Okay, so now you know why I couldn't sit down at my computer for a week and work on my report. Ha, ha, ha, I know you’re laughing at me, but I don't sense any sympathy at all. Some of you may wonder why I would go to Brazil to be with women when I have somebody like Princess nearby. To be honest, it's not to be with other women, I go to Brazil to get away from her! Usually, I tell her that I am going scuba diving on a dive boat somewhere down in the Caribbean and to prove that I was diving, I show her some photos. What she doesn't know and I'm not about to tell her, is that the photos I show her are from several years ago and I just keep recycling them for each trip.
One time she asked me why I didn't use my digital camera to take the photos and I explained that they get ruined by the salt water. This ploy worked great for a few trips, but that ended last January when somebody she knew ran into me in Rio and told her that he met this nutty guy from Philadelphia and she correctly assumed it was me. What are the odds that someone tells her they met some nut called James Bond in Rio, she somehow puts two and two together and comes up with my name? Yup, that’s how my life works, day after day. It’s horrible, a fucking virtual nightmare, but since it’s the only life I have, I try to enjoy it to the fullest. Now I’m dragging all of you along in my nightmare too. Thank you for joining me on this journey.
African women have the same intense questioning technique as Brazilian women and after a few hours I broke just a little. Essentially I told her that I needed a rest and I read somewhere that it was summertime in Rio during January, so I went there to get a little sun, nothing more. "Did you screw other women?" "Of course not," I responded with the usual lies." "Why not, are you gay or something?" I took that as a personal affront and replied, "If you want to know the truth, I met this very nice tall girl who was totally into oral sex and all she did was give me blow jobs for two weeks -- there, are you happy?" "Blow jobs are okay, just don't fuck another girl," was all she said and I thought I was off the hook, but as usual, I was terribly wrong.
For some strange reason black girls in the States and Brazilian women love to play with my hair. Every Brazilian girl I meet wants me to do one of the two following things: either send them to beauty school or buy them a salon. Fortunately, Princess already graduated from beauty school, so I didn't have to pay for it, but she likes to practice her trade on me. Simply put, she likes to cut my hair whenever she comes over. It's a great way for me to save $35 a month, so I used to let her trim my hair whenever she came over. In other words, I get a trim while I'm getting a little "trim," if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, after she found out that I was in Brazil she decided to trim me a little close. "Buzz cut" best describes what she did to me. It was so bad that I didn't get a haircut for three months.
What the fuck, I'm way off track right now and have to get back to Rio. Now, where did I leave off? Oh yeah, I left Don and walked back to the apartment to finish unpacking. After putting all my clothes away, I decided to go into the living room and watch TV and this was where I found Sandman's third trap for me. He knows that I have difficulty with all electronic devices and remote controls particularly give me a hard time. There lying on his coffee table are six remote controls all lined up, ready to confuse the shit out of me. Then to add insult to injury, I find a little note telling me not to use the overhead projection TV that is hanging from the ceiling and his living room. Obviously, that was his fourth trap. This is like telling a little kid not to eat the cookies that are on the table. I never really wanted to use it in the first place, but now that he said I couldn't, I wanted to. Why the fuck does he torment me like this?
The fourth remote turns on the TV, but all I could get was one channel, that's when I realized that one of the other two remotes worked the cable box. Now that I have TV, I lie back, relax and fall asleep. I wake up about six hours later and I'm dying of hunger so I go over to Terrasco Atlantico and order the châteaubriand, which is absolutely delicious. Because I don't want to Miss Bubble Lips or Lurch to find me, I rapidly devour my meal and walk over to Alcazar to meet Don.
Don is sitting there sipping a beer and is surprised to see me out in the evening, particularly since he knew that I had to keep a low profile. I explained that I was famished, had just eaten at TA, would join him for only one beer then back to the apartment to hide out. He smiled when I said I would stay for only one beer and suggested that I drink it quickly and leave so that I don't run into any of the girls. See how he looks out for my best interests.
Don is wearing a hat and I ask him if I can borrow it while I’m sitting there to disguise myself. After a few minutes I ask how effective is my disguise and he says, "you look like James Bond wearing a hat." Fuck! He once again suggests that I don’t linger too long and I agree with him that I’m tempting fate. As I was leaving, he told me to be careful walking home. He also said that the tall guy standing in front of the building on the next block was named Bruno and that he would keep an eye on me. He suggested that sometime during my stay I give him R$5 or R$10 for his trouble. Can you believe it, my first night in Rio and I have to go hide out. At least I know things will get better tomorrow when Don takes me to Centro.
Just slightly down the block and across the street from Sandman's apartment are two 24-hour combination convenience store and bar establishments right at the entrance to the favella. It was on my way home so I stopped at the cleanest of the two to buy a couple of Coke Lites to take back to the apartment. There was a motley crew of locals in there slugging down skols who were quite surprised to see someone like me frequent their fine establishment.
Yes, I had one of my big assed cigars in my mouth as I entered and smiled at each of them. Each smiled back, and between the six of them there were about 14 teeth collectively in all their mouths. Apparently, they did not practice good dental hygiene. But they left me alone while I was there and as I was walking away, I heard one of them affectionately call me, "Gringo Loco." At least they accepted me by giving me a nickname and I decided, right then and there, that one night I would go over and join them for some liquid refreshments. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun just hanging with the guys, watching some futbol. After about five minutes, I figured out how to get through the outside gate, wave hello to the laughing doorman, go upstairs, take off my band-aids and spray my four fingers with the Curad stuff, climb in bed and fall a sleep.
At 6 a.m. I wake up, go in the bathroom to run the hot water then start to clean up the 10,000 tiny particles of white toothpaste that are everywhere. Never buy Rembrandt toothpaste; that stuff takes forever to clean up. After I have showered and shaved, I walk down the street to get some coffee. I particularly like the coffee at the little coffee shop on the corner of Copacabana and Xavier, which is just down the street from the Princess Copacabana Hotel. The lady behind the counter recognizes me, but I'm not going to let her take advantage of me like she did the on my last six visits to Rio.
During my last six trips, I would stop there everyday and buy a grande café that costs R$2.30, sit outside and watch people and then buy several refills while I enjoyed the scenery. On my last trip, however, I would grab a cup of coffee sit down and watch that sadistic military policeman trap unsuspecting pedestrians in the middle of traffic like he did to me earlier in the week. Since it would usually take quite a while for some other unsuspecting gringo to come along, I would often go back to the counter, have her refill my cup and pay her another R$2.30. Sometimes it would cost me R$15 just to get out of there.
One morning shortly after that tequila incident, Miss Bubble Lips wanted to stop for a cup of coffee before going to the beach, and after I got my first refill she asked me the following question, "Why did you pay her again, refills are free?" "She never told me that," was my lame reply. Then she asked me another stupid question, "Think real hard, doesn't that Japanese guy in the elevator remind you of anyone?" Then I told her "nope, not a soul," and I wondered why she kept bringing up that idiot. Brazilian women can be strange, very, very strange.
After two cups of grande café, I buy a can of chemicals; light my first cigar and start walking towards the beach. The type and class of Brazilian that is out at that time of the morning is quite different than what you see during the day. Primarily, it's older women between the ages of 45 and 75 out walking their dogs. Some of the 45 year olds aren't too bad looking and appear horny as hell. Come to think of it, some of 75 year olds also look horny. Ugh, what a horrible thought. Oh, not the 45 year olds, I’m referring to the real old bitches that cruise Ave. Atlantica in the morning. My advice to all of you is: Stay in bed and avoid the wrinkles.
I walk along the beach on the sidewalk confident that I won’t run into MBL or Lurch, but I still have a keen eye out for Tigger. Nope, he’s not lounging on the beach, so I continue on my merry way. As I’m walking back to my apartment, I decide to take one of the street parallel to Av. Atlantica, which I think is called Rua Aires Saldanha or something like that. I pass that Laundromat where I tried to perform that little water experiment; you’ll never guess what happened when the blue shirts recognized me. In unison two of them gave me the finger and the third gave me a funny gesture. It was kind of like an upside down reversed OK sign, whatever the fuck that means. Oh well, I wasn’t planning on going in there this trip anyway because there was another one a block away from my new location named either Lava Kilo or Kilo Lava. Anyway they didn’t know me and, consequently, it was perfectly safe for me to go there or so I assumed.
Walking along this street in the morning can be very dangerous and you have to be very diligent to keep out of harms way. First of all, there’re a lot of street urchins that inhabit it at that time of the day. Fortunately, the have alternate side of the street sleeping. By that I mean one night they sleep and shit on one side of the street and the next night they move or alternate to the other side to shit and sleep. Another equally dangerous obstacle is the automobile.
No, I’m not walking in the street or anything like that; these are the cars that exit the parking lots under apartment buildings and cross the sidewalk to enter the road. First a door mysteriously opens then the car roars out striking anything in its path. Yeah, they have some safety devices, but apparently as soon as they find out I’m in Rio, all of them are immediately disabled. Yellow and red lights are supposed to flash and a horn should beep like the ones that go off when a tractor trailer truck backs up, but when I’m in town none ever go off, at least not when I’m walking by.
I make it back to my apartment in one piece, turn on the TV and promptly fall asleep. At 9:00 am I wake up and start going stir crazy. Hiding out is not agreeing with me at all, but going out now could be dangerous if I run into MBL or Lurch. Oh fuck it; I’ll just go into stealth mode, that's why go out and buy a hat of my own. I find this nice little store about two blocks from Sandman's apartment and for R$20; I buy a navy blue baseball cap with Copacabana emblazoned on the front. I decide to go for another walk and again go down to the beach where I'm pretty sure I won't run into either of my major obstacles, MBL or Lurch. As I'm walking down the beach I get out another cigar, clip it and then try to light it with my defective Brazilian lighter.
The God damn thing won't light so I put the cigar in my mouth and chew it and slip the lighter back into my pocket which also contained my SOG knife and the fucking cell phone. Why I'm carrying my cell phone at this time of day is beyond me because everybody I know that has this number is sound asleep, including my son. You're probably wondering why I need to light another cigar when I haven't really finished my first one.
When I returned to the apartment, I put the half smoked cigar in a small planter next to the gate and when I went for my second walk I picked it up and it was a little wet. It tasted like some dog peed on it, but I'm not too sure. Hope I made someone sick with that line. Actually, the doorman watered all the plants and ruined my cigar while I was napping upstairs. I'm not sure, but I don't think the doorman likes me because he never speaks to me. Well, perhaps it's due to the fact that he doesn't speak English and I don't speak any Portuguese, but I'll reserve my final judgment for later. Now this is the sickest part of this trip—I go to Mondego just like I did with Felix everyday. Shit, he’s not even here with me, but I’m acting like he’s right here: damn, I hope I don’t do this every day.
After breakfast and no fuckups with the changing of traffic patterns at 10:00 am, I stroll across the street and walk along the beach. Fernando spots me and comes running up offering me a chair and his services for the day. We exchange pleasantries for a few minutes and talk about the weather, at least that’s what I think we talked about, and that’s about the time that things started going south on me. I tried to explain to him that I am not supposed to be in Rio now, so if he sees me with MBL to pretend like he never saw me.
As we were sitting there, I decided to light my cigar and when I pulled out my lighter the chain on it caught the small clip on my SOG knife and it came out too. Now that I look back on it, perhaps what I did next was not the best move possible, but after all he asked me what was that thing attached to the lighter. Since I didn't know the Portuguese word for knife, I opened it and his eyes opened widely. We weren't communicating very well. He had this confused look on his face and I decided to use sign language to simplify matters, which was not the best course of action by a long stretch.
Rather than put my index finger up to my lips signaling silence like I should have done, I took my index finger and dragged it across my throat in a manner that construction crews signal each other to stop. Don't ask me why I did this; it was the first thing that came to my mind. As my finger was crossing my throat Fernando started to shake and give me the most innocent look. He started reaching in his pocket and jabbering away in Portuguese and extracted a few notes and tried to stuff them in my pocket.
I guess he thought I was threatening him bodily harm because I was mad that he extracted R$50 from me on my last trip. But after several more minutes, I calmed him down and got him to understand what I wanted him to do. At least, I think I did. God damn it Fernando, will you please learn some English. I immediately went to one of those elephant telephones, called Felix and told him exactly what happened -- he laughed his ass off. I was looking for understanding, he wanted comedy. Then to twist the knife some more, Felix asks me to tell him how much I paid for my hat. When I told him R$20, he said, “Remember when we were on the beach and I bought that hat, the guy wanted R$15 and I got him down to R$7.” No wonder I have so many problems, look at the fucking support system I have behind me.
Right about now I figure it's time to walk back to the apartment when suddenly I'm set upon by a flock of shit flickers. I have this foolproof method of foiling them and I'll tell you about it. First of all, you have to understand that I've been down to Rio many times and despite the odd things that happen to me, not once has a shit flicker managed to hit my shoes. I'm very proud of that fact and I'm confident that they will not get me on this trip either. The first course of action is to not allow them to outflank you.
Simply put, you have to limit their approach direction so that you don't have to worry about defending both your right and left flanks. I do this by walking right alongside the bike path, which limits their approach dramatically. Unfortunately, you have to watch out for a few assholes on bikes who will graze you with their handlebars, but in my opinion, that's a lot better than making some shit flickers day. Three of them approach me, throw their concoction and miss. As I stroll home I can't help but think that they shouldn't try to match wits with me, they'll never ever win.
Don is at Alcazar when I arrive shortly after 3:30 pm, we’re to meet two other guys then go down to Centro. I promised Don that I would bring him some cigars and I hand him a half dozen Gloria Cubana Churchills. He’s surprised that I remembered and then I tell him that I’m sorry. He asks, “Sorry for what?” “Whatever I do that’s bad over the next two days,” is my brief and confusing reply. Again he asks me, “How long do I have to stay with you?”
Fortunately Workoutmaniac and another fellow show up to momentarily distract him, he looses his train of thought, we get into the taxi and our adventure begins. Workoutmaniac asks me if everything really happens in my stories and Don tells him that he’s independently confirmed enough of them with Sandman and others to satisfy himself. I don’t know how Workoutmaniac took that piece of information because here he was in a taxi with a confirmed “disaster area” sitting right next to him. I told him not to worry; those around me rarely suffer long.
Anyway, we make it downtown and drop the two guys off at 4x4 and Don and I walk a few blocks over to the cut-rate termas on Buenos Aires. My new ultra compact camera is loaded with a new Ultra High Speed SD one gigabyte chip and I’m loaded for bear. That was a poor choice of words, yet somewhat prophetic at the same time. Luckily, I have on a pair of loose fitting shorts that have ample pockets because, in addition to my usual shit, my God damn camera is in them as well.
The first place we enter is 113 Buenos Aires, which is located on the second floor of a nondescript building. We go in; it’s dark with sticky floors and reeks of stale beer. A bull dyke greets us and for a few seconds I wonder what have I gotten myself into. She guides us over to the bar, which consists of a folding table with a large plastic cooler on it. We each grab a beer and proceed into the main area where the girls await. Now before I go any further I have to briefly digress to discuss modern medicine in Brazil. Stick with me because I have a point to make. Anyone who has been to Brazil can not help but notice the huge disparity in medical care. Walk down a major Avenue for a few blocks and you’ll see people with severe birth defects, people crippled by Polio and a variety of other medical problems that are virtually nonexistent in the United States. However, there is one thing that modern Brazilian medicine has virtually eradicated—cellulite!
Go to the beach, you never see cellulite. It’s not in Help and you don’t see it on the streets like you do the cripples, but I know where they hide the poor victims of cellulite – on Buenos Aires Ave. Oh my God, there are some hogs in these places. One girl, I swear looked like a bear without any fur and I could swear I heard her growl as she sauntered over. Yeah, she was that big and ugly. I might have gone with her, but she didn’t speak any English. What if she got me in a bear hug? How could I tell her to let me go? See, it could have been a real problem so I passed on her. After we’re approached several more times by a few of these lovelies hawking their goods, Don leans over and asks me, “Do you see anyone in here you want to fuck?”
“Don, don’t take this the wrong way, but the only one in here I would ever consider fucking is you.” His eyes widened, he shuffled away several feet and he kept a close eye on me. “I’m kidding Don.” He still stayed where he was and this was the unintended signal several of the hogs and the bear were looking for to approach us again. Rejection comes naturally to many of them and they didn’t take offense that we just wanted to be left alone and drink our beers. For some odd reason the other customers in the place stared at me the whole time I was there. Hadn’t they ever seen Cole-Haan tasseled loafers before?
How do I say this delicately? Their clientele is not exactly country club material; most of the guys in there look like they’re one step above being homeless, that is except one. This guy walks in, he’s about mid 40’s, dressed in a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase. Don and I were like FBI profilers trying to figure out his story. We finally agreed that he got fired from his job today, came to the termas for one last fuck and then plans to either throw himself out of the window or explode the bomb we feared he had in his briefcase. Rather than find out which he would choose, we chugged our beers and left. After my flippant remark, Don suggested I always walk up front just like I did with Honey Bee.
One down, many more to go! The next place held more promise in that it was a multilevel establishment with a different termas on each floor. This was 85 Buenos Aires and as soon as I entered the place I knew I would have trouble. No, I don’t mean with the girls or management, I’m referring to the stairs in the place. It seems that they have a four story spiral staircase that is going to be torturous for me to navigate at best. I’m the kind of guy who can severely injure himself dialing a rotary phone so you can imagine the damage I can do to myself on these stairs. Oh well, what I do for you guys, I hope you appreciate it.
I felt exactly like Geraldo Rivera in Iraq, you know going that extra mile for a great story. After all I’m now a reporter or at least it says so in my profile on CH. I take my assignment seriously as I slowly climb the stairs to our first stop. I think the place was called Café Buenos Aires or something like that. We were to soon find that each floor had a slightly different name yet similar managements, but Buenos Aires was in practically ever name. This was getting as confusing as dealing with Jorge and his multiple identities. As we were soon to find out, the higher up we went, the quality of women decreased exponentially.
Apparently it's the custom to consume one beverage in each establishment you visit. Consequently, by the time we reached the fourth floor each of us had chugged a total of five beers. Now I have this little trick to stay sober and it has never failed me. I alternate between beer and water all night long, but for some stupid reason I only had one water on my way up the stairs. Going down the stairs is a real bitch and I think we stopped a couple of times to refresh ourselves with skols before continuing our descent. All in all, I would not highly recommend any of these places for a sexual liaison, but if you're curious and just want to go and see what it's like, be my guest.
I know I promised to take lots of pictures of hot girls, but there weren't any hot girls and Don told me if I took out my camera they would probably beat me to death. If that happened, I couldn't possibly write this story and you all would be left in the dark as to how to properly behave in Rio. After all, this series is instructional in nature, isn’t it? I couldn't possibly let that tragedy befall you, so I didn't take any pictures in the cut rate termas, but there's always tomorrow night -- Villa Mimosa. By the time we reached the street each of us had about six to seven beers apiece and we were feeling no pain. In an effort to upgrade our image, Don suggested we go to a cigar bar several blocks away, sit down have a few beers and enjoy our cigars. Sounds good to me!
This place is more to my liking, real comfortable and kind of homey. As we’re waiting for our first beer Don asks me if I have a copy of my passport on me. I reach into my back pocket to get it out to show him and that’s when I find Lurch’s three emails, which I ask Don to translate. He says that one of them says she’s coming to Rio soon. Then he asks me, “These are from Miss Bubble Lips aren’t they?” “No, they’re from Lurch,” I reply. “Where does MBL live,” he asks. “Five blocks from Sandman’s apartment,” I tell him. ‘You’re fucked, really fucked,” was all he could say. To drown my sorrows we have about four beers each and after awhile we decide to take a taxi over to Hemps place.
On the way over there we get stuck in traffic and all of a sudden Don gets out and walks to a gas station nearby. I’m convinced he went in to take a piss, but he comes out with a twelve pack of Skols to take to Hemps. How do I describe Hemp? Well, I felt like I found my long lost older brother. He’s a true gentleman and we had a great time telling stories. This guy is a fucking genius because he figured out someway to live in Rio year round and enjoy all the pleasures it has to offer. Me, well, I’m not that smart yet, I can only figure out how to get down to Rio for two weeks at a time.
After lots of laughs and three beers each, Don and I walk over to Bluestravellers place and invade it for about an hour. Bluestraveller is a great guy with wonderful sense of humor and he’s sharp as a tack. Between meeting Hemp and Bluestraveller I’m getting depressed. These two guys have the life I want to live and after two more beers Bluestraveller senses that I’m slipping into a depression so he suggests we go somewhere to pick up my spirits. We hop into a taxi and the next thing I know we are walking in the door at Centaurus. This should place should pick me up, I remember thinking.
We get changed and put on our white robes, go down the hall and enter a splendid place that lifts my spirits dramatically. God, the women are absolutely gorgeous. It’s an “L” shaped room and we go to the very end, sit down, and order three beers and each of us lights up a cigar. After a few minutes some young asshole comes over and tells us, not asks us to put out our cigars. Bluestravellers calls over the waiter, says something to him in Portuguese and the next thing you know the waiter tells this jerk the following, “If you want a smoke free environment, go to church.” He gets up in a huff and that’s the last I see of him. Good riddance, you asshole! It was great watching Bluestraveller absolutely crush this guy.
Bluestraveller then asks us if we had any dinner yet. Although both of us have consumed over a thousand calories in beer each, we told him that we are famished. He orders a dish of fillet mignon tips sautéed in a rich and flavorful brown sauce with onions. It’s delicious, but there a slight problem with eating it. They give you tiny slices of bread which you’re supposed to place the meat upon and then pop in your mouth. As you can imagine, my fine motor skills are somewhat impaired by this point and balancing the meat on that tiny piece of bread is a daunting task to say the least.
I try my best, but the brown sauce gets all over my hands and this is where things started to go rapidly down hill for me. I’ve gone through several napkins already so I start to wipe my hands on the front of my robe down at the bottom. Then I would tuck the ends between my legs in a somewhat modest attempt at covering up my privates. What I didn’t realize at first was that any girl who came over to talk with me saw these brown stains on my robe and naturally assumed that they were skid marks and that I had a major problem. After about thirty seconds the girl had enough staring at my stains, walked across the room to her associates and proceeds to describe the horrible biological material on my robe. All six pair of eyes suddenly focuses on the front of my robe, but I’m so hammered I don’t even care what they’re saying.
Another group of girls come in and exactly the same thing happens again. Finally one girl lingers and both Bluestraveller and Don convince me to take her to the cabine. She’s of Brazilian- Turkish extraction. I hate to thinks what’s going through her mind as I get up and she sees my brown streaked robe. Fuck it, I don’t care anyway. We go in the back and the room is a mess. The bed is unmade so she calls the maid who immediately comes to the room, strips off the soiled linens, sprays the bed with some antiseptic, then throws on a sheet. When she’s finished I walk back into the room and smash my toe against the bed platform, ripping off a nail. Oh shit, now what do I do? I call back the maid, take her antiseptic and spray the bleeding toe. It burns like hell, but in a few minutes it stops bleeding. She comes into the room and suddenly my mind goes blank.
Photos: Centaurus 01 02 03
It’s not that I passed out or anything as drastic as that, it’s just that I can’t remember a fucking thing about what happened while we were together. I really think someone slipped a quick acting short duration ruffie in my beer because the next thing I know I’m paying my bill and we’re getting in a taxi. I know for a fact that we had sex because as I was to learn in only a few short hours, I had photos on my camera prove it. I’d love to share them with you, but there’re a little graphic for some of our younger members. By that I’m referring to anyone born after 1978, which was when my son was born. If he can’t look at them, you can’t either.
We drop off BluesTraveller and arrive at Alcazar at around 12:30 am and we proceed to quench our thirst on a few more beers. By 2:00 am they have cleared and stacked all the tables and chairs outside and are waiting for Don and me to depart so they can put our table and chairs on the heap. For the last half hour we’ve have been discussing how effective my stealth mode works. Both Don and I are thoroughly convinced that absolutely no one will recognize me and that’s when we make the stupid decision to go over to Terrasco for a few night caps. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
When we get there Don says to me, “See how effective your cloaking device is. No one recognized you while we were walking here.” “Don it’s only a fucking block over here, this place will be the true test,” I replied. Sure enough, we didn’t see anyone that recognized me and everything was going great until I got up to go to the bathroom. Who’s sitting right behind me with a girlfriend, none other than Lurch? The funny thing was that she didn’t know I was sitting right next to her as I say, “Hi Lurch.” Oops, that wasn’t supposed to slip out as I struggled to remember her name so I could introduce her to Don. Fortunately he remembered her real name from her emails, said it out loud so that I would remember it, and then stood up to shake her hand. She started to get out of her chair and she just kept on rising up higher and higher as Don was watching her with the most amazed look on his face. “Holy shit, she’s taller than you said,” was all he could manage to say. “Yup,” was about all I could manage to say.
I went to take a piss and to also try to collect my frazzled and frayed nerves. I was practically having a nervous breakdown and then I remembered that Wolf told me that would happen sometime soon. Fuck him; he has no idea of the stress I’m under in Rio. How the fuck could this possibly happen? I took all the necessary precautions, didn’t I? Yep, I was in stealth mode, but somehow this giant slips in right behind me totally unnoticed. I chalk it up to bad luck as I approach the table. Don is telling her how much I appreciate her emails and asks me to show her that I’m carrying them around with me. As I take them out of my back pocket, her hearts melts and she’s putty in my hand. I have to remember to thank Don for passing me that lay up shot.
After a few minutes I ask her if she wants to go home with me and she agrees. After all, I’m such a romantic; I’m carry around her emails so that must mean that I really care about her. There’s only one thing I’m really caring about at this point and that’s “Buddha Baaaby.” Don strongly suggests we get a taxi back to Sandman’s apartment just to be safe. I look at him and say, “Look at who is walking me home, don’t worry I’ll be safe.” He looks up at her and asks, “Can I walk with her over to Copacabana Av. to catch a cab?” “Sure, she’ll protect both of us.”
Don grabs a taxi and we go back to the apartment. She fucking phenomenal and practically tears me apart. We’re going at it for three hours and it’s now 6:00 am and she asks me to take some photos of her. This was where I slipped up big time, but you guys have come to expect that of me. I pull my camera out of my shorts that are lying on the floor, take her in the living room and shoot a few shots of her. She asks to look at the photos on the LCD, which is huge on this new camera.
Actually its 2.5 inches and her shots come up beautifully, crystal clear with fine detail. I’m so happy she likes my work. She slips the camera out of my hand as I go into the bathroom to take a piss. When I come out she practically another woman in the way she’s acting. What the fuck just happened is she going skitzo on me too? Then she shows me the LCD on the camera displaying that Brazilian-Turkish girl from Centaurus. Ooops, how did that happen!!
I told her in my unique version of sign language by using my fingers in that familiar in and out motion that I didn’t have sex with her. And then she scrolled ahead a few shots to further refresh my memory. Oops, again! “Honest I don’t remember doing “the deed” with her, come to think of it that was on my last trip to Rio when I couldn’t find you Honey,” was my totally lame reply simply because it was all I could think of at the spur of the moment. More graphic photos came up on that fucking large LCD that showed rather intimate acts, if you know what I mean. Oh God, when will my misery end! Unfortunately, not for another 10 minutes!
Why do women drag things out so long? What really helped drag it out was the fact that she found the zoom feature on the camera and would look at each photo again and again zooming in to get more detail. I felt like Tom Cruise in The Firm when Wilford Brimley showed him those photos taken on the beach in Grand Cayman. Where was Don when I really needed him? Oh yeah, he’s home in bed asleep. I guess he assumed I wouldn’t get into any trouble with Lurch, but as he was to soon find out, trouble stalks me on an hourly basis.
Lurch informs me that she has to go; she jumps into the shower and smacks her head against a shelf on the wall that at least 6’6” high then ducks under the shower head because she could hit that too. Man, she’s a fucking giant and angry at me so I let her enjoy a long hot shower all by herself. I get dressed to walk her out to a taxi, hand her US$100 and lead her downstairs. As we’re going out the gate she points across the street towards that convenience place I went into the day before and I realize she probably wants to get a water or soda for her long taxi ride home. I’m starting to feel even guiltier by the minute so I hand her another R$50 for taxi fare as we walk across the street.
Just as we almost get to the store, she turns to her left and grabs a wrought iron gate. What the fuck is going on here, I remember thinking? With her right hand she point skyward and says, “Mi casa.” “Say what,” is my stunned reply as she opens the gate, gives me a big kiss and walks to the front door. She lives across the fucking street from me. Oh no, MBL isn’t going to like this one bit. As I’m pondering that thought, the gate slams behind her, I turn to walk across the street and remember that the last time I crossed it I paid R$50 to get to the other side only moments before. Will someone put me out of my misery, please?
