Sly beauties who rob lustful men dry

There was a time when the most a man could get from woman of the night was a bad disease. These days, careless men are lucky to escape with their necks intact, writes PETER NDORIA

An elderly man once told me that as a virile young man in the 1970s, charming a woman on the dance floor made one a man;  a hero if she joined him; and a legend if he left with her.

But if a man did that to several of them, he was a titan amongst mere mortals, or so thought the boys’ club.

What he forgot is that those days, the most a stray woman could do to a man was pass on an infection that could be easily cured by over-the-counter antibiotics. Children, if they popped up accidentally, were taken care of by the village, as times were not as hard.

Not anymore. Beyond the preliminaries, assuming one has the money to sustain her interest and a pack of condoms in his shirt pocket for medical insurance, a man also needs to be literally on the lookout for his life.

Cases of hitherto charming men being left drooling in bars as a result of having their drinks spiked with drugs are no longer shocking. That beauty you walk up to and throw your best lines at could be carrying enough drugs to tranquilise an entire national park.

Victor, a young man who got drugged recently and had to be rushed to a hospital while foaming at the mouth was surprised by how much interest the nurses were taking in him until they explained.

“These cases are no longer a joke. The last two incidences we had, both victims died. And nowadays, they don’t even spare fellow women,” he recalls being told by the concerned nurses.

Drugging, by the way, no longer happens in those dingy River Road bars with creaky stools, jukeboxes and ageing barmaids. Victor was having a drink at his favourite joint in South B.

In one instance, a man who had driven into a drinking joint in Hurlingham in the company of a well-dressed woman was drugged, and because everyone assumed he was with his spouse or girlfriend, she ransacked his pockets, took his keys, Smartphone and wallet before driving off in his car, never to be seen again.

Needless to say, there is the stigma that follows these cases. Everyone assumes that you must have been picking up a ‘take-away’ for the night, especially if you are found in funny places. This perhaps explains why very few such cases get reported to the police, despite it being a common occurrence. One medical doctor, for instance, recalls dealing with five cases on just one weekend.

Strangely, the more charming and chivalrous a gentleman you are, the more likely you are to be a victim of these prowlers of the night. Extortion is another risk, especially if you are a famous personality.

Recently, a well-known gentleman who had been in the company of a notable politician took upon himself the chivalrous duty of dropping home a woman at their table. When she got to her flat in Westlands, she threatened to scream and accuse him of attempted rape her if he did not part with Sh20, 000. Since the man has a reputation to protect and had a woman who is not his wife in his car in the wee hours of the morning, he quickly realised that not many would believe his version of the story. He paid up.

Another one who dropped a woman home ended up in the seedy parts of Dandora where he found his Datsun surrounded by mean-looking men who took everything he had and beat him up.

Not so long ago, a famous advocate whose clientele reads like the ‘who’s-who’ in government found his photos splashed on the front pages of a tabloid. He was in his mistress’ home, in a pair of shorts, not a care in the world and totally oblivious of the fact that someone had been secretly photographing him. 

Another senior government official had to call his friends and part with a six-digit extortion figure, after he picked a companion for the night. She convinced him to go to her house, where she secretly filmed all the action and blackmailed him into parting with money in the wee hours of the morning.

If you think you are smarter because you take your ‘conquests’ home, perhaps you should know that those who dare take women to their houses also have harrowing tales to tell.

“We were walking towards my door at 11:30 am when she raised her voice claiming that I had refused to pay her dues,” Edwin relates an incident in his apartment, which is situated in a leafy Nairobi City suburb.

He had wined and dined her for hours only to discover that had dragged home a monster. He quickly considered his neighbours; families that respected him; children whom he bought chocolate and other goodies and who fondly called him ‘Uncle Edu’. He paid up.

Another man says he took this woman home when he was remarkably sober, but was shocked to wake up to a house devoid of electronics. His phone and wallet were missing, too.

When he shared his predicament with friends, a veteran explained that the woman in question must have simply smeared the drugs on her nipples giving the poor sod who thought he was climbing Mt Everest, a knockout.

Not all situations end up in extortion, drugged gentry and robbery. Some get worse. When David went to a party and charmed up this young lass, he was not looking to settle with a wife. Being on a Friday evening, he did not mind her lazing around on Saturday, or even Sunday because she seemed not to be in a hurry. By Sunday evening though, he asked her when she would be going back home since he was an early-riser.

The girl explained that she was a second year student at the university but since they were on holiday, she now lived with her cousins while revising for an accountancy course. She would be leaving the following day, no problem, she said.

When David came back in the evening, she was still there.

“My one-bedroom house had been reorganised, my shirts pressed and arranged plus there was a warm home-cooked meal on the table,” says David, explaining why he let her spend few more days in his house.

One day, he came home to find a visitor. It was her cousin — one of those whom she lived with. Ostensibly she had come to see where ‘our cousin lives’. That was the day David learnt he was already in a ‘come-we-stay’ arrangement, apparently without his knowledge.

“I had to lie to her that something had come up at home that required my urgent attention. I packed my clothes, escorted her to her cousins’ house and promised to call when I came back,” David says.

He then went to live with his friends for two weeks, a price he had to pay to get her off his back.

And yet men never learn. This very night, men will be leering drunkenly at strange women in the bar. Others will stop at dangerous sections of the highway to offer lifts to women they have never seen. Many more will invite women they met half an hour earlier into their homes.

A few of these reckless men will be lucky to ‘score’. But the majority will wake up drugged in an empty house, in hospital, in their cars — or dead.

They will go through a ‘never again’ phase where they will be on good behaviour. But like hopeless addicts, when the lone woman at the bar smiles in their direction, their loins will stir and they will walk, eyes wide into another elaborate con game.

If tales from barmen can be believed, some men who are highly educated and who hold senior positions have been drugged as many as five times

It appears the days when women were considered the weaker sex are finally over!