ARNOLD AYCEE: REAL MEN DON'T HIT WOMEN

 

Hi people, my name is Arnold.

 

Whatever you read from this article is all true. I at most modified the scenarios to the stories but the events were real and exact. The opinions I air are mine and you mustn’t agree with it so please do not see it as a cause to throw insults at me. Not that it will matter but I thought I put it out there, and if you have a contrary view to mine, please share and let’s logically reason it out.

With my headphones in my ears and my mind set to finish the novel before tomorrow, I lay in my bed perusing this Sarah Wilson’s prose. I couldn’t care less if anyone was knocking at my door and I wasn’t hearing him/her, for all I cared; the person should have called first and as long as he/she did not call, I wasn’t expecting anybody. Amidst the heavy sound of the afro pop song playing on my headphones I still heard a mighty thump from above me. Once I looked up I could see that my ceiling fan, which was immobile thanks to the absence of electricity, was swinging from side to side from the effect of the thump from above me. I had felt the vibration of that thump on the wall I was leaning my back on as I sat on my bed trying to read. I pulled my headphones off in less than a second and all my sense rose to understand what was happening. That was when I heard the continuous scuttles from above me and the cry of the woman. It had to be my neighbours who lived on the floor above me. A few more seconds of attention to the cry convinced me, it was her. I dashed to my entrance veranda to listen some more, the other neighbours were out too; apparently I wasn’t the only one hearing this. The scream became heavier, their baby was crying and the man was yelling back at her as he struck her, at least so it seemed. A few of us dashed to their apartment which was left ajar and there he was, husband standing at about six feet four inches give or take and should weigh nothing less than say ninety five and above kilograms, sitting over his wife; who should be no more than five feet nine inches tall, slender and her weight would not be over seventy five to eighty kilograms, and repeatedly slapping her face with both hands swing one after the other at the braced up lady on the floor. It took three of us, young men to raise him up from her so that two ladies would raise her and nurture her. Her face evidently bruised, cuts on her arms and she was bleeding from her nose and a cut over her right eye. One of the dining chairs lay broken at the corner of the room and their rechargeable fan in shatters at another corner of the house. He escaped from our grip twice and dashed at her to hit her some more so once we caught and took him off the third time we just took him out of the house. He would not stop barking words of insult and demeaning statements at her, spitting and cursing the day he met her. Their baby was crying through all of this. I imagined that it was size of a man that had come down that heavily on that size of the woman to cause that thump heavy enough to quake our side of the building. My thoughts? It was thoroughly unfair no matter what she had done.

 

Some time ago I saw a picture that said; Real men don’t hit women, pussies and cowards do.

 

If I could add, I’d say foolish pussies and foolish cowards do.

 

Looking at my neighbours I wondered what could drive a man into hitting a woman and I couldn’t figure out a good enough reason. Some of my married friends say to me “Arnold you’d not understand till you actually live with a woman in the same house and have to stand all her excesses day in day out” while some unmarried but quite way older ones say it’s inevitable. I disagree.

 

Maybe it’s the promise I made my mom that is driving me though. I was 15yrs old, in ss2, when I came home that afternoon. My dad scuttled out of the front door evidently ruffled, I greeted him but he won’t answer, he just swung past me and out of the compound, I had seen his scene too many times to wonder what had just happened. I just walked into the house and saw my mom lying all curled up in the middle of the living room. She immediately stopped crying out once I entered the room, she possibly didn’t want me to know she was crying, but I already knew. I just threw my bag on the floor lay as curled up as she was beside her.

“Promise me” she said “promise me you would never hit you wife at any point in time in your life, no matter what she must have done.”

I promised I would never hit any woman ever. From that day till now I have never hit any woman. I used to have these silly fights with my elder and immediate younger sisters back then (which I suppose is quite normal as siblings fight every now and then and as an only son it was just my sisters I had to fight), but from then on till now I have never even thought about conceiving the idea of hitting any woman since. The worst it has been was back then in the university, but the intention was not to hit.

 

Jide was my friend at the university, with muscles like a wrestler and the strength of an ox. Once upon a time in one of my relationships from the university, a certain annoying scenario propped up between me and the girl I was dating as at that time. Some friend of mine had spread a story about her and she was certain since it was my friend telling the story, it had to be what I was propagating as well. Her way of dealing with the situation was to arrange for me to be beaten and dealt with by some boys in town. I soon heard of it when it didn’t work out thanks to one of my many lucky streaks, I approached her about it and she blew up in my face in public and called me names and said the most demeaning things to me, the worst anyone outside my dad has ever said to me ever, and I’ve been told many terrible things in this my life. Her words made me regret many things and once my temper, which is quite terrible by the way, started to boil, I just did as I always do, walk away. Jide was with me and he was encouraging me to walk away like I was doing. She then threw the worst jab at me and no matter how farther away from her I had gone she made sure I heard it.  I was quite a known person on campus as at then so having her continuously saying those offensive words kicked me in the guts and I turned around and dashed towards her, my intension I swear was to scare her. But Jide in the wealth of his dominance of size as against mine pulled me back with just one arm. His words;

“No man. Don’t Ace, you’d hate yourself if you do. Trust me, nothing is worth striking a woman for man”

My surprise was that this was the same person I had seen over and over again beat his girlfriend down and fight with him in public even to the point of  having his clothes ripped off his back. That totally convinced me that there’s never enough reason to hit a woman.

 

I guess the underlying reason for all these I’ve been writing today is this; men should desist from hitting women. Be that woman your sister, cousin, friend, neighbour, girlfriend, wife, whatever. Back in the days, when a man had a problem with a woman, he took it up with her husband or father or brother because it was not appropriate to pick a bone with a woman as a man; made one seem weak or petty. But that’s not the trend these days. Most men see an opportunity to hit a woman as an avenue to vent all the troubles of their lives on the woman. Say no to hitting women, so no to domestic violence #RealMenDontHitWomen

 

 

Arnold Aycee

📷/🐦 @arnoldaycee

📧 arnoldayceee@gmail.com

👑 ♠