I DON’T DO RELATIONSHIPS

Men have the friend zone. This is the zone where he does everything like a boyfriend but gets none of the benefits of the boyfriend because he is ‘just a friend’. The equivalent of this with women is the I don’t do relationships zone. This is where she does everything as a ‘girlfriend’ but gets none of the perks of being a girlfriend i.e. the man is disinclined to ask her to go out with him, be his girlfriend or propose.

A number of times I have been asked how to get the ‘I don’t do relationships’ kind of guy to commit because you like him, are attracted to him and you want to get to the next level. Here then are some pointers that you (if you are a girl or attracted to guys) can use to get such a guy to commit. Feel free to use any combination or all of these pointers to achieve your goal.

Never explicitly state that you want a relationship

All men are clairvoyant and can read minds. It is the one thing that men like to do; read your mind. Men spend hours every day going through every faucet of your mind and thus don’t need you to tell them what you want. They already know. Do not tell a guy explicitly that you want a relationship. That’s bad mojo for his mind reading skills. Not to mention that telling a guy you want a relationship or (gasp) asking him out is fatal. There are cemeteries filled with all the dumb and suicidal women who dared ask a man out.

Become friends with benefits then use the sex to get him to commit

Men love it when you agree to one thing then change the goal post mid-stream. Once he is hooked onto the sex use that as an opportunity to interrogate if he has changed his mind. If he does not give you a satisfactory answer hold off on any further intimacy until he changes his response. Don’t forget to dangle the chance of intimacy if he gives you the answer you seek. Use this blackmail to your advantage. There is nothing more attractive to a man than a manipulative lady. Manipulation always works. It is the oil that lubricates all successful relationships.

Show up unexpectedly and dead drunk at night

There is nothing more exciting than a woman showing up dead drunk in the middle of the night to add spice to his dull nights. Call him when you are outside his gate and tell him he needs to let you in. Do not forget to remind him that he has to pay for the cab that you have taken from Githurai Kimbo. Provide more entertainment to the night watchman and any person awake at 2 am by staggering while walking. Do not mistake the pitying eyes of the watchman as pity, he is enjoying the show.

Call in the middle of the night

If you can’t make it to his place in the middle of the night you have the suitable alternative to call in the middle of the night to find out who is in his bed or if he is spending the night alone. Once again the conversation should be lubricated by your favourite drink alcohol. There is nothing as entertaining as a 2 am call and a long winded interrogation to boot. There is no better way he was spending his time at 2 am other than wishing to hear your beautiful shrewish voice asking all these incomprehensible questions. Who really is asleep at 2 am anyway? Not to mention that such questions cannot be brought up at 8pm or 9pm or wait until morning.

Remind him how other men want you

There is no better way to get a man to commit than to keep him on his toes. He has to know that the competition is stiff. When you are away from him organize as many other dates as you can with other guys. Be available for drinks and going out with your ‘male buddies’ at a moment’s notice. A woman needs an entourage that will be ready to take her out any time. When you are with him ensure the phone is ringing off the hook with the guys asking where you. It is more convincing when it is at 2 am and there is music blaring in the background. You need to make it clear that there are lots of men at the club willing to entertain you and buy you drinks. That uko wapi phone call at the wee hours should do the trick. Never turn off the phone when you are with him and always answer every phone call no matter the time or the situation. Let him know you always have guys on standby when he is not available.

Get pregnant

This is the deal clincher. Once you get pregnant no man will resist committing to you. That’s why there are no single mothers in this beautiful country or angry women who were left holding the baby. This is the nuclear bomb of commitment. Once detonated the man will have no choice but to surrender and commit. Feel free to use this as method as your first and only option.

By now you should have figured I am being ironic and sarcastic. A man who says that they don’t do relationships simply means they don’t want to date you. He knows who you are and he doesn’t like you enough to date you. If a man tells you that he doesn’t do relationships, respect his decision. No amount of manipulation, dramatics or sorcery will get him to commit. In the end, he will walk all over you like a door mat and you will only have yourself to blame. After all, he did tell you. The answer to what do you need to do to get him to commit is NOTHING.

JUST SO YOU KNOW

I am unmarried and single. I have been single for a quite a while now. I have learned to enjoy my singleness and at worst tolerate it. The most bothersome thing about being single is the persistent questions other people ask me. It seems they are more bothered by my being single than I am leading to these incessant and annoying questions on my singleness. These questions make me pause and wonder if I am leper or I have grown another pair of arms or I have a ‘stink of singleness’ that needs examining. It’s as though my being single is an ailment that needs curing and I get all these questions and remedies to my ailment. Today I will try and answer some of the questions I have been asked when I proclaim I am single.

Here goes:

What do you do with all your money?

I actually do have bills to pay. I have to pay my rent, electricity, water, fuel, insurance, eat, furnish the house, etc just like every other partnered and married person. Bills do not miraculously disappear just because I am single. Neither were they invented solely for the married couples. I actually have serious and meaningful things to spend my money on.

What do you do when you get home?

Probably the same things you do. Cook, watch TV, eat, read, unwind, get ready for tomorrow and sleep. As a matter of fact I probably have more time to do something I have passion for like writing or going to the gym. Come to think of it you will probably do those things as well. So I am back to: the same things that you do. Except you will have spectators and I won’t and I don’t have to fight with anyone over the remote control.

Don’t you get bored?

How do I answer this one? I would hate to be with someone who is with me simply because they don’t want to be bored. I do get bored but it is likely I get bored less than you do. For starters, I do enjoy my own company and I like alone time. Second, I actually have things to do with or without someone (i.e. a fulfilling and busy life). I hope you didn’t get married or into a relationship simply to get entertained.

You must have so much freedom?

Actually, you have the same amount of freedom as I do. It’s just that one of your choices was to get married or have a relationship with the person that you did and play by the rules you are following. I use my freedom to do things that are important to me as an unmarried single bloke just as you do things that are important to you as a married/partnered person.

What do you do with all the free time?

For your information, I barely have ‘free time’ because what I hear you say is that my being single and unmarried gives me additional time in the day that I can waste. Like you, I have a busy schedule and ‘insufficient’ time to accomplish my goals and dreams. My day still has 24 hours only and I have a job and things to do; including writing this article. I do not have time to waste.

What do you mean you have no money to spare and you aren’t paying school fees?

What? That’s because I plan and think about my finances. School fees is not the only expense my earnings are supposed to meet. When I say I have no money to spare it means my earnings are earmarked for something, like paying off for my car or buying some land. But in most cases it means that you are making assumptions about what I earn and how I ought to spend my money and I really don’t like it.

For real, you have no extra cash lying around?

My being unmarried and single is not grounds for me to go around discussing my financial situation with just anyone. From the way you keep insisting on asking it seems you want a ‘soft loan’ and I am disinclined to lend money to anyone who thinks they are entitled to borrow from me. And No, I will not buy you drinks or finance your entertainment and lifestyle choices either.

Life is just one big party with you, isn’t it?

I am not sure what you mean by ‘big party’ but yes I do enjoy my life. I would certainly hope it would continue being ‘one big party’ if I was married or in a relationship. I am sorry yours stopped being ‘one big party’ after you got married. Then again, it was your choice.

What do you do over weekends and holidays?

Please see: what do you do when you get home and what do you do with all the free time.

Don’t you want children?

Is that the only reason you got married?

What’s wrong with you?

Nothing. What’s wrong with you?

There are tons of other questions that I get asked about my single status but those are the ones I would like to answer for now. Just so you know, being single is a great place to be. Just because you are in a different circumstances does not make my situation a disability. Kindly lay off the questioning and interrogation of we single folk.

THE VILLAIN IN REAL LIFE

I was re-watching the Karate Kid recently. It is one of my favourite movies and it has some fantastic fight scenes. The thing that always strikes me is the sheer brutality of the antagonist (for those who skipped English Class that’s the bad guy) Cheng and his instructor Master Li. For no apparent reason Cheng takes a dislike to Dre Parker and attacks him at the first opportunity and goes out of his way to bully him and antagonize (hence antagonist) for any and whatever reason. His instructor, Master Li, seems to be cut from the same cloth and has this philosophy of show no mercy and daring all and sundry to fight him and his students.

Turns out that real life Cheng (actual name Zhenwei Wang) is an accomplished martial artist. He was sent to study wushu (a form of Kung-fu) because his father thought he was weak and sickly. He was focused from a young age and put in all the work and effort to receive accolades, praise and medals in the wushu industry. In order to be cast as Cheng Zhenwei had to compete against about ten thousand potential candidates and he came out on top. The selection was extremely strict: English fluency, wushu skills, physical appearance, acting facial expressions, and even control over eye expressions were tested.

In essence Zhenwei is a person to be admired and yet Cheng is to be abhorred. The producers went out of their way to look for someone who looked mean and evil to play out a mean and evil person. It didn’t matter what the person was like in real life, they just needed someone who looked mean and evil and would play the part to perfection.

That got me thinking about the movie villain. Like Cheng they have no reason to be evil. They just are. For no apparent reason they are opposed to the protagonist (good guy) for no solid reason and no matter how much you try there is no reason to root for them. In fact, you want them to be defeated and we applaud their defeat. On the opposite divide is the villain who is a buffoon. They are so inept and ineffective that I wonder how they made it and survived in the ‘bad guy’ world.

The more I think about it, I become convinced that the movie bad guy is simply created to be defeated so that the good guy can look… er… good. When the bad guy dies or is defeated, we don’t feel any sadness on the loss of life or livelihood. We are glad he was defeated and destroyed. His underlings and minions deserve to be defeated and destroyed. The villains underlings and minions are so inept and ineffective that you wonder how they were hired in the first place. They can’t shoot straight no matter how much training they had supposedly received and make the most fundamental mistakes instead of getting the job done (think of talking instead of pulling the trigger hence giving enough time to cut your ropes).

More so the cartoon and animations villain. This villain has the most ludicrous and outrageous schemes and ideas that they cannot help but fail. Most of the time this villain is such an idiot that if they succeed it would be a miracle. For some reason all the bad guys in animations want to dominate the world for no reason. For some reason they have a large amount of wealth that they put to use to try and dominate the world. I always wonder, with such with wealth and ability to accumulate it, wouldn’t it be better spent doing something else worthwhile. Who accumulates such power and wealth and then screams from the top of the hill of their intention to dominate and destroy the world thus attracting the attention of the world’s greatest super hero?

The most important part about the villain in movies is that we all know who they are from the get go. The protagonist knows who is to be defeated and we all know what has to be done. We cannot help but root for the good guy. The bad guy needs to be destroyed and the good guy needs to win. Often we don’t know why the bad guy is bad, he just is.

There is only one major problem with this stereotype for the villain. It does not correspond with the villains you will meet in real life. No doubt there are times you will meet unreasonable villains on the street who will attack you for no reason. But these are easy to deal with because all you have to do is run very fast and very far.

The real adversaries and the people who will cause you and I the most grief in the world will look nothing like what the movies, cartoons and animations portray. Real life villains are intelligent and hard working. In most cases they do not know they are villains. They truly believe what they are doing is the right thing. In many instances such people will be someone you once admired, looked up to and had a relationship with.

Their ‘villainy’ will probably stem that you have a difference of opinion on what is right or wrong or on how to do things. The irony is that their point of view will be valid to them and to lots of other people. They will have a following and will know how to rally support to their ideas and point of view. The thing we all have to admit is that right and wrong is a complex issue. Right and wrong is mostly a matter of perspective. Unlike the movies, we shall be right and wrong all at the same time. By extension we need to realize that we shall be the good guy and the villain too. To some people we are the villain. We are the one causing them grief.

A word of caution: The people who will cause us the most pain in this life will not attack you on the street with knives. The people who will cause the most grief and pain are the ones who will be our friends, those that we love and those we admire. It will be our neighbours whom we thought we had an understanding and were the same. This is because we will have welcomed them into our lives and our hearts.

DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON’T

Dear Vera,

I suppose I am not the first to write to you and tell you what I think about your recent shenanigans on toning (or bleaching depending on whom you ask) your skin. I will ask for your forbearance and ask that you hear me out. I hope by the time you get to the end of this letter you will shake my hand and give me a hug.

Two things I must confess from the onset. The first is that I am a guy (if you haven’t figured that out already). The second is that when I first heard that you had bleached, sorry, make that toned your skin I was filled with outrage. How dare you bleach your skin? How dare you alter the way you look? You should accept what you look like and learn how to live with it!

However, the more I followed your shenanigans (take this word positively) and listened to the perspectives of people who have had to suffer the limelight and fame I grudgingly started to have some admiration for you and the courage you have to do whatever the hell damn pleases you. We mere mortals also want to have the power to do whatever we damn well please but we just don’t have the guts to do it. That’s why we hate you so much. You are doing what we can only ever dream of doing. We know our life will pass us by without that courage to go for what pleases us.

Unfortunately for you it will get harder because you were born with two major handicaps. The first is that you were born a woman. The second is that you were born a curvy beautiful woman.

Make no mistake about it; being born a woman is a handicap in this world. This world is a man’s world. You may huff and puff all you want but like it or not it is a man’s world. The world is built to judge and discourage women from ‘succeeding’ like their male counterparts. You don’t believe me? Let me give you some evidence.

A recent article in Time Magazine published the findings of a study on sexting among young people. The study concluded that women will be labelled whether they sext or not. If she sexted she was labelled a slut. If she didn’t she was labelled a prude and playing hard to get. As a woman whatever you do shall be judged harshly. If you make it to the top; you slept your way to the top. If you stay home to raise the kids; you lack ambition and are dependent on a man. If you don’t talk about sex; you are frigid. If you are sexually liberated; you are a nymphomaniac.

Being curvy and gorgeous just made it worse for you. Ciku Muiruri expressed it very well when she said: with curves like yours every boss would hit on you and every woman would not want her man working with you. Men will objectify you and want to get a piece of that booty and woman will hate you because you are getting all the attention. You will be judged because you were born curvy whether you do anything about it or not.

You have then compounded the problem by making yourself lighter. You know how much we men love the yellow yellow brown brown. That is the reason all this vitriol and scorn is being spewed on you. How dare you take away any chance we mere mortals had to stand against you? You were beautiful and curvy to start with and you just had to turn yellow yellow on us to make yourself hotter and more desirable. Shame on you.

Our condemnation of you is quite two faced. Since when was it a crime or a sin to want to look your best? We condemn you yet we feed on every action and word that cometh from you. We follow you on twitter and watch every interview you give. The more we see you going for what you want and not giving a hoot about our opinions the more we hate you. The viler our comments about you become. What kind of role model are you we ask. Strangest thing is that at no point do I recall you saying that you wanted to be a role model and encourage other people to do what you did. You just did what you thought was right for you. You have not even pretended otherwise. You wear your new skin with confidence and carry the term socialite with aplomb that politicians would pay good money to have. You are doing you as the lingo goes.

Go to school and get a job I have heard you being told. That would just make you average. I applaud that you are unwilling to settle on average. You should be more than average. You are entitled to be the greatest the world has ever seen. A word to the wise; even if you got a job and decided to become average, every tom, dick and harry would still hit on you. They would want a piece of that booty. If you demanded something in return then men would still call you a whore and a gold digger. If you just gave it up you would still be called easy.

You are a game changer, no doubt about it. Being the best means you have to do things differently. Game changers need to move outside the box and do things that are unexpected of them. Otherwise we take you for granted and forget you. Miley Cyrus and Jessica Biel anyone? Dolly Parton wrote that she understands Miley’s recent spate of sensuality. Miley needed to be taken as a grown up and not as a little girl in order for her music to be taken as grown up music. Her way to achieve this was through overt sexual videos. Don’t blame her. If she didn’t do that we would have always thought of her as a teen star and nothing more. Break away from the mold and let no one define.

Allow me to pontificate now and give you some advice. You were born this way. You did nothing to acquire the curves and a lot of the beauty you have. This being a man’s world, men decided that you look beautiful and desirable. Eventually, your looks will fade. You will grow old and parts will sag. The world is fickle. We shall ‘accept and move on’ to a new socialite. I hope you have a plan to monetize your current fame and glory into something you can live off in the future.

Learn a skill that you can use to make more money. Make sure you have a talent and skill beneath that bootilicious exterior (think of Miley and Jessica). Refine yourself, learn how to speak well and present yourself. Keep yourself in shape and work out. It always helps to look good at whatever age. Build yourself into something bigger that we still haven’t fathomed which can be used whenever needed. Let no one shame you for getting paid for looking fab and being fab. Once upon a time lawyers’ fees were called a bribe and frowned upon. Now it is a respectable profession. As for the guys willing to give you 50 million to tone your skin; get them to give you funding for tangible assets, like a house, land and a business.

From where I stand two things can happen. One is you will be a game changer whom we shall applaud and aspire to be like. The other is you shall serve as a horrible example on the price to pay for vanity. Whichever it is I admire the courage you have had to do you.

The Wisdom of the Gideon’s

If you ever stay in a hotel room you will most likely find a Gideon’s Bible in the room. Usually, it’s a small New Testament version placed on the bedside table. As a matter of fact, I thought the Gideon’s (yes it’s a society) only distributed the New Testament Bible. For the first time in my life I saw a big Gideon’s bible with both New and Old Testament. And when I say big I mean it was a large heavy bible. At that point, it didn’t hit me as anything significant but it actually was.

The Gideon’s are very wise people. They put great thought (or so I imagine) into what kind of bible should be placed in every location. Especially on the size and content. I was out of town and intending to go out, make merry (or is it said party hard?) and have fun. But, I should have paid attention to the size of bible. What I discovered is that the size of the bible tells you how ‘sinful’ any locality can get. Small bible means you are ok and expect no surprises. Big heavy bible means you better leave the innocents indoors, lock all doors and windows, anoint everything in holy water and be prepared to mingle with vampires, werewolves and the minions of hell celebrating as though we are in Hades and the dark lord rules the earth.

I am still shell shocked by what I saw. The amount of sin and debauchery I saw in a span of three days was more than I had seen in the last 6 months combined. Bear in mind that I have partied in Mombasa which is supposed to be sin central. I ended up being paralyzed and all I could do was gape in shock and amazement at what ‘watoto wa siku hizi’ can do out in public. Truly this is the kingdom of the underworld. Thus I understood the wisdom of the Gideon’s.

All I could think about was going back to the room, grabbing that huge and heavy bible, coming back to the club and ‘swatting and beating the devil’ out of all the ‘possessed’ youngsters shouting Riswa! Daimano! Shindwo! Kuris! That’s how bad it was. No matter where you turned something worse than what you had seen last was happening. It reached a point where I thought that perhaps what I needed was sharpened stakes and silver bullets. Yet for some reason, I could not tear my eyes away and run to get my huge Gideon’s Bible safely ensconced in my room.

The next time you are out of town, pay attention to that bible. Hold it in your hands and feel its weight. Then you shall know whether to carry the innocents along or a quiver full of sharpened stakes.

Volume 15

Below is a letter I wrote to someone I had been seeing and ‘broke my heart’. Too many times I have let myself remain silent when I wanted to say something. While sometimes it may not make a difference at other times it just may. Should it not work out then I want to be sure I did everything I ever could. Then my heart would be at ease. I shall call her Kay in this letter:

 

15th December 2013

2122 Hrs

Dear Kay,

I went to watch Thor and I couldn’t help thinking of you. I loved the movie make no mistake about it but it felt like an empty experience. It was just a well-made movie, nothing more. Unlike Ironman 3 which was spectacular and like the best movie I have watched this year. It was made spectacular because I watched it with you. That was the factor that took it from excellent to cloud 99 spectacular.

It has taken me a while to get round to writing this and I am not sure what I will do with it after I am done. I hope I will have the guts to give it to you and not just delete and discard it.

I am not happy with the way things have turned out between you and me. I am completely at loss on what to do, why it has happened this way and mixed up when it comes to my emotions and feelings in regard to you. I remember a time when meeting and hooking up with you was easy and we made time for each other. When I knew that I would see you regularly and frequently and that I would have a ball whenever I spent time with you. I remember when my days were filled with chatting you and my phone battery always run out because of the long chats. The day could not end without me talking to you or vice versa. It isn’t like that anymore. It feels empty. I feel as though you are unavailable; as though I don’t matter anymore. It has become pretty much difficult to see you or make time to see you and I feel as though you are out of reach. I am never sure if I will get to see you, talk to you, chat with you or even do anything with you. The times I do ask if I will see you all I get is a “we shall see”.

Kay, I would like to take credit for initiating and getting you and I together (yes we were together) but you put in just as much effort. I know I am not wrong in saying and thinking that you wanted and made something happen between us. I also did and I am not the only one who worked at it and put in effort. We both did and I had the greatest time of my life. I can’t stop thinking about you, wanting you, wishing I could see you, wanting to call you and missing you like mad.

Before I met you and got to know you, my life was good. I enjoyed the things I did and I was pretty much happy. When I got to know you I felt as though I hadn’t been living. Life and everything suddenly became very colourful. Things as regular as going to church got more exciting because I would get to see you. Life’s volume was turned up to volume 15 from 10. Everything was different. There was more reason to laugh, smile, be happy, dream, do things I had only thought etc. Everything was as bright as a sunny day.

I miss that. I miss being the go to guy. That you called me and invited me for anything and everything. I miss inviting you to everything I am doing and knowing you will be there. I miss being the guy who went shopping with you, for random plans, road trips, picnics, coffee, drinks, movies and anything that came up. I miss holding your hand and just touching you. I miss you touching me. I miss talking to you. I miss kissing you. I miss hearing you laugh. I miss looking into your eyes. I miss dancing with you. I miss having dinners with you. I miss dropping you home. I miss being silly with you. I miss playing little games with you. I miss you in my life. I miss you loads.

Life has gone back to volume 10. But I liked volume 15. I was not and I am not wrong in thinking and knowing that we had something special, a connection. It wasn’t something that was just a by the way. The things we shared and did together were too intense and too real for them to be unimportant. I trust my heart when it tells me that you are special and what we had is rare. I miss you Kay.

I want to ask you for coffee, for a date, a movie but I now worry that it won’t happen, that we shall allow ‘life’ and ‘stuff’ to get in the way. That we shall kill this special thing we have and one day look back with regret because it wasn’t worth letting go. So I am putting what I feel in the way I know best, the written word. This is what I want to say:

Kay I miss you terribly. I want you in my life. You are too special to let go. I want volume 15 and more.

The one and only,

Alejandro-Ricardo Julio-Ramirez

 

Note to readers: I am afraid to report that I did get over Kay. While I am moving on in life, I believe it is always important to acknowledge whatever it is we go through as that just makes us better human beings.

The Venus flytrap

The Venus flytrap is a carnivorous plant native to subtropical wetlands on the East Coast of the United States. Its prey is chiefly insects and arachnids. It works by trapping its prey in its jaws. It does this by attracting the insect with a color and a scent. It waits for the insects to enter it and start eating the sweet sap that it has. Once the insect starts eating the sap, the fly trap closes its jaws and eats the insects.

Any ‘modern, self-respecting, urbane man (used in the biblical sense and incorporates women)’ has visited a strip club. Stop with the indignation and the self-righteousness because we all know it’s true. It is a given fact that more and more strip clubs are mushrooming all over Nairobi and in all urban centres in Kenya and the only reason is because they are making lots of money and they have frequent patrons. In short it’s good business.

The image in a man’s mind of the stripper is that of a sex goddess sent down from the heavens to fulfill his every sexual fantasy. Her magnificent body defies any description. She flaunts this magnificence in a scanty outfit that brings out its full glory. She is the epitome of sensuality and sexuality that will leave him shaking and trembling with desire and longing. This woman is raw unadulterated sexuality. She can fulfill any depraved fantasy and she is willing and happy to do it. She is that poster girl of our sexual dreams and is now available, ready and willing to fulfill our fantasies.

This is where I say that I have bad news. Reality and our fantasies don’t match. First and foremost most strip clubs in Nairobi are dingy hovels. The only reason you would go there is because of the allure of the stripper goddess. They charge an entry fee (by comparison most upscale clubs don’t charge a thing) ranging from 200 to 1,000 (sometimes ludicrously more). This fee is paid out without complaint because we are still being driven by our ‘secret desire and longing’ for Ms. Stripper. Strip clubs are poorly lit with the purpose of showing the entertainers (read strippers) in the best light. The purpose is to hide as many blemishes as possible so that they can look as close to the goddess resident in our minds. What’s more your entry fee just gets you into the ‘general’ area. Girls in thongs and bras are evident but for an extra fee you can get more. Then you learn that there is a VIP area where you will see more skin and flesh and get to interact with the goddess of sensuality. You are ponied up with a drink (a must in every strip club) whether you need it or not. You want a strip dance; then you have to fork out a little bit more. You want a private show; there is a price. Reality begins to sink in; everything on offer here is at a price. By then you are enmeshed in this fly trap.

Secondly, let’s look at the actual stripper. In Kenya, with our ‘Christian’ values, conservative and strict upbringing, the only person who opts to be a stripper is a person who most likely does not have a choice in the matter. That idea that they are educated women who want to be strippers and are in it because of the enormous amount of fun to be had and for the big bucks is an illusion. Get over it. A stripper is half a step up from a prostitute. To some they actually rank at the same level as a prostitute. It is likely that the person who is a stripper isn’t well educated and has got no other source of income hence her resorting to being a stripper. What she wants is to earn a living by making you give up as much money as she can get from you while doing the minimum she can. This is a woman who will be groped and invaded by a myriad of men and the reason she accepts is purely and simply for financial gain. By the time you are getting to her she has been groped, ‘caressed’ and used by all sorts of men in various ways and methods that she is probably immune to your idea of a ‘good time’. She just wants your money and she will find the most appropriate method to pry it from you. Trust me she has perfected her art of prying. A stripper has lived a hard-knock life and has probably tried everything before ending up a stripper. She most likely has a habit she cannot break like drugs or she has a child at home she has to feed. You are a means to an end period. Being a stripper is a necessity more than a choice.

Having lived a hard-knock life the stripper is not attractive at all. In regular light it is highly unlikely she will pass muster as a beautiful woman. If she was beautiful her beauty would have taken her places. Very few really beautiful women remain strippers. Those that do bear the scars of childbirth, have hanging bellies, sagging tits, dimpled asses and all the signs of the hard-knock life they have lived and has led them there. They cannot hold a decent intellectual conversation because if they could they would be doing something different. The only reason they look ‘beautiful’ is because the lighting, her clothing, your inebriated state and your imagination are leading you to see that. We have been fed so many images of sexy strippers by the internet, television and magazines that we will see that image in the strip club. Truth is that a stripper is really a beat up woman who has no other choice than to be a stripper. If she has a better option she would take it.

The other thing you need to realize is that the strip club is usually frequented by middle-aged and elderly men who would embarrass themselves if they tried the same antics they carry out in the dimly lit strip clubs in broad daylight. These are the type of men the stripper has to deal with. To the men they pay for a service and expect the returns. The man will want to pay the minimal price for maximum satisfaction. The stripper on the other hand wants to get as much money for as little ‘service’ as possible. In this case the stripper has the upper hand as she knows how to coax the imagination of the middle-aged and elderly man. She will dress provocatively enough for the man to believe that he is about to glimpse paradise and ask him to part with money but paradise will remain a distant illusion. A stripper has more layers than an onion and shedding each layer costs a pretty penny. It is likely you will have run out of money before you get to what your idea of paradise is. Bear in mind that this is what she encounters every day of her life; being groped, prodded and invaded by middle-aged and elderly men. She does it without raising a fuss and smiling all the way. What makes you think you will pry what you want from her before she pries what she wants from you? Once she is done with you she moves on to her next victim.

A strip club, like the Venus flytrap, is designed to draw you in with the sweet scent of fantasy and desire. Once inside it will eat you up and suck you dry then spit out a broke husk. More often than not you will spend more money than you anticipated and leave empty and still as randy as you got in. You will leave with just enough of your fantasy fulfilled and a promise of more next time that you will want to go back. Trust me that is exactly what a strip club is meant to do. Venus flytrap meet the human flytrap.

The best deal on offer

The Valentine’s weekend is over. Welcome back to the real world. What did you do over Valentine’s? Where were you taken? Out to dinner? A trip out of town? Kept indoors for some intense love-making? Whatever it is you did or wherever it is you were taken, did you get the best deal for the weekend? Could you have done better?

Last week was rather instructional when it comes to valentines, dating, spending a weekend together or taking a trip together. I learned that the question: “what do you have planned/ in mind” when you ask someone out is not an idle question or simple conversation. More so if it is asked before being given an affirmative or negative answer. The purpose of this question is to discover just how any idea or plan you may have ranks compared to any existing plans that the object of your affection has. She (it is most likely she is a she) wants to determine whether your plan is worth giving up anything else that was planned or she has in mind.

You are much better off getting an immediate affirmation or rejection before this question is asked. Let me explain. If you approach a girl and say: “May I take you out on date on valentine’s?” and her answer is yes or no, then you are good. This means, that she knows what she feels about you and where you stand in her life. She is making it clear that it is not what you can give her or do for her that determines her feelings for you. In other words she is not a gold digger.

However, if she asks you: “What did you have in mind?” run for the hills. She wants to know how good your plan is then decide whether to say yes or no. She is looking for the better deal. This is not about whether she likes you or not, this is about what you can do for her. If she liked you, she would have said yes immediately and would go on a date with you even if you were taking her to Serena B (does it still exist?). If she doesn’t feel you and she is honest, she will say no. If she is dishonest (aka a gold digger) she will ask the question: “what do you have planned?” then depending on how extravagant or exotic your plan is she may opt to drop her other plans and go out with you. In other words she is asking if you have a better offer.

This gets to be tricky once the plan is laid out. If it is a really exotic plan say like a trip to Seychelles, then she will say yes. If it is a regular thing like a coffee date then she will say no. Getting herself out of the date will entail a lie of sorts. The reason being that she doesn’t want to be asked why she asked about the plan if she was not interested in the first place. The lie is for ‘future purposes’ incase you, the interested party, should one day come up with an exotic plan. Remember that you are dealing with a person plotting the next move and trying not give her intentions away.

However, accepting an ‘exotic’ plan has a price. That’s one thing that any girl has to bear in mind. A man is not going to take a girl to Seychelles simply because he is feeling sufficiently philanthropic and charitable unless it is your father or a relative. A man will take a girl on such a trip because he is attracted to her (and purely lustful intention counts as attraction). He is of the hope that such a trip will get him inroads into something he is after whether purely carnal or perhaps more honourable intentions (with some carnal thrown in). A man who knows that she went on a trip with him simply because he had the best offer will exact every ounce of blood and ensure that she pay the full price for the trip. Remember, a guy who can afford to take a girl on an expensive and exotic trip or date is likely not to be stupid. That could be the reason he has figured that the only way he will get a piece of her is by taking her on a trip.

Who really has the upper hand?

I am all for the honest approach. Tell me if you like me or don’t like me from the get go. Then I have a choice. Do I still want to make a plan that involves you and am I ready to accept the terms and conditions that go with it. Being honest, allows you the option of calling the shots. If you said “I don’t like you in that way and are you still willing to take me on that trip?” then you have the upper hand. Then you can lay out the conditions of the trip and you know if the man only had carnal designs on you or other honourable intentions (with some carnal thrown in).

How was your valentine’s? I hope you got a good deal.

Who asks whom?

14^th February, the day of love, the day of lovers and the day to show your loved one how much you love them. Off the bat let me declare that I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. Call it a matter of principle. I believe in love, let’s get that clear. I believe in the celebration of love every single day you are with your partner. What I don’t believe in is the commercialization of gestures of love which is what Valentine’s Day has turned into. It has turned into outrageous gestures as a show of ‘love’ coupled to outrageous demands and expectations which are not the true expressions of love. Valentine’s day has become about showmanship (or show-womanship) than true love.

I have the good fortune or ‘unusual fortune’ of having received a proposal for a valentine date from a lady. Actually I received two proposals. In my books that is not unusual since I have had requests for dates coming from ladies and I do recall having been asked out to Valentine’s a couple of times. I think I hear some gasps of shock from the ladies gallery. Apparently it is unusual and ‘taboo’ for a lady to ask a gentleman out. I learned this because I fumbled and blurted out this ‘predicament’ before a group of ladies that I was having lunch with. There was profound disapproval and lack of understanding from the ladies of this esteemed bench as to how a lady would ask a man out.

My question is, why not? If you see a guy, you like him, you get along, why not ask him out? I was made to understand that it is the responsibility, nay, make that the duty of the man to ask the lady out. Be it for a date or for a relationship it rests on the man to initiate. There seems to be a ‘code of conduct’ when it comes to initiating dates or relationships which has been adhered to ‘over the ages’ but frankly I cannot see its value.

Upon asking why my lady friends were perplexed that I had been asked out for Valentine’s the first answer I received was; “Do you know how hard it is to ask a man out? Supposing he says no?” I suppose that means that it is easier for a man to ask a lady out and it is ok for her to say no to his preposition. For the record, I would like to point out that it is hard and nerve wracking to ask a lady out. In addition, men take rejection just as hard if not harder than women. Ladies, the next time you are coldly turning down a man think about how you would feel if you were being turned down by a man you had dared to ask out.

I started wondering why ladies are so willing to accede such vital control over relationships and dating. Being the person who is asking gives you control of whom to ask, when to ask and how to ask. Basically they were happy waiting to either say yes, no or I will think about it. Wouldn’t it be easier to know that you can ask a guy you like out and know where you stand? In the current set up of things all ladies have to do is hope and ‘send the correct’ signals to a person they have eyes on and wait until they are asked out, turn old and grey waiting or give up and set eyes on another. Which means that you are leaving whom you date or possibly spend the rest of your life with in the hands of another. Wouldn’t it be better to have more control over the situation?

Then I was informed that when you ask a man out he will remind you that you are the one who asked him out in case things fall apart. Huh? How is that a bad thing? To be reminded that you have initiative and go after what you want is a bad thing? That’s something to be proud of. But, I realized that was a little bit of ‘reverse psychology’ going on here. The reason I think that there is preference to being asked out is that there is a sense of being the one in a position of power. The lady has something the man wants and he should come ‘begging’ for it and the lady has the choice either to grant him his request or reject him at a whim. That is a power I think that ladies are unwilling to give up even if it means the loss of one or two or more ‘men of their dreams’.

I have dated a lady who asked me out and trust me it was no different to any relationship where I had asked the lady out. Dating and relationships should be based on mutual attraction by both parties. They both should be allowed to express their attraction and feelings for one another without judgment or prejudice. Why would you want to date a man who would not respect that you can have certain feelings and have the freedom to express them? My view is that it doesn’t matter who asked whom out but that you got together. That’s the most important bit, getting together.

Happy Valentine’s Day. Be responsible

A thousand words

I have always wanted to start a blog and write consistently. I had actually intended this to be my first blog entry but as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.

To get myself ‘ready to blog’ I wrote out a couple of articles on some thoughts I had and asked a panel of ‘eminent persons’ to read them and give me an opinion if my musings were blogworthy. The most surprising and unexpected feedback I received is that a blog entry should not exceed a thousand words.

A THOUSAND WORDS? A thousand words, I was informed, is the upper limit. An ideal blog should have considerably less words than that.

I am normally a verbose person and I wondered how I would express any and all ideas and concepts in less than a thousand words. Was that actually possible? I figured that an average reader reads one word per second. That would translate to 1,000 seconds to read the longest blog entry. A thousand seconds translates to 16.66 minutes. There are secretaries who type faster than that. At 120 words per minute she can bang out almost 2,000 words in 16.66 minutes.

That got me thinking; are we at the point that we are so easily distracted and bored in less than 16 minutes? Have we reached the point that anything beyond a thousand words or 16 minutes is not worth our time? Is artistic and creative expression to be limited to 1,000 words and 16 minutes? Anything beyond that is irrelevant, useless and boring?

The more I think about it, I realize that in today’s world everything seems to have a shorter lifespan. Fashion lasts all of three minutes before it is old news. I speak proper English because I can’t keep up with slang. When I listen to any ‘youngins’ speak it might as well be Armenian. I remember a time when songs lasted all of 7 to 10 minutes. I go to the club these days and all the DJ does is play the chorus of a song and move on to another chorus. By next week there is a new ‘hit chorus’.

Sitting through a three hour (180 minutes) movie is torture and yet movies from a little while back like 10 commandments lasted all of 220 minutes. Cleopatara run for 248 and Gone with the wind run for 220 minutes. Those were the movies to watch in their days. Today, it is far more interesting to watch a movie trailer than the movie itself. Commercials are far more interesting to watch than anything else on TV yet they last less than 60 seconds.

I am sure that generally fewer books are being read. I know that when I say that I enjoy reading and writing and I take time to actually read I normally get the look as though I am from the planet Klingon and I shouldn’t be walking among normal people. Anything longer than a page is too strenuous to read. Even a proposal for a serious business venture must have an executive summary that is less than one page because we are ‘too busy’ to read more than a page. What then is making us so busy?

Relationships last all of one month from meeting to the full fledged sex and breaking up. Any relationship that lasts more than a year is slowly becoming an exception than the norm. The art of the long love letter is dead. Love messages should be less than 160 characters and they are as abbreviated as possible. Marriage is now temporary as opposed to permanent. As soon as you get bored, you start the process of looking for a new wife.

The things that I can think of that we are spending more time on are Facebook, Twitter, Social sites and porn sites. The world is spending more time on creating virtual connection and less time working on the real life connections. There is more time being spent on the web and on getting intoxicated all in a bid to get away from our real lives.

Boredom has become the motivating factor in our lives. As soon as something ceases to be new, exciting and ‘fun’, we move on to something else. Yet, we know that a meaningful life is built by persistence and consistency. To be a first class student you need to get an A in the interesting as well as the boring courses. A meaningful life has interesting moments and ‘boring’ moments. In order to have balance we must have both in our lives. Taking and seeking only one skews and messes our lives.

So at 781 words, I welcome you to my blog. I can’t promise to keep strictly to 1,000 words. I promise to try and contain my verbosity and present my musings and rumblings as honestly as possible. I do not expect to be right all of the time, some of the time or any of the time, I will simply be presenting my opinion.

Welcome to the works of fiction. 848 words, I am out.