Through a lens darkly
III.
groove, groove junkie
I can't help but remember my intense, strange, surreal sojourn abroad in a tiny Iberian country hugged by the sea and my visit to another land emerging from the South-Chinese mud without feeling a little ambivalent. Who was I then? Where was I going? And why? Looking back, but not completely removed from that confusing past, I know that I was alone, escaping and discovering. Through my experiences I found myself and the beauty inherent in living and loving. . . Sometimes it all comes back to me with a delicate perfume, the deep smell of drying fish, the salty air of the seaside or a cup of coffee, even a clove cigarette Đ memories are tempered and disinterred by the olfactory sense.
I have always felt that embraces are like waves, they roll in quick and fast, full of strength and then towed back into the ocean of feelings, unexpected yet expected. Love is like that, memories are, too. And, it's funny how they both can be bent to suit the present; how time is compressed, syncopated, and how images and feelings blur into an inconsistent and incoherent haze. That time was like that: incoherent, inconsistent and definitely unexpected.
But my time in that liminal space, between here and there, was much more defined than a continuous inconsistent blur. My selective memory tells me that everything that happened was not equally important nor equally unimportant, but fit closely together in a functioning confusion we call life.
Being in a state of profound pain and anguish, I walked with my heart out of focus. The cynically darkened lenses of my eyes, once impartial observers of the world, collapsed unto themselves into an subjective performing reality: the background, so to speak, became the foreground. And I faded from the picture, moving without form nor substance, just existing.
In a sense, I was fleeing something or rather someone, escaping a reality and denying the ineffable. I found myself in Portugal one morning utterly alone, left by my love of five years just before my birthday, and in perfect isolation. Confused and dazed, existence was a series of reactions, but that soon changed. Absurd is one way of describing the entire situation, bizarre, yet another. I don't know. However, at any rate, the human mind is capable of amazing feats, and one of the most interesting is its capacity to condition itself to accept the grotesque: shocking ideas and practices become the standard, even normal, whatever that might be.
My journey to personal discovery begins in Portugal, or to be more specific, in Lisbon. More often than not, people fondly call Lisbon "the white city" due to the white marble highlights around windows and doors and the serene shaded cobble-stone sidewalks. When I reach Portugal, it is the height of summer and I have all the dry heat and dust to myself. The marble is covered in a dismal gray, only revealing its lustrous beauty in the moonlight after an infrequent evening shower. Lisbon is enchanting: the downtown is dominated by buildings in soft pastel hues and throngs of beautiful, captivating people. Their eyes, their mouths and movements betray an inner sensuousness as they sit in sedate repose smoking a cigarette, drinking a coffee or just hailing a taxi.
One afternoon I find myself at the ferry docks near the PraŤa do ComŽrcio. In every sense of the word, dodging cars, buses and whizzing motor-bikes, I practically kill myself getting to the previously agreed upon rendezvous point. Crossing the street to the docks, I pass Chinese peddlers hawking shirts wrapped in clear cellophane beside bright green and red plastic animals. Near the entrance to one of the docks a man shouts out the prices of sunglasses. A scruffy guy bumps into me and opens a well-worn grocery bag:
"It's a good price."
A Nikon. "No. No thanks," I say and walk on.
Lisboetas, in a frenzy only physically and psychologically possible at lunch hour and quitting time, jostle against me and each other racing to the queues snaking from the ferry terminals. A group of conductors sit smoking by the railings of a gang-plank, half-watching the folly of a middle-aged man in a tweed jacket "accidentally" bump into a much younger and firmer woman and suffer the unfortunate consequences of his uninvited advances. A slap, a shout and a stern stare. He must be a foreigner, the rules are known by everyone: look, but do not touch.
My new friend Mario had told me specifically last night to get to the third ferry terminal at a quarter to two and he'd pick me up and we'd go to the beach with his sister. Five minutes to go until zero hour, a glance at my watch reminds me. Too bad I do not exactly know where we are to meet. And why, pray tell, am I wearing a jacket and tie?
Unconsciously I follow a beautiful young Portuguese woman, perfectly tanned, whose sway could turn me quintessentially straight. Her hips move to a beat that I can only say is vaguely tropical and reminiscent of a slow song by Sade. Slender and gently curved, my eyes cannot help but follow her. In my mind I decide that, today I'll be heterosexual. When she enters the terminal just before the Navy docks I realize I had met her the night before at a reception for a film academy, the Academya Lusoh-Galaktika - Edgar Pera's pet-project. Her boyfriend with her that evening had the face of a cupid, and I specifically remember the lingering kiss they shared across from me. As their tongues touched, my heart sighed and I longed to feel her lips, too. She has alluring African eyes and angular feline grace. Her name is Vanessa, an aspiring artist.
"Are you Mario's sister?" I ask hesitantly tapping her on the shoulder gently.
A bit startled, she turns around and smiles. It is her and she recognizes me from last night. After a light beijinho she asks:
"Would you like some water? I am going to buy some."
"Yes." I respond slowly. The brisk walk tempting fate from Cais do Sodré to the docks in a shirt and tie in the unrelenting August sun causes my body to cry out for liquid replenishment. "Yes, thank you."
A discrete smile.
We both sit on the curb and watch the cars go by. She, in a maroon top that circles her neck leaving her back and midriff bare and a pair of jeans molded to her sensuous hips, causes me to think about how overly dressed I am.
She lights a cigarette. "Aren't you hot?"
"I guess so." I smile sheepishly, and off comes the woolen coat and tie.
"It's two, right?" I ask, "So where's Mario?"
"Oh, he's always a little late," She answers half-consciously blowing smoke to the wind.
In a few minutes Mario pulls up, all smiles and bursting with his characteristic energy. I can't help but smile, too, when I get in the car. Like his sis, he too has an alluring glow and Latin beauty to him. I feel lucky to be in such beautiful company. I wonder if they feel the same about me. Perhaps.
Driving out of the city, Mario puts on something he calls "Pimba," music for the Portuguese masses and jokes that he has an album or two out.
"Really?"
"Yes, I am a really big hit with everyone."
I just cross my arms and say, "Uh-huh. So you're a call girl and a singer on the side."
"Yes, that's me," he laughs and the accordion on the radio follows suit.
Going up a cobble-stone street to some place in the Chiado, he asks me if I'd like to go to a party with them: him, his sister and Maria, a very very mutual friend. He then chirps that I have only five minutes to decide since we are close to where he has to buy the tickets.
"Um. Sure." My lips say.
"Okay. Well here we are." And out of the car he dashes.
We leave the city and visit the beach and return some hours later that night, me perfectly burnt and them a bit more toned.
Before crossing back over the Tejo ("that's Tagus, for you Drake."), Mario pulls into a shopping center leaving me and Vanessa alone in the car. We chat a little about our families and ourselves, hopes and aspirations.
"You know," I say, "you probably know all this about me from Mario and Maria. I pretty much figure that everybody already knows everything about me anyway. I'd like to think that I am pretty transparent."
"I don't like transparent people," she smiles sardonically, leaning between the seats.
"Then," I shrug, noticing the inviting light in her eyes, "you probably wouldn't like me."
Mario steps back into the driver's seat brandishing cat-food and cheese.
"Do you have spaghetti at home?" He queries Vanessa.
"Yes."
"Good. I got some mushrooms and cream for the sauce."
After a stop at his grandparent's and a few kisses to their dogs, we make it to Lisbon. Passing the docks I notice a familiar building:
"You know, a poet-friend of mine lives here. Salom‹o."
"Really?" Mario muses. "That's funny, because my father lives there and his name is Salom‹o. And he's a poet too. When did you meet him?"
"Two years ago in the States."
"Really? He was there then, too."
"Must have been him then. . ."
Laughing, he pulls the car into the lot and hopping out, gives Vanessa the keys. We drive to her place, in Santana.
"So what's this thing you've got for my roommate? I saw the way you looked at her all last night."
"Maria? Oh, let's just say its a mutual attraction."
"Don't deny it, you've got a crush on her, I know."
"Maybe," I smile, "what about you?"
Biting her lower lip, then rolling her tongue, "Uh-huh."
"And your Cupid?"
"He's not mine, he wanted a Church wedding, but I said no."
"Why not?"
"He's got no money and well. . ."
"And?"
"He has no job, well you know. . ."
"He's a man of leisure, then?"
"So to speak."
Driving through the Baixa and talking about everything and nothing, somehow our conversation gets to the point when she says:
"But you look so saintly."
"Well, things are not always as they appear. I'm no saint."
"I told you, I don't like transparency." She adds cryptically.
With a quick jingle of her keys in the lock and one, two, three flicks of a light switch, "So this my place. You've been here before, right?"
"Yes, with Maria. . ."
"The night before?"
"The night before last. Yes. It looks familiar."
And with a glide in her voice, "I'm sure you know upstairs."
"Uh. . . Yeah."
In a few minutes Mario strolls in looking rather pleased:
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Only the guilty speak."
"Whatever, Drake. Are you hungry? I think the cat is."
After dinner Mario takes a shower and I sit down on the couch and play with the now fed cat. Vanessa sits down at the dinner-table and opens a small tin in the shape of a sarcophagus and starts breaking up some hash.
"May I watch?"
"Sure."
Sitting by her side: "It's that I've never seen anyone make a joint this way."
Then after a short silence, I add:
"I think I'll write about it or something in the novella I'm working on."
Taking on a teacherly tone she says, "Well, this is what we call the soup."
First she takes a lighter and heats up a cube of hashish and begins breaking it up into small pieces over a leaf of rolling paper gingerly cupped in the palm of her hand. She cuts open a cigarette and mixes the tobacco and hash chips together. With a shred of cardboard torn from her box of smokes, she rolls a filter and places it at one end of the paper. Moving the mixture to the middle, she tightly rolls the joint and licks the edge of the paper ("It's adhesive.") with the tip of her tongue and twists the ends. In front of me sits the fattest and most perfectly rolled ready-to-smoke joint handled by a becoming-ever-the-more-beautiful-by-the-moment woman.
"Have you tried this before?"
"Hashish? No. A little marijuana, that's it."
"I've never tried. . . Mario! The phone!"
Jumping from the couch, Mario picks up the ringing telephone. He is speaking in a Portuguese so rapid that I can barely comprehend him, terminal vowels disintegrate with amazing speed:
"Yes. . . Okay. . . Right. . . Yes. . . Oh. . . Listen, you should. . ." then a sauce of sounds too complicated for my untrained ear.
As I tune him out, Vanessa and I just gaze at each other a little blankly and somewhat fondly. From the look in her eyes, I can tell that with her no bullshit or cheap talk was allowed, only pleasant stoned philosophy.
"Vanessa. . ."
"Yes, Mario," She says mockingly seductive, reaching her arms to his waist.
"I have to go and pick up Maria. You kids behave. Kisses."
"Yes, Mario," with special emphasis on the "ar" and a quick casual glance to me.
Switching off the kitchen light and moving into the adjoining room, I hear Vanessa opening and closing drawers. And then a sudden:
"Would you like to see my work?"
Before I can say yes, she is standing the door-frame with three color-studies. One done in light and dark blues, another in harsh reds and the last in yellow and green. The subject is a woman's torso from the navel to the knees, supine with legs bent and spread.
"Ah. . . huh." I can't think of anything to say.
"They're color. . ."
"Studies," I complete her sentence.
"So you know something about art?"
"Yes, a little. So who was your subject? Or should I even ask?"
"Self-portrait."
"Nice," I try to smile. It wasn't every day, really there hasn't been any day, that a beautiful young woman shows me a graphic and moving artistic rendering of her vagina; folds, curves - everything - shadow and light faithfully reproduced in vibrant color.
Breaking the trance: "I did it with a mirror."
"Excuse me?"
"A mirror. You know, a mirror," She throws a smile at me.
"You should try doing portraits of the other kind. Like of your, um. . . not-boyfriend," I stumble, trying not to say anything stupid, but instead stammer, "He has nice lips."
"I know. They say that eyes speak a thousand languages, but the lips. . . lips hold a million secrets. It's the secrets that attract. . . desire. . ."
As her voice becomes softer, tapering to a whisper, I find my lips unconsciously pressing against hers.
Instinctually, our arms wrap around each other. A hand brushes across my cheek. Fingers rest on my neck and feel through my hair, becoming warmer with every caress. We unlock the secrets held in each other's lips, first with light, tentative, shy tender kisses, then bolder and firmer with more passion. In a moment we are lying side-by-side, tongues touching and hands moving over and through clothes, feeling breasts, thighs and more intimate parts.
Touching Vanessa, I want to speak, but know that the moment we are sharing is not conducive to speech, only sighs of release and moans of pleasure.
"Drake, you like me, no?"
"How can I not?"
"Let's wait. They're coming back soon."
And kissing the nape of my neck: "Yes?"
"Yes. . . Please more. . ."
"Later," she whispers, "With XTC."
I stop and murmur: "Ecstasy? What's that?"
"You'll find out tomorrow night. Promise."
Calming ourselves down, we share a cigarette and look out onto the moon-lit street below.
"I know you did not make love to Maria."
A look of surprise crosses my visage.
"Don't look so surprised, we share everything. We're practically sisters, she and I."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh. We've known each other for practically forever. We sleep in the same bed, wear each other's clothes. You could even say we are lovers, but we're not."
"Um. . ." Why is she telling me all this, all so suddenly? Are Portuguese women usually like this? No, I've encountered the exception to the rule, must have.
In a flash, like watching old Super-8 family films in the den, a thousand thoughts and soundless images race through my mind. With brilliant vividness, I see scenes composed of a pair of two little girls playing on the street, skipping rope and running after a ball; obscured snapshots of teenage girls experiencing a furtive, curious kiss together, braiding each other's hair, touching budding breasts and exploring nascent sexualities; and grainy video of two beautiful mature adult women, together in a club dancing, deflecting hopeful male advances, falling together in bed, kissing, touching, caressing.
I feel guilty for having such an imaginatively sordid mind, but I'm sure that I'm not too far from the mark.
"I know your secret, too," She continues.
"You do?"
As if singing: "Uh-huh. You're not transparent. Only those who have something to hide would say it with such, how do you say, conviction? Yes, conviction. I can tell in the way you kiss. In your eyes. The way you move. You aren't like the average men, your tongue speaks of a different past. Your embrace, too."
"Excuse me?"
"I know what you are," She draws her breath to a low whisper, "My brother does too. He's just like you. We all know."
"And?" And what if they know, I think, So what? I have nothing to hide, but I'm out to change my life, right? Or at least that's what I'm convincing myself I'm doing, right? Is she really that intuitive or is she just playing with me?
Just to make things a little boring, I decide to quickly change the subject:
"Anyway, Maria told me that this apartment is Mario's."
"This place was my grandmother's."
"It was?"
"Yes, she left it for Mario when she died. My she was raised here, my mother, too. This building survived the great earthquake they had a like two hundred years ago. . ."
"So this is all original stuff from two hundred years ago?"
"Before. There are some changes, of course. But this building, well, neighborhood, survived because the walls are made of a special mixture of wood, plaster and dirt. And it's been standing all these years. It'll probably stand another two-hundred."
"That's impressive. . ."
"Uh-huh." And then lowering her voice, "I know what you're doing. . . Oh look, here comes Mario and Maria. Ola! Hi you two!"
Casting my gaze from Vanessa's shoulders to the street, I see two familiar faces looking up to mine.
A little later Mario, Vanessa, Maria and I pass around the joint, take some long, cool drags and sit in sedate repose. Sucking in the air makes the tip glow a bright red and crackle lightly. I close my eyes and think of cool breezes and pink thoughts. I feel awash in light blues and yellows, like the lime-washed farmhouses of northern Portugal. Lisbon could tremor with earthquake, but I'm so at ease, I wouldn't care nor notice. I'm floating above everything. A complete calm descends over my tired body and I feel perfect peace and oneness for the first time I've been in Portugal for weeks. I know this.
The drug is having different, more boisterous, effects on the others:
"Mario!" Maria giggles, "I know!"
Mario gazes at me as if he were slowly undressing me.
"What?" I smile.
"Come on, tell us the truth. . ." He says.
"Vanessa says she knows. . ." I look to the very sedate shadow leaning against my shoulder.
"No, I want to hear it from you."
"It."
"Stop being silly. This is serious. Who makes love better, a man or a woman?"
I laugh a little nervouly, trying not to be nervous: "Um, could you give me another hit? Then we'll talk."
Taking in another long, cool hit, my tongue becomes looser:
"I'm going to give you a non-answer answer. . ."
"Ta bem."
"Man. . . men, sorry, they know exactly where to feel. You know, we've got all the same stuff, so men know where it's at. But, this is for you two, women. . . women really know how to kiss. . . be soft. . . nice. . . they know how to touch."
"I said make love. . . not touchy touchy."
Maria breaks her gaze from Vanessa: "Mario, but making love is all about touching. It's how we make each other feel. A kiss here, a touch there. It's all senses, you know? You make love with your entire body. Shit, it's not just fucking."
"Michael Drake, so I should rephrase, who fucks better? Man or women."
I become flushed.
"Don't be shy. We're all friends."
"Mario, come on leave him alone," Vanessa winks and turns on the radio.
Surfing the stations she stops and sways while singing the chorus:
"Groove, groove junkie. Groove junkie."
My eyes follow her slow-moving turns like a dream of passion and I can feel the music moving my body, too. Much too tired to stand, I close my eyes and then open them to meet hers. With each glance cast in my direction, the more desire fills my mind. My lips thirst for her burning mouth. But enchanted, all I can do is watch.
She sits down next to me again, takes a hit and whispers, warm breath tickling my lobe:
"Why did your wife leave you?"
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