II. "Muito Pensiva"

Ivo delicately sidles through the streets of Salvador, Bahîa. As I follow closely in tow, I’m trying to deduce something about the way he walks. He furtively avoids the objects in his way as if memorizing the location of each one. We pass through a café and he lightly touches each chair that he squeezes by, not once looking back to make sure I’m behind him. Perhaps he already has them memorized. Despite being a forty seven-year-old wedding caterer, he carries himself like most Brazilians: light and leisurely. Unfortunately for me, the pace of his native language is anything but: vowels and consonants bounce off his tongue, undulating me in waves of beautiful yet unintelligible syllables. When he talks to me, I must repeat everything to myself, even the words that are familiar. Comido, food. Escuela, school. Nothing he says comes easy to me; I have to work at understanding everything. He calls me “muito pensiva.” At every meal, there is fresh fruit juice and conversation concerning just about anything. Language, beer, politics, Carnaval, weather, news, feng shui, Zodiac signs. His partner, Andre, is less talkative, more nervous, and rarely around. I gather he is less comfortable with their situation, despite having been with Ivo for seven years. I’m not sure how furtive the gay Brazilian community is, but Ivo and Andre’s hospitality clearly speaks for itself; I am their fifteenth guest “son.” From the way Ivo speaks about his other “sons,” I deduce that he earnestly considers them family. Maybe because his blood family is all gone, or maybe because he has no interest in reproducing. In any case, his hospitality certainly makes me feel silly for joking about the sanctity of my asshole when I found out I was going to have two host fathers.

I take note of the calming way Ivo’s arms swing with each stride as we walk down the halls of ACBEU, my new school. For a moment, I forget that I’m several days late to Salvador and that I’ve missed orientation as well as the first day of instruction. Then he knocks on a door, and suddenly there’s an enormous woman greeting us and squeezing me into her tits. She kisses my cheeks and practically squeals, “Levi!! Como vai, tudo bem? Como é sua tia?” Between the twenty two hours in transit and her genuine concern for the well-being of myself and my aunt, I feel like I’ve taken several blows to the temple. Her charisma almost makes me forget that I made up some bullshit excuse about my aunt being sick so that I could stay another night at home, party with my friends and play one last show with my band. (This ended up not making a difference in the end because some vindictive cunt of a neighbor called the cops on our party at 11:30, and the rest of the night was spent wandering in a drug-addled stupor to Denny’s and other places. The power of the American property owner, eh?) The best I can muster is a meek, “Muito prazer. Minha tia é tudo bem, obrigado.” Next to this lovely, booming woman, I must barely be audible.

She fills me in on the rest of what I missed, which isn’t much, and sends me on my way with a whole lot of instructions in Portuguese that I don’t understand, and a packet of information about capoeira. She adds at the end a parenthetical comment, directed to me but looking at Ivo, about how I seem “muito pensiva.” I flash a grin and play it off like I’m worried about my aunt or something, when really I’m beginning to realize that I’m going to have to work at understanding just about every word that comes my way for the next five months. But as I fall back in line behind Ivo on our way home, I begin to watch his movements, and soon it’s all gone except for the trees, and the people, and the hot Brazilian evening air.