No, I don't speak Spanish

One of the downsides of being from the only lusophone country in South America is that you look Latin, in a general sense - as I was once told by a cabbie in Dublin, "Aye, ya talk like a yank but ya du look latin, mafriend."

I suppose that, if I had been smarter when I was young and unattached, I would have been able to parlay my "latin" looks into having better luck with American girls. But I think a lot of immigrants go through a cycle of initially seeking assimilation (anglicizing names, for example - most people called me "Ed" for a number of years), and it is only after some time that they become quite comfortable with being a sometimes-other, sometimes-yank person living in the U.S.

Group politics have always been hard for me anyway, since I tend to go out of my way to distance myself from groups that become too group-y. Still, my first year in high school in the U.S., I was incredibly relieved to have a table full of Brazilians in the cafeteria with whom to spend my lunches. We sat in a section that was distinct from the white kids, far from the black kids, sort of like an inlet in the area where the latino kids sat.

I was taking soccer for my phys ed credit that year, and there were two of us in the class who weren't native Spanish speakers. One was a tall blonde kid with a hyphenated, WASPy name. The other was me, and going by my name and looks alone, it was assumed that I spoke Spanish. I always had to kind of apologize, explain that I was brasileno and only spoke poquito "portunol". They all thought I was being lazy, I could tell.

It made matters worse that one of the guys I had lunch with, Paulo (though when he played with his metal band he was just "Paul,") was more than happy to roll his "r"'s a bit more, learn a few new verbs, and drop the fake-spanish like it was his job. They would point to Paulo and say, "Pero Pablito habla espanol..." and Paulo would happily say, "Si, hermano!"

One day, after this little guy Rigoberto and I set up a give-and-go play that took us from one side of the field to the other and led to a goa, Carlos - short, squat, central American with native features, wide shoulders, arms as thick as my legs - got really angry with me and thought we were just showboating. He pointed at me, let loose a string of curses, and ended it with something like, "...and don't pretend you don't understand me, you cabron - I know you understand everything I'm saying."

It's somewhat true. I probably understand at least 50% of what is being said to me in Spanish, and it's also true that I'm lazy for not trying to speak it. I could probably take a few classes and speak it really well. It would certainly get me out of this awkward spot. As my mom once put it, "I hate going to Florida. Everyone speaks to you in Spanish." And I think what she's getting at isn't some silly English-for-America agenda, but rather the assumption that Spanish is somehow a common denominator for all of us from Latin America. Furthermore, I think it's presumptuous to speak a language you haven't studied. Sort of like Ornette Coleman picking up the violin on a record even though he was a sax player - it's disrespectful to all those who have studied that instrument or language. I could, then, but the fact is, right now, I don't speak Spanish.

Lord knows there are plenty of Americans who are surprised to hear that Brazilians don't speak Spanish. But a good portion of Brazilian immigrants assimilate well into Latin American communities, and the rest of us end up looking bad because of it, like we're crying exception, like we're the one person at the pool party who doesn't want to get wet.

By the end of my first year, I wasn't sitting with the Brazilian kids anymore. I had made American friends, which, if I'm honest with myself, was always my goal anyway. I still hung out with the Brazilian kids, even meeting up with some of them when I was back in Rio for the summer. But I could tell that, for most of them, seeing me in the hallway with my new "weird" friends - who wore fishnets, doc martens, had dyed hair and lots of piercings - was sort of like seeing the provincial upstart who didn't know his place. "He used to run with us, but now it's like this..."

I felt some guilt about it. I had always wanted to float freely between different groups, and I had felt boxed in by the Brazilian playpen. I had been trained on the specifics of American high schools by a seemingly never-ending parade of tv shows and films on the topic. Watching those movies and shows, I always knew that I wanted to be the kid who confounds everyone else's expectations, the kid who dresses like a freak but is quite nice, the kid who seems not to have an athletic bone in his body but who could outplay most American kids on the soccer pitch.

I always knew that I wanted to be friends with bad kids as much as I wanted to be friends with the good kids; I liked being friends with the preppy beer set and the bookish clove-cigarettes set alike. And somehow, in the worldview I was developing, I didn't know how to incorporate a group that was only loosely tied together by geographic accidents, the country of our birth.

Looking back now, this little story repeats itself endlessly. It happened when a Brazilian kid came to Wooster and I didn't know how to relate to him. It happens whenever I check into a hotel in a place like, ok, mom, Florida, or Texas, and the people at the desk speak to me in Spanish, or when I buy something at the Todito grocery store in my neighborhood. It happens even now when I make small talk with Brazilian colleagues at conferences, many of whom I have now known for a number of years, but around whom I still feel somewhat fraudulent, like at some point the "real" Brazilians will be separated from the "fake" ones. Even now, I wonder why I am not writing this in Portuguese.

Faz parte do meu show, I guess.