A MOMENT IN TIME

“So when did you know that you are queer?” Chike asked.

I was taken aback. I hadn’t expected that. Chike was someone I met on Grindr late last year. We vibed well and became friends. I wanted us to be a thing, to date, but he didn’t. I pushed, but was met with a brick wall of his refusal. So, I grudgingly let go and settled into being just friends with him. We’d meet and fuck sometimes, but it never got more serious than that.

I’d visited him that day, and had just gotten home when he called to know if I was home safe. We had talked for about fifteen minutes, discussing stuff, from politics to academics; Chike is an unapologetic IPOB supporter and we don’t quite agree on that.

And then, he asked me that question.

When did you know that you were queer?

As I thought about his question, one face rose up into my consciousness. A face I’d grown to loathe even years after I saw it last.

“I was about ten years old when I discovered my sexuality,” I said to Chike. “But I was taken advantage of in the worst possible way. In fact, should I ever get to see him again, I think I might kill Nwachukwu.”

I said this with much venom, that I could feel Chike’s startle coming through the connection. I was also surprised by how suddenly furious I’d gotten, considering how I hadn’t talked about the hurt and abuse I suffered from Nwachukwu since it happened about fourteen years ago.

I figured it was finally time to change that, to open the doors and windows on the hurt I didn’t even know until that day that I’d been carrying about for years.

It was in the second term of my JSS1 in an all-boys boarding school in Delta State in the year 2006. The school had resumed for a new term, and the ten-year-old me was vibrant and eager to carry on with life as a secondary school junior. I was the smallest in my class, and because I was somewhat intelligent, I was also a favorite amongst most of my teachers and seniors.

Nwachukwu was also in my class, but he had repeated the class so much, he was older than the rest of us. He was also bigger and quite intimidating.

That day, we were seated in a corner in class, there was no teacher in the room, and then he turned to me and said three words that startled me: “Suck my dick.”

No, I wasn’t startled. I was shocked. Shocked and strangely excited. Before then, I’d always known that I didn’t like girls the way other boys did. I didn’t know why. I also found myself being drawn to other boys. I couldn’t explain these desires, and so, I kept them hidden and unspoken, especially because I’d looked around me and couldn’t find any other boy who seemed like they felt the same things I did.

And suddenly, here was this boy, the biggest boy in my class, putting into words what I didn’t even know I’d always wanted to do.

I hesitated. But with little persuasion from him, I finally gave in.

He took me out of the classroom to one of the toilets and dropped down his shorts. I stood there, enraptured by the sight of his penis. To my very inexperienced eyes, Nwachukwu had the most beautiful penis in the world. Dark, firm and quite long. I took it in my hands, knelt down and proceeded to give him my very first blowjob.

Seconds into it, and he suddenly yanked the penis out of my mouth. In that quick moment, I remember thinking that I was obviously not doing it right, and was prepared to beg him to teach me how to do it right for him. I just wanted that dick back in my mouth.

But my hell was just about to begin. Nwachukwu zipped his penis back into his shorts and then turned a very ugly look to me. He told me that he was going to tell the school that I am a homo and had tried sucking his dick. I was horror-stricken. My ten-year-old mind was instantly paralyzed with fear; even at that young age, I knew how much I’d be destroyed if Nwachukwu said anything to anyone. I began begging him. He seemed intractable. I begged and begged, until I found myself promising to do anything for him to not mention this incident to anyone.

I signed my soul to the devil right then.

Nwachukwu heard me say I would do anything for him, and smiled a wicked smile at me, before proceeding to list out all the things he expected me to do to maintain his silence.

I would give him the spare key to my cupboard, surrender my Sunday eggs, and fetch his water and any other thing he required of me. I begged for leniency, but this devil of a boy refused to back down. And so, believing that this would be my punishment for a few weeks, after which he would let me go, I reluctantly agreed to his terms.

But this hell did not last for a few weeks.

After I gave him my spare key, Nwachukwu moved my provisions out of my locker, leaving me with little or nothing to survive on. Then, after a few days, he called on me and told me that I would have to start surrendering half of ALL my meals to him.

“Your provisions have finished,” he said, “and I need to be maintained.”

It pained me, but I agreed. I was still afraid of the secret he held over my head.

But I was giving him more power over me. He got greedier. He started demanding for everything and anything that he knew I could give, and I gave him, too afraid to say no to. And this went on for three years! All through my JSS1 to JSS3, this guy tormented me with a secret I was too afraid to defy him over.

And I was only able to escape from that hell, not because I eventually got the courage to say no, but because he was expelled from school.

He was caught red-handed breaking into a fellow student’s locker, and because stealing was an unforgivable offense in the school – plus he already didn’t have a stellar record as a student of the school –, he was promptly expelled.

And I got my freedom.

Thinking about it all now filled me a new kind of rage that I didn’t know how to control. It happened over a decade ago, but remembering it led me to the discovery of a badly healed wound of the three years of torture, starvation and emotional abuse that I was made to go through simply because I agreed to suck a boy’s dick – something he asked for! I know someone might ask why I didn’t call his bluff, but I was just a child, with no worldliness, and I was at that age where I was still trying to figure out who and what I was.

Nobody saw nor heard from Nwachukwu since that fateful afternoon when he was expelled. Remembering him now made me long to see him so I could hurt him for all the pain he made me suffer through for three years.

After graduation from secondary school, I would later go on to meet and fall in love with someone. We have since broken up, but being with him was one of the things that helped me along the journey to figuring out who I am, a journey that was almost disrupted by Nwachukwu’s manipulative wickedness.

Written by Benjamin