English Version | We’ll have another round of fresh gossip

Let us clarify once and for all: a tavern is not a pub. In a tavern, you have hard boiled eggs on a plate of salt to "make a path" to the glasses of wine consumed at the counter. In a pub, you eat jaquinzinhos with tomato rice. At the table. Where there are even napkins, one can imagine. Traditionally, and unlike the pub, there aren’t (many) ladies in the tavern. Therefore, it is a place where men can be what they are. In other words, a bunch of gangsters, loose-lipped, talkative, big-mouthed, and everything else they think women are at the hair salon. 

In the time when animals talked, a hare ended up, without saying anything to anyone and in the usual rush with occasional long jumps, in a pot of Feijoada da Mesma. This was sitting on a table. Which in turn was in a tavern that I can't remember the name of. Which doesn't matter because, as we know, in Alentejo the establishments don't have an official name. Only tourists go to Tasca do Celso or Restaurante Fialho. The locals go to "Celso’s" or "Fialho’s", because they are the owner's home. Then there is, of course, this very reprehensible mistake that I myself made, saying that a very specific place was in the Alentejo. It really makes me sick when people say "I'm going on vacation to the Alentejo", the biggest Portuguese region. In Almodôvar, which borders the Algarve? In Portalegre, which borders Beira Baixa and Ribatejo? Or in Alcácer do Sal, which borders Setúbal? The only people worse than that are those who say "Tomorrow I'm going to the North." North of what? The Tagus? Of the Zêzere? Of the Ceira? The Mondego? You see, North of Minho River there is Galicia. But I was saying, and so that we can situate ourselves geographically, the place that was where the tavern was, which had a table with a pot of hare stew on it, was the very brave, candid and friendly town of Ponte de Sor. For those who don't know, you arrive in Mora (nice fried cuttlefish with asparagus migas) and turn left towards Montargil. Our table was the closest to the counter, where a tall, thin man was sparing his elbow, supporting his entire flank so he could watch the soccer game on the tiny TV on the top, while sipping a glass of white wine. I had my hands full with the silverware, and for a change, because I am always so unlucky, I landed on the head of the queue. This was the excuse for the first intervention of the "young man", which is like saying "Mr. in your seventies", who after all didn't only have his eyes on the TV screen, but was also glancing at the struggle I was engaged in with the cutlery, trying unsuccessfully to reach that fruit of the decapitation of a member of the fauna of the cork oak forest. Visibly annoyed, he could no longer contain himself and asked me: "Oh friend, may I show ya?” and I, caught off-guard: “Of course!” Having said that, he takes, with the tips of his fingers, the hare’s head from my plate and sucks it vicariously and then says: “Use your hands, man.” General laughter, all friendly

again, and we return to the conversation interrupted by the episode: the G-spot. I had just got out of a relationship with a woman who "squirted" in such an intense way that we had a set of towels just for Sunday afternoons, a mattress cover that cost me a lot of money, and waterproof car upholstery covers. João, sitting in front of me, had no idea what this was. Nor in pornography. Carlos, next to me, was biting his, was biting his fingernails as if there was no tomorrow or another half a pot of feijoada to finish, tired of trying to find this Mr. HG, as we called it after a few more glasses of red wine, H for Holy and G for Graal. "It's that roughness right there at the entrance," exclaimed someone. "Yes, but how do you do it? Do you rub it, pull it, press it?" inquired another. Until the young man, still leaning against the counter but with no hare's head between his fingers, hoarsely declares, "Sorry to butt in, but... are you talking about the roof of the dog's mouth?"

After all, after so many decades of studies, scientific research and articles on the subject, confessions from women who assure us that men can't even find the clitoris, let alone the G-spot, after we have watched, from the sidelines, the slow and gradual liberation of a society like Portugal, so ruthlessly blackened by a dictatorship and with no shadow of secularity in sight until the end of the 20th century, where modesty still reigns as a shadow, we discovered that, after all, the story of "dating at the window" was a beautiful mockery, for dad to see and mom to organize the trousseau. And don't give me the romanticism inherent to the story of making love on straw bales, because I've tried it and it stings like hell. We are talking about good, exploratory sex, which seeks not only our own pleasure but also that of our partner. Suddenly, with a hare's head in the middle of it, there was light and we realized that sex has been going on for many years and, amazingly, has ensured the emergence of generations and generations since prehistoric times. And it was practiced, surprisingly, as it is today... With desire, passion and ardor for some, and coldness for others. In other words, there has always been a fuss, sometimes by people who know what they are doing, and sometimes by others who would be better off fishing for asticots. And all because what we sought with youthful charm that man called by "roof of the dog's mouth”. In other words, that roughness a little more than three centimeters from the vulva in the direction of the pelvis, which increases in volume as the excitement increases and which sometimes explodes in a firework of pleasure stamped in a kind of uncontrollable epileptic fit, was as familiar to him as delicious were the memories he visibly treasured.

This is the magic of taverns. They are the confessional without the church protocol. They are the destination we dream of during the workday. And they are the temple that keeps the most unmentionable secrets that only alcohol can release - and which confessors try to spread among all the other regulars the next day. Sometimes it is enough for the confessor to leave the establishment for all the others to toast to the revelation of secrets, in a gossip fest, like the bacchantes of intrigue. And just as, after all, "the ancients" already knew what the G-spot was long before we remembered to compare it, in terms of touch, to the roof of a dog's mouth (even because not all men have touched the roof of a dog's mouth), tavern topics have been transversal for decades. Centuries. Millennia even, if we consider, for a mere example, the thermopolis, that establishment where the Romans delighted themselves with wine and various dishes of chicken, beef, fish, snails, all ready made and stored in dolmens (containers that kept the food warm). Between a hairdressing salon, which is thought to be the place where women exercise intrigue, gossip or, in Caetano's sweet pronunciation, gossip, and a tavern, the difference is the mustache.

Behold, brethren, the taverna is not exclusive to Portugal. It has the same name in Italy (taverna, locanda, or osteria) and is a bodega in neighboring Spain (and that's why we think something bad is a bodega, never a taverna). In Jorge Amado's epic novel Jubiabá, it is in the boteco (the Brazilian tavern) by the port of the magical city of Bahia, called Lanterna dos Afogados, that all the wonderful characters meet. Even the pub is the tavern's more "beer-oriented" cousin. Because wine has always ruled here. One barrel of white, another of red, and when it comes to food, which you have to eat to fill your stomach, you bring it from home. In the Alentejo, for example, a reality with which I am more familiar, it is not uncommon to see guests take from their pockets or coat pockets a dry cheese, a tangerine, an apple, a quarter sausage or a piece of bread that is placed on the counter of the establishment to be shared. Those who want to, and they do as their cheeks flush with redness, get out the small knife they always carry and serve themselves. It wasn't rare to see people bringing their lunch from home to eat there, accompanied by a glass of red wine. In the morning, it was the "mata-bicho" (bagaço, to "give strength and courage for work", medronho, if there was any). Tables and chairs? If there were any, it was for a game of dominoes, a game of cards or checkers. Outside, yes, there was a bench where the guests sat, each one with his or her faithful and inseparable "pup" (small dog) at their feet. But we are talking about a remote and forgotten Portugal, where the tavern was the place to socialize when neither the community homes nor the most recent recreational centers existed. In the cities, another rooster crowed. In the late Adega dos Canários, in Cais do Sodré, which is now a gin bar that appeared when Rua Nova do Carvalho changed its name to Pink Street, its three doors opened to dazzle us. ​​A tiny display case could grow to the point of displaying boiled pork snouts and ears (which could be eaten like this, inside a bun, or chopped for salad), fried squid (whole, to make sandwiches, or calamari style), fried horse-mackerel (small size or flatter), breaded meat that had to be folded in half to fit inside the "carcass" and, of course, fried chicken. Behind the counter, there was the frying pan for the steaks in its eternal bubbling, a pot of soup (bean soup, invariably), two gigantic vats of wine, one red and the other white, a good dozen hams hanging from the ceiling beams, which I never saw being served, neither whole nor sliced, and two very old gentlemen who were part of the first wave of migration of Galicians to Lisbon (those who were responsible for the first quality restaurants, of which the Gambrinus is a living testimony), but from Valença do Minho, which is very close by. In Lisbon's oldest nighttime tradition, which is the fado tradition, when the night was over and there was nowhere else to give vent to the drunken vein, it was said, "The taverns have already closed." But while their doors are open and flanked by cages with canaries in symphony, poetry happens:

- "Look there comes the lame guy. Poor man, he's being swindled. Just yesterday I saw her with the other one at that gourmet burger joint downtown."- "Which one?"- "I don't know, some guy all dressed up."- "No, man... What gourmet burger joint? There are so many..."- "The one that also has kebab."- "He had it coming, because he also did his thing with the one from the office."- "Oh yeah? You tell me a lot. I didn't know anything about that."- "How could you not know? Everybody knows. He's here already." They both get up.- "So, lame... Aren't you buying the guys a drink here? You're getting fatter, man. Your wife, how's she doing? I haven't seen her in so long."

Translated from the original on The Gossip Issue of Vogue Portugal.Full credits and stories on the print issue.