I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. A beautiful coastal city in Western Africa is how I read about it once. I tend to romanticize things so I do agree with that definition. I do not know if the people mirror the city or if the city mirrors the people. It is easy to understand Lagos when you are standing in your small privileged corner like a child who feels they have lived too many years.
My family lived in Ikotun from the time my parents wed in 1997 to some two years after my birth in 1999. We moved from Ikotun to a place that technically fell into three districts so each time I was writing a letter in school, the address would change. The only constant was the ‘Sawyer Close’, depending on my mood; it could be Gbagada, Anthony or Obanikoro. Sawyer Close was a quiet place. My older brother (it’s a year and seven months difference) and I were the only children for most of our time there until we were not.
HADASSAH (2005)
Hadassah was the pretty girl who all of a sudden lived next to us and went to the school next to ours. We went to the University of Lagos Women’s Society: Nursery and Primary School (after saying it for years, I can say it all in one breath) while she went to the University of Lagos Staff School. It should be noted that the way people who live on the island in Lagos raise their noses at people who live on the mainland, was how kids at my school raised their noses at those in Hadassah’s school. Privilege is one hell of a drug.
Hadassah appeared and disappeared so fast, I would have thought her a figment of my imagination except for one thing; she left my life with my favourite Archie comic.
My older brother and I had just entered into the car to go to school when our mum stepped outside the compound to talk to someone. She returned some minutes later and drove the car out. I was not concerned with this until I raised my head from the Archie comic I was reading to see this pretty yellow girl open the car door and sit next to me. I felt flustered. I introduced myself and she and my brother did the same. I resumed reading on our way to school but I kept peeking at her, she was the most beautiful girl on the planet, as far I was concerned. I noticed she was looking at the comic and so I offered it to her, after all, I had read it before. She smiled at me and said thank you before plunging her entire self into the comic. We got to school but she wasn’t done, she promised to return it to me when we got home. I did not see Hadassah again until August 6, 2016. The comic on the other hand, I still haven’t seen.
HOMOPHOBIA AND HOMOSEXUALS (2006)
My mother was in the hospital. She had just given birth to my younger brother on the eclipse day. My dad was not home yet and my older brother was sleeping. I had already re-read all my Famous Five books and all the comics I could lay my hands on. There was no light (Quite usual for a home in Lagos at 4:00 pm) so the option of watching TV was out. I did not want to sleep and so I picked up my Longman Active Study Dictionary, closed my eyes and flipped randomly. I came across words I had seen before and kept flipping until I saw new words. It landed on page 359.
Homophobia came first before homosexuals. It was simply described as the hatred and fear of homosexuals. I was going to be 7 in September, I already knew hatred was bad and fear was only meant for God so I knew homophobia was a bad thing before I knew what homosexuals were. Homosexuals were defined as people who were sexually attracted to people of the same sex. So simple and boring. I flipped the pages and read more words but when I fell asleep, I dreamt of boys liking boys in the same way boys liked girls and girls liking girls just like girls liked boys.
It was in November that I was taught in Sunday school very harshly and in a voice that threatened hell, that not all love was love and that although homophobia was a bad thing in the dictionary, it was the order of the day on the outside. I was quite confused but I figured it was the church getting things wrong as usual. Once, aunty Goodness had said that God could not hear as well so we had to speak loudly in church then another Sunday; she told us that God knew everything in our heads and hearts and could hear even the smallest whisper. Church people twist and make up things just to get you to do what they want.
TITO (2007)
The year 2007 was a haze and although most of my memories from that year are missing, I still remember Tito. How she looked, her attitude and my intense want to marry her. She was a tomboy but a cool one. She wasn’t my friend but at lunch break, she had done something that must have been attractive because I remember wanting to marry her and saying harshly to myself, girls do not marry girls.
I was not being homophobic, I knew because I had read in the news how two women were killed in a market for homosexual behaviour. Maybe the church was right…
AMINA (2011)
Amina was my ‘senior’ in secondary school. She was in her penultimate year when I entered school. I convinced myself for the six years I was in secondary school that I did not like her; she was just a good girl I admired and wanted to be my school mother. I found a smart beautiful girl in all the sets ahead just like Amina but I never thought of it as a crush because my crushes had been on boys and had been direct and quite physical.
Amina was probably 14 or 15 when I met her. I was in JSS2 and completely smitten by this tall gorgeous being. She must have been like 6 feet. All legs, curves and an amazing throaty laugh. I used to melt and always say something funny to make her laugh. I wanted her to hug me or touch my hair or brush my hand with hers. I loved to hear her talk. What I remember of her voice was how smooth and deep it was, something you’d want to drink like cool water after a long day.
I often told her of how I imagined she married one of my school fathers (who I am very certain I had a crush on), she’d sit by the stairs of the library during snack breaks and smile as she listened to me ramble on about dreams I had of them getting married. She would laugh at the end and tell me how interesting my dreams are, run her thumb up and down my cheek and then send me back to my class.
The day she graduated, she grabbed my hand for a brief moment as she strolled out the hall with the rest of the graduating students. I would never forget that day; it was the day my period began. Perhaps, my heart was so hurt that it leaked blood down to between my thighs. I had written her a letter, telling her how much I would miss her and how much she meant to me and how she was the best school mother in the world. I wanted to give her the letter and also get a last hug. When I saw her, she was surrounded by other people. I had not realized that she meant the world to them too. I gave the letter to another senior to give it to her; I’d never know if it got to her.
That night, I dreamt of her being married again but this time to me. I never got to tell her this dream.
DIANA (2014)
This is the story I tell when people ask me when I knew I was queer. I tell them a story of two teenagers who made eye contact and their lives changed. Again, I tend to romanticize a lot of things. I would never know if Diana’s life changed after she met me. I’d like to believe that it did.
It was September of 2014. I do not remember the exact date but I would never forget the day. It was a nice school day, just enough sun and just enough wind. Not the kind that would make you sweat or the breeze that would lift your skirt. It was a perfect day. My secondary school has two main buildings and they form a triangle missing the last bottom line. The gate faces the first parking lot which is in front of Building 1. Building 1’s ground floor is the school’s hall. Its first floor contains the staff room, the computer room, the business studies room, a classroom, the physics lab and then the chemistry lab. This is from left to right, there were stairwells on both sides of the building. The last floor had the principal’s office, the library, and the biology lab. The second building is adjacent to the first and it contains the classrooms and other PTSD triggering places.
I had run an errand for one of my English teachers. I came down from the staff room via the left stairwell this life-changing day and headed towards the back of the hall on the right. I was happy, it was a good
day. I walked past the open front doors of the hall, the side of my eye-catching something- someone. Everything in me pulled to a halt by the first window after the doors and I walked back to the open doors and took a full look inside.
Standing still about nine steps from me was this girl I had never seen before in my life in a baggy school shirt and such a long skirt. It was clear she was a new student because EVERY girl who had spent a term in school had cut their skirts shorter and slim-fitted their shirts. In this horrible uniform, you’d have thought she would look ordinary but when I looked at her face…. My goodness, when I looked at her face, I knew she was going to change my life in so many ways. I experienced what I later discovered to be a Mumford and Son’s “Winter Winds” moment. My head told me to go to her but my heart said no. I was still having this internal debate when she looked up at me. It was as if she stilled the air, the way my heart and mind went silent. She was looking at me like ‘who is this one looking at me like she’s hungry?’ and that was enough for my body to decide to walk to her.
Before I knew what was happening, I was smirking and stretching out my hand, introducing myself in my most charming voice and asking if she had just transferred schools. She raised an eyebrow and her face seemed to say this won’t work on me and so I took a breath, let it out and gave her a warm smile. She smiled back and put her hand in mine. We both pulled back a little when our hands made contact, I felt a shock and I believe she did too. We did not let go.
“Yes, I am new here. I am in SS1. My name is Diana, Diana Akeme.”
And at this moment, I knew I was doomed. I knew I would love her for all my days and she would always be a part of my life.
* If you asked anyone who was in that school at the same time we were, they would tell you I loved her. I never thought we spent a lot of time in school together, what I remember well, was always texting her and calling her. Goodness, she hated calls. If I have a type, it is people who hate calls.
We would text from the evening after school to 5 am when we were getting ready to go to school the next day. I loved to go to school just to see her. She used to take the school bus while my parents dropped me off so I got to school before her. In school assemblies, my head was constantly looking out the window waiting for her bus to arrive, just waiting to see her sling her bag over her shoulder and stand at the back of the hall. She had this particular smell. I never figured it out but once when I was in Dubai, I found a body cream that smelled a little like how she smelled and I was so excited. I slathered it on myself, just so that I could have her on me.
She was funny, interesting, beautiful, sarcastic, annoying and so many things. She would make me so happy and the next minute we would be arguing some insignificant thing and then we wouldn’t be talking and it always felt like the world was ending so I always apologized. I never did learn how to hold grudges. She was my Achilles heel and everyone, from students to teachers knew it. My class mates hated it because I was her senior. I was THE senior, never mind it was just by a year, how dare I let a junior do me tumbo tumbo? I did not care. Her happiness was all that mattered to me and her friends
exploited it. They would come to me and say ‘Diana isn’t feeling fine. She hasn’t eaten.’ or ‘Diana is hungry’ or my favorite, ‘Your wife forgot her money at home.’ Of course, I knew 8 out of 10 times, this was untrue but I was too occupied with the possibility of each occasion being true and so I coughed up the money, often it was all I had. I would either send a junior or go down to the tuck shop myself and get her caprisonnes and sausages. She didn’t like meat pies. Once, an English teacher, the same one from before, was going to flog a class of 6 people four strokes of the cane each but I took the punishment because she was among the six. The teacher stopped flogging at 10 strokes.
I wrote her so many poems. She was my friend, my muse, my heart and this was a problem.
* I was once told a story of how God was jealous that a man had loved his family above Him and so He killed his family. This instilled fear in me. I was very aware of how fast my feelings for Diana were growing and how much I was in love with her and I was so scared that God was going to take her away from me so I prayed instead that He take away these feelings.
I prayed, I fasted, I stayed away from her, as much as I could which I should let you know wasn’t much but at least I tried. F for Effort. F for Fucking Universe, destroy these feelings. I read my bible and offered the Holy Spirit many things to take away my feelings so that God would not kill her. It would not be an exaggeration to say I soaked my pillow with my tears. I was losing sleep, I was losing hope and despite all my prayers, pleading and tears, I was falling more in love with Diana every day.
I hated myself for being so selfish. I hated myself for wanting to hug her, hold her hand, put my hands on her waist, breathe the same oxygen as her and more recently, wanting to kiss her. I needed this to end. This waiting game. Was God waiting for me to relax before deciding to kill her? I needed to do something and so I took matters into my own sinful hands.
I asked Him to kill me instead. I said if this love was so dreadfully wrong, if you are so jealous, kill me and kill me tonight or let my mind be at rest and let my heart be free. That night it rained heavily. Thunder yelled and lightning showed me heaven’s colors. I woke up the next morning, feeling very relaxed, at peace. I was by the balcony, looking at a rainbow that had been there since morning when Diana got out of her school bus and waved to me. I had asked Death to take me and he said: “come back tomorrow.” I am still waiting.
Tomorrow never came.
POLYAMOROUS BISEXUAL (2014)
After I didn’t die, I became a little more committed to understanding myself and my feelings. I knew I was not heterosexual because I liked Diana and I knew I was bisexual because I liked Anthony Akeme. Diana’s brother.
This made me feel very uncomfortable because I loved Diana and I loved Anthony. I used to have ‘Library Chats’ with Anthony. I had certain days where my free periods clashed with his library periods. We would sit opposite each other in the corner of the library and pass a sheet of paper back and forth, just gossiping about people and talking about random things. These were our moments. We also moments of skyping naked and him jerking off to my body but let’s not focus on that. He was a nice boy, he was funny and he was fine and he knew he was fine but he wasn’t narcissistic about it. I thought about kissing him and all the wonderful things we could do in a school bathroom together. In retrospect, this is all disgusting to me because those bathroom floors were certainly filled with all sorts of bacteria.
He was what my hormonal body wanted but Diana was the one my heart wanted. She was the one whose hand I wanted to hold, the one I long to dance with even though I can’t dance, the one I dreamt of performing songs to. The one I wanted to marry. Even the little things she did to me had me more and more in love with her.
Once I had helped her do something and when I was about to leave to go hang with my friends, she called me back and told me to lean closer and closer then kissed my cheek, close to my mouth. I was ecstatic for two days. It was like I was floating. In the words of Sufjan Stevens, ‘Blessed be the mystery of love.’
Anthony was the one I wanted to screw but she was the one I wanted to marry, the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I searched Google for articles about people who liked multiple people at a time and then on The Naked Convos, I found the word for it – Polyamory.
I was polyamorous. It was a thing. People were like this, I was not weird for liking two people at the same time, maybe just a little weird for liking siblings but asides that I was pretty normal. I felt more settled. I felt like it was my duty to please both of them, my two different loves and so I did my best for the years, we were in school.
When I graduated, I knew who I was – Ife Stark, Polyamorous Bisexual.
