This episode,  I read the preface and first chapter, Bicep, from my non-fiction manuscript, F*ck Bubble, to my beloved friend, Fabiano. I met Fabiano on the sidewalk in Rio de Janeiro back in 1999 at the beginning of an extended South American backpacking trip.

The episode essentially comes in two parts,  and two hemispheres.

The first half, recorded in November of 2022 while Fabiano was in his home country of Brazil, consists of the reading and a brief discussion.

The second half, recorded in May of 2023 while Fabiano was at his full-time home in Montreal,  includes an in-depth conversation about his coming to terms with being gay while growing up in one of the most sexually-liberated cities in the world, Rio, then thawing out along with the rest of Brazil from decades of military rule.

The preface and Bicep are all about how I came to know Mack, a handsome and beguiling musician met earlier in '99 at a gay bar in the East Village of New York City. It's about those first passionate but often complicated months of getting to know a potential love interest, trying to figure out what is and isn't real.

You can find out more about F*ck Bubble and my other creative projects on my website,  http://brianpearson.net/writings.

If you'd like to support the podcast and the writing, please check out my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80977299. 

Thanks for listening to F*ck Bubble.  

Each episode I’ll be reading a new chapter from my non-fiction manuscript, F*ck Bubble, to a close friend. F*ck Bubble is the near twenty year true story of a 1999 hookup in New York City that morphed into a deep but often turbulent friendship – one that got even more complicated after an unlikely encounter in the Utah desert in 2016. It’s a story of serendipity and how revisiting the past can sometimes set oneself free in the present. Weaving the personal with the historical, F*ck Bubble also documents certain aspects of LGBTQ+ life from the nineties till now. With 19 friends from Scotland to LA, Brooklyn to Brazil, I’ll discuss the reading, talk about how we met and how life can change with a blink of an eye, a twist of the head. Intended for a mature audience, listener discretion is advised.