That’s what I wanted to hear, but then, we always confuse “want” with “need”. That’s why people seem to always tell us what we want to hear, and my dad isn’t just one of those people. To be honest, sometimes it’s easier for the soul to deal with what it wants to hear, rather than deal with what it needs to hear. My soul could have done better with what it wanted to hear.
When you’re thirty, and you get a call from your father, and after saying hello very briefly, he tells you: “you know I married your mother at the age of twenty-seven…” there’s a brief pause, more than brief – the pause is pregnant with confusion – and that confusion gives birth to silence. Short of understanding the appropriate response to that, I just foolishly replied, “oh, congratulations, dad”.
Now let me tell you something – my relationship with my dad used to be very sweet, but since all my other brothers settled down with their various partners, our relationship has been a little strained, so, I’m sure he wasn’t expecting any sort of chummy conversation – and besides, I was in the middle of a terrible fight with a female friend, in fact, I was just about to get into my car to run as far away as possible from my apartment that night to clear my head, and yeah, to avoid any physical altercation – you know, women are mean these days, since it’s uncustomary, ungentlemanly, and even illegal to raise your lay your hands on a woman, I figured sitting at home would just be as good as committing suicide – ‘cause, trust me, my female friend is just a curvy version of Tony Montana (with boobs), when she’s mad.
I didn’t want to wait at home and get f**ked up by a very angry female friend. Now, you’re wondering what I did – damn, I (allegedly) broke the effin cardinal, yet unwritten rule of “friendship according to ladies” – and that rule is simple, “for as long as we’re friends, please don’t try to have sex with my girl friends”. You see the problem and why I’ve got to run – I didn’t want my neighbors watching a 2012 parody of Scarface – now, Daddy is cramping my style, slowing my run.
I didn’t want to be rude to my own father, so, when he didn’t respond to my congrats, I said “hello, I think the network is bad…I can barely hear you”, but hey, I think he knows that line, so he just replied, calmly, “son, what I’m saying to you is the earlier you find a woman and settle down, the more time you’ve have to raise your kids before you’re too old and too senile to string two words together.”
Wow. Papa Gangster. Now, I know where I got my wits from.
He knows I dread the subject of marriage, settling down, and relationships. But he just hasn’t been able to figure out why, and neither have I. So, he laid it on me with the only emotional appeal I’d understand – the fear of losing the ability to write. I wanted to hear him say, “Son,
how much real estate (or even petrol) would you like me to leave you in my will” – but heck, I guess I needed to hear what he just told me. Despite the irony of the whole scenario – me, running away from my own apartment because my female friend was mad at me, and my dad, several miles away, telling me I was getting old, and had better got married.
“Dad, let me call you back please – the network is just too terrible here”. End call.
Now I’m wondering. Damn. I thought only female children were subjected to such pressures to get hitched. So, now, where the hell do I start from – out of a modest number of the “female friends” I have – I’m struggling to zero in on one with what I “need” – trust me, when looking for a date, it’s easier to go with what you want – video vixen-like beauty, with a booty that’d make Nicki Minaj look like a teenage boy – but then, when you get the kind of call I got – you begin to look beyond the tits and the hips, and oftentimes, those figures are just too damn distracting to let you look out for anything else you “need” inspecting. And even if you’re lucky enough to see beyond the glittering physical attributes, how sure are you that what you’re seeing isn’t what the person-of-interest “wants” you to see – this paranoia is eating deep into the bone marrows of men and women who are ripe for marriage – it’s like mind cancer, of which I suspect I’m a level 4 patient, just waiting for the doctors to pull the plug off my life support.
Sometimes, I rationalize that the fear of marriage is the beginning of wisdom. And I tell myself that it’s perfectly alright to avoid commitment – that way you minimize the risk of getting screwed. Crap!
And if you subscribe to the above-mentioned excuses (like me), my friend, it simply means you’re either too paranoid and faint-hearted, too caught-up in a romantic fantasy novel, too obsessed with the impossible standards and definition of beauty and sexuality as imposed on the Regular Joe/Jane by MTV, and television in general, or you’re just not ready to stop being a kidult. (Like me, again).
~James Amuta
Founded in 2007, Ladybrille® Magazine is a California based pioneer digital publication demystifying the image of Africans in the west through contemporary African fashion and celebrating the brilliant woman in business and leadership, with an emphasis on the African woman in the diaspora. Our coverage includes stories on capital, access to markets, expertise, hiring and retention, sales, marketing, and promotions.
I’m with James. Then again dude, try not to sleep with your woman’s best friend, and try not to pick them for the wrongest reasons. Don’t get married sha. You know what you need. You can always get to that when you’re older and wiser and have played the field to your satisfaction. What is so wrong with that?