Ma’am, your man is sad, hug him tonight

It was way past midnight, the scene - one of those decaying colonial houses that those connected to power scammed from government for a song – if at all they spent a dime in the first place.

Being good Africans, they quickly converted them into noisy pubs (our colonial masters must be seething with fury in their graves) where middle income earners fry their livers on black tea laced with formaldehyde – produce of Industrial Area, er… sorry, Scotland.

The last men and women standing that night were an odd bunch. At one table sat a group of ageing women whose predatory eyes wept with sin each time a young man walked through the door.

MCHELE ARTIST

An expensively dressed ‘independent woman’ sat alone at the counter, handling her wine glass with the agility of a veteran.

It was an uncharitable thought, I know, but it did cross my mind that she could be a mchele artist, the modern day Jezebel who spikes your drink, and then robs and leaves you for dead.

There was also the usual crowd, hard drinking men and women who spend every night hopping from pub to pub, wolfing down enough meat to clog an elephant’s heart, and always one pay check away from bankruptcy.

One of them could be nursing an STI, facing divorce or fighting a vicious money-related battle at the children’s court, I mused.

But it is the two middle-aged who caught my attention. Expensively dressed, they exuded the quiet authority of men used to making tough decisions in the corporate world; moneyed men with multiple bank accounts, big properties and homes. And you know what? They kept dozing off, in a noisy bar, way past midnight.

NOISY PUB

“Why don’t these two old timers just, you know, get the hell out, go home and sleep?” I wondered.

Then it hit me. They were probably dozing off in a noisy pub because they didn’t want to go home!
Sad, but that’s just the way it is. We have an army of men who loath their homes. For them, home is a dormitory – a place to sleep, shower, change and scram.

These men are happiest at the office, away on official trips, in bars, at a football match, in the arms of their mistresses. But home is that toxic, tedious space where happiness, peace and comfort walked out of the door without a backward glance.

They are the sullen faces you see in matatus; the irritable folks at the workplace; the troubled man huddled in a corner of the bar; the ninjas who stroll out on Saturday mornings in a tracksuit to buy a newspaper only to crawl back at midnight on Sunday; the stressed out chaps talking to themselves down the road. Dead men walking.

Weighed down by responsibilities, incessant rebukes, unending demands for money and shaming comparisons to “other husbands who are doing better”, they are always giving, but nobody gives them a thing in return.

For them, home is a battlefield that dehumanizes and devalues them, the last place to expect comfort, happiness, peace, appreciation and respect.

Don’t wait to be hugged. Hug your man tonight.

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