writing – TwoNightStands

“It’s one thing to love a child, but it’s an entirely different thing for the same child to feel loved. A home is the last place a child should feel conditionally loved.”

Leggy: I remember seeing this book months ago on Bookstagram. An Asian content creator popped up on my feed talking about this book and I sent it to you and suggested we read this.

Taynement: Yep! It was a book by a Nigerian author being spoken about by a non-Nigerian and it piqued my interest because something I always talk about is wondering how people who aren’t familiar with the culture digest books about Nigeria.

Leggy: This book follows Obiefuna, who was born into a lower middle-class family in Nigeria. His peculiarities make him the black sheep of his family and when his father finds him in an intimate position with another boy, he ships him off to seminary school.

Taynement: To be clear – his peculiarities to them were the fact that he loved to dance and wasn’t particularly good at sports but in reality, he was gay. Obiefuna was a rainbow baby after his mother suffered many losses. He turned out to be a golden child, and his parents attributed their successes to his birth, and he held a special place in his mother’s heart. His father makes the sole decision to ship him off after finding him in a compromising position with a male apprentice without letting his mother know the reason why.

Leggy: This is one of the best books I’ve read this year. I think what makes it so impactful is how quiet and not exaggerated it is. Every time I thought the author was going to make an outrageous choice he always chose something different. And I think the quiet choices make this book even more powerful because you recognize the characters. You know this would absolutely happen in Nigeria. There’s no exaggeration to pull you out of the story and other Obiefuna’s humanity.

Taynement: Yes, it was very realistic, and I agree that it was quiet and not exaggerated. It’s funny because some other books that I have as my faves this year share those same characteristics.

Leggy: What did you think about his experience in boarding school?

Taynement: I think it was true to form. I chuckled when his dad chose that as a form of punishment because it was almost predictable that he would explore his sexuality there. I would say though that I had my heart in my throat the entire time because I kept expecting him to be raped especially when he built a connection with Senior Papilo.

Leggy: Exactly. I was like sending your son to an all-boys school because he’s gay is a choice. That’s something I loved about this book. I thought Senior Papilo was going to rape him as well but that never happened. The author never made any shocking choices and that choice would have been expected.

Taynement: But again, another reason I liked this book is also showing how flawed our parents’ generation was in parenting. They just did not have the tools. His dad thought he was doing his best. Another way that this manifested in the book is when Uzoamaka (Obiefuna’s mother) visited the hospital with Anozie (Obiefuna’s father) and the nurse makes the comment about him being a good man because he accompanied her to the hospital when most men wouldn’t. Anozie loved his family, and he was showing up for his wife.

Leggy: I do believe Anozie genuinely loved his family. He even tried to hide the fact that he found out Obiefuna was gay from his wife because he thought it would break his wife’s heart. When they finally had the discussion in the open and she told him where else would a boy like him be loved if not at home?

Taynement: I do think certain threads were left loose or maybe I did not pick up on their usefulness to the story. The two most prominent were – Ekene’s (Obiefuna’s brother) plot purpose and when Senior Papilo takes him to a brothel.

Leggy: I think Ekene served as a juxtaposition to Obiefuna.

Taynement: I get that, but I don’t know if it was well done. The juxtaposition didn’t seem to have any effect on Obiefuna? Basically, if he was left out of the story would it have affected my understanding of Obiefuna?

Leggy: It was because of him that Obiefuna even came in contact with any traditional masculine things. He would have never gone to the football field if Ekene did not exist. Also, even though Ekene was not that smart he was left in the private school while Obiefuna was moved to seminary school because of his gayness leading the private school to have a meeting with Uzoamaka inquiring why Obiefuna was moved.

Leggy: I also expected Obiefuna’s brother to turn on him at some point because he was portrayed as so macho and being complete opposite of him, but they actually stayed closer than I expected them to. When Obiefuna comes back from holiday and Ekene sings for him to dance. I thought that was such a touching scene.

Taynement: The scene where he tells Obiefuna to dance, do you think it was him acknowledging it? Ekene just seemed to be in the dark about a lot of things.

Leggy: I absolutely think he knew. And I think that scene was a way for him to acknowledge it without having that conversation especially from someone considered traditionally masculine. He was never going to confront it head on.

Leggy: Also, about Senior Papilo taking him to a brothel, honestly, I thought Papilo was gay the way he gathered all those young boys to himself, the way he treated them and the way they competed for his attention. So, when the brothel happened, I was confused. I was actually relieved that the boys just went to a brothel. I genuinely thought they were leaving the school to do something more sinister like armed robbery and that Obiefuna was going to get caught up in it. I was so relieved that that wasn’t the case that I didn’t even think about the brothel anymore. But I think it speaks to how straight men initiate younger boys into what they believe manhood is.

Taynement: Interesting. I do think Papilo is gay but wasn’t going to “give into it”. Papilo is one of those Nigerian men who will marry a woman and live a straight life and a part of me wondered if he was giving Obiefuna an out by taking him to the brothel.

Taynement: And something that struck me was up until the end of the book had Obiefuna actually had sex? He mentions touching and rubbing and we never really going into the nitty gritty of his relationship with the artist.

Leggy: They never described his actual sexual relationship with the artist. Only that he did a lot of drugs with him and I was so worried because obviously Obiefuna was depressed and grieving and I was worried about the path he was heading down. But he never had actual penetrative sex with the long-term boyfriend that comes after the artist.

Taynement: Overall, I think that is the beauty of this book. It was written so well, and it maneuvered from topic to topic so deftly and the story just flowed.

Leggy: This book culminates with the 2014 law that criminalized gay relationships with a hefty 14-year sentence. That was devastating to read about.

Taynement: It was a good balance of reality. I liked the fact that Obiefuna found a community because they do exist in Nigeria.

Leggy: And then when one of his friends was kitoed. By the way, this is an actual thing that happens in Nigeria and that’s when straight men pose as gay men on dating apps to lure gay men out and then they get beaten up, videos are made of them confessing to be gay and then they are robbed while law enforcement looks the other way.

Taynement: All in all, this was a fantastic, well-written book that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Leggy: Such a fantastic book. I loved it so much and it was an easy read.

“There has never been, in the history of all human interaction, a way for a woman to explain effectively that she’s calm when a man has suggested she isn’t.”

In 1980, a wealthy Jewish businessman, Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later and the family moves on with their lives. Two simple minded brothers are arrested for the crime after marked bills used to pay for the ransom are found in circulation but only a couple thousands are found with them. They are imprisoned with the underlying understanding by everyone that there is someone else who masterminded the whole thing and has gone scott-free. Nearly 40 years later, it is clear that nobody has ever gotten over anything, after all. Carl is barely functioning when he’s at home. Ruth, his wife, has spent all her time protecting her husband’s emotional health and left the kids to their own devices.

“They had watched all this, as the understanding of what had really gone wrong in their lives revealed itself to them, which was that the tide pool you’re born into is only manageable if someone gives you swimming lessons. Or, put more simply, in order to be a normal person, you had to at least see normal people.”

The three kids born into the family – 2 brothers that were alive during the kidnapping and a sister that was born after the kidnapping but born into a life that has been shaped by the most consequential thing in their lives. Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm and is constantly anxious. Beamer rose to Hollywood fame by writing a blockbuster that involves a kidnapping and now has not been able to write anything else and has had to watch his writing partner go off and start a successful series that Beamer suspects is based fully on his family. Beamer deals with his perpetual terror by consuming anything that will numb him – drugs, food, women. Jenny has spent her entire life so bent on proving that she is better than her family, railing against capitalism while accepting the money she is paid every month from the family business.

“The irony of it nearly crushed her. She had been locked in a debate with herself her whole life about how to be good in the world, and the only thing she left out of that very private conversation she was having was the actual work of being a nice, normal human being.”

I like a book that knows the characters they are writing about. I love the process of recognizing a character and just reveling in them being who they are and the author making no apologies for them. I recognize that people grow as they become older but as I’ve become older, I recognize that more people remain the same than grow. I think in a society and generation where we go to therapy and talk a lot about introspection, we have convinced ourselves that we are constantly self-improving, but I would posit that we are just talking about the same issues with our therapists over and over again and learning coping mechanisms, but we aren’t changing.

I say all this to say that the characters the author created are amazing. They are proudly Jewish and rich with all the trappings that come with that. They have grown up insulated from the rest of the world and it has played out in their lives and the author lets us be a spectator to their glorious lives. These are characters that seem so real, you feel like you can see them and you think you know them.

“Maybe that was the real Long Island Compromise, that you can be successful on your own steam or you can be a basket case, and whichever you are is determined by the circumstances into which you were born. Your poverty will create a great drive in your children. Or your wealth will doom them into the veal that Jenny described at her science fair, people who are raised to never be able to support a life so that when they’re finally allowed to wander outside their cages for the first time on their way to their slaughter, they can’t even stand up on their own legs. But the people who rise to success on their own never stop feeling the fear at the door, and the people lucky enough to be born into comfort and safety never become fully realized people in the first place. And who is to say which is better? No matter which way it is for you, it is a system that fucks you in the ass over and over, in perpetuity, and who is to say which is better?”

I loved the end of this book. I thought it was realistic. Rich people keep being rich and keep being bailed. This is not a fairy tale. We live in a capitalist society, and this is what it looks like. No one is better at the end of the book and that’s something you have to sit with and accept. You want to read about rich people being rich living their lives in their bubble and never knowing real life? This is the book for you but also what is even real life? Whatever life anyone is living is real. I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Tag: writing

We Chit Chat – Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh

Book Review: Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner