The Apostle,
The life of the womanizer is bland. The relationship to which commitment is its hallmark is non-existent for the womanizer. For the naive virgin, this is about to be the most surreal experience, whereas for the womanizer, it’s just another day at the job, one life lived multiple times over. Nevertheless, as complex as humans can be, the womanizer finds solace in this complexity, which provides nuance in his pursuit. As such, there is something new, something exciting about every chase. But that’s all there is: the chase.
The ultimate goal of a seasoned womanizer is the hope that the chase never ends, because the day he catches his prey is the day the game ends, in that he doesn’t know what to do with a relationship. He might have at some point in his life wished for that, but not right now. To him, a relationship is a stumbling block. It’s a hindrance; it’s a summons of some sort to abandon this thrilling life.
It seems, also, the sad thing about being a womanizer is that, in the long run, you realize that you never really played anyone. You were the butt of the joke. Everyone else saw you for what you are: not good enough for more. Hence, you are a pastime. Supposedly an expensive pastime. Exciting? Yes, still a pastime. So, the life of the womanizer is a sad one in retrospect, a king enthroned by pressing the pleasure-seeking buttons of human consciousness.
Not often do we speak about the abyss that is pleasure-seeking. It never ends. There is no “yes, I’ve had enough.” There is no “this is the zenith of all pleasures.” None; it keeps taking and taking and taking and taking and taking and taking till there is nothing left to take, yet persists in its demands to take more.
Hence, the life of the womanizer is a miserable one, especially when you are seated on a cold Saturday night, staring out the window. Yes, it’s raining, but it all feels like the night sky is mocking you, because this doesn’t seem like some friend in need. Maybe it can relate. Maybe the night is subject to being the understudy, only holding up the brightness accorded to it by the sun. And when you think about it, the sun is always there. Inasmuch as you think this is mockery, maybe it’s authentic: the night is crying, in that how pretentious is it to produce light in this steep darkness! How miserable it is to bear bad news! To mark the end of fun, to be associated with everything evil; to understand that you are the opportunity to do the unimaginable, a chance to let loose that which we are most ashamed of, finally! Think about that.
And so, you sit and think to yourself, maybe you’re better off. You take credit for preparing the brides for their grooms. And when you are reminded that you have no bride of your own, you retort with, “Coaches don’t play.” But of course, the life of womanizing is fun during the day, in that you have your fair share of women, but your bed is always lonely at night. Perhaps, on the days that their men are not around, they may grace you with their presence, and at nights like that, in the middle of this enchanted lovemaking session, you remember that all you have left is all he left for you.
Therefore, the next time you sit in a class with Prof., and she begins to make such beautiful rhetoric about female subjugation and how, by default, you, being a male, can never understand what it means to be subjugated, you smile because being a womanizer is synonymous with being a second-hand citizen; the ones who seem to have it all but have nothing at all. Quite like the housewife: called a homeowner, yet nothing in the home is owned by her. Think about it. You almost sound like a belligerent feminist. Perhaps that’s what happens when you sit too long in Prof.’s class and listen to her rumble, and, as much as you hate the subject matter, perchance it’s her beauty that keeps you in this insufferable class, this cancer of an ideology called feminism.
Then again, isn’t she right? Think: how would she feel knowing that this bright student of whom she’s most proud is only here because she is well-built with the face of a 1987 model? And as much as the words that jump off her lips seem to take a deep dive in a pool of honey in her mouth, just like Joan Rivers said, “No man has ever put his hands up a woman’s dress looking for a library card.”
As such, what then do we call this? Do we call this the rambling of a retired Playboy? Or what should fashion this thought? What should be the carrier? What string of words should provide carriage to this thought? And so for the umpteenth time, when Michael Idio sends you a clip with the song of King Pereama talking about man wey refuse to marry, you laugh. Not just because it’s funny, nor because this young man who has made this song popular once again is creative in his ability to humorously capture the gaps in the life of a man who has refused to be married, but because of how unique this common experience of yours is.
So dear Apostle, I write to you and I enjoin you to remind the little boys within your domain that the life that appears glamorous is a life full of nothing. I hope you write me back, and if not, I’ll be content knowing that another content from the series, “man wey refuse to marry,” will be coming my way. Have a blessed day.
The Chief.
