HE THAT FINDETH A WIFE

“The first thing that is taken away from us as LGBTQ people is our spirituality, is God. ‘God hates fags.’ No, He doesn’t. Stop it.” – Billy Porter

They say every cloud has a silver lining, every tunnel has a light at the end, and every night has a morning. This was the thought that gave me solace, that gave me some peace through the time this story happened.

I was 23, serving in Lagos State, living the young homosexual dream. Living, laughing, loving, making money. Then I went home for the Christmas celebrations.

At first, everything was fine. Then my parents began to drop hints.

“Nna, you should start thinking of settling down…”

Or,

“As di okpara, you know you need to get married early.”

There was no pressure at first. I’ve always known that I would get married to a woman someday — it was a no brainer. I’m an only son, and the firstborn of my parents. Of course they’d expect me to get married.

However, I also am a gay man. And I decided early in my life that, even though I would get married, the woman I would get married to would neither be heterosexual nor in the dark about my sexuality.

I returned to Lagos after Christmas, put the idea of marriage out of my mind, and proceeded to enjoy the rest of my service year. Shortly after service, I got a job that retained me in Lagos. Life was good. I was living it up. Still, there was that niggling feeling worrying the back of my mind, a feeling I didn’t want to confront.

Two years later, the pressure hit. I was 25, and my parents wanted me to get married. They didn’t want any more delays and they told me as much. If I couldn’t find a wife for myself, they would help me find one.

I panicked. I could not get married to a heterosexual woman. Not in this life. So, I did the only thing I knew to do. I prayed. Yes, I am a gay Christian who has been able to make living with both his sexuality and his faith work. So, on one morning, after lying on my bed for an intermittent amount of time, pondering a future with a woman, I slid down the bed to my knees and began to pray. I told God that He said His plans for me are of good, of peace, and not of evil, that marriage to a heterosexual woman could not be His plan for me because I cannot cope with such an arrangement, that He needed to fix things, to give me someone who would give me peace.

“Father Lord, You know You made me this way. You also know I will not be happy married to a heterosexual woman. You know that will literally be the death of me, because I would not know how to live a lie. One day, she will find me out, and she will hate me, and she may make trouble. And my life will be over. That is, if my high blood pressure hasn’t already killed me from having to hide before she finds out. I don’t want to live a marital life that is that messy and stressful and potentially fatal. Please, God, make this right for me. In Jesus’ name I pray.”

As if to negate my prayers, my parents immediately started implementing their plan. I was home for a visit one time when they asked me to drive them to visit someone. It turned out to be a matchmaking effort on their part. I sat through a conversation with the daughter of their friend, wondering just how to get out of there. On our way back, my parents kept dropping hints about how I needed to take things to the next level with her.

I simply told them that I didn’t like her, that we didn’t click, that there was no chemistry between us throughout our conversation. Surprisingly, they didn’t push further. I thought that was the end of that.

I was wrong.

They brought to the house another girl, a family friend’s daughter this time. And when I came up with another excuse to disqualify her, they were ready with another option: an uncle’s wife’s niece.

At this point, I was desperate. So I reached out to Pink Panther to help me make a matchmaking post on Kito Diaries, as well as to a few friends to link me up with any lesbian friends of theirs. I needed to get my parents off my back. But, more than this, I needed time. Time, and the right person.

They say God works in mysterious ways. What people do not also say is that those mysterious ways also take time to manifest.

I got a number of emails from different people. Some conversations went south quickly, others fizzled out, and others still quickly revealed that the person I was conversing with was not what I needed in a partner.

Then came Sweetie.

At first, our conversations were just friendly. There was banter here and there, light conversations, nothing too serious. I knew she was someone I wanted in my life, and I didn’t want to ruin it, even if we did not end up getting married. She was that amazing. Before long, we found ourselves opening up to each other. She became the reason I smiled every time I picked up my phone. She was my friend, my confidante, a gossip partner, someone I could let my guard down with and trust. Completely.

We hadn’t met physically yet, but I knew I couldn’t see myself with anyone else the way I was with her. She got me, and I got her too. I mean, if we were both heterosexual, I’d probably have said we were fated in the stars to be together. That’s how much we got each other.

So when, in 2019, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes, I knew God had answered my prayers.

There, however, were a few mountains to climb.

First and foremost was my parents. They didn’t know her. I worried about their meeting — Sweetie stayed in Abuja and I was still in Lagos. After I told them about her and they had had some phone conversations with her, my parents decided to meet her during one of their trips to Abuja in late 2019, and I was so anxious about how they would interact with her, whether they would like her. I have a tendency to want to micromanage everything, and the fact that I wasn’t going to be around for this crucial first meeting disturbed me. The irony wasn’t lost on me that they would be meeting her face-to-face before me.

Sweetie too was nervous about meeting them. She hadn’t met me yet, so meeting my parents was a bit scary. However, she chose to go through with it. Her courage made me proud. It felt like we were in this together, both of us equally committed.

We needn’t have been worried or nervous. My mother fell in love with Sweetie at that first meet. And my Dad had only the best things to say about her. It was the most fulfilling feeling ever, knowing that we had the support we needed to do this journey together.

There were a few more hiccups along the way, from ex-lovers who were mad about the fact that I was getting married and the gossips within the community who peddled rumours that I have become yet another dishonest MGM, to random people who chose to invade Sweetie’s DM on social media to regale her with the stories of my queerness in order to dissuade her from getting married to me (yes, there are people who are just that jobless and determined to perpetuate evil), to the COVID lockdown and all the madness that followed. We skated over all these and finally got married in 2021.

Life with Sweetie is unexpected, the good kind of unexpected. I’d always imagined that as, well, a romantic and a homosexual, that the person I’d make whatever sacrifice I’d be called on in life to make would be for a man. But getting married to Sweetie and being with her has reset that mentality. She is the one I would make those sacrifices for. She is that best friend whose relationship I will always favour over the romantic relationships with boys. I don’t take her for granted. She has proven to be firmly in my corner time and time again, and I am firmly in hers. It is interesting how we both have our romantic relationships – I am good friends with her girlfriend, and she is friends with my boyfriend – and yet, our priorities are to each other. My priority is her happiness, nothing else.

And let’s not talk about all the ways she establishes my “legitimacy” as a married man in this society that seeks to destroy the gays. There was the one time this unfortunate kito scum targeted me and sought to take me down (story for another day), and amongst other things, the fact that I had a wife who lives with me, who could come out and be outraged by my side, made nonsense of the piece of shit’s attempts to rubbish me.

See, our life together is like a well-oiled machine designed to protect each other. And I will always remember that moment when I got on my knees and prayed for someone like her to come into my life.

God does answer the prayers of gay people. I know this because God gave me Sweetie. And every day of my life, I am and would be grateful for her.

Written by Blue Fox