/ 17 March 2004

Someone rid me of this flirt

There is something quaintly exotic about a woman playing a man’s game. Especially if the game entails the ritual of hunting and hooking up with the opposite sex because they are wont to employ that traditional weapon hookers and trollops called flirting.

Just recently I was introduced to a pretty young thang who invaded my personal space to run her coquettish fingers down my long, flowing dreadlocks. She cooed about how long and natty my dreads were and was brimming with compliments about everything from my rude T-shirt — which proclaims to the world that I am the orifice that ejects human ordure — to my photographic memory.

Then she asked me to bend my huge frame so that she could see ”the roots,” which is always a good sign of a genuine interest in my locks. I bent forward a little and, with our faces a few respectable centimetres apart, she took a huge chunk of my locks and teasingly smelled them. Impure thoughts gravitated to my loins. Fortunately it was at night, so no one saw my ”blushing” face turn a shade of gray or the nascent bulge in my pants.

I do not usually lose sleep over women who fuss over my hirsute crown and have been accused of being an imbecile for failing to latch on to such ”interests”. But this time I noticed my friend and his wife — who had introduced me to the pretty young thang — seemingly at pains to play Cupid by highlighting all my redeeming features. So that night I lay in my bed reviewing the whole scene in my head like it held the key to immortality.

And as the night drifted away into morning I wondered whether the whole act was mere, unadulterated flirting or a genuine interest in me? Certainly, one can never be dead sure.

Reading overtures from women is about as easy as finding the ”heart of a cloud.” I once witnessed a scene where a woman made a nuisance of herself in front of this gold-toothed dandy at a club.

She gyrated her hips in that suggestive manner of the kwasa-kwasa dance and he ”typically” interpreted her behaviour as a green light for her amorous desires. Yet, when he made his advance, he was snubbed. Naturally he felt cheated and lost it. The club’s bouncers had to intervene.

Personally I learned a salutary lesson about the peculiar, incoherent muddle of female overtures from a woman whose intensity and quirkiness had seemingly matched my own. Our conversations could go on endlessly until either cellphone batteries went flat or we ran out of airtime.

Suffice it to say, all the soppy, mushy Hallmark ejaculations seemed to be written with our ”marriage of true minds” in mind. Yet, when I tried to shift the relationship up a gear, she stonewalled.

Fortunately a female friend, who was privy to my frustrations, was at hand to provide the inside info. Apparently I may have been ”typically” confusing those fraternal twins ”companionship” and ”intimacy.”

As you can gather when dealing with overtures from women, it is prudent to weigh all possibilities as one would a puzzle. The polarity of the sexes’ attitude and approach towards sex and ”hunting” is still very much dictated by our traditional mores. Hence, the world is awash with prose and verse of what happens when a man loves a woman, but little or nothing on what happens when she loves a man.

As a result, if a man desires a woman he will overtly signal his intentions, get her contact details and go all out for the kill, in a manner of speaking, whereas the average woman will guard her chastity (whatever that means) by simply telegraphing her interest to a man with subtle hints and deft touches.

Such a half-measured, half-hearted approach gives currency to the twin lies that women are not really sexual animals and the ones that explicitly signal their interests are sexual deviants. The former, I dare add, is a deliberate attempt to appear vagina-less.

It is lamentable that women who flirt, generally, use such tomfoolery not to show genuine interest but to raise men’s blood pressure. In that respect, the picture of that femme fatale Sharon Stone brazenly crisscrossing her knickerless legs in Basic Instinct comes to mind.

Of course, to be wanted or found attractive by a woman can send a man on an ego trip that is, perhaps, only overshadowed by that delectable moment of teenage wet dreams. It is precisely such flattering attention that has made one of my buddies to cultivate dreadlocks so that he can ”insert” himself into the window of female attraction. But women need to be more forward and accept that we (men) are mature, nay, sophisticated enough to allow being fancied without the labels of ”slut” or ”bitch” permeating our minds.

Obviously, until that time I will exhaust myself, and risk offending the constitution of a woman whose interest was only in my mane. And I am afraid men will continue to risk suffering the indignity of a batsman who gets dismissed by chasing a very wide delivery.