When I get back to the apartment MBL is waiting for me and so are her fucking cramps. Why is it that every woman I’m with gets cramps and migraines at one time or another? More often than not, they get them both together! “Get your ass in gear, we have to go over to Felix’s for soup and we can’t be late. If we are, tomorrow he’ll give me shit all day long and you know it,” I said as I tried to hurry her along. Have you ever noticed that when you need a woman to hurry up, she immediately downshifts into first gear? It drives me crazy and she knows it. Hey, maybe that’s precisely why she does it. What do you think?
On our way over to Felix’s apartment, MBL suggests that we buy some red wine at the super market on Copacabana Av. Yep, it’s the exact same one where that little old lady fell down and her accomplice robbed me of my groceries back in June. As we approached the store, I started to get a little worried because the place was packed with little old white haired ladies and any one of them could be the same one I ran into last June. Cautiously we buy two bottles of Chile’s finest Cabernet Sauvignon for about R$30 each and several bags of M&M’s as I make sure no little white haired lady comes within thirty feet of us. For some strange reason whenever MBL gets her “Special Day,” she gets this craving for chocolate. Oh well at least the M&M’s should satisfy her insatiable desire to cuddle all the time; I hate cuddling. Oh well, at least she’s easy to please, unlike fucking Felix.
When we arrive at Felix’s apartment at 8:57 PM, a wonderful aroma greets us and it’s not Felix’s cologne; it’s the soup. “Where’s your date?” I ask Felix. As soon as the words, “she’s going to be late like all Brazilian women,” pass my lips, there’s a knock on the door and she enters the apartment. Holy shit, it’s exactly 9:00 PM and she’s here; I can’t believe it. MBL leans over and whispers, “How Felix find garota who tell time?” “I don’t know, but I have my priorities and he has his. Unfortunately, high on his list is being prompt, a concept that you don’t comprehend,” I whisper as she slaps my shoulder. From that point on I decided to call Felix’s girlfriend TIMEX!
A few minutes later MBL snuggles up next to me and says, “I know why gatota here at 21:00, she has watch.” “She does?” I say with a surprised look on my face. I gently hold her left hand in mine and raise it up so it’s directly in front of her face and say, “This looks like a watch on your wrist and it doesn’t seem to help you much, does it? You’re always late.” Then she went off on me in fucking Portuguese, which isn’t a good sign, trust me.
Luckily, Felix rescues me from MBL’s wrath and I tell him my nickname for his girlfriend. “Timex, she’s better than that; she’s more like a Rolex,” he chided me. “Fuck you Felix! She’ll always be Timex to me; you can call her whatever you want.” Shit, Rolex means absolutely nothing in Brazil. In the states it means quality, but here it’s just something to counterfeit. For example, remember when my Chinese lighter guy approached you on the beach and wanted to sell you a Rolex for R$250? What did he say when I declared it was a crummy fake? Didn’t he say, “It no fake, it genuine imitation Rolex!” “Timex works better anyway, take my word for it,” I said in a thoroughly disgusted tone of voice. How the hell did I get off track and on to this stupid topic? Let’s get back to discussing something more important, like Felix’s soup.
The soup smells fantastic and looks like it should be on the cover of Gourmet magazine. “Who made this?” I ask. “I did,” said Felix. “Are you sure you didn’t buy this at some restaurant?” I inquired. Unfortunately, that was the wrong thing to say because for the next half hour he went into excruciating detail about all the problems he had making the soup. First, he listed all the ingredients, then he described buying the big pot (that story took ten fucking minutes) and finally he told us about every store he went into to find soup bowls. Man, he wasn’t even smart enough to check to see what he had in the apartment before he decided to make the fucking soup; that was a dumb move, wasn’t it.
In an attempt to make him feel better about the whole thing, I said, “How much did all this shit cost you?” Figuring it cost him next to nothing. Once again, that wasn’t a smart move on my part because he brought out all his receipts that he meticulously keeps and calculated the total cost right down to the fucking centavos. For your information, it totaled exactly R$142.37. “Add in the cost of the wine and M&M’s and this whole fucking soup dinner cost us over R$200; you must be nuts. For the same price, we could have gone out to some fancy restaurant and had a great dinner,” I scolded him. When I was able to get him away from the M&M’s and the women, I decided to give him one more jab,” Christ, at the current exchange rate, you could have had another girl for the whole night and enjoyed your first dupla for what you spent tonight”
In an attempt to get even with me, Felix decided to bring up an unpleasant topic. “What about the time you tried to cook MBL dinner at the Princess Copacabana?” he hissed at me. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied as I passed the M&M’s to Bubble Lips. “Oh yes you do. You spent a bundle that night and didn’t even tell MBL about your mistake.” “Shit, the only mistake I made was telling you about that night—it was supposed to be a surprise and later when it didn’t pan out, a fucking secret,” I yelled at him.
For some strange reason, women always seem to seize onto the word “surprise’ in any sentence and then want a complete explanation regardless of whether or not the subject has anything to do with them. Unfortunately, MBL is no exception to this rule and she started interrogating me as Felix just sat back, smiled and munched on my fucking M&M’s. To make matters worse, Felix’s girlfriend started asking me questions in Portuguese which MBL eagerly translated. “Felix, go stir the fucking Chicken Soup, I’m hungry,” I told him in a half hearted attempt at interrupting the Brazilian’s limited attention span.
Like everything in my life, it wasn’t successful at all and the questions kept pouring out of MBL’s big Muppet-like mouth. Why the fuck is Felix doing this to me I wondered? Then it came to me-- oh yeah, just like he told me on the beach—to watch me get deeper into trouble. I’m beginning to hate the bastard and now I have to figure out some devious way to get even with him. Shit, I’m smart, so I should come up with something appropriate within minutes. Let’s see, it’s now 9:52 PM; I should have the answer by 10:00 PM at the latest. Within minutes, I come up with the perfect way to extract my revenge.
Actually, Felix gave me the idea when he asked me to slice the bread for dinner, which thankfully also momentarily derailed MBL’s intense interrogation. I whipped out my trusty razor sharp SOG knife and sliced six pieces as deftly as one of those chefs in a Japanese restaurant. A few moments later Felix said, “What’s this on the floor?” “Looks like spaghetti sauce to me,” I innocently replied. Felix leaned over and pronounced, “Its blood, where did it come from?” “MBL just got her “Special Day,” maybe it’s hers,” I added. Felix immediately started to wretch and gag.
As he’s bent over sounding like a cat trying to hack up a “fur ball,” he noticed that my left hand was bleeding. Then to deflect attention away from himself, he said, “Jag, you imbecile, you cut hand when you sliced the bread.” “Impossible,” was about all I could say on the spur of the moment because I couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say. Sure enough, somehow I had sliced open a finger with that God damn fucking lousy SOG knife and was dripping blood all over his kitchen floor.
“Where’s your Spray-on Band-Aid?” “I left it back in the apartment. I didn’t think I needed it with me tonight. Shit, this isn’t like the last time I went to the Palm and sliced myself with a steak knife. After all, we’re just having fucking soup and using spoons,” I replied. Felix rolled his eyes and asked, “How many restaurants have banned you in Philadelphia?” “Only six of them! Hey, who told you?” I asked. “Nobody, it was a lucky guess.” “Fuck you, Felix,” I shouted at him as he left the room chuckling to himself.
Felix went into the bathroom and brought out a bottle of God damn Brazilian mouthwash. “What are you going to do with that?” I asked. “Pour it on your cut. Rio is full of germs; you don’t want to get an infection, do you?” That’s it, I’ll use Felix’s germ phobia against him! Shit, he so afraid of germs, he makes Howard Hughes look normal. All I had to do is figure the best place to take him that’s totally germ infested to get his skin crawling; but where? That might take a little more planning, but I’ll eventually come up with someplace suitable; you can count on it.
As he poured the mouthwash over my cut he said, “This might hurt a little because it’s 12% alcohol and it will keep you from getting infected. “How do you know that,” I asked him. “Because that’s what it says on the label.” “How do you know, you don’t read or speak Portuguese, do you?” I prodded him. At that point just to rattle the bastard a little more I asked him, “You don’t suppose they make that stuff with the local water, do you?”
That stopped him right in his tracks as he was trying to calculate how many times he used it. I knew he was silently figuring out what the potential cumulative bacterial damage to his body was at this very minute. Then to add insult to injury, I ran water over my finger to wash off the shit and then plunged my finger into my glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. “Why are you doing that?” he asked. “Because the wine’s 14% alcohol and it’s made with crystal clear Chilean mountain spring water; not filthy favella water like they use to make your mouthwash. I bet you they make it up on the hill over there,” I said as I was pointing towards the favella on the mountain two blocks away from his apartment. Toying with him is so much fun that I can’t wait for him to start gagging again. Like clockwork, he didn’t let me down.
In an attempt to take his little mind off the mouthwash and the Brazilian bacteria currently invading his body, Felix started to serve dinner. He got out his cute little soup bowls that cost him R$10 a piece and ladled (the ladle cost another R$4) out each of us a hearty helping of fantastic soup. During our liquid feast, MBL leans over and asks, "What surprise Felix talk about?" Is it Rolex like he say a few minutes ago?" Oh fuck, now she thinks she's getting a Rolex because that idiot Felix felt as though he had to improve on Timex's name. "No honey, there's no surprise," I said calmly as I glared at Felix.
Apparently Felix misunderstood the look I gave him and started rambling on about how I tried to cook MBL a dinner at the Princess Copacabana in April. Like him, the first thing I did was buy all the necessary ingredients. When I got back to my suite, I went to get a sauté pan only to find that the suite had plates and silverware, but no pans. I immediately went around the corner and bought at a cost of R$80 a lousy set of nine cheap pots and pans with lids, I might add, to cook her gourmet meal.
I put everything out on the counter next to stovetop and poured oil in the pan to start the meal. Sadly, the stove failed to light. That's what I realized that the gas must be turned off at the valve under the sink. After opening the valve, absolutely nothing happened. I went to the front desk and Carlos informed me that they turned off all the gas to the rooms last October because they feared some idiot would start a fire in their room. Strange as it may sound, they turned off the gas at exactly the same time as my first visit there. How ironic! Personally, I don't see any connection between the two events and I’m sure you don’t either.
MBL butts in and says "I no see food in suite, what happen to it?" "I gave all of it to Carlos to feed his family," I sheepishly replied. "Who Carlos; is he the one who puts arm and the air when he see you?" She asked. "Yeah, yeah, that's him," I replied. If she only knew that was his way of asking "where's Lurch" she would kill me. Felix piped up with, "How much did that fiasco cost you?" One hundred and sixty reais," I hissed at him and then gave him the finger. “That’s R$17.63 more than I spent,” Felix added. “Go gargle with that favella mouthwash,” I suggested. Although I absolutely hate the bastard because he can’t keep his mouth shut, he does have some good qualities, like the neat sounds he makes when he’s gagging. As soon as I mentioned the mouthwash, he was retching like a true champ. Revenge is sooo fucking sweet!
Before we left Felix and Timex snuggling on the couch around 11:30 PM, he made us promised that we would join them for dinner the next evening. I don’t think he really wanted our company, but rather he wanted to get rid of the four gallons of soup he made. Bubble lips then started talking to Timex in Portuguese and I told MBL to hurry up so that we could get into Help at the reduced entrance fee.
For those of you who have never been to Help, the entrance fee between 11:00 PM and midnight is R$20, after midnight it’s raised to R$30 apiece. Since I’m a cheap SOB, I told Bubble Lips that we could go only if we could get in for R$20. Ironically, that made her hurry up rather than downshift to first gear like she usually does when I try to get her somewhere at a specific time. It seems like she moves in a hurry for dancing or food; otherwise, she as slow as a fucking slug.
The next morning I awake at 6:30 AM and can’t get back to sleep. MBL’s lying next to me gently snoring like most women do when they’re content. I look outside and it’s fucking raining again, but I decide to get up anyway and look at the early morning sights that are plentiful at that time of day. After about a half hour walk, I settled in at a sidewalk café almost directly across the street from Felix’s apartment building. Two doors down from his building is a Militaria Policia station. Boy, those cops with their M-16’s sure are paranoid! You should have seen the way they stared at me while I was sipping my grande coffee. You would have thought they had never seen a grown man before in a two-toned baseball jersey with the number 24 emblazoned on it, sage green shorts and tasseled Cole –Haan loafers enjoying coffee and an 8” cigar at 7:00 AM. They should get out more often.
As I’m sitting there watching the Policia watch me, I realize that I’m now stalking Felix just like he did to me on our last trip together in June. Good, it serves him right! Now he’ll know how it feels to be stalked by some nut, like I did; only I’m not as crazy as him. Around 7:45 AM Felix and his Honey exit the building and I stand up and wave at them. Apparently that wasn’t the smartest move on my part because the cops brought up their M-16’s and started pointing them at me. Within a millisecond, I was back in my seat with my hands on the table in plain view so as not to worry the group of heavily armed cops that I nicknamed “Paranoids with weapons.”
After Felix gets rid of Timex, he crosses the street and joins me for some juice. He doesn't drink coffee and I never completely trusted anyone who doesn't, but he's a friend so I let it slide. Oh fuck! As soon as Felix sits down on my table, the cops across the street start laughing and pointing at us; thankfully they weren't using their weapons this time. Christ, they must think Felix's queer or something; that's why they're carrying on like a bunch of little schoolboys.
I glance over at Felix and notice he's wearing a blue Henley T-shirt, cargo shorts and docksiders. Yup, he sure looks gay to me, so I decide that we should start our walk right away just to get away from the fucking cops. As soon as we stand up to leave they start in with whistles and catcalls. Shit, I better get Felix out of there in a hurry before they shoot him. Felix informs me that he has to go back to his apartment to take some medicine before we can go on our daily constitution.
God damn it, I can't go in the building with him because the cops will think I'm gay too, so I suggest he go in by himself while I wait on the sidewalk in the light drizzly rain. Fortunately, I completely blended in with the locals like usual and stand there smoking my cigar. Two cops walked down the sidewalk right past me turned, laughed, and walked back to their station. I avert my eyes so as not to attract any undo attention and it apparently worked because I'm sure they never even saw me.
Within minutes Felix rejoins me and we walk down the street together. Oh no, just as I suspected, the two fucking cops are now following us down the street and it's all Felix's fault. I can't believe it. Dumb fuck Felix wasn't smart enough to change his clothes when he was in his apartment and now the cops are following me and my queer friend. I tell Felix that we have a couple of cops on our tail and he suggests we duck into the next open store. That sounded like a great idea to me till Felix took me into a pastry shop.
"What the fuck are we doing here?" I asked him. "It was the first store open," he replied. "Felix, I hate to break this to you, but the cops think you're queer and that you're trying to pick me up." "They do?" "Of course they do. Look at the way you're dressed compared to me. They have to assume you're gay," I yelled at him. Then I went on to say, "To make matters worse, you take me into a fucking pastry store to hide from them. Don't you know pastry shops are usually full queers trying to buy something sweet to take away the taste of their last victim? Christ, Felix, queers use pastries like you use mouthwash!" Right on cue, he starts to gag uncontrollably.
Fortunately, the cops left us alone after they saw Felix bent over dry heaving up his guts. "There you see, the cops left us alone because they think you have some weird disease or something like that. Probably from your mouthwash," I scolded him. Once again he started with a dry heave's. "Good, get it out of your system; I'm hungry, let's go get some breakfast." Felix just groaned as he slowly shuffled out of the queer pastry shop.
Unfortunately, The Office, the local sports bar doesn't open for breakfast until 9 a.m., so we had to walk around for a while. Man, you should see the looks we were getting from the locals. "God damn it Felix, right after breakfast you have to go home and change," I told him. "I don't understand it, the other day I wore the same outfit and nothing like this happened," he replied. "Well, maybe it smells or something like that, but whatever it is, you have to change your clothes. Comprende?" "Si."
Even though we've been in The Office many times before, this time we got a lot of odd looks from the waiters and other patrons. "Do you see what I'm seeing? I asked him. "Yeah Jag, but they appear to be staring at you, not me," he replied. "I would expect something like that from you, trying to place the blame on somebody else when you should be taking it yourself. You're so fucking infantile! Be more like me and take responsibility for your actions" I hissed at him. "No, I really mean it; they're looking at you not me." "Fuck you Felix; you're the one dressed like a queer, not me."
Felix suggested we order breakfast quickly so we could get out of there in a hurry. Rather than ordering a regular breakfast, Felix ordered a side of bacon, a side of toast and a fucking Coke. He then explained to me that they give you a huge order of bacon and he can make two large bacon sandwiches out of it. “How much is that?” I asked. “Less than R$7,” he said with a smirk on his face. “No shit! My breakfast usually costs about R$18. Maybe I’ll have the same as you, but with black coffee instead of the gay Coke,” I said as we sat there with everyone looking at us.
It was then that I realized that they were trying to figure out which of us was the pitcher and who was the catcher. When I explained that salient fact to Felix, he immediately started to heave and left the table to go to the bathroom to retch his brains out. Strangely, when he left the table all the Brazilians kept watching me as if there was something wrong with me. Shit, the only thing wrong with me is the fact that I’m with queer Felix. Even though he wasn’t anywhere near the table, I could hear him gagging in the bathroom and it was music to my ears.
Our breakfast came at about the same time as Felix emerged from the bathroom looking as white as a sheet. “Felix, get a hold of yourself or everybody will think you have some strange gay disease and they’ll start leaving the restaurant in droves,” I pleaded with him. He was composed for about two minutes, silently eating a small bacon sandwich, until I brought up his mouthwash again which, as expected, necessitated another quick trip to the bathroom. Ah, the sweet sound of Felix dry heaving almost brought tears of joy to my eyes.
By the time he got back to the table, I had completely eaten my breakfast and half of his bacon. “Where’s all my bacon?” he asked. “Right there on the table. They didn’t give you much today, did they?” I replied. “Oh well, I’m not very hungry anyway—let’s get out of here,” he said in a weak voice. “Felix, you better take care of yourself or you’ll really get ill. Why don’t you go home, change your gay clothes and gargle. That should make you feel better,” I shouted to him as he was running back to the bathroom for another bout of the dry heaves. “See you later buddy,” was all I said as I left the restaurant.
Thankfully it stopped raining in the sun was out, so walk to the apartment was delightful as I stepped over and around the street urchins sleeping on the sidewalk. When I rounded the corner near her apartment, I saw the crazy idiots in the laundromat next to our building and that reminded me that I needed to do my laundry today. Damn Don won't let me use his "precious washing machine," so I guess I'll have to send Bubble Lips in there with my wash. Unfortunately, because of that previous bad experience with them when I tried that water experiment, I don't dare go in there myself. As I entered the apartment, I take off all my clothes and living room and tiptoed towards the bedroom saying "chuva, chuva, chuva." "Remember that deal we made several days ago, Honey; well I'm here to collect again," I called out to her in excited anticipation.
One of the wonderful street urchins
I opened the door to the bedroom and MBL is lying there in bed watching cartoons, which as we all know is a great indicator of what's about to come. As I say once again, "Chuva, chuva," MBL points at the darkened window, smiles and gets out of bed and pulls back the drapes. "It no chuva -- you lie," she says as the sun shines into the room and completely wrecks any hope I had of getting sex this morning.
Okay, get dressed and take my clothes to the laundromat. Have them iron all my dress shirts, I need them back today. I asked her if there was anything else that needed to be washed and she said, “No, all my clothes clean." What I didn’t know was that MBL had slipped a bag of M&M’s out of Felix’s apartment and was munching on them when I came home this morning. God damn it, she had spilled some on the bed and now the sheets have multicolored spots on them. Let’s strip the bed and have them wash the sheets too.
Within minutes of leaving, she was back saying that they refuse to do my laundry, but they will wash the sheets. “You didn’t tell them it was my laundry, did you?” I asked. “Oh no, I know they no do it for you, but she see sign on shirts and remember you have same on your shirts.” “What fucking sign are you talking about?” I asked her as I held up one of my shirts. “This sign,” she said as she pointed at my monogram. “Go back and plead with them, I really need clean shirts. All I have left is this shirt,” I said as I held up the shirt I was wearing when I was with Felix. “You wear that shirt outside?” she asked as if I were a Special-Ed student. “Yeah, I wore it to breakfast with Felix,” I replied.
She shook her head from side to side and gave me the most God awful look imaginable. "James, you intelligence aren't you?" "Of course, I am. And by the way, the word is intelligent, not intelligence," I gently corrected her. "As a matter of fact, I'm so fucking smart I could join Mensa international, which is a worldwide organization of geniuses, but I prefer not to associate with them," I explained to her in terms so simple even she could understand what I was saying. "Why you wear shirt?" she asked.
"Because it's one of my favorite baseball jerseys, it even has Mickey Mantle's number on it -- 24. I wear it all the time back in the states," I told her. "You do?" she asked. As I was nodding my head, she said, "Don't wear in Copa, it no good." "I happen to like it and plan to wear it all day today; do you have a problem with that?" I asked her. Then she answered me with what seemed like a bizarre Brazilian riddle, "Oh, no problem for me, but maybe problem for you."
She went back down to the laundromat and within a few minutes was back, explaining to me that they would wash my clothes, but refused to iron any of my shirts. Boy, these Brazilian sure do hold a grudge over the most infinitesimal infraction imaginable. Shit, all I was doing was a little water experiment that they completely fucked up and now they're holding it against me for what seems like forever.
I told her to go back downstairs and tell them to do my wash as I looked around the apartment for an iron, which thankfully I found. When Bubble Lips returned to the apartment and saw me standing there with an iron in my hand, she said, "Don no let you use that -- you start fire." "Okay Honey, I won't use it, you will and we won't tell Don anything." She took the iron out of my hand and said, "You no touch any more!"
Then, to confuse me even more, MBL grabs a bottle of red wine to bring with us as we go to Don’s office. Christ, it’s only 11:00 AM and MBL wants wine—somebody must be driving her nuts. Must be Felix! As we get in the elevator she suggests we walk quickly to Don’s office. She won’t give me an explanation, but hints that I’ll soon find out. I usually hate guessing games, but this could be fun. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
Don and Wally seem surprised to see us as we approach his shop. Strangely Don’s expression goes from surprise to shock within seconds as he screams at me, “Why are you wearing that fucking shirt?” “Oh no, not you too,” I shout back at him. “Did MBL tell you to wear it?” he asked. “Are you kidding, she didn’t want me to put it on either. Brazilians are so fucking crazy,” I added.
“Jag, they’re not crazy, you are. Do you know what number 24 means in Brazil?” “No, not exactly,” I shamefully replied. “Well, for your information that was the number of a famous soccer star who came out of the closet,” he explained. “What closet?” “You idiot, he didn’t literally come out of a closet; he was gay and announced it to the world, embarrassing Brazil. Consequently, no straight person in Brazil, except you, would be caught dead in a jersey with that number on it. Although now I have some questions about you,” he practically screamed at me. How in God’s name do I get myself out of this situation? Then it came to me as I said,“Shit, don’t give me any crap; I borrowed this shirt from Felix; it’s his favorite!
Not my shirt!!
