A husband’s guide to sneaking out of home

Dear Much-Younger-Man. One day you will grow up and get married and one Saturday afternoon you will want to leave the house but you can’t because you promised the madam that you will be spending more time at home. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • First, never dress up. And never shower. If you hadn’t showered in the morning, too bad. When you shower and dress up you are saying you will be long. So if you were lying on the couch, continue lying on the couch.

  • Don’t be overly friendly or considerate. She will see right through your ruse. Be prepared to leave in your sandals and an old t-shirt if you have to. Men have been known to leave in bathroom sandals and not show up until wee hours, so who are you to cringe at leaving in your Maasai sandals?

  • But here is the shocker. It’s hard to fool a woman.  Especially one who has known you for more than a month. They will sit there on the couch and read your mind. They have mastered all your moves and mannerisms. They know your next plan before you hatch it.

Dear Much-Younger-Man. One day you will grow up and get married and one Saturday afternoon you will want to leave the house but you can’t because you promised the madam that you will be spending more time at home.

It will be lovely outside, with the sun out and the sky so blue it looks like a lake hanging upside down. You will watch CNN, then The History Channel, then NatGeo, then CNN again. The TV remote will germinate in your hands. You will be bored. Then your phone will trill with a message – someone offering to buy booze. And that right there will be your dilemma, because madam is five months pregnant and taking a nap in the bedroom (lately she sleeps all the damn time; you even caught her sleeping while standing at the sink with a toothbrush in her mouth). And yet, you can’t leave.

You will text your boy back and say, “Acha, I will let you know.” Then you will watch more TV without really watching it.

Madam will finally walk out of the bedroom wearing a dera and glowing like a full moon. She will curl up on the sofa and ask sleepily, “What are you watching?” and you will want to say a waterfall, but instead you will say, Banged Up Abroad. You will look at her to gauge how low her nonsense threshold is this afternoon and you will see that it’s very low. Not good. The question is, how do you leave the house without causing problems for yourself?

First, never dress up. And never shower. If you hadn’t showered in the morning, too bad. When you shower and dress up you are saying you will be long. So if you were lying on the couch, continue lying on the couch.

Also, don’t pace up and down the house – don’t go to the bathroom followed by opening the fridge 20 times without getting something out of it. Don’t ask her if she will be leaving the house. Or if she needs something from the supermarket or if she needs a walk.

JUST LEAVE

Don’t be overly friendly or considerate. She will see right through your ruse. Be prepared to leave in your sandals and an old t-shirt if you have to. Men have been known to leave in bathroom sandals and not show up until wee hours, so who are you to cringe at leaving in your Maasai sandals?

What does she like? Meat? Samosas? White forest? Steak pies? Ask her if she would like you to go out and get it for her. If she wants to frustrate you she will say, “Sure, I’d kill for an ice cream, you are so sweet,” and when you jump up from the sofa triumphantly, she will say, “In fact, let me come with you, I could use some fresh air.” Plan gone up in smoke! If you take a call that is for a drinking plan with the boys, don’t sound enthusiastic. Sound bored and out of it.

If all else fails, just go to where she is lying in bed and say, “Sweetheart, let me step out for a small drink with Chris, he wants to talk about something.” She will say, “Oh, I thought you said you were broke?” Whereupon you say, “Oh no, he’s buying.” Oh, and a side note; it’s harder to leave the house for a drink if you haven’t paid school fees for the kids. Or if you promised her a new phone. It will be waved in your face: “You promised to get me new rims for my car yet you go out every weekend to drink. It’s fine.” And when they say  ‘fine’,  you had better abort mission.

Back to that conversation happening in the room. You will tell her gently, “So I won’t be long, can I bring you chicken/cake/sukari nguru?”

She will say, “Sure. If you come back with it at 4am then you might as well eat it yourself.” Then you will laugh and say, “Aii, no, I don’t even feel like drinking today.”  (A lie.) Don’t mention that you are going drinking with a friend she dislikes, the ones she says “have no sense of direction.” Say you are drinking with the ones she likes. The ones who wear V-neck sweaters on Saturdays. Then kiss her on the forehead and quickly get the hell out of there before she changes her mind.

Do this and you might be fine. But here is the shocker. It’s hard to fool a woman.  Especially one who has known you for more than a month. They will sit there on the couch and read your mind. They have mastered all your moves and mannerisms. They know your next plan before you hatch it. They know your body language and what it means. You will wear a particular shirt in the morning and they will know you will be coming home tomorrow morning.

You will pick up the phone and talk in a very casual way and they will know if you are talking to a man, a female colleague, a woman you are interested in, or a relative. They are like hounds that smell the trail of blood.

But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that they never make a move until they are ready to make a move. They never rush. Never show you they are onto you. They make you believe you are ahead when they are ahead of you. They can sit and study you for six bloody months, taking inventory, looking, observing and finally when they move in on you, you are dead in the water. They are like crocodiles that lie on the banks, motionless and giving the impression of innocence. Until you move an inch closer.

In short, all you have to do is remember that they are smarter and craftier than you and you only get away with everything that you do because they let you.

So the easiest way to leave the house when you want to leave the house is to say you are leaving the house. No games. No monkey tricks. Just leave. Good luck!