My wife is an identical twin. I’m also a twin but my twin is female. It was this “twin’s” thing that attracted me to my wife. Her twin sister is a spitting image, as in, they have the same moles in the same place on their bodies.
Anyway, I met her, when I was schooling in South Africa, then and well, being a foreign student, I lived among my kind, in Jo’burg.
I remember the first time my wife, then girlfriend Tikkie, that’s her name, came to visit me in my apartment, one naija egbon…as in senior guy, who had been living and working in South Africa for some 20 years or more, told me I should be careful with SA babes.
He told me so many things and while I was also careful, I felt he had exaggerated some. When he saw my girlfriend, he asked me if I was also sleeping with her twin sister!
I felt insulted.
I said, “Bros, I’m not like that, o.”
He said, “Whether you are like that or not needs to be seen…” he laughed and walked away.
I made sure I avoided that man for months. I didn’t want to continue acquaintances with people who thought like that.
Anyway, after a year in that area, I moved to another area in Jo’burg because of xenophobic attacks against Nigerians.
After my studies, I didn’t want to return to Nigeria as you all know, getting a job might be difficult but in SA, I needed to get a permit, there were job opportunities, though South Afrians gave references to their citizens above foreigners but there were skilled jobs like in my field that many times, South African applicants just didn’t go for. So I wanted to move from having a student’s permit to having a work permit.
I applied through Tikkie’s twin, Tally, who worked with an agency that specialized in procuring visa’s for foreigners, students, workers…et al.
Now, Tally, that is my girlfriend’s sister, had always been like, you know, a sister, she is the sister of my girlfriend; though they both looked alike in many ways, my own girl was calm, not adventurous and in short, the direct opposite of her sister.
Over the course of our dating, they had both tricked me by disguising as one another and they completely fooled me. I had told my girlfriend, I didn’t like being fooled like that, I told her one day, “I may end up having sex with her sister by mistake.”
I felt that should shock her into not fooling me like they often did but instead, she would laugh and say I was too uptight.
And yes, I am uptight, you see, in SA, HIV is rife, as in, like for example, in my workplace, the government subsidises the drugs and gives the staff antiretroviral drugs and shots to help them remain healthy. At my workplace more than 70% of the staff are living with HIV, it is normal as in no big deal!
While my girlfriend isn’t infected, her sister is…so you understand how uptight I was.
Anyway, Tikkie and I decided we were going to get married and I did their Umabo, that is what their traditional wedding is called. It’s like any marriage ceremony in Africa. Here is what happens, when you are ready to marry, the girl you want, tells her father, he tells his family, they tell you the things they require from you…
Usually, the ceremony is conducted in the grooms place, showing that the girl has decided to spend the rest of her life with you.
Anyway, so you see that night, I had friends, my family came from Nigeria. My mum couldn’t come, of course but my twin sister and two brothers came and one aunty.
It wasn’t a big event, it was a small family gathering and after the party, my family went back to their hotel.
That night, I was drunk; my naija buddies all over came to celebrate with me…you know, when you are in a foreign land, if one of your country person is having a party, they invite the rest of the others and jam the place with music, food and booze…I got drunk, not closed eye drunk but also not fully in charge of my faculties!
After the party, it was like early the following morning not night, I crashed into bed, thinking the person in my bed was my wife.
She looked like my wife, she smelled like my wife, she had to be the woman I married…
Even though we had been having sex before we were married, you know, that wedding night sex is symbolic and so, drunk as I was, I wanted to “consummate” my marriage to Tikkie.
She was naked in bed, as a couple, we do not wear clothes to bed, so, that wasn’t unusual.
I held her, kissed her, asked her how it felt to be married…even though it was just a few hours old…she laughed and kissed me back…we made love…no, we actually had a wild morning! she sucked, she pumped…what didn’t she do to me?
She was wild and maybe if I had been a bad boy, I would have known this wasn’t my woman.
But I was happy…I slept off.
I woke up around 6.30am in the morning and we made love again…You know, I’ll put it to me being…maybe naïve? Then I thought it was being married that made her this wild…or I wasn’t even thinking
I then got up to use the toilet, I still had an erection, I remember telling myself, I would deal with my wife the proper naija way when I returned from the toilet…
Then something just rang in my head, I looked back at the woman in my bed; she looked back at me and I knew immediately I had been having sex with my sister-in-law!
Ha!
What kind of calamity is this!
I called her name, “Tally! Tally what are you doing here?”
She replied, “Eish, no noise…didn’t you have fun?”
In my mind, I wailed, these people have killed me. “Where is Tikkie?”
I called out for Tikkie and she came from the living room, yawning and smiling at my nakedness.
I know some guys would be like, “O’l boy, jump at this, you didn’t force them…” but this is not the kind of human being I am. I don’t want to sleep with twin sisters, identical or not, I don’t want to sleep with any woman that isn’t my woman, no matter how close they are…I am a one woman man!
But that isn’t the pain I had then…Tally is HIV positive, have I been infected?
Tikkie and I had a huge fight that day and if I had been a violent person, I swear, I would have beaten the two of them to pulp that day. I just went into the toilet to cry.
I felt betrayed, I felt used, I felt unloved.
Yes, I know many men would actually enjoy this but I am not them. I had told Tikkie over and over again that I did not want to have any kind of intimacy with her sister even though that is how they had always operated before I met her. I hated her after that.
I went to get tested the following day, thankfully, results came out negative!
Of course Tikkie begged me, she said she thought I would eventually like it but she promised she wouldn’t let her sister come between us.
I shudder when I remember how I came thisclose to getting into something I never planned for my life…I mean, I worried, what if she got pregnant? I mean, how do you even begin to contemplate these things?
My wife and I are still together but that incident almost separated us.
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)