They Just Don't Know You

This is from a collection called KINDNESS.

...A couple of friends had decided to meet in one friend’s room and there we were drinking, talking, hanging out. The night was far gone and at this point, people were doing their own thing. Half of the people had left, the other half of us were watching videos on YouTube, exchanging memes, doing every stereotypical thing young people in 2018 did .

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The year was 2014. I was a different person. He was exactly the person he was meant to be.

2014 me was—to understate it—a catastrophe. I had just moved to New York for undergrad. It was my first time out of Nigeria and the culture shock was hitting hard. When you’re from where I’m from, you don’t get a lot of diversity, especially in the way people think and the way people identify. Growing up, all I ever knew about the LGBTQ+ community was: they are bad. I always tried to question my religious beliefs, my morality, what I thought was good or bad, but growing up in Nigeria—especially pre-internet days—it was a battle you did not begin, because inadvertently, you were guaranteed to lose .

So there I was, an LGBTQ+ fearing, morally “righteous” 18-year-old Nigerian boy standing in the middle of New York city where, just the night before, I had gone with my parents into Times Square and seen a woman wearing nothing but nipple-pasties and barely-there panties. I remember it took the combined efforts of me and my dad to convince my mother not to “help” her. And by “help” her I mean: to cover her with a layer of wrapper my mother was already removing from her waist. New York was the antithesis of Nigeria. Everything Nigeria was, New York wasn’t. All the diversity Nigeria lacked, New York more than accounted for.

So when I saw Devin, a black 19-year-old boy with purple hair, handing out fliers for some PRIDE event his club was putting on, I immediately knew: That’s trouble. That’s the kind of person I’m most definitely staying away from.

Fast-forward and it’s the middle of the semester. Guess who’s in my Programming class? Devin. It had been 5 or 6 weeks and I’d been making a deliberate effort not to engage with him. I honestly don’t even know what I was afraid of, now that I look back on it. But I remember at the time, every time I’d see him, I’d feel a sharp pain across my chest. It’d been about 6 weeks and I was still very much avoiding any sort of interaction with Devin, even though I thought he was absolutely hilarious in his responses to questions and comments in class, and judging by his pop culture references, we seemed to share a lot of similar interests.

Then that Tuesday happened. The Tuesday when I was so tired I snoozed my alarm about three times, only to wake up and realize I was incredibly late to Programming class. I ran out of my room without combing my hair, taking a shower, or anything. I just quickly brushed my teeth, changed my clothes, and headed out. As I approached the classroom door, I noticed that the class was already in session, so to avoid being a distraction or catching my professor’s attention, I made my way quietly to whatever seat was available in the last row. I hadn’t noticed, but as I’m sure you guessed, Devin was sitting beside me. When I tell you he was the nicest person, I mean that as an understatement. This is a boy I had never talked to, yet without asking (because God forbid I actually started the conversation), he brought me up to speed with what the professor was going on about and made sure I was comfortable and not as frazzled as I had been when I’d entered. He was—to put it mildly—a true sweetheart.

At the end of class that day, I was entering into new territory: life as someone who associated with the LGBTQ+ community. This sounds so funny to me now, but at the time, it truly was a very scary thing for me. Becoming friends with Devin was very slow, all the while being in my head a revolutionary act that no one else in my family would ever understand or approve of. We both found the class to be very difficult and would often study together. Of course, studying together meant that we talked about non-class related topics, played music together (that was when I confirmed we both had very similar tastes) and just…hung out. Like I’d done with any other person in my life. The fear and “Oh My God” of our friendship eventually washed away, and by the end of the semester, I wouldn’t say we were best friends, but we were in each other’s lives and in each other’s corners.

Fast forward again to about a year later and it was thanksgiving holiday. The school was pretty much cleared out because everyone had gone on to spend the weekend with their families. My family was, of course, in Nigeria and I had no intention of buying the $1,450 ticket it’d cost roundtrip just to spend a weekend. I was stuck on campus with no friends, no family, and only 2 places open: the sandwich place and the mini-mart we had at our school. Those sandwiches got really boring really fast. It was on my way back from the mini-mart—I’d gone to buy some croissants and juice—that I saw Devin. I was so happy to see him. In true Devin style, he asked how I’d been surviving, and when I told him I hadn’t been, he invited me over to his room to eat some of the left-over Thanksgiving food he’d brought back.

This was, I think—especially looking back at it now—the pivotal moment in our friendship, because that day, we had the longest talk we would ever have with each other in our lifetimes. It started at about 4/5pm and I ended up leaving his room at around 2/3am. We talked about everything. Our dreams and aspirations, our backgrounds. I told him about how I’d been making the conscious effort to avoid him and he found it hilarious. We shared everything. I learned that Devin hadn’t told his family he was gay. I learned that before Devin was born, his parents had a son who, unfortunately, died about a year later. So when Devin came around, not too long after his brother’s death, his parents saw it as a kind of “second coming” of sorts. They believed heavily in reincarnation and they believed that Devin was his brother, reborn. He told me of the pressure he felt to be perfect because, growing up, anytime he’d do anything “bad” or that would “disappoint his parents”, they’d always say “Andrew would never do that.” He expressed how hard it was to constantly be compared to someone who wasn’t there to mess up anymore. He was living up to someone who, in his parent’s eyes, was perfect, and he expressed to me how unnaturally stressful it had been to live there. That night I told him there was nothing to be worried about, that his parents would understand if he came out to them, he’d just need to express his thoughts and they’d come around. Before I left his room that night, we exchanged Instas and Snapchats, you know, the seal of approval on a friendship.

Fast-forward several months and several semesters and, although me and Devin are friends, we’re not the I-see-you-all-the-time kind of friends. We’re more whenever-we run-into-each-other-we-say-hey kind of friends. But something is different. Not in our friendship or how we relate to each other, but in Devin. It was slow, very slow, but it is there. Something is different. As time moved on, I’d come to hear a lot of different accounts of what happened. Some people said he was homeless, some people said his parents had kicked him out of the house for being gay, some people said he’d broken up with his boyfriend. I had many different accounts of the story but none were his. I wish now that I had just gone up to his room, knocked, and asked what was going on. But we were not those kinds of friends. Our relationship had hit cruising point, not to be disturbed.

Then came the night of the hangout. A couple of friends had decided to meet in one friend’s room and there we were drinking, talking, hanging out. The night was far gone and at this point, people were doing their own thing. Half of the people had left, the other half of us were watching videos on YouTube, exchanging memes, doing every stereotypical thing young people in 2018 did. Somebody was in charge of the background music and a song titled “They Just Don’t Know You” by Little Mix started playing. It was an ordinary song, not even a single, now that I research it, but here it was playing—I reckon from Devin’s playlist. What I remember is that we were all doing our thing when all of a sudden, we heard sobbing and saw Casey, Devin’s best friend at the time, run up, hug him, and escort him out of the room. It was as confusing as you can imagine. Devin never returned to the hangout but Casey did. Of course we confronted her about what happened. Her response was something like “Oh no, it’s nothing. It was that song, I guess it made him feel some type of way”, something along those lines. This made me research the song for myself when I got back home (because I am nosy) and when I heard it and really listened to the lyrics, I cried. I actually cried. I’m not just saying I cried as a metaphor, I physically cried. Real straight-from-the heart, chest clenching tears. I still don’t know why I cried as much as I did that day, the song is pop, but something about the lyrics and the way it tied back to what I knew of and had been hearing about Devin…something about it just made me cry. Still, I never talked to Devin about this, I never said a thing about the incident at the room. The next time I saw him, I wanted to ask him so many questions: why is your hair no longer purple? Why do you suddenly look sad all the time? Why were you crying? But of course I didn’t ask any of these questions. We simply exchanged smiles, said our ‘hi’s and went on our ways.

When graduation came along for us not too long after, the Devin I had first seen all those years ago was such a completely different Devin from the person taking pictures with his parents who I finally got to see for the first time . I must say, very normal looking family, very similar in the way they looked to my family or your family or any regular family. And isn’t that so crazy? On the outside, we all just kinda look the same, until you go behind closed doors and really see and learn what’s going on.

Anyway, they were all smiles, his parents and other extended family I saw, but Devin…Devin was different. He was smiling, and he looked happy, but he didn’t… he didn’t… I don’t know how to explain it but he wasn’t Devin anymore. His hair was black, he was standing, talking, and walking very straight. His interactions with his friends, including Casey, were very stiff, especially so when his parents were around. Backstage before the commencement ceremony officially began, he’d seemed jittery but he was still a little more like the Devin I knew. Here, it wasn’t Devin, not at all.

I wish I could say this story goes on to end on some high note, that it’s a redemption story about a boy who broke away from his parent’s expectations and became a total badass. Say that this story ends with me and Devin finally sitting down and having another long talk like the one we’d had on Thanksgiving weekend.

But that’s not how this story ends. After graduation, I went out with my family to get Red Lobster, celebrate, have a blast. Afterwards, I flew to Los Angeles to enjoy some of that LA weather and experience all of the tremendous highs the movies told me exist in LA. Then, I hopped on a plane and went back to Nigeria. That was in 2018, 2 months after Devin and I graduated.

Last year, October 2019, I heard that…Oh my God…I actually can’t write it. I thought I could write this, but I actually can’t write this. Last…Oh my God…I’m sorry I’m typing this out on Vocal and I don’t know but when I saw the prompt to write about a song that sparks instant emotion in you, my mind immediately went to this song and to Devin, and all of the emotions that I’m still yet to resolve. All of the questions, all of the what-ifs, the should-haves. I don’t even think I can submit this story now that I’m writing it. But I guess I have to…I…WHY AM I CRYING??!!!! Uhhh…I have to take this last part out…No, I’m just going to leave it, and end this story.

In October of 2019, I heard the heartbreaking news that Devin passed away.