Act I, Sin-band 1.
On 14th 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:
ñ Guy will most likely be embarassed.
ñ 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, they 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.
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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’?