Roommates know you more intimately than your lover

By BILL ODUNGA

KENYA: For all of you men living in campus hostels who thought that your girlfriends know you best, please stop kidding yourself. 

Your girlfriend only knows the little mundane stuff, which when you sum up, only equals to an insignificant portion of who you really are. The things you let them know, like the songs you are hot for, even if it is Fundamentoz. But the person who really knows the person you are is your roommate. You can never hide anything from that person.

Your roommate knows the last time you bought a new pair of underwear, or whether you even wear any at all. He knows your preference, briefs or boxers.

Fallacy

He knows the last person you speak to before you sleep. And even though your girlfriend Njeri thinks it’s her, you know for sure it’s Philgona. You cannot fool him however much you try. And it’s a fallacy to imagine that he doesn’t know you cloak yourself behind the scriptures, when who your truly are, comes out alive at Molly’s dance-floor.

That is why gentlemen, we should never allow our girlfriends to be our roommates. Why? Because every relationship needs a lie. If you do not know how to lie, you will not have a blissful marriage.

What drove the point about roommates hit me on Wednesday. I stay alone in a single room, one of the few good things that come with winning campus elections. But then it gets rather lonely sometimes and on days like Wednesday, when boredom rears its head on a cold morning, I have breakfast with my boys next door — Oscar and Martin.

Somewhere between the almost sugarless black coffee and the two mandazis, Oscar points out a fact about his roommate Martin that sends all of us sprawling on the floor aching from mirth.

He says he has watched Martin keenly and has noticed a very strange thing.

That Martin never has ‘morning wood’ ever. Apparently, if scientific research is anything to be believed, the true mark and definition of a man, is waking up with a hard on. And this has nothing to do with having ‘dirty’ dreams. Every normal man experiences it. According to Oscar, Martin is not normal, thus, needs to get checked.

Semester

I am still stalled at the point where he’s so keen on his roommate’s health to the point of noticing his erection patterns.

I can bet you my next semester HELB loan that Martin’s girlfriend has not mastered how often his blood flows south, and at what points. It is not gay for a roommate to notice stuff like this by the way — such mastery of your roommate’s blood flow comes with cohabitation of six months. It would take your girlfriend five years to notice such.

In the meantime, I shall continue to stay alone and wait for the five years for my significant other to realise what times of the day my blood flows south.