SEX,yes I said it "S-E-X"

Let's talk about sex

I attended a sexual awareness program in the beginning of the month and it was something I was really excited for prior to the day of the event. While I have learnt to lower my standards for Sagamu events, what was more irritating than the mediocrity and disorder of the event was the fact that none of the speakers(male and female included) there were comfortable with saying the word "penis". At a sexual awareness program ooooo, where the youngest person in the audience was probably 16 years old. I mean what's so hard to pronounce in the bi- syllabic word, P-E-N-I-S, penis, penis, penis. I'm typing it over and over again so you'll keep reading it in your mind till it sounds normal. I bet the average girl can count the number of times she's said the word. Nothing in the world would make me understand why "dick" is acceptable but "penis" isn't, I mean "sex" sounds very classy to me, why's "fuck" more palatable. I could go on and on with the dumbass words we've leaned into, words that only make sex sound unnecessarily mysterious. Now I don't care where these words originated from but the fact that they're globally accepted is a problem. Well enough of the English lecture, that's not even the focus of this newsletter. I mean I had it in mind to write around sex for a couple of weeks, but the thought to write this was solidified by that event.

Last month, I read Chimamanda's dream count. Although I was only motivated to read it after watching her interview with Trevor, it was totally worth the read. I felt so many emotions that I'd need another newsletter for a proper review. Anyways like Chimamanda did, in this newsletter I'd be telling stories of women, inspired by real life encounters of people I know. Well, these are stories of Christian women(age 18-20) navigating their faith journey and walking the paths of holiness with God's help. Even if you aren't a Christian,still stick around,the word sex is common to every human. I didn't record my conversations with them so I would be parI have a lot to say about sex but I figured these stories easily capture what I want to say compared to an endless rant. Darling, put on your seatbelts because I have no idea how this ride would go.

VIVIAN

I only have two vivid memories of when I was 5. One was of me throwing a coconut off our balcony from a two story building in an attempt to break it because my mum wasn't around and well I wanted some coconut. The other memory I have is the store room, the dark store room where three men wanted to play with me. They'd touch me, give me a lolipop and tell me to tell no one. It didn't just happen in the store room, in their bedroom too, when mum and dad were away and they'd sent us to the neighbor's place so she could watch over us. Oh! our neighbor, a lovely fair woman curved in the right places. She would sit in her shop and send us to play with her sons upstairs. Her sixteen year old twins with a 5 year old me and my three year old sister. They fed us, sometimes made expensive garri cake for us with chocolate and sweets and whipped cream and afterwards we went to the bedroom and they played with us. Once in a while they'd even invite their friend who was again, a next door neighbor to join in the fun. Well they played with me until I turned 6 and my family moved away.

It was a random Saturday evening at our new house, my younger sister and I were sitting at the dining table with my two older female cousins when my sister dropped the bomb. I can never forget the shock on my cousin's face when my sister jokingly said " me and brother Bola used to do ajosepo". Ajosepo, which was the Yoruba word for sex, it was all we knew it to be from the numerous Africa magic Yoruba movies we were subjected to before my dad sleeps off and let's us watch our Nickelodeon shows. My cousin, horrified by the news, went to my parents and told them how their old neighbor's son were paedophiles who preyed on their 3 year old daughter. Well my parents did what parents would, went to the neighbor's place, wanted to get the sons arrested and on and on. Oh well they didn't get arrested in the end, their parents pleaded and both our parents go way back so my parents eventually had to forgive. After that day we never stayed at a neighbor's place again, we were perpetually imprisoned by the high fence of my father's gigantic house and in my house no social media till you were in the university.

Iwas a quiet child while growing up, I didn't tell anyone that I was touched and till date I don't know why I never did. At age 6,I had this beautiful purple bag and well I felt a tingling sensation in between my legs and every time I put the bag there it just felt good and better. And so I did it repeatedly but in hiding because I didn't know why it was bad but I was taught not to tell and to hide. Plus growing up in a house where your father was a dictator doesn't give room for much communication hence hiding things becomes second nature to you,even the most unnecessary things.

Well from bags, it graduated to towels and basically anything I could fit in between my legs. I would lock the door to my room, get naked and touch myself and kiss a pillow imagining it was whatever dumb boy I had a crush on at that phase of life. I remember when I was 10, in primary 5 at that time, I'd close my legs on the table just to soothee the tingling feeling. It was really that terrible. I didn't even know it was masturbation till I was 14 and my computer teacher mentioned it in passing. So you mean the bad thing I had been doing in my room was called masturbation. I didn't know a lot about sex, I never watched porn till I left secondary school and the little I knew about sex was from friends at school who had seen one too many sex tapes.

One time a sexual awareness advocate came to my school, I think I was about 12 years old then. You know he talked to us and sang a particular song I'll never forget "if you watch jagajaga, you'll think jaga jaga, you'll do jagajaga". Jagajaga there represented sex. And what I loved about the man was that he wasn't gender specific, he didn't make it sound like it was a sin for girls and boys could go about wagging their penis without getting raped. The man and his team of counsellors told us to come and see him in the farthest back of the hall if we needed help or wanted to talk about something, I almost made it to the back of the hall but I was too ashamed and so I stepped outside and never got the help I needed. I was too preoccupied carrying the shame belonging to those paedophiles that I couldn't see help purely as help.

Fast forward to now that I'm in Uni and I am getting to know God, when I came to uni, I was carrying a lot of hurt and anger and unforgiveness because I felt like it was unfair. What did a five year old me do to ever deserve that, I didn't even get to choose whether or not I want to be sexually active. Sometimes I blame my parents and sometimes I blame those disgusting paedophiles. You know about two years ago, I heard one of them got married and God knows how much curses I rained on them because they were getting married and I was battling with an addiction that looked like it would be the end of me. Well good news is; that addiction isn't the end of me and yes I still masturbate once in a while but not everyday like before. So for me that's growth, habits take time to grow out of and forgiving myself after I fall back into old habits gets me one step closer to getting rid of them. Speaking of forgiving those paedophiles, forgiveness is gradual and possible with the help of God, forgiveness is in me choosing to be as kind as I can be with my words when describing those paedophiles. And forgiveness is in me choosing to love myself and acknowledge that shit gets fucked up but I'm still valued and precious in God's sight.

So yeah, I still think paedophiles are mentally disabled human beings that need deliverance on Ori oke or a bath at a river with native sponge and maybe intermittent injections from Aro psychiatric hospital also probably a dark cold room like the store room when I was five. It melts my heart to see how common it is these days,in the back handed compliments handed to little girls and boys and the pervasive looks in the eyes of those predatory adults. I hear too many stories and I ask myself exactly when it will stop. Anyways the good news is it is possible to heal from childhood trauma and just because I'm like this now doesn't mean I'll be this way forever. And that in itself is comforting.

This first story brings me to the most eccentric sexual activity in the world, paedophilia. I'm not here to give you statistics about paedophilia, I don't even think statistics do justice to how rampant it is. Hence look out for the little ones around you even if you don't know who they are or who their parents are. Moving on;

TEMITOPE

I don't know why the pornography industry was established in the first place but if there's one thing porn did to me,it made sex look scary. What do you mean that a huge penis is going into a human being's body and she's supposedly enjoying being stabbed from behind. What happened to mummy and daddy sex in the old Yoruba movies? Why are people slapping and choking themselves in the name of pleasure? Are these even humans mating in these videos? Well porn did less of sexual enlightenment and frightened me instead. I don't like sex,sex is scary.

To be continued............

As much as I want to continue, I've got to get back to surviving my textbooks. Alongside Temitope's story, I have two more stories to tell. I will just make it a series and hopefully I'll be able to tell all these stories by the end of the week. In between these stories, I hope you get a general overview of what I'm trying to say about sex. Yes I said it, S-E-X, sex. You should say it more often too.

That's the end of today's yap session

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.