• The naked truth is too much for my fiancée to handle
Image: PEXELS
Diary,
If you’re new to the roller-coaster ride that’s the life of the Perpetual Bachelor, here’s a recap: I was once a lifelong member of the Never-Marrying Club.
Enter Harper, a beautiful American divorcee who shone a different light on circumstances, and I found myself looking down the barrel of the wedding gun. It wasn’t pretty, but I felt well-protected by the bullet-proof jacket of happy matrimony.
Then came a twist I never saw coming. Harper’s biological mother is dead. But apparently, Harper believes she can still communicate with her (Yes, Wazungus can be crazier than us). And my future deceased mother-in-law is somehow (read that “quite”) racist and doesn’t see a typical African as the best fit for her daughter. You see where this is going, right?
In-law drama has been one of the reasons I hate marriage, and boy was I right. Not even conjugal unions are immune to the death of in-laws.
Harper says she loves me, and I’m inclined to believe her. You really must love your mechanic if you always take your vehicle to him even after the wheels keep falling off and the engine has the cacophony of Bomas jua kali at high noon. In other words, it takes lots of blind affection to take a risk on an emotional loser like me.
Yet, her idea of dealing with our current crises is encouraging me to convince her mother I’m the best thing to happen to women since the wonder bra.
“Can’t ghosts tell when a person is lying?” I ask Harper.
She gears up for a spat. “First of all, my mother is a departed spirit, not a ghost. Secondly, what do you mean lying? Don’t you love me?”
“Of course, I do, dear, but what do I do if she brings up Emilio Estefan?”
“What about him?”
“You want to talk about a perfect husband? Dude’s been married to Gloria for 45 years,” I say. “On a scale of me-to-Emilio, he the perfect husband; me, the bottom of the barrel. There’s like four billion males on this planet. And don’t forget that group includes Bill Cosby.”
She gasps. “Oh my God! You never wanted to get married to me, did you?”
“On the contrary, my dear. I never wanted to get married, period. For a while, you changed my mind but it seems the same issues I wish to avoid will keep coming up. You see…”
Harper storms into the bedroom, leaving me talking to myself.
And so, my friend Lucas the mechanic, there goes your advice. You said I should break it off and make it sound like my fault, but she must be onto me. She must know I dread the time in the future when she’ll open the door and announce, “Hey, honey, we have a guest. It’s my dead mother.”