Recently, I have been engulfed by this overwhelming urge to write something. Something brazenly daring and yet necessary. The urge has steadily grown and fanned into an almost all-consuming inner fire threatening to scorch me, if I fail to put out what is in my heart.
You see, this urge didn’t just come though. It had been with me ever since I can remember. However, I had ruthlessly submerged it. It wouldn’t do me any good for people; others, to see or know me for who I really am (or what I am not for that matter). They most likely will turn away in disgust when next they see me. Or worse, they will pretend like they didn’t know, while their eyes will betray the knowledge that resides behind them. That will kill me. It will, or send me quickly to the asylum.
Those were not prospects I cherished; so, I stamped down on that urge.
But, things have changed. I need to step out. I want to step out from behind the closet. The urge will no longer remain dormant. Hell, I have not had any peace since that discussion I had with a female friend (names withheld). Female friend in question had been a private candidate for some schooling (shoot me if you think you are the one, or not).
Before I step out though, let me warn you. Whatever you read are purely what I wrote, if you proceed to misconstrue it as a memoir, that is your fucking business.
Secondly, all characters mentioned or alluded to are real; albeit, fictionalized. Don’t get on the high horse with me or condescend after reading this. Let’s just shake hands and still be friends, if you really think you were the fictionalized character.
Fine?
Good.
And if not fine with you others, go jump in the sea. I got something to say; and behind this closet is becoming too small and musty for my continued stay.
I had gotten into this BBM discussion with the ‘very good, female friend ‘ – I have got many. The discourse had centered around people and what they got in their “closets”.
Anyways, the discourse petered out innocuously. My mind though wouldn’t rest over the subject matter.
Try as hard as I did, it kept oscillating back to that word – Closet.
Funny contraption, that closet. A repository for all kinds of odds and ends- dirty boxers, smelly pants, shoes, socks, belts, erotic comic books, diaries (that will spell some people’s death sentence if read by other eyes other than theirs), dildos, vibrators of all kinds (anal vibrators, g-spot vibrators, rabbit vibrators – that one, hmmm; nipple clamps, butt plugs), condoms. The list is endless.
Well, the closet is an interesting piece of furniture. Almost like Dr. Who’s teleporter box. I have heard some people have skeletons in theirs. So, you can also say it is a coffin of some sort. Hiding away the old bones of long forgotten (or in most cases things people wish to forget) escapades.
So, as I see we are in agreement up to this stage; since you are still reading. Then we are fine.
Now that we have got that out of the way, let me come out.
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I am bi-sexual.
Yes, I like to have it both ways. Shocked? Don’t be. After all, it is nothing new under your sun, is it?
Or is it?
Well, I am what I am. I wasn’t born like this. Someone made me into what I am. Someone, whom if he hadn’t come into my life at the very early stage of it, might probably not have had so much influence in shaping my future sexual life.
He is my cousin. A number of years older than I am. He lived with us for some years before his wayward ways and sticky fingers earned him a ticket out the front door.
But by that time, the deed had been done.
Several times.
I was seven or eight when it started. Really started that is. There had been incidences before this time though, he will fond my penis when he bathed me. All the while joking and poking fun at their size. You see, my phallus was large (at least back then for a boy of my age). As a young boy of four, I never thought anything about it. It was all play and fun.
However, that Tuesday morning it no longer became play. Rather, it became a play Thing. I was home all alone with him, school being on break and my parents having gone to work.
We were sitting in the sitting room, watching a movie. I can’t remember the title. But, it was really boring.
“Uncle Segun, change this movie joor. It is not sweet,” I had chirped in my querulous little voice. “This one is making me sleep o. Let us watch Voltron now.” I got up and went to stand before the TV.
“You don’t want to watch this one again?” He asked in an exasperated voice. He glanced at the scattered collection of video cassettes on the rugged floor.
“You picked it yourself o. Remember?” He teased.
“Yes, I remember. But it is no longer sweet,”
“Oya, pick another one. The fourth you will pick and none we have finished,” he snorted.
“No joor, I don’t know which one to pick again.”
“Then, go and sleep.” He made to get up from the couch and to head to his room. I couldn’t let him do that. I have to stop him.
“Noooooo,” I jumped on him. “Don’t off the TV o. Select one and let’s watch now.” I begged and cajoled and even feigned tears.
“Okay, I will bring one movie for us to watch now. But promise me something,” he was looking at me in an odd way. I was excited that we would watch an interesting movie after all.
“Okay.” I chimed
“Promise me you will watch till the end; that you will not tell mummy or daddy what you saw; and you will do everything I say.” He was making counting gestures with his fingers as he reeled out his conditions for us to watch his movie.
“I promise.” I replied with a tinge of excitement evident in my voice.
“Alright. Get down, let me go and bring the cassette.” I climbed down from his lap and he got up and went to his room. A few minutes later, he came out cradling a video cassette in the crook of his arms.
He slotted the the new cassette into the Philips VCR, after removing the one we were watching earlier. Then flipped off the light switches, after which he went and latched the front door.
All the while, I was following each stage of his action with rapt attention and a heightened sense of excitement. The movie must very interesting for Uncle Segun not to want anyone to disturb us. That can only be the explanation for all the privacy.
As the color bar on the movie dissolved, the first sight that confronted me was of a woman who was dipping something that looked like a spoon into her penis!
Well, that was what it looked like to me then. See, I didn’t or hadn’t known anything about the female sexual anatomy. Later on though, I will learn that the woman in the movie had been titillating her vagina with a vibrator.
I was engrossed in the action before me, the rhythmic motions made by the bodies on the screen – male bodies on male bodies; female bodies on female bodies, doing all sorts of things to themselves. Some of the things uncle Segun used to do with my thingy in the bathroom. There were many more parts where the spoons (all types of spoons) were used to poke the women’s thingies.
The scenes were so captivating that I didn’t realize when Uncle Segun moved from the armchair where he had seated to the couch. I only became aware something was wrong when I felt a hand feeling for my thingy.
This time though it was different for me. I had been initiated to a world I never knew existed. I had been infused with carnal knowledge; and the human body never forgets such knowledge – even in an eight year old boy.
I felt a sudden rush to my thingy, my head also seemed to be swelling.
“Uncle Segun,” I whispered.
“Yes.” It was more a statement than a question. But, his voice was different. It was like he had water in his throat.
“Remember your promise?” He asked. His hands traveling deeper into my pants, stroking my thingy like he has always done. Short, fast strokes. This time, I could feel some sensation down there. Like water was pumping down to it or something.
“I want you to stand up and kneel in front of me,” Uncle Segun said. He pulled me up when he sensed my reluctance. As young as I was, after having watched the movie, I was aware enough to know something might be wrong with what was about to happen.
Still, I was excited. Excited because I had felt something I had never felt before. It was like all my body had water running through it; like a tap or pipe, the type in our kitchen.
Uncle Segun dragged me from the couch and forced me on my knees. He pressed my face forward and I sensed, even before I felt, the heat. It was manic; like when you smell akamu. He kept pushing my face forward and then I felt the rock solidity of his manhood against my lips, pushing and forcing it’s way through and into my mouth.
“Suck!” Uncle Segun ordered in a guttural voice.
I had sucked. Hell, I sucked and sucked. He instructed me all morning.
“Faster,”; “open your teeth'” ; “yes, spit. Use your spit, it makes it easier,”; “rub it slowly, then jerk faster. Do you understand?; I had learned. And it had felt strange (afterwards) how my initial reluctance had faded away. Replaced by the exhilarating feeling a small boy can only have when he pleasures an elder enough for them to say, “Yes!” several times.
From then on, I was led down a road that kept on opening other vistas.
Some few months after, and several episodes of sucking and anal sex after, Uncle Segun was angrily sent packing from our home by my dad. The argument had been over some missing foreign currencies.
The weeks after that were horrible. I took solace in the one gift he left me – The video cassette, and the relieve my hands can buy for me. It was not much, I was not much back then even, but it was enough.
I wouldn’t, couldn’t go anywhere else to satisfy my sexual urge that had being stunted by the absence of Uncle Segun. Even as young as I was, I realized that I could In time keep my secret relatively safe; I learned to keep very much to myself. I led as normal a life as I could.
Then one December, nine years after Uncle Segun had been sent packing, Chinyere was introduced into our home.
Chinyere, light and flawless skinned was a sales assistant with a restaurateur down the street. We had met largely by chance; we collided by our house gate one evening. She was heading in to fetch water, the water corporation workers had for the second time in four months gone on strike and because we had a bore-hole, people will come to our house to fetch water.
I had never met her before then. I was dumbstruck by what I saw before me.
The fairness of her skin, almost the same texture as that of an alabaster cast. The full lashes drooping over her lowered eye-lids, the slim but well curved body, the well-rounded breasts.
It was a breath-taking sight.
“Sorry, I no look.” She mumbled her apologies.
Her eyes were still cast down. I made space for her and she squeezed past me through the barely large enough human gate.
I had met an angel.
Soon, we became good friends. I had just finished my WAEC and so usually at home, alone. Every time she could, she would sneak down to my house and we would talk. We talked almost about everything. She told me about her family – her three brothers and two sisters, about their precarious state financially and why she came to be working with her aunt at the restaurant, about her life and how miserable it is, about how she hated the work and the men who come and throw sly glances at her. She did most of the talking, while I mostly did the listening. I was like a sponge soaking up all of her pain. Trying to draw the sting out of the misery-barbs life had thrown at her.
Luckily not long after we met, the owner of the restaurant where she worked moved it to the building next to ours. It was like fate was drawing us together. Bringing us closer; closing the gap between us and erasing the spatial vacuum that tended to have kept us apart, physically.
I knew I liked her. But, I had committed myself to another way of life. My likeness for her cannot progress beyond that.I was convinced in my heart about that.
That was until that fateful afternoon when she sneaked to my place on the pretext of going to the market to get food stuffs.
“How body?” She greeted in her usual cheerful manner. She was wearing a green slip top, over a black barely-above-the-knee skirt and a green cap with the inscription Lock Down on it to match.
“Body dey joor. Na hunger dey worry me so,” I replied. Trying to match her cheerfulness; she had come in while I was almost at the point of climaxing from my own personal attention to my sexual needs. “How are you? You look good. That cap is very nice too.” I smiled and moved to the kitchen to get her a drink.
“Ahn ahn! You should have come and told me now. I would have brought you something to eat. Okay, wetin you get for house? Let me cook for you sharp sharp before I begin go market.”
I was taken by surprise. It was the first time she would offer to either bring me food or cook for that matter.
“Nothing to cook o. As in, nothing you fit cook sharp sharp,” I responded. “Unless I go buy noodles o.”
“Okay. Go and buy. I will cook for you. Quick.”
I went out to get the noodles. On my way, I couldn’t help but wonder why Chinyere was being nice to me. We were friends, but I sense she was expecting something more from me. She was being chased all over by boys on my street. But, she didn’t seem to have any eye for those boys. Most of her free time was spent with me in our sitting room gisting and playing cards, video games or sleeping.
Now, she had just moved beyond the sitting room into the kitchen. How long before she expects she can move into my bedroom? To my bed? I have to find a way to discourage this before it gets put of hand.
I noticed the cloud was gathering fast on my way back from the store where I had gone to guy the noodles. It was looking like it will rain. I quickened my pace. Chinyere has to be at the market.
“Chinyere, you may have to go quickly,” I said to her as soon as I returned. I held on to the nylon bag. Giving it to her is inviting her to stay longer.
“Why?” She looked back at me quizzically.
“It is about to rain. The clouds are gathering and if you don’t leave now, you might not get to the market and back in time before it starts.”
“Then give me the noodles.” She grabbed the bag from me before I could keep it out of her reach. “If I start now, I can finish faster.”
She proceeded to the kitchen and in less than ten minutes, the noodles was ready.
But, the rain didn’t wait ten minutes before it began to fall – Hard and fast.
“See? I warned you;” I mocked her while I shoveled spoons of noodles into my mouth. It was spicier than I ever had it, but it was delicious.
“Hmmmmm, this noodles sweet.”
“Thank you. I dey cook for canteen and for seven people for house. I no get choice.” She tried to play down her culinary skills, all the while looking pensive as her eyes darted now and again to the open back windows.
“Dis rain ooooh. Biko stop now.” She has a way of lapsing into Igbo when agitated.
“Come and join me joor. The rain no dey stop at least for another hour.”
“Don’t say dat one o. Biko…” she made to get up and leave.
“E go stop soon; no vex shey you hear?”
She sat back down. “The rain should just stop. I don spend time for here wey I no get” She looked genuinely worried now.
“Don’t worry. It will stop when it will. Nothing anybody can do about it.” I mumbled with my mouth full with food. “Just come and join me. Enjoy the rain and the freedom it gives you while it lasts.”
“Dat freedom go earn me punishment o. It may be auntie will deduct my money again or refuse me food or….”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be joor.” She removed her cap, revealing the hair beneath. I always loved that hair. The lushness and rich blackness of her full hair is captivating.
She sat down beside me and I fed her.
In that singular act, something melted between us. It was like the barrier I had unconsciously built around me against her just fell away. I fed her the rest of the food and she packed the plate and cup. When she stood up to leave for the kitchen, I studied her again. The buttocks jiggled rhythmically, like two dancers jiggling in conspiratorial concert to a song. I could see her straight back and the patch of bare skin where the slip top had been strapped at the back to her neck. She is breathtaking. But, I am not sure I can feel for her the way I will feel for another, a guy. Another uncle Segun.
In a short while, she returned and sat beside me again. It was like the most natural thing for her to do. By this time, countless thoughts were running through my mind and my heart was racing a beat. I felt strange. Uncontrollably strange.
“You know it is funny how you have not told me much about yourself,” her voice yanked me back from my reverie. I looked blankly at her. My focus blurred, my eyes stuck way deep into the cleavage that was presented so close to me. It was still raining outside.
“Ermm, there is really nothing much to say. You see me almost everyday. I hardly go out and all that. So, you know me. In ways that most don’t.” I replied. I flashed her a smile in hope that it will stem the tide of other questions I sense might follow.
“No. I don’t know you. The fact you don’t go out is even more reason I asked. You no dey play with the boys for this street. Or the next street sef. Na once in a while I dey see your friends come your house. And you don’t have any girlfriend sef. Dat one I know well well.”
“I have female friends.”
“Yes, I know. But, no girlfriends.” She insisted. “Anything the matter with you?”
I flushed at the question. My head hurt. I couldn’t see her well.
She snuggled closer to me, “Abi you no like me?”
I felt a rush in my loins, very similar to the one I felt so many years ago. Again, different from what I experienced that time.
De javu!
It was hard to control the swelling in my jeans.
“Ah, nothing do you after all.” She was smiling mischievously.
“Chinyere,” I choked on the words I was about to spout. So, I tried again “Chinyere, there is nothing wrong with me. I just don’t want to get into trouble.” I lied.
She looked keenly into my eyes, then made to move away. Of their own volition, my hands stretched out and held her. She fell into my arms and rested her head on my chest. I could feel her heartbeat as it thumped against my chest.
“I like you. But….”
“Don’t say it, please.” She interrupted me.
Without hesitation our mouths fell against each other. Hungrily at first, then we relaxed after the initial tension had subsided. We kissed, searching into each others inner soul with our tongues. Reaching and darting out of unknown crannies, exploring the depths of our locked up emotions.
After an eternity, I gently pushed her away.
“Chinyere, we shouldn’t.” I could barely hear myself. This must be how Uncle Segun felt; Like water was in my throat.
She just sat against me and didn’t say anything. For a while we sat like that, listening to each others’ heartbeat. Then she started tracing her fingers across my chest, kneading it intermittently. I couldn’t push her away again, I didn’t want to. But, she was driving me crazy. Her finger was sending tingling sensations down my spine. I felt like I would burst at any moment.
Somewhere in the course of time, my many years of watching the video cassette kicked in and I instinctively reached for the underside of her breasts. I heard her sharp intake of breath at my touch. I worked my hands gently, rubbing clockwise and anti-clockwise with intermittent pinching of her nipples through the slip top.
I could feel the heat welling up and threatening to engulf us. She was moaning softly now. Her body squirming at my touch; our lips were glued for several seconds. It felt like an eternity. Somewhere in my deepest subconscious I could still hear the patter of the rain outside.
With one swift motion I unclasped the knot at the back of her neck, the slip top dropped to her waist revealing two cups of pink bra. That, she removed herself and her breasts popped out from their prison like tigers let loose into the coliseum.
I bent down and put my lips to those two mammalian gland offerings.
I worshiped.
Most of what I did to her, I improvised. But from the way she squirmed and moaned I knew I was doing something right. It only fueled my desire to do more. After all, I have had a lot of learning.
I traced the outline of her outer nipple, later learned it is called the areola, with my tongue. I circled both nipples slowly, feeling their tautness against my cheek; and then I gently nibbled at the nipples making sure they were as hard as small pebbles.
There was a sharp recoil from beneath me. Gently, slowly I continued downwards; worshiping every inch of her skin. I was past the navel and reaching the edges of her skirt when I felt the first signs of resistance from her.
“Please, do it now. Enough. I have had enough.” I could hear her, but my brain didn’t process what I heard.
I pulled off her skirt, and removed the pink panties she was wearing. I could feel her hands unbuckling my belt, unzipping my fly, reaching for me.
“Be quick please….” She moaned.
I shifted, getting my phallus out of reach and bent down on my knees.
I made to bury my tongue into her vagina but her hands pushed my head away.
“No joor. Not like that. Get up here, olodo.”
“This is better, Chi. Way better.” I was vaguely aware that I had called her Chi. Why have I called her that? I decide to bother about that later.
Once again, I tried for her vagina and this time I countered the obstructing hand and placed my tongue on the outer edges of the vagina. I was now automatically following the manual from the video cassette.
I licked the vagina like it was the sweetest ice cream I ever tasted.
From the viciousness of the trashing above me, I was convinced I did a thorough job. The tangy-acidic taste of her in my mouth was further prove.
I felt her go limp and relaxed. Her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. I got up, zipped my fly and sat beside her.
“Thank you.” She smiled at her me. In that smile was promises of better days ahead.
But, I didn’t feel happy. In the recesses of my emotions was still the feeling that something was missing.
Something still didn’t add up.
That is a tale for another day.
