A few seconds later when I shook off the effects of what had just happened, I looked over at Wolf as tears streamed down his chubby cheeks. The front of his car was a mess because a tree was now growing out of the hood of his SUV. To complicate matters the carjacker was laying on the hood up against the smashed windshield. “Your fucking airbags didn’t go off,” I shouted. “I have a kill switch on them because I plow,” he replied as if that would placate me. “Is that what I think it is on the hood,? I asked as I was squinting through the smashed windshield. “I don’t know. But I think I hit a woman because she’s wearing a fur coat,”
“As we were trying to open the front doors, Wolf looked over at me and said, “You’re a fucking racist.” “Where did that idea come from?” I asked. “Do you know what you said just before I hit her? You quoted Don Imus,” he shouted at me as he kicked open his door. “I did?” “Yeah, you said, “Watch out for the nappy headed hoe.” Isn’t it funny how the mind can play tricks because what I really said was, “Watch out, you’re heading for a doe.” Yup, that’s doe as in deer, not hoe as in crack hoe. We had hit a fucking female deer. As we climbed out of the vehicle to survey the damage, Wolf breathed a sigh of relief. Sure enough, we had hit a deer like I said, it rolled up into the windshield obliterating Wolf’s view of the road, he lost control and we smashed into a tree. “You just fucked up my whole trip,” I yelled at him.
Wolf, although he felt terrible about the situation, wouldn’t back down as he went into attack mode, “Well, if it wasn’t for you needing a ride to fucking Newark, this never would have happened?” “Wolf, do you want me to tell the bitch about how you misbehaved while she was visiting her mother?” I said as I took out my cell phone, ready to call her. He turned and shouted, “Shut up you bastard,” as he continued to pace back and forth. Then to add insult to injury, I said, “You know she’s pregnant!” To which he replied, “Who, Bubble Lips or the new girl?” “No, you imbecile, the deer was pregnant. Do you know what that means?” “No,” he replied. “You just killed an unborn Bambi!” Then in an effort to put a more positive spin on things, I said, “Hey Wolf, do you like venison? I do.”
Enough of the endless tragedies in my life, it’s time to get back to my story. I know many of you have heard stories of Sweets legendary snoring and you probably don’t believe that anyone could fall so deeply asleep within seconds. I’m telling you that he could and did on many occasions in my presence. Bedouin and I would often have breakfast with Sweet at The Office, meeting at 9:00 AM each day. The two of us would usually order a full breakfast of eggs and bacon while Sweet would order just a Bloody Mary con Gin.
After he finished his drink, he did one of two things; either he fell asleep, or he started eating my breakfast. I preferred that he fall asleep because once after eating all of my bacon, Sweet turned to me and said, “Order it more crispy tomorrow, that’s how I like it.” Sweet, like most of us loved anything free, especially food. I think the quickest he ever fell asleep at breakfast was just before 9:15. What was truly amazing about it was the fact that he fell asleep right at the table and snored so loudly. He slept so often that it got to the point that Bedouin and I accepted his sleeping as normal behavior. We later were to learn that he suffered from sleep apnea, which is a very dangerous condition and probably contributed to his death.
Many of you are well aware of the fact that there was a warm and generous side to Sweet’s gruff exterior. He was always considerate of others whether he liked you or not. However, if he didn’t agree with what you said, he let you know it in no uncertain terms. He gave his opinion quite freely, often starting with, “Don’t be an idiot…” Because of his outspokenness, he sometimes drove people away. But to those of us who knew him well, this was one of his most endearing qualities. For one reason or another, he was always fearful that something horrible might happen to one of his friends while they were in Rio and that he would be powerless to help. He always wanted everything to go perfectly for his friends, whether it was selecting the right girl at a termas or ordering the best meal at a restaurant.
When it came to dealing with me, it was quite a different story. Rather than worrying about something going wrong, he was always terrified that I would do something stupid, get myself into a dangerous situation, and then somehow drag him into it. Simply put, he cared for others and feared for me. For example, one time he took me to termas 65 so I could get some material. After we went into the boite in our robes, I asked him if it was true that he always had wine stains on his robe like everyone told me. “No, I don’t spill wine, others bump into me causing the stains,” he convincingly replied. Within two minutes I saw three stains down the front of his robe and asked, “Did you just spill wine?” “No, somebody knocked my hand,” he replied. “Sweet, I’ve been watching and no one has come near you,” I stated.
As soon as he realized I had caught him, he suggested I sit down at one of the tables along the wall to get as far away from me as possible. I selected the corner table, you know the one with the stripper pole right behind it. It turned out to be a disastrous choice. Shortly after sitting down and munching on the free peanuts, one of the scantily clad girls decided to do a dance set using the pole right behind me. Unfortunately, as she was dancing, she slipped and came crashing down on my head with her entire weight. I was dazed and choking on peanuts as Sweet grabbed me and hustled me over to the bar. He suggested I take a sauna to ease my severe neck pain, and to keep hydrated, I grabbed a bottle of water and an unopened beer to take into the sauna with me. Sweet made sure I was comfortable before he left to get a well deserved break from me and a needed massage. Forty-five minutes later as he walked into the sauna my unopened Skol exploded from the heat, spraying the walls in a shower of suds. He rolled his eyes, turned and walked out without saying a word. At about six o’clock, which was early for Sweet, he said, “Let’s get out of here before you cause more damage.” We walked outside and it started pouring rain. He looked at me and said, “Do all your days go like this? I shrugged my shoulders and meekly answered, “Yeah.”
On Saturday morning I went to get some money out of my locked briefcase, only to find it unlocked and approximately $3000 gone, vanished. I ran downstairs and told Sweet what had happened. He told me that exactly the same thing happened to him in the same apartment two months before. He lost over $5000 cash, but was embarrassed by the theft and, consequently, told no one. The landlord’s local representative, Rosie, was called and she rushed over. It was clear that someone had a key to the apartment, gained access while I was at the supermarket the day before, took considerable time to open my case and took all my money. It was also clear that whoever did it had a lookout to warn of my return.
The door locks were removed and changed within hours. Moreover, the landlord insisted on returning my rent money because of several factors. First, I had rented from him many times without incident. Secondly, the apartment didn’t have a safe and it was readily apparent that the apartment’s security was compromised. Since Sweet had collected the rent money, he returned part of it immediately and agreed to return the remainder within a few days when the banks opened. One thing about Sweet, he hated owing anybody money or leaving a bill unpaid. In other words, he was the exact opposite of me. Every time I saw him after the burglary he would say, “Now don’t forget, I owe you $400, when do you want it?” Each day in response I would say, “Sweet, I don’t need it now, why don’t you hold onto it for me.” With a little bit of sleuthing, we were able to ascertain that Sweet’s idiot friend had given his extra keys to several GDPs while Sweet was laid up in the hospital last fall. Simply put, this idiot was a real looser and didn’t even need to be in the southern hemisphere to wreck havoc. As I stood at the window pondering my diminished finances something caught my eye. It’s that steel netting on that eighth floor apartment across the street. Maybe that guy isn’t so paranoid after all. Yeah, he’s definitely skitzo, but not paranoid.
The next day Lucy needed to go home and I decided to go to the beach without her. On the way, I ran into Coffemaker, Scotch and Cdaze. We all sat together and waited for the GDP’s. Within an hour a wonderful girl sat down near us and gave us a fantastic show. She had an outgoing personality, immediately took off her top, and smiled at us as I snapped photo after photo. She tried to take off her girlfriend’s bikini top and I caught a photo of them wrestling for it. Hope you like her.
Photos: Wonderful Girl 01 02 03 04 05 06 07
The next morning when I went to the window and looked down at the bandito’s lair, I was stunned at what I saw. Holy shit, a bunch of them were doing push-ups. What the fuck was going on? I ran and got my camera to record this new sense of discipline among the merry little band of banditos. Luckily I had my ten power zoom camera with me and as I zoomed in, I saw something that appeared out of place. Sure enough, it was three Militaria Polica officers hitting my buddies with a long stick and forcing them to perform pushups. It was good seeing them getting some exercise as the cops rummaged through their hideout looking for drugs. If you look in the first photo below, you will see several holes carved into the rock. What you can’t see is the fact that they are about 2 meters deep. The cops reach in, don’t find any drugs and leave. As soon as they’re gone, the banditos take that long stick and attach a wad of gum to the end of it, reach into the hole and extract the drugs. I watched this same drama four times—boy, those cops are really stupid.
I visited Sweet to show him what was going on down below but he wasn’t interested. Instead, he sat me down and started to lecture me on writing a book. He suggested I take all the material I’ve written so far, edit it and take it to a publisher. “You’ll make millions and because I suggested it, you can take me out to dinner every night you’re in Rio,” he added. Then he told me to start writing new reports or else. “But Sweet I didn’t think you really read my stuff,” I commented. “Like I said before, your first report was riveting; the rest of it is shit.” “How so?” “In your first report, things moved quickly and you didn’t get bogged down in all that fucking dialogue like in the next ones,” he stated like a true literary critic. “Look, I’ll think about it but you have to let me write stories about you, otherwise I can’t write anymore reports,” I replied. “Okay, you can write about me, but I don’t want you to do a hatchet job on me like you did to Felix.” “Ah come on Sweet, Felix loves the attention and you will, too. I’ll make you both famous. You’ll both live forever in literature,” I said as I left his apartment.
The rest of the trip was uneventful except for a little surgery on that fucking splinter and that queer guy almost drowning on Ipanema beach. One day as I stopped in to see Sweet, he insisted on paying me what he owed me. He didn’t have enough cash and wanted to give me a check for the difference. I told him I didn’t need it yet and that he could continue to hold onto it for me. Each subsequent day he became more insistent. Finally on Sunday night when I stopped in to see him around 7:00 PM, he once again brought up the money. “Look Sweet, I’m not go home until Wednesday and you’re not going anywhere, are you? I asked rhetorically. “So you hold on to it and tomorrow we’ll settle up.” “Okay, we’ll settle up tomorrow,” was the last thing he said to me.
Queer guy drowning
I got up early the next morning, made a pot of coffee, grabbed my notebook and started writing my next report. I’d like to say that I wrote a lot that day, but between taking breaks and watching the banditos, I wrote only about ten pages before there was a knock on my door at around 10:15 AM. It was the doorman and one of Sweet’s contractors shouting something in Portuguese. I ran into the bedroom and got Lucy to come to talk with them. She never even made it to the backdoor before she heard what they were saying. She grabbed me and with tears forming in her eyes, she said, “James, Douglas is dead.” Strangely, I wasn’t surprised or shocked by the news, just terribly sad that he was gone forever. Actually, three days before his death, I had asked Don to look in on Sweet because I thought his health was failing rapidly. I told Don that I didn’t think he would last a month given the way he was drinking. I never imagined that three days later he would be dead and I would miss that mark by a factor of ten. Then I remembered that he still owed me $400.
When I got to his apartment I found Rosie already there and she was a complete wreck. I checked for a pulse, found none and said a long silent prayer for my friend. Suddenly Rosie said, “What do we do now?” I thought for a second and realized that the best person to call was Don because he had been through it all before with Bob. I dialed his number and waited. On the third ring he answered and I said, “Don, this is Jag, I have real bad news—Doug is dead.” “ I could hear the pain in his voice as he asked me several questions. He said he would be over in five minutes and as he was getting off the phone he said, “Jag, you got the Com.” “Com, what Com are you talking about?” I asked. “You know, you got the Command Center again,” he replied. That was his little code phrase telling me not to fuck anything up.
Don arrived minutes later and took charge. Within an hour he had arranged for a doctor and funeral director to come to the apartment to start the necessary paperwork. I don’t want to bore you with the details, but Don did a phenomenal job of orchestrating his final arrangements. Chichi99 and Catocony arrived and help out immensely. We contacted his family and after everything was taken care of, I went upstairs. A few hours later, I ran into Ken and he said, “If Bob’s death made you stop writing for a year, how is Sweet’s death going to affect you?” I looked him in the eye and said, “Ironically, Sweet’s death has kick started my writing.”
As the day dragged on and I got more depressed, Lucy decided that a change of environment was needed. She suggested we go to Botafogo Shopping Mall to have a drink overlooking Sugar Loaf. That sounded like a great idea so we grabbed a taxi and went over there. There was only one elevator and as we got to it the doors closed and we watched it depart. It took about five minutes for it to return and by the time it reached the ground floor there were about thirty people waiting to get on. Since we were the first ones in line, we wound up in the back of a fully packed elevator. As I was thinking that things couldn’t get much worse today, the elevator stopped at a floor, the doors opened and MBL was standing in the doorway. I started to shake uncontrollably, Lucy saw this and said loudly, “James, are you alright?” Bubble Lips started looking around as I turned completely around to look at Lucy who was behind me. Fortunately. the elevator was packed and she couldn’t get on. When the doors closed, I breathed a sigh of relief.
We found a restaurant on the eighth floor that faced Sugar loaf and we ordered some wine. I kept a keen eye out for MBL as I tried to enjoy the moment. I looked down and saw an interesting sight that grabbed my attention. There was a work crew cutting grass next to the highway below and what amazed me was the fact that they did it without a lawnmower. As you may know, any mechanical or electronic equipment is very expensive in Brazil due to extremely high import duties. Consequently, a lawnmower is outrageously expensive but labor isn’t. So instead of using a lawnmower, they outfit one guy with a heavy duty weed-whacker and give him a team of eight guys equipped with rakes. It’s simple, cheap, and effective.
The next morning Sweet’s wife Dula, arrived and none of us knew what to expect. We were very pleasantly surprised. She’s a delightful Brazilian with a wonderful sense of humor who was thrust into a difficult situation. Although obviously distraught, she thankfully jumped right in and started making some of the difficult decisions about handling his funeral. Sweet had told many of us that he wanted to be cremated, but under Brazilian law it couldn’t be done unless his wishes were in writing. Unfortunately, Sweet hadn’t done that. With Don’s help, she arranged for a viewing and his burial the next day at the Batista Cemetery
That same day, Dula sat me down at 3:00 PM and said, “James, tell me some Douglas stories.” Lucy and I sat down with her and her girlfriend and I proceeded to tell them several humorous anecdotes about him. At dinner time we moved the discussion to Terrasco Atlantico as I continued to tell stories. We toasted Sweet often and three bottles of Miolo reserve Chardonnay bit the dust as I kept jabbering away. By 12:30 AM the next morning, I ran dry, or so I thought, then she asked me to tell them about the time Doug got the angriest with me.
It was only two months ago, when I was doing intensive research on Villa Mimosa. I would go there at various times during the day to see what was going on. Each day and night were different. For example, one night might be high school night, then college night; shit, they even had a “business man’s special” in the afternoon. In other words, they were marketing geniuses. Given my talent for finding trouble, Sweet was terribly afraid that some day I would go into VM and never come out. It got to the point that I had to lie, telling him that I wasn’t going anywhere near VM just to put his mind at ease.
It was a Wednesday afternoon around 2:30 when I arrived at my usual spot in Villa Mimosa. I call it my usual spot because I usually sit down at one of the three table there, grab a beer, and start observing and writing. As I looked around, there was something odd about the place but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Nothing dangerous, just an odd feeling. In a few minutes I figured it out. It wasn’t VM or the girls that were odd, it was the customers. At first I thought there was a group of gay guys roaming around VM, but as I looked closer, I learned more. Apparently, on this day a number of guys brought their retarded or “special” brothers with them to VM for some needed release, if you know what I mean. By number, I mean about thirty “special” guys. So as not to misplace their sibling, these guys walked around VM holding their brothers’ hand. Shit, imagine how would you explain to mom that you lost your “special” brother in Brazil’s national whorehouse? You couldn’t possibly explain that away so you would take precautions, wouldn’t you? Holding hands was their simple solution.
Okay, so I’m sitting there drinking my beer, watching all the action and taking copious notes. As you may know, there’s a narrow street right down the center of VM and my “usual place” is located next to the road and also adjacent to the main entrance of the interior mall. In other words, it’s the perfect location except when trucks or cops drive by. I’m furiously taking notes when all of a sudden I hear a car horn honk. I look up and right in front of me is a Militaria Polica SUV with three cops in it and all of them are looking at me. The two cops on the passenger side have their M-16s sticking out of the window and aimed at me. Holy shit, what have I gotten myself into? I didn’t have a fucking clue as to what was going on, but I knew I better stay seated.
Villa Mimosa Main street
How the fuck can I defuse this situation, I wondered as one of the cops adjusted weapon, making my forehead his target? This is where some knowledge of Portuguese would have come in handy. But since I only know a handful of words, verbally communicating with them was out of the question. That’s when I decided to communicate through hand signals like I do with Fernando on the beach. To let them know that I wasn’t dangerous, I smiled and with my right hand waved at them. I thought that would do the trick, but instead all three cops narrowed their eyes at me and two of them readjusted their weapons. I remember thinking that I was going to die, but I just didn’t want my body being disposed of in the meat processing plant next door. I patiently waited for a bullet to go through my brain when all of a sudden the three cops burst out laughing. Clearly my waving was making them laugh so I waved faster. Wouldn’t you know it, they started laughing louder and louder. Finally after what seemed a lifetime, they drove away laughing. I still didn’t have a clue as to what just happened until I turned around and saw eight severely retarded guys standing there behind me, all waving, too.
Meat Packing Plant at Villa Mimosa
