Dear Chinedu,
It’s funny, but I just realised I’m free from all your drama. No more whispering because your mother is around and dares not catch us in bed. No more placing female slippers outside the door so that your sisters would think you’re in with a woman. No more bro-ings and guy-ings at your dining table to reassure your family that we’re just course mates who became close friends.
I’m not jealous, let me assure you. I have a new boyfriend. Tall, dark, abs hot as hell, a deeper voice, a slight stammer, especially when he’s discussing his passions. That’s one thing I like about him: passion. He knows what he wants. He has his ideologies all straightened out, not like you who’s swayed every often by YouTube videos and TikTok. He’s affirmed that I’m the one he wants. Both publicly and privately. Do you know his friends call me Our Husband already? And no, they’re not all gay. And yes, I don’t need to hide my slippers when his father visits, or remove my boxers and towel from the bathroom.
I haven’t changed, right? I can’t stop going on and on about myself, I’m sorry. So how’s marriage treating you? Her name is Amuche, right? She’s from the village, so I suppose she’ll be to you a good wife. At least she’ll make the whole thing easy for you. She’ll make Ofe Nsala the way your favourite restaurants at Uwani can never try. She’ll dedicate the rest of her life to having your babies, breastfeeding them, preparing them for school, playing queen-mother to their spouses, pretending to be unruffled in about forty years’ time when her grandchildren call her a witch.
Do you remember how you scolded your younger sister for not getting a job before rushing into marriage? So, Ijeoma, after all our discussions, you want to end up a housewife? I’m so disappointed in you. If the man turns you into a rag and starts using you to wipe his nyash, don’t call me o. Later, if you’ll also remember, you told me, I’m not worried about the twins. Adanna has her own shop already, at least, and Adanne is learning tailoring. I’m sure they’ll become independent women in their respective husbands’ houses if at all they decide to marry. But, Ijeoma, Ijeoma of all people!
You remember my grandfather, right? Here’s what he used to tell us: Don’t mock a blind man until you’ve lived your life. Because it’s difficult for you to understand certain rhetorics, I’ll spell it out: You rebuked your sister for getting married jobless, but guess whom you’re married to? A girl from the village, who barely made it through secondary school.
Anyway, she can always attain education, even in her fifties. Her primary function of hatching children for your lonely mother can wait until she bags a B.Sc., can’t it?
I guess you’re on honeymoon now. Seychelles, right? Adanna told me. She messaged me on Facebook. Why didn’t you attend your best friend’s wedding, she asked. Or did you people quarrel? Guess what my reply would have been if I was angry that you left me? Adanna dear, your brother isn’t my best friend; he was my lover; he used to kiss me the way he kissed you people’s Amuche at the reception today. But ours was much different: while that with Amuche was staged, ours was sincere. He never closed his eyes when he kissed me.
But I replied her: I was there. I didn’t just show myself.
My mother was looking for you. Adanne even tried to call you when the MC invited friends of the groom to the dance floor. Your number was switched off.
I told her I was having a headache, plus I didn’t have the time to take my material to the tailor’s, and I had to go now because I was driving, and she said, I’m sure you guys are quarrelling. Even Adanne who doesn’t notice things knows. When he returns from Seychelles, we’ll table it.
Cool, I said. Goodnight.
Don’t worry, Chinedu. Even though you scattered my heart, I’ll never out you. You’re a good man at heart and I wish you all the best in your matrimonial life. At least you’ll have kids which I can’t give you. All the suspicion around you will finally wear away. Amuche is a naive woman (I mean it in a good way); she wouldn’t say a word even if you brought a boy home. What perfect compromise, yes?
I hope you attended marriage counselling though. They must have explained the disadvantages, right? But then, these pastors with their gospel tendencies, they will always sugar-coat it, telling you only prayers can make your marriage work, and so, as someone who genuinely cares about you, I have decided to offer you some food for thought:
- How long do you think you can fake sexual satisfaction with a woman?
- I thought we once agreed not to have children? How do you cope when the babies start coming?
- Before the children come, how will you cope with Amuche’s bumps? Remember pregnant women make you squirm?
- Should Amuche find out (yes I know you’re discreet, but things happen, you know?), what will you do?
- Despite how crude Amuche might be, do you think there’s any woman out there who doesn’t know how a man should feel inside her?
- You know you can be selfish with your time. I don’t know if that has changed, but if it hasn’t, how do you divide it evenly between your family and yourself?
- Have you forgotten how much you hate in-laws? I have some of your texts on my phone:
i. Obinna, see how Ijeoma’s father-in-law is controlling my mother. Is it because she has no husband anymore? Should I, like, tell him off?
ii. Just negodu this anuofia who calls himself my new brother-in-law asking me if Adanna has a boyfriend! What do you think I should tell him? Like I don’t want to sound outright offensive, just a brilliant innuendo. Text me NOW and stop laughing with them!
iii. Do you think, as the eldest man of the house, I can adjourn this meeting? All this in-law shit is making my skin crawl!
iv. Thank God my uncle will oversee the wedding. I can’t stand all this family-merger cockshit!
You know you can be a big baby. Remember all the times we spent together? Even though I’m way younger than you, but I was your emotional pillow. Obinna, can you imagine what my mother said to me today? Obinna, are you home? Obinna, I want to cry in your arms. Obinna, I am in catastrophic need of a hug. Obinna, do you think I’m antisocial? Obinna, can you call me now? I know, I know: you don’t have airtime. I’ll send you 1k now. I just want you to call me, not that I can’t simply call. I want to check my call log later and feel loved because you actually called me.
I hope you know you’ve lost those privileges. You’re married. I’m in a new relationship. Anyway, I’m sure Amuche can handle it. I know how you plan extensively before entering into a relationship with anyone (our dating contract is still pasted in my wardrobe, but don’t worry, my boyfriend doesn’t think anything to it so I’ll take it off tomorrow), and I’m sure you must have drawn contracts with Amuche. I’m sure you highlighted the Emotional Responsibilities section in red ink. Oh, wait, can she read fluently? I bet she can. No matter how far society has pushed you, I’m sure it can’t make you marry a bare literate. It’s Chinedu we’re talking about here—Chinedu with the class and swag, the Triple-E: Erudite Emeritus of Enugu.
It will be a big shame, though, if she can’t read, because now, there won’t be anyone with whom you may want to share the weird words you coin. Remember the last one you coined—was it quesearal or cuarseral—that night in Ogui, and there was this lady with an electric-bulb nose who sneered at us and we hooted and asked if this was her mother’s shitroom? Remember how we both invented that word that night, shitroom, only to discover with disappointment that it had been in use before our parents were born?
If I didn’t meet my new boyfriend, I would have written here that we were magic, you and I, but you get the idea: before you meet someone that blows your mind, you think you can’t have anything better than what you’re having at the moment. But still, Chinedu, I can’t deny that we had our moments. The stupid songs we wrote and performed in front of each other, using my Tura tube as a microphone. The forbidden places we braved. The feet we dared to step on. The enemies we made with our full chests.
My boyfriend says he’d rather die than marry a woman. He thinks it’s cruel, the idea of marrying a woman you cannot disclose your sexuality to; unless you can stay off boys completely, he thinks it’s cheating. His family doesn’t ask him stupid questions about marriage because he doesn’t cower like a scared kitten before them. One time, when his father introduced him to a girl, he told the poor man that he also had desperate female friends looking for widowers to marry. See the clapback? That’s one thing I like about him: he has my type of pra-pra-pra tongue, not the flaccid one tucked between the teeth. Look, Chinny, ensure Amuche has a fiery tongue too, because if she’s as cold as you are, the world will ride the two of you until you’re both flattened to the ground like cardboards.
I can’t deny Amuche is so beautiful. I’ve seen her photos on Adanna’s Facebook. The ones where she makes the poses she must have gathered from the village: hand on waist, tongue out, left leg out. The ones she takes with you, a refined woman in an A-frame wedding dress, clutching her bouquet like an inheritance, displaying a blurry smile through her meshed veil. I saw how she leaned towards you, how you were looking at her and not laughing, how slightly red your eyes were. I look at the two of you and shake my head: you don’t deserve her; she’s too beautiful for you; she’s way kinder than you—of course I’ve not met her, but I can bet she’ll never leave a relationship the way you left ours.
Upon all her beauty and kindness, you’ll still cheat on her. She’ll be waiting for you on those cold nights, shaking her left leg, counting the strokes of the clock, standing up and pacing the room and sitting down again and begging MTN to please stop telling her your numbers aren’t reachable, and you will be busy in a hotel room of ornate chandeliers, sucking a boy’s lips, tracing his veins, nibbling his ear, caressing his beard, pinching his nipple, sliding your creamed fingers into his butthole, and watching the muscles of his face crinkle when you finally ease in, and his cry, small and raspy, will disappear underneath the wailing voice of Shaun Farrugia: dear God, make her stay.
You’ll do this to her over and over again, and you’ll return home in the morning, smelling faintly of the boy’s perfumed sweat, floppy and tired, and instead of holding her, kissing her, asking if she slept well, cooking up a decent excuse, you’ll immediately go to the bedroom and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. You’re that stonehearted, Chinedu, because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t have done to me what you did. Your family had found you a woman three months before you broke down in my apartment, waving the IV card. You didn’t know this, but your mother told me beforehand. The girl is from Umunede, she said. Nedu is too sad. I’m sure he’ll be happier if he gets married. And you, shesaid, touching my shoulder, after his wedding is over, we’ll start hunting for yours.
Ah, Mummi, I said, I have girlfriend o.
Ngwanu, mechi onu gi! Who’s playing with you? I’ll start talking to your mother now sef. You only sons, I don’t know what gets into your heads sometimes.
Chinedu, I waited for good three months for you to tell me. You were losing weight. You were losing appetite. You were losing interest in books and baseball and bubble gums. Chinny, what’s it? Nothing dear, just work. Chinny, are you sure you don’t want to talk to me about anything? Oh, you want to listen to the boring details of my job now, okwia husband material? Chinny, do you need, like, a therapist? Obinna, what have you been smoking? Chinny, na you sabi; just know I’ll support you through anything. I’m not suicidal biko; rapu m!
Not until three days to the wedding did you bring the IV to my house and go on your knees, saying, I know you’ll get mad. Do whatever you want to me.
Do you remember all the bullets I took for you? Remember that time at UNN when they were calling you homo? Remember how I intervened? Remember how you took to your heels while those boys pounced on me? Remember I only shrugged when you came to my apartment later with stupid flowers that had I’M SORRY cards clipped to them? Remember when your mother found those stuff on your computer? You couldn’t say anything, couldn’t defend yourself, although she’d have believed anything you said because she never wanted to come to terms with your homosexuality even though, like a mother always does, she must have figured out. Remember how I saved your ass, told her it was I who downloaded the stuff, that I was planning to open a men’s underwear store?
What if I didn’t find a boyfriend almost immediately? Do you have an idea what irreparable emotional damage you’d have done? But I found him, and he saved me from myself, because, when you left, your sobs drowning your footsteps, I lost myself. I set all the photos we took together ablaze. I returned to Grindr and tried to see reasons with guys who wanted hookups and nothing more. I wanted someone to show me I was still hot, still desirable. I wanted someone’s mouth to water at the sight of my body. I wanted someone to hold my dick in their hand and compare it to the perfect curve of a banana, marvelling at how insanely red the cap is against the crude blackness of the shaft. So I went on a hookup with a guy who wasn’t that sex-crazy. We spent the night playing chess, him beating me serially, laughing so hard, so wildly, as though we’d known each other since childhood. Three visits later, we were boyfriends. But, if I’m going to be sincere this once, Chinedu, I’m still hurting from what you did to me, and especially how you did it—the suddenness, the way you fell to your knees and sobbed, trying to play the victim card, the way you said, Look at me, Obinna, we can still be together, look at me, please look at me, as though you’d forgotten that was what we’d sworn never to do: cheating, reinforcing the narrative among straight people that gays were unfaithful.
But my boyfriend makes it easier to deal with. He says I’m much more than the hot abs, the sleek dick, the milky voice, the pink pecs. He says he’s fascinated by how my brain works. He says he doesn’t just want to have sex with me; he wants to make sex with me, he wants to make history with me, find the lost city of Atlantis on my body, rebuild Pompeii from the ruins of my broken heart, find Eden and its tree of the forbidden fruit in the cool of my breath against his neck. He says he’ll spend the rest of his life helping me to heal.
I saw your mother today. At that new supermarket at Ziks.. She hugged me and asked why I’d gone MIA. Don’t mind Adanna, she said when I gave her a surprise look, she’s the one teaching me all these things: LOL, MIA, ASAP, BTW. This one that Chinedu is married, hope you haven’t forgotten us like this?
I have to ask, Chinedu: is your family missing me already? First, it was Adanna. Then, even Adanne called me one day just to check on me. Adanne that didn’t have my number o. Adanne that used to give me shoulder whenever I came around o. What’s changed? Is Amuche giving you problems already? Of course not. She’s too innocent to give you headache. Apart from the fact that she was shipped from the village, she was bribed with money. O di egwu, people are paying bribes to get jobs, to transport cocaine past police checkpoints, you’re bribing a village girl to be your make-believe wife.
You know, though, that her desires can’t be bribed. As you gradually withdraw from her, she’ll look elsewhere. Your gateman is in trouble. Remember we both agreed he was a cute-ass guy? That space teeth? That oblong face? Remember we’d speculated that, giving his build and veined arms, he had a BBC? Remember how we’d agreed that his shyness made him even more desirable, how we’d got so drunk we planned (but failed to execute) a threesome? Guess what. Those qualities of his are what any woman, whether from the village or city, desires in a man.
But you, Chinedu, what do you desire in a woman? Do you remember how you used to wonder what straight people really saw in women? I told you it was sexist, and you said you weren’t shaming them or anything. That night, we had our first fight. You said the world had become too sensitive, but you didn’t stop there, you added that men were becoming girldicks. That led to the fight, the fact that you claimed to be feminist only when an argument was in your favour. Do you remember how you later made me ginger tea and licked the emerging hair on my left thigh? Of course, you do. Amuche isn’t like my boyfriend whose presence could make you forget things so easily.
But really, I’m curious. How do you learn to have sex with her? Well, you can actually arrange for someone to be doing it for you. Remember the story your mother once told us? About an impotent man who asked his friend to be sleeping with his wife for him? You remember how the story ended, right? If yours should end the same way, and you revert to being the big baby that you used to be, who will you run to? Amuche, who would have been on her way back to her village? Ijeoma, who’s now a Mummy GO in her husband’s church? Your twin sisters, who must have blocked you online?
Or is it me? Me, who has a boyfriend?
I have to go now, Chinny. I can hear my boyfriend at the door. I can smell something heady too. Rose, maybe. That’s how romantic he can be, bringing me flowers and sometimes silly things like red stones and quills. I have to go before he comes to see what I’m writing. He’s suggested I cut off contact with you. And really, why haven’t I? Because, maybe I think you’ll come back to me? Because, when Amuche starts the trouble and you take your grievances to WhatsApp Status (that’s what you always do, coming to wail on WhatsApp like the baby you are), I’ll be there for it?
No, no, no. It’s because I want you to watch how beautiful my life will become. View my WhatsApp Status, for a start. I post my boyfriend and I, kissing, resting on each other’s chest. I didn’t block a single person to do that. I now talk about gay stuff without the euphemisms you taught me. By God’s grace, my boyfriend and I will get married. Right under your nose. I’ll send you an IV. I’ll pay for your flight to London. You’ll see. You’ll understand, finally, that the worse decision you’ve ever made was leaving me.
But I won’t be that guy anymore, whose face is laid against the window, his breath steaming up the glass, waiting for your return.
Ola W. Halim lives in Edo State, where he teaches and writes fiction and reflections. His work has been shortlisted for the Gerald Kraak Prize, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and the Kendeka Prize for African Literature. He is also a finalist for the TFCN Teacher’s Prize for Literature 2019. Twice nominated for the Caine Prize, he is a 2022 fellow of the Literary Laddership for Emerging African Authors. Halim’s work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Lolwe, Iskanchi, adda, Isele, The Forge, and the Gerald Kraak 2022 Anthology.