I had promised myself that I will never write about shisha, ever again. The topic itself is as disgusting as the people who smoke it and, frankly, I hate to write about losers. I like to keep off the unhappy and unsuccessful, lest their bad luck rubs off on me.

Just when I thought I had hit the final nail in this shisha coffin (pun definitely intended), just when I thought I will never have to deal with the shisha girls, their stinky weaves and their over powdered pimply faces, while out on last Saturday night, I met the men who smoke shisha.

I blamed the gods for allowing me to see men smoking shisha. I questioned God, wondering why he had let me see the most disgusting thing I will never unsee. The memory of a man smoking shisha, dear Lord, is forever imprinted in my world-class brain. Lord, why me?

DISGUSTING

Men who smoke shisha have no shame at all. I am confused, dear readers. Help me decide. What is more disgusting? An African man stuffing that filthy little pipe up his mouth with smoke billowing from his nostrils or a man who brazenly shares a pot of shisha with a bevy of unruly women like he does not know how a real man behaves?

Let me break it down to you, my dear shisha boys. A real man does not smoke shisha – the cancer aside. A true African tribesman, a man with dark skin, coarse hair and hot African blood rushing through his Savannah-toughened veins, should never be seen within a hundred metres of a shisha pot.

Who raised you? Did you ever see your father or uncles or even your grandfather smoking sweet-flavoured things without so much as an iota of shame?

Listen up shisha boys, remove your fake Dr Dre headphones, I am talking here. The only strawberry flavoured product a real man should use is protection (since I cannot use the C-word here).

POT OF SMOKE

An African man does not surround a small pot of smoke in the company of women with recycled weaves smoking something that smells like Bint el Sudan.

There is a certain level of cheapness and crudeness that comes with the men who smoke shisha. There is a way they look that you’d never miss a shisha boy from a single glance.

Maybe it is their fake cologne or their downtown watches. Or maybe it is their knock-off “Jordan” sneakers they parade on Instagram alongside a battalion of #hashtags. Or maybe it is in their low cc cars they tweet about all the time. You tell me.

Surely, a man who smokes shisha is not destined for greatness. They are the broke type that will spend only Sh2,000 a night to buy a pot of shisha and a single bottle of beer which they will fondle for the entire night.

It is a cardinal sin for a man to leave the bar smelling of a strange strain of strawberries like a house girl who just discovered body lotion.

No, please, if a man is seen to be asking the waiter to “badilisha hii makaa ya shisha (change the shisha coal)”, then we should buy him purple lipstick and a pair of heels from Moi Avenue so that he can be the shisha girl he so desperately wants to be.

GROW UP

If you are a man above the age of 30 years and Friday nights find you at a certain bistro smoking that poisonous thing, then let me be the first to tell you have a lot of growing up to do. I mean, what’s a future with a man whose Nairobi stalls sweater smells of shisha?

You will never attract a serious Jesus-loving girl (like this writer) if you keep that filthy pipe in your mouth. No self-respecting woman will marry a shisha boy because playing nurse in her forties to a husband battling lung cancer is not in her game plan.

Shisha boys are doomed to a life with the equally intellectually handicapped bimbos also known as “shisha girls”- plus her uglier twin the stinky weave.

Some of you have smoked so much shisha that we can no longer tell the colour of your teeth. Your tar-stained lungs aside, I am told that smoke is not good for young men who have not yet had children. Go figure. But who cares if you smoke your cojones away, the world is not ready for your inferior genes, anyway.

UNGODLY FETISH

Leave shisha to shisha girls. The ones that live from sponsor handout to sponsor handout, some of which is used buy you a pot of shisha. Leave shisha to the Qatari and Emirati sheikhs with their ungodly fetishes.

Be the man you were meant to be. Make your ancestors proud and drop the pipe – and the microphone – for some of you struggling MCs and DJs.

A man like you, if he must smoke, should keep off fruit flavoured types. A real man will smoke a cigar. And if he cannot afford it yet, like we all know you can’t, wait your turn when you can smoke something worth Instagramming about. Something that preserves your dignity, as a true African man worth his tennis ball-sized cojones.