Sex Without Love: The Ordeal of a Queer Nigerian Man

In a male-to-male dynamic, the expectation of financial commitment disappears, so what, then, is left to love? On top of that, could I date someone who was married to a woman and offered nothing?

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Photo by Joshua Mcknight

In Nigeria, the first step to being who you are is accepting yourself. Once you do, the second step is finding a place where you can find sex or love. That’s where Grindr, the always-busy dating app, comes in—until you realize it’s not exactly what it appears to be on the surface.

On Grindr, people want you based on your “roles.” You exchange pictures to determine if you are a good fit for each other. The last step is accepting that you might never find love unless you are willing to cosplay heterosexuality for most of your life. Here, you love a woman while seeing a man.

In the Nigerian queer dating community, I’ve found that the majority of gay men want you sexually but not romantically. You often wonder why. Maybe it’s because they can’t commit to a same-sex relationship, or maybe it’s because Nigerian men don’t know how to love beyond financial rewards and parading their partners to friends, families, and social groups as proof that they are not single. In a male-to-male dynamic, the expectation of financial commitment disappears, so what, then, is left to love? Without any sense of financial responsibility, you are left in the dark, swimming in nothing.

I knew that the first time on Grindr: No love was to be found where everyone chased nothing other than the satisfaction of their sexual urges. The Nigerian gay community is big, yet small and, as I navigated the app—sifting through fake and real profiles—it became clear that love was absent. Being a gay man meant having limited options, and being one who refused to conform to heterosexuality, I accepted that I might never get the love I craved.

Slowly, I decided to start building platonic relationships, knowing they might save me from being alone. Grindr became a playground, a space that I explored until I met my first hookup, then the second, while in university. These two sexual encounters didn’t meet my expectations. For queer sexual relationships, something felt lacking. I doubted my sexuality, but even as I tried to resist, my body still yearned for only a man.

I felt my first sexual attraction at 11 when I wrestled with a boy in the playground. Unlike most kids my age, I was smaller in frame, though we were the same height. He had more muscle mass. When I landed on the ground beneath him, I felt a burning sensation, a desire for him to stay there forever. On top. Forever there. Looking back, it all makes sense: I was always a gay boy.

At 13, I began to fully grasp my sexuality. Traces of sexual and romantic feelings emerged, and I burned for older men rather than boys my age. I would stalk random men to their respective places. I was drawn to them, wanted them, and was unable to look away from them as they glowed in an aging beauty. A year before, at 12, a much older classmate had pointed out my femininity. He said if I were a girl, he would have slept with me. At the time, I brushed it off. I didn’t yet understand sexuality, at least not as it applied to me.

As a teenager, I learned the saying “the third time’s a charm,” but I didn’t know it could happen in real life, and that it would apply to my third “time.” The first two were when I was 19 on my way to turning 20, with men I didn’t enjoy having sex with. Something felt off. I craved roughneck men, but I finally realized they were merely teenage fantasies and nothing more. Still, I gave it one more chance.

On Grindr, the conversation started with “Hi,” and I replied. He sent a series of pictures of his body. I was fascinated, but by then, I had grown to understand I needed more. By my third year at university, I knew every encounter was an opportunity to understand who I was. To understand whether penetrative sex was for me and tell me if I was even gay. Back then, I didn’t understand the asexual spectrum beyond the vague idea that some people didn’t feel attracted to other people. I wondered, was I one of them?

I asked for his face photo, but he refused, and I let it go. By then, I was deeply immersed in queer culture and had come to understand down-low men and their need for privacy. Instead of sending a picture, he invited me to his house on a Sunday morning. Through our chats, I learned he was in his early forties, and he described himself as someone who spent a considerable amount of time at the gym. I weighed my options, wondering if he would be the one to help me fully explore who I was.

A busy street in Lagos, Nigeria | Photo by Temitayo Aina on Unsplash

A few days passed, and Sunday morning arrived. Outside, the streets of Lagos were unusually quiet, with no traffic. The city is almost evenly distributed between Muslims and Christians, and maybe fewer people were going to church. Throughout my journey, I switched between four buses, a quad, and a tricycle, before finally finding his location. He hadn’t given me a specific address, and he let me wander down his street. He called as soon as he spotted me. Inside his house, I finally learned his name. He looked even better than I imagined: a perfectly toned body, exactly in his forties, with graying beard and hair. He was light-skinned but with a fading complexion. A great combination.

“I thought you wouldn’t be able to locate this place after complaining on Grindr,” he said. I wanted to respond, but the words stalled. My real-life introversion and stuttering have always hindered me. The words were there, readily available, yet I couldn’t say them.

In Nigeria, as a queer person, you have to be cautious and research who you are meeting because many homophobic heterosexuals masquerade as queer people. Inside his three-room apartment home, it was dead quiet on that Sunday morning. The neighbors had gone to church. In his house, items were scattered all over the place. A portrait of his wife and children hung on the wall. I could tell he was married. I decided it wasn’t a deal breaker.

The end goal was to desperately get the orgasm, and he delivered. It was the best sex I had ever had as a gay man. He went all over my body, and I did the same for him. We moved from the bedroom to the sitting room, where he told me to sit beside him and lay my head on his chest. I did. He ran his fingers through my hair, and I felt like I was floating out of the universe.

“You know, I was young like you once…” he said.

For someone who grew up with “daddy issues,” I have never felt more assurance in my life. Not even by my uncles, who were present in my life but never made me feel like their child. My mother died in the mid-1990s when I was barely older than one, and I still don’t know my father. I don’t care to know him.

Growing up with my grandmother and grandfather until I was 13 gave me the core of a mother’s love. I didn’t even realize my grandmother wasn’t my mother until I was old enough to understand my environment. Unlike her, my grandfather was different. There was something off. My grandmother made me feel like I came from her womb. My grandfather made me feel like I was nothing.

In this new world, at this moment, I felt secure with this man, who reassured me that I was safe with him. He told me about his younger days, about a brief stint in a queer NGO in the late ‘90s and early 2000s after graduating from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He told me these stories while his wife and children had gone to 10 a.m. mass as Catholics do, while he’d attended the earlier mass scheduled for 6 o’clock that morning.

“We are now in a relationship,” he said. His words rang in my ear. I pretended I hadn’t heard him. I asked him to clarify, and he did.

Queer men never claimed they were in relationships—especially the married ones. They didn’t commit, and certainly not a down-low man who wouldn’t even show his photo online when we texted on Grindr. I relished the possibility. I’d finally found an older man who wanted me as much as I wanted him.

He told me about his family and societal pressure that roped him into a forced marriage. How he resisted but eventually gave in, and how he couldn’t have sex with his wife for almost a year. I felt for him, but words failed me again. Being a stutterer and an introvert had gotten in my way too many times. I knew we might never be together the way I wanted. Most Nigerian women don’t mind if their husbands cheat with another woman. But with a man? It was different. This man told me that he wanted me as much as I wanted him.

I lay on his chest, taking in the father figure he was becoming to me. There, in the living room, sitting beside each other on the sofa, I could smell the alcohol and cigarettes on him. He explained that he needed them to feel energized before sex. I luxuriated in his calm and soft voice, deep and sonorous. I knew it was time to leave his house before his family returned. I stood up, but he grabbed my waist, pulled me against his solid frame, and lifted me. I felt like a child in his arms. He was a real lover, and I envied his wife. She would have had the best husband if he only was affectionate toward her the way he now was with me. If only he wasn’t gay.

I left.

I would later tell my friend tales of how I finally enjoyed gay sex, and how I had been with a man I found attractive. He had the biggest penis of any man I had been with, yet it hurt less than the others. The first man I had genuinely “made love” with. I had pushed my body into his, taken in his buff frame, and he had taken in mine. He moved his lips atop mine. His lips tasted sour, like a stale cigarette, but I basked in the euphoria. I’d finally tell my friend that I’m truly gay—or maybe that I truly enjoy penetrative sex. I had found a man who unlocked something in me. A man who made me feel gay—not just as an act of feeling gay but as an act of being gay. My truth.

The University of Lagos was as sunny as ever on a Sunday afternoon. The hostel had a brief calmness on Sundays, lasting till it was the evening when everyone returned. It was the same kind of calmness that settled during the weekdays when students were away at lectures. I laid on the lower part of my bunk bed and slept like a child. My flesh still burned from the different positions and movements on his bed, but there was fulfillment. I found solace in the fact that the third time had indeed been a charm for me. But could I date someone who was married and offered nothing? He only texted or called when he wanted sex. He did so two more times, and we ghosted each other. It had been too good, and I wanted more.

I craved his warmth, but he disappeared when I was at my weakest point. I met others along the way and had sex with them. They were good but none were as good as him. He stopped replying to my Facebook messages, and when he did finally respond via WhatsApp, he gave excuses for why we couldn’t meet. I knew he had given up on whatever we were. Our relationship had never been official, but we had made each other burn with feeling. Sometimes, I wondered if what we had was the same ending I had with the boy I met during my undergraduate days. The one who, after everything, told me he had repented and become “ex-gay.”

Then, in 2022, he popped up on my Facebook timeline and rekindled the memory. As usual, he didn’t send a picture, but we eventually met up again two years later, in 2024, when I was 27. The sex sucked. He had changed a lot in frame, looks, and demeanor. When I left his house, I knew it was over.

Over the years, I configured myself to see sex as a one-time thing. I thought a married man would never commit and, in a way, he did, partially. He taught me that, in the end, he’d always succumb to society. When he said, “If I were a woman, we would have been married,” it was a reminder of how powerful heterosexual dynamics persisted in his psyche. I knew it was the end. That was it.

Since then, I have grown in my understanding of queer love. Last year, I found someone who wanted me as much as I wanted him. We are the same age and are slowly becoming something.

I met Austin, another young Nigerian, in Lagos during a one-off sexual romp, but we clicked in a way I didn’t expect. We didn’t text each other again until the end of the year and, just last week, we finally made it official. The funniest thing is that I am two years older than him. After years of seeking connection with older men, I found love with someone I genuinely needed—and the fact that he’s younger doesn’t matter. The affection, a two-way exchange, reshaped my view of queer love. He loves me, and I love him. It’s reciprocal. It’s equal. Yet, while we defy the odds, I sometimes wonder if it will ever last, being a Nigerian.

One thing my friend pointed out in our favor is that I didn’t even ask him if he liked Beyoncé as much as I do, which I’d joked was a dealbreaker. I didn’t ask Austin about Queen Bey because I didn’t care. Love is a compromise, and whatever had convinced me that I couldn’t find love as a queer Nigerian, I now know, had been a lie all along. Or maybe it was the process of growing up and finally learning I could fall in love with someone my age instead of seeking out older, unattainable men.

I don’t know. I am still in the early stages of queer love.

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