WHILE WE WERE YET KIDS (Part 6)
Previously on WHILE WE WERE YET KIDS: So they say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well, try scorning a gay teenager, then you’d know how stinging his scorn is; about as stinging as a slap in the face. Oh wait, that already happened to me. When Kanu introduced his palm to my cheek!
*
I was by no means a queen bee as a secondary school boy. I had a clique of friends, sure. But even amongst them, I was not the most popular one or the one who commanded the spotlight. I wasn’t gregarious enough for that exalted position.
But there was something about an SS# boy assaulting his mate in full view of the entire school that turns the assaulter into a villain and his act a wrong one that must be addressed.
Kanu slapped me right there in the dining hall, and some hell broke loose. A swarm of SS3 boys immediately clustered around us, with my friends closing ranks around me, shielding me from the collective shocked stare of the other students. I was shaking. The imprint of the slap was burning against my cheek. Tears had pooled in my eyes, tears which in my effort to blink them back were slipping through my lashes and dropping like beads down my cheeks. I felt humiliated. My entire body was burning with mortification at the assault, rage at Kanu, and devastation at the death of my rep as a senior boy.
Some of the other SS3s who’d gathered around us quickly got confrontational with Kanu, and the ensuing ruckus alarmed the dining hall prefects so much that they swooped down on us and attempted to get us all to move the altercation out of the dining hall and over to the hostel. Through the melee, I caught Chioma’s bespectacled gaze as she stared apologetically at me. She appeared distraught that whatever she’d said to Kanu must have provoked him to lash out at me.
And she wanted absolution; she wanted it right there and then. So that as we all began to move out of the dining hall, she came after me, called my name to get my attention and reached for my hand.
“Get away from me!” I hissed, recoiling from her at the same time.
“I’m so sorry…” she said miserably. “I did not mean for this to happen…”
“Well, you should have thought of that before you opened your big mouth,” I snarled.
I couldn’t bear to look at her, and allowed my friends guide me away from her.
We got to the hostel, where the senior boys gave free rein to their displeasure with Kanu. Sharp words were shouted back and forth. Kanu was unrepentant about what he did. And that was okay by me. I didn’t want him to be. I’d prepared myself to begin hating him from then on.
Eventually, that turbulent night passed. A couple of days passed too. Life returned to normal, except that I was not speaking to Kanu in the hostel and I was not speaking to Chioma in the classroom. Otherwise, everything was just peachy.
Then one afternoon the following week, JBoy (yes, he was a dear friend) and I went to visit another close friend of ours in his hostel. (Let’s call him Buchi). Buchi was very popular, rich, the life of the party and a prefect. As a prefect, he owned his own room, a boxy compartment that adjoined his dormitory. Such prefects’ rooms were called box-rooms. (They were actually intended as storage for the boxes of students, but everyone preferred the iron-clad safety of their guardians’ homes to the doubtful security of the box-rooms)
JBoy and I were in the dormitory, approaching Buchi’s box-room, when Kanu emerged from the room, on his way out. The atmosphere instantly tightened. Words were not exchanged. Kanu didn’t look at me. I didn’t look at him. But JBoy stared daggers at him. (If anyone despised Kanu as much as I did over the assault, it was JBoy).
The moment we were in Buchi’s room, JBoy went straight to the point. “Come, Buchi,” he began, his eyes sparkling with fire, “I hope Kanu was not here to collect nyash from you.”
Before then, I’d heard talk that following my rejection of him, Kanu had moved on to Buchi. I didn’t bother verifying from my friend because I didn’t think it was my business. I was just that uninterested in Kanu.
“That’s what he came for o,” Buchi said with his signature throaty laugh.
“And you gave him?” JBoy bridled. “You two did it even though you know what he did to your friend?”
Buchi laughed again, unfazed by JBoy’s rapid anger. “Relax joor. Haba! Your blood too dey hot. We didn’t do anything. I told him no. I’m not a disloyal friend now. I told him he would have to apologize if he ever wants to see this ass” – he slapped his derriere lightly – “again.”
“I don’t want his nonsense apology,” I quickly interjected.
“Oh for sure, we don’t want his stupid apology,” JBoy added, incorporating us into one single injured entity. “What we want is for him to suffer small.”
“How do we do that?” Buchi asked, his eyes shining. He was always one for intrigue.
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out,” JBoy assured.
“Well, whatever you have to plan,” I said, “leave me out of it. Anything that concerns Kanu is not my concern.”
My tone was so emphatic that my friends took me serious. They didn’t tell me a thing. And because of that, when the story started circulating that all the boys in our set and in SS2, who bent over for anal sex in those hidden corners and empty parking lot and deserted dormitories, were shutting their legs against Kanu, I found the story too incredible to believe. But the story persisted. Senior boys were talking about it and sniggering. And Kanu was walking about with the kind of sour expression that only frustrated konji could confer.
Soon, I stopped finding the story unbelievable and joined in the quiet snickers, chuckling to myself every time I watched Kanu walk by, and imagining his dick was pushing against his fly, begging desperately for libidinous release. I enjoyed immensely the thought that he wasn’t getting sexual gratification from anyone, that there was such solidarity amongst senior boys to unleash a sex strike on the bad guy. I relished the thought, and every time Kanu and I walked past each other, I flipped my imaginary weave-on, silently letting him know who was responsible for his UKD (Unsatisfied Konji Disorder).
And then came that morning. It was the first day of our WAEC Home Economics practical, the first of the external examinations we were about to embark on. SS3s had returned to school from a short holiday ahead of the rest of the student body to commence with our practical exams, for both Home Economics and Agricultural Science.
That morning, I was standing in my white-and-blue, in front of the hostel, waiting for those of my friends who offered the same Home Management subject as I did (It was Home Management practical that day; Food and Nutrition was going to be the next day – or was it the day before? I can’t quite recall).
Anyway, as I stood there, inhaling the morning air and trying to keep memorized all the answers I needed to prove to the Homec invigilators that I’d be an excellent homemaker some day, I heard footsteps approaching. I turned with a slight smile, anticipating the approach of my friends.
The smile froze when I saw Kanu drawing up to a stop beside me. He was looking at me. I looked back at him. He really was a handsome boy, almost pretty in fact, with small eyes that had a perpetual bedroom look in them, and a tiny rosebud of a mouth that begged to be kissed. As I stared at him, briefly, I wished the circumstances between us were different: I wished that I wasn’t dating and in love with Vince, that I didn’t hate Kanu, that I hadn’t said no to him, that he hadn’t slapped me, and that we were friends.
I was thinking these thoughts when he said the words I least expected to hear from him.
“I’m sorry.”
I stared at him for a few seconds, absorbing his apology, feeling it reach inside to thaw my insides, to tease apart my tenseness, to unclench the muscles holding my face together into a rigid mask. I attempted a smile as I replied, “Thank you.”
If the apology was given because of a starving libido – as a couple of my friends teasingly remarked – that didn’t matter to me. Forgiveness was sought for, and forgiveness was given. Kanu and I got past all the antagonism and regained our acquaintanceship.
PS: We became such friends that when he asked, I agreed to impersonate him in his TOEFL exam a couple of years after we graduated from school.
PPS: Forgiveness didn’t come for Chioma until we met three years after graduation. We ran into each other in the university (we weren’t in the same school though), and she was so profuse with her apology that I, bemused that we hadn’t settled our past, accepted her apology at once. We hugged it out, laughed over old times, exchanged numbers, and went our separate ways, never to call each other.
Written by Pink Panther
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27 Comments
Eddie
April 12, 08:15guess i’m the first to comment lol…seems y’all were out ,proud,and active in your school…what kinda school could that have been….sounds fun…if na me eh i wouldnt have acquiesced to kanu…just saying
ambivalentone
April 12, 09:13Azzzin ehn, d level of ‘I’m gay, don’t care watchu say’ no be 4 here o. I really wonder why I didn’t know of such at my school.
Delle
April 12, 08:40Lmfao! @never to call each other
Wait o, so in your school you guys had a ‘union’ of guys that bent over? Why didn’t I go to such a school? A school where all that engaged in anal sex were known, oh church!
Splendid story. Made my stay in the toilet worth it…
yinkss
April 12, 08:47interesting story.. Seems like u went to a FGC.. I just don’t know which one.
Pink Panther
April 12, 09:54It was an FGC. 🙂
Francis
April 12, 09:17Sometimes i find it hard to believe this is non-fiction. Chai.
michael
April 12, 09:41Bia Pink Panther. Where is “love and sex in the city?”
After seeing a couple of boys expelled during my first week in my new all boys boarding school for doing the nasty in the schools orchard, I quickly closed my legs and tucked my dick inside my belly.
Law
April 12, 18:45Is this a catholic school in ogun state @michael ?
michael
April 12, 22:44No. Its another one in Enugu state.
Khaleesi
April 12, 10:11ahn ahn, Pinky, this your school was on a whole new level of GAY!! Jeez, at that stage when you guys were already embracing and accepting your sexuality whole-heartedly, I was still being wracked by heavy doses of guilt and internalized homophobia …
Pink Panther
April 12, 21:56That’s just it. I didn’t go thru any prolonged self torture over my sexuality. I came into self acceptance quite quickly and pretty easily.
McDuke
April 12, 10:45Pp pls I need your email address…thanks!!!
Pink Panther
April 12, 21:54It’s pantherptb@yahoo.com
DI-NAVY
April 12, 11:12This sounds like FGC okigwe. I can totally relate to this story. lol
posh6666
April 12, 12:28The joys of attending a federal school..When I come home on vacation like this back then am just like can we just get back to skul already and continue with our late nite rendevous of sneaking into abandoned buildings,dark toilets,uncompleted buildings to suck each others cocks and try crazy things.Gosh good ole days
Eddie
April 12, 15:33the raunchiest thing i did in high school…FYI,an all boys’ school was french-kissing…i didn’t even touch myself/wank till after high school lol…i was such a prude
Pink Panther
April 12, 21:58Lol. Are you still such a prude?
Jay
April 14, 01:43If you French kissed a boy in high school , you were anything but a prude.
Kester
April 12, 15:43And to think I actually was to school at FGC okigwe but my mum made so much noise and I was changed to FGC ikot ekpene. That wasn’t bad shaa we did our own even with the abundance of girls. But I heard FGC port Harcourt was hot o I went for a competition there, spent a week and was nearly raped upon my visitors status, hmmmmm
michael
April 12, 17:05Dear future son, you’re so going to FGC.
Pink Panther
April 12, 21:59Hahahahahaa just negodu.
*•sugarrr•*
April 12, 18:07Omg… Was there any logo which the gays used to identify themselves?… Well, that must be in the eastern region mostly where ppl might have X-rays to see inner …. ?
Geeluv
April 12, 22:14That kind school….
Lorde
April 12, 22:57Dayumn, why ddnt I go to FGC, I would’ve had a fab life, I’d prolly had bin a total whoremonger tho
Eddie
April 13, 09:54@PP… prude ni bo ejo? I am so not a prude….you don’t even wanna know my track record lol
Uziel
April 14, 07:53Your teachers must have been bat blind or very accomodating….
Like, eh!
Pink Panther
April 14, 08:22They didn’t live in the hostels with us. So…