Paradise Tales (9 page)

João is going to take me to Eden to have the baby. It is Indian territory, and the Indians want it to be born. There is something about some story they have, about how the world began again, and keeps re-birthing.

Agosto and Guillinho roasted the chicken. Adalberto, Kawé, Jorge and Carlos sat around in a circle shelling the dried prawns. The waiter kept coming back and asking if we wanted more beer. He was this skinny kid from Marajo with nothing to his name but shorts, flip-flops and a big grin in his dark face. Suddenly we realize that he’s dragging us. Nilson starts singing, “
Moreno
,
Moreno
… ,” which means sexy brown man. Nilson got the kid to sit on his knee.

This place is paradise for gays. We must be around four percent of the population. It’s the untouched natural samesex demographic, about the same as for left-handedness. It’s like being in a country where they make clothes in your size or speak your maternal language, or where you’d consider allowing the President into your house for dinner.

It’s home.

We got back, and all and I mean all of João’s huge family had a party for my birthday. His nine sisters, his four brothers, and their spouses and their kids. That’s something else you don’t get in our big bright world. Huge tumbling families. It’s like being in a nineteenth-century novel every day. Umberto gets a job, Maria comes off the booze, Latitia gets over fancying her cousin, João helps his nephew get into university. Hills of children roll and giggle on the carpet. You can’t sort out what niece belongs to which sister, and it doesn’t matter. They all just sleep over where they like.

Senhora da Souza’s house was too small for them all, so we hauled the furniture out into the street and we all sat outside in a circle, drinking and dancing and telling jokes I couldn’t understand. The Senhora sat next to me and held my hand. She made this huge cupu-açu cream, because she knows I love it so much.

People here get up at 5:00 a.m., when it’s cool, so they tend to leave early. By ten o’clock, it was all over. João’s sisters lined up to give me a kiss, all those children tumbled into cars, and suddenly it was just us. I have to be careful about sitting on the babies too much, so I decided not to drive back. I’m going to sleep out in the courtyard on a mattress with João and Nilson.

We washed up for the Senhora, and I came out here onto this unpaved Brazilian street to do my diary.

Mom hates that I’m here. She worries about malaria, she worries that I don’t have a good job. She’s bewildered by my being pregnant. “I don’t know, baby, if it happens, and it works, who’s to say?”

“It means the aliens’ plot backfired, right?”

“Aliens,” she says back real scornful. “If they wanted the planet, they could have burned off the native life forms, planted a few of their own, and come back. Even our padre thinks that’s a dumb idea now. You be careful, babe. You survive. OK?”

OK. I’m thirty-six and still good looking. I’m thirty-six and finally I’m some kind of a rebel.

I worry, though, about the Nilson thing.

OK, João and I had to be apart for five years. It’s natural he’d shack up with somebody in my absence, and I do believe he loves me, and I was a little bit jealous at first … sorry, I’m only human. But hey—heaps of children on the floor, right? Never know who’s sleeping with whom? I moved in with them, and I quite fancy Nilson, but I don’t love him, and I wouldn’t want to have his baby.

Only … maybe I am.

You are supposed to have to treat the sperm first to make them receptive to each other, and I am just not sure, there is no way to identify, when I became pregnant. But OK, we’re all one big family, they’ve both … been down there. And I started to feel strange and sick before João’s and my sperm were … um … planted.

Thing is, we only planted one embryo. And now there’s twins.

I mean, it would be wild, wouldn’t it, if one of the babies were Nilson and João’s? And I was just carrying it, like a pod?

Oh, man. Happy birthday.

Happy birthday, moon. Happy birthday, sounds of TVs, flip-flop sandals from feet you can’t see, distant dogs way off on the next street, insects creaking away. Happy birthday, night. Which is as warm and sweet as hot honeyed milk.

Tomorrow, I’m off to Eden, to give birth.

Forty-six years old. What a day to lose a baby.

They had to fly me back out in a helicopter. There was blood gushing out, and João said he could see the placenta. Chefe said it was OK to send in the helicopter. João was still in Consular garb. He looked so tiny and defenseless in just a penis sheath. He has a little pot belly now. He was so terrified, his whole body had gone yellow. We took off, and I feel like I’m melting into a swamp, all brown mud, and we look out and there’s Nilson with the kids, looking forlorn and waving goodbye. And I feel this horrible grinding milling in my belly.

I’m so fucking grateful for this hospital. The Devolved Areas are great when you’re well and pumped up, and you can take huts and mud and mosquitoes and snake for dinner. But you do not want to have a miscarriage in Eden. A miscarriage in the bowel is about five times more serious that one in the womb. A centimeter or two more of tearing and most of the blood in my body would have blown out in two minutes.

I am one very lucky guy.

The Doctor was João’s friend Nadia, and she was just fantastic with me. She told me what was wrong with the baby.

“It’s a good thing you lost it,” she told me. “It would not have had much of a life.”

I just told her the truth. I knew this one felt different from the start; it just didn’t feel right.

It’s what I get for trying to have another baby at forty-five. I was just being greedy. I told her.
É a ultima vez
. This is the last time.

Chega
, she said. Enough. But she was smiling.
É o trabalho do João
. From now on, it’s João’s job.

Then we had a serious conversation, and I’m not sure I understood all her Portuguese. But I got the gist of it.

She said: it’s not like you don’t have enough children.

When João and I first met, it was like the world was a flower that had bloomed. We used to lie in each other’s arms and he, being from a huge family, would ask, “How many babies?” and I’d say “Six,” thinking that was a lot. It was just a fantasy then, some way of echoing the feeling we had of being a union. And he would say no, no, ten. Ten babies. Ten babies would be enough.

We have fifteen.

People used to wonder what reproductive advantage homosexuality conferred.

Imagine you sail iceberg-oceans in sealskin boats with crews of twenty men, and that your skiff gets shipwrecked on an island, no women anywhere. Statistically, one of those twenty men would be samesex-oriented, and if receptive, he would nest the sperm of many men inside him. Until one day, like with Nilson and João, two sperm interpenetrated. Maybe more. The bearer probably died, but at least there was a chance of a new generation. And they all carried the genes.

Homosexuality was a fallback reproductive system.

Once we knew that, historians started finding myths of male pregnancy all over the place. Adam giving birth to Eve, Vishnu on the serpent Anata giving birth to Brahma. And there were all the virgin births as well, with no men necessary.

Now we don’t have to wait for accidents.

I think Nadia said, You and João, you’re pregnant in turns or both of you are pregnant at the same time. You keep having twins. Heterosexual couples don’t do that. And if you count husband number three, Nilson, that’s another five children. Twenty babies in ten years?

“Chega
,” I said again.

“Chega
,” she said, but it wasn’t a joke. Of course the women, the lesbians are doing the same thing now too. Ten years ago, everybody thought that homosexuality was dead and that you guys were on the endangered list. But you know, any reproductive advantage over time leads to extinction of rivals.

Nadia paused and smiled.
I think we are the endangered species now.

Happy birthday.

He’s forgotten who I am again. I can see the little flicker in his glasses as it goes through photos and whispers my name at him. “Brewster,” he says. Then he, like, shrugs and says, “It’s all in the mix.”

It’s all in the mix. That’s what he always says when he’s pretending he’s chilled out and not gaga. Jazza’s still on planet Clubland, a million years ago. Maybe he’s happy there.

But he can’t pay his bills.

“Bar’s not open,” I tell him. I hold out his blue tray of pills. “Take one of these, man. Top buzz.”

Instead of taking one, he fumbles up a whole handful and the tray says to him, “Nooooooo.” It sounds like a bouncer outside a club.

“Shit,” he says and takes five of the fuckers anyway.

Outside his big window, it’s late summer, early morning, all kinda smoky. It’s a nice view; I’ll say that. Lawn, trees. The view is wired, too. Whole place is full of VAO—Victim Activated Ordnance. To protect us rich old folks.

Once I saw this kid who’d climbed over the wall. He was just a kid. He probably just wanted to play on the grass. The camera saw him and zapped him. They used pulse sound on him. He clutched his head and tried to run, but his feet kept wobbling. Each bullet is 150 decibels, and you can’t really think. He stumbled down onto his knees, and he’d stand up, drop, stand up, drop down again until they came for him.

I used to make that stuff. I used to make the software that recognizes faces. Now it recognizes me.

I go back and my room smells like a trashcan. It’s got gray hair in the corners. It pisses me off what I pay for this place. The least they could do is keep it clean. There’s got to be some advantages to being an old vegetable.

I push the buzzer and I get no answer. I push again, and nothing happens so I go to the screen and start shouting. I tell ’em straight up, “I push your buzzer and you don’t come, man. I could be dying of a heart attack up here. If I tell the papers, that’d blow your sales pitch. You don’t answer my buzzer, I scorch your ass!”

About forty-five minutes later the Kid shows up moving real slow. He leans back against the wall, arms folded. I can’t even remember what fucked-up country he’s from, but I can read him. He’s got that mean, sour look you get when nobody gives a fuck so why should you.

I feel pretty pissed off myself. “Next time I ring the buzzer you fuckin show up.”

“Sorry, Sir.” Kid says “Sir” like maybe it means “dog” in his own language.

“What the fuck is up with you?”

“Nothing, Sir.”

I look for buttons to push. You know, like if someone blanks you out, you get them mad and maybe you find out what’s going on?

I insult the Kid. “Can’t you talk English?”

Nothing.

“It’s a helluva way to get a tip. Or no tip. You want no tip?”

His arms snap open like a spring lock, his head swivels like armed CCTV, and his mouth spouts garbage like a TV in translation. I pushed his button all right.

When he stops swearing in Albanian or Mongolian or whatever, I finally hear him squawk. “I get no tip no how!”

So that’s it. He’s not getting his tips.

The assholes who run this place don’t pay the staff. You gotta give the nurses tips, the cleaners tips, the doctors tips, the waiters tips. If the toilets get more intelligent we’ll have to tip the toilets. And management makes sure you do it regular. That’s one of the things about this dump I hate the most. They keep sending you little forms to fill in to debit your bank account. Those fuckin’ forms show up on your computer, on your TV, on your microwave, on your specs. The forms have these horrible chirpy little voices. “I’m sure you want to express your appreciation for the staff.”