For now, I’m Joãotónio. I’ll say it and then I’ll unsay it: when it comes to women, I advance like the army. ’Cause my whole encounter with them feels like a battle. What I mean is the minute I look at a woman, I already start wondering: what’s her voice like? It’s not her audible voice that piques my interest, but the other, silent one, disembodied, capable of speaking as many languages as water. In other words: what I want to decipher is her moans, these wings sliding to the edge of the abyss, the chill that runs up the soul when it’s lost its home.
You know what I’m talking about, bro: a person’s voice obscures the sweet taste of her sighing. The voice conceals the way she sighs. I can already hear your question: what’s this obsession with unravelling the secrets behind the way a woman sighs? It’s the same desire a general has, bro. It’s the taste of the enemy’s surrender. It’s the desire to hear in advance the way they make love, subdued and abandoned.
Sometimes, I stop to think: deep down, I’m afraid of women. Aren’t you? You are, I’m sure of it. Their thoughts come from a place that’s beyond reason. That’s where our fear comes in: we’re unable to make sense of their way of thinking. Their superiority frightens the hell out of us, bro. That’s why we see them as well-versed adversaries in a battle. But let me get back to the beginning—just look at me, screeching like a hairpin turn, swerveering off into this pseudo-philosophizing. And start your listening over, too.
For the time being, I’m still Joãotónio. What I’m telling you now is the fiction of my unhappiness. Don’t go telling this to everyone. I’m trusting you, bro. ’Cause it’s not just anyone who makes his troubles public. What I’m about to write is cause for shame.
I’ll start with Maria Zeitona, source of all urges. As I write the name of this woman, I can still hear her voice, smooth as a bird’s wings. I already told you: a woman’s voice is as important as her body. It whets the appetite more than appearances or seductions ever could, at least for me.
As I wasn’t saying: Maria Zeitona seemed to be intact and untouchable. She gave off suspicion like an ember beneath ashes. Her body spoke through her eyes. And what crystalluminous eyes! We were married in an instant. I wanted nothing more than to suffer the promise of that inferno. I was marrying to consummate the ardencies swarming round my dreams. But the bad news, my brother: Maria Zeitona was ice-cold, frigelid! It was as if I were making love to a corpse. You could say we maintained asexual relations. And that’s how she stayed more virgin than Mother Mary. I tried, I tried again, I used every technique from the whole of my experience. All the same, bro: for nothing. Zeitona was damp firewood: flames could not touch her.
I changed tactics, I gave her worthy surprises. I ran through all the preliminaries I knew. I even kissed the tips of her toes. Still no luck. A kiss is neither given nor received. It’s life that does the kissing, and the kissing back. I’ll say it again, bro: it’s life that kisses us, two beings in an infinite moment. Enough with the family chat? All right, got it, bro, I’ll get back to this subject of mine, Maria Zeitona.
At the end of these campaigns, I gave her a penultimatum: either she sweetened up or I’d resort to unfortunate measures. And that’s what didn’t happen. That, bro, is when I made my decision: I’d send Zeitona to a prostitute. That’s right, my little Zeitona would intern with a pro of the romp and raze. That’s how she’d learn to tangle in the sheets. At last she’d commit immortal sin.
It didn’t take long for me to find the right instructor: it would be Maria Mercante, the renowned bacchanalian, with an innate talent for horizontal acts. Dark-skinned, deep-dipped Black. Possessor of savoury fillings. In this world, there are two creatures that use their rear to get ahead in life: the wild boar and Maria Mercante. I got straight to the point with that piece of tail:
—Please, give my wife a lesson in nuptial twistings and turnings!
—Rest assured, sir. It’s no use for a woman to be known for her qualities: she needs to have qualifications!
And the able prostitute got to work. She held forth on irrelevant subjects—perhaps just to increase the price of these lessons. Zeitona would leave virginity behind with more regrets than the only one to have conceived without sin. Zeitona knew the math: the Virgin Mary had, in the end, turned down the visit of the Holy Spirit. She’d responded in these terms:
—Bear a child without making love? Where’s the pleasure in that? Go without food but get stuck belching anyway? I’ll teach Zeitona. None of these platonics: sex at first sight.
I interrupted her, directing the conversation to my more material woes. Advanced payment guaranteed, Maria Mercante accepted the job. I could rest assured: my wife would leave her tutelage hotter than the midday sun. We’d ruffle the sheets until the mattress begged for urgent repairs. And off Zeitona went to this place of ill repute. We might as well say it: an undressing room.
Weeks passed. The course ended, my wife came back home. She was, indeed, a changed woman. She had a different way about her but not in the way I’d expected. Man, I’m almost ashamed to admit it: all of a sudden my little Zeitona came on like a man! She, who usually sat back on her heels, was now leading the charge! That is and was: my Zeitona oozed manliness. And not just when making love. The entire time, in everything she did. Her voice, even. Everything in her had changed, bro, to the point I had to scratch my male parts just to be sure they were still there. I’m telling you: she was the one who pushed me to the bed—you better believe it. She’s the one who turned me on, took my breath away. I lay there like a spectator, commanded and directed like a girl during her first time. And it’s that way to this day.
The problem, bro, is this: I kinda like it. It’s tough for me to admit it, so much so that I hesitate to write this. But the truth is that I’m enjoying this new position of mine, my era of passive initiate, being on the bottom, the embarrassment, the fear.
That’s it, bro. Explain it to me, if you can. I don’t know what to think. At first, I would make excuses: after all, there are several versions of the truth that can claim to be truthful. For example: when it comes to sex, there’s no male/female. The two lovers join into a single, binary being. There was no reason to think I’d been given a lower position. You following, my brother?
But now, at the moment I write, I no longer have any appetite for explanations. Only for unreason. Every day the one thing I look forward to is nighttime, the quiet storms when I become Joãotónio and Joanantónia, man and woman, in my wife’s virile arms. But for now, bro, I’m still Joãotónio. I’m saying goodbye, meanderly, to my real name.