Brazilians are a friendly bunch. This is a fact. If you don’t watch out, complete strangers will strike up conversation in public places, which is something that tends to unnerve the average reserved Briton and make him want to start running. Having overcome this urge by sheer force of repetition, I now throw myself into social congress with anybody sufficiently slow-moving.
Whilst standing on an odour-filled bus recently lamenting the absurd state of public transport with a senior citizen who couldn’t get away, I was reminded of a rather arresting incident that occurred early in my foraging for a living here in the Republica Federativa do Brasil.
I was exercising my hound, as is my daily routine, when I noted a strikingly tall blonde with dark glasses tottering towards me on an unruly pair of high heels. As she passed, she hissed something to me out of the side of her crimson-traced mouth. Back then, I was subject to the second-and-a-half time delay that kicks in when spoken to unexpectedly in the native tongue, and I just looked at her blankly and continued walking, my poor brain trying to decipher her sudden interjection.
Mulling things over, two things struck me about her throwaway comment: (1) she had a voice that would be suitable for dubbing the Rocky character into Portuguese; and (2) she was, if my flaccid language skills weren’t deceiving me, inviting me to put her “on a leash” – presumably an oblique reference to my dog-walking. Quickening my pace, I continued on my perplexed ramble until I got home and consulted a dictionary, which only confirmed my suspicions.
I have since seen various photos of my new friend in the society pages of the local paper, each time in a different dress under captions such as, “Marco reaches boiling point at the Metallurgical Workers’ Union Annual Barbecue”.
It’s reassuring to know that, should you ever need one, there’s a transvestite available, even in a small town such as this.
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Comments
When I worked in Baku I found out that it was a hub for transvestites throughout the Caucasus, especially those who used to live in what had been Chechnya.
They hung out at the "Mother and Child" cafe, an allegedly man-free zone where demure Azeri women could munch cakes with their infants without having Stalin lookalikes rubbing against them. The mommies had usually gone home for casual domestic violence by tea-time, and from then on it was Trannistan.
I never ventured in, and evil President Aliyev had it closed down the following year. Thus was another opportunity for major linguistic misunderstandings missed.
One of my first recollections of a trip to Rio de Janeiro, back when I was around 9, includes a great number of "serious" transvestites and others not so serious (some poorly dressed drunk men) on my stepfather's car hood!
To say the least, they are definitely a fun break on our attempt to classify love and gender. Yes, as a homofobic billboard in Campinas said some time ago "God made men and women" and culture made us who we are with our symbols and freedom to connect anyway we see fit (and that's not hurting anyone).
Cheers ; )
Erika
A friend of mine was in London once and a passenger in his car, fuelled by drink and boyish bravado, shouted some insults at some transvestites, unaware that the car was about to stop at a red traffic light. Seeing them running towards the car in the wing mirror, he tried to wind the window up, but was too drunk to coordinate it. Before he knew it, one of the cross-derssers stuck his head in the window, kissed him and said, "Dontcha just love it?!"