AS EVERYTHING BURNS

 

 

 AS EVERYTHING BURNS
Based on  “WHAT DO I DO WHEN EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE” by Antonio Lobo Antunes     

Re-imagined & Adapted By  John-Phillip Bettencourt

1.

It’s cold. I feel cold. I can’t tell where I am. It’s almost like I’m sitting in the sun or laying on the floor on the warmest day of the year letting the sun plow through the window and bake my body—it’s that bright. But I don’t feel the warmth, I just see the brightness. I’ve opened my eyes, I feel hung over. Something tells me that I’ve been where ever I am for days, maybe weeks. It’s the smell. It’s the smell of something withering and dying, unwashed. It’s me. 

My eyes finally adjust to all the light—which is artificial. It’s a string of florescent lights buzzing above my body in a room with no windows and white washed walls. The white sheets feel rough on my naked skin, I can feel the fibers scratch as I try to wriggle out of the binds that are oddly tied around my wrists.

White walls. White gown. White sheets. 

“You must feel totally out of it. I was worried. We were all worried.” 

Someone is speaking to me. I turn my head to both sides to find the voice, my groggy mind feels upside-down. I can hear the voice and the sound of metal instruments clinking around me. 

“What the fuck is this?” –that’s my voice now—I recognize it, growling about the binds on my wrists--I then notice they're around my ankles too. 

“Paulo, relax for a second. I’m going to give you something to wake you up a bit.” The voice said as it slowly became attached to a beautiful, perfect face that hovered above my body. I knew this face. It’s my nurse Gabriella. Gabi. Gabi is here. 

She was dressed in her white hospital scrubs and looked like an angel with her light brown hair curled perfectly around her round face. Her lips so plump you’d think a bee attacked her. Those eyes were so green.

“What happened?” I ask. 

“You don’t remember? Of course, you don’t. Paulo, you had one of your ---” she pauses to concentrate right before she sticks me with a needle. I see the blood, my blood, flow into the glass swirling around then back into my arm with whatever medicine was in the vile. “You OD’ed again.” She finishes her statement. “You promised last time it was your last one, but I should have known better.”

“Fuck.” I say in a disappointed whisper, my head falling backwards onto the lumpy pillow. 

Gabriella, the beautiful and perfect nurse, was also my ex-girlfriend, had been in this situation before, maybe 7 times before, I've lost count but I have a feeling she hasn't. She always helps me and always helps my foster parents through it. The truth is, she’s an angel, but a frustrated one. I can tell she doesn’t want to get too close this time. Somehow, I always end up hurting her.

I do that. That’s what I do. I hurt people I love. Its what I was taught. If you love someone you hurt them because you love them, after all isn’t that how you show your love? 

Gabi has been through so much—because of me, and yet, she’s still here. She still smiles when she see’s me this way, tied to a bed smelling of shit and sweat and all things that are disgusting. My eyes blackened underneath and red inside, my hair, dingy and matted. But she’s smiling. She’s here, as my nurse and smiling because she loves me. 

“Did my parents come?” I said, my voice still snarled and tight in my throat. 

“They got here this morning. They went down to the cafeteria for a coffee.” She informs me with her back turned as she submerges a pristine white wash cloth with blue trim into a vat of warm soapy water. She turns back around to look at me while she wrings out the towel. “You can’t keep doing this to them.” 

I didn’t know what to say. I mean –I did, I should have said I was sorry and that I would never do it again and that I would stop the fucking heroin, but I knew that was a lie, she would know that would be a lie and what would it all be for? I lied about lying and I would lie again to cover that lie just for fun. I was disgusting and horrible. I knew it. They all knew it, but they all still came to the hospital and waited for me to get out and watched it happen all over again. What was the use of saying what was untrue?

“He’s awake!!” Its my foster mother  Alice said, bouncing into the windowless white room with scratchy bed-sheets and buzzing lights. She’s smiling ear to ear like I was here to remove my appendix. She was goods friends of my biological mother and had take me in with  her husband Antonio at the age of 12 after my parents divorced. 

“How do you feel?” Antonio asked right after, less happy to see me, but still here to see me. I shrugged at his question. I really didn’t know how I felt yet; Gabriella’s medicine kicked in and I felt like I was a bowl of pudding mushy and gross on this white bed. 

“This time will be different, won’t it son? You won't keep doing this to yourself.” Alice said to me as she always did after one of my OD’s. She kindly dabs my sweaty forehead and moves the sticky hair off. 

“I want it to be different.” I answer—that was the truth. 

“You do?” Antonio, always the skeptic barked. He was a cop, his job was to always be a skeptic mainly because he was a creature of evidence equals proof, and I haven’t EVER given him any evidence that I wanted things to be different, but I really did. 

“Where’s my father? Where’s my mother?” I asked them. Antonio shook his head frustrated by the question. Gabriella turned back around to the soapy water. 

“Son.” Alice said, her voice calm again. “You know where they are. You’ve known this all along.” 

She paused and looked into my eyes, I could't remember a damn thing. 

“Gabi, my love, can we get these ties off of him? He needs to eat and he can’t eat with his hands tied up.” Alice said, clearly avoiding the subject of my birth parents. They practically abandoned me with Alice and Antonio, I was almost 30 now, still living with them, and asking for them. It probably stung Alice a bit that I asked, I was curious. I felt like I needed them, my father. My mother. 

"Have you talked to them?" I asked again. Not a single response. 

Gabriella smiled and nodded at Alice's request for the removal of the binds. She dropped the warm towel back in the vat of soapy water and started to untie my right hand. Alice my left hand. Antonio, sat across from me in the only chair in the room and sipped his coffee, his legs tightly crossed in his tight police uniform pants. He was a big guy. Thick in body mass. Healthy and brawny for a man in his late 50s. He just sat there and watched me. I felt his disdain. I knew that he cared for me but like everyone else, he was tired of the mess of the life I had made, he just didn’t hide it as well as the Gabi and Alice, even thought they were bad at hiding it too.

“You’re going to come home. When Marina comes home and she sees you’re there too…she’ll be so excited.” Alice said to me as she massaged my wrist that was marked from the tight bands of the restraint. Antonio shook his head at Alice’s comment about Marina. 

Marina was Antonio and Alice’s only daughter, She’d been missing since she was 7 years old—15 years ago. Everyone in Lisbon had searched for her when she went missing that night. I remembered that I had been living with them for about 2 months when Marina disappeared. There was a lot of rumors that she had been kidnapped and murdered by a pedophile from Barrio Alto then killed himself just a few weeks after Marina went missing but no one knew for sure. Alice, however, always assumed that Marina was going to just walk back into their little apartment on Rua do Jasmim like nothing ever happened. And no one ever challenged her on it. 

“When can he come home?” Alice asked Gabriella who was now ready with the white wash cloth to bathe me. 

“The doctor will let you know. Could you excuse me while I clean him up?” Gabi said, Antonio bounced of out the chair before she could even finish the sentence. Alice nodded ‘yes’ and then looked down at me with a happy grin. She wrapped her fingers around my chin and gave me a quick glance as if to freeze my face in her mind then followed Antonio outside.

Gabriella sat me up, my back made a popping sound, the bones jumping back into a new position after all those days of laying. She slowly unbuttoned my hospital gown and removed it. I was sitting there naked, my head still a little foggy. The white room was so damn cold, I could feel every hair on my body stand up. I looked down at my legs and it was as if I was seeing the very second that every tiny goose bump rise from my skin.

Gabriella brought over the vat of warm soapy water and placed it between my legs. The warm walls of the vat felt good on my skin. She dipped the wash cloth in the water and began to wash my chest but said nothing.

“Are you going to say anything?” I asked, my body covered in goose bumps.

“What do you want me to say?” She asked me.

“How sexy I look in goose bumps.” I joked, but I knew I looked horrible. I smelled horrible too. I had lost so much weight. The drugs took over so much of my life and control of my body. I wasn’t the same Paulo she fell in love with so many years ago, but I was still funny—she giggled at my goose bump joke. 

“Paulo—listen to me.” I didn’t look at her. “Are you listening?” She asked forcefully.

“I’m listening.” I knew what was coming. She stopped washing my body and grabbed my face moving it with her hand so that we were eye to eye.

“We’ve given you medicine so that you don’t feel the effects of the withdrawal. It won’t last—” she said before I interrupted with “I know” then she interrupted back. “Oh, you know! I don’t think you do. I don’t think you know a damn thing about what you’ve done to Antonio and Alice and what you’ve done to me. This is the last time that I come and be here and do this for you. The very last time. Get yourself together, figure out what it is that has made you this way and for God’s sake, fix it. We’re all sick of you this way.” 

There were tears in her eyes. She and I hadn’t been together in a long time, but I knew she cared. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known this, I did, I knew exactly what I was doing to everyone. I’m a junky but I’m  not stupid—in every sense of the word. Gabriella then told me that she was seeing someone and that she wanted her life to be better. She was going to marry this new guy and she wanted me to be healthy so that she could move on. I just sat there the whole time as she washed me, then dried me, the put me in a fresh gown.

“You’re not speaking.” She said to me as I looked at my hairy legs, my toes were like 10 pink shrimp freezing in the white room. Gabi noticed me staring at me feet and tossed the white sheet over them and repeated herself. “You’re not speaking.”

“Huh?” I answered. Everything she had told me was still processing. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it.

“Paulo.” Gabi said, her eyes watery. Her heart on her sleeve.  My face must of looked blank, probably because it was. I was thinking, my mind was working but none of what was in my head would be understood to anyone. It was just a set of voices and information and faces just flying around, mixing up my history my life my worries my passion. It was all in there like a puzzle that needed to be put back together but for who? Why? Why did I want this puzzle put back together? Who was I putting bit back for? I couldn’t even say that, I couldn’t articulate anything. 

“It’s the meds.” Gabriella said realizing my brain was fried. She helped me lay back down on the bed. That was always her excuse. It wasn’t really the meds, it was the shit I had to go through all my life and it was the heroin probably still flowing through my veins and brain blocking everything that normal people use to communicate and feel real feelings to be normal.

Gabi picked up the vat of water and poured it down the perfectly clean white sink. She cleaned up and gathered her stuff to leave and move on to her other patients. She pulled the door open and I said “Thank you Gabi.”

She turned back around and looked at me, still watery eyed and perfect.

“Get some sleep.”

  

2.

 A day later I found myself putting on my shoes to leave the white room. The shoes were the worst part. My body felt like a dried up old tree, with every stretch and pull I could have just snapped a bone. It was agony. But I did it--I didn’t tie the laces. It wasn’t worth the pain to bend my aching body and tie the laces.  

I got up from the white sheeted bed and walked over to the door that had a large metal frame and at the bottom the reflection of the bottom half of my body. Alice brought me fresh clothes for the ride home from the hospital. I looked ok, even if it was a reflection from a distorted metal frame reflection.

As I got closer to the door, I could see through the tiny window of the door Alice and Gabriella talking. Gabi was the talker, Alice was just nodding and agreeing with hand on Gabi’s shoulder. I could see them both worried about me, but I didn’t care. I was that kind of monster that I didn’t care if they were worried, I knew I should care—but I didn’t.  

I opened the door and Alice and Gabi suddenly stopped talking. They turned to me and Gabi grabbed her patient files and walked over to me. “Get better.” I watched her go back to Alice and hug her then walk off into the glare of the white hallway.

“You feel ok? You look better.” Alice said, lying of course, I looked like hell. I had been sedated in the hospital after my 7^th or 8^th heroin over dose for who knows how long.

“Where’s my father?” I asked. 

“He’s at the police station he had to work.”

“No, not Antonio, my father.” I said clarifying which father I meant. 

“Paulo, you know where he is. You know where he is.” Alice said repeating herself as she grabbed my arm and walked me down the hall to the elevator. 

“I think I want to see him and my mother too. I want to see them both.” I said as the elevator doors closed on us. 

We were alone in the elevator watching the floors drop in numbers 5^th floor. Then 4^th, then 3^rd. Then opening on the second floor. A doctor walked in and smiled at us then turned his back to face the doors. 

“I want to see my mother and my father too.” I said to Alice who seemed embarrassed that I was talking about it with the stranger—the doctor—in there with us.

“Paulo, we’ll talk about it at home.” 

The elevator doors opened, and the doctor stepped aside allowing us to walk out before him. He kindly held the doors opened, as we passed him I looked at him in the eye, he smiled, I didn’t, then he didn’t.

The drive home from the hospital was a trip I had taken over and over again. We’d hail a taxi, get in, Alice would tell the driver where to go and we’d take 20-minute drive on what should have been a 10-minute drive. Lisbon traffic. 

“I’ve made you this delicious soup—it’s Aurora’s recipe. You’ll enjoy it.” Alice said, her face flashing with the shadows of the buildings we passed on the street. 

“How is Aurora these days?” I asked of our 89 year cross-the-hall neighbor. 

“The same. Nosy as ever. But she has the best kale soup recipe. You’ll see. I made it for you.” Alice –constantly curing the problems of the world with one of Aurora’s soups. 

I didn’t want any soup. I wanted heroin. 

 I could feel the itch already. I wanted it like a man dying of thirst wants water. It was so powerful, nothing could control it, not even the medicine the doctor prescribed to help curb my cravings. It never worked because I never took them when I got home. I would always lie and say I did, but I didn’t. How could I? The medication wouldn’t solve anything, the heroin however made it all go away.

And just like that, the thud of the taxi door woke me from my dazed state. I didn’t even realize that I was standing on the side walk in front of our building. Was that really 20 minutes? Where did my mind go after we talked about Aurora’s kale soup? That’s all I remembered. I went over events in the taxi in my head again to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind: Thud—In taxi---Alice tells driver our address—Alice tells me of the Aurora’s soup---I ask about Aurora---still nosy---I think of heroin------second thud we’re home out of taxi.

Alice and I begin to walk up the four flights of stairs to our apartment. It was painful. My body was not ready for stairs and I was feeling itchy again. I needed my next hit, but I was so tired. I had no idea how I was going to get it. I didn’t know how, but I knew I’d figure it out, I always did. 

We got to the second flight and I could already smell the soup, I wanted to vomit. The sweat on the back of my neck made me want to vomit too. Everything made me want to vomit. I had to stop climbing. 

“I want to see my father.” I said to Alice out of breath. She turned back around and looked down at me from her perch on the three steps above me. 

“Paulo,” she said disapproving.

“And my mother.” 

“you know….” She began to say. 

“YES! I know where they are, that’s why I want to see them. Why the fuck are you not letting me go see them? Why the fuck do you even care?? Do you want me to disappear like Marina? Is that what you fucking want? Because I will!”  

Alice stood there staring at me, she was as white as the sheets from the hospital. I looked up in the stairwell that spiraled up into the building like a tightly coiled snake. I could see  all the way to the top of the fourth floor where we lived. Old Aurora had heard me yell and was peeking over the banister down at us. Alice followed my eyes and saw Aurora. 

“Olá Dona Aurora!!!” Alice waved nervously like I hadn’t just berated her in withdrawal filled rant. Aurora’s curiosity ended when she got caught watching and her little white head popped back over the banister. 

I took a breath. 

“I’m sorry.” I was always sorry. 

“I know.” Alice always knew.

Alice grabbed my arm and helped me up the stairs the rest of the way to our apartment then fiddled with her keys at the front door while I stood there, my body aching for another hit. Literally aching. I wanted to punch the wall; the pain was so profound, but I stood there for what felt like hours as Alice fiddled with her key in the lock. It was an old lock that needed to be fixed long ago, but they never fixed it. 

I opened my eyes and looked behind me. The apartment door facing ours was opened, a small lady with white hair looked out from behind the 3 inch open gap. Aurora. 

I looked at her and smiled as best I could through my sweaty pain. 

She shut the door quickly and locked all of her locks. 

“Here we are!” Alice said, pushing open into the apartment. “Come in, sit down, sit down.” She said to me as I walked over to the olive-green sofa with the white doilies covering each arm. 

The pain again. I wanted heroin. Now.

“I made the soup before I went to fetch you at the hospital, it should be still warm. Your father is coming home from work for lunch today too. We can eat together!” Alice said joyfully. 

“My father!?!” I asked scooting to the edge of the green sofa. 

Alice peeped from behind the wall that separated the kitchen and the living room. Her face not as joyful as her voice just was. 

“Antonio.” She said—I realized at the same time she spoke she meant my foster father. 

I laid my head back balancing it on the back of the sofa with my eyes closed. The room began to feel claustrophobic and hot even with the window open, it was hot. I could feel my neck sticking to the back of the sofa from all the sweat, I was withdrawing so bad. The smell from my pours made me want to vomit. Again, all I wanted to do was vomit. 

“You ok?” A voice asked. 

As I opened my eyes to see who spoke, I could feel the skin of the lids sticking together. I was dehydrated and tired and I still wanted to punch the walls. It was Antonio home for lunch in his police uniform. I hadn’t even heard him come in. Did I fall asleep? 

“Did you fall asleep?” Antonio asked sitting across from me in a matching olive-green chair. 

“Did I fall asleep?” I responded. 

“Did you?” He asked again. 

He was fucking with me. Was he fucking with me? I had no idea what we were talking about. He walked through that wall, I didn’t hear him open the door. The lock is broken, did he use a key? I don’t even know what time it is. 

“Soups ready!!” Alice, still so happy I was home yelped from the kitchen. “Come on, come on lazy pants, eat a little then go to sleep. Don’t sleep on the sofa.” Alice ordered scooping me up from the sofa. 

“Did I fall asleep?” I heard my voice say as Antonio chucked behind us to the kitchen table. 

“Sit here, go on. Soup’s ready.” Alice said plopping me down at the table and revealing a large pot of green potato and kale soup that smelled delicious. It looked delicious. But it also made me want to vomit like everything else I could see and smell. 

She scooped the soup into a blue and white bowl that had scenes of 17^th century Portuguese ships sloshing in the sea on their voyage to discover the new world.  Through the clear broth and under the leaves of kale I could see the ship in all its regal form. I could smell the soup and I could see the ship. With my spoon I moved the kale and potatoes to the side of the bowl so that I could see the ship more. It actually looked like the it was floating and moving in the sea. The boat was actually moving. It was bouncing up and down and up and down in the wild Portuguese sea. Up and down and up and down and up and down. 

I wanted to vomit. 

“Alice!” Antonio noticed my face was as green as the kale. 

Alice brought the bucket. It was the bucket I always used the day after I woke up from a heroin overdose. 

I finally vomited right there at the table in my OD-bucket. 

“Can you eat anything?” Alice was always so caring. 

I shook my head no. 

“Off to bed.” She grabbed my arm and tossed it over her shoulder. 

“No, let me. Go on. I’ll take him this time.” Antonio said tossing his spoon into the bowl, the loud clank of the silverware on the glass bowl woke me from my sweaty hunch. I looked up at him. His big body swiftly grabbing on to my arm and flicking it over his broad shoulders and around his thick neck. 

He walked me and my green face down the hall to the room they gave me when I first came to live with them after my mother left me here. We walked slowly down the short hallway so that I wouldn’t get nauseous again, slowly. One step at a time. One step at a time, my eyes glazing down at the plush dark carpet. 

We passed the picture on the wall of Marina. 

“Marina.” I said softy, I looked into that picture on the wall. She looked at me. She was staring right in my face. I could see her disgust. I could see her wishing me dead.

“Shhh.” Antonio hushed. 

He sat me down on my bed, my room was still the way I left it, which was the way they had left it because it was Marina’s room. Still with her girly things in the corner. Still with her girly clothes on one side of the closet, my things on the other side of the closet. Still sitting on the edge of the bed, I looked up at Antonio. 

“My father.” I said to him as he shook his head. 

“Go to sleep already.” His big hands grabbed my shoulders and laid me down. I instantly fell asleep.

  

3.

“Carlos.”

I could see her from my favorite hiding place: the back of a closet that had shuttered doors. She was calling out to my father.

“Carlos.” My mother’s voiced called again to my father who was home late again. She was standing in their bedroom in front of the closet with shuttered doors. 

“Its 4am, woman.” My father’s voice muttered in drunkenness. 

“Carlos. Is this yours? I found it. It was hidden. Is this yours? 

I could only see their headless bodies from my hiding spot. He didn’t answer her, just grabbed what she was holding from her hands and walked away leaving her standing there In the center of the room alone with just her reflection in the vanity. For a very long time their relationship seemed strained. Sometimes I blamed myself. He, my father, was distracted and distant. Sometimes to me but always to my mother. She tried, she did everything she could, but he pushed her away. She loved him. She believed in her heart of hearts that she loved him. 

 I could hear his voice in the distance saying something back to her, but I didn’t understand. The walls had muffled his voice. 

“I can look wherever I want to look.” She responded to whatever he said. “Is it yours? Answer me? Are you sleeping with someone that that dress belongs to?” My mother said to my father who re-entered the room. 

I peeked out through one of the shutters of the closet at a different angle so that I could see my father’s face. He looked at my mother with a strange icy glare. Who was he? Who was he now? He didn’t want anything to do with my mother. I could sense it, Im sure she could sense it too. Who’s fucking dress was it? I wanted to know too. 

“Carlos. Who’s dress is that?” My mother asked again to my drunk father. 

“Judite, please. I want to go to sleep. It's past 4am” 

“Carlos.” My mother said, her voice cracking and unrelenting. “Tell me the truth.” 

Nothing in our house had anything to do with the truth. Not me, not my mother, not my father. Not us. Nothing. It was all fantasy or a nightmare depending on which one of us you asked. 

Why would she ask him that? She knew the truth, she knew it but only wanted it to come from my father so that she could finally let it rest. The problem was, he couldn’t tell her, not right now anyway. Not in the state he was in. The shock of her finding that dress shook him at his very foundation. He couldn’t tell her yet. He couldn’t give her the answers that she wanted. 

“Carlos.” 

She kept pressing him, but the response was a slammed door. 

I slipped down to the floor of the closet, my arms wrapped around my 11-year-old knees. The bars of light that shined through crossed my face like the bars of a prison cell. I could smell their clothes that hung above my head as my mother sobbed in the mirror of her vanity. I could hear her mutter two herself “why Carlos? Why? Aren’t I enough Carols? Aren’t I what you need?” 

She wasn’t. But she had no idea yet. 

I was in the closet. I kept hearing my mother sob until she stopped. She had fallen asleep at the vanity. I looked around my little prison where I was eavesdropped and saw a small box hidden way in the back. I opened the box, and there were various photos and flyers inside. I picked up one of the photos and placed in the light coming from the bedroom. It was a woman, a woman dressed in a gown on stage performing. Her makeup was heavy and glamorous. I couldn’t tell who the singer was. Had I seen her before?

She was familiar. Those eyes, the lips… she was familiar. On the back the singer’s name  

“Soraia—SPARKLE club, March”. 

I didn’t know that name. I didn’t know the face, but I did. Was this the woman my father was having the affair with?

I peeked through the closet shutters, my mother was fast asleep. I snuck out, box in hand and dashed across my parents’ bedroom to my own room. 

The light in my room was dim, but I could see. I knelt on my bed and opened the box I found in the closet. I poured out all the photos and flyers of Soraia on to my bed. I sorted through them.  

Men. Naked men. Photos of naked men. Lots of them. 

This one hairy. That one smoking in what looked like a bathroom filled with other men. That one dark hair and a leather cap. Soraia was in all of the photos. Sometimes she was in a gown, sometimes she was only in her underwear. Some of the men appeared often. Some just once. 

Then I saw a photo of my father with some of the men I recognized from the other photos.

My door was open just a crack. My father passed it in the hall. I panicked and began to gather all of the photos and put them back into the box.

“You little fuck.” 

I looked up, my father had caught me. 

“I don’t know what this is.” I said in my eleven-year-old cracked voice. 

“Why did you go through my things huh? Why did you go through my things!!!” My father said, the cigarette hanging from his mouth, his eyes looked strange. Was he drunk? Something was different.

He was shaking me now, screaming at me for looking through his things. I could smell alcohol and cigarette smoke and something else on his breath. Another smell I didn’t yet recognize, in time I would, but at 11 years old I didn’t. 

My mother came in screaming at him for shaking me. I was off the floor now in his hands.

There were so many screams, from her, from him. I was too scared to make a noise.

“Carlos!! Carlos!!!” My mother repeated his name over and over again beating the back of his shoulders pleading for him to drop me. 

He did. 

He couldn’t stop sweating. He was drenched. 

“Carlos, are these yours? Is this…. what is this?” My mother said collecting the photos from the box in her hands that had spilled from the bed to the floor. 

“Give me those.” My father said in a cold calm. 

“Carlos.” My mother was horrified. 

“Judite.” My father extended his hands for her to return his photos. 

She stayed quiet and handed his things back and came over to me, I hadn’t gotten up from the floor yet. She held me and looked at my father who suddenly seemed to be sober. He was confused and crying. 

“Carlos.” My mother said again, her voice more forceful this time. “get out.”

I opened my eyes to the smell of Alice and Antonio’s house. It was night now. I had been a sleep and dreamed of my father and my mother and the moment everything changed. The moment my father’s darkness crept out of the closet with the shuttered doors and slapped us all in the face. I needed a fix or I’d die, I just knew I would die. 

I bounced out of Marina’s bed to the small bathroom just across from Marina’s bedroom where I slept. I splashed water on my face. The cold water felt so good, I did it two more times. 

“You’re making a mess.” Alice said as she passed the bathroom. 

“Jesus Christ!” I hated being watched so much. 

“Mstk!” the sound of Alice smacking her tongue against her teeth at me for using the Lord’s name in vain. “are you hungry?” she was always feeding me even though I never ate. 

“I need to go get some air.” I said back in Marina’s closet, buttoning up a coat of mine. 

“Air.” Alice was smart. She knew what air meant. 

“Air.” I wasn’t so smart. I pretended she had no idea.  

“Don’t be out late. Antonio will be here at 11.” 

I looked at the clock, it was 9:34 at night. I would be home very late.

I had to find Olli. Olli knew me back and front, front and back. He knew my father too. He knew my father back and front and front and back. He also gave me what I needed when I needed it as much as I needed and never asked for much, except when he did, and I often gave him what he wanted. I was broke. Always broke. And he had what I wanted. I gave him what he wanted. 

We had a friendship of even exchange. Maybe he knew where my father was. 

I walked down the orange lit streets of our little neighborhood searching for any familiar face I knew that could point me in Olli’s direction. No one was around. No one that would know Olli that well. I ended up at SPARKLE, a bar. Olli’s favorite bar. If he’d be anywhere, he’d be here.

I entered the bar through its thin front door. Sure enough, familiar faces from all sides bouncing to the beat of the DJ's round. There was the drunk fat lady that always humped any man she could convince to dance with her, I called her Porkina, but her real name was Paulina. Then of course the two transvestites from a small village up north who only came out to Lisbon bars together dressed in women’s undergarments and bright red lips but no wigs, hairy chests, hairy legs. They called themselves Lola and Leila, I had a feeling they weren’t just best friends but probably lovers, and from the look of it, probably cousins. They had very similar in features. 

Then in the corner, the most attractive man I had ever been with, Felipe, who dropped me when he found out I was one of Olli’s junkies. 

I smiled at Felipe. He turned away and pretended he didn’t see me. He was gorgeous. Thick black hair and thick hairy arms. His eyes so deep and so brown, you’d think you could see the future in them. After Gabriella, I could only think of him.

“Well, they say when the dead walk in, walk the other way.” A voice from behind me screeched as I stared at Felipe. 

“Who say’s that?” I asked the voice that I recognized. 

I turned to confirm the voice. 

“I do! You look dead Paulo, and so I should walk the other way—come here you little fuck!” It was my friend, Flore, a drag queen who moonlighted as an escort, or was it the other way around? She pulled me in for a big hug. 

“Listen I’m looking for--” 

“Olli, no shit. He’s not here.” 

“Where is he, and my father…have you seen them?” 

“Paulo,” Flore said with a blank expression, adjusting her fake breasts in her gown. “Never mind…You don’t need him love, come on, let’s have a drink, I just sucked this guy off who just may or may not be a member of parliament and he was very happy to make sure I didn’t recognize his face later on, so my treat.” Flore said pulling out a wad of cash from her brazier.

She was always sucking off rich men and to distract me from Olli and what Olli could give me, she loved to tell me about it. 

“Flore, I need to see him. Have you seen him?” I asked again, my itch getting stronger. 

Flore looked at me, her eyes dazzling in blue and purple glittery eye shadow, her hair in regal up-do. She sighed and fixed the ring on her perfectly manicured fingers. 

“I haven’t seen him in 4 days, my love. Hand to god.” She said raising her hands in the air. 

“Do you believe in God?” I asked, a joke and a test at the same time. 

“I might. But I believe in myself the most. Go home, get out of here.” Flore pushed my shoulder back and pointed at the exit trying to make me leave, she then sat at the bar, looked back at me and pointed to the door again. 

Felipe turned to look at us, I looked disgusting. Sweaty. Itchy. I ran out as fast I could hoping my image in Felipe’s mind would just be a blur.  

  

“You’re so special.” Felipe said one foggy night to me on the street corner under a street lamp that covered us in it's orange light.

“Do you think so?” 

“I think so.” He pulled me in close for a kiss. 

“Why do you think so?” I asked after our warm kiss.  

“You ask a lot of questions. Why do you ask a lot of questions, especially when someone is paying you a compliment?” He was asking the questions now. 

He was taller than me, I loved looking up at him when we were standing that close to each other. I could feel his breath on my lips as we talked. I liked being with Gabriella too, but this felt different. She felt different. I liked them both. I loved her. I liked him—a lot. They were so completely different and made me feel different ways. With Gabi, I felt like I protected her, when Felipe, he protected me. I wanted both because I lacked both. No one depended on me, and I depended on no one.  

“I just do.” I responded coyly . 

He pulled me in by the lapel of my jacket. Kissed me again. Longer. Deeper, our tongues vibrating against each one another. I suddenly felt the same feeling rushing through my body that the stuff Olli gave me.

I needed to find Olli.

4.

I can’t describe how I was feeling as soon as I left SPARKLE. It’s sort of the way you’d feel if you were dressed in a thick wool coat in the middle of a humid swamp. I was sticking to myself, my skin felt like it had been covered in honey and my mouth was dry; framed by chapped lips. 

I was starting to feel sick again. I had to get out of the street, people were starting to stare. I didn’t know where to go, but across the street from SPARKLE was small pathway between to apartment buildings that lead to a park. It was hidden enough that I could go back there and be sick. It was also a very popular spot for the working girls in the neighborhood to serve a customer a quickie and not be seen. 

I sprinted across the cobblestone street with just enough time to dip my head in the shadowy pathway between the apartments, I keeled over to vomit. I coughed. Snot squirted out of my nose. I could feel the sweat drip down through my hair and down the side of my cheek. 

“You really look like shit this time, don’t you Paulo? What do you need?” 

I looked up. It wasn’t Olli. 

“What do you have Loba?” I asked, it was another drag queen friend of mine named Loba who had been working the pathway. As we started to talk her customer zipped up and rushed out of the shadows and made his way down the street home to whomever was waiting for him. 

“How much do you have?” Loba wanted money up front. 

“Come on…” I was clearly broke. I had nothing. I was throwing up in an alleyway in need of something to take it make me whole again. 

Loba, who’s name came from the fact her drag aesthetic was all about how hairy she was as a man, circled me like a shark in warm waters ready to feed. She wasn’t as treacherous as this act though, in fact, most of her circle of friends knew her as a protector, the one person all the gay Lisbonite refugees ran to when they needed a mother or a father or a lover or a friend. 

“Here.” Loba’s voice said giving into her pity the dope sick junkie in front of her. I was still hunched over, and her big hairy arm reached around me and placed something in my front pocket. 

“How much?” I said, knowing I couldn’t pay, but… 

I turned around to see what she’d say, she only looked at me with an expression as if to say, ‘you’ll pay me back somehow’. She then tossed her hand in the air, her chunky plastic bracelets clanking in the motion, she turned and started to walk back across the cobblestone street to SPARKLE. 

“Oh! And you if you ever interrupt me while I’m working again---I’ll kick your ass.” She shouted as she meandered across the cobblestones in 7-inch heels. “Come back at 11! I have a show!” – Loba: drug dealer, prostitute, self-promoter, friend. 

As soon as she was in the building I tore into my pocket and grabbed the tiny baggy. I rushed into the shadows of the building in the walkway and dropped to the ground between two dumpsters. I was still so sweaty. I was so tired too. I needed to find Olli, but I needed this fix. I shifted to my other pocket and took out this small little kit I always carried with me. A needle, a spoon, a lighter, a tournicate. 

It must have taken 5 minutes to get everything together, but it felt like 5 seconds. It was almost instant. The needled pierced my skin struck my vein, I pressed the plunger, removed the tournicate and my head went back. I sat in that hidden walkway and nothing hurt anymore. 

Applause ---then a voice. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, don’t sit on your hands! Please welcome to the stage, Lisbon’s most glamorous, most beautiful, most –everything! The legendary SORAIA!!” 

“If you had to kiss me, would you use your tongue!?” Soraia, the most glamorous, most beautiful of all of Lisbon’s drag queen’s first words as she set foot on the long T shaped stage at SPARKLE said as she flicked her pink feather boa around her dainty neck. 

“I would!” an old man said from the back. Soraia shades her eyes from the bight light to try and see him better. She spots him and makes a disgusted face to the audience. 

“Ehhhk!” She says in a humorous disgust. “I’d bite your tongue off and feed it to the rats that live here at Sparkle!” She said to the laughter of the crowd. 

When I turned 17, with my parents’ divorce now 5 years old, I would go and sit in the back of SPARKLE on a bar stool and watch the woman in my father’s photos: Soraia, she was a legend. She would perform 4 songs in a row. The crowd loved her. She was tall, and her wigs were always perfect and her smile lit up the entire night club. It was brighter than any of the lights shining on her. When watching her perform, I was under a spell. I adored hearing her do her jokes. 

Olli was Soraia’s lover. He’d always bring me with him to watch Soraia. Always.  I didn’t miss a single show. I never did. 

Sometimes she’d come off stage and sing directly to me, when she was feeling good. When she was dope-sick and still had to perform she’d still perform her ass off but wouldn’t bother to pay attention to me. 

Olli, her drug dealer, and eventually mine too, would only keep her dope sick to punish her when they argued. Soraia never used drugs before she met Olli, she was a drinker—socially—but drugs came with Olli. 

I was obsessed with watching her in her beautiful gowns. People would come from Spain, sometimes France and England to see “A Soraia de Lisboa”. I was so proud. And sometimes secretly embarrassed. 

She would slink around the stage in a sexy walk. Wink at the old men who gave her money. She'd sing and dance and work every corner of that stage, every drag queen in town envied her. Every gay man in town wanted to know her, some even wanted to be her. I just wanted to be next to her, I wanted her to acknowledge me and see me. I wanted Soraia to see me!

“Thank you! Thank you…. it’s been a beautiful night. I really am so happy to see all your shining faces. Especially yours…. you know who you are little one.” Soraia said on the last time I saw her perform.  

I smiled from ear to ear on my little bar stool, Olli walked over to me that night. “I love it when she mentions me on stage.” 

I looked back "mentions him?" I thought. 

The crowd roared, it was a wall of noise, clapping for her, chanting her name, and clinking their glasses for more! 

But she just vanished behind the pink and red sparkled curtain only a few pink feathers remained of her on the T shaped stage. 

“Alright you bright faced horn dogs, get ready for our next performer…………”

  

“Hey!!! YOU!!! Get up!! Get the fuck out of here!!!” 

I woke up, high, still sitting on the ground of the walk way to the park across the street from SPARKLE with my legs stretched all the way out. Loba’s little heroin rock knocked me out good but someone who lived in the building wasn’t happy to see me. 

“Did you hear me you fucking junkie!? GET OUT OF HERE!” The voice shouted. I looked around and didn’t see anyone. Then as I began to get my things water came from a window three floors above me. The water missed me by inches. I grabbed my kit and flipped the voice off and made my way down the street again. I only had about two hours to get my next fix. I still had to find Olli. I still had to find him. I needed him for so much. 

As I rushed down the street past SPARKLE, Flore and Loba was outside and watching me. Flore shook her head at Loba. She puffed from a cigarette that Loba had handed her moments before.

“Cabra, What did you do that for?

“Do what?” Loba said grinning crudely in a halo of cigarette smoke.

“He came in looking for Olli and his father.” Flore responded with an authoritative tone.

“And his father? Fuck.” Loba’s eyes widened. She puffed more from her cigarette with a surprised look on her heavily made up face.

"I don't know what more he can do to himself once it..." Flore paused.

"Just....forget it. He'll find his way." Loba said, her face grimacing with concern.

I got to Alice and Antonio’s apartment. I turned the knob, it was tight. She must of tried to lock the broken lock. I kept twisting the knob hoping to get in before Antonio so that he wouldn’t see me high. I really didn’t care if he saw me high. He knew I got high. He saw me do it once a few years before, but I hated the arguing and the disgusted look he’d give me. It ruined my high. It made me feel something—guilt. I didn’t like that. 

I turned around and right across from me –again—was the neighbor Aurora. Her door open about three inches. She stared at me and didn’t say a word. She just stared at me. 

“Good evening.” I said to her, my eyes blinking in slow motion in a watery state like to raw eggs.
 I rarely spoke to her I think this surprised her. 

“What are you doing?” her old voice crackled. 

“Huh?” 

“What are you doing Carlos?” She said to me, strangely calling me Carlos. 

“That’s my father’s name.” 

“What are you doing Carlos?” She asked again. 

“What?” 

“Carlos, what are you doing?”

“WHY DO YOU KEEP CALLING ME THAT! That’s not my name!” I shouted, drifting from Alice and Antonio’s door to her door. 

“Carlos!”

“My name is not Carlos. My name is NOT Carlos!” I shouted back at her, I was now fully in her doorway. 

“Get out!” She shouted back at me, my heart was pounding, my blood filled with heroin was boiling. 

“Do you know my father? Do you know Carlos?” I asked her. She shook her head. Then she nodded her head. 

“Get out.” She said again, I was now actually in her apartment. How did I get in here? I don’t even remember walking in here. 

“Where is he? Where is my mother. Do you know my mother too?” I asked her, I was in her living room now, she had back away from me slowly and sat herself in a chair.

“Carlos, get out. Get out Carlos.” 

“Answer me!! Answer me!!! 

“Judite.” The old woman Aurora said. 

I saw a ring on her finger I grabbed her hand and I pulled the ring off hard. Aurora screamed something I had never heard from a human. 

The ring went into my pocket. 

“That’s my mother, yes Judite. Do you know her? Where is she?” I asked shaking Aurora by the shoulders like my father shook me when I found his photos.

“No! Carlos!” 

“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” 

“PAULO!!!!” my head snapped back to the door where I had entered. It was Alice she heard the commotion, she saw Aurora’s door open. “Get away from her and come home right this minute. What are you doing!?” Alice quickly made her way into Aurora’s apartment. She was dressed in house shoes and an apron. 

“Huh?” I was confused, but then suddenly I realized where I was, what I was doing. Who I was with. Jesus Christ, I just screamed at a woman in her 90s because she was confused too. We were two confused people screaming at each other.

“Get out Carlos.” Aurora said, her voice calmer. 

“Come.” Alice said to me, both of her hands supporting my torso up and leading me out of Alice’s living room and to her front door. “I’m sorry for the intrusion, Dona Aurora. It won’t happen again.” Alice kept hold of me tight. We passed a mirror. I looked into it. 

Who was that? It was me, I saw my light hair, my olive skin. I saw my brown eyes, albeit sunken in and tied, they were my eyes. My freckled face. My pink lips. It was me, I saw me, but I saw my father. 

“Carlos.” I said to my reflection, I was so high 

.

“Get inside.” Alice said closing Aurora’s door opening hers and closer hers. 

I was so high. Loba’s drugs got me so high. 

Alice walked me into Marina’s room and took off my clothes and my shoes. I lay there in my boxer shorts and curled up in the bed. 

“Marina would be so happy to have you home again, I am so happy to have you home again, but I wish you wouldn’t do these things. What did Aurora do to deserve that behavior, huh? Next time just come straight home. Promise me you’ll come straight home.” Alice was lecturing me while tucking me in. I moaned something back to her that I don’t remember. 

Alice would always talk to me while I was high like this as if I had a cold or the flu. She knew exactly what was happening to me but the same way she couldn’t admit to herself that Marina was gone forever she couldn’t admit to herself that she was supporting and enabling a heroin addict in her very own house who 5 minutes before pushed his way into a 90-year-old woman’s apartment, screamed at her, and stole her ring. 

I was fucked up, but poor Alice was too. She just didn’t know it. 

“Go on. Sleep. Antonio will be home and thankfully you’re here too. I won’t tell him about tonight.” 

  

Alice protected my secrets for no good reason other than she had no one else to protect. 

She closed the door to Marina’s room and slept for hours.

5.

I slept in Marina’s bed that night, high as a kite, just letting the heroin swirl around in my body like a race car making each curve of a racetrack. Speeding. Like there was no end in race. Speeding. My mind was racing even as I slept.

My mind took me to a hospital that Alice and Antonio brought me to 3 years after they took me in, I was 15 and it had been the first time I had seem my mother. She was there...she was at this hospital.

The hospital was near the beach. So close you could smell the salty water in the air. It felt like a resort more than a hospital. It felt like a safe place more than a place where you’d go to get better. I was 12. I don’t remember how far away it was from Lisbon, I just remember getting up in the morning, eating eggs that had too much garlic in them and then heading off to this resort like retreat like happy like fake like hospital for people who weren’t in their beds with broken bones but in their beds with broken hearts. 

Like my mother. 

“Paulo,” that was Antonio talking from the front seat of his car. “When we get there don’t make noise. Just stay quiet and let her talk to you.” I didn’t respond. “Paulo? Paulo did you hear what I asked you to do? I asked you to stay quiet and not speak. Do you understand that?” 

As he drove into this giant parking lot in front of the sea-side hospital and slowly stopped the car and turned back to me in the back seat. I was watching a seagull circle something out on the beach. 

“Hey!!!” Antonio, again from the front seat shouted back at me.

“Antonio! Calm down. He heard you. He’s just nervous.” Alice snapped back, also turning to me from her front seat. 

Antonio just shook his head and put the car into motion again. We parked. 

Thud. Thud….Thud. Three car doors slammed. We walked up the cement steps into this hospital where a lady met us. Her suit was crisp and clean. She had beautiful dark skin, I remembered how pretty she was in such a pretty place that had so much ugly inside of it. It felt like my mind. Pretty on the outside, ugly on the inside. 

“She’s waiting for you just beyond those doors in the courtyard. Don’t worry. She’s ok.” The lady in the suite said with a grin and a wink. She looked down at me. “She’s happy you’re here Paulo.” 

“Happy?” I said out loud not realizing my mouth had spit out something. Antonio glared at me. Alice smiled at the lady nervously. 

We followed the directions of the lady in the suit and opened shiny French doors that lead to a green and fresh smelling garden courtyard with white tables and white chairs. There were patients there all happy and giddy with their families. I could smell the fraud in the air. No one was who they said they were. No one was happy to be locked up in a hospital. No matter how gilded the cage, the bird is still locked in unable to fly on its own. 

My mother waited for us, just as happy as the lady in the suit said. Smiling and waving at us, my  mother ushered us over like she was sitting at a restaurant table and we were late for brunch. 

“Jesus Christ.” Antonio said under his breath. I heard him. I felt that same way. 

“You made it! How are you? How are you? Sit Sit sit!!” My mother said to us. Patting the seat closest next to her for me to sit. 

“I hope you weren’t waiting long. We got lost for a bit, but we found it, and here we are. How are you love?” Alice asked her old friend, my mother.

“Lost?” My mother questioned. 

“We took a wrong turn and…” Alice began talking but no one was really listening. My mother had no idea where she was, how far she was from home. I could tell in her eyes she couldn’t tell she was in some hospital. Whatever they gave her worked very well. 

“Did you see the dogs on the shore honey?” She said to me cutting off Alice during her explanation.

“No.” I said. But then I remembered the seagull circling something. Maybe it was a dog.

“No? Oh there are dogs out there running around. Sometimes they’re loud so loud I can’t sleep at night.” My mother explained. 

“They’re out at night?” Antonio asked her, her eyes darted from me to him. 

“You don’t believe me?” 

“What? No, I was just asking.” 

“They’re out all the time. Ever since I got here. Ever since I came here to this place. You know I don’t really have to stay here, Carlos will come and take me when he gets free from her.” My mother said as she pulled a crucifix from around her neck began to play with it over her lips. 

“I’m sure.” Alice answered after a few seconds of silence.

“Carlos liked dogs, but she didn’t let him, remember Paulo? Daddy liked dogs, but she didn’t let him be there for us and the dogs. But they’re out there on the beach. They’re out there. I hear them.” My mother looked so different. Tired but not sleepy. She seemed fixated on dogs and some woman and my father. 

“Judite, how have you been feeling? You look well.” Alice said, changing the subject and basically lying to my mother who looked like hell.

“Fine! If it weren’t for the dogs.” 

“I miss you.” I said suddenly to silence at the table, Antonio and Alice turned their heads from my mother to me in unison. 

She looked at me intently. She didn’t smile at first, she just looked at me and didn’t say anything. Then she leaned in close to me so that we were eye to eye. She smirked at me and for that second, I could see the real mother of mine who had been so loving when I was a child but changed so horribly the night she realized my father had a box of secrets hidden away in a closet that I found. 

“She’ll never take you away from me, I’ll always have you Paulo. I’ll always have Carlos too. No matter how hard she tries to take him away or to take you away, I’ll always have you both.” My mother said, then she got up and walked over to a thicket of bushes that over looked the sea.

“Maybe we should go?” Antonio said standing up, my mother heard his chair back up and turned back around. 

“The dogs are out there again. Listen to them. They’re out there. They’re out there.” My mother said to us. She was so beautiful in that moment. The ocean air was blowing her light brown hair in the wind, she cuddled herself in the cool breeze. 

I didn’t get to hug her. I didn’t even say goodbye really. Alice did. She hugged her and kissed both her cheeks but Antonio kept me from going over. I wasn’t supposed to talk. I was just supposed to look. 

I looked and what I saw was a woman so damaged by my father’s secrets that she turned into someone else. Fractured and confused, broken and destroyed. I never thought of her as some so fragile, but like a fine piece of porcelain she cracked under pressure. 

  

There I was in Marina’s bed. The sun was out, and Aurora’s ring was burning a hole in my pocket. I could already feel the achiness of my body and I hadn’t even moved yet. Someone was going to get a new ring today and I was going to get my next fix.

Olli? Loba? Someone. 

I put on my pants and pulled the ring out of the pocket. I looked at it for a few seconds when Alice walked in. 

“HEY! Don’t you knock!” I said zipping up my fly. 

“I’m sorry, son.” She said turning around as I dressed. 

“I’m not your son.” I whispered to myself. She turned back around when it dawned on her what I was looking at. 

“Paulo where did you get that ring? Paulo, look at me, and tell me where you got that ring because I recognize it.” She stepped closer to me in the room. 

“What ring?” I was stalling. 

“'What ring'? That ring. The ring I clearly see in the palm of your hand. That’s Aurora’s ring. I know it is. She’s lived across from us for years and I know that ring. Did you take it from her last night? Is that why you were in her apartment?” 

“I need to go.” The itch again, I passed Alice in the doorway. 

“Paulo, don’t you lie to me, get back here!” Alice began to follow me talking behind me. 

“I need to go.” The itch still itching.

“You listen to me, get back here right this minute!” She said as she pulled at my shoulder to stop me.

We were in the hall now, she turned me so quickly that when I came face to face with her my first instinct was to shoved her into the wall. I pushed her so hard she fell into Marina’s photo. The glass in the photo shattered into 100 pieces behind Alice in a loud crash.

She made a noise like the wind was knocked out of her when she hit the wall. She was too sacred to move. 

“Alice.” I couldn’t believe I did that. I could be an asshole when I was itching for my fix but never violet. This was the second time I was violent in as many days. The night before with Aurora and now.

Alice didn’t move at first, she just stared at me then she slowly backed away from the Marina’s frame that then fell to the floor, shattered and broken just like Alice’s heart when her daughter went missing.

“I’m sorry, let me clean it.” I said 

“Go away. Get out of here NOW!” Alice said, from the floor of the hallway as she picked up the pieces of the frame and glass. Her voice sounding like a wounded animal. She didn’t look up at me. She didn’t even try. 

“Alice…” I felt horrible. 

“I said get out.”

The day was winding down. I couldn’t find anyone. My itch was now at a heightened point. I was irritable and tired and sweating and all I wanted was to get to Olli or to Loba, no matter what. I just wanted to catch that next high. I was heading towards the pathway between to apartment buildings and a park where I found Loba I the night before. 

I was walking through this park and I could tell that it must have been spring time, I didn’t even know. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t noticed what season it was, for the longest time. I had no idea what season it was. The sun felt warm, I hadn’t felt warmth in so long. So very long. 

There were kids playing on the freshly cut park lawn. Dogs barking all over the place with happy doggy smiles. I looked at a few playing together and thought of my mother. I thought of the dogs she heard on the beach. I thought about how horrible it was for her to hear them all the time day or night Real or imagined. I turned to walk towards the path between the buildings and a couple, a man and a woman, walked up to me. I had to stop. 

“Paulo.” The woman said. 

I squinted. The Sun was in my face. It was Gabriella, my ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend André.

“Paulo.” She said again. I looked down and they were holding hands.  “Paulo?” She was worried I could tell. 

“Hi! Hi! Oh Hi! I said to her, to them. I was feeling so awkward. I was sweating. I was itching. "Sorry the sun was in my face." I said as an excuse.

“How are you? I haven’t seen you since the hospital. Where are you going?” She asked, André stayed silent. He knew who I was, we’d known each other when I was with Gabriella, she never told me this was her new boyfriend.

André just looked at me up and down for a second. I could smell his pity. Or maybe it was the dogs. 

“Ive been, you know, the same actually.” I said with a laugh, what was the use lying they knew. 

“You look sick.” She said, her eyes soft with concern. 

“You know.” 

“Paulo.” She was so worried. “Listen, if you need to get to a place where you can feel better, you know that I can set you up with someone. There are so many—” I cut her off. 

“Gabi, you look good. You too André. You too. Listen, I’m meeting someone right now. Umm… I gotta go.” I said, the dogs barking behind me. 

“Where are you going?” she asked. 

“I have to find someone, I’m looking for someone. My father.” I said, half true. Olli or Loba first, then my father. 

“Your father?” Gabriella took a gulp of air after that. It wasn’t a question. She was naturally surprised I still wanted to see him for some reason. 

“yeah my father.” I confirmed. “Sorry, gotta go!” 

“Paulo.” I heard her voice behind me as I was literally running from them to the shadowy alley in search of Loba or Olli…or my father. 

“His father?” André asked her. “But didn’t his father…” 

“Yes.” She cut him off then started crying. She cried because I was so off. She cried because I was a mess and she could see me and my life crumble in front of her, a man she once loved and thought she’d have children with and now was relieved to be free of me, but she wasn’t really free of me. She still loved me, or maybe she still thought she loved me. 

 She was terrified of me and what I was doing to myself. I knew it, I saw it all over her face every time I woke up in one of her hospital rooms after an O.D. But the itch was so much stronger than her love. So much stronger than any of their love. 

“Come here.” André said, folding her broken heart into his arms and holding her. Just holding her on that spring day, the breeze chilly on her cheek. The playing dogs barking in the distance. I could still hear the dogs even as far as I was now. I could hear them, just like my mother could still hear the dogs on the beach.

The path way between the apartments beyond the Park and in front of SPARKLE was empty. No one was there. What was I thinking? It was the middle of the day. Of course, no one was there. No one would be there until the sun went down and the shadows came. 

I stepped out of the path and on to the side walk across from SPARKLE desperate now. SPARKLE always looked so different in the day time. Nothing like it was at night. At night it was lit with hot pink lights, music blared from all of its open orifices, people poured in and out, sweaty from dancing, drunk and horny. It was a place of joy and a place of electricity. Even for me, even for all those memories of Soraia and what she meant to me.

I needed to get back to Alice and Antonio’s I had to get out of the sun, I was itching for a fix and heat was making me sick. The walk back wasn’t far, it wasn’t hard to get to, but feeling the way I was it felt like I was walking miles and miles. 

I jumped the turn-style on the Metro and got on to a train that would take me a few blocks away from their apartment. I sat there with the air-conditioning spewing all over me. I felt better. It dawned on me what my body was doing, it was trying to expel the heroin from itself and heal, and for some reason I couldn’t let it. Couldn’t? Or wouldn’t? I wasn’t sure. I just knew I was so controlled. A slave. 

I remembered the first time Olli shot me up. I remembered how he told me Soraia did it too and how much she loved it. He told me that Soraia would do it just before she performed and that it made her perform so much better, it was like her magic serum, that’s what Olli said. He wanted me to believe that it was a powerful potion that wouldn’t hurt me in the long run. I was 17, fostered by Alice and Antonio (a cop!). My mother was  at the hospital for insane people and my father….

My father was finally who he wanted to be.

I got to the apartment, Aurora wasn’t snooping at her door this time. I was expecting her to be there. But she wasn’t there. I panicked for a minute. Had I killed her last night? Did she die from fear last night that I’d come back and hurt her? I walked over to her door and put my hear to it.  I heard her television on. I heard her laugh at whatever it was on TV. I took a deep breath and then Alice and Antonio’s door opened. 

It was Antonio, he had come home for lunch, and he wasn’t happy. 

“Get the fuck in here right now.” His hands were on his hips, he was dressed in his police uniform.

I took a gulp of air. He was often angry at me, he was often angry period, but this time seemed different.

As I passed him in the door way, he grabbed my arm and pulled me, I was unsteady and fell to the floor, the apartment door slammed. I looked up and Antonio was already standing over me. 

“Who the fuck do you think you are you little piece of shit? We take you in, you live here for free, we feed you, cloth you, take you to doctors, do everything we can to make sure your miserable life isn’t worth the shit we step in on the street this is how you repay us???” He said, his voice not raised but seething with anger, a calm anger that was just at a simmer but a boil was on the horizon. 

“What?” I had no idea what he was talking about, except that I did, from my vantage point on the floor I could see their bedroom door closed, which it never was, and Marina’s frame still on the floor, the photo inside missing.

“You’re almost 30 years old Paulo, you’re almost too old to be living in your parents’ house.” He said turning his back allowing me to stand up. 

“You’re not my parents.” I said stupidly. 

“You piece of shit! I KNOW WE ARE NOT YOUR parents! Your mother is in a mental hospital and your father is ………” he stopped himself. 

“My father is what?” 

“A faggot! You’re a faggot! Your father is a faggot! We wanted to take care of you but all you did was treat us like shit, and now I come home to see what you did to Alice! I could beat you into a pulp right now.”

I stood there, silently expecting him to do just that.

My mind: "Don’t talk. Let him talk. Don’t talk."

I had been called faggot before, even though it didn’t bother me, the word itself didn’t bother me no matter how horrible it was slurred to me, but when he said it about my father, I could see he meant it to hurt me. I was more hurt that he thought that of my father than of me.

“I didn’t mean to hurt Alice.” I was telling the truth. 

“You’re a fucking liar.” He didn’t believe me. 

“It’s true.” I was telling the truth. 

“True? What do you know about truth huh? Go on, Paulo, tell me. What is TRUTH to a drug addicted, orphaned faggot thief who spends all day trying to find some drug dealer to get his next hit of heroin. That’s the truth. That is your truth.” He knew it, I knew it.

“I’m not a thief.” I wasn’t, normally. Aurora’s ring just happened. 

“No?” He hit that horizon, his simmer turned to a boil and he lunged at m. We tussled. He picked me up from the floor by my shirt and dropped me then flipped me over to search my pockets. We made so much noise, but never said a word. I don’t know why Alice never came out of her room the whole time. We made her living room a mess. He found the ring and pulled it from my pocket, Aurora’s ring, the ring I needed to give to Olli or Loba for my next hit. He pulled me to my feet and held the ring out in his hand so close the cold gold touched my nose.

“Who’s is this then, huh? And remember I already fucking know, so don’t try and tell a lie.” He was a man of proof. 

“Give that back to me.” I needed it. 

“It’s not yours. You’re almost 30. Paulo. You’re almost 30!” he couldn’t believe what a mess I was at this age. He was right. 

“Give it back to me.” I needed it. 

“Paulo.” He just kept saying my name. 

I lunged at the ring, he held me back, I lunged again, I hit his face with my arm and his police officer instincts kicked in, he punched me dead in the face knocking me down to the floor.

Out cold.  

I heard dogs barking. I heard my parents. 

“Carlos.” My mother. 

“Judite.” My father. 

“Carlos, who’s dress is this?” My mother. 

“Judite. Stop.” My father. 

“Carlos. Carlos, tell me what is happening. The pictures. The photos Paulo found.” My mother.
Silence from my father. 

“Carlos. Tell me. Tell me.” My mother. “Who’s dress is this? Who is she?” 

He sits at the vanity in their bedroom. He looks at her in the reflection in the mirror, never at her directly. 

“Soraia’s.” My father.

  

6.

It was Soraia’s dress. It was her photos too that I found.  

My father would disappear into Soraia 3 nights a week, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at SPARKLE. He was the most popular drag queen in all of Lisbon. They knew him as her, the knew her as him. My mother knew this after the dress incident. It didn’t go well after that for my mother who couldn’t cope. They divorced. My father left. My mother left. 

Soraia, stayed. I saw her all the time when I would run off from Antonio and Alice’s house to see her. To see him. And she welcomed me every single time.

“Sometimes, these rip right before I go on stage. It’s the worst thing ever.” My father said, sitting at his space at SPARKLE getting ready for his show. He was talking about his leg hose. His face was painted his hair pulled back, his dress hanging on a hanger off to the side. 

For all the years that my parents were apart, my mother at the hospital by the sea, me at Alice and Antonio’s I would still come to see him at SPARKLE and at his flat. I'd watch him meticulously prepare for the stage, transforming himself from Carlos to Soraia. Sometimes, in those moments, his metamorphosis trapped me in a blur of reality and fantasy  I didn’t know what to call him. Father? Not Mother. Father? Soraia? Who was he when he was she? I never asked him. It was just a conversation I had with myself in my mind. I didn’t even know how to articulate it. I just let it go. I let it be. I let him be her I let them be them. He was happier, and what I wanted was to be with him, no matter who or what name he called himself for those minutes primping for the stage. 

Olli walked over from the vanity and kissed Soraia on the neck, then walked over to me and kissed me on the lips. Soraia, my father, didn’t see. Olli was the first man I fell in love with, a curious strange puppy crush with someone who looked like Marlon Brando from On The Waterfront. He was rugged handsome with deep bedroom eyes--sleeping with Soraia –my father—but he knew I was curious. He liked it, I was only 20 when he first started kissing me, he was 50.

My father didn’t know.

“What do you do when that happens?” I asked Soraia about the torn leg hose as I removed Olli’s kiss from my lips. 

“I cry.” He said joking. “I send Olli out to get another pair or some other bitch lends me hers. it doesn’t happen often. Now watch how I put the liner in this color right under my eye, watch Paulo, come here. Watch what this liner does to my eye.” He was showing me Soraia’s make up tricks.

“What does that feel like?” I was curious.

“Like a wet kiss, you want some?” He offered. “Come here, let’s see.” 

I sat down on the edge of this makeup chair, I had never tried makeup, it never appealed to me. He looked at me and then lifted my face up into the light of his vanity and drew a simple little line across the top lid of my right eye. 

“Look.” He said turning my face to the mirror. 

I scrunched my nose in disappointment. 

“Well, it’s only part of the mask, love, you’d have to sit here for hours before I could get you as good as Soraia. Go on sit back over there. Olli, do you have it?” Soraia was bossy, bossier than Carlos.

Olli walked over and my father, Soraia stuck out his arm. Olli quickly tied it off and pulled out a needle from his jacket pocket, removed the cap and stuck Soraia’ s vein. She closed her eyes. My father closed his eyes. His own itch instantly scratched. 

“This is not part of the beauty ritual son. I just need my medicine.” He was lying, it was heroin.

“Medicine.” Olli said looking at me and raising his eyebrows in three quick motions, he knew I knew.

“Alright boys, I need to get ready for the show, go on, go out there. Ill be out very soon.” Soraia said, shooing us out from the makeup room. 

“Carlos.” I could hear my mother’s voice again. 

"Judite.” I could hear my father’s voice.  

“Carlos whose dress is this?” My mother. 

Silence from my father for a moment. Then ....

“It’s Soraia’s.” my father’s voice telling my mother who the dress belonged to.

I woke up on Antonio and Alice’s olive-green sofa. Alice was sitting in the matching chair, knitting. Antonio must have put me here; Alice was out of her room and knitting. I blinked. My jaw hurt.

“Are you ok?” Alice asked, she noticed me moving. 

“What happened?” I knew but in that moment, I didn’t remember, as she began to answer I remembered but didn’t stop her from explaining. 

“You and Antonio got into it, It was my fault Paulo. I shouldn’t have told him what you did. I should have left it how it was. I’m sorry he hit you like that.” 

“Where is he?” I wanted to get away from him. 

“He’s gone to work again. You’ve been out for a while.” She continued knitting. 

“What it that?” I asked of her project, she looked up at me in utter glee that I cared enough to ask.

“Oh!! It’s some house slippers…for Marina.” 

At first I thought I heard her say Maria, but then I remembered who I was talking to.

I stood up and walked over to her, I smiled. “they’re pretty. She’ll love them.” 

“I hope so! Im not very good at it. You know who taught me how to knit? Dona Aurora. It’s true! When We first moved in to this apartment Marina was just a baby and she knitted her a darling little blanket. I asked her to teach me and she did.” Alice explained. 

Aurora’s name suddenly reminded of the ring I took, I still needed it to for payment for my itch, for my medicine, my heroin. Alice noticed me searching frantically. 

“It’s gone Paulo.” She said calmly.

“It’s gone.” I repeated. 

“Its gone.” She repeated. 

“I’m sorry.” I always was. 

“I know.” She always knew. 

I went to the bathroom to wash my face. In the hall Marina’s frame was back up. She was there looking back at me from her glass cage, her eyes so big, so innocent. Her smile slightly open like she had something to say to me. I had seen this photo for years as I lived here and only now did I look at it and see her, really see her face. All this time she was the only one who wasn’t judging me. How could she not? 

Marina was never coming back, she was either dead or living somewhere no one could find, but she was never coming back but her ghost remained. She looked at me from behind her new glass. There was no judgement just pity. She didn’t resent me. She didn’t wish something more for me or less for me. She was indifferent. She was frozen. Forever. I put my hand on her face, the glass was cold.

I wish I had known her.

I closed Antonio and Alice’s door and turned to leave the building. Aurora was at her door looking at me through the three-inch gap of her open door. I looked over and she made no motion. She stood there. 

“Bom dia.” I said to her, wishing her a good morning even though it was the evening. 

She spoke nothing, but her eyes said everything. Her blank stare told me she knew what I was. As her hand reached around to pull the door closed on my face, I saw her ring was returned to her.

Then she locked three locks on her door.

I felt my body walking at a fast pace down the street. The cars were rushing by me, but I felt like I was walking faster than they were driving. There was a rush in my, something that most people would describe as Adrenalin, but I wasn’t sure why I was feeling this way. I had this urgent, crushing, impatience in me. Olli hadn’t contacted me, I hadn’t found him, and I was, of course, itching again.

The daily grind of finding Olli was draining. No one could tell me where he was. No one could tell me where my father was. I hadn’t heard from either of them in days, I couldn’t remember the last time I saw them. Had they left town? 

As I walked through my Prince Real neighborhood, I saw a group of people standing out side of the neighborhood's famous Fado house. I could hear the singer singing her Fado ballad from where I was standing. Her voice slithered through the air like a snake and pulled me in, within seconds I was one of the people standing in the crowd outside listening. 

The Fado house was packed, standing room only. I stood on my tippy toes and looked in, I could see her singing. Her voice was so clear and so pure she didn’t even need a microphone.  It was just her and a man playing the Portuguese guitar. I could feel her passion and her pain, I could feel her longing for the person she was singing about. It was like she was singing to just one person even though there were around 70 people listening and watching.

Her pain. Her Loss. Her wishing for the sea to just take her away, take her to where she could find her lost loved one. The man she loved. The person she connected to. I could see her and in a way,  she looked a lot like Soraia standing center stage with everyone’s attention pinned to her.

The fado singer flicked her black shawl over her shoulder like Soraia would flick her feather boas.
The fado singer would close her eyes and feel the music like Soraia would close her eyes and feel the music. The fado singer would find one man in the audience and sing to him like Soraia would find one man and sing to him.

Soaria was my father, my father was Soraia. She was beautiful. He was too. 

“Paulo.” 

I turned. It was Gabriella’s new boyfriend Andre passing by the Fado house too. 

“Her voice is like honey.” I said quickly then turning around to walk away from André. 

“Don’t go! Wait up!” he followed me, he was fucking following me.

“Listen,” I said trying to shoo him away “I wont bother Gabriella again ok? I promise. She wont ever have to see me again.” 

“She’s worried about you.” He persisted.

“I know.” I always knew.

“So? That’s it?” André said jumping in front of me so I could not pass him. The cars on the street finally catching up to my speed. 

“What?” I was confused and mostly in need of heroin.

“That’s it? You 'wont bother her anymore'? Do you think that’s what she wants, for you to just vanish/disappear? She loves you!” André was right.

“Isn’t that what you want? I don’t want to hurt her anymore and I’m sure you’d like it if I---” he interrupted.

“Paulo I want a lot of things, and you’re right, I really wish you’d just go away and leave her alone. But that’s not what she wants. She loves you and wants you to get better and I love her. What makes her happy is what makes me happy.” He confessed.

“I have to find my father.” I passed him up, he caught up. 

“Your father?!?! Are you fucking serious right now?” He was upset. His voice changed from calm to frustrated. 

“Man! What’s it to you??? Leave me alone!” I shouted.

“PAULO!” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back, my body instantly hardened, I gritted my teeth and lifted up a fist ready to land in on André's gorgeous face. “DO IT!” he screamed back. 

“Get lost.” I said backing off.  I was no match for him. 

“Right, there you go, off to find your daddy. Man, you’re more messed up than I realized.” André said releasing my arm. 

“I am messed up.” I was getting annoyed, I turned to start walking. “I have to find my dad.” 

“Paulo, your dad is dead. He’s dead!” André shot me with his words. I turned, lunged at him. 

“WHAT? What are you talking about? Shut the fuck up! Why are you…WHY ARE YOU FOLLWING ME? What are you talking about?” I was screaming, spit was flying out of my mouth. How could he say something like that to me after everything I had been through. What kind of monster lies like that.

I was sure he was crazy, but then the knot in my stomach that suddenly appeared told me he might be right. 

“He’s dead Paulo." He said calmly. "Think about the night you had your last overdose. Think about what happened. How did you overdose, and how did you get to the hospital this last time?” I heard André saying to me as I stormed off down the street.

What an ass hole. But the knot in my stomach that suddenly appeared again told me to listen to him. But I didn’t. I didn’t listen. 

But I heard him.

7.

I somehow forgot about Olli. I forgot about looking for my father. I was enraged by what André said to me. It was a lie. Was it a lie? It was a lie.

Was it?

Within minutes I ended up on a beach pacing through the grains of sand. I thought about the Fado singer singing about how much she just wanted the sea to take her away from all the pain and suffering she was going through at the loss of her love; at the loss of everything. It was killing her.

It was killing me too. I heard that song play over and over in my head. Her pain. Her passion. Her need to be heard by all those people watching her.

The ocean was reflecting the moon and I could see the Tower of Belém sitting on the sea like a tiny castle welcoming the waves. I walked further out on to the sand, hearing each little grain  crunch under my shoes. I got closer and closer to the waves crashing on the wet shore. The waves were calling me, I could hear them splash on the rocks, but it was my name. Paulo. 

I heard my mother’s voice “Carlos.” She called for my father. 

I heard my father’s voice “Judite.” He tried to console my mother.
I heard her crying the night she found the dress. The night she saw the photos that I found.
The night everything changed. The night Soraia was no longer a secret.
The night all the secrets broke free like a strand of pearls snapping from a woman’s neck.

I wanted to so much to go into that sea, I wanted to so much to just drown everything out and never breath again. But I wasn’t only just a junkie. I was also a coward. I was someone who needed a substance to dull the pain and dull out the horror that my life was turned into when I was child. I needed those feelinsg to drown. I needed those voices to drown. I needed it all to just go away 

“Judite.” My father’s voice. 

“Carlos.” My mother’s voice.

I thought about everything Antonio had to go through with Alice and how her own reality was so split ever since Marina vanished. She wasn’t coming back. Alice knew that deep down inside, but she used her denial to keep her going. Her addiction wasn’t something she could fill into a syringe and stab herself with to quiet the pain, it was a photo in a hallway that she looked at every day and sang to, and talked to, and loved like it was a real-life person. It was hope. Hope was Alice’s heroin. Hope kept Marina alive, and it kept Alice alive. Where was my hope?

The waves were closing in, and my cowardice pulled me back from a watery grave. I walked up-shore. The water was now rising, and I needed to find somewhere to hide, just to sit and cry and scream and laugh and think of my father and where he was and where my mother was and how we all go to where we were this very moment.

I was on a beach having a nervous breakdown.
My mother was in a mental hospital having a nervous breakdown.
My father was—My father was Carlos. My father was Soraia.

My father was dead.
He was dead.

The night before my last overdose was dark. I went to SPARKLE to see Soraia perform.

“Soraia?” I asked Flore through the blaring music.

“She’s not here, love. I called her. No answer. No one’s seen her.” Flore was sipping on a colorful cocktail. She shrugged and went off to gossip with her friends amid the spinning mirror ball sparkles and dance music.

“Hey!” I pulled my secret crush Felipe over. “Soraia? Have you seen her?” 

He shook his head no. Chugged his beer. He was beautiful. “And Olli?” I asked again. Shook his gorgeous head no one more time. 

I took off. I went to Soraia’s apartment. My father’s apartment. I walked up and saw dim lights in the window. I opened the door and made my way up the stairs to his third floor flat. 

It was so quiet. I didn’t hear anything. It was so quiet.

Another apartment opened it’s door. An old woman peeped out. I swore for a second it was Aurora, she was following me. She was in someone else’s apartment stalking me. I did a double take.

It wasn’t Aurora.

“Boa noite.” I said to this new Aurora. 

“Boa noite.” She replied, she looked as though she wanted to tell me something but she pulled back into her own flat. She definitely wasn’t Aurora. Aurora never spoke to me.

I came to Soraia’s door. It was barley closed. All I had to do was push it open to enter. I entered.
It was upside-down. Furniture thrown, pictures fallen from the wall. Everything was everywhere. My eyes looked back and forth wall to wall up and down-- all over. I don’t even remember what I was saying. Maybe I was calling out her name. Maybe I was screaming because I knew. I knew it in my heart there was death.

I walked into a room that was bathed in red light that streamed from the lamps all round the room covered in sheer red scarves. I walked in and I knew it. I knew it.

There was Olli standing over My father’s bloody body stabbing him. He was covered in blood. His body was covered in my father’s blood.  Covered in Soraia’s blood…she had her make up on. She had her woman’s padding on. Soraia was murdered, my father was murdered. Olli looked over at me, I could tell he was high, I could tell that the bulging veins in his neck and in his arms were running cold with heroin. 

“What have you done?” I said turning quickly from the scene. 

Olli panicked. He lunged to a table that had a syringe sitting on it filled with heroin. I heard the knife fall to the floor. The needle,  It was meant for him. It was filled with enough heroin to kill someone, he had planned to kill himself that night, and for some reason he killed my father. Everything was in slow motion.

Olli jumped over Soraia’s body and grabbed me. We struggled. We fell to the floor I was screaming I could feel my mouth open but there was nothing coming out. Not a sound. He stuck the needle in me and pushed the plunger. He wanted me gone too, I saw too much. He wanted me dead. The next few seconds were a literal blur. The room was going in and out of my head. I only saw the ceiling and hearing Olli move around the room. I could hear him cleaning up the scene. Then I closed my eyes to the darkness that came from the needle.

The waves were splashing on the rocks with such force. I kept walking down the beach. I had no where to go. I couldn’t go back to Alice and Antonio’s just yet. I couldn’t go to my father’s house. As I walked, I saw something laying in silhouette on the beach. I walked towards it. Closer and closer I could see it was a person. I could see it was person laying within a bed of rocks just off the shoreline.

I got closer. I got close. I got to the person. 

It was Ollo. I had finally found Olli. He was dead. A needle still sticking out of his arm. Dried blood that trickled down from his arm like a little red river had pooled in the palm of his hand.

He was dead. I fell into the sand. My head was spinning. My head was hurting. I saw stars, and I saw my father’s dead body. I saw my mother screaming. I heard the dogs barking on the beach. I heard Alice crying. I saw Aurora’s face in the 3 inch gap of her door.

“He was special. He was special.” A voice said.  

Was this real? There was a casket in the center of the room.

“He was special.” I walked slowly. To the end of the room. The casket was covered in white lily’s.

“He was special.” I turned to see who was saying it. It was my mother. She was dressed in all black.

“He was. Who was?” I asked her.

“Say goodbye Paulo.” She said as she lifted the black veil around her face.

I turned back to the casket. I looked in. It was my father. It was Soraia. In full hair and makeup. It was my father. It was Soraia. I saw her. I saw him. I saw them.

Then his eyes opened and looked at up me.

8. 

“Remember you’re everything you want to be. Make yourself to be anything you want. There’s no one, not me, not your mama, no one that can change your own mind. Be that person.” That was Soraia’s voice to me one night when I was 16 on a visit to her flat. She was finished putting on her makeup.

“What do you mean?” I asked in my squeaky teen voice.

“Do you know what I am Paulo? I mean, do you see what sits in front of you right now? What do you see when you see me?” Soraia asked. 

“I see..” I was nervous to be honest. “I see you.” I said. Was that the right answer? 

“But what am I?” Soraia, my father, turned in his chair to fully face me. “Go on. Look at me, really look at me son, tell me what you see.” 

“I don’t know what you mean."

“Sure you do!” 

“I see you in a wig, a man in a wig who puts make up on." I paused then it came out.  "Do you want to be a woman?” I asked. Finally, just asking point blank what I had been dying to ask for so long since I found the photos of naked men and Soraia and the dress that my mother found. Soraia’s dress. 

“There. Was that so hard?” Soraia said, then turned back around and removed a brown wig from a foam head that sat staring at me too.

I waited for the answer.

“I don’t want to be a woman, Paulo. That’s not what this is about. This isn’t about my gender. To me, it’s an illusion, a fantasy. I get to go away for just a few hours into Soraia’s world and forget everything that happened to me. Just for a few hours.” Soraia said, wig now in place, now to adjust the makeup.

“What do you feel when you are on stage and people are calling out to you but it’s not Carlos.” I asked as we made eye contact in the mirror.

“Freedom.” Soraia answered.

“I’d like to feel that way too.” I said in a hushed voice. My own secrets and demons yet to be expelled at this young age.

Soraia turned in her chair, her makeup clean and perfect, her hair coiffed and ready. She stood up and stepped into her performance gown and zipped it up all the way to the her shoulder blades. She looked at me and I instantly knew she needed help getting it up the rest of the way.

I zipped up my father’s dress. I zipped up Soraia’s dress.   

My father Carlos. My father Soraia. 

Soraia turned back to me and with bot of his big hands, hands manicured to the tips of her red nails, each finger crowned with rings of gold and diamonds, but it was Soraia who looked at me. She smiled

“My boy, you’ll find your freedom too. Somehow. It doesn’t always come in a pair of heels or a beautiful dress though—if you’re lucky it will.” She laughed.

“How will I know when I’m free?” I asked seriously. 

Soraia thought for a second. There was really no right answer. There was no real answer either because she knew that sometimes the type of freedom beings like us searched for was sometimes a figure of our own imagination. Something we create to cope and to move past the horrors and the nightmares of our existences. It was a part of our mind that usurped the ugly truth with any assortment of beauty just so that we could survive. 

There was a dark side to this as well that for some manifested in using drugs to dull the pain, that was a sort of freedom. Other's used alcohol or sex. Some just lied all the time. 

But what we all had in common was that we disguised ourselves with a smile hiding the hurtful truth like Alice, or like me, falling into the dark rabbit hole lifestyle of a junkie, and my father Carlos, the most famous drag queen in all of Lisbon, he put on her wig and gown three nights a week and made people forget their masks by using his own mask.

Soraia put on her coat. She looked back at me sitting in her room and smiled. 

“When you get back to Alice and Antonio’s I want you to be good. And Paulo,” 

I stood there as Soraia paused to speak again. 

“get ready.” She finished. 

I didn’t know what she meant that night when I came over for a visit when I was just 16. But I do now. Life was going to toss me around like the ships in the sea that searched out new worlds and new horizons. I could either sink or I could swim, but what I needed to be was ready to make that choice. 

I sat on that beach near Olli’s body. Staring into that wild sea. It crashed up against the rocks, lord, how loud that sound was. It was like bombs blowing up every three seconds.

I looked out onto the horizon. There was a new world out there for me. There really was.

I curled up on the sand, my arms hugged my knees, my feet dug into the sand and for the first time in a very long time the itch seemed weaken. The itch was fading  and as the salty wind blew in my face and through my hair I whispered to Soraia, I whispered to my father, I know he’d hear me.

“I’m ready.”