What’s left of Tatuapé? – 05/28/2023 – The Worst of the Week

Garoto (that’s how he signs his e-mail) writes to me because he wants to know “what’s left of Tatuapé” in my “routine and customs” as a “young lady living in an upscale neighborhood”.

I remembered when a middle-aged writer who is also a journalist came to my house to profile me for a men’s magazine. I had just released a book that, in addition to being among the top five bestsellers in the country, was being disputed by two major production companies to be adapted for the cinema. I was already a columnist for this newspaper, and my chronicles at that time were among the most read and shared. Combined, the comedy scripts I had written had brought more than 5 million people to movie theaters.

But why talk about a woman’s success, right? Even more so a woman who had the same profession as that middle-aged journalist writer, who was about fifteen years older than me and had never managed to draw much attention to his work.

Whether it was the 90s, or even the 2000s, maybe the profile would start with a description of my breasts and hips. But it was 2015, and the journalist / writer / cultural agitator at the soiree of disapplause knew that he could not commit this career “self-annihilation”. Then he began the story by saying that I had spent the entire interview disguising an “attractive suburban accent” and “trying to force some elegance.” Machismo always finds its ways to perpetuate the species.

My friend (and here I am referring to Garoto, and not to the journalist/writer/alcoholic performer who interviewed me), if there is one thing I do not insist on in this life, it is talking, walking, eating and staring at the sunset imitating the aristocracy decadent house left over in the west zone after three generations blowing away the fortune of the slave-owning great-grandfather. Look: I love inn, hotel, restaurant and rich shop, but I can’t stand any rich person inside these places. My dream is to fill a bus with my friends and relatives and invade Fasano Boa Vista. I can’t stand the accents of the rich, the malemolence of that tongue daubed with dollar signs in the sprinklings, the knife in the right hand to cut a fake prime rib −always in favor of the fibers−, the extremely erect posture of the spine, why bend over, even with five hernias , is a poor thing. I can’t stand it, I don’t want to look like it, I don’t want to imitate and, above all, I never want to vote like most of them. But I’m very jealous of inheritance. Many. From my family I only inherited chronic pain and autoimmune disease.

For example, this middle-aged reporter/writer/journalist/DJ. He considered himself elite. But, at the time, I was renting a property that belonged to a couple of my friends, and they told me that not only had you not paid the rent for over a year, but whenever you saw them you said “I really don’t pay, I’m a damn artist “. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, man, it’s a damned artist. It’s not that hard to ditch a bar chair for an office chair. But, if it’s impossible for you, then it’s your obligation to write a “Pornopopeia”. If you’re as brilliant as Reinaldo Moraes, I’ll even pay your rent. In any other case, I just hate fucking middle-aged artists shitting rules and bad poetry on little white plastic tables.

Perhaps this anger is also something that “I have left of Tatuapé”. Since I moved to Higienópolis, I realize that anger has gone out of fashion. In Perdizes there was still a lot of bile oozing from the elevator poop, but here everyone looks like they just got off a long yoga session. Finérrimos. I threw a party at which Anitta could be heard fifteen blocks from my window (I hate noise, I never make it, except that when I do it’s for real) and nobody (NOBODY!!!) in my building complained or fought or looked down on me. I was only forced to pay a fine of almost 3 thousand reais the next day. Finérrimos. Elegant. I’ve never been so homesick for a good Italian lady scolding me with fat, flabby arms at four in the morning. It’s much better to be offended by someone who gets nervous, feels sick, crosses the line and apologizes (real people) than putting up with balanced smiles and having to pay three bucks. Rich doesn’t wear out. They have lawyers and employees for that.

The other day, at the school door, I noticed that I was the only mother dressed to embarrass a child. He had been wearing the same dirty sweatshirt for two days and pink socks with yellow flip-flops. It’s no use explaining that I feel like a genius from Silicon Valley (who, precisely because she could dress well, makes a point of not dressing). My daughter always asks me not to get out of the car when I’m “dressed awful”.

My last ten boyfriends have made it very clear—not always in words, but in silence—that they don’t like swearing, scatology, and “boyish” jokes. They were all elite. I have this defect: I date a playboy disguised as a PT progressive. But they’re all playboys. Even if PT progressives. I think I date rich people just to fuck with them — there, I made a boy joke.

Everything about me is kind of periphery, and I don’t disguise it. I won’t say I’m proud, because then there’s that boring thing about an actress who wins an award and sends a kiss to her grandmother in the hinterland of Piraporinha Mirim: “without her I would be nobody”. I’ll bet my expensive laser-depilated anus that more than half of these grandmothers weren’t even nice to their award-winning granddaughters in Gramado. I don’t strive to look like something else just for lack of ability, time and patience. The money I would lose by wasting my time to look like I have family money would lose me the money I need to have to support my family who don’t have money. Only that.

Furthermore, I find it immensely difficult to plan anything in São Paulo that is not close to the Higienópolis mall. When the Higienópolis mall opened, I walked fourteen subway stations and then took two buses to go there and see it. I don’t visit relatives or childhood friends because it’s too far away and because I have to take medication when I see laminate flooring imitating wood. At no point did I say I was cool.

Tati Bernardi answers the most unusual questions and strangest comments from her readers. Do you want to participate in the O Pior da Semana column? Send your message to [email protected]

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