Geography of Love
TRANSLATED BY INES MARQUES
Prologue: Mister Universe
He
What you are about to read might seem like a
Random, improvised or crazy thing.
It’s not random or improvised. This, here
and now, this thing that you are about to read,
and that is still a thing, is an initiation rite,
is the portal for the Geography of Love.
Geography of Love was written in Lisbon, between 3pm and 3am, on the last day of Spring.
*
This is my uncle, Ricardo Wagner Braga, a cis gay man, who used to cross dress as a witch and chase me around the house of white marble floors – the protagonist of Geography of Love. In this picture, he’s parading his beauty in front of Mermen Beach.
*
INVITATION
Below is one of the many Love messages
Ricardo received from his Mermen,
this message is also an invitation and I’m
extending it to you… In the hope that, as the sun rises,
a friendship arises
between us…
*
ALMOST A SYNOPSIS
In 2011, the most loved and feared man
from my childhood, my uncle Ricardo
(my little Witch), died from AIDS, and verbally
bequeathed all his inheritance to me,
his Princess Yayá.
It was a small plastic box he had kept
under his wardrobe for four decades.
It contained 254 postcards
from different cities, stamped and dated, exchanged
with about 160 people. And another 250
without a date. The messages span over
3 decades and 14 countries. And there’s another 500
documents. He met most of
these “lovers” at Posto 9, on Ipanema
Beach (the natural habitat of “mermen”
in Brazil), and in the splendor of the free ghettos
And their gay Balls, during the military
dictatorship. In 2016, I opened the box and saw that
treasure with teary eyes. I still do.
It must be the rain (a summer shower
is pouring down outside…). Two dreams (one in December 2017,
the other in February 2018), gave me permission
to start conceiving and gestating
the fruit of this inheritance and to create a
future work of art.
*
COLLECTION
Here is the collection I received in 2011 and opened in 2016.
When I opened it, I cried and its title came to me: Geography of Love.
The time span of the collection encompasses:
four decades: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s;
seventeen Brazilian states (Amazonas, Pará, Pernambuco,
Sergipe, Paraíba, Ceará, Bahia, Mato Grosso, Distrito Federal,
Goiàs, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais,
Santa Catarina, Paraná, and Rio Grande do Sul);
fourteen foreign countries (Angola, Chile, United States of
America, Peru, Panama, Portugal, Canada, Italy, Spain, Netherlands,
England, Israel, Iraq, and Switzerland);
two hundred and fifty-four postcards from different cities, handwritten
and stamped, exchanged with about one hundred and sixty women and
men (80% men, 90% Brazilians);
160 flirts, lovers. His 160 Mermen;
two hundred and fifty postcards from different cities that weren’t stamped or signed;
ID documents;
medical exams;
Love letters;
nostalgic letters;
hate letters;
police documents regarding an “offense against the person”;
healing prayers;
personal photographs;
family photographs;
mermen photographs;
a witch;
diary pages (on one of the pages, dated from the 1990s, Ricardo
explains his concern regarding my being with the flu);
two cities drawn by Ricardo: Belo Horizonte
and Rio de Janeiro;
a drawing of a still life;
a drawing of a “Miss Universe” who I’d turn into one day;
postcards I sent him;
postcards that never got sent;
Christmas cards;
memorial cards;
tears;
laughter;
party addiction;
sex addiction;
pleasure;
voluptuousness;
and the photo of my elder brother, Daniel Braga Portugal, intubated,
in an incubator that got sent to a healer,
days before his departure;
loneliness;
longing;
voluptuousness and magic.
*
MISS UNIVERSE
This is the beginning – but all of this had already begun.
I’m simply the beginning of us on this geographical journey.
Like a window that is ready to open onto a
framed object.
Like a sea wave.
You’re the beginning, along with me.
We’re the drinkable, nocturnal, lunar, and milky thing.
If you’re thirsty, come to me and drink…
While I handle your liquids.
I’ll be hospitable and I’ll offer you water as you come in, I’ll wash
your feet to ensure your peaceful rest…
But will you dance with me afterwards? I’ll be your Charon
and carry you down the river of life of queens and queers. (bichas e bichos)
Divine semen is also a word; let’s dance on this moist word.
Before I write to you, I’ll have turned into the drawing of Miss
Universe I found in my uncle’s collection and I’ll perfume myself
with baby fragrance.
*
Ricardo’s drawing of Miss Universe.
*
This is me, the princess-heiress of the Witch, a non-binary person, gender fluid since I was a child, parading my beauty at sunrise, dressed as the Miss Universe that my uncle drew.
*
Act 1: Maria da Concepção
GHOST
Suddenly, I see my grandmother Conceição smiling. Smiling with
such strength that brings me to tears. I cry now. She used to change clothes
while moving up and down the house. I remember
her ample bosom in motion down the corridor where there was
an image of Christ made of iron.
Eroticism becomes filthy when it parts from religion.
My grandmother Conceição was our physical and mental cornerstone, the master,
Ricardo’s guide, but perhaps her bibliographic references don’t
contemplate an academic project. I’m not even sure if she ever read
a book in her life… Like Clarice Lispector said in her last book:
“It’s legitimate: every being has something to say.”
My grandmother is a woman like many others, who lost her husband
to a fast-spreading cancer, a sad army officer during the military dictatorship, who
gave in to death. She, a housewife, became the owner
of a bar and raised six children under the counter of that same bar, and built
a home where many parties were thrown to celebrate pain. She raised
six attractive people, alcoholics and (un)happy. In the end,
carnival was triumphant. I mean the carnival among us,
not the one happening on the street. The carnival that took place during its official date,
but not only. And it came. It always did. Like a wave full of
Uranium’s foam.
This project is not about my grandmother, but her
eldest child, Ricardo Wagner Braga, who lived his
sexuality to the fullest and who, before dying, made a “promise” to
Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil’s patron saint. My grandmother
died on Our Lady of Aparecida’s day and this saint
appeared to me in the corn mill at Seu João’s farm
(he was the boyfriend of my grandma Leny – my father’s mother), when I was seven
years old. Ricardo is the son who died six months after
her. My beloved uncle. Ricardo Wagner, my little Witch,
the genius in the family, our Richard Wagner.
*
ARCHON AND ARKHEION
From now on, you’re before a man’s life and a
cohesive array of objects he silently collected
over decades.
I open the box and the photo album and I start to flick through it.
I’m in front of an archive.
The etymological origin of the word archive is the Greek
word arkheion, a word that designated a place. The archons
were the guardians of those documents, which they kept in their own
residences. The archive I’m presenting lies in my residence in
Lisbon, but also in my body.
I am the archon, arkheion and the materialization of Ricardo’s
drawing of Miss Universe.
I’m going to show you some objects from this archive, the
wet ones. But first, with the goal of providing this introduction with
some historical and cultural context, I choose those that have to do
with the state where Ricardo, my mother’s family and I were born:
Minas Gerais, Brazil. The wealthy state: of grottos, gold,
coffee and diamonds.
*
WHERE WE INCARNATE
(A TRAMPOLINE FOR VOLUPTUOUSNESS)
Our state, Minas Gerais, is the most colonial and Catholic state
in Brazil, we have the richest grottos and churches.
The churches are rich because of the grottos. Grottos have parlors for the fairies;
churches have confessionals.
Despite being rich, we’re grotto people, we’re grotesque:
we pray before the altar and we fall into temptation before the Moon.
There’s an entry in Ricardo’s diary, dated from September 20th 1988,
that reads: “Another night approaches. Night is always better than
day.” Although veiled and denied, eroticism is present in the everyday life
of those born in Minas Gerais. It’s painfully engraved in the so-called
“Traditional Minas Gerais Family,” which reverberates through conservatism,
envy toward the success of others, guilt, and prejudice toward differences.
Back at home, my relatives weren’t hypocrites. We died from
excessive living, in search of voluptuousness.
Our house was God’s house, my grandmother is Maria da
Conceição, a matriarch, daughter of a woman rancher who eloped with
a luscious gipsy – she conceived us; my mother is Maria
Cristina, a Christian femme fatale who drove her brother-in-law crazy
and built a financial structure for our home; my uncle was my
little Witch, who had the name of a music god, Richard
Wagner, and I… well, I am “impossible.”
(Ricardo writes in a loose diary page:
“Diego is being impossible.”)
I was still a child when, during one of my deliria caused by chronic bronchitis,
I saw Christ’s face on the bathroom foggy mirror. I called everyone.
Then I was silent for one day. The family believed I had gone
dumb. I was a witness to God and the Witch. Do you
believe me? I learnt to pray and dance. I liberate myself.
I liberate you.
I didn’t find it strange when I came up different “sacred” pictures in Ricardo’s
inheritance: his “Mermen”, knowing where he came from and to please him
– the truth is that everyone wanted at least one night with
Ricardo (that is our family’s tragedy) – they offered him
iconic pictures of Minas Gerais. Ricardo was not a
Minas Gerais “lover.” Ricardo was the Mermen “lover.”
He was a wet temple of desire; he was the Witch who had the power to
take sacred strength into profane depths; he was the free Witch with
the power to set life on fire – that power is engraved in our
DNA and that’s where our tragedy originates…
our cultural and behavioral tattoos.
I want to take you from the fairies’ grotto to the cemetery of crosses
(or vice-versa, of course, if you happen to believe in eternal life).
*
Congonhas, MG. Photograph of Senhor Bom Jesus, chiseled in wood, on display at the bottom of the high altar – 1787.
*
Cordisburgo, MG. Maquiné grotto – Fairies’ parlor.
Congonhas, MG. The Supper - by Aleijadinho, sculpture made of wood, on display in one of the chapels at Jardim dos Passos.
*
Partial night view of Ouro Preto, MG.
Tiradentes, MG. Inside the Holy Trinity Sanctuary.
*
Crucified Merman.
*
Ricardo helps Jesus carry the cross.
*
Act 2: Yemanjá
THE DANCING BIOME
When I was one year old, my mother divorced my
father and invited grandma Conceição and uncle Ricardo (the only single
uncle) to live with us. My uncle became the main male figure
from Monday to Friday (my father on the weekend) and was
the only openly gay relative in the family.
Uncle Ricardo was an AFFICIONADO and great expert in
world geography, and a fanatic disco clubber. His
job fed his great passion for geography (he
was a book seller and a thief at such important bookshops in
Belo Horizonte as Leitura, Acaiaca and Ouvidor).
At Christmas and New Year’s, we hosted his friends who
didn’t have a family to celebrate with. Thanks to my uncle (and to
my mother and grandmother’s permission), parties at my
house turned into discos attended by
heterosexuals, trans people, drag queens, transvestites, priests,
prostitutes, police officers, activists, pastors, thieves and atheists.
My home was a celebratory biome of Love’s co-existence.
Ricardo turned the living room into a disco where musicians and
bands became present. They were: “Bronski Beat”; “The
brother Johnson”; “Rose Royce (Car Wash)”; “Giorgio Moroder”;
“Communards”; “Donna Summer”; “Diana Ross”; “Chic”; “Minnie
Riperton (Loving you)”; “Sylvester”; “Parliament-Funkadelic”;
“Patrick Hernandez (Born to be alive)”; “The Tramps”; “Earth, Wind
& Fire”; “Queen”; “Cazuza”; “Marina”; “Rita Lee”; “Madonna” and “Elton
John.” There was also Xuxa, of course. There was always that moment when
he honored me by singing ilariê ôôô with his friends.
In 2010, my nanna Conceição passed away (Ricardo’s mother and
his great love). He refused to continue treatment and gave in to
alcohol, eventually dying in 2011 from alcoholism and AIDS.
Ricardo bequeathed his secret little box to me. As agreed,
after his demise I got the box from his room, took it to
my apartment and I put it away for 6 years. In 2016, I decided it was
time to open it without any intention, wish or idea to turn
the inheritance into a work of art.
*
THE DISCOVERY
Imagine me writing to you… Know that, instead of erasing these loose sentences and forbidden thoughts, I’m going to leave everything on paper… Perhaps these thoughts will get wet halfway through. If that happens, you’ll read something smudgy and, thanks to this lived experience, the blotted paper will forever remain blotted and it’s no use drying it with a hair drier.
If it gets wet, it gets wet.
And if it happens, if any fountain in your body leaks or gushes out, tell me which kind of water made you wet. Which body part did it speak to. If you can be more specific, tell me which material or immaterial body made you cum.
I want to know everything and I’m rushing - I don’t know from where and I don’t know towards what.
It was night when I found out my uncle had AIDS.
He came in screaming, or crying, in pain or in anger.
My nanna shouted my mother’s name: Cristina!
He had just escaped from a scuffle.
He came into the dining room and my mother ran desperately down the hall and locked me in the bedroom. She knew I would go to him.
The living room and the hall had white marble floors.
Before my mother locked me, I stuck my head out and looked under her left arm, which she pressed against the wall, while pushing me inside with her right arm.
On the white floor I saw red drops.
I spent the night locked in (maybe it was only 30 minutes).
The image of blood on white.
I tried to stand on my tiptoes and peek through the lock.
The image of blood on white.
My uncle screamed Yayá, that’s what he called me.
The image of blood on white.
This is the climax.
I’m in heat.
I want to dance.
*
— pause for death —
Now imagine that I
whisper in your left
ear what is
between these
parentheses: (Sometimes
I will speak quite
fast, as above,
to try to throw you into
the strong cardboard
waters. Maybe you’re
a sailor, maybe
a “merman”, maybe a
lifeguard, maybe you’ll
drown,
maybe I’ll drown…
Don’t think at all.
Smell the perfume. Do you
smell the scent? What is
your perfume? I confess
I feel some pain as
I write to you – the pain of
writing about a Love that is
gone and will never come back.
I won’t wait for
the end to tell you
the truth of all this
because the climax is now –
I miss him).
— end of pause —
*
CLOSE
Remember I asked you to imagine me writing
to you?...
It’s just like you imagined…
only with the sound of the sea in the background.
Listen to the Sea… Only the Sea matters.
It’s in the background, but very close, so close
it becomes dangerous for the little notes.
*
1970s flirting postcard from one of his Mermen.
Poem “Corriente Lenta” by Garcia Lorca, from the Peruvian Amazon.
*
DREAM I
This dream happened in the morning of February 10th 2018, in Lisbon:
Daylight. We’re on a street in Silvianópolis, outside the Old House,*
on the back of a white convertible car. There’s me,
my cousin Mônica and her boyfriend. Mônica doesn’t want to go in
because she’s afraid of not being welcome. I tell her otherwise and convince her.
We go in. As I cross the door to the dining room, Mônica vanishes
from the dream.
We’re inside the house. I walk into the dining room, I don’t really know
what I’m doing there. I look around the room and feel that
the moment is unique, I’m aware that I will never have
breakfast there again. I get emotional and look around with Love,
gratitude, and nostalgia.
Out of the bathroom comes a woman who used to clean the bathroom and starts preparing
the house for something. I can’t really tell what it is, but I know I’m the
centerpiece. I don’t ask and I don’t question her. I know her (is it
my aunt Graça or Marisa, my advertising copy
professor? I know this person smokes a lot and carries with them the
energy of Tobacco).
I walk down the corridor, make a right and enter my great-grandmother
Idalina’s bedroom… I remember where the furniture was, the beds, wardrobes, and
the curtain… I try to remember what the pictures of the saints looked like, but I can’t.
I remember a mirror above the bed. I stare out the window that
looks onto the interior patio and I remember how dark the
nights were in that house and how long it took me to fall asleep. I think
I remember a white embroidered curtain.
I walk into the dining room.
There’s a mattress on the floor. It’s nighttime, or sometime between day and night.
I see young people, I see Camilla and Patrícia. Patrícia is on the floor playing
around, but I don’t laugh because I know who she is and what she’s done to me.
I respect her.
There’s a baby in the corner where great-grandmother Idalina used to sit.
Someone, maybe Camilla, offers me a green bottle of perfume,
Maybe Lacoste, and hands me a piece of cloth so I can smell it. I don’t like
the smell, so I turn down the gift. Camilla offers me her services as a
graphic designer and I think of the “Cleopatra” solo.
I hold the baby, it’s a girl, and at some point I dance with her.
She enjoys it.
And I love the feeling of holding this baby!!!
The entire time I know that all of that had a purpose but I don’t have
a clue what it meant or what it will ever mean.
Suddenly, HE enters the room, Uncle Ricardo.
Looking at him, I understand that I’m there because of and through him
I gently welcome him, with intimate and profound care. I lean
on his back and I take him to the center of the room.
Everyone dances and moves around and I say something I no longer recall.
Ricardo is shirtless, his body looks healthy, his face
looks older.
Ricardo exits.
I’m holding the baby and I want to take her to nanna Leny’s room, but
a woman tells me no. The baby’s father enters, he’s shirtless,
sweaty, he looks strong and muscular. He arrived from work
or practice (I think he was working at the house
for this event which, although I don’t know what it is, I know I’m a
fundamental part of). The father picks up his daughter and now it’s daytime, the light is bright, solar. The light penetrates the living room windows and fills up the room.
Someone approaches me from the corridor and tells me, with their body, that the time
has come. The time is now.
This person doesn’t utter a sound, but I can hear them internally:
“Everyone is ready.”
I go then.
I walk down the corridor, walk past the dining room again. People
stare at me and open the door to the kitchen (a door that never really
existed) and hand me a microphone.
I must sing.
I think of a song that starts with the word “LIGHT.” I think of
Maria Bethânia.
Now they open the kitchen door that leads to the laundry room and the interior
patio. People are opening doors for me continuously.
It’s nighttime.
I’m on the patio.
Men sit in a circle, many men.
It’s nighttime, it’s very dark and I cannot see anyone. Behind me
all those who opened the door for me.
I give back the microphone.
Suddenly, I see a healthy and lovely face looking at me, it’s
Lair.**
Lair gives me a welcoming look. I stare at him.
Besides Lair, the circle is made up of Ricardo’s men, his
sailors or “mermen,” and of all the men around the world
who lived/died from AIDS, including Cazuza, António
Variações and Freddie Mercury. All those men and me.
They’re all holding a well-lit candle and they stand there, forming
an empty space in the middle, which I’m supposed to occupy.
Are they here for me or am I here for them?
I occupy my place and I sing the word light.
Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight
*The Old House was my paternal family’s house/headquarters when they arrived in Brazil from Portugal, in the 1930s. It was the set of great parties, births, deaths and wakes. The name “Old House” was born in 2006, when my grandmother decided to move and the house became dilapidated. After some time, it was demolished. I should note that Ricardo is my maternal uncle.
**Lair was Ricardo’s boyfriend and a friend of the family. He was diagnosed with AIDS at the same time as Ricardo. His family abandoned him and he found refuge at our house. Many years after ending his relationship with Ricardo, he was found dead at his place, alone. He was a high cuisine chef and had a big heart. I’m taking the opportunity to express my grattitude for Lair, guardian of my queer childhood.
*
THE ANSWER TO THE DREAM
Ricardo, my little Witch,
I wake up feeling moved, I pray and cry. And I cry now, as I'm writing this
to you. The Geography of Love has begun. Thank you for your visits.
You’re dead. Something opened which cannot be closed. I want
the flow. We’re the climax.
The dreams made me see the waters of all your
inheritance. I got here after I researched the meaning of the “candle” from
my dream. It’s our meeting point. It’s the synthesis of all
natural elements, especially water and fire. Water
comes from your geographical inheritance and fire from my body’s biography,
Sun and Ascendant zodiac signs. I’m twice Leo.
Victor Hugo once said that every light is a plant and that perfume
belongs to the light. I sense that there’s a perfume in the light of my dream’s candles. Which perfume?
In almost every postcard there’s water: from the sea, rivers,
waterfalls, natural and artificial lakes, and even pools. It’s the same
with all the photos in the small box.
I realize that you left me, on hundreds of papers, all that is
informal, virtual, promises and threats and the infinity of possible
maps deep underwater.
Besides all the men in the world who were in my dream, you also left me
almost all of the water in the world.
Drop after drop, I keep drowning.
To find these paths I know I must dive into these waters – but
I prepare myself to emerge without completely dissolving, saved by
a symbolic death that means a return to the origin. The Quran
says the sea was covered in foam and that every flake of foam
gained shape and formed a body. It’s 160 bodies.
BUT WHY SO MUCH WATER?
If it’s meant to wash away the absence, the stain: the Geography of Love shall be holy water.
If it’s meant to set free: the Geography of Love shall be a symbol of fecundity and fertility. Free, with no chains.
If it’s meant to rejuvenate, it shall be the fountain of eternal youth.
Drop after drop, I keep drowning.
Yayá,
Lisbon, June 2018.
*
LET THE GIRA SPIN
Now I’m going to talk about Yayá Yemanjá Sea Sailors Portugal, but I’ll keep writing in a flow, open to the errors and the flaws of this exercise that should be much better structured.
I’ll “let myself” manifest to you. Don’t stop. Don’t give up. Come in without knocking, if you wish. You don’t need a visa for the Geography of Love.
Why did he call me Yayá ever since I was a child? Last week, I discovered that Yayá, the name my uncle used to call me, means mommy in Yoruba. I wonder if Ricardo knew.
Before moving to Lisbon, mom and I went to an Umbanda terreiro. I was so frantic that I wanted to dance on the first day. You’d laugh your head off. And the Pai de Santo, who was the reincarnation of Chica da Silva and had never seen me before, managed to find me the next day – via my mom’s friend, Terere, a regular, who called my mom, who called him, and he called me in the end. The Pai de Santo, Father Renato, had dreamt about me…
I was riding a white horse, fast, fast, fast, giggling out of pure happiness and joy of living, with my hair blowing in the wind, in a red outfit…
On the phone, he told me that I could participate in the “Gira” in the following week without going through the initiation rite. And he said that, in Umbanda, my mother is Yemanjá and that she’s summoning me for the DANCE. Yemanjá is “The Queen”, mommy of the Sea.
One year later, Julie Beauvais and Horace Lundd, who know nothing about this and live in the Swiss Alps, chose the Sea as my shooting location for the opera Orlando, inspired by Virginia Woolf. The Sea and I – why?
Coincidently, one year before Julie invited me and one year after I opened the box for the first time, artist Fernando Cardoso drew my portrait as a “merman”, I’m naked, my sex is erect, words gushing out of it and into my mouth.
To tell the truth I never pictured myself with the Sea water element, I’m constantly burning. I’m fragile and flammable like my uncle. In Hebrew, water means mother, matrix, sea. Am I drowning in mother? Am I the mommy to him?
I returned to the Terreiro for a second and last time, and I asked the space for permission to participate in the Gira. About the space: a big warehouse; the floor was burned cement; on the back wall, large-sized portraits of all the Saints; and other pictures I didn’t recognized + huge lit candles + flowers. Inside:
— I kissed the ground;
— I ENTERED
— I let my hair down;
— I was placed between the men and the women;
— Two beautiful men – resembling great felines – drummed away with strength and precision (I positioned one of my immaterial bodies among the drummers who ricocheted against my hips);
— The “followers” were seating, staring. Ecstatic!;
— The Pai de Santo sang with so much strength that his voice sounded like thunder, vocalized between his chest and forehead, scratching the cracks between day and night;
— I got into that fever and I didn’t stop for three hours. And I wanted to shout LIFE!
— Fornicatefornicatefornicatefornicatefornicatefornicate fornicatefornicatefornicatefornicatefornicatefornicate. I want to dance with whomever wants in on the circle of the Geography of Love. There’s going to be a Gira, a dream circle, the circle of life. But which water should be incorporated into this choreography? Abyssal water? Lightning water? Water, fountain of life? Water, fountain of death? The last one won’t do because water can cause death, but only to the sinners. There is no sin in the Geography of Love. We gush.
In his dream, the Pai de Santo realized that I couldn’t be the resident dancer of that Terreiro and wished me much luck on my move to Portugal and told me he would pray for me. “May God be with you.” Father Renato protects me.
Everything changed in 2017. In Portugal, I had to unlearn to swim and be saved by a sailor (this is the land of navigation!). Hence, I’m temporarily off duty as a lifeguard at Sea. 2018. Atlantic Ocean. Portuguese coast. Shooting week for Orlando. I go in the Sea and I scream desperately:
HELP!
I want to smell the perfume from your candle.
*
— pause for death —
Listen to what lies
between these
parentheses like a
whisper in your right
ear: (Keep listening
to the waves, only
louder. You’re so
close… Drop after drop
I keep drowning you. But
don’t be afraid, this is
LIFE! Tomás Maia
said that art looks for
the life in
life. Isn’t that beautiful?
Life gives life to life.
The language of art has
the power to create life,
knowing that the dead
don’t come back. Don’t be
afraid, my uncle is
dead,
it’s true, I paid my respects and
wrote a text I couldn’t read and I don’t
know where it is now. But the
truth is that I can’t confirm
that the 160 Mermen are
dead…)
— end of pause —
*
Act 3: Aphrodite
*
ODE TO GEOGRAPHY
For uncle Ricardo, “world geography” was always about entering
a space of awe and mystery, since he never went to most of the
places he described to me, except for
Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Bahia. Thanks to his book
knowledge, he would constantly push his imagination towards
the unknow. During my childhood, in his “classes” he seemed
to seize every opportunity to take me further and further. Once a
month, he would dress as a witch and chase me around the house. As
a child, I interpreted it all as a fairy tale.
I ran with no destination through the wild forest.
At the height of his AIDS crisis, in the 1990s,
Ricardo drank ethylic alcohol and entire bottles of cheap perfume.
He was a man with a penchant for flammable liquids.
*
Postcard from his friend Luiz Carlos, from São Gonçalo, 28/07/1976.
*
INVOCATION
The archipelago of Ricardo’s Mermen is calling you.
Come dance!
Spells of water and Love.
Of death and heat.
(You get to rhyme here)
Now you let yourself go uncontrollably and you’re
Draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag-
ged down to the bottom of the Sea…
Will you die, exhausted, in his arms?
Don’t speak with your mouth full of foam.
You’re going to lose this game.
Sit down.
One hundred and sixty.
Let yourself go.
Feel the strength of your arms against the tide.
Don’t you even try
back up.
FALL DOWN, YOUR MOUTH ON URANIUM’S SPERM
Passivity is as dangerous as uncontrollable action.
Broths. Waves. High tide. Mother.
They seduce with their beautiful faces,
with their melodic singing.
They symbolize abandonment.
TO FALL DOWN, MOUTH ON URANIUM’S SPERM is the foolish dream of a real object, it’s your
mortal, naked, tropical journey.
They swim, drool, gush
Let your desire out of control.
AH! ECSTASY! ECSTASY! ECSTASY!
How to avoid the depth?
I am entered.
Drunk.
Eaten.
Fucked.
AH! ECSTASY! ECSTASY! ECSTASY
And along with the mermen song, I sing
LIFE! LIFE! LIFE!
Ceaseless back and forth of vital Energy.
LIFE! LIFE! LIFE!
*
Postcard from the 1970s sent by Merman Carlos
*
ABLUTION AND MEDITATION
Listen to the sound of the Sea again.
You’re part of this sound now.
You’re so close…
I’m so close…
Maybe we’ll touch each other.
Your knees are underwater.
Now let your sex touch the Sea.
Let the sea wet it.
The water is warm.
Close your eyes and feel it.
Let your testicles float.
Let the waters lick you with their salt.
Let the waters lick the salt from you.
Now dive in and come back.
Dive in Come back!
I want to throw the entire Sea against your body and baptize you!
I want to drink a drop from your body.
Immersion and emersion!
AH!
Symbol of purification.
Ablution.
Wiping the mud off your body.
I let the water talk.
Stimulate heal fertilize.
Brace yourself.
I have to sacrifice you.
Something opened which cannot be closed.
I’m aware it’s all very explicit and bordering on tacky.
I want the flow, so I talk too much.
I’m going to sing for my baby Eros, who instructed me
to bear the fruit of his inheritance.
The fruit shall be called Geography of Love.
Animals surround me, ready to mate
in the wood as soon as they pick the right scent.
I want two big felines.
Feel the perfume of silence.
What does it smell like?
Feel the silence of perfume.
What does it sound like?
I search the natural perfume of a man who has the power to
transmute seminal energy. The strength of creation. I’m going to smell
this perfume and spill it on the submerged statues of the
Gods.
Who smells like that? What is it in you that smells like that?
Close your eyes. Listen to the scent.
*
INCORPORATE
(We’re in the dressing room, the beasts and myself, on Aphrodite’s paper. On the wet stage, which is Post 9 at Ipanema Beach, are the 160 Mermen. The beasts from the animal kingdom make life sounds that vibrate onstage. I recall that Balzac used to say that every perfume is a combination of air and light, like a candle. Every man needs a mother and has a candle. When a candle sparks, there is a triumphant entrance. I imagine a big and thick white candle. I’m in the dressing room and, once I smell the perfume of light, I’ll enter with my parade of beasts. We’re in heat, we’ve started to gobble each other up. The beasts are now making life sounds. Silence! I smell the perfume of light! I enter and sing the moist dream word while the beasts from the animal kingdom make sounds, in ecstasy.)
Beasts from the animal kingdom
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Aphrodite
Light
Beasts from the animal kingdom
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Aphrodite
If someone is thirsty, come to me and drink
Mermen
Fountain of vital water
Love fire
Aphrodite
If you’re thirsty, fall dead into the water and come back up alive
Mermen
Fountain of vital water
Love fire
Aphrodite
If someone is thirsty, come to me and drink
Mermen
Foam concert
Sperm concert
Aphrodite
If you’re thirsty, fall dead into the water and come back up alive
Mermen
Moist word
Joy of living
Aphrodite
Sex without fruit is pure, it’s vital sex
Mermen
In the geography of Love
In the Geography of Love
Beasts from the animal kingdom
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
(A gay man, a survivor of the 1970s, enters holding a candle and the power to transmute seminal energy.
All the animals in the Geography of Love, beasts and others, run and mate for the sake of the joy of living. Mammals, insects, amphibia… Times of joy!
Aphrodite kneels and drinks the perfume from the candle.
We hear the moist word from the Atlantic waters again, but now dolphins are singing it.
Listen to the dolphins.
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
*
CLIMAX
Diary entry written on the set of “Orlando”,
Comporta, May 2018
I feel catatonic. I start writing compelled by the feeling that I’m going to die. I dilate my eyelids to see everything I didn’t see before. I’ll try to describe what I see, but first I need to confess that, exactly one day before this day, I felt so miserable – I was dead. The memory of those I loved and who died resounded and keeps resounding in my body and I feel alive and I want to dance. To dance until I fly. Before I write to you, I perfume the sea with baby fragrance and I drink Uranium’s foam. I know I must write about what I became in the sea, but right now I’m just someone with sore tonsils. They keep the memory of the male and female traits in us but the fever is burning this information. I have nothing else.
It’s five in the morning. I jump out of bed. I land on my feet and I almost drown.
I’m in the car, in the backseat, on my way to the set of the shooting session for “Orlando.”
It’s still nighttime.
The sun will rise any minute now,
it might rain, thunder,
In tears, I look out the car window and I see a rainbow.
The car could break down, explode.
I could die.
The sea is near…
The end is near…
Death is near…
Music comes from the sea… The beat of the everlasting back and forth.
The light keeps shining / the day keeps coming / the night keeps returning.
The white silk outfit highlights my sex and I swallow salty water. I eat and bite Ricardo’s Mermen. I share the pleasure. The laziness after an organism.
I fall into a vulgar posture, all fours on the sand, singing…
I want to play that beat and shake / Rub my dick on the floor and moan /
Stick it in you, for real.
*
I keep myself lubricated. The tips of my body freeze in the
wind. Pleasure happens to me. Another pause for death.
I will escape this place, and I will stir up all the sand on this beach, as I
ride a comic book pony, as I run, live. We drown as we climb a wall made
of water.
I salute those who came before us.
I remember Ricardo drinking entire bottles of perfume. One
day before going to the hospital he felt
so unhappy that he was already dead. A storm blew up, the sun was rising and dying,
lovers wrote and vanished. That day with him was short, but it was everything.
To me, the house never seemed so noble and humane. Whores, priests, paupers,
army officers and us. I will howl three times and then I will dance until I fly.
Three
the wave that returns to the deep body of the sea
Two
the wave that returns to the deep body of the sea
the wave that returns to the deep body of the sea
*
After handing over his collection, Ricardo gets on the plane and travels all the way to heaven, in peace.
After receiving the collection, I get on ta boat and I continue my journey, which started with my Magical Feminist Queer Ancestry, but now it has a happy ending.
Geography of Love
TRANSLATED BY INES MARQUES
Prologue: Mister Universe
He
What you are about to read might seem like a
Random, improvised or crazy thing.
It’s not random or improvised. This, here
and now, this thing that you are about to read,
and that is still a thing, is an initiation rite,
is the portal for the Geography of Love.
Geography of Love was written in Lisbon, between 3pm and 3am, on the last day of Spring.
*
This is my uncle, Ricardo Wagner Braga, a cis gay man, who used to cross dress as a witch and chase me around the house of white marble floors – the protagonist of Geography of Love. In this picture, he’s parading his beauty in front of Mermen Beach.
*
INVITATION
Below is one of the many Love messages
Ricardo received from his Mermen,
this message is also an invitation and I’m
extending it to you… In the hope that, as the sun rises,
a friendship arises
between us…
*
ALMOST A SYNOPSIS
In 2011, the most loved and feared man
from my childhood, my uncle Ricardo
(my little Witch), died from AIDS, and verbally
bequeathed all his inheritance to me,
his Princess Yayá.
It was a small plastic box he had kept
under his wardrobe for four decades.
It contained 254 postcards
from different cities, stamped and dated, exchanged
with about 160 people. And another 250
without a date. The messages span over
3 decades and 14 countries. And there’s another 500
documents. He met most of
these “lovers” at Posto 9, on Ipanema
Beach (the natural habitat of “mermen”
in Brazil), and in the splendor of the free ghettos
And their gay Balls, during the military
dictatorship. In 2016, I opened the box and saw that
treasure with teary eyes. I still do.
It must be the rain (a summer shower
is pouring down outside…). Two dreams (one in December 2017,
the other in February 2018), gave me permission
to start conceiving and gestating
the fruit of this inheritance and to create a
future work of art.
*
COLLECTION
Here is the collection I received in 2011 and opened in 2016.
When I opened it, I cried and its title came to me: Geography of Love.
The time span of the collection encompasses:
four decades: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s;
seventeen Brazilian states (Amazonas, Pará, Pernambuco,
Sergipe, Paraíba, Ceará, Bahia, Mato Grosso, Distrito Federal,
Goiàs, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais,
Santa Catarina, Paraná, and Rio Grande do Sul);
fourteen foreign countries (Angola, Chile, United States of
America, Peru, Panama, Portugal, Canada, Italy, Spain, Netherlands,
England, Israel, Iraq, and Switzerland);
two hundred and fifty-four postcards from different cities, handwritten
and stamped, exchanged with about one hundred and sixty women and
men (80% men, 90% Brazilians);
160 flirts, lovers. His 160 Mermen;
two hundred and fifty postcards from different cities that weren’t stamped or signed;
ID documents;
medical exams;
Love letters;
nostalgic letters;
hate letters;
police documents regarding an “offense against the person”;
healing prayers;
personal photographs;
family photographs;
mermen photographs;
a witch;
diary pages (on one of the pages, dated from the 1990s, Ricardo
explains his concern regarding my being with the flu);
two cities drawn by Ricardo: Belo Horizonte
and Rio de Janeiro;
a drawing of a still life;
a drawing of a “Miss Universe” who I’d turn into one day;
postcards I sent him;
postcards that never got sent;
Christmas cards;
memorial cards;
tears;
laughter;
party addiction;
sex addiction;
pleasure;
voluptuousness;
and the photo of my elder brother, Daniel Braga Portugal, intubated,
in an incubator that got sent to a healer,
days before his departure;
loneliness;
longing;
voluptuousness and magic.
*
MISS UNIVERSE
This is the beginning – but all of this had already begun.
I’m simply the beginning of us on this geographical journey.
Like a window that is ready to open onto a
framed object.
Like a sea wave.
You’re the beginning, along with me.
We’re the drinkable, nocturnal, lunar, and milky thing.
If you’re thirsty, come to me and drink…
While I handle your liquids.
I’ll be hospitable and I’ll offer you water as you come in, I’ll wash
your feet to ensure your peaceful rest…
But will you dance with me afterwards? I’ll be your Charon
and carry you down the river of life of queens and queers. (bichas e bichos)
Divine semen is also a word; let’s dance on this moist word.
Before I write to you, I’ll have turned into the drawing of Miss
Universe I found in my uncle’s collection and I’ll perfume myself
with baby fragrance.
*
Ricardo’s drawing of Miss Universe.
*
This is me, the princess-heiress of the Witch, a non-binary person, gender fluid since I was a child, parading my beauty at sunrise, dressed as the Miss Universe that my uncle drew.
*
Act 1: Maria da Concepção
GHOST
Suddenly, I see my grandmother Conceição smiling. Smiling with
such strength that brings me to tears. I cry now. She used to change clothes
while moving up and down the house. I remember
her ample bosom in motion down the corridor where there was
an image of Christ made of iron.
Eroticism becomes filthy when it parts from religion.
My grandmother Conceição was our physical and mental cornerstone, the master,
Ricardo’s guide, but perhaps her bibliographic references don’t
contemplate an academic project. I’m not even sure if she ever read
a book in her life… Like Clarice Lispector said in her last book:
“It’s legitimate: every being has something to say.”
My grandmother is a woman like many others, who lost her husband
to a fast-spreading cancer, a sad army officer during the military dictatorship, who
gave in to death. She, a housewife, became the owner
of a bar and raised six children under the counter of that same bar, and built
a home where many parties were thrown to celebrate pain. She raised
six attractive people, alcoholics and (un)happy. In the end,
carnival was triumphant. I mean the carnival among us,
not the one happening on the street. The carnival that took place during its official date,
but not only. And it came. It always did. Like a wave full of
Uranium’s foam.
This project is not about my grandmother, but her
eldest child, Ricardo Wagner Braga, who lived his
sexuality to the fullest and who, before dying, made a “promise” to
Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil’s patron saint. My grandmother
died on Our Lady of Aparecida’s day and this saint
appeared to me in the corn mill at Seu João’s farm
(he was the boyfriend of my grandma Leny – my father’s mother), when I was seven
years old. Ricardo is the son who died six months after
her. My beloved uncle. Ricardo Wagner, my little Witch,
the genius in the family, our Richard Wagner.
*
ARCHON AND ARKHEION
From now on, you’re before a man’s life and a
cohesive array of objects he silently collected
over decades.
I open the box and the photo album and I start to flick through it.
I’m in front of an archive.
The etymological origin of the word archive is the Greek
word arkheion, a word that designated a place. The archons
were the guardians of those documents, which they kept in their own
residences. The archive I’m presenting lies in my residence in
Lisbon, but also in my body.
I am the archon, arkheion and the materialization of Ricardo’s
drawing of Miss Universe.
I’m going to show you some objects from this archive, the
wet ones. But first, with the goal of providing this introduction with
some historical and cultural context, I choose those that have to do
with the state where Ricardo, my mother’s family and I were born:
Minas Gerais, Brazil. The wealthy state: of grottos, gold,
coffee and diamonds.
*
WHERE WE INCARNATE
(A TRAMPOLINE FOR VOLUPTUOUSNESS)
Our state, Minas Gerais, is the most colonial and Catholic state
in Brazil, we have the richest grottos and churches.
The churches are rich because of the grottos. Grottos have parlors for the fairies;
churches have confessionals.
Despite being rich, we’re grotto people, we’re grotesque:
we pray before the altar and we fall into temptation before the Moon.
There’s an entry in Ricardo’s diary, dated from September 20th 1988,
that reads: “Another night approaches. Night is always better than
day.” Although veiled and denied, eroticism is present in the everyday life
of those born in Minas Gerais. It’s painfully engraved in the so-called
“Traditional Minas Gerais Family,” which reverberates through conservatism,
envy toward the success of others, guilt, and prejudice toward differences.
Back at home, my relatives weren’t hypocrites. We died from
excessive living, in search of voluptuousness.
Our house was God’s house, my grandmother is Maria da
Conceição, a matriarch, daughter of a woman rancher who eloped with
a luscious gipsy – she conceived us; my mother is Maria
Cristina, a Christian femme fatale who drove her brother-in-law crazy
and built a financial structure for our home; my uncle was my
little Witch, who had the name of a music god, Richard
Wagner, and I… well, I am “impossible.”
(Ricardo writes in a loose diary page:
“Diego is being impossible.”)
I was still a child when, during one of my deliria caused by chronic bronchitis,
I saw Christ’s face on the bathroom foggy mirror. I called everyone.
Then I was silent for one day. The family believed I had gone
dumb. I was a witness to God and the Witch. Do you
believe me? I learnt to pray and dance. I liberate myself.
I liberate you.
I didn’t find it strange when I came up different “sacred” pictures in Ricardo’s
inheritance: his “Mermen”, knowing where he came from and to please him
– the truth is that everyone wanted at least one night with
Ricardo (that is our family’s tragedy) – they offered him
iconic pictures of Minas Gerais. Ricardo was not a
Minas Gerais “lover.” Ricardo was the Mermen “lover.”
He was a wet temple of desire; he was the Witch who had the power to
take sacred strength into profane depths; he was the free Witch with
the power to set life on fire – that power is engraved in our
DNA and that’s where our tragedy originates…
our cultural and behavioral tattoos.
I want to take you from the fairies’ grotto to the cemetery of crosses
(or vice-versa, of course, if you happen to believe in eternal life).
*
Congonhas, MG. Photograph of Senhor Bom Jesus, chiseled in wood, on display at the bottom of the high altar – 1787.
*
Cordisburgo, MG. Maquiné grotto – Fairies’ parlor.
Congonhas, MG. The Supper - by Aleijadinho, sculpture made of wood, on display in one of the chapels at Jardim dos Passos.
*
Partial night view of Ouro Preto, MG.
Tiradentes, MG. Inside the Holy Trinity Sanctuary.
*
Crucified Merman.
*
Ricardo helps Jesus carry the cross.
*
Act 2: Yemanjá
THE DANCING BIOME
When I was one year old, my mother divorced my
father and invited grandma Conceição and uncle Ricardo (the only single
uncle) to live with us. My uncle became the main male figure
from Monday to Friday (my father on the weekend) and was
the only openly gay relative in the family.
Uncle Ricardo was an AFFICIONADO and great expert in
world geography, and a fanatic disco clubber. His
job fed his great passion for geography (he
was a book seller and a thief at such important bookshops in
Belo Horizonte as Leitura, Acaiaca and Ouvidor).
At Christmas and New Year’s, we hosted his friends who
didn’t have a family to celebrate with. Thanks to my uncle (and to
my mother and grandmother’s permission), parties at my
house turned into discos attended by
heterosexuals, trans people, drag queens, transvestites, priests,
prostitutes, police officers, activists, pastors, thieves and atheists.
My home was a celebratory biome of Love’s co-existence.
Ricardo turned the living room into a disco where musicians and
bands became present. They were: “Bronski Beat”; “The
brother Johnson”; “Rose Royce (Car Wash)”; “Giorgio Moroder”;
“Communards”; “Donna Summer”; “Diana Ross”; “Chic”; “Minnie
Riperton (Loving you)”; “Sylvester”; “Parliament-Funkadelic”;
“Patrick Hernandez (Born to be alive)”; “The Tramps”; “Earth, Wind
& Fire”; “Queen”; “Cazuza”; “Marina”; “Rita Lee”; “Madonna” and “Elton
John.” There was also Xuxa, of course. There was always that moment when
he honored me by singing ilariê ôôô with his friends.
In 2010, my nanna Conceição passed away (Ricardo’s mother and
his great love). He refused to continue treatment and gave in to
alcohol, eventually dying in 2011 from alcoholism and AIDS.
Ricardo bequeathed his secret little box to me. As agreed,
after his demise I got the box from his room, took it to
my apartment and I put it away for 6 years. In 2016, I decided it was
time to open it without any intention, wish or idea to turn
the inheritance into a work of art.
*
THE DISCOVERY
Imagine me writing to you… Know that, instead of erasing these loose sentences and forbidden thoughts, I’m going to leave everything on paper… Perhaps these thoughts will get wet halfway through. If that happens, you’ll read something smudgy and, thanks to this lived experience, the blotted paper will forever remain blotted and it’s no use drying it with a hair drier.
If it gets wet, it gets wet.
And if it happens, if any fountain in your body leaks or gushes out, tell me which kind of water made you wet. Which body part did it speak to. If you can be more specific, tell me which material or immaterial body made you cum.
I want to know everything and I’m rushing - I don’t know from where and I don’t know towards what.
It was night when I found out my uncle had AIDS.
He came in screaming, or crying, in pain or in anger.
My nanna shouted my mother’s name: Cristina!
He had just escaped from a scuffle.
He came into the dining room and my mother ran desperately down the hall and locked me in the bedroom. She knew I would go to him.
The living room and the hall had white marble floors.
Before my mother locked me, I stuck my head out and looked under her left arm, which she pressed against the wall, while pushing me inside with her right arm.
On the white floor I saw red drops.
I spent the night locked in (maybe it was only 30 minutes).
The image of blood on white.
I tried to stand on my tiptoes and peek through the lock.
The image of blood on white.
My uncle screamed Yayá, that’s what he called me.
The image of blood on white.
This is the climax.
I’m in heat.
I want to dance.
*
— pause for death —
Now imagine that I
whisper in your left
ear what is
between these
parentheses: (Sometimes
I will speak quite
fast, as above,
to try to throw you into
the strong cardboard
waters. Maybe you’re
a sailor, maybe
a “merman”, maybe a
lifeguard, maybe you’ll
drown,
maybe I’ll drown…
Don’t think at all.
Smell the perfume. Do you
smell the scent? What is
your perfume? I confess
I feel some pain as
I write to you – the pain of
writing about a Love that is
gone and will never come back.
I won’t wait for
the end to tell you
the truth of all this
because the climax is now –
I miss him).
— end of pause —
*
CLOSE
Remember I asked you to imagine me writing
to you?...
It’s just like you imagined…
only with the sound of the sea in the background.
Listen to the Sea… Only the Sea matters.
It’s in the background, but very close, so close
it becomes dangerous for the little notes.
*
1970s flirting postcard from one of his Mermen.
Poem “Corriente Lenta” by Garcia Lorca, from the Peruvian Amazon.
*
DREAM I
This dream happened in the morning of February 10th 2018, in Lisbon:
Daylight. We’re on a street in Silvianópolis, outside the Old House,*
on the back of a white convertible car. There’s me,
my cousin Mônica and her boyfriend. Mônica doesn’t want to go in
because she’s afraid of not being welcome. I tell her otherwise and convince her.
We go in. As I cross the door to the dining room, Mônica vanishes
from the dream.
We’re inside the house. I walk into the dining room, I don’t really know
what I’m doing there. I look around the room and feel that
the moment is unique, I’m aware that I will never have
breakfast there again. I get emotional and look around with Love,
gratitude, and nostalgia.
Out of the bathroom comes a woman who used to clean the bathroom and starts preparing
the house for something. I can’t really tell what it is, but I know I’m the
centerpiece. I don’t ask and I don’t question her. I know her (is it
my aunt Graça or Marisa, my advertising copy
professor? I know this person smokes a lot and carries with them the
energy of Tobacco).
I walk down the corridor, make a right and enter my great-grandmother
Idalina’s bedroom… I remember where the furniture was, the beds, wardrobes, and
the curtain… I try to remember what the pictures of the saints looked like, but I can’t.
I remember a mirror above the bed. I stare out the window that
looks onto the interior patio and I remember how dark the
nights were in that house and how long it took me to fall asleep. I think
I remember a white embroidered curtain.
I walk into the dining room.
There’s a mattress on the floor. It’s nighttime, or sometime between day and night.
I see young people, I see Camilla and Patrícia. Patrícia is on the floor playing
around, but I don’t laugh because I know who she is and what she’s done to me.
I respect her.
There’s a baby in the corner where great-grandmother Idalina used to sit.
Someone, maybe Camilla, offers me a green bottle of perfume,
Maybe Lacoste, and hands me a piece of cloth so I can smell it. I don’t like
the smell, so I turn down the gift. Camilla offers me her services as a
graphic designer and I think of the “Cleopatra” solo.
I hold the baby, it’s a girl, and at some point I dance with her.
She enjoys it.
And I love the feeling of holding this baby!!!
The entire time I know that all of that had a purpose but I don’t have
a clue what it meant or what it will ever mean.
Suddenly, HE enters the room, Uncle Ricardo.
Looking at him, I understand that I’m there because of and through him
I gently welcome him, with intimate and profound care. I lean
on his back and I take him to the center of the room.
Everyone dances and moves around and I say something I no longer recall.
Ricardo is shirtless, his body looks healthy, his face
looks older.
Ricardo exits.
I’m holding the baby and I want to take her to nanna Leny’s room, but
a woman tells me no. The baby’s father enters, he’s shirtless,
sweaty, he looks strong and muscular. He arrived from work
or practice (I think he was working at the house
for this event which, although I don’t know what it is, I know I’m a
fundamental part of). The father picks up his daughter and now it’s daytime, the light is bright, solar. The light penetrates the living room windows and fills up the room.
Someone approaches me from the corridor and tells me, with their body, that the time
has come. The time is now.
This person doesn’t utter a sound, but I can hear them internally:
“Everyone is ready.”
I go then.
I walk down the corridor, walk past the dining room again. People
stare at me and open the door to the kitchen (a door that never really
existed) and hand me a microphone.
I must sing.
I think of a song that starts with the word “LIGHT.” I think of
Maria Bethânia.
Now they open the kitchen door that leads to the laundry room and the interior
patio. People are opening doors for me continuously.
It’s nighttime.
I’m on the patio.
Men sit in a circle, many men.
It’s nighttime, it’s very dark and I cannot see anyone. Behind me
all those who opened the door for me.
I give back the microphone.
Suddenly, I see a healthy and lovely face looking at me, it’s
Lair.**
Lair gives me a welcoming look. I stare at him.
Besides Lair, the circle is made up of Ricardo’s men, his
sailors or “mermen,” and of all the men around the world
who lived/died from AIDS, including Cazuza, António
Variações and Freddie Mercury. All those men and me.
They’re all holding a well-lit candle and they stand there, forming
an empty space in the middle, which I’m supposed to occupy.
Are they here for me or am I here for them?
I occupy my place and I sing the word light.
Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight
*The Old House was my paternal family’s house/headquarters when they arrived in Brazil from Portugal, in the 1930s. It was the set of great parties, births, deaths and wakes. The name “Old House” was born in 2006, when my grandmother decided to move and the house became dilapidated. After some time, it was demolished. I should note that Ricardo is my maternal uncle.
**Lair was Ricardo’s boyfriend and a friend of the family. He was diagnosed with AIDS at the same time as Ricardo. His family abandoned him and he found refuge at our house. Many years after ending his relationship with Ricardo, he was found dead at his place, alone. He was a high cuisine chef and had a big heart. I’m taking the opportunity to express my grattitude for Lair, guardian of my queer childhood.
*
THE ANSWER TO THE DREAM
Ricardo, my little Witch,
I wake up feeling moved, I pray and cry. And I cry now, as I'm writing this
to you. The Geography of Love has begun. Thank you for your visits.
You’re dead. Something opened which cannot be closed. I want
the flow. We’re the climax.
The dreams made me see the waters of all your
inheritance. I got here after I researched the meaning of the “candle” from
my dream. It’s our meeting point. It’s the synthesis of all
natural elements, especially water and fire. Water
comes from your geographical inheritance and fire from my body’s biography,
Sun and Ascendant zodiac signs. I’m twice Leo.
Victor Hugo once said that every light is a plant and that perfume
belongs to the light. I sense that there’s a perfume in the light of my dream’s candles. Which perfume?
In almost every postcard there’s water: from the sea, rivers,
waterfalls, natural and artificial lakes, and even pools. It’s the same
with all the photos in the small box.
I realize that you left me, on hundreds of papers, all that is
informal, virtual, promises and threats and the infinity of possible
maps deep underwater.
Besides all the men in the world who were in my dream, you also left me
almost all of the water in the world.
Drop after drop, I keep drowning.
To find these paths I know I must dive into these waters – but
I prepare myself to emerge without completely dissolving, saved by
a symbolic death that means a return to the origin. The Quran
says the sea was covered in foam and that every flake of foam
gained shape and formed a body. It’s 160 bodies.
BUT WHY SO MUCH WATER?
If it’s meant to wash away the absence, the stain: the Geography of Love shall be holy water.
If it’s meant to set free: the Geography of Love shall be a symbol of fecundity and fertility. Free, with no chains.
If it’s meant to rejuvenate, it shall be the fountain of eternal youth.
Drop after drop, I keep drowning.
Yayá,
Lisbon, June 2018.
*
LET THE GIRA SPIN
Now I’m going to talk about Yayá Yemanjá Sea Sailors Portugal, but I’ll keep writing in a flow, open to the errors and the flaws of this exercise that should be much better structured.
I’ll “let myself” manifest to you. Don’t stop. Don’t give up. Come in without knocking, if you wish. You don’t need a visa for the Geography of Love.
Why did he call me Yayá ever since I was a child? Last week, I discovered that Yayá, the name my uncle used to call me, means mommy in Yoruba. I wonder if Ricardo knew.
Before moving to Lisbon, mom and I went to an Umbanda terreiro. I was so frantic that I wanted to dance on the first day. You’d laugh your head off. And the Pai de Santo, who was the reincarnation of Chica da Silva and had never seen me before, managed to find me the next day – via my mom’s friend, Terere, a regular, who called my mom, who called him, and he called me in the end. The Pai de Santo, Father Renato, had dreamt about me…
I was riding a white horse, fast, fast, fast, giggling out of pure happiness and joy of living, with my hair blowing in the wind, in a red outfit…
On the phone, he told me that I could participate in the “Gira” in the following week without going through the initiation rite. And he said that, in Umbanda, my mother is Yemanjá and that she’s summoning me for the DANCE. Yemanjá is “The Queen”, mommy of the Sea.
One year later, Julie Beauvais and Horace Lundd, who know nothing about this and live in the Swiss Alps, chose the Sea as my shooting location for the opera Orlando, inspired by Virginia Woolf. The Sea and I – why?
Coincidently, one year before Julie invited me and one year after I opened the box for the first time, artist Fernando Cardoso drew my portrait as a “merman”, I’m naked, my sex is erect, words gushing out of it and into my mouth.
To tell the truth I never pictured myself with the Sea water element, I’m constantly burning. I’m fragile and flammable like my uncle. In Hebrew, water means mother, matrix, sea. Am I drowning in mother? Am I the mommy to him?
I returned to the Terreiro for a second and last time, and I asked the space for permission to participate in the Gira. About the space: a big warehouse; the floor was burned cement; on the back wall, large-sized portraits of all the Saints; and other pictures I didn’t recognized + huge lit candles + flowers. Inside:
— I kissed the ground;
— I ENTERED
— I let my hair down;
— I was placed between the men and the women;
— Two beautiful men – resembling great felines – drummed away with strength and precision (I positioned one of my immaterial bodies among the drummers who ricocheted against my hips);
— The “followers” were seating, staring. Ecstatic!;
— The Pai de Santo sang with so much strength that his voice sounded like thunder, vocalized between his chest and forehead, scratching the cracks between day and night;
— I got into that fever and I didn’t stop for three hours. And I wanted to shout LIFE!
— Fornicatefornicatefornicatefornicatefornicatefornicate fornicatefornicatefornicatefornicatefornicatefornicate. I want to dance with whomever wants in on the circle of the Geography of Love. There’s going to be a Gira, a dream circle, the circle of life. But which water should be incorporated into this choreography? Abyssal water? Lightning water? Water, fountain of life? Water, fountain of death? The last one won’t do because water can cause death, but only to the sinners. There is no sin in the Geography of Love. We gush.
In his dream, the Pai de Santo realized that I couldn’t be the resident dancer of that Terreiro and wished me much luck on my move to Portugal and told me he would pray for me. “May God be with you.” Father Renato protects me.
Everything changed in 2017. In Portugal, I had to unlearn to swim and be saved by a sailor (this is the land of navigation!). Hence, I’m temporarily off duty as a lifeguard at Sea. 2018. Atlantic Ocean. Portuguese coast. Shooting week for Orlando. I go in the Sea and I scream desperately:
HELP!
I want to smell the perfume from your candle.
*
— pause for death —
Listen to what lies
between these
parentheses like a
whisper in your right
ear: (Keep listening
to the waves, only
louder. You’re so
close… Drop after drop
I keep drowning you. But
don’t be afraid, this is
LIFE! Tomás Maia
said that art looks for
the life in
life. Isn’t that beautiful?
Life gives life to life.
The language of art has
the power to create life,
knowing that the dead
don’t come back. Don’t be
afraid, my uncle is
dead,
it’s true, I paid my respects and
wrote a text I couldn’t read and I don’t
know where it is now. But the
truth is that I can’t confirm
that the 160 Mermen are
dead…)
— end of pause —
*
Act 3: Aphrodite
*
ODE TO GEOGRAPHY
For uncle Ricardo, “world geography” was always about entering
a space of awe and mystery, since he never went to most of the
places he described to me, except for
Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Bahia. Thanks to his book
knowledge, he would constantly push his imagination towards
the unknow. During my childhood, in his “classes” he seemed
to seize every opportunity to take me further and further. Once a
month, he would dress as a witch and chase me around the house. As
a child, I interpreted it all as a fairy tale.
I ran with no destination through the wild forest.
At the height of his AIDS crisis, in the 1990s,
Ricardo drank ethylic alcohol and entire bottles of cheap perfume.
He was a man with a penchant for flammable liquids.
*
Postcard from his friend Luiz Carlos, from São Gonçalo, 28/07/1976.
*
INVOCATION
The archipelago of Ricardo’s Mermen is calling you.
Come dance!
Spells of water and Love.
Of death and heat.
(You get to rhyme here)
Now you let yourself go uncontrollably and you’re
Draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag-
ged down to the bottom of the Sea…
Will you die, exhausted, in his arms?
Don’t speak with your mouth full of foam.
You’re going to lose this game.
Sit down.
One hundred and sixty.
Let yourself go.
Feel the strength of your arms against the tide.
Don’t you even try
back up.
FALL DOWN, YOUR MOUTH ON URANIUM’S SPERM
Passivity is as dangerous as uncontrollable action.
Broths. Waves. High tide. Mother.
They seduce with their beautiful faces,
with their melodic singing.
They symbolize abandonment.
TO FALL DOWN, MOUTH ON URANIUM’S SPERM is the foolish dream of a real object, it’s your
mortal, naked, tropical journey.
They swim, drool, gush
Let your desire out of control.
AH! ECSTASY! ECSTASY! ECSTASY!
How to avoid the depth?
I am entered.
Drunk.
Eaten.
Fucked.
AH! ECSTASY! ECSTASY! ECSTASY
And along with the mermen song, I sing
LIFE! LIFE! LIFE!
Ceaseless back and forth of vital Energy.
LIFE! LIFE! LIFE!
*
Postcard from the 1970s sent by Merman Carlos
*
ABLUTION AND MEDITATION
Listen to the sound of the Sea again.
You’re part of this sound now.
You’re so close…
I’m so close…
Maybe we’ll touch each other.
Your knees are underwater.
Now let your sex touch the Sea.
Let the sea wet it.
The water is warm.
Close your eyes and feel it.
Let your testicles float.
Let the waters lick you with their salt.
Let the waters lick the salt from you.
Now dive in and come back.
Dive in Come back!
I want to throw the entire Sea against your body and baptize you!
I want to drink a drop from your body.
Immersion and emersion!
AH!
Symbol of purification.
Ablution.
Wiping the mud off your body.
I let the water talk.
Stimulate heal fertilize.
Brace yourself.
I have to sacrifice you.
Something opened which cannot be closed.
I’m aware it’s all very explicit and bordering on tacky.
I want the flow, so I talk too much.
I’m going to sing for my baby Eros, who instructed me
to bear the fruit of his inheritance.
The fruit shall be called Geography of Love.
Animals surround me, ready to mate
in the wood as soon as they pick the right scent.
I want two big felines.
Feel the perfume of silence.
What does it smell like?
Feel the silence of perfume.
What does it sound like?
I search the natural perfume of a man who has the power to
transmute seminal energy. The strength of creation. I’m going to smell
this perfume and spill it on the submerged statues of the
Gods.
Who smells like that? What is it in you that smells like that?
Close your eyes. Listen to the scent.
*
INCORPORATE
(We’re in the dressing room, the beasts and myself, on Aphrodite’s paper. On the wet stage, which is Post 9 at Ipanema Beach, are the 160 Mermen. The beasts from the animal kingdom make life sounds that vibrate onstage. I recall that Balzac used to say that every perfume is a combination of air and light, like a candle. Every man needs a mother and has a candle. When a candle sparks, there is a triumphant entrance. I imagine a big and thick white candle. I’m in the dressing room and, once I smell the perfume of light, I’ll enter with my parade of beasts. We’re in heat, we’ve started to gobble each other up. The beasts are now making life sounds. Silence! I smell the perfume of light! I enter and sing the moist dream word while the beasts from the animal kingdom make sounds, in ecstasy.)
Beasts from the animal kingdom
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Aphrodite
Light
Beasts from the animal kingdom
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Aphrodite
If someone is thirsty, come to me and drink
Mermen
Fountain of vital water
Love fire
Aphrodite
If you’re thirsty, fall dead into the water and come back up alive
Mermen
Fountain of vital water
Love fire
Aphrodite
If someone is thirsty, come to me and drink
Mermen
Foam concert
Sperm concert
Aphrodite
If you’re thirsty, fall dead into the water and come back up alive
Mermen
Moist word
Joy of living
Aphrodite
Sex without fruit is pure, it’s vital sex
Mermen
In the geography of Love
In the Geography of Love
Beasts from the animal kingdom
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
Roar! Grraurrr! Brrrum!
(A gay man, a survivor of the 1970s, enters holding a candle and the power to transmute seminal energy.
All the animals in the Geography of Love, beasts and others, run and mate for the sake of the joy of living. Mammals, insects, amphibia… Times of joy!
Aphrodite kneels and drinks the perfume from the candle.
We hear the moist word from the Atlantic waters again, but now dolphins are singing it.
Listen to the dolphins.
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
*
CLIMAX
Diary entry written on the set of “Orlando”,
Comporta, May 2018
I feel catatonic. I start writing compelled by the feeling that I’m going to die. I dilate my eyelids to see everything I didn’t see before. I’ll try to describe what I see, but first I need to confess that, exactly one day before this day, I felt so miserable – I was dead. The memory of those I loved and who died resounded and keeps resounding in my body and I feel alive and I want to dance. To dance until I fly. Before I write to you, I perfume the sea with baby fragrance and I drink Uranium’s foam. I know I must write about what I became in the sea, but right now I’m just someone with sore tonsils. They keep the memory of the male and female traits in us but the fever is burning this information. I have nothing else.
It’s five in the morning. I jump out of bed. I land on my feet and I almost drown.
I’m in the car, in the backseat, on my way to the set of the shooting session for “Orlando.”
It’s still nighttime.
The sun will rise any minute now,
it might rain, thunder,
In tears, I look out the car window and I see a rainbow.
The car could break down, explode.
I could die.
The sea is near…
The end is near…
Death is near…
Music comes from the sea… The beat of the everlasting back and forth.
The light keeps shining / the day keeps coming / the night keeps returning.
The white silk outfit highlights my sex and I swallow salty water. I eat and bite Ricardo’s Mermen. I share the pleasure. The laziness after an organism.
I fall into a vulgar posture, all fours on the sand, singing…
I want to play that beat and shake / Rub my dick on the floor and moan /
Stick it in you, for real.
*
I keep myself lubricated. The tips of my body freeze in the
wind. Pleasure happens to me. Another pause for death.
I will escape this place, and I will stir up all the sand on this beach, as I
ride a comic book pony, as I run, live. We drown as we climb a wall made
of water.
I salute those who came before us.
I remember Ricardo drinking entire bottles of perfume. One
day before going to the hospital he felt
so unhappy that he was already dead. A storm blew up, the sun was rising and dying,
lovers wrote and vanished. That day with him was short, but it was everything.
To me, the house never seemed so noble and humane. Whores, priests, paupers,
army officers and us. I will howl three times and then I will dance until I fly.
Three
the wave that returns to the deep body of the sea
Two
the wave that returns to the deep body of the sea
the wave that returns to the deep body of the sea
*
After handing over his collection, Ricardo gets on the plane and travels all the way to heaven, in peace.
After receiving the collection, I get on ta boat and I continue my journey, which started with my Magical Feminist Queer Ancestry, but now it has a happy ending.