My brother

From 1973 to 1980

The lack of a real father figure involuntarily pushed me into a search for substitutes.
The first and most obvious was my brother.
Eleven years older and possessing a free spirit, he was shaped under the constant shadow of a father who, in my case, was only irregular and intermittent.
Incredibly, our contact was also minimal… not to say no: shortly after I turned 5, he, then 16, enrolled in the School of Aeronautical Specialists.

Considering our family's low income and the technological level in 1978, the large number of photographs he took, starting in the 1st grade in Guaratinguetá, can be considered proof of his fondness for the military lifestyle.
Make no mistake, all that energy ended up influencing me and, without a doubt, qualified him as…

The First Hero of My Life

My older sister, Geisa, had already taken me to the movies—if my memory serves me right, she traveled with me to the South Zone to see "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"—but my first live-action film (and not animation) and one of the most memorable experiences (and I say this in relation to my entire life!) was the absolutely incredible and unforgettable "“Superman, The Movie”.

I can say that the child I was cherished and memorized every single scene, undoubtedly shaping part of my personality: I left the cinema with my heart leaping with emotion, hope, love, and honor, and even today, when writing about that occasion, it's difficult to hold back the tears—you'll understand why well before the end of the book—and, ultimately, the association was inevitable: my brother was my Superman!

Okay, so my brother depended on airplanes, but — wow! — he FLEW!! I remember all the enthusiasm he showed when he qualified for the "Flight Mechanic" specialty, the anxiety and stories about the training and preparations for his first parachute jump…all recorded with photos!
Perhaps I hadn't yet fully grasped the concept of time, but I remember how much I eagerly awaited my brother's arrival, full of exciting news!

But if he arrived, there was also the departure… and that Sunday afternoon anguish It became a somatic landmark: the whole family would accompany him to the Mangueira gas station (intersection of the old Rio-São Paulo highway and Rio do A) to wait for the São José bus. When the bus left, a bitter emptiness rose from his stomach to his mouth. He would go, and I would be left with the promise of his return.
My brother, my pioneer…

All the memories I have of him reveal an intense, altruistic personality and a joy willing to overcome the restrictions imposed by poverty: a player for A Patotinha do São Basílio, he was ecstatic during Flamengo games, the team he inherited from his father.
If I almost came to like football a little, it was his fault, because he made me endure the entire duration of a game only to, if Flamengo won, be thrown very high into the air and, upon landing, be caught in his arms… he was the only one who could do that to that huge, heavy child that I was… the only one!

And the guitar? Until 1980, I can say that it had nothing to do with pagode (a type of Brazilian samba) and was an adherent of an intensely Northeastern Brazilian musical style, introducing the works of Raimundo Fagner, Zé Ramalho, Ednardo, Elba Ramalho, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil… the family got to know MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) through the many LPs of these artists and the music festivals that took place at the time — events whose quality time and technology have only degraded — whose songs were attentively listened to, sometimes with “Vigu” (Violão & Guitarra magazine) by his side, until he was able to faithfully perform them and, from there, could delight us… us and his group of admirers, who, incidentally, were not few…

What could you do if the guy was handsome? Besides being a mulatto (with darker skin, but the hair better than mineWith honey-colored eyes, he also stood at 1.83m, enough for everyone to find him very tall. Besides the "glamour" that a military career brought at the time, and in addition to playing the guitar, the guy also danced and was even up-to-date on "Disco Dance" steps... he did and was so many things that it's difficult to list them all, but I think now, risking that the images and audio might express more than words, would be a good time to share a simple tribute I prepared:

Catalyst

Before me, my brother always associated himself with the pursuit of action, always demonstrating such an intense hunger for life that I believe I have never seen the like in anyone else. In fact, even today I don't understand how he, so young and without a car, would drive all the way from Campo Grande to attend dances (or parties?) up at Sítio das Morangas, at the top of Estrada do Catonho… today I even wonder: was this behavior a kind of premonition?

I also remember one Carnival, the first one he went out dressed as a woman, when he drank too much and, upon arriving home, locked himself in the bathroom… and stopped responding! It was agonizing to see everyone shouting and trying to wake him without success, and me, very young, looking through the cracks in the door and seeing that pathetic figure still wearing a dress and sleeping sitting on the toilet… was he in a coma? The despair grew to the point where it became necessary to call the neighbors to break down the door.

It's incredible how all my memories related to people who have consumed alcohol are, without exception, extremely unpleasant.
Another terrible example was Christmas 1978, when my ex-brother-in-law, duly drunk, put on his little "show"... this after the "special appearance" of my father, who took advantage of the fact that my brother had been accepted into the EEAer (Brazilian Air Force Academy) and went there just to utter a wretched phrase (which must be famous among those who lack their own inspiration and live by quoting clichés with great gravity) that I remember with millimetric perfection:

“"My son, when you were born everyone was smiling and you were crying.".
Live in such a way that, when you die, everyone cries and only you smile.”

I think that was one of the first times I became aware of the reality of death and, even worse, according to that talk, the one who was going to die—damn premonitions!—would be my brother! Faced with that, I was overcome by a crying fit that took a long time to pass… I think they even had to bring forward the delivery of my present (I think Geisa gave me an Autoban!)… and then I only remember playing and being interrupted by the screams of… Elber Gilberto Alves Pereira, Drunk and agitated, he was challenging my brother to go out into the street and "fight" with him...

There was no "fight" as required, but I don't understand how, even in the face of that animal's absolute disrespect for my entire family, my sister has stayed with him... sometimes, because of this and other strange behaviors, I even question whether she is really my sister...

But my chapters aren't just made up of dark memories: my brother was also the catalyst for my first interstate trip, and my mother and I went by bus to Guaratinguetá to visit him during the so-called "quarantine"! I remember the funny-tasting chicken we ate with guaraná soda at the canteen; I remember the transfer we made on the way back in Volta Redonda… and I remember the loneliness I felt throughout the trip, because my mother, who only slept, faced her first erysipelas crisis right then!

And tell me: For me... what's left?

Until I was 7 years old, I saw this young man as so immense that I knew I would never be able to copy him… certainly, in my childish way, I envied him, but never, since that time, have I had the pretension of imitating or replacing him. In the subtitle of this work I promise that I will speaking ill of myself, So maybe it's time to start revealing how awful I was even as a child.

As soon as my brother moved to Guaratinguetá, he gave me access to his "Homem" magazines—whose brand soon evolved into "Playboy"—and, believe me, besides looking at breasts and buttocks (frontal nudity wasn't allowed back then!), I READ in detail the articles, the interviews, the jokes, and the sections that presented "chic" products that would make up that lifestyle…all that information, combined with my passionate personality, ended up having such a strong influence that, much later, I had to stop, identify, and disown it, but that's a topic for another chapter…

It suffices to say that I viewed all of this with such great normalcy that, even in elementary school, I was known by the other students for always having a Playboy magazine, and once (if I remember correctly, only once) a teacher found an issue with me and, taken to the principal's office, they even called my mother!

In truth, I think I very rarely got excited by those publications, but it was interesting to observe how silly the other boys became when they saw them: for a fat boy who suffered bullying — a term that didn't even exist at the time — that magazine wasn't an object of lust, but a status symbol: reading the articles and carrying Playboy gave me social power, an armor of maturity that kept the aggressors at bay.
It was my first legacy of survival inherited from him... from which it took me a long time to free myself.

Almost the Farewell…

Then came 1980, and in December, my brother graduated: he became a 3rd sergeant in the air force and left to become a flight mechanic way over in Manaus, at the 1st/9th GAv, working with C-115s and, on the side, building a musical career that became quite successful, but… we'll talk about him and all his influence on my life a few chapters later, when I'll be forced to try to recount what was probably the strangest and most terrible moment of my entire life…