The Meatpacking District

Now the cool beach to go in Rio, where everyone is used to the finer things in life like champagne and prescription pills, is right across from the Country Club. There you can rent dingy little beach chairs and listen to loud music and do all the other things cool people do at cool beaches. But it’s a weekday and I’m alone so all that agravation isn’t necessary. I drag myself to the beach in front of a five-star hotel, just a mile away, where I can rent a proper matressed armchair and waiters in crisp white uniforms - all paid for on the side. The problem with five-star hotels is where the tourists go, the prostitutes naturally follow. I tried to look my best on this particular day in order not to have my identity mistaken and fished into my oversized Marc Jacobs bag for my oversized Valentino sunglasses. Just to be safe, I also produced a pink iPod, a Versace sarong and a book in english. The only item I wasn’t too proud of was a white Shore Club Hotel cap, but it was the only one I had and I wasn’t about to go down in freckles, like some sort of Lindsey Lohan.

After a little nap, I wake up surrounded by eight gorgeous Italian men, who are obviously all gay. Most of them are wearing pink shorts (how cute) and the one beside me has a stunning profile. He should be on a coin, I think to myself while he takes out a huge bottle of baby oil (how quaint) and starts smearing himself.  Suddenly a mulata* with the most perfect body leaps in front of him and asks him for the lighter. She puffs on her cigarette a few times and anyone can see that she is very inexperienced.

“Sei Brasiliano?” she asks him. Now I don’t see the point of asking someone in Italian if they’re Brazilian. He dismisses her and she skips off, purposely trying to step on a pigeon, who flies away spreading sand, diseases and general panic.

To my other side, a few feet away, I can’t help but notice three guys, clearly anglo-saxons, talking to what is the purest Brazilian traditional archetype of a … - sorry, a whore. Her bikini top is white and tied on very tightly, and her boobs are pushed upwards to look like they are implants, I imagine. On each little triangle is a red cross, implying a nasty little nurse or a dirty little life-guard. To me, she looks more like something out of a crate from the Salvation Army. She has just been in the water and the top is completely transparent so you can see her nipples, which are big and flat and look like CDs. The bottom is black and not a G-string per se, but rather a regular-sized bikini, only shoved into her ass. The cheeks are separated, because who can take that much fabric pushed in between them,  and I’m sure she is having a little trouble walking. She is combing her hair, which is the color of Chinese noodles: no color, while the three guys smile at her like she is Father Christmas or something. They are all fat and old – that’s a given – but one of them is particularly revolting. He is very round and red – red shorts, red cap, red nose, with a round bloated stomach a violent shade of tomato – sitting on a beach chair (red) that says “Nildo: beach like no other” in smudged black paint. Lovely.

Someone offers me iced drinks and I say no, thank you very much. I go back to applying sunscreen on my neck, chest and hands because Dr. Pitanguy once told me there are no plastic surgeries to correct them if they get old and wrinkled. And also on elbows and knees because they’re naturally darker and you don’t want to look like you were scrubbing someone’s floor. But the guy – let’s call him Red – appears to be extremely excited and I can hear the sound of his fat laugh through my headphones. I turn to them again and he’s telling her to lower her bikini. More! he cries out delighted, more, more, more! – and he yelps. She laughs and starts to grease herself with tanning oil and I wonder how she can possibly become more tan. I would consider it a race-shift, personaly. Red rubs oil on her thighs with hands so filled with liver-spots its like he’s wearing tweed gloves (Author cringes). I’m caught up between tanning myself and staring, I can't decide which.

Now I’m a newborn writer; everything is so picturesque to me that even the slightest stimuli, like a butterfly on a flower or a new Pucci scarf, bring paragraphs and paragraphs to my mind. Before I can stop myself, I reach for my pen and start taking notes of the whole scene on the back of my book. I decide the guys are probably British, judging by their crooked rotting teeth and receding chins, but Red has especially big buck teeth. I know everything is relative but these teeth are big and buck compared to just about everything else on the planet today. Someone offers me ice-cream and I shake my head and smile politely. They seem like they haven’t been laid in a hundred years and could use some first-class spanking, and I don’t mean to stare, I do not mean to, but I can’t help myself , I am out of control, and I can’t stop! I have to go home, and I still have to buy a pair of Havaianas for a friend back in New York (must not forget them, must not forget them), and I really need to use the ladies’ room, but I sit for hours! I stare for weeks and I try  with all my might to think other thoughts BUT I CANNOT! I try counting and reciting and thinking and singing BUT I AM BEYOND MYSELf! I am pulled away from this nightmare when the guy who sells coconuts comes to me and says:

“Are you foreign?” he insults me with his breath. (Author recoils).

“No, no. Brazilian.”

“Ah. Those guys were wondering,” he points to Red and his jolly fellows. “Are you a p…” he pauses. “professional?”

I look at him as if I do not recognize the word. After a moment all I can muster is a meek “no, no.”

I wonder what could have given them the idea that I could ever – I AM TAKING NOTES WITH A GOLD MONT BLANC FOR GOD’S SAKE! Just then I spot a voluptuous dark-skinned woman in a fabulous Dior bikini (one that I covet) screaming in a cell phone in portuguese, with a white, fat old guy on one arm, a gold Daytona on the other. Oh dear.

You see, more and more people seem to feel it alright to behave anyway they choose. It’s on occasions like these that I like to think of myself as a tourist. Detached. Excuse me, EXCUSE ME, but it’s true.

(Author composes herself a bit). I look back at them and to my horror, the nurse, baywatch – I don’t know what to call her -  is walking towards me. I freeze. Time stands still. I hold my breath as she draws closer but she walks right by. She smells like nail-polish remover. I breathe a sigh of relief and put on my sunglasses so I can stare unnoticed. She has three random tatoos: one on the left shoulder, of a sun possibly remniscent of the one on a kiddie vitamin drink; another….on the left shoulder of a dolphin and the third one is my favourite: on her stomach, to the left, of a bird and a LEAFY TWIG. She eats a meatball sandwich on the guys’ tab and I know it’s meatball because I can smell it and I hate the smell of other people’s food, and then thankfully Red takes her for a romantic stroll on the beach. I wonder how they communicate. (Author pauses and looks to heaven).

Meanwhile the samba-singers aproach the others and harass them into giving out tips, because they won’t stop singing and go away witht their loud banter and toothless smiles unless you do. The guy reaches for a blue knapsack and I see there’s a huge identification card dangling. I try to catch the name on it so I can report him to social services but he is too fast for me. At this point I’m sitting up and facing them and I don’t care anymore, I just have to look and look for the sake of writing. The gay guys beside me must think I’m such a sad pathetic little loser waiting for someone to strike up a conversation. Sadly one of them does and I tell him I’m a paleontologist from Peru. I would have made up somewhere more glamorous but Peru was the only thing I could come up with, since I had no time to think or prepare. I have this overpowering need to make up fake names and professions, even in the most casual circumstances, like when someone asks my name in a store. I would have made a great CIA agent, I often think. Someone offers me a massage and I decline. I see the little beach-mouse who has the perfect body is now giving the boys an EYEBROW WAX. And the nurse is back from her stroll with Red and is now talking to yet another big-gutted guy who looks like a bull. Why is everyone suddenly so FAT? (Panic builds up inside Author) I look at his stomach and I think, THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THERE! He’s handing her a stick with shrimps that are so orange they can only be plastic. Or have a bad case of hepatitis. The sad girl who won't give up on the boys (yes, they are gorgeous but couldn’t be more gay if wearing leotards and rollerblades and humming Barbara Streisand’s hits, can’t she see?) is now up on an armchair and dancing as though she’s trying to give birth to something, while beating on a tamborine I have no idea where it came from. The poor tragic thing, I think. That’s what I call trying too hard. I almost want to give her a twenty, but I don’t quite dare so. I spray on some more sunscreen because if the day comes when I have to compete with players like these, I’m going to need all the good complexion I can get. Someone offers me a tatoo. I decline and go back to reading my book. I think of the unfortunate ignorant wives, sitting in a dreary-looking castle in Belgium or Denmark, staring at sheep. Thank God I’m Brazilian. (Author nods and smiles faintly).

photo modaspot.com