Cachaça Mecânica — Guatemala City, Guatemala | July 2000
“Te Amo, Amore”
Two empty wine bottles linger next to the tub, the foam is long gone and the bubbles hardly display any of the enthusiasm of a couple of hours ago. We’re sitting in a bath, she and I, a Jacuzzi on a roof terrace high above Guatemala City. The apartment actually belongs to her parents, but they are away on holiday.
We met each other on the top of Temple Five at the Mayan ruins of Tikal. She’s a photographer and so we spoke about the thousand words expressed in a single picture, and now we’re sitting in a Jacuzzi.
She lazily leans backwards and swirls the last sip of rosé round her glass, absentmindedly glancing at a soap series on a portable television.
I take in my surroundings, the reed fence and the terracotta pots with semi-arid palm trees; the small pile of wet clothes besides the tub, the empty pizza box on the mosaic table and then at her. The terrace is illuminated only by the city’s neon lights and the flickering television screen, giving her body a blue shine.
There’s a remote beside me. When I press ‘Play’ music swells up from hidden speakers. Abruptly she puts down her glass and rises. Silently she pulls me up, pressing me tight against her. A strumming guitar; slowly we begin to sway, pelvis to pelvis, her left hand on my right, her right hand on my neck, my left on her buttock.
I don’t know anything about Latin-American dances, but it doesn’t matter; she does. I just need to follow her and I’m an excellent follower: “back, back, and forth and forth,” with our feet we jazz up the Jacuzzi foam.
The whistling of a quetzal joins the melody. Guatemala’s strikingly coloured national bird forms itself out of the city smog, the neon lighting comingling into a long blue-green tail.
The music intensifies, the first rays of sunlight sparkle on the water, “Te amo, amore,” she says.
“I love you too,” I say.
With her hand she tilts my head and kisses me full. I stare into chocolate brown eyes, at once matte and gloss. She glares back into electric blue ones with undoubtedly the same lustre.
I slide my arm up to her waist, guided by the piano she waves her upper body backward over my forearm creating a rainbow of droplets with her long wet raven black hair and foaming up the water with her feet.
We dance until the music ends and then slip, with a final twist, back into the tub.
I open another bottle of wine and look at her as she re-engages with the soap on the television. The sun is up and the Jacuzzi bubbles enthusiastically once again.
Erasmo Carlos. Cachaça Mecânica on Projeto Salva Terra [LP]. Lançamento, Brazil: Philips Music (1974)
This autobiographical sketch comes from my bundle In the Moment: A Disjointed Audiobiography which is available at Amazon.com. (USD 9.50 for a paperback or USD 4.50 for the Kindle version)
