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Published in the April 2012 issue, on sale any day now
A man walks out of the elevator, into the lobby of the apartment building where Sofia Vergara lives. Tall, handsome, relaxed, dressed in workout clothes. All-American guy. I'm just walking in, about to buzz up.
"Hey," he calls out to me, "you here to see Sofia?"
Turns out it's her boyfriend, Nick. He's a very friendly guy, Nick, and he stops to chat. The more you talk to Nick, the more you like him.
After a minute I say, "Why don't you come up and join us for the interview?"
He looks confused.
"You could help shed some light on the cultural differences an American man faces when he's with a Latin woman," I tell him.
A smile spreads across Nick's face. He's no fool. He waves goodbye and is out the front door in two seconds flat.
--
This is not a magazine story. This is a public-service announcement. Roughly thirteen million people watch Sofia Vergara on Modern Family every week playing Gloria, the gorgeous, caring, opinionated, loud, and much-younger wife of Jay, played by Ed O'Neill. It's the best show on TV. You figure a lot of the men watching Sofia are single. Many have fallen in love with her — her Colombian curves, her perfect comedic timing, her accent. Unfortunately for them, they will never be with Sofia Vergara. Somehow, Sofia is nearly forty years old. She has a twenty-year-old son, and she has all-American Nick. So it figures that at least some of these single men in love with the Sofia Vergara they see on television will go looking for their own Sofia. And some of them just may find her, in another Latina. They may even marry that other Latina. It's not a stretch to say that children, perhaps many children, will come into this world because so many American men are falling in love with Sofia Vergara.
And so when I enter her apartment, I have a purpose. We greet with a kiss on each cheek, as if we'd met in Colombia. Then she leads me to a couch. It's a white couch — a Latin couch. Large, elegant, and comfortable. A family could inhabit this couch, could lean all the way back and laugh. It makes you feel at home.
I start off by bringing up Sonia Braga, the Latina bombshell from a generation ago. When I was a young man, I saw Sonia in two movies, Gabriela and Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. In each one, the plot was driven by Sonia's ability to cook food that made you want to dive into the screen and make love in ways that wouldn't let you sleep at night. "Sonia Braga was my idea of a Latin woman," I tell Sofia. "That was all I wanted — great food and amazing sex. I even learned a little Portuguese so that I could communicate with her when I found her. I went to Brazil, and I did find my own Sonia Braga."
I tell her that when my wife moved to the United States from Brazil, we ate out for the first three days. On the fourth, she said she'd make soup. I went for a run around Central Park, thinking about all the meals I'd seen Sonia Braga prepare on the big screen. When I returned, I walked through the kitchen and noticed a blue bubble escape from the soup pot. Then another. I realized at that moment that in all the time I'd known my wife, she had never cooked for me. She had maids in Brazil who cooked for us. My wife was not rich. She was middle class. But everybody has maids in Brazil. Even the maids have maids in Brazil.
I walked to the pot, lifted the lid, and watched thousands of bubbles float toward the ceiling.
"What did you put in the soup?" I called out — in Portuguese.
"Look in the top cabinet," she called back.
I opened the cabinet and saw a small box of dishwasher detergent.
"My point is," I tell Sofia, "that all these American men who are falling in love with Latinas because of you may have no idea what they're getting into. It's only fair that you give them a heads-up."
The conversation that follows is the heads-up.
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