Why Are You Wearing a Tie?

The summers of 1999 and 2000 bookmarked a rough year of dating absolutely the wrong men; in particular one artist/sociopath who intoxicated me, used my frustration for inspiration, and reeked of BO. It wasn’t completely his fault, of course. I fell for it and followed him through on again and off again, all the while guarding myself behind an unsteady wall. He saw glimpses of me, but only just. Perhaps that was the hook. I saw all of him and knew that truthfully, he really didn’t like me all that much. Sadly, that was my hook.

In the aftermath of the artist I retreated—into my room, into my writing, into my body, into therapy. It was an introspective time to say the least, but also a time to shake it off—heal, breathe, flare up neurosis, heal, breath. Repeat.

The fall of 2000 brought a shift. There were things to look forward to—a gorgeous new apartment in the Forest Hills area of JP, the start of grad school, the always beautiful Boston fall foliage.

And that fall, there were boys. Now, if you know me you know that there were always boys, but through the artist and quite frankly the artist before him, they shook me and worried me, left me feeling sick and confused. That fall I felt hopeful about romance again.

There were two crushes in September. They presented themselves at the same time. One was a guy named Dave, who was in my fiction workshop. He wasn’t my usual type, which I couldn’t really describe, but I could tell you that it wasn’t him. He was moody and withdrawn, outwardly hip and very city. He had nice eyes and a great mind, but there was something telling me to take it slow after the summer of healing. Another tortured artist didn’t seem smart.

Cristiano was a line cook at the Cottonwood, the upscale Southwestern restaurant where I worked as a waitress. At Cottonwood, the wait staff didn’t typically have a lot of interaction with the guys in the back of the kitchen, unless you were cocktailing and needed chips and salsa.

One night I was cocktailing. I needed chips and salsa.

And there he was, singing a song in Portuguese, laughing with the other guys. He had wire rim glasses and a thick head of black hair. He was gorgeous, masculine, but also so boyish and goofy. I couldn’t help but smile as he sang his little song, moving his head from side to side as he poured my salsa. The bar was packed that night and I was too busy to make much of the moment—our two sets of dark and tired eyes meeting over the smooth tiled countertop of the café window, which was just the right height for me to rest my chin on. I kind of wanted to just rest my chin there and watch, but I had about twenty tables to take care of, and besides it would have been weird.


At some point that week I told one of the Brazilian girls that I thought Cristiano was cute. The Cottonwood was crawling with Brazilians—the men cooking in the back and the girls, all of them tiny and adorable, up front as bussers, food runners, and hostesses. The girls congregated in little groups around the restaurant, gossiping and singing, jumping and clapping. They were very excitable, and so they were excited to hear about my crush.

It all happened so fast. I was having a beer at the bar after my shift and the Brazilian girls were going crazy at the café window. Peter, my favorite manager, was over there as well, leaning in to the window and occasionally glancing in my direction. Suddenly Cristiano popped his head out the window, the window with the smooth tiles so perfect for chins, the window where the salsa is poured. Of course. He’d been told and was checking me out. I sat there, stunned. The crowd at the window grew rowdy, laughing and clapping. My heart thumping out of my chest, I forced the rest of my beer down a tight throat, the sound of the bartender’s voice like spongy cotton in my ears as he asked, “What on earth is going on?”

They moved toward me in a pack, skipping as if in a Carnival parade. Peter too, bringing up the rear, rubbing his hands together, his grin wide.

He thinks you’re beautiful, they said. He wants your number, they said. Their enthusiasm was contagious—I could feel my face glow, my chest fill with light pink, bubbly air. The girls grabbed me and hugged me, took my hands, laughing and screaming. Through the commotion I caught his eye, his face peeking out the café window. He smiled and waved, also glowing.

There was just one problem, and when it came to me I froze. I grabbed Jackie, the nearest Brazilian girl. I held her shoulders, looked into her amber eyes.

“How good is his English?” I asked, horrified that I hadn’t thought of this before.

Jackie laughed and put her arm around my shoulders, pressed her cheek to my arm, and stroked my hair. “Honey, he barely speaks a word.”

As my heart sank and my body followed into the nearest chair, the girls gathered round with words of encouragement. Who needs words? We’ve taught you plenty of Portuguese. We’ll teach you more! Get a dictionary. It’ll be fine. Go over there.

I didn’t go over there. Not that night. I didn’t even say goodbye.

A few days later Isabel came to me, serious.

“He wants to talk to you.”

I laughed at this. “How?”

She pulled me by the elbow, strong for such a tiny thing, determined too. “I’ll help,” she said.

The lamps at the café window were hot, my whole body was hot. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and his hair was messy, kind of standing on end. I watched as he ran his fingers through it and bit his bottom lip.

“Hello Jennifer,” he said. I straightened at the sound of my full name. Everyone at work called me Jen.

“Hello,” I said, fighting the urge to slide my chin onto that tile counter and camp.

He said something to Isabel in Portuguese and she pinched my arm and whispered, “Your phone number.”

I fumbled around in my apron for a piece of scratch paper and a pen. As I wrote I realized that my hand was shaking badly. I tried to steady it as I handed over my number, but it was no use. I shrugged apologetically and he placed a warm hand on top of mine, holding it still on the counter. His hand felt different, electric, and I wondered if I could really take on a Latin lover. Did I want to? Did I dare? I pulled my hand away quickly, as if shocked.

More chatter to Isabel—I looked back and forth between their faces, wondering what they were saying, wondering what was going to happen next.

“He’s going to call you tomorrow,” she said.

“How will we talk?” I asked. She translated and he laughed. More Portuguese.

“His roommate will help.” This sounded like a nightmare, but I couldn’t see a way out. As my mind raced, as I planned my trip to the bookstore for a Portuguese dictionary, Cristiano was ripping a friendship bracelet off his wrist. He thrust it at Isabel hastily, talking softly with words I couldn’t understand.

“He wants you to have this,” she said, handing the woven thread bracelet to me. As I shoved it into my pocket he pulled something from around his neck, a few beads on a thick black cord. He handed it to Isabel, but as he spoke to her his eyes were fixed on me. I leaned in to the window; I couldn’t help myself. I let my chin graze the edge of the counter.

“This too,” Isabel said, laughing, handing me the necklace.

Of course, there was much teasing about my new treasures. The Brazilian girls squealed and said that it was love. The Americans laughed and asked if we were going steady.

Later that night, when it was time to go home, I walked by Cristiano in the hallway by the time punch cards. We shyly said goodnight and as we passed my hand found the bracelet in my pocket. The bracelet was an open strip and needed two free hands to be tied. I couldn’t do it myself.

“Cristiano,” I croaked, so nervous I could barely speak. He turned quickly and came to me, standing close, smelling of hickory and sweat. I held out the bracelet and he immediately looked sad, confused.

“You no like?” he asked. He was like a boy, like a pup—big brown eyes, few words.

“I like it,” I whispered. I placed the bracelet in his hand and held out my wrist.

“Ahhhh, claro,” he laughed, his hands moving fast with the strings. It was secure in seconds and he turned my hand over so that I could see. It was worn but beautiful, frayed and imperfect, blue and green and yellow, the colors of Brazil, and embroidered with the word Bahia. He explained to me, in very broken English, that Bahia was a place in Brazil with beautiful beaches, very white sand. He actually talked on and on about Bahia, but that was as much as I got.

“Obrigado,” I said, “Thank you.”

He leaned in to kiss my cheek, slowly, letting his lips linger for a long second on my face. I felt him breathe in, smelling me. I couldn’t help but close my eyes as he did it. I know this sounds ignorant, but he felt foreign—the way he looked at me, how close he stood, how he seemed both innocent and predatory at the same time.

I remember that night, lying in bed with the window open, the cool autumn air on my feverish skin. The bracelet and the necklace kept me up and restless, but not in an unpleasant way. I fingered the beads around my neck and drifted in and out of half-sleep and blind, nervous hope.


Our first date was ridiculous, a comedy sketch. We started at his place in Somerville where we sipped caipirinhas. We talked through his roommate, Adriana, our fearless interpreter. Ridiculous. Try having a date where everything you want to say is not only heard by a third party, but repeated aloud with added enthusiasm. Adriana was very excited to have me there. She told me that she’d been praying for an angel for Cristiano, who was a little brother to her. She celebrated that night—clinking glasses, patting our heads, and making plans. I was the answer to her prayers. No pressure.

That night, Cristiano’s eyes never left me. He watched my every move, hung on my every word, which of course were few. I knew enough Spanish to get by, but Spanish is only similar to Portuguese. It’s not the same.

At some point Adriana left us alone and we kissed, the sugary-lime cocktail slippery on our tongues. It’s hard to explain how slow the kiss was, how different. He kissed with a lingering authority, both gentle and fierce. Again I had the feeling that I was with a foreigner, which of course I was. What I’m saying is—I was shocked at how different it was—the kissing, the conversation, and the rapidity with which he drew close to me.

Later we went to a bar to see one of our coworkers sing. On our own, we relied on our translation dictionary. We tried to talk freely but kept passing the book back and forth, flipping through it frantically for the right word. Lots of laughter, lots of learning. We were boyfriend and girlfriend by last call.


In many ways, Cristiano was just what I needed to pull me from my time of fear and disconnect. He seemed childlike and safe, because we had so few words. That’s not to say that I didn’t know things about him, that I didn’t understand that he was complex. I knew that while working as a photojournalist in San Paulo he saw poverty and crime unimaginable to me. I knew that he worked like a dog in Boston, eventually moving out of Adriana’s in an effort to save more money, moving into a tiny place in Allston with fifteen other Brazilians, sleeping in shifts because there were only a certain number of beds. I knew that he had spent two days in some sort of shack in Rio, experimenting with cocaine, in the end learning that he did not like drugs. I knew several big things, but only a little bit about those things. Our day to day interaction was simple and physical, like two children and their play, two children with eyes and laughter.

It was fun for a while and the bare bones communication was refreshing. I could not have the long, analytical relationship talks that I was prone too. It was good for me to connect without all that. Besides, we were adorable. I often called him Christian, an Americanized version of his name, or sometimes Kiki, his family nickname growing up. He called me Jennifer, never Jen, but sometimes Branca Neve—Snow White.

I went to Brazilian Christmas parties that started at midnight, I made him his first birthday cake. Surprisingly we were never at a loss for words because we were constantly learning from each other. Long silences could always be broken with our favorite game, “What do you call that?”.

At work things were great. I’d plant my chin on that tiled café counter and receive warm, sweaty Eskimo kisses. If we shared a break, we’d sit on the sidewalk of Saint James Street, our legs intertwined, sharing cigarettes and watching the people pass by. After work, he’d wait for me or I’d wait for him. If he didn’t have to go to his next job, if I didn’t have to go to school, I’d follow him through Copley Square, watching him take pictures.

It was lovely for a time.

By late December things started to change. The misunderstandings were more frustration than folly and we found ourselves having the same five minute conversation, again and again, about something as mundane as laundry. I learned more of his language than he did mine. And I learned that emotions and eyes and hands are nice, but that you do need to talk about things. The language of love can only go so far. I couldn’t talk about the book I was reading, he couldn’t read the book I was reading. We watched Central Station a few times and both of us loved it and loved that we could watch together and understand. We could laugh and cry at the same parts, but we couldn’t talk about it. Meanwhile, Dave from fiction class had been sniffing around, making his move.

For those of you who think that it’s fun to have two suitors, I can tell you that it’s not.

On the last day of class, Dave wrote me a flirtatious critique of my final story. Now, the class note was something that I had thought of doing throughout my years as a writing student. When forced to write a personal letter to a cute boy, it was just so tempting to say, “I really liked your use of metaphor, and by the way, you’re dreamy.” To receive the crush critique was really hard to ignore. I had a lot of respect for the gesture and I poured over the words, because they were words, sophisticated and many. Meanwhile, Cristiano and I had been fighting, mostly because of miscommunication—showing up for dates at the wrong time, not calling when we said we would. We had found ways to communicate, we had gotten better at it, but day to day we just didn’t understand each other.

Dave and I started emailing and instant messaging late at night while Cristiano was asleep, exhausted from his two restaurant jobs, exhausted from walking pneumonia. Probably exhausted from trying to understand me. He knew we were hitting a wall. He was hanging out with the Brazilians more, making plans for the New Year in Times Square, plans that didn’t include me.

There were mornings in my kitchen in JP, looking out the window at the snow falling down, holding back tears as Cristiano danced around in a towel, looking beautiful of course. He’d take out his big, fancy camera, try to take pictures of me looking tired in the morning light. The camera made it worse. I could look at his incredible pictures but he could not read my stories. He couldn’t speak my language.

I’d smoke endless cigarettes on the porch, listening to the Hal Hartley soundtrack compilation, trying not to think of Dave and how wonderful it was to just talk to him, how wonderful it was to talk. I fought it hard. I didn’t want to be with the dark and brooding narcissist. I wanted bright and sunny Cristiano. But the lure of my own language, a common passion for words at that, was extremely hard to resist.

I did end up leaving Cristiano for Dave, which wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone. Cristiano half-heartedly tried to confuse me with his mouth at my neck, but it didn’t have the same effect then as it did in the beginning.

Things with Dave were wonderful and then bad and then heartbreaking very fast. Another story, another time. When all was said and done, Cristiano and I gave it another try, but there was overlap with Dave and my heart would be split for a while. Once Dave was over for good, Cristiano moved in for a few months while planning a move to Florida. He wanted me to go with and I pretended to think about it, but truthfully I didn’t even consider it for a minute.

One night, shortly before he left for Florida, he called me from work and said (in his own words) that he had something to ask me in person. He wanted to make sure I’d be home. This couldn’t be good.

I paced the porch, smoking like crazy, watching the street for signs of Cristiano. I saw him, finally, walking and whistling, picking flowers from the neighbors’ yards as he went. My heart melted for a minute as I watched him. There was that boy from the beginning, with little bursts of joy and the vulnerability a child.

The door bell rang. He never rang the door bell. What was going on?

He presented his little bouquet of neighborhood flowers, but my eyes were immediately drawn to his neck and the crisp white shirt and burgundy necktie. He never wore ties.

“Why are you wearing a tie?” I asked, panic rising in my chest, walking up the entryway stairs quickly, as if running away from him. His laughter followed me. What was so funny?

I could not present, in real dialogue, the disjointed and nervous marriage proposal that followed. I can say that there was no ring, no getting down on one knee. We just sort of sat there on the futon arguing over the fact that I did not want to get married and he did. At some point he mentioned a green card and I rolled my eyes and said something along the lines of, “Here we go.” He pulled me to his chest and told me that he loved me and that he had never thought of the green card before, but that he was scared. Still, I said no. He pouted and said (again, in his own words), “I can’t believe the first time I asked a girl to marry me she said no.”

I said, “I can’t believe the first time a boy proposed to me he mentioned his green card.”

Two days later he brought his friend Carlos and another bunch of flowers, this time red roses from the store. The three of us sat in my bedroom, on the bed actually. The windows were open wide and the sweet green air filled the room with promise. Carlos was bilingual and because these were very important ideas to get clear, we needed to talk through an interpreter. That, right there, was my first point when explaining why it wasn’t a good idea to get married.

Carlos told me that it didn’t have to be a forever marriage, it could just be helping Cristiano out. Yes, right. The Green Card.

Through fat tears and sloppy sobs I explained to Carlos that yes, it would be a real marriage. It would be real because we were together, we had been together. We were sleeping together and sharing birthdays, giving Valentines. I was crying because all of this was true. While I did know that our time was up and that our relationship couldn’t satisfy forever, it had been sweet and exhilarating. I did not like that all of that would now be tainted with the mention of a green card.

Then Cristiano spoke. As in the beginning of our relationship, he spoke in Portuguese, through a translator, but his eyes were fixed on me. He said that he loved me and that he understood that I wanted a love that was deeper, one with better communication. He said that more than anything, he wanted his green card so that he could have the chance to be with me for real some day. What if we wanted this someday but it was too late? What if he got deported? What if we wanted this someday but he was already gone?

I looked into those dark, deep, open, puppy dog eyes. Call me an idiot, but I believed him. I knew what he was saying. I mean, he didn’t have any reason to stay in America. In Brazil he was a successful photo journalist for the biggest paper, in the biggest city—one of the biggest cities in the world. All that America had to offer him was new things to photograph and shitty jobs. And me. He just didn’t want to have to leave, with regrets.

I told Cristiano that I would never want to marry him and that I was sorry. He understood. Our physical relationship stopped at that point but our goodbye two weeks later was warm and affectionate.

I’ve Googled Cristiano, of course, quite a few times while writing this piece. He’s back in his hometown of Goiania working as a photographer. His website is fantastic, his pictures still stunning. There’s even one of him behind his big black camera. He hasn’t changed.

There’s an option to contact him on the site, write a message. You know, I’ve thought about writing him. I’ve wanted to ask him, for many years now, if things turned out OK. I’d like to tell him where I’ve been since Boston, tell him of my life and love and kids. I think he’d like that.

Yeah, I’ve thought about writing him. But I wouldn’t know what to say.