I handed over my passport and ticket. Glancing at my information, the woman behind the desk giggled. “Do you know what your name means in Portugese?” she asked.
“No, which part?”
“Your last name. It’s a little funny given the circumstances…” The circumstances were that my flight from Faro to Lisbon had been delayed, resulting in a missed connection, a rebooking line that stretched more than two hours, and the news they would not be able to put me on another plane until the following day.
“Well, Azar means bad luck. And when we add ito at the end, it means little bit. So your name means: a little bit of bad luck!”
I thought about my cell service failing when I was lost on my own in endless roundabouts, waving apologies to honking cars as I tried to navigate to a remote part of Algarve without GPS. I thought about almost running out of gas on my way to Porches Pottery in Lagoa, and the not-so-simple pizza pursuit that ended up lasting three hours: adventures all.
A little bit of bad luck. I laughed. I could work with that.
The Subject
A week before, when I stepped off the plane and looked at the unfamiliar skyline— a not wholly remarkable view from the tarmac— I realized I knew not a single significant thing about the country I was now standing in.
This vacation was not planned far in advance. I’d been invited by three girls I’d met in Morocco the previous summer and said yes before I could crunch the numbers, knowing it was not the most fiscally responsible idea. But I’ve never understood the notion of saving up for a life you never lead. Portugal had not been on my must-see list— just a place to pop over to if I was ever on a trip to its big sister, Spain. With its La Tomatino Festival, Gothic Quarter, and gloried Futbal arenas, Spain was far more alluring to me. It’s not that I didn’t want to spend time in Portugal (I want to spend time everywhere), but I know none of us can really buy more time in this life, and there were other spaces on my map itching to be scratched off.
But I breathed in and tasted the air and felt the truth I have always claimed to understand: Every place has its own story; every place has its own heartbeat; every place is its own author. It was time for Portugal and me to discover each other.
There’s a wonderful little gem of a lyric in a song from a different era in my life written by the band Say Anything: “I wanna taste the breeze of every great city.” I suddenly craved the sights and smells and sounds of every part of Portugal. I wanted to taste all its foods, all its drinks, and all its breezes. And I wanted to feel the pulse of every city and town and shoreline. I wanted to read all its stories.
Of course, one cannot do this on a week’s long holiday. But I was ready to try.
The Predicate
After landing in Faro, I drove for the first time in Europe to the outskirts of Lagos. When you plan trips, it’s the big things you think about; when you actually arrive, it’s the little things that preoccupy you— day-to-day differences that make you realize how small a life untraveled is. No rights on red, certain street names displayed on buildings instead of freestanding posts, traffic lights on the sidewalk instead of overhead, and an array of unfamiliar symbols on road signs. I did my best to infer the meanings and guesstimate my speed (kilometers is not my first language).
I spent most of my vacation at a yoga and surfing retreat with over twenty other wandering souls from different parts of the world. We were all coming together to faceplant in the ocean. Nothing bonds a group of strangers like the humbling experience of trying to learn to surf— to perfect the pop up, find the pocket, catch a party wave— but really just learning how well salt water clears your sinuses.
I didn’t just camp out at the villa, though. I took day trips— some solo, some accompanied— to other places in Portugal, like Praia da Batata and the cliffs at “The End of the World.” And the group made our way into the heart of Lagos to spend a few nights eating Bacalhau, drinking Sagres, and laughing our way up and down streets too narrow for any car. The bars and restaurants were at odds with themselves, living in buildings from yesteryear, both beautiful and rundown. The cast iron rails on balconies and mosaic facades giving us a sense of the old world, but the neon signs and graffiti vying for our attention, too. The intricate patterns of grey stones, bricks, and tiles beneath our feet led us from one intriguing contradiction to another.
It was a week punctuated by saltwater and sunshine, cobbled streets, and conversation. In a word: joy. We talked music and movies, politics and careers. We discussed social responsibilities and the different lifestyles we led in our prospective countries. In one week, we’d developed inside jokes (the search for Rich’s pants continues…), celebrated a fake birthday for the free dessert (“Happy birthday dear Steve/Andy/shit… whose birthday are we pretending it is???”), a real birthday (thanks for the excuse to share tubs of ice cream, Jana), and learned more about each other than we knew about most of the people in our lives back home. It’s much easier to be open with people when your basic human vulnerabilities have already been laid bare on the surfboard.
When the week was done, I knew I’d lived it the best I could.
The Modifier
And then I believed the vacation was ending. I packed my things, bid farewell to my British roomie, hugged the girls from Morocco, and discussed possible future reunions with new friends. Melancholia said hello as I said goodbye, but I got in my small, rented car and made my own way back to the Faro airport— a little more confident on the return trip than I’d been driving in.
Bad weather in northern Europe delayed my first flight, though, and by the time I arrived in Lisbon, my connection had been missed. Shepherded to the main airline desk with hundreds of others, I found the line already winding through row after row of stanchions.
I pulled out my book and got lost in one of David Levithan’s worlds, only vaguely aware of time and the need to shuffle forward a few steps every so often. Eventually my legs began to ache, and I emerged from the pages to discover that over two hours had passed.
Thinking I’d get rerouted that evening, I was surprised when I finally approached the counter and was given a boarding pass for a mid-morning flight along with a reimbursable hotel for the night. I guess this was just the semi-colon of the trip— a brief pause before more adventure.
The Coordinating Conjunction
And as it happened, I was not the only one from our surfing group who’d had a little bit of bad luck. In our group chat, I discovered others with delayed flights and overnight stays in Lisbon. With four hours to enjoy alone first, the luxury of a proper shower was appreciated after a week of shared bathroom use, then I ventured into Bairro Alto. I rode a cable car and photographed the graffiti all around. I ate Pasteis de Nata and drank Vinho Verde.
When dinner time approached, I met up with three of my fellow surfers. We shared five or six tapas— including alheira croquettes, a spread with Serra da Estrela cheese, and edamame with fleur de sel— and more than one pitcher of sangria. Noobai, a trendy but unpretentious rooftop restaurant, offered us a panoramic view of Santa Cantarino and the Tagus River. We watched the sunset over Ponte 25 de Abril (reminiscent of the Golden Gate Bridge and named in commemoration of the Carnation Revolution), then made our way into the night. We barhopped through the streets, eating dessert in an outdoor seating area and stopping for drinks whenever we happened upon an inviting atmosphere. A few hours later when hunger struck again (or maybe it was the desire to taste as much as possible), we stepped into a pizza bar.
Both a pizza place and a bar, the establishment had an odd vibe at the hour we were entering. Some of the people were looking for carbs to soak up the alcohol in their stomachs. Some were assuaging their munchies. Others were looking rather haggard as they finished the last few pages of their night’s story. The outdoor seating area spilled onto the street where the crowds from all the different bars and restaurants melded together. We devoured our slices (which, as a New Yorker, I can say with authority were too fluffy) and then two of our number called it a night.
It was around 2:30. What else do you do at that hour?
Rich, one of my new English friends, and I decided you head to a drag show deep in the cultural heart of the city, away from too many prying tourist eyes. We decided you turn the page.
The Interjection
In the five minutes of research I’d done, I’d read about the Finalmente Club. One of Portugal’s oldest gay bars, it opened its doors in 1976 and holds quite the reputation and daily performances starting at 3:00 AM. A review online read: “FUN… watch for your wallet. In the crowd, there are pimps and maybe some drug dealers. I have the time of my life there. Very small space.”
The place was packed to burst. A tiny hole in the ground as it was, there were so many bodies you had to dance your way through to the bar. And by dance, I mean grind. In order to enjoy the night, you had to give yourself over to the heartbeat of the room— the rhythm of its words— moving your body in time to the music and the other humans filling the space. Otherwise you were in for an uncomfortable night getting jostled and bumped. Sweating was not optional.
We made our way to the side of the room in front of the counter where empty glasses were supposed to be left. Not too long after we’d secured the space, someone gingerly passed back a broken glass. In an effort to be helpful, I ended up slicing my finger. The injury wasn’t too concerning to me— not too deep— just rotten luck. But Rich took me to find a bouncer who poured some rubbing alcohol on my hand and gave me a napkin to stem the bleeding. Then we went back to reclaim our spot just in time to see the curtains open.
Music is meant to be felt. And these performers were feeling it. So was the crowd: enthusiastic cheers, hands thrown spastically into the air, hips rocking sensually back and forth. There were lovers grabbing one another becoming a tangle of lips and limbs. None stood still or silent. It was a glorious thing to witness; joy always is. And I was among them, awkwardly clapping with a napkin wrapped around my finger. I didn’t understand a word of the songs they were lip syncing to, but I understood their wide smiles and the way they held their arms open to the room, as if they were embracing the positive energy flowing between their own hearts and those of the crowd. I might not have known the words, but the sentence structure made total sense to me.
The voluminous, long, red curls of the star performer swirled around their face like a mane as they embodied both lion and lioness. The black and pink corseted bodice evoked whoops and shouts from the audience when it was revealed, which sustained through to the final song. They wrapped up their performance with a beautiful ballad that crescendoed until it filled not only the room, but every person in it. This was the exclamation point of the night. Rich reached over and held my hand in both of his. I read gratitude in his eyes— an appreciation for having attended with me. When the song ended, I called an uber and he accompanied me to the car to bid farewell. There was a hesitation in his goodnight. The question mark. He stepped back as I got in the vehicle but then dashed forward again. Leaning ever so slightly through the window, hands on the door, he looked at me a beat.
“Um… Let me know when you’ve made it back safely,” he said, eyeing the man behind the wheel.
I smiled. “Okay.”
I got back to my hotel in time for a few hours of sleep before my journey back home. The period.
The Independent Clause
Sometimes life is about understanding the irrefutable immediacy of today and believing in the limitless potential of tomorrow. And knowing that somehow there is utter urgency in both, because while the potential of tomorrow might be limitless, the number of tomorrows we each have is not. It’s a battle we must all fight inside to determine the value of now versus the value of now-ish.
In that battle we write the story of our lives. A story punctuated with dashes and commas. With stresses and hesitations. Often with ellipses instead of closure, or with question marks instead of answers. We use adjectives to paint our world and apostrophize everything because we want to claim it as ours. We try to organize our past chapters based on when— when we were little, when we met someone, when we did something— and we try to look to the blank pages with hope. Do we decide what we want today to look like in hopes of creating a better ending? Or do we decide what we want today to look like in hopes we reach the end having told a better story?
Either way, life is better if you refuse to let a little bit of bad luck do anything but help you find a little bit of adventure and joy.