Melvin
had learnt the norm in the school: serve yourself. The PG refectory was the
small house opposite the PG hostel. It was neater and more spacious than the undergraduates’
refectory where you cannot concentrate on the food because of the flies that
buzzed uncontrollably. The PG refectory was not as noisy and overcrowded as the
undergraduate refectories where you would have to stay on a long queue for sometime
before you could buy food. There was smell of freshness hung in the air. Melvin
tried to imitate John, eating with fork and knife. The fork refused to balance
in his fingers. He looked up and saw John watching him. He smiled shyly and
dropped the fork on the table. John laughed. Melvin stood up and crossed over
to a sink on the wall and washed his palms. John looked up still smiling at
him. As he ate the Ogbono soup, he was conscious of his white shirt to ensure
that the gluey mucilage of the Ogbono soup would not loll down on it. After
eating, John paid and they climbed up to his room. While they climbed the staircase,
Melvin tried to recall the face of John’s hideous roommate and wondered if the two of them were gay mets. He thought about
how he would manage to sleep in the same room with such an ogre without having convulsion.
He was afraid, not just because of Efe, also because he wasn’t sure of the kind
of person John was. He wouldn’t want a repeat of his secondary school
experience, where Senior Bus-stop would have sodomizing him if he hadn’t
stabbed him with a kitchen fork. He couldn’t say what the gays liked in him. If
John turned to be a gay, he would be the forth gay to make attempt at
sodomizing him. Agbo, the huge chemist boy in his street at Aba, with chest
like a fox, was the third. He was even the one that gave Melvin the money he
used to purchase his JAMB application form. He was so fortunate that he fled
from Agbo. He ran into Agbo’s chemist shop for a shed from a heavy rain. While
he waited for the rain to stop, he dosed off on a short bench behind the
counter. When he opened his eye, the door to the shop was slightly closed and
it rocked slightly as the breeze of the rain outside moved it. The shop assumed
some kind of unholy quietness that frightened him. The hushing sound of the
rain outside swallowed the wailing of the rusty ceiling fan that rarefied the
suffocating stench of drugs in the small enclave of the shop. Agbo was sitting
behind Melvin caressing his opened chest and the flap of Melvin’s trousers was
open. Melvin jerked up in shock and zipped up immediately and turned to Agbo
with astonishment in his gassy eyes.
“What is this?” he managed to berk in
cracking voice and the veins that run across his temples stood turgid.
“KC cool down, I… I’ve not…” Agbo said
with some curves of mischievous smiles on his face. Melvin pushed him violently
and he fell backwards and hit the back of his head on a counter and the bench
overturned and hit him on the face. Before he could get up Melvin pushed the
door open and ran out into the rain.
