Prostitutes and Wives

Prostitution is the one profession that has been painted in a bad light for so long by people who have gained most from it. These are none other than the women whose men indulge in the business. Am serious! For reasons that am about to highlight, women will be happier if they imagined their husbands with prostitutes than with anyone else because there has to be someone all the same.
Though I will refer to the profession as ‘prostitution’ and the professionals as ‘prostitutes’ herein, it’s for convenience purposes only. I personally don’t like these references, they sound demeaning to say the least.
Nowadays, secretaries are referred to as administrative assistants, watchmen as security personnel and toilet cleaners as sanitary officers. Why then do we insist on calling our prostitutes prostitutes (no pun intended).We have an array of euphemisms to choose from, ranging from commercial companions to Plan Bs.
Anyway, to tell the truth and shame the devil, all men are cheats. Whether they swear by the breasts of their dead grandmothers, they will always have extracurricular sex, period. However convincingly they deny it, they will always have that extra share of the cake. It is only natural, just like women like soaps so do men love football. In the same vein, just like women love gifts and expensive dinners so do men love sex.
This does not mean that men don’t fall in love. They do. To men, love does not equate to sex, they can love one woman but have sex with any number. Women on the other hand consider sex and love as synonymous, unless they are Plan Bs. A man can therefore have sex with numerous women but only make love to one. It’s only natural. It’s no wonder that our universities have awarded all of them MBAs, Married But Available.
(N.B: Don’t expect your man to accept these allegations. This is the one and only area where men say no when they actually mean yes.)
Since it is given that men will always play these ‘away matches’, let’s examine the options they have. The first is running after young school girls and college students or worse still, the maids in their backyards.
I know wives will not want this. The school and college girls may be younger and probably prettier than the wives and the men may get obsessed with them. Maids on the other hand are out of question, which self respecting woman can stand the fact that her husband is fooling around with a maid, and worse still, in their backyard?
The second option is to have an affair with other viable women. This is more challenging to the wives because such a setup will demand that the man diverts attention and resources to the other woman. This sounds like a direct threat to the wife’s capacity as the incumbent. Women don’t take lightly to competition and that is what an affair such as this presents them with. Second wives are normally end results of such affairs. An affair also creates a window for the man to possibly fall in love with the other woman since they spend some reasonable time together. Consequently, he might fall out of love with the First Lady. Now, we don’t want that ladies, do we?
The other option is masturbation but please, let’s not even go there.
Enter prostitution, the oldest profession in the world. This is the best kind of infidelity a woman can ever wish for her partner. This is because it serves its purpose with fine precision. Men do have sex plurally, we are already agreed on that. This method therefore allows them to do so without raising any questions since nobody who matters ever finds out. It also transpires without creating a conflict of interest between the wife and the service provider. It is cash on delivery business, nothing more. You pay, get the services and go to hell (or wherever it is you came from).
When a man goes for a school girl, he might be tempted to skin-dive by assuming the young girl is innocent. When he has an affair, he will eventually develop trust for the other woman and they might start having unprotected sex. Not so with the prostitute. Since he knows only too well the nature of her occupation, he will always use condoms. This therefore serves as the safest type of stolen sex.
A prostitute’s contract ends once a man puts his pair of trousers back on. The transaction is always so professional that a man can bump into the prostitute in the company of his wife and have a chat with her (the prostitute) without arousing any jealousy from either woman. A fling with a prostitute is therefore by no means a threat to the relationship between a man and his woman.
A man may repeatedly visit the same prostitute due to services well rendered but that will be about all there is to it. Show me a man who falls in love with a prostitute and I will show you a confused man.
Prostitutes do not therefore pose any threat to the incumbent’s territory. They just help the men do what they have to do. Men will rarely go for a lasting relationship with a prostitute.
Am therefore not asking women to allow or encourage their men to chase prostitutes around, all am asking them to do is not to despise these noble women or sneer at them whenever they talk about them or happen to meet them. Women are right in thinking that once a man loves them, he never desires any other but deep down their hearts they should harbour one prayer and that is; if my husband decides to cheat, let it be with a prostitute.

Villainy.

Locked away in my solitude
You passed by exuding your fragpranks
Then you smiled and smiled
And I let you in.

With your right hand
You bewitched me with your wand,
With your left
You stabbed at my heart,
And smiled and smiled
And I let you stay.

Having sucked me dry
You cynically walked out
Leaving my spent self cursing after you
But you smile and smile
And I miss your villainy.

©2007 Otiato Opali

Nana's Trilogy

“… and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Genesis 3:16.

But For Those Breasts.

(Morning: listening to the office messenger)
Couldn’t believe it was her
Having seen her still a toddler,
She sounded twelve, but looked twenty!

But those breasts!
I would have said hi
But for those breasts,
I didn’t even see her wave
Courtesy of those breasts.

They were so full
Pressing hard against her blouse
I must have salivated for them
Those breasts, full breasts
God! I wished she wasn’t twelve.

Next time I met her
Couldn’t face her and her breasts
For those breasts, I had learnt
Were full for breastfeeding.

The one responsible (or is it irresponsible)
Is a respected man.
A wealthy man
A family man
And above all, a responsible man.


They Puff Away

(Lunchtime: Jivanjee Gardens)
I passed them puffing at the smoking zone
And my lungs were inflated with desire,
The cigarette whiff sent craving deep down my bone
I yearned to partake of the nicotine fire.

They puffed away their cigarettes
While laughing away my predicament.
Puffed and puffed and puffed
Laughed and laughed and laughed,
Laughing at my handicap
My inability to join them for a puff.

Not a single lady was in the smoking zone
Not that not a single lady smokes
But that not a single lady is expected to be seen smoking.

So they puff away at the nicotine of power
Puff away at wealth control
Puff away at the pleasures of MAN-kind
Puff and laugh, laugh and puff.

The doomed us watch with craving eyes
Wishing we could walk in and share in the puffing
But society returns us a cynical stare,
We are not forbidden to puff
But we are not expected to!

Painting Of the Sun and the Rock

(Evening: My boss and I)

He rants on and on
Drooling foolishly, smiling deviously
He chants on and on
Devouring me with his greedy eyes.

My eyes, bored, blankly stare past him
To the painting on the wall
A painting of a rock in the sun’s glare.

The sun victoriously shimmers its rays on the rock
Celebrating its effortless conquest
Devouring the rock with its mighty splendour.

In the morning, it would blaze the rock’s face
Afternoon, scorch the rock’s top
Evening, rage the rock’s back.

Reigning over the rock day in day out
Hitting the rock from all angles.

Shrewdly, the rock lies in silence
Guarding its secret from the sun with its life
For whatever angle the sun takes
The rock will never show it its shadow
Its dark side, its hidden side.

They rant on and on
Chant on and on
But we are the rock in the painting
And they will never know our secret side,
Our woman side!


© 2007 Otiato Opali

Kibaki and Smokers

It is election time yet again and the promises are flowing in like hell. This is the first time am in a proper mind to notice this lie that electioneering is. In the last election in 2002, I was a drunk undergraduate who dint have time for election crap, the elections preceding that found me too young to grasp anything.
This time round, am a broke and jobless graduate with all the time to ask 'what went wrong' since am beginning to feel that political misappropriation is partly responsible for my barrenness.
When this government came to power, they swept our filthy system so clean it hurt. The matatu industry was shaken into sobriety. What's more, even the touts had to put on Uniforms.
The hawkers on their part were not spared. They were swept out of the city centre to a distant ten kilometre away since they were an 'eyesore' in our beautiful city. With them went the street families and street urchins dragging away their jigger infested limbs to where tourists could not see them.
There are also these characters in the name of Mungiki, most of whom were the youth. After terrorizing the country for long enough, the government decided to roll up its sleeves and engage them in a fist fight. The president and his internal security minister ordered the police to leave no mungiki skull un-cracked, fire would be met with fire. What followed was a massive man-hunt that saw many a youth, most of them mungiki, sink six feet under.
We also bore the brunt of these new guidelines. We were not allowed to smoke aimlessly in the streets and inconvenience non-smokers with our cancer-ridden exhalations. They made seclusions for us and like animals in an amusement park, other city residents pointed at us as they passed by our designated smoking zones.
That was then, this is now. The city cleaners are now back and this time it is not to sweep us away but to woo our votes. Knowing only too well that all that ordeal they put us through was for a right cause but not being manly enough to stand by it and let history judge them, they approach us with a devious smile, half apologetic for the 'cleaning' they had to do while in office.
Its interesting what people can do to remain in power. They can even go as far as discrediting their 'good record' just to remain in power. As we speak, the hawkers in the city center are more than the other city residents going about their businesses in the Nairobi City. Their brothers, the street urchins, are back too smearing the pavements with jiggers and feaces as they beg for a penny.
(Just a Sidekick: If the economy really grew as they claim it did during their tenure, how comes the number of hawkers has seemingly doubled and the street communities are growing into societies?)
Recently, I was surprised to read in the press that the president had relaxed the rules for touts and they dont have to report to work in uniform. The reasons given were that the uniforms were expensive and costly for the touts who earn a pittance. Wasn't that the case when the rule was being introduced and if not, has the economy grown that bad that uniforms that were cheap then are expensive now?
The president has also asked the police to stop brutalising the youth (read mungiki). Is this some sort of guilt on the government's side? And why should they feel guilty if what they did was right. I am getting this feeling that to get votes, you cant just stand up to be counted, you have to renounce your reforms if you have a feeling that they might have rubbed some people the wrong way. Is this what democrazy means in your dictionaries? Someone should enlighten me.
Now to my predicament. Someone has deliberately decided to forget about us, the smokers. Despite all the good rules being relaxed all around us, we still have to gather in shaming groups at designated spaces to take our cancer sticks. Mr. president and your men, we too have votes you know. We also need the reprieve.
Why not let us go back to smoking in the streets like the hawkers are now allowed to sore eyes in the city center and like the chokoras are now allowed to smear the pavements? Together with the touts who don't have to wear uniform for now and the 'youth' who are not being harassed by the police, we will go back to our pre-election existence once you get to power.
After all, its votes you want for now and its votes we smokers also have, for now. I speak for the smokers you speak for want of the votes, do you hear me?