#newstory
Being a friend with a philanderous rich friend who takes advantage of his financial powers over you to blatantly break the boundaries of the brother code is depressing. This kind of friend takes advantage of your financial desperation and fear of being canceled from your rich-friends clique to wag his tail closer to your girlfriend. Maintaining a girlfriend next to such friends is almost impossible, as I experienced in 2017.
I felt that my friends deliberately flexed their financial muscles in the presence of my girlfriends to impress them or humiliate me or both. I was a member of a clique of very rich friends, in their mid-twenties. I wasn’t. I was a jobless university dropout, struggling with life on the outskirts of Ruaka town. They drove high-end cars, they dressed in fancier clothes, and they could afford everything they wanted in life. Benson was the richest, at 26. He owned a high-end car wash, car garage, a car bazaar, and other businesses. Whereas he could afford anything, he failed to maintain a girlfriend. He lost his girls because of his promiscuous nature.
Because of his haughty attitude, when lonely, sometimes he wagged his tail too close to his friend’s girlfriends.
More often, I was the victim of his blatant contempt for the brother code. Why? Because he was the guy I ran to when I had financial issues. He was as philanthropic with his money to his friends as was with his tail to his friend’s girlfriends.
One day, I tagged my new girlfriend to one of our friends’ wedding reception to flaunt her to my friends.
Ben was the first to make comments about her, lewd comments that made me uncomfortable. He pulled me away from the rest of the group during the wedding and wondered how I always managed to fish beautiful girls from time to time. It is always a proud moment when your friends acknowledge and approve of your girls’ beauty, but his comments were offbeat. ‘Bro, your new girl has the kind of bottom that I dream of. How do you manage to get them?’
On our way from the wedding reception, we drove in Benson’s SUV. Cyprian, a friend, was driving. Benson was sitting beside him. I was sitting in the rear seat alongside Kibet, another friend. My over a month-old girlfriend, Miriam, was sitting in the middle seats alongside Kibet’s girlfriends.
Whereas my friends were aware that I was struggling financially, we always kept such a discussion from our girls. But Benson was about to change that. Totally unprovoked, he pulled his stunt;
‘So, Sakwah, I have been thinking,’ he started. ‘Since that day when you borrowed money to settle your rent, I have been thinking, why don’t you move from the house to a hood where you can afford the rent easily?’ He said. Silence engulfed the car cabin. None of us hard anticipated such a talk. We always had such conversations without the presence of our girlfriends, but with girls around?
I was mortified beyond redemption. ‘It is something that I have been considering,’ I lied in a haste. I always believed that I had the situation figured out.
‘Yea that would be great. Plus, whatever you are doing at the moment is not able to sustain you. We were discussing amongst ourselves without you, and we feel that you need to get a new source of income, or probably also grind harder.’ This was perfectly written within the friendship books. When we were alone, the guys, more often we had such honest talks, and I understand if my friends thought that about my situation, but saying it in the presence of my girlfriend was unacceptable, embarrassing. It felt like someone calling a press conference to insult you before helping you.
Kibet and Cyprian were more than mortified. They did not contribute much to the topic. The damage had already been done, on my ego and pride as a man. My new girlfriend was not privy to my struggles, and I would not have loved her to learn about it in such a manner.
From then, I distanced myself from my friends. Although I keep our friendship, I stopped turning up to events that warranted the presence of our girlfriends and wives. My girlfriend did not shove the revelation on my face, but I noted she had changed since that day. Days moved on, as I struggled to recover financially.
Then came yet another day, if my memories serve me right. We were walking down the streets of Nairobi from attending Miriam’s brother’s graduation party in Utawala. From Utawala, we took a matatu through the CBD to Westlands. Our plans were to grab a few drinks in Westlands on our way home. We alighted from the matatu and while we were in the streets of CBD, Miriam spotted a pair of shoes that she had been converting for a while.
She had talked about the pair of shoes before we attended her brother’s graduation party. I ignored the talk because I still didn’t have money to buy her the shoes. She howled this in the air, ‘babe, do you remember the pair of shoes that I wanted to wear to my brother’s graduation party? See, there are on display. I wish I could afford the pair,’ I glanced at the price of the shoes and shuddered at their price. In my wildest dream, I could afford that pair of shoes at the moment. The high heels’ price almost rivaled my rent.
‘You can pick them, I will pay,’ Ben shocked the rest of us with his offer. Miriam jumped up and down like a happy toddler. She was too excited. Momentarily, she stared at me, with a wide beautiful smile on her face, as if seeking permission from me to thank Benson for his philanthropic prowess. I looked away, not buying her intentions to thank Benson inappropriately. Nonetheless, she hugged him anyway, tighter and longer than I would have been comfortable with. It actually took the intervention of my dry and uncomfortable cough to break them up.
‘Thank you, Benson. You are such a gentleman.’ My mind flashed back into my memory lane again. Never had she ever called me a gentleman. Why would she anyway? We were living in a world where gentlemen no longer pulled chairs, opened doors for their girls, held cars doors for their girls, and said ‘after you!’ We are living in a generation where gentlemen are men who spend more money on women, buy the most expensive alcohol in clubs, and drive the coolest car in the hood. For that reason, I was far from being one.
‘No. Don’t thank me. Thank him,’ Benson pointed at me, using his car keys. He did not travel in his car on that day yet her could not stop waging his car keys around. If you met him on the way, one would have imagined that his car keys did not fit in his pocket. ‘Were you not his girl, I wouldn’t have bought the shoe for you. You know, I would not have known you.’ My ego was violated beyond repair. Why didn’t he send the money to me privately so that I can buy my shortie the shoes later? Why didn’t he allow me to give my shortie a - I am waiting for some cash. Once I have the cash in my account, I will get you the shoe- lie, before he offered to buy her the shoes? My head played host to a plethora of disturbing questions.
I barely talked on our way to Westland. I had twisted my mind, upside down. To imagine that I had never bought my girlfriend anything worthy half of what Benson had forked out to buy her the shoes was unsettling.
And if I thought that I had seen the end of Ben’s antic, I was wrong. In the club in Westland, Ben constantly asked my girlfriend to put on the shoes so that the rest of us could review her. It was manipulation, I could tell it, mental manipulation oiled with money, influence, and entitlement. My girl wore the shoes. Ben cheered her on, as she balanced her beautiful body on the heels. He bombarded her with beautiful names, telling her how she was born to walk in heels all her life. Bro, that girl had never owned heels before. And I had never given her such compliments. I felt belittled, another man was commanding my woman, in my presence and asking her to do things I ought to have asked her to do.
At one point, Miriam and the girls walked into the washrooms. Ben leaned over me and commented, ‘Bro, your girl has beautiful, firm, perky avocados. The feeling of her hug has not left my body. I can still feel her pokes on my chest’ Bro, who says that about his boyfriend’s girl? I would never ever compliment my friend’s girlfriend’s rear or front goodies in his presence. He insisted on talking about her until I was visibly mad. I wanted to rant, I wanted to complain, but the Alcohol on the table, the roasted meat, and anything else on the table were on Benson’s bill. So, I shut up and allowed my friend to disrespect me, so long as I was drunk and full.
A point came when I stopped dating, entirely. Because it was increasingly becoming hard to maintain a girlfriend next to my friends. My previous girlfriend left me because she felt my rich friends’ girlfriends treated her unfairly. Because she was the girlfriend to the poorest guy in the cohort, more often, she was relegated to clearing the table whenever we met, did the utensils, while in most cases the other girlfriends sat in their comforts or in the sitting room with their friends. When in clubs, she was the one who was sent to make orders.
I could have left the clique, entirely, but the guys were my best friends, plus they always came to my rescue financially, especially at that time when I was struggling. What prompted me to stop dating entirely was a nauseating incident between me and my girl. I was snooping in her phone when I found a chat between her and her friend. Mariam had exchanged a text with one of her friends. In the text, she regretted why she met me or accepted my advance ahead of meeting my rich friends. ‘His friends are filthy rich,’ the text read, ‘I wish I met them earlier before I accepted to date Sakwah. I have a feeling one of them is interested in dating me. He even bought me the heels. I have been trying unsuccessfully to get his number.’
‘Why his number?’
‘I don’t know. To thank him or something?’
‘Why don’t you pick it from his phone?’
‘I can’t,’ Mariam replied.
‘Why? Don’t you guys go through each other’s phones?’
‘No. Like, I suggested that we should not be going through each other’s phones. He didn’t have a problem with it. I said that I will never go through his phone so that I deny him the chance to go through mine as well.’
‘Well, would you want his friend?’
‘So long as he gives me money which Sakwah does not have,’ Mariam replied. I read the texts and almost went mad. This text message disturbed me. I confronted Miriam over the same. Instead of offering an explanation or anything, she pulled out the victim card. She accused me of snooping into her phone without her permission and invading her privacy. I ended up apologizing for going through her phone when, ideally, I was the one who deserved an explanation.
In the end, I dumped my girlfriend at the expense of keeping the friendship with my friends. Because I feared being canceled. How then would I get free booze, and get to hang out in cool joints, if I got canceled from the clique because I complained that one of them was flirting with my girl? Men will always hit on one someone’s girlfriend or wife, but it's the mandate of the girl to say no to their advances. I thought, as a man, Benson had a right to hit on my girl, but it was her mandate as my girlfriend to turn him down. Therefore, I dumped her.
I remained single for the longest time during that period.
Being a friend with a philanderous rich friend who takes advantage of his financial powers over you to blatantly break the boundaries of the brother code is depressing. This kind of friend takes advantage of your financial desperation and fear of being canceled from your rich-friends clique to wag his tail closer to your girlfriend. Maintaining a girlfriend next to such friends is almost impossible, as I experienced in 2017.
I felt that my friends deliberately flexed their financial muscles in the presence of my girlfriends to impress them or humiliate me or both. I was a member of a clique of very rich friends, in their mid-twenties. I wasn’t. I was a jobless university dropout, struggling with life on the outskirts of Ruaka town. They drove high-end cars, they dressed in fancier clothes, and they could afford everything they wanted in life. Benson was the richest, at 26. He owned a high-end car wash, car garage, a car bazaar, and other businesses. Whereas he could afford anything, he failed to maintain a girlfriend. He lost his girls because of his promiscuous nature.
Because of his haughty attitude, when lonely, sometimes he wagged his tail too close to his friend’s girlfriends.
More often, I was the victim of his blatant contempt for the brother code. Why? Because he was the guy I ran to when I had financial issues. He was as philanthropic with his money to his friends as was with his tail to his friend’s girlfriends.
One day, I tagged my new girlfriend to one of our friends’ wedding reception to flaunt her to my friends.
Ben was the first to make comments about her, lewd comments that made me uncomfortable. He pulled me away from the rest of the group during the wedding and wondered how I always managed to fish beautiful girls from time to time. It is always a proud moment when your friends acknowledge and approve of your girls’ beauty, but his comments were offbeat. ‘Bro, your new girl has the kind of bottom that I dream of. How do you manage to get them?’
On our way from the wedding reception, we drove in Benson’s SUV. Cyprian, a friend, was driving. Benson was sitting beside him. I was sitting in the rear seat alongside Kibet, another friend. My over a month-old girlfriend, Miriam, was sitting in the middle seats alongside Kibet’s girlfriends.
Whereas my friends were aware that I was struggling financially, we always kept such a discussion from our girls. But Benson was about to change that. Totally unprovoked, he pulled his stunt;
‘So, Sakwah, I have been thinking,’ he started. ‘Since that day when you borrowed money to settle your rent, I have been thinking, why don’t you move from the house to a hood where you can afford the rent easily?’ He said. Silence engulfed the car cabin. None of us hard anticipated such a talk. We always had such conversations without the presence of our girlfriends, but with girls around?
I was mortified beyond redemption. ‘It is something that I have been considering,’ I lied in a haste. I always believed that I had the situation figured out.
‘Yea that would be great. Plus, whatever you are doing at the moment is not able to sustain you. We were discussing amongst ourselves without you, and we feel that you need to get a new source of income, or probably also grind harder.’ This was perfectly written within the friendship books. When we were alone, the guys, more often we had such honest talks, and I understand if my friends thought that about my situation, but saying it in the presence of my girlfriend was unacceptable, embarrassing. It felt like someone calling a press conference to insult you before helping you.
Kibet and Cyprian were more than mortified. They did not contribute much to the topic. The damage had already been done, on my ego and pride as a man. My new girlfriend was not privy to my struggles, and I would not have loved her to learn about it in such a manner.
From then, I distanced myself from my friends. Although I keep our friendship, I stopped turning up to events that warranted the presence of our girlfriends and wives. My girlfriend did not shove the revelation on my face, but I noted she had changed since that day. Days moved on, as I struggled to recover financially.
Then came yet another day, if my memories serve me right. We were walking down the streets of Nairobi from attending Miriam’s brother’s graduation party in Utawala. From Utawala, we took a matatu through the CBD to Westlands. Our plans were to grab a few drinks in Westlands on our way home. We alighted from the matatu and while we were in the streets of CBD, Miriam spotted a pair of shoes that she had been converting for a while.
She had talked about the pair of shoes before we attended her brother’s graduation party. I ignored the talk because I still didn’t have money to buy her the shoes. She howled this in the air, ‘babe, do you remember the pair of shoes that I wanted to wear to my brother’s graduation party? See, there are on display. I wish I could afford the pair,’ I glanced at the price of the shoes and shuddered at their price. In my wildest dream, I could afford that pair of shoes at the moment. The high heels’ price almost rivaled my rent.
‘You can pick them, I will pay,’ Ben shocked the rest of us with his offer. Miriam jumped up and down like a happy toddler. She was too excited. Momentarily, she stared at me, with a wide beautiful smile on her face, as if seeking permission from me to thank Benson for his philanthropic prowess. I looked away, not buying her intentions to thank Benson inappropriately. Nonetheless, she hugged him anyway, tighter and longer than I would have been comfortable with. It actually took the intervention of my dry and uncomfortable cough to break them up.
‘Thank you, Benson. You are such a gentleman.’ My mind flashed back into my memory lane again. Never had she ever called me a gentleman. Why would she anyway? We were living in a world where gentlemen no longer pulled chairs, opened doors for their girls, held cars doors for their girls, and said ‘after you!’ We are living in a generation where gentlemen are men who spend more money on women, buy the most expensive alcohol in clubs, and drive the coolest car in the hood. For that reason, I was far from being one.
‘No. Don’t thank me. Thank him,’ Benson pointed at me, using his car keys. He did not travel in his car on that day yet her could not stop waging his car keys around. If you met him on the way, one would have imagined that his car keys did not fit in his pocket. ‘Were you not his girl, I wouldn’t have bought the shoe for you. You know, I would not have known you.’ My ego was violated beyond repair. Why didn’t he send the money to me privately so that I can buy my shortie the shoes later? Why didn’t he allow me to give my shortie a - I am waiting for some cash. Once I have the cash in my account, I will get you the shoe- lie, before he offered to buy her the shoes? My head played host to a plethora of disturbing questions.
I barely talked on our way to Westland. I had twisted my mind, upside down. To imagine that I had never bought my girlfriend anything worthy half of what Benson had forked out to buy her the shoes was unsettling.
And if I thought that I had seen the end of Ben’s antic, I was wrong. In the club in Westland, Ben constantly asked my girlfriend to put on the shoes so that the rest of us could review her. It was manipulation, I could tell it, mental manipulation oiled with money, influence, and entitlement. My girl wore the shoes. Ben cheered her on, as she balanced her beautiful body on the heels. He bombarded her with beautiful names, telling her how she was born to walk in heels all her life. Bro, that girl had never owned heels before. And I had never given her such compliments. I felt belittled, another man was commanding my woman, in my presence and asking her to do things I ought to have asked her to do.
At one point, Miriam and the girls walked into the washrooms. Ben leaned over me and commented, ‘Bro, your girl has beautiful, firm, perky avocados. The feeling of her hug has not left my body. I can still feel her pokes on my chest’ Bro, who says that about his boyfriend’s girl? I would never ever compliment my friend’s girlfriend’s rear or front goodies in his presence. He insisted on talking about her until I was visibly mad. I wanted to rant, I wanted to complain, but the Alcohol on the table, the roasted meat, and anything else on the table were on Benson’s bill. So, I shut up and allowed my friend to disrespect me, so long as I was drunk and full.
A point came when I stopped dating, entirely. Because it was increasingly becoming hard to maintain a girlfriend next to my friends. My previous girlfriend left me because she felt my rich friends’ girlfriends treated her unfairly. Because she was the girlfriend to the poorest guy in the cohort, more often, she was relegated to clearing the table whenever we met, did the utensils, while in most cases the other girlfriends sat in their comforts or in the sitting room with their friends. When in clubs, she was the one who was sent to make orders.
I could have left the clique, entirely, but the guys were my best friends, plus they always came to my rescue financially, especially at that time when I was struggling. What prompted me to stop dating entirely was a nauseating incident between me and my girl. I was snooping in her phone when I found a chat between her and her friend. Mariam had exchanged a text with one of her friends. In the text, she regretted why she met me or accepted my advance ahead of meeting my rich friends. ‘His friends are filthy rich,’ the text read, ‘I wish I met them earlier before I accepted to date Sakwah. I have a feeling one of them is interested in dating me. He even bought me the heels. I have been trying unsuccessfully to get his number.’
‘Why his number?’
‘I don’t know. To thank him or something?’
‘Why don’t you pick it from his phone?’
‘I can’t,’ Mariam replied.
‘Why? Don’t you guys go through each other’s phones?’
‘No. Like, I suggested that we should not be going through each other’s phones. He didn’t have a problem with it. I said that I will never go through his phone so that I deny him the chance to go through mine as well.’
‘Well, would you want his friend?’
‘So long as he gives me money which Sakwah does not have,’ Mariam replied. I read the texts and almost went mad. This text message disturbed me. I confronted Miriam over the same. Instead of offering an explanation or anything, she pulled out the victim card. She accused me of snooping into her phone without her permission and invading her privacy. I ended up apologizing for going through her phone when, ideally, I was the one who deserved an explanation.
In the end, I dumped my girlfriend at the expense of keeping the friendship with my friends. Because I feared being canceled. How then would I get free booze, and get to hang out in cool joints, if I got canceled from the clique because I complained that one of them was flirting with my girl? Men will always hit on one someone’s girlfriend or wife, but it's the mandate of the girl to say no to their advances. I thought, as a man, Benson had a right to hit on my girl, but it was her mandate as my girlfriend to turn him down. Therefore, I dumped her.
I remained single for the longest time during that period.
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