2000-06-20 - 21:24:08
The Azorean Dream

The Azorean Dream

Exactly one year ago today I arrived on the Azorean island of Terceira for a one week holiday with my best friend Alex from Toronto. Alex's parents were native to the island until just before he was born, and this was his first adult visit back. We had a blast: the boys were stunning to look at, but it was a virulently homophobic, macho culture. The saddest thing I heard that week was that gay men could be picked out of the crowd because they were always alone.

My first night there, I was awakened by a dream (scribbled at 2 am in my journal by candlelight in a strange country, sleepy-headed and stiff-dicked, sweet Alex murmuring dreamlike in the next room):

Shannon [my boss in Toronto] and I are walking down the main street of Terceira's "old town" and she is talking to me with incredible intimacy. There are a lot of people wandering about, including guys with dogs. A couple dogs, starving and scarey-looking, are causing a disturbance right under our feet, bothering Shannon. Finally I yell in an aggressive tone of voice at the men to deal with their unruly dogs. Shannon is embarassed by my assertiveness but it is also very obvious that she's utterly impressed. Afterwards I comment to her that she has never heard me raise my voice like that before but what I mean is that I have never heard myself raise my voice like that before.

Later I tell Alex about me telling Shannon that she had never heard me yell like that before and he is very sarcastic, wondering why I made such a big deal out of this with her.

Then later Alex and I are kissing. At first he is just being silly but then he seems to be kissing me passionately and we are really biting on one another's lips. Then he pulls right back and his kisses are more tentative. I don't like the waffling back and forth he is doing with his lips so I begin to think it was a mistake to kiss him in the first place.

Later I'm in a crowded house filled with people and Alex and I are sharing a bedroom.

And I am drinking alcohol again. At first I slough it off as no big deal. I am also really wanting sex so I am preoccupied with finding a sex club or an erotic massage in the Azores. I promised Shannon that I would be into her Azorean office to do some work by 830 pm but I am feeling so close to her that I conclude I could tell her why I didn't show up and she would just laugh, so I am not very concerned.

There are a bunch of young kids partying in the house. I am drinking with them. At about 2 or 3 am my grandparents--who, it seems, are also staying in the house--are awakened by the loud noise, blaring music and bright lights. They don't make a huge fuss as they come out of their bedroom: I see both of them partially naked as the bath towels they have wrapped around their bodies come almost undone. Grandma turns down the volume on the stereo; Grandpa adjusts something with the lights. I feel guilty about all this.

I am now also horrified about being drunk. My initial instinct was to lie and pretend it never happened, not change my sobriety date. But I began to realize I simply must come clean and go back to an AA meeting. Imagining the "I-told-you-so's" and 12-step lectures I'll get when I return fills me with dread.

Then I am looking for sex. I am on the top floor of a highrise building where the Terceira festival is in full swing. All the ritzy restaurants have rented space here with patio seating. There is some local restauranteur who is very famous, who I recognize standing at his patio door proud as a peacock. All of his waiters are strippers or perhaps hustlers.

I see Don [close friend from Toronto] at one of the restaurants and his face is full and beautiful and he has a goatee. We do not acknowledge one another. I think to myself that he resembles the sexy Azorean boys Alex and I have oh-so-discretely drooled over on the street.

Sex hangs ominous and thick in the air. Especially in the many men's washrooms on this top floor. Some of them are actually restaurants, not restrooms, when I enter; others are the opposite. One bathroom is populated almost exclusively by cross-dressers, transvestites and transsexuals and it is here I get the most interested, leering looks. This attention from the trannies both arouses me and freaks me out.

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