Dee and Cee and Monogamee 

“Did he say he loves you?”

“It was ever implied but never declared.” 

One of my favorite lines from the literary legend, Jane Austen. Extra points if you can
name the book (or movie—I’ll allow it).

I’m going to use a story to talk about something I feel strongly about. If you’ll let me, I’ll
occasionally break the fourth wall like this to drum a point home, fast-forward the story,
or just give in to my love for commentary. 

One, two, three… ENTER 💨💨

Cee was an archetypal modern woman: beautiful and intelligent with no limit to her
powers. A champion of integrity and nobility, Cee followed society’s rules strictly and
was cold to strangers but warm as fresh-baked mandazi to those she elected as friends.
Cee was the kind of person who stopped at a red light at 3 AM, even though only the
moon watched over her in the darkness.

Cee loved nice things and was the kind of person who never ordered water at
restaurants because one must commit to the fine dining experience and indulge in the
fine dining on offer. 

On one of the many perfectly temperate Kampala nights Kampalans take for granted,
Cee had drinks with friends at a swanky restaurant in Kololo when a friend of a friend
asked to join their table. 

Dee was his name. 

Cee tried to hide the fact that she’d noticed how attractive Dee was. She’d later pretend
she didn’t hear his name. 

But Cee noticed Dee’s chiseled bone structure and fetching brown eyes. She noticed
his bright smile with well-shaped evenly white teeth like two perfect white rows of
kernels on a maize cob. But sturdier of course. The way Dee carried himself. The way
he spoke in full grammatically correct sentences. All of it—mesmerizing. 

Full grammatically correct sentences?? Yes, the bar in Kampala teeters as low as the
fuel in a young lawyer’s car. 

But Cee hid her piqued interest well. Everyone else at the table of five who took leave of
minding their own business was convinced Cee hadn’t seen Dee. But once the
conveyer-belt of pleasantries reached Cee, she acknowledged Dee with a cautious
smile one gives strangers in the bank and shook his outstretched hand.

The evening aged like Pharrell Williams, and eventually, through African belly laughs
that forced people to eject from their seats and run off to nowhere, and several
bathroom breaks, the musical chairs placed Dee in the seat next to Cee. 

To Cee—a complete coincidence; to Dee—the result of calculation and patience. 

Cee’s interior was beaming, but her exterior was stiff as an accountant’s. Dee, a
confident fellow, was rehearsing his greatest hits in his head waiting for the right
moment to rattle Cee’s cage with his charm.

This charm, Dee knew, served him well in life.

Dee was confident and calculating. He knew his strengths and leaned into them often.
This explains why he stole every excuse to smile even when there was little cause to do
so. Dee knew he had a good face, and after years of being told the same, he was
ungovernable. To cement the likability his good face afforded him, Dee hid his
weaknesses away from the world like a teenager’s porn stash.

Dee had a wandering eye, chronic indecision, and a complacency betrayed by the
casual way he dressed. He sometimes dressed like a Kenyan man at a wedding. Need I
say more? You see, once someone learns they have a good face and the doubt of that
fact doesn’t burden them, they grow complacent.

Dee worked as an analyst at a Venture Capitalist firm. It was his job to convince
overconfident middle-aged white men who washed out from Wallstreet that investing in
a chain of rolex stands in the tropics made sense. Dee made good money, but he
dressed like his wealth was a state secret. He appreciated nice things, but somehow
had trouble picking them out for himself, like a good advice giver stuck in a cycle of bad
relationships.

“Are you having a good time?” Dee heaved a rock at Cee’s cold cage. 

Cee smiled reservedly but her soul was dancing the Azonto like a Gen Z TikToker
desperate to go viral.

“I’m sorry, what was your name again?” Cee remembered to forget.

“My friends call me Dee.” 

“D — double E, Dee,” Dee confirmed he could spell. 

“It’s always great hanging with the girls… and the occasional stranger,” Cee replied as
she laughed playfully.

With that laughter and Dee’s charm, Cee was a goner. But lucky for her, so was Dee.
By the end of the night, Dee walked Cee to her car and asked her out while she fidgeted
with her car keys. Cee accepted immediately, forgetting her pride in her restaurant seat.

Dee and Cee hit it off. Cee’s consuming love for all those she let in carried them while
complacent Dee coasted by, receiving all the benefits of having a girlfriend but cashing
few checks of his own. 

Six months passed and they were still in the “would you like me if I had two left feet?”
phase. 

Dee had been faithful for half that time. He liked Cee a lot and tried to be good, but his
wandering eye sent him on wanton escapades in the city’s armpits at odd hours. 

Was he happy with Cee? Yes, but happiness wasn’t his problem; bad habits and
unresolved fears were. 

Was she the one? There’s no such thing. She was the one for this season, at least. She
was hot and he liked the way her lips felt on his. That was usually enough for a couple
of months but several had passed, so perhaps it was serious? 

These ideas bounced around in Dee’s head like ping-pong balls.
His anxieties festered and he began to self-destruct. He began to retreat not because
he was unhappy, but because the indiscernible feelings he felt for Cee scared him. 

Classic immaturity on Dee’s part here.

Dee’s text replies took a little longer. He discharged from their hugs a little sooner. He
stopped saying goodnight every night. He stopped saying good morning every morning.
He stopped calling Cee randomly to rant about the colonialists he worked for. 

There are often only a couple of options for a man who wants to leave a decent
relationship: fall on his sword and let them break up with him or be direct. The former
usually wins.

Cee was perceptive. She noticed something was off and pressed Dee for answers but
his response was always the same: 

“Everything’s great, babe” Dee would say before caressing her nape and kissing the
inside of her neck; an act that surely led to sex. And after good sex, problems could wait
a few weeks. Maybe even a few months. 

The time between the afterglows shortened and Cee’s reservations returned more
aggressively each time. Dee was on autopilot like a peripheral contributor on a group
project. 
Gaslighting couldn’t save him any longer.

It was one of those nights when Kampala’s air resembled the muggy summer of a
developed country—thick with humidity that fogged up eyeglasses and car windscreens.
On that hot night, Dee and Cee met at the restaurant where they first met. A meeting
Cee and her burgeoning impatience pushed for. 

“Do you still want to be together?” Cee cast the first stone under the restaurant’s fairy
lights with stiletto confidence. 

“I’m not sure. I like being with you, but…err…” Dee muttered after a long pause,
struggling to find the honesty Cee’s stern stare demanded. 

The thing about many men in relationships is they are many things, but they’re hardly
stupid. They know exactly what they are doing. Give them an inch and they’ll take a
kilometer. Enable their bad habits, and they’ll cling to them as long as they can.
Anything to avoid conflict. Anything to avoid a conversation about feelings. Anything to
keep milking the cow without tending to its greater needs. 
Hide your true feelings behind passive-aggressive silence and many a man will cling to
the plausible deniability your silence offers. 
An indecisive man, or a man who just wants to take advantage, thrives in uncertainty. 

Dee thrived in the consuming fog of Cee’s love for several months, but Cee finally
mustered the courage to broach the topic. The courage she procrastinated because of
her love for Dee. 

Cee knew Dee cared for her. And based on his infrequent actions during their moments
of bliss and clarity, he maybe even loved her. 

But for Cee, love paled in comparison to consistency. 

She knew if she stayed any longer she’d be stuck in a 5-year-long marriage riddled with
emotional abuse and mediocrity. Because of love. 

So she asked a question she knew the answer to:

 “Do you still want to be together?”

“I…” Dee started the sentence and braked suddenly. He was afraid of saying the wrong
thing. 

Dee’s hesitation emboldened Cee to do what she did next: 

With her entire body burning with a sharp pain like a blunt knife was lodged in her side,
Cee spoke concisely:

“I hope you’re not a coward in every part of your life and I hope you grow up. I love you,
but I can’t stick around waiting for you to realize you love me, too.” 

Cee gathered the straps of her purse dangling from the side of her chair with her left
hand and flagged down the waitress with her flailing right arm. 

Sensing the urgency, albeit too late, Dee finally lifted his chin from his chest as Cee
signed the merchant’s copy of the receipt. 

“Cee, I love you but I just don’t think I’m ready…”

“I..” he breathed out quietly before forgetting how to string words together again. 

“It’s ok, Dee. Take care.” 

She was gone. 

Dee didn’t stand a chance at dinner. He was a wild animal in a field oblivious to the fact
that its frame was tracked squarely in the scope of a hunting rifle. Before dinner, he
wore his favorite white button-down shirt and prepared for an evening of laughter and
flirting. He hoped to start the dinner sitting across from Cee’s beautiful face and to end
by sitting beside her, caressing her thigh, and making empty promises.

Cee, on the other hand, with the preparation and self-awareness that’s arcanely
feminine, had rehearsed her speech many times. The tears she was supposed to cry at
that dinner table, she had cried out in several showers. She had healed. She had
moved on. 

That was the last time they spoke.

Several weeks passed and Dee was in free fall. He wasn’t a drunkard, but he drank
more. He wasn’t a night owl, but he couldn’t seem to find his car keys until the moon
was fighting for sky with the sun. 

He snapped at his colonialist boss one day, calling him an overrated rich insecure
manchild and that was the last straw; Partly because it spelled adding unemployment to
heartbreak, but mostly because Dee saw pieces of himself in his colonialist boss. 

His boss didn’t fire him though. 

After 5 years of working with Dee, that outburst was a speck of curry powder on a crisp
white shirt. Also, the thought of advertising for Dee’s replacement filled the boss’ pants
with fire ants.

“What’s bothering you? You haven’t been yourself lately.” the boss asked after fighting
the urge to punch Dee in the face.

Shocked by the boss’ empathy, and heavy with heartache, Dee broke down and curved
his body into his boss’ broad chest. 

Their relationship would never be the same after this. Maybe he should’ve resigned?
Ignore me.

“I think I ruined the best thing that ever happened to me,” Dee said with a quivering lip
and a string of snot connecting his nose to his lips. 

Dee rambled on for 45 minutes, describing the entire relationship in honest detail for the
first time—even to himself—and left the boss’ mouth dry and his eyes shiny with tears. 

His boss, who was less guilty of racism than ignorance and unrecognized privilege,
looked Dee in the eyes and paused for a moment as if swiping through different pieces
of advice in his head:

“Learn from it. It’ll be ok.”

“When you’re not ready, you’re not ready. Even when it costs you everything. You were
not ready.”

Shockingly capable of depth, the not-so-racist boss and villain-turned-hero of the story
rang the bell for my takeaway:

Me, you, teenagers, young adults, adult adults, and even our reticent parents alike, we
all delight in a good dalliance. But love, as powerful a force as it is, demands respect.
Love demands deliberation and consideration.

Don’t open that door before you’re ready. 

-End-

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