Blurred Lines: The Mortality of Straight Thought

~ For @Storymoja's #WazaDunia

Act I, Sin-band 1.

On 14^th July, round about 2000hrs EAT, I happened to be at the scene of a crime. A bunch of crooks got tired of sitting in front of prison bars, cuddling prisoners' heads with the butts of their guns. Frustrated with guarding their own species of sex, never having to do more than butt the prisoners, let loose on the streets of Pwani Si Kenya’s Shanzu. Problem.

Their foray into the armpits of the Tourist Town’s foliage set the neighbourhood alight. Literally. Gunshots left, right and centre, mostly aimed at the sky. These crooks were exchanging smiles, snatching guns from each other as kids to toys. Much to the shit loosenings of the innocent bystanders.

Every Dick, Dick and Dick legally outside Shimo La Tewa's prison gates instantly became a candidate for the hostile reception party these crooks’ boots, whips, blows, bayonets and gun barrels had in store for them. Forget that many of these men were trying to get home to Mtwapa after a long hard day’s work in the sputtering of Tourist Hotels that are the mainstay of the Coast’s economy.

***

Act II, Sin 1.

You drop a cigarette in a litter zone. This zone, it so happens, is not a designated litter bin. It is, however, a litter bin nonetheless. Problem.

Solution? You pick up your butt and walk off, right?

***

Act III, Sin-band 1.

All the world's problems are, from every individual, picked up and dumped in one designated problem tank. They are then shared out equitably to every individual on the planet. It is then said that we would all, unequivocably, drop the new problems, pick up our shitty little problems and stalk off. Never looking back, the Lot's wives of us.

***

Are the above scenarios similar? Is Act II Sin 1 similar to Act III Sin-band 1? Is the problem tank analogy the same as the litter bin hyper thesis?

Perhaps. They all have problems. The second and third are probably most correlatable, but even then, not quite.

Unlike litter, our problem tank is full of material and immaterial issues. That cigarette's butt, plastic bottle, Java cup, busted Mobile phone, condom, condom wrapper, lollipoop-stick, or black gangsta hoodie in the bin. They can all be picked up. They can all be dropped. Easy peasy...quite the breezy.

Can you do the same for – or with – a social problem? Moreso, is the problem equal when exhibited by different individuals?

Does a high-class call girl, for instance, suffer through the same issues a street-walking strumpet does? Is prostitution a problem, or just the hive that nests problematic bees?

Act IV Sin 1

A guy stands at a podium. As he takes out a card from his pocket, out fall not one – not two – but a six-pack of sex-packs. Guy is a lecturer, preacher, politician, president or other exalted panel speaker doing his mouth runs in an auditorium full of eager young grasping sponges of minds. Like minds.

Society preaches protection and safe sex. Yet:

• Guy will most likely be embarrassed.
• Crowd will quite likely erupt in laughter, aka LOL, alias LTAO.

These like-minded eager to learn folks will still – quite likely – bear this double standard. Preach protection, then shake their damn heads at it in equal measure. Problem?

***

We live in a quite stratified society. Where every individual, despite being individual, unique, is expected – or expects – to fit in. One in which there are tonnes of eager boxes waiting patiently to be filled. To be entered. We have levels and lanes, wigs and high-roads full of self-interest and other-disinterest. Yet all these somehow merge for and/or against common enemies.

What common enemies?

Recently, our common enemy has either been very sexual or very religious. Or very religiously sexual, sexually religious.

Very sexual. Very homo. Very natural. Very same.

Because sex, like it or not, is natural. Take a look at your general pubic configuration and have yourself a gory light bulb moment. Hey socket, meet plug. Go ye forth and electrify.

Because homo, like it or don't, is same. Homosex, is same nature. As in natural. See history books. You were not taught by some outside force to be straight or curveballed.

Because individual, like it or not, we are. As a planet, we are a globe full of individual persons, with individual needs, and individual goals. Should one individual's needs be to score goals aplenty for the 'same' team, then that prerogative is their own to do with as they please.

As is their bum and pubic region.

What's stopping you from doing as you please, always caring too fucking much about your neighbours shit et al? Mavi usioyala, yakuwashiani?

What's should stop me from being?

Status quo?

It's nigh on impossible to simply sit there and talk about the issue of homosexuality as an exclusive issue. Yet, and this is where #teamHappy goes wrong, our problems are interconnected. Before your brain goes into overdrive, dear reader, trying to figure out if I think homosexuality is a problem that needs a solution, let me spell it out for you: being gay is a problem.

Homosexuality in itself, you will find, is not the problem. However, the modalities of being curved–not-straight, are. And not just for 'the gays'. It is in fact in the way society interacts, when it cares to, with them, and how they react to it. How they interact with society, if they bother, and how it reacts to them.

There seems to be a certain protocol and bureaucracy that correlates gay guy sex to feminism; where feminism refers to being feminine. And since women need to be controlled in our society lest they run wild and refuse to open their legs in silence, so need the gay guys.

The irony is that when manly men are shackled, the have the luxury of revolting. Not so much for their women, and their womenly men.

Did the MauMau revolt because they were denied land that was rightfully theirs, or because they then had to walk around this land with a noose around their necks, from whence hang a metallic pedantic pendulum of identification?

The Kipande, a colonial ID system that was basically the equivalent of Slave TrackIt, still exists. Not only in our linguistic parlance, where we still reserve the term for our wallets and IDs; but also in our minds.

We still call them kipande, and like women's tribal names, they remain as their cultural society intended them to. Women, in my native tongue, are -lashed 'silence'. Directly translated, 'mutumia' refers to 'person whose lips are sealed'.

Men, conversely, are called 'choice', or 'brave', depending on which scenario of preference they are zooming in on. 'Muthuri' is the 'person who chooses,' while 'mundu-urume' is the 'person who is brave.' Choice is a man, bravery is a man. Silence is a woman. And what is a man's choice?

Man's choice is as to which woman's lips he will seal. Which women he will bravely silence, awed as they will be by his courage and ability to choose so well. It's no wonder the blowjob is such a fast-rising – and arousing – sensation. The only sound she can make then would be a gaggle or slurp...but I digress.

What society, thus, cannot fathom, is why any man would choose to be silenced. The gay guy, being so 'womanly', is expected to be just as silent. Because he so chose to be. A woman. Yet in true double standard, he is also expected not to choose to 'be a woman'; not to 'be a 'Desperate Housewife'; not to 'be a queen'.

He is expected to choose. To be brave. To be man.

Ergo, it's either 'take your pride parade where it belongs. In a closet far far away' ... or 'why don't you be...somebody? Why are you being...a woman?'

And just to make it a tad worse, sometimes it's either...or...or die.

So why bother coming out? Why not simply be who you are, and not have to come out into the shit streets in defense of who you, I, we...are? Pride at having come out should be the bravest, most stupid choice a guy can make.

[First Published on July 19th 2013]

Homo? No Homo. Yes?

Conversations between Opinionated Guys - Straight meets Out ~ Featuring @french_freddy and @KenyanPhil

For this next piece, I almost talked my brilliant Editor Mama on this here One Story, aka Storymoja hearspace, into deleting my bio down there ↓.

Or at the very least, wanted her to replace the comprehensible alphanumerical flow in it, where the numerics are silent, into something illegibly encoded:   ˬ͏֤֟؁؏قٲڂڳ ↓ 

[I hereby declare that a fatwā on my mOngol should there be any iconic Arabic icon somewhere in there would be way too rash, brush and rush…]

For over a month, and certainly longer than I’ve been Wazaing Dunias, akaImagining Worlds with Storymoja Africa for the Hay Festival this September, I have contemplated writing with a gay Kenyan I met in a group called Sanaa, aka Art in Swahili. Story Moja, Sanaa. Waza Dunia. Quite the Swahili Teacher today, amn’t I? [I’ll presume you SWIDT – See what I did there?]

Digressions aside, it was not, and never will be, the fact that he is and has been gay for much longer than I even knew the gays existed, that led my hesitations. Nope, nosiree! It was something less, maybe more sinisterly cynical than it. 

His writing scares the shit out of me. Now I realize that visual commentary about a gay guy doesn’t exactly whet your appetite for what’s about to follow, so to ease your pain and decision-making, let me now play you Should I stay or Should I go, by The Clash:

Should I stay or should I go? 

Always tease tease tease

Siempre – coqetiando y enganyando
You’re happy when I’m on my knees
Me arrodilla y estas feliz
One day is fine, next is black
Un dias bien el otro negro
So if you want me off your back
Al rededar en tu espalda
Well come on and let me know
Me tienes que desir
Should I stay or should I go?
Me debo ir o que darme

Now that we’re done with that nifty nitty gritty itsy bitsy little icky, I have two ideas that me and Phil ARE GONNA write together. They’re both bold moves on my part, sorta pedestrian on his, with the first being the easier pill to shove down my friends’ and readers’ mouths.

Project 1: To do a sorta comparison between what growing up knowing that you’re gay – as a guy – and growing up knowing you don’t subscribe to society’s expectations of manhood – obviously, also, as a guy. The obvious stereotypes will be examined. The assumption that that guy you know, who doesn’t do the weird things guys are supposed to – say sleep with every lassie that bats a good eyelid – is gay. The assumption that that gay guy in the closet – the guy who walks, talks, thinks, dresses, takes and says IT like a gay guy – is not gay, because it better suits YOUR sensibilities.

I want to bring out the dynamics of that straight guy, always hating that he was thought of as a lesser man; sometimes, stereo music typically so, even thought to be gay as a result. I want to juxtapose it to that of the gay guy who has to act straight and hate it all the way; until both finally embrace their personalities…come out, so to speak. It will be the whole 81 miles, forget 9, in my view.

The next piece would be the more controversial one. Because once this little piece is done, I would then want us to do a second piece, one in which we explore what goes on in the mind of a gay guy as he ‘turns’ a straight, and what goes on in the mind of a‘Virgin Adonis’ before his first ‘sinkable’ voyage…it should ideally be in a bedroom setting.

Now I know what went through my mind as I got into my gay friend’s bed for the first time, but I have no clue what goes on after the acceptance, so to speak, of a shagging; so I’d be banking on Kenyan Phil’s ‘sexpertise’ on that, for lack of a better word (who are we kidding?).

I’m glad to say that Kenyan Phil (it just occurred to me that maybe Kenyan Phallusy would be a better name for him, no?) nodded and said “Aїe! Caramba!” to both pieces. Now we can start working towards ‘pitching tent’ and ‘bouncing balls’ of ideas off each other.

Here’s a quick recap of what he had to say when he responded:

Hey Freddy?

Thanks for writing me. I am totally lost on some things you wrote and I will try and get a clearer picture. So you would like me to write about growing up with the realization that I was gay, then you do the part about not subscribing to society’s expectations or do I do both? I don’t seem to find a part I can start on. Yes I grew up, yes I realized I was gay etc… I just lack a base.

I did a shared post once and I did great when I was presented with questions which can then become a story.

Make sense?

In the next one, by ‘turn a straight’ you mean sleep with a ‘straight’ person? Give me questions man, ask the questions you want, ask them all, and don’t hold back.

I feel you have the idea you want to see through, but it is taking a tad bit long to cum to me, make me understand, get me on your page…..

Have a great evening!!

And since the headline already gave you an idea of what this was gonna be, here’s what I said back:

Hey there matey?

(Is it wrong that I keep feeling like I can ignore the reservations I usually have with calling guys this coz it’s YOU? Calling a guy mate, just, erm, stereos and typos…)

I tend to lose people when I go unabashedly no holding back with them, so I’m glad that did not hold you back from responding, or, God forbid (irony), allow it to piss you off. I’m a highly unstructured being.

You may notice that every time I’ve done a guest blog post, like today, it’s usually with the “you write your thoughts and I’ll respond sorta mind set”… I know that can be a problem with flaws in flow, so let me attempt to answer you. You’ll be Skip, I’ll be Yule M2, aka YMM…

Act 1/ Scene 1: Clothes drop, mind free, fingers numb…aaaand sextion!

Skip: So you would like me to write about growing up with the realization that I was gay, then you do the part about not subscribing to society’s expectations or do I do both?

Yule M2: Yes, you do the growing up and realization you were gay, and I do that about not subscribing to expectations. However, as I read what you write, I will throw in suggestions of my two cents, and you can do the same with mine.

Skip: I don’t seem to find a part I can start on, yes I grew up, yes I realized I was gay etc… I just lack a base.

YMM: Start from the part I would think would be interesting to straightees looking in, like me. What did you do during Cha mama Cha baba*? What was nursery school like? Any mixed feeling then?

What was your first kiss like? Was it with a girl or with a boy? Differentiate the emotions in both if you’ve had both, and if you have, also differentiate between first girl and first boy kiss.

What, finally, did it feel like to be out in the open? Do your parents know? (Obviously, I think, they do) How’d they take it? When’d they finally accept it? And you?

Skip: I did a shared post once and I did great when I was presented with questions which can then become a story. Make sense?

YMM: Makes perfect sense matey, in fact could you send a link to the story and maybe provide me the questions asked?

Skip: In the next one, by ‘turn a straight’ you mean sleep with a ‘straight’ person? Give me questions man, ask the questions you want, ask them all, and don’t hold back.

YMM: Yes I do mean it. Did you look at the straight and go “I love him” or “I wanna jump his bones”?

What was his reaction? (I want a story of triumph here, so think back to the guy who tried valiantly but failed to keep your advances off).

When you got to (bed, back seat, tub, kitchen sink, Jacuzzi, rooftop, club toilet *choose one as appropriate*) did he flinch?

(Please let that be a yes… a *puss in boots hands clasped in front of him in prostration to God* sorta please)

What did you do to convince him? How, if he was a ‘virgin’ did he react? Any yelps in pain? Any blood? (I know, call me ignorant)

And finally, after sleeping with him, did you toss him out or did he do you? As in kick you out, he’d clearly already done you. Or you him. What were the two scenarios like?

Or are you Kid Cuddly after c’anal’ knowledge? OK (this one you can lenga if you don’t wanna say) and finally, the idea that anal opens up the faucets and you can’t hold your sh!t together after you do, true?

Skip: I feel you have the idea you want to see through, but it is taking a tad bit long to come to me, make me understand, get me on your page…..

YMM: I hope that helps bruh….does it?

Skip: Have a great evening!!

YMM: And a good morning to you too. You write like an angel man, I have to say, then realize the irony, stereos and innuendo in that statement.

One love matey

(To Be Continued in 1 month's time)

About the writers:

Fred Wambugu, preferably known as Freddy, is a writer/ entrepreneur with a liking for agro ways. Both the loud-mouthed, angry “for no reason” and the arable kinds.

When not farming or talking, Freddy owns of a hard-hitting anything-goes blog, the Diary of a Serial Schizo, is an Industry and Market Researcher with Eronia Inc Ltd. and is the founder of inThync Kenya. 

For more details on the writer, he has suggested that we tell you to scream at him on @french_freddy or Yule Mbois Mndialala. 

Disclaimer: He will holler right back. Loudly. Or lovably.

In other News, does a bio need to have an ‘I’? 

Find out what, who, why, where, when and how the Kenyan Phil thinks he is here.