• Everyone and their mother seems to have condemned me to marriage
Image: FILE
Diary,
After taking Harper to the staff meeting last week, she stole the limelight and became the bell of the ball. Compliments came rolling, probably to mask the fact that most of my colleagues trying hitting on her.
“Good job, doctor. This one’s a keeper.”
“Wow. Tom, does this mean I might have to visit our neighbours up north to catch myself a wife, too?”
“You can’t do better than her, Tom. Don’t even try.”
Even other comments that didn’t sound too complimenting.
“She’s so beautiful. Whatever does she see in you?”
Usually, I’ve never been one to lack a less-than-approving adjective to describe marriage: sham, con job, failure… Words have always rolled out of my mouth at the thought of shacking up with someone for life.
The affirmations at the end of the party only hammered home my recent observation — The Bachelor is basically a married man who would only be self-chastising if he said anything derogatory about wedded bliss.
It matters not that Harper and I sleep in different beds or that our union is yet to be consummated. Every day after work, I come to a clean warm house filled with the aroma of good things happening in the kitchen, followed by a hot, home-cooked meal that tastes 10 times better than what I managed to get off the stove.
Even her ugali no longer looks like overdone uji. And, by the way, she makes something American called “corn bread”, a kind of bread made out of baked yellow maize flour that is out of this world.
Even though I am yet to replace the furniture ruined by the floods, she’s made the little I have actually feel like a home. It doesn’t take a priest and a crowd or rings and a gown to get married, does it? Could it be that I’ve betrayed everything I’ve stood for before?
The worst part of it all is the betrayal of my best friend. My dog Puppy is completely smitten with Harper. Nowadays when I come home, he peeks me from behind the American woman and makes a face as if telling me, “Put a ring on it already, human.”
I’m doomed.