At The Rubicon – How I Came Out At Work

I never go out with work colleagues. Yes, it’s because of privacy issues related to gayness. I especially avoided it when in African cities. I realised quickly that the religious and conservative environment meant that often people could be singled out by their supervisors for things they did on the work night out or just in public and were seen. One of my colleagues ended up losing his job for something that was not even related to the company, something in his personal life that leaked.

However in the UK, it’s far easier. There is a certain feeling that everyone has been there and done that and people don’t really care who you shag or if you shag at all. And there’s a certain camaraderie that’s built up by those after work drinks.

I work in a female-dominated environment and they have all been very nice and easy to work with. We’ve had a few big nights. One of them in particular was so bad I had to be helped home. I had thoroughly underestimated their bar prowess and paid dearly for it the next day.

So on another night out, I was chatting with one of my colleagues when she started to get a bit flirty. At that point, I took a few minutes to gather up courage and then told her “Listen yeah, I’m gay.” She laughed and said “we all know!” I was stunned. I couldn’t believe my ears. I asked how she knew and she responded: do you not remember??

On the big night that I’d gotten so drunk, I’d told many of the coworkers that I was gay. I don’t even remember any of it. And so it had been passed on as part of the usual office gossip and was old news. I was the only one who didn’t know I’d been out at work for weeks. A few things suddenly began to make sense.  I’d detected a softening towards me from many formerly frosty members of staff that hadn’t been there before and now I knew why. For some reason I felt weird at work. It wasn’t that I was upset that I was careless with my private life – it’s legal to be gay in the UK and I knew my job wasn’t in jeopardy – this was all uncharted territory for me and I had never even considered telling work colleagues. All my energy so far had been expended in figuring out how to tell family with the plan that I’d work on work folk later should it be deemed necessary yet the reverse had happened.  Eventually I decided to let things flow and not overthink it. So far things have been good, no one has made anti-gay statements, made me feel uncomfortable or tried to set me up yet (thankfully!).

And the love and respect I have for my coworkers continues to grow in leaps and bounds.

 

A Sexual Wrestling Adventure

Senegalese Wrestlers (Dennis Rouvre)

One of the issues that has come up during talks with my psychologist is my hidden desires. We agreed that it was time I explored some of them. As I found myself caught in a wrestler’s sleeper hold a few days later, feeling dizzy but tapping away frantically on the floor, I doubted this was what either of us had in mind.

 

As Support For Gay People Rises in Nigeria, Violence Against Them Rises Also

While the Police has begun seizing people’s phones at random and checking for incriminating pictures, luring and arresting suspected gay men all in the name of bribes curbing the homosexual menace, most gay men and women have bound to together to form support groups and networks and protect each other while others have taken to speaking against the law. There has been support from the heterosexual community such as Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka (whose piece requires a good dictionary to follow), musician Seun Kuti who also advocated for gay people to come out, and blogger Ayo Sogunro who succinctly (and satirically) explained why even heterosexual men and women should be worried about this new law.

On the hand, two gay men got were caught by a mob of young men and forced to have sex with each other. The episode was recorded on multiple mobile phones by onlookers and uploaded online. No one attempted to help them. I watched the video and every second of it broke my heart. The one thought going through my head was this could happen to me. There have been no comments from the Nigerian police on this issue.

A man was also outed on social media via pictures that were taken when he was having sex with another man. The pictures clearly showed his face and he was tagged in the post, thus making sure that everyone who saw the picture knew exactly who he was. People immediately began condemning him and calling for him to be arrested. He has since gone underground. The worst part of this entire spectacle is that it was orchestrated by another gay man. Talk about drama.

In other Nigerian news, petrol queues are starting to form due to shortage (real or induced by those with ‘vested interests’ – sometimes you never can tell). This is yet another problem that was placed lower down in the priority list as fighting homosexuality went up. I hope Nigerians are seeing their tax Naira at work.

 

The Aftermath of The Anti-Gay Bill in Nigeria

I don’t know who edited this picture but they did a good job

The ink isn’t even dry on the paper yet and the Nigerian Police Force have started rounding up suspected gay men. Allegedly some members of the police have signed up to some gay dating websites and begun luring men to meet up with them. When these men appear, the officers arrest force them to reveal names and numbers of other gay men in the area. Many people have been arrested and some are asked to pay bribes or risk being outed. In the North, 12 men were arrested according to the BBC and one of them was sentenced to receive 20 lashes and pay a fine in accordance with Muslim Sharia law. The lashes were meted out in a packed court room. A Christian who was also arrested will be handed over to the regular courts. Gay men in Nigeria have been warned to stay off the sites and not to meet any new people.

 

An Unnecessary Misadventure Courtesy of Carelessness

I was hanging out with an older cousin recently when she asked to see my phone. I don’t know if I had momentarily forgotten the kind of information I keep on that device or if I was subconsciously trying to out myself. To cut a short story even shorter, I gave the phone to her then spent the next five minutes holding my breath while feigning nonchalance though my eyes were involuntarily drawn to the screen as she scrolled through my applications list and past the popular gay chat apps – Grindr etc.

 

All In The Family

After recently moving house(or tiny apartment to be precise) I found myself without internet access since the phone company were taking forever to come by and set things up. Stuck with a dongle that barely worked after a (relatively) obscene fee with most of my books and other things still in storage,  I had to focus on areas on my life that I had ignored for far too long: the people in it. It’s funny how you begin to see things when you pay attention

 

Dating 2.0: Of Conversions and Relentless Pursuits

These days it’s getting harder and harder to tell a woman you’re not interested and nip a potential difficulty in the bud. This year I’ve been in a couple of such situations where I meet a woman at work, at a function, in a shop and due to boredom/proximity we get talking and exchange numbers. Suddenly she lets it slide that she’s single and I immediately say that I’m not available and expect that to be end. But no, I start getting calls, invites: “What are you doing this weekend?” “I was just in your area and..” “There’s this play at the National Theatre..“, or my favourite: “Let’s just have sex, no strings attached” (this happened at work I kid you not).

 

“Who Comes Up With This Stuff?” – Funny Gay Myths

We all like to find explanations for ideas and behaviour we cannot understand or at least find someone who does. If we’re lucky we are educated by the people who actually know what they are talking about. Sometimes the people who are the most knowledgeable are unwilling to release their information (and with good reason!) It then falls on the rest of the people to come up with explanations to satisfy their unfulfilled curiosity. Occasionally these “observed phenomena” and attendant explanations are so bizarre that they are more entertaining than (mis)educative but some of them can be frankly insulting, especially when it comes to gay people. Unfortunately there are so few people who are out in our system (Narnia is a favourite travel destination among Africa’s gays) therefore there are lot of stories swirling around concerning gay people.

Here are the most interesting I’ve heard as well as my take on each one: