The boys danced with the boys and the girls danced with the girls. Now, I got into the club and I felt something wasn’t quite right.
When I moved to California on the eve of this century, I had all those fears and beliefs burnt in my brains. They let you know that if you take the wrong turn you have a reserved ticket to hell where the fire never ends. In church and mosques, the pastors and imams let you know that if you take the right way, life would be good and so would be the afterlife. Growing up, you are placed in an imaginary junction of life and you’re made to believe that wrong lay on one side and right lay on the other. The mothers were, for the most part, the gatekeepers to your safety. Your father had it when you’re not in school. Your principal and his cohorts, the teachers, had your soul and balls during the day. You really don’t remember God until you’re really in danger, at church or during prayer times in school and at home. The order differs from day to day but God was normally at the rear. Growing up, a kid like me had three fears – the fear of our fathers, the fear of the school principal and the fear of God. Unknown to me, this part of Los Angeles is not a place for a kid from the streets of Ibadan at night. She wanted us to go dancing and “we can take it from there”. After a while, she decided to open a window. I was crazy about this girl but she thought I was crazy. It makes me remember the night a woman took me to a gay bar in Los Angeles. I’m writing about what women make men do today because I am in Nigeria and I hear all these interesting dialogue on the place of gays in the society. Imagine the women working and all you have to do all day is drink wine and pepper soup. Maybe women would have had to do all the work since they ate the apple. This would be paradise – no work, all play. If only Adam was strong enough to say no, the world would have been a lot different. The first man got us into all this mess because he listened to the woman and ate the apple.
Men have always done things because of women.