CW: Racism, Sexual Explicitness

by Emmanuel Agu

Right.

So I suppose this starts as incredibly clichéd as every article you’ve ever read central to this topic, so apologies for the start. My story looks like this initially: a surprisingly overconfident, yet tragically naïve 18 year old city kid sets off to university, desperate to finally leave the comfort and restraint of home, yearning for a new circle of friends with few inhibitions; eager to explore depths of his sexuality and surrounding community. None of this realistically, was achievable with a 12:00pm curfew (African parents. Let’s just leave that one there.)

Fairly rapidly I’m granted a few of my first desires – fresher’s week had me out and as drunk as I could ever wish to be, I was very quickly surrounded with an open minded, assertive circle of young men and women, a second circle of friends as eager as I was to see what life was like living free the constraints of a second generation African upbringing, and finally a group of flat mates that squabbled and clashed and reconciled in a clockwork fashion that felt like a family away from home.

Many I had been on dates with, or perhaps had confessed my identity to (feeling a little loose tongued whilst inebriated) had told me my identity “wasn’t really a thing”, I was quite simply “greedy” or still had “half my leg in the closet.”

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