Last Night in Rio
I woke up the next afternoon before the sun went down. I'd made a choice after the beginning of the trip, and realized late parties would prevent any chance of appreciating Rio under the sun. I missed breakfasts, lunches, and all of the basics most people enjoy during daylight.
I opened the mini-fridge in the apartment, found only water, juice, and crackers—no beer. For once, I felt relief finding the fridge without beer. We had partied the past ten nights and early mornings. Time to slow down and soak in the city. The guys collected without many words until I asked if I missed anything after leaving the
esplanade the night before—no, wait, that morning, or . . . damn, head hurts. Where the fuck are my shades?
Wondering aloud what to do the last night of the trip, the boys handed it over to me. Your choice, Ari, lead the way. Step one—sandals, wallets, and keys. Step two—hand our room keys to the staff at the front desk with a casual nod and smile. Pointless to say good morning at sunset. Step three—quick stop at the store across the street to grab a big bottle of water for a walk to Copacabana. We'd already begun strolling downhill, so gravity narrated the rest of the tale for the evening.
Just stroll with the flow downhill, and we were pulled right back to our regular locations. We headed straight to the same terrace of the same restaurant, with the same professionals pulling out chairs and arranging a table for us. Don't recall what the other dudes ordered, but I asked the waiters for suggestions along the line of
mariscos, and dined on fruits of the sea I'd never seen, studied, nor dreamed. I thought about one last
caipirinha, but no need for that. Just beer,
sangría, and water sufficed.
A special peace settled on the streets and beach of Copacabana that evening. No hurry, I just wanted to soak it all in. Skipping dessert and coffee, we strolled across the street to our regular
baizharinha. I would hesitate to label us regulars, since we only visited the location for ten days and nights. The people offering service and the locals hanging out alongside made us feel like we were sharing a community living room.
Then the band appeared. Never noticed them setting up, only felt the drums and heard the guitar strings. I wondered aloud if someone had a good stereo in a taxi passing by. Then I wondered aloud if it was an
axè, or one of the other Brazilian genres I noticed in a local music paper. Then Doug asked why I always wonder aloud.
The rhythm, the melody, the tune, and the atmosphere all felt exactly like what I expected for a Rio experience. This was why we ran around the town in a taxi trying to hunt down the spots we discovered in every travel book, rumor, and website. All along we had no need to hunt for anything. We only had to wait patiently, take it easy, and Rio brought us what we wanted.
The bossa nova hippies played on, and we chatted with one of the dudes who was picking up cans for income. I asked if he could drink on the job, and he laughed. So I bought him a beer. The one musician who played some funky mix of bossa nova and reggae handed his guitar to the sound man. He walked right over to us and smacked hands with a snap and a knock. We stood stage left, so he probably had a good view of us kicking back and digging his music for real, something unique and forceful we'd never experienced, but which we knew waited for us in Rio.
Sabrina, our favorite waitress, laughed at us travelers trying to revel in the local cool. The soundman took the stage, and the locals began shouting out requests. The guy looked like a generic middle-class old guy who would fit in better on an American softball team. He fomented the emotion of the people as they all danced and sang along with the music of their lives. I had no idea if he played standards or modern hits of bossa nova or folk songs, but the people enjoyed the vibe, and we felt good.
But the musicians could not play forever, and we could not stay much longer. We had plane tickets and stupid jobs back home. We were travelers, picking out our clichés of choice. The band possibly moved down the beach to play for another crowd of revelers, or simply headed home. Sabrina sat down with us after the crowd left, and shared some details about her life. She lived alone, somewhere in the
favelas. All of her family lived back in the
nordeste, Northeast of Brazil. I forget what town or state she mentioned, but knew it must have been more remote than Recife or Salvador d'Bahia.
I expressed my emotions as best I could, and the boys encouraged me. I said no way, not cool. But these cats have a pact to indoctrinate new friends into their fold by pushing them into doing something out of the usual mode. Egan, Doug, and Steve built an Egyptian personhood of sorts while in school in Colorado. They choose hieroglyphs rather than Greek letters in order to differentiate themselves from the frats and sors—fish-eye-guy going like that. . .
Feeling bitter, I took the push and asked Sabrina out for a dance after she checked out of work that night. She told me she was only going home to sleep alone, so nothing was going to happen. Unhappy getting pushed into that corner spotlight, I wondered aloud for another round of beer. Nobody refused, so we enjoyed our last white sunrise in Rio. I'd traveled there looking for nothing less than an epiphany, a life changing experience in a legendary city, maybe meet a woman made of dreams.
I must admit I fell in love with one of the Finns we met on Copacabana the sunrise of Ash Wednesday. I moved to Helsinki the next year, and eventually met my Finnish family I had never had much contact with previously. The relationship did not work out, but my life in Helsinki goes on. I have my friends, family, and contact with the planet Earth I could never feel in California. I now have certified world citizenship. I demanded a life changing experience from Rio, and she delivered as promised. Blame it on Rio, baby—she can make it all dance.
Labels: brazil, copacabana, rio, travel
A Bright White Sunrise, Part 2
What Ari wrote in his post "Finally Scored Some Shades" is true. I threatened to kill the bloke from Southampton. I don’t normally threaten people’s lives—in fact, this was the only time that I can remember doing it. But this primitive character, who looked like he probably gutted sheep for a living, took such joy in dominating a prostitute that I thought he should experience a little domination too. What I told him exactly, was to look into my eyes and tell me if he thought what I next said was a joke. Then I explained to him that he was sixty seconds from the end of his life if he didn’t apologize to the woman. I asked him if he believed me. He said, “I believe you, mate.” And he apologized.
Thinking back on it, it was inevitable that I’d try to take a stand, however futile, against this particular niche of capitalism that makes whores of us all. And as with the boy who I lectured for pissing on another boy’s face, I don’t think the Southampton bloke learned anything. I sometimes ask myself if I really would have killed him. All I can say is that I meant what I told him. And in the midst of our standoff I whispered to Doug: "Do not step in no matter what happens." But as it all unfolded, the hooligan understood what was in my eyes, and he got the hell out of there. I never saw him again.
That morning of the bright white sunrise was my last Rio encounter with the Finns too—they were flying out the next day. But my friends and I had finally discovered the Copa kiosks, and they were our home now. Each had a particular character—some were social and some were for quiet reflection; some were international and some local, some had live music, and some were just for drinking the night away. The carnival was over, and hundreds of thousands had returned home. A hurricane had passed and the sun had returned to Rio. Storefronts that had been sealed with corrugated riot doors lifted to reveal beauty salons and butcher’s shops and stationery stores. The street where we were staying in Arpoador took on a pleasant neighborhood feel—no different from a block of midtown Manhattan.
Doug and I visited Corcovado—just the two of us. It was a sunny day, and the park was crowded. Scores of tourists were taking photographs of the famous statue Cristo Redentor. I wandered around and sought a shot that didn’t look as if it came directly from a postcard. A small cloud sped across the mountaintop and I saw dozens of cameras lowered as their owners paused, waiting for the sun to return. In that brief few seconds I raised my camera and made the shot at the top of this post. I have never seen another photo of Cristo Redentor like it.
Rio changed all our lives. We learned what it truly was to immerse ourselves in another culture, to buy airline tickets on a whim and just fly away. We have since visited—together or separately—places like Reykjavik, Budapest, Dublin, Puerto
Vallarta, Lisbon and many others. There have been countless adventures—Ari was once held hostage in a Budapest strip club; I once rode stormy seas smuggling two wild animals onto a tropical island. Ari and I actually did see the Finns again—six months later when we flew to Helsinki to meet them. Only a few months after that I moved to Guatemala and Ari left the United States too. But Doug’s story is probably more interesting than all ours.
Arriving as he did, days after his father's death, the trip was a chance to shed his entire bad history. He attacked Rio with an intensity that astounded me. He danced and drank with ferocity, laughed and joked like a madman, and everybody who met him loved him. He broke every rule of safety imaginable, from passing out overnight in a Rio gutter to scoring drugs from shifty street hustlers. He was invincible. He simply knew nothing bad would happen to him. After I moved to Guatemala I tried to get him to come and visit, stay for a few weeks or even months. But he could never quite manage it. And then a year later Steve passed word along to me—Doug had committed suicide.
We discussed why, and we all had opinions. I think his family drove him to it, and I think in the midst of all their negativity the invulnerability he felt in Rio was impossible to hold onto. But in the end it doesn’t matter what I think. Though god and country would have us believe otherwise, each person’s life is his or her own to do with as they wish. Only Doug knows the reasons for choosing to end his existence. But as a friend, I trusted him with my life, so it pretty much follows that I trust him with his own. I support his decision, even if I disagree with it.
There is a world in my mind where Doug still lives, and in that world, there is only one city—Rio de Janeiro. The same sun rises over and over, bright and white as burning acetylene, and "New Year's Day" is playing. The photographs I took, some of which are below, don't seem to originate from any terrestrial place, but rather from deep space. They are like fragments of interstellar static assembled to form images of events that occurred billions of years ago. And that’s how I’ll always remember Rio—as an instant in eternity, a flash from the other side of the universe, gone now save for a few shards of color so beautiful yet so weird it’s difficult to say whether they ever really existed. I guess that's how I'll remember Doug too.
Labels: brasil, brazil, copacabana, rio, travel
Avenida Atlantica Vice
Every customer comes with those bulging, moist, expectant eyes of a man who has escaped from his prison for a week or two. It may be the puritanical monotony of the working week that drives the men to seek relief: not raging bulls, exactly, more like cows waiting to be milked.John Burdett
Bangkok TattooOn night four we went in search of dinner and ended up in Copacabana. We’d had some great adventures so far, only some of which I've described. In short: three allnighters, an excellent street party, two meltdowns, a near-death experience, and a gas-filled apartment that—in a building full of smokers—did not explode. All typical vacation fun. But on Copacabana’s Avenida Atlantica on Sunday night, near a disco called Help, we walked into ground zero of a citywide vice explosion. There were scores of outrageously dressed women. I’m talking bikinis and high heels, red capes and devil horns, negligees and fairy wings, and countless miniskirts that revealed more ass than they covered. Professional girls, these? Indeed. In fact, we had wandered unknowingly into one of the most famous hubs of the global sex trade.
There was an outdoor restaurant called Sobre as Ondas right next to this scene—we snagged four chairs and rubbernecked while eating dinner. The Avenida was the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and Bartertown rolled into one. The whores were magnificent, and came in more varieties than simply the nearly naked. For instance, see that girl riding a skateboard and wearing baggy camo fatigues? Yes, she’s a prostitute. See that perfectly coiffed woman wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase? Yes, she’s a prostitute too. The meter maid? Her too. The Brazilians had taken the oldest profession, added a dash of niche marketing theory, and frappéd them into a moneymaking miracle.
Music, singing, and drumming were constant. The street crackled with the energy of a high-tension line. There were hard and fast negotiations going on everywhere—I mean serious business, with frowns and demands and counteroffers. The men involved were mainly of a certain type—those so steeped in sexual ineptitude that people could almost see it stamped on their foreheads. But the rules of the sex trade gave them control. Female free will had been abolished. Two-hunded bucks in pocket now equated to superheroic virility. These men whistled, shouted vulgar come-ons, and generally behaved exactly like losers given carte blanche in a sexual Disneyland.
Amongst this throng Doug, Ari, Steve and I were clearly non-participatory—other than the fact that we were having a great time just watching. I’d say twenty percent of the men were chill and seemed to have their shit together. The rest were problem children from north of the equator somewhere, and just like the Brazilian water supposedly went backwards down the drain, Brazilian hookers were going to reverse every failure and blow-off they had ever suffered. For their part, the girls made their preferences clear—they flocked to the non-predatory guys, including us. It made sense—if you’re going to fuck for money, first try the guys whose eyes aren’t spinning like the reels on a slot machine. No need to service some overwrought social misfit if you can avoid it.
We made it clear we didn’t want to partake in the wares, but that we didn’t mind the company. Several girls joined us after Doug gathered some chairs (he may have been browsing at this point, but I’ll get to that in the next post). There were two types of girls on the stroll—year-round pros, and opportunists. The pros had no time for nonsense, no time for socializing.
One of them might pretend for a minute to be friendly, but soon she’d segue into her pitch: “Serious now, handsome, you wanna party with me or what?” When we said no she’d leave fast enough to burn rubber. The girls who sat with us and stayed were the second breed—opportunists. They had plenty of time to shoot the breeze because they didn’t consider themselves hookers. One of them laid it out for me: “I work all year up north in a store and make like three-thousand dollars. I come here for carnival and make three thousand in a week. What would you do?”
We bought pitchers of
sangria. Girls rotated from our table and others replaced them. There would be a few whispers traded as our companions presumably informed the newcomers: “These guys? No, they’re not buying pussy—just drinks. But they don’t mind if you join them.” Occasionally one of the girls might doublecheck our intentions: “Have you changed your mind yet, baby?” But generally they didn’t pressure us. Why would they? Why would they waste their time when the street was jammed with men eager to ransack their bodies? The ones who decided it was time to sell simply left. The ones who wanted to socialize stayed. And we all laughed like we were at a frat party as the ancient spectacle of sex-as-commerce pulsated wildly around us. We spoke Spanish and Ari had a little Portuguese and we were communicating fine.
Rio’s year-round pros are into volume, while the opportunists are about quality. They don’t want to have sex with twenty men during carnival then go back to their secretary or hostess jobs up north with what they perceive as a lie in their hearts. They’re hoping for the most benign of johns—the Canadian who would never cheat on his wife but wants dinner with a beautiful woman and is willing to pay for the company. Or the German who will buy her for ten days straight—twenty fucks from one stranger translating to something more forgivable than the alternative. Forgiveness is an important part of the milieu, keep in mind, because every one of these girls is at least nominally Catholic—which means they’re expertly schooled in the art of burdensome guilt. To avoid that guilt, they will stiff you in a second. They’d rather run off with your money than go through with the sinful deed. How much money they can make without actually ending up on their backs in a hotel room is another of the many games played during carnival. And yes, free drinks are part of it too, so perhaps they were working us as well.
Just a few doors south stood Help, which Ari mentioned last post. Travel guides explicitly warn to stay out of the place. It's the largest disco in South America. It was closed at the moment, but many of the people on the Avenida seemed to be waiting for it to open. We asked our girls about it. They said the place was great—wonderful music, strong drinks, all night dancing. We filed that away. Quarter after midnight or so Help opened and half the people on the street poured inside. Our girls said farewell and we were alone. We took a survey—continue to relax and enjoy the spectacle on the street, now considerably diminished, or go to club Help?
Labels: brasil, brazil, copacabana, prostitution, rio, travel
I woke up the next afternoon before the sun went down. I'd made a choice after the beginning of the trip, and realized late parties would prevent any chance of appreciating Rio under the sun. I missed breakfasts, lunches, and all of the basics most people enjoy during daylight.
The bossa nova hippies played on, and we chatted with one of the dudes who was picking up cans for income. I asked if he could drink on the job, and he laughed. So I bought him a beer. The one musician who played some funky mix of bossa nova and reggae handed his guitar to the sound man. He walked right over to us and smacked hands with a snap and a knock. We stood stage left, so he probably had a good view of us kicking back and digging his music for real, something unique and forceful we'd never experienced, but which we knew waited for us in Rio.
Feeling bitter, I took the push and asked Sabrina out for a dance after she checked out of work that night. She told me she was only going home to sleep alone, so nothing was going to happen. Unhappy getting pushed into that corner spotlight, I wondered aloud for another round of beer. Nobody refused, so we enjoyed our last white sunrise in Rio. I'd traveled there looking for nothing less than an epiphany, a life changing experience in a legendary city, maybe meet a woman made of dreams.
