WICKED GAMES

His name is Ed. I’d known him on Facebook for years (we got acquainted in 2014), since when I was back in Owerri. And we had an online friendship where we occasionally chatted and bantered and just generally checked in with each other every now and then. He is very good looking, so of course, on my own end, the friendship was driven primarily by the fact that I had the hots for him. It didn’t help that our chatversations were sometimes flirtatious, even though, at no point was it confirmed that he was gay.

And then, last year, in May, we got around to talking about how we’d known each other online for all this time and never met. It was even more surprising when, upon revealing our locations, we found out that we both stayed on the Island. So, he asked me to come meet him at a hotel in Lekki, where he usually hangs out. He was an upcoming actor with a side hustle of being part of a crew that provided entertainment for the club and night life section of the hotel he asked me to come see him at.

I went there and it was a fun evening with him and his friends. We had drinks and gisted and had a generally good time.

That became the first of the many hangouts he and I had. It helped that I was mobile, so Ed would often have me drive us to fun places to hang out and catch our cruise. He was charming and outgoing, and knew every hot spot around, and I had the car and always ended up footing the bills from our outings.

At this point, we were still platonic, but we had great chemistry. I was really vibing with him and couldn’t get enough of his charm.

Then one night, we were at a joint, where we boozed and smoked ourselves to a high. During that period, I was staying with my uncle and his family; but that night, no one was home. Both my uncle and his wife travelled, my two adult cousins were away too, and the help had taken this rare opportunity of her bosses not being around to go see her family on the Mainland.

So, when Ed talked about being too high to go back to his place, I suggested he follow me home and spend the night at mine. He agreed. When we got home, someone touched someone else, and that led to a blur of naked bodies and frenzied sex – an experience which I still can’t quite recall. It all happened so fast.

And it happened again – and again – as the night wore on. Whether it was pure desire or passion fueled by the poison in our bodies, we just kept fucking all night long.

That was how we went from a platonic friendship to a sexual relationship.

It was during this time that Ed asked me to teach him to drive. I did, and it was quite the regrettable decision, because he was a terrible driver. Reckless and too eager to stunt behind the wheel, he often ignored my warnings, which ended with him bashing my car at least two times, both damages which I paid for to fix.

And for some reason, I didn’t mind very much.

In July, two months after we first met, he asked me out. We had gone to the beach that weekend and I was dropping him off at his place, an apartment he shared with his crew members, when he turned to me in the car and started talking about us. We were soon talking about what exactly it was we were doing, what we were to each other.

And then he said, “Will you be my boyfriend?”

I hesitated. I liked him very much and wanted nothing more than to mean more to him than just a casual fuck. But in my experience, putting a label on something that’s already good tends to mess things up.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?” I asked, wanting him to know that he didn’t have to make a commitment to me if he didn’t want to.

“Yes,” he said, before leaning over to kiss me. “Yes, I want to be your man.”

I suppose that was his way of cementing his claim on me, because, during that time that we were hooking up, I was seeing other guys as well. And he knew this. I figure he felt that for him to get me to be to him the person he wanted, he had to keep my focus on him.

But all this reasoning is in hindsight. At the time, in that moment in the car, I was simply ecstatic that I was officially the boyfriend of this gorgeous man.

It wasn’t very long before Ed started exercising his rights as my boyfriend. He had a movie he was filming, and asked me for the use of my car for the one week he’d be on the movie. I objected, pointing out the obvious: that I need the car for work.

“Surely, you can manage without it for a week na,” he wheedled. “Just enter keke and be going to work.”

WTF!

“Why would I do that?” I stared at him in incredulity. “Why would I enter keke when I have a car? And how am I supposed to explain to my family – my uncle and his wife – that I’m taking keke to and from work?”

In response, he began grumbling something about how I’m always talking about telling my family this and telling my family that, and how I was acting like a child.

Eventually, we reached a compromise: he would come to my workplace and pick up the car, and return it before close of work at 5 PM, when I would need it to drive home.

And of course, he abused this privilege. From not furling the car, always using my fuel and never replenishing it, to using the car to transport heavy undignified objects that I would never put inside the car myself. One time, they were filming at a location that was on the other side of the expressway from my workplace; it was getting on to 5 and he hadn’t returned the car. I called him and he said he’d be there soon. I don’t like driving at night because I can’t see very well. In fact, the times when I drove home from work at night, I am usually able to do so without any incident because my system has become used to the commute, and so my other senses largely make up for where my sight fails.

Ed knew this. And yet, despite my frequent, vexed calls and messages for him to bring the car to me, he kept me waiting from 5 to 7.30 PM. I was mad throughout the time I was waiting for him, but for whatever inexplicable reason, the moment he pulled into the parking lot, flashed a smile at me and said, “Hey, baby, I’m sorry”, my anger was gone. I didn’t say one cross word to him and found myself easily appeased by his basic apology.

Ed’s untrustworthiness was consistent, but I always seemed to stop minding the second he apologised. He borrowed heavily from me, but I could never bring up the last loan he got from me whenever he came for another. It was as though whenever I was in his presence, I cared about nothing beyond whatever made him happy.

Whenever we had sex, Ed didn’t want the lights to be on. One night however, I wanted to see him, to look at him during the heights of our passion. So I insisted on the lights being on. The moment he undressed, I understood why he had that aversion to the lights, because etched all over his chest were several markings – blackened carvings on his skin that spread from his chest to his back. It was a startling thing to see.

“What are these?” I asked.

“They are part of my religion,” he said, “I am a traditionalist.”

I gaped at him. How had I not known this?

“What do you mean by you’re a traditionalist?” I queried, wondering if he meant that he was someone who strictly observed the customs and traditions of his hometown.

That was not the case. Ed began talking about how he was into the worship of traditional gods. He said his mother was a chief priestess in his village; he called her nwanyi mmiri. As the son of an Anglican reverend, I couldn’t believe what I was learning: that I’d been shagging and dating the worshipper of what my father would call false gods.

One of life’s ironies sha…

But Ed wasn’t finished. He went on to reveal the reason he liked to visit the beach often: apparently, he held his prayers there, by the waters, where he’d make sacrifices of eggs and whatnots to the water goddess, asking for her good fortunes, so that his business dealings would work in his favour.

This revelation was confirmed by something that happened a few weeks earlier, when we last went to the beach. Ed had told me of a meeting he had with a potential investor in a movie idea he had. He disappeared after we got to a beachside joint, stayed gone for several minutes, and then reappeared in high spirits. Soon, the investor was there, a middle-aged man whose money Ed wanted. As I sat through the meeting, noting that this was the first time these two were meeting, I said to myself: Surely, there’s no way this man will give Ed any money.

But much to my surprise, by the end of the 20-minute meeting, the man was transferring 500 thousand naira to Ed’s account – from which he spent a small portion on drinks and a good time that evening. (As an aside: this is another thing about Ed. His spendthrift nature made it so that he never had any money).

Learning about Ed’s religious tendencies was at first unnerving for me. But then, I figured he cared too much about me to make me a victim of his fetishism. I didn’t think I had anything to be worried about. So, I stayed put in the relationship.

However, my behaviour when it regarded Ed continued to baffle me. It was as if I had no reservations when it came to pleasing him. For instance, there came a time when he had a falling out with his crew members and because they were the ones accommodating him, they threw him out of their place. And then, he came to me with this fantastic plan for me to be smuggling him into my uncle’s house to spend the nights in my room until he could fix his accommodation situation.

I still cannot believe that I agreed to this crazy plan, much less execute it for as long as I did. But yes, for two weeks, I’d drive home with Ed at the end of work, go inside alone and wait till it was dark enough and my uncle and his family had retired upstairs, before going out to my car to sneak him into my bedroom, which was fortunately downstairs. And then, very early the next morning, he’d be gone. His bags were in my car, and whenever his dirty clothes had piled up, I’d launder them, iron them and pack them back into the bags for his use.

It was crazy, and I’m still thankful that my uncle, who is very neurotic about his house, never found me out.

By the end of the second week, I was the one who fixed his accommodation issue. I found out that my colleague’s fiancé was looking for someone to work as a virtual assistant to his company. The job came with housing. I told Ed about it, and yet, it was me who worked on his application, smoothed out any wrinkles that might prevent him from getting the job, and let him use my phone for the Zoom interview.

He got the job, and I was all too relieved when he moved into his new digs. That didn’t stop him from continuing to task me with laundering his clothes, and so, some of his things continued to stay put in the boot of my car.

Then Christmas came around, and I traveled to the East for the holiday. That distance between me and Ed seemed to rewire my consciousness. I was no longer gung-ho about him, and I started investing more into myself, something I didn’t realize until then that I wasn’t doing enough of. Other things were going on with my family at the time, and so, I just generally needed some time to help myself from getting overwhelmed.

One day, when Ed called and started nagging about this and that, I tried to explain that I really needed some me-time during this period I was away from Lagos. Hearing this angered him and he raged on the phone at me, before abruptly hanging up.

He called at another time to ask for a loan of 20k, and for the first time, I found myself saying no. I don’t know who I shocked the most with my declination, me or him, but he didn’t take it well. He said some nasty things and then hung up.

And for whatever reason, I just didn’t care. I didn’t panic and try to call him back to smooth things between us. I didn’t worry myself to death that I’d upset him. I simply let him be and continued focusing on myself.

When I returned to Lagos in January, I called him for us to see. In response, he acted like a complete man-child. “Shebi you said you wanted some me-time… Eh, continue to enjoy your me-time na.”

I didn’t let myself be baited. I simply disconnected the call and continued living. I’d started to realize that there was an increasing indifference that was slowly overtaking the affection I had for Ed.

A few days later, around 6.30 PM, just as I was closing from work, he called, asking me to bring a particular outfit that was in his bag to his place. I told him I wouldn’t be able to do that because it was getting late and I wanted to hit the road before it got too dark for me to see. He protested, saying he needed the outfit for a meeting the next day. I knew he was lying. There was no meeting. He most likely needed it for some partying that night. And he was asking me to take a risk by driving all the way to his place before heading to mine – just to deliver some clothes. I maintained my No, and that was that.

We didn’t speak to each other for a couple of weeks. Then one evening, I decided to check in. I called him twice and he didn’t answer. On the third try, he picked and curtly told me that he was busy and would call me back later. Three hours later, he hadn’t called back. By 9.30, I called him again. This time, he screened my call. I called again and he screened the call again.

He didn’t call back until after two weeks, when he buzzed to ask me to get to him the rest of his things that were in my car.

Just like that!

No hello, no “sorry that I haven’t called you back all this time”.

Just “can you bring my things to that hotel where I used to hang out with my crew”.

Something snapped inside me. Suddenly, I was done accommodating this muthafucker. I told him no, that I wouldn’t be coming anywhere to deliver his things. That he can either come to my workplace to pick them up or he can forget about them. His certificate was among the things in those bags, so of course, he came for them.

He came to my workplace.

I stepped out of the office in response to his call.

We went to my car.

I opened the boot and stood by, tapping away on my phone while he gathered his things.

He picked out the bags.

I shut the boot.

He headed for the road.

And I headed back into the office.

I was done. We were done.

However, my future lesbian wife (story for another day), who I told about the whole drama, pressured me to call him and find out why our relationship ended the way it did. I didn’t want to know why. But she was persistent, and eventually, I relented.

Three weeks after he came for his things, I called Ed. The conversation was stiff and awkward, and I hurried to the reason why I called.

Why did he behave the way he did that led to us breaking up the way we did?

His answer: that me telling him I wanted some me-time really hurt him. He’d felt like I didn’t care about him any longer. So he decided to give me some space.

I didn’t believe this for one second. And I asked him another question: “Please be honest with me, Ed. On a scale of 1 to 10, where did you place me as someone you cared about?”

“I should be honest?” he said.

“Yes, please.”

“Five,” he said.

This, I believe, was when the relationship officially ended for me. Hearing how much I mattered to him as a boyfriend iced out whatever was left of the feelings I had for him.

Then I read a story here on Kito Diaries, Red Candles In The Dark, about how gay guys used diabolic means to entrap the affections of their love interests. I was reading that story and feeling a cold wash of realization: that perhaps, the reason I was that much of a fool for Ed during our relationship was because he had, in fact, used his fetishism on me. Just like that investor at the beach, like every other target who’d been unable to say no to him, Ed had probably weaved a spell on me, one that made me do everything I did for him, however against my nature they were.

I even wondered if I ever loved him, or if everything I felt for him was magnified by his diabolism. Every relationship I’d been in that ended all cost me some emotional turmoil. But with Ed, I was done, as though I hadn’t even invested any emotions in the relationship. Was that because what I felt for him wasn’t real to begin with?

Did I start to regain my senses when I put some distance between us and travelled home into the Christian stronghold of my parents’ house?

Was that how his hold on me weakened?

I got the idea to pen this story because, out of the blue a few weeks ago, he called me, wanting to apologize, to say he was sorry about the way he treated me, to ask for us to meet again. I thought about how this dude must be stirring another pot with my name on it, and simply needed our physical closeness for the juju to take effect.

And I said no and hung up.

Written by Queen Blue Fox