A STATE OF OUR UNION

To write or not to write? That was the first dilemma. Then it became the issue of relevance, graduated to the issue of importance, and finally became an issue of personal prestige. Prestige – yes, because as you will get to find out, I fucked up. Big Time!

Let’s get to the beginning, shall we?

It was the beginning of my second year in school and I’d decided to change my course in school. Don’t blame me; try studying for combined honors in Philosophy and Psychology and see whether you won’t run mad in a few months. I’d borne that hell and I was totally drowning, so I decided to leave. Upon my return to school that year, I launched myself fully back into fellowship activities; choir, dance, drama and all else. I was a committed member and that was all that mattered.

We also got some adorable new members in the Dance and Drama unit – N’anya, a wonderful, very talented and subtly bossy young lady; Dera, a secondary school girl who was a church member and desperately wanted to dance; Mimi, a sweet motherly type; Divvy, a political All-I-Wanna-Do-Is-Dance lady; Dandy, a suave, pidgin-blasting, light-skinned boy who virtually all the girls were tripping for; and Vinny, a Lagosian who was both charming and handsome.

Vinny was brought to us by our assistant leader, Uche. The day he came, he instantly caught my attention with his quiet charm and oh-so-unsure ways. It was quite endearing to see a guy like that. I was in charge of auditions, so during his acting audition, I asked him to chyke N’anya. Boy! Was that exciting to watch! Vinny looked and acted like a fish miles out of water. He couldn’t look N’anya in the eye, couldn’t hold her, he couldn’t even make a coherent statement. He stammered his way through his monologue, and eventually gave up. Following that disaster, I talked to him and gave him a new role to play, which he executed perfectly.

With subsequent rehearsals, Vinny left his shell and became more social, even to the point of ribbing and shading others in the group (something which is a tradition among us). I was proud of Vinny and we got closer. So close that I was soon having sleepovers at his place. I was especially proud of him when he landed the lead role in a musical drama we had to perform, a role I was supposed to get. Vinny slayed that performance and when we got back to school, he invited me for a celebratory dinner at his place the next day. Now, he and Uche lived in the same lodge off-campus, and all the lodge-mates knew we belonged in the same fellowship. I went to his place that Friday night after fellowship with plans of all three of us – Uche, Vinny and I – going for our church rally the next morning in preparation for our program. After the meal, we retired for the night and Vinny went to sleep almost immediately.

For some reason, I was unable to sleep. After tossing and turning for quite some time, my roving mind landed on something I hadn’t realized. I had a massive crush on Vinny! In that moment, my 18-year-old-brain that had been sex-starved for almost 16 months began to think of doing things with Vinny. While I was fighting within myself, it seemed the fates had me in their agenda that night, as the lightly-snoring Vinny turned on the bed and his crotch rubbed against my hand. Instantly, my resolve shattered and while my heart pounded with fear in my chest, my hand snaked over to his crotch and began to trace the outline of his cock on his light boxers. Not satisfied, my fingers reached through the fabric and dived into his boxers. And I was stroking Vinny’s cock. My fingers flitted over that limp piece of skin and muscle, kneaded it, caressed it, felt it get harder, hotter and longer, the feeling of excitement and power that I felt causing to ease away all the tension I’d been feeling before.

However, I soon began to realize that something was wrong. My heart was pounding and my hand was stroking, while my mind searched about for what was out of place. After about a minute, my heart nearly stopped as I discovered what had set me on alert.

Vinny was no longer snoring!

I slipped my hand from his boxers and casually picked up my phone, which was next to me. I turned on the screen light, acting like I wanted to check the time. The soft illumination from the phone confirmed my worst fears. Vinny was indeed awake and he was staring at me. I turned away from him and feigned going to sleep. My heart began thumping fast and I wondered if he’d attack me or call for the attention of Uche and his lodge-mates.

He did neither. He did nothing. I lay stiffly in bed, anticipating trouble, when a few moments later, I heard him snoring again. I let out a small sigh of Hallelujah before finally drifting off to sleep.

The next morning, Vinny was as friendly with me as before, so friendly and seemingly forgetful of the previous night’s incident that I soon began to ease back into our camaraderie, quietly tucking that incident to the back of my mind. Our friendship remained undamaged, and I ensured that I didn’t slip up around him again. We never even talked about that night.

Later that year, a pastor in our fellowship called both of us, talked to and prayed with us, saying that we’d been bound as brothers and that I had a duty as a senior brother to Vinny to guide him aright. (Vinny is actually 14 months older than me). Following the session with the pastor, I fervently took to playing the big brother role fully. However, by the next academic year, things changed. Uche became our fellowship president, and Vinny changed his course to Pure and Industrial Chemistry and stepped down to first year; he also moved to a different off-campus location. With his relocation, Vinny’s attendance to both fellowship and rehearsals gradually ebbed until he quit coming altogether. I tried to get him to return, but he told me he’d decided to return to his home church, the Catholic Church. At that point, I stopped persuading him to return as I was having emotional and spiritual crises of my own.

That year was the year I threw off my shackles and decided to actually do things I loved. I began designing and modeling, and at some of these modeling events, I’d run into Vinny. At first, it was kind of awkward, but we slowly warmed up to each other again. By my fourth year in the university (third in my new course), I’d begun to go out partying with a lot of gay friends, as I’d dealt with the internalized homophobic demons that held me back from identifying with them in the past years. I also ran into Vinny in the party circuit. Apparently, he’d become quite the party freak. And he’d begun to smoke weed, cigars and take quite a number of antidepressants. I became really concerned and began drawing closer to him because I felt some guilt over leaving him in spite of the express instruction the pastor had given me a couple of years ago. I began to visit him again and tried to be there for him, to ensure that he didn’t destroy himself. At a point, I knew I was too close to him to hide a fundamental part of me from him.

So last December, the day after an all-night dance fiesta that was hosted by my faculty, an event Vinny was present at, I took the bull by the horns. I went to his place and we took a stroll to a bank in school. On the way, I asked, “Vinny, do you remember 2012? The night I slept over at your place before the one church rally like that?” My heart had began a quick tattoo as I considered how I was opening up a talk we’d subconsciously decided not to have.

He responded in the affirmative. He remembered the night in question.

“Well,” I said, “you saw me touching you in the night while you were asleep. Yet you did nothing and you haven’t talked to me about it since then. Or didn’t you realize what happened?”

I didn’t know what I expected him to say, but it wasn’t this. “When I woke to you rubbing my cock,” he began, “at first, I was shocked. But then, I thought about it and realized that it’s your life and you’re free to live it the way you want to. I wasn’t really disturbed by it nor did I give it much thought. The only thing though is I’m straight.”

The peace I felt right then was so profound, it literally felt like someone had lifted a trunk off of my shoulders. We talked a lot more and finally parted on good terms.

Fast-forward to 2016 and event planning had me up to my neck. By the end of January, a friend of mine, Cloud, invited me for the Back-To-School bonfire his team was hosting. I reluctantly attended the event, and decided to let my hair down and just have fun. Around 1.30 am, I spotted Vinny and some friends of his, and I went over to greet them. After the greetings, Vinny asked to talk to me privately.

He pulled me aside and dropped his next words on me like the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima. “Do you like guys in a masculine way or feminine way?”

Gba-gam!

I opened my mouth and closed it like I was searching for oxygen to fuel my response. “Could you elaborate because I didn’t get you at all,” I eventually managed to get out.

“I mean, are you the one who does the fucking or who gets fucked?” He was saying these words like he was asking which I preferred, jollof rice or fried rice.

“Okay,” I began, trying to adopt his matter-of-fact tone, “truth is, in gay sex, both parties are both doing the fucking and getting fucked. But to answer your question, I get fucked. Why the question? Is anything wrong?” I was trying desperately to hide my discomfort.

“Not at all,” he answered. “Could you come over to my place later today?”

“Umm…I think I could. But that doesn’t explain any of this to me.”

“Don’t worry. You’re safe. All is well.” With that, he left me to rejoin his friends.

I went to meet Cloud and we shared a drink. While we were drinking, I analyzed what had just happened. To the best of my knowledge, seemingly straight folks only invite gay people over to their place after such an interview for either of these four things: to kito them, to have sex with them, to get them to have sex with other guys, or to get them to try pussy. The moment I realized this, my unease swelled inside me. I knew I couldn’t leave our talk the way he’d ended it.

I walked back to him and asked to speak to him. As soon as we were in a secluded part of the field, I turned to him. “Could you please tell me what you’ve got in mind for me, because I’m really not comfortable with this arrangement,” I said tersely.

“Really, it’s no big deal,” he began reassuring again. “I just want us to talk.”

“Just talk? C’mon Vinny, it’s me. You know you can tell me anything.”

“Okay. Actually, I’ve been wondering what sex with a guy feels like ever since you told me about yourself. So I was wondering if you’d want to have sex with me.”

I was incredulous. “But you’re straight! How come you’re thinking about sex with a guy?”

“For me, life is all about living in the moment. I do things because they make me happy at that point in time. I try not to hurt people and I try to utilize every opportunity I get in life. I don’t know whether I’m gay or straight but what I do know is that right now, I feel like experimenting with gay sex because I feel it’s what will make me happy.”

I’d been celibate for about eight months at this time, because I’d decided to wait for the right guy. One who would want me in all ramifications of the word ‘WANT’! And here was this guy I liked – A LOT! – asking for that gift? How much more complicated could my life get?

At this point, I became silent, while I contemplated what he’d just said to me. Some of it was hedonistic, sure, but I was really caught by his words. Besides, I was having a pretty tough time myself. I’d been feeling like I was fading into the background and that I would soon lose relevance in life. My emotions were topsy-turvy and thinking straight was a job for me at this period. So I shrugged and agreed to come visit him that day, which was Saturday. We parted ways again and returned to our parties.

Minutes later, this time, he sought me out with another question.

“Could you come to my place with me from here?”

Without thinking, I said yes. Then the thought came to me that as a straight guy, he’d know next to nothing about gay sex. So before he could return to his friends again, I stopped him and began probing him and revealing to him tidbits about gay sex. Consequent to my tutorial, and with a twinkle in my eyes, I suddenly asked, “Have you ever had a blowjob?”

“Yes, but very few,” he said.

Unable to shut my damn mouth, I said, “Would you like to have one now?”

The moment the words left my mouth, I realized that was probably the dumbest, stupidest thing I could have asked. He stared at me for a moment, before saying yes. And upon looking around, he suggested a huge tree with expansive foliage at the edge of the field, away from the light and people. I went over there first and while I waited for him to come to me, my brain was trying to speak to me through the fog of hormones and desire coursing through me. I couldn’t make anything out of what my brain was saying. I was trying to though, but then Vinny arrived, and I shunted my brain’s noise to the background.

As he walked up to me, he whipped out – to my surprise – an already erect, hard, fat, about 6-inch, pink-tipped cock. And he turned it to my face. I got down on my haunches and went to work on that cock, fellating it like my life depended on it. I brought all my skills to fore, and his moans, groans and sharp intakes of breath told me I had the trophy on this one.

However, that chatter from my brain that I relegated to the background broke through the hormone-ridden fog back to the forefront. And this time, its screamed words in my head were clear. “Dude, you’re blowing a guy in a field where people are! It may still be about 2am and dark, but he’s wearing a white shirt and you’re just behind a female hostel! AND THERE’S LIGHT! E be like say better beating don dey hungry you!”

Instantly, I stopped my ministration, looked up at him and was about to tell him we had to stop, when he dropped the second atomic bomb. You know, the one that fell on Nagasaki!

“Can I put it inside you?”

Whoa! WHOA! Werreminute! The tolls, alarms and bells in my head were going off a mile a minute.

“Is it lubricated enough for me to enter you?” he asked again.

Quickly pulling my wits about me, I answered, “No. Gay sex takes a lot of prepping. And besides, we’re not exactly in the safest zone right now. Anyone looking from the bonfire or this hostel could see us.”

He agreed. We pulled ourselves together and returned to the bonfire.

Then just before we parted ways, he said, “That was the best blowjob I’ve ever had. I’d give you a 9/10.”

Whoever said flattery would get you everywhere was very correct. Nothing he could have said in that moment could have made me feel as good about myself as those words did.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Written by Mitch