I was barely 13-years-old and in Form 2 in secondary school when I
read a novel that impacted much on me and later influenced me in becoming an
erotic fiction writer. I am talking of Dillibe Onyeama’s novel, Sex is a Nigger’s Game published in
London in 1976 by Satellite Books. It was erotically graphic and left nothing
to my already fecund imagination.
Mind you, Sex is a Nigger’s
Game was not the first erotic novel that I read. In fact, I had been
introduced to erotic literature wayback in primary school! I lived with an
uncle who bought Playboy, Penthouse, Variation, Mayfair and
other foreign smut titles that he read religiously and carefully hid them away
supposedly out of my reach, but I always devised ways and means to get them to
read no matter where he hid them. I even read Alex Comfort’s bestseller, The Joy of Sex when I was in primary
school even though I did not understand much of what was written there.
So, I was no stranger to smut literature when I read Sex is a Nigger’s Game. But what made
the novel profound for me was that it was written by an African (a Nigerian)
with a pan-African theme and focus. If you ask me, I would describe it as a
“Black supremacist erotica.” The illustration on the cover of the first
edition, says it all. It has a Black man holding a very big banana or plantain
if you wish, and standing behind and looking at him with obvious envy and
embarrassment, is a Whiteman who is holding a very tiny banana.
The banana in the illustration represents manhood (the penis) and
the message is clear: Black men are sexually endowed and possess very big
penises to the envy of lesser sexually endowed White men. Indeed the
protagonist in the story was a very well-endowed African student in Britain who
was the toast of White women. So good was he in bed that some White folks hired
him to screw their wives to satisfy their sexual cravings.
Published at a time when the pan-Africanist movement was at its
peak and the liberation struggle against Apartheid was beginning to gain
international momentum, Sex is a Nigger’s
Game was embraced by the Black Community from Africa to Europe, North
America and beyond despite its explicit sexual content and the profuse use of
the “N" word.
It was also the era of sexual liberalism and the sub themes of
voyeurism, swinging lifestyle, cuckolding and open marriages that the novel
explored, resonated well with readers beyond the Black Community.
That Black men have bigger dicks and are better in bed than
Caucasians and men of other races, is still a topic of global debate. While
some people argue that sexual prowess and endowment are individual thing and
have nothing to do with race, there are confirmed and reliable
studies/statistics that indicate that the average Blackman is better endowed
“cockwise” and have a longer staying power in bed than men of other races. That
is why sex is a Nigger’s game. It is also an open secret that sleeping with a
Black man is about the sweetest taboo in the fantasy list of many White women.
And like they say in porn, once White women “go Black” (a euphemism for
sleeping with a Black man) they hardly go back.
These were the myths (?) that were explored and romanticized by
Dillibe Onyeama in Sex is a Nigger’s
Game. Himself a victim of racial discrimination in Britain, Dillibe Onyeama
gave the impression in Sex is a Nigger’s
Game that the Whiteman may be better is several areas than the Blackman but
when it comes to sex and satisfying women, the Blackman is a clear leader.
It is noteworthy that before Onyeama’s Sex is a Nigger’s Game was published, Naiwu Osahon had in 1971 published
Sex is a Nigger in Lagos with a
similar theme. I read Osahon’s Sex is a Nigger much later and while I
found it entertaining from a sexual point of view, it didn’t have the sort of
mature plot and pan-Africanist focus of Sex
is a Nigger’s Game.
This month (January,) Dillibe Onyeama will be 67 and this piece is
a dedication to him. He remains one of my writing mentors and I do no pretend
that I have copied copiously, his literary style in Sex is a Nigger’s Game in my works. He currently lives in Enugu
where he runs a publishing company, Delta Publication Ltd. Apart from Sex is a Nigger’s Game, he wrote 25
other bestselling novels including his remarkable debut, Nigger at Eton that chronicled his days as a student in the
prestigious Eton College in Britain and the racial discrimination he faced
there. Other novels he wrote include Juju, Revenge of the Medicine Man, John
Bull’s Nigger, etc.
