Still haven't found...

I’m at karaoke listening to a bunch of men sing the most syrupy ballad ever, one that challenges every definition of masculinity I have ever had. And they’re loving it! Go figure. See, all this time I've been thinking you buggers have the emotions of a torn sieve and yet here they are, a bunch of grown ass men crooning away to a Celine Dion song like their lives depend on it... Eh?  When did men get emotions?  Now there’s a bugger singing Bette Midler...

My friend, this is live blogging, yawa! But do I say...

I’ve had a weird week. Random conversations with various characters I barely know have left me convinced that for all our differences, we’re really not all that different.  I know, that doesn’t sound like a dramatic revelation, but it is, especially for someone who has always thought that being an ‘individual’ is more important that ‘fitting in’ and being part of the crowd.  This ‘human condition’ jive seems to be more real than I thought…

And now the manager just bought me a drink... This night will not end well, karibu I funga my pal, he that is currently chasing a woman with a spectacular ass, and not much else it would seem.  I’m just saying, she wouldn’t have given him a second look if he wasn’t light-skinned, and by light-skinned I mean Indian.  Seems at 2 in the morning, anything goes, which then begs the question, why am I sitting here typing out a post on phone instead of trying to get my ass taken home by a (seemingly) attractive stranger?  She pauses and looks up, scanning the room for prospects, but sees none, the room being crowded as it is with young attractive females in very tight jeans and ankle boots (slight detour, did I miss the fashion memo?  All the girls in here are wearing the same outfit, complete with matching hair…very peculiar…), and only 4 grown men (I refuse to count the boys who look like they finished high school not too long ago, despite their thumb-sucking hotness), of whom 3 are idiots I know better than I’d like, and the last one has absolutely no interest in me. 

Lakini, I must tell you about that one bugger who is immune to my (and I say this in complete jest) charms.  That bugger shot me down, yaani, alinilenga na madharau.  What!!!  I have not felt that small since I was 28 and my brother’s friend, he whom I had been (not so) secretly lusting after, introduced me to his friends as his ‘little sister’.  Yes, the ground does in fact open up and swallow you if you pray hard enough, either that or its just the feeling of shrinking till you’re about 2 inches tall that makes you feel like you’ve just sunk to previously unknown depths.  Stop laughing at me, I know you know what I’m talking about, no?  No?  Shit.  Back to the bastard at the bar.  The man not only looked right through me, he then walked off and began chatting up one of the aforementioned young girls dressed in what I suspect is the new Kenya uniform (she did look quite spectacular, though).  I sat there, stunned, for a minute, and then I gathered up my skirts and skulked back to the counter, into the arms of my langa pals, who at that point were rolling on the floor in evil laughter.  Again I ask, what???  Still, the night has picked up somewhat, I was proclaimed ‘one of the boys’ soon thereafter, in honour of my bold and audacious, yet ultimately unsuccessful, attempt, and I’m now currently enjoying the third of what appears to be a never ending stream of free drinks.  I keep saying this, a willingness to humiliate yourself in public will earn you unlimited quantities of tequila.  Feel free to quote me the next time you go down in a blaze of shameless glory…

I must stop doing this, I’m starting to look a bit pathetic now, plus I’m a bit concerned that I can type on the phone, half drunk, at 2:34 am.  If I met me in the bar, doing this, I’d be a bit scared.  Then again, I am me, so what the hell, no?  No.  I will pick this up when I’m sober, and alone.  

Fast forward to a couple of nights later…

This ‘one of the boys’ story is the source of great humour in my life.  Apparently, I think I like a man, or so I’m told, only I don’t get it, because I don’t understand men, clearly.  At best, I figure, I’m a bit of a hybrid, many years spent in the company of mostly men has essentially infused me with certain male characteristics, for instance, the ability to use the word ‘fuck’ as a noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective and conjunction (coarse language is for the most part a male trait and it takes a woman with a very sexy voice to pull it off.  I do not have a very sexy voice, but I make up for it with my brilliant mind, and a variety of hand gestures…).  Back in the day I used to love it, being ‘one of the boys’, I figured life was much easier when I could blend in with my environment, and my environment was very, very male, but eventually it gets a bit old, once you realise that for all the talk, you’ll always pee sitting down, and not on the side of the road.  These days, I’ll sit at the counter and talk dirty with the boys, then I’ll stand up and adjust my boobies, and wander off to chat up a sweet young thing, as girly as I can pull off (which, just for the record, is not much, see earlier incident as reference), then I’ll go back to the boys and give them a most filthy run down of the conversation I’ve just had, complete with hand gestures.  It’s the best of both worlds, no?  Perhaps not.

Some time back, Jackson Biko wrote about women in his Mantalk column (One of the Boys), I guess I should say women like me, except that I don’t think what he wrote was entirely accurate.  He said, and I quote, “And that’s the one limitation to being One of the Boys; for the longest time she has the enviable privilege of knowing the uncensored thinking of a man, privy to such dirty laundry and the mannerism of men that when she outgrows that role – and they usually do – she goes into a relationship with so much baggage that it takes years of ‘exorcism’ for it not to spill over into her new relationship.”  Thing is, I think he has it backwards, its the baggage that drives a woman to become one of the boys, not the other way around.  Any time you meet a woman who is aggressively avoiding her femininity (and I do agree that a woman who is seen to be ‘one of the boys’ is in some ways a bit butch), there’s a story buried there, it could be as simple as basic rebellion or as complex as daddy issues.  More often than not, these women are slightly fucked up individuals (as we all are, no?), and the drama that ensues when she tries to find a man has nothing to do with her friends and everything to do with her (as is the case with all of us, no?). 

I know you’re sitting there thinking, ‘Nkt!  She’s defending herself, the foolish cow…’ but I’m not, simply because, despite what my idiot friends tell me, I do not consider myself ‘one of the boys’, and I know now that I never was.  See what these men don’t, and probably can’t, tell me, is that I will never truly be one of them.  No really, never.  We can spend a long evening watching football and discussing the merits of 3D porn (don’t ask), but when its time to go home, they will see me to my car and make sure I get home safe, because I’m a girl.  They are only too happy to throw drinks my way, and happily take the drinks I throw right back at them, but they will strap me down in my chair if they think I’m too drunk to be making eyes at a stranger, or if the stranger is too drunk to be making eyes at me.  They will call me up in the middle of the day for my professional opinion, that which they claim to respect greatly, then turn around and accuse me of making ‘emotional’ (read female), and not professional, decisions when I tell them I turned down a job because I didn’t share the client’s vision. 

I used to think it was chauvinist of them to constantly treat me like a girl, and I often complained about what I thought were double standards, until one day it finally clicked, for all their talk, they can never forget that I’m female.  Thing is, when a man treats you like a woman, a competent woman, but a woman nonetheless, turns out he’s showing you respect.  I like that I’m good enough friends with my male friends to be treated as an equal, albeit an equal who occasionally insists on having girly conversations about feelings and such like rubbish, but at the same time they still treat me with the respect accorded to a lady…well, perhaps lady is too strong a word, let’s use woman instead.  I used to think that fitting in with them meant I had to muzzle the female in me, but I learnt, through them, that a large part of the reason I was part of the group was because I’m female.  They like that I have a different perspective, that I reason differently (I would say more clearly, but I’m a cocky female so…), that I show them the other side of the equation, and that I look better in a skirt than they ever will. 

So what does this, a grown man singing Bette Midler’s ‘Wind beneath my wings’, my humiliating rejection at the hands of a stranger and my mboys, all have in common?  It’s the human condition.  We’re all out here looking for the same things, love, respect, meaning, maybe even gratification, who knows?  We’re not that different, you and I, except for the troubling fact that my spelling improves when I’m under the influence of greater spirits.  

Hang on, I should have written that bugger a note instead, no?  No, that would just be odd.

I have run, I have crawled,
I have scaled these city walls, these city walls,
Only to be with you,
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for…

Not to offend the diehard U2 fans, and I consider myself one of the many, but the cover by The Chimes absolutely kicks ass.  I’m just saying, this song was meant to be sung by a black woman, and from what I’ve read about it, I think Bono and Co. would agree.