When your baby brother was born in the hospital, that place that smelled strangely of liquid soap and disinfectant, your father bought a big pack of pampers for his shit and pee. And whenever he cried, his face scrunched up and legs up in the air, your mother carried him, felt his buttocks and said, “Cheta’s pampers is wet. Give me another one from the bag.”
The news around the school was about homosexual people. All the boys in your class, boys like Chuka, Emeka, Michael, Odika, boys who wore smartly ironed uniforms, called it Homoor Nditu(ass busters). And during CRS class or Science class, they asked questions related to homosexuality.
“Excuse me ma, was there condoms during Jesus’ time?”
“What did homosexuals use in that period?”
They would ask these with suppressed laughter, and your CRS teacher, a portly woman with a tired gait, would stare at them sternly and continue with her story of how Jesus changed water to wine.
But what really amazed you in their stories was the one about pampers. It was not the ‘homos will roast like popcorn in hellfire’ stories. It was the story that a gay man had gone to have sex in a hotel with his partner – not lover, because they did not believe that two men could love themselves – and when they finished, the other man’s intestines spilled out through his buttocks, and his partner had to rush and get pampers for him to wear, so his intestines would not drop to the floor.
You were amazed.
Later when you got home, you snuck into Cheta’s room, picked up a diaper and stared at it. It felt soft and firm, like bread from the bakery on Uka Street, and you wondered how something this squishy could hold intestines in it, and why gay men had to wear pampers.
It became a standing joke in your class.
“Don’t touch me o! I’m not ready to wear pampers yet.”
“Let those gay people catch you, your pampers will be extra-large!”
“Abeg free me joor. My pampers size never dey market.”
And whenever you laughed at their jokes, you felt your earlier amazement begin to dwindle, to trickle like sand in a bag with holes in the bottom. And finally, when it dwindled completely, a new fear lodged itself in your heart and began to choke you. It tightened your throat and made you dread your sexuality, made you dread what would happen if you finally had sex with someone who liked boys the way you did. Of course your intestines would spill too, and you would have to steal Cheta’s pampers and wear them. And your punctilious mother would notice that they were missing, and would know that you had taken them to wear. And then your parents would know you liked boys more than girls.
And each time you thought about this, your fear bunched like wool, and it wrapped you up until you felt listless and limp, your palms sweaty.
***
Cyrus came when you were in SS3 first term, when the paint of your school had started to peel and gaping holes were in the windows because most of the louvers had been broken. You found his name odd. Cyrus Amadi. Most people you knew had mostly Igbo names – Raluchi, Onuekwusie, Fanasi – and those who had English names had conventional Biblical names like Tabitha, Cornelius, Zechariah.
But Cyrus was a foreign name, something you heard on TV, and this foreignness filled you with wonder.
Cyrus was dignified in a serene way. He did not join the other boys to joke about homos. He did not laugh when they told anecdotes about a gay man who was burnt in Onitsha, or another one who was stripped naked and made to walk naked while people shouted at him, saying he was a disgrace to other men and that this was why many ladies remained single because all the handsome men were nditu. Cyrus did not laugh. He simply stared at them, his left eyebrow arched slightly as if what they said did not matter to him. And each time someone said something like, “Na pampers you go wear last-last,” you glanced at Cyrus to see if he would laugh. But he never did. He never even smiled.
It was on a Wednesday afternoon, one that was ablaze with heat, that Cyrus finally stopped you as you packed your bags to go home. You stared at him when he stood in front of you, his tie lopsided, and his smile gentle.
“You live on Obollo Close, don’t you?” he said.
“Yes,” you replied. You did not know how he knew where you lived, but you felt pleased that he knew something…anything about you.
“I live on Uka Street, in that tall house beside the bakery,” he said. “I always see you when you come for bread.”
You laughed as riotous thoughts crowded your mind. Perhaps Cyrus liked boys in the same arousing way you did. Perhaps he wanted to be friends, ordinary friends who went to school together and returned home together.
“Are you going home now?” he asked you when you zipped your bag.
“Yes,” you said.
He carried his own bag too and walked with you until you got to the dense cluster of withering nondescript flowers where the roads separated and you turned to your own street and Cyrus to his.
On the Wednesday when the mid-term tests ended, and Thursday and Friday were mid-term break, Cyrus walked home with you. And during the walk, he said something funny about a woman with matted weave-on, and you laughed loudly, throwing your head back and standing beside the dense cluster of flowers.
“I like you,” he said.
You stared at him, and in the sky bleached to a powdery shade of blue, bereft of clouds, you saw that the sun was tilting.
“Are you…” you started to say.
And he nodded, as if to say he understood things you did not, as though he knew saying you were gay felt sticky on your tongue and difficult to unfurl.
“I want us to be more than friends,” he said.
And even though you felt there was a theatric feel to his words, something strapping boys with sprouts of hair on their chin said to coy giggling girls, you felt something burst open in your chest, something deliciously warm and silky in that region where your heart thumped.
***
It was Cyrus who finally unraveled the mystery of Pampers to you. You were in his parents’ house, in his room where the wall was painted a muted green. His trouser was off, and even though you had kissed his lips, rubbing your hands over his erection, you still could not let him unbuckle your belt and take off your trousers.
“Why?” he asked you, nibbling your left earlobe and running a finger in little circles round your nipple.
You wanted him to do more than that, you wanted him to slip into you and see if you would feel the same sporadic bursts of pleasure you felt when you touched yourself in the bathroom, the smell of LUX soap masking the stench of semen.
“I don’t want to wear Pampers,” you said, and attempted to slip away from him as your discomfiture surged inside you.
He stopped nibbling your earlobe, and focused on you. Locking gazes with him felt too heavy with lust, and small needles of pleasure scattered round your body to your feet, pricking you.
“Pampers?” he asked, surprised.
Of course he had not heard the story of the two partners in the hotel, the one whose intestines spilled out after having sex. So you told him, staring at the small hole in the ceiling and wondering what he would do if your own intestines spilled out your ass. Would he run out and buy pampers or would he tell you to hold it in with your hand until you got home and could steal from Cheta’s trolley?
He began to laugh when you ended your story, loud laugher that seemed so unlike him. Then he told you things like that never happened, that gay people never wore pampers after having sex. He told you about the last neighbourhood he lived in before his parents moved here, the area where people who hated homosexuality had used the word ‘pampers’ until it had an ominous pallor. Of course it was a lie, the intestines did not drop out of one’s ass like that. And even if it did, it was never caused by sex.
When he finished speaking, you felt an unsettling peace, like a butterfly, resting on you and then going away again. Finally, you stood up and unbuckled your belt.
“Let’s do it,” you said slowly.
And as he slipped into your ass, you grasped the bed sheets and moaned. You felt like you were two as his thrusts multiplied; one part of you was being pleasured, the other part was worrying that your intestines would slip out, and whether you had enough money to buy pampers.
In the end, your intestines did not make any gory appearance from your behind. And as Cyrus slipped out of you and took off the condom, you felt strangely bereft, as if someone had sunk the boat you were sailing on, the boat of pleasure and dreams.
“Do we still need pampers for you?” he asked with a teasing smile as he stood up.
And you laughed, a spontaneous sound that burst from you as you embraced him, perceiving your body scent enmeshed in his.
Original Story posted by our sister blog Kitodiaries.com