MALE PERSPECTIVE: Don’t ever carry a woman’s purse, ever
You are about to leave the house when your woman hands you her purse to hold as she puts some hair products in a different bag. When she’s done you hand back her purse and she says, “Carry it for me.” You don’t say anything. You just put the purse firmly in her hands.
In the car, she pouts and asks, “You can’t carry my purse?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why should I carry your purse?”
She rolls her eyes and looks outside the window for a second before saying, “So you are saying you can never carry my purse, ever?”
You sigh and say, “ No, I will not carry your purse as long as you have your hands. Why on earth should I carry your purse?”
“Because!”
You hate it when people’s arguments are limited to a word like ‘because'. It’s a very American thing to explain something with “Because!”
NOT THAT KIND OF GUY
“I’m not the kind of guy who carries a woman’s purse,” you say.
That gets her really fired up because she’s into the whole gender equality thing. She’s a feminist, but not the ones who hate men. She turns all the way in her seat, crosses her arms cross her chest dramatically and asks,
“Eh heh? Tell me, so what kind of a guy are you?”
You go over a bump, take a left turn into a side road and say,
“I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t carry his woman’s purse. Why would I?”
Then she retorts, “Because you are proud of me!”
You laugh that forced laughter meant to incite.
“Sweetheart, I don’t have to carry your purse to show you that I’m proud of you. There are many ways I can show you that I’m proud of you.”
She responds gravely, “By the way sometimes you say things that simply shock me. Ati you can’t carry my purse.”
You take another turn into another road next to another commercial building coming up. Two men in hard hats are tinkering with a bulldozer at a gate.
“Listen, if you went to Wasini with your crazy girlfriends and a shark bit off your hands, God forbid, and you came back to Nairobi with no hands then I would carry your purse.”
It’s her turn to laugh sarcastically. “Oh won’t that simply ruin your precious manhood?” she asks.
You say, “It probably will but don’t forget that you don’t have hands. You will be having it worse than I am. You can’t even powder your nose in the bathroom anymore.”
She laughs.
“I think a confident man would not think twice about carrying his woman’s purse,” she says.
You see right through her. She’s playing to your masculinity.
“You are right, he should shouldn’t think twice, actually. He shouldn’t even think about it,” you say, then add, “You can’t define your man’s confidence by his ability to carry your bloody purse.”
She laughs and shakes her head and says you are a just a Neanderthal.
“That’s the thing with women,” you continue. “They say ‘Oh American men don’t know how to be men anymore’ … ‘Oh, there are no men left anymore in this town, just boys’, then when you get a real man, you hand him your bloody purse to carry.”
She asks with an arched eyebrow, “And you are the real man in this narrative?”
You ignore her and continue: “And once you have handed this real man your purse full of tampons and make-up, you will turn and say, “Oh, I can’t have a man who does everything I want. Such a man bores me.’”
You have now stopped at a black gate. A guard comes to your window and you tell him you are dropping her off at the salon.
“One would think you are living in the 50s,” she says as she pulls down the visor and starts applying lipstick. That’s another thing with ladies; they will sit in the car through the whole drive, talking and talking and then they want to apply lipstick and powder their faces when it’s time to leave.
“After you start carrying your woman’s purse, where do you stop?” you ask.
She turns to look at you and asks, “Is my left eye kind of red?” You tell her that it’s not red, just lovely as usual. Both are actually lovely eyes. She stuffs her cosmetics in the evil purse that has caused this debate and says in conclusion,
“ Look. If you love your woman you should be able to do everything for her. It doesn’t make you a lesser man. It shows that you are a man who is comfortable in his skin.”
You sneer and ask, “Show who?”
She squeals, “The world!”
You click the doors open and tell her, “Get out of the car. You are delusional. Bring that wonderful soft cheek I kiss it. Text me when you are almost done so I start moving.”
Dear male reader, never ever carry your woman’s purse. Sometimes women will make you do things, not because they want you to do them but because they want to see if they can make you do them. Don’t do it, brother.
Thank me later.
