| Chapter Three (My Friend Henry)  |
| Sex is so sweet I wouldn't mind dying to have it anytime of the day... at sixteen he was already having sex with prostitutes. |
At fifteen hairs had grown out of my pits and my pubic hair was much
more visible. I made some interesting friends in my Secondary school; a mix of
brains and brawn but nonetheless they were my friends. They were blunt
discussing issues, they made their private lives public interest; it was
subject to applaud and criticism. With them nothing was spoken in parables, this
is the guy’s clique; we make the lies good and the truth blunt too. Perhaps,
you might have such friends during your teenage years... I bet you do.
They were the ones who told me stuffs. Stuffs my dad wasn't bold
enough to say to me. One day, one of my friends nearly laughed out his eyes
when I argued that babies come through a woman’s anus. He alerted others who
joined in the laughing spree then they bluntly told me the passage way is the
vagina. Though they didn’t use the word vagina, they used the pidgin language to spell it out to me. Bear
with me dear diary, I find the word difficult to write down or speak in words
till date.
Most of my friends didn't have a disciplinarian dad like mine. Also,
they had mums who were traders, mums who owned shops far away from the ghetto,
mothers who hawked from the wee hours of the morning till night time when they
return home exhausted. Many of them had parents that were never home except at
night. Only few of my friends had mums who were full housewives but they seldom
care where their teenage children went or what they did.
As it is customary to find litters of dirt around street corners
of the ghetto neighbourhood, so customary it is to find gossiping housewives. Housewives
horn their gossip skills and sharpen their antennas to shuffle and prioritize
the latest gist leaving their children to wonder off from street to street. They
are the reason for conflicts between neighbours of the same compound and a free
for all fight across the streets. They are the ones who never stayed at home,
walking from one room to another and from one house to another with a piece of
wrapper. We refer to them as Busybody.
Lot of my new friends roam the streets very late at night. They
were given unrestrained access to privacy by their parents especially those who
had a room to themselves unlike me, my compound was my prison yard and our one
room apartment is my cell block.
Of my friends, one that explored the dark corners of his puberty
unrestrained is Henry. Henry was sixteen years old when I was fifteen but he was
already having sex with more than three consenting teen girls multiple times in
venues varying from school toilet, parents’ bedroom, the house of a friend and
his compound backyard which was always dark due to epileptic power supply at
night.
He was very explicit and detailed in recounting his sexual
escapades. His experiences were always real when he narrates them. It was like watching
a 3D video; all the details converge at a focal point.
On rare occasions when
he ascertains that either or both his parents would be home, he’ll take a girl
from school to a friend’s place for the act. These friends were always ready to
testify about the authenticity of Henry’s adventures because they always peep
through the keyhole unknown to the girls, so they can tease them when they make
Shakara. Who were these girls? Common!
They were our classmates who just admired Henry for his cash or charm or for
both. Henry was a good and very lucky gambler so cash was always in his pocket.
Henry would damn the consequences of being absent from school just
to have sex. He would say, “Sex is so sweet I wouldn't mind dying to have it
anytime of the day.” So, if being at home guarantees him sex then he is not coming
to school. I have never known him to leave his pack of Gold Circle condom at home when he is in school. Not that he cared so
much about safe sex, he actually prefers unsafe sex which he refers to as, Skin to skin but if using a condom would
allay the girl’s fear and guarantee him sex, he grudgingly obliges.
Dear diary the story of Henry may look like something fetched out
from an adult comic book but it is real and true. Sometimes I wonder the great
disillusion cast on his parents or other parents who look at their teenagers as
innocent, immature to discuss the topic of sex with them. I had always wondered
during my leisure while gazing at the ceiling, “Does Henry’s parents need to
teach him about sex? I bet he’ll be the one mounting the pulpit preaching the
gospel of sex to his parents had they dared to make it a topic for discussion.”
Oh dear dairy I almost forgot about the other part of Henry which may scare you, do you know that
at sixteen Henry was having sex with prostitutes? Yeah, commercial sex hawkers
if you intend to call it that. When the girls in our class and his
neighbourhood were unavailable, he goes to streets dedicated to prostitutes or
hotels disguised for such purpose and pay to have sex. Every ghetto has its own
area assigned to prostitutes, if you are in doubt please pay a visit to one. Henry
has never been thrown out of such hotels or streets before. At sixteen he was paying
to have sex with adults in their mid and late twenties. Although, he readily admits
that sex with a prostitute was never satisfying, he doesn’t last five minutes
and he had to use a condom…
The prostitutes didn’t bother about his age and the size of his penis,
this was their job, they call it Servicing,
and what is guaranteed is not your satisfaction but you paying up, else you are
in for a live show you’ll never forget. To talk about morality in such a place
is a joke, a lost cause. When people are plagued by poverty the voice of
morality is often lost to a suppressed conscience. People in the Lagos ghetto would
readily sell anything they consider valuable to others just to eat and survive and
so it is in any ghetto in the world.
However, no matter how
explicit Henry recounted his sensuous affairs it was never disgusting, at least
to me. Rather I draw inspiration from it to go on such adventures myself if the
opportunity ever presents itself.
“What I would have given to be in his shoes, even if it’s just
once,” that was my earnest wish back then.
I knew
it was bad (morally) but how bad could it be? Here is someone who I should have
probably named a "Sexopedia,"
he gave colours to that urge I felt, he paints with those colours a masterpiece.
How bad or how wrong would it be if I had to pay a prostitute to douse the
flames of these feelings?
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