LOVE . . . Or Something Like It (Entry 3)

January 20

A HETEROSEXUAL JEALOUSY

Dear Diary, so, my straight friend and I had a falling-out because of my boyfriend.

Yup!

Did I hear you say “What in the David and Jonathan is going on”? Well, calm down. I’m about to get into that gist.

Soon after I relocated to Lagos, I made a friend (who we’ll call Ben) from a movie set that I was part of. And following that acquaintanceship, I moved in with him and another friend (this one we’ll call Vino). Both Ben and Vino are heterosexual, and for a few months, the three of us lived together. Then Ben decided he wanted to move out of that place to someplace of his own. Vino wanted to find a new place too, and I would have been left out in the cold, seeing as I was still trying to make my way in Lagos – but then, Vino said I could stay with him. I was grateful for this, and invested my time and energy into helping him find what was going to be our new place.

By this time, Kai and I had started seeing each other. When Vino and I found a place, we moved in. however, like I said in my last entry, I was spending a lot of time with Kai. When I wasn’t at work, especially on weekends, I’d be at Kai’s place. On those weekends, I’d go to Kai’s straight from work on some Fridays and then return home to Vino’s after work on Monday.

This routine apparently didn’t sit well with Vino. He started complaining that the house was starting to feel like it was a halfway house for me as opposed to where I actually lived, that I only ever seemed to come home just to take a shower and change clothes. This was of course not true, and I didn’t understand why he’d be so resentful of my situation, because he had a girlfriend and I figured I was giving him room for privacy with his girlfriend, who loved to visit. Besides, it was his house, not our house. It shouldn’t be a problem for him that he was finding himself alone in his house, right?

Wrong.

Vino grew increasingly resentful of my absences, and I just didn’t know what I could do about it. I mean, I was spending the time with my boyfriend and it was a new relationship, and he knew this. I was out to him, and I couldn’t understand why he’d want me to favour him over my boyfriend.

One time, when we talked about this, in a “joking” tone, he said, “Even me that has a girlfriend, I don’t see her as often as you go to see your boyfriend.” And then, he added that I spend too much time with Kai.

LOL! This nerve sha! The audacity of this homophobia!

It got to a head when the nights came that Kai would call me up for us to go out. So, I would leave the house to go out on those dates with Kai, only to come home to a furious Vino, who’d go on to complain to a mutual friend of ours that I was going out late and gallivanting all over Lagos. To hear this mutual friend report back to me, you’d think I was some impressionable JJC who’d just come to Lagos and was now leading a fast-and-loose lifestyle all over the city of Lagos.

When all I was doing was spending time with my boyfriend!

I mean, jeez! If I wanted this kind of monitoring spirit, I’d move back to my father’s house!

Anyway, on one Friday, I was already at work when Vino texted me, saying that the lights were out in our neighborhood and in the next two weeks before the transformer would get fixed, he’d be staying at his friend’s place. The text read like he was already headed out to his friend’s.

I was more than a little annoyed by this. I had left the house for work that morning, and he hadn’t thought to tell me so I could pack some things to go stay at Kai’s place. I didn’t have a key to his house, so I was basically locked out with no heads-up. He didn’t even bother to enquire if I’d intended to spend that weekend at Kai’s or wonder if I’d have any place to stay for all of two weeks. This was a clear act of spite from him, and I was pissed off by the unfairness of it. Considering how close we were, this was very much undeserved. Yes, it was his house, but how could spending time with my boyfriend be the reason he’d want to “punish” me like this?

For two weeks, I stayed at Kai’s place, managing the few clothes I had there for work. I didn’t text Vino and he didn’t keep in touch. Two weeks passed, and then he texted, saying he was back. Without a word to him, I went back there, picked up some things and returned to Kai’s, where I spent another week without going back to Vino’s.

Toward the end of the week, Vino chatted me up, saying he needed us to talk. I went back to his place after work that day, and the talk we started having quickly turned into a fight. And then, during the heated exchange, he fumed, “You know what? You’re spending more time at this guy’s place than you do here. So, I feel like you should move out altogether.”

And that was it. Nothing else needed to be said.

I jejely packed the rest of my stuff and by the next day, I’d fully moved into Kai’s place. I wasn’t expecting to move into Kai’s place. I didn’t think I’d move into Kai’s house. But there we were, officially live-in lovers – because this heterosexual friend of mine couldn’t handle the fact that I had a boyfriend who I wanted to spend my time with.

When I got to Kai’s place that evening with my things, he helped me move my things from the vehicle into his place. We worked wordlessly for awhile because I was in a foul mood and he wanted to give me space to feel the things I was feeling. I was angry but I masked my emotions with a stony expression, not wanting to show that I had been affected by my friend’s betrayal.

Finally, we were settled inside and I sat there, moody, unsure what to feel, resentful of the circumstances that had brought me to this moment.

I could feel Kai’s gaze on me. He has a way of looking at you and seeing you. He looked at me and he said, “It’s okay. You can vent.”

I didn’t know what to say. So, he came over to me and hugged me, and he held me like that.

And that was it.

I broke down and cried. I cried profusely, letting all the frustrations and negativity out as Kai held me, his embrace letting me know that it was okay for me to be this vulnerable with him.

Vino and I went for months without talking to each other – about 6, 7 months – and then, his girlfriend stepped in to end the cold war. She got him to call me for us to talk. And that led to us patching things up. I would go on to introduce Kai to him, and things eventually became okay again.

Written by Kennedy