to report to work on Saturdays, while she didn’t. I really didn’t mind it though.

For a whole week, I had been trying to figure out the best way to tell my girlfriend, who was mad at me half the time, that another girl, who happened to be a million times prettier than her, had come to my house, used our(my) shower, dressed up in her clothes, including that red top that she had asked about at least thrice so far, and now wanted me to meet up with her the next week to catch up, you know, like old friends. There was no easy way in sight, but I was determined to find it.

Come Friday, and there were, cuddled on the Sofa watching a movie whose title escapes my memory. “Sweetie, I need to ask you something” she announced in the middle of some romantic scene. She never entertained interruptions while a movie was on, a habit that happens to be a major weakness of mine.

“Yeah, of course babe” My nerves warned me that this wasn’t good.

“Are you cheating on me?” I almost choked on the peanut in my mouth. Read the rest of this entry →

“You know what your problem is Lawrence!? You are too proud!!”

“Really!? Because the last time I checked you were a stubborn disrespectful bitch!!”

“What!!!? You have two seconds to get out of here or else I swear to Bazuzu!! One…Two..”

This was probably the tenth fight that Daisy and I were having in a span of just two months.

We were so close to clearing one year since we started going out (a first time feat for me). For some obscure reason, we were going through a very passionate phase of our relationship. The fights would start with something as petite as dirty dishes in the sink, escalate to how I treated her like a house maid, then to how I thought she needed to respect my house, and finally to my pride and her bitchiness. Then came the countdown, One…Two… and for fear of whoever Bazuzu was, I always walked out. I would spend some time with Masai the watchman, and two hours later take the stairs back to MY HOUSE, engage in a brief apology session, and some amazing make up action would ensue. I loved the make up, but I was worried that one day she would be the one walking out and I would have lost my Daisy forever. Tim (my ex roommate and close ill advisor) kept on about how we were about to cross over to the next Phase of our romance, and that we just needed to get past this.

“It’s like baptism by fire. The first real test on how true you are to each other” He said.

Tim has been in a relationship with the same girl since I first met him which is longer than I care to remember. As you can imagine, I was inclined to acquiesce to his teachings. Read the rest of this entry →

It was exactly 7:03 am. I remember clearly because the events that followed that random glance at my watch left quite an indelible mark on me. It was a Monday morning, the June weather as chilly as never before. I barricaded myself within the confines of my scarf, desperately trying to cover as much of my lanky frame as possible.

It wasn’t working.

That’s when I lifted my can’t-we-just-go gaze from the overly zealous conductor, to the area beyond my malfunctioned window. My eyes instantly landed on the first inspiring phenomenon I had seen that morning.

She ambled gracefully towards the ‘ma3’, swaying her curvaceous body from side to side, utterly oblivious of the trail of gazes she left behind her. I was transfixed, my shivering body suddenly warming up, my beloved scarf forgotten. As she edged closer to the ‘ma3’, I did a quick scan around my vicinity. If she boarded this vehicle, she would have one of two choices; either sit between those two rugged looking men in the row ahead, or sit next to me.

I had already subconsciously conjured up my opening statement, ready for the grand dispatch. She disappeared behind the ‘ma3’, and I could have sworn I saw her smile slightly at me, just a little bit. If she was a girl who knew what was good for her, then next to me is where she would sit.

After brushing her flowing hair to the side and holding it in place on her chest, she boarded, and slowly inched her way through. The conductor had totally forgotten what he was supposed to be doing.

My heart was now racing at speeds that could only be described as breakneck. Not for one moment did my shameless eyes steer away from her. One of the rugged men in the front row swiftly turned to provide her with ample room to get in between.

“Nipishe Tafadhali”

Yes! Here was a girl who knew what she wanted, and she announced it in flawless Swahili! The poor rugged man grudgingly let her pass, and there she was, settling her made-for-goddesses-only behind right next to me.

Before I knew it, I was subtly gasping for air. For a moment it seemed like I couldn’t breath. Then I realized it. I didn’t want to breath. I was breathless. So was the old lady at the extreme end, and the rugged men in front of us.

It wasn’t the smell of stinking feet, or stale sweat, or fresh human waste. It was a very strong combination of all of the above. As if that wasn’t bad enough, my stubborn malfunctioned window was stuck shut.

Was it….? Noooooooooooooo!! It couldn’t be! But before she came in, it had been the usual smell of stale sweat that is characteristic of most PSVs. This wasn’t happening. So this is what it felt like just before a heart attack! My head was now spinning. Five more minutes and I was quite sure I would have fainted. Read the rest of this entry →

Its one of those Wednesdays.

Shirley is busy packing her numerous belongings into her hand bag while bidding her colleagues good evening. She often thinks of quitting this Bank Teller job, but some days stand out more than most. Like today for instance. It takes 4 days for a cheque to mature! Simple and Clear. So why would a grown up man, bring his ugly face to the bank two days later!? As if that’s not enough, claim that the bank is too slow, and try to debate bank policy with her, a mere bank Teller!?

Anyway, thank God the day is over. Hopefully Becky will have some juicy stories to cheer her up with when they meet up in 15 minutes. “Oops!” she exclaims, glancing at her watch. She’s already late. She bends down to trace her high heels. She finds one, squeezes her right foot into it while scanning her booth for the other. It’s nowhere to be found, again! She knows who the culprit is.

She limps into James’s booth and there it is. “Not funny Jaymo!” She hisses, while painfully putting it on. Seriously, is her left foot bigger than her right? She wonders for the hundredth time. No way, it must be these damn shoes. Why can’t Jaymo just grow a pair and ask her out instead of playing these stupid games? Read the rest of this entry →

I am not one to kiss and tell, so if anyone, especially Daisy, ever asks if we had this conversation, IT DIDN’T HAPPEN. I will deny and swear by my Great great grandfather’s grave that it wasn’t me.

Sigmund Freud

I have heard far too often that there is nothing like ‘deep friendship’ between boys and girls, men and women, males and females …you can finish off the list. Reason being very simple, as my good old friend Sigmund Freud says without flinching a muscle, it’s all about sex. If she is not my sister or first cousin, then yeah, trust Freud, it’s all about sex.

Males and Females, human and animal alike, are drawn to each other by purely sensual bonds, supported by a deeply rooted but also hugely tacit hope that at one point in the near future, the so called ‘friendship’ will culminate in sexual gratification. Yes he is your boy from the hood, yes you have known him since he was wetting his pants, yes you even saw him naked once, yes you two have been through too much together to even consider that option, yes even your mother thinks of him as her son, yes he says sometimes he even forgets that you are a girl. Deep inside, deep deep inside, like really deep inside, he hopes you two will one day do it, if you haven’t done it already. Oh, and here’s the best part, you too share the same sentiments. Hard to believe until you end up in my kind of quandary then you stop hating on Freud.

You see, I always thought Freud was a deeply disturbed person who in his time could have benefited greatly from psychiatric help. I have friends, girls, whom I have known as we like to put it, ‘like since forever’. We played ‘Kati’ and ‘Cha mama’ and other games whose names escape my lazy mind for now. We splashed mud on each other on our way from nursery school, made fun of each other all through primary school, and wrote hilarious letters to each other through out high school. Read the rest of this entry →

“This is just moving too fast! I mean, don’t get me wrong…I am glad I met you Lawrence…you are amazing…you have all these great qualities that I always wanted to have in my man…we have a lot of fun together…but…can we just take this a little slower?…”

Then she pulls one of those girlish ‘woiiishee’ smiles that she knows drives me crazy.

I’m not sure what to say to her. So I just sit there, feign an its-ok smile, tell her I understand, and keep stroking her stubborn hair strand.

Truth is, I don’t understand a thing!

We had been seeing each other quite regularly for almost 2 months. Lunch/Coffee/Juice Dates, Ice Cream Marathons (we both loved those) and lots of evening walks across the city (its beautiful at night in Nairobi).

In vintage Lawrence style I had pulled a couple of surprises on her that simply blew her friends’ minds off. She also loved them, told me no guy had ever done those to her before. She called me crazy a number of times, and I told her she inspired madness in me because of how I felt about her.

As far as I was concerned, I was simply doing what any man who truly was attracted to a girl that he didn’t encounter on a daily basis would do, in an attempt to get her into the proverbial box. Read the rest of this entry →

Christine was…well…different. As I discovered later, she wasn’t really in what you would consider the top cream of her class – if by class you meant from an academic perspective. She derived her reputation from ‘leading men astray’ as my priest would put it. I found her particularly skinny but she spared no efforts at squeezing her body into the skimpiest of school skirts, often to the administration’s chagrin.

I briskly followed Jack who appeared to be in a peculiar hurry to get things over with. Our short trip led us to a darker section of the block corridor where Christine’s slim image was partially hidden from the teacher on duty’s roving eye. Jack made quick introductions and even before I acknowledged Christine’s presence, he was gone.

So there I stood, heart pounding, feet barely supporting my lanky frame and on the verge of a massive sweating attack. Christine, in stark contrast, seemed perfectly composed, and at ease with this whole eerie situation.

“So, you are the famous Lawrence, huh?” she asked, eying me head to toe as if evaluating a new army recruit.

“Uhm, I’m not r-r-really famous as such” I replied, still wondering why I was doing this.

“Oooh, how humble of you. That’s so sweet!” and finally she offered an inviting smile.

This awkward exchange continued for a while. Christine was no novice at all, and in no time had managed to make me feel totally at home in that dark corner.

Our little introductory meeting was not to last long though before we heard the TOD’s (Teacher on Duty) lazy footsteps approaching from the only exit out of that hideout. In a quick swift move that still baffles me to date, Christine got hold of my arm, pulled me close to her and gestured me to keep it still and quiet. Read the rest of this entry →

If you had the option of choosing what precise moment you prefer to die, what would your choice be? Most of us would probably say just after going for confession. Let’s face it; none of us likes the idea of paying for our sins, right? Sins by definition are everything your mama and your pastor or priest have told you not to do, but which for some obscure reason appear infinitely more appealing than the good deeds. But what to do? It is what it is, right? Ok, enough of that.

One of the Sins I was repeatedly admonished against as I grew up was ‘Girls’. I’m serious. My list of the top ten sins to avoid had ‘Girls’ leading at first position by a colossal margin. Precisely put, I remember such assertions as ‘Achana na hawa wasichana’, ‘Wasichana watakuharibia maisha’, and my favourite one, frantically delivered just before I left for campus, ‘Ukiwaona, toka mbio!’.

It came as a complete surprise to me when my Paps raised this issue for the first time, during one of our scant-but-still-scary father-son bonding sessions. Turns out ‘Girls’ wasn’t a sin; and that’s how ‘Girls’ lost the singles quotes. “Girls are good”, he said. “But not now”, he concluded with finality. According to Paps, I had to finish my schooling first before I earned any rights to Girls. Girls would distract me from achieving his dream of fathering the first ‘A’ material in our village. Nothing was going to come between me and his social bragging rights, nothing!!

In the face of this maze of declarations regarding this mysterious opposite sex, who would blame me for being increasingly curious? Thus I began staring. Read the rest of this entry →

The season of giving is finally here! Well, at least for me. A time to sow what I shall hopefully reap before Christmas comes around. Boy, do I dread Valentine’s Day.

I’m not much of a genius when it comes to relationships and romance. This probably explains why I have never in my dating life, celebrated two consecutive Valentines with the same love bird. Of course when my friends inquire about this statistic, I proudly declare that there are too many bird species in the wild for me to hold on to one for too long. I then boastfully add that if not for the stringent rules governing the Guinness book of World Records, I should have already broken some record related to the most number of women dated in a year. Then I order another round of drinks to that effect. Read the rest of this entry →

Kamau is attracted to a woman named Diana. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Diana, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: “Do you realize that, as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

“Really!?” exclaims Kamau.

And then there is silence in the car. To Diana, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: “I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he thinks I’m trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he isn’t ready for, or isn’t sure of yet.”

And Kamau is thinking: “Gosh. Six months!”

And Diana is thinking: “But, hey, I’m not so sure what kind of relationship this is, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I’d have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward . . . I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know Kamau that well?”

And Kamau is thinking: . . . “so that means it was . . . let’s see . …February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer’s, which means . . . let me check the odometer . . .Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here!” Read the rest of this entry →