MANTALK: Life with the Wardrobe Mistress

But then you meet a woman and you decide to settle down with her, and realise you no longer get to say what you want to wear because she’s the Wardrobe Mistress now.. PHOTO | FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • When I was a child I remember looking forward to two things when I grew up and got a job: being able to buy as much Cerelac as I wanted with my money, and being able to choose and and buy anything I wanted to wear.
  • The Cerelac bit happened (for a month) and the clothes thing also happened.
  • But then you meet a woman and you decide to settle down with her, and realise you no longer get to say what you want to wear because she’s the Wardrobe Mistress now.

You get home from work to find a pile of clothes on your bed. “What are these?” you ask your woman. She says, “Boxers.” You look at her and then at the said boxers. “You want to start wearing boxers?” you ask her with a grin. She rolls her eyes. You both stand there and stare at the boxers like they are evidence in a murder case.

You take off your tie because you are tired and not really in the mood for an argument because for the umpteenth time, your boss blatantly took credit for your work at a meeting. That witch. May she get a boil in her armpit.

“Those are your boxers,” your woman says as you unbutton your shirt. “Oh, thanks. Now I must have like 2,000 boxers,” you say, throwing your shirt in the dirty laundry basket. “Actually, you needed boxers,” she says. It’s the way she says it, with that dangerous tone hiding underneath her casualness. You recognise it as a precursor for fights, something you can’t be dealing with because surely you are one man, and you can’t deal with a lazy and conniving boss at work to come home and fight about boxers or whatever. So you grab a towel and walk away from that impending argument and into the shower where you whistle one zilizopendwa track by the Maroon Commandos. You know that song that goes, ‘Sitaki uniambie unaenda…’? Yeah. That one.

CHANGE YOUR BOXERS

You walk out of the bathroom, drying your hair, and she’s still there, seated on the bed next to the new boxers. You can tell she’s been waiting for you, probably irritated with those ‘shady’ songs you like whistling. Once upon a time she mentioned that she suspects you like to whistle to those shady songs just to spite her.

“How was your day?” you ask, to avert an underwear crisis. “It was okay,” she mumbles, which is uncharacteristic of her because normally that question would elicit a painful minute by minute account of her day starting from the moment she got into her car in the morning.

“You don’t like your boxers?” she asks. You say, “I do... I do, but it’s just that I have 13 pairs already. But I appreciate you buying more. I wish you would have bought me new tyres for my car, though.” It’s a joke. She doesn’t laugh. Instead she says, “Your 13 boxers are lousy.” And you are like, “What do you mean lousy?” And she says, “They are too colourful. Too gaudy?” “Gaudy?” You ask. And she says, “Yes, gaudy.”

But you have always worn colourful boxers, you tell her. They make you feel alive. “I hate them!” she says. “Since when have you hated them?” you ask with a chuckle and she says, “Since I met you. You are a grown man, there is no need for you to wear colourful underwear!”

You stop what you are doing to look at her closely and raise your hands in the air in surrender, and ask with a smile, “Hang on, are you ovulating?”  She shakes her head and says, “Just get rid of that old underwear,” and leaves the room. She is definitely ovulating. She’s like that when she is ovulating.

When I was a child I remember looking forward to two things when I grew up and got a job: being able to buy as much Cerelac as I wanted with my money, and being able to choose and and buy anything I wanted to wear. The Cerelac bit happened (for a month) and the clothes thing also happened. But then you meet a woman and you decide to settle down with her, and realise you no longer get to say what you want to wear because she’s the Wardrobe Mistress now. All you hear is: ‘I hate your happy socks. I don’t like the smell of your lotion. Why are you wearing Obama jeans? Your shirt is too tight. Who wears green pants? Why do you keep holding your crotch while watching TV?’ Etc, etc.

Sure, some men need help with what to wear. (Those guys who tuck Polo shirts in their office trousers on Saturdays should be shot, by the way.) But sometimes you just want to wear what you want to wear because you are an adult who fills his tax returns on time. I think if a man can’t even decide what he can wear under his trousers then clearly there is a problem. If a woman meets you and you wear those trousers with pleats and big turn-ups and you tie them right over your navel and she complains I think you should let her have her way because, well, this is not Kinshasa. But if she meets you when you have a collections of hats because you are a hat-guy who has always worn hats and that’s how everyone knows you and she comes and says, “I don’t like you in hats,” then I think you should fight to defend the right to keep your beloved hats.