The absurdity of such tragic bravery cannot be known to those who have not had the precarious privilege of being in a relationship
with a
woman. Kevin’s girlfriend was a woman, a real woman, come complete with all the extras that go to waste on that dear species of human kind: unbelievable artistic talents wasted on painting, stretching, dressing, steaming, dying and knitting the body and its parts into strange, unnatural shapes and appearances. If men were to be completely honest for one second, then the truth should be told that there are not funnier looking creatures on the planet—no, in the universe, than women. True, there is the attractiveness in fashion and body care that goes into men’s opinion of women. But if, at great risk, men were to tell the truth they hide in their hearts, they would say that there is nothing more humorous than women painted to the bone, dressed in uncomfortable shoes and ill-fitting clothes who actually, seriously believe that they look good!
In his attempt to understand women, Kevin started from where the most intelligent man had made his conclusion, namely, that women by saying ‘no’ mean yes and the other way round. Primed to prove that the perceived complexity of women could indeed be summed up in such an ingenious conclusion, Kevin set out to put the theory to the test. He asked Mwai, his girlfriend, if she would go out for dinner with him. To his shock and surprise, she screamed a piercing ‘yes’ and jumped into the car, a genuine smile on her face. Kevin had absolutely no basis for even allowing the slightest suggestion into his mind that she meant anything other than what she had said. Puzzled by these rather confusing events, he got into the car and resigned himself to an unintended dinner with the queen of his heart. After driving round town for a few minutes looking for an ideal place to have dinner, he finally settled for a new eating place about which his friend had raved a few days earlier. They sat down, placed their orders, and waited. Kevin decided to ask Mwai a few questions to get a conversation going. She was unusually brief and precise in her answers, which greatly delighted him, seeing as his girlfriend was not one to answer a question without at least a load of unnecessary explanation and justification.
Fifteen minutes later the food came—tempting, spicy food that was. Kevin said his short memorized prayer and quickly dug in. It was only halfway through his meal that he realized his sweetheart was not eating. She was also unusually quiet.
“What’s wrong hun?” Kevin asked with concern.
“Nothing.” “Are you sure, because if it’s the food we can order something else?”
“I said nothing!” She said, loudly and angrily. “I want to go home…, just take me home!”
So in utter embarrassment and under the staring eyes and mocking laughter of the other diners, Kevin played the failed gentleman and took his angel home. A heated and rather unpleasant conversation ensued as Kevin dropped his girlfriend off. Kevin learnt a vital lesson that day, however, and that lesson is a milestone in the age-old attempt of men everywhere to understand women. But he also learnt a few other common sense rules when dealing with women.
Probably, Kevin learnt that the only time a woman will tell you what she wants is when she has failed to get it; before that it is your responsibility as an all-knowing man to see to it that her untold desires are well taken care of. But how do you know that she wants a nice, quiet, forlorn eating place with quick service and appropriate conversation—not stupid asking of questions and lame jokes humorous only to drunks? Of course ‘appropriate conversation’ has no definition, sometimes she will want you to be serious, or to be romantic and sometimes she will want you to just tell her stories and be playful, but again, you can’t tell with certainty what she wants; or maybe that’s what the male omniscience is good for.
Precision and curtness are, without doubt, an indication of irritation, disinterest and most often a burning, seething rage: inculcated in Kevin’s mind, by painful experience of course, that women can never be trusted when they say nothing is wrong—if the woman is not blurting out lots of useless information, the man better watch out! However, the choice might still be yours as a man to press for an explanation of what is wrong, really, and get a tirade of accusations ‘I told you nothing is wrong Peter! Don’t worry about me. You have never cared about how I feel since we started going out anyway; why the heck should you start caring now? Do you think I'm stupid? You think I don't know that all you care about in this relationship is what you get from me?’, and then after the dust settles and apologies are made or something like that, she will tell you that all she wanted was for you to hold her and tell her that you love her. Meanwhile you know that if you had dared lay a hand on her she would have brushed you off like a leper of biblical proportions!
Alternatively, you can leave her alone and meet her later when her ‘nothing’ has subsided. At this time you will be scolded for being a guy who has no idea what it means to be a boyfriend. You will be lectured on what she expects from you when she is angry and how you are such a failure at being the kind of boyfriend she expects. Depending on how self-centered she is, she may mutter something about not being able to do this anymore or not knowing where this relationship is going. Overall, you will be left with a gnawing guilt and a sense of catastrophic failure, in spite of the blatant knowledge you have that there was completely nothing you could have done to better the situation. Then you will put your back into pleasing her and making sure she gets what she wants. She will then praise you for all the things you absolutely do not need to be praised for and then point out and make a big deal of mistakes so small you could never have detected them with an electron microscope. When you tell her to stop being emotional, she will become emotional and then say ‘you never...’
But the vital milestone lesson Kevin might have learnt, having put the intelligent man’s theory to the test is this; there is no doubt, reasonable or otherwise, that women for sure mean both their ‘yes’ and their ‘no’. The intelligent man’s fault might have been a very crucial oversight. You see, what has for long confused the male species is the fact that women say ‘yes’ and then proceed to act out all the characteristics of a ‘no’, just as they give an oversized ‘no’ and continue to act in the most ‘yes’ way possible. You see the thing is when women say ‘yes,’ what they mean is ‘yes, as long as…’ Yes I will go out for dinner with you as long as you pay, the place is not crowded, and you tell me everything I want to hear; yes I will be your girlfriend as long as you have eyes for me only, appreciate and accept me for who I am and hold me when I’m scared. So when you hear her say ‘yes’ and act ‘no,’ you certainly haven’t addressed her ‘as long as.’ So the advice is free; never take a woman’s ‘yes’ at face value, make sure you think through every possible ‘as long as’ to avoid the horror of a ‘yes’ turned ‘no’, which is really always an unaddressed ‘as long as.’
Conversely, when a woman says ‘no,’ what she really means is ‘no, but.’ It could even be said that as long as a man takes care of a woman’s ‘but,’ there is nothing a woman will not do, and it doesn’t matter what kind of woman she is. It started in Eden. Eve says to the serpent ‘look, we can feed off any tree, but the moment we touch this one, we’re dead.’ This command was issued in person by God himself, but the moment the serpent addresses the woman’s ‘but’, the Hitlers, Bin Ladens, HIVs, TBs, politicians, and lawyers of this world were on their way, and the man couldn’t do a thing about it! The odd thing to Kevin is that the answer to a woman’s ‘but’ doesn’t have to be true! It just has to be convincing. And there’s a woman’s weakness; as long as a man can deal with her insecurities, even superficially, it doesn’t matter how indistinct from a pig he looks, or how many drums of beer he guzzles per hour, he’s got the girl!
At the end of the day, Kevin realised, a woman wants to be loved, appreciated and accepted. She wants to be secure, confident and beautiful, she wants to trust, be provided for, be held in strong and loving arms, and have moments of beauty and spontaneity, of love and romance. No man can give a woman all these things, and women know that. But men can give these things in some measure, and a woman’s heart is so desperate for these things that she can give up so much for a taste of them, and men know that. There are men who convince women to give up their identities, to devalue their sexuality, to always feel they are not good enough, to feel like true love is a myth; that is shameful. But to all men who have decided like Kevin that women have a million other functions apart from sex, to the men who can rise to the challenge of loving their women and being responsible for their families, to the men who refuse to abuse their strength even when they know their women’s weaknesses, kudos.
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