the gay underground

from The Standard, Kenyan Newspaper

September 4, 2004: As American presidential elections draw near, the twin issues of same-sex marriages and gay sex are widely expected to influence the outcome.

Last year, this controversial debate acquired religious overtones when the Episcopal Church in the United States elected its first gay Bishop, Archbishop Gene Robinson.

In Kenya, a clause on sexual freedom in the draft constitution raised a storm when it came up for debate at Bomas of Kenya last year.

That the clause was included is in itself telling as it suggested the existence of a gay 'community' in the country. Acting on this assumption, Society's Tony Mochama went behind the veil of secrecy under which homosexual relations are conducted and discovered a vibrant world of same-sex romance.

On a deck chair at the poolside bar of Nairobi's Serena Hotel, a dark Kenyan man sits sipping a daiquiri from a wide-rimmed wine glass. He is waiting for his date, all the way from Belgium.
"We met on the Internet - and fell in love," says Levin as his dark face flashes a wide white smile. He is dressed in a tuxedo and fashionable spectacles, and a loud ring glints from his middle finger. Opposite the flamboyant 24-year-old man - who looks six years his own senior - is his best friend, 28-year-old Katie, who works for a travel agency in Nairobi. She is his camouflage.

Presently, Levin's cell phone rings. He excuses himself and heads off to go and give some room service. Not that he is a waiter.

Paddy DeVant, a man who possesses that unique British knack for snide remarks, reveals that Levin is a kept man for a United Nations diplomat in Nairobi "who adopted" him when he was 16, and paid his mother in Nyanza a tidy sum to become his official guardian.

DeVant, himself a homosexual, theorises that Levin is not the genuine article. "Levin isn't a natural gay," says DeVant, a green hue of resentment streaming over his tongue.

Levin is black, kept and yet a jetsetter, forever in the air to Brussels, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Paris to meet white, gay men - all this on the UN diplomat's cash.

The diplomat must suspect something? But he is too diplomatic, too old, too scared of Levin leaving him to complain, Katie later reveals.

Levin looks more of a Yuppie metro-sexual than the dandy homosexual. But he isn't in the least bit shy about flaunting his homosexuality.

Katie, waits for DeVant to go to the cloakrooms, then says: "Levin is alright. Paddy is just jealous 'cos Lev dumped him after a short affair."

As it is among the straight, so it is in the world of gay men. The emotional gem, the green ryed monster, is never far away.

Levin is "married" to a UN honcho, but is the globally unfaithful "wife". Devant was jilted and so is jealous. So, what is Kabie's role? "She's a fag hag," explains a male columnist tagging along.

Fag hags are a new phenomenon in town: well turned-out women from their late 20s to early 30s who enjoy hanging around, and being friends with, gay men. "You can't discuss homosexuality without discussing fag hags," the columnist says.

Katie apparently enjoys hanging around Levin not just for the novelty of it, but because he's so dandy she can be the envy of other women on the social and cocktail circuit in town.

Although the weird still exist, many modern gay men are also metrosexual - slick, sleek men who care about their appearance.

Their women friends act as red herrings, to throw off the scent of detection as they exercise their rights of freedom of movement and association.

Does Katie mind being in her role?

"Hell, no," says she. "Levin is fun because he can read both my and my boyfriend's barometer. He's emotionally bi-sexual like that (as are a lot of gay men)," she giggles. "He's also physically impossible to get - I tried at first, so I can trust him, unlike other straight guys, who still want to sleep with you. Only ugly girls can have straight, male pals," she adds.
Worlds apart

DeVant, on the other hand, doesn't seem too successful.

He does not have a dainty, attractive female companion on his arm, and the five-star Serena is not anywhere near his league. He seems more comfortable while helping this writer round the noisy midtown restaurant and beer garden, Simmers.

Paddy DeVant is the one who will open the door to the gay closet, where homosexuals have retreated and closed themselves in - fearful of coming out into the open.

Shut off from ordinary public channels "to express our affection for whomever we choose to love" as DeVant puts it, the homosexual/gay community mostly remains invisible behind the straight faÁade of mainstream heterosexuality. Like a stream running crookedly underground beneath plain terra firma.

Like all groups that feel marginalised, the city's gay community is both a close-knit and underground lot, paradoxically operating in the open but with some secrecy, like eyes behind sunglasses.

At Simmers Bar and Restaurant, above the din of the Congolese band playing old numbers from the 1980s, the man DeVant leads us to is a shy guy with a girlish smile and coy manner. He is from Los Angeles, and over lunch, he gives a view of the way homosexuality thrives in the United States, and indeed in most of the liberal Western world.

"Gay men in America are a minority - maybe 10 per cent but we are a very vocal minority," Guy says, so softly it is hard to imagine this smart pianist being vocal anywhere. "Some people, especially the George Bush neo-Christian conservative types, dislike us, but we are part of the American scene."

Guy gives an example of the Los Angeles Gay Day Parade, and the right in San Francisco to get married to a "same sex" person. (Actually, the California State Court will soon decide if City Hall has the jurisdiction to award marriage certificates.)

"In San Francisco," says Guy, "I can freely hang out with my boyfriend Harmann (yes, he's German) and our (gay couple) buddies Bradley and Gordon. We can dance intimately at Saints - (a gay discotheque) - while here in Kenya, other than some place in Mombasa, I feel we are on the fringes."

"Fringes my grandma's tushi," DeVant bursts out. "What you mean, my good guy, is that we are always sneaking around."

As Oscar Wilde, the Irish poet and playwright, himself gay, put described homosexuality - "Tis the love that dare not speak its name."

When speaking of "normal sex", everything is as said and understood. For heterosexuals, society simply says they fall in love, get married and have children.

But when it comes to describing less conventional attachments, people speak in terms like "twisted" and "perverted," vulgarising less conventional relationships with allusions, euphemisms and analogies such as "he is fond of little boys", "he forms indiscreet liaisons with men" or the blunt crudity of "he's a bugger!"

As one straight man says: "God hates homosexuals, and they can burn in hell as far as I am concerned. In fact, if I knew one, I'd lynch him myself."

DeVant, who describes himself as "100 per cent British and 110 per cent gay", is neither effete nor effeminate on the face of it - but his sneaking glances have something of the effete about them.

DeVant next goes to the Norfolk Hotel for an early dinner with yet another gay man, this one in his mid 30s, whom we'll call Ben Odumbe. Ben is a tall, bespectacled, American-trained pharmacist with a wicked sense of humour - and infected with HIV.

Ben casually takes out an assortment of medicines, including AZT, and places them on the table, attracting a few curious glances from dining guests nearby.

"Cocktail," Ben says casually.

"Bon appetit," Devant offers.

Ben, it later turns out, is one of the few openly active homosexuals about town, in the sense that he is a passive activist who, while not shouting from the rooftops, will not hide his dual conditions in any closet.

"There is a stigma against gay people in this town, and there is a stigma against HIV positive people generally," he states, "and it is all wrong."

How did he get infected? "Took a trip to Bangkok, Thailand, in 1999 to usher in the New Year," Ben says.

Gay men are five to 10 times more vulnerable to HIV/Aids because anal sex creates fissures that provide easy access for the virus. In America, almost all the first 400 cases of Aids (389) involved homosexuals between the spring of 1982 right through to the fall of 1983, at first leading people into calling it "The Gay Plague" - with fanatical preachers like Pat Roberts gloating that "God was punishing the wicked," before HIV burst the banks and rushed into the heterosexual population, as a wolf unto sheep.

"All of life is a risk," Ben says philosophically, "and I made my choice. Besides," he adds lightly, "everyone is gay. People just refuse to let the little fag inside come out."

Ben then goes into stories of how there are many married men for whom the marriage is a front to disguise their homosexual yearnings. The thought that there are many people in gay liaisons seems to comfort the two men - one black, one white. Wasn't it Renaud Camus, the French writer, who said with verve that "homosexuality is always elsewhere, because it is everywhere"?

Dancing in the dark
Opposite the Norfolk Hotel, the silhouette of the Kenya National Theatre looms quietly in the after-dusk light. In 1996, Tony Kimani put up a production of the play, Cleopatra, to ostensibly "try to sensitise the public on the Gay Dilemma as natural, and bring the discussion out into the open".

Cleopatra, as a play, was okay - but its theme was not accepted.

Watching the Kenya National Theatre in the shadows of the night, it is clear that in Kenya, at least, the gay community will still have to dance in the dark, operate in the underground, lie low like evening's shadows.

Gay bars, or open social places for homosexuals won't be coming any time soon - not even to a cinema near you, and they will still have to operate on the periphery of society.

A client of Gypsy's in Westlands put it most eloquently, recently. "Thank God this place regained popularity because the homosexuals have gone."

"Where to?"

"Sodom and Gonorrhoea, maybe," and laughed. Actually, they just broke up into smaller groups and scattered into nearby clubs - Havana, Soho, the Crooked Q ...

Socially, it seems, the Kenyan gay man is a gypsy - nomads forever condemned to shifting from place to place, leaving sniffles and scandals in their wake.