You Have to Be Gay to Know God. Siya Khumalo
that was the stupidest thing I could do. God and the homophobes had different ways of inflicting their violence, but they belonged to the same WhatsApp group and he was the administrator.
I got an anti-God and anti-religion campaign going. For my English oral, I gave a talk on how the human religious impulse was probably evolution’s way of letting us form a transcendent basis for our base survival instincts. Our souls were not dust motes dancing in a cosmic spotlight that illuminated us with its love; rather, we were mortal creatures frozen in the headlights of the onrushing car of our animal instincts. We were doomed to die no matter what we believed about it.
My classmates were scandalised, one spluttering in response that my whole speech was ‘hogwash’. And this was to be expected, I calmly reasoned. What they were feeling, I’d felt.
The Flame
I first met him in Grade 8. You and I will call him Josh. He reminded me of Robbie Williams, the singer. Josh was a green-eyed, brown-haired bohemian tucked in a green school blazer, innocent, as though he hadn’t seen everything that follows schools and blazers. Oh, parents, lock your teenagers away, I thought.
Given that everyone was attracted to him like a moth to a flame, I’m not sure how I squeezed my way into his social circle and past another guy who also happened to be called Siya. I would never confess Other Siya’s real sins; that, I could possibly go to hell for. That our names were similar caused not a little confusion. Other Siya was also gay and interested in Josh. He and I formed a love-hate friendship, an unspoken peace treaty over our mutual interest.
But Other Siya and Josh were in the cross-country running team, despite what I’d imagined was the former’s questionable athleticism. They were also in Drama together, despite what I’d imagined was Siya’s tepid talent in that arena. Come to think of it, the number of occasions Other Siya spent with Josh grew exponentially each time I looked the other way — that, he was superbly skilled at. Was this not a clear violation of the unspoken agreement on Josh — shared custody, equal visiting hours, the usual? At least I’m above doing anything as pathetic as rearranging my whole life for a guy, I thought as I scribbled my name down on the cross-country sign-up list.
‘You’re going to be glad you joined,’ the teacher in charge of the sport was assuring me. ‘It’s a great team. We’ve got lovely people.’
‘I know. I’ve met some of them,’ I replied, hoping my transparent face wouldn’t betray me. The coach was super-Christian. Probably gay, too. Too bad he was a good boy, my hormones figured. When you took that whole teacher thing out of the equation, he was quite handsome. Stop it, Siya! the voice in my head said.
‘Running is a great sport,’ he continued. ‘The important part is focusing on your core.’
‘I can hardly wait to start,’ I replied. I could see how running after Josh would be a great sport. I’d glimpsed his shirtless core in Grade 8 next to the pool, frantically taking memory pics. What are you judging me for? Instagram hadn’t been invented, and I was a teenager.
Other Siya had no idea what hit him. What I lacked in long-distance running stamina, I made up for in catching up to his agenda and occupying more of Josh (or at least, Josh’s time) than he did. I acted nonchalant about this achievement, as though cute guys always spoke to me without having to be kidnapped and tortured first.
My family was surprised when I picked up running as a discipline and stuck to it. ‘Is he on drugs?’ they must have wondered. ‘Is it compulsory for him to run?’
I went with it. ‘Yes, it is!’ I said. ‘It’s is a white school, fam. You can’t just sit there and not do a sport.’
‘What?’
‘Well, it isn’t compulsory but they want us to become well-rounded, balanced people,’ I explained, knowing full well I’d never be nor cared to be a well-rounded, balanced person.
I was out to my mother and two of my sisters. I told Mom and the younger one about Josh, downplaying his participation in cross-country lest they put two and two together. Still, they figured I liked him probably even before I did. I thought I’d mentioned him once or twice, but they later insisted I’d spoken about him. All. The. Time.
By Grade 11 I’d gotten tired of standing in spotlights where nothing good happened anyway, so I left the light of Josh’s flame. I wasn’t going to be that gay black guy pursuing that straight white boy because then I’d be my own prank; it wouldn’t be someone else doing it to me. Also, Other Siya played dirty. Strangely, that’s when Josh started seeking me out. He would sometimes even evade my namesake to talk to me.
‘They’re efficient these days,’ I would remark, looking up from my circle geometry homework as he approached.
‘Who is?’ Josh said. He’d be dumping his big black-and-green backpack on the bench from which he’d occasionally hurled his Nokia 3310 at the Matric garden wall, for fun.
I replied, ‘My Namesake’s Department of Access to You, that’s who’s becoming efficient. I was just wondering whether to bother applying for permission to say hi — but here you are, in the flesh! Guess the country isn’t going to the dogs, after all,’ I muttered, punching numbers in my calculator. The wrong numbers, because I was suppressing my anger. I wrote the answer down anyway. Theta is 17°.
‘I need to talk to you,’ he replied.
I snapped back with, ‘Talk about what?’ loudly enough for bystanders on our side of the Matric students’ garden to turn and look. Yes, it was small of me but I had to cut that thing. The English teacher had told the girls in our class, ‘You must run away from a man until you catch him.’ I wasn’t a girl, but I liked men and I took great notes. So much as I hated running and liked what I was running from, I would run, properly. If anything was going to happen, he was going to have to come out and put the work in. And I just didn’t foresee something like that happening anytime that year.
The evening after our next running meet, I climbed off the bus that dropped us back at school. I’d asked my parents to pick me up because we would be getting back late. I was walking to my dad’s car when I heard Josh call out for me. At first, I wanted to pretend I didn’t know whether he was calling for me or Other Siya, who shouldn’t have been too far away. But I suppressed my pettiness and instead turned to tell him he’d have to make it quick because I didn’t want to keep Dad waiting.
Josh said he wanted to clear something up.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, blinking innocently. There was no one within earshot.
‘Siya, are you gay?’ he asked.
My eyes shifted to the moon. I could feel my pulse in my toes, in the running socks I hadn’t changed out of and the school shoes I had changed into. I hadn’t showered; my sweat had dried on my skin on the trip back. And he was standing really close. There was no one else around us except Dad in his car. If Josh did something funny like shove me for being gay, Dad would see. Who knew? Maybe Josh had spoken to someone who said I was and he had to sort it out, or people would assume he was gay too.
He leaned forward, pressing into my personal space-zone where he sucked up all the oxygen. I’d have to give him mouth-to-mouth if I wanted to stay alive. The English teacher had also said, ‘A kiss upstairs is an application for a job downstairs.’
‘And do you like me?’ he was asking. ‘Like, really like me?’
Who else could torment me and my hopes as much as he could if I answered his question truthfully? But seeing I didn’t have enough oxygen to dance around the issue, I said, ‘Yes. I am and I do.’ Feeling stark naked, I thought, Siya, which school are you moving to after this?
‘I felt I had to ask,’ he said abruptly, his voice sounding like an auditory hallucination emanating from the moon, ‘because I’m gay and I think I like you too, Siya.’
I don’t remember the trip home or waking up the next morning.