Chinagorom Martin: When you’re gay in Nigeria

by Chinagorom Martin

gay-couple

Gradually you hit the big 30 and the question of marriage becomes inevitable. Your friends tell you how they have to work up an erection to fulfill conjugal responsibilities to the ladies they have spoused. You do not envy them. You do not blame them. This is Nigeria! 

When you’re gay in Nigeria,your whole life is one colossal creationary displacement. You should have been born in Europe or some place in America, not here. Maybe he had tossed you in Africa hoping you would land in South Africa but you look in the sky and it is “green-white-green”. You go to the mirror and a square-in-a-round-hole stares back at you. You’re an anomaly, your very existence is an abomination.

Growing up you realize you focused on your peers’ bulging crotches while they bantered about the new girls they were cutting eyes at. But God forbid you were checking them out. You were just admiring the zipper on their jeans, nothing more. Strong as you feel it, you couldn’t be one of those things they call homosexuals, those cursed, perverted, bedamned, anathemised and hell-sure lot. Everyone hates and condemns them so you couldn’t be a walking taboo, admiring guys’ butts. God just forbid!

For all you have heard about your forbidden feelings no one has been directly spotted to be the same as you and no one has checked in with you. You conclude you are alone and carry your ton weighing sexuality lips-sealed, it is a burden breaking your neck that you cannot put down nor mention. It is a live coal that burns in your mouth that you cannot spit out. Then you journey through a spell-casting novena and make many resolves, but six months later you are where you started. Gay!

The more you think about it the more you feel caged, lonely. You want to be in touch with what you feel, you want a sampling. But you find yourself with no canvass to paint out the emotions. Those like you keep to themselves and before long you take to porn, ignoring the females and ogling every bump of muscles, every fleck of hair on the stallions. That is the picture in your head when you go to the bathroom for water and soap and an addiction builds, slowly.

Soon you get your first kiss and you are relieved your feelings are twinned in some other guy. Then you hear of guys who have been kissing guys. Same folks who traded tales of heterosexual conquests? Ah. Really? In the next gathering you make your own imaginary boasts. Finally.

After the kiss you battle thoughts of eternal damnation and do more novenas, more self-abasement but give them up soon you realise they did not make you less gay. And then a whole new world emerges on social media. You realise you have been stuck in ages past after you had those epiphanic chats on Facebook: two guys commending your looks and asking for your cell phone number. But you cannot, should not have guys making gay advances through an account where brothers and sisters and relatives and colleagues are listed and information says Interested in Women. So you create a phoney Facebook account and name it something silly, something to draw in like-minded guys. You name it ‘Fine Gboy’ and use a provocative profile picture, a headless shot of your chiseled abdomen maybe. You block out all gay suggestive profiles on your main account and request friendship of same through the phoney account where everything guys happens and information says Interested in Men. And there you select friends like you are picking Adani rice . No effeminate-looking/acting dude. That’s an abomination within the sacrilege your life already is. It is like contacting hepatitis B after a HIV+ diagnosis. No students, too much drama. Just working-class, safe! On your fake Facebook you are introduced to gay websites. You sign up on both and plunge deeper into the cultic hide-and-seek game being gay in Nigeria is. Soon you are meeting guys located far and near, people like you, men seeking men, and you bless the Lord for internet. Social media comes and communication is more spot-on, guys are even closer; only you are horrified by those guys who have filled in gay or bisex as their sexuality on Badoo where they could have left the row blank. This is Nigeria!, you want to remind them.

Gradually you hit the big 30 and the question of marriage becomes inevitable. Your friends tell you how they have to work up an erection to fulfill conjugal responsibilities to the ladies they have spoused. You do not envy them. You do not blame them. This is Nigeria! Everyone gets married. Everyone must have a child. (Maybe you should marry a lesbian, you have seen some on some websites). And for a fugitive moment you consider fleeing to Europe. You discard the thought. But you pick it right up when one morning you wake up and on the TV hear the debate on the senate floor. Not long after, your sanctimonious senators anathematize everything gay and slam a 14-year legislative seal on it. They have no idea they’d just poured fuel into a raging fire of gay hate and signalled an era of terror for you and your kind. Heterosexuals invade your cabalistic social media luring your brothers and experimenting all sorts of evil on them. They are brutalised, raped, robbed, blackmailed, humiliated on the streets and in work places but they take it in good stride cause it is a lesser evil than the 14 years imprisonment against which they cannot make a fuss and which their antipathetic assailants quote for justification. You hear of those stoned in the North, and of those whom are forcefully exorcised. Quickly you deactivate your profile and are wary of even previously trusted gay acquaintances. You get irritable at the lie you see you have to live forever.

Nigeria, all 923,769 sq km of it, becomes a claustrophobic space, it closes in on you. Now frustrated by it all you hate even the air here and wish wings to carry you across the Atlantic. You make up your mind to leave. You decide Europe. Or maybe America.

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Chinagorom Martin Emeka is a graduate of philosophy from the Pontifical Urbaniana University Rome. He grew up in Onitsha Nigeria where he now lives. When he’s not reading he’s trying to dance or trying to write. He’s available on [email protected].

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

 

 

Comments (2)

  1. Fool. To be Gay is a sin. It’s just like being a thief and instead of trying to change, you try to justify it saying well, that’s who you are. It’s a lie. That’s know who you are. You are responsible for what you have become. The first step to success is by taking responsibility.

  2. Ugh as much as I enjoyed this story, it ended abruptly.. Sincerely, tthis is a typical story of an outcast in a persecuted world… It paints the kind of life being lived by outlaws… Its typical of the way early christains lived in europe, and Muslims did with the quraish.. Its soo true.. Msn is a natural subjugator, he rues.. And finds it difficult to accomodate anyone with a diffrent view of life.. But sincerely, I strongly feel this gay thing and legislation is a diversionary measure to appease the nigerian populace who are already boiling with the many stories of corruption in government.. Religion they say is an opium fed on by the people.. I think mr Jonathan is playing this game verywell.

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