VIBES: #01 kiitan

vibes.
#1: kiitan

I could count the number of times my father ever mentioned sex in my hearing – once. He had caught my brother masturbating while watching porn on our junk/no-good/nobody-touches-anymore laptop, in the toilet on a Sunday morning. Pops called me and Kiitan in the evening for a talk. I knew something was wrong because Kiitan was quiet the whole day (which was beyond unusual) but I didn’t think his plight was a major no-go-area. Who even made porn a no-go-area? We didn’t know but we knew it was and up until then I didn’t know my twin brother was a fan. Pops was uneasy as he spoke, it showed in the way he stuttered and his eyes kept shifting from place to place too often. He was not a shy man, I never thought he was, and I had never heard him stutter before. We were fifteen and we were boys; sex was (kind of) all that was on our minds apart from girls, and girls too, somehow led us to sex. Not that we wanted to have it but we had all these hormones running around in our blood and urges like crazy, and girls intensified it, so in a way, it all led to the s-word.

Now that I think of my father that evening, I feel sorry for him. He was not a prude. I don’t think he even knew what it meant to be one. He was a typical Yoruba man without a clue as to how to explain matters of this kind to his teenage sons. I couldn’t really blame him and nah, I refuse to blame the society. I mean c’mon, everyone seems to be doing that these days. It’s all pointless don’t you think? Us blaming society, just look around. We are the society. We created this crap. Instead of breaking off into chains of creatives determined to be eccentric and prove ‘society’ wrong, we should be more realistic. Yes, I agree, there’s some beauty to that – spice and razzmatazz – but we don’t need that, at least not in the doses we have now. If we truly care for the society and the future and not our own ego/name/fame, we would realize we don’t need more crazy young people on the hunt to certify that they are different. What I believe we need is people who do stuff. You know, we need action, a plan and more than anything we need passion. Passion for the nation, passion for people and passion for life. I don’t like to get my mind entangled in the paradoxes that define earthlings, we all know it’s such a brain drain. Like how we complain about how our culture is responsible for our hypocrisy and refrain yet we are the same people that praise our culture and say that that is our power against the western world, same ones that chant on about how we should tell African stories and get the word out, same that says Africans are doing it wrong.

The African man is chilled, reckless and dauntless but nonetheless, chilled. He expects his wife to kneel, to be quiet when he speaks, to cook, bear children, care for those children. The African man is a man of mad ego and he is conservative. He doesn’t talk about sex openly or loosely without feeling like he is farting in public. This is the African. I mean, don’t say Africa is beautiful because it is this way and then go further again to say, African is terrible for those same reasons. Culture as an organ, like the heart. It beats as a whole. If you want to be a culturist and embrace culture, then you can’t also back stab that culture because it all works together and stems from the same root. You can’t just like a part, that’s like pooping without washing your buttocks after; just saying. Forgive me, I digress. This is not about culture. Well, not completely.

That evening, during the talk, was the beginning of a drift between my brother and I. He was ashamed I guess, and I still did not understand many things as to what went about. The whole time pops had been up to his sermon, I intentionally distracted myself by finding the rhythm in his stutter, I was taking it apart and putting it together again in my head (it sounded like a hippo trying to sing) because I found the scenario awkward, and pops seemed tortured, I wanted to relieve him. By the time I came back to the conversation, I was alone in the living room. I often got lost in my mind like this when I was younger. Daydreaming is it? But mine weren’t typical dreams in the day, they were more intense. A single sentence could throw my mind into series of workouts where I would go on in circles over and over then find myself oblivious to all around me. It was one of the things I loved and hated about myself at the same time like a secret superpower that you don’t fully understand.

I never had the kind of curiosity that drew one to porn, though later I got there, but I had no initial flex to do so. I think it was because of the trouble (talk) my brother got us both into that Sunday evening. Even before then, it wasn’t exactly something I wanted to crash into. Yes, I had thought about what the sex fuss was about and I knew what porn was but my self-righteousness wouldn’t let me even think of diving into it. The talk only sealed the deal. The next day we went to school and pretended like nothing happened, even though we both knew everything had changed.

Kiitan gave me a distance that made me, to an extent, feel guilty. The only way I could interpreted his changing demeanor was that he  resented how pops saw me as the good one and him the bad one. It wasn’t just about his porn adventure, Kiitan had always been the more volatile twin. He always got into trouble in school and was bullheaded. I loved him that way though. I saw him as strong. He saved me from most of my bullies and always stood by my side. I wasn’t smaller than him physical but I was never as confident and sturdy. Most people took my lack of enthusiasm for rough play as goodness and vice versa, meanwhile I secretly envied my brother for his radness. It had never visibly bothered him that he was regarded the troublesome one until that day, or maybe I had only just began to notice that day. I came to a final conclusion that Kiitan felt like this when he said it out loud later in the year.

It was Christmas, and our tradition was to visit our grandma, my mother’s mother. She wasn’t all that old, my mom was her only daughter. My mom died after having us; the twins. We were her first and only children.      -_-

Pops thought it would be good for her (grandma) to have us with her at least once a year, since she was always alone in her house. The compound was a big one but it didn’t look that way from the gate. First off was the bungalow that took most of the front view, it was six roomed, too much space for a family of three if you ask me. Maybe she thought she would have other children after my mom, but then Grandpa died soon after. She didn’t like to talk about his death. I asked her once and noticed her blink away fresh tears then hastily changed the subject. It troubled me that it still troubled her. Did the pain ever go away or was it just because he died young and a few years later she had lost her only offspring too?

The house was cushioned by a large backyard that held a forest of some sorts. As I grew older I realized Grandma had probably asked this visits of my father because he seemed saddest during this time of the year and extra grumpy. He generally acted that way around anything that reminded him of mom and he never spoke of her. Grandma was a joy to be around. It was obvious she tried, sometimes too hard, to make us all comfortable, but I loved the whole month of December because of her. She was the only means of learning of my mother and that alone was enough for her to have my heart.

My mom was beautiful. The model kind. She had a slight gap between her two most prominent upper teeth, every time my grandma laughed or smiled, it was like my mom (from the pictures of her I had seen) was in the room. I thought perhaps, this bothered my father the most. She called I and Kiitan, Taiye and Kehinde and I always felt she liked me the most. The way she brushed my cheeks when she told us stories on her veranda on cold harmattan evenings only assured me the more. Most of these stories were of my mother; her childhood and teenage years. I learnt my mom was quite the thug. Grandma looked at Kiitan when she described my mother’s thugish ways ending with “like Taiye here” I hadn’t groomed very well then, the art of indifference, so it showed in the my smirk that I was disappointed. “but she was also soft, and passionate” she drilled right into my eyes as she quickly added. “Like Kehinde” and I couldn’t resist a glistering grin. She chuckled softly at my reaction.

Kiitan stood abruptly and began to walk, then run away, slipping to the back of the bungalow towards the mini forest. I watched him run and looked to my grandma, her eyes, together with the whole of her head were following him and she was calling after him frantically, like her life depended on it. I was watching the bones on her neck tense and relax and she filled her lungs with air to shout his name again. I was lost in one of my brain hustles again. The bone jerk. It was fascinating to me. Was it painful? Why was it so pronounced on her golden skin? Did it mean her bones were also calling after Kiitan? I subconsciously held my neck to feel the bones there, I was still searching for them when she stopped calling and faced me. I didn’t want to go after him because we had barely held a solid conversation in about two months and I could already feel awkward  vines growing in my abdomen when she asked, but she persuaded me and I reluctantly did.

The trees were my favourite part of the whole compound. they were tall and thick, with perfectly brown trunks. The kind you see on Nat Geo Wild. I loved it! My hands couldn’t go around the whole width of the tress when I tried hugging them, even tightly. I had tried many times during each visit, hoping that as I grew older my fingers would finally connect, even if it were just the tips of my fingers. I hadn’t tried it that year. I was afraid I would be able to hug them and then have nothing to come back to. “Kiitan” I called. Entering the woods, not sure what I would say. “What do you want?” His voice felt as cold as the inside of the small refrigerator compartment in a fridge. (I always thought those smaller freezers were colder than the large ones). He was sitting by the stream that passed through that area of land, watching the ducks. My grandmother like most old women reared domestic animals, but unlike most old women I knew (except those in cartoons) she reared several; Ducks, chickens, Turkeys, Goats, dogs, pigs, and catfishes. She had a small vegetable cultivation too, so almost everything she ate was fresh, but I always thought it was too much work for one person. My father had told her once to get a maid or someone to help her with the chores, but she said the maid will be the death of her. Pops didn’t persist, he wasn’t the type keep talking after a shun.

I saw Kiitan through the trees. “You hate it here” I said suddenly remembering that he hated the swamp. He replied with “what do you want?”
“Grandma wants you.” I said quickly like I had hot yams on my tongue, because he was making me nervous.
“Is that what she said?” he questioned
“What do you mean?” I was by his side now, but he refused to look at me, he was enthralled by a lone duck on the water who seemed to be behind it’s family. “Did she say she wants to see me?” he repeated
“No, but…”
“then leave me alone.” He snapped
“Why are you acting like this Kiitan?” I really wanted to know
“Leave me alone, it’s you they want! The good one! Enitan, the soft and passionate one! Leave me alone joor.” Then he stood up and left me sitting there. The lone duck had caught up with it’s family now, I couldn’t tell it apart. I sat there a while and wondered if it always worked out that way, if family always stuck it through.

That Christmas visit was the worst for me, it was when I started learning to function without my brother and to master the art of indifference.

(…till next Friday xx)