Shortly after landing, on your way to baggage claim, a young Brazilian girl hands you a tourist map of Rio de Janeiro. A couple months from now, thousands of tourists from all over the world will be coming here to witness the Summer Olympics. I am here ahead of the game, to give the people back home a sneak preview of what to expect if they travel to Rio this summer. Will you have fun? Will you get robbed? Will you catch the Zika virus? Will you find yourself involved in a coup? Will you fall in love? Will you be lonely your whole miserable life, Colby? All these questions and more I'll try my best to answer. I shove the tourist map into my bag. It will remind me of the places I will not go. I'm not here for any of that. This is my olympiad.
Just a couple hours after getting my passport stamped at the airport, I end up at a backyard party in a favela in the northern part of Rio called Irajá, which to me looks a bit like Iraq. It's not the worst favela in Rio, I am told, but it's up there. The mailman doesn't make deliveries here because it's just too dangerous. I'm not quite sure what street I'm on, but a local family is throwing a party for their son who just graduated from medical school. He's young and smart and has that studious thing about him, as if he's always deep in thought. Everyone around him is extremely proud. The cake on the table is in the shape of a doctor's uniform and there are a dozen or so people hanging out all around me of all ages and skin colors. The girl who invited me to this party, Lauren, owns the bed-and-breakfast where I'm staying in Ipanema, called Casa Bromelia, which is located just a block from one of the most beautiful beaches on the planet. She says where I'm staying is safe, but just two days before, a girl was stabbed to death on the beach right outside of some fancy hotel.
Lauren is from the States, visited Rio years ago, loved it, moved here, and this family adopted her as one of their own when they found out she was here all alone with no family. Brazilians are very family-oriented, and the more people in the family the better, including total strangers. They're passing heaping trays of food around, the beer is flowing like wine, and there's a guy standing by the barbecue who's grilling with one hand and swatting at insects with the other using this electronic bug zapper shaped like a tennis racket, which reminds me that I forgot to pack insect repellent. Nor do I plan on purchasing any. I figure catching Zika might add to the story and perhaps be a great way for me to shed a couple pounds. I'm from California—that's how we think.
While seated on a plastic lawn chair, eating some homemade farofa, I hear laughter all around me. The young kids keep saying the word slum and then laughing their heads off. Lauren leans in to whisper that the mother is saying to everyone, "Why would he come all the way to Rio and hang out in a favela? He should be at the beach!"
I'm not much of a beach person.
At the party is a guy in a wheelchair who wears around his neck a chain with a Christian cross dangling from it. He's paralyzed from the waist down thanks to being shot multiple times while driving in this particular favela. While eating the celebratory cake, he pulls out his cell phone to show me a picture of his brother, who was killed here. He drives one of those special cars, and at the end of the party he offers Lauren and me a ride to the metro.
In the backseat, Lauren tells me how he is taking a special route, driving only on the streets that he knows have the fewest shootings. We thank him for the ride, and on the metro back to Ipanema I ask Lauren where I should go if I was a tourist visiting Rio for the first time and wanted to experience the nightlife. She suggests a neighborhood called Lapa.
It's a good half hour away from Ipanema, and my cabdriver drops me off at a gas station in a very vibrant part of town, filled with many restaurants, clubs, and bars. The streets are packed, thousands are out, and open-container laws don't exist here. The people are all beautiful. Nearly everyone has a drink in hand or is selling booze from a shopping cart or is seated in front of a cooler filled with beer to sell. This functioning gas station is a party as well, with people gathered around the pumps, mixing drinks on top of them, hanging out and conversing. A couple is passionately making out on the hood of a parked car.
There's an old lady seated on a crate selling beer out of a Styrofoam cooler by one of these pumps and I point to a beer and with my fingers ask how much. With her hand she tells me four. I nod okay, and when she hands me my beer and I hand her my five, she stares at me for quite some time and then increases the cost of the beer, now showing me five fingers.
A guy is getting his ass beat by a bouncer outside one of the clubs. He's bloodied and pinned to the ground. I can hear Morrissey coming from the club, and it looks like the guy on the ground is poor—his clothes are filthy and he has no shoes. There's a crowd standing around all dumbly watching what's going on, and off to the side, a couple making out furiously.
People make out in Rio.
After I purchase another beer off a street vendor, this rock-'n'-roll-roadie-looking type wearing a Pirates of the Caribbean T-shirt comes at me all wild, talking to me in a bunch of Portuguese. My first impression is that he's crazy. I tell him, "Sorry, I don't speak the language," and he gets even more excited, gives me a high-five, and says, "What's up, man!" I tell him nothing much, just waiting for the world to end. He's fifty-two years old, born and raised in Lapa, and I come to find out he is actually crazy. He tells me so, and when I tell him we all are crazy in our own ways, he gives me this enormous high-five again.
He speaks broken English, and when I pull out my journal to have him write his name down for me, since I can't really understand him, he writes, "My fuck name is Orlando. My nickname is Zezinho!!!!" followed by a bunch of stuff I can't decipher. He worked as a sound engineer, he says, but is currently unemployed. "No one has job! I kiss ass! I work many times. Now, no." Since I'm taking notes, he gets suspicious and points at me up and down, brings up my build and my haircut, and is now convinced I'm "federal police." Speaking of which, where are they? I haven't seen a single one yet. I assure him that I'm not, that I'm just a tourist, and he points a block or so away to a massive series of cement arches, stacking two rows high. It's called the Carioca Aqueduct and it cuts across the city center. He tells me that if I stay where I am, I'll be fine, but then his eyes get even more wild. He cocks his fingers into a pistol. "Pow! Pow! Pow!" he says. That's what will happen if I go to the other side of the Carioca. I slam down my empty, purchase another from a guy selling them from a shopping cart, thank the roadie for his time, and make my way over to the other side of the Carioca.
I've found home. The buildings are dilapidated, there's graffiti and filth and trash everywhere, yet there's this different energy and aliveness here that one doesn't feel on the other side of the double arches where I just was. From the art galleries and dance studios and bohemian types everywhere, I get the feeling that I am in an artist community.
I end up with a bottle, seated on the cement steps at the bottom of the 250-step stairway called Escadaria Selarón, or "Selarón Steps." The staircase itself is a work of art, covered in an explosive array of colorful tiles that make it shine, even at night. There's a bunch of crust-punk-looking types sitting on the steps alongside me, mixed with some Rasta- and beach-bum-looking types, and there's another couple making out. Wait, there are several. No, wait. Everyone's making out.
The urge to make more Brazilians is strong.
It's 4:00 A.M. Slouched in the backseat of my cab on my way home, staring out the window, thinking to myself how for the last six hours all I did was walk around by myself. All my life, by myself, I thought. When is it going to end? My cabdriver is running every single red light. He's not even slowing down.
I have a decision to make once I am dropped off at my location. Either I can call it a night and go in to sleep, or I can take a peek at what's going on at the club directly across the street that's still going off at this late hour. I enter the club and order a drink and a shot at the bar. I observe that everyone is extremely attractive. Music is playing and people are dancing, others are talking and laughing and embracing like they have never been happier to see someone in all their lives. I sit down and moments later, this cute and very petite Brazilian girl pops up alongside me. I noticed her dancing as I walked in—she was having so much fun and had this warmth about her. She's wearing a polka-dotted miniskirt and a black blouse showing off a tremendous amount of cleavage. We make eye contact and it's the first real eye contact and smile I've received all night.
Earlier, Lauren told me that most of her clientele are gringos who come here to try and hook up with Brazilian women. Most don't have any luck, she says, because they don't know how to talk to Brazilian women. She says it's all about the approach—there needs to be confidence and passion and a whole long list of other things that would make Rio the very last place on earth for a guy like me to get laid. I can't for the life of me approach a girl. I've always had this problem. Lauren also told me it's not uncommon for two people to kiss right off the bat to see if there's any chemistry. It's all about chemistry, passion, and the moment. "Living in the moment"—that's important here.
I'm sensing a moment, so I decide to go for it. Fuck it. I'm in another country. What's the worst that can happen? A slap? A drink splashed on me? A tap on my shoulder from her favela drug-lord boyfriend asking me, What in the hell are you doing? I place my hand on her hip and glide her closer to me so that she can hear what I'm about to say, since the music is pretty loud. There's no resistance, and I pull her closer to me until our bodies are pressed up against each other. She shifts her body in a way that's somewhat sexual. I lean in and whisper in her ear something corny about how I noticed you while you were dancing and you were amazing. She then pulls away and gives me an even bigger smile but tells me with her eyes that she doesn't understand a word of English. I then remember that I wrote down some Portuguese in my journal just in case I found myself in this situation, a sentence I had Lauren tell me. I open up my journal to find the page and try to read her the words "Você é muito bonita," which I was told means "You are very beautiful." Her head is cocked to the side, not understanding, but she's smiling every time I attempt to communicate this to her.
She pulls out her cell phone and curses how she can't get WiFi or she could use Google Translate. I don't want to pull out my phone to know what she's saying because right now I just want to live in the moment, and so I go back to looking in her eyes, which are beautiful, and talking to her in the same way I saw so many people do all over Rio tonight, and she is receptive to this, very much so, and we end up talking to each other effusively—there is so much to say—in languages that neither of us understand.
We take our moment outside. There, she starts using the word fuck with a question mark attached to it, and every time she says this, I say Yes followed by an exclamation point. There's some confusion on where we should go to fuck. She asks where I am staying, and I point to the building across the street and say how we can't go there, it's a bed-and-breakfast, there's a family that's just checked in, it'd be inappropriate. She has no idea what I'm saying, and in this crowd of people hanging out and drinking outside of this club, she spots a friend of hers who is flamboyantly gay and who speaks some broken English and is able to translate for us.
Great. My night's over, I think. Here's where her cock-blocking gay friend is going to look me up and down, pull her to the side, and tell her no way, don't do it, girlfriend, all about how she can do much better, how I'm totally drunk, you'll thank me for this later. But the opposite happens. He tells me she really likes me and wants to leave and go have sex. I tell him I'm totally okay with this, and while we're trying to figure out where we should go, he tells me, "You know she is prostitute, right?"
Pause.
I sober up. Her? There's no way. I look back at her. She gives me another one of those heart-melting smiles of hers and I … I don't know what to do. She's a hooker? While staring back into her eyes and seeing that smile, I'm reminded of the countless beautiful women I walked by tonight—none of them looked at me the way she does. I tell him, "Honestly, my friend, I don't have enough money on me to afford a night with her." He translates this to her and they talk. He tells me that she really likes me and would sleep with me for far less. I pull out what's left in my pockets and count what's left in my wallet, and it's enough to maybe buy a six-pack. He points to an ATM, I shake my head no, I tell him I purposely don't carry my ATM card on nights when I know I'm going to go big, and that's specifically for this reason here. I tell him to tell her sorry, that I'm not looking for that tonight and I'm more interested in just hanging out and having fun, but to also tell her thank you for me. She is a beautiful human being, and I felt a connection for a moment, and that was nice. He communicates all this to her and they talk back and forth and he tells me that she doesn't care, she still likes me and still wants to hang out with me tonight. Really? I look at her, she smiles, I smile back, and we hug.
Now she wants pizza. It's around 6:00 A.M., so the three of us jump in the back of a cab. I have no idea where they're taking me.
Sabrina is her name.
My new girlfriend and I are seated at an outdoor table out in God knows where along with our gay friend. The sun is now out and she puts on her Wayfarers. We order more drinks and she's friends with several of the other hookers hanging out on the street. She introduces me to them all and they are all kind and sweet to me. When our food arrives, my left hand is holding Sabrina's hand and I'm using my right hand to take notes in my journal so I don't forget any of this as our gay friend is periodically feeding me bites of pizza.
I tell Lauren all about the night I had. When I tell her how Sabrina paid for the pizza and drinks and just wanted to hang out, she tells me that my experience is not typical.
I wander another favela, Santa Marta, thinking I'm some kind of total badass explorer, and everywhere I turn leads to a dead end. It's not like you can use Google Maps to find your way through the very narrow alleyways of Rio's favelas. Just then I come across what appears to be a tour group exploring the same favela, all cumbersome cameras and brand-new I HEART RIO T-shirts, being led by a black guy and a fun-looking blond Brazilian lady who gives me a friendly smile as I walk past her. Their tour has just ended, and after some debate with myself, I turn around and ask her if she'll give me a tour. She says sure, but the next one isn't for a couple hours. I figure that's time to get a bite to eat. Her name is Marrissa.
It's a buffet where they sell food by the pound and you can pack your plate with as much paella as possible. My plate is overflowing, and while digging in, I look up and see Marrissa walking in. She asks if she can join me. I'm slightly embarrassed at the amount of food I have on my plate, but I tell her, Sure! I'd love to have you as company. The first thing she tells me is how she lives alone. I live alone as well, I tell her, and I know the pain. "I like living alone, though," she says, and she also likes to travel alone.
I agree, I tell her. It's complicated, though. There is something that is hitting me pretty hard in Rio, and finally, I find it in a sentence. "But you have no one to share the experience with," I say.
The tour starts at the very top of the favela. We are joined by a young couple from Milwaukee. The first thing we're shown is a cement wall that's riddled with bullet holes and known as the "execution wall." This is where the drug lords would shoot and kill whoever didn't follow the rules of the favela. This favela at one time was that bad, but now it's world famous and frequented by adventurous tourists. Next to this execution wall is an observation deck with a breathtaking view not only of the favela but of all Rio as well. Michael Jackson shot a video here, and it's a popular location for movies.
Somebody has tagged the wall behind us with the word GENTRIFICAçãO. I've lived in San Francisco off and on for the last ten years and am well aware what gentrification looks like. So far I haven't seen any of that here. Marrissa points out all of the homes located right about where the graffiti is, and she explains how the government has wanted to demolish all of these homes and put up a five-star hotel in their place. She then points at a half-built cement apartment complex located at the bottom of the hill and explains how they were going to move all of those people there, but they refused to leave their homes, which brought construction to a halt, which is why everything's half built. I ask why the people refused relocation. "It's ugly, it looks poor here, but this is their home," she says.
Over by the gift shop is another observation deck and a life-sized statue of Michael Jackson. We are given a ten-minute break to shop and take pictures, and I decide to poke around the little alleyways that all lead to God knows where, and I come across some interesting graffiti, so I go back and grab Marrissa to interpret. She looks at it, then turns around and firmly tells me, "It is nothing."
"Are you sure? It doesn't look like nothing."
I'm no expert, but it looks like gang graffiti to me, with the words CHAPADãO FAMILIA. Reluctantly, she tells me that Chapadão is the name of another favela. Not too long ago, a couple of tourists typed the wrong address into their GPS and ended up driving through there, and when they did, drug dealers shot and killed one of them.
Marrissa says that drugs have totally destroyed some of the communities in the favelas, and the guy from Milwaukee asks what drugs they're pushing. Marrissa tells us it's everything but mostly coke. "I was offered some the other day," Milwaukee says. I pull him to the side and start asking him about it—he says it was on the beach at Copacabana. Some guy walking around selling sunglasses and then, boom, he touched his nose and all the sudden he's a drug dealer, offering a full range of pharmaceuticals, and sex massages, too.
"Sex massages? Really?"
Just as I'm taking this all in, I hear Marrissa trying to get my attention.
"Colby!" she finally shouts. I turn around and she's pointing up to the top of the mountain. "Look!" she says excitedly. "It's Christ the Redeemer! You need to go see him!"
There's a newsstand on Ipanema Beach where this young kid named Omar works. He's eighteen, speaks a bit of English, and he's skinny, but he works out and is in love with his personal trainer. He tells me all this while I'm seated on a wooden bench right outside his newsstand, which is also a bar. It's 4:00 A.M. He tells me he keeps asking her out on dates, and although she always flirts back with him, she never says yes, always maybe. He pulls out his cell phone to show me a photo of her, and I see that she's gorgeous. I then realize that Omar and I have the same problem. I keep meeting these beautiful women here in Rio, but in the end none of them are really interested in me. They just want to charge me for personal-training sessions. I don't need any personal-training sessions, I want the real thing, I want to have a real moment here in Brazil, here on earth, a moment that you don't have to pay for.
Omar says that he thinks she just flirts with him to get him to pay for more sessions. While taking another swig of my beer I tell him that he's probably correct. He stares at her image on his phone and says he's in love with her. He says love several times when talking about her, and I keep my thoughts to myself.
I was once young, too.
When the bar across the street closes, Omar decides to shut his newsstand as well. As he gets up to do so, I start feeling blue, and I notice that all the hookers are migrating toward the beach now while a few get in cabs to go home. I pull out my cell phone, out of boredom and out of habit and to see what time it is, and right then this hooker walks right up to me. "Put that away," she says.
Her name is Sophia. She's slightly older than the others, but she's stunning in a jeans miniskirt. With her Brazilian accent she tells me all about how she never carries her cell phone when she goes out, and that no one should, ever. She explains that playing with your phone is "nothing" and "not real," and how it's our duty to enjoy life. We get to talking and when she finds out I haven't really been to the beach yet or ever watched the sun come up, she gets excited and insistent and tells me that I must to come with me to the beach! She's with three other hookers, all beautiful shades of Brazil, it's very late, I've never met any of these women before, I'm in Rio, I can't recall the last time I've seen a police officer, why not?
On the way there, she again goes on and on with all this be-happy, don't-be-depressed crap that somehow doesn't irritate me.
On the street that runs alongside the beach, there's a stand that's still open where you can still buy drinks. There's a small crowd, warm and jubilant for the hour, all friends of Sophia's, and she kindly introduces me to every single one of them, and I'm smiling, I'm meeting people, and I look over at her and she's smiling, too, and I'm getting the impression that seeing me happy makes her happy. There's about half a dozen more hookers of various ages, a couple musician types, a few drug dealers, and a crazy-artist type who is a bit deformed. He can't walk correctly and he's the kind of person who's very enthusiastic about everything, volatile even, and you can't tell from one moment to the next if he's going to stab you with a screwdriver. He's got a canvas out and is working on a piece. He breaks an ink pen, gets the tube filled with ink, splatters as much paint as he can onto the canvas, and with cigarette butts, which he uses as brushes, he smears the ink around to form some of his image. He holds up the masterpiece and asks what I think. I tell him it's very abstract, but I like it. He gets superexcited and demands that I have this work of his for free, right now, thrusting it at me. Sophia steps in and tells him not now, we're going to the beach and I don't want to be lugging it around, and he gets pissed to the point where he's yelling at her. I can see that she's dealt with him many times before, and the compromise is that I'll get the painting later. Now he's happy.
When the sun is about to come up, Sophia asks for my hand. She pulls out a baggie and dumps some coke into it and says it's for me. Sophia hugs me tightly and tells me to just enjoy the moment, and remember this, remember it, and I never asked her if she was one or not, but the moment I know she is a hooker is when she tells me to kiss her, but not on the lips, only on the cheeks. Sabrina had this rule as well. So I kiss her, and she kisses me back. Not once does Sophia hit me up for sex—she instinctively knows I'm not looking for it. The sun is wobbling just over the horizon, but runs into a couple clouds. "See?" I tell her, "Nothing ever works out. Ever."
She disagrees, and she invites me over to another group of friends of hers who are all singing joyfully, which might have something to do with all the cocaine. When it's time for me to go, she hugs me again tightly.
"I am your friend!" she says.
The road to the Olympics is a nightmarish series of oversized strip malls and mega malls, Outback Steakhouses, chain stores with the word Americano attached to everything, Burger Kings, Imax theaters, a Statue of Liberty that looks to scale. I'm in the back of a cab with the photographer assigned to the story, Paulo from São Paulo, who just arrived here about an hour ago. It's 11:00 A.M., and he tells me that Lauren told him that she heard me stumbling in at around 7:00. I tell him that's about right. Been working long hours lately.
While stuck in traffic, which is at a standstill, I receive a text from Sabrina. It's another one of her texts that's nothing more than a long series of heart and flower emojis. I ignore it. After last night, I've made the decision that I am going to ghost her. We went out and had drinks and everything was fine until she started pressuring me into paying to have sex with her. She's persistent, I'll give her that. Now she's wondering what's wrong with me. I'm stuck in the largest traffic jam in the world, that's what's wrong with me. I wonder how these people that we're sharing the road with are going to get to work during the Olympics. If traffic is a mess now, wait until summer.
Paulo wants to enter the stadium area to take pictures. He's using his persuasive voice and they're firmly denying him access. He pulls out his wallet and casually hints. Now a different kind of security guard comes over, this one wearing a gun. Behind all of them, a couple is making out.
Minutes later a press guy named Gabriel shows up and I chat with him while Paulo awaits word if we can get in or not. I ask if they plan on having this all complete by the time the Olympics arrive, and he confidently tells me yes. I ask him about the area, what it was before all this, and he tells me it was just a racetrack. I point to the village right next to where all the stadiums are going up, which looks like it's been hit by a bomb, and with a smile Gabriel tells me those people will be just fine. There have been some "minor legal controversial problems" there, he says, but the mayor has pledged to build some new housing just for them.
They're not allowing Paulo into the stadium area, which is totally fenced and off limits to the public. So instead of touring the gleaming Olympic city, we walk around the doomed village. There's protest graffiti everywhere. RIO DE JANEIRO NA LAMA MORADORES DE BEH SITIADOS. I ask Paulo what it means, and he says, "It's important."
Something about Rio de Janeiro residents being under siege.
We bang on a door belonging to a home that looks like it was constructed using various materials from a junkyard. On the door is a flyer warning about Zika. A shirtless guy answers. His name is Francisco, and he tells me that his family has lived here in this home for their entire lives, he's worked hard, saved up money, and he built this home of his with his bare hands, with love. He works as a security guard at a nearby building, never takes any vacations, and has never traveled. He doesn't want to leave home, wants to live here instead but there's really nothing much he can do. When asked about the new homes and area they are going to develop for him, he shrugs. As we talk, a wrecking crew demolishes a structure right next to Francisco's home. It's the church where his daughters worship.
I see a guy poking around and exploring in what's left of some of the buildings. I go over to him and try to see if he speaks English, and he speaks a little. He's an artist/activist named Igor. I ask him what he's doing and he tells me he's scouting out a location for a performance-art piece to help create awareness of what's going on here. Something that combines the aesthetics of weight lifting in the Olympics and the injustice that's going on here. He tells me, "We don't need Olympic game. It's shit. You live here fifty years, the government puts a number on you and you go. Poor people in Brazil have no rights."
On Ipanema Beach, I hear a female voice call out my name. It's Anna, a lady I met one night at the newsstand. She's a tall, kind black Brazilian who I promised I would visit at the beach if I ever made it here. She greets me with a hug and a kiss on each cheek, and I notice she's got two items in her hands, one being a laminated menu and the other a paperback copy of Sex and the City that she's excited to show me. She grabs my arm and tells me to come with her so that she can take care of me, and guides me over to her tent, where I rent an umbrella and a lawn chair. While carrying these items to an empty spot on the beach, I hear another person calling for me. It's David, who I also met at the newsstand one night while he was cleaning out his heroin kit. He's from Canada, and when I walk over we shake hands and he introduces me to his drug-dealer friend.
"Hey, remember when I told you that in order to get the good shit here it's all about who you know? Well, this is the guy."
I shake his hand. He's got that whole dealer vibe about him, dark circles under his eyes, seems friendly and pretty laid-back but also has that energy about him where I would not want to fuck with this guy. They offer to have me sit with them, so I do. I order a caipirinha from Anna, and David advises me to not drink more than five or I'll be crawling home. He has to go take a piss. "There's no bathrooms at the beach, so you piss in the ocean." The two of them get up to do just that and ask if I can watch their stuff while they're away. I say sure.
Anna comes over to check on me. She's still holding on to her copy of Sex and the City. She bums a smoke and sits down next to me to take a break. She works seven days a week, from sunup to sundown. I notice both her knees have braces, and she tells me that they've gone bad from walking in the sand all day, back and forth, back and forth. She lives in one of the favelas I roamed around in, her place is about a hundred square feet, and on average she makes anywhere from $40 to $100 a day doing this. She extinguishes her smoke in the sand to get back to work, and she hands me the book so that I can read it, saying that she'll never find the time anyway.
As David explains how each section of the beach has a different personality to it—there's the gay section, tourist section, local section, etc.—my mind wanders to Sex and the City. What I liked about the book, I tell myself, is that it's darker than the show, and I crack it open and find myself reading a couple chapters, enough pages to make me hate myself more than I thought possible. You're on Ipanema Beach—what the fuck are you doing? Carrie Bradshaw's shoes cost more than Anna makes in a month. I close the book and would have thrown it in the ocean had it not been a nice gift from Anna, who is standing right there. "Is good?" she asks. "Yes," I say. "Is good." I pay for my umbrella and give Anna a hug goodbye.
He just stands there, Christ the Redeemer. Unmoving and unmoved, swarmed by selfie sticks. I pray for a miracle, but he doesn't seem to be listening. I must be doing it wrong. Is it too much to ask to not be alone in life? To meet a nice girl who doesn't have an hourly rate? I pray and I pray, and not just for women, either. I pray for this crazy world to just shut the fuck up for one solitary moment, I pray for Francisco, whose house is about to be demolished. I pray for all the wonderful hookers I've met, I pray for something that will help make sense of this experience for me. I open my eyes, look up at Jesus. Nothing.
At the base of the mountain, waiting for a cab, I come across an English-speaking couple who have just arrived to go up and see Mr. Redeemer. I ask them about Zika and if they're worried about it. The guy is from D. C., and he laughs out loud, as does the girl, and he says, "Not at all. The news is full of shit." The girl, who's Brazilian, says, "I'm not pregnant."
Love has eluded me.
Around midnight I step outside to go visit Omar at the newsstand. He tells me he didn't work out today and he's not sure about buying any more personal-training sessions from his girl. Just then, I see a cab pull up to the curb and it's Sabrina. She comes directly to me and I still can't understand her, but I can tell she's asking me why I haven't been responding to her texts. I tell her I lost my phone. She grabs my pants pocket and feels my phone. I tell her I got a new one. She eyes me suspiciously but softens and motions for me to go with her to the club across the street. I then have Omar tell her I'm under a lot of pressure right now, I'm actually kind of sick, not feeling too good. She points to my beer and I can tell she's saying, If he's so sick, then why is he out here drinking beer? But I can tell that Omar is politely telling her, Look, he doesn't want to hang out with you, it's okay, go do your thing. And to my surprise, she walks away and does just that.
I thank Omar and purchase another of his beers. And then something remarkable happens. A girl steps into the newsstand and she places her drink on the counter and pulls a large bottle of vodka from her purse and gives herself a generous pour. She catches me smiling when I see her do this, and in broken English she explains to me that it's hard to sneak alcohol into your drink inside the club, and if they see you doing it outside, they won't let you back in, but she tells me Omar doesn't mind and lets people come inside to mix their drinks in peace. As she puts her bottle back in her purse, I can't help but tell her, "I like your style." She thanks me and offers me some of her drink, which I gladly accept. She is tall, slender, with long hair, and has just a little bit of an edge to her. And she carries a large bottle of booze in her purse when she goes out. I love women like that. We share glances and smiles as she says goodbye and walks back into the club. I go back to drinking beer on the wooden bench with Omar.
A few moments later, the girl with the bottle in her purse walks back in and asks if she can sit with me. She sits right beside me and cracks open her bottle and we get to talking. She has one of those romancey-sounding names: Louisia, which I ask her to say several times just so I can hear her voice say it. She tells me that she's studying to be an engineer, meaning she's smart. I tell her I'm a writer, meaning I'm retarded. It then hits me: Louisia is not a prostitute.
We're sharing her booze, and after listening to her explain to me why she can't stand contemporary music, I ask if she's ever been to the United States before. She has—really loved it there and likes America slightly better than Brazil. I try and get her to tell me how so and she brings up politics and the country's current president, who she describes as one of those presidents that whenever they open their mouth, she just gets completely embarrassed. I point to a magazine cover, a picture of a woman holding her head down in shame. Is that her?
"Yes!" she says, rolling her eyes.
She tells me how she wants to go back one day, and then gets up to go back inside the club. I thank her for talking with me and she tells me that she doesn't know how to properly say it, but could I come with her? She grabs my hand just as "Love Shack" starts, which excites her. "I love the B-52's!"
We're racing into the club and it's here that I'm reminded that I can't dance. At all. None whatsoever. Put a gun to my head and tell me to dance and I'll happily take the bullet instead. I've had this problem my entire life, I just can't dance, and I tell Louisia that I can't dance. She tells me to just jump up and down and have fun and sing along to the song like how she and her friends are doing. At that moment I see Sabrina over by the bar and she is radiating anger in my general direction. But I am in the moment. I start dancing with Louisia and her friends and we're all having a blast.
Time passes quickly and I'm drenched in sweat and when I step outside for a smoke, I run into Sabrina. And I can tell by her body language and the way she's talking to me that she is clearly telling me, What in the hell was that? Please, Sabrina, I like you, but I can't take the high-pressure sales tactics. You're beautiful, but I'm not buying.
As I'm smoking and negotiating, I see Louisia peek her head out of the club, and when she sees me, she races over and grabs my hand. I toss my cigarette. She tells me that they're playing another B-52's song and she wants me to dance with her. We dance and we dance and at one point in the evening I spot Sophia, of the sunrise. She sees me dancing with Louisia and she gives me one of her I'm-happy-for-you smiles.
We dance until closing time, and at the end of the night, Louisia asks one of her friends if she'll take a photo of us together. I'm in total shock. Wow. This girl wants a picture of me? Of her and me? Together? I then ask her friend if she can please take a couple with my phone as well, and she does. Outside the club we hug and I thank Louisia for the best night I've had not only in Rio but in a very long time. She gives me her number and politely tells me to keep in touch. Kiss one cheek, kiss the other cheek. Ciao.
They leave to go back home and I head over to the newsstand for a last beer. I open up the fridge, grab an Itaipava, take my seat, crack open my beer, and look at the photos her friend took of us. Omar comes over and takes a seat next to me while I'm staring in awe at my phone. I show him the picture. "Look," I say. "I'm in love."
The next day, in the cab to the airport, out the window I see Mr. Redeemer off in the distance. I smile, pay my respects, and apologize for ever doubting him.
Oh, and yes, the Olympics are coming this summer. Check your local listings.
From the May 2016 issue of Esquire.
