Catfish

I have been in relationships which my partner refused me to even touch her phone. But those were the days that you could only peep at text messages, call log and contact list. Nowadays we have smart phones. With the security combinations these gadget offer, you are free to only touch and admire the phone. One would not even suggest to her partner to give out pin number or pattern code. One, because they might ask for the same from us. And two, a “trust” war might come up.

If you remember my story “Dirty Dancing”, the one where my friend was invited to Florida 2000, something surprising happened that day. But I did not mention it then because it was not related to the theme. Well, We saw Pauline dancing with another guy. She was my best friend's girlfriend. He met her while she was on her way back from St. Charles Lwanga Secondary school in Changamwe. He stopped her, greetings, and tried some dull start up lines obviously because he wasn't good with the words. But to my surprise, he managed to attract the attention of the girl. We were done with high school, but the girl was still on her last year. They met for the second time, on the way of course. And by the third time, he was escorting her to school and back home everyday.

I know my friend, He loves deeply. He loves in excess. He loves foolishly. And after seeing Pauline on the night club that day, he was broken a bit. I knew the guy Pauline was dancing with, Khamso. we were in high school together but he was a class below me. He was so popular with girls and had the gift of the tongue too. I went to say Hi to Khamso and my friend Sebastian got to say Hi to Pauline too, to send a confusing message I think. Then he couldn't stay any longer and said we should leave.

I said my friend loves foolishly. Well, when we talked about it at home, he said maybe Pauline met Khamso at the disco and they were just dancing. He was throwing benefits of doubt at her. They met the second day and he apologized for the way he reacted. He didn't tell me he would do that. The girl had it easy, I thought. I told my friend I cannot watch another girl playing him, and I would do something.

My friend asked me of ways we use to make sure our women don't cheat. I will start with why? We love those women, and we want them to be exclusive to us. We are men, we have much higher ego. The idea of another man stealing your woman is hateful and unwelcome. That action taints our pride. And if news like those come out, even our friends will laugh at us although not to our faces. It could be our woman's fault, but we sometimes translate it to our own fault of not being able to satisfy her in one way or another. Despite our shortcomings, we still want to keep them. We know there are better guys than us out there, and that scares us. There is also the matter of damages. Not only emotional, but financial. Imagine all the dinners and gifts you have bought. Expensive escapades. Maybe you have been paying her rent. They all amount to loss if your love runs away with another man. Our obsessive nature sometimes forces us to take measures that this loss doesn't occur.

From School to home Pauline was safe, so the weekends were what I should watch. I got up early every Saturday and Sunday to have my breakfast at a cafe nearPauline's home so that I could watch her door. When she got out, I trailed her. Sometimes it was brief to the shop and back. Sunday it was to the church. But one Sunday afternoon after a fortnight, I followed her to Pirates beach, and my suspicions were confirmed. Four photographs of Khamso and her holding intimately in the waters and two kissing on the shore were all I needed to save my friend. And I did, but he barely came out for three weeks and when he did, he had lost an alarming amount of weight.

Yeah, Bi Rachel that's one way of protecting our interests. Another is to hold the girl inside, permit her not to go outside unless its with you or an escort you trust. We use unpleasant ways sometimes. Like threatening to kill her and her lover if you ever find out she is cheating. Are we proud of it? Yeah if we get good results. Lets not kid ourselves, unfaithfulness occurs. You give money to your girlfriend and she goes to buy a phone for some jobless handsome guy. You are out with your gang and she goes kissing the single village doctor. They always jump at “Don't you trust me?” Many of us argue and believe trust is automatic in a marriage. We go on threatening that if there's no trust, this marriage has no use and it should be dissolved. But fact of the matter, Cases have come out of women playing with the neighbor while the man of the house was at work. Cases came out in the open where men were raising kids that were not theirs. Silly explanations come out like, he or she resembles maternal uncle. Funny, but cruel and sad. It is stupid to make trust a guardian of our relationships yet we see people using the same trust awarded to enjoy immorality in secret. Trust should not come automatic, trust should be earned.

Technology brought good news to insecure boyfriends and husbands. Nowadays we can install soft-ware secretly to your spouse's phone, or wife, and the GPS will tell you wherever she is. We have another thing, its called Cat-fishing.

I once had this gorgeous secretary for a girlfriend. She used to lecture me on morality and the trust issues so that I would feel guilty of even thinking about them. I liked her, and I think too much because I didn't want to share her with another man. Even secretly. Her name was Mariam and I first met her when I took our family's house rent collection business to their office. Her family was in Malindi and when she was done with college, she was lucky to get a job as soon as she got her diploma in Mombasa. She had to find an apartment in Mombasa because that's where the job was. And one weekend every month she would go visit her folks in Malindi. I wondered why she would not want to spend the rest of the weekends with me while she was not working. If she just wanted to rest, I could rest right beside her on her apartment.

It was hard to keep a watch because her apartment was in town center. Security guards of some buildings will start harassing if they see you loitering on their pavement for hours. That's when I came up with a brilliant idea of a new email address and Facebook account. We did chat and have fun for over four months over the internet. I wanted to burst her after two weeks but she might give a clever alibi that she knew it was me and she was playing too. Plus, I kind of had fun doing it because she was naughty and vulgar on my secret account. I never saw this reality in her for the ten months we had dated.

We sent each other pictures. I just Googled handsome Africans and chose some pictures to send her. She sent pictures that were not of her too and I laughed. Time was going, and we had to arrange a meeting. Two passionate e-lovers could not have stayed in one town without meeting for that long. We agreed on The Sapphire hotel and I made the reservations to have an upper hand on the room. Cat-fishing was finally paying off. Is it moral? No. is it reasonable? Yes. There's nothing strange. Many others do it. We do it to play pranks on our friends, siblings, cousins or cruel teachers in college. Its only weird and sad if you catfish your ex. But its sick to catfish your parent or child.

It was Sunday, 22 April 2001. I got into the hotel suit at eight in the morning. Two hours earlier from the appointment. This was the day I was going to prove Mariam's unfaithfulness and hypocrisy over the trust issues. She sent a message over Facebook to assure me she was on her way. And at ten thirty, the door was knocked. I opened and asked the guy standing at the door whats up? And he replied “I'm your date,” while he forced himself into the room. He was big and muscular, but not handsome. I asked him if this was a joke and he replied that he was the one chatting with me all the time. I called Mariam's number, but it rang in his pocket. “Oh, and by the way, Mariam gave me your message. Don't look for her, don't find communication to her, Ever.” he said. My brains started spinning, the buster had been busted. I asked myself how she could have found out? Did she have computer hacker friends? And the guy interrupted by complimenting the comfort in the hotel bed and asked if I could rest on the bed with him. He sounded disgusting, and he was having his fun. I got out of the room and he followed me. At the lounge, he put his hand on my shoulder and people were looking at us. I pushed him away but he pretended to be cool and gave a sexual smile and look. I was very mad. Then the hotel receptionist came forward to announce to us that the hotel barred us from using the rented suite and we should not come again because the hotel policy does not allow gays.