I read the Pantami story and the Presidency’s defence of his youthful indiscretions and I shook my head.
Pantami is lucky to have something he did as a young man forgiven just like that. Me, my sins as a 16 year old are still following me around as a curse.
We were all young then; not more than 13 to 16years of age.
You know, as boys, we just did things without thinking, without meaning to be mean. We just thought we were being rascals.
Here’s what happened.
Now. In the village, forget all the things they tell you about chastity, back then, we had what you would call and Area Uncle. He was one of those brothers who had gone abroad, discovered how hard life can get and went into drugs. He committed a crime and was given the option of being deported or serving a jail term. He chose deportation and so came back empty handed.
He still continued to speak fonay and we, being kids, were fascinated with him but he was a shadow of his old self, had nothing, depended on family and the community and of course was a very bad influence to us boys growing up at that time…he smoked a lot of ganja.
We called him Bros Jay!
What did Bros Jay do?
He would tell us stories about America and the life he lived; with the benefit of hindsight, he must have lied most of the time but we were village boys, enthralled by someone who had not just gone to a big city like Lagos but abroad, where things and life were even better by far than Lagos. He was king in our eyes.
Now, many times, we would go steal from our mothers in order for Bros Jay to feed his habit; there was another shady character then, he was the one who supplied the smokes Bros Jay took that turned his head. And when you come from my side of town, smoking hemp, was not new…we grew it in fact….so you see.
Now, the boys in my group were 5, me included, we were roughly the same ages, between 14 to 16, so whenever we turned 14years; Bros Jay would tell us that we had become men and as men, we must learn how to fxxx!
You know that isn’t the kind of conversation you will have with your parents or siblings or anyone who can go report you to your parents?
So that made Bros Jay, a really cool big brother to have.
He would then tell us how to have sex with girls and after the theory lessons, he would take us to a brothel in town and pay for the service. He would ask the woman to fxxx our brains out; tell her by the time we come of her room, we should be walking like men!
Ok, so you see, again, this isn’t the kind of story our parents must hear. We dare not even tell friends we knew had the tendency to go report to other elders. So this for us was like a big deal. In fact back then, if we saw a woman’s panties, we were in cloud 9, so to fondle a woman’s’ breast….ha, that was heaven.
Once we turned 14, Bros Jay would pay for our rite of passage and you bet, that brothel became the place we went to whenever we had money until we finished school, and yes from age 14! It was the same lady, it was the same thing, we were just content with being with her and she soon began to demand for more money.
But let me go back, a bit, so when it was my turn; of course I had had several wet dreams before then, I had been told by three others what it felt like, what they did and how they did it.
See, this is what we did growing up; for us it was the biggest thing as kids; we didn’t go raping girls or forcing them, if you toast a girl and she says no, go to ashi and relieve yourself…it is what it is.
Like I said, Bros Jay had just one particular lady he took us to because according to him, she was not just clean she knew what to do; knew how to help us do it for the first time; I’m not going to give you details, madam, use your imagination.
But she was this kind of lady, abi na ashyi who would help you relax, massage your body, get you in on the action and help you enter the dragon!
Of course for all of us, after that first experience of being dis-virgined by her, we knew how to go there ourselves and do things our own way; and she always charged us for it.
Ok, so this woman, we had all be visiting her for some time, maybe say about two years. I remember the last time we stopped, I was already 16years.
What happened?
Now this lady, you know say na poor ashi she sef be? So yes, ashi’s have grades.
So she had this bowl of water she kept in her room, after we had done it with her you know, amateurs, cumming many times before even entering…kids now. She would carry this bowl of water to wash our pingolo then after washing us she would wash her thing. Then come back to ask for her money.
Condom? Ah, we didn’t use condoms o.
One day. We wanted to… you know, we had tried wanking off, e no reach us… one of us had brought a half torn copy of Play boy and we were in our feelings !
Our imaginations were stirred; so we decided as stupid children to go meet our ashi even though we had no money. We would play a trick on her. We would all do her turn by turn, after the last person, we would distract her and replace her water with pepper water and when she used it to wash…she won’t even remember money.
We had gone as a group before, so it wasn’t new. Now, when we came as a group, she never bothered to wash after anyone but would do so after the last person. If you’ve been to ashi joints, the lights are always dim, the corridors and toilets never have light, so there was no way she would know.
It was a great idea. Brilliant one, in fact…or so we thought.
We were four that day and that woman’s talk was as raw…anyway, we told her all of us wanted to do; she said, “Oya, turn by turn, who go pay me?” We pointed to the last guy. We took turns while the others waited outside. Again as kids, maybe we were there for three minutes or five minutes each… we were done. Then we went back into her room as the last guy signaled with a knock on the wall that he was done. We trooped into her room and one of us went to that water and poured in pepper we came with. It was in a nylon
The ashiy told us to wait, being trusted customers, she took out the bowl of water to wash…of course, as soon as she left the room, we took off and waited at a distance to see what would happen.
Osanobua!
The woman came running like a mad woman and cursing us. She knew we had done it.
She was screaming and cursing and running like a mad woman, throwing her wrapper away and shouting, “fire dey my toto…ooo, fire dey my toto … ” and then raining curses, all manner of things.
For us, it was fun, we laughed at her and picked race before other adults got to know what we had done!
We knew we would never go there again. Who wanted to anyway, we had started having girlfriends then even though getting to sleep with them was not easy.
Now; I needed to tell this story because some of the curses she rained on us, came to pass; to date, I don’t eat pepper; if anyone puts pepper in my food, I will almost die. So I don’t eat outside.
Please don’t scoff because you don’t know what it is not to eat pepper for almost 8 years now since I discovered why I was always having stomach pains after eating. And the last time I ate pepper by mistake I ended up in hospital with something like crabs tearing out my intestines.
Doctors say I have ulcer. But tests have proven otherwise. It was my wife’s colleague who took me to see a baba and it was the baba who told me eight years ago, after I had spent a fortune and suffered horrible stomach aches that I was under a curse and must avoid pepper.
So, here I am suffering for my sins as a boy. I can never eat outside. Not at parties or clubs because if I taste pepper I will be in agony for days.
We messed up that day and eight years ago when I went back to make amends they said the woman had died.
So, here I am with my curse.