By Tony M

Let’s get one thing straight, no pun intended. I am as straight as an arrow. In fact, if there was a way one could be polygamous without going back to 1909, I’d gladly grab it. Oh, I hear a Mormon reader telling me to join them. Sadly, man, Utah just isn’t one of those places I’m dying to visit.

Oh yes, I was determined to avoid the Chege-Gichina debate at all costs. I mean, how old is that furore — like three weeks, a lifetime by Kenya’s short attention span standards? We really are like goldfish. Thirty second long national attention span!

But seeing as the matter didn’t fade away, like a 1991 box-slope and fade hairstyle, this real man decided to throw in the proverbial two cents, or in this case four friends, into the dodgy debate.

I first met Erica five years ago at my sister’s mzungu’s fiance’s place (BTW, congrats to her, she married HIM last week in the UK, but why do some white folk like hanging around queers?)

It’s true — ‘Erica’ was actually Eric, a guy, but with his effeminate looks, dusky light hue, big eyes, pouty lips and in a wig, push-up brasserie and make-up, he really did look like a girl.

It was in the May of 2003, and I still remember the day because it was the Champion’s League Final (about as big a deal as our Chelsea’s clash against Manchester United on Sunday, so God save the Devils) and it was the last time Real won UEFA. More on Erica later.

The other queer guy I know, Quentin, is really one of the wittiest, most artistic gentlemen in this city — and makes far better conversational company than most of the ‘beer and nyama choma’ cretins in this country — whose discussions suffer from a dearth of an iota of intellectualism or clever banter, what-so-ever.

Football, business and clandestine chit-chat is all-fine, for a while. But clean-cut Quentin, with his brilliant wit and cutting humour, does make for one fine to-hang-out-with chap. By the way, wit is to cheap jokes what Windsor is to a pati-pati nusu boarding-and-lodging.

So who am I to judge Quentin for his private libidinous inclinations? No-one, but You?

Then there is the film-maker, Yusuf. Ok, so there is the clichÈ that gay guys tend to go into the hair salon business, and have as much intelligence as a weave has brain between its fluff. That’s neither here, nor hair.

Fact is, Yusuf got a scholarship to study Medicine in America, way back in the ‘90s.

While in California, he came out of the closet and switched to film college. Back home, his mother was disgraced that he had chosen an ‘alternative lifestyle,’ while his doctor dad lost more face over his prodigal son’s abandonment of the medical profession.

"I don’t care if you want to have intercourse with goats," he growled, "But won’t you complete your medical course?" The point being — Dali’s paintings, Byron’s poetry, Wilde’s plays — don’t lose their brilliance because of their creator’s sexual orientation.

If you have to stoop to gay-bashing to feel better about yourself, friend, then you probably are a very mediocre person — just like that white trash idiot who hates/hits you just because "you are darn African!"

Finally, there is my good friend, Anselm, who is gay and at the very top of his game — again, no lurid links being made there.

A darling of the media, this fellow is funny (as in ‘ha ha’ not funny gay), very much into sports and one of the most entertaining chaps a man can ever drink with.

Where Quentin is suave and polished in his wit, Anselm is cruel, cynical, chauvinistic, cutting, comedic or cartoonish — often in the course of one conversation. And as he swills down his whiskey, and talks tough and rough, if one didn’t know, they’d think Anselm is one of the most masculine men one has ever met. Bottom-line, pardon the pun? If you don’t pinch my bun while we’re at the urinals, then I have no business commenting on your sexual inclinations. Period.

As for Erica, on that long-ago UEFA evening in 2003, he was in full cross-dressing attire, complete with wig, false eye-lashes and lipstick. So I introduced him to my gay-hating buddy, lawyer Ogolla, who thought he was a she.

"Very pretty," Ogolla said.

By the time Real Madrid was lifting that trophy, Ogolla and ‘Erica’ were deep in lip-lock. I found it hilarious!