Ladies, these are birthday gifts you shouldn’t give us this year

It is my birthday tomorrow. It is bad enough to have a birthday in January and terribly worse on a Sunday.

In January, Kenyans are childishly broke, and Sunday, especially the first Sunday of the year, is that time many individuals are thinking about school, school fees or regretting for the umpteenth time their December overspending.

Besides, I’m a man, and men are not allowed to fret over petty things like birthdays.

Ideally yes. But this article is as much about birthdays as it is about gifts. A fortnight ago, I pointed out that women, especially Kenyan women are lousy givers. Of the dozen or slightly more women I have dated, fewer than five have bought me a decent gift.

When I started writing, a young, pretty thing I was dating bought me a good pen. Very symbolic, very thoughtful.

It was black, although feminine; it was like a nudge to me to keep on writing. It probably ‘boiled’ in my breast pocket or I gave it to a Kenyan to sign a document before he or she kept it away. But what matters is that this woman got it right and bought me a good pen. I loved her for that.

This other lass with razor-sharp wit took my love for good female legs literally. I hung out with her on my birthday a few years ago and she brought me a card and asked me to open it later when she is gone.

Good Lord, father of Jesus! Know what I got? Inside the card were leggy women in nothing more than a top. Kinky. I never knew even such a card existed before. Dating a woman with a sense of humour is one of those things. A terrific blessing.

I have received a shirt from my sister and perfume from another lady. Both good gifts, but no one has ever given me a gift that I can enshrine their name in my heart. A good gift not only requires some level of thoughtfulness. It needs to be otherworldly.

Kenyan women are stingy, even the loaded ones. So as we start the year, here are my guidelines on how to give gifts.

For starters, try your best and surprise him, either in timing or the nature of the gift itself. Men scarcely get carried away by such trivialities as gifts but if you go out of your way, he will acknowledge that you truly feel his vibe.

So shirts, underwear, perfume and such have been overdone. So if it is a material gift, I suppose something very expensive or out of the ordinary. The key is to find what he likes the most and serve him just that.

But material gifts are rarely satisfactory to men. Men, unlike women, prefer the non-material gifts from women.

Cook for him his best meal. Or buy him the best rum in town. Or arrange his house well enough to give it the minimalist look that he so much cherishes.

Enlarge and frame his photo with ‘beautiful’ emblazoned on it in your handwriting. It is more personal. Something that will touch him.

Really, there is no science to giving. The golden rule is always think outside the box, be extreme (price wise) or offer a service he will relish for a long time, be it cooking or  cleaning or best of all, get in your kinkiest mood and drive him wild.

Surprise him with the wildest things that he only fantasies about. This can scare him or backfire, but as long as you are tactical about it, he will like it.

Here is to a good start for the year.