JUST ASKING........

This past week has been full of fun. I had friends I haven’t seen in years visiting. It was like being in Coast (where I grew up) and Kisumu (where my family is at the moment) again; the catching up and the gossip...... refreshing.
My mum was around for a whole week; I spent everyday after work taking her round and going shopping. I haven’t ever gone shopping with my mum, the few times she took my sister and I to a shop to buy dresses when we were young, were always disastrous.

My friend Diana from Kisumu was here to meet an Internet ‘hook up’ but thought it wise to say hie before she goes for her ‘romp in the sack'.
My friend Kombo from Voi who I haven’t seen in almost two years was here to do his political stuff and passed by for a half an hour.

Then my cousin came to stay over for three days. She was here for an interview. I haven’t seen her since graduation; she decided to get married at our 4th year of cole'.
She chose the ‘bad boy of our class to get married to. Everyone was shocked. Every man who was pursuing her (she was the perfect pretty and soft woman.) either cried or got absolutely drunk once the news was out.

I had to tell her about my being HIV positive and she opened up a lot about her marriage and her fears. She hasn't gone for the test and is so scared. I added two and two when she confessed she told the interview panel she would love to work anywhere KCB posts her. I saw her off on Saturday night and promised to keep in touch.

She gets home on Sunday morning to a rude shock. her husband isn’t in the house at seven in the morning and on top of their rumpled bed is a condom. Yes a condom. The best excuse her husband has when he walks in after 20 minutes is he took the condoms from the office. I spend 30 minutes listening to her and trying to say the right words to sort of ease the pain. Pain I know she will carry with her most of today.
At the end of that call i had this feeling...like my past was catching up with me, de' javu.

Can somebody tell me what drives a man to bring another woman other than his wife to his marital bed? Why does a man cheat on his girlfriend or wife or whatever?

I mean what makes a man who knows his wife is in a night bus get a woman to their house, their bed (this is disgusting) and fuck her? Okay, thank God he used a rubber. Honestly at least he has some sense.

What makes a man leave his office, go back to his house when his wife is at work, to do his house help?

What makes a man who proclaims he loves a woman to pieces and has a baby with her cheat?This guy cant even afford to pay for the baby's upkeep and the woman has to deal with this.She after some thought decides to take his sorry broke ass back just for the sake of the baby or whatever. What makes such a guy cheat on a woman? i am already raising our child without your help and fucking you because you begged me to.

What makes a man look at a woman across the room in a pub, lie to his girlfriend that he is going to the gents only to go screw her at the parking lot in his car or on the bonnet of someones car? (That was my boyfriend.)

What makes a guy screw a hooker when his girlfriend is just three meters away stupidly in love and waiting for him to come back from wherever he excused himself to go to? (My boyfriend again) I wonder do they use a condom all of these times they cheat?

I mean I don’t want to believe this but lets just say that hypothetically I may be the most boring woman you ever took to bed, sessions with me could be so boring you cry when you ejaculate but why not just dump me? Why not save me the torture of seeing you treating me like trash?

Why? At these moments do you suffer selective amnesia? Like, do you forget you have a wife or girlfriend? Or what happens? I’d love to know.

When you are done and come back to me in the pub, sit down and go on drinking don’t you feel a tad guilty? Well don’t you? What do you tell yourself at these moments? do you tell yourself you're ‘the man?’ are you proud? do you feel strong or do you feel powerful or what? Seriously do you tell yourself that you had a right? Because I am a boring woman in bed? Or what do you tell yourself?

Why embarrass me this much? Bringing a woman to my marital bed? That’s low.
Fucking my girlfriends for the thrill of it, that’s low too. Fucking a hooker when in the parking lot of some pub is lame. For whatever reasons. Why did you bring me to the place with you anyway?
I understand that men a hunters by nature. Believe me i understand. i know that once in a while they need the thrill of hunting for fresh prey but honestly can't you hunt somewhere far from me? why don't you go to the next country and find yourself a woman there.Why my neighbour or friend or house help or cousin why?

Seriously are relationships worth having? Is marriage a dangerous place to be in? I went out with a guy for only six months, six and I had the ‘grand heartbreak’ and HIV. Six months of pain and tears and embarrassments I don’t want to mention. Now I have to deal with having HIV for the rest of my life. Does he ever think of this when he is sticking it up all the random women in the darkness of parking lots?

I can’t believe i am crying as I write this. Do you know what happens when you are in such relationships? You beg for him to change, and cry like crazy just so he feels you. Then you do stupid stuff to try and make him change. You do the lowest stuff like call the women on his phone and yell at those you suspect could be the one s he is sleeping with. Then you yell at him because you don’t seem to be getting anywhere. You get embarrassed when your friends ask you what’s going on. Because they saw him with another woman at a function you and him were invited to. Then slowly you get indifferent. You just don’t care anymore, or so you think. And this thing eats up your heart and your feelings and by the time you decide to leave you are so dead inside you don’t even cry.Because you feel nothing but empty.

That was me end of 2003. This is my cousin today. And hearing her voice on the phone 20 minutes ago, I couldn't help wondering why I let someone hurt me this bad.
Everything happens for a reason i guess for i know better now.