Love and sex in the city

Episode 6

Love in the city episode 6

It’d been two days since that disastrous evening (well, for me), two days since I last interacted with Bryson and Paschal. I refused to pick Paschal’s calls, and, it was only by the grace of God that I’d not already deleted him from my BBM contact list. But with the rate at which he was going with all the pings he’d been sending my way, despite my steadfast unresponsiveness, my patience was starting to wear thin.

But Paschal wasn’t on my mind at all this early Friday morning as I trekked the short distance from the bus stop to my workplace. It was very early, a few minutes past 6am. I’d left my house earlier than usual because I couldn’t bear to be around all the anxiety and long faces that filled the place.

Last night, the news broke of yet another terrorist attack in Kaduna. Gunmen believed to be affiliated with Boko Haram attacked a church in a community, gunning down nearly everyone who’d been in attendance of the evening service. All night, the blogosphere had been alive with reports of the act of terrorism, and all night, my family had fretted, my mother especially, because one of her brothers, Uncle Joshua, lived in that district. The woman had barely gotten enough sleep, preferring instead to burn up the phone lines as she desperately sought for information about my uncle’s welfare from her relatives who lived in the same area with him. His number had been unavailable ever since the news broke, so my mother worried everyone else. And the fact that no one had any report to give as to the whereabouts of my uncle proved to be even more disconcerting.

“This cannot be good, ehn – this cannot be good at all,” she mumbled as she hung up from an umpteenth call, as we sat in the living room, watching AIT’s account of the terrorist attack.

“Mummy, stop worrying,” Tonia soothed, placing a hand on her shoulder. “At least, there’s no confirmation that he’s dead –”

“And that is supposed to console me?” Mum snapped. “Eh? No news is equivalent to bad news, or don’t you know? Heu! Chineke m biko (Oh Lord)!” And she turned to her phone and proceeded to dial another number.

I shared my mother’s anxiety. I love Uncle Joshua, and our relationship was made even more special by the fact that he is the only one in my family who knows about my sexuality. Well, I mean, perhaps they all in my immediate family know or suspect something (it’d be foolish to presume that in all the twenty-seven years of me growing with these people, that they’d all be in the dark); but Uncle Joshua is the only one who has had the evidence of my sexuality bared before him. It was last year; he visited Lagos, stayed at our place. It’d been an exhausting night journey for him, and after the preliminary acknowledgements of his visit, he turned in for the night – er, morning – in the guest room. That day, I was on leave from work; everyone else went out for the day’s businesses, and feeling frisky, I invited one of my runs over for a booty call. Uncle Joshua, still groggy from sleep, walked in on us as we were locked in a passionate make-out session in my bedroom.

That was the day I wished I could die on the spot.

That was also the day I got to know understanding like no other.

After my runs made a harried and embarrassed departure from the house, Uncle Joshua called me into the guest room, and heard me out. He prodded gently, and I soon found myself unburdening my soul to him. I told him everything. About the first boy I kissed. About the repulsion I felt for the girl in secondary school who placed my hand on her left breast and told me to have her. About the turmoil I’d suffered. About the guilt I’d borne. About the private tears I’d shed. By the time I was done, I felt like a weight was lifted from me. I realized then how terribly alone I’d always been.

Then he pinned me with a frank stare and said, “As long as deep within you, you love who you are, who you are becoming, as long as you have no regrets from loving whoever you want to love or being whoever you want to be, then you have my approval. Someday, you’ll have to tell Ada nnem, and your father, and umunne gi, of this. When that day comes” – and he reached out a hand to grasp mine with avuncular affection – “if you need me to stand by you, I will.”