Hello and welcome to Afro Queer. I'm your host, Sally Chum. Well, we've had a bit of a break but we're back to share our last few episodes of season four. And yes, all good things must come to an end. But these are some fantastic episodes. So everybody stay tuned because they will be so worth it. Bow and me all I need.
Oh and me before we get into today's episode, I have an exciting announcement, Afro Queer has won gold in this year's Anthem awards, the Anthem Awards, celebrate purpose and mission driven work from people, companies and organizations worldwide. And you can watch us virtually accept our award at the Anthem Awards ceremony on Monday, February 28th. The virtual experience goes live at one pm Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern in the US, which is 11 p.m. Nairobi, sorry, Nairobi and 10 pm job 8 p.m. Accra.
And you can watch the Anthem Awards at Anthem awards.com. It's been an amazing four seasons and this is such an exciting recognition of all of the work that we've done. So, thank you very much. Now, today's episode, I've been excited to share for a while. I first heard the Nigerian non binary poet and songwriter Logan February read this essay during Afro queer's online festival in 2020.
And when I heard them read this beautiful, intriguing and very personal piece of writing, I knew we should find a way to share it on the show. So we've collaborated with Logan and turned their essay into an audio short story. It's a piece that explores one of their queer experiences in Nigeria and explores the experience of being ghosted. So this excerpt is called My Ghost. And it's read by Kinsey Odeon. We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we did making it. Also, please be advised.
This episode contains some strong language. The last time I saw the ghost, he met me at a fancy hotel in Ioi after many months of us not seeing each other. I was in town for poetry festival. He stopped by to say hello. Our meeting was a very adult affair composed like something cinematic. There was little talk about our harried past the intensity, the heartbreak, the ring, I'd flung into a black lake. We spoke instead of his newborn niece, his demanding work.
My weeks on tour with a book about my sadness. We smoked weed out of his ceramic pipe, embossed with skulls. And he showed me a new tattoo on his left cup. I touched his skin and soon we were given in to desire, becoming a tangle of long limbs and begging to stay the night to touch the other some more, to perhaps slow down a little or otherwise blur the lines of self be lost entirely since my ghosting. Few of my poems have been about this man more often.
He stands at the door of my verse, his fist is raised but he never knocks. It was a week before the first ghosting when he began to make himself difficult to love. We loved over the internet. And I could count all of our physical interactions on one hand. But for a while, it was as real as thunder. We had been texting. But then I'd noticed that he didn't want to speak to me anymore. Did he want me to fuck off and leave him alone? No, he said he didn't want me to leave.
It was just that he did not know what to say to me. I said I would listen to anything at all. Anything. He said it strikes me as pathetic. Now, I must have said it because I was in love the ghost. And I kind of just stopped talking. I asked him to send me a voice note because I had not heard his voice in the several weeks since I had left Lagos. The note he sent to me was a relic of sweetness. The sort of words someone might sample in a sad song about the end of love.
But after that, there was another ghosting a stalker ghosting through which he became transmuted into the entity. I now know as my ghost, an entity that returned wearing love's newer and truer face of cruelty and of ugliness, the face of madness. The ghost was very handsome and very tall. He had a disproportionately sized penis. I don't know, I just recall having the impression that he belonged to a smaller man, but I didn't mind that. I hardly considered it at all.
I felt shock and embarrassment but also extreme joy, curiosity lust. When we met, I was in a Hypomanic state. I had a roster of half a dozen guys I was sleeping with had recently shaved. My head was making decisions at such a frequency that there was little time for consideration. Even my one night stand with the ghost, the excessive drinking and outrageous flirtation that led up to it. This was all outside of my character.
I think it unfortunate that when I loved the ghost, I was not at all my real self. I was invincible and a cosmic fool. Nigeria makes it hard to fuck with its stringent anti queer legislation, its institutional wars against queer bodies, its enslavement to the colonial import of abrahamic religions.
I man still I had my long list of Tristes the trom with a couple in Lagos, the computer engineering student who wanted me tied up and left my body spotted with hickey as a kind of romantic gesture, the chain smoker who once after I act pulled out of me to find blood on his condom. It's my ghost. The sex is quiet and not very exciting. At daybreak, we tiptoed out of the house so his sister would not find out he'd had me over, over and over.
This way to fuck, to feel anything at all was a way of winning with my outlawed body in the aftermath of it all. I spiraled into a quest to understand my desire to muster it. I read several theories, literary psychological Buddhist. And my takeaway was that desire is the teasing of an intrinsic void to obey it is to answer. Yes. Yes. Yes to the calling of some emptiness within us, which is not at all my idea of what it is to win. Oh The ghost taught me so much about loss like a craftsman.
He shaped the outline of my void, its molting edges. I'm unsure if now I write about him because I miss him or out of spite. After he ghosted me, I ghosted many guys, every other man who was interested in me. I do not want to be their piece of meat. A pretty thing to win. I wanted no one if it would not be him. If I had a void that called so loudly, I would not feel it with anyone else rather I would enter it myself and disappear because perhaps I do have a problem with desire the same.
Maybe the problem is not with these men who tease the hole in my soul, but more with the whole itself, the soul itself. If I resent the ghost, it is because I have been forced to wonder what it is in me that must be mastered. The second ghosting was not as ceremonial as I've made it out to be. He called me after maybe three months of radio silence. I said I only had five minutes to talk and what did he want? I was busy. We talked for over two hours.
He missed me and wondered where the time had gone. He hoped there were no new boys in my life. He would have to fight off. There was no one I said, and he told me he would not let time fall down between us again like a wine glass. This after I was far into my backwards walk away from him picking the shards from my feet while he spoke with that rambling confidence he always had.
I found myself fishing the old ring he'd given to me from the box where it was stowed, slipping it onto my thumb to admire it, tilting my hands this way and that affirming his endless sweet words. What a sparkling night that was. And he never called me. After 10 days later, I had unraveled to less than nothing. I resorted to that wretched coping mechanism. I had determined to quit taking a blade to my body. I was gentle with myself and wept afterwards.
Then I put on a long sleeved sweatshirt and walked to a little lake not far from my room. It was silver in the sunlight. When I flung his ring into it, nothing. He did hurt me as much as that one act of my own. It splintered all my future fantasies when he transcended in my mind into a living ghost who haunts though, absent, who follows everywhere, who refuses to speak. But I am a poet.
I can pull words from a ghost and at times I do it, I conjure him or a version of him who meant the things he said on the phone. That night, I call out to my void. I kiss the air which takes the shape of him. That was my ghost read by Kensey Odeon, written by Logan February and adapted from their work, the mania of Queer desire in praise of Fever raise plunge. It's been an honor to bring Logan's words to your ears. Thank you, Logan February.
You can check out the full essay and their other work on Logan february.com and their socials are at Logan February. All that fabulous music you heard is by Swedish songwriter Fever Re from their album Plunge. Thank you so much. Fever Re check out the show notes for more details about how you can listen to their music.
Afro Queer is a production of A Q studios executive produced by me, Sally Chum and produced by Penny Dale Kevin Sui and Mercy Barno are our sound editors and I want to give a huge shout out to Mercy Gaya, who is the backbone of the Afro queer team. She works as our administrator and manages the day to day of the show and works a lot behind the scenes. Mercy actually pitched us Shana's story and made sure we were able to produce it for this season. If you haven't listened to that story, go back.
It is powerful. We're saying goodbye to Rachel Omoto. Our long time social media maven, the entire Afro career team wants to give her a huge thank you for her hard work getting our show and our online community where it is today, we're going to really miss her Afro queer is supported by the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund and the Ford Foundation. You're listening to our theme song Power by Maya and The Big Sky.
You can follow us on all social media platforms at Africa podcast and you can listen to all our episodes on our website www dot Africa podcast.com or anywhere you get your podcasts. I'm Sally Chum. Thanks for listening. Oh, I need. Oh.