ROCK BOTTOM

I’ve always played the role of Top in my sexual relationships. In fact, I am what one would call a Strict Top. However, the older I get, the less inclined I am to be stuck in a mindset, to be defined by an experience. As someone who is often driven to try new things, I always strive to explore the bounds of my sexuality, to better understand the things I like or don’t like for who I am.

So, it was only a matter of time before I’d get around to considering what it’d be like to bottom. I am always getting bugged to bottom, especially by people who hit on me online. In my DM, in the midst of all those who are always asking me to come fuck them, there are those who’ll always want me to bottom.

“You’re always posting your dick pics… Show us pictures of your butt na…”

“I bet your pussy will taste really good. I can’t wait for the time when I’ll get to rim you…”

“So when are you going to give me some of those buns…”

“I want to see you, so I can have fun with your ass…”

When I started considering bottoming, as I do with all things I want to understand, I researched it. I hit up Google and read what I could about the experience. I consumed write-ups that said that bottoming for the first time starts out being painful, but eventually progresses to pleasure. I read about bleeds and how important lubrication is. I read up all I could on the subject.

The person who I would bottom for was however going to be a more deliberate process. I was not going to spread my cheeks for just about anyone. It had to be right, and so, this person would have to be right.

There was this person (let’s call him Kaffy). I’d known Kaffy for quite some time. We got acquainted on Twitter, and a friendship developed. He was the manager of a hotel and our first meet was at his workplace. He’d always wanted us to have sex, but I wouldn’t consent to that because he was Top. He was the very dominant type of Top, the kind who wants his bed partner to be entirely submissive to him. And because I am Top too, we couldn’t get sexual with each other. I mean, we’d make out, kiss and caress – one time he permitted me to rim him – but it never went past foreplay.

Kaffy was nice to me, very generous. As a material boy that I am, I was warmed by how much he liked to spoil me and attend to my material needs. With him, I could just relax and be taken care of.

So, on that day, I was feeling sad and down-spirited. When I called him to know if we could see, he said okay. We had a regular room in the hotel where we hung out whenever we wanted to have some private time. So, I went there, wanting to feel. I wanted to feel anything that would draw me out of the sadness that was pulling me down. As I walked into the room and hugged Kaffy, I found myself deciding there and then that I wanted to have sex with him, and that he’d be the Top. I figured that pain, physical pain, was a thing I could feel that would draw me out of my sadness.

So we were in the room, talking. I told him about what I was going through, and he tried to encourage me out of my funk. Then I made the first move.

I kissed him.

He kissed me back.

We started touching each other, grasping, caressing. And then I told him that I was willing to take his dick.

He was elated, and we were soon divesting ourselves of our clothes. I was mentally prepared. As I positioned myself to receive his dick, I didn’t feel any panic. However, it didn’t matter how much I’d read, because nothing prepared me for when he pushed his way into my virgin asshole. Pain exploded inside me, and I bit my lip, riding it. The online articles had gotten that part right. I didn’t back away from him, no matter how strong the instinct to was. I was determined to see this through. So, I gritted my teeth and rode the pain, waiting for the pleasure the articles said would eventually come.

That never happened.

The entire penetrative session was uncomfortable from beginning to end. With each thrust, I felt invaded, and not in a good way. I was acutely aware of the uncomfortable sensation of Kaffy’s dick going in and out of me. I lay there, waiting for the eye-rolling pleasure my online reads promised.

But the articles lied. The pleasure never came. But I didn’t pull away. I’d started to feel like I should see this through to the end to prove to myself that I was strong enough for this. It felt like a challenge that I wouldn’t let overtake me. At a point, in order to disconnect from the discomfiture, I forced my mind to wander. I thought about a road trip I was planning to take with a friend. I thought about registering for a driving lesson.

When Kaffy finally began to shake and groan as he reached climax, I began counting.

1…2…3…

I was at “9” when he finally collapsed, spent from his exertion, and slid off me onto the bed.

Thank you, Jesus.

I got up and went into the bathroom, where I turned on the shower and sat down on the floor of the stall, letting the water rain down on me.

The experience left me feeling weird, like I’d somehow made a mistake. Whether the mistake was bottoming or doing it with Kaffy, I couldn’t say. But I was certain I wouldn’t be doing this again anytime soon. I could be convinced to do it for a partner…maybe.

Or so I thought.

A couple of days later, I hung out with a friend. After a drink or two, we moved to have sex. As we were making out, clothes off, hands all over each other, limbs entangled, he moved his hand to grab at my ass. In the process, his fingers ran through my ass crack. That fleeting touch ignited something inside me, an electric bolt of pain that shot straight up my spine from my asshole.

We weren’t able to shag because I suddenly felt all out of sorts. This dull throbbing pain that I was very unfamiliar with and which was emanating from my anal region had doused my mood for sex. I just wanted to go home.

Unfortunately for me, the discomfort didn’t stop simply because I was no longer about to fuck this guy. In fact, throughout the ride home in the taxi, I felt very uncomfortable sitting in the car. Every bump and jolt that connected with my rump sent small electric bolts of pain shooting up and throughout my body.

That evening, when I was about to take a dump, I immediately regretted the decision as I sat on the toilet bowl and began my business. It felt as though my whole world was being forced out through my anus. I’d never known pain like this before.

I had no idea that this was – in Nollywood terms – just the beginning.

By the next day, the pain had dulled, but was present enough for me to try investigating what was happening in my anus. I poked around in there with my fingers and could feel some lumps. This scared me into going to ICARH to see a doctor. I explained what I was going through, but the doctor couldn’t carry out a physical examination because there apparently weren’t any tools available for that. He however tried to talk down my burgeoning panic and gave me a prescription for prodophylin. I commenced with the treatment, applying it inside my asshole morning and night, per the doctor’s instruction. It was very uncomfortable, and I didn’t notice any change with the lumps. But at least, the pain down there was no longer searing.

A couple of weeks later, I had excessive diarrhea, and as I stooled constantly, the familiar uncomfortable sensation in my asshole began to return. With each visit to the toilet, the pain grew. And this time, it brought company. I could now feel sores and boils scattered all over my anal region. Rashes were spreading across my palms and under my feet. And I was feeling both fatigued and feverish.

For two days, I suffered through an ailment I didn’t understand. I hit up the internet, Googling my symptoms to comprehend what was happening to me. This only worsened this case. I’m telling you: if you’re down with sickness you don’t understand, do NOT visit Google to know what’s wrong with you, because all that does is compound your anxiety. Several worst-case scenarios jumped out at me as I Googled my condition. Syphilis. Chlamydia. Anal cancer.

All this sent me on a downward spiral of depression, as it triggered some anxieties I didn’t even know I had. You see, several weeks earlier, three things happened consecutively that, back then, had had no significance. First, there was this bit of news that resurfaced during a conversation with my friends about a gay South African musician, Koyo Bala, who died in 2016 of anal cancer.

Then a few days later, I was in a barbershop, getting a haircut, when I overheard a conversation going between a female customer who was getting her hair done in the hair salon section of the shop and her attendant. The conversation wasn’t even that hard to eavesdrop; they were pretty loud as they thrashed homosexuality. The customer was especially venomous, filled with Christian fervor as she condemned the gays to untimely deaths brought on by all sorts of diseases like AIDS and cancer. Back then, right there in the barbershop, as I listened to her, all I felt was mounting irritation that I was being forced to listen to this homophobic exchange because I was getting serviced. I seriously contemplated never going back to that shop after that.

It was the third incident that really shook me up. I have this friend, a bestie who is straight. He’s very open-minded. We hang out a lot and are just generally fond of each other. One day, we were at a bar, having some drinks and a good time – when a small group of guys approached us. There was a belligerence about them that immediately registered with me. They said they’d been observing us since we came in, and they want to know if we are “homo”. Our reaction to this was incredulous laughter.

There were a bunch of factors that contributed to my incredulity at this. First of all, both my friend and I are very masculine-presenting. There is something about me being tall, masculine and with a rugged appeal that made me go through life never fearing – or even knowing – that my physicalness could make me a target of homophobia. Being caught by a Peeping Tom in a compromising situation with another guy? Sure. But simply walking down the street and getting harassed? Certainly not!

Secondly, I reside in Abuja. All of Nigeria is homophobic of course, but there is something about the genteelism of the capital city that keeps random acts of unprovoked prejudice at the barest minimum.

So, to suddenly be confronted by these hooligans felt surreal. But it got real very fast, as the confrontation soon escalated to a physical altercation, which lasted briefly because my friend and I had enough machismo to push back. While my friend emerged from that experience with a better appreciation of what it means to be gay in Nigeria, I came out of it with my sense of invincibility shredded.

All these came rushing back into my consciousness, sending me into a breakdown. I could suddenly imagine my death as a result of anal cancer. I remembered the Nollywood actor, Muna Obiekwe, and all the gossip that trailed his death within the gay community. The official report was that he died from kidney failure, but within the community, because of his closeted nature, I heard varying takes as to why he really died, from AIDS to cancer.

Would this be me when I die from this sickness?

Would people snigger and spread tales about the cause of my death?

Would the blogs catch wind of it and publish it – complete with sensationalized headlines about my sexuality – just so their homophobic readers would delight in how “that homo got what he deserved”?

Was that woman at the hair salon right?

Was this cancer God’s punishment to me for being gay?

I was spiraling. It would have been worse if this was happening to me, say, 10 years ago. The younger Me would have gone on to commit suicide; that’s how much I live in my head. But maturity had instilled in me a restraint that I was able to call on to calm me down long enough to go to ICARH again to see a doctor.

It wasn’t the same doctor I saw during my last visit. This one heard me out, listened to my agitated ramble, and then tried to reason me out of that state of mine. He told me I couldn’t possibly have cancer, because not only was I too young to develop that kind of tumor (apparently, the odds are low for those in their twenties), but my sexual activity as a Top greatly limited my chances of getting anal cancer. He did a checkup on me and discovered that the lumps were nodular, even though he didn’t seem very sure.

The visit was ultimately disappointing, because not only didn’t their pharmacy have the drugs that the doctor prescribed for me (which meant I had to spend my money to go get them elsewhere), but the VDRC test he recommended was also something I had to get done elsewhere. I was broke and really counting on the awoof of an NGO care.

By the time I left the place, even knowing that I couldn’t possibly have cancer didn’t alleviate my depression. Next, I went to a facility where I had an anoscopy done. As the attendant poked around my anus, unintentionally triggering the pain, I could feel a swell of sadness that drew tears to my eyes. I went home crying, thinking about my life, wondering if I shouldn’t just end things there and then.

I cursed Kaffy a hundred times over, for being the reason I was going through this hell. I wanted to call him and rage at him, but I instead ended up blocking his number. I was mad, sad, confused and just very upset.

This situation was exacerbated by the sense of loneliness I felt. This felt too private, too embarrassingly intimate, for me to share with any of my friends, some of who are straight. I feared that confiding in those who are gay would result in me enduring their mockery and judgment. And I was feeling too fragile to endure anything that wasn’t unmitigated support. I always care about being judged.

I was seriously considering taking my life when I remembered someone I could talk to: Pink Panther. We’d been friends for a very long time, even though we hadn’t always been close. However, after our meeting that was as recent as a few weeks ago, I got the sense that he had an empathy inside him that wouldn’t let him respond to my plight with anything other than compassion.

So, I called him.

And he saved me.

We talked for hours, with me venting and him calming me down. He went out of his way, both in words and action, to get my confidence back up. He sent me articles on Kito Diaries that discussed these anal issues (Bless you, Francis). He linked me with a health specialist who I talked to and who helped me gain better perspective of my ailment.

The only time Pink Panther expressed amusement was when he chuckled, saying, “You are panicking over something that Bottoms everywhere have had to deal with. You’re not alone. You’re just new to our reality.”

It helped to know this: that I wasn’t alone.

Somehow, feeling this renewed confidence made me approach my father, a pharmacist, to tell him about my health crisis. It wasn’t easy. I was perspiring, filled with thoughts about how disappointed he’d be. He noticed my discomfort and eventually got me to tell him everything – well, everything but the fact that I had gay sex and that I think I’m a homosexual being condemned by God.

He heard me out and then echoed some of the things I’d already heard from the two doctors and Pink Panther: that this wasn’t cancer. Then he asked his medical lab assistant to take a blood sample from me. A full blood work-up revealed that I didn’t have syphilis either.

Instead, what was discovered was so basic, that I thought my dad was trolling me when he told me.

“Typhoid and malaria,” he said to me.

I stared disbelievingly at him. That was it?!

He said that the levels of typhoid that were detected in me were so high, it’d probably have been fatal for anyone else with a less active immune system.

Then he revealed something else to me: that he’d also had those nodes that I detected in my anus. When he discovered them, he’d consulted a doctor and found out that he had internal piles.

This really helped: to know that I really wasn’t alone.

My dad also had samples taken of the pus that was oozing from those lumps, and the test result came back another shocker: I had chicken pox.

I proceeded on to a treatment and a change of diet that was engineered to get me fixed. I did a lot of sith baths, the first which caused me so much pain, I almost passed out.

And it wasn’t just my physical health that was getting fixed. I got brave enough to share my situation with some friends, and those who’d bottomed told me their experiences which were even more horrid than what I was going through. Some people’s situations involved surgeries and extended healing periods that threatened their sex lives.

In the end, I don’t regret bottoming. I think this was a necessary experience to give me a healthier understanding of what guys who bottom go through. In my current state of mind, I don’t think I’ll ever bottom again. But I have a never-say-never mentality that makes me think that while I will never bend over for any random hookup, I might consider it with a lifetime partner.

Written by EJ