He's back! (aka the saga that refuses to die...)

“Turn down the lights, turn down the bed

Turn down these voices, inside my head

Lay down with me, tell me no lies

Just hold me close, don’t patronize me
Don’t patronize me…”

Every so often someone writes a song that transcends damn near everything we’ve ever heard before.  Lyrics so honest you wonder how they got into your head while they were writing it.  A voice that delivers an emotion so strong its practically tangible, it’s a caress on the cheek, an embrace to your soul, a much needed slap across your face, waking you up to the feelings you’ve been trying to hide for so long.  Today’s song is exactly that.  “I cant make you love me” is the one of those songs I listen to and freeze, it takes me to a dark place that I’m both familiar with and immensely scared of. 

I first heard this song in 1998, back when I was in campus in the middle of what was my ‘first love’.  When I got the CD, George Michael’s Best of compilation (‘Ladies and Gentlemen’), I listened to it non-stop for months on end, and while this song in particular was love at first sight/hearing (the simplicity of it blew me away), it was not my favourite.  About six months later, my ‘love’ had tupad me like a used tissue, for his childhood sweetheart no less (it was quite a soap opera, as only campo drama can be…) and I was in the throes of my first heartbreak.  All of a sudden, the song took on new meaning, George was speaking to me, ‘strumming my soul with his fingers, singing my song with his words…’, to quote a woman much more talented than me.  In my innocent mind, my recently ended relationship was a classic case of a love that was doomed from the start, because ‘he never loved me’.  Ah, the sweet foolishness of youth, no?

“Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t
You can’t make your heart feel something that it won’t…”

Almost ten years later and a truly devastating ‘all grown up’ break-up later, this song was back on heavy rotation.  ‘Not again!’ I cried to myself, wrapping myself in the beautiful voice of George as I attempted to nurse myself back to sanity, but this time, being older and wiser, I threw in a good measure of alcohol as well, all the better to bring out the emotion (or dull it, depending).  Unfortunately, second time around, George’s magic wasn’t working, so I dumped the music and clung to the bottle.  I tell you, if I did not become a full blown alcoholic during those six months, it wasn’t because I didn’t try, I drank more crap in that period than I had drunk in all the years preceding it.  Fortunately for me, my losing streak continued and I failed at that too, that plus my guardian angel was working overtime, protecting me from myself.  I was in a daze, numb, not even my extensive collection of ‘pick yourself up and dust yourself off’ songs could get through the fog (actually one did, but I’ll write about it another day).  Eventually, as with all things life, that too came to pass, and George finally began to get through again.  But this time the song wasn’t one of youthful longing, it had become the song of a woman tired of hanging on to something that didn’t exist anymore.  It became a farewell.

“Here in the dark, in these final hours

I will lay down my heart, and I’ll feel the power
But you won’t, no you won’t

And I can’t make you love me

If you don’t…”

Now around the same time, Paco gave me the Boyz II Men album of covers (I forget what it’s called), and I stumbled across this very song.  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, confused, ‘These bastards have the nerve to cover George, my George?  Nkt!’  And with that I dismissed the album wholesale, seeing as how I despise covers, or at least I used to.  Then one night, a couple of months back, I’m working late as usual and listening to Capital, the request session between midnight and 1.00 am to be precise, and a random guy requests this song, no doubt nursing heartbreak of his own.  I get excited because I’m expecting to hear George, or at the very least the Boyz geniuses, who I still love despite my issues (those buggers sang the songs which those of us who were teens in the early 90’s had our first kisses to, and possibly more, you can’t help but have a soft spot, no?).  Instead the presenter plays a version by Will Downing and I’m wondering, ‘Eh?  Kwani how many guys have covered George?’  Very disturbed by this new revelation, and slightly idle as usual, I proceeded to google the song. 

I never learn, do I? 

On the off chance you glanced at the soundtrack section today, you may have noticed that there’s a second version of the song uploaded as well.  That’s the original.  Yes folks, turns out my man George is an impostor.  This time though, having gone through the D’angelo/Smokey debacle, I remained calm and composed.  And then I wept a little.  Kidding.  The song was originally released in 1991 and is one of Bonnie Raitt’s biggest hits, understandably, and has been covered by countless artists, from Prince to Adele to Kenny Rogers.  And it gets better, if you listen to the original, you’ll hear distinctive piano playing accompanying her raspy voice, distinctive to those of you who are/were fans of Sundowner.  The fellow playing is none other than Bruce Hornsby of ‘Mandolin Rain’ fame, or for the hip-hop heads amongst us, the chap who sang the song sampled in Tupac’s ‘Changes’, ‘The way it is’.  That 6 degrees of separation saga is no lie I tell you, but that too is a story for another day.  Another useless fact for you, Ms Raitt is quoted as saying that she struggles to sing this song live, because the emotion of the song is such that she’s forced to dig deep, too deep sometimes.  So you see, I didn’t imagine the ‘naisikia kwa roho’ feeling I got, and still get, there are many others like me.  I’m not crazy, is all I’m saying.

Why am I subjecting you to a music appreciation class?  Because George is back on rotation, courtesy of the mess with Disappearing Dude.  Only this time, he’s not doing the trick.  Problem is, this time I think I’m the one who was not feeling the love, not the other way around.  No, that’s not it.  Whatever love I may have felt, and I’m probably still feeling seeing as how I clearly have separation issues, it wasn’t enough.  I gave up on this man, not because I didn’t care about him, I simply cared about myself more.  I’ve always been the idiot who will keep fighting till there’s no fight left in me, and then I’ll try again one more time, just to be sure, because I believe that anything worth having is worth fighting for.  At least I did.  Until recently.  It’s a scary thing when you realise you’ve grown up, or grown away.

“Morning will come and I’ll do what’s right

Just give me till then, to give up this fight

And I will give up this fight…”

The man has reappeared, seemingly serious and intent on making up for past transgressions, transgressions I might add he seems to have no knowledge of.  In one of the stranger ironies of my life, he seems completely unaware of the fact that shit ended, and not in a particularly good way.  The way he’s carrying on, he simply went away for a couple of weeks and now he’s back to pick up where we left off.  Men, huh?  Can’t live with them, can’t shoot them!  Now I’m a believer in second chances and what not, but how am I supposed to handle a genius who doesn’t even know we’re on round two?  I have no idea what to do, so I’m adopting my tried and tested method of, ‘Freeze!  Don’t move a muscle, maybe he won’t see you…’, this as the lion is staring at me, licking its paws in anticipation, about to pounce on my juicy and conveniently immobile ass.  If you happen to find this and related posts gone one day, in my attempt to remove traces of my emotional infidelity (you’re all my clandes and if I go down I’m taking you with me, I’m just saying…), know that I’ve been bitten.  Again.  Until then however, I shall continue to hold my ‘statue’, in the delusional hope that bloody simba is blind…

...like Wonder Woman (aka sex(ist) therapy part 2...)

“She take my money, when I’m in need
Yea she’s a triflin’ friend indeed
Oh she’s a gold digger, way over town
That digs on me…”

Stop looking at me like that, those are the ever brilliant Kanye West’s words, he that would have featured here much sooner if I wasn’t too lazy to rip the bloody CD’s.  Today’s track was originally the surprisingly profound ‘Wouldn’t get far’ by The Game featuring Mr West, I song that I would love to quote at length, but I don’t have the balls to put up its lyrics.  If you feel so inclined, listen closely at 2:40 on this track, the lines starting ‘the things niggaz do when…’  That is the point to all this nonsense I’ve written today, and from whence the title of this post was derived.  But as with all best laid plans, things went awry when I stumbled across ‘Gold Digger’ yesterday, it just fits so much better, and you’re about to figure out why.

Given those opening lines, do I still need to give a disclaimer?  Okay then, for the benefit of any newbies amongst us (not likely, but who knows…), we’re headed into the sewer today, take off all valuables and such like, fragile people exit now, the language in this one might get a bit…hairy. 

Every so often I’ll tell you about my local, not to show you what a lush I am (I’m not.  Really, I’m not…), but because that’s where I end up listening to all manner of idiots bitch to me about all manner of rubbish, usually because I’m the only female in the bar they aren’t trying to shag.  Now every so often, one of the fellas will start bitching about some random girl he met (read shagged) who keeps hitting him up for cash, airtime, cab fare, salon money, random trips to the coast, fees for her relatives, and on and on…  And then at one point in the bitching session, said unhappy bastard turns to me and asks, “Why do you women always want money from us?”, and then the other three bastards turn to me and chime, “Lakini why?”  I’m sitting there, odds are at that point slightly tipsy, staring at these four men and thinking, ‘When did I become the representative for all Kenyan women?’, but I don’t bother asking that.  Instead I ask, “Why did you give her money the first time she asked?”

Today I’m going to give you a couple of stories, stories of men who I worry have IQ’s that are slightly suspect, slightly, and this in an attempt to illustrate the unending foolishness all around us, because you know how much I love foolishness.  Or not. 

First up, the story of a friend of a friend of mine who is currently ‘married’ to a woman who is, from the way his boys tell it, not a very good woman.  Now when she met this man, he was newly promoted and single, therefore flush with disposable income and looking to make up for lost time by shagging any woman who would have him, now that he was standing a little taller and looking a little more shiny and shit in his (not quite) new Golf.  She took a quick look at him and figured, ‘why not?’, and the next thing he knew she had his number.  Expensive dinner here and drinks there, a loose shopping spree in Uchumi for ‘breakfast stuff’ for the morning after the night before, the man was living in the Southern outskirts of the city and he was taking her home to the (far) Eastern outskirts every night, this so he could get laid, very well laid I assume if you factor in Nairobi traffic and fuel prices.  What?  That’s a long way to go for crap sex, we have to give the man some credit and assume it was good sex, no?  I’m just saying…  Less than four months after they began ‘dating’ she’s pregnant and the next thing he knows she’s in his house.  Two years later, the man is crying into his beer, moaning about this woman who expects him to pay all the bills, she practically takes his entire pay check each month.  He’s frustrated because she’s happy to sit back and enjoy the fruits of his labour without contributing anything to the family pot.  He wants to know how to change this situation.  I want to slap him.  You meet a woman who likes your wallet as much as, if not more than, you and then you turn around and complain that she’s bleeding you dry?  Really?

Different idiot, similar scenario.  Moving on up, newly minted six digit income, decides to go get himself a sweet young thing, still in college to boot, to go with his recently acquired eligible bachelor status.  Now seeing as how she’s still a student, he’s paying for everything, no?  Not a problem, he’s only too happy to throw his cash around, he’s the man!  Check out the hot chick on his arm, man!  Once in a while there would be minor rumblings about the cost of maintaining this woman, but said rumblings were mainly used to show the rest of us just how much cash the man had.  ‘Can you believe she wants to go to Mombasa, again?’ he asks, stroking his big fat…ego, ‘It’s not a problem, I can take her, it’s just…’  A hungry woman and a flash bastard, match made in heaven, right?  Problem is, she has since graduated, got a good job with a newly minted six digit income, and he’s still paying for everything.  Everything?  Every-thang!  They got married last year, and he’s still bitching about the money, all while occasionally stroking his big fat…say it with me…ego.  Him I already slapped, years ago.  Don’t worry, it was with a book, I didn’t break anything, although I think I smudged the lovely book’s cover.  And the slap didn’t help.  Clearly.

Should I continue?

An acquaintance from the bar (i.e. random idiot I run into every so often), having recently broken up with his mama, proceeded to go on a shag fest, literally, I lost track of the different girls parading in and out of his life, bed, car (don’t ask).  One day several months later, he realised that the hole he kept trying to fill with random sex was only getting bigger, so he decided to find a serious mama and settle down.  He meets a woman who could possibly be ‘the one’, seeing as how he didn’t meet her in a bar at 2.00 am, but one month later he’s already complaining about how she’s too pushy, she’s trying to take over his life, blah blah blah…  He’s moaning about how he’s spending too much money with this woman, because she’s a serious woman and she deserves to be spoilt rotten, no?  No.  Turns out that in his brilliance he may have told the woman that he’s more successful (read richer) than he actually is.  There he is, living the champagne lifestyle on a beer budget, struggling like a nonsense, but he’s still going, he’s the man!  The reason he keeps going?  This woman has shagged him like a superstar, the way he tells it, literally, role play, handcuffs and shit.  The man is completely p… whipped.  (I know, a mouth this filthy and that’s the one word I have issues with?  Go figure!)  Some idiots aren’t even worth the slap.

I have more stories, many more.  Stories of men doing stupid shit, like pretending to be big time playas to get laid, forgetting that such a big lie will eventually catch up with them; or shagging virtual strangers bila condoms, in this day and age, and then acting surprised when a little Jimmy surfaces soon thereafter; or flashing the cash around to make up for what must surely be a lack of something else, or simply good old-fashioned laziness, who knows?  The thing that bothers me about this trend of men using money to get laid is this, if you meet a woman and the first thing you do is show her your fat wallet, what do you think is going to happen thereafter?  If you want to keep getting laid, you have to keep paying, yes?  On the up side though, with these women using what’s between their legs to get a man, more accurately to get his money, they don’t get to complain when he goes out and buys a newer model, because they’re the geniuses who turned it into a commercial transaction to begin with.  All’s fair in sex and money.  If you get tired of your purchase, all you have to do is go out and buy another one, right?

I read an article last weekend, in the March issue of GQ (Seeking Arrangement), about a dating site for sugar daddies.  You heard me, sugar daddies, men with cash to spend, looking for young women (referred to as sugar babies) interested in being their recreational partners, for a fee.  I’m not shitting you, these men get onto this site and state what they’re looking for and how much they’re willing to pay for it.  While sex is never mentioned explicitly, because that would be prostitution and therefore illegal, it’s implied in the ‘arrangements‘ they describe, they’re looking for a ‘girlfriend experience’.  They stick their annual income right up at the top, then they describe their appearance and such like, then they state their offer, as in how much they are willing to pay a woman for her ‘time’.  Reading this I assumed that the sugar babies would be working girls, but apparently that’s not the case, these girls are regular, albeit hot, girls either looking to make a bit of extra cash, for a myriad of reasons, or perhaps hoping for a ‘pretty woman’ type happy ending, who knows?  Point is, we always talk about how money plays an important role in dating, and sex, but here is a genius who went one step further and allowed people to state it up front: I give you x number dollars and you give me x number hours a month, and vice versa.  Brilliant, or deviant?  You decide. 

From what I’ve seen in this special city of ours, dating these days is exactly the same, a cash transaction.  A man steps up to you assuming that you expect him to spend his money on you, and in return he expects you to shag him, the more he spends, the more, or better, sex he demands.  Go out with a man more than three times and don’t give it up, you’re promptly branded a prick tease.  The man takes you out on Saturday night and you can rest assured that he’ll be expecting a blow job on Sunday morning.  Go out of town with the man and you will be expected to bend over before you even unpack.  And the worst part is, women seem to have accepted this state of affairs.  They’re out there selling their sex to the highest bidder because they figure, why give it out for free when they can make a little money out of it?  I guess if it’s a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ scenario, then what business do I have getting worked up about it, live and let live and what not, no?  No.  Thing is, it’s now the default assumption is that we’re all ‘that woman’ who’s selling her p… let’s call it ‘wares’.  That’s just plain unacceptable.  Gentlemen, some of us do not want your money.  Really.  I’m not saying we don’t want you to spend money on us, all women love it when you spoil them rotten, in our deluded heads its part of the courting process.  Yes, you must woo us, but please don’t take that to mean throwing money, expensive gifts and such like material things at us, that’s not courting, that’s a purchase, hire-purchase to be precise. 

Ah screw this!  I’m done speaking for all of womankind, I’m going to speak for myself from now on.  I don’t know what some of my kind are thinking when they ask you for 5k to go get their hair done, every week.  I don’t know what they’re thinking when they call you and ask you to ‘loan’ them money for rent, every month.  I don’t know what on earth possesses them to demand an Easter holiday in Malindi, just to let you hit it, that one time.  I don’t bloody know, so stop asking me why.  Bottom line is, if you choose to go out and buy ‘wares’, then don’t turn around and come crying to me, ati all the supplier wants is your money.  Why do you think she gave you said ‘wares’, fucking charity?  

“Now I ain’t sayin’ she a gold digger
But she ain’t messin’ with no broke niggaz..."

This one is about my date with Phillip, a prophecy, a langa zebra and weed.

These buggers have to be on crack!  They must be.  How else do you explain an institution whose own audit finds that most of their staff is incompetent receiving ISO certification?  Crack!  What criteria, pray tell, is used to give this most esteemed certification?  Quality of the product and/or service delivery?  Or perhaps the quality of the management and staff?  Perhaps its the efficiency of the company, or maybe the satisfaction of its customers?  Or could it be that someone just managed to fill out the form correctly?  Even the MD of KeBS, not KBS, KeBS, is quoted as wondering ‘How now?’  All I’m saying is an entire city cannot be wrong, can it?  Crack babies, the whole lot of them.

That said, Kudos Phillip!  How about I buy you a busaa or two at my now flooded local to celebrate?  Its flooded because the storm drain hasn’t been cleared in so long its now a garden, thus the runoff flows straight into the shack, forcing us to put our feet up on empty crates as we unwind.  Because I like you, I’ll carry a spare set of gumboots for you, but only because I like you.  Don’t worry about finding the joint, it’s just off the formerly tarmac road your geniuses came and dug up last month, just before the rains, so they could patch up potholes that weren’t really there.  I might be a bit late though, because I’ll be stuck in traffic on Uhuru Highway, this as the traffic cops step in to replace the temperamental lights (those that work once a year) and manage traffic in their own more scientific manner: 1 one thousand, 2 one thousand, 3 one thousand…  And when you get there, try not to park on what’s left of the road outside, not unless you want to get picked up, for loitering, by your own extortion gang, sorry, ‘security apparatus’, as you stand there fumbling with your door. 

Once inside, we shall sit round a candle and share a story or two, because there shall be no power, because the tree your people said Maish needs a permit to cut down finally fell on a line last week, during the rain storm you see, and Kenya Power (no longer lighting) can’t seem to find the time to get round to sorting me and mine out.  If you do get there before I do, whatever you do, do not order water.  There’s none from the tap, but you already know that, and the bottled one is from a company that only recently received ISO certification, and you know about that too, don’t you?  And whatever you do, don’t tell the barman you’re running for governor, not unless you want to be sodomised with a broom handle in the back room, next to the crates.  Nothing personal you understand, it’s just that you and yours shaft us so often, and so well, that if and when we get the chance to return the favour, well, we just can’t help ourselves. 

I didn’t think I would ever live to say this, but can we please have John back?  Anything is better than this charade of inefficiency.  ISO certified?  Really?

On a unhappier note, it has been prophesied that Kenyans are in for hard times.  No really, there’s a prophetess who has seen the future, and she sees us suffering.  Don’t believe her?  Check out her credentials.  She predicted a big minister would lose his job, to which the journalist said, ‘him, never!’, this when he interviewed said prophetess the first time, a couple of months back.  Then the big man was not just fired but demoted, and now the bugger is all, ‘whoa, deep!’   She predicted the death of two big men, and lo and behold, two geriatric geezers keeled over.  Again the bugger is all, ‘prophetic man!’, this said as he no doubt passed the blunt around.  Then the prophetess says she knows who our next president will be, but she won’t tell us, all she’ll tell us is that he’ll have a difficult race to state house.  Te de de de…  That’s suspense music by the way. 

Now I’m a complete sceptic, but I’m also a devout conspiracy nut, X-files, Fringe, all that sci-fi, stranger than fiction, the truth is out there nonsense is my cup of tea.  I am open to the possibility that some random woman can see the future.  Really.  Just like I am open to the idea of alternate universes, how else do you explain Kalonzo’s conviction that he could actually be my president one day?  That bugger is living in another dimension, his reality and mine are not the same, but that’s a story for another day.  What I am not open to, however, is an idiot journalist writing a half-baked piece of swill, with little to no investigation to back up any of the claims made therein, nothing but, ‘that’s some prophetic shit right there…’  Do you these buggers not go to school to learn this crap?  Is there no quality control in the print media?  Hang on, they’re ISO certified, aren’t they?  Figures.  The moral of the story is, hard times they are a coming.  It has been said, so shall it come to pass.  Or not.  I’m waiting for those ISO bastards to certify this shit first. 

Moving on to even more unhappy matters, the Grevy’s zebra is apparently on the brink of extinction.  It’s not enough that loss of habitat and poaching have conspired to reduce the numbers of the sub-species, its own behaviour may be the final nail in its striped coffin.  ‘How?’ you ask.  Turns out the stallion is ‘territorial and adopts a harem mating system, whereby it does not chase after females but waits for them to be attracted to it, unlike its common cousin.  This means it has difficulties finding mates.’  That’s right folks, rather than go out looking for zebras of his own stripe, he shags whatever comes his way, usually his smaller less striped cousins, who are possibly drawn to his large body (apparently Grevy’s are almost twice as large) and fancy coat (their stripes are thinner and they have a white underbelly, very flash).  So now his kind is about to become extinct, and all because he’s a bit of a whore, a lazy whore at that.  This funga business is an epidemic.

And last but not least, as of May 1st, ‘coffee shops’ in three southern provinces of the Netherlands will begin to implement the ‘weed pass’ law.  It’s not what it sounds like, you will not be required to pass it down.  No, these geniuses have outlawed the selling of weed to foreigners, and they plan to roll out this brilliant scheme to the rest of the country, including Amsterdam, next year.  Apparently, the reason for this most intelligent scheme is to cut down on ‘drug tourists’ (is there any other kind?) from neighbouring countries, basically buggers who drive across the border, stock up, and then go back home.  They don’t mind if you smoke it, they just don’t want you to go smoke it at home see, it’s not like you’re a drug dealer or something, are you?  If you were hoping to one day cross the ocean and sample international blends, go now.

Baby? Not right now, thank you.

Yesterday someone I hadn’t seen in years asked me how my kids are.  ‘How’s that?’ I asked, looking down at my waist to check, perhaps I looked pregnant.  I didn’t.  ‘I heard you have kids,’ he says seriously, ‘don’t you?’  ‘Not that I know of,’ I reply, ‘but I’ve had a couple of wild nights in the past so who knows …’

Quick disclaimer before I go too far, this one is about kids, and seeing as I don’t have any, you know this will be short.  I’ll try to throw in the occasional reference to sex to keep you interested, but I can’t really promise too much, its a bit hard to sex-up a discussion about babies, no?  Not to fear though, next week is sewer week...

The thing about crossing 30 in this town is that everyone assumes you have children, and if you don’t, then you must be dying to.  Fair enough I guess, almost every woman I know is either a mother or longing to become one.  I on the other hand, not so much.  Wait, don’t light the torches yet, put down your pitchforks and let me explain.  I’m a last born, all my life I’ve been the youngest one in the room, but now all of a sudden there’s little versions of my siblings all over and I’m looking at them in curiosity wondering, ‘I wonder what happens if I poke it here?’  Stop laughing, I accidentally said that out loud once and now my mother won’t leave me alone with her grandbabies.  Shame man, can’t she take a joke? 

Apparently all women are hardwired to reproduce, and those of us who aren’t of the same frame of mind are immediately branded freaks, and not in a good way.  When I told the last guy I dated (briefly) that I wasn’t sure I wanted to have kids, he looked at me like I’d just confessed a love for child pornography, then he crossed himself and muttered a quick prayer, this while simultaneously taking a gulp of beer and a hit of smack or whatever shit he was on (he was slightly unstable, I suspected chemicals).  Trust me, when a possible abuser of things illegal crosses himself, things are not looking too good for you.  Now you know.  So now that I’ve been branded a half-woman by those in the know, what am I to do with myself?  Back in campus when I first said I don’t plan to have kids, everyone just chuckled and wrote it off as one of those foolish things I’d say every so often.  Older types would smile patronisingly and tell me that I’d change my mind as I matured, I assumed they were right and so I sat back to wait for my Damascus moment.  27 came and went, nothing.  30 came and went, nothing.  Now approaching a middle age crisis, still nothing.  Ladies and gentlemen, I fear my biological clock is broken.  I am defective.  Oh joy!  Because my life isn’t hard enough already, I now have to worry about not worrying about shit. 

I have to ask, are there others out here like me?  The only women I know who don’t have kids and have made their peace with it are nuns, and they spend all day around other people’s children, running schools and what not.  And not getting laid.  From what I can tell, that’s the only way to get away with this whole no baby thing, because our society places little to no value on women who refuse to reproduce, and unfortunately on those who are unable to as well.  My female friends frown at me when I refuse to change their babies’ diapers, they take it as a personal affront that I have no urge to cradle their screaming child to my bosom.  My male friends stare at me like I’m an alien, devoid of human compassion and what not, the female terminator from T3, only without the red leather jumpsuit.  The men I date don’t believe me, they think I’m trying to trap them with reverse psychology bullshit, either that or they start to stare at my womb suspiciously, like perhaps I’ve had a couple of kids already and now I’m hiding them so as to get them down the aisle as quickly as possible.  My mother refuses to acknowledge it, period, and my father looks at me like he suspects I’m not really his spawn.  Hell, every so often, even I start to wonder what’s wrong with me, why don’t I have this most basic urge?   

A woman’s body is a strange thing.  Once a month it reminds you that all that crap you’re carrying around has a greater purpose, reminding you of your place in the great chain that is mankind.  At its most basic, a woman’s body is the vessel through which all life flows forth, and it will never let you forget it, despite the nonsense we often get up to.  Deliberately not having a baby is like telling your own body, ‘Fuck you, bitch!’, a pointless act seeing as the next month your body will still be there, laughing at you, asking, ‘Who you calling bitch, bitch?’, and constantly trying to get its own way.  It’s a scary thing when you want one thing and your body wants something completely different, it forces you to go to great lengths, up to and including sticking wire-thingis in your womb and wearing plastic to bed, to not achieve the stated purpose of your design.  Did that sound almost religious?  Don’t worry, I’m not about to start quoting creation scripture.  Thing is, I’m a designer by training, an old school designer for that matter, I believe that form should follow function.  Put differently, I believe that only by performing its function well can an object be truly beautiful.  Brilliant theory at work, but its makes it a bit hard to explain the ‘woman without babies’ thing, no?  Question is, by going against the design, am I negating the essence of what I am?

Now I need you appreciate just where I’m coming from here.  When I was in my early 20’s, I thought all the ‘women must have babies talk’ was rubbish, a combination of dodgy biology, sexism and pressure from our mothers.  I was an independent cow who refused to bow to society’s norms.  Then in my late 20’s, when all my female friends started settling down and popping babies out, I realised that biological clock story was no lie, or that it was such a pervasive lie that it had become truth.  Same difference I guess.  At that point it became a case if different strokes and such like, but I was still bucking the trend, still fighting…you guessed it…society’s norms.  For me to sit here and calmly proclaim the essence of a woman is as a baby making machine is not only frightening, it’s slightly absurd.  I’m a bit concerned for myself, I’m starting to sound almost rational.  I’ve always been a stubborn idiot, more inclined to say no before I listen, but with age comes, if not wisdom, at the very least perspective.  I know enough now to know that I don’t know everything, so these days I’ll try to listen first, then say no (rarely yes), but with reasons, sometimes even good reasons. 

Back to the question though, is my choice not to reproduce a rejection of my femininity, or am I simply an aberration from the norm, an outlier?  They say nature will always seek balance, so it stands to reason that for every woman trying to populate the earth with as many babies as possible, there should be another one who doesn’t want to reproduce.  Balance, no?  You’re not buying this shit are you?  Neither did my mother last weekend, but I figure it’s worth a shot, anything to help explain why I’m not living up to my biological potential.  Truth is, I have no idea why I don’t want to have kids.  Maybe it’s that I’ve never felt stable enough to start a family, because family comes with great responsibility, doesn’t it?  Maybe I’ve just never met the right man, seeing as how I’ve always thought if I had to have a child, then I’d have to be married to the child’s father, because no child deserves to have only me taking care of him, that’s would be cruel and unusual punishment.  Maybe I’m a selfish cow who just doesn’t want to grow the fuck up, I suspect that’s my father’s theory, at least that’s what his eyes keep saying.  Or maybe, just maybe, this is how it was meant to be.  Who knows, right?

POSTSCRIPT
For any of you currently going through the ‘must have baby now!’ hunger pangs, read this article The science of baby fever, turns out you’re not crazy, and neither am I. 

This is about nothing in particular...

I sat down this morning with all intention of writing something pithy and thought provoking about the tragic comedy that has become our politics, but now I’m thinking, what for?  We all know how nonsense these politicians have become, and this is going to continue till next year’s elections.  Why not have that discussion around December when I’m on holiday and therefore relaxed (read drunk) enough to talk about these idiots without punching the keys on my keyboard like I’m trying to beat the life out of them (as I am currently doing)? 

That decision now made, I have nothing to talk about today.

I’m looking back at the last few posts and it occurs to me that I’ve been a bit serious lately, no?  Maybe serious isn’t the right word, more melancholic, bittersweet.  The one drawback to doing a post each week is that the blog starts to resemble a journal, tracking the ups and downs of my not very dramatic life, which I guess isn’t a bad thing, makes it more realistic, honest almost.  But it also shows more than I intend to.  I’m not sure I’m comfortable with a bunch of strangers peeking into my head, she says, as she peels back her scalp to expose the sign on her skull saying, ‘Ingia hapa’.  Ah well…  Bora you don’t try to blackmail me, right?  The thing about blogging is it’s a conscious decision, we (and I use this term loosely) write because we want to, or need to.  We have something to say, some wrong we want to make right, some omission we need to correct, a side of ourselves we are desperate to show someone, anyone.  Sometimes I think all we’re doing is looking for kindred spirits, someone who gets what you’re about, or at least pretends to.  On the one hand, we bare our souls and expose ourselves simultaneously to praise and criticism, but on the other hand we bare selectively, kind of like a peep show, I’ll show you the good bits and maybe some of the not so bad bits, maybe. 

Now in as much as I try to be honest with you at all times, I will occasionally spin a story a little to paint myself in a slightly more flattering light.  I definitely won’t come out here and tell you about my deep dark secrets, that would just be foolish, no?  But if by telling a story a certain way, I start to look like some excellent all knowing creature of perfection (not likely, but you never know, no?), then I’m clearly approaching Alistair Campbell like proportions of spin and I need to stop and reality check myself.  This is my attempt at correcting whatever misconceptions, and flat out lies, I may have created over the last six months, and my disclaimer for the next six.

1. I’m impatient, unless I’m waiting for a good thing, then I’m ridiculously impatient.
2. I have flat feet, at least that’s what my mother always says, but I suspect that’s just her way of trying to make me feel better about my abnormally shaped feet.  I guess I should have said I have abnormally shaped feet…
3. I suspect I swear more than I should, but who the fuck cares right?
4. I have two warts, thankfully not on my face.
5. I hate being told what to do, even though most days I need a bit of help, or direction.
6. I have 10 hairs and counting on four spots on my chin.  Don’t freak out, I pluck the bastards, it’s not like I have a goatee or anything, although the way things are going, I might have soon, who knows?  Slight detour, when they said drinking that moonshine shit woud put hairs on my chest, this was not what I expected...
7. I have a very short fuse, I’ve done some damage speaking in anger so these days I try to bite my tongue and walk away.  Fail most times, but still I try.
8. I may have, occasionally, in the (not so) distant past, partaken of some pornography.  Just a little.  Hang on, that’s a good thing no?
9. I can be unforgiving, and I hold on to shit far longer than I should.  Doesn’t help that I seldom forget…
10. I love politicians...
11. I have no qualms telling a lie or two.

My name is (not) Alex and I have very many issues. 

Thank you all for keeping me company over the last six months, taking time out of your busy lives to laugh at mine.  Special thanks to the two lovely strangers in California(?) and Germany who’ve been coming back here since November, I don’t know how you found me, at this point I don’t care, I’m just glad you did.  If I knew who you are, I would mail you cards and shit.  No money though, I’m quite cheap.  Plus I suspect the other, more vocal, regulars would revolt.

Have a good week folks, I’m off to (not) read the paper.