…finally a letter to him …

“December 7, 2004

Hello my dear darling crazy brasilian……

I have no idea why I only just now found your email……I have waited and searched every day, and finally decided that I should just give up.

Then, this morning, I was going over my hundreds of emails

(I sell on ebay), and THERE YOU WERE…..

First of all, let me say with all sincerity and passion that I am so glad just to know that you are alive.  Many times I have wondered, and yet

somehow I have believed that you were.

I also was afraid that you were in Desert Storm, and up there in the north, fighting the Republican Guard.  …..I guess I was right.

And yet, somehow you survived, and to read (sort of, the translations are GHASTLY), your writings has been the second thing that I am so grateful for.  To get a gleaning of what your life has been like…..

I guess I can only imagine.

I want to hear ALL of it……

Yes sweetheart, it is me.  OK, so you want proof?  What, you think

someone else is fucking with your mind?  OK….You came to my house with a Mensa brat named Steven, and you were both drunk.

You’d met at the bar….you were diving, or hoping to get a diving position at Point Arena.  It was nine o’clock, and Steven was supposed

to have cooked dinner, and you walked in with a frozen chicken.

You bowed with your hands in prayer position, and I later figured out it was because I wore a kimono.

You walked into my kitchen, and exclaimed…..

“what ees thees woooman doing with thees peecture on her wall???

I have grown up loookin at thees picture……what ees thees wooman

doing with thees theeeng???……..”

“Oh, you’re Brazilian?” …………

“Yes, what deed you theenk, I was a stupid Mexican?”………..

More? You want more?

You always left something at my house, and had to come back

to get it.

Your watch, your wallet, your sunglasses………I told you it was

because you wanted to come back…….

Oh, and you were going to vote for Bill the Cat and Opus for President………..

Remember the hot tub night?  oh my, so hot……..we were something.

Oh ya…….what car? At first you didn’t have one, I think, because you

got rides from your friend, and rode your bike (how cute was that?)

to my house.

Later, you arrived with a big fat Thunderbird…….and washed it in my yard, while I watched, and played Sade.

When you called me from Rio, you said

“I love you, and I always did…….

…and I would not want you to think something different”……….

and you kept saying  “I’ve never forgotten”……….finally I asked why…

..and your reply was one of the most poetic things anyone has ever

said to me……

“It is not often that a man can find peace”.

OK, your turn.  My heart is beating fast, and I smile to you, my

beautiful man……..

Love and kisses to you too.  I can’t wait for you to write back……

………….Carol

ps……yes, it is you.  No one has those eyes but you.”

 

 

…until next time…

I remember the last time I’d seen him.   I hadn’t heard from him in weeks, when suddenly the phone rang..
“Hello…?”

“Halllooo…. so…. I’m on my way….”
“What?……  where Are you?”
“I’m in Marysville…….  I coould have gonn to Reno, but I’m cooming to see you…”
“Where’s Marysville?”
“About 200 miles away….”
“…so….so you’re saying you’ll be Here in four hours?”
“Yes……… So eeef you haf a Boyeefren, you bedder tell him to Leeeeef..”.
His voice got a little deeper when he said that…

“No…. no boyfriend… ok….. so…. guess I’ll see ya..”
“Yes…. bye….”

When he arrived, I remember little, except that the wait was endless, sitting in the upstairs window, leaning in with every car sound, until at last he was pulling in, his new silver truck announcing arrivals.

I recall his perusing my albums, and chuckling…. “Awful lot of Donovan albums here…” smug lips…

“Ya…. oh shut up!’…. laughter.   There was always laughter with him.

I remember how exhausted he was, as he lay in my arms after love.  Once more I felt like Isis, and my warrior had returned, albeit briefly and for unknown time and reasons, and he quickly slept, although restlessly.
That was unusual for him.  Strange as it may seem, this man was the most peaceful bed companion.

Our lovemaking was briefer than usual, he doing his best to stay with me, and I remember his comment…”I won’t be happy til you orgasm…” and I truthfully said that I didn’t care.  Just to have him there was all the orgasm my heart could take.

“I know I’m not heeere much, but I wan’ you to know…. You get the Best… eeets true…. you always get the Best.”

Next morning after coffee and breakfast, we drove around, and up Fish Rock he spotted a large boat, down a little road below.  He stopped and ran over to get a closer look.

“Oh that’s a gooood one…. I wonder eeef eeet’s for sale…. I wan’ my boat.  Do your vooodooo, I wan’ a meeelion doolarrs”, and I told him of the visualizations I had been doing for him.  Visions of him on his beautiful sail boat, big grin, heading towards a magical island, money pouring down all over him from the sky, and him…. laughing his big glorious laugh…
“Oh, tha’s beautifulll” he smiled.

Soon he spoke of leaving and things calling to him.  His plans were up in the air, once again nebulous, changing in unexpected ways, he was agitated, and when I got just a little upset, he looked at me sternly, and for a long time.

It was like at that moment, he just shut down, made his decision, and took me home.
“I thought you said you could stay another night…”
“No…. I haf to go… ”  he trailed off.
Quickly he was loading the truck, as I sat on the steps watching.  My sadness was overwhelming, and left me unable to talk about anything meaningful.  He was already gone to me.

His truck started up, and we eyelocked.  Endless time swirls passed between us, as we both just sat there, staring, taking in eachother for perhaps the last time.

At last he turned off the truck, got out, walked over, and as I sat immobilized, he planted a long long hard pressing kiss that made my face surrender backwards in a swoon, and lasted forever.  A desperate goodbye through lip talk that stayed with me, full of sadness and resolve.

As the truck pulled away and grew smaller, finally vanishing out the driveway, I sat stunned, really groking the last 24 hours, and knowing that he had slipped through my fingers, perhaps forever, and yet he would never leave my soul.

So now, once again and years later, I held him for a timeless moment; his voice was distant, yet his presence strong, and I sensed a softening, an effect that had washed over him in the brief, intense two years that had transpired.  I couldn’t even imagine what he’d gone through, and it was only many years later in Brasil that he began to share with me some of the things that had transpired.

So there I am, lying on the pantry floor, cold I couldn’t feel, pasta I couldn’t see, every nerve straining to absorb every molecule of him that slipped through the wires.

“So….” he began again… “I wan’ to coomm back to the states, when they let me leeeff..”

“When will that be?”,  my heart racing at the mere thought of the possibility of the maybe someday…

“Oh, in a year or so, things might be better…”

I breathed deeply, taking it all in.  There was no time for reflection now; all focus was intensely on the Now, and later I would replay the conversation as best I could.  I felt myself straining to reach him, glean any morsel that was gleanable at this foggy distance.

“I’ve never forgotten”, he repeated once again.
and then he said something that went through me like a blade of fire, branding my solar plexis, the recording in my head playing over and over again, as I saved it for posterity.

“I’ve never forgotten….”   … there was a long pregnant pause here……
“…..It is not often that a man can find Peace…………”

…awakening…

The phone rang.  Busy making dinner, Lily answered for me, while I obliviously continued my quest for dinner.

“Mom!  some lady’s on the phone, and she says she has a Collect Call from Brasil…”…she shrugged…

Oh great, I thought.  Some friend of mine is messing with me… they’re so sick of hearing about Mr Brasil, and now they’re giving me grief….

“Here hon, give it to me…”  (damn…)… “Hello?….”

“Halllooo?  Yez, iee haf a collect call from Alcir…  yooo doo not know sumone named Alcir?” came the dusky,  accent laden voice.

“Uh………yeeessss….. I slowly pulled from my mouth, while brain went into permafreeze…. silent moments passed…..

“Hallloooo?  Eeeeez Theeees Reeely Yooo?”  came that old familiar dark deep voice, that voice that seemed to go right to my nether regions…

I took a deep breath, and in my confusion, suddenly everything stopped.  I had a house guest… one of my absolute favorite friends, playmates, collaborator,  D I shall call him, and he and his buddy were up from the Bay Area to find large driftwood for his new store in the city… and dinner, D, Lily, time…. all became temporarily irrelevant.

“Yessss..???” which ended in a question, because there was no where else for me to go with this.  I hadn’t seen or heard from him in Two years, and frankly, knowing him as I did, I found myself at times wondering if he was even alive.

Oddly enough, I had just gotten a Card back, return to sender, no such animal, that I had sent to Tahoe weeks ago, in desperation.  My mind had been plagued with terrible wondering, I couldn’t stop thinking of him, and I had written something simple, direct inside:
“Come Back….. At Least let me know you are Alive”… It had a tender print of Isis holding a wounded Osiris on the front.  I still have it.
Weeks had passed, and then there it was in the mail…  oh no… I may never know…
That was but Days ago… and Now…?  how can this be??  I excused myself to the pantry.  I needed isolation, focus, clarity, a brain please.   Shake brain like Snow Globe…. let dust settle….

“Where Are you?” I semi stammered.

“In Brasil… tonight there hass been many celebrations, with many friends and family from long ago …I Had to come back.  Eeeets my contree…” he trailed off.

Long ago, he had left Brasil, run actually, from an inevitable jail sentence, perhaps death… and his Grandfather had given him money… he’d bought a 30 foot boat, and sailed away, alone, around the Horn all by himself… he was maybe 20…
“I was a Revolutionary.  I robbed banks to finance the Revolution.  An’ then a coople of peeeple got Keeeeled, an I had to leeeef.”
That was over ten years ago, ten years he’d spent in Norway, Hawaii, and finally,  and mostly, the West Coast.  He’d acclimated quickly, Loved it.

“What … where ..have …you been?…”…( so he just Got there? tonite?)…

“I waz een the French Foreign Legion” he told me.   OK… another brain freeze.

“What??? what was it like?”

“Hell…  Eeeet waz Hell. But I got out, an came back.  ”

“What …. like what do you mean?”

“oh…. like walking for twenty miles with a hundred pounds on yer back, an eeef you fall down, they Keeeek you…”

“How did you get out?” I asked, for I’d seen enough about the Legion to know that once you join, you give up all rights, all contracts, all everything, for Seven Years.  How could this man…?”

“Oh… they deedn’t know whaat too doo weeth me for a while… All three of them had mee in a rooom for a few hours…”  He referred to his double citizenship… Brasil, US (he’d been born in Honolulu while his parents were traveling) and I guess France and the Legion.   I fantasized him escaping, running through the jungle, dodging bullets… big grin on his face…

“I Love You” he breathed softly…

“What..?” I squeeked, breath gone.  He’d never said that, ever.
Once I had said that to him, in the midst of love, and he busted out
“Nooooo, don’ sayee thaaat.   Why, because we have good orgasms?  Nooo…don’ saayee thaat.”  It was like an allergic reaction…

“Could you say that again please…Words, I want to hear words…” I coughed.

“I Love You…. an I Alwaays Deeeed, an I woould not wan you to theeeenk somtheeen deeferent.”

Breathe, Carol, breathe.

“I’ve never forgotten”

“..and I’ve never forgotten…”…

We stood there… half a world apart… and it was alive, still alive.  I didn’t care how much it was costing, how long, nothing…

“I’m sorry for calling collect,” he said…”I’ll make it up to you when I see you.”
My knees went weak.  By now I was lying on the bare floor of that narrow pantry, staring up unseeing, at shelves of canned beans and pasta.