Editor’s Note: In partnership with The 2023 EIO Workshop, Isele Magazine publishes the works selected by the facilitator, Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo. Josiah Ikpe’s “Not Like Other Boys” is one of the selected works. 

Facilitator’s Note: Josiah Ikpe’s “Not Like Other Boys” employs the Gatsby-ian technique of mirroring characters. Our narrator is the camera. The new boy in class, Vincent, is the focus.

It was the beginning of a new term. We were halfway into a Literature class, listening to Ms. Gloria discuss the plot of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest, and her incorrect pronunciation of the word, Hertfordshire. She pronounced it as hert-ford-shi-re, dragging it into a four-syllabic word. This caused the class to giggle, leaving Ms. Gloria perplexed.

Ms. Gloria was short-tempered with our class. According to her, we made so much noise and impelled her to use the cane often. She was never good with wielding her authority by flogging, she said, but months of being taken for granted had taught her to never spare the rod. Once, in an afternoon class, a class that began right after breaktime, we took longer than usual to settle down for the class and this heightened her temper. Furious, she commanded us to stand up, and ordered the class-monitor to get Mr. Agbaje’s cane—the fat, spiky one, the one that made all the students wet their pants. She flogged the whole class, five strokes each. After the end of class, she said she hoped never to be our class teacher. Ironically, she was appointed as our class teacher the subsequent term.  

Eneh, the girl who all the boys in the class liked, stood up and corrected Ms. Gloria. “It’s pronounced hert-ford-shire, not hert-ford-shi-re, ma,” she said, her baby-like voice causing all eyes to settle on her.

Ms. Gloria snorted and turned her back to the class as though she hadn’t heard it. She began writing on the blackboard, and only turned when Mr. Agbaje, our vice principal, entered the classroom with a boy whose head was lowered. 

“Good afternoon, Ms. Gloria,” Mr. Agbaje said. 

“Good afternoon, sir,” Ms. Gloria responded.

“This is a new student,” he said, placing his hands on the boy’s shoulder. The boy’s lips stretched into a stiff smile, and he mumbled a greeting. His head was still bowed but I could make out his face: the smallness of his eyes, the thinness of his lips, and his pointed nose which looked like the shape of a cute, little ice-cream cone. 

“His name is Vincent Ogbu,” Mr. Agbaje said.

“You’re welcome,” Ms. Gloria said to the boy and stretched out her hands to him. The boy received the handshake timidly, as if he was uncertain it was meant for him. “Go and take a seat then,” she said, pointing to an empty chair beside the window. The boy turned and looked at Mr. Agbaje, who nodded at him, and then smiled broadly as though it was all the boy needed to make any sort of movement. 

“Welcome again,” Ms. Gloria said to him. “I believe Mr. Agbaje has briefed you about our syllabus?”

“Yes,” the boy said, his voice soft, and then opened his bag, revealing several notebooks, textbooks, and the drama text we were discussing. He pulled out the drama text slowly, delicately, and placed it on the table that had all kinds of designs and writings engraved on it. He turned sideways and Eneh, quite charmingly, whispered that we’d just gotten to page 10 in the text. The boy smiled and mouthed a “thank you”, and, turning to face Ms. Gloria, his eyes met mine. 

*

There was something different and strange about Vincent Ogbu. The air about him was crystal-like as though one could tell who he was just by looking at him, and yet enshrouded like he was hiding something. The way he talked, walked, and carried himself conveyed one thing, a thing that compelled me, and at the same time made me roll my eyes in shame for him. 

A couple of days after he joined us, in a Government class Ms. Gloria also taught, Ms. Gloria threw a question to the class, hoping no one would answer it correctly so she could punish the us for our lack of attention to the lesson. 

“What were the factors that fueled Nigeria’s position as a non-aligned State?” she asked, her eyes fixed on us like a predator on its prey.

The class was now silent, and everyone’s faces became serious. Ms. Gloria knew she had us where she wanted, which she showed off by walking around the class, the click-clack sound of her shoes on the terrazzo floor echoing within the four walls of the classroom. Her question didn’t require a yes or no answer. It required spinning together more than one word, explanations that the class didn’t seem to know, and since the question bordered on a new topic, one we’d just begun treating the previous class, the concept was still entirely new. So, we all sat still, stiff-tongued. 

Seconds became minutes and no one made any attempt to speak, to try guessing their way to the correct answer. Even Eneh who always had something to say in class, sat quietly in her seat and stared vacantly. The air became constricted, so stiff that if one threw a knife from one end of the class to another one would hear the sound of something slitting into two. Ms. Gloria, at this point, was growing impatient, eager to unfurl her victory through insults. But just when she was about to close the curtains, Vincent Ogbu raised a hand and stood up at the same time. 

“What?” she asked, snapping at him. 

“I know the answer to the question,” he said, looking like he’d made the wrong decision. 

Ms. Gloria stared at him, her eyes sinking into the concaves of her socket, and appearing back again. She asked why he’d kept quiet all this while if he knew the answer, and then, with a raised hand, signaled him to speak. 

Vincent Ogbu’s voice cracked at first and then grew stable; his expression gradually lightened. “Nigeria’s policy of non-interference and her belief in the sovereignty of all nations,” he said. “This made her to condemn the invasion of Panama by the US and to break diplomatic relations with France for testing an atomic bomb in the Sahara.” He looked at Ms. Gloria, seeking approval. 

The class was still silent. Everyone watched, waited. Ms. Gloria’s face grew tight, threatening to burst and reveal all its muscles and ligaments. But soon, her lips spread into a smile, exposing the gaps between her teeth. She praised Vincent Ogbu and told the class to thank him for sparing their asses. 

And so, everyone took note of Vincent Ogbu. I did, too. 

*

Vincent Ogbu became popular not just because of his apt knowledge but also because of his personality. He was the only boy in school who swung his hips when he walked and had hands in the air when he talked. And this, this trait, wasn’t something that could go unnoticed in the eyes of most boys in our class who saw it as a dent on a prized possession.

The first real incident happened during a late afternoon assembly. We stood in lines, divided by sexes and classes, saying a short prayer of thanks. The sun was out, and its fierceness pierced hard on the skin of everyone. So, to try and escape it, we all lunged forward, toward the parts where the school building cast its enormous shadow. The line was crammed, bodies pressing against bodies. Mr. Agbaje stood in front of the assembly ground on an elevated platform. There was a slight uproar from the junior classes, and he ordered them to behave themselves or else they’d get severely punished. Most teachers were absent, escaping the afternoon heat. 

Vincent Ogbu was pressed somewhere in the middle of the line. He was quiet, as if deep in thoughts. Then the boy in front of him turned around and said, sneering, “This boy wants to fag my yansh.”

Those words, the swiftness with which they rolled out of the boy’s mouth, caused other boys to burst into a peal of laughter, their eyes lingering on Vincent Ogbu. And he, confused, stood in shock. A short while passed before he stepped out of the line, his gaze to the ground. Ordinarily, things like this often occurred, boys crammed behind boys, their bodies pressing hard against one another, and nothing of this sort was ever said. This, however, was new, and its newness streamed upward and floated above the air of the assembly ground, making all eyes rest on Vincent Ogbu, who stood outside the line transfixed in shock like someone stripped of their clothing. 

Mr. Agbaje was done speaking with the junior classes, and now he seemed interested in whatever was causing the disarray among us. He called to our class and asked if our senses were still intact; if, by an unfortunate doing, we’d forgotten that we were the senior class, the class that ought to shine the light for other classes. Curious, he asked Vincent Ogbu what he was doing standing outside of the line. Vincent Ogbu stepped back into the line and stood behind another boy, Akin, who jumped out of the line immediately.

Irritated, I made my way to the middle line and positioned myself in front of Vincent Ogbu.

*

The insults thrown at Vincent Ogbu became frequent. He was ridiculed in all kinds of ways. And he, as usual, never retorted. This eerie silence of his fueled most of the boys and soon they began using that word on him. Whenever his name popped up in our little confederacy, one of the boys would shake his head and say, “What a waste of sperm.” Another would say, “This one nah real sissy.” This was how it went on even as exams approached, and the term gradually drew to an end.

One morning, as we stood by the balcony of the classroom halfway into breaktime discussing football, Vincent Ogbu, in the company of some girls, passed by, swinging his waist. It had rained throughout the early hours of that morning. The sun wasn’t out, and the sky cast a greyish shade far above the roof of the school. The sawdust we’d used last term for the inter-house sports competition, heaped in the center of the school field, formed small puddles, and pigeons gathered and drank from them. Some of the girls had stopped and were conversing with us. But Eneh stood beside the window of the classroom with Vincent Ogbu, both of them giggling. Sometimes, it was difficult to tell the two of them apart from each other whenever they were together. The only thing that distinguished them was that Vincent wore trousers instead of skirts, and his hair was cut low instead of braided into tiny, slim cornrows, and his chest was flat.

One of the boys walked up to Vincent Ogbu. “What’s so funny?” he said.

“Nothing,” Vincent Ogbu said. “Just mind your business.” 

“Get your gay buttocks out of here,” the boy said to him.

Eneh turned to the boy, said, “How do you know his buttock is gay? Or have you sampled it before?”  

The boy spat and said, “God forbid.” And then he tightened his face and shot Vincent Ogbu a hateful look. 

So, with that tint of joy one got when a ballgame had been marked in one’s favor, Vincent Ogbu walked away with Eneh, both of them chit-chatting and laughing as they strolled into the classroom as though nothing had happened. 

Standing by the pillar supporting the balcony, a streaming satisfaction filled me to the brim.

The next day in school, at the cafeteria, I saw Vincent Ogbu leaning against the balcony. I walked up to him and stood beside him. After a few seconds, I said, “Look, Akin is a nuisance, so are the other boys. Don’t let their words get to you. Defend yourself.”

Without looking at me, he said, “Why are you acting as if you care?”  

“I care, Vincent.” 

He turned and looked at me, smiling. I smiled back. We stood silent for a while, both of us leaning against the balcony watching as some junior students ran around the school field kicking a deflated ball. We soon began discussing school life, how demanding it could be yet how necessary it was to give it our all, and how we couldn’t wait to be done; our career paths, his dream of studying law and becoming a justice of the supreme court and my desire of doing something, anything that would further ignite my love for literature. 

When the bell rang, marking the end of breaktime, we walked to class together. In his eyes, in his features, I saw something that mirrored a part of me I was yet to acknowledge.

*

If one got shoved to the wall so often, a day would come when one would push back, and that was what happened one morning in class. That morning, the assembly took longer than usual with Mr. Agbaje talking nonstop about good behavior, dressing neatly to school, and prompt payment of fees. Earlier, we’d listened to a short sermon from a man who came from a white-garment church. The man spoke about sin, evil works, and salvation. The words that swirled out of the man’s mouth were inchoate, slurring his speech. After he was done speaking, he asked if anyone would like to embrace the newness of life Christ offers. Almost everyone from the junior classes raised their hands. None did from the senior classes.

Immediately after the assembly, we went down to the Biology lab for a class. The class, again, seemed longer than usual; everyone turned on their seats and some even dozed off. The second and third classes turned out similar. But due to what happened in the fourth class, the slowness that weaved itself around the fringes of the day went unnoticed. 

It was in a Literature class. We’d long finished reading Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest and recently started reading William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Some of the class had volunteered to take on certain characters from the play, including Eneh and Vincent Ogbu, and were already reading the dialogues from each scene, with Ms. Gloria stopping them occasionally and explaining the passage they’d just read to the class because the text was in the original archaic English, which made it difficult for most of the class to comprehend.

Eneh had finished reading the dialogue from the character she played, and Ms. Gloria had just rounded up explaining that passage, but Akin, not satisfied with the explanations, asked Ms. Gloria to explain it again. Ms. Gloria’s eyes came close together and she let out a deep breath. She asked someone from the class to explain the passage to Akin. Vincent Ogbu offered, and he went on to explain the passage not just to Akin but to the whole class. 

But Akin, in his usual repulsiveness, stood up and said, “It just had to be you, faggot.” He fixed his eyes sternly on Vincent Ogbu as he said this, as though the combination of his words and gaze would not only pierce Vincent Ogbu’s skin and gush out a warm reddish-brown-like fluid but would leave him quavering with deep sensational pain. 

The whole class turned and looked at Vincent Ogbu, and Vincent Ogbu’s eyes lingered on his feet. Silence filled the classroom, and the classroom suddenly felt hot. In that moment of stillness, Vincent Ogbu hurled the drama text at Akin. The book whooshed through the air and landed on Akin’s forehead. Akin shrieked in what sounded like a mixture of pain and surprise.

Seizing the opportunity, Vincent Ogbu rushed towards Akin and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. “Who are you calling a fag? Answer me now?” Vincent Ogbu’s voice hit the ornate ceiling of the classroom. 

Akin, at this point, was still recovering from the shock of being hit in the face. But not wanting to feel weak in front of the entire class, in front of an effeminate boy who couldn’t throw a punch properly, couldn’t decode the importance of wearing the male body in the way it ought to be worn, he pushed Vincent Ogbu and uttered, barely audible, “Yes, it is you I am calling a fag. What can you do about it?” 

Ms. Gloria stood at one end of the class, watching as the drama peaked. She was quiet, and it seemed as if she was enjoying the drama like the rest of us, as if she, too, was interested in how it would play out. It was surprising, almost amusing, that things like this often occurred in her class. When one of the girls accused Eneh of always wanting to draw attention to herself and they both ended up insulting one another down to the state of their panties, it was in Ms. Gloria’s class. When Akin was confronted by one of the boys about something he’d said and they began throwing punches at each other, it was also in Ms. Gloria’s class. When half of the class argued over the list of noisemakers the class-monitor had submitted to the vice-principal a day before and which didn’t include his name and warranted the whole class to be flogged, it was also in Ms. Gloria’s class.

Now, in one swift motion, Vincent Ogbu thrust Akin to the floor with both hands. Akin landed on his buttocks, causing a few tables and chairs to retreat backward in a loud, grating protest. The words that rushed out of his mouth made everyone, gaping already, gape even harder. “How do you know I’m gay?” he asked. His eyes lingered on Akin, and, slowly, swept the entire class. “And how is it even your problem if I’m gay?”

A cold breeze darted into the classroom, sending down a trembling sensation on everyone’s skin. Outside, the sky had darkened. Clouds had gathered, and soon rain would begin slashing downwards. Silence still lingered above the air but, as the tension dwindled, a few voices began flying here and there. Akin had gotten up and was now dusting the stains off his trousers, his face still burning with rage. But knowing better, knowing that whatever he does or says would not matter to anyone, he picked up his chair from the floor and resigned into it, defeated. 

Ms. Gloria, standing at the front of the class, threw a pleasing smile at Vincent Ogbu who sat stiff-faced in his seat. She’d always emphasized the importance of him standing up for himself. One time, at one of the breaks in which I’d stayed behind in class writing some notes I’d missed, I overheard her say to him, “If you don’t stand up for yourself, they’d keep toying with you, and the insults won’t stop.” Now, she cleared her throat, signaling the authority she still had over the class, an authority she knew was fragile and could break at any moment. As expected, she rebuked the actions of Akin and Vincent Ogbu and the entire class and warned that if this should repeat itself, she would not only flog the living daylight out of everyone but would go on to report us to the vice-principal. 

So, as everything fell into place, Vincent Ogbu, turned, nodded at me. I nodded back, and then he threw a smile that awakened something inside of me. 

*

Things became different the next day in school. Everyone looked at Vincent Ogbu in a different light, with a new lens, as though he was a shiny thing that emerged from a place beyond their comprehension. Almost all the boys in class avoided him, frightened he would twist their words. He didn’t seem to mind. Just why would he when all the girls in class had come to adore and love him?

The altercation travelled around the school. Even the Math teacher who always acted as if he was deaf to whatever happened in the school spoke about it when Vincent Ogbu attempted a question he threw to the class. To a degree, Vincent Ogbu became an embodiment of resistance in the eyes of the entire school. 

Akin, whose voice was always the loudest in class, became quiet. He sat somberly, alone, musing and nursing whatever injury he’d sustained the previous day. It seemed as though Vincent Ogbu had quelled the flames that burned within him, flames that erupted and charred whoever came close to it, whoever became the object of his silly shenanigans. 

And at the end of school, approaching Vincent Ogbu, I asked him if we could both walk home together. He agreed. As we made our way out of the school gate, I said, “I’m glad you listened to me and put Akin in his place.” 

He paused, turned, and looked at me as though my words had come out watery. He then smiled. “It wasn’t just what you said that fueled me,” he said and continued walking. “It was a combination of other things that made me react the way I did.”

“Whatever your reasons were, I’m glad you were able to stand up for yourself.”

Some of the girls from the class were walking behind us, with Eneh in the middle, discussing loudly about a Spanish telenovela. Vincent Ogbu turned and said he couldn’t wait for the next episode to air. They all agreed with loud excitement.

“Most boys can be mean, you know,” I said, fixing my eyes on the road.

“What about you, are you mean?” he asked.

I stared at him, and then, I threw my gaze elsewhere. I continued walking, ignoring him, ignoring the thoughts that were now weighing my movement. I felt stabbed by his question, more so, by my sudden inability to find a response. The girls were far behind us now, and the street was mostly quiet, as it usually was on Friday afternoons.

Vincent Ogbu’s eyes rested on me, patiently seeking a response. I was beginning to grow uncomfortable, chafed by the way his eyes rattled something inside of me. Eventually, I said, quickening my pace, “I’m not like other boys.”

“Not like other boys? What do you mean?” he asked, increasing his pace to catch up with me.

I kept on walking fast. But he called my name and, as if something stood in my way, I stopped.

“What do you mean you’re not like other boys,” he asked again.

He’d reached me now, and we stood close to each other, only an inch between us. I could hear the muffled sound of his breathing, his fast intake of air. We’d followed a shortcut behind a house bordered by a high fence and a huge almond tree whose fruits and leaves were scattered on the ground. 

I drew closer, placed my arm around his shoulder and met his gaze. For the first time in a long while, I felt buoyed with a new spirit. “I’m different from the other boys,” I said, and then turned, and urged him forward.

About the Author:

Josiah Ikpe holds an LLB degree from the University of Ibadan. He was a participant in the 2023 E.I.O Creative Writing Workshop. His story was longlisted for the 2024 Awele Creative Trust Awards.

*Feature image by Salah Regouane on Unsplash