Going Crazy in Brazil

On Thursday evening I was sitting at the bus stop on Overland and Washington waiting for the public limo after having purchased a sack of rice and plantains at the El Camagüey supermarket. I rarely grab the green bus at this stop, though on this day the weight of the groceries kept me from walking the mile back to my place.

As I sat on the bench I began to hear a woman screaming. I squinted down the block and spotted a middle aged white lady directing her angry diatribe at the cars and the Sony Picture Studio across the street. The sounds of her squeals increased as she walked closer to the bus stop. Much of what she said was illogical though she continued to declare the fact that she had been wrongly accused of something. As she stopped at the corner and viciously shrieked at no one in particular, I was reminded of the time when I had done something similar while living abroad.

Have you ever thought about what it would take for you to become that crazy person at the street light, pushing a shopping cart full of dead cats? I have always seen these eccentric characters with the assumption that I would never be like them, however one night, five months after arriving in Brazil; I had an experience with other-mindedness.

It was 7pm on Mother’s Day of 2005 and after going to the pay phone to give my mother a ring, I went back to my apartment to prepare for the my weekly pilgrimage to Barronnetti, a club in Ipanema.

I had not felt any sense of homesickness while in Brazil, beyond the first few days when I arrived in Bahia, although on this day I was struck with an incredible longing for home, or as we say in Portuguese, saudades. I decided that a healthy dose of clubbing would be just the cure for these saudades.

I went back to my flat, though I realized that since I didn’t need to show up at the club until midnight, I still had five hours to spend. I decided that I was thirsty and thus spent the subsequent 300 minutes blending up fruity cocktails, which I consumed on an empty stomach. This was the first mistake. The signs of my drunkenness could be seen in the fact that I had vandalized the living room floor with poetry, which my roommate had to scrub the next day while I was on my deathbed. The amount of alcohol I had consumed is uncertain, but it was more than I had ever quaffed in my lifetime. Five hours of imbibing later, I was still itching to hit the Ipanema dance floor. Just before the clock struck 12, my friends and I made it over to Barronnetti where we usually went to ear our guilty pleasure songs while observing the young Brazilian elite.

On this night, as I was completely and utterly inebriated, I have little memory of the time between entering the club and getting tossed out by security. All I recall is that I saw a bucket of Smirnoff ice on a VIP table, which I proceeded to steel and pass to my friends. Seeing as how I was a wee bit blasted, I didn’t think to look around me to see who was watching. After giving the drinks to a friend, I decided to go back for round two, at which point a security guard reported me. I was then charged 100 Reais (about 50 dollars) for drinks I don’t remember consuming and was told to leave.

I was angry that the night was over so quickly and I started to ball my eyes out in front of the club, saying that I had been cheated. My friends then escorted me to a taxi for the ride home. I was not in the mood to return home, and continued crying to the taxi driver, saying things in Portuguese and English that were rather incoherent. When we arrived at my apartment in Lebon, I jumped out of the cab as my friends were paying the driver and ran down the block. I heard my friend call my name, assuming I would be right back. I didn’t return for hours.

I had no idea where I was going, it was 3 in the morning and I was in Rio de Janeiro, crying and yelling in English that “they cheated me”. I could do nothing to halt these hysterics and amongst my tear filled vision I saw the faces of the apartment guards through many gates as I ran down the street behind my building. At this point I really had to pee.

There was a great big canal at the end of the street between where I lived that led to the Catholic University so I assumed that would be the ideal place to release the juices. There happened to be an enormous tree in the middle of this canal, which I thought would also serve to block my undressing from the after-club traffic. I was so out of it that in the midst of peeing I looked up and saw that it was a two-sided street, that although I had managed to hide my backside, the cars in front of me caught occasional glimpses of my American insanity as their headlights flashed me.

I pulled up my pants, tripped over a tree and cried for an uncountable amount of time. My eyes burned from the mascara that drained into my eyes. My lashes were like wet leaves, as I blinked little salty drops would fall off the edges and sting my vision. I continued to cry and roam the empty streets, catching the attention of each and every doorman in Leblon. I continued to scream in English and Portuguese, talking to myself, and asking “Why did they cheat me? I didn’t do anything.”

At some point all the grief I had piled up from the death of two friends that had occurred in the months leading up to my trip to Brazil was released in one head-splitting fiasco of hysterics. I staggered along the sidewalks of Rio, yelling, “Why did they have to die”? I heard doormen attempting to shush me, though others asked if I needed help. I twisted and twirled down the blocks until finally crawling up the stairs to my apartment. Upon returning, I noticed that my friends were not there and when I called another friend I was informed that my roommates were out looking for me and were pissed that I had taken off.

I had a second bout of hysterics and returned to the streets for one final round of neighborhood shame. I was incredibly thirsty, and somehow I managed to find a gas station in the midst of the crying and screaming in English and Portuguese and drank 20 ounces of carbonated water in a minute. At this point I retuned home and hit the hay.

The next day I woke up so incredibly ill that I took two doses of Dramamine and slept for another 12 hours.

It took me days to raise my head after that shameful experience. My friends forgave me for having acted a fool, though I never quite forgave myself for going so far. Granted I’m really not one to show my emotions, it pains me to cry in front of people, let alone in public. I am comfortable sharing the most private of information, but when it comes to crying or talking about my feelings in a non-joking manner, I cannot handle it. Thus, when I realized that the entire neighborhood had witnessed me lose my mind, I contemplated never leaving the house again. But then I remembered this really beautiful person I met at the beach and couldn’t be late for my date…

Homo Standard?

I was talking to a male friend about Halloween in West Hollywood the other day. I have never celebrated this holiday in Los Angeles, though I did spend one crazy October 31st in the Castro, the San Francisco equivalent. My friend, Javi, was discussing the intricate and impressive costumes of the many celebrants. As he told the story he then mentioned a distasteful experience when a man pinched his butt cheeks.

My response was, “Well, was he cute?” Javi was not amused by said comment and retorted, “I turned around and said, ‘What the fuck? You faggot!’ I was ready to throw down but he had a lot of friends with him so I let it go.”

When I told Javi that it was unnecessary to hate on the man for simply going after what he liked, in a gayborhood, there was no call for yelling, “faggot.” Obviously, this Halloweener thought my friend was cute and when I told Javi he should be flattered, he told me he wasn’t into that gay shit.

Let’s back up the truck. I asked that he imagine another situation in which a woman had grabbed his ass. Javi took a minute to contemplate the fingers of this fantasy woman caressing his caboose when he said, “Well, if she’s cute then I would love it.” And what about a woman expressing her desire for another woman through the pinching of a cheek? He couldn’t comment on that…

This pissed me off. To begin, violence is so unbecoming, why must every action result in the swinging of a fist? Here this man was, having fun on All Hallows Eve, when he saw an attractive ass, gave it a little smack, and is that really cause to knock the fan’s lights out? Furthermore, what I am betting really irritated my friend was that he liked it. He, of course, would be unwilling to admit this, but check this out:

There is this fabulous documentary called “Middle Sex” which follows the lives of homosexuals across the globe. In part of the film there is an experiment conducted by the University of Michigan to test homophobia. The researchers collected a sample of straight men that were completely at ease with other gay men, and in another cluster they recruited a group of homophobic men. In the tests, they had each man individually sit in a room and watch gay porn while being attached to machines that tested their biological responses. In all cases, the straight non-homophobic men had no reaction, whereas the homophobic men were often sexually aroused.

This is a scientifically tested reaction to a fact we already know: those who are homophobic experience these feelings in response to their own repressed attractions to the same sex or other insecurities about their sexualities. Javi’s reaction to the man who grabbed his butt was an example of this: it enraged him that a man would do that. Granted, I might feel violated if a random man did that to me, though I would probably not feel inclined to scream, “you fucking heterosexual.”

After seeing the aforementioned documentary I recalled a friend I used to travel with while an undergrad at CAL. I had this friend at UC Berkeley, who was against gay marriage. She was married to a man, technically, though was on the global market while traveling. Although she claimed that gay people should not have the right to marry, I couldn’t help but get thrown aback one day when she told me about the time she had a girlfriend. We were eating turkey burgers at Blake’s on Telegraph one day after Spanish class and she started telling me about her brief interlude with women. She said that she tried it but that the woman she was with was crazy and thus, it did not work out. I found it utterly fascinating that this woman had actually had a same sex experience and yet was still against gay marriage. Although I don’t know what sort of authority she thought she was on the institution of marriage, seeing as her husband had no idea what she was doing while in Argentina…

Another thing that enrages me is the homosexual double standard: So often on television it is seen as attractive for women to make out or experiment with one another, and yet when it comes to men, this is not seen as desirable. I have this homophobic male friend, who, one day, was listing the reasons why gay people should not have the right to marry. However, when talking about television, he said he was a fan of The L Word. For, it was “hot” to see women dating one another, and while they may have given him many a boner, he was not willing to repay their kindness with a marriage certificate. Go figure.

Sexual attractions are complicated and even for those who do not identify as homo/bi/transsexual, we are all a little bit gay by nature. There are varying degrees to this gayness, but there are qualities that we are attracted to that are found in both men and women. A good friend recently reminded me, that as Nietzsche says, there is no right or wrong, only good and bad encounters.

About to Burst in Zanzibar

You know how people make comments about "Be careful what you eat while traveling, otherwise you might spend a bit of quality time with the toilet?" Well, I had managed to prove these people wrong in spite of the fact that, while in Zanzibar, I ate all kinds of foods off the street. I chewed this roadside cuisine after picking it up with my right hand, the same hand that touched shillings, coins and everything else. I expected that the toilets of this Tanzanian island and I would know each other as well as I knew the ones in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. Though surprisingly, up until this point, I had no bowelistic problems.

It was the end of my five-week stay in Tanzania. I had attended the Zanzibar International Film Festival, made a host of friends, and had managed to see much of this spectacular Indian Ocean isle. I had been so busy with activities during my stay that I had almost forgotten to visit the host family of my Swahili professor at UCLA who had asked that I bring her family a packet of pictures she had taken on her last trip.

It was a few days before I was to go to Nairobi and one of the last errands I had to run before exiting the isle. Prior to safaring into a community outside of Stonetown I spoke with Zuhura’s host family and obtained directions to their abode. It was nerve racking to comprehend directions in Swahili, and as excited as I was to understand the words I realized that I still had no idea where I was to go. I was instructed to take a daladala from Darejani market to a stop called Kanisani, which was named after the minority Catholic Church in a predominantly Muslim island. When I got off the truck, a boy in a blue shirt and glasses would be waiting there and would escort me to the house. Luckily my friend Ahmed agreed to tag a long with me, so I wouldn’t get lost.

Before heading to the family’s house, I had spent the day with my friend Jamila and her family, where I ate a hardy lunch of rice, beans, salad and meat, per usual and I was fine. Then a few hours later Ahmed and I took a bus back to town where we returned to the house for a little rest. I started to feel a little "questionable” but I just assumed it was a wee bit of gas, nothing big.

At 5pm Ahmed and I strolled to the market to catch a dala dala, a flat bed pick up truck attached with bench seats and head coverings. After the daladala loaded all the passengers and merchandise, we were off to the outskirts of the city. It took around 30 minutes to arrive at the church and as soon as I put the change in the driver’s hand and exited the transport, I felt a shooting pain in my entrails. I was in the middle of nowhere, and the only person I saw was a man selling fruit and cold drinks from a little stand on the side of the road. As the “gotta go gotta go” feeling arrived, I attempted to not admit what was wrong with me while scoping out an exit strategy.

As far as the eye could see was a settlement of small houses along a road of dense coconut trees. I was just about to start asking who I could pay to use the loo when our lovely escort arrived. Granted, my stomach was in sailor knots at this point and thus I lost all sense of cultural etiquette. As soon as the young man greeted Ahmed and I, I said, “Do you live far from here?” This probably sounds like an appropriate question to the untrained ear, but this is defiantly not a suitable introductory question in Swahili culture. One must first ask how the other person is doing, introduce themselves and then delve into other questions after asking about the other person’s day and family. But really, time was of the painful essence.

The young man stated that he lived close by, so this response put me at ease for a moment. We were walking rather slowly, as people tend not to be in a rush, but I wasn’t sure if I’d make it without leaking. I then whispered to Ahmed, “Can we hurry up, I need to use the ladies room." Ahmed speaks English although he was not familiar with the term "ladies room" So instead of beating around the bush I had to say, "I have got to go to the toilet, nahitaji kuenda chooni. SASA!."

To my relief the house was around the corner, however because I had never met these people before and it is per Swahili culture to greet everyone in a lengthy way, I was trying to figure out how I was going to politely run in their house and jump on the toilet.

There is no way to doll up the shameful way I ran into this house, tossed off my shoes, introduced myself quickly and said, "may I use your bathroom?" This seems like a normal question, but I said this instead of "how are you, how is your family, how is the house, work, etc." I think they understood the predicament I was in and thus said warmly that I could of course use the bathroom though I had to wait for one of the children to fetch a pail of water for the flushing.

Finally I could see the finish line in the distance, I could see the toilet but I couldn’t go in it till the water came. They told me to wait and I was crossing my legs and praying to any god that would listen to please allow me to survive the embarrassment of this moment. An eternity later, one of the kids supplied me with a bucket of water and I was free to dive into the stall.

I was in there for what felt like an hour, which was probably more like 10 minutes. I then emerged from the thrown, satisfied and apologetic that I had been so rude to not greet everyone properly. When I felt like I was going to bust into a million pieces, it wasn't funny, but while in the bathroom I thought how ridiculous it must be for this family to have a strange white woman in their bathroom doing God knows what. Ah, humanity.

In the end I think they forgave me, or were too polite to point out the strangeness of it all, including the fact that I had brought a male friend along with me. We sat and talked with the family for a while as I hoped to make up for my awkward first impression, all I could think of was why did that have to happen at the worst possible moment?