a real gay time

from The Standard, Kenyan newspaper

August 7, 2004: The road to my first gay dinner - after Westlands Primary School - is straight … The guy driving me there - pardon the pun - is not.

His name is Levin, and he's gay. He picked me up at Tamambo in Westlands less than 20 minutes ago as I finished off French fries awash in Tabasco sauce, not too sure if I would have the appetite to devour anything at a gay party. Levin is not the kind of gentleman a straight guy wants to be seen with, alone, for too long.

It's not so much the small, crotch-hugging shorts, won loosely with ambulance siren-red slippers and eye-catching Hawaiian shirt. Rather, it is the outrageous batting of eyelashes - (so long they must be false) and the "pssst" way he waves his right hand, wrist-straight, like a dandelion in a strong gale: Dead giveaways for Levin's preferred sexuality.

So that it is a relief to leave the public eye for the privacy of a drive in Levin's RAV 4 (UN plates), just as it is not a relief to finally arrive at a black gate that leads to a small gravel driveway, then we are there.

"There" is a big wooden door with the doorknocker being a brass phallus. Levin flashes me a full white tooth grin as he uses it. Someone has a brazen sense of humour.

That someone is our dinner-and-party host, Carlos, who works for the UN in Nairobi, and lives with Levin. Carlos is 52, with blue eyes, grey hair and a weather-beaten face - like a man who spend many years at sea (and, as it turns out, he did - as a young man in one of the European Majesties' navies). Levin, his 24-year-old partner, is in contrast very dark and smooth-skinned. Baby faced.

The two men kiss. I flinch and get into the house through the kitchen, leaving there a bottle of original Russian vodka (ironically called 'The Diplomat', considering Carlos's profession), as I'd been told it is courteous to bring a bottle to grace the party. Tennesse Williams, the gay American playwright, once said, "Gay men aren't trying to imitate women." Pardon, Mr Williams, but the young man, nay, the exotic creature we walk into, in the living room a draped across a crush, definitely is.

Light shinned, with lipstick, lustrous hair and … bringing apples to his cheeks, the fellow is straight out of Gay Dreams (or nightmares), complete with a white fur coat (they still make those?) and, behold, white hot pants complete with a thong, peeping provocatively over the hipline.

The fellow, whose nickname we shall later learn is Beautiful Boy (or BB) lazily stretches out a manicured hand for a kiss, like royalty, or the way the Pope stretches his hand for his holy ring to be kissed.

I am tempted to quote Pope John Paul II to BB, that "those who behave in a homosexual fashion ... shall not enter the kingdom of God," just out of jest, but opts for courtesy as the best course. After all, odd "Western" behaviour or not, the fact is that these homosexuals are our hosts, and it isn't African to spit in the eye of one's spittoon hosts.

While BB opts to stay on the couch and listen to music on headphones, Levin puts on an apron and joins Eric Omollo, in the kitchen - the two men having partnered to make dinner.
The rest of us fill up the long dinner table in the dining room, downing glasses of red and chilled white wine, which Carlos swears have been brought straight from the winefields of Providence and Nice, in France. "I bought then in Paris last month." Carlos says.

"Very nice," Ben Odumbe puns, imitating Kiss FM Radio-host, Maina Kageni, and everyone laughs. There is a sense of camaraderie innthe midst of this little gay community, under siege by a society intolerant of sexual practices that aren't considered normal.

"People think," says Ben, the political majordomo, "that while heterosexuals fall in love, we gay guys just have sex."

"Don't we?" BB pipes up from the couch, making us all wonder about his headphones because he's obviously eavesdropping in on the general conversation.

"No," says Ben," if a guy is truly gay, then he should be able to fall in love with another man." Ben then shares a truly bizarre story of a time he was in Los Angeles with his younger sister, and they were sharing a hotel room.

"She went to a club, and I went to a gay club and picked someone up," says Ben.
"When I let myself and my new lover in (at 4 am in the morning) my sister was already asleep in bed, with another man."

Ben then says how he and the other fellow began making out. "Suddenly, we were viciously attacked by my sister's lover, who beat us over the head, threw us out of bed and sent us packing from the hotel room I had paid for." Ben pauses for dramatic effect.

"A real gay-basher, that guy was," and there is hysterical laughter all around the table. As it turns out, a lot of gay talk is about the tribulations homosexual men face, and the disgusted discrimination against them. Many of the anecdotes are funny, or funnily narrated, but one can't help pitying these folk, especially because most claim to be naturally gay.

It would be like condemning the devil for having a forked tail, and only the most fork-tongued character would state that sexuality always is a conscious choice.

Carlos - respected UN diplomat by day, closet homosexual by night (with his pampered and cosseted partner, Levin) - thinks the law that criminalises homosexuality is ridiculous. (name law here…/.

"It is a clear violation of section 79 of the constitution, that upholds Freedom of Association," Carlos, who has obviously done his homework, says passionately, and urges," it should be struck out!"

He gives the (upsetting) example of the former Citizen TV employee - an Asian Muslim male who was handed a three-year sentence at the turn of the millenium, for having homosexual contact with a Somali man in his car at dawn, outside of The Stanely …

Queer
"It was pure discrimination," Carlos says, "because had it been an heterosexual couple, the magistrate at most would have charged them with indecent exposure."

"We (gays) are grown men, making very personal choices of intimacy and do not need to be threatened by the State," Carlos states.

For him, it seems, the only queer people are those who think that queer men are queer - although looking at BB over on the sofa, the epithets "Queen" and "Fairy" do come to mind.
Ben expresses hope that the new constitution will watch out for their rights, so much so that "the new constitution will uphold the right of two consenting adults to get into legal, matrimonial union - just as they have in Boston and San Fransisco."

Actually, liberal San Francisco isn't exactly the gay Mecca Ben makes it out to be. A recent ruling in the San Francisco State Court said City Hall wasn't within its jurisdiction in giving out marriage licences to gay couples - but as that city's mayor later painted out - "that ruling is more administrative than substantive at law, so - the battle goes on." Aluta Continua.

Levin walks in with a tray laden with steaming plates of spaghetti and meatballs, and grandly declares dinner served.

Everyone, including BB, with his exaggerated sense of Sang Froid, falls upon the food with relish. It was Bettie Davis, the film actress, who declared that "a more artistic, appreciative group of people for the arts does not exist". She was referring to gay men.

Certainly, when it comes to the culinary arts, Levin is in a class of his own. Over spaghetti, the dinner talks turn to lighter topics - mostly Beautiful Boy fulminating about make-up and the world of haute couture (he's a hair-dresser) with the others peppering the dinner talk with various anecdotes, mostly funny, as if applying verbal antidotes to the poisonous way they are perceived by the "Moral Majority".

After dinner, I take my leave - mostly because our contact man, Mark [not Paddy?] DeVant, is now busy and busily handing out playing cards, in readiness for a form of strip-poker named 'Orgasmic Bingo' …

DeVant and his ilk are viewed by the wider Kenyan society, as deviants - but the fact is that homosexuality, beyond the act, is here with us.

As George Bush, the Father, put it once: "I wish the whole issue of homosexuality could be toned down. Actually, I wish they (gays) would just go away. But of course, they won't!" He was right.

*Names have been slightly altered to protect the privacy of the individuals