KwaZulu-Natal in traditional gay marriage first 3

A beautiful image of yet another happy African couple, this time courtesy of Towleroad:

Tshepo Cameron Modisane and Thoba Calvin Sithole

Tshepo Cameron Modisane and Thoba Calvin Sithole

South Africa is the only African country which has enshrined the rights of all, including homosexual persons, into law and where gay marriage is legal.

More from Towleroad:

The relationship has become something of a cause célèbre in KZN, with a local newspaper celebrating their upcoming nuptials as the area’s first legal gay marriage with a front page feature. Tshepo says that one of the reasons they’ve chosen to be so open is that they “hope to inspire people out there who are still struggling to come to terms with their sexuality”.

“We see no reason to hide in darkness as if there is something to be ashamed about. Our marriage is largely symbolic and a sign that black gay men can commit and build family through a happy and loving marriage,” he says.

Thoba chimes in that “This is who we are and we are just tired of people judging with no understanding. We are people and entitled to live life to the fullest”.

Aah!

Ugandan activists should stay clear of Chris Mubiru! 8

oh dear red_pepper_ug_headline a

Last week’s Red Pepper front page

The fallout from the Red Pepper front page gay pornographic show will take time to sift through but, already, a number of expected events have happened following the first publication. The Red Pepper has, rather predictably, continued the onslaught and a number of other tabloids have followed suit with even more graphic images.

Chris Mubiru, the older man shown in the pictures, has apparently fled the country. There will likely be no such easy exit for the young man in the above pictures because of course it’s not available to him so one wonders what kind of life he is going to have after the smut published about him in the tabloids.

How did it come to this? Yours truly has no definitive proof of the order of events but it would appear that Chris Mubiru himself recorded the sex session on his phone with or without the young man’s knowledge. Then he took the phone to a repairer which is how the images found their way to the Red Pepper. It should be noted that Chris Mubiru is no stranger to homo-pedophile controversy. Whether true or not, the tabloids have been hounding him for years about his rumored penchant for sex with much younger men, many of whom were also his charges in the soccer training he was involved in.

So, the issue is not only one of pedophilia (and this hasn’t been proved yet by anyone at this point), but also one of abuse of authority. The latter is much easier to establish and there is no doubt that Chris Mubiru, a man in his 40s if he were a day, preyed on young boys he had power and authority over.

Now, thanks to the careless actions of a man who should have known better than to have sex with the young men in his charge, the gay community in Uganda is on the defensive amidst renewed charges that we recruit children into homosexuality.

Uganda’s gay rights activists should stay clear of Mubiru’s case completely as there is nothing in his conduct to defend. They should instead focus on assuring the wider Ugandan community that we don’t condone the abuse of authority and thoughtlessness that Chris Mubiru displayed in having sex with a coachee and then filming the proceedings.

Let’s be clear, had Mubiru had sex with a 30-year-old soccer player he was coaching, it would have been equally distasteful. To have preyed on young men who were barely out of their teens when he had power over their careers and/or future was thus scurrilous to say the least. We must say this loudly and clearly.

Then we must finally condemn the Red Pepper for stooping to a level where they are serving up to parents and children gay pornography for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

30+ Ugandan gay men talk dating frustrations

A couple of days ago, on another forum, three 30+ (including, ahem, yours truly) had this conversation about the frustrations of gay dating in Uganda. The excerpt is edited and the names have been changed to protect the privacy of the discussants. It does, however, give an interesting insight into how the dating world has morphed into a primarily monetary one almost from the moment older man meets younger man.

*********************

You are introduced to him for the first time, you like his large, firm, hands, his clean look, his dark mysteriousness, the tight body, the suggestive bulge …. and then he starts lamenting to you his tale of financial woe! Zzzzzzzzz …. That sinking feeling …

AA: It’s unusual if it does not take this turn……this is the normal turn of events in the Uganda I know or sub-Saharan Africa….

Me: t the first meeting? Eh! I don’t get it. How about finding out my other name before you pour out your sob story?

AA: It’s not about you, it’s about them……that’s classic feudal……

Me: Sad, very sad.

TLC: Your sob story! Lmao. A different world indeed from the one I grew in. ” Don’t take anything from a stranger however tantalized you might be”  used to lesson numero uno!

Me: You know!! Whatever happened to personal pride, keeping your problems to yourself (and those close to you) and absolutely, utterly, completely never letting total strangers know your dire financial situation? It feels as though I was raised on a completely different planet.

AA: It’s  a give me society…not what I can give back……give me, give me……give me………and what are you going to bring for me society? You owe me … for being blessed more than me … again I still will not try to understand … PAY AS U GO …

TLC: Decency/Dignity. Let me initiate the generosity. When demanding and pressure is the ammunition you use to get what you want from me, the fun and romance is gone, which in turn drives me to demand quality, not fun.

Me: I am telling you AA. I could write a sob story of my own about this kind of craven, slimy, selfish begging. In my book, if you don’t give me, and I can’t get it for myself, I move on. In our day, anyway, we got f****d for free because we loved being f****d. The idea that I was going to sleep with a man for money never once entered my head. I guess that is the difference between us and the young men of today.

AA:  It’s a sad side of us……it takes a lot of civility..

Me: And you know why I avoid those kinds of boys? When they get to the bedroom, they can’t even get it up and keep it up. So, they weren’t interested in you in the first place – just the money. Aiyee! Unless I want you sexually (even for a mercy f**k) I am going nowhere with you!!!

TLC: Maybe it’s Society that changed so much! Bad Black syndrome, it’s like no free f***s , you pay for it and then maybe love comes! (Is it love for me or love for what you are getting out of me?)!

Are the best things in life free any more?

Are the best things in life free any more?

AA: Maybe we should accept that we are old cows …  and pay for it…….why not……better attitude than trying to change anybody….

Me: Love is taking it too far TLC. I am talking about a simple f**k. Why do I have to hear how your mother’s sister can’t afford treatment for her gout in order to get a good dick in? What happened to a simple, uncomplicated, sob-story-free f**k, huh? Yes, love can come later … and then I can listen to your mother’s and grandmother’s ailments … but can’t we fuck without the attendant sob stories? Do these boys know that I could tell them sob stories that would make theirs look like Sunday school?

TLC: Well this Old cow is okay with sex deals and no pretense. Not that I am into commercial sex but I respect honesty, no sob stories. Lol!

Me: Exactly TLC. If it is a financial deal, I get that. I know I shall pay you the going rate at the end of the night. But don’t bore me with tales of your mother’s rickets, and how you need to bring your brother’s wife’s nephew’s dead body back from Tanzania for burial. Eiiish!

AA: A little pride would do the trick…..but since they don’t have the little pride…what do u do?

Me: You listen to the sob story, decide whether the f**k is still worth it and then get it in. Lock up everything in your house if you are taking him there – without pride, he will also not hesitate to lift your valuables. Better still, take him to a guest house, get your dick in and send him on his way with whatever you feel the going rate is.

TLC: A you are cracking me up ! It seems like you’re converted .

AA: You can negotiate on the rate…….

Me: Negotiate? That’s dangerous. What price do you put on his mother’s rickets? Or his grandmother’s lumbe (funeral rites) contribution?

AA: One chicken for the elders….or clan heads……

Me: Ha, Ha, Ha.

AA: It could be a goat, a chicken ……whatever you’re able to work with for the evening……

Me:  am inclined to say … depends on how good the sex is. If it ain’t any good … you know … wilting willy, flaccid dick, too much work to get it up … you just pay for transport to the nearest boda boda [motocycle) stage.

AA:  And also U R FREE TO SAY NO……..IT DOES NOT HURT…….

Me:  True. But we went ahead of ourselves. My problem is not when we get home, it is the financial sob stories when you don’t even know my second name.

AA:  By now you know how to say no……and you can easily say…..I don’t want to deal with that at this point ……What is hard there?  If they insist……half chicken…….and say good-bye……

Me: I know, AA, I know. But that bulge, the big hands, the tight body, the dick I want … my raging hormones! Do I really have to hear that your mother’s rickets will play up if you don’t get 200K in order for me to get taken care of? LOL.

AA:  Honey darling……..they know the trick……..it works with you……again you’re the big boss……You can put a a price tag to your hormones as well darlin …

Me: True. Well, then … listen up you hungry bitches out there. In my day we got f****d for free because we loved it. If your culture tells you to start on me with tales about your broke ass on the first date, move it on. I don’t want to be part of it. If I get to know you a bit better, then I will listen. On the first day we meet? No, No, No!

FOJ:  Hehehehehe KIKA………I just love this…I hope they are reading this!!!! Small Kampala Boys!!!!!

TLC: Anyway I can give. I’ve given before. But don’t torment me with your miserable life’s tales! Its a total turn off. I don’t want to know that my catch is a riffraff , gutter resident! Let me delude myself at least in the beginning that am with someone worth the attention. Just like a lady friend of mine told how a guy was asking her for a phone , rent money, money to promote his music career before she even had an orgasm !

Me:  Lolest!!! You have summarized it perfectly TLC. Hope they are reading it.

AA:  Come to me all ye financially stricken…. I will quench your thirst…..

Why gays and lesbians don’t get along 1

It’s not a much spoken about reality but a reality it is. Gay men and lesbians are not wired to get along.

Put more starkly, talking about gay and lesbian social relationships is like talking about chalk and cheese. In that adage lies one of the reasons why gay men and lesbians generally don’t get along; we have as much in common as chalk and cheese.

Yes, yes, you have issues such as LBTI emancipation that usually unite lesbian and gay activists – they are after all fighting a common enemy.  But you have only got to scratch the surface and you find all sorts of nasty, malignant, toxic dynamics even within such groups. But it is fair to say that where the struggle for gay issues is still on the ascendancy, gay men and women get along a little better than usual. That said, I don’t know of more than a handful of organizations in the entire world where gay men and women work together as brothers and sisters for the common good of the male and female gay/rainbow fraternity. The more successful LGBTI organizations tend to have lines drawn in the sand along gay, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender, intersexual lines.

Frenemies? Butch lesbians and most gay men rarely get along.

The less talked about dynamic that makes for uncomfortable gay/lesbian relationships is in the perception among gay men that lesbians see themselves as men. Lipstick lesbians (who look and carry themselves as women) generally tend not to be too threatening to gay men and they are the easier ones to get along with. But bring a butch lesbian, complete with workman’s Timberland boots, oversize jeans and manly swagger, into the mix and you will have gay men silently running for the hills.

Then there is that aggressive streak that seems to bubble just beneath the surface of many a lesbian social gathering. Of course not all lesbians are trigger happy but it is difficult to shake off the perception that too many of them are constantly spoiling for a fight when they hang out. As one of my friends once put it … “some of these loud mouth lesbians really think they are men.”

In that sentence he encapsulated the problems gay men have with lesbians. Gay men like men because … they are men. So, the reflexive reaction of a gay man to another that he finds attractive is to want to embrace him since the sexual dynamics are already aligned. So, when a lesbian tries to act like a man, it is the very antithesis of what a gay man is about.

Inwardly, therefore, most gay men will be screaming to themselves ‘ you are not a man, bitch’ even though outwardly they will put on a pretense of getting along swimmingly.

Lipstick lesbians are usually less threatening to gay men, and so we get along better with them, because they look and act like women. So, while we are already aware that we both don’t want anything sexual from each other, we are content in the knowledge that they don’t deign to offer what we want – namely a man. But the idea that we are hanging out with women who are acting like men, when all along we know they don’t have dicks, is enough to make the ins and outs of such relationships testy at best.

Thus gay men merely tolerate [especially] butch lesbians and will hang out with them socially only if they have to. Lipstick lesbians have the finesse and refinement many a gay man aspires to so we love our stiletto-heeled, dolled up  lesbian sisters; if we hadn’t been men, we would likely have liked to look the way they do. Even as men, we can get some beauty tips from them so they compliment rather than threaten our equilibrium.

No, no, no. We don’t hate lesbians, be they butch or effeminate. We just don’t know how to get along with them when, all along, we have so little in common and, in many extremes, are irritated that they are pretending to be what we know they can’t be; the men we are looking for.

Related articles:

After 30 years, I am going nowhere!

Think about what someone feels and, more pertinently, looks like after 30 years of living with another person as a couple. You are literally tied at the hip after 15 years so imagine what you are like after 30.

You expect me to get back into these LBTs in my 50s+!!!

You are practically the same person. Even if you met at 17, it would mean you are well into middle age thirty years later.

And then you ask for a divorce? What would you expect me to do? Don LBT heels again and start dating afresh? After 30 years of being Mr. and Mrs (or Mr. and Mr.) so and so? Seriously? Imagine the thought of learning to get used to someone else’s bad breath, their unsightly body this and that.

And I am telling you
I’m not going
Even though the rough times are showing
There’s just no way, there’s no way
We’re part of the same place
We’re part of the same time
We both share the same blood
We both have the same mind

No, no, no, no way Im living without you
Im not living without you
(Jennifer Holiday)

You resemble each other, and all your pets resemble both of you. You lost track 20 years ago of when you resigned yourself to his terrible habit of gnashing his teeth in his sleep, his snoring like a steam engine, his unsightly nose hairs … and the gray hairs that keep coming relentlessly in all sorts of unexpected (and startling) places. You  know each others habits better than your parents’ or siblings, you, you, you …

No.

So, let’s be clear about something:

After 30 years of marriage, with or without children, I am not going anywhere. You are stuck with me whether you like it or not. You can bring the newly minted bastard child home. You can ask the latest hussy you fell for to come home and we share the house. You can introduce the son you had with the house help 14 years ago. You can even reveal that you are sexually attracted to four-legged animals. I will send you to the dogs’ house to live out your fantasies but I shall not leave. Not after 30 years.

Sorry possums. After 30 years he is not divorcing me, and I am most certainly not going anywhere to start life afresh … whatever he wants to do or he has done.

Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman … please get back together immediately. This is just silly.

When violence a relationship makes

But the heart is not so smart /Can’t always trust it, no /The heart is not so smart Goes where it should not go / Always seems to find / Its way to trouble, no / The heart is not so smart / Oh, no, oh, no (El Debarge)

Here is a fact that feminists and the politically correct (PC) brigade would rather you don’t ever hear or see in print: some women (and men) actually love

Thug: modern day Heathcliff

being roughed up, beaten to a pulp and treated like “bitches” by their love partners!

Violence, violent sex, affinity for rough sex, being beaten blue-black to the extent where one has to mask the bruises with layers of foundation and sunglasses often are the basis of what many men and women would want their relationship to be about … if it weren’t for public opinion casting a disapproving, pontificating nose into their business.

Indeed, that is what makes the thuggish type of man very attractive to many a woman (and the odd man).

Thus far, nothing new. You only have to pick up Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights  to see the hot, passionate, relationship between the refined Catherine and the rough and ready Heathcliff which is frustrated by class-driven political correctness to understand that these kinds of relationships are as old as time itself.

Though Heathcliff was exactly her type – crude, rude, but simmering with sexual energy – Catherine had no way of making the relationship last because of her upper class upbringing. So she settled for the soft, safe, unexciting Edgar Linton whom she despised but was of her own pedigree.

Fast forward four centuries and you still see that sort of scenario being played out by young people of a different generation.

Heathcliff

Let’s be clear about this: if the press hadn’t picked up on Chris Brown beating Rihanna to a pulp, they would never have pretended to break up. Those two young people had found what they wanted in each other and it was clearly a relationship that survived on bouts of violent, physical, fights.

Indeed, since Rihanna was forced by PC to break up with Chris Brown, she has sung about how she likes to be physically manhandled no less than three times up to and including a sexually explicit song track with the real love of her life, Chris Brown.

And what else can one make of Rihanna’s Rude Boy (excerpts below)?

Come here, rude boy, boy; can you get it up? Come here rude boy, boy; is you big enough? … Give it to me, baby like boom, boom, boom What I want,

Rihanna/Brown

want, want is what you want, want, want Nah nah-ah … Tonight I’ma get a little crazy, get a little crazy, baby … I like the way you pull my hair Babe, if I don’t feel it I ain’t faking, no, no I like when you tell me ‘kiss you there’ I like when you tell me ‘move it there’ So giddy-up; time to get it up … (Rihanna’s Rude Boy)

Or the lyrics to the duet she recently agreed to sing with Chris Brown, the man who is supposed to be bad for her:

“Girl I wanna f*** you right now. Been a long time I been missing your body. Lemme, lemme turn the lights down. When I, when I go down it’s a private party.”

Well, well, well … some break up that was then, huh?
Apparently, Paris Hilton, the ultra rich, spoilt, heiress is trying out her beauty and the beast variation on the same theme with her latest allegedly violent boyfriend, River Viperi. It won’t last because her parents will not let it but, hey, why not dabble in the darker side normally denied to nice, well brought up girls?

Rough & ready: something of the night about him

The modern version of Catherine’s Heathcliff is of course what is referred to with a mixture of secret admiration and mock distaste as a thug. Chris Brown is a clean cut, nice young man who has done all he can to turn himself into a ghetto thug, mostly by visiting the tattoo parlor more times than is really necessary. He already had the roughness Rihanna was looking for so all the work he has done to turn himself into a tastelessly tattooed ogre is overkill. But that is another discussion anyway.

This is not to say that all thug-types are violent. It’s simply to make the point that just because a woman/man regularly screams for mercy on account of being beaten up doesn’t mean that she/he is not in the kind of relationship she desires. It is also to explain why your friend goes from dating an abuser to dating yet another abuser – they already know what they want and would look for it openly if only you let them.

Too nice? Nice can be a turn off for some.

To many a man or woman, being punched, having hair pulled, being slapped around like a rag doll … being treated like a whoring bitch is exactly what the doctor ordered. To such men and women, nice guys must indeed come last.

To which one can only  say … to each his/her own. Rihanna, please get back with your man – pretending that you two are not dating is as tired as it is insulting to those you think you are fooling.
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Frank Ocean’s open-heart venting coming to you in Africa

A kiss in the dark/A  certain time I can call you/A letter of love/But no name did you sign/Pretending to all that we were just friends when I saw you/I didn’t know that you wanted me to be/I didn’t know that you wanted me for your, to be/Your secret love … (Luther Vandross)

There are  singers/musicians in Uganda that I know are gay. I have interacted with them as gay men and women, have seen them seeking gay love, have witnessed their hopes for love, struggles and  disappointments with their  gay relationships and listened to  their doubts about same-sex loving in a country where the entire phenomenon is all too often defined by the empty-mind din of people like Martin Ssempa, James Nsaba Buturo and Simon Lokodo.

And so it doesn’t surprise me at all when I now see those erstwhile gay men run around with girls,  professing undying love for one after the other, often in their songs. There is nothing for it but to fall into line and toe the straight line if you wish to remain musically relevant in Uganda.

But is there really nothing for it?

Attitudes towards homosexuality in Uganda are indeed changing. The views of the younger generation are discernibly more sophisticated than those of their parents where homosexual loving is concerned. Since life is about the young replacing the old, it stands to reason that It should only be a matter of time before gay Ugandan musicians are pouring their hearts out a la Frank Ocean.

About a year ago, I had a discussion with one of the most successful musicians in Uganda today who is, I should guess, about 15 years younger than me. Having met in an environment where my sexuality was not a concern, I was introduced to him as ‘our gay friend.’ He didn’t miss a beat, and we went on to discuss why being gay was such a big deal in Uganda etc. His enlightenment was as refreshing as it was, in my mind, an eye-opener that the struggle for acceptance even in Uganda is heading in the right direction. This musician already knew some of the gay musicians I knew and wasn’t fazed in the least that they ‘swung on the other side’ to use Ugandan parlance.

And, of course, as Uganda’s schools seek to attain international standards, the issue of homosexuality has to be tackled in classrooms as part of the curriculum. British GCSEs and other international curricula demand that human differences be acknowledged and tolerated. This might send shivers of horror down Simon Lokodo and Martin Ssempa’s spines but there is nothing they can do about it if their government is authorizing private schools to adopt international education standards. Those come with, among very many other things, requirements that children be educated to appreciate  that being gay is part and parcel of life.

So, it will be only a matter of time before we dance to thinly veiled homosexual-loving lyrics from one of our young gay singers in Uganda. The views expressed by our young people especially give me confidence that if we are alive long enough, we shall have a Frank Ocean heartfelt gay outpouring in Uganda in my lifetime.

So, I only have to pray for time since … where there is time, there is life.

What were the “sex in public” gay men thinking?!

Okay. Time for some armchair pontification.

You might recall those two gay men who opted to have sex in a rough neighborhood of Nairobi? They got beaten up badly by a mob and one of them ended up lynched.

Tissues out everyone.

Now that you have cried the tears, how about taking time for some circumspection?

What on earth were these two men thinking? Ever heard of the term “contributory negligence?” This is a typical example of that legal term.

Being gay is, of course, not a crime. But having sex in public – be it gay or straight sex – is. More to the point, we cannot go around having sex wherever we feel like. That’s what differentiates us from dogs – the ability to discern that some things are not for public consumption and thus making the choice to take our sexual peccadilloes into places where we have reasonable privacy.

Even in Africa where the cost of renting a tenement for some heated action can seem prohibitive, we are really talking about roughly $5.00 for a couple of hours. That is a small price for two people to pay for peace of mind and body, surely.

This all reminds me of another related case which happened thousands of miles away, a couple of months ago. In that case, two thrill-seeking men went out on to their cabin balcony and made out in full view of onlookers down below. They were arrested, charged, fined, publicly embarrassed and will now remember that cruise for the rest of their lives for all the wrong reason … and rightly so.

You make your bed, you must be ready to lie in it. The two men in Nairobi obviously made a terrible choice in opting to drop their pants to have sex in an area where they could be happened upon by malevolent malcontents. It is inconceivable that they didn’t know the price they could pay. So, although their fate was horrendous, it wasn’t a surprise to them. They threw the dice in a place where they knew the potential repercussions for public gay lewdness … and lost.

A fellow gay man on another forum tried to rationalize what happened to the gay men in Nairobi by arguing that they were the victims. To which I say … they could have made the choice to take it indoors and on one would have been the wiser. But they knowingly chose a course of action that could potentially put them in danger. If you know there is a lion in the lair, you can’t claim to be a victim when you put your arm through the fence and it is bitten off. That is foolhardy, irresponsible, reckless. It might also be tear-jerking but ultimately, once the tears dry, it should only serve as lesson to others who might be inclined to such foolishness.

The lesson, thus, is a fairly simple one:

If you are an amorous gay male or female who chances upon an encounter that you feel must be satisfied with a full sexual session, the solution for you whether you are in Dominica, a toilet in Los Angeles or an unfashionable neighborhood of Nairobi is a simple one: take it to a place where you are assured of privacy.

Was it really De-Lovely?

If you get a chance, find a movie called De-Lovely, starring Kevin Kline as Cole Porter and Ashley Judd as his wife Linda.

Apart from the music which, by all accounts, blazed the trail on the stage and other mediums of performance, the movie is remarkable for the frank way it deals with the curious relationship between Porter and his wife.

You see, Cole Porter was a homosexual, a more or less openly gay man at a time when it was taboo to be gay because most of his friends and work colleagues knew he was homosexual. Linda, his wife, also knew he was gay when she married him.

Legend has it that Linda married Porter, 21 years her junior, to keep her place in society as well as move on from what had been an abusive first marriage.

So, I suspended my skepticism and decided to put myself in Linda’s place for a couple of minutes.

In order to continue being respected in the 1920s, when respectability was such a prized commodity, would I, had I been a middle-aged woman, have opted to knowingly marry a flamboyantly promiscuous gay man?

I would have asked myself questions that clearly can’t have featured much in Linda’s mind. The foremost one would have been about how I would reconcile trading in a bad relationship with a straight man with an emotionally abusive relationship with a gay man.

For, yes, Cole Porter didn’t stop for breath when he married Linda. Indeed he carried on with his flamboyant lifestyle in Europe, often leaving Linda to return to their home alone in the evenings while he remained behind to frolic with beautiful boys. She put up with all that up to and including notifying Porter that she would already be asleep by the time he returned from his gay exertions.

Finally, she lost a bit of her patience when the gay parties at their home in America became too brazen. But, as Porter, reminds her when she reprimands him about it, he had never been anything else and had never passed himself off as anything else.

Discretion is dishonesty wrapped up in a little breeding,”(De Lovely)

Before she dies of cancer, Linda arranges for a man, a life partner of sorts, to enter into Porter’s life; the final act of a devoted woman who always knew that she stood no chance in winning Porter’s physical attention. Okay, she was devoted to him and he to her but I still don’t get it that she could put up with that arrangement. I don’t.

The lesson I draw from the movie, and what I now know about Cole Porter’s life is that one is best advised to live and let live. Cole Porter likely entered into the relationship and stayed in it because it allowed him to have his cake after he had eaten it. In Linda Lee Thomas‘ case, was it really de-lovely?

But I have lived in a slightly different age so perhaps I should just enjoy K.D Lang’s version of Cole Porter’s So in Love and forget about trying to make sense of his wife’s motivations.

Strange dear, but true dear/When I’m close to you, dear/The stars fill the sky/So in love with you am I/Even without you, My arms fold about you/You know, darling why/So in love with you am I./In love with the night mysterious/ The night when you first were there/In love with my joy delirious/The thought that you might care/So taunt me, and hurt me/Deceive me, desert me/I’m yours till I die/So in love with you am I

Give me a Kenyan man … any time!!! 1

A mutual friend from another forum recently made this remark:

“Don’t show me Kenyan [gay] boys and then expect me to buy Uganda. You [are] simply asking for too much.”

What a coincidence, I said to myself. I have been thinking about the differences between Ugandan and Kenyan personas, specifically about the men in the two countries. Being gay I am of course terrible at figuring out the women if only because, with no vested interest in that direction, I haven’t bothered to.

Comparisons, especially  of human beings, are usually unkind but we make them all the time. Correction, discerning people, well-traveled people, thoughtful people, make comparisons all the time. The notable point is that when perceptive people make the comparisons, they keep the unkind conclusions they reach to themselves.

So, I am going to do the polite thing; focus on the “positive” attributes I have observed about the Kenyan men, gay and straight. Of course this will not be a minute description of all Kenyan men – it is impossible to do that. But, generalizations are mother’s milk to mankind (even if namby-pamby do-gooders try to dissuade us from “stereotyping” as though there is any other way of commenting on a whole set of people) so they are going to flow thick and fast here.

Not all Kenyan men look this good obviously, but when it comes to going for what they want … they sizzle

Ugandans and Kenyans are what they are whether they are gay or not. So, there is little point in spending too much time trying to figure out why the two peoples are different. But there is, it seems to me, traction in dwelling on the differences in personality that make Kenyan gay men a more interesting set of people to hang around and, dare one say it, explore as sexual beings and lovers.

If a Kenyan man is interested in you, you will know it in about one and a half-minutes. In this day and age where we have so much going on, that sort of speed is a godsend. Once the niceties are out of the way, Kenyan men are making it clear they like you, want you, need you (though not necessarily in that order) before you take the second sip of your first drink.

I mean who wants to have a man act all coy, demure and well-brought-up when, all along, you’re eyeing him up and down and then some? Besides, in this day and age of Tyra-Banks-esque ”got for it” brazenness, who wants to spend time guessing whether that man eyeing you across hotel gardens wants to maul you to kingdom come or is simply staring at the mole on your nose in idiotic stupefaction? Kenyan men (I wonder whether it applies to straight men, too?) will simply walk over and let you know that you have a date if you want it. Oooh la, la.

Not necessarily gay but, being Kenyan, they likely know what they want and are wired to go for it

Of course most gay men [all men?] play silly games, what the Americans call bullshit. It is the order of the day even in the straight world, so you have to learn to sieve out the chaff from the diamonds. Growing up teaches you the hang of those ropes.

But there is nothing as irritating and confusing as dealing with the bullshit of people who think that they are straight men playing gay men pretending to be bisexual. One might have a little patience with confused people of that sort if they are 12 years old, but over 21? Oh, for Pete’s sake, grow up!

“Most Kenyan gay men I’ve met are comfortable with being gay. They don’t think its just a phase.”  [Anon]

Homophobia, the African secrecy about matters sexual and general [pretend] disinclination to talk about sex and sexuality aside, Kenyan gay men  are, to my mind, the most uninhibited gay men in the whole of East Africa, if you discount the money boys. And, oh, how refreshing that is.

Some might call that slutty or loose; I call it accepting that you have one life, embracing the odds stacked against you as a gay man and nonetheless living. Kenyan men seem rather good at this.

On a personal note, there is nothing that incenses me as much as all these down low (DL) men who tell you that they are bisexual and expect you to look at them as though they are somehow special because they get it up for men and women alike. “So what?” I always wonder to myself … “You expect me genuflect at your feet because you are a bar-fly?

Please.

Am I supposed to take your flitting from men to women  as a badge of honor so that it would be a privilege to wait in line for when you will tire of your woman to give me a look-in? Please be a DL bisexual all you like but don’t flatter yourself into thinking that I am supposed to understand your clandestine juggling ways.

No! Whether they are Kenyan, exciting, direct, God’s gift or otherwise, bisexual men become a chore in two and a-half days. It’s tough enough wanting a relationship with a man – but one who also feels attraction to women and nonchalantly expects you to fall in line to accommodate that? No, thank you very much. Even if putting up with the DL bisexuality weren’t tedious enough, slugging it out with a woman over a man seems too indecorous to bear even if a man beating a woman wasn’t so embarrassing.

But this was supposed to be about Kenyan men. Give me a Kenyan gay man (Kenyan man?) any time. I so like the helium that seems to course through their very existence.

Now, I was about to embark on a description of what the Tanzanian, Ugandan, Rwandese, Malian, Togolese, Nigerian, South African, Somali, Ghanaian, Zambian, Zimbabwean, Moroccan, Cameroonian men are made of. But then I realized that this is too long already. Besides, who wants to admit in public that he has the intimate 4-1-1 on all those men?

Not me in whose mouth butter wouldn’t melt!!!

Best to leave it at the excitement-oozing, pot-boiling, action-seeking, party-livening, straining-at-the-leash Kenyans for now.