It was 1962-63, we were 16 years old and all the girls caught the attention of me and José, my colleague and friend to this day. Especially the girls from the school we studied at, "Aplicação da Lagoa", in Rio de Janeiro. After all, they were the ones we saw the most, the ones we wanted the most, whether in physical education classes with our gym uniform skirts showing our thighs, or crossing our legs more carelessly (or not so carelessly), making eye contact, in adolescents instincts and annoying thoughts.
The classmates were the main targets of the looks, but they were paying attention to the older boys, at least two years older. It was when José's attention was caught by a girl two years younger, brunette, brown eyes, with lots of freckles, just like my friend, neither beautiful nor ugly, they went unnoticed, but in the prime of our years, we were all beautiful.
As the girls were also in puberty and Mother Nature helps preserve the species, there was a certain reciprocity in the looks, a “chemistry”. Then José Suarez, son of Spanish immigrants from Galicia and Sara Martman, daughter of Jewish immigrants began to "talk".
Trying to get the same “crowd” for Cosme-Velho on the way home, the heart beating a little stronger, each one learning to control their emotions, discovering the game of seduction, of dissimulation so as not to “give it a miss”, in short, many emotions, at the same time, difficult to “take on” at that age.
Everything was going great until they started holding hands a few times and Sara's brother saw it. And, jealous of his sister, he went to tell her at home. Then mom and dad entered the story:
_ How? Is the boy a goy? You can't, how absurd!
Sara was "forbidden" by her mother to continue with that. He told José what was happening, and that was that.
Ethnic prejudice is “phoda”. Although rarely unidirectional it is phoda. Each ethnic group does not admit its own prejudices, it is always others who are prejudiced.
But José understood, after all, there was no occasion that his parents wouldn't try to "bring him closer" to some daughter of fellow countrymen and to disqualify those who weren't “Galicians”.
And there were so many people to approach that it would be a waste to commit so soon. They were the explanations we found (they and they) to manage our regrets. Platonic loves, objects of desire that they didn't even know about.... It was the age of masturbation alone (the dictionary I consulted says that the verb is “reflexive”, that is, “alone” would be a redundancy). In fact, I do not recommend this dictionary because it appears that the author does not understand the subject since masturbation for two is highly and widely adopted with effective, efficient and pleasurable results. Transitive verb.
A similar thing happened to me with “Vera Nobre”, now an architect, who lived on Rua Hilario de Gouveia, in Copacabana, which led me to take the “circular” lot in reverse, turning around just to admire those green eyes that pretended I didn't see my parents and when it looked like something was going to happen, my parents found out that my parents were “disconnected” and banned me. Oh traumas! Oh cruel life...
But going back to José and Sara, the two moved away, at least “pro-forma”, I don’t know exactly because I didn’t see José for a few years. What is certain is that between the two there was a certain taste, a certain smell of hormones in the air. Knowing the two of them, I think they would have been a couple 20 as they said. I also know that their friendship lasted forever. My current wife and I are very malicious, and we think that they have already fallen into temptation a few times, maybe they will continue to do so. But these are just guesses. Many of this generation were considered “quiet eaters”, that is, they don’t tell anyone about their relationships, leaving us to have to invent, imagine. Doubt spices things up more and life becomes more exciting. Better not to confirm anything. If confirmed, it may or may not be a lie, but it breaks the spell.
How will these things go nowadays (in 2022)? I'm going to ask my grandchildren, a Rabbi and a Galician I know...
Miguel Fernández, engineer and chronicler,
Written in 2022Oct, 4,058 touches
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