Behind Closed Doors

Chapter Eleven

Phoenix had decided to become an actor, and so he had to leave his life at the Drummer Club behind, and by the New Year 2000, he’d almost already forgotten that he was ever a dancer and a paid runs-man at that seedy club, that he had fed the fantasies of a thousand men and women. But yet, the brand of liquor and the hard sex, mixed with the odor of dank sweat and cheap perfume, with the touch of roughened hands and the wet tongues were etched deeply on his mind. The club had marked the beginning of his life as a fighter for survival; it had been the place where he’d been betrayed by the angels that were supposed to have charge over him. He was innocence betrayed, and that showed in the shadows that haunted him in the depth of his eyes, because in their depths burned a fiery wariness.

He had broken the vows he had made to himself, that he would never have to stoop so low as to get himself used for sex; he had become a veteran at the sex act. It was his job to give the men that came to him the pleasure they paid for, and there were those that had been the embodiment of sexiness and temptation. And he had had them all; they had fucked him, they had tasted him. And the truth was that he could never get their smell off of his skin.

On that fateful day after the New Year, when he walked into the salon, he was swaddled in fitted black silk, from neck to toe, and he could feel the eyes that were on him as he made his way in, a vision of beauty, and he knew it. He said nothing to those he passed on the street, his face a careful mask of blankness, and nobody said anything to him. But he knew that many of the people he passed on the street were aware of him, of his beauty.

Lawrence was heating up some needles in a steaming pan that oozed with hot steam, and he said succinctly to Phoenix, ‘You like someone in mourning. What’s with the black attire?’

Phoenix gave a non-committal shrug. ‘Nothing.’

But the older guy had gotten used to him, and he loved him, so he knew when to get past the bravado to get to the vulnerable person beneath. He was no fool about the issues regarding his younger friend. ‘I know that you want to go high up in this life, but then I want to ask if you’re ready to take all the heat when the time comes. You want to be an actor, I see, but what about what the society thinks? How will you cope? And will you be able to make to it there?’

Phoenix smiled, but it was a rueful smile that was devoid of all warmth. He knew what his beautiful friend was alluding to. He was the living, breathing stereotype of the gay male in the country. And in Nigeria nobody would really care about whether he was really gay or not because of his feminine looks and disposition. And if he were to take that look into the big screens like he was planning to, would he be able to stand firm under the crushing weight of the society’s criticism of him?

He said, ‘That’s a bridge I intend to cross when I get there. What’s really important now is for me to get there; let the tongues wag. I do not give a fuck about them. You’ll see for yourself that I have it in me.’

Thankfully, it was a Saturday, and all the hot women of the Island would be coming out to have their hair and their faces done for the following week, so the place was packed to the brim with gossiping women who had come to have their hair done, their nails fixed and lacquered, and receive the pampering spa treatments that left them glowing for their men, and their women. For everything had a price here.

Then Phoenix later stepped into the main parlor to work, with its pink leather chairs, hidden lights that made everything to sparkle, elaborate beauty equipment which the sexy male employees used on the women, and many of the women were receiving facials in tiny cubicles, with the guys using magnifying glasses to see every perceived imperfection in the complexions of the women and fixing them up. He was looking very slender and very beautiful, and also very flawless in his black attire. A hush seemed to descend on the room as he walked in, and there was expectancy in the air, like a hum in the cold, heavy air. He moved gently towards the chair on which reclined a woman who was a top executive in one of the top firms in VI. The hand he held out to her looked slender and ended in long tapering nails that had been painted a nude shade of nail polish.