Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [40]
“Is this common that people go to these Love Motels?” I asked him as we drove out. “Are there many of them in Salvador?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, apparently relieved to be talking about anything. “And some of them are very fancy, with ceilings that open, fetish rooms, swimming pools, whatever you want, depending upon what you can pay. It’s what everybody does here. If you live with your parents until you get married, what are you going to do? You have to go somewhere. And if you want to have an affair, it’s a safe place to do it. Once you drive your car in, it’s in a garage, hidden, and no one knows where you are. You could be having an affair in one room and your wife in the next and neither of you would know the difference.”
I nodded. “Interesting.” I touched his hand that was on the wheel. “Thank you for being so polite,” I said.
He glanced at me and gave me an irritated look. “Of course,” he said. “What would you expect?”
Later, I made the mistake of telling Luzia about all this. She broadcasted my story to her theater friends at the Bastidor. Bastidor, meaning “backstage,” was a bar close to our apartment that was frequented by theater and film people. It also attracted a wide variety of genders, colors, and identities. The owners were a flamboyantly gay middle-aged man and a transgendered person who made loud rude jokes with everyone while she waited tables.
None of them would let me forget my faux pas. They would think up the most outlandish slang or euphemism for Love Motel and invite me. Luzia loudly encouraged me to go out with a man commonly known as Mala (mala means “suitcase” in Portuguese).
“Why is he called mala?” I asked.
“Because he packs a large suitcase!” Luzia replied amid loud guffaws from the entire bar. Mala, I had just discovered, was also a slang word for “penis.”
Just when I thought my Portuguese was great, something would happen, and I’d realize how little I knew. As a part of my research, I had developed a relationship with the Anthropology Department of a major local university. My second grant was running out. I wanted to stay, so I had begun discussing with the department the possibility of becoming a visiting professor and teaching some seminars for them. They liked the idea and invited me to give a paper on my research at the university, in Portuguese, of course. I spent weeks on it. Because my written Portuguese was not nearly as good as my spoken Portuguese, I wrote the paper in English, knowing I could loosely translate as I gave the talk.
The day of the lecture arrived, and I was presented to an audience that included faculty, other academics, and graduate students. I began to speak. Gradually, I noticed that within the polite silence, I heard periodic titters. I wasn’t sure I had heard correctly until the titters became giggles. Then came periodic outbreaks of loud laughter, followed by people nearly falling off their chairs in an uproar. It was as though I were a very successful comedienne. I bit back distress and tried not to let my humiliation show. What was I doing wrong?
Finally, an Italian colleague came up to the podium and intervened. “At least it is clear that she works in the favelas she writes about,” he said. Resounding laughter.
After the paper, people asked me questions, even wanted to go out for a beer, but I only forced a smile, shook my head, and ran for the bus home. I arrived at the apartment in tears. Luzia made me a cup of tea and sat me down. I told her what happened.
She stroked my hair. “Oh, Margaret,” she said. “It wasn’t your paper or your ideas. It’s your Portuguese.” I burst into tears again. “No, no,” she said gently. “It’s not bad. The Portuguese is fluent. It’s just that, well, it’s not middle-class. Your accent, the way you use your verbs, the slang