The big repercussion for me of paying for gay sex in Nigeria
One or two days after I paid someone I met on Grindr for sex, a man who happens to be in my top 10 favorite people met on Grindr so far told me via WhatsApp that we can't be friends anymore.
Sola and I had been so compatible that he might have been my first boyfriend ever if he had not been due to get married (to a woman) in less than a year from the time we started dating. Much to his heartbreak at the time, I stopped our relationship from counting down the romantic path, not seeing the point in going into something that had a very obvious and appalling expiration date; asides also having more expectations - at the time - from a boyfriend than he was meeting. Nonetheless, our friendship survived that period and we kept meeting for weekend hangouts frequently where neither of us wanted to leave the other's company, up until he had to relocate from Nigeria to Asia where he then got married shortly after.
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Sola had visited Nigeria one or two weeks before my pay-for-sex episode. We met up during that visit and we had an amazing intimate time together - he came twice, me once (TMI, I know; perks of anonymity if you ask me - even though the number of people who this isn't anonymous to anymore is fast approaching 20, if it's not there already). Since then, our relationship had hit a new high, which continued even up to when he was back at his home in Asia. We started having regular WhatsApp audio and video calls after he returned to Asia from his yuletide visit to Lagos.
During the hookup with the ho from Grindr, Sola had sent me a 'hello' on WhatsApp but I couldn't reply because I was still trying to get things going with the ho. So four hours after, I texted him back to let him know what I was up to when he texted, just in case he'd seen me come online without replying his message. His response was not something I was even remotely expecting.
Sola: What? How could you? A prostitute? No...
I sensed his disappointment and I reacted to that by trying to make light of it with some rationalizations. First of all, we didn't even end up having sex because I could not get hard. Secondly, given how mainstream promiscuity is within the global gay community, I couldn't see how paying a stranger for sex is any more decadent than sleeping with a stranger who is not asking for money, just for pleasure, every chance you get (hookup; which I'm sure he wouldn't have been judging me this hard for).
Alas, my wordy rationalizations did nothing to faze my friend, Sola. He followed up his previous thread with "Severely disappointed". After which he informed me that he would have to reinstate his ban on our friendship. Yes, reinstate. The intimate friendship we'd built over the past three years now had to go because I had now proved beyond every reasonable doubt to be a moral corrupter; of which he was now at a stage of spirituality where he needed to cut any such influences entirely off.
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For me though, I was okay with whatever decision Sola was making. He was married now after all and were I to be his wife, I would be ecstatic about his making this decision. I responded, telling him that I was fine with his decision and wished him the best with no hard feelings.
A few weeks after Sola first ended our three-year strong friendship, I got an out-of-the-blue phone call from him from a local line. He was in Nigeria for some family business and had decided to lift his ban on me before returning to Asia. Of course, I talked to him like nothing had happened and like he was just calling to catch up with me after a long period of separation. No drama, no attitude, I didn't even bother to ask him why he had now changed his mind about the ban. Truth is, I really don't care; about that and a lot of other conventionally important things in life.
Sola told me during the call that he was due for Asia in a few days but would be back in Nigeria again in another couple of weeks. Without much ado, we agreed to meet up when he was back. I was looking forward to it because truly, we had developed a solid friendship with each other in his last few months in Lagos. Between us, there was no anxiety, no fights, no bitterness or jealousy. Just pure banter and sharing positive vibes all the way. My relationship with him is arguably the closest I've ever come to having a soulmate.
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Contrary to the first time Sola asked that we cut off our link, Sola's second time rejection hurt me badly. First, because I felt judged. Yes, I had done something morally questionable. There's no denying that fact. But then, do we as actively-gay people actually subscribe to vanilla definitions of morality?
When you juxtapose being a prostitute and being a sexually-active homosexual in the world of today, you can begin to draw a lot of parallels between them, except you just want to be a self-righteous homosexual. First, both of these things are considered exhibitions of depravity by the vast majority of the modern human population.
Besides that, the people that participate in both a gay and prostitution lifestyle do so to fulfill a valid need that is difficult to fulfill in any other way. Hence, as someone who wants to live in a world where gay people enjoy their sexuality with no stigma, I think it'd be hypocritical of me to look down on a full-grown adult who has decided to explore the trading of sexual favors they can do for others as a path to financial actualization. Someone needs what they're selling and pays for it. Both parties fully consenting. I don't see the immorality in that. And to begin to see the immorality in that in my opinion would be to begin to shoot down my own decision to pursue my attraction to other men.
The other reason - I was hurt - apart from the fact that I felt like Sola was being foolishly self-righteous was that for the previous two weeks, our relationship had been blossoming. We were chatting and video-calling almost every day - which is a level of closeness that I hardly ever attain with anyone but truly treasure when it happens.
Sola's rejection suggested that all of the positive and supportive interactions that we'd shared meant nothing to him in the light of my being gay and having the guts to 'up the ante' by paying someone for sex. Just a few days before Sola gave me the boot, I had devoted hours of my time sharing my award-winning personal-finance budget with Sola and hand-holding him through creating his own. This was spurred by my discovery that he had next to no savings during our special night out on the town - back in December 2018. I'm pained that that level of collaboration and mutuality between I and Sola was not enough for him to put his sense-of-morality aside for the sake of the healthy relationship we had built over the years.
Yes, healthy. In our interactions, I never intentionally did anything to stigmatize Sola for being a MGM (married gay man). I never pressured him to do anything that would jeopardize his marriage. Yes, we got down and dirty the last time we were together alone but it wasn't even something I'd orchestrated or was eager to do. It just happened, naturally. Most of our coversations were about our career hopes and mutual challenges in the path to growth. We were just a very good support system for each other and again, it hurt to know that he was leaving all of that behind to go live the life that Allah created him to live.
I truly care about Sola and in spite of all that has happened, I know he also cares about me and has had to make a hard decision to let go of our relationship, mainly because of the belief system he has chosen for himself - or perhaps, that has been chosen for him. He's a devout and active Islam-faithful who when I consider sometimes, I wonder how he manages to pursue that side-by-side with being a sexually-active gay man who is also married.
Thinking about it now, one thing Sola had always said was that he liked me for being different. Different in that I wasn't a ho that bounces from dick to dick like the stereotypical gay guy in Lagos. He loved that image of me: prude, innocent, unsoiled. Perhaps, that image of me is what he's been in love with all along and such blatant evidence as me paying for sex was enough to shatter it entirely, to convince him that I was after all, just like the rest of them. Depraved gay men.
Sola and I had been so compatible that he might have been my first boyfriend ever if he had not been due to get married (to a woman) in less than a year from the time we started dating. Much to his heartbreak at the time, I stopped our relationship from counting down the romantic path, not seeing the point in going into something that had a very obvious and appalling expiration date; asides also having more expectations - at the time - from a boyfriend than he was meeting. Nonetheless, our friendship survived that period and we kept meeting for weekend hangouts frequently where neither of us wanted to leave the other's company, up until he had to relocate from Nigeria to Asia where he then got married shortly after.
-----------------------------------------
Sola had visited Nigeria one or two weeks before my pay-for-sex episode. We met up during that visit and we had an amazing intimate time together - he came twice, me once (TMI, I know; perks of anonymity if you ask me - even though the number of people who this isn't anonymous to anymore is fast approaching 20, if it's not there already). Since then, our relationship had hit a new high, which continued even up to when he was back at his home in Asia. We started having regular WhatsApp audio and video calls after he returned to Asia from his yuletide visit to Lagos.
During the hookup with the ho from Grindr, Sola had sent me a 'hello' on WhatsApp but I couldn't reply because I was still trying to get things going with the ho. So four hours after, I texted him back to let him know what I was up to when he texted, just in case he'd seen me come online without replying his message. His response was not something I was even remotely expecting.
Sola: What? How could you? A prostitute? No...
I sensed his disappointment and I reacted to that by trying to make light of it with some rationalizations. First of all, we didn't even end up having sex because I could not get hard. Secondly, given how mainstream promiscuity is within the global gay community, I couldn't see how paying a stranger for sex is any more decadent than sleeping with a stranger who is not asking for money, just for pleasure, every chance you get (hookup; which I'm sure he wouldn't have been judging me this hard for).
Alas, my wordy rationalizations did nothing to faze my friend, Sola. He followed up his previous thread with "Severely disappointed". After which he informed me that he would have to reinstate his ban on our friendship. Yes, reinstate. The intimate friendship we'd built over the past three years now had to go because I had now proved beyond every reasonable doubt to be a moral corrupter; of which he was now at a stage of spirituality where he needed to cut any such influences entirely off.
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The Initial Ban
Sola had texted me an emotionally-laden message a few weeks prior to his visiting Nigeria during the 2018 yuletide. Through a series of WhatsApp voice notes, he told me that he'd had an epiphany and had decided that the best thing for him was to cut off all of his links to the gay community, of which I was the very last. I played his voice note to the hearing of a lover who was spending the weekend with me. No sooner had my lover got the point of the messages than he'd been ready with a mocking response for my friend. In his opinion, Sola is probably just passing through a phase and would probably be the one to come back begging that our relationship continues. He had seen this before.For me though, I was okay with whatever decision Sola was making. He was married now after all and were I to be his wife, I would be ecstatic about his making this decision. I responded, telling him that I was fine with his decision and wished him the best with no hard feelings.
A few weeks after Sola first ended our three-year strong friendship, I got an out-of-the-blue phone call from him from a local line. He was in Nigeria for some family business and had decided to lift his ban on me before returning to Asia. Of course, I talked to him like nothing had happened and like he was just calling to catch up with me after a long period of separation. No drama, no attitude, I didn't even bother to ask him why he had now changed his mind about the ban. Truth is, I really don't care; about that and a lot of other conventionally important things in life.
Sola told me during the call that he was due for Asia in a few days but would be back in Nigeria again in another couple of weeks. Without much ado, we agreed to meet up when he was back. I was looking forward to it because truly, we had developed a solid friendship with each other in his last few months in Lagos. Between us, there was no anxiety, no fights, no bitterness or jealousy. Just pure banter and sharing positive vibes all the way. My relationship with him is arguably the closest I've ever come to having a soulmate.
-----------------------------------------
Contrary to the first time Sola asked that we cut off our link, Sola's second time rejection hurt me badly. First, because I felt judged. Yes, I had done something morally questionable. There's no denying that fact. But then, do we as actively-gay people actually subscribe to vanilla definitions of morality?
When you juxtapose being a prostitute and being a sexually-active homosexual in the world of today, you can begin to draw a lot of parallels between them, except you just want to be a self-righteous homosexual. First, both of these things are considered exhibitions of depravity by the vast majority of the modern human population.
Besides that, the people that participate in both a gay and prostitution lifestyle do so to fulfill a valid need that is difficult to fulfill in any other way. Hence, as someone who wants to live in a world where gay people enjoy their sexuality with no stigma, I think it'd be hypocritical of me to look down on a full-grown adult who has decided to explore the trading of sexual favors they can do for others as a path to financial actualization. Someone needs what they're selling and pays for it. Both parties fully consenting. I don't see the immorality in that. And to begin to see the immorality in that in my opinion would be to begin to shoot down my own decision to pursue my attraction to other men.
The other reason - I was hurt - apart from the fact that I felt like Sola was being foolishly self-righteous was that for the previous two weeks, our relationship had been blossoming. We were chatting and video-calling almost every day - which is a level of closeness that I hardly ever attain with anyone but truly treasure when it happens.
Sola's rejection suggested that all of the positive and supportive interactions that we'd shared meant nothing to him in the light of my being gay and having the guts to 'up the ante' by paying someone for sex. Just a few days before Sola gave me the boot, I had devoted hours of my time sharing my award-winning personal-finance budget with Sola and hand-holding him through creating his own. This was spurred by my discovery that he had next to no savings during our special night out on the town - back in December 2018. I'm pained that that level of collaboration and mutuality between I and Sola was not enough for him to put his sense-of-morality aside for the sake of the healthy relationship we had built over the years.
Yes, healthy. In our interactions, I never intentionally did anything to stigmatize Sola for being a MGM (married gay man). I never pressured him to do anything that would jeopardize his marriage. Yes, we got down and dirty the last time we were together alone but it wasn't even something I'd orchestrated or was eager to do. It just happened, naturally. Most of our coversations were about our career hopes and mutual challenges in the path to growth. We were just a very good support system for each other and again, it hurt to know that he was leaving all of that behind to go live the life that Allah created him to live.
I truly care about Sola and in spite of all that has happened, I know he also cares about me and has had to make a hard decision to let go of our relationship, mainly because of the belief system he has chosen for himself - or perhaps, that has been chosen for him. He's a devout and active Islam-faithful who when I consider sometimes, I wonder how he manages to pursue that side-by-side with being a sexually-active gay man who is also married.
Thinking about it now, one thing Sola had always said was that he liked me for being different. Different in that I wasn't a ho that bounces from dick to dick like the stereotypical gay guy in Lagos. He loved that image of me: prude, innocent, unsoiled. Perhaps, that image of me is what he's been in love with all along and such blatant evidence as me paying for sex was enough to shatter it entirely, to convince him that I was after all, just like the rest of them. Depraved gay men.
Tbh . This guy of yours is a scum bag. Cut him off. Forget that prude nonsense he's displaying. He is the MGM fucking you after all .a Better person will come, it isn't your fault.
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