Hello, my friend.
I do not like sending letters over the Internet. They lack those beautiful stamps that delighted me as a child. But what is the point of using the postal service now that it has replaced beautiful pictures with bar codes? Brazil is no exception to the trend, and there is nothing I, Rui Amaral, can do about it!
Helio and I have quarrelled again over trifles. Nothing serious, then. I love him just as much, even though we no longer make love very often. I remember how, a very long time ago now, we would roll around beneath the sheets, sometimes with friends. We were young, stuffed with LSD and happiness, a fine pair of stamped lunatics, to return to my postal introduction.
I met some friends in a bar. But should I really consider them my friends? I hate ghettos, especially the one that confines us poor homosexuals to bars that nevertheless resemble the bars of people who call themselves normal! The vulgar mingle with the vulgar. Shit against shit. My friends talked about sex the way other people talk about cars. They kept questioning me about my relationship with Helio, incredulous and amused by our fidelity. They are nothing but envious hypocrites!
They have not changed in fifteen years. They talk about the same subjects, the same problems, the man who dumped them, the one they would like in their bed, the song everyone is raving about. Nothing of substance! Has time stopped for them? Are they already dead? Or am I the one living a bad dream?
Tomorrow I will go for a ride to clear my head. I will take my bicycle and go down to the lake to watch the passersby, people I do not know. At least they will seem alive to me because I will never know the alarming details of their immobility!
I am angry, as you can plainly see. And not only because of my friends or my quarrels with Helio. My anger dates back to childhood. We were all angels, my sisters and I. What have we become? Wretched ravens croaking out their bitterness. Look at the photograph I have attached to this message. I was eight. My father had just given me yet another of those poisoned gifts. A beautiful windmill, all the same.
Look how sad I seem. My father always had a genius for taking photographs. I am pouting; the toy spins and seems to invite me to play. I remain leaning against the tree, my lips pressed tightly together.
I used to accompany my father on his business trips. In this photograph, we were in Recife. I remember that period very well. My father took me to elegant restaurants and bought me very expensive toys, then left me alone in our hotel room while he went off to amuse himself with whores.
In my big bed, I waited for him to return. When he came back, he shoved me aside without ceremony, drunk and steeped in smells I would not learn to decipher until many years later.
And so you can see the genius of this photograph even more clearly. The windmill represents my father, and the photograph centres on the toy, not on me as I direct all my reproaches at him.
I have never told anyone this. My mother must have known about my father’s infidelities. Perhaps that is why she never smiled for him when he took her picture. Did they love each other? I should ask them before they die. They are so old. Will they have the courage to tell me their truth?
I embrace you.
Rui