1
Difficult, smuggling a hummingbird back to the building, but that done, then came the fun part. Without anyone knowing.

Virgílio stuffed it into the blender and screwed on the lid. The critter just tapped a little off the sides, at first, kind of hovering in the air.

When Virgílio switched it on – minimum speed –, then we saw the first flashes of adrenaline course through that tiny, steely blue-green body. Startled by the hum of the blades, it beat its wings more vigorously and slammed more forcefully against the sides.

I watched it panic through the plastic blender jar. Looking through the lid, I noticed Virgílio’s nails and the palms of his hands, that much paler in tone than the rest of his skin. Thin fingers, the movements showing through.

Though any bird would do, there was nothing quite like a hummingbird. It was playfulness, sadistic delight and scientific curiosity rolled perfectly into one. We had always had a thing for animals.
We loved the mice bought at the pet shop, sedated and dissected in the bedroom. The scalpel slicing through the thin leather of their bellies, releasing an acrid smell that mixed with the ether we used as a general anesthetic and to sterilize the instruments. We loved the tadpoles from the aquarium, those tiny exposed fetuses, black, with funny eyes, transforming in plain view, acquiring webbed feet like deformations provoked in vitro, their tails slowly dissolving. Or the ants we’d stick to ice-cubes, so they’d be temporarily frozen stiff, and then leave on the windowsill to resuscitate in the sunlight. Sometimes successfully. Then there was the behavioral laboratory Virgílio invented, and which we’d set up in Nossa Senhora da Paz square. It was a basin filled halfway with water, with rocks for islands and toothpicks for bridges, where ants of various species rushed to and fro, marooned on the makeshift archipelago, killing and being killed for the privilege of devouring the corpses they were becoming in droves and the globules of ice-cream purposely dotted here and there. Suicide was not uncommon; ants hurled themselves into the water in desperation.

A flurry. The body, metallic, muscular and small, was beginning to tire. Virgílio’s kinks seemed electrified. His green eyes all lit up.
— He’s strong — I said.
Virgílio gave no response.

We smiled nervously, hearts skipping a beat.

Stray cats and dogs were a whole other story. We had a blast tying them to the rear bumpers of buses. When they couldn’t keep up any longer they’d get their paws in a muddle, roll into a bundle and get dragged off, bouncing across the tarmac. Other times we’d suffocate them in plastic bags, observing as their faces crunched into a grimace. On special occasions, enticed by the exuberance of their final moments, we’d incinerate them with alcohol and matches. The flames rose easily in the rubbish skip. With the victim flung to the flames, the routes of escape all blocked-off, Virgílio would relish the countdown as the squeals carried through the iron plating, 5. . . 4. . . 3. . . 2. . . Between fear and expectation, the way was paved for a rocketing ball of fire.
The whole neighborhood became our back yard. ‘Ipanema’, in Tupi, the language originally spoken by the indians in that area, is no compliment, meaning “pestilent water”.

Almost drained now, the hummingbird was slowly giving in, letting go, descending. Capitulation was becoming an option. And yet the brush of its tail against the swirling blades was all it took to inject a fresh bolt of energy. The bird struggled once again into a climb, its luck running out, its fortune fatally wounded. Its wings were filling a space beyond their span, in the grip of the frenzy only fear of death can provoke. Convulsions, palpitations, and those black eyes, the size of a pinhead, filled with expression. It slammed frantically against the plastic lid and sides, darkened by Virgílio’s looming shadow, as he tapped gleefully on the blender with his fingertips.
Pressing the second button immediately sent the blades into a spin so fast and loud that the screaming motor hurt the ears.

— If it was a scorpion, it would’ve killed itself by now – said Virgílio.
The bird could never have imagined it, but the flowers were plastic, the water, artificially sweetened, the shade, a trap: its whole world had betrayed it.
It was only natural that it should fall, and fall it did. The blades were momentarily muffled, until the force of their rotation overcame the resistance, slinging a thick, wet, crimson paste against the plastic – interspersed with some vaguely recognizable metal-green feathers, hard matter, aqueous goo and entrails. The hum of the motor, only slightly dulled, returned to its normal pitch.

2
Virgílio came home earlier than usual. The elevator stopped on two floors on the way up, but no-one opened the door. Once in, he went straight to the kitchen for a glass of water. The sun was fading outside, but it was still swelteringly hot. There was a note stuck to the draining board from the housekeeper to her husband saying she’d gone to the supermarket. Virgílio had got that far without the slightest mind for silence, but neither had he gone out of his way to make any noise.
Something muted and subtle was in the air. The tinted glass door between the kitchen and the service area was wide open. He passed through it and glanced at the row of three slatted doors to the housekeeping quarters that ran along the tiled wall to the right. They revealed nothing at first, but the door nearest him was slightly ajar, allowing a glimpse of a black-and-white television, switched off, and an ironing board beside a chair stacked with sheets and clothes. There was no-one there. He could hear a bird chirp. The second door was closed, but Virgílio knew by heart what was on the other side: the double bed in the middle, the crucifix pinned to the wall, dead center, symmetrically dividing the space above the headboard, the magazine spreads stuck to the walls as decoration. He moved on, the sound was not coming from there.

Virgílio thought of the dog and the sound it made when chewing on stuff, but that wasn’t it. This was different. Intrigued, he cast a glance around the service area of the apartment, decorated with Fatima’s potted samambaia ferns and Jairo’s caged canaries. She talked to the plants. He loved his birds. They reminded him of his native state, Ceará, and of his father, already dead before he left for Rio de Janeiro. The Estrela de Ipanema apartment block, however affirmative of modernity it may have been, still harbored a few nostalgic hearts after all. The cook and the driver, a married couple, seemed to enjoy a kind of pre-industrial happiness, gifted rather than won. They had a son, Miguel, who was twelve. Life was stable and simple.

Fátima was a joyful Baiana with a strong mulatto smile. She had always been a little heavy-set, but now, heading on forty, she was packing it on for real. She had learned to cook in the manner of a genius – with no rules. Her good humor and talent made all the difference.

Jairo was fair-haired, short and stocky, with large hands. He was of a more serious temperament than his wife, which is how she kept him over a barrel. She had him laughing all the time, enraptured one minute, faking disapproval of her whims the next. He was discretely good. He kept a scaling knife in the car, under the driver’s seat, but that was just macho posturing, pure show. He was a delicate man who took care of the birds with fatherly zeal, changing their water each day, mixing the rights feed for each phase of life. He had canaries of various colors – yellow, orange, brown and dappled –, all with the short, sharp beaks typical of the species. He stroked them, hand-fed them, talked to them. He knew when to scare them like some terrifying giant and when to stretch out his hand and let them come to him, brazenly. When he was at home with no work to do, he would sit by the window out back, silently savoring Fatima’s coffee, and let those tiny little birds wing him away to some far-off place. “The males sing more and better than the females”- he’d say, explaining who was who in the cages. Virgílio and I never did learn to tell them apart, not by song nor color, and we always got the names mixed up. Jairo never suspected our predilection for hummingbirds.

The sea-breeze blowing in through the eleventh-floor gently stirred the cages, making the canaries hop from perch to perch. The late afternoon had soaked the sky in pink and orange. The nearest mountain was a jagged profile of shadows in the background. The birds began to chatter in unison, conspiring, so that Virgílio could hear nothing else. They soon went quiet again.
When he reached the third door, what initially drew his attention was the naked ass. Nice, he thought. And then he realized it was a man’s, and noticed the dropped trousers, the back, the muscular arms. And the hands that gently cradled the skinny rump of a boy, barley leaving finger marks with each slow, rhythmic thrust.

From where he stood, Virgílio could not quite make out the faces, but the bodies were calm, standing, stretched, and exhaling the warm vapor of breath. The son with his legs parted. The father, Jairo, kissing his neck.

3
On the other side of the road, there was a small sentry-box. Virgílio turned the car off the asphalt, driving up onto what was practically an embankment, so we could make sure of where we were. We soon perceived numerous cars some yards to the right in what we realized was the visitors’ car park. Tourists and the just curious usually walked from there. Only people who were going to fly were allowed to drive up to the other car park, close to the ramp. We had arrived at the path of Pedra Bonita, ‘beautiful rock’, the second part of our journey.

Virgílio suddenly accelerated, crossing both lanes and pulling up right in front of the sentry-box, which looked empty at first glance. I noticed its warped, damp-rotten walls and the figure of a bird-headed man painted onto the flaky white paint, wings spread in demonic flight. Then we saw the two sentinels sitting on the curb, guarding that miserable little shack.

In no particular hurry, they got up and came over to our car. My friend explained that an instructor was expecting him up top, one “Alexandre”. They knew who it was and lifted a rusty rail to let us through. They warned us to keep honking all the way up the ascent, as the track was narrow.

Once off-road, it was my turn to spark the joint. Virgílio dug his hand into the rucksack and pulled out another beer (by that stage, the first was a crumpled tin rolling around on the floor). Encouraged by the hypothetically restorative effects of the burger I just had, I cracked one too.
Almost immediately, however, the joint was clipped and the beers were dumped in my lap. The track really was narrow, like the guards had said, but no simple verbal warning could have prepared us for what we found. Honking every meter wasn’t just advisable, it was essential to survival. All of a sudden, each bend became absurdly steep, like bended knees jutting up before us. Craters, and that is no exaggeration, seemed to pop like bubbles from the asphalt. The tires bounced and dropped, jolting all the way. With each more violent bump my wounded back ached and I clutched the dashboard for support. Virgílio was gritting his teeth at the wheel. The worn tarmac started to emit an ominous groan and the vegetation had begun to invade the road, lush and slippery, damp down to the trunks and the rocks. The embankment magnetic attraction came into play.

Now let’s be frank: only those who have managed to extract a lifestyle, an ethic at once subtle and particular, from the brink between the natural perfection and unstable urban order can truly claim to understand Rio. I was in revolt, subject to bouts of civil indignation, of civilizing omnipotence, but not Virgílio; he was a fervent adept of the model.

So much so that he thrived on adrenaline while I endured it. For me, the best thing about that road was its shortness. A kilometer later, at most, and it was over. We reached a rocky tree-bed, round and buried up to the rim, some two meters in diameter and half a meter tall.

In the middle, perched above ground, stood an old jack-tree, in pride of place, master of its own private and curious dynamic. In the shade of its bough, the surrounding trees, stunted and rickety mangoes and palms, were condemned to the most complete insignificance. They seemed more like scrawny tufts of grass. And yet the jack-tree itself was underdeveloped by the standards of its species. There was little room for its roots. A harsh destiny; poor egocentric, claustrophobic, schizophrenic creature, at once victim and villain.

The rock-bed split the road in two, slipping round it in two lanes that merged again on the other side, at the exclusive car park for fliers. There were other cars there, so we pulled up alongside them. To the right, a gate opened onto a row of three or four houses, presumably for the park staff (seemed the only explanation). To the left, a makeshift flight of steps surmounted a bank, the planks of heavy wood shaping the damp soil into stairs. This was the way up to the ramp.

Virgílio was wound up like a spring and jabbering non-stop about his plans again, an endless stream of dreams, prophecies, hopes and deliriums. “I’m gonna direct my own movie”, “start up a theater company”, “write a manifesto”, “shag like mad”, “you’ll see”.

I was a few steps behind him, struggling from the pain in my back and under the relentless nausea. The sun, the burger, the pot and the beer had not done me half as much good as one would expect. On top of all that, I was on-edge, out of sorts, pessimistic, melancholic… Virgílio and his destiny; and me and mine, what was I going to do with it?
As for our friendship, maintained by a past of shared experiences that resulted in diametrically opposing temperaments, what would become of that?
Luckily Virgílio had brought the rucksack of beer, so I decided to try to cure my nausea with shock treatment. I knocked back what was left of the first beer, caught hold of my friend halfway up the steps and grabbed another can.
It was then that I asked:
— What does this instructor look like?
— Dunno. We only spoke on the phone.
— So how are we gonna know which one’s him?
— His glider is white with three diagonal stripes; red, orange and yellow.
— Do you know anyone who’s flown with this guy?
After renaming me “Marcrapper”, Virgílio explained that Alexandre was a professional pilot, that he made a living doing tandem flights. He lauded his competence, informing me that he was known among the fliers as Alexandre the Great and for his exploits flying from São Conrado, where we were, to the statue of Christ the Redeemer, very far from there.
— From São Conrado to the Christ, Virgílio, give me a break…
Scorning my disbelief, he marched ahead to the top of the steps. I followed close behind.
On a peak higher up, two metal towers gleamed in the distance. Microwaves flowing out across the city.

The clearing was much smaller than expected. You could even say it was cramped. There was something scenographic about the greenery. A curtain of leaves girded the plateau, broken only by the launch ramp out front. But it was no forest. Beyond the brush it was five hundred meters of nothing.
Left as you arrived, the ramp itself seemed small, not to say crude and precarious. Its pillars reached down some four or five meters, in pairs, through the undergrowth. Mere shoddy pegs.
The fliers were just as unceremonious as the place they jumped from. I had imagined them kitted out in jumpsuits, rigged with safety gear, boots and helmets. Not even close, it was all much more improvised than that. They flew in shorts and sandals.
Here and there swollen wind socks flapped in the ocean wind that swept in over the mountain.
Down below, sun-drenched and beckoning to the adventurous spirit of Rio’s bourgeoisie, the view reigned supreme – the blue of the sea, the white strip of spray and sand, the grey scratch of asphalt, the soft green of the Gávea Golf Club. A few fliers were already preparing their garishly colored wings for flight. Others, rigged and ready, were hanging around waiting for who-knows-what. Watching the whole thing, I had this enormous fear of suddenly jumping, for no reason and with no equipment.

Virgilío’s excitement was obvious. The height really made him believe that all his dreams depended on the next thermal swell. As soon as he clamped eyes on the hang-glider described by the instructor, he exchanged some gestures with the closest man to it and we headed straight for the guy.

— Which of you is Virgílio?
My friend introduced himself and then me. Alexandre looked me over with distrust, eyeing my clothes and shoes. I risked a friendly aside, noting the coincidence of us three sharing the names of celebrated figures of Antiquity: Virgil, Marco Aurelio and now Alexander the Great. The instructor shot me a condescending smile, quite at home in his ignorance. Virgílio looked toward the ground. My observation, less cultured than it was misplaced and pedantic, created an immediate syntony between them. I don’t know what possessed me to make such a stupid comment.
Virgílio was the kind of person whose friendships were instantaneous, ours excepted. He often fell in with jerks for practical reasons, but sometimes out of anthropological curiosity, and he dumped them just as quick if he got bored. And I – who had learned to keep my distance, but couldn’t cut people off quite so brusquely – bore the indirect brunt of these comings and goings.
The instructor introduced a colleague of his – Zé Emílio, another pro. His countenance was a little more intelligent, his speech, less rudimentary. He was encouraging Virgílio, recalling his sensations on the day of his own first flight. He then went on to extol the mastery of Alexandre. My friend said he was excited and unafraid.

Another flier, Fabio, joined the group. Alexandre introduced him to the man of interest:
— He’s gonna fly tandem with me.
Virgílio, now the centre of attention, dumped the rucksack in my arms. I could hear the inviting clatter of the remaining beer cans.
I was there as a mere extra, a secondary and inexpressive figure. It wasn’t spoken, it was left latent, but the fliers knew how to get the message across. After a certain point they didn’t even bother to look at me any more. My aspect – clothes and reactions – didn’t gel with theirs. I didn’t fly.
As I watched them chat I felt rotten inside and out. A flier was preparing for take off behind us.
— Duuuuck!
Our little group split in two, making way for the glider’s three-meter wingspan. I took the chance to drift off alone, unnoticed. I pretended I was going to check out the view and wandered off. They wouldn’t miss me.

From a distance I could observe Virgílio’s new friends more closely. Alexandre was tall and well-tanned, with long hair, an athletic body and large hands. He was shirtless, in only Bermuda shorts and trainers. The other guy, Zé Emílio, was wearing a white T-shirt, baggy pants and flip-flops. Fabio, the fairest-skinned of the three, wore mirrored sunglasses and had a white cream smeared on his nose and lips. He was shirtless too, wearing a pair of shorts that revealed a sinister tattoo on his calf.

There were also two girls sitting on the ground nearby, a few meters ahead. They were together, accompanying someone. Who? One of those guys? Who? Which? Best not to know. They were clear-eyed, young, athletic and lovely, with a marvelous tone of skin. Never had beauty, strength and health been so indissociable. The blonde was holding the collar of a huge Great Dane, with a mottled grey hide and white belly and paws. It was a bizarre presence on the mountain top, a surreal aggressiveness. The other girl, a brunette, was wearing cropped shorts and just a bikini top. I cogitated an explosion of animal sexuality, but then I was me, and I’d never get passed the Great Dane anyway.

The fly-boys were talking near the aluminum frames, in the half-shade of the synthetic sails with all their purples, reds, oranges, yellows, browns and greens. The light seeping through the colors tinged everything – people, ground, air – with their hues. All around me were glimpses of a philosophy of life that could never be mine, a kind of spontaneous coloration that I simply didn’t have and could never acquire. Looking at my body, its fake, unnatural tan, nature itself was telling me this. In that group, obligatory, permanent good humor, physical beauty, muscle tone and aggression were synonymous with self-realization, signs of power amid the urban chaos. Everything that went on between those sporty men and women struck me as brutish, even the love. “Corporeal Primitives”, Virgílio used to say. Although he, out of pure devotion to idiosyncrasy, had taken us up there.

There on the launch ramp, dug into the mountainside, I relived this most intimate discomfort, albeit obvious to any stranger who cared to observe me with a second’s grace. It was the cross I carried, and not even the beauty of this summer’s day could make it any lighter. Not even the beer I had just popped open in my hand.

Anger gives us weapons to endure life? A thirst for power? Egocentricity? Greed? I could even believe that, but what of me? Was I bereft of anger?
Unfortunately, this self-deceit went beyond the bounds of the acceptable. The right question was: why did my anger not convert into force? Why did it simmer into resentment?
The burger churned over inside me, steeped in beer and smoked with pot.

When it stirs, cold,
appears jarred and pickled.
Feels pleasure, uneasy,
The pain embraces it and dilutes.
And if a mirror reflects, dejected,
It reverses the real.

But the body is calling…

I remembered one of my poems. If someday I ever lost the fear of really writing… A frightening desire, even in isolation, and more so when you consider the possible results. There was no way of knowing when I would be ready – never, I supposed.

When it doesn’t sleep, unending,
The more it dreams the night.
On the days it doesn’t feed, fading,
It ends up talking gruff.
It’s sometimes even good in bed,
Coming clean, alone.

The body that will pass away.

Something very wrong gurgled in my stomach.
I walked out onto the ramp, contrite. Its long planks shot out towards the precipice, toying with me.

I stumbled upon a little shrine near the steps. It had been erected to Saint Conrad, who, in painted tiles, offered up a prayer for the safety of all who practiced hang-gliding.
At the head of the launch platform, the evening light lent a soft golden hue to Virgílio’s dark skin. His eyes were lucid green in the sun, his flaring nostrils pulling in drafts of fresh mountain air. The wind rustled his black locks, like living, restless, pulsating antennae. His thin, wiry body was fidgety, the very opposite of the studied, thickset, manly presence of the instructor and his colleagues, who were busy giving him instructions in truculent tone or carefully checking the minutiae of safety.

Virgílio, every bit as alien to that world as I, was the very picture of reckless joy as he prepared himself for his tandem flight. At ease, as always. Inadequate and out of place, but with that special way of winning people over. He always ended up well-liked in the most unlikely of groups. There he was, being strapped into the hang-glider, cracking jokes with Alexandre the Great’s instructions, taking the piss out of his own inexperience and making wisecracks out of the jargon: control bar, “I hate the jealous kind”, topless format, “even up here!”, kingpost, “is that a kingpost, or are you just pleased to see me?”

As someone who believes in words, I would never entrust my life to things whose names I didn’t understand. My dream had always been to use simple words to say what I thought.
I could feel the connection between self-knowledge and my resignation to being average.
Spreading out before us, the landscape shimmered in all its glory, like a commanding spectacle, effusively aglow. Across the beach and in the city streets, the sunlight multiplied on the semi-naked bodies, in the drops of seawater, on the white sand, on the lemon and leaf-green tones, on the tinfoil wrappers of the sandwiches, on the rattles swirling in the hands of the lollipop sellers, on the Styrofoam ice-cream coolers, the tapioca pancakes, the sunglasses, the coconut trays, the colorful kiosks, the plastics, the drinks cans, the litter, window-glass, the passing cars; it was a ricochet of darting, scintillating rays.

You could imagine the asphalt after hours of storing up heat. Anyone who has grown up in Rio de Janeiro knows what it’s like to cross the street barefoot on the way to or from the beach, the soles of your feet sticking to the softened tarmac.

On the farthest formation of the massif, nestled on the Dois Irmãos mountain, you could see an immense slum looming over the city. On one side, Ipanema, Copacabana, blue sea. Closer to the ramp, a second mountain, which someone informed me was called Crocaine. A nickname given by the fliers – I made a mental association with cocaine? Or maybe a distortion of Cochrane, in fond tribute to some imperialist of yester-year? There was a street down there with an English name… Well, it was a fine mountain, one way or another.

To the right, almost at our backs, was the Gávea Rock. Mysterious and solemn.
When I looked out to sea, which dominated the horizon before me, I felt a sudden fear. It might swallow my friend. A wee strip of a lad, quite literally a drop in the ocean.
I looked to either side. And what if Virgílio went down in the surrounding mountains? He’d be dead just the same. A crumb on a huge green carpet.

If it was me, I thought, I’d fear an even darker fate: immediate freefall. It would all be over from the moment of the first jump, quick and before I knew what hit me (I couldn’t stand the idea of experiencing even death unconsciously). One resounding and pathetic plunge, like in the film footage of the pioneering aviators, piloting their speeding contraptions into a thumping Laurel and Hardy-style crash.

I walked carefully along the ramp, in slow steps, looking around me, trying to find some sense to the things I saw, to those people, so young and beautiful; to that marvelous view of such a fucked-up city. That beautiful, stifling day. The strange combination of sun and sea, beach and mountain, asphalt and slum, human insignificance and the immensity of nature – for some sense to being young and feeling so old, to that good life, so difficult, so hurried and so unfree.
I went on walking, sort of dizzy, lightheaded. I had drunk and smoked too much. On the edge of the ramp, still standing, I looked down and saw an abyss, gaping open.

I fled, looking skyward, but the sky was torn too. I turned to run, reeled back toward the foot of the ramp. I saw my friend, without knowing what to think.

A giddy Virgílio was about to commit that disguised modality of suicide. He and the fliers were posturing their way through the radical ceremony of initiation. He’d be flying in a nylon sock rigged to the aluminum bars of the glider, with no prior training whatsoever. Anyone who saw it would not have believed the abyss was real. In fact, from up there, the vastness did look unworldly, of dimensions far too grandiose for the daily reality. It made human life and death look pure silliness by comparison, but I was worried nonetheless.

I finished off another beer and waited on the edge of the ramp for a while in the hope of curing the nausea with the wind in my face. I tried to contain my anxiety. I took a deep breath and went to rejoin the others, my heart beating, eyes downcast, embarrassed, ashamed of everything. I watched as Alexandre strapped himself into the goddamned hang-glider. He rehearsed the take-off maneuvers with Virgílio, while his colleagues gathered round to watch.
Intimidated, I edged closer to Virgílio:
— Are you really gonna do it?
As soon as the question was out of my mouth I saw the instructor glaring at me. The other fliers were also darting me dirty looks.
— Already gone, dude – quipped Virgílio, overdoing the ghetto drawl.
This was his specialty: worrying the hell out of those closest to him while never getting in a spin himself.
— You’re gonna risk your life, just for the hell of it?
— Marcoward. . .
Virgílio and his penchant for playing with my name. Like that, in front of that crowd, it was an insult. I responded dryly:
— What?
— See ya later, alligator!
Typical flippancy. Typical. They all laughed. Virgílio, in the most critical moments, always acted like nothing serious was happening. All that mattered was that it was “radical”.
I withdrew, fuming, stung, mortified. I walked round the back of the hang-glider. I had nothing to do with this. Flying wasn’t my idea, I didn’t know those people and I didn’t trust them, I didn’t feel welcome and I had tried to get him out of there. What’s more, I hadn’t asked to come along. I was at home, just doing my thing. Want to jump? Jump then, you son-uv-a-bitch.
It didn’t take long. Virgílio and the instructor took the first steps. The colored triangle bobbed, large and floppy. They started to trot, then run, taking short strides at first, looking for synchrony. Then longer strides, one now in the other’s shadow. The horizon yawned wide – a deep breath -, the height – a gallop -, I heard the noise on the ramp. . .
I covered my face when Virgílio launched into the air. The voices around me fell suddenly silent. There was no way of knowing what had happened. When I opened my eyes there was no glider in the sky.

I ran to the edge of the ramp and looked down. The wind blasted into my face and I could see nothing again.

Then, an invisible movement in the abyss. My eyes traced it. There they were, in one piece, miraculously. You could see when they caught the current and settled into a glide. I stayed there for some time, dumbfounded, watching them ride the bubbles of warm air. It was working. Unlikely, but true. The glider was gaining altitude.

Relief. No, thinking again, I really was an asshole.

I looked around me; no-one else had taken such a fright. I was disappointed in myself. I sat down right where I stood. Zé Emílio and Fábio, thank God, left me alone. I watched their celebrations from a distance, the blatantly choreographed congratulations, full of upraised arms, heavy backslapping, dancing index fingers. Behind every flier, surfer, skater or intellectual there’s a psychopathological condition. Being normal was a difficult, uncertain and very lonely vocation.
I stared down, fixedly, knowing I could jump if I wanted to. Rio de Janeiro, the city against which I had protected myself all my life. Precisely that: protected against. I could feel that land begin to seethe.

Soon I would have to make my way down the mountain in the car to pick Virgílio up at the beach. In other words, I’d have to descend into hell with the air-conditioning full-blast. Furthermore, I’d have to do so whilst respecting the speed limit, flashing the indicators, always checking the rear-view mirror, doing everything just right. No license, but going through the motions like a senile Sunday-driver. Disgustingly square.

My father once asked me which Latin maxim I preferred as a philosophy of life: “Seize the day” or “The Golden Mean”. When I told Virgílio he gushed praise for the way my father had brought me up. And when I retorted, saying that I had my doubts as to whether the contradiction explicit in the options was really necessary, he replied: “Sophism, my sensitive little man, sophism. Your dad wasn’t God to be able to teach you that one”.

Some say it’s not what you live, but how you live. If so, a minimalist biography like mine could possess great depth. The sedentary could live an existential life every bit as rich as that of the adventurer, idem the chaste as the debauched, idem idem the blind as the painter, and so on. Although I thought this a fine idea and would have loved to apply it in my life, I never could really feel it was true. It was an attractive rationalization, but ultimately false. While my embarrassment at certain internal and external circumstances drove me to don the mask of the well-balanced, eminently contemplative individual, I felt a latent over-ambition that humiliated me, a restlessness, an anxiety to act, to do, to build a future full of life, of experiences, of permanent and simultaneous artistic-moral-sexual excellence, or sexual-moral-artistic excellence, or if all went wrong, at least a moral-something excellence. Faced with so many demands and hindered by so many limitations, there was obviously not the slightest chance of appeasement.
The hang-glider was sailing gently through space, in sweeping maneuvers, very high up and very far away, as if there was no danger at all.

Despite the wind, I managed to light what was left of the joint. I wanted the freedom promised by the fumes from those burning folds. I filled my lungs with smoke, held it there, let it out. Inhaled, held and let it out. I tried to relax, tried to forget there were other people around. But it was impossible. The anguish grew.

Down there, the immensity, the sea and the asphalt. Up above, soaring, Virgílio. Life looking down, destiny opening and closing like a mouth, a trap for the larger-than-life, nihilistic, mathematical. And he? Literally flying. Perhaps his biographical turnarounds, or just general luck had made him irreverent like this; given him that hallucinatory way of being loving. Made him solitary, made him feel entitled to throw himself out on invisible currents of air that slid up the mountainside, whirling and swirling, clashing and overlapping, slow and spreading one minute, fast and rising the next, leading the glider across the sky in an anti-gravitational waltz.
Virgílio and I had bet all our self-esteem on a single source of satisfaction. Art. Art. Art. We were living the same moment, though diverged completely in the way we faced it. In different, almost opposite ways, neither of us had, thus far, displayed the only gift indispensible to artistic success, namely the ability to mingle with powerful people while pretending that you’re revolutionizing.

I relit the joint. I was afraid, anxious, pessimistic and anguished. The beauty of that day depressed me. I couldn’t stop thinking. I saw that my complaints about the past were, deep down, complaints about myself. Obstinate earlier incarnations, draining all my energies, butting in and barring my way towards the real problems. All the infinite hope of childhood, eternally promising, was running to ground upon the somber denouement of adolescence. Destiny opened and closed with increasing clarity.

Some clouds drifted far off, slowly. Shredded by the breeze, they unraveled in space, though continued on their way regardless.

I felt time rushing ahead at breakneck speed inside me, outstripping my real pace. I had always been in a hurry, though my destiny could no longer be decided on impulse, on pure whim. I knew that. Even haste had become methodical with me.

I smiled, grimly. The danger was to die without having really lived. Die before having truly loved, for its own sake, for no reason. Before having loved, above all else.

Sitting on the edge of the ramp, I looked up to shake off a sudden vertigo. It just made it worst. The pot, the beer, the want of an honest lunch, the burger, it all came back to me in a ball. The sky went blank.

Blue

Sun

City

Future

Fear

Sky

Greed

Character

Loneliness

Greenery

Mountain

Sea

Present

A wave made my body falter. A rapid, uncontrollable tingling that ran from my legs to my head. The colors left the spectrum. The blue became too blue, blurring the frontier between the sea and the sky; the yellow sun became yellower than yellow, exploding its focus into a huge ball. My skin, red, drained white; running from hot to cold. A strange sensation came over me, a kind of absence. It wasn’t me touching things, or even myself. The muscles were beyond control. I tried to stand up, but collapsed, consciousness just about to crash, a black sheet covering everything. I struggled to keep my vision from closing down, I fought against my own weight.
In the depths of my reeling, I could feel Virgílio far off, loose in the air, and me here, pinned to the ground. I imagined a formidable fall and a lifeless routine. From that flight on, we would never be so close again. We were condemned now.

Spasms made my chest tighten. I coughed, turned my face away. My stomach wrenched, my mouth was flung open; a hot, sour jet sprang from me, making me shudder. I vomited up my soul, my childhood, the drink, the pot and the gunge of poetry. There was soul splattered everywhere, mixed with my envy of Virgílio, with fear, History, shame, the minced-meat of the hummingbird, the buggering of the housekeeper’s son and the venom of that ramp. Spewed up with my future and my certainties.
I gasped for air. My stomach pumped another jet of vomit. My neck stiffened as I brought it all up.
I sucked in more air. Along came a third spurt, though weaker. My sight was immediately restored, my hands regained their strength.

I was in a cold sweat, drained, staring at my vomit, into the abyss, I don’t know for how long.
Where is it written that the role of man on earth is to be happy?