The Lunch Date

“Do you know Rusty Nail?” Monique asked after I picked up her cell-phone call at its second ring.

“Rusty Nail?” I echoed. Then it occurred to me after she had replied with a “Yeah…”

“Looky here babes,” I told her. “Just because we haven’t been intimate for a while doesn’t mean you have to change the nickname for my your-favourite-body-part.”

She laughed.

“Our Kid,” she said. I didn’t see anything funny about the predicament she had forcibly placed me just a few weeks before the wedding. “Firstly, your my-favourite-body-part is your lips. And secondly, Rusty Nail is a restaurant,” she informed me.

“Hmmm?” I asked.

“Yeah. It is near The Great Corner.”

Now she had lost me. I am a quite directionless person and I always seem to get lost once I make a turning and I therefore never bother with pointing to people where I have come from.

Even in my own digs, I am unable to point out where the City Centre is and once in a while meanie people have laughed at me when I point to the opposite directions. So there was no way I could even remember where this corner was as the mere mention of the word ‘corner’ makes me tremble.

“Where the devil is that?”

“Kiddo, you really have lost your sense of humour,” Monique said. “Oh well…” and then the cellphone connection went off.

I called her back.

“Sowie,” she said at the first ring. “I ran out of units.”

Hmmm. And my unit has been running out of patience since she slapped this ban on me so that we could focus on the wedding.

“What was I saying?” she asked.

On Monique. She could remember the street, the exact date or month and the colour of mini-skirt or dress of the last girl whose swinging hips made me turn my head as we walked past but she couldn’t remember what she was just telling me only a few minutes ago.

“You were talking about some corner,” I said hoping this was all it took to click the refresh button.

‘Oh.. yeah… The Great Corner… come on… didn’t you know that Dagoretti Corner is a corruption of that?”

Wololo. Was she kidding me? Dagoretti?

“So anyways... I would like to buy you lunch at Rusty Nail.”

I have been around women for so long in my life that I know when she says she wants to buy you lunch it is either she wants you to buy her lunch or she wants you to buy her lunch.

“That’s alright. I am insatiable and could do with some food.” I admitted.

And that is how we ended up at the place where the sign at the entrance could very well have been the same sign on Monique’s panyos. Admittance was restricted.

I had barely sat down when she smiled and said, “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Now, now. I thought this was about lunch. My appetite was all soaring and I made gestures for the menu to be brought to the table. I looked up at her and she was having this sly look in her face. Something was up.

“Is there something you want me to tell you?” I asked her as we looked at the menu. I will probably never ever figure out women and their ways. She asks me if there is something I want to tell her when I didn’t have anything to tell her since she had been the one who initiated this whole lunch date in the first place.

“Eish Our Kid,” she prodded. “There must be something you want to tell me.”

“Nope!” I said. “Is there a point to all this?”

“I’ll give you a hint,” she stated. “Shower!”

I laughed uneasily.

“Oooh”, I said. “The Bridal Shower. You know, I always thought that was some girl event. I have no problems if you guys want to invite a stripper or one of those sexologists to make your evening. I thought I already told you I am not the most old fashioned person you ever met. It would be a great…”

“I heard you had quite the shower the other day!”

Wow. Cilla actually told her! Cilla actually told her! Cilla told her about the shower? Now this was getting interesting (probably for you) and uninteresting (definitely for me). I will probably never ever figure out women and their ways. Snakes with tits.

“I… had quite the shower the other day?” I repeated after her.

I had discovered that this asking-a-question-back always worked for me when Monique asked me any question or said anything I wasn’t sure how to respond to. There was no YES or NO for me since this was not the referendum.

“Yeah. I know about it. I am so proud of you,” she said and lovingly put her hand against my chin as if she wanted to give me some shaving tips. My mind was racing.

“You are?” I asked.

“Very.”

Turns out that Cilla told her that in a moment of feminine vengeance against her ex-boyfriend, she had offered herself to me during this sex ban and I had demurred. Turns out that Cilla had found a foursome sex tape of her boyfriend in his apartment and upon watching it had decided she was through and through with him.

“A foursome?”

Awesome. Boy, oh, boy are not some men lucky? I have met Cilla’s boyfriend (or now ex) several times and he was always wearing some T-Shirts with funny inscriptions such as ‘I AM 2 GIRLS SHORT OF A 3SOME’ but I never thought the guy actually would actualize some of those thoughts.

I was still picturing the tape in my mind to even notice that Monique was continuing with her talk. And like all women, Monique can talk as if she needs to hit a certain word limit per day!

“So I guess I am also to blame for always concentrating on this our relationship to the exclusion of the desperation that my friends like Cish are going through. You know when she opened her heart to me, I really felt bad about how the two relationships with our respective boyfriends have been so different!”

Music to my ears. To tell you the truth, Monique was too much at times and had even gotten un-friended by several of her friends as she kept going on and on about our relationship and even had the countdown to the wedding.

'18 days until I marry the love of my life!... 17 days until I marry my best friiiiiiiiiiend!...' and so on...

Some of my friends had in jest inboxed me these updates twisted to reflect my soon to be Prison Break status. She counted each and every day!

“… And when the other day she asked me where I had bought that outfit the magazine had cited as ‘Model’s Own’ and I told her you got it for me, she had sadly remarked how she never got anything from her boyfriend.”

On the basis of that tape, she could easily get something from her boyfriend, I thought. And on and on and on Monique went. In my mind I was thinking of how one day I should be walking around with a placard that opened up to read ‘THE END’ when her stories got lengthy.

“… I know I called for a lot of sacrifice when I said that I wanted us to take a break from intimacy until the wedding and I promise you I am going to give you so much it will be worth it”

Hmmm. Mushy stuff.

I was confused. I didn’t know whether to say the pseudo-Shakespearean tosh or to play the I-am-still-upset-you-said-no-intimacy-until-the-wedding role.

I had already taken some advice from my close associates on how to handle this pre-wedding bilas.

Romeo, whom I had settled on as the Best Man had advised that he had never read in the obituaries about someone whose cause of death was lack of sex.

Furansisi had confessed that he once had a back problem and the doctor prescribed that he had no intimacy for a month… though he tried to coax his wife into sex with the line ‘The Doctor isn’t here to see me!”

Don on the other had said he pitied Monique. “You could positively drown her in your sperm when the ban is lifted!”

'15 days. 15 days and then it is done!...' my FB status would have read if I was the status updating type.

We were through with lunch and Monique either settled the bill or didn't.