Not too long ago, I visited a friend’s church and saw a beautiful young couple entering the church. They looked new. You look at the glimmer on their rings and you immediately know they haven’t been married for far too long. The man was walking ahead of the woman. Just when they were about to enter the church, the woman called him to stop and see something. The man waited, probably anticipating something huge. The woman gave her phone to him and asked him to take a photo of her.

He took the phone, while the lady was preening herself for the photo, the man entered the church with the phone, leaving the lady there and disappointed. She looked at me, brushed with embarrassment. She smiled shyly and also entered the church. I was waiting for my friend at the entrance. He was running late.

When we entered the church, we sat behind this couple. They were joyful as if to say the joy of the lord is their salvation. They danced, they looked at each other and smiled a lot. When it was time to pray, they held hands. They had love written all over them. When the service closed, the man was the first to step out while his lady was talking and shaking hands. I was out before the lady stepped out. Immediately she saw her husband, she handed her phone to him and posed. The man had a frown on his face but he took the photos. Not one, not two. As many as his lady desired.

It reminded me of the woman I had in the house. You can’t run from them. You may say no today but tomorrow you’ll say yes to the same request you shook your head about. They don’t stop until you give in but there’s one thing I knew that the gentleman didn’t know.

That one day, he’ll miss this. He’ll miss the day his wife used to worry him about little things. He’ll miss when he was angry but did it anyway. I’ve been married for thirty-seven years. I don’t know everything but I know for sure that he’ll miss such moments.

When we were young, me and my wife, I felt my wife was using me for things a husband should have no business doing. So I would do it wearing a thick frown. She would see my face and say, “So who should I ask to do this for me if not you?”

The first time it happened, I was sleeping. It was the early hours of Saturday morning. I had no plans and wanted to sleep all morning. I felt a heavy tap on my thighs, when I opened my eyes, she had a portion of cream at the tip of her index finger. She opened my palm, put the cream there and sat with her back facing me; “Smear it at my back for me.” I was like, “So you woke me up from a beautiful dream just to ask me to do this? What will happen if you don’t put cream on your back?”

She said nothing. She sat there breathing while waiting for me to finish nagging and do it. After I finished discharging my duty, she got up and said, “Did you die? You can go back to sleep if you want to.”

No thank you. No sign of appreciation but sheer audacity to annoy me the more. That wasn’t the last time. She would just lift my palm, put the cream in it and sit in front of me without saying anything. Sometimes I wouldn’t do it immediately. After a few seconds, she’d scream, “I’m getting late. Hurry up and let me get up.” Grudgingly, I would spread the cream haphazardly at her back while she gave instructions; “Go down a bit, yeah close to my waist.”

As we grew older, my wifey duties also grew taller. I was closing Kaba zips and opening bra buckles. When babies started coming, it got worse. “Darling, have you seen the thing we use to clean the baby’s feeding bottle?” She would ask me. She hadn’t looked for it anywhere. It’s her way of telling me to come and pick it up for her.

I thought I was having it hard until I met an old friend who married years before I did. When wifey topic came up and we were talking about the subtle ways these creatures annoy us, my friend said something that made me feel I had no reason to complain about what my wife had been doing to me. He said, “My shoe size is 42. My wife wears size 38. You see how large the difference is? But every weekend, I have to wear my wife’s shoes for hours before she will wear them.”

I screamed, “What? What for?”

His wife had too many shoes. There were too many of them she didn’t wear often. When one day she decides to wear them, she knows they will be tight and it will hurt her feet so before she steps out, her husband will have to wear them and open them up a little so she will be comfortable in them. Her husband’s feet became the dummy feet she used to open up her shoes.

I laughed at my friend and even called him one Saturday morning to ask if his feet had started their weekend job. He too didn’t complain. Even if he did, he would still do it because wives don’t stop asking until you oblige.

I was the one picking things at height. She could just stand on a chair and pick it up but she wouldn’t because she owned a Goliath in the house. I was the tin opener. When she starts cooking, I go to the kitchen and ask, “Is there anything to open?” There was always something to open. If there weren’t, she would invent one.

She would wake me up at dawn and ask me to scratch her back because her hands couldn’t reach there. In the morning, she would bring her face next to mine and say, “Look at my upper lip, there’s some tiny dot there, what’s that? It hurts like hell.” Once I identify it as a pimple, my job changes. I become the pimple burster. “Burst it for me. Don’t press it too hard it will pain me.”

There is no place I haven’t checked on my wife’s body for dots. I’ve checked everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. She came with a torchlight one afternoon and spread her legs apart. “Look down there, what’s that? Is it pɔmpɔ growing up there?” I will search and not see anything. She would say, “It might be the hair there. Wait, I’m coming.”

She would go and shave and come and show it to me again. If I told her nothing was there, she would call me blind or “You’re intentionally not seeing what’s there. When I pass my hand there I can feel it but you and your big eyes can’t see anything.”

When my kids grew up and were in SHS and old enough to close zips and unbuckle bras, I thought my job would come to an end. But no. Even my kids pointed at me and said, “But Daddy is there so why are you asking me to unzip you?”

I complained about all these things and called them maltreatment but once we fought and she was no longer asking me to do them, I got uneasy. “Why is she not asking me to un-bra her? Is she planning to murder me?” “How is she smearing pomade at her back now? Doesn’t she feel dry?”

Maybe that’s why prisoners go back to prison once they are set free. Even hardship is missed once is taken away for a while after suffering it all your life.

My wife has been sick for some time now. She had a mild stroke that put her down. She’s less mobile these days so there are not many wifey duties but that’s exactly what I miss about her. Maybe that’s what bonded us as a wife and husband. Now that I no longer do them, I feel there’s a wide gap between us. An emptiness. Sometimes I rub her back but it’s not the same as she demanding it from me.

That young man who’s running away from taking pictures, one day he’ll miss it. Growing up takes what we once loved away from us. One day, she won’t ask for it again and the man would begin to question his usefulness. It’s annoying but maybe, it’s their way of telling us we are more useful than paying bills and being men of the house. They do that because there’s more to love about us than just being who we are. Men.

—Gabriel