I write in the dark, it’s almost dawn.
I live in a city tattooed with neon lights, a city that doesn’t sleep and
has no mercy for anyone. I have the night as my accomplice, for what I’ve
been seeking dwells in the world of darkness and unconsciousness:
The love of monsters and savage beasts.

1988, Contagem, Minas Gerais. I did the First Holy Communion in the St.
Lucy Parish. In the line to receive the sacramental bread, my heart was
pounding. I was told that if I took Communion in a state of sin the bread
would turn to blood inside my mouth. A few days earlier, I didn’t tell the
father during confession that I’ve watched “The Devil’s Advocate” on TV
and that whenever the guy (Keanu Reeves) was on screen I got butterflies
on my stomach and a boner on my willie. By a miracle of God, or the Devil,
I passed the test of the bread unharmed, but deep inside I was tortured
by guilt and self-censorship.

I lived in a suburb of an industrial town, in a blue-collar neighborhood.
There, no one escaped violence. Everyone was under someone else’s
authority: the workers, overpowered by the bosses; the women, by the men,
the children, by the adults; the non-White people by the White people. In
the face of scarcity and hopelessness, brute force wasn’t just a form of
language, but rather a way of survival and maintenance of life.

AIR WITH SHARP EDGES, CARBON MONOXIDE:
On the factory floor, workers build automotive machines, electronics,
steel mills.
From the mountains they take iron ore, gold, zinc, bauxite and niobium.
1995, SUNDAY ON TV:
We’re watching a “Robocop” rerun. In the story, a police officer killed
in the line of duty is turned into a cyborg by a megacorporation that
alienates him from his own identity and his memories.
Shattered and forced to carry out his duty, Robocop enforces the law in
a city ravaged by crime and corporate corruption. At home, on the couch,
we’re completely unaware of any relation between our lives in Contagem
and the dystopian Detroit from the movie, devastated by the automotive
industry half a century earlier than us.
STILL in 1995, Mamonas Assassinas released the hit “Robocop Gay”, yet
another nickname I was given at school.

2003. Contagem. At fourteen, I had just discovered sex. I hated school,
all people, and, more than anything, myself. But adolescence gave me
a new chance. I was surprised and excited when I discovered that the
grown ups had desire for me. I left church altogether, but the guilt and
a diffuse fear of Him still dominated me. Strangely, the certainty of my
condemnation to hell represented by that time a sort of liberation. I
was certain that sooner or later I’d have to pay for my sins, so I decided
then that they might at least be worth it.
Enraged and lost, I rushed from a mall to another, with nothing on my
mind besides my dreams. Before learning to be someone, I learned to be a
customer, and the shopping mall was the first social place where I felt
safe and respected at the very least, although my spending power could
afford just the ice cream cones from McDonald’s. There I went, from a
snack bar to another, from a mall to another, consuming ice cream and
people. On my backpack I carried my notebooks almost empty from the
classes I always skipped, where I doodled my ugly drawings, my encrypted
secrets — My fast-food diaries, which I later burned to forget them.

Stuck in the underworld of loneliness and shame, I didn’t feel capable
of reaching the exit door, even knowing that there was life outside.

But I lacked the capacity to break free by myself from two-thousand-
something years old constraints. Even If I was unable to be more and all I

could do was to be less, my desire, however, has always been superlative.
That’s why my speech still needs to be maximalist, because even if I
struggle I never find an adequate translation that meets the intensity
with which affection strikes me.
If myself and the others are separated by an inevitable opacity, then
our encounter can only happen in disruption.

In the dumbness kindergarten, at some point I learned:
— That during the social cataclysm ignorance is an alibi
— That the body is a battleground
— That sex is a competition game and, depending of where it’s played, it’s also a speed sport
— That if I managed to have self-control I’d eliminate anxiety
— That reason sleeps cuddled with fear
— That GOOD beats EVIL
_______________
However, much later I understood that:
— From so much thinking, I unlearnt the body
— Light doesn’t heal, just reveal
— The humiliated ones will be humiliated and the praised will be praised
— The world is rat, but that’s the one we have
— Hell is right here

As I was forged by the paradigm of brute force, I’ve grown nerves of steel
and strong bones, always ready to fight or flight. In the matter of my
savage feelings, I’ve learned to ride them holding tight and letting myself
be carried away.
Who has ridden a beast knows that the secret is not letting yourself fall
from it. And to never fear it, for it’s by allying with it that we learn the
art of riding.
With pure violence, we can only speak in a pure, violent language. And that’s
how wild beasts love each other: TORN THEMSELVES APART. One beast riding
another manifests its love by syncing their pulses, two fierce hearts,
beating up to the same ruin.
That’s how I’ve been dealing with my worst feelings, acknowledging them.
The first step is this, to see the beast. Second step, to name it. Third and
hardest step: TO LOVE THE BEAST AS IT IS.

Emergency call, 911: We need to hurry before every every everything ends
for good, as they said the end is near, isn’t it? They say it does. However,
it might be worth it to find out to whom are interesting the stories around
an inevitable hecatomb and why the apocalypse is much more plausible than
believing in the possibility of paradigm shift. I was myself very recently
getting prepared for the worst. I even created a score to dance the
end of the world. But something within myself has changed and I still
haven’t understood what it is. A nice hypothesis: I maintain my belief
in the future because each generation learns and advances something
that the previous one couldn’t. Another hypothesis, this one a little
selfish: I can’t accept that this world ends before I find a true, big
love. But then I remember that my own end may not take long. And soon
the dream of a big love takes the shape of an emergency call that makes
my heart pound in a countdown towards extinction.

Contagem, sometime around the 90s.
We are at an aunt’s house and I asked her to watch MTV, as we couldn’t
get the broadcast in my neighborhood without a satellite dish.
We are all in the living room when all of a sudden a girl (Madonna)
shows up almost naked dancing to a song (Erotica) that, according to my
aunt, might be written by the Devil himself. They changed the channel
immediately — but I, in silence, was already absolutely transformed.
This was one of the first times I identified with the EVIL without
feeling any guilt. In that moment I discovered that was the life I
wanted: dancing naked on TV. In black and white. To a song written by
the Devil himself.

It’s late at night, it’s hot and red. To deserve the hell from where I
speak, first I had to know the brotherly love — this was the first gift
life gave me. And this is a love that never scared me.
I fucked with dinosaurs, crocodiles, racing cars and tanks. Performative
sex generates orgastic impulses of disruption and annihilation. Which
is not exactly bad — it can be very good, indeed. But I discovered,
almost too late, that what is really radical is to love someone.
LOVE IS THE REAL HARDCORE, I’ve already written this in another wall,
but I need to repeat so I won’t forget.
Last year I almost loved a man. Although it hasn’t gone exactly right,
I learnt from this experience how much there is to be learnt. I still
lack courage, fact. I, the most brute of all monsters, am still afraid
of looking into the eyes of a man and get scared if someone comes too close.