I prepare Miss Bubble Lips a fantastic dinner consisting of grilled filet mignon, garlic mashed potatoes with chives, a light salad with balsamic vinaigrette and a rich brown sauce with green peppercorns. As she sits down at the table she tells me that this is the first time any man has ever cooked her dinner and that convinces me that I am going to get laid tonight regardless of how badly I fuck up during the evening. She kisses me deeply as we’re sitting at the table and then proceeded to sprinkle salt over everything. Brazilians have this tragic tendency to put copious amounts of salt on everything they eat before they've even tasted it. Oh well, I shouldn’t complain just as long as I get laid later tonight.
Brazilian Salt Shaker
Since it took me forever to cook the meal I made Miss Bubble Lips clean up. Wouldn't you know it, she was exhausted after doing a little housework and suggested we stay in for the evening. With Lurch definitely in the area and Fawn possibly in the vicinity, I agreed to stay in the apartment for the night in an effort to save my ass. All I can say is that I have to cook for MBL more often because she was an absolute animal all night long.
On one point during evening before we went to bed I was looking at Brazilian currency and asked her whose portrait was on the front of each and every Reais note. Believe it or not, she didn't have a clue whom it was, so then I asked her about the animals on the flip side of each note. On the back of the R$1 note is a magnificent bird according to her, a R$2 has a powerful tortoise on the reverse side, the R$5 note has a beautiful stork on it, the R$10 note as the intelligent parrot on its back, unfortunately, I didn't have a R$20 note, but now we were coming to my favorite one. I handed her a R$50 note, she turned it over and said, "This is a Jaguar, some dumb cat!" Fuck her I thought and I grabbed her, took to her into the bedroom and screwed her brains out. I love to relieve my frustrations in the bedroom!
The next day starts off like all others, I go for a walk down by the beach, stop at the Marriott than walk to The Office for breakfast. On my way back to the apartment I stop at one of the elephant ear phone booths and call Felix. He's giving me some shit because I haven't gone to the pharmacy to price some of his prescription medications like he asked me to do. I told him I had a very simple excuse for not completing his request. A list of his medications was safely locked in my briefcase along with most of my money and since my reading glasses were in there too, I couldn't read the combination to open it. For last four days I've been feverishly spinning the dials and trying every possible combination, but so far I have come up empty, which I'm sure it comes as no surprise to all of you.
His first solution was to have MBL open it for me. When I explained that this is where I kept all my money and if she opened it she would have access to all of it, he decided that his first suggestion was unworkable. Then he came up with another simple solution that had completely eluded me. "Go buy another pair of reading glasses at the pharmacy," was all he needed to say to solve my dilemma. Now, I'm pissed at him because he didn't give me the solution days earlier. He then screamed at me, "You just told me about your problem, it took me 10 seconds to come up with a suitable solution, fuck you!" Boy, he's getting awfully touchy and I'm about ready to try and calm him down, but suddenly my attention is directed elsewhere as I see Lurch turn the corner and approach me.
I whisper to Felix that she's approaching and he starts laughing his head off-- great support I get from him, isn't it? Lurch kisses me and that's when I decide to put her on the phone with Felix. She attempts to speak with him in English, but after a few seconds hands me the phone and all I can hear his Felix still laughing on the line. "Now I know why you call her Lurch, she sounds just like him on the phone," was all he could manage to say because he was in hysterics. I decide that this phone conversation is going nowhere, but I thank him for the advice to buy new glasses and hang up then walk over to Lurch to catch a couple of cheap feels, if you know what I mean. She has a great ass and I can't resist kissing her and slipping my hand up under her skirt for a cheap thrill. We play touchy-feely for a few minutes and she tells me that she'll see me later today, whatever the fuck that means.
Believe in not, I managed to stay out of trouble most of the day till nightfall came. For some strange reason whenever it gets dark in Rio I seem to get into more trouble and I can't explain why. We had leftover fillet for dinner and met Don at Alcazar around 10 p.m. for a few beers before going to Help. Once again, I was nervous that MBL would run into Lurch or, worse yet, Fawn, but I couldn't very well sit in the apartment every night and miss all the fun. After we went inside, I thoroughly checked out the place and didn't see Lurch anywhere and, consequently, relaxed my guard more than I should have done. We got a few beers and went over to one of the booths in the back, sat down and watched the crowd.
One thing that's very unique about August is the fact that Rio is overrun by Italians. Fortunately, they do not have a very good reputation as a whole with many of the girls in the area because they have a tendency to be somewhat aggressive and very cheap at the same time. It's interesting to watch them try to work the girls and get shot down repeatedly yet go back for more. What's great about their invasion is that Americans look fantastic in comparison. Shit, I don't need fat northern Europeans here at all to make me look good; slender, buff, cheap Italians work just as well, if not better. Apparently, I'm the only one in Copacabana who truly appreciates their presence, albeit for selfish reasons.
Help
The Italians make MBL uncomfortable because they have a tendency to gravitate towards her and stare at her. In an attempt to get away from the jerk-offs she decides to go to the ladies room and I’m comfortable with that because she will be out of sight if Lurch comes up the stairs. I’m positioned perfectly to scope out the whole place with special attention to the stairway. Lurch will never get by me, I’m confident of that. After about 10 minutes I wonder what’s taking MBL so long in the ladies room. So I look over in that direction and see her coming out. My eyes catch something familiar next to her and my stomach turns and my knees buckle as I realize that it’s Lurch standing right along side of her.
They turn towards each other and chat like old friends, obviously continuing their intense conversation that started somewhere deep in the recesses of the ladies room. What the fuck could they be talking about? Then I watched as Lurch put her fingers together in a rectangular fashion and hold them up to her eye. Oh shit, she’s telling MBL to look at my camera. God damn it, what else had she told her? No doubt everything, which meant I would have to be on my guard at all times and lie like crazy for the rest of my vacation. Fuck, my dream vacation is turning into my own version of Owen Wilson’s exploits in the movie Behind Enemy Lines. All I can think of is where is there a land mine I can jump on to end my misery?
I run back to our corner booth and wait for MBL to show up, praying that she doesn’t have Lurch in tow. In a few minutes MBL shows up with a big grin on her face and calmly sits down next to me. Once again I tell her how beautiful she looks tonight and suggest we leave in a few minutes and join Don at Alcazar for a nightcap. Surprisingly she agrees and within minutes we’re having beers with Don who is feeling no pain, I might add.
Don starts telling MBL about my first two reports that I printed out and gave to him to read. Unfortunately for me, he’s read almost the whole thing and decides to tell some of the funny stories. However, before he starts he decides to call several friends on his cell phone to ask them to join us and within minutes six friends magically appear. All these friends are Brazilians so the rest of the conversation is in Portuguese and I just sit there waiting for the stares that I know are going to be coming soon. He tells everybody that I've written many stories about Rio and with that he launches into the Pouseta--Pousada story and the bus ride to Buzios. MBL hits me and says, “Why did you go to Buzios.” All I said was, “I was with another girl before I met you.” That satisfied her and she started laughing again.
I'd hoped they would somehow lose something in translation and that would stop him dead in his tracks from telling them more stories, but that wasn't what happened at all. Unfortunately, the stories seemingly became funnier because I was sitting there, you know, the idiot all this happen to was sitting right there in front of them. MBL practically wets her pants from laughing so hard, then turns to me and asks, "Why you no tell me this story before?" "I didn't want you to think I'm stupid," I replied. "Oh no, I would never think that," she says as she starts laughing her head off again.
Next he told the "Three Fingers in the Air" story, which they liked even more. Now picture this; I'm sitting there in front of everyone trying to look terribly intelligent and everyone in the restaurant is laughing and pointing at me. After that story he told them "Terror at 35,000 feet," you know the one about me and the cialis on the airplane. That story had everyone on their feet laughing their heads off and it got so bad that one of the women left to go to ladies room. Meanwhile, the security guard, two waiters and several busboys have also joined in on the fun at my expense.
Somehow during all the laughing and commotion it came out that I called her Miss Bubble Lips in the stories and that they were on the Internet. She asked me why I called her that and I told her to remember back to the first night we met when I told her that she reminded me of Angelina Jolie. She agreed by saying, "I have bubble lips too." To get back to who spilled the beans about me calling her MBL, I can’t figure it out. For the life of me, I’m totally baffled. You know me, I'm like the fucking NSA and CIA combined -- totally secure and thoroughly encrypted, so it couldn't possibly be me. Now that I think about it more, it had to be Don, not me. Yeah, Don’s the blabber mouth, not Jaguar!
For the rest of the trip, whenever I passed Alcazar somebody always shouted out "Pouseta—Pousada," and then I would hear laughter. I sit there and continue to get hammered because everybody's laughing at me and around 2 a.m. we decide to leave and go back to the apartment. As were walking down the street on the next block I reach my pocket and start to walk over to one of the doorman and MBL asks me what I'm going to do. "I plan to give Bruno R$10 for keeping an eye on us," was my simple explanation. "But why pay him again; you gave him R$10 two days ago?" Oh shit, I have to give up drinking soon!
The next morning is a carbon copy of pretty much all the others except I decide to go to laundromat because I'm running low on clean clothes. As the girl is checking each piece of dirty laundry she comes to the shirt that MBL spilled red wine on. They were three large blobs right down the front and I pointed out the spots to her and indicated that they need to be prespotted. Now, you have to understand that this woman doesn't speak any English and, you know my language skills, so as you can well imagine a disaster is about to occur.
In my extremely limited Portuguese I tried to explain to her that my girlfriend spilled the wine, but somehow it came out quite differently than I expected. Apparently, Portuguese is one of those fucking languages that has a masculine and feminine form of the same word and to completely change the meaning of a word all you need to do is change one fucking little letter. In other words, it would be exactly like adding an "o" to the word "girlfriend" to completely change its meaning to "boyfriend." For example, “girlfriendo” would mean boyfriend. That would really be fucked up, wouldn't it? Well, Portuguese is really fucked up -- where was I in my story?
Oh yeah, I'm in the laundromat explaining the wine stain and I'm trying to tell her about the romantic dinner I prepared the other night, and how we got a little frisky on the couch and then how my girlfriend spilled wine on the shirt. This is where I fucked up, but it really wasn't my fault. I had a raging hangover, that's my excuse and I'll stick with it. The cute little thing in the laundromat is listening to my story with starry eyes, just hoping someday to have a similar experience, which she probably won't, but let her dream on.
As you can imagine, I go into great detail in my pantomime story, using arm and hand gestures to dramatize the situation and then I decided to speak and fucked everything up in a matter of seconds. Prior to me opening my mouth, she presumed I was talking about having dinner and getting frisky with a woman then I mistakenly said "namarado" instead of "namarada" to describe MBL. Shit, I only misplaced one fucking letter and her whole opinion of me radically changed. Her eyes open widely, she took two steps backward and I stood there with the stupid look on my face wondering what went wrong.
One fucking little letter and the girl thinks I'm queer as a three dollar bill and there is absolutely no possible way that I can rectify the situation by myself. I’m not too worried because you guys know how resourceful I can be -- I'll think of something to clear the air. I take my ticket and slink out of the place knowing that everyone is wondering whether I’m the pitcher or the catcher in my relationship. Oh shit, I hate Portuguese! I'm racking my little brain for a solution, but don't come up with one till I get home and tell MBL about my little mistake. After I get her to stop laughing, she comes up with a perfect solution. It was absolutely brilliant! Within minutes we would put her plan into play and everything would be fixed with no more confusion about my sexual identity.
We decide to stop at the laundromat on our way to the beach, but before that MBL asks if we can first stop at a newsstand because she wants to buy a crossword puzzle booklet to keep her busy on the beach while I watch all the bundas stroll by. It takes her about a half-hour to select the perfect one. It was sheer torture waiting for her, but I met some interesting characters playing cards nearby while waiting, which took my mind completely off the laundromat problem. I should have paid more attention to the problem at hand, but I got sidetracked as usual soon to be followed by disastrous results.
We stroll down the sidewalk with my arm around her shoulder and in front of the laundromat we stop and I get the girl's attention. I waved to her and in a loud voice screwed up one more time as I say, "namarado" again by mistake. Now the girl looks even more disgusted than before and I grab MBL and walk off totally embarrassed, but come up with a positive spin to the situation anyway. "At least she saw you Honey, so she knows you're a girl," was all I could say. MBL hit me in the arm and totally floored me when she said, "Yeah, she thinks your boyfriend’s a transvestite." Oh fuck, why do these things always happen to me?
We get down the beach and Fernando's talking to me again because I guess he feels that I've forgiven him for blabbing so much. MBL sits down and immediately starts working on her crossword puzzle booklet. After she's completed a few of the crossword puzzles she comes the one the completely stumps her. It's a numerical puzzle and she can only figure out one line out of the eight lines in it and hands it to me to finish. I suspect this is some sort of intelligence test and within 30 seconds I correctly fill in all the blank spaces. As I hand it back to her she says, "That's impossible," then checks each answer. She's absolutely astounded that I could do it so fast then says, "Chuva Hombre." I look at her, smile and say, "Tom Cruise?" "No, Dustin Hoffman!" Fuck her!
After about an hour of getting tortured by both Miss Bubble Lips and Fernando, I decide I close my eyes and take a nap. When I wake up I find a beach chair close to mine facing in the same direction with its back to me and Fiscal next to it working feverishly with a broad shovel. I watch him intently for a few minutes and he reminded me of the Seabees on Iwo Jima building an airfield. What the fuck is he doing, I wondered? In a few short minutes, I would find out exactly what he was doing.
First he built up a pile of sand close to my chair and then he cleared out a large flat area behind it. He stood off to the side, spread out one of those thin blankets they take to the beach, smiled at someone sitting on the chair and gestured that his work was finished. A hand reached out from behind the chair and paid him several reais. It looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Then all of a sudden the individual stood up and it was Lurch. Apparently, Fiscal was constructing a beach chair for Lurch in the sand right at the foot of my chair. She smiled at me as she lay down on her stomach with her chin resting on the pillow Fiscal had constructed for her, picked up a book and started to read. Her head was no more than 10 feet from me and only 15 feet from MBL who was unusually quiet. Oh shit, this beach day was turning shitty real fast.
Miss Bubble Lips kept on pulling my chain all day by calling over every fucking vendor that walked by to look at their inventory. "Can I have this bracelet honey," she asked? "Sure, go for it," was my terse reply. Every time she ordered something, Lurch would look up at us and smile. Why are these girls doing this to me? Now I know how a mouse feels when it's trapped by two cats. Next thing you know, she wanted cashews then peanuts and finally one of those grilled cheese things on a stick.
After about an hour this crap I told her that I was getting too much sun and that we should leave and she surprisingly agreed to my request. As we were getting ready to leave Lurch smiled and winked at MBL, and I caught her smiling back at Lurch. The short way for me to get to the sidewalk was not the way that MBL insisted I go. Instead, she asked me to come around to her chair and help her get her things together then we had to walk right by Lurch who was still lying on her stomach, to get to the sidewalk.
As were walking past Lurch, MBL looks down at her ass and says to me, "You like bunda, how would you like to fuck that one? I pretended like I didn't hear a thing and just kept walking, but was terrified of what could come next. Fernando waves goodbye to me and gives me a smile that can only be characterized as "goodbye dumb ass." Shit, he was so happy to see me go he didn't even charge me today, which means they'll be hefty interest charges tomorrow.
I figure that I have one of two choices, first go to the apartment and have her start with the interrogation routine or take her out for a nice lunch. I decided on the latter and we went to The Office where she ordered a big fillet as usual. As a waiter was walking away she called him back in order to something else, a fucking shrimp appetizer in an effort to stick it to me just a little bit more. Before she could start interrogating me I decided to tell her a funny story that happened to me last January in an effort to take her mind off of Lurch and whatever she told her.
Back in January I met this guy from the Boston area who had a great deal of difficulty communicating with his English-speaking Brazilian girlfriend. The problem was seriously compounded by his extremely thick Boston accent. Simply put, she couldn't understand a word he said and, consequently, he used me as his English translator. You may remember this character from my first story; I called him "Puck." Yeah, that's the guy who left me with Fawn at Meia Pataca when Lurch was in the neighborhood.
Well, he was a diehard Patriots fan and after the conference championship games he said he would get me one of those temporary tattoos because my team would be playing his team in the Super Bowl. He said I could get any tattoo I wanted, so I said, "Go Eagles." This pissed him off, but he insisted they put it on my back above my shoulder blades where everyone could see it. We selected one of the idiot vendors on the beach and I chose Gothic print, lay down and let him work his magic on my back.
It takes these guys forever to do one and by the time he had finished the word "Go" I was sound asleep. Puck said it looked great and when I got back to my room I tried to look at it and could only see several of the last letters that spelled "OLE." The bastard had done it in Portuguese I figured, but it didn't matter to me because I got what I wanted. It rained for the rest of the trip so I was never able to mess with Puck by showing him my tattoo. For some strange reason it upset him immensely also. Go figure? I just attributed it to the fact that New England fans are a little weird anyway.
A couple of days after arriving home my son comes into my bathroom to ask me a question. Yup, it's his usual question, "Dad, can I have some money." But before he can complete the sentence he says, "What’s that on your back Dad?" "A temporary tattoo, I got in Rio; it says Go Eagles," by tersely replied. "What languages is it in," he inquired. "Portuguese," I replied. Then I told him it said, "Something then OLE." He then got an exasperated look on his face and said that he thought what was written on my back was in English not Portuguese because it said "ASSHOLE." "Here son, take $100 and don't tell a soul, OK." He took the money and I heard him laughing all the way down the hallway.
Fortunately, the shrimp, fillet and my story put her in a great mood so I asked her if we could go join Don for a few drinks in an effort to postpone the interrogation. I'm glad she's a good mood because when the waiter brought me the check and it totaled R$85, I damn near choked. "How much is that shrimp appetizer," I asked him. "Nineteen reais!"
When we got Alcazar Don was having his usual afternoon tea and the first thing he did was apologize for telling all my Jaguar stories the previous night. I told him that I didn't mind it at all and with that I hear someone in the background shouting "pouseta--pousada" then the whole place cracks up. Maybe on second thought, I do mind it just a little. Don then turns his attention to question me about how I fucked up today and before I could answer MBL tells him about my little problem with the girl at the laundromat. God bless Don because he said he would take me over there in a few minutes to set the record straight.
MBL got up to go the ladies room and as soon as she was out of sight Don asked me what else went wrong today. "Oh nothing, just Lurch sitting next to us on the beach, smiling and winking at MBL," was all I could say. "I said you were fucked when I read those e-mails, didn't I?" As if he wasn't worried enough about me I damn near gave him heart attack when I told him what happened last night when I saw Lurch and Miss Bubble Lips together outside the ladies room. "Why the fuck did you let them talk to each other," he asked? "I didn't know they were in the ladies room together, what could I do?" "Man, you're a walking disaster area," was all he could get out before MBL returned to the table and we quickly changed the subject.
Don suggests we go to laundromat to straighten out that little misunderstanding while I pick up my laundry. As the two of us walk in the door together the girl gives me an even weirder look because she knows Don, his office is located right next door to laundromat. Oh shit, now she thinks I'm cheating on the transvestite with Don -- this situation just keeps getting worse and worse. Fortunately Don's tremendous command of Portuguese sets the record straight and within minutes she smiling at me as she's looking for my laundry. As I look back on it, hiring Don was one of the smartest things ever done in my life, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why it took me until my eighth trip to Rio to hire him. Perhaps I'll figure it out someday, but probably not.
On our way back to Alcazar to join MBL, we run into one of the busboys on his way to work at Alcazar. Don introduces him to me as Fernando and I figure his name will be easy to remember because it's the same as that fucking little Road Runner Fernando on the beach. He tells me that Fernando lives in the favela and he can arrange for me to have a tour tomorrow. He whispers to me that this kid is a "Magilla" meaning someone that is big and strong. Apparently this kid is so strong that he cracks open coconuts with his bare fists. The whole adventure sounds fantastic, just imagine me in the favela, what could possibly go wrong?
By the time we get to Alcazar, I had agreed to meet Fernando at noon the following day for a splendid tour of the favela facilities. When I informed MBL of my plans she went absolutely ballistic. "You can even go to the bathroom without getting into trouble, how do you expect to stay out of trouble in a favela?" "Don't worry Honey, I'll be safe and anyway, regardless of how much trouble I get into, I always manage to get myself out of it in one piece don't I?" She couldn't argue with that statement so she just said, "good luck."
As we walked back to the apartment she berated me about my decision to go to the favella, but she couldn't dissuade me from going there. When we got the apartment she asked me to take pictures of her and when I was done I left the camera on the coffee table and went in to take a shower. When I came out she was still scrolling through the photos with a thoroughly confused look on her face. "You have any more chips for this camera," she asked? "Sure do, the other gigabyte chip is in the camera case," I joyfully replied.
She immediately switched chips only to find that there were a few photos of my children on the second chip. "Any more chips, James?" "No sweetheart, it's a new camera and I only have two chips for it," was my answer that was a complete lie, but she didn't need to know that. The chip that had pictures from Centaurus and Lurch on it was very safely locked in my briefcase and as soon as I buy glasses tomorrow, I'll hide it somewhere that's even safer.
That night I prepared dinner for her one more time and we decided to stay in for the evening. She puts on this great Victor Hugo top and I momentarily take my mind off of dinner. Where was I? Oh yeah, I had another fillet that I cut up into bite-size pieces that I braised to seal in all the juices. I then deglazed the pan with a full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon and made a fantastic brown sauce that I pored over the fillet tips and served with a dish that I call "Autumn Rice." This dish actually tastes like a crisp autumn day because, in addition to white rice, it has sautéed chopped onions, red and green peppers, and celery in it and is topped with toasted pine nuts. I would include the recipe here, but as you know I get enough grief for the things I do on this site already, so if you want it, personal message me.
Once again she raves about the meal and I know I'm going to have a spectacular evening in bed tonight. Just before we climb into bed she goes in my closet and pulls out some clothes she wants me to wear tomorrow. She picks out a pair of sage green shorts and then she selects a pink polo style shirt because the monogram on it is in the same color as the sage green shorts. In other words, she wants me to be color coordinated. I could give a shit about what I wear, but I decide humor her and I'm glad I did because she was absolutely fantastic once again.
