Stories from "Kenyon Review", "One Story", etc. Set in Nigeria I think.
- The dreamer's litany - A rich, male customer, Chief, starts regularly visiting a shopkeeper Auwal (a young father) at the end of the working day. They suddenly have oral sex. The shopkeeper soon decides that their meetings should stop but he has difficulty stopping. Auwal came from a village and misses Idris, a male lover who was forced to move away when his father found out he was gay. Chief thinks Auwal makes love like a wild animal. Auwal's wife was clever and wanted to go to university but her father preferred spending money on her brothers. One night when Auwal's in a hotel with Chief, his little daughter has a seizure. Chief offers to pay for a doctor. Next day Auwal and his wife (who's suspicious of Chief) take their daughter to Chief and they see a doctor. Chief charms the daughter, who's ok. Later Auwal rushes to Chief's hotel room wanting love. He's offered money then (I think) rejected during sex.
- Happy is a doing word - Binyelum wants to be a pilot. Somadina is his friend at school. The school bully catches them having sex, exploits them, and tells their parents. Binyelum is whipped. Somadina gets off lightly. Years later, Binyelum is having sex with David in the church. Somadina is into girls. A neighbour, Baba Ali, and his loving wife can't have healthy kids. She leaves him. He remarries, but his new wife leaves him when he falls ill - AIDS? Binyelum repeatedly fails the pilot exam. He works in a factory and breaks up from David. Years later he's moved to Lagos to be an apprentice shopkeeper. Somadina is living with beautiful Kamura. She leaves him after 8 years because he has no prospects. Binyelum has his own shop and male friends who he contacts via Facebook and Whatsapp for sex. Somadina tries to Friend him. The ending is "Every day he lived, he felt less like himself. Growth, people called it; he thought of it as estrangement"
- Where the heart sleeps - Nonye's father died 2 weeks ago. She's just arrived from the States to visit the family house that she's not been to for 2 years. Tochukwu (his fingers too slender for a man) lets her in. He noticed in her some of 's traits that he'd not noticed before. We learn how Tochukwu had coped with the sudden death, having to phone the relatives who hated him, who wanted him out of the big house. In the night Nonye goes to Tochukwu's room and they grieve together. At the family gathering, Tochukwu's told to leave the room. Nonye and her mother order the rest of the family out. Tochukwu realises that before long he'll have to leave the house.
- God's children are little broken things - Lotanna (male - the "you" of the story) meets Kansi (male) at a football match and befriends him, meeting him later at church where Kansi's the organist. Lotanna phones Rachael to say he loves her. Kansi starts living with Lotanna, though he rejects full sex. Kansi's parents argue. His father is having at affair. Rachael finds Kansi's many calls on Lotanna's phone. Lottanna says that Kansi's a girl. Kansi's become a victim of gay bashing. Lottanna's mother suddenly dies. After the funeral, Lottanna splits with Rachael and tries to contact Kansi, but his father sends Lottanna away. People try to interest Lottanna in God. "There is no power. You light a candle, and everything else becomes shadows."
- Aloban - Ralu (male) is waiting for Obum (male, 20) at a club. He doesn't arrive, Instead he phones Ralu asking to be collected. He's been with Ibrahim and tells Ralu so. They have an open relationship. Ibrahim and Ralu had been sleeping together during their school years until Ibrahim's brother discovered them and Ralu was banned. Obum reminds Ralu of Ralu's brother Makuo who died in a street fight at 23. He'd fancied Makuo. Obum was the first man he'd slept with. PoV switches between Ralu and Obum. We learn what happened between Obum and Ibrahim that evening - the comforting nostalgia but also Obum's need for passionless sex. Ibrahim had rough sex with him, made him cry. Ralu recalls a talk he had with Makuo, when Makuo told him that Obum was clever and gay, and would have a difficult life. My favourite story so far.
- Good intentions - Another "You" piece. A 40 year-old male literary lecturer (author of "Relections on Loneliness") has criticised the dean for how he deals with protests and complaints. His student lover has left him after a tiff about sex roles, and has returned to a poor part of town. The lecturer is coming home after a preliminary hearing. Next day, in public, 3 students will accuse the lecturer of unnatural sexual acts. At 15 his mother caught him with a boy and got religious people to flay his back. Later, after his suicide attempt, she got people to pray around his hospital bed. At the end I think his lover is returning.
- What the singers say about love - When Somto was 17 he had a 31 year-old male lover. Somto (the male "I" of the story) and Kayode (a musician) exchange glances. Later at a club Kayode drags Kayode to the dancefloor at gets him to lose himself in the music. They sleep together. They're both students. "Before him, I walked around campus with my body alert, that is what the body does when it has become a recipient of frequent violence, it perks up, an antelope, ready to flee, or a guard dog, ready to pounce". Eunice begins to come to their flat. Kayode makes out with her. Somto becomes jealous of his charisma. Kayode's campaign to be student rep is sabotaged when Eunice tells people he's gay. He begins to feel the prejudice that Somto's long suffered from. Then his demo recording takes off. Years pass. The move to Lagos. Somto's a teacher. When they go to a party to celebrate the success of Kayode's single, Kayode's producer, Lanre, tells Somto that he should find a girlfriend. He storms out, leaving his incriminating phone behind. It's safely locked, but they decide to live apart. The rumours dies out. Somto can't cope seeing Kayode with girls even though he knows it's for show. He ends the relationship. Kayode gets drunk and pukes in Somto's toilet. Years later, when Kayode's songs are all over Africa, and when Somto wonders if leaving Kayode was the biggest mistake of his life, he remembers that puking.
- Michael's possessions - Only 7 pages. Obinna goes to pickup Michael's things. Adanna unexpectedly lets her in. Michael was their child. It had been his house before they got married. He still pays the rent. He'd not visited for 3 years. Before they'd married, when they were good friends, he'd told her he might like men. Before Michael's birth he had moved out to live with Martin. Gradually their relationship weakened. Now Martin's left him. She'd not let him see Michael's corpse. She's still angry. The weakest story so far.
- Mother's love - Male Chenna left male lawyer Chikelu (34) two weeks before Chikelu's mother came to visit, staying a few days because of medical appointments. She'd not been kind to Chenna, partly because she wanted her son to marry and have babies like his sister Anulika had. Anulika tells Chikelu that their mother is friends with a doctor. She'd divorced their womanising father only once they'd grown up. The medical tests are ok. Mother, looking at Chikelu's phone, discovers he's gay. She leaves, shocked, but feels guilty later. Chikelu texts Chenna saying sorry for not realising that his mother was unkind to him. Chenna returns that evening.
There's a variety of PoVs - 1st person PoV, 2nd person PoV, 2 alternating 1st person PoVs. One story has a female PoV. 2 stories have numbered sections. The style varies little, nor do the ingredients. Common ones include Nigeria, being discovered having gay sex by parents, tell-tale phones, men going to each other to be comforted, a man's relatives disliking the man's lover, sensitive nipples, scars on the back after whipping, having a secret gay affair while in a straight relationship, liking friends' mothers, student life, the nuances of language switching.
Other reviews
- Julia Lichtblau (It’s a convention of ambitious fiction that the narrator orients the reader ... A Nigerian reader would undoubtedly pick up many more nuances in the implied Igbo/Hausa tension—Igbo being a minority Southeastern ethnic group and Hausa, the majority, mostly Northern. But even without that background, the use of language as fault line is masterful)
- goodreads
No comments:
Post a Comment