I say NO, he hears maybe, or even YES! :-/

I walk out of the cinema on a balmy Sunday evening with a girl friend and as soon as I switch on the phone it starts to ring. My relaxed mood evaporates immediately as I see who it is: I am reminded of my resolution to put an end to this nonsense once and for all by the end of the day. I ignore the call and it goes to voicemail. We resume our dissection of the the newest Sex and the City Movie (II), and agree that although parts of it were over the top, it was watchable on the whole. For once I also saw why the fashion is so much a part of the SATC experience - I simply loved the outfits; and as for the furniture!!

Anyway, my friend and I had earlier agreed to swing by a trendy bar that had been open for sometime on the roof top of the building complex; as an architect, she was keen to check it out. It is fantastically expensive but we figure think we can manage a drink of water at the very least. I do not know what it looks like during the day but in the cool night air, I am struck again by the beautiful and warm decor, perfectly accessorised by the beautiful people sitting within its inviting interior. Cutting through the bar one can access the outdoor area, which is laid out with high tables and bar stools nearest the exit from the bar, and further out along the edges, lower seating with large cushions and intimate lighting. My friend is oooh-ing and ahhhh-ing as we head to the low seating; we take a minute to we gaze can see the night sky and parts of the city laid out before us through the glass atop the half wall that runs along the boundary.

After we order our drinks, I decide to check my voicemail to listen to what my latest suitor has to say. He is complaining (as usual) about finding my phone switched off. Irritation wells up within me as I remember that the day before i had told him that I would go to the 7 O'clock movie and naturally my phone would be off. I remember his only response as quipping:

"Well, I am not movie [sic] person so you are on your own," as if I was inviting him along!

The problems that I have with this one are countless. We had met at a cafe not long before, and one coffee date (where two of his friends were present for half it) and some phone calls later, I would not say that he was ringing my bell. Time had come to cut those ties. First I thought I would just make myself scarce and unavailable, but then he'd bombarded me with even more phone calls and kept trying to fit in with whatever I was doing, even driving miles out of his way to give me rides to places. I had finally decided that time had come for me to set him straight on his prospects, but so far I hadn't found quite the words. The original plan was to do it over the telephone but out of some stupid sense of fairness, now I thought I ought to tell him face to face.

You might ask yourself why I felt I had to show such consideration, and how I found myself in this mess in the first place?

Well, this is a result of a new resolution to be more open to guys that I would not normally give the time of day; this in efforts to widen my dating pool and give a chance to those people who once I got to know may be quite worth knowing after all. The game plan is to go on at least three dates - a la 'The Surrendered Single', and having given him a fair chance, decide whether or not I wanted to accept more dates. Unfortunately, although this new attitude had gotten me more dates, they have not exactly been quality dates. I could go so far as to say I attract the most unstable and clingy men imaginable; so much so that I can hardly ever last beyond the first date. These are men, who within hours of our first date (or even during), are usually swearing undying love, and are proposing marriage within the week! And the worst thing is that these are men that I would indeed not give the time of day so to give them my number, I have had to brush aside some serious reservations. After three such men, I am sincerely beginning to ask myself if I shouldn't just go back to my old ways - this hustle simply isn't worth it!

My phone rings and it is him again.

"Where are you?" he snaps - apparently angry I guess.

Holding down my irritation I reply "We are up on the roof top"

"What are you doing up there? I am in the parking lot"

"My friend and I are checking out the new bar up here. Do you want to come up?"

He hesitates for a moment and then snaps "O.k." Gosh.

I had told him the day before that I could not see him today because I had a movie date and he had said he would come by just for five minutes. My attempts to dissuade him had been fruitless so here he was (which begs the question: why he is asking me what I am doing up here?) Later I thought that it was all very well giving him his five minutes, the sooner I got this over with the better; so instead of staying out with my friend, we had agreed to part after he arrived and I could take those five minutes to let him know it was not working out.

My friend and I sip our drinks and take in our surroundings; she is still exclaiming with pleasure and I glad I brought her. We try to talk about this and the other, the movie - nothing! Knowing he was coming up to the top of the building I cannot concentrate. Finally my friend asks:

"Do you want me to stay with you?"

"Oh," I exclaim " would you? I think I will need some back up after all!"

I wondered what exactly he had in mind. His tone over the phone implies that he thought we had a date or something, and yet I told him I could only see him for five minutes. Which is another of his problems - the man simply does not listen to anything I say! My phone rings again, and before I can speak he asks:

"Where are you? Am I in the right bar?" Irritation.

"We are outside" I respond calmly.

"Outside? Why are you outside? Who sits outside?"

I am struck temporarily dumb. I stutter

"What? We - "

"Outside where?" he cuts in.

"Just walk through the bar - we are sitting directly opposite the door to the bar"

I look up as I say this and see him walking rapidly towards us: he comes to a stop next to our table and I introduce my friend. He shakes her hand and quickly says

"Come inside - it is nicer, and you can watch soccer"

"We are not interested in soccer" I retort "go and sit there if you like - I will be with you shortly" To hell with this!

All this time he is maintaining a strange stance - chest out, arms away from his sides, widening all over the place; I am beyond dismayed by his rude beahviour. When he has left I turn to my friend with my mouth open; she is shaking her head:

"Missy, what was that all about?"

"The rudeness!" I reply slowly, amazed.

I slump back in my seat:"I really have to get this over and done with" I think. My friend and I chat on for a while, we agree that I need to get over there and shut this down, but both of us a little afraid of the aggressiveness he has just shown. We decide to return to our original plan - I will go over and talk to him for a few minutes, then return to our date, otherwise if my friend leaves I might never be able to get rid of him (Yeah, I know, I am totally spineless about these things!) The other thing I forgot to mention is that this guy has a military background so I was probably better off not being left alone with him.

I spot him sitting by himself when I go into the bar, eyes trained on the T.V. screen. I walk up and take the stool next to him.

With one eye still on the screen he half-turns to me and says "Are you through?"

"Through with what?" I ask

"Your friend."

"What do you mean? Yesterday you said you only wanted to see me for five minutes so here I am"

"What? Why don't you finish with her and then come back"

"Because I have to take her home" I lie.

"Oh really?" He turns fully " So - I can't see you tonight?"

"But that is exactly what I told you yesterday"

"No goodnight kiss for me then?"

(I'm thinking huh?? He had been nattering on about his good night kiss since after the first date )

"Er, about that..." I say hesitantly, unsure how to proceed "uhm, that is not going to happen I'm afraid"

Puzzled he tilts his head to the side "why not?"

"We-e-ll, for a start, we have hardly been on a date, and -"

"But that is your fault - you are always too busy to see me"

"Well, that is another thing - this is simply not the time for me to start a relationship. I am getting ready to leave the country for a good length of time and this is not something that I can sustain" (taking the wuss's way out)

"Leaving the country? When?"

"Soon."

"But what has that got to do with anything?"

I abandon the wuss-ness, and decide to be truthful "Well, actually not a lot - even if I was not leaving I have known for some time that this was not working"

"What?" He hisses. He grabs my hand "Let's go outside and talk about this."

I wrench my arm away and through gritted teeth say "there is point. And anyway I have to get back to my friend". I soften "You can call me later and talk some more about it if you want. Gotta go now though." I hurry away.

"Wait," he says getting off his stool, "I will walk you both to your car then" I groan inwardly - I had not expected this - actually my friend's car is also in the parking lot so we would now have to go through the charade of getting into mine, and pretend to drive away. I just hoped he did not decide to drive out behind us.

"O.K." I say weakly.

As we walk down to the parking lot, he continues to pointedly ignore my friend, and says hardly anything to me. My friend and I chat uncomfortably until we arrive at my car.

"Right. So talk to you later?" I ask.

"Yeah, I will call you later."

My friend and I hope into my car and drive around in a circle, stop at some supermarket, get some stuff and then I drive her round to her parked car. The man for his part screeches out of the parking lot and heads in the direction of his home.

Later he calls and says that he is really speechless after what I told him; he likes me so much, he does not understand, etc., I tell him we are just not suited and it's best he forgot about me. He pleads with me to meet with him one more time, the following day, for coffee, and I am just so worn out with his begging that I agree.

The next day, I have to fit him into my busy Monday morning schedule and as I expected, our conversation accomplishes nothing beyond wasting my time and strengthening my resolve. I tell him to simply move on, he says o.k, he cannot force me to date him but can we at least be friends? I tell him that never works in my experience, he pleads with me to let him at least call me sometimes (God, the pleading just kills me) I am so exhausted by all this I say fine, whatever; only don't call ten times a day as you have been doing. We wrap that up and he rings me the minute he is back in the office (sigh...) to say again how much he likes me, I tell him he cannot be telling me he likes me if we are just going to be friends and what had we said about the frequent calls? He says oh, sorry - right. Talk to you later then. Exasperation.

To cut that long story short, he calls twice more that day, I pick his first call and ignore the second. Next day he calls and says he's had a great idea: how about before I left the country he took me to his home village to meet his Grandmother (who brought him up mind you) - I give up! Now I ignore all calls and text - maybe that way he will hear the NO more clearly!

I don't know that I will so willingly give my number to the next man that asks for it because this simply too exhausting!

On starting over...

There is this young woman - 30 years old, been in a relationship with a guy for five years and they have a two year old together (he has two other children from previous relationships and she has one from a previous relationship too). Friday night, we are out for drinks and as usual she is in tears over the fact that he will not make their union official - or rather that he keeps putting the ceremony off - this despite repeated cajoling by the girl, her Mom, her Dad, her brother, her friends, name them! Present was a young married couple and the husband said that in his opinion, this was exactly the wrong way to go about getting her boyfriend to commit. Her response to that was that he should leave if things were not to his liking, and that she had done everything in her power, including 'giving' him a daughter to prove her loyalty, but that all that did not seem to be enough.

This married couple is also friends with the boy and they had talked to him about this issue not long ago; apparently he too had complaints about the relationship that were a mile long, and said that unless the girl could address these issues then he could not see how he could make their relationship official. Chief among these complaints was her family and their interfering of course, but he also pointed to a number of incidents where she had flat out deceived him, or left him out to dry in dealings with her family instead of supporting him. When asked why he did not just leave, he hesitated to say; later however he said that he did not want to look like a man who moved from woman to woman, having children all over town, but that if some external forces could get him out of this relationship he would be out of there in a flash!

My own take on the whole situation is that of course the girl should take control of the situation and leave the guy - waiting for the man to leave is a waste of her time and energy! Looking back at my own life, I have found myself in some relationships which, although they appeared to have a lot of good things going for them at the time, were wrong for me on some fundamental level. In the beginning of these relationships I often had my eyes trained on the positives, deciding that no relationship was perfect, but with time I would have to face the fact that there were things that I really could never live with. Then followed a period of discussing these flaws with my partner and expressing my inability to live with them in the hope that he would make the decision to break up (so I could blame him and hate him I suppose); this period could last anywhere from a few months to a couple of years (!). Eventually though, I have had to make the decision to quit discussing the situation and just leave (and leave for good)!

I have recently had to make a similar decision. This is with a man who is perfect in so many ways, but who is simply at a different place from me; plus, we don't live in the same country and he told me early on that he was not capable of being in a long distance relationship. Since we were compatible in so many other ways however, (he recognised and verbalised this often), I thought the long distance thing was not such a big issue and raged against it for at least two more years! With time though, I finally had to face the fact that he was simply not at a point in his life where he could make a long term commitment, and that I should accept that fact without taking it as a rejection of me as a person. For his part, he often told me that he really wished things were different, but ultimately he stuck to his guns and did what was best for him – including persuading me to continue taking his (infrequent) calls and being friends in general. I on the other hand viewed these calls as more opportunities to show him how special what we had was, and what a mistake he was making in not grabbing it, and so on, and so forth! Looking back now I feel really stupid but there you are – this foolishness happens to the best of us!

ANYHOW! After years of trying to persuade him to make a decision, in June this year I decided to make the decision for myself - not discuss it with him, not get his approval, nothing - just do it! I have had to struggle with feelings of rejection of course (and wasted effort etc.), but it has been a couple of months now and I have come to terms with the reality that we may never be together (I should say 'we will never be together' but I guess I am not that over him! :-)); but guess what? He has not come running after me or anything - if anything, he does not even seem to have noticed my recent non-responsiveness - more proof that I made the right decision!

But back to this girl and her woes: The young husband and I discussed it at length, and came to the conclusion that her main fear was that of starting over. His own experience of the fear of starting over (or of getting over that fear anyhow) was related to starting over in business, which he has had to do a couple of times in the past few years! A bystander would think he was CRAZY to do some of the things he has done; most recently he decided to leave behind a partnership that he had built up and that had really good prospects, but that he had to leave because he and his partner simply did not see eye-to-eye anymore; one day he just picked up his computer and walked out the door! He did not try to get bought out or try to take the equipment he had purchased or anything - the way he looked at it, he had started out with his computer, and he could do it again - pursuing his own vision was more than worth it (and boy has that decision paid off by the way!).

For myself, letting go of this latest relationship required me to really look to myself and dredge up the confidence to start over - I will be 35 in about a month's time and I am completely single. However, being beautiful, fit, intelligent, and having some truly good friends, I know that there are plenty of opportunities for me to meet someone new if I will only open myself to them. Best of all, I took control of my life and made a decision for my own happiness, and I can really be proud of that!

My woes with Matatu Drivers

The typical Matatu driver is rude, obnoxious and will always try to hit on you if you so much as look at him sideways! (Matatu is the local term for the 14-carrier public transport minibus). My woes with these guys are a mile long, but recently I met one who took the cake!!

I like to take the front seat because it has the best leg room, and on this occasion the seat between me and the driver was not occupied and since I was going home pretty late, there were just two other passengers in the rest of the Matatu. Now usually, when these guys see that that there are too few passengers, they try to pawn them off to another Matatu that is going the same way, so that they can turn around and go get more passengers. The problem is, the new Matatu driver is even less invested and chances of being abandoned become even greater!

Anyway, true to form, this Matatu driver was trying to pawn us off and in desperation I decided to use my womanly wiles to persuade him to take us up to our agreed destination. So I start off by asking him what his name is (Daniels something or other), and ask him as sweetly as I can to please take us all the way and not leave us stranded in the middle of no where. After some back and forth, with the other passengers chipping in, he grudgingly relents, claiming that if I wasn't so young and beautiful he would not have agreed. I sit back, well satisfied with my efforts. Daniels however, not one to waste opportunity, immediately launches into some spiel about what a big favour he is doing me and how he will have to produce a signed statement to his wife concerning his whereabouts and why he is getting home so late, and how about I make it worth his while and give him my number.

I smile at him in the dark and go: "But you are married - what use will my phone number be?"

"Eh, don't worry - I know how to handle these things..."

"Well how do you know I am not married myself?"

"Oh, if you are married, that is even better! I like married women."

I shake my head: " No, I'm sorry, I never have anything to do with married men"

"Eee?" he complains, "you also reconsider" as he reaches across the seat separating us and pinches (!) my thigh!!

"Hey! Don't do that!" I exclaim..

He smiles to himself and withdraws his hand and drapes his arm across the seat next to me..

"So," he goes on "are you really married? I was thinking that I could take you all the way to your door step if you like"

I squeeze into my seat and move nearer the door, and reply as frostily as I can manage: "Thank you but no thanks - I already asked some one to pick me up from the bus stop" I lie.

"Who? Your husband?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact"

"Eeeh, why disturb him now?? You can even give him my number and ask him to call me - I think I can take him on."

I look over at the man and wonder what the hell he is going on about. "No, that won't be necessary - he doesn't mind picking me up" I continue trying to squeeze up against the door, and when he sees me doing this he reaches across me and says "hey - careful - the door is not locked!"; he locks the door and taps thigh nearest the door as he brings his hand back to the wheel.

"Stop that!" I snarl. He throws his head back and laughs: "Come on, we're just having a bit of harmless fun"

I snatch my bag off the seat between us and lay it across my lap, and proceed to sit there fuming. Honestly. These guys think that a little flirting gives them the license to basically molest you! I wonder if I should just get out of the Matatu but the road looks quite deserted, and I can't be sure that I will get another Matatu at this time of night. The other passengers chatter on, no clue what is going on. I turn around and engage the other passengers in some banal chatter, and ignore Daniels though he keeps trying to interrupt our conversation. He even turns up the music and dedicates some song that's playing (and that I have never heard) to me.

Eventually, we reach our destination. Quick as lightening, before I can open the door Daniels reaches across me to unlock the door and I immediately press into my seat and hope he does not try anything else. Sure enough though, as one hand unlocks the door the other hand snakes towards my crotch (!) and when I push it away roughly he growls in my ear "come on, at least let me just touch your hootchie, you've already refused to give me your number!"

I practically fall out of that Matatu as I shout: "I TOLD YOU TO STOP THAT!!"

The nerve!!

Anyway, I have to say that I met ONE nice driver once, and was so impressed with his gentlemanly behaviour that I have never forgotten it. In fact, I had decided to give Matatu Drivers the benefit of the doubt since then, but Daniels had to go and spoil it for them again! But about this other driver. I was on this Matatu headed out of town, in my usual spot by the driver, and was totally surprised by the courtesy with which he treated me. The main reason I was so impressed by this other driver was that even though he had every opportunity to keep brushing his fingers against my thigh as he moved the gear shift, he was veeery careful not to. Other drivers get their thrills by spreading their fingers out and moving the shift in such a way that that can feel you up... I am always totally baffled by that - I mean what can they possibly benefit from that?? These kinds of drivers will also usually slump in their seats and spread their legs so that their arm and thigh are in full contact with yours - this driver was different though - I could tell he was making a special effort to sit upright and keep himself to himself. I only ever see this kind of behaviour during the month of Ramathan - in that month these guys will even return your money in case you over pay them!! The first time it happened to me my eyes almost popped out of my skull!!

Anyway, this one driver not withstanding, I think of all the rest of them as annoying, thieving perverts; unless of course they give me cause (on a case-by-case- basis) to think otherwise.