good girls,bad boys

I think I’m one of those good girls who like bad boys. Don’t look at me like that; you probably do worse things when no one is looking.
Anyway, bad is the one thing I realise that all my exes have in common. For some reason, they never seem to win my mothers affection. Her hand refuses to usher them comfortably into her house. I wonder if she has some psychic ability that informs her that they have all spent at least a night at the cop station just a few blocks from my house.
She refuses to leave the living room every time they visit for fear of leaving her daughter in the hands of ‘dangerous’ male company.
But my boys are good guys if you get to spend time with them. In fact, they were arrested on very silly charges: loitering while they were escorting a guest at the 9th hour. Free country huh?
Anyway, like I said, they are really nice guys. And quite the lookers, I might add. My side mirror always lands on this one guy whose clean-shaven head and sideburns had the ability to leave that melted sugar taste in my mouth. His beautiful brown skin interrupted by the tattoos, which peeped from under his muscle shirt. He was quite ‘walkable’. That was the term we used in high school for a guy who you would not mind to be spotted with while walking in town.
Living in Eastlands my hang out joint those days had been reduced to countless hours around a large stone that was strategically placed at the entrance of our estate. Hanging out with the boys there, we would make fun of the girls who tried too hard in killer heels whose straps looked like they were strangling the life out of their feet. I learnt to appreciate the value of buggy tops, I retained my dignity rather than showing off cleavages and excess acres of skin.
The good thing about having a bad boy is that they always give you that sense of security that every girl craves. If he wasn’t around, he’d get someone to look after me, make sure ‘no one gave me any trouble’. I was a revered girl in my hood. Being ‘Manzi ya Donga’ meant that I would take in no nonsense. I would call the shots on street affairs on behalf of ‘my man’ when he was away.
Now I’m all grown up and out of touch. We moved out of my hood and there were no mobile phones then to help me track him down.
The other day, while I walked around Industrial area, my friend found it necessary to inform me that Donga had been putting up at the remand prison for a while.
I didn’t even want to ask what he was in for; all I knew was that I was glad that we moved.