The Elephant In The Room [Writer's contest]

I wasn’t in the mood to clean up stuff that Tuesday, but when Ife called me to come help her, I had to oblige. My plan was to quickly iron my clothes and zoom off to Yaba. I had an appointment for noon and time wasn’t on my side; not that time is ever on my side. As we lifted up the mattress to sweep out the dirt beneath the bed, we encountered an eyesore. The place was so dirty and dusty that I was tempted to run out, not until I saw a One Hundred Naira note.

Eventually, the One Hundred Naira became Seven Hundred as it turned out that Soji had dumped quite a number of Naira notes under his bed overtime before he left for UK the night before. Anyways, we couldn’t blame him. His parents are rich – very rich. Ife and I only came to Soji’s parents’ house for the holidays, and Ife was supposed to leave that morning, along with her siblings.

Apart from the money we were able to pick from the dump beneath the bed, some other thing – the alarming amount of tissue paper under the bed – caught my attention. See ehn, the way the tissue matter was set up, I immediately knew what had transpired in Soji’s room but those words remained unsaid. Ife and I complained about the amount of dirt, even her siblings joined in, but deep down, I sensed we all knew what had happened there. We just didn’t mention it. It would have been awkward.

What happened that day is something that has repeated itself many times in my life, and my relationship with fellow Nigerians. In matters of sex, we like to shy away from facing the elephant in the room. In our situation that day, the elephant in the room was that Soji dey wank, and he no dey clean up him mess. How does someone wank so much and throw the tissue under the bed when he’s done? Couldn’t he have just flushed them down the toilet? Or at least, used a waste bin?!

Growing up, my parents, like many other Nigerian parents, never got around to sitting me down and giving me proper sex education. Most of the things I know about sex I have learned from the internet, peers and experimentations. Maybe it’s because my parents felt talking about sex to their own child was an abomination or that it would be too awkward. Or maybe just because they didn’t want to ‘corrupt’ me. Whatever! Till tomorrow, I too can’t talk to them about other private matters.

From observation, I dare say that a lot of Nigerians can relate with my story. It’s only recently that we have started to openly talk about sex en masse, thanks to social media – more specifically, Twitter and blogs. Isn’t it silly to watch a music video on Soundcity and you find them censoring cleavages and girl’s in bikinis? Like we don’t already know what’s beneath the blur! Or isn’t it sad how many marriages are suffering because one or both of the partners are addicted to porn and none of them is willing to talk about it to solve their marital issues? Even though they both know what one another is engaging in. I think it is sad.

Someone would say we pretend a lot in Nigeria, that we are too hypocritical. While that may seem true, I don’t think it’s a matter of pretense or hypocrisy in all cases. It’s the way our society has been set up. We live in a society that openly frowns on curiosity even though many people are really curious. I suppose it’s because we’re too moral and religious, and many of us feel it’s sacrilegious to talk about those things, meanwhile we do a lot of it.

Adding a twist to this story, it is possible Soji wasn’t even wanking. But then again, we will never know, would we? Because who will talk about it sef? Who go wan resemble demon for people eye?

NAME: DAVID I. ADELEKE