Living Out Loud

Living Out Loud is one of my favorite movies. Holly Hunter plays a woman rebuilding her life, more or less from scratch, after a devastating breakup. The scene that gets me every time is the one in a women's bar, where she lets go on the dance floor to Brownstone's "If You Love Me," finally breaking away from her repression and starting to express who she really is. A breakup isn't what brought me to Portugal, but the starting-from-scratch part feels familiar, and so does the letting go. New country, new language, new friends, and a dog who had to start over right along with me.

Things are finally settling down. I feel that mainly because of Newt. We found a beach within walking distance. He romps up and down it like he's been let out of something, which, in a way, he has. The pup who spent our first weeks here flinching at everything is less scared now, less triggered, and some days I look at him and think he's finally decided this place is home.

I'm getting there too. The furniture has started arriving, and the apartment is beginning to feel like somewhere a person actually lives. To mark the occasion, I spilled a full cup of coffee on my brand-new wool rug. Immediately. I like to think of it as a housewarming.

My friend Colette has been here from Portland for the past week, and we've had a great time, though somewhere in the middle of it I realized how little I actually know about Portugal. I'd been cast as tour guide, and I was probably a terrible one. Colette, if you're reading this, I'll study.

Having her here did something useful, though. I wanted to impress her, which meant I had to actually speak Portuguese in front of her instead of just pointing and smiling. I'm still butchering the language, utterly, but I'm doing it out loud now, and that turns out to be most of the battle.

Getting it right is another matter, and that's where Joanna comes in. Readers of previous posts may remember the kitchenware shop. That's Joanna, and she's become my first real Portuguese friend. She's the one who told me about a city-run language program, and I'm now enrolled, six hours a week. By the end of it, I should be able to pass the language test for citizenship, if I decide to go that route. That's on top of lessons three times a week with a private tutor. I'm determined to learn this insane language, no matter how much I embarrass myself along the way. So Colette got me talking, and Joanna is going to make me conjugate.

Newt, meanwhile, remains my introduction to nearly everyone. He just attracts good attention. People stop us on the street to fawn over him. They pet him, baby-talk to him, and tell him how gorgeous he is. He’s semi-interested at best. Mostly he just wants to keep walking. He's above it all, a little aloof, like a celebrity, and I'm the guy holding the purse/leash.

The one person he does love is Margarida, his dog walker. He's fallen head over heels for her. Every day he watches for her from the balcony, and when she arrives he announces it by prancing around and whining, making it perfectly clear that in this moment, I'm nothing and she's everything. So I'm a little worried, because Margarida is about to leave for music school. But, like everyone else he meets, Newt has charmed her entire family, and her dad has volunteered to take up the slack.

Today, Colette, Newt and I are heading to Porto for the night to meet my old high school friend John and his wife, Holly. Starting from scratch means almost everything around me is new: the language, the streets, the friends, even the furniture. So it means something to spend a week with Colette, who knew me in Portland, and then an evening with John, who knew me when I was a teenager with no idea any of this was coming.

My version of the dance floor scene is mispronouncing Portuguese in front of anyone who will listen. It's not sexy and cinematic, but it's a start.