At the dawn of my forties, I look at all these links piled up and left behind. I can be proud of the few victories I’ve achieved without any pretension, because I don’t intend to misunderstand this imperfect version of myself either. This me, full of naivety and candor, who made mistakes when they had to be made, that is, with all the childishness of the young age that believes that good feelings can do anything, that loyalty is adored, and that sincerity transcends everything. I gave more than they deserved to some people because I had the stupid conviction that this was the way to go. That if I go back into the fold, I won’t have to tell them. I would be above suspicion. I was molded into what everyone is taught. I have been a virtuous girl from a good family, a valiant sister, a respectable wife and an honorable, loving mother to drape my inner self, absolving me of my greatest sin. I have served as a good little soldier. I was a good woman but not the one I was meant to be. This sentence seems so banal and yet it crystallizes everything that is at stake.

At the age when the senses are racing with hormones, I was the first to not understand why for so long my eyes had lit up in front of a pair of breasts rather than a man’s biceps. Then there was that precise moment when I could no longer procrastinate. That moment you are dazzled by the body of a queen. You admire her as one can admire a person but not only, you contemplate her as one can contemplate anything but not only, you pretend to follow her gaze as one can be captivated by a thing but not only, then your lips brush against her lips, your hand wandering in her blouse explores that protruding part of her chest which is familiar to you, your being is invaded by this burning desire for her, then you understand everything. I understand that I am a woman, but not only that. I am a woman who loves others, another one. Words at last about one’s own emotions, the veil lifted on our indifference to other tastes, the ironic observation that shivering in front of a similar body is human but that this part of humanity is amputated from you.

I am what is called bisexual. I, to take the irony of the labelling a step further, like to add bisexual with a strong tendency to desire women. If mathematics were to rule the world, I’d say 75% female bias versus the rest male bias. The world would be such a sad place with that much precision. And yet, how much space that 25% has taken up! This is because it was convenient for me too. When I became an intrigue to others, because at nineteen I was unable to flaunt male attributes, that 25% allowed me to join the famous “norm.”

I could hide behind my reputation as a girl from a good family who didn’t want to get into trouble. I was praised for crossing my legs and squeezing my thighs so late in life, but deep down I wanted to kiss and caress Julie and Lucy instead of Jules or Lucas. I was beyond suspicion as long as I remained hidden behind the nursery of my faith cheerfully watered by my mother in a society that didn’t give a damn about the torments of your own conscience, as long as the supreme injunctions of appearance rather than truth were respected.

No one told me; I didn’t read it anywhere, hear it in any ear, that we were celebrating the day we revealed ourselves. No one I know is jumping for joy at discovering their non-heterosexuality in this world as we know it. Besides, it’s quite ironic that we use the expression “coming out of the closet” when we reveal ourselves to others, because the day we reveal ourselves to ourselves is sometimes, on the contrary, the beginning of a long life in the closet. We enter the closet consenting to our own assignment. For almost forty years, I have not been able to find the keys to unlock the closet. I definitely went into the shadows when I convinced myself that a handsome man would free me from my shortcomings, would save me from my sins. I entered the orders. I got married twice before God and men, as if to seal my fate, to tighten the grip of my straitjacket. I had done this correctly, with two jewels at the end, which today constitute the only interest of this episode which lasted for fifteen years of my life. I was definitely above suspicion. Who would look for a woman who loves women underneath the trappings of a respectable wife and mother? I could not have any deviations.

Then came the moment when the uniform of social respectability no longer fit. There was more and more to give, too much of myself to cut off; the straitjacket had to be forced through. So I left. Not only because I was wasting away from waking up with a woman. It didn’t matter consciously at the time. Only later would it become vital to reclaim my identity, to grasp it, and to try to escape from that closet in which I had obediently settled and where I had put the soft cushions that kept me snugly inside. Apart from the rare moments of naïve optimism when I thought I could show up in front of them and face the monster I would be in their eyes if I told everything. Most times, the deeper I was pushed into that cage, the more room I created for myself to stay there. All these years, I will vacillate between the intolerable weight of this heavy secret and the vain hope that no cataclysm will occur if I feel like shouting to them what I am; to my mother, who is busy making her devotions, and who decides what is either bad or good without any nuance; to my brothers, who are convinced of their virility and who have, like everyone else, this “dirty faggot” on the tip of their tongue; to this patriarchal system for whom a woman outside the boxes of marriage and motherhood is a pariah; to a heterocentric society that wants a woman to be here and there and a man not this but rather that.

So, I remain lucid on the madness and cruelty of their world. I still have the instincts to survive in their jungle and hold on to what I have in common with them, our humanity that makes me need them. The bubble I have built for myself is only interesting because it floats in the middle of them. From within it, I can continue to feel them existing around me without them reaching me. In order to be part of their world, I have already had to give up a deep belief, the one that wanted love to be above everything and that our differences should transcend everything. I am one of those whom love can expose to violence, to peril and exile, to death in a society where the rampant passion for God in any costume has exacerbated the rejection of non-heterosexual people.

I live in Abidjan. There are worse things, you may say. But there are still homophobic acts and aggressions, insecure working-class neighborhoods, institutionalized social rejection, overt hostility, fear of social fury that make one feel obliged to despise homosexuals twice as much when one is publicly accused of being part of this community. The existence of a strict criminal law that hangs like a sword of Damocles over homosexuals. How does one come out of the closet in such an atmosphere? I have not been a victim of anything like this because I am also a privileged person who can afford the means of circumvention that others cannot. Even if we are safe from anything, I remain well hidden in my closet from where, nevertheless, I sometimes have to take in my face some violence from relatives and friends bathed in this general atmosphere of homophobia, far from suspecting that everyone around is not them. I hear the acerbic voice of the good friend who tries to appear open and tolerant with debates like “I like gays, I have gay friends,” “if my friend was a lesbian, I’d still love her, even if I’d pray to change her” … and I hear this sly rejection, this inappropriate mothering, and I’m ashamed of my own deafening silence, this opportunity I offer her to spout her insanities. Perhaps it’s more unbearable to face this hypocritical tolerance than the unadorned hatred. How will I face the world if I cannot even slightly open the doors of this gloomy closet?

Yet, throughout these half-days, I have seen the extraordinary resilience and resistance of courageous and determined people, of famous figures who carry the torch, of targeted militant associations, of committed activists who refuse to let them bury us under the rubble of their fierce hatred and primary rejection. People whose works and actions leave me in awe of their heroism. My shoulders sag at their struggle, which is too great for me to bear. I have already spoken out because I was a woman, because I was black, because I was a foreigner and also because I came from a modest social class. Speaking out for my sexual identity would be the ultimate struggle. Will I make it? It took me twenty years to accept myself and tell myself the truth.

Every feminist commitment to more rights for women, every involvement in foreigners’ and migrants’ rights issues, every interest in anti-racist and minority issues that I have carried, have all been in the end, perhaps unconsciously, roundabout ways of approaching the advocacy for the right to life for non-heterosexual women. How I wish all these actions would make up for my cowardice in not also taking part in the fight for the right to one’s sexual and gender identity.

For now, I try to bring what I know how to do, to take my pen, even if my wrist is more hesitant and my hand trembling. I try to distil between two lines, two verses, two rhymes, two metaphors, and words to take my share. 

While waiting to find the strength to join those freedom-loving utopians who would give anything to see the rainbow sparkle in the firmament, I am trying twenty years later to build myself, to become me. I will finally dare to stick my head out, to make these stammering confessions, these sometimes pathetic, sometimes spontaneous confidences to a few trusted friends who will be the guardians of what is still a secret, even if, in the end, the choices I have made in my life still put me above suspicion.

Today, I try to create air spaces in the recesses of my closet and I celebrate the rare audacities that make me go towards those I desire, covet lewdly or lovingly. I think I’m at a beautiful stopover in this long journey that has made me reach a star, even if I don’t know how to deal with a star that has marked out its contours. She herself is damaged and trying to repair herself; impregnated with the same crazy guards which are to remain discreet, not to make waves, to hide any clue which could be unmasked, to remain vigilant and hidden. It’s all logistics, all retention.

No path is linear and neither was the one that led me to her. I wasn’t used to recognizing this feverishness in myself. This vulnerability due to my inexperience in this world of women that I never wanted to face because I didn’t want to recognize myself in it. I always liked to be on familiar ground to control, to master, to give the right measure of what I wanted. But this time, it was me who was leaving on sight, who was losing my resolve. And yet, I only wish for one thing because I feel I’m in the right place, to keep her in this world that doesn’t want to hear from us. It is with her that I feel equal, and that is what I must keep from the world. It is with her that I feel like a queen and a goddess and that is what I must keep quiet. It is with her more than ever that everything is so peaceful, so calm and so sweet and that is what I must keep quiet. It is with her that my dreams of the future I want to fantasize about and those are the ones I must stifle. It is the only tale with two fairies and no prince charming that I want to tell, and that is the one I must keep quiet about. It is with her that I want to fall asleep and wake up every day, to relive it again, to relive it whenever we feel like it, without the world between us, without distance between us, without our priorities between us, without our past and our fears between us.

I know that this would require each of us to stand up against so many mountains, to give up so much, to deny so many loved ones. But none of these obstacles made me afraid of this sweet, waking dream I hope to have with her. I close my eyes and I can reach, in the middle of a clearing near a stream and on the side of a mountain, this lost cabin in which we both dream of ending up embraced in the dampness and the traces of these sheets testifying to our exchanges, without having to finally put the locks on the lock to prevent any irruption. I hope that this place of love and possibility will one day exist in this Africa that is our home, without forcing us to dream of elsewhere just to be able to live at last. I want to dream it, if not for us, for those who will follow.

This story is published with the permission of the editor, and is one of the award winning stories from the forthcoming anthology, Wedged Between Man and God: a Collection of Queer West African Women’s Story.