Looking sideways

Chapter three - Future: I’m far from perfect, and often unkind to myself. My self worth can be low, I usually feel like I’m a burden to others, I’m insecure, I obsess with bad stuff, and I find it really hard to be vulnerable. Besides, I’m a control freak, my pragmatism would scare most people, I plan stuff in advance and I can get easily overwhelmed with social situations. Meaning that I like my space, I'm not very spontaneous and I may take a while to reply. Despite all that, I have really high standards for the people I call my friends. And there’s a reason for that: I also have amazing qualities and, most importantly, I know my worth, and what I should expect from others, even if I don't get it from myself.  I’m supportive, caring and loyal. Once you become my friend, I’ll be there for you whenever you need me, and I’ll always be honest with you, even if that is not what you want to hear. I’ll never tell you something if I don’t really mean it, no matter how that makes me l...

Chapter two - Present: January is a strange month where I live. It’s a cold, dark, poor and uneventful period after the holidays, where people realise that their new year’s resolutions are unrealistic, they're desperate for payday and they just want to continue in auto mode until everything really starts kicking in. For me, there’s another layer: it’s my birthday month. And I haven’t enjoyed it for a long time. This year, for the first time since my late 20s, early 30s, things have been different... I used to love my birthdays back then. Recently, they just made me sad. I can't pinpoint why, but I can think of a few reasons, which are the topic for another day. January 2026 didn’t have any reason to be different. It started with my balls and nipples sore from three new piercings, my guts being unfriendly to basically anything I ate, my haemorrhoids choosing to make a comeback tour, and on top of all that, a week with that nasty cold everyone’s getting. Despite all that, it’s be...

Chapter one - Past: I’ve lost a bit of weight over the last months. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to write about it, an entirely new territory for me. I last embarked on a journey to lose weight 20+ years ago, for completely different reasons then. This time, for instance, I don’t feel about it like most people seem to. It’s an achievement for sure, and it’ll bring positive impacts to my life, but I don’t see it as something to be celebrated. Or deprecated. I don’t want to make a before/after where I’m better/ worse, and I definitely don’t want it to be about body shaming in any direction.  Things are changing because of choices I made, and choices have consequences. Over the summer my doctors told me that I’m prediabetic. Being overweight is not the only culprit here, there is a family history, but it has definitely contributed to it. Prediabetes was an addition to a mild NAFLD and sleep apnoea, both of which I had for a while, and probably the trigger for me to make some cha...

Anthology - Part VII: It was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me. A lot of strange things have been happening to me these days, but this may be the one that left the biggest mark. And it was so simple, so mundane. He just smiled at me, and this was it. It hit me. Like a punch. One I had no idea was coming my way. The best way to describe it, though, wouldn’t be using violence. I would probably compare it to that scene at the end of Ratatouille, where the food critic puts food in his mouth and, suddenly, he is transported back to his childhood. Me, I was transported back to my first kiss with the guy in the red speedos. For a few seconds that felt like hours, I was back at being 20 years old and feeling the shockwaves of that kiss. Just from a smile. It was such a strong feeling that I had to walk very quickly, all the way from the changing room on the lower ground floor, to the street outside my gym. Normally one needs to leave a crowded space because one gets overwhel...

Anthology - Part VI: I don’t remember arriving in Berlin. Or even disembarking at the now closed Tegel Airport. I remember the delicious cookies I got from the cabin crew of the quick KLM flight from Amsterdam, and I remember seeing snow at the tarmac in Schipol. But my first memory of Berlin is being in the 128 bus, on my way to the U6, with a heavy backpack on my back. All the excitement had, at that point, been replaced by tiredness after a 24h journey across the Atlantic. It wasn’t until a few days later that it dawned on me that the first day of the rest of my European life was finally here. I didn't know at the time that it would be the rest of my life, and that I would never end up using my return ticket scheduled for 6 months later. I also had no idea that I would meet someone right at the beginning, someone who would break my heart and my soul in a really catastrophic way. But most importantly, I had absolutely no clue that the love of my life was so close to me, waiting t...

Anthology - Part V: Coming out is not a standard procedure kind of thing. On the surface, it sounds like this shared experience that every queer person goes through in the same way, and to an extent this is the case. But every coming out is different, because it involves so many variables that it would be mathematically improbable for two queer people to have the exact same set of circumstances. For me, coming out was a unique experience, and it started with myself. The first thing I had to do was to come out to myself. To look at myself in the mirror and say to me: you are gay. You like men. You are different from other males. And that’s ok. Once I came out to myself, I had to come out to everyone else. Maybe “had to” sounds a bit heavy, and I understand that some people might not have that option. Or that they prefer not to share this bit of their lives with some others around them (or whatever it is that they prefer to do through the process, because as I said, it is unique to each ...

Anthology - Part IV: You night never believe this, but I once had a six pack. And no, I don't mean that I went to the supermarket and got myself a pack with six cans of buds - although I can imagine why someone would think that, given how I have been talking about my story of being straight. I think I some point I actually told people I like buds. Beer buds, not guy buds. How times changed... I also changed after that conversation I had with the guy who outed me in the shower. Looking back now I can pinpoint that this was the kickoff of it all, and it all came down to admitting to myself, for the first time, that I liked men. By opening up to him, I also opened up to myself. That day I was terrified, and I didn't know it then that in less than a year from that conversation, I would be an completely different person. And it all started with my body.  Over the following months, I lost a bunch of weight, I started going out, I tried drugs, went to parties and drove home drunk. I s...

Anthology - Part III: December 31st, 2002, a cabin in the woods kind of situation. A group of friends gathered with some other friends, to spend the holiday together. Amongst all the people there, the ones I knew and the ones I haven’t met before, this guy got my attention almost instantly. Basically everything I described before, jock wise, including that he was clearly into girls. Oh, and the fact that he would not miss a single opportunity to make a homophobic joke.  The clock struck midnight. 2003 was finally here. We all wished each other 'happy new year!', drank a bit more, ate a bit more, danced a bit more... Slowly, everyone started to drop out, to find their way to bed. One by one, people said goodnight, but we both stayed awake. The two of us kept chatting and drinking. Until it was just him and me. We were quite tipsy at this point, and next thing I know, he started to flirt with me. I couldn’t really believe it! But then again, in Brazil it was quite common for ...

Anthology - Part II: I grew up in a very male dominant environment, with a sexist oriented culture. People around me glorified men and masculinity, and femininity was, for them, a synonym of weakness and inferiority. Submissive mother, traditional male and female roles, remember? This was just an echo of the society my family was part of, and they played a leading role in this society. Someone who showed even a tiny bit of femininity was called gay, made fun of and discriminated against - regardless of whether they actually liked boys or not. In addition, all the gay guys I knew of were very effeminate and very out in the open about it, maybe because they had to be fierce to be able to handle living around those kinds of people. Add to that the fact that I was born in 1983, so my childhood years happened right when HIV and its complications became a thing, and that thing was heavily associated with gay men. In the midst of that colourful scenery, my femininity started to pop its head o...