For you with a heart lost in a sad life, the one whose songs have been shut out from light…
February 2015
He skipped to Bode’s canopy wearing a white shirt that had seen more beautiful mornings under the sun a while after the games were over. He called out to me with his arms in the air. His teeth exposed, glistening eyes; a genuine smile I appreciated more than the company Bode had offered. He was dishing out cusses at his girlfriend he suspected was seeing his old friend. He ranted about it with bustling energy and a voice stronger than his feeble masculinity.
He crushed my lithe body with slender arms marked with scars. Holding me away from his thin body, he stared at my Converse, then legs before leaning in to whisper how much better I looked in life.
To be gay in Nigeria is to not exist
“Fag,” Bode yelled with a snide smile.
I moved away from Afolabi, my heart in my palm, conscious of a personality and history I wished to avoid. Afolabi laughed with my hand clasped in his, holding me closer while we walked to the school gate. Nedu had been walking faster. He knew I supported homosexuals under a dishonest shroud hanging over my head – “I support human rights.” He avoided Afolabi and his effeminacy and mocked his passion for fashion everyone knew he could not afford.
“You be my guy, please stop,” he had said to me with a recognizable Igbo accent the day he read my lewd messages with Afolabi.
Bode moved slowly, sucking out of an ice-cream sachet. When he bought a sachet for Nedu and me, he ignored Afolabi. I held out mine for Afolabi to share with me. I watched him chew on the ice, and it made me smile. I was amused at how efficiently he used his rabbit-teeth.
I saw Ikechukwu across the field hitting a younger student who had a tracksuit on. He wasn’t talking to me because I smashed his moral-compass with facts when he saw Mother kept her name after marrying Father. When I challenged him, a moment I felt free from him, in a subservient tone, he called her an abomination. An abomination for supporting a gay son while retaining her father’s name, and a sinner for studying in the West; inculcating their vile tradition and beliefs before returning to practice law and birthing another abomination. He slapped harder each time I
Afolabi held me back. He suggested I move slower so our walk could last longer. I imagined possibilities with him, and although they grew murky, I imagined sinking in. I walked with him while members of his team celebrated their win against the other four houses. Careless, he moved his body to the music,
“Ryan, you must dance,” he whispered.
I giggled awkwardly and felt something. I felt it crawling in my arteries, seizing my heart; I gasped for air as I was birthed into a space bigger than me, newborn.
I knew what he was feeling, and it was mutual. When he wasn’t looking, I left.
October 2016
Ikechukwu, the love of my life, had just blocked me again. I tried to kiss him after he had emptied himself. He hit me, twisted my arm, drawing blood with his nails, and called me a slut.
“You know my relationship with God, and you keep trying to ruin it,” he said, as he wiped his essence off his hairy thigh and zipped his trousers back on.
I sat in bed, broken; still wanting more of him. Everything had begun to hurt less. The voices in my head growled for blood, aroused by the bleeding scrape. I slit the bottom of my wrist, and when I felt my blood run, I felt peace. I slit my thighs next, and then I smeared his essence on it while I cried, as even his essence stung my bloodless potently than his words.
I stared at my screen with my typed apology glaring back at me with a single mark at the bottom right corner.
November 2016
Afolabi posted some pictures of the lagoon; he was back in Nigeria from Germany. He looked handsome with a faux fur coat on, carved eyebrows and dimples which complimented a smile carved for the gods. I liked his picture and the comment Favour – who wished I was a girl so he could love me – left on it. I browsed through my newsfeed, resisting the need to engage anyone on the comment Nnamdi Kanu had passed which tore and set up factions among the Ohaneze Youths and MASSOB. Personally, I still stood neutral. I had listened to Ikechukwu when he spoke of self-determination and a country without smelly Hausas and dirty Yorubas. I supported my uncles and Mother when they spoke of the properties they had amassed in Lagos over the years, and how they won’t jump into the lagoon – an allusion to Oba Akiolu’s statement.
He sent a message immediately, praising my work. Words which sounded patronizing but which I yearned to hear from Ikechukwu and Favour nonetheless, who were both one and the same; soaked in religious beliefs that conflicted with their sexuality, turning them violent and hostile towards their kind and the love they offered. One, who had not taken my call since October, more toxic and violent than the other who was an Anglican reverend’s son.
We talked about Germany, his scholarship and the little town South of Hamburg he lived in. We talked about his girlfriend, Folashade, who lived after the roundabout Mother would turn right on, heading down Ago Palace. He asked about my girlfriend, and I ignored the question which had an answer we both knew. An answer infused in the pieces I had created, which he had read. An unwavering truth that stands solid as the Milliken Hills do. I told him about my school. I told him how I was attacked outside the school gate, on the streets of Choba, by a group of boys who discovered my profile on Facebook. He called immediately and sympathized. It happened a month ago, the night Ikechukwu blamed my promiscuity for disrupting God’s plan for him to study medicine in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he would be away from Yorubas and me.
Afolabi spoke of God who had helped him take the desire of men away from him, and mentioned how He would do the same for me. He spoke of God in a sweet way. Called his name like he was a coke drink I would dread in my 60s as I battled diabetes. Apart from serving God with a dessert spoon, he swallowed my decision to identify as a gay male; leading a subliminal life with two strains ready to manifest in diverse situations as a form of adaptability. We argued, and he concluded it was a phase I was mistaking for growth.
“You that will still –”
“Marry?” I interjected, “What am I proving to my mum again?”
I invited him over on All Souls’ Day. Mother drove to Yaba. She stopped worshipping at the Catholic chapel close to Raji Rashiki Estate, before the mall at FESTAC because of its many corruption scandals. He came at 5 pm, a while before Mother left with Chuka, my little brother. Grandmother would be home since she had gone for the morning service. When Mother left, she asked I go buy bread for the next morning. She also gave me money enough for a pack of toilet paper.
I led him into my room holding a plastic tray with drinks and dry chin-chin. I sat across him and told him how heavy his jacket looked.
“It’s how the Germans like it,” he said with a sardonic chuckle stripped of superiority.
“Ja Wirklich?” I grinned. “Is that so?”
“Sprichst du Deutsch?” “Since when did you learn, this boy?”
“Nein. Vielleicht,” I laughed, coughing in-between.
He laughed, too. He laughed with the same glee he burned with when we first met. “Your pronunciation is terrible, but I’m still impressed.”
I recognized the sawdust this new language had left on his tongue; leaving a distant, distinct accent.
“Danke.”
He showed me YouTube videos of Christian converts who were gay, and when his battery died, he asked about medical school at Port-Harcourt. I told him I didn’t want to talk about the scars on my thighs when he watched me change into shorts. He persisted, and even after I told him it was Chris, he disputed.
Grandmother called from across the hallway, “Ebuka, ga
At 7 pm, before I left my room and knew he was behind me, I turned and drew him closer for a kiss. His tongue tasted reminiscent of familiar grounds, and his arms wrapped around my neck felt like home.
I walked him to Apple Junction and asked him to take a taxi. He disagreed and asked to walk me home because FESTAC could be unsafe. We got back to my compound, and we sat under a palm-tree and joked about possible snakebites.
“If I die, I would be happy I was next to you,” he said.
I gazed at the naked dark sky and believed this was how boys in a sexually-fuelled euphoria spoke, with disrespect to time and its mechanics. Humans, with reckless disregard of fate; set empires on expectant rainclouds that could give way for everything to crash.
Before we left, after Mother had asked him unsettling questions about what he would answer responsible parents who would ask his whereabouts, he was the one to kiss me. Then he held me and told me he wanted us to be ‘happy’ for just us. I held his hand with boldness, as I walked him down the road.
He called before I got to my bedroom, 2 minutes after his taxi drove off and I had waved, smiling till he left, even though I knew it would be too dark for him to see it.
“I love you, Ebuka,” he said in a hushed tone.
I felt uneasy, unsure of what to reply; I hung up then went to bed where I was curled up till morning, slitting an old wound that struck spikes through my spine to my brain.
He returned to my place at 10 pm the next day, after I had missed his calls through the day. Under my window, unbothered about who would hear him call, he yelled my name. His love was far-flung, and I was unworthy. When he spoke about feelings nursed over the past year before he got his scholarship to Germany, he spoke with a ferocious assurance that made me relish the safety it offered. He let me into his life, not through a window or door, but by tearing down a wall and begging me to come through.
Afolabi wanted somewhere we could be. Later that week, on a hot Thursday with intense traffic at Oshodi, Segun left his keys so I could use his apartment. I yearned to taste home in my mouth even more now it was just us together. His legs like a
I understood monogamy as a necessary social construct considered by several antagonists as a pillar of heteronormativity
I imagined Afolabi spurred by a thirst to explore and acquire tales of sexual conquest that would scare me, and this scared me. I came before Afolabi when he placed his full lips on my perky nipples. He kept stroking, and then he asked, referring to Segun,
“Don’t you think he should join us?”
“He already wanked before we got here,” I replied.
I felt it seeping away; our synchronized energy. I was unsure if it was mine or his that was taking leave. No matter how sour its wake is, when love vanishes, it leaves a vacuum for value to set in. His erection began to wane, and I nursed a longing for Ikechukwu who would keep to me till we were done, before we fought, leaving me broken and vulnerable to the demons I shared my head with.
“Do you want him, Babe?”
“Yeah, sure,” he replied with a mischievous smile plastered on his face.
I watched them both. I saw them climax and stared at Afolabi as he held out his arm for me to hold. I held him in a manner lacking originality- lacking me- which he felt. And when he stared at me, I gazed back in a cold stare. I saw fear in his eyes, and this made me feel powerful.
He apologized the next morning over a long phone call punctuated with sobs wet of regret. He had texted the night before and I had ignored him like I had ignored him after our first kiss. The night a love so pure and Celestine blossomed in my heart; making me a fertile gutter with Roses of Castille growing unnoticed, but violently. I loved him with everything that was still mine, and yet it felt insufficient from him, and for me.
I decided after Afolabi apologized. We talked about us. We talked about happiness, and we set out to be happy.
I left for Apapa to see him. I pressed his doorbell, my heart chugged and beat too hard as his mother swung the door open with little effort. It was the first time I was meeting her.
“Good day, Ma,” I said, scared to continue structuring my review of the noisy Taxify driver who had offered me nuts and banana while blasting Ambode who he held responsible for the poor sanitation in Lagos.
“Is Ikechukwu home?”
About the Writer
Ryan Uche-Tasie
Country: Nigeria
Twitter: @ryan_tasie; Instagram: @ryantasie
Bio: Ryan is the ghost of the tiger whose tongue was cut off. He leads a life under names and dimensions he has created for himself in several pieces. He enjoys day-dreaming when he isn’t being bothered by his lover, Blue.