Chapter Twenty-two

The White Phoenix glowed with dim blue and red lights, and gorgeously dressed men and women milled about, drinking cocktails, playing card games, and talking. It was the hottest ‘happening’ club currently in VI, packed with action, both sexual and otherwise. Men pulled up in their sparkling cars, smoked expensive imported Cuban cigars, and drank up their wealth in expensive liquor, while the women were all dressed to kill, their long, bare legs flashing with scented oils, their high heels giving their heights more inches, their long fingers which ended in lacquered nails clutching at tall glasses of ginger ale with the sophistication brought on by the wealth of their sugar daddies and loaded boyfriends.

In an earlier incarnation, the White Phoenix had been a restaurant that catered to the hot-blooded youths of Lagos and the older generation who were on the prowl for young women they could lure into their beds for nights of sex on the sly in return for the cash they had in abundance. It was also the place where the upcoming actors came to, the soon-to-be musicians and soon-to-be-hot-models came to, hoping to get their feet into the establishments they wanted to get into.

But the casting directors were sharp, and they could easily lure the girls and even the boys, most of whom were very pretty, into their cars or offices to be thoroughly fucked and then dumped because of the fact that most of them had zero talent for the screens and the soon-to-be musicians had the voices of wailing hyenas. Occasionally though, a real star was discovered, as had been the case of the now sensational model Tope Odusote who was now strutting the London catwalks and earning mega bucks.

From where he stood in the wide hall, with its erotic art paintings, vases of flowers, and the blue-painted walls, Phoenix could see into the main parlor where the real thing was going on, where the rich men of the deliciously decadent Lagos society and the madams paid to gain entrance so they could engage in same-sex liaisons with the members of the younger generation. So many men had been after him for sex and he’d politely but firmly turned them down in such a way that there were friendships that developed, and when the White Phoenix went up for sale, he went and acquired it. He knew the perfect use for it: a spot where the horny people could come and satisfy their sexual urgings by picking out the legion of youths there that were available for the fucking, both male and female, all for a price.

It had been ridiculously easy to circulate the news, albeit secretly, in the right ears at Surulere, Mile 2 and the other happening spots around the Island where the gay people thronged, all hoping for fucks, and along the Lagos mainland areas; get young men who were tops, bottoms, and everything in-between in the gay culture, to come to the White Phoenix, buy drinks, invite their friends, play games, drink cocktails, and then eventually hook up with dates. It was the perfect place for homosexuals and high-playing prostitutes to meet in the city, away from the prying and censorious eyes of the society. If you went into the White Phoenix, then you were sure to hook up with someone before you left so long as you’re in the game.

Then he spotted Henry Johnson as the guy walked into the place and stopped to take the scene in, his long trim body still, his eyes flicking disinterestedly over the three hot guys that were standing by the entrance, eyeing him expectantly. He’s used to being wanted, to being the ultimate specimen of the desirable man, Phoenix thought, not without a twinge of jealousy. That Henry was so masculine, so rich and so beautiful as a man, and then so gay, but with his sexuality masked from the glare of the public eyes, made him all the more desirable. And he knew that Henry felt very possessive towards him; that much had been obvious to him the very moment the reporter called him with full apologies. It also made him to understand the fact that he was in a way special to the young man, that Henry would be willing to really hurt those that hurt him.

With a small sigh, Phoenix turned and headed for the small private booth he’d had Henry installed in. He parted the long swinging curtains, his eyes narrowing to slits as they adjusted to the dim red lights that illuminated the circular table in the middle of the booth on which reposed a bucket filled with ice cubes, chilling a bottle of wine. Soft New Age music wafted forth from concealed speakers, and Henry was nodding slowly to the beats.

‘You smell of roses and peaches,’ Phoenix told him.

‘It’s my wife’s lips gloss. Fiona was unhappy that I had to go out for a meeting with a prospective investor and so she covered me with kisses. What do you think she’d do when she discovers that I was out meeting with a lover?’

Phoenix sat down, threw his head back, and then he laughed. ‘She’ll expire from apoplexy, but not before she’s stabbed a knife through your heart.’

At that moment, Dan, one of the guys Phoenix had worked with in Lawrence’s beauty salon, parted the curtain and peered into the booth. Then he came in, bearing plates on which reposed thick circles of pancakes with honey dripping down the sides which he placed noiselessly on the table. He uncorked the bottle of wine, poured two glasses, and then he disappeared again. Phoenix picked up his glass and took a sip of the liquid.

‘You’re not drinking?’ he asked Henry.

‘Fiona will smell my breath when I get home in the hopes of getting a whiff of alcohol on my breath so she can dole out her punishment: she’ll make me sleep on the couch in the living room.

Phoenix let out a peel of laughter, and then he sobered up instantly. ‘Why did you attack that obnoxious reporter?’ he asked quietly.

Henry shrugged, but there was now rigidity in his pose, plus an alertness that was inscribed on his features, and then he spoke, his voice as hard as ice. ‘The bastard had no right to write those things he did about you. You have done a great service to Nollywood, and what does that bastard do about it? He goes about, spreading vermin about you, and believe me when I tell you that I refuse to allow anyone mess with something that belongs to me.’

The feral anger and fury that boiled beneath the cold exterior of Henry’s face made Phoenix a bit taken aback, but he was a master actor who knew his craft very well; he masked his features very well. It would never do to let the guy see anything except what he was meant to see. And shock was not one of them. So, there.

‘Do you think I belong to you, Henry?’

Henry looked at him and smiled, and it was an odd sad smile. ‘The time I have had with you are the very best things I will cherish till the day I die, and believe me when I say that they are good compared to what I have chained my ass into at home.’

‘Nobody forces a man into marriage and you know it.’ But Phoenix was annoyed that the guy had chosen not to answer the question he was asked, though there was nothing he could do about it yet.

Henry glared at Phoenix, and his eyes flared with annoyance. ‘In my case, I was forced,’ he snapped, and his voice had risen. ‘You’ve met Rosalie, and you must know that underneath all that sophistication, all that polish of public life, lies a ruthless go-getter who knows the value of only what she wants and how to get it. She wanted me to have my inheritance, and I must have it too since I’m the only child of my parents. It was my mother that made me to get married to Fiona against my nature. And did you know that it was Rosalie that had discovered your face on the screens and then gotten it into her pretty little head that we had to find a way of making some money off of your talent?’

‘So you managed to buy your way into my career with your hefty pay money, but still you must admit that doesn’t make you own me,’ Phoenix pointed out coolly.

Henry looked at Phoenix coldly. ‘Oh, I do own you; you just fail to see it yet. I have the ability to give you anything you want, and there is the issue of the fact that I can protect you and hit at your enemies and your detractors when they try to strike at you. In return, I want your body and your loyalty, and you must not go around flirting with those little boys; I find it distasteful.’

Phoenix was really beyond furious at the audacity of the guy. He tried to sit up, but the hands of his lover trapped him there effortlessly. ‘How dare you?’ Phoenix exploded, throwing his slender arms up in the air and clutching at nothing. ‘Oh, you have the nerve! And what will you say next－ that I should stay away from the women that interest me because you want to keep me as your whore?’

‘No, you can go to as many women as you want; I feel no threat from them,’ Henry said with an amused chuckle. ‘When you have sex with a woman, it’s as if you’re knitting with her; that’s no problem whatsoever to me. It will lessen the pressure of our relationship.’

Phoenix managed to twist around so he could look Henry squarely in the face, and he thinking in his mind: what you want from me is done. He thought these thoughts in his mind but he did not say them out loud because he wanted to be the one with the power in their relationship, not Henry. What he failed to tell the guy was that he was very much attracted to women and even though he preferred their company to the company of his fellow guys, he was now having really zero interest in sleeping with them because of the fact that they were cheap lays to him. There was nothing to be done with them save engage in the ancient, timeless rhythm of male-female coitus. And besides that, he’d been branded a homo by the public－ he read the papers and visited the internet gossip sites religiously, after all－ so why not live up to the expectations of what he was accused of by people who knew nothing about what being gay really meant.

And then, there was the guy Henry. He was a handsome, sensuous young fellow; full and ripe and yet very masculine, and very much a homo, but he was different from the Nigerian society’s warped sense of who a homo was. They thought that a homo was the guy with the swish, the one with the limp wrists and the gentle voice, the purely androgynous face, and the swaying walk, but the bastards were all wrong. The homo was the so-called ‘normal’ guy－ whatever that was－ and they were the ones that hit on the feminine guys many of who were at most straight as arrows or asexual; disinterested in sex.

And Phoenix was very lonely, a guy greatly surrounded by people, suck-up young men and women who wanted to get their feet into Nollywood and wanted to use him as the doorway; women who came to him because of the fact that he was more fun to be with than their boyfriends. But none of these people were really friends because they were as attracted to him as they were repelled by him; they loved him, and they loathed and hated him, yet they could not do without him.

On the other hand, here was Henry, a guy who loved him, a guy who saw beyond the effeminacy of his behavior which every other person held against him. . . Henry wanted him for who he was, not for what he was; however, like the others, this Henry guy wanted something from him, just like the others did. And that meant that there was no way in the world that he could let himself be taken in totally by what the guy had to offer. He had to keep some part of himself to himself, and that was the only way for him to stay safe and not be burned badly when it blew up in his face.

Henry then moved in and kissed him, and there was nothing he could do to stop the guy. He knew that Henry was a very cruel person when he wished to be so; the brutal attack on the reporter attested to that fact. And he knew that Henry was capable of being more brutal than just a broken arm and a few fractured ribs. There was something that spelt out trouble and cold ruthlessness about the Adonis; he would never have gotten to the stage he was in right now in his life if he was nothing other than ruthless. That was the rule of the game and that was all there was to it.

But he had to lean into the married guy that had come on so strongly to him, and there was the silky taste and feel of the guy in his mouth, his eyes misting with tears at the thought that things should not be like this. He felt the strength of Henry’s rock-hard erection digging into him, and he stroked Henry’s face because he felt starved so thoroughly of affection; everybody seemed to be fighting against him. His mouth moved lower to Henry’s exposed neck and the latter emitted a deep low moan in his throat, and then Phoenix reached down to the shaft of the tumescent organ which strained against the corduroy trousers Henry wore.

Henry shot up as if bolts of electricity had been rammed into him, nearly throwing Phoenix off to the ground. He jerked away, panting hard. ‘We can’t do this here,’ he panted. ‘This is a public place.’

Phoenix grinned like a Cheshire cat. ‘This is not a public place, Henry,’ he countered. ‘It is a small world inside this huge city. It is a place where people like you can meet and hook up without any fear of being caught. Outwardly, this place is a high-class restaurant, but during the weekends, it turns into the gay hangout of Lagos, and this fact is known only by those who wish to really know. Even the ministers available come here.’

Henry’s eyes popped open.

And Phoenix laughed softly at the naivety of his friend, rolling his eyes at how ridiculously innocent Henry was. He went on to explain more to the befuddled guy.

‘This is enabling environment for the homos available to meet each other with no inhibitions. And then there is the big price to be paid, of course. Last night, a call came in from this high-ranking government official in Ikeja who wanted me to send over two young men to him for the night. This man is really loaded with the needed heaps of cash that’s been piled up for ten generations of his family to use. Then he sent over this young guy with the heaps of cash I need to set things rolling for him. I sent the guys over, with a promise squeezed out of them that they will tell me of their adventures when they return from their adventure.

‘When they came back, they told me that the man had sat down on a huge chair in the he’d had them taken to, and do you know the funny part of this? The man wore a mask to cover his face.’

Henry, though filled with disbelief, was enchanted with the story. ‘The man wore a mask?’ he asked as he burst into laughter.

Phoenix nodded. ‘Yes, and this was a married man we’re talking about here. Then this man made them touch and kiss themselves, and then he had them fuck each other and come in each other’s faces. There he was, seated there on the chair watching them, and then he pulled his pants down and jerked off, getting his own release. When they were all done, he told them to dress up, that he’d enjoyed their live performance, and if they were able to keep up with the good work then he’d take them places. Then he paid them their cash and they returned here and regaled me with the juicy tidbits. And it’s a bit surprising, isn’t it, what with this man being a politician and all that?’

Henry was nodding, trying to digest the knowledge that Phoenix was trying to impact into him. ‘So what are you trying to tell me?’ he asked finally.

‘All I am saying is that behind closed doors, anything can happen. Men sleep with their wives’ sisters; men sleep with their male apprentices who they keep in their homes; women have sex with the sexy younger brother of their husbands; men fuck their male lovers who they keep in their homes as hired servants, and all these is done in the dark. But the truth is that, on many occasions, it never even is a secret. But then what is the other spouse to do? Then I appeared on the screens, the beautiful guy who is the really the stereotype of what the gay man is in Nigeria, and they all came for me. But then I can never be interested, so there arose the need for me to open the White Phoenix.’

‘In other words, you’re a whoremaster.’

Phoenix ignored the barbed taunt of his lover and said nothing. He couldn’t say he knew what the guy was that angry about due to the fact that he was only rendering a service to those that were in need of his services. But above all, it provided a new insight into the feelings that Henry Johnson had for him. He realized that Henry really did care for him, perhaps even more than Henry was aware of. And even though the guy was glaring at him, Phoenix wanted to reach out to him and to touch him; he tried to, but the pampered son of Rosalie shrugged him off.

And that had ruined their night beyond redemption because the things that they held between them was too much.