Tell me it was for the hunger
& nothing less. For hunger is to give
the body what it knows
it cannot keep. That this amber light
whittled down by another war
is all that pins my hand
to your chest."

— Ocean Voung, On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous

The App

Facebook. It wasn’t my first time traipsing multiple dating groups on the app, but that day ushered me into an experience that’d continue to breathe in the deepest recesses of my mind.

I punched in the words, “Enugu gay group,” and stared at my phone with anticipation. The network snailed on, taking eternity to load. I waited, legs crossed on the bed. I was surprised my legs were not shaky like the previous times; those tendrils of anxiety that usually twined around my spine each time I scrolled down rows of naked, ripped men wasn’t present. This was progress. 

The site was done loading. Google gave me  a couple of variations.

Enugu tb group.

Enugu men’s group

Imo-Enugu gay group

I didn’t bother to click the first two groups because I had been there; those groups were riddled with holes and their members were replicated; anyone could easily slide in and out of it without proper verification.

I opted for the third. The group appeared to be an intricate web of people whose privacy could not be hampered, and it was different from the rest. By different, I mean, I had to pass through security checks, supplying deeply thought out responses to questions about respect and privacy, failure of which would result in my immediate eviction from the group. Halfway into the page, I saw the members, most were men, clad and half-clad. Bare-chested men, flexing tight biceps and neatly arranged cubes of muscles. Men that made my blood dance with nervous delight so that I jerked and pinched my thighs to keep myself from floating in dreamy clouds. I laughed at their names. Some had names like “dick sucker,” “hot rod.” Others maintained names like Arinze, Chidubem, Kamsi, Tochukwu 4 flex. Minutes went by, I remained mute in the group. I scrolled through their posts, noting the ease with which some guys revealed their phone numbers. Others declared their horniness, their readiness to be claimed. I cringed at their fearlessness, their boldness that I did not have.

Someone revealed his location on the group and instantly a lot of His and Hellos flooded that post. I checked him out. He had a caramel complexion, a perfectly round face and a row of white teeth. His muscles peeked from his ripped jean shirt. He was a tree of possibilities, a fruit ready to be gnawed. I couldn’t do this. It is depressing enough to desire something, but more depressing to have it staring at you when you are helpless. I flounced out of Facebook for a while, for my sanity.

Moments later I returned. Without the intention of actually meeting someone, I decided to riffle through the names and the faces. I did this for some time until a guy, wearing a clean shaved head, piqued my interest. Chidi Okonkwo. I poured over his pictures, the gorgeousness of his eyes, basking in their semi nudity, before crawling into his DM.

The guy

In addition to being gorgeous, the guy was also warm and friendly. It was in the way he spiced every message with my love, baby, dearest. It was in the heart-shaped emojis he sent me. For the length of days we chatted, I felt a weightless thrill coursing through me. Chidi was an actor. He loved his job. And this was the information he shared. Although I loved movies and actors, it was quite difficult placing him in the sort of roles prevalent in Nollywood. He couldn’t pass for a house boy or a gateman. In my head, he was a rancher in tight, ripped jeans. He was a man in love with another man. 

Chidiebere was his name. Chidi for short.

When he asked, I said my name was Gerald. 

My occupation?

Teacher and creative writer. A graduate of the University of Ibadan. I didn’t stop there; I told him about my passion for writing, the stories and poems I had written, mostly those that had been published. I wish I had drawn the line. I wish I had stopped myself from saying so much. But the strands of excitement in me kept unspooling as though I would die if I didn’t reveal that much about me.

My anxiety reached a boiling point when he blacked out of Facebook for days, leaving my messages unread, most of which were gentle pleas to know his place. I spent the day thinking of him, conjuring up his face in between my working hours. And at night, I slithered in and out of slumber.

He came online a week later, dropping a few messages in my Dm. It was a Tuesday morning, and there was a strict policy against using our phones at work. 

When I got home, I smiled at the love emojis sprinkled beside his apologies. And almost at the same time, my smile dissolved into anger when he said I wouldn’t be spending the night at his place. His house wasn’t in a suitable condition, he said. Although I didn’t understand what that meant, I didn’t probe for details.  Like me, he was still living with his parents. Slipping out of my work clothes soddened with sweat, my anger gave birth to anxiety. So, I asked if he could come over to my family house around Nowas since my mother had traveled to Abuja to be with my father. He agreed. But he wasn’t going to spend the night because he had a movie to shoot that same night.

The first meeting

Call it love, call it  lust, I had done something many Nigerian queer people were scared of doing: bringing a man to your place, in tight proximity with your loved ones.

I was in the kitchen making soup when my phone buzzed on the counter.

“I am in Afia Abakpa now, please come to celebrity, Nowas,” Chidi’s small voice bled through the phone.

 “Ok, I’m there.”  Sweat beads licked down my forehead and tickled my back as I stirred the soup on the gas cooker. The lie tasted sour on my tongue, but it didn’t fill me with guilt. It was the sort of thing you told someone so they would arrive at the meeting place on time, before you.

Yet, my heart hammered against my chest. He was getting close.

Five minutes later, my pot of soup was ready to be served but my guest hadn’t arrived. I dialed his number but the calls went unanswered. I called again. The mechanical voice shot back at me with the line you dialed is not reachable at the moment. I sank into the living room sofa, staring at the wall, at the space where a clock should be. I wondered if I was actually doing the right thing. But then, I had sauntered beyond the threshold to make a u-turn. My phone chirped. It  read: I am sorry for the delay,  traffic was so tight but it’s over now. Please, where are you? I’m in front of Nowas now.

The hooting of cars and the voices of people laced the air. Standing in front of Celebrity, a mini mall, I pushed my hands into the pockets of my purple jalabia. Fear sat in my throat, almost blurring my vision. Leaning against a stump, I called his number, but it wasn’t reachable. Thirty minutes later, he called back. He wanted to know what I was wearing. I told him. Then, he instructed me to walk to my left.  

He was wearing a tight tee-shirt and ripped jeans. It was already dark, and I couldn’t see his face clearly.  I took his hand in mine, feeling the soft texture of his palm. We said our names out loud, almost at the same time. We nodded at the same time, trying to settle into the awkward air.

*

I quelled the urge to sit beside him on the sofa. Instead, I sat on the one opposite his. It was our first physical contact, and I didn’t want him getting the wrong signals. I didn’t want him thinking I was desperate. He slanted away, evaded my direct stare, while tapping his hand restlessly on the sofa.

When he asked about the pictures on the wall, I thought it was an excuse to escape the flaming desire in my eyes. Perhaps, he wasn’t used to looking people directly in the eye. He pointed at a picture on the wall. In one, the man was wearing a black suit while the woman a white bridal ball gown, a small crown pinned to her hair.

“Your parents?”

“Yes.” My eyes followed the movement of his mouth as he swallowed each morsel of  food.

“You take after your mum,” he added, and looked at his phone again.

“You and this your phone eh,” I said.

He put the phone away, mischief in his eyes. “I’m sorry, my guys are just chatting me up. They want to know where I am now.”

We talked about family, dreams and aspirations, the senselessness of the anti-gay law. How it turned queer people into rats scurrying in the dark, into themselves, how it had enabled  armed mobs against us.

He talked about himself, how he was so passionate about acting. His love for acting had propelled him to study theater arts at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. I wanted this moment to linger, wishing that he wouldn’t leave. I wanted to curl up beside him on the bed, to wrap myself around his arms. 

He finished his food . 

“Thank you for the meal.”

His phone blared again, and he gave me a deep look, sagging his lips as though he was about to cry. I knew it was time to leave.

Another meeting

I was teaching a pupil somewhere around New Artisan when my phone buzzed. It was Chidi. How is your Sunday going?

Nothing much. Just the usual home lesson.

After that?

Nothing? Or do you have something?

Hmm… I was thinking we could hang out.

I felt the impulse to type, Hanging out would be great, but decided on something else.

Ok. Where?

He suggested a hotel. I had planned my budget for that week and a night at a hotel wasn’t part of it. What about your place? 

My answer still stands. No, please.

When I asked how much a night cost, he said within the range of 4500 to 5000 naira.

After much hesitation and committing my brain to a quick mental maths, I agreed. 

The hotel—lonely and perching on a slightly hilly street—reeked of decay. The door leaned over its hinges as though it was at the verge of falling. The walls peeled from top to bottom.  Although Chidi had assured me that all was well, my mind was a rollercoaster of thoughts. How safe was this environment? Didn’t the owners know that they needed to carry out a routine check of their facilities, to ensure they were in good working conditions?

I paid 4500 naira for a night. A night in a room laced with decay and mustiness. Chidi began to undress when we entered the room. I glanced at the antiquated chair close to the door, and then at the space on the wall where a wardrobe should have been. I slipped out of my clothes. It’s not that bad, he said, sitting on the rickety table beside the chair. At least, it’s manageable. My skin crawled with irritation. I couldn’t believe I had paid for a night here.

 I was taking off my boxers when I noticed the phone in his hand, his mind buried in it. This made me angry.  “What’s with this phone?”

“I’m sorry, darling.” His smile mulled the crushing weight of irritation and angst I had felt the minute I swung into this place.

I couldn’t tell if it was his first time but I caught something in his eyes. Something like hesitation. Something in the shape of anxiety. It probably was just my mind playing a trick. I waved off the thought. I was about to flick off the lights when he insisted he needed it on. He couldn’t have sex under the cover of darkness.

And all of a sudden, we were two naked men, standing in front of each other. While I regarded the growing hardness between my thighs with a feverish excitement. I was puzzled by the flatness of his, though for a brief moment. I took him into my mouth, and he was still flaccid. In my bid to make him hard, I worked him, sucking for a while, until the door creaked open. A bald headed man strolled in, phone in his hand.

And that was when I felt it. That wave of cold fear sweeping right through me. The door had been unbolted all this time? 

Before I could gather  myself, Chidi was pulling on his clothes and flashing an ID card in my face. 

“My name is officer Frank and you are under arrest for luring a guy into the room and attempting gay sex with him.”

I froze. I held the edge of the bed for balance. The next moments passed in a blur: All I saw were two men shuffling in and out of the room. One of them, the one whose face and name and identity now occupied a vague space in my memory, held my clothes with a firmness that startled me. I couldn’t look at him without trembling, without tearing up. Was he the same guy I had invited to my place the other day, the same person to whom I showed kindness? His eyes darkened with hate.

I sank to my knees and begged them to release my clothes. 

“Shut up!” the one I no longer recognize said. “You better keep quiet.” The bald one snatched my belt and  lifted it, aiming for my back, but then changed his mind. .

“Bloody homo! Faggot!” The men cussed, their faces contorted into a frown.

“So, this is what you do, eh?” the one I no longer recognize said.  “Your cup is full, today. Faggot. You know you’re liable to a 14 year jail term?”

“What are you saying? It’s seventeen jor,  not fourteen,” the other guy said.

I did not cry as I had expected. My tears failed to come even when I kept pleading with them to return my clothes, my voice barely rising above theirs as they threatened to hurl me out in the dark, naked. They would call the police on me, they said, if I didn’t stop begging them. I thought of my loved ones. I couldn’t bear the shame of being hurled naked into a police van. I would never  look at my parents’ faces again; I could never bear my mother’s pain, my father’s disappointment.

Almost immediately, they agreed to give back my clothes. But this decision came at a price. A price that made my heart quake, but a price that was little compared to the pain and shame that would come if I refused to consent to the blackmail. In exchange for my clothes and my freedom, I surrendered my phone and my ATM card, and I watched them slide the card into a POS machine to make multiple withdrawals.

A bruised reed

The tears still did not come while I sauntered out of the hotel, down the hilly street to Nowas. I slid a hand into my pocket, instinctively, hoping my phone was still in there. I coughed and sneezed, trying hard to unearth the tears from wherever it was buried. The more I did this, the weaker I became. A bruised reed struggling to make room for the dagger of pain shot through it. 

Cars whizzed past as I dipped into the umbrella of lights ahead. I gave my body to the wind, to the music of death strumming from its lips. I struggled still my  against the thought of diving in front of a moving car. 

I did not know what propelled me to the ATM that night but I had gone to check my account balance. Maybe with the hope that my assailants had left something small but tangible for me. Still, my expectations turned into fatal disappointment and my eyes steamed over as I glared at my balance: 585 naira. The 69, 000 naira I had been saving up so I could rent a single room, to move away from my parents, was gone. 

The unfurling of grief

I was robbed. This was the line I came up with. I told my family this, and every other person. As for the details of the robbery, I said the thieves were masked and that they clutched a knife. I said that I had struggled with them, before they subdued me and snatched my phone and ATM card.

Soon, this lie became a wet rag on my tongue. A lie that made my heart flip with anxiety. What if those I was feeding this story could, somehow, figure out that it was a lie?

Still, I repeated the same story. I fed my colleagues with it. My parents believed the story. I couldn’t bring myself to spill the truth, at least not yet. Perhaps they’d find out while reading this work. Perhaps, they won’t. 

The days afterward felt like coasting around a path in a thick forest; every movement, every sound, every smell, felt like a disaster about to leap at me. I couldn’t bring myself to leave my room, to walk in the sun. And thank goodness for the four day sit-at-home order that IPOB imposed on southeastern Nigeria, I was free from my job  for four days. But at night, I still couldn’t go out. My fear prised me open: I feared that I would  stumble into those men, I feared that they would  lynch me. 

My mother tried to coax me out of that sheath of grief. “They took your phone and money, not your life, Onyebuchi.” Her voice rang at the door of my room. “You should be grateful to God they didn’t hurt you.” But I shut my ears to her voice, her words. She didn’t know the truth. If she did, perhaps, she wouldn’t be talking about God to me. Perhaps, her eyes would be veiled with the same hate and scorn I had read in Chidi’s eyes. Or Frank’s. Whatever he called himself. Perhaps, I would become a stranger to her if she found out.

Everything finally changed when I gave words to my pain. I came undone, the tears poured in torrents. I tried to  write the grief away.

Every spoonful of food became debris in my mouth. I lost my appetite. And that’s the thing with grief: it unfurls until it takes up the rooms in your stomach; it displaces hunger. In my attempt to escape this grief, I tried to read the bible, but the words melted and evaporated from the pages, and all my eyes could see were the words sin, sin, sin. I flung it across the room. Where was he? Where was God when I needed him the most? Where was he when those men pulled my heart and called it sin, when they heaped their curses on me? 

My mother gave me her phone. I retrieved my old line and gradually, the splinters of my previous life and memories began to take shape.

Google became handy. I needed a name for what happened to me. Google took me through the maze of stories of other men. Ugly experiences that had shaped the lives of these men and the lens through which they now saw the world.

In these stories, I was not a stranger, but a participant in grief. There was Kelvin, who was kitoed. Kitoed. A word which has become entrenched in Nigeria’s internet slang. A kito is a person who pretends they are queer on social media and dating apps. After building an online rapport with someone, they plan a date, which  is just a ruse to extort or physically harm their date.

An anonymous person wrote  that his date  also invited him to a hotel but then attacked him and stole his wallet and his phones. My eyes misted as I blended with the experiences of these men, becoming one with their pain, their fears, their tears. Yet, sadly, stories like this seem to remain under the radar, never making mainstream conversations. Many of these stories  go unreported because  who would we turn to? Certainly not the police who the government had given the power to harm and persecute queer people. The anti-gay law is devilish, a beast with fangs fashioned to hurt queer people whose only crime is to be themselves. 

The LGBTQ community would have been a safe haven for many vulnerable queer persons, but that group has become porous. Some queer people who can afford it have fled to other countries for safety. Others who do not have the means remain at home, crawling into themselves in an attempt to escape visibility, an attempt to escape a society steeped in hate. They cradle their pain and shame hoping that  healing will come.

A bruised reed trying to rise above the storm

Healing did not come on a platter. But it took a while for me to crawl out of the darkness, out of that tunnel of self-loathing and pity.  I wasn’t going to force myself to heal, yet, I knew when it came because I began to write about it and at my own pace. 

I had felt this burning need to talk to someone. Not just anyone. Someone like me—broken, too, but who had found catharsis. J came to mind, but quickly I shoved him aside. Sometimes, the guy acted like a joker. He would make light of my pain by laughing over it. Maybe, I was only exaggerating. Still, somehow, I couldn’t trust him. What if he told someone else, and that person told another person?

After a thorough deliberation, I opened up to N, my closest colleague at work.

She stared at me, her mouth wide open, her eyes misting over with tears. She didn’t put up a  show, didn’t rain  curses on the men. Instead, she held my hands. “Gerald, you are a strong man. Even after everything that has happened, you still come to work, smiling at everyone as though nothing really happened?”  She pulled gently at my wrist. “You are really strong.”

I smiled, fighting back the tears. I wanted to say that I wasn’t strong. I had never been. I was just a bruised reed trying to rise above the storm. Instead, I let out a sigh and stared out the window, finally easing into the warmth that seeped into my bones.

About the Author:

Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi is an Igbo storyteller from Nigeria. He writes short stories, essays and poems with a deep interest in religion, queerness, sexuality as it relates to the body and feminism. He has been shortlisted and long listed for a couple of awards and contests, including but not limited to the Spring 2021 Starlight Award in Poetry, received an honourable mention in the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest for the fourth quarter, 2022, a finalist in the 2022 NSSF righting our story contest, Ibua bold call in 2020 and 2022, the 2022 Spectrum Poetry Prize in 2022, 2022 Kendeka Prize in African Literature, the AUB international, poetry prize, 2022, the 2023 Abubakar Gimba Prize for creative nonfiction. Some of his works have been published or are forthcoming in the fantasy and science fiction magazine, efiko magazine, uncanny, the temz review, afritondo, brittle paper and elsewhere.

*Featured image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay