THE MANAGER

“Good afternoon, are you here to eat?”

Those were the first words he said to me when I stepped inside the restaurant located in Wuse.

I had a lunch date with a lesbian friend of mine, and I had just entered the restaurant, believing I was early. As I stepped inside, I saw a young man who looked to be in his thirties make a beeline for me.

As he approached, I gave him a once-over. He was dark-skinned, bearded, with a good body that looked like it gets whipped into shape in a gym. A long, dangly earring was hanging from his right ear, and the top he was wearing was a bit cropped; it wasn’t completely resting on his belted waistline, giving me glimpses of his toned midriff.

“Hello, good afternoon,” he greeted warmly as he drew up before me. “I’m the manager. Are you here to eat?”

I noticed now that his nails were painted black and his eyebrows carved. At this point, I felt a speculative expression come over my face as I wondered just how homosexual this dude was.

“Yes, I am,” I replied. “But I’m supposed to meet someone here. I fear I may be too early. So I’ll have to wait.”

“That’s alright,” he said. “Please come on in, let me show you to a table.”

I was a bit surprised by the hospitality, but a quick glance around the room, which showed a minimal lunch crowd, made me understand why the manager would have the disposition to be this welcoming.

He led me to a table and I got seated. Then he left. He was gone for a few minutes, during which time I went to my phone to text my friend that I was at the restaurant.

Then he was back.

“Where’s your friend?” he enquired. “When is he coming?”

“They’re not here yet,” I said, not bothering to correct him that it was a female I was waiting for.

“Okay. So would you like to order anything while you wait?”

As he was talking to me, he was smiling brightly and appeared to be batting his eyelids at me. I didn’t know if this was still a restaurant manager being amiable to a dining customer or if this was supposed to be a come-on. I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t respond to his geniality. I simply said no, that I’d wait for my friend.

“You look very familiar,” he said then. “Do you go hiking?”

At this point, I let out a very low chuckle. It was becoming clear to me that this guy was hitting on me. First of all… You look familiar…Really? That’s like an age-old pickup line. Secondly, in Abuja, getting asked about hiking is a coded lead-in for a gay proposition. Don’t quote me on this o. But yeah, in my experience and from those I’ve heard of, when a random guy comes up to you in Abuja and starts asking you if you go hiking or if you’d like to go hiking, it’s most likely a pickup line.

I replied, “No, I don’t hike at all. But I do go to the gym.” Just in case he brought up the hiking because of how athletic my body looked.

He gave me a quick appraising look, as though taking in my body the way I’d taken his in earlier. “OK then. It’s probably at the gym that I saw you before.”

He mentioned the name of his gym. It was unfamiliar to me. I told him that I didn’t know the place, and then told him the name of the place where I work out. He said he’d never been there before.

Then he left, only to return moments later. This time, he pulled out a seat and settled in front of me at the table. Then, he started chit-chatting, random small talk that I wasn’t interested in. He went from asking if I’d been living in Abuja for long to encouraging me to come to the restaurant more often and bring my friends along. At this point, I was no longer responding, simply kept quiet and listened to him prattle on.

All this time however, I didn’t know that my friend (let’s call her Bella) had been at the bar section of the restaurant. She’d in fact gotten here before me and was having a drink and observing me and the manager from the distance.

Eventually, she sauntered over. I didn’t notice her until she was almost at the table, and then I beamed a “Thank God you’re here” smile at her.

Bella is brazen by nature, but even knowing that about her didn’t prepare me for what she said the moment she stopped at the table.

The manager had noticed her and was getting up when she said ever-so-saucily, “My guy, so you’re gay.”

I choked back a laugh. An expression of stupefaction flashed across the man’s face and for a moment, he simply stared at her, clearly rendered speechless by her comment.

Bella went on, “Shebi you were the one hitting on me back there at the bar. Now, you’re over here, hitting on my friend – and that makes me wonder which one you are, gay or a serial flirt.”

The manager’s entire countenance then underwent a change. Earlier on, his demeanour with me had been fluid, with a hint of effeminacy as he chatted me up. However, confronted by Bella’s comments, the shock passed and he stiffened, his attitude projecting a stoic masculinity as he protested, “Oh no, no, no. I was just trying to make him feel comfortable. I’m not gay at all. This” – he gestured at his appearance – “is just my aesthetic.”

But nobody said anything about your appearance, I wanted to say.

He continued, “I like to look like this, so that I can get attention for marketing purposes. So that people can look at me and ask me where I work, and that gives me an opening to market this place…”

He kept going on and on, a torrent of explanations no one asked for to rebut my friend’s audacity to claim he might be gay.

And he may not be gay. he may be a straight guy who, like every other opportunistic Nigerian heterosexual, is bending the queer aesthetic to serve his hustle (this whole thing where straight men are now painting their nails black is especially irritating to me) – but his long-winding explanations were not helping his case.

Bella, on her own part, was in her dramatic element. She’d taken a seat and was looking at him, a rapt expression on her face, as though she was truly interested in the seminar he was presenting.

Suddenly feeling mischievous, as he said something (yet again) about how he looks the way he looks because of his marketing objective and not because he’s gay, I interjected, “Me too. I like to suck dick, not because it means anything, but because dick tastes like lollipop in my mouth.”

Bella burst out into laughter.

The manager laughed too, but uncomfortably so, looking like he was trying to understand if I was making fun of him or agreeing with his point of view. He left our table immediately after.

Then Bella turned to me and started gisting me about how the guy had hit on her when she got there and chose to sit at the bar. He’d told her how much he liked her hair, her dress, her tattoos.

“I even thought he was straight, but, you know, metrosexual, given how he is dressed, not knowing that he’s just a confused soul,” she said.

Soon, we got started on lunch, gisting and eating and just generally enjoying each other’s company.

However, the manager didn’t seem to be able to help himself. In spite of the earlier awkwardness, he kept dropping by our table to check if we (read “I”) were okay and if we (again, read “I”) needed anything. He tried to make like he was being a hospitable host, but it was apparent he was trying to get at me.

Upon his fourth visit to our table, Bella had finally had enough. She said, “He’s fine o! My friend is just fine, thank you very much. He doesn’t need any help.”

The man didn’t return to our table again. I half-expected him to accost us on our way out when we were done with our repast, perhaps to ask me for my number, but we didn’t see him anymore. Maybe the presence of Bella at my side had scared him off. Maybe he really was a heterosexual restaurant manager who simply paints his nails, carves his eyebrows and wears cropped T-shirts for the aesthetic.

Written by Zen