Te Amo & Broke in Waikiki

Cachaça – I still can still taste that Caipirinha sometimes, those nights it comes to mind...that sugar cane liquor, 80 proof but smooth and water-like, similar to the Honolulu-popular Soju that weʻd girls drink at the after-hour Korean bars. Went great with any juice, or just lime and soda water. Andre would bring it on days to impress or merely keep my girlfriends around. Grupo Pagode & Churrasaco playing “Chue Chua, Chue Chua...” on the backyard speaker those humid summer nights in Diamond Head. The barely clothed women dancing – quick feet switching forward and back between the fast beats, happy, carefree, colorful feel – like children. Maybe thats why I felt so comfortable with them. Cause four years is a long time, to be in a culture not your own. But then again, all those months, years, shares of liquor and pot-deep dishes, bed sheets, children at the beach bbq with us all become a part of the culture molded into “your own.”

Farofa or Yuca/Cassava was a mild bitter powder the Brazilians used to roll the pieces of beef into coming off the bar-be-que, warm from the grill. It coated the blood soaking-through in a bread-crumb-like essence, more coarse, more fiberous. They were healthy. Despite the all day drinking and heavy meat meals, the Brazilians i lived with had clear skin, thick hair, good vision, strong teeth and daily sex without the agressive tones like over-porned westerners Iʻve encountered.

Andre had that dirty blonde full head of hair, 6ʻ1, a slight beer belly but naturally buffed and thick-thighed when I met him right before I turned  20. We were fast to home base – way too early – caught me by surprise. Never thought heʻd get my heart – thought the beach bbq would end in a kiss at the most. Heʻd end up moving in a couple years later – domestically clean and sensitive to the energy, which is why I think we had a peaceful roomate like vibe (most of the time) yet so much unspoken differences. In those years, we fought hard, male ego, Aries + Aries loud, like brother-sister, one yelling in English and the other in Portuguese. Maybe it was the fact he liked reggae, dressed simple, had tattoos done the Tahitian tap-tap style like so many of the men here do, or maybe he just looked like a Haole-Hawaiian mix surfer boy - I donʻt know… but he was there at college graduation, there at the family events, held me when my parents split and I couldnʻt talk for a whole 3 days in my tears.

Sao Paulo middle class was rough. I could tell just by the way he stayed calm when blood broke or when cops came around. Party invites, weed sales, sex, homemade meals and alcohol exchanges were normal barter in those circles and that upbringing carried over from Brazil to Hawaii for many of the transplants I met. Iʻll never forget the cash stash he kept under the drivers seat in case a cop came by – I had to explain to him that would get him in prison here, not free.

Soccer. Or Footbol as I learned to say – was how he got here. Scholarships or endentured talent was the way he, at 19 and his brother, at 17 ended up in Corvallis, Oregon. Not a word of English, in weed-and-blackberry country, part Amazonian natives surrounded by upperclass white skinned blonde Christians. He survived because of 23-year-old woman – Morman-raised beauty who found his exotic rough-neck to be marriage worthy and he kept a green card because of that alone. Course, every young ego fails his duties to marriage when not given those needed years of wisdom and so he drowned his failures of that relationship in alcohol and a spontaneous plane ride with the bar tourist on a one-way ticket to Hawaii. I met him three years after that - when he was still being paid by small soccer teams to play for their hobby showcasing. He was semi-tattoed by then, blue eyed, tan, bout 190lbs, cleaning pools in addition to soccer payouts and gambling / bets, entertaining girls with bbq invites almost nightly. I did not take him seriously, especially cause he seemed to have no financial goals at first but hey, Iʻm down for new fun and a little challenge now and then. 

I guess we donʻt know how guarded we are...until we meet another just as guarded or more broken than us. Sometimes those players are safer because you donʻt have to tell your real life, your real thoughts or be strong for them. We all need comfort, companionship, peace – so we often say yes to the unfulfiling to make the week bareable, feel something, be anything but the emptiness it was.

 He was possessively jealous after each modeling gig I had and equally passionate all in the same breath. It drove me nuts. The FIFA obsessions and Mardi Gras commitments Iʻd end up in - had me exhausted for weeks but I do confess … Iʻd come home those years in Kaiulani Avenue to candle night dinners, handy-man fixes, a clean apartment, sweet picture albums, gas refilled in my car, massages and hand holding watching Planet Earth series on repeat. He showed up to every show, angry at me or not, paid what he had, clean cash or not, he was not a gentlemen, no. An academic? no. Yet he had a world education not taught in this land - with evidence of a plane fuled on water in Brazil long before the Wright brothers. He questioned if American media told the truth as he noticed the food made people gain weight and meds make them depressed. He believed the mind was stronger than body and scholded me for days id stoop feeling pain. He said Amazonian plants and chants heal men without surgery or long term medicine – since he had witnessed first hand during his youth. He scrubbed a toilet with a pumice stone and lemon juice, nothing else – hands and knees. So he found our expensive cleaning chemicals absurd and toxic. About hard work - he was humble, No inhibitions. But he was not the 9-5 type and I used to worry if weʻd make the rent and electric bill often. But the simple living, the way he made time for me…Something I never forget. Good looks, athletic, street smart - that does make a big ego for the men under fifty though…

On and off, we had lovers in between, and more fights than anyone else Iʻve ever lived with, pet turtles, plants on the porch, daily run work-outs and friends passed out on our couch every weekend... he didnʻt understand my dedication to college, my need to work three jobs, my absentness of our love life when a deadline hit. He didnʻt know why it took so much wine for me to relax, or why I loved reading historical novels instead of watching a movie, non-fiction documentaries over a fantasy. He thought it was strange we Americans circumsized men as he himself, was not, and therefore, more sensitive – pleasing yet least demanding in bed than many iʻve known. Heʻd dress me in green and yellow for sportbar Sundays of yelling “caralho” at the screens till Iʻd have to pry him home.

 I canʻt say I was ever the same after his minimalist way of living he had, his gifts of tiny thong bikinis and those cuddly mornings of “Meu sol.” Those hours at the hole-in-the-wall-bar playing bad pool, the braids, the singing, the açaí bowls after diamond head afternoons… Some people are a catalyst, the connecting lesson building your depth, resilience and belief for the fated to come.

Iʻve thought long and hard about how to explain him – because truely, he made no sense to the outside audience view of my life. I guess the years after you heal is when you can finally talk about the real shit. But Iʻve realized after a whole marriage later and lovers since, that often we are drawn to the people who we need at the time, who force us open, make our hearts shake to have to remember why we exist, evaluate our choices – with self forgiveness or guilt all the same.

Unlike other men Iʻve ended things with, this one called a few times over the years to make peace, despite the flames we ended in – he talked through the residue, the dreams we still had of eachother months later, the box of my things he still has at his place – now an island away, the sorries, the regrets, the laughter, the sex, nights of drunken fun, the nights of comfort and hand holding, the sober friendship that comes after the coals cool from the battle with your equal. This story is way longer than a five min read but for now, iʻll just say that life with Andre gave me a huge explanation of who i am, how I got here and itʻs a relationship I draw self-reassurance from years later as it prepared me for bigger battles to come, and forced me self-belief, self-trust despite misunderstandings and pain –

that faith is the universal calling.

If I met him 20 years later maybe things would have been smoother … language barriers out of the way, or the young-life-liquor-talk no longer an issue… but life seems to happen as it needs, not always as what we understand …

Tchau

*Please note that this read is meant to be entertaining, not necessarily factual