Snippets of Ex-pats

“I just think it’s really neat that something that started as something performed by men in loin cloths in the middle of the desert thousands of years ago continues to this day.”

This seemed like a nice enough explanation for Passover and came with an invitation to attend a Passover ceremony with Melissa. Life in an overwhelmingly Catholic country is not filled with many references to Passover.

“What should I bring, except body and soul of course?!” I was trying to be amusing but also knew that an invitation to come to Melissa’s house usually exacted some kind of price. For the many parties that she gave, she was, she declared, too poor to provide the liquor “so I’m trying to introduce the Brazilians to the concept of bring your own bottle.” The obvious question, why the hell do you give parties if you can’t afford to? Of course I didn’t ask that.

It was pretty damn obvious this attempt to introduce Brazilians to American values had failed miserably. To bring liquor to a party you had been invited to in Brazil would be an insult to most Brazilian hosts. It would imply that you thought they were too poor or worse still, stingy to put on a proper spread. The last party I attended at Melissa’s house, the beer ran out quickly and the other guests and I left about thirty seconds after that.

“Some wine would be great. And try and get here by sundown.” There was apparently some deep significance to this that I forgot immediately.

My mother used to drag me to museums which had the result of making me wary of anything culture. Call me shallow I guess. But as I grow older I have come to understand that looking at a Degas painting or admiring a dinosaur skeleton is not something that just the people you used to make fun of (hey weirdo!) in school enjoyed.

Melissa was one of those people I had known for years but until recently we had never had a conversation of more than five minutes. We met at a party, a typical ex-pat affair in this case made up mostly of teachers from the local English-speaking school. The majority was woman, and most of them seemed to have taken a break from sex with white men. Their swarthy partners inevitably looked like they spent most of their lives inside a gym or attending to their Adonis bodies. And the kind of shit that spewed from their mouths confirmed this. They guarded their conquests like a pot of gold.

These women represented a ticket to the United States or another rich country where in local imagination the streets were still filled with gold and more gullible white women seeking the ‘native’ experience. This is of course a grossly unfair generalization, but what the hell, this isn’t some academic paper.

Melissa had scored with one of these native trophies, though this guy was demure and happy to let Melissa be the dominant one in the partnership. She was way into that.

I ended the evening talking to a lovely fake blond from Australia called Sharon.

“If I wasn’t my black stage, we could have maybe made a go of it.” She was hilarious; one of the most fun things in the world is getting ribald with a woman you know there is absolutely no chance you’ll sleep with.

Her man was someone of seriously ambiguous sexuality. At another party where the liberal flow of alcohol resulted in communal passing out, another way of saying everybody got shitfaced, a friend of mine woke up to find Sharon’s man’s hand on his crotch. On his face he had an impish grin.

“Come on, let’s f***.” He said leeringly.

My friend was astonished and not particularly impressed. But he’s got the acerbic humor from Britain to deal elegantly with such matters.

“Nothing against you Carlos, or what you like, but would you mind getting your fingers off my dick.”

Sharon didn’t seem to mind that her man played both sides of the field because when in his female-liking stage he served her well, ‘if you know what I mean,” she said mischievously, opening her hands as if she was measuring a piece of wood.

These parties generally ended up well with everyone dancing, the flow of cultural interaction, as Anthropologists like to say, oiled by drink and much else. And in Brazil, you don’t have to worry about the Cops closing down the party. The sun usually does that, no sins below the equator, etc.. There should be a top ten list of countries where it’s best to party, like in the same league with who produces the most cars, or has the best per capita income. Like in football, Brazil would be in the top five every year. That shit is important.

Sharon went back to Darwin a few months after the party, and I ran into Melissa once over the course of about five years. She was now pregnant with a boy, apparently, who was to be named Carlos. The leading character of the novella passing at that time was called also called Carlos. She was not that amused when I asked whether she’d named her new born after the main character of the novella passing at the time. Irony was like a Chinese word to Melissa.

I should have been warned off early about getting too involved with her. But I wasn’t because she was interesting and smart, and with beer her self-aggrandizement (said in what she thought a modest way) was tolerable. Or at least I initially thought so. She’d had some cool experiences.

Example, she met Patty Smith or, “we hung out,” as she told me in her Elizabeth, New Jersey accent, a place on the Jersey turnpike it’s probably better not to stop at. She sang in some bar in the East Village I was meant to have heard of and wrote poetry. She’d had a book published. She lent it to me and I guess I’ve never really understood poetry correctly.

‘Men’

Men don’t like me
Because
I drink too much
Because
Men don’t like me.

Men with
Grey
Hair
Make me
Want to
F***
Teenagers.

Or another that concluded:

“He’ll suck my nipples but he won’t read my poetry.”

But her poetry was appreciated by some people, called ‘clairvoyant’ and ‘cleverly libidinous’ by certain esteemed critics whose names were completely foreign to me.

“Wasn’t Marianne Faithful awesome?” Yeah, she was cool enough, no doubt. I put her in the category of woman singers like Marlene DietrichMarlene Dietrich, Kim NovakKim Novak, Edith Piaf, Billy Holiday, Linda Ronstadt or Lori Anderson, slightly off artists, some of whom used tons of drugs. But it wasn’t her music that Melissa was talking about.

“Well, she f***** three of the Rolling Stones. No shit, Mick, Keith and Ronnie.” People from New Jersey love to swear, it’s one of their positive characteristics. I wanted to ask if she knew these guys intimately enough to be calling them by their first names. I hate it when people refer to stars by their first name, like ‘yeah Bob he’s the King of Reggae’ or some such nonsense.

She’d been hired by the American school to teach the sons of the elite who think that because the school curriculum is in English the school is actually any good. This is not always the case. She taught kindergarten when one of the little buggers escaped and started to run to the road and she grabbed it, too forcefully apparently. A parent had seen, disapproved and she was fired. What, you’re meant to try and negotiate with a kid running out into the street now? This was not just cause.

She found another job but was always complaining about money.

“It sucks to be poor,” she would start to moan if at all provoked.

When people say stuff like that, and you live in a developing country with tons of really poor people, you want to take them aside nicely and say, “look, you’re wealthier than 90% of the population so shut the f*** up.”

So the signs were there and there had been several events before the Passover ordeal that showed that Melissa was the kind of person who sucked energy, and didn’t give enough in return to be worth it.

There was the sing along fiasco. My nephew and I were invited to join Melissa as she strummed along to Simon and Garfunkel and Bob DylanBob Dylan tunes. We’d hoped there would be a bunch of people so we could sit around and quietly take the piss out of such a camp setting. But there was only Willy, a gay American ex-pat who, like his American sisters had abandoned the Caucasian race for the local lads. I don’t think Willy was aware of the British use of his name, or maybe he was and liked it or it caused him to be gay.

He was happy to sing but insistent we join in to.

“Come on, guys, stop being such wusses.” We did try on one song but Melissa made several mistakes which destroys the rhythm completely. I wondered what her band was like in the Village.

Willy was a translator and had been in Bahia for fifteen years. He was pleasant enough but was a little pushy about the having to sing part so we got out of there pretty quickly. There was no beer obviously.

Another occasion was the Thanksgiving Dinner. I expected to be asked to bring a bottle of wine, no problem (I’d bring two because she undoubtedly would not be providing) but was a little surprised by her phone call.

“I feel a little awkward, but would you mind bringing the turkey?”

That’s the first Thanksgiving dinner that’s ever happened to me and believe me I won’t be going if it happens again. Hey, you don’t invite people for Thanksgiving and not provide at least a turkey. Have them bring the fucking potatoes and vegetables, pecan pie or whatever but for Christ’s sake have the damn turkey.

“I don’t want to have a dead bird in my icebox,” was the pretty pithy excuse Melissa offered up.

“Well are you a vegetarian?” I asked and learned that she wasn’t. Whatever.

My nephew also suffered through that, where Willy was once again present, this time in the role of supportive friend and entertainment. He was constantly going ‘oo’ or ‘oh gross’ about stuff, usually when someone was talking about sex. My nephew with, it must be said, little tact, whispered, “I wonder what he says when he’s got a dick up his arse.”

So call me an idiot for accepting this last invitation, but there was the cultural interest I referred to.

As instructed, I arrived exactly at six o’clock when the sun is finally extinguished quickly by darkness in places close to the equator, like when the lights go down in a cinema. Well, almost. The table was set for eight but I was the only guest that had arrived.

Melissa’s son not named after the soap opera character, Carlos, was not what you’d call a settled kid. He darted around like a wild animal, jumping on shit, avoiding eye contact and completely ignoring his mother’s pleas that he act like a normal, civilized, boy. He was like one of those ally cats that recoil from affection and just snarl at you and puff their tails outs. You kind of just want to give him a good slap. He was probably going to grow up to be a kind of weird dude.

Brazilians aren’t good at punctuality, it’s just a fact. And Melissa’s agitation about something so inevitable seemed pointless.

“And Bob and Renata, they’re American.” Renata was not in fact but being married to one meant you should get with the ‘arrive on-time’ program, was Melissa’s take on the situation.

Bob was the principal of the American school. He was one of these all-American types who just choose to live out of the United States all their lives without ever intending to live there again. He’d taught in Nepal, Australia, Colombia, Italy and Brazil.

“I’m gunning for a post in Africa, that would be all five continents, maybe Angola or Mozambique, those sound like cool places.”

The guy was clearly international, but he clung to American culture with a fury, the greatness of America, keeping up with all the sports, barbecuing hamburgers and hotdogs at the weekend. No matter where he ended up he would always be the completely American guy from Kansas City, Missouri. I liked Bob.

His wife had been his Portuguese teacher. They should do a survey of how many foreign men marry Brazilian woman. Another ex-pat who’s lived here for thirty years, put it this way.

“In the States I’m just a short average looking white guy; here I’m exotic, which is, by the way, a lot better for your sex life.”

Bob was perhaps a little too forthcoming on the details of his courtship, part of that folksy American side.

“I used to watch her ass wiggling as she was writing on the board,” he boasted later at dinner. I wasn’t sure I needed to know that.

Anyway, they hadn’t showed so I handed Melissa the bottles and offered to open the wine.

“Oh no, we can’t do that.”

What? This was a huge fucking drag. There was a large glass already filled with wine and I felt like grabbing it. This was reserved for Elijah, who would visit the house and be placated by the offering. But what about the guests, don’t they get to drink? What kind of raw deal was that, what to placate us?

“This is a religious ceremony,” Melissa reminded me with appropriate curtness. She was right, of course, which is why I am so bad a religious stuff.

Conversation withered without enological stimulation, as by now I realized I was in for a long night, no getting out of it.

She put on Bob Marley’s Exodus. At least that.

We’re leaving Babylon

We’re going to our father land

Exodus, Movement of the People

Send us another Brother Moses

From across the Dead Sea

Exodus, Movement of the People.

Now the Rastafarians, they’ve got religion right. Get baked and go into the spiritual realm that has been opened up by the ganja, that’s the way to celebrate Jesus. Like they do with peyote, that is truly transcendental.

But there were no Rastas in sight, just Melissa and I. She had those Brady Bunch type family pictures spread all over the place, with her son slightly darker and with curlier hair than his lily white cousins.

“My dad’s like the Jewish Urban Cowboy,” she said when she saw me checking out the picture on the wall of a man wearing a Cowboy hat and one of those tie things that are fashionable in the world of Cowboy fashion. .

“So does he ride one of those mechanical bulls?”

Her reply, ‘probably’, showed she was not particularly close. He hadn’t done such a ‘great job’ at being a father.

Her tastes in literature and music were almost completely American. Walt WhitmanWalt Whitman, Mark TwainMark Twain, Flannery O’Connor, Paul Auster type of stuff. Her music tastes eclectic but aside from the Beatles and Rolling Stones almost entirely American also, Grateful Dead, The Doors, John Coltrane, Theolonius Monk, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Dolly PartonDolly Parton. I did get some excellent reads from Melissa, I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything in this assessment of her.

“I loved that book by that British author you gave.” She said it like I’d acquired it on another planet.

On another book I gave her.

“I just love that Amos OzAmos Oz book you lent me. Thanks so much for introducing me to him. I had no idea he existed.” It was nice to be appreciated of course and I was happy to bring new pleasing things into people’s lives. Call me a sort of cultural ambassador if you will. Oz, a renowned Israeli writer, was so depressing I wished I hadn’t discovered him, his gloomy and lugubrious characters ruminating about the futility of life, easy to do if you live in the Middle East, I guess.

I prayed for Bob and Renata’s arrival, the most religious thing I did all evening, which did eventually happen. No excuse was offered for their nearly one and a half hour tardiness, and Melissa was reduced to saying, “You guys sure took your time” in a joking voice which was obviously not a joke at all.

Another Brazilian guest arrived, equally without an excuse for making people wait for him, and so we could begin the party, excuse me celebration.

I once had a cultured girlfriend who used to take me every year to the Kennedy Center at Christmas to watch Handel’s Messiah. Very beautiful and all, nice setting, I’m not a complete philistine. It’s just alarming that when you follow the words, you think you’ve managed to plough through four pages than they go back to the beginning. The whole damn thing starts again. You want ‘Halleluiah’ expunged from the English dictionary when it’s finally over. The Passover Ceremony was like that for me, with Melissa in full control, as she had machinated.

First she explained about the unleavened bread and how the Israelites (not Israelis as Renata had said) had to flee before the bread could rise. One of the things she liked most about this holiday was the ritual of her parents hiding the matzoth and then the kids having to find it. She wanted her son to go out of the room so she could reenact this. He was having none of it.

“Carlos, please honey.” Carlos nodded his headed frantically from side to side too forcefully. It was all a little embarrassing as this went on. Her authority over her son was tenuous to say the least.

“Okay, I’ll give you five dollars if you do.” This was desperation on Melissa’s part and I for one was glad for her son’s venal vulnerability. Bribing is effective at any age one supposes.

We were handed programs and each were assigned certain readings, I felt like those English classes when we would read pages of books out loud. The thing was, Melissa had about 95% of the lines, something she clearly was relishing. Occasional parts were in Hebrew, so we obviously had no idea what the f*** that was about. I remembered why I hadn’t attended Church in thirty years, just the overwhelming boredom. It was comforting to know that Judaism was just as tiresome on its poor adherents.

The toasts finally came and eventually we got to eat. The thing had gone on about two hours longer than I was up for, but when the ceremony was over the conversation got more lively, or rather we didn’t all have to pay rapt attention to Melissa.

With about 99% of Americans who live abroad, you can vent against George BushGeorge Bush and be sure it will spur more venting from others, horrified at the imbecile who’s done wonders to mess up the world even more.

“I just can’t believe the American people voted for that idiot. I mean, the guy’s a fucking moron.” Bob reminded us that nearly 50% of the people hadn’t voted against him. Still that the guy got elected in the first place, come on, give me a break.

Melissa gave a remarkable show of complete insouciance to her surroundings.

“When I was young, I would never go out with bald men but now, I’ll consider sleeping with them I guess.” This is a perfectly innocuous statement unless every man in the room you were addressing was bald or on his way to being.

“Well, Melissa, you’re not exactly Marilyn MonroeMarilyn Monroe and I’d have to have drunk about forty beers to find you attractive.” I was thinking this, of course I wasn’t saying it. As you can see, I have no complex at all at being bald.

When Bob sneaked out to smoke a cigarette, Melissa declared that she ‘fucking hated smoking.’ But she had smoked for twenty years. She was the self-righteous reformed smoker. There are few worse species on this earth.

That was two years ago and was the last time I saw Melissa. At the end of the Passover ceremony, she had to pay Carlos ten dollars to look for the Matzoth crackers she’d hidden. Nothing like the spontaneous participation by the youth in age old traditions.

She decided that she would always be poor here in Brazil, but in America she could climb up the educational establishment ladder.

A couple of weeks ago she called, she was going to be in town for a month or so.

“I have a box of books I don’t want to throw away so I wanted to give them to you.”

This was a tempting offer, but the cost would be too much. An evening with Melissa. I’d had too many of them already, so I lied and said I’d be traveling for two weeks. When she called the day I said I’d come back, I started not answering the phone for the next two weeks. Cowardly, I know, but understandable after what I had been through. I do wonder what was in the box of books though.