Um Caso Sério - #13

At least, this is how I tell our story

When we last checked in on my love life in 1993, as winter turned to spring in New York and summer turned to fall in Brazil, Américo had fulfilled his promise of providing the most wildly romantic three months ever and then shifting our relationship overnight to “just friends”. My social life did not suffer and soon I met Cadu, Carlos Eduardo, at a party. We kissed before the party ended. Cadu was the perfect antidote, a sweet and handsome boy-next-door type. If the boy-next-door’s father was a political legend, former Governor of the state of São Paulo, I guess. What I am trying to say is, the kind of man I knew was destined to be a devoted husband and father – and we both knew it was not to be with me so ours was a low-pressure affair. I have a photo of us in May 1993, at the family’s mountain home in Campos de Jordão, cuddling in ski sweaters (both his), undoubtedly listening to Cat Stevens singing “Where do the children play?”

And then I just got busy. Busy with trying to make something of the job of serving Brazilian companies before the window in the capital markets closed again, busy with a demanding guest in my apartment in New York, and busy with an active social life supporting the endeavors of my artistic friends in both NYC and Sampa.

One day Belisa called to invite me to another party. Her son’s demo tape of rap music had just won him a deal with Sony Brasil for an album. She was inviting some friends over to celebrate. (Check out Gabriel o Pensador, well chosen name for this still-thoughtful artist). That night I arrived at her apartment on the Upper West Side, greeting the doorman who motioned with his hand towards the elevator where a cute guy was holding the door open for me. As I hurriedly entered, he asked in sweetly accented English “Which floor?”

I took a chance and replied, ‘Ta indo pra festa da Belisa?

His eyes widened and then he broke into the most enchanting grin. I was looking at one of those rare men who smile fully in the way a child does, their whole being delighted by the wonder of this surprising moment. I think my heart actually skipped a beat. Sou Nelson, he offered. Sou Beth, I responded, using the Brazilian pronunciation which is more like Betchy since the “th” sound does not exist in Portuguese. Tudo bem, tudo bom, kisses on both cheeks.

Belisa later told me when she opened her apartment door, she did not see two people who had just shared a ride in the elevator. She saw a couple, and thought “that makes sense, but I did not even know they already met!” Nelson’s business partner and her husband were already there. They had produced a CD, a compilation of Brazilian music, maybe hoping to find a larger audience in the U.S. He was here on a journalist visa, which by then I knew was a pretty easy one for well-connected Brazilians to get in order to stay longer than a tourist visa would allow. I just assumed he was a typical Brazilian of some means, enjoying life in New York.

We had dinner the following week, and soon thereafter our dinner dates began lasting through breakfast. By this point my Portuguese was fluent enough to enjoy Nel’s intelligent, humorous takes on American culture and politics. We would amuse ourselves by communicating in English colloquialisms translated word-for-word into Portuguese. Try it. Translate “We are running short on milk” into any other language you know. That should be followed by shoulder shrug and laugh out loud emojis.

By late fall (northern hemisphere fall), Belisa was helping launch a new Brazilian magazine devoted to celebrity news. Caras could mean “faces” or “people” and it is like the oversize, glossy version of People magazine that goes by Hello! in the U.K. She had already interviewed Paulo Coelho in my apartment for it, and now I was invited – or should I say the now coupled we Beth and Nelson were invited - to yet another party at her place for the crew about to return to Brazil. At some point during that evening, Nelson and I went to the kitchen to refill our wine glasses and exchanged a lingering kiss. A kiss that was caught by a photographer for the magazine. Or so I learned a few weeks later when Belisa called to give me a heads up that the magazine would hit the stands that weekend and she had been asked to identify me and write a caption for the photo.

In my naïveté and romantic haze, I just wondered why anyone would care about me kissing someone in her kitchen. And I was pretty sure no one at the Bank would be buying that magazine. Nevertheless, I took the precaution of calling my best girlfriend in our São Paulo office. Marisa was technically the administrative assistant to the guy in charge, but since that guy was generally a clueless expatriate manager, she was the continuity that kept things running. Marisa was a member at the Club where I worked out in the mornings, kind enough to give me a ride to the office after our weekday exercise. Thanks to this morning ritual, we became real friends.

I begged Marisa to pick up a copy of the magazine on Saturday since I would be flying down Sunday night and in the office first thing Monday morning. I just wanted to know what it said. Back in the 90s, before the days of PDFs and broadband, those of us doing business internationally had fax machines in our homes to receive documents outside of office hours. Marisa faxed me the page with a cover sheet that screamed YOU ARE DATING NELSON MOTTA???!!!!!

Nelsinho directing a music video for an artist whose album he produced in 1994.

I read the caption, which said, in rough and abbreviated translation: Journalist and music producer Nelson Motta is also famous for his success with women. Father of three girls, two of them with actress Marilia Pêra, producer of dozens of singers such as Marisa Monte, and now his latest conquest is the American banker….”

The steam was coming out my ears. First of all, I am no one’s conquest. Well that was Belisa’s word choice, I’d let her know how I felt about it. But still…shit. How did I not know the man I have been sleeping with for several months had been married to the most famous Brazilian actress of screen and stage, discovered and produced and hint-hint no doubt had been lover of dozens of artists whose albums I had already collected, and basically had a reputation as a notorious ladies man?

I dialed his number. Our conversation went like this (in Portuguese, my tone of voice frosty rather than affectionate, which is not easy to achieve in that melodic language): Nel, I just saw what it says in Caras. When were you going to tell me? He apologized profusely. At first, it was just such a welcome relief to have someone get to know and like him for himself, without a bunch of projections and assumptions. And then it just got harder and harder to know what to say…

That calmed me down a bit. I could hear the regret in his voice, and I had spent enough time with Paulo and witnessed the complexities of being a famous person to understand Nelson’s perspective. But it still felt like a massive breach of trust. All this time he had been writing a weekly newspaper column, gone to a studio weekly to record Manhattan Connection, a cable television show that aired on Sunday nights in Brazil, there were a dozen ways I could have stumbled across the information. Maybe he should have said something early on? It was confusing. OK, as you know I will be in Brazil for two weeks. I need some time to think about this. Don’t call me while I’m gone, I’ll be in touch when I get back.

After a red-eye flight, I arrived at the São Paulo office the following morning still naively thinking I would have ample time for quiet introspection. Imagine me walking into a big, open office, the classic banking floor set up of desks arranged in rows. At my entrance the room fell silent…until one man’s hand rose over his head, waving a copy of Caras magazine. Come explain to us how you met Nelsinho, he exclaimed as everyone gathered around. I was astonished. No one had said a word about the dozens of articles in mainstream publications describing my friendship with author Paulo Coelho, but there was general excitement about the news I was dating Nelson Motta.

Then our mutual friends began to call. They had heard I was upset and were urging me to give him a chance, that there could be something special there. Random people who had never met him in person would speak to me at length of Nelson, whom everyone calls by the diminutive “Nelsinho,” with such intimacy. Puzzled, I asked Marisa as we enjoyed a suco de laranja com mamão  and our first cafezinho of the day. I wanted to know why it was that everyone, whether they knew Nelson personally or not, spoke of him with such affection.

As you know, she began, we just came out of 20 years of dictatorship. We missed all the trends in the outside world – sex, drugs, rock and roll, women’s liberation, gay pride. At first, we did not know what to make of it all. But Nelsinho taught us how to think about it. He gave us our values.

Wow. My heart softened. When I called Nelson on my return to New York I told him that during two weeks of conversations I had not heard one single negative thing about him. I simply felt proud to be his friend. I invited him to dinner and gave him a CD, Bonnie Raitt’s album Luck of the Draw. The first track, I explained, was my answer: “Let’s Give Them Something To Talk About.”

And so, for a while we did.