The Day I Found You

by Pedro Chagas Freitas

Nobody deserves to outlast their dreams.

  And there’s no grandma now and there’s no grandad. There’s the smell of the hot kitchen with my dreams inside it. The smell of the bedroom where I hid, under the bed, to hear the grown-ups talk. The new words, big words, bad words. That tight hug from uncle André – ‘you’re becoming quite the strapping lad, my boy’ – around my childhood back. The empty house with what I am inside it.

  Nobody deserves to survive what he kills.

  And to have a father and a mother. Only when the house empties do you learn what a father is worth, what a mother is worth. And it doesn’t matter what had been, what was yet to be. It doesn’t matter what words we said one day, the mistakes that one day we didn’t avoid making. Father’s thick voice doesn’t matter either – ‘you must be a serious man’ – nor does mother’s unspoken pain. It doesn’t matter what was lost when you have a father and a mother to hold. Here we still are, mother. Here we still are, father.

  Nobody knows what loss means as long as they still have a mother and a father to hug.

  And as long as I have your shoulders to rest upon, no tears will die alone.

  ‘You could have fucked with everything but the illusion.’

  On the esplanade where we met, the end of the world at the end of an afternoon like the end of the afternoon when life started to make sense.

  ‘The end of an illusion, it’s the biggest sonofabitch in the world.’

  And the city seems to shut itself off with each step I take. Your words are no longer there. Your hands are no longer there, the wrinkly skin – ‘they’re the hands of my soul; inside I’m an adorable little old lady’ – of your hands. And time. Time is like a penitence I must pay.

  Each minute without you I live through the whole life I had with you.

  The esplanade without your body, the esplanade without your voice. The cruelty of a happy world. How is it possible to be happy after love like this?

  ‘When your illusions are fucked, everything is fucked.’

  I told you I could bear it. I told you that the meaning of life was to be found in keeping going. I believed it. I even believed that keeping-going really existed. And it does. Everything I do is exactly that, just that. Desperately that. Going on. Without you, I go on. I go on, myself.

  Losing you changed everything even if everything remains the same.

  I already can’t say how long it’s been since I died. How long with that empty esplanade. How long your back – ‘grab me like that, squeeze me like that, I like feeling your chest behind me, your sex growing in your trousers’ – the distance from your back on the esplanade in which everything was done and everything was undone. I already can’t say where the desire for one more day is to be found.

  ‘Don’t think my hating you means I don’t love you.’

  The illusion. That bitch illusion. I let it fall. I let it slip. I let life take care of us. And laziness. That bitch laziness. I let it advance on us, and conquer, one day at a time, a few inches of land. I let the house where two people loved each other become the house where two people lived.

  Houses are not for living in; houses are for loving in.

  Ours is still here. Really ours even if all that remains is one lost man. Your wardrobe intact, your fingerprints on the glass as proof you still exist. The mirror in which you looked at yourself after you came – ‘I like knowing what an orgasm looks like, what an orgasm does to my skin’ – and the message I wrote with tears and the lipstick you forgot on the bedside table: ‘There’s always time for one more illusion.’

  Come back now or die for ever.

  And if it’s already too late, forget about your watch and go.

  An embrace from you always arrives on time.

  Silence, there’s going to be love.

  All loves begin like this. In the silence of a look, in the silence of one hand depending on the other, another vagrant hand wandering the night-time city of your body, in the silence of lips chewed, changed, massaged, embraced, and embraced again. All loves are an extended silence.

  It’s essential to tell politics to go fuck itself. It’s essential to understand that only what’s politically incorrect can bring happiness. It’s essential to refuse what is sold to you and buy only what is not for sale.

  Nothing worthwhile has a price.

  It’s essential to love silence. Reject anyone who rejects it. Demand that they respect it as God is respected.

  And only those who do not love fear silence.

  It’s essential to demand silence. Keep words for after the orgasm, for after the sin.

  All sin forgets your words.

  And no word is so great that it can be said to unite us.

  Silence is essential between two people who want to speak to each other. Silence is essential for love to be heard.

  And ‘I love you’ is a word that is only said like this:

  Sssshhh.

  The great advantage of life is that it teaches us to cry again. Life is infantilising. It becomes greater as it makes us smaller. It grows outside whatever is lost inside. We spend our childhood wanting to grow, our adolescence wanting to grow. And then we understand that the only people who want to grow are those who still feel small. An adult feels small but thinks the opposite. He feels small and wants to get smaller. Go back to a time when there were dreams.

  Where are dreams lost?

  All dreams are lost. Even those that you will gain, and you will gain many, they’ll all be lost. Because they’ve already stopped being dreams. You dreamed this, you got this. And that’s that. There it went, the dream. The secret is managing to generate new dreams. Dreams that can occupy the white space left by the dream you have lost.

  Even if it was gained.

  Even if it was gained.

  It wanted to be like you.

  And I wanted to be like you. I wanted to look ahead and see that the path doesn’t end, the path as far as the eye could see.

  Does yours not go as far as the eye can see?

  Mine makes me unable to see. I see less every day. And every day I see more behind me. Growing up is seeing better behind you with each passing day and being unable to see ahead. Growing up is an illness of the eyes. You get less and less able to see what’s behind you. As if you were walking backwards.

  Is growing old walking backwards?

  Yes. You’re walking in the opposite direction to the way you’re looking. You’re looking forward and dreaming only backwards.

  Is dreaming backwards dangerous?

  Dreaming backwards can kill. You have to be a child. You have to look at a wrinkle as though you’re looking at an Action Man or a Barbie. Take it out of the box, be fascinated by it, investigate it, understand that it’s nothing but folded skin: fascinating folded skin. Learning to grow old is learning to play. Being old is learning everything all over again. The world changed when you changed. The world grew old when you grew old. What used to be a banality is now an impossibility. You want to play football and you can’t, you want to dance all night and you can’t. And your life is many hours of your day of this: you want to and you can’t. The world has changed for you. You need to learn everything all over again. What to do, how to do it. You have to invent yourself so as not to be completely wiped out. There’s no sadder moment than the one when you desire something and your body prevents you from having something. The body is a bastard. Cover your ears now, please.

  I’ve covered them.

  Now listen carefully: the body’s a son of a bitch. Never pay it any attention. If the body gives you orders, tell it to fuck off. The body’s only good for offering you false hope. It makes you believe yourself capable of everything, feeding you with feelings. And then taking them away. One by one, slowly, to increase the pain. You just need to be able to discover new feelings.

  Like a child?

  Like a child. However few toys a child has, he will always have all the toys in the world. A child who makes a pair of socks a plane, a chicken bone the
Eiffel Tower, a torn jersey a set of football gear. Growing old is transforming a body unable to have the expected feelings into an amusement park to be explored.

  I’ve got to go. My teacher’s already called me.

  Go. Learn. But not too much. Knowing too much always goes wrong. Limit yourself to illusions.

  I like you.

  And I you. That’s what you must never lose. The capacity to like.

  One day I’m going to be big.

  One day I’m going to be small again. I promise.

  Once you are resigned, there’s nothing left for you but to be buried.

  Worse than the illnesses, worse than the economic crisis, worse than the defeats that happen every day, the world’s great drama is resignation. Complete and utter (and sad, so sad) resignation. Resignation is the absence of dreams, the absence of goals, the absence of plans, the absence of desires: the absence of revolution. And there is less and less revolution in the world. If there’s no revolution you can be anything, but you definitely can’t be happy.

  The problem with the world isn’t massification; it’s mass equivocation.

  The equivocating of the masses. The world’s problem is linguistic. The problems of the world are not convulsions, but conjunctions. The diabolical obsession with the yet, with the though, with the however. And yet is a fucker. Although is a fucker. However is a fucker. Ninety-eight percent of people say ‘and yet’ whenever they speak; and the other two percent are happy. However many difficulties they have (and they have so, so many), however much it may sometimes seem that it won’t be possible to get there (and there are so, so many times). However much everything might be telling them ‘and yet’, there are still always people who don’t resign themselves.

  The big secret to being alive, obvious as it may seem, is not to die till you’re buried.

  Up till that point, you have an obligation to dream, to plan, to believe. Up till then you have an obligation to try. That at least: try. It’s never too late to try. If you’re eighty years old and still want to feel the best orgasm of your life: go on – try. If you’re ninety years old and you still want to write the book of your life: go on – try. If you’re a hundred years old and you still want to find a woman to love: go on – try. Perhaps you won’t succeed, most probably. But only what’s improbable is worth it. Even happiness, if it’s foreseeable, is a sadness.

  Believing in the improbable is, probably, the best decision you can make in your life.

  And seeing. Risking seeing. Really seeing. Seeing what only you can see. You see things that nobody else sees; I see things that nobody else sees. Everybody sees things that nobody else sees. And it’s from these sights I have and you have that the evolution of the world is made. The world only advances when these sights are transformed into implementations: into real acts, into palpable matter. Believe in what you see, and take a chance on what you see being the only kind of altruism the world gives you to implement. Bet on what is yours alone. That’s the only way you can bet on everything that is ours.

  The blindest person is not one who cannot see; nor even one who doesn’t want to see. The blindest person is the one who only sees.

  Maybe using pen names is the only acceptable madness.

  And there’s no name for something that has no definition. I go by what I think, by what I feel – and not by what others call me. But even what they call me does make me. Perhaps if I were Carlos I wouldn’t love the same people, perhaps if I were Fernando I wouldn’t wish for my wishes, I wouldn’t know the same things I know.

  Perhaps your name is your inside skin.

  And we have several names on our skin. But when we are in pain we hurt with the right name. If I am to hurt I will always be Pedro. I will embrace the names I love with all my letters, I won’t allow any reserve to keep me away from the words that define me. Until the time comes for running away. And I can be a fearful man in my own recklessness, a vagrant woman in my reason. When the time comes for running away all people are inside me. And it’s only like this that I can escape from what, even if I’m not, only I can be.

  Perhaps being many people is the sole allowed form of solitude.

  The nights pass and the days pass, and through them people pass, I pass among the people who wander past and who wander past me, without knowing what I’m writing, why I’m writing, for whom I’m writing. And I write. I’m always me, that bastard Pedro, as I write Daniel, and Miguel, and Joana, and Maria. And everything Pedro writes is, even if it’s not, what only Pedro can be.

  Perhaps making things up is the sole practicable kind of truth.

  There are people who don’t understand what writing is. I don’t understand what writing is. And that’s why I write.

  Perhaps writing is the only possible victory.

  The drama of loving is not having substitutes.

  And everything else tastes like shit. Because there was your embrace, because your smell exists. I loved you for ever even though I have already stopped loving you. I have kept within me the evening of our body for the first time (your panting showing me what language is spoken in heaven, your mouth showing me the size of a kiss), and from that evening I was an orphan of a body whenever it was not your body. And when the day came to say goodbye I knew that the day of for ever had arrived.

  The drama of loving is not accepting death.

  There is one woman too many whenever I love a body that is not yours. And a man too few. I lie down, hug, squeeze (the perfect fit of your back in my arms, the smell of your lips on the sweat of my neck). And even an orgasm confirms the hypocrisy of the flesh. I said goodbye to orgasms when I said goodbye to you. I’ve been to bed with so many women already and it’s always your goodnight that puts me to sleep.

  The drama of loving is creating only replicas.

  Everything I love is you. One mouth, one skin, one sex. Everything I love is you. And there is no oxymoron more perfect than ‘new love’. Your love alone is new. And there is no succession to a reign like that. Loving you is a fascist monarchy, a dictatorship within me. What comes after you only comes after you. Always after you. Every time after you. What comes after you only comes after me, and wherever I am, I am either alone waiting for you or I am alone with you. If love exists it is because you exist.

  The drama of loving is loving you.

  Suck one another: that is what a real God ought to say.

  Our bodies are not for living; our bodies are for loving. And I must explore every vein to learn what blood you are made of.

  ‘Use me up to what’s impossible,’ she asks, her samba hips along his obedient sex. ‘Either you reach deep into the bone or you’re still on the surface’, and no fingers have ever learned more than that whole dictionary, those pages and pages of incomplete theories.

  Consume one another: that is what a real God ought to say.

  Our bodies are not for living; our bodies are for consummation. And I must explore every taste if I am to learn what pleasure you are made of.

  ‘When I see that I’m going to make it, that’s when I give up,’ he explains, eyes lowered, hands on the threshold of her back. ‘Either you’re unreachable or you’re too close’, and the moment comes to discover everything again, the bed explored in the cleaver blade of an I Want.

  Come with one another: that is what a real God ought to say.

  Our bodies are not for living; our bodies are for flying.

  ‘The best thing about touching you is feeling untouchable myself,’ she explains, breathing laboured on the wet pillow, the whole roof and all the sky. ‘I open your legs to raise your feet off the ground’, and all the impossibilities rose up, all the divine mutinied.

  They said goodbye in search of the perfect recollection: the final orgasm and absolute love. Anything better (hands detaching themselves finger by finger, a pain so deep that even tears cannot reach it) seemed impossible to them there.

  (‘Whenever you open my legs I feel exposed.’)

  And it was.

 
; The most dangerous thing of all is what’s reasonable.

  What is not good or bad – it’s just pretty good, it’s pretty bad. What neither excites you nor depresses you, what offers neither orgasms nor tears. What neither heats nor cools.

  The most dangerous thing of all is what’s reasonable.

  And reason. Bastard reason. Ninety percent of people spend ninety percent of the time in search of what in ninety percent of cases is of no use whatsoever. Bastard reason. And then there’s the ‘I told you so’, the ‘I wouldn’t have done it like that’, the appalling ‘that’s what I said’. All because of the bastard reason. All because of the beast reason.

  Only those who aren’t afraid of not being reasonable can be bestial.

  Those who know they can be wrong. Those who know that they’re constantly making one cock-up after another. Not because they want to. Not because they’re not trying. But just because they did, they took the risk, because they took that step forward when the beasts were all around them, shitscared, telling them to stop here.

  Better an idiot that fails than a genius that endures.

  And I’m the guy who tries. The guy who wants things different to everything he sees. The guy who when he sees something cool doesn’t criticise, resentfully, whoever did it – and who seeks, on the contrary, to do even better. I’m that arrogant guy who believes he can do better than everything he sees. And who does everything he can just for the sake of doing it. He might not succeed (and only he knows how it feels to be constantly over on this side, miles away from what you wish you’d done, from what you wish you’d produced). But he tries. He really does try. He tries without hesitation. And he subjects himself to the criticisms of the petty little beasts. Of those who spend their lives pointing the finger (and it’s so easy to point the finger; anyone can point the finger; when you have nothing but a finger to point you point the finger in order to endure: to bear the weight of your inability to do). Of those who are always bloody reasonable because they never dare, not for a single moment, to do more than others have already done. Who are, and always will be, assistants. Eternal assistants. Guys and girls who will never lose their job – because they’re sheltered behind those who show their face, who give their souls, their lives, for what they believe in.