By Milly G

The last time I met Pauline* was in 2004. She was a work of art; chocolate-brown beauty, legs that would dwarf a Greek column, the body of a goddess, rounded to perfection, and a disarming smile. Pauline was an ace actress who, as fellow actresses at the National Theatre, we learnt to accord the respect due to the queen of the stage. But Pauline was running amok. Stories about her amorous escapades did the rounds at the theatre, and most girls, happy for the compensation, wrote her off as spent. You see, Pauline did not discriminate; young or old, rich or poor, peers or employers, she loved them all, for a fee. She needed not go to Koinange Street to earn herself a title. She was the theatre call girl.

The next time I see Pauline, she is on a glossy women’s magazine, all bumped and posing with her husband and father of her baby. My first instinct is to pity the man and wonder if he was drugged down the aisle. Or maybe he was the innocent new-comer who knew nothing of her fame. But no. Either the writer of the article has a fertile imagination, or our former hook-up girl has undergone a, pardon pun, Pauline conversion. She is talking about her love for her baby, the devotion of her husband, her dreams for the family, tips on motherhood… and the piece has me thinking… "You got the wrong suspect"!

No they did not. Pauline is now happily married, with an extra 40Kgs to show for her marital bliss. The best way to clean a dirty woman? Give her a wedding ring and change her last name. There’s something about the title ‘wife of’ and the epithet ‘Mrs’ that dignifies even chewed gum. There’s something about the family portrait of father, mother and baby shot at the famous Cargen House Studio that vindicates people. Or a family out at picnic in City Park, feeding monkeys. The society can finally rest easy knowing there’s order because so and so belongs to so and so. Curiously, a married hooker is a safer bet for the society than a lone single girl who may sleep around with impunity. At least with the married woman, adultery is punishable by law.

Does marriage really change footloose women? Does it ground them so that they are faithful to their hubbies? Rarely. If your wife’s ‘to do/has done list’ reads like the male voter register of your constituency — long and all-inclusive — you better belt up for a bumpy ride. The charade of the wedding and the tears after holding her first baby is only a punctuation. Soon, she gets bored of eating the same meal for lunch, supper and breakfast, and goes back to her more exciting life. Nothing changes, but the fact that she does it in hiding. And even that will change with time. So be careful when installing the simu ya jamii at home. Old habits die hard.

The only time it seems to work is when the girl reforms before she is married. Even twilight girls have been known to make good wives and mothers. But the credit is not to some mandingo who comes around and rescues the damsel in distress. No. It has to be the woman’s decision to change. Faithfulness in marriage is next to impossible if you are used to grabbing the next cute thing that passes in a trouser. If you don’t show restraint when single, the before and after pictures are no different. Marriage is just some form of make up you wear for the society, but somewhere in there, the monster lurks. How do you know that you’ve lost it? When you wake up after a one-night-stand thinking "That was better than the last" instead of "what was I thinking!"

The blokes on guard at our offices make sure that before you even get to the elevator, you are searched, you write your name and you leave your ID card. That’s just on the ground floor. If you want to come up to the Standard Group offices, there’s yet another vetting system on 6th floor where they confirm that indeed the person you say you’re visiting knows you; you may even talk to him or her on phone under the intrusive eye of a CCTV camera before you are finally allowed in. Now, the short of the long story is, if you have lost your security detail, so that any man can slip in and out as they wish, you have lost control. You need help, not marriage. You can only fool yourself and others for so long.