The first time I said it
Two years of not writing the sentence. Today I said it, to E., on the stadium road, and the world did not end.
We were on the stadium road, where we always walk, and there was a lull in the traffic, and I said it. Three words. I am not going to be dramatic about it, or I am, a little, because I have been carrying it since I was seven and it turns out it weighs less in the air than it did in my chest.
E. did not stop walking. He said, I know. Then he said, me too, which I also knew. Then we walked another hundred metres without saying anything and he bought two Fantas from the woman under the umbrella and gave me one, and that was the ceremony.
I want to describe what it felt like and I cannot. Not relief exactly. More like putting down a bag you had stopped noticing, and then noticing your hands.
So it is said. Once, to one person, on a road in Owerri, on a Sunday afternoon in March. It is written here as well now, for the first time, in full: I am gay. I have written it. Nothing happened to the notebook. Nothing happened to me. God bless gay people, and God bless E., who did not stop walking.