Carnaval tá chegando, meu...

OK, so my first year down here is going down as a wash in many respects, at least on paper. I just have to accept it. I may have survived the transition in terms of the permanent visa, bank account, apartment living, absorbing the bureaucracy and the cultural divides with the U.S., but on some really key aspects of becoming Brazilian, I've been taking a powder.

Case in point: the all-important Carnaval begins this weekend, and I'm fleeing to New York with Vini.

It's something I have cherished in the past -- Carnaval in New York -- for a number of reasons. First of all, it's a week when Vini could get time off from work and school and come north to visit me. It's frigidly cold on the East Coast as a general rule in February, and Vini adores the cold. Since I was stuck with it in D.C., a change of scenery was also welcome. Plus, if you're ever going to visit New York as a tourist, that's the month to do it as nobody else seems too interested in doing so, and the hotels are cheaper, the Broadway seats more plentiful, and the streets quieter and more gentle at night. I can visit with family. We can also go skating in Rockefeller Plaza, and bundle up against each other as we walk down Fifth Avenue. That's always a pleasure.

But I live here now, and while I am excited about the coming trip, I also feel a bit disappointed, too. I'm feeling more of a pull towards being more Brazilian in my everyday life, so I feel a strange connection to soccer, TV Globo, and eating dinner at 10pm. I'm more at peace with life here. It feels like home. So, missing out on Carnaval seems almost like a missed opportunity to go deeper into the spirit and psyche of my strange home. My whole life has been a journey to go deeper in all respects, and so my natural inclinations are tugging me away from the trip back home.

Granted, I get all sorts of guff from my gay friends. "Oh, you're married anyway, so Carnaval doesn't make sense." Well, not so. I do realize that the carnality of Carnaval is one of its key aspects (much like I recall from my last one I spent here, in 1985). But carnal pleasures need not be adulterous ones, should they? Just cuz everyone's drinking the vodka punch doesn't mean I can't have a glass of champagne. The Brazilians I see all around here are so at ease with a festive, physical atmosphere. I don't have the least bit of an urge to screw around, but I need not flee to the other side of the planet to prove it. It seems the stereotypically jealous Latino syndrome is less a cultural phenomenon as it is a sign of desperate insecurity among people (of any background) who have work to do on their self-esteem. Gay or straight. If you trust your partner's sincerity when he says he loves you, then you have nothing to fear from him. The fear you still harbor must be coming from somewhere else, and it's your problem, dearie.

Vini gets it. My friends here don't seem to. But alas, most of them are early 20-somethings. So I need not go further. It won't matter.

So, as much as we've talked about New York every Carnaval being a tradition for our little household, I'm not so sure about next year. I think I really want to get into this thing, and feel that I'm going to have to if I really want to be Brazilian.