A friend told me the story of some guy whose rent is paid for by his girlfriend. I stared at her in bemusement. “Is he unwell?” I asked my friend. She said the guy was fit as a fiddle – ate three square meals a day, all that stuff.
“So why is she paying his rent?” “Just,” she shrugged. “Because they are dating and she fancies him and he’s not employed now. She is one of those with good hearts.” Oh, those. (The rest of us never meet these women with ‘good hearts’ who pay your rent.) “How long have they been dating?” I inquired. “Eight months now.”
I sipped my whisky and stared across the room at this waitress called Rose, whom I like flirting with sometimes when I’m in a good mood, but who was now flirting with another customer wearing a gold chain and a t-shirt with the emblem: “Listen to Ghostface.” He himself looked like a ghost.
“And how long has he been jobless? “ I asked, and she said nine months. “So he lost his job then met her a month later and she has been paying his rent during the whole relationship?” I said to no one in particular and I let that statement hang between us for a while, for her to process. That didn’t happen. Instead, across the floor, my waitress giggled furiously at something Mr Ghostface had said. Oh, so Ghostface was funny, now? I wanted to throw my glass at his ghostly face. “Is this chick loaded?”
I turned to my friend. Turns out she isn’t even rich. She is like the rest of us, going through this city, one penny at a time – and watching those pennies.
I thought about that guy. I wondered what kind of man gets his girlfriend to pay his rent. How lucky can you be? Is it even luck or is it pure talent? Or perhaps it’s some level of charisma that only the gods know about.
Was his grandmother a medicine woman? You make a woman reach into her bank account for your rent when the rest of us can’t even get them to reach into their purse to pay for a soda?
I honestly don’t know how these men even ask for rent. What kind of a face do they wear? A poker one? Straight one? Pained one? Desperate one? A look of love? Or of promise? How does that rent conversation start? “Honey, I’m in a small bind here, business has been slow and I was wondering of you could help me settle the small matter of my rent this month. And maybe next month. Also perhaps the month after that… well, at least until the shilling settles. It’s only 45K. Will you, honeybun?”
DO THEY HYPNOTISE WOMEN
Do they hypnotise these women into paying their rent? “Honeybun, look at this swinging pendulum. You are getting veeery sleeeepy now. When I snap my fingers you will wake up and start paying my rent.”
Urban lore has it that that men who get paid for rent are good in bed. That they are keen, attentive lovers who put their women’s pleasure before theirs. They also go for longer than the average two minutes. That same urban legend has it that men who get paid for rent are dandies or metrosexuals who have perfectly chiselled torsos and stomachs that women can sip drinks off. Or that they are dapper dressers… which means they wear red trousers and bow ties and smoke pipes and use words like ‘hence’ in conversation.
How smooth do you have to be to have a woman pay your rent? Do you speak like Shakespeare? Do you ooze poetry? But even most important, how into you does this woman have to be to pay your rent? Is this sorcery, people? This is sorcery, right?
I asked another female friend if she would pay her man’s rent. She said, if he lost his well-paying job. Note, the keywords are ‘well-paying’. “If he has a well-paying job it means he has potential to get another job,” she said.
But she’s Nyeri and they take care of their men. I asked an Embu girl and she said, “No, because then the dynamics of the relationship change and I don’t know if I could handle that.” I asked another girl from Kisii (yes, I know many girls), and she said,
“Did his money go down with Chase Bank? It better have.” I asked a Kamba lady and she said, she wouldn’t, “because it’s against my religious beliefs.” Then I asked a Luo woman and she said she would pay but only if he had been supporting her when he had a job.
If not she’d hang him out to dry. (Of course all these opinions are not representative of entire tribes, so don’t go getting your knickers in a twist and sending angry letters to Wayua calling me tribal.)
I remain confused. I still don’t know why a woman would pay a man’s rent. When Rose, the waitress, finally wandered over to our table to ask if I needed another double, I asked her, “Rose dear, how do you know that gentleman with the gold chain? Be careful with him, I know him. He’s a wanted child trafficker. Don’t get too friendly with him. “