True Confessions

TRUE CONFESSIONS - 19

by Mighty Mouth

ROGER (MISS MATCH)

I went with my friend Kenny to Rio for Carnaval in 1971. For the first three days of our visit, I was merely Kenny’s Rio guide, proudly showing him the city. By that time, I was exploding with frustration and sexual tension from seeing so much masculine beauty. I told Kenny, "I gotta get out of this apartment and go find some fun." I walked one block to famous Copacabana Avenue. Near the corner a young guy stopped me and asked in Portuguese if I had a match. I thought he was fabulous, so I immediately said without thinking, "No I don’t have a match on me, but I have one in my apartment just one block from here."

He accepted, and we went to the apartment. I probably told Kenny to go take a walk. What I had picked up was a beautifully muscled, macho nineteen year-old soldier in the Brazilian army. His skin was so dark I thought he must be black, although he had no facial features associated with that race. At least I thought this until he took off his shorts. Lo and behold he was white, albeit very deeply tanned by a lifetime in the hot Rio sun. He lacked a lot downstairs, but his body and sweet personality compensated. He wasn’t very tall, perhaps about 5' 7". I told him I was staying for a few more days and asked if he was willing to be my companion for the period. He explained that his time was limited, being at a nearby army base, but would spend as much time with me as he could. I did get to see him almost every day. I don’t know if he was going AWOL for a few hours, or how he pulled it off. Because of the way we had met, I gave him the nickname Miss Match, but never mentioned it to him. His real name was Roger.

    He seemed like a nice kid and was well-mannered. I took him to dinner several times, sometimes just us alone, at times with Kenny joining us. When I left Rio he gave me his home address; I gave him mine. We began a correspondence as soon as I returned home to New York, that continued until my trip to Brazil the next year.

By 1972, I wanted desperately to live in Brazil, preferably in Rio. I contrived to spend three months in the country. I checked into a hotel, and phoned Roger. He came running. I thought it better to rent my own apartment, and found a nicely furnished one to my liking, with telephone, in Copacabana. Roger came to visit every day and we often ate out, but I frequently cooked dinner for us. By this time he was out of the army and working.

    After a two-week gig in São Paulo, I returned to Rio and Roger for a few days. Roger begged me over and over to take him with me to New York. I guess he knew a good thing when he saw it. I helped get him an American visa, and  bought him a ticket to New York a few days after I returned there.

Through my contacts I was able to get Roger a night job, not far from a temporary furnished apartment that I rented in Brooklyn Heights. After not too long in the U.S., his attentiveness and sweetness began to disappear. He took on the air of a spoiled brat. He did fulfill his assignment to clean the apartment weekly and have sex.

In late 1972, I convinced my neighbor and friend Dickson to visit Key West with me. I had been there the previous year and fell in love with the city. Needless to say, Roger was invited to join us. The plane we took to Miami was equipped with a stand-up bar and lounge, the first I had seen. I invited Roger to have a drink. Immediately, an ugly, overweight woman in her early thirties began a conversation. Her name was Gloria, but she was far from glorious. She was from The Bronx and was headed to Florida for vacation. I instantly disliked her aggressiveness and her ignorance. It was obvious that her interest in twenty-year-old Roger was more than just casual chit-chat with a fellow passenger. Without my noticing, she slipped him her phone number, as I was to find out later.

When we arrived in Key West, Dickson was completely charmed by the quaint old houses. Dickson suggested that we jointly buy a house and renovate it. We both lived in old houses in Brooklyn. We bought a broken down house there, dirt cheap.

Back in New York, Roger began to see Gloria, the silly woman he met on the plane. I saw less and less of him; he usually didn’t come home to sleep, except on weekends. By this time his attitude had completely modulated to arrogance and disrespect. I decided that enough was enough and threw him out. Needless to say, Gloria took him in. The fact that Roger moved out did not signal a total disconnect. I suppose a part of him needed to maintain contact with me, which he did. Our relationship, while more sporadic, continued.

In 1973 Roger drove me from New York to Key West in his old Volkswagen. The trip was intended to last two days, but his car kept breaking down along the way, and it took three and a half days. Besides paying for the repairs, gasoline, and an extra night in a hotel, I couldn’t tolerate sitting so many hours in his cramped car. So I flew back to New York and left Roger to drive back alone.

My friend from Rio, Fernando,  came to visit New York in 1975, and stayed five weeks at my townhouse. It was payback time for all the occasions I had stayed for free in his separate fuck flat in Rio. Roger drove me and Fernando to Philadelphia in his worn-out Bug to get a toupée for Fernando, where he had made contact with a guy who made them to order. Roger, ever the opportunist, secured the guy’s phone number and began visiting Philadelphia frequently, falling in with the gay community there. He was probably bored with Gloria by this time, or she threw him out, so he moved to Philly.

As usual, good luck sought him out. One day, as Roger passed a girl talking on a public phone, she asked him if he had a pen so she could write down a phone number. By luck he did and that initiated a conversation. She asked him where he was from and when he told her Brazil, she got excited. Turns out she had a girl friend who spoke Portuguese, and would obviously like to meet him. Apparently, she preferred Brazilian Indians, and was rich. So Roger passed his phone number to the girl at the phone booth.

Shortly after he got a phone call from the girl who spoke Portuguese. Knowing a good thing when he saw it, he probably told her that he was a Brazilian Indian. Shelived on Rittenhouse Square. In a very short time they were married and her parents bought her a huge mansion on the Philadelphia Main Line with seven bathrooms and endless bedrooms. His wife, L., was as ugly as homemade sin and spoke the world’s worst Portuguese. Her main ambition in life was to have kids, the more the better. After a few years, there were three little ones in the house. By this time, Roger had bored of her, or she of him, and he joined the American Army and was shipped off to Germany. He joined me once in London and also in Lisbon, and we spent a few days together.

    He remained in Philly, going from one mediocre job to another. His wife found out about his extra-marital affairs with both men and women, and sued for divorce. He occasionally phones me, but I never call him. By this time I consider Miss Match a total loser.