Goddammit.
Goddammit, I hate Americans sometimes.
Every time I come back to this country I feel a rising disgust at being associated with these massive shit wads. The lack of worldliness, the fast food, the Coca-Cola, loud and exaggerated voices, the fat, superfluousness of everything. The percentage that represents intelligence, creativity, jazz, blues, explorers, independence and ingenuity is a very small number indeed. The rest of them, these twats, these ignorant and complacent gits… I can’t even form complete sentences around them, it’s just so many idiotic interpretations and faith in the wrong…….dammit!
And don’t get me started on the Christian right. Just don’t.
Breathe Pete. One, two, one, two, in, out, in, out…
That’s it. Easy, big fella.
–
Ahrggghhh! It’s no use, they’re everywhere, especially in Texas. God, I loathe Texas.
But not as much as these Christians. I sat there, entertaining dim-witted half-thought questions to fools with good intentions but not one original thought in the heads. It’s not a tragedy but it is ironic; horrible and hatefully so. The externalities of the ignorance of these people causes a rise in me that’s explosive and dangerous like sake and car bombs.
Anyway, I hate & I loathe, but I try to just sit there and not turn violent. That’s all you can reasonably ask of me in Texas. The swine across the isle…I snap occasionally when I hear them say things like “in Brazil it’s just easier to spread the work of God because people accept Jesus in their hearts when he tells them to,” or worse, “they’re not hampered by the stupid division between church and state.”
You think I kid.
“That stupid division is what’s kept this country running like a warm stove up until now,” I snap at him like a political piranha. But he goes on.
“people are so accepting and…”
“Ignorant?” I interject. He seems not to notice.
“…and nice,” he continues, blankly and uselessly. I have much to say but as usual, I try to keep it to myself. This doesn’t always work because things that need to come out, tend to. Nature finds a way, right? Look that up. It’s in Jurassic Park.
I look at him coldly. An innocent-looking child sits close by. His young, I assume, but something isn’t quite right about the look it’s giving me. I feel unsettled and uneasy. I prod a bit deeper.
“Has it occurred to you that religion, while it gives them hope and something to latch onto is also one of the greatest hindrances to their progress? People don’t need love, they need infrastructure. They don’t need god, they need health care. Your understanding of the causality of the situation is all wrong.”
“God made his children all equally lovable, but some need more guidance than others to find the strength in which to know Him.”
“You’re either absurdly tactless or tragically uneducated to say something like that,” I say, with malapert thoughts on my mind.
“Do you read the Bible, friend?”
“Jesus Christ,” I blurt, not really jonesing for the reaction but glad to have it. His eyes swell with indignation at my impudent reaction.
That seemingly innocent youth next to him, a pupil faith assassin, looks at me curiously, obviously having caught more of what I so generously handed out. I look at her sharply and continue, now that the locks are flooding.
“I had loads of premarital sex,” I stab, gaging the small one’s reaction. “My favorite meat on Friday is red,” I continue, seeing the children eagerly identify me as a heathen who needs saving, their assassin’s eyes on me like a starving rotweiller, eyes fixed on the prize.
Let them come.
As they spring, teeth out and Bibles in hand I pull out my light saber and slice the first three in one burning motion. Their halves fall to the ground separated by mere moments of delay. I lay the rest of them spread eagle on the floor with the Necrominicon I carry with me for just these sorts of times.
At the climax of it all, looking down on the field of half-corpses and mortally stunned carcasses I realize that they were just children. Young, misguided, doomed children nonetheless, but it wasn’t their fault. If only their hypocrite parents could’ve thought for themselves long enough to teach the kids they would have had a more reasonable reaction to my powers.
Oh well.
–
Dammit, Every fucking time I re-enter this country, something like this winds up happening. Every TIME.
Houston International Airport, Terminal C - April, 2006
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There have been naysayers who thought I had not the sack that hangs between my legs to do the necessary to secure the goals I so arduously seek. You know who you are. And you know what?
Shut up.
I have faced, not once, not twice, but thrice the fury of the Brazilian salesman working on heavy commission. But I planned, schemed and executed beautifully, on time and under budget. In heavy traffic I crossed the Beast, found the places, got my wares and made it back alive, successfully.
And it wasn’t in the ease of the evening, after work when time is not a factor. And it certainly was not on a weekend when I have better adventures to chase, more dangerous and less well-funded. No, it was during a maddeningly well-planned lunch hour that I sought my instrument, my talisman. With all my skills and wits about me did I face the insanity of crossing the Beast at mid-day, when the motorcycle boys are out in full force and when people are hungry. With all my innate sense of direction did I tell the cabbie where to go, in the rain, turning onto streets only known to me from a 300 mile orbit picture on Google Maps. With all my fierce ice-coldery did I stand in the face of the musical store sales-wretch and make him bow to my clear American Express Blue card, which apparently they don’t have in Brazil.
“I’m not sure we can take this clear, futuristic card of credit. I’ve never seen it’s equal.”
“Take it! Take it, vile scum! Feed from my credit, which is immaculate as it is foreign. You shall know no better reward (and I’ll get the points).”
“I cannot as I don’t know the card code. It’s written in some kind of alien language I can’t read.”
“Fool, the card is clear and you’re reading it from behind!”
“Ahh. I hear you master. Your power is great indeed. I will throw in a power cable and carrying case for you.”
“You are wise.”
–
And so it was that I bought my guitar.
Victory over the Beast, and I even had time to eat an esfiha when I got back. I am - and please understand that I say this with all my modesty - the shit.
…and my guitar rocks. Hard.
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Characters in this strange place on dark nights with little moonlight. With this job, with this existence, I don’t know, man. I feel like I wander into realities that were never really meant for me but through which I’ve been allowed temporary passage.
Taxi drivers in Brazil — cabbies — being what they are, would also make good bartenders. They know of all of the best places to eat for cheap, where the quality counts and the quantity is abundant. They are often rough but sometimes refined, and can lend a good ear in short bursts of 5 blocks. That’s a pretty tight skill to have.
“It’s all the same”, he said. “All the same. Don’t ever think you’re in the worse, because the guy you think is better off, isn’t. I know — I’ve been both.”
Wisdom, man, especially now, in these times. We spoke in vague terms, uncommitted and agreeable, but I left it all in the backseat. He said that’s how you win when you have all of this baggage and you don’t know where to start — you leave it in the car, in the back, and don’t take your worries home with you.
That sounded right. I’d sure like to believe him, but I just can’t imagine it’s that simple.
Or maybe I don’t want to.
–
We have, all of us, such disparate existences, such alternate realities. There are dark corners of this city where integrity is not defined by your character. It’s not defined at all, actually, because survival is too important to worry about integrity. There are other corners, other places where what matters is your power to obtain because it’s all you have left.
Or something like that.
What I know is that many times it happens in this country, that as I’m about to step out of the cab and am waiting for my receipt (since, you know, it’s a business expense), the cabbie asks me how much I want him to make it out for.
“What do you mean,” I ask naively. “What does the meter read?”
“45 Reais,” he replies.
“Then make it out for 45 Reais,” I say. He looks at me with a confused look most times, though occasionally you get the guy that understands that you’re not of those guys.
“Wow,” he’ll say, “usually they say to double or quadruple it. I don’t get many like you.”
“Shit,” I say, “that’s too bad. If they’re government people, it’s likely you’re paying for it.”
“What?” He asks.
But that’s a losing battle.
–
Once, it was late at night, one or two in the morning. I was headed back from dinner at my uncle’s house but the cabbie didn’t know that. He picked me up on a corner by a residential street and who knows what he thought I was doing there. Leaving home?
He must’ve thought I was a local of some kind. Business men who pay expensive late-night taxi fees in São Paulo are either government folk from Brasilia who don’t know the city or else foreigners who don’t speak Portuguese.
I was neither, of course, and I had done my homework, studying Google Maps until late hours of the night so that I would feel comfortable in this vast sprawl of concrete and narrow roads. It totally threw him off when I asked him to take me to a well-known and very expensive hotel on the ritzy part of town.
“Are you alone?” He asked me initially, which made me nervous. In a city like São Paulo, you never want people to know you’re alone.
I told him that no, I wasn’t alone. I was married.
“I know,” he said, “but are you alone?”
Oh. Hmm. Um.
How fascinating, I thought, and adjusted my butt on the leather bench seat of his taxi. This guy had absolutely no reservation about taking a married man to see a prostitute, even arranging it for him. And why should he? It wasn’t, I felt, just about how much money he could make from it. It was his role as a courier to provide a full-service escort from point A to point B. And since he knew his client’s typical tastes from experience, of course I had been bundled into the same line of thought. It wasn’t a values thing, it’s just how the night winds wail in some places.
This strange reality tends to fade when the sun comes up, but weirder things come up; things in conference rooms on the high floors of corporate high-rises; things I don’t like to repeat. There are many kinds of evil in our world but the worst kind is the one that doesn’t traverse other people’s values; the ones that you may not be willing to do, but someone is. That’s when things get dangerous if you wander through these realities. At one point or another, I will have to consider that as an option, I think.
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Saturday started off as hectic as one would have expected when coordinating a trip between three families, only one of which is not loaded with the burden… err, blessing, I should say — of children under 6. It’s a goddamn miracle we arrived at the lovely little beach town of Cambury before 1 pm. A goddamn miracle.
Speaking of which, the boys and I were quite the fools back in the day when we traveled to Guarujá and payed a hundred Reais to squeeze into the maid’s room at the hotel for a weekend. Had we continued another hour north we would have found it well worth our troubles and adventures to be lost in the thickest of jungles of the Mata Atlantica bordering the nicest beach town yet.
Such is the folly of youth, I suppose.
Often times it happens that the universe is not cooperative and decides to turn things against one’s every whim. Sometimes though - sometimes the universe gets creative and events conspire to turn your way. I feel, friends, that this weekend was one such time.
I had every intention of spending the weekend surfing as much as possible on my birthday budget, though renting boards in Brazil is getting more and more expensive every time I’m here. I never really considered just chilling on the beach…I never really understood why people do that when there’s so much more to do.
But the universe conspired, remember, and all was set on track.
–
On arrival at our pretty little pousada, I went around back to explore the joint and its surrounding foliage, which is ample and thick, just the way I like it. I can only imagine what people must think seeing a white dude with long hair, an obviously-foreign look about him and poking around a maintenance area that has barely any room between it and the jungle. Suspicions of mischief must overload their minds.
Whatever their fears, they stayed away, and I am thankful for that. With few exceptions, in a place like this I’m pretty much anti-people.
While exploring I found an old dude with white hair and very short shorts waxing a surfboard with a grin on his face that could fit a kitten.
“Alex,” he introduced himself, reaching over his wooden board to shake my hand. I took it.
Alex worked as a real-estate agent in Campinas and also ran a welding supply company. I think that’s what it was. I might have lost some of that in the translation.
“Are you in the pousada for long,” he asked me.
“Nah, just the weekend. Hope to get some surfing done.”
“Good,” he said. “This is the place to do it. Rodrigo runs a very nice pousada here - plenty of space to move around and everyone leaves you alone. My wife and I don’t go anywhere else in this state.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “That’s exactly what I’ll need this weekend.”
I asked him what the going rate was for board-rental in the area. It varies so much, I’d found, on other beaches, and the tooth picker and dick dragging locals usually don’t know shit about that kind of thing.
“Why the hell would you rent a board?” He asked. “I’ve got 5 in that closet behind you.”
I looked at him in mild disbelief, waiting for him to tell me how much he was going to charge me for his boards. But it never came.
“I won’t lend you this one because I just got it and want to try it out. It’s a big board too, shaped by a guy in San Luis Obispo in California. Great surf out there!”
“I know,” I said, hiding my smile, “I’ve heard.” That was no time to show off.
So he gave me his long board and I headed for the sand, to beach where the waves were plentiful, fast, well-formed and over sandbars, not rocks or a reef. Sand is better than stones or coral in a situation like this where you’re surfing in a Speedo.
–
Later that evening, surfed out and tanked on a clear liquor that Alex had served up for me, I joined him and his wife, Amparo, in a conversation with the funny little man who owns the pousada, Rodrigo.
Amparo was a short, black-haired woman with the body of a 25 year-old but the sullenness of a woman 15 years her senior. She was the quiet type and we didn’t hear much from her throughout the night, but her exotic beauty complimented her stern appearance and she wore her age well.
Rodrigo, we quickly discovered, an Anarchist. How about that? I don’t think I’ve ever met one before. Alex mentioned that he becomes more anarchistic the more drunk he is but at this point he was pretty far gone and he really wanted government out.
“What Brazil is needs,” he stumbled, “isn’t fairness or fewer taxes or health care. We need to do what the Americans are doing! Terrorism!”
I leaned back on the couch. Alex rolled his eyes. Amparo said nothing.
“Look at how much unity it’s inspired in them. We need more terrorism in this country.”
“So why don’t you do something about it, you freak?” Alex said pointedly, clearly probing his friend’s inebriation.
“I don’t think you realize what it takes to have good terrorists bother you,” I told him, very casually. “You have to work at it. You think it was easy pissing off enough people in the right way?”
Alex and Rodrigo looked at me with confusion on their faces.
“You boys need more insight into the stealing that goes on the government. There’s too much hiding behind legislation and phony back offices in the Brazilian Government. If you’re going to have an anarchistic revolt full of terror and senseless violence, you have to get people there. You have to steal out in the open, lie to the people directly, in the press conferences, to their faces, and look comfortable doing it full of disdain for the law and with a middle finger out of the public. The only other way to do it is to invade enough middle eastern countries, but you don’t have the organization for that.”
They seemed satisfied with this advice and mulled over it for the rest of the night but I got bored of festering unrest. It started to get disgusting when another idiot joined their conversation and really jammed a log under their fire. He spoke of military occupation and oppression of free thought as if it were the only solution, a polar opposite to our inn-keeper, Rodrigo.
“Sometimes,” he said, “the only solution is to wipe out the trouble makers. Get rid of that scum.” Everyone looked aghast. I don’t think any of them had ever met so much as a neocon, let alone a tyrannical lunatic.
Their arguments ensued, mostly civilized, and mostly because Rodrigo passed out on the table a few minutes into it. I took the opportunity to sneak off elsewhere, to a place where the anarchists aren’t yet looming, but neither are the neocons, the armies of Jesus, or the Nazis. Fuck, man, I don’t need that on a weekend.
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