by Max Lobe

The first time someone called me “Faggot”, I was around three years old. My older cousin, a young teenager with breasts growing out like small lemons, spat: “Pédé!”. For a long time, I thought she’d insulted me. Today I think she was trying to define me. “Pédé” must have been the only word she knew. It was the only word she had.

I broke up with my partner when he started wearing nail polish. Also that golden glitter on a face covered with a wiry, thick beard. And imagine those crop tops he started buying on sale in the children’s stores. My Ruedi is a thin ginger otter, and so it must have been hard for him to find clothes his size in the men’s section. The crop tops were mostly golden, metallic, anything flashy, shining from afar and showing his hairy flat belly, down to the tiny hole of his navel. I swear to God, that nearly killed me. But it was the nail polish that dealt the final blow.

That’s why in 2017, I broke up with my Ruedi: because of nail polish. Don’t come at me with gender studies and your theories about the patriarchy and capitalism we all already know or, at least, are supposed it. As a Black gay author, I know them all by heart. I know about the ‘social learning’ theory on how the society we live in shapes our choices. Pink for girls, blue for boys. I know about how gender is a performance imposed by heteronormativity. Sure, they’re important, but still, they’re just theories. This essay is about my feelings, my feelings in an intensely personal experience. No theory can explain what we feel about the people we love.

I was born in Douala, Cameroon, in 1986. A childhood surrounded by my mothers, four siblings, fruit, and the simple pleasures of childhood. My life was planned along three main axes: home, school, and church. Turn the triangle any way you want, it will remain home, school, and church. Sometimes, I think it was actually: Church, Church, And Church. The first time someone called me “Faggot”, I was around three years old. I can still recall the ruckus in the neighborhood because our famous Roger Mila had just scored a goal. That was during the World Cup of 1990 in Italy. That day, I was walking around the compound and imitating my mum. 

No theory can explain what we feel about the people we love.

I cannot imitate my mum: I simply am my mum. I wore her black high heels and her red nail polish, you know, that basic red we associate with women. Amused and exhausted, my older cousin, a young teenager with breasts growing out like small lemons, spat: “Pédé!” For a long time, I thought she’d insulted me. I thought she’d tried to shame me, mock me. Today I think she was trying to define me, to put into words what she was seeing in my behavior: the way I catwalked and talked, as if a girl. “Pédé” must have been the only word my cousin knew as a young teenager to describe boys who behave like girls. It was the only word she had.

My little Ruedi was born in Eastern Switzerland, a mountain guy from the countryside that has nothing to do with Zurich or Geneva. No, Graubunden is the Alps. It’s snow, yodeling, and green meadows where even the cows have bank accounts. When I first saw him wearing a short crop top with navel exposed, I thought: “Pédé!” At the time, I was already a 31-year-old grown man who already knew about life and the many faces of that insult. It wasn’t even necessarily an insult anymore, and I proudly use it even today. But that time, faced with Ruedi in red-fuschia nail polish, I meant it as an insult.

I have fought long and hard to accept myself as a man who loves other men. I have carried on silent, brutal fights to make my African and religious family imagine, tolerate, and even accept having a gay son. When I came out, my elder sister laid down the law: “there can’t be someone like you in this family. Either you die or the family does.” We didn’t talk for two years. They were some of the hardest in my life. My dear sister! My dear sister who became mum in Switzerland as she paid for my school, my everything. I would never be who I am today without her. So I didn’t give in. I didn’t give in until she accepted me.

For a long time, I thought she’d insulted me. Today I think she was trying to define me.

So yes, you could say I have made it to the other side. I am a Black African author. I’m an openly gay Black African author. I give voice to Black African gays in my novels. A Long Way From Douala portrays two young Cameroonian men discovering themselves and their country under the threat of Boko Haram. Does Snow Turn A Person White Inside? is about my relationship with Ruedi and my mother, as a young African migrant in Switzerland. I also give lectures and interviews on an array of subjects. I even have a fucking blog over at www.maxlobe.com/blog. All that, and I couldn’t accept my husband, just couldn’t accept him with painted nails. I just couldn’t. When Ruedi appeared with lipstick under his beard, he simply lost me. We officially ended our seven-year marriage in 2020, amid the pandemic and solitude.

Soon, I moved into a bright new apartment alone. There, I found ghosts waiting for me. It seems they could finally appear in the flesh and bone: my phantoms, facing me obstinately. Many were from my childhood. I soon understood that my silent fights with family were not a path to freedom and acceptance, and things began to materialise in all their complexities. I discovered familial acceptance was not enough to be at peace with myself. To find peace deep within myself where was a shadowy valley of dark thoughts, visited again and again. 

I started painting my nails recently. I like them brown, like my skin, or pale pink, like the juicy guavas of my childhood. When Ruedi saw them, he didn’t say anything. He simply put his arms around me in a warm hug. I’m telling you all of this because I’m trying to find it, the path that leads us to the sunlight. I think a man wearing nail polish is not necessarily free, not yet. I think freedom runs deeper, somewhere in the deep, dark waters of childhood memories. What I know is that I felt it, if only for a fraction of a second, in that hug.

by Max Lobe

MAX LOBE was born in Douala, Cameroon. At eighteen he moved to Switzerland, where he earned a BA in Communication and Journalism and a Master’s in Public Policy and Administration. In 2017, his novel Confidences won the Ahmadou Kourouma Prize. Other books by the author include 39 rue de Berne, A Long Way From Douala (published by HopeRoad in 2021), and the upcoming novel Does Snow Turn A Person White Inside? (coming 2nd November 2022). He lives in Geneva.