Brazil + Smile: A Queer Brazilian student on British soil

Brasil, my Brazil, brasileiro/brazilian. I am a queer student on British soil. I arrived in January and have been living impressions of this beautiful place, which is welcoming at times. I call this country my second home. I think I can say that. Maybe. I am a foreigner here. And being a foreigner is curious. You quickly learn where you can step firmly and where the ground still feels unstable.

I have been reinventing myself here as a visiting PhD student at the University of Leeds. The place is welcoming. I even have a room of my own there. I find that quite chic. And it is not just that. There is something symbolic in having a room, a desk, a key, a space. A place where I can sit, open my computer, think, write, exist as a researcher.

Back in Brazil, I am doing a PhD in the History of Science and Health at Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, the main public health research institution in the country and Latin America. Sometimes I stop and think about how many spaces I occupy at once. And still, I keep going. Maybe because there is desire in all of this. Maybe because there is a dream.

Since arriving, I have attended a few events. The first was National Student Pride. It was a babado. Two intense days full of people, voices, bodies, exchanges. I also took part in an event at the University of Cambridge, an international meeting on LGBT Studies in Madrid, and will probably be at the University of Oxford later this year.

I circulate, I speak, I listen, I exchange. Sometimes I feel exactly where I want to be. Other times, not so much.

It all sounds great, doesn’t it? I’m flying. Am I?

Because there are cracks in all of this.

A few days ago, I was surrounded by a group of teenagers while leaving Aldi. They harassed me, calling me “gay boy.” Was I scared? Absolutely. And it was not an abstract fear. It was bodily fear. I was wearing a beautiful outfit. And that matters.

For a moment, I thought they might attack me. Then I realized they might try to provoke me, to throw me off balance.

And that stays with you.

I am a student. I am a researcher. I am a foreigner. I am queer.

And the world feels so chaotic.

As Gilberto Gil sings, “faith does not usually fail.” This text is a bit of that. A way of saying: let’s keep going.

In this moment of chaos, of multiple wars, of pain across the world, and of growing hatred against us, I stop and think.

And I remember Fernanda Young.

In one of her last texts, she wrote about something I cannot stop thinking about. It is not about taste, clothes, or music. It is something else. An existential bad taste.

A way of existing marked by aggressiveness, by ignorance worn as pride, by contempt for science, by a refusal of the other.

Maybe what happened to me that day was not an isolated episode. Maybe it was also this. A small gesture carrying something bigger.

A kind of tackiness that is not about aesthetics, but about ethics. About how one occupies the world.

And the strangest thing is that it does not stay in one place. It crosses countries, languages, contexts. It is here, it is in Brazil, it is everywhere.

But at the same time, something else is happening.

If there are people shouting, there are people creating. If there is violence, there is also desire, affection, and encounter. There are people writing, researching, singing, dancing, inventing other ways of existing.

And that is where I hold on.

We need to be even more present. We need to speak. We need to write. We need to say.

We also need to live; not as what is left after the struggle, but living as part of it.

To be happy. Happy.

To laugh, to dance, to take up space. To make noise, but a different kind of noise. A noise of life. This is not small. This is political.

This is not just a rant. It is communion. It is a way of saying that we are here.

Let’s exist, whether the tacky ones like it or not.

And I leave here some names that help me keep going: Cazuza, especially Blues da Piedade, Clarice Lispector, Hilda Hilst, Rita Lee, Linn da Quebrada, Liniker, Gloria Groove, Caio Fernando Abreu, Ana Cristina Cesar.

Maybe these are new names for you. I hope they become encounters.

I want you to be happy, as I want to be happy.

And we cannot let hatred say that we are less. Or that our science is lesser because we expose fragility, affection, and desire.

Maybe that is exactly where our strength lies.

References

CAZUZA (1988) Blues da piedade.

GIL, Gilberto (1982) Andar com fé.

YOUNG, Fernanda (2019) ‘Bando de cafonas’, O Globo, 25 August.