Thirty Something (Nothing's How We Dreamed It Would Be)

By Filipa Fonseca Silva

Joana is a conservative, controlling woman who expected much more from marriage; Maria is trying to get back on her feet after being dumped just before her wedding; Filipe hides his broken heart in failed relationships. Is this as good as it gets when you're thirty something? That's what these three friends from college times will find out during a dysfunctional dinner party. Because life is not always how we dreamed it would be.
Considered by some 'The Big Chill' of the 21st century, this debut novel is all about the end of innocence. Funny, clever and real.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Filipa Fonseca Silva
• Release date: Jun 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476351223

Filipa Fonseca Silva

Filipa Fonseca Silva is a copywriter, blogger and Amazon Top 100 author. She’s mostly a fiction writer ("Thirty Something - Nothing's How We Dreamed it Would Be" 2011, and "The Strange Year of Vanessa M." 2013) but recently ventured in the non-fiction with this humorous essay on motherhood, which caused quite a controversy in Portugal, where it was originally published. Besides writing, Filipa loves painting, collecting shoes and eating watermelon. She lives in Lisbon with her husband and two children.

Book preview

Thirty Something

(Nothing’s How We Dreamed It Would Be)

By

Filipa Fonseca Silva

Translated from the Portuguese by Mark Ayton

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 Filipa Fonseca Silva

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes



This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

To Hugo, the love of my life

Table of Contents

First part

The Dinner

New Book

About the author

Filipe

My earliest memory is of a Christmas tree. I know now it was a Christmas tree, that is; but all I saw at the time was this thing full of colours and shapes, bathed in a yellowish light. I think I was sitting in a pushchair, strapped in. And although I can remember exactly what I wanted to say (‘Look, mummy, how lovely’), I couldn't speak yet. It was the same feeling as being in a dream and wanting to shout and not being able to. All I could manage, therefore, was a few unintelligible noises. That was the day I learned what it means to be misunderstood.

All the rest ended up being more of the same. My drawings at nursery school of a homeless man sleeping in the garden that the teachers insisted was the Baby Jesus in his manger; or the times I'd carry Patrícia's satchel for three full blocks, not because I liked her but just to see her Mother, who was waiting for her at the entrance to the building and plumped my cheeks with her smooth hands with their red fingernails and vanilla scent.

Poor Patrícia... In eighth grade, after five years of a kind of platonic love affair that had lasted through our childhood and puberty, she said, all right, you can kiss me, but no tongues and I rejected her. Obviously I didn’t tell her why I’d rejected her; I had to make up a story about having a sore throat and maybe she’d catch it and then I ran off home, to masturbate thinking about Mother. In the following weeks I played football every day after classes, and when winter started and there were no more games I began to go out with Rita, a girl who was far from pretty but had well developed breasts for a thirteen-year-old. Patrícia was heartbroken. Now I could no longer see Mother and was stuck with an ugly girlfriend who gave kisses with her stiff, rasping tongue that lasted five painful minutes. Worse still, when I wanted to end it for the good of my neck she let me move up to level two – feel her tits, in other words. This made me keep the romance going for another few months and learned what it was like to have a permanently numb neck. I should have understood there and then that 1) no matter how small they are lies only lead to trouble and 2) my future with women was hardly going to be brilliant.

Now I’d destroyed my reputation with the girls at school, I had to take refuge in grunge music and literature to survive my adolescence. Naturally I went to parties, and pretended to enjoy myself as we smoked in matinées or played footsie under tables. I had friends, and I even considered myself to be fairly outgoing, but it was in my room that I felt best. I read, wrote, composed dumb melodies on my guitar and fantasized about Liv Tyler in the Aerosmith video, or Vanessa Paradis, or – in a filthier way – Pamela Anderson. While the other kids smoked hashish and drank shots of absinthe in their pursuit of ‘different experiences’, I preferred to question the version of reality they presented us with every day in the classroom. Political systems riddled by corruption, Catholicism’s subjugation of the intellect, the economic interests that lay behind wars. Unfortunately I didn’t have many people to discuss these questions with. Some teachers actually liked the issues I’d raise, but most just wanted to get things out of the way without bothering to question them. Which is what nearly everyone I know still does.

The only important thing that happened in my adolescence was Bé. I met her on a night in August, during a meteor shower. I was in my family’s holiday villa with my grandparents and cousins, who were younger than me. I decided to go and sleep on the beach to get a good view of the meteor shower far from the lights of town. I grabbed my sleeping bag, took enough food for three days, a torch, my notebook and my Walkman. I was lying on my back listening to Polly when Bé appeared above me and said something I couldn’t make out. She could have been shouting for all I cared; at that moment the world had stopped for me and all I saw was her pink lips, moving slowly.

Shit, you gave me a fright, I started, sitting up as quickly as I could.

Sorry, all I wanted was a light, she answered, in a voice so hoarse and sexy I don’t think I’ve forgotten about her because of it.

Ah, I don’t have a light... I mean... wait, I brought matches with me to make a bonfire.

A bonfire!

Obviously. It’ll be cold in a little while.

Then make the bonfire so I can light my joint.

And we stayed like that, lying on the sand watching the meteor shower, she smoking joints and me pretending not to be absolutely captivated by her sensuality.

Why do you smoke that stuff? Is to escape from a reality you can’t handle? I asked, quite the man of the world.

Of course not! she burst out laughing. What is it with people that they think weed gives you hallucinations and sends you off to parallel worlds and people smoke because they can’t face reality? Weed relaxes me, that’s all... Your body feels light, like you’re walking on clouds, and your mind becomes aware of sensations it doesn’t normally notice; the sounds of nature, smells... I like to feel my brain going at a thousand miles an hour and then a minute later going blank. The next day I think about what I felt, and I paint. And no, I didn’t have a troubled childhood or a dysfunctional family. I’m not a depressive and I’m not afraid to face reality. I just like to get high. That OK with you?

I suppose so... Smoke what you want for all I care, I answered, indifferent. I prefer life in the raw. I like being straight so I can feel everything, feel that it’s real; that life and the universe are real. Don’t you think sometimes we’re not living at all? Like we’re in a film, or somebody’s head? And how did we get here? I mean, to this stage of evolution. For instance how did Galileo, looking at the sky just like we are now, manage to discover that the Earth is round and had the nerve to tell everyone? Sure enough they thought he was mad. Don’t you think about these things?

Yes! Yes I do, she answered, eagerly. And you know something I wonder about lots of times? How do we know we’re both seeing the same thing? Colours and stuff, I mean. Is my jumper really red, or is that just the name someone gave to a colour my brain sees as grey and yours as green? Who decided it’s red? And how did words appear?

For the next ten minutes the only thing that punctuated the silence was our smiles, as we thought about how good it was to meet someone to share in these near-absurd conversations without getting funny looks or people making a fool out of you. Then, just like that, she said, are you a virgin?

What kind of a question is that?

It’s a really simple question. I’m a virgin, what about you?

Me too, I confessed, hesitantly.

Oh, drat.

What’s the problem? I’m only sixteen; it’s not that serious. And most of my friends are too, except they make up stories about friends of cousins that nobody else knows, just to appear experienced.

It isn’t that, she sighed. It’s that I want to discover what this sex thing is about. And, as I’m not looking to meet Prince Charming and I don’t think virginity’s as important as they make it out to be, I want to try it as soon as I can and put an end to the mystery. But I want it to be with someone who knows what they’re doing, you see what I mean?

Ah... Well, they say I’m a fast learner.

Yeah, I bet. Forget it. Anyway, I like you. Like, I think we could be friends, have conversations on the phone, go for an ice cream on rainy days, watch French films in pretentious art-house cinemas. If there’s sex now, we’ll ruin our whole future together.

Worse still; we might even fall in love!

And that would be a tragedy. Promise me something, she asked, clasping my wrists.

What?

That you’ll never fall in love with me and we’ll always be each other’s best friends.

Deal.

I have to go, or my mum will notice I’m not in my room and she’ll think I’ve been abducted.

Are you leaving already? Wait! What’s your name?

Call me what you want, she said, brushing the sand off her legs and doing up the straps on her sandals.

Go on tell me. I’m Filipe.

See you tomorrow.

She took off into the darkness as if she was flying, her black hair undulating to the rhythm of her steps.

And that was it. That was how I met Bé, the most fascinating girl on the face of the Earth. We spent the rest of the summer in evening conversations about philosophy, interrupted only by my attempts to persuade her to lose her virginity with me, which she wouldn’t, to my great disgust. She ended up in the arms of a surfer a lot older than she was, and the next day he avoided her just like she wanted, for she insisted sex was an animal act and the emotional bond it’s always supposed to create was just an invention of literature. I was consumed with jealousy, but I couldn’t show it. After all, we’d agreed never to fall in love with each other. I was also consumed with envy – at her knowing what it was and me not. She teased me and tried to fix me up with her female friends.

At the end of the holidays, we found we lived too far apart to do all the things we’d planned. We decided letters would be our only form of communication. I still have them. She wrote from the soul and sent me fabulous drawings that illustrated her thoughts. When something really important happened, we allowed ourselves a phone call. Anything was important for me, and I could never last more than a month without hearing her voice. She pretended to be annoyed at me calling without a good reason, but we’d end up talking for a couple of hours. With every letter and every phone call, I realized I was getting nearer to breaking the only promise I’d made her. Our emotional bond was so strong it stopped me from getting involved with other people. None of the other girls had Bé’s voice, Bé’s hair, Bé’s rosy lips, Bé’s intelligence and sense of humour.

The next summer I ruined everything, as