Bagging the elusive man

‘If men are like buses, then how do I catch one?’ That is the title of a book by Michelle Hamon that illustrates how elusive bagging an eligible man has become for so many of the modern day women. The problem is not in that there are no men around- but that today’s man for one reason or another, is in no hurry to think of wedding bells.

Maybe it comes with seasonal tides like the migration of birds but when the settling bug bites, woe unto the single woman who has to attend so many weddings while trying to explain to a myriad aunties why she has not said anything concerning her own. The problem per se is not getting a man because local statistics tell us that though women outnumber men, there are still enough single and eligible men around. Crisis is when a woman reaches that point in life when only wedding bells will do, and she slowly and sadly realizes that she might have to tone down on so much of what she wanted in her perfect man, and even the compromised ‘revised second edition’ might not be all that easy to convince to produce the magical stone.

When the woman finally decides to try some ingenuity on her own to convince the poor bloke that it was time anyway he preserved some of those gorgeous genes in a stable family setting, she comes across some code, that no one has ever bothered articulating its specifics (at least to me). This is the code that has cost so many men and women possible spouses and friendships because someone somewhere went to the trouble of laying down rules for love.

If you ever watched the movie  ‘Two can play that game’, starring Vivica Fox and Morris Chestnut, then you probably came up with the same lesson that I did: that there are no rules to love. But how I so wish that could sink into the skulls of so many, who go about with bleeding hearts, probably because they did not say (or do) want they wanted to say when they should have said it, and now they just wonder at what might have been.

For all the aggressive women who have sat by the phone waiting for it to ring only to resign themselves to the fact that he is not calling- at least not tonight; for all the women who have won his engagement ring for what- four years and he is still to talk about weddings; for all those who have not yet gone beyond knowing his first name, and even that, he did not tell it to you himself, you got it from a friend: when it comes to matters of the heart, there is no script that will work every time. And even when you think you got it, ‘the foolproof recipe for making him walk down the aisle’, the man will always do something that upsets the whole scheme and you want to shout, “It is not meant to be that way.”

I do not dispute that there are the generalisations that work with men: they are the hunters, being chased by a woman spoils the fun of the game… blah blah. The truth is, you are not going to lose him if you never had him, so get him first. And that might mean walking up to him and finding out his name. Or you just might be the one to pop the million-shilling question. Or you have to get off your bum and fix that first date after all.

When it comes to matters of the heart, and here we are not talking about the blood pumping muscle in your thoracic cavity that misses a few beats or races when you see him/her, virtual codes that often exist in people’s minds may only succeed in causing you so much heartbreak. There will always be a battle between logic/sense/ conventions and what you think you heart wants. You will often have to decide between following your heart and using your head. That does not mean you throw all reason to the wind just because his sight preempts everything else that was running in your brain and three months later you are either HIV positive, with a broken heart or wondering what the heck to do with that baby.

May be loving someone is all in the mind and therefore a matter of choice rather than the combined effects of genetic self-preservation, cupid, hormones and emotional imbalances. And may be the fall is so bad it short circuits the brain’s thinking path or moves the grey matter to some other part of the human anatomy. But maybe that is how it is meant to be. Uncharted, unprecedented, unwritten. The only thing a list of do’s and don’ts could ever accomplish is wreak havoc in hearts that are completely taken over by temporary madness.

I wont try and draw parallels between men and buses especially Kenyan buses- but I guess Michelle, catching a man is much more complicated than catching a bus, unless you are ready to flaunt the rules and get in the arena ready to play dirty.