Some lovers cannot round off a lie

BY John Kariuki

As a keen observer and an eavesdropper, I know that Valentine’s day has taken a near-national holiday prominence in Kenya. So the love bug will hit many people today as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But we are likely to see more of the rough adoration that is carried out without finesse or forethought.

Often, Valentine’s day turns into an event of hilarious and amateurish antics apparently in the belief that we must do something memorable as we do on Christmas.

I do not begrudge anybody with heart palpitations and a thin sweat in the name of romance. You can empty your heart and pockets today, for all I care. You may also beget a full football team of children like ‘good old’ Jacob Zuma. The South African president supposedly has the most potent Weapon of Mass Destruction on the continent and honesty to boot! Whereas I don’t expect Kenyan men to confess their illicit liaisons today, like Zuma, at least we could do with some ‘professionalism’ in these matters.

Ever since American singer, Gwen Guthrie, composed the evergreen pop song Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ on But the Rent with the catchword No Romance without Finance, the golden rule by which the love game is played is crystal clear.

Love adventure

If you have some cash to spare and an ambivalent heart, someone will always notice and help you manage it under the adventure of love.

So, in all probability, most of today’s love hullabaloo is a culmination of studious saving. Many fellows strutting around with flowers, fondling and kissing their lovers in public today may have taken bank loans and overdrafts. Others may have executed financial scams in their workplaces like the mess in the free primary education funds.

Many respected men ‘lost in town’ often do amateurish things on Valentine’s day. Often they conscript their families to a meal of ugali and sukuma wiki as they partake of the finest food with the usual feisty ensemble of gold diggers, voracious piranhas, double-crossers and home wreckers among others.

Though this ‘clearing and forwarding brigade’ comes in different ages, sizes and shapes, they invariably shepherd their dates towards glitzy and crowded places to make a poignant social point every Valentine’s day. There seems to be a subtle sub text in their flaunting: "See who I am capable of dating?"

The battle within

And like me, perhaps you have seen many respectable men looking like lambs at the sacrificial altar in strange social places.

On one Valentine’s Day, a phoney young woman sat at our table. She had accompanied a friend. Her makeup appeared hastily applied. Over the evening she addressed this don as "sir" just once. A deep silence descended on all of us as we battled with our conscience. This single word validated the social gossip that many things still go bonkers in college.

But the gentleman could at least have avoided this slipshod faux pas by briefing his Valentine’s beau on the proper address to use for the day!

And if you listen keenly, like me, you will today pick up the careless denouement that puts all the Valentine’s shows we enact in their perspective. Having used first names for the best part of the occasion and nearly suckering you in with their ostentation, true Kenyan romantics cannot round off the lie without letting the cat out of the bag.

"Boss, could we revisit my pending promotion tomorrow!" a female lovebird may say coyly, finally putting all your evening’s suspicions to rest. So, the misleading faÁade of perfect Valentine’s bliss gives way to the outing’s true motive and which is not love.

"Greet Brian for me Mrs Kamau!" a gangly youth, satiated with both love and wine for the day, may say to his cradle snatching and older sugar mummy, putting to rest all that day’s gossip at an establishment.

Delusions that come

I am amused and horrified every Valentine’s Day by the delusion that love comes your way when you don red clothes.

At a cursory glance, more women than men appear to believe this. Consequently, many women from teenage girls, who can hardly tell a water pistol from an AK47 rifle –– figuratively speaking –– to veritable grandmothers will wear red today. And all will hope for love to drop from heaven, like manna, and sweep them off their feet with the intensity of the recent Haitian quake.

As I sign off to watch in and eavesdrop on today’s excesses, please make every day your Valentine’s.

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