This Chic: Three types of Males you will meet as you grow

In adolescence: the bully

In 1996, after much begging, crying, fasting and throwing a big tantrum, my grandmother and mother gave up and agreed to move me into a different school. My best friend had moved the term before and I could not handle life anymore. I had to repeat classes in the new school, so my friend was a class ahead but she came to stand with me in parade on the first day of school.

After parade I got into the dusty classroom, new faces all about me with no locker or chair and in a few minutes the Kiswahili teacher came in. So what to do? I looked around and three other kids were sitting on a bench so I went over and asked them to squeeze themselves. The boy obliged. Nice friendly boy. Fat boys are rarely mean. 

After the lesson, another boy came over right away and started to laugh so loudly it caught everyone’s attention. He was saying:

-Wa,wa,wa did you see her? She put her butt right next to Peter(let’s call the fat boy Peter). ati please squeeze for me....- And everybody thought it was very funny, the girls especially.

My adolescence pride had been hurt but I was in a new school and didn’t want to cause trouble, so with my butt still on the bench I got out a storybook to read.

Lunchtime came and when I got back, I found my bag on the floor, dusty on both sides and someone volunteered the information that (James, let's call him that) the boy that was laughing at me earlier had thrown it on the floor. I confronted him, asked him to wipe the dust off. He glared at me, I glared back so he beat the dust out with his hand.

Our relationship did not get better, I got a desk later but my keys would go missing until I ran out of spares. All the way up to Standard eight. One time I found them in the flower bed behind the classroom. People said it was James that stole them but I had no proof. In class seven the dislike flared so much I called him KIHII on his face. And to call a KIKUYU boy KIHII is like calling a black person a nigga.

This is a James no doubt

This is how it happened; our class teacher would arrange the class in such away that regardless of which number you held in the exams, no one could tell by the class order. He mixed us up boy girl boy girl boy girl. If he had used the class numbers style, James and I would have been desk mates eternally.

That did not stop him from bringing his chair over to carry out a conversation around me. His conversations were mainly about sex. I would not laugh or look at him. I just buried my head in a novel which only made him speak louder, until the day I erupted and told him he was a stupid KIHII.

When I thought about it, I realised I might  have feared the boy. All that sex talk and meanness. In the former school, there was a boy of similar manners. His meanness was not directed to me only but to all the girls. He used dirty language and one time on the way home, he jumped on my back but the scream I let out made him flee quicker than any police siren would have.  

So James, if this was not a boarding school, I suppose  might have tried to jump on my back or something gross like that.  

The guy you didn’t marry in your 20’s

You are a late bloomer you know. So when he talked of children and his mother and financial security your head got confused. You suddenly realised you still didn’t even know how to look after yourself. How would you be expected to look after three or four children and polish shoes with kiwi everyday for your hard working husband?

So you ran. Not because he was a bad guy but he was a good guy that came at an inconvenient time. A good guy with a stable career and good morals. You still needed to figure things out. At 22, your dreams were so big you could not imagine them contained in a one bedroom apartment in Kahawa Sukari, Umoja 2 or South B.

You wanted to go places, Asia, Jamaica, South America. You wanted to finish writing the three novels, you wanted to make peace with family members that  ‘left’. So you let him go.

Or maybe it was him that let you go, when he talked of goals and ambitions and not seeing himself married in the next five years but still wanted to go out for tea and samosa and the big game with a bottle of Smirnoff  Ice for you, and a Tusker for him. 

Yet, you were ready; you were ready to give up your own dreams, you were ready to take his name even though it didn’t really rhyme with yours. You were ready to clean his boxers and go to the market with his mother. Heck, you were even ready to give birth to the three children he wanted, you know they wouldn’t be very good looking, but they would be healthy, coz you now had a recipe book and an oven and a good job that would cover the deficits.

 

But he started to slip, he wanted to know how much you would cost- like really? So you smiled and told him that he had to consider that your family gave you an education. Your heart was numb, you didn’t tell him that your family didn’t care about such nonsense. You smiled, because your family would never meet this fool. Then you relocated and bought an Orange line.

Middle Age: What Beyonce discovered before you did.

That Jay Z is actually a very good looking man. If you look at the overall picture.

I remember watching the music video for the song Jay Z sang with Pharrell Williams, Excuse Miss. All I saw was Pharrell.

But in middle age you learn you got to see the whole picture; when you meet the decent boy that was a caterpillar then but has now metamorphosed. Yea, just like plants and other things that are living souls. No wait, plants aren’t souls. I mean baby rabbits that are born without fur but later become fluffy balls.

On to quiet boys who always finished their homework, were a bit sensitive and not too good looking then. But you meet them 25 years later and you want to go for a 40 day hike in Chalbi desert just to repent your sins, coz you were mean to them at some point. In school, when they offered to help copy the Biology group notes you rolled your eyes, because you thought their hands would sweat all over your Kasuku Brand exercise book. 

 

sensitive lads

And you never looked at them once, unless it was to ignore them and remark how bushy their eye brows were.

But how could you pay them attention, when  you were into tall dark and handsome boys that wore bandanas on the flip side, like Snoop. 

Those boys still look like Snoop today.

And on value evaluation you know you are not that hot thing you were at 16. In your mind you are hearing lyrics like:

Who’s the chicken now?

And you start to think seriously about life.

You regret watching too many American sitcoms, Australian TV series  and Westlife. Because they gave you a distorted view of  the kind of males you will meet as you grow.

Even though it was the geeks and nerds that intrigued you, had you been less flirtatious.

So I did this flirting test.

KIHII- An immature man that talks and does inappropriate things.