Rhubarb!

Enough death for now. There is more to life.

Without even realizing it, I took a break for the whole work week from reading Ran's blog. It's my most frequent touch-back with life back in Logan Circle. In fact, I'm amazed that I haven't even mentioned yet that I was back in Logan Circle last weekend, and stayed with Ran while I was there.

I don't really place myself back there often enough, and this was the first planned visit since I moved. But it will always have a sort of swirl of emotions for me, being the place I became myself, and also the place I'll never truly be able to return to, all at the same time.

So it dawned on me that I hadn't visited his blog since I got back, so I went. My visit made his blog, and yet hadn't made mine yet. It was odd. I can detail all the goings on, but I don't think it would be done justice. A couple of important parts of the trip I'd rather keep under wraps for the moment, and the heavy work-related aspects won't make it here as I want to keep work and the whirl separate. But I can report that I adored every moment of the trip, and a couple of things struck me.

For one, it was weird being back. All my carrying on about the crime back here in Jardins made me realize that at some unknown moment last week, before I headed north, I suddenly felt completely at home in São Paulo. I felt part of it all, with an intense pride of ownership and indignation at the things I wanted to impact and make better. When I arrived in the U.S., I truly felt like a kind of foreigner, more accustomed to the way of life here rather than there. For one, as soon as I got on the line at immigration (the U.S. citizens line, which was short as the plane was full of Brazilians), I felt out of place. The Americans had to wait about 5 minutes for the border agents to start their morning shift at Dulles, and were so rudely impatient and grouchy. I was all like, "honey, you don't know from lines, okay?" (But just in my head.)

But little things started creeping in that reminded me I am still a Logan boy, even though I'm also a paulistano. For one, I felt the freeing sensation of walking on the city streets with my iPod and my backpack on, and had no fear at all of robbery. I downright enjoyed waiting on a line that actually moved, like at the checkout at Whole Foods on P Street. I rejoiced at walking into every store, and finding what I wanted on the shelf in every case. And I dug into some great Penang Tofu from Thai Tanic. The weather was Los Angeles-perfect. DJ Melissa spun a great set at Apex on Friday night.

And seeing everyone. I missed Sean so much, I had no idea how much. There wasn't enough time in the day. And I got to play Guitar Hero at Filip's, and I finally found a game of his I can play halfway decently! (Dance Dance Revolution was too much for my old man body.) And it was so funny to giggle and celebrate with Lulu about how incredibly gay Roberto has become -- he has flowered into this joyful, completely assimilated gay D.C. boy, and he's finally aware of how hot he is. Lulu also came out with us to Apex - that was a trip. We had so much fun.

It was nice to see Matt and Christopher doing so well, and we got to visit the site of their future home(s) in Logan, as construction on the loft building they are moving into is continuing apace. Dane also seems happy -- but just a few steps away enough for me not to be sure. I couldn't find him on his birthday last Saturday. He gave us all the slip. Quite a contrast to his 40th, two years ago, when we were all in a villa in Radda-in-Chianti.

Most of all, it was nice to spend a lot of time with Ran. I finally got to do that after the past couple of months. He came out with us to Apex, also, and really let go and had fun. We had lots of time together alone, too. I don't think we ever were alone together quite like this. He's journeying through a complicated place now. He's been cast adrift like an emotional Odysseus, and the part I find least surprising is that he recognizes the adventure of it, as much as the challenge. He hasn't lost his sense of humor, nor his creativity. It's all poking through the canvas covering of his grief, showing itself in flashes of cleverness and wonder. He doesn't repress any feelings at all -- he rides through them. It's like watching a tree shed its bark and open its leaves at the same time. Kind of awkwardly natural and necessary, with future springtimes of glory in the air. I miss him more now, after this visit. But I also know that he needs time alone, sort of like how we have to take our medicine when we're cranky and sick.

Overriding everything around the visit was my continuing attempt to figure out what I've lost, what I've gained, and what it all means. Much like Ran, I guess. I've been playing a major game of "O whoa was me" since I moved here, focused on all the marvelous little luxuries I gathered around me in Logan which allowed me to thrive, and which I was without here. The view from my terrace, the clean streets, the order and the familiarity. The first-worldness of life there. The spoiled uber-out-gayness, the organism that was Logan Circle society. And most of all, the little things that I could dash out and pick up, and bring home to my Poggenpohl kitchen.

I've been mentally carrying on and anguishing about all that since I landed. Lamenting this or that thing I couldn't have here. Not having "my kitchen". Not having a terrace with a view, in the City of Views. Not having any of my things, nor access to new things at U.S. prices. Gosh, sometimes I wonder why Vini hasn't tossed me out the living room window. But alas, I did live my life at a profoundly different level in Logan Circle. There is no doubt about it -- it's obvious from what I've already written here since March. But this sort of despair I'd sometimes feel is also a bit over the top.

Part of the problem has been that I work at home, and this means I am spending most of my time in this largely empty apartment (my things are still in the Port of Philadelphia, waiting for the ever elusive permanent visa). I don't venture out enough, not even around Jardins not to mention the rest of this city. So, how could I be sure that I am so deprived as that? It's something I could easily ask Ran about himself: have I really been giving this irrevocably new life a real chance yet?

So, on Thursday I was antsy to get out and do things. I grabbed our dry cleaning and our rent bill, and Vini and I went out to run errands together. We got the clothes dropped off and the bill paid, and then stopped in at Santa Luzia to pick up a few groceries, whatever we could carry as Vini's car was in the shop.

It seemed like the caravan had just blown through, because the place was stocked with items we'd normally not find, like Skippy peanut butter, Dutch leederhammer cheese for under R$20, and they even had my kefir!

And then, magic happened. On an ordinary shelf, I stumbled upon a true holy grail of the kitchen cupboard. Something I'd heard existed somewhere out there in this dimension, but I never -- ever -- found on a shelf in Washington: Bonne Maman Rhubarb jam. And it's the confiture, not the compote. (Don't be fooled by the photo - that's the only one I could find cuz the confiture is apparently so rare!) It's the real deal.

I can remember the feeling when I spotted it. It was like the time I spotted a Yeoman Rand Star Trek action figure on a store shelf in New York (I still think I was hallucinating, even though I picked it up and held it). This jar was beautiful, the preserves were glowing inside, and I was imagining how it would taste on toasted ciabatta on top of some salted butter and a little bit of Bonne Maman strawberry jam mixed in, with a homemade latte and the latest Economist.

It's Saturday morning, and I can report that I indeed made the above happen -- plus a freshly laundered white cotton Ralph Lauren robe, with some Brazchill House playing in the background, and a gorgeously sunny morning outside.

It was heaven. Absolute heaven. :-)

13 Year Old is Principal Suspect in John Clayton Murder

It's astounding, but true:

SÃO PAULO - The São Paulo civil police are still searching for two accused of stabbing John Clayton Moreira Batista, a 19 year-old waiter, to death in a bar in Jardins last Friday night. One of the two suspects is 13 years-old, part of a punk group, who wears piercings and black clothes, belongs to a middle-class family, and lives in Chácara Tatuapé and studies at Colégio Arthur Azevedo, in the same neighborhood in the city's east side.

Identified as "P.", he is being sought by the Civil Police as the principal suspect in the murder. Along with the adolescent, investigators at the 78th DP (Jardins) are also seeking Peterson Caldeira da Silva, aged 20. The police have already apprehended four young adults and detained four adolescents, all accused of involvement in the murder.

(....)

Police say that "P." lives in an apartment building on Rua Irmã Carolina, in Chácara Tatuapé. Each unit in the building has 98 square meters in size and are available for about R$250,000 each. Neighbors said that the boy and his family have not been seen in the building since the media reported the waiter's murder. The boy's father is a small business owner, making miniature cars.

This just gets more awful with each day. A child killed John Clayton, and from a middle-class family. And still no indication from the police here that they are taking steps to prevent the next murder in Jardins at the hands of skinheads or punks.

Marching Against Violence, but Not in Jardins (and wondering "where's my parade?")

After so many weeks of hearing from Brazilians about how complacent their fellow countrymen are about civic involvement, it was good to hear that someone was organizing a protest march against the violence we've been seeing lately in Jardins. I showed up last night at the meeting spot -- the corner of Rua da Consolação and Alameda Itu, a few blocks up from the spot where John Clayton Moreira Batista was murdered a week ago, and a few blocks over from where Gregor Landouar was knifed to death on the day of the Gay Pride parade.

There were a lot of positive things about this march. I counted about 75 people at the starting point, and the crowd grew to over 200 during the march. It was organized by the Pride organization, and was ably led and remained peaceful and defiant throughout. They handed out literature with instructions on how to file a police report if you are attacked (something, apparently, gays are not doing when they're bashed) and with resources on who to turn to in case of anti-gay discrimination. The leaders also called for passage of hate crimes legislation.

However, what also became clear was that this march had little to do with the two murders that just took place in Jardins. Instead, it was an astute (and welcome) exploitation of the media attention around those murders by the gay activists to promote their effort to awaken the gay community (albeit, on the other side of Avenida Paulista, in Bela Vista) to the importance of taking the appropriate steps when they are assaulted or discriminated against. It was a gay march, period. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

The march did not, as I thought it would, stop at the two crime scenes of recent nights here in Jardins, nor did it even stay here. It immediately moved up Rua Bela Cintra and across Paulista, and down the Bela Vista side of Rua Augusta to the far-off Centro area. This took it through the more working-class neighborhood where young gays live three and four to an apartment, and where I understand a lot of anti-gay incidents occur but get little attention, mostly because the victims don't take action. And far away from where the skinhead murders are happening.

I was struck by the diversity of gays and lesbians in the crowd - it wasn't all hard-bit radicals, although they were in there. But there were teenagers and old-timers, and a couple of trannies as well. There were lots of people who knew each other, probably from being activists, and they had a camaraderie that was comforting. It says that there are people who consistently do this sort of thing, and are conscious of the importance of street activism as a means of getting attention and vocalizing community needs in a direct, peaceful manner. That was heartening. I expected more than a few hundred people in a city of 18 million, especially after the gigantic pride parade. But activism is never easy.

Walking down old Augusta into Bela Vista was an interesting journey for me. I haven't walked there probably since 1985, when it was the chic boulevard for shops and nightlife. It sure ain't that anymore. We marched past what was once the Caesar Park Hotel, where Madonna famously spent the night during her last tour stop in Brazil in the early 1990s. That former luxury spot is now an abandoned ghost building, and the street is a seedy and dangerous place where by-the-hour motels, strip clubs, low-rent apartment blocks and low-price gyms are crammed together in various states of disrepair. Many gay Brazilians who migrate from the poorer Northeast of the country to São Paulo land in Bela Vista.

The tension on the street during the march was very evident. The protesters stopped at one particular pizza joint and started chanting and pointing at the people inside, and one person told me it's a notorious place for routinely discriminating against gay and lesbian patrons. The manager came forward (not seen in the video) to see what the commotion was, and had a sneering expression that could only have been more stereotypically villainous with a little moustache twirl and shaking of a fist. The kids over there need help, and I'm glad there is an effort to help them and I support it.

But I was disappointed, too, that the names of the recently murdered were never uttered, and despite 10 or more journalists and photographers swarming around the action, they did not stop off at Ritz or at the corner of Alameda Lorena, to commemorate the men who died. There wasn't any attempt to reach out to the residents of Jardins, nor to enlist the wider community. I don't fault them for it -- these were not on their agenda. Indeed, Jardins was not even on their agenda. But the lack of such a response from Jardins itself is what bothered me.

As I walked along, I was frustrated that the gay activists were quick to exploit these deaths for a noble cause (without even mentioning the deaths), but that the residents of this bairro have no organization, no voice, and no apparent public will to address the fact that blood is being spilled here by highly visible assailants who come into this neighborhood with the sole intention of causing trouble.

From what I have heard, there is the Associação dos Lojistas da Oscar Freire (the Oscar Friere Storeowners Association) -- and that's it. This organization has proven quite powerful, with their most recent accomplishment being the renovation of most of their street, making it one of the only "first world" looking avenues in the whole country. But no other civic associations that I can find here.

That is not to say the lojistas wouldn't want to step up. It's also not to say a residents' association in one of the wealthiest and highest-profile neighborhoods in the largest city in South America couldn't be organized. I do know that every residential building here has a condo association, so there is a skeleton in place for some kind of network to be threaded together. But why hasn't it happened? Some folks here say it doesn't exist because people don't care, while others say simply that people here don't know how to organize and just need someone to show them. I tend to think the truth is somewhere in between, probably closer to the latter. I can't imagine people don't care here. I don't want to believe that.

So, I was proud to have marched. And I felt a little less powerless. But I'm even more enervated as well. We need a march to go down our end of Augusta. We need a passeata to pass in front of Ritz and to head straight down to the headquarters of the 78th police district on Rua Estados Unidos. We need an opportunity for the residents of this area to vocalize their fears, their outrage at the murders, and their expectation that the authorities are going to prevent the next one because it's their job.

I was in Mexico City (São Paulo's Latin American rival city) in June 2004 when over 250,000 people marched against violent crime and demanded that the anemic government do its job to combat it. It frightened the authorities because it was a middle-class protest, and it showed the depth of disgust and frustration that they shared. They dressed in white, held aloft the pictures of crime victims, and had the support of hundreds of civic and religious organizations. I think it's no surprise that President Felipe Calderón made a point of visible, effective police actions in high-crime towns and cities in the north when he came to office this year. He heard them, but only because they spoke.

Maybe it's time to stop wondering where our parade is here in Jardins, and do something about it.

Jardins Attacks: The People Fight Back

I just got back from a lunch date with Brazilians where we lamented the lack of agitated spirit in the people of Jardins over the ongoing gang murders of residents in this "bairro nobre", and my mood was angry, defiant and a little sad.

But thanks to my good friend Chris up in Rio, news was waiting in my inbox about the protest march that will be held on Thursday evening at 7:00pm in Jardins, expressing outrage over the "Bermuda Triangle" of violence in this neighborhood, directed at gays and causing the deaths of non-gays alike.

As soon as I read that the Pride organization, led by the courageous Nelson Matias (pictured), will be leading the march down Rua Augusta -- the backbone of this neighborhood -- I let out a yell of pride and enthusiasm. I knew that there were other paulistanos out there who shared my outrage, and knew it was time to take action. Now we will demand the protection we deserve from the police and from the city government.

All I want to do now is make sure that everyone I can possibly contact in the city of São Paulo knows about this important event, and will join me in marching. I will cover it for you, and will post photos and as much information as I can gather.

In the meantime, kudos to Nelson and the whole Pride leadership. They are not only the leaders of the gay community, but on Thursday they will also be the unofficial leaders of the Jardins neighborhood, and we welcome their march with enthusiasm and gratitude.

Jardins Attacks: Is It an Organized Murder Campaign?

For those who have followed the continued series of stabbing murders in Jardins by witnesses have repeatedly described as skinheads or punks, it is already well-understood that the city police and elected officials have not breathed a word yet about any strategies, or even any recognition, that there is a problem here beyond the individual cases. What boggles my mind even further is that the local community doesn't seem to even care. They don't write letters or speak out or organize. Instead, like Brazilians did for generations under various forms of dictatorship governments (which finally ended in 1985), they just seem to cower in the corner like victims.

Well, here is one pseudo-Brazilian (aka me) who never will do such a thing. And I, frankly, don't care if I annoy my neighbors and friends in São Paulo with my persistent questioning and criticism of the authorities here. I have gotten a lot of guff already, mostly the type that accuses me of making the country look bad to foreigners (as if the city's already lousy image that it projects all by itself could be worse) rather than exercising my rights as a resident of this city (and country) to speak up and demand to be looked after. As I've said before, it's a fatal flaw of the political culture here for people to see-saw between cynicism and active repression of critics, taking the place of the former military dictators who would censor the news and jail their opponents. It's a terrible obstacle to positive social change in Brazil.

Well, for those of you who are new to the history of hate crimes against gays in Brazil, I'll remind you of the long-standing problem of organized hate groups, most of whom are identified as skinheads, who have been beating and murdering gays here for a long time:

"Gay Man Beaten to Death by Skinheads in São Paulo" ILGA Action Alert (July 2000)
"Brazil: World Champion in the Murder of Homosexuals" ILGA (July 2000)
"Skinheads on the Rise in Brazil" BBC News (September 2000)
"Brazilian skinhead charged with stabbing gay man", The Advocate (October 2005)
"São Paulo Skinheads Injure One in Apparent Gay Bashing," Washington Blade (April 25, 2006)

And the U.S. State Department's annual report on human rights around the world, released in March 2007, cited the anti-gay skinhead attacks in Jardins as a "societal abuse" present in Brazil:

According to the NGO Bahian Gay Group, 81 homicides of homosexuals were reported between January and July, compared with 63 killed during the same period in 2005. ... There were incidents of violent attacks against homosexuals carried out by neo-Nazi groups in the southern part of the country. In March and April, a group or groups of neo-Nazi skinheads attacked several homosexuals in the Jardim Paulista neighborhood of metropolitan Sao Paulo. (Emphasis added)

So I have to say something that will probably further upset my fellow Paulistanos. This all makes me wonder if what we're seeing in Jardins is part of a wider effort by an organized group along the lines of those who have done this sort of thing before. Is this an organized effort to murder and terrorize gays in Jardins?

Organized crime is so widespread in Brazil, particularly in São Paulo, that the power of organized gangs often surpasses that of the legal authorities. Anyone who has followed the long, violent story of the Primeiro Comanda do Capital (PCC), which held the entire city in its terrorist grasp in 2006, knows that this is true. But could these skinhead groups possibly be so powerful that the police and the city are incapable of fighting them? Certainly not.

And why aren't reporters even entertaining this question? Why isn't the city addressing these attacks more comprehensively, even with just words if not actions? More upsetting is the fact that the people themselves, including gay news portals like Mix Brasil, are largely silent in the face of all this. You get a report here or there, and then nothing.

I could be completely wrong of course. Am I just hallucinating that so many similar attacks don't appear to just be coincidences, but indeed have a pattern?

I encourage your comments and emails, and I will keep posting on this topic with a hope that at least a discussion can begin. I also hope my friends in the United States and abroad help me press these questions on the internet so that pressure increases on the São Paulo media (especially the gay media) and on the authorities to do more.

UPDATE: According to Folha, new facts emerging on the murder of John Clayton show that it was apparently sparked over a cigarette - but it seems clear that this was just an excuse. A 17 year old girl in the group of punks asked him for a light, but he didn't have one. His friend, another girl, lent her a lighter. The punk girl left the bar insulting the group, and returned with a gang of men. One of them was quoted as saying to John Clayton: "You don't know who you're dealing with." They then attacked the bar, as has been previously reported, with a variety of weapons they brought with them. Customers fled the attack, including John Clayton, who was run down, and stabbed to death. One witness had previously said that the gang "was looking for a fight." That's obvious to me. It's apparently not so obvious to the deaf, dumb and blind police of the 78th District.

Now, explain to me how a gang of punks come heavily armed into Jardins, get involved in a brawl over a cigarette lighter (which seems like an almost invented excuse) and end up murdering a man -- and this is all just a "common crime", as the police have labelled it, and not part of a larger problem.

Another Murder on the Streets of Jardins; Police, City Have No Strategy to Prevent the Next One

John Clayton Moreira Batista (left) was 19 years old, and was a waiter at Café Armani in Jardins. He was sitting with a friend at a sidewalk table on the corner of Rua da Consolação and Alameda Lorena on Friday night. Minutes later, he was lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor of a bar on Alameda Lorena, dying from multiple stab wounds. He'd been attacked at his table and chased down by a gang of "punks". It was about 8pm.

According to eyewitnesses, the gang of punks attacked the bar with a variety of weapons, causing patrons to flee in terror. It appears the event was totally unprovoked.

John Clayton died at Hospital das Clínicas, the same place where Gregor Landouar, a French tourist who was stabbed by a group of skinheads outside another bar a few blocks away, died two weeks ago.

I was appalled to read this news yesterday, and I am maybe even more appalled at the reaction by the police and the city. If these crimes were happening in Logan Circle in D.C., there would be angry protests, candlelight vigils at the crime scenes, and demands by the editorial pages of the major newspapers demanding that the police and the city government take immediate, visible and sustained actions to counter this wave of violent, senseless crimes and mobilize its resources to prevent them in the future. Indeed, every new killing would only provoke more and more societal outrage and pressure on the authorities to do more. If the killings continued still in Logan, people would be fired and accountability would be severe.

In São Paulo, however, rather than announcing what they would be doing differently in Jardins to crack down on this senseless, animalistic killing on our streets, the police made a point of denying that there was a "crime wave" in Jardins. The punk attack on the bar, they said, had nothing to do with the murder. The boy was killed in a "simple dispute among young people." (Gee, what an amazing coincidence! The boy was fleeing a widely-witnessed attack on a bar, and just happened to be stabbed to death as he fled, but from an unrelated matter??)

In the John Clayton murder, the city was able to make several arrests. But there is doubt as to whether they have apprehended the killer or killers. There still have been no announced leads, and no arrests, in the Landouar murder, and it seems that the local press has largely forgotten about it.

The young dead man was laid to rest today, and the scene at his funeral was one of bedlam and hysteria (my translation to English):

At the burial of John Clayton, who was from a humble family, the atmosphere was of great consternation and outrage, with a lot of crying, and a friend of John's arrived desperately screaming, "Come on, John, wake up!" and had to be restrained by the uncle of the victim, Ronilson Silva Pereira. “John was a very good and happy boy. He always was driven and worked since he was 15 years old. He had many friends and people liked him very much," his uncle said.

I have a question for the 78th Police District in Jardins, the Subprefeitura of Pinheiros, and the Mayor himself: how many more attacks, how many more senseless murders, until you do your damn jobs?

Oh Long Johnson

There is a clip on YouTube that was taken from an undated broadcast of ABC-TV's America's Funniest Videos of a cat that appears to be either reciting a poem or singing a song, depending on your point of view, which it has apparently authored as well.

It is hard to believe at first, but that is the actual cat's voice. And the video, which apparently first appeared on the internet over a year ago, has spawned an international movement of critical interpretation of the original feline work. First off, there is a dispute as to whether its title is "Oh My Dog", "Oh Long Johnson" or "Oh Don Piano". However, there appears to be consensus on the actual words/lyrics of this enigmatic piece:

Oh my dog
Oh Long John
Oh Long Johnson
Oh Don Piano
Why I eyes ya,
All the live long day?

On one blog, some have tried to translate the symbolism, while others have reported that celebratory t-shirts saying "Oh Don Piano" are floating around Virginia. Similar fan tee's have turned up for sale online, and a fan site has the cat voicing the part of Darth Vader.

Cynical Hollywood industry types have adopted the phrase as well: "An “Oh Don Piano” story is where a celeb is at a junket and gets asked a bullshit, pointless question, like, “Would you do a sequel to this famous movie from your past?” and they give a total bullshit non-commital answer like, “If the script was right, sure!”

Elsewhere on YouTube, the craze has arrived here in my new home, as a Brazilian has put up a two-chapter epic tribute to the nameless cat artiste, with the finale claiming to reveal the cat's "mysterious prophecy" to the world. (There's one photograph from a cemetery at 00:55 that is hilariously chilling, and remains the one grand image associated with this work.) There's a short recitation by what appears to be a member of a teenaged crocheting circle, and a bizarre ska-ish speed-metal mash-up by some Dutch kid. I even found some garage band who attempted to make a rock song named after it, but I think the cat's original has more depth.

And, as with any great discovery that gains a global following, there is the inevitable club remix.

For my part, I side with the one thread of consensus that the literal meaning has to do with a dog, and that the cat is itself perplexed -- perhaps on a cosmic level -- at to why it stares at this dog all the time. This long Johnson, this....this Don Piano of a dog. (Perhaps they were two dogs?)

I've often wondered why cats stare at things, particularly things which are far larger and more menacing in animal-kingdom terms, with that vacant look on their faces. I never believed the blasé image they try to project, and here a cat betrays its species' secret. But alas, cats -- as we've seen in previous videos -- can never be too sure of their place in the grander scheme. So Long Johnson/Don Piano is (are?) merely symbolic. For I would posit that a cat which ponders why it stares at this dog or that is, indeed, a cat pondering its very essence, its whole possibly pointless existence.

So no wonder this cat is warbling its little heart out. (...To a predictably unappreciating live audience of one, as we learn at the end. Such is art, puss.)

Irish Government Makes It Official

Vini and I have been following the slow but steadily moving progress of civil partnerships in Ireland for a long time. We have always felt that our pot of gold was waiting at the end of the rainbow over there. As Ireland is my other homeland (hence, the "two-passport blog"), and neither of us ever planned to live in Brazil forever, we have been waiting patiently and with great excitement to hear the news that came today.

All the major political parties in Ireland have included some form of legal recognition of same-sex relationships in their party manifestos. But legislative action has been slow-moving and deliberative, mostly because the main party of the Government for some time, the Fianna Fáil, was the one with the vaguest promise among them all.

However, it did seem that the 2007 election would bring some kind of resolution to that, as all the opposition parties (especially Labour, the Greens and Sinn Fein) got more aggressive and specific in their pledges to take swift action. Add to that the fact that the Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has long endorsed legal recognition for gay couples, despite his party's slower approach.

Well, the elections certainly did resolve things. The new Government is a Fianna Fáil/Greens coalition, and it didn't wait long to make it official:

Civil Partnerships

This Government is committed to full equality for all in our society. Taking account of the options paper prepared by the Colley Group and the pending Supreme Court case, we will legislate for Civil Partnerships at the earliest possible date in the lifetime of the Government.

[From the Programme for Government]

As the Department of Justice Working Group (aka the Colley Group) and all other government publications have included immigration rights as part of the deal, this will mean that Vini and I will have the immediate option to immigrate, as a couple, to Ireland once it all becomes law. Since I am an Irish citizen, it would mean I could get a permanent visa for Vini quite easily, and he could achieve Irish citizenship in a reasonable period of time. This would open the entire European Union to us both, and we would no longer have to face the whole myriad of legal or economic challenges and frustrations that we face in Brazil and in the United States.

I am not popping the cork just yet, of course. Nothing is done until it's done. But our dreams do seem a little closer to reality. And we're in no hurry. Life is still just settling here in São Paulo, and Vini is close to a new job offer that will send him on his way professionally but he is indeed just getting started. I also would have to figure out my own professional leap to Europe. It's a brave new world over there for me, too.

But I am so proud to be Irish nonetheless. Who would have guessed that the land from which my grandfather fled, and never spoke much of again, would be the place that I myself would flee to a century later?

The Art of Knowing It All in Your 20s

I kept hand-written diaries from age 13 off-and-on to age 30-something. The first couple of volumes were written on little hand-held flip-pads you'd buy at the drug store for 50 cents, and like Anne Frank, I would write each entry as if it was a letter. But I was a boy of the 70's, of course, and addressed them not to my "kitty" but to sci-fi film monsters like King Kong (later shortened to "King") and Godzilla (trimmed to the more athiestic "Zil" than the more obvious One). Those were filled, as I recall, with very painful confessions of loneliness, sexual confusion and anger towards my family. One night, in a fit of religious fervor, I tore them up and burned them, hoping I'd be cleansed of my bad feelings somehow. I was absolutely convinced that this was the way to be happy. Didn't work.

Starting in 1986, when I arrived in Washington, I started keeping a proper diary. And I have all four volumes of what followed, packed up in one of many boxes sitting in the port of Philadelphia, waiting for my visto de permanência to finally get granted. They covered all of my 20s and a bit of my very early 30s, before I stopped writing with pens. The one thing I know those four volumes oozed with early on was a sense of intense self-righteous arrogance that I didn't even realize I had.

I knew all there was to know. At 22. I knew what food I liked, and would like forever. I knew what music I defiantly only liked, which music I absolutely loathed and wouldn't allow to be played in my presence, and that would be that. I knew what sex I wanted. I knew where I wanted to live for the rest of my life. I even had the US-Soviet conflict figured out at age 20, and believed I had the plot for the greatest film of the century all laid out in my head. I had it all figured out - I was all set. And I was perpetually confused as to why the world wasn't getting with the program.

And yet, while I don't at the moment have the chance to thumb through the pages and give specific examples, I also know that quite obviously, between the lines, I was terrified and very, very naïve. I had little idea what I wanted to do with my life, or how to function on my own without being afraid of every step. Oh, yes, I had my official line -- I always had a job lined up and my monthly budget all planned and followed. My meals were very routine, and my few items of clothing always matched. But I was very young, and had no reference point other than the present to know how to think or act or opine about anything. I lacked basic self-confidence, and as a very young man I had that sense of life being very short, and death being just around the corner.

At the time, my angst and pain was all too real. I can remember this gnawing ache in my gut that felt like something eating away at my soul, and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from or how I could be free of it. I felt hopeless all too often, and I could make an almost endless list of all the things I felt I just couldn't handle. I knew a friendship had become intimate when I would have the chance to collapse in that person's arms, sobbing, and confessing that I "just couldn't take it" or I "can't put up with this" -- whatever 'this' was. Often it was something so small, in retrospect. Something I was not mature enough to understand, so it frightened me. And I was frightened of so much, and too young-arrogant to admit it (perhaps as a defense).

Well, I'm almost 40 now. And I am so much older now that I'm even way past the stage where you wince and put that young self of you down, or pretend it never happened, or feel ashamed you were like that. Long past lashing out at people in their 20s who act out like I did, as a way to distance yourself from your own...well...past humanity. I'm now well into the stage where I have affection for that young self of me, that terrified young Kevin-know-it-all who cried at night, alone. I have compassion. I can't be mad at him now.

You often hear people say: "if I'd known then what I know now....." Well, that phrase gets more appropriate with every day past 35 years old, at least for those of us who grow. But I really don't care how I got to where I am; I'm just very happy and content that I'm here.

Back in the days when I "knew everything" and had nothing left I thought I needed to be taught about life, I lacked perhaps the most basic ingredient for happy adult life. I didn't have what I needed to be confident, to be mature. I hadn't lived enough yet. And that was not something you could rush, no matter how hard you tried.

I also realize today that there's almost nothing I can't deal with, and I wish I'd known that sooner. I can handle just about anything, even down to the point where when I feel I can't handle something, I know it's only temporary. Maybe because I'm momentarily weak and must remove to higher ground for a breath of air, or want to freshen up for the next round. But nothing fundamental. Certainly not something in my own home, or close to me. I know I'll always make it.

I thought I'd "been through the fire" already at 25, and could make all sorts of iron-tough conclusions about life based on my experience. Now I know how laughable that is, and I'm humble enough to know that I'm still not there by any means at 39.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned was to stop judging people and to, instead, nurture my natural curiosity about them. The more curious you are, the more you learn, and the closer to true joy you become. The more harshly you judge other people -- especially the ones you love -- the longer it takes for you to grow and blossom and have a rich inner life of your own.

I looked at a video of Paris Hilton (26), Britney Spears (26) and Lindsay Lohan (21) last November, getting into a tiny sports car together, united by various forgettably petty young agendas, drawing the paparazzi in like swarming insects. (It was the same night Spears' vagina was photographed and splayed out for the world, a kind of humiliation I couldn't imagine. The New York Post dubbed the evening a "Bimbo Summit" on their front page.) And as I write this, all three women are living through some kind of personal hell -- Spears and Lohan are in rehab, Hilton is in jail. They all have some kind of exceptional talent (Hilton's is perhaps related to getting publicity more than anything more concrete), and have every kind of advantage one can imagine. And I wonder - will they make it? Will they be able to get over that hurdle of young arrogance and see through to the truth about life, like I did? I don't count myself either a fan or a critic of any of the three. I just hope they make it. Everyone deserves to.

To say that I was quite poor at their ages, and they are very rich, and therein lies the difference in our respective futures, is being far too simplistic. I'm not so Catholic to think that salvation is borne only of privation and poverty. I think these three women, as an example, probably have it a bit harder only because their money and fame only increases the illusion of being "strong", and having mansions and cars and people trailing you all over the world sends you the signal that you know it all, you have it all, and you're smarter than all of them somehow. I can imagine the pain of how that illusion smacks against reality several times a day, and there's no one there who you can trust, who will be compassionate and loving...and blunt.

I don't subscribe to the notion that we should tear young people limb from limb for their actions, when the ones they hurt the most are always themselves. I made a lot of mistakes as a young adult, too. I own up to every single thing, and have no regrets beyond the things that merited apologies. And the world has kept turning.

But I also was just as deserving of love then as I am now. I had it rough getting to where I am now, but I also was very lucky, and very blessed. I take stock in all of it every day, and it makes me a very, very strong man to know that I can be compassionate and patient, and I am still as curious as a child sometimes. And I believe that when you love someone, and you trust him, that you can open up the parts of yourself that are untested, unexplored, and you can learn so much more about life -- no matter what your age.

The first step is to stop judging, and to be vulnerable and honest and humble. And then the bounty of life's riches come your way a little more every day.

• PREVIOUSLY: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being 20-Something (aka the Twinkie Defense)" (Dec 1, 2004)

Meanwhile, the Clodovil Can-Can Dances On

You can't keep a wacky old queen down, certainly not this one.

When we last heard from the Alexis Colby of the Brazilian Congress -- openly-gay Rep. Clodovil Hernandes -- she was "resting" in a São Paulo clinic with a bout of high blood pressure after a multi-round slapfest on the floor of the (truly) lower House with rival soap-opera diva, feminist Rep. Cida Diogo (PT). Something to do with who's uglier, who's more like a hooker. Something like that. Who can remember these little things?

Well, much has happened since. Apparently the boiling blood got the better of Clodovil, and he ended up in Hospital Sírio Libanês, where he suffered a small stroke. Indeed, he's been under medical care for almost a month and only now has pulled himself together.

So, as I was following the unfolding story of the murder of Gregor Landoaur right after the São Paulo Gay Pride Parade, I stumbled across another classic Clodovil media moment, on the front page of yesterday's Diário de São Paulo, right underneath a banner headline on the murder story.

The page grab, pictured above (click it for larger view), is a photo of Herself being wheeled out of the hospital as she removes her Chanel glasses and gives us a look at her million-dollar gams (courtesy of a hiked-up robe). As the paparazzi clicked and flashed, Clodovil was asked how he was feeling, and he said fine. They noticed, however, that he was being bundled into an ambulette rather than a car.

"Where are you heading now?" the reporters quizzed.

Upon which, Clodovil said he was going directly from the Sírio Libanês discharge door to the Clinica Santé -- perhaps the most famous plastic surgery center for the super-rich and famous in Brazil. And then he delivered what would be another in a multitude of Clodovil classic headlines:

"I cared for my health, now I will care for my beauty."

Just goes to show you, even when things go awfully wrong here in Brazil, they seem to always be book-ended with something hilarious at the same time.

Landouar Murder: Eyewitness Talks to Reporter

One of the three gay men who was with Gregor Landouar on Sunday night when he was brutally murdered outside the gay bar-restaurant Ritz on Alameda Franca, in Jardins, has given an interview to Diário de São Paulo, on the newstands this afternoon, where he describes in detail what happened. Very interesting details emerge in this interview, which was reported by the parent newspaper O Globo.

The young man, whose initials are D.S.M. (he declined to be identified by name), is 25 years old. He told police that he and his two friends were at Ritz after attending the gay pride parade. Landouar, whom they did not know, was sitting next to them at the bar, eating and drinking alone. One of D.'s friends struck up a conversation with Landouar, as the friend spoke French. After 20 minutes of conversation, the four men left Ritz together.

D. and his two friends were planning to go to another gay hangout nearby, but D. says that Landouar was not going to accompany them to the next place. Also, D. said he was taken ill outside, as he "was drinking all day" at the parade. D. threw up outside, while his friends stood nearby. He said after he recovered, he noticed the four attackers coming towards them.

"I think they attacked the tourist (Landouar) because he was closest to the sidewalk. Of the four of us, he was the one that had the least appearance of being gay," D. said, adding that he wasn't sure if Landouar was gay or not, but that he believes he was killed because he was with the three gay men. D. also says one of the friends heard one of the attackers say something, the only word of which they understood was "facção" (literally "faction", or a defined group of people).

"I haven't slept," D. told the reporter. "I remember the French guy falling, covered in blood. It was horrible...I am afraid, but I can't let those people get off without punishment."

O Globo also reports the continuing police investigation into Landouar's visit here -- who was hosting him, why was he here. They are aggressively chasing down leads on the victim, which will help rule in and out various other possibilities to a motive. What appears clear from this eyewitness account, however, is that Landouar didn't seem to be personally targeted for a "revenge" attack, but appears to have been targeted because he was perceived by his killers as being gay.

The paper also reported that hate crimes do not have a special category of penalties in Brazil. According to an attorney for the Commission of Blacks and Anti-Discriminatory Affairs of the OAB, while proof may exist that hate was a cause for murder, "there is no provision for aggravation" in the indictments of those responsible. A major fight by gay activists in the Brazilian Congress is for passage of an anti-discrimination law that would give gays similar protections afforded blacks here. "Every two days, a gay person is murdered in Brazil," said Toni Reis, an activist leader.

Nelson Matias, president of the pride parade organization, also weighed in: "This is a hate crime. It's unacceptable. People may have their prejudices, but it's different from violence of this kind. These delinquents must be arrested. I have a lot to be sad about over this. We want these crimes to be punished as hate crimes."

Pride Leader on Violence: "I confess, I didn't like what I saw."

It is amazing to believe it, but there is pressure from within the gay Brazilian community to play down the news of the brutal murder of French tourist Gregor Landouar outside a popular and well-known gay hangout in Jardins on the night of the biggest gay pride parade in world history (indeed, only a few blocks from where the parade happened, and only shortly after the parade ended). There is also a lot of angry commentary on blogs like Made in Brazil from gays who don't want reporting of the record level of crime and sometimes frightening shoving matches that went on in the clogged parade route, where over three million people jammed Avenida Paulista.

It points to a general cultural tendency in Brazil to chew out people who raise critical facts which might "denigrate" the country's image, even though they might be true. It is why, in my opinion, things don't change here. The public pressure is paradoxically turned on the critics rather than the people who are responsible for managing things, and those in power are too often let off the hook.

But it is not the rule so much anymore, certainly not this year. I have to eat my words about my fear that the MSM would gloss over the obvious gay aspects of the Landouar murder, and I have to give credit to Nelson Matias Pereira, the president of the Parada organization, who spoke out yesterday about the violence that indeed took place all throughout the event.


The Landouar Murder

I am proud to say that Folha, Estadão and O Globo did not, as I worried they would, sit on the Landouar story. They clearly did their jobs. They have multiple stories today on how the police are investigating this murder as a possible anti-gay hate crime, and that Landouar was indeed a French citizen in town as a tourist, visiting São Paulo for the pride festivities. He had met three gay men at Ritz and the four of them were heading out to another gay hangout when the four men dressed in "skater clothing" approached them without saying anything and stabbed Landouar repeatedly, fleeing afterwards. Folha also reports, quite sadly, that despite the media attention here, the French government has still not been able to locate Landouar's family in France to notify them of his death.

Estadão, known as the stuffier paper, did some good beat reporting, indicating that Landouar was staying at a friends house in Saúde, in Zona Sul (the city's south side), while here in town. And that the Jardins area is where many gays hang out, and where skinhead violence has been a problem. They reminded the public that on April 22, on Alameda Santos near Rua da Consolação, a gang of 10 skinheads terrorized a bar and stabbed a teenager on the sidewalk.

The best reporting was in O Globo, by far. They reported that the April 22 stabbing a few blocks from Ritz was indeed a "crime of intolerance", based on the testimony of the victim, who survived the stabbing. They also reported that two of the four attackers had shaved heads. Landouar lived in southeastern France, and was a newspaper salesman. His passport picture, which I've posted here, was printed along side the O Globo article. It shows a man who may have been on any one of the corners during the parade, kissing people, smiling and waving. It could have been any one of us.

"The police will not rule out any hypothesis," Officer Flávio Alfoso da Costa of the police department's murder division told O Globo. "It will be investigated as a 'crime of intolerance' by the characteristics of the region and taking into consideration the event that had taken place on that day."

However, MixBrasil is not doing any independent reporting on this story, nor have they tied the Landouar murder to the obvious fact that it happened on the day of the parade, and that the area around Ritz is a major gay hangout area that is also prone to violence. In an email exchange I had with a prominent gay reporter yesterday, he said his first suspicion was that the victim here must have been targeted for a personal reason, that it was some sort of "revenge" killing. I couldn't tell if he thought this because the facts were murky at that time, or he really just didn't want to believe it could have been a hate crime. I was taken aback, nonetheless.

Yes, this is uncomfortable news. But it must be reported, and the city must be held accountable for taking action to address it. Kudos to Folha, O Globo and Estado de São Paulo, and I hope MixBrasil will show the same vigilance in chasing down this story. The gay public deserves as much.

UPDATE: Eyewitness Talks to Diário de São Paulo about the murder.


Nelson Speaks Out

Despite the pressure to gloss over the clearly evident problems at the parade, Nelson Matias Pereira, the president of the Associação da Parada do Orgulho GLBT de São Paulo (APOGLBT), gave an exclusive interview to G. Online where he lamented the violence that indeed took place at the parade, and criticized the police department for not providing the kind of presence that was necessary for an event of this size.

"I confess that I didn't like what I saw," Nelson told G.Online. He said that the police presence was not what was promised, and that the stands they purchased for the police to use to gain better views of the event for better crowd control were instead used by parade attendees and journalists. "We put people's lives at risk, as people went up and took over the stands that were for the police. Another sad fact is that I personally tried to find policemen to complain about scenes of aggression and they denied that these scenes took place, that I was causing a tumult, and they threatened me saying that if they had to detain anyone, they'd have to detain everyone." (The city assigned a ridiculous 900 police officers to control a crowd of 3 million people.)

Nelson has already confirmed an appointment with the city's Secretary of Public Safety to discuss what happened. He also said he was increasingly worried in the run-up to the event about the massive size, and the inability to control such a gigantic crowd. The tremendous size is "important, and adds value, but it's becoming difficult to lead this huge mass of people. Even more so when you don't have the help of the police."

My heart goes out to Nelson. He's an honest gay leader, and he deserves our support right now. We need to very honestly assess where things are going with this important and glorious annual event in São Paulo, before it becomes something that actually could bring tremendous shame and tragedy to our marvelous city and country. We should, like Nelson, see forward, demand responsibility, and insist on coordinated support from the police, the city and the community.

Murder at Ritz

We just finished the long Corpus Cristi holiday weekend, which also featured the longest and biggest Gay Pride celebration series in my memory. Lots happened this weekend, which I will get to.

But my eye caught a small story in Folha de São Paulo this morning, about the brazen murder of 35 year-old French tourist Gregor Ervan Landouar late last night in front of the popular gay bar-restaurant Ritz on Alameda Franca, here in Jardins. According to the story, and other reporting in O Globo, Landouar chatted with three Brazilians he met at the bar, and then the four left Ritz together late in the evening. Right outside, they were approached by four young men, "dressed in skaters clothing", according to O Globo, one of whom took out a knife and repeatedly stabbed Landouar in the abdomen. The assailants said nothing on approach, and fled the scene. No robbery took place. Landouar was carrying his passport in his pocket. He was taken to the nearby Hospital das Clínicas where he died. Also according to O Globo, the three Brazilians accompanying the victim were "a stylist, an actor and a teacher."

Ritz is a legendary meeting place for gays in this area, and it is always crowded, with lines out the door, on weekends. Sunday night was undoubtedly a very busy night as over 3 million people had just participated in the parade, and over 300,000 tourists were in the city for the Pride events that started Wednesday night. Vini and I and our friends go to Ritz all the time, and I can always feel tension among the Brazilians I go with when we leave the place at night. You rarely see any police presence there, despite the fact that a few blocks over there is a notorious intersection where young gays and lesbians, often too young or poor to enter the bars and clubs in the neighborhood, gather by the hundreds on Friday and Saturday nights to meet each other and socialize; it is where many of the hate attacks have taken place recently.

Neither newspaper made any link to the fact that this happened on the day of the largest Gay Pride parade in world history, nor that it took place outside a gay establishment, in a well-known gay area. Nor did they point out that hate-attacks and stabbings by skinheads have become frequent in this vicinity. To me, it is screamingly obvious that this should be investigated as a hate crime; I question whether it will be without pressure, and the mainstream media consistently fails the test here on this issue. The failure of a beat reporter to connect the obvious dots is frustrating to say the least.

I sent the two stories to a friend at the gay web news portal MixBrasil, as their live-blogging of the parade yesterday topped their reporting this morning, and my guess is that they're all sleeping late today after this weekend. Meanwhile, Mayor Gilberto Kassab said this weekend, in light of the record-setting attendance at Pride, that Brazil is a country "that is every day less prejudiced." Yet, I see little to no concrete action on the part of his government to deal with anti-gay violence on the streets of this city, and no serious recognition of the problem in terms of police action.

Stay tuned.


UPDATE (1:00pm): MixBrasil now has the initial reports from Agência Folha on its site, which had initially said that Landouar was stabbed at the door of Ritz. Since that story (which I have a copy of, but it has been purged from the Folha site), the reporting now says (see the original hyperlink above) that the stabbing occurred sometime after the four men left Ritz, outside on Alameda Franca. Hopefully some independent reporting by MixBrasil will turn up more salient facts.

Also, Made in Brazil reports he was at Ritz earlier in the evening on Sunday with friends, not long before the murder took place, and after his extensive coverage of the parade.

MORE UPDATES:

• S. Paulo Newspapers Report Murder as Possible Hate Crime (June 12)
• Pride Parade Leader Laments Violence, Lack of Police Support (June 12)
• Landouar Murder: Eyewitness Gives Details to Newspaper (June 12)
• Another Murder on the Streets of Jardins (June 23)
• Jardins Attacks: Is It an Organized Murder Campaign? (June 24)
• Landouar Murder: "Punk" Under Arrest (August 3)
• Confirmed: Landouar Murder Was an Anti-Gay Murder Directly Linked to Gay Pride Parade (November 9)
  

Battles to Which We Are Mere Observers

Thanks to Cameron for sending me this amazing video of a full-scale conflict between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo and two crocodiles beside a lake in South Africa's Kruger National Park. Cam calls it his favorite nature video, and I have to say I agree, now that I've seen it all the way through.

It's a bit violent (but not gruesome) and it's nearly 9 minutes long, but stay with it. Trust me. You'll be astonished. It proves that the true experience of life can turn anything you thought you knew (even about nature) completely upside down.

NOTE [added August 10, 2007]: American tourist Jason Schlosberg, who posted this video on YouTube, has edited it down to about 4 minutes, taking out much of the early part which consists just of the buffalos and lions coming upon each other by the lake. The video has racked up over 10 million views on YouTube. I'm proud to say, like me (once), Jason is a native New Yorker who lives and works in Washington, D.C. Fellow traveler David Budzinski shot the video in 2004, and gave a copy to Schlosberg, who in turn posted it in order to show it to other friends who'd been pestering him to see it. The rest is history. The National Geographic Channel will air a documentary on the making of the video this fall.

Work in Progress

A long weekend in Buenos Aires with Vini, that I thought would be just a really nice diversion, was so much more. It was glorious and beautiful, and romantic as always. It was also a grueling challenge, and ended up shaking me to my core as the true weight of everything in life at this moment is hitting me like a giant anvil on the head.

Let me break it down.

First off, we missed the flight. I won't even get into that part, but it was not really due to anyone's fault. But I had a meeting to get to. And the next flight we were so lucky to get on was delayed over three hours. I managed to push the meeting back by almost 2 hours, and still was 20 minutes late to it. Did I mention that Aerolineas Argentinas also lost our luggage?

The hotel was really great, and a tremendous bargain. We also got upgraded to a suite. But all that was just flying by my face when it happened because I was in too much of a hurry to get to my meeting. (The meeting was just fine - it went well as always. I should have calmed down about it all.)

I'd made a point of calling my cell service to have international roaming added. But of course, upon arrival in Buenos Aires, it didn't work. It took about six hours for the roaming to kick in. Long after it would have been useful for the meeting. Again - nothing ever seems to work down here.

Our bags finally showed up, and we made it to a wonderful dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in the city where our romance truly began two years ago. Saturday and Sunday were glorious -- the cold weather seemed to run away when we got there, and the sun was shining all day. The shopping was phenomenal, as always. I cleaned out Christian Lacroix's shop at Galerias Pacifico, and Vini got a great pair of Dior shoes. We had our favorite ice cream in the world, and were invited to a really wonderful dinner at a colleague's home in Palermo. My Spanish is much better than I'd even realized, as we carried on a tri-lingual conversation about every topic under the sun and moon, and dined on this delightful back porch with open stove fires glowing all around the table to keep us warm.

As we headed back in the taxi to our hotel, I remember looking around at the deciduous trees, with their autumn leaves turning and dropping, and that crisp chill in the air, and holding Vini's hand and thinking how magical life can be. But this time, it wasn't just one of those moments that I shared with me and myself. I was not alone anymore. I would never be alone again. And I was living abroad, and continuing to meet interesting people and doing fascinating work. I just felt at peace. The craziness of Friday's journey melted away into an almost Brazilianized sense of calm in the midst of chaos. I had my love beside me, and all else in the world could just fall into place after that.

Amidst the smiles and joking on Sunday at Ezeiza Airport, waiting on a long, long, long check-in line at Aerolixas, I was kind of amazed and pleased with my very blasé attitude about having to wait on my feet. Usually I'd be grouchy. But no, I was at peace. We checked in, and got our boarding passes, and then we were heading to pay our departure tax when I realized my wallet was gone.

Long story short, I lost just about everything I needed to have in Brazil from my life in the U.S. except my passport. And I didn't know where to begin to fix it. It freaked Vini and I out in very different ways -- he wanted to fix it, and would stop at nothing (even common sense) to fix it. I sort of beat myself up for a minute or two, then shut down so I could just get through it and get on the plane and get home. But that wasn't going to work. I had to cancel my check card and my credit cards and cope with figuring out how to get them replaced. It wasn't pretty.

But by the time we landed in São Paulo, we were cuddled up and half asleep. It was okay. It was very stressful for both of us, and re-opened the whole nightmare of Friday, but it was okay.

I handled all the bank and credit card stuff. My D.C. driver's license was now gone for good. I thought about identity theft and all that. I wasn't over the whole thing. My mother was freaking me out with her intensity (she was upset because she thought that if I didn't have a driver's license, I wouldn't be able to rent a car and drive out to visit her...as if I could drive from Brazil, but I digress). And Vini and I made the mistake of getting into a stupid argument at 10pm Sunday night, and it was the release valve that blew all the tension of the weekend into full relief, right in the living room.

And over the following 24 hours, it seems all the stress and tension of the past two months, perhaps longer, for both of us just seemed to spring forward and explode.

I can say - by 10pm on Monday night, things were fine. In fact, better than fine. When we made up, we opened up -- and we learned more about each other than we'd even known before, and grew more emotionally close. That's all the good part of this.

But I also walked away from this whole thing with an even more stark and sober realization of how much my life has radically changed since March 29th.

Outside of my relationship with my soon-to-be-husband, I have two close friends in all of Brazil. One of them, Lulu, just went back to D.C. last night. The other, Claudia, is probably my oldest friend in the world. But she is also in her own life right now and not quite in a position to take on the full brunt of Kevin: The Emotional Hurricane.

What's more, I spent 20 years in D.C. carefully putting together both my full identity, as well as a complex and rich set of friends and support networks to bolster the health and well-being of my identity. And being an out-gay man who had a ten year career in gay activism, that identity is proud, complex and something which gives me a tremendous sense of accomplishment, strength, ambition and determination. I'd just about reached my apex when I left. I do have something of a holy grail in the fact that I have the love of my life with me. He is the whole reason I moved. But anyone who thinks that's all you need in life is really naive. I never thought it for a minute.

I just never realized what life would be like day to day without any support network at all. I'm not just trading home cities here. I'm literally starting completely from scratch in a totally foreign land, all the while knowing that life back in Logan Circle is going on fabulously without me. The parties are still happening. The weekends, the birthdays, the milestones. I got sweet messages from Sean about people missing me, and now and then I get an email or something from this or that person. Mostly just when I write. But I know the story. It's all moving on.

And in the 24 hours that Vini and I weren't speaking, I realized how way far out on that plank I am right now. I was further out there emotionally than I could remember, staring down at an abyss. Without him, I literally have nothing in the way of emotional support that I can really turn to and lean on unconditionally here. I love Claudia, and I know she loves me, but she has two kids already. She doesn't need another one. The gay scene here, from my experience so far, doesn't have the core of confidence and the intense camaraderie of Logan Circle. At least not in my eyes, not yet. Gay men here seem to try to keep everyone at some form of a distance, even their lovers. I had my lonely moments in D.C., especially missing Vini. Those moments grew to a point where I physically couldn't be up there anymore if it meant being without him.

Now, while my intimate love grows richer and more assured each week here, I feel a truly deep and soul-sucking emptiness right outside the perimeter of my marriage that I can't compare to anything else I've ever felt in my life. And the strains and stress of life here only compound it. The poverty and decay in this city -- the fact that you can't even ride in a car with your fucking window open on a clear night because of the danger of traffic-light carjackings, for example -- just gnaws at me on top of it all.

And then today, I had to face another reality. The owner of my favorite café in the city, who always greets me when I'm there, told me I was gaining weight. He used a Brazilian euphemism for "fat" to describe me, to my face. And it was made clear to me after I thought I'd misunderstood, which just made me sad and embarrassed. OK, so I am struggling to get back into the shape I was in back in February, when the whole move officially started to get underway. São Paulo Gay Pride is this weekend, Michel and Chris and Anderson will all be here, and it may be the first time I truly have fun at a club since I arrived. I have been going to the gym every day for two weeks, and I had more emotional currency riding on this weekend than I'd realized when this man called me fat, like a bolt out of the blue. And for a moment, after all that has happened in the past two months, I felt like my confidence and strength was finally shattered, and I was literally saying to myself: "I.....am......done."

(silence)

But, I can't go there.

There is no turning back from where I stand. I made the right decision to move here, because I have found the love of my life. In fact, as we held each other Monday night and moved beyond forgiveness and into deeper affection, I made it clear to him (and myself) that all my life I have been made to feel fundamentally alone, that there wasn't a one-special-person who would be at my side forever unconditionally, not even as a child. And this had deeply marked my soul until I met Vini. He was the one I have been searching for my whole life; even before he himself was born, I was searching for him. That is the one thing you drop everything to have, and you never look back.

So, I am trying to do that. Even if I have to fucking wing it every fucking minute in this new life, I am going to have to do it.

ADDENDUM: I should get off the cross a little bit. A couple of important details to add. When I was in full-panic at Ezeiza over the lost wallet, I called Sean and he called my mom, and she cancelled my bank card before it could be used fraudently. And when Vini and I were not speaking, Lulu was on the phone with me, and Dena was there on Skype, and they both pushed me in the right direction. While I can't deny the intense feelings I have -- everything I expressed in this posting is heart-felt -- I have to stop focusing too much on the things I am pressed under, and at least be open to realizing I still have my friends, I still have my identity. I'm still me. And I can still have fun, fat or not fat. Claudia just emailed me - she's having friends over tonight, and would I like to come, etc. I'm going. :-)