Arriving in Brazil

In the immigration queue at the airport, a woman behind us blurted out.
“It’s so great to be back home.”
She informed us she had been in Spain and Portugal and referred to the people there as “povinho chato” which literally means “unpleasant little people.” Her attitude toward Brazil’s former colonizers was one bordering on disdain. In the national culture this manifests itself in jokes being made about the dimwittedness of the Portuguese in the way the Irish are for the English, the Polish for the Americans. She had no idea how we felt about it, whether we had Portuguese ancestry or indeed friends, she just assumed we would think the same.
Armed with these prejudices when I first travelled to Portugal two years ago, I had been surprised by people’s friendliness and general good nature. I had expected dour, short ugly, lugubrious and generally sad (have you ever listened to Fado) people who spoke a language that resembled Slavic or Arabic, not the suave, languid and beautiful Portuguese of Bossa Nova. That they regarded Brazilians as mostly consisting of transvestite prostitutes I was assured many times.
“If we’d been colonized by the English or the Germans, things would have been different. Instead we got the backward, lazy and incompetent Iberians who frittered away all the gold and left us miserable.”
I have heard this refrain, or variations of it, innumerous times as if it was part of a national poem or song. All Brazil’s problems can be traced to Portugal, it is argued.
But I only spent two days in Lisbon and credited the brevity of the stay and good luck to our wholly positive interactions with the city’s population. Maybe I wasn’t understanding their much more guttural form of Portuguese and therefore not catching all the famed negativity contained in the content.
This year we went again, my whole clan renting a magnificent old house near Felguerias, a town 30 miles from Oporto, Portugal’s second city. There we stayed for two weeks, and without question, everyone was not only nice, but absolutely friendly, exuding good will.
Not only were the people exceptional, it’s a beautiful place. Oporto is a wonderful city, its winding, hilly streets lined with often spectacular old and newer buildings, good taste abounds as modernity and innovation are working in near harmony.
It resembles Pelourinho, Salvador’s historic old town, only one worries less about getting mugged. Whenever you leave Brazil, especially going to Europe, the relief of not having to worry about crime is almost immediate. A house of the type we rented, old and filled with antiques and other things of real value, if it were in Brazil, would have to be walled in, and patrolled by Rottweiler’s dogs and armed guards. So maybe we can’t blame the appalling violence we have in Brazil on the Portuguese.
We went to the beach, a very different experience than that of Salvador’s spectacular Sunday beach scene where flesh is proudly on show. Not that the Portuguese are prudes but a steady wind ensures you never really get hot, and regular beach goers have long ago purchased a concoction they stick in the sand to protect against the elements. The water is brutally cold, un-swimmable really except for plashing about in. I’d say we in Bahia win on that score.
A family group at the beach was fascinated by us, in particular Pedro, whose dark skin and hair seemed to put a spell on them. Luiz, the oldest one about 12, constantly stroked Pedro’s hair and skin between kicking a football about and them showing us the sea creatures that they’d collected. Pedro is not fazed by much and did not seem bothered by the attention though he thought it strange. I guess they’d never really seen a black person before, remarkable to think in this day and age.
Despite Portugal’s European façade, one immediately sees where Brazilians get some of their anarchic side. At the local supermarket in Felgueiras, drivers seemed incapable of parking their cars within the designated lines. Here in Salvador I once saw a car (driven by a perfectly intact person) parked horizontally occupying two handicap spaces. I never thought I’d see that again, but sure enough, it was repeated in Felgueiras.
I am now on a mission to correct this misperception of Brazil’s ancestors. I have received skeptical expressions as if maybe I’ve also become dimwitted. But Brazil should embrace this country, from where the great navigators, Vasco da Gama, Magellen, and Cabral set out on little more than bathtubs to open up the world for trade. It’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

Brazilian Film

The one line description of the film, called Mango Yellow, is that life consists of sex and stomachs. So you get an idea of what it will be like.
Many Brazilian films like to show the underbelly of the country since its elite are on display in the wildly popular soap operas, shown relentlessly from 5:30 to 10:30 every day on the most popular television station, watched by 80% of the country. The opulent lives of the rich and often deplorable characters shown in the soap operas contrast to the physical condition in which most Brazilians live, and it is this side Brazilian filmmakers seem to prefer to portray.
The result is that most Brazilian films can only be made with grants of some form or subsidy, i.e. they don’t make money but are rather patronized. People seem to much prefer to escape into the stories of those better off than them or have two hours where they can watch Tom Cruise hanging from a cliff with two fingers killing multiple bad guys. Despite this, filmmakers here are intent on receiving public subsidies and producing films that hardly anybody, besides critics at obscure film festivals nobody has ever heard of, watches. The French have traditionally been the culture emulated by the Brazilian intelligencia and notions about the utter futility of life rather than the optimistic, American idea of the perfectibility of man are accentuated.
Everything in Mango Yellow happens on one day and revolves around a seedy flophouse, in the city of Recife, the second biggest in Brazil’s northeastern region of around 2 million inhabitants. The city is very much part of the film; some of its best moments are touring around town to a soundtrack of samples of the great and wildly eclectic music produced there. It’s a culturally vibrant place and also a site of many of the world’s shark attacks.
The characters in Mango Yellow lack a certain role model quality. The first scene sets the tone. A woman is filmed, naked and getting out of bed, slinging on a dress (no underwear) and making her way to an adjacent bar, which we assume to be hers as she starts to clean it up. She is blond (maybe a descendent of the Dutch who occupied the city in the 17th century for 25 years) and maybe her one role model quality would be for aspiring fashion models as flesh is all she has.
The bar is messy, there’s a lot of work to be done, and from the Helena’s ensuing monologue, which touches on such existential considerations such as ‘‘life is crazy, during the day it’s lights, at night it’s dark, we live and then we die,” we realize that the picture is not altogether rosy. Her philosophical knowledge seems to have come from unsuccessful self-help books. Helena gets on with her prosaic tasks as the day progresses. The first alcoholic arrives at seven in the morning for a dose of cachaca and appears regularly throughout the day for a top up.
We get to know a middle aged man, Otavio, one of a cast of the flophouse residents that feature in this sanguine film. He is incapable of making a sentence half of which are not swear words, and derives intense sexual pleasure from shooting at bodies of recently dead people (the warmer the better). It is not clear whether he has sex with them, the film doesn’t specify. Certainly that act would likely also be morally acceptable for our hero. For this rather torrid pastime, Otavio provides heaps of pot to a guy who works in a mortuary.
All het up from his latest shooting of a dead person, Otavio takes the supplier of his thrills to Helena’s bar to celebrate. Before they get there, Helena has thrown out two guys who talk about world politics and other intellectual themes while getting outrageously drunk. One had grabbed her and she had struck back like a snake, violently attacking him and cursing his ‘whore’ mother. The expulsion was quick and efficient, the chastened pair, so inebriated as to be barely able to walk, skulked off.
Otavio and his friend are intent on reaching the same level of intoxication as the banished pair and quickly there are many beer bottles besides the table. This Brazilian custom in ‘popular’ restaurants or bars (i.e. which cater to poor people), of leaving the beer bottles at the table so as to avoid accusations of cheating when bills are tallied, is ruthless for giving away the level of drunkenness of the table’s occupants.
Predictably, beer does nothing to sweeten Otavio’s nature and he is soon making outrageously permissive comments to Helena. He asks whether the hair ‘down there’ was also blond and as she sashayed over you remember she has no underwear. She lifts up her leg onto a chair and raises up her skirt. This is full frontal stuff and of a delayed nature not allowed in Hollywood.
Of course Otavio cannot contain his brutish, libidinous nature and tries to accost her at which point the bottles become convenient weapons for her to smash over his head. Mr. Cadaver man quickly splits the scene as Otavio is also repelled with the rage and savagery of Helena. You have to respect her.
Another person we are introduced to is Augusto. He works in a slaughterhouse and we get to see a cow being killed. What a treat. Augusto then goes around in the meat truck and delivers large slabs of meat to supermarkets and hotels. One of the clients is the flop house and Augusto walks into the kitchen to be greeted by the flop house manager who as soon as he popped out of the womb, it was obvious he was gay.
As Augusto cuts the meat, Felipe, in shorts so tight it’s how to imagine how he managed to get them on, taunts him relentlessly and quickly unleashes the side of the macho man who thinks it okay to be the active one, whether with a man or woman. Augusto then goes home to his wife, a born- again full of Christian pudency , thank God according to Augusto, and they eat bread, cheese and drink coffee.
Not only is he sodomizing Felipe, but Augusto also makes eternal promises to Eva, his lover, that he will give up his wife for her. For this, he gets to sleep with her though she swears she will leave him but never does. Felipe, now falling in love with Augusto, and conveniently friends with Eva the lover, arranges for the Christian wife to catch Augusto with Eva up to no good later that evening.
This duly happens, and the born again, in that gesture of female solidarity so common here in South America, immediately attacks the woman and, drawing inspiration from Mike Tyson, bites part of her ear off. It’s a bloody scene. This acts has dislodged Jesus from her heart and on her way home, overtaken by the deadly sin of lust, she gets picked up by the guy who shoots (and maybe screws) cadavers. Their ensuing, wildly ribald tryst confirms her utter abandonment of chaste and obedience to God.
The hotel owner dies, leaving Felipe distraught in a very stereotypical gay way, i.e. endless screaming and carrying on. No one has money, or is willing to give money, to buy a coffin for the wretched owner. It is here we get to know more about the fat woman who never leaves her room and refuses to give a cent toward a dignified burial for the newly deceased owner.
She hints at how bad she has been, pointing out that her family, perfectly decent people, want nothing to do with her. Her breathing is impaired, and for this she constantly is using an oxygen mask. Our parting scene is with her rolling about on the ground with the oxygen mask most definitely not on her mouth but rather glued to her private area, the sounds of her moans more like an old dog than erotic in any way.
The plot, such as it is, is circular. In the end we are back with Helena, who just can’t take it anymore and whales balefully at the injustices of life as she picks up beer bottles and empties ashtrays. I am told the director has produced an even more bleak movie, where life and a sewer are basically interchangeable. I look forward to it.

The Fight

For me, a successful international journey in the air is one where the plane doesn’t crash. This low expectation, plus the four or five of those little wine bottles I imbibe mean I’m slightly exhilarated when I arrive anywhere, especially in the tropics.

I was traveling with a friend, and we both were carrying tons of electrical equipment. Like a fool, last time I’d left Brazil I’d asked people if I could bring anything back with me from the US. That’s the last fucking time I do that.

The customs man stopped my friend and unloaded two printers, miles of cables and other items that make custom’s people’s mouths water in countries with huge import duties on electrical goods. My friend protested innocence in English.

“All for personal use,” he declared with a straight face. The customs guy spoke no English and waved him on.

Also stopped, I tried the same tactic, sweating and in Portuguese. The customs guy said straight up that he didn’t believe me, which made me sweat more. But he bade me on with a piteous smile, perhaps realizing that someone involved in contraband would not be such an obvious liar.

It was my friend’s first time in Brazil and even though it was two in the morning, we decided to go out. I knew the perfect place.

Barracas are small wooden or iron kiosks that sell just about everything and dot the streets of Salvador. The kind of establishments that will probably eventually be crushed by the Walmarts of the world.

There was a 24-hour ‘Barraca’ close to where we were staying. Beside it some tables had been set up for people to drink. It was extremely clean and organized.

The beer came ice cold. Next to us was a group of prostitutes, their reptilian eyes following any movement, who drank beer and smoked cigarettes. They quickly realized we weren’t to be customers and paid us no further attention.

We chatted but also became increasingly diverted by a very drunk man standing at the counter. All drunk people should be filmed and the next day made to watch themselves to see what complete fucking idiots intoxication makes them.

A VW Beetle with loud Bob Marley music pouring out of it pulled up. Five young men ambled out, their eyes the small slits of those who’d been smoking a ton of weed. They were dark and bleached from the sun and there was a 99% chance they were surfers.

“These fucking pot heads are ruining the country, vagabonds, no-good-for-nothing pot heads.”

This was said by the drunk man as he stared menacingly at the young men as they settled into their table. He was about forty-five and spindly. This didn’t seem the most intelligent thing to do.

I gave an anthropological lecture to my friend about how in Brazil people loved to joust and wail at each other but didn’t fight. Look at how the customs guys let us go, isn’t this country great I said, so relaxed, the people so friendly.

One of young guys quickly attacked the drunk who was immediately flung to the ground and kicked him repeatedly in the head. It was a swift, efficient and brutal beating and the enforcer and his crew were quickly off.

The drunk guy, nose bleeding, shirt torn, head gashed and stumbling somehow made it back to the bar. He was now crying but to his credit still cursing the potheads.

We sat their stupefied but guiltily amused. When we paid, the owner apologized to us with an explanation.

“Put it this way, on a weeknight at 4:00 in the morning there is not much more than whores and drunks around the streets.”

And us.

The C Word

I had only met Brian a couple of times and it was clear that he was an acquired taste since his parents seem to have not bothered teaching him the fundamentals of social graces. Despite this he was interesting and intelligent, two traits that serve to counteract general unpleasantness, in small doses anyway.
It was through Michael and Steven that we had come to know Brian. We were all PhD students in New Jersey studying things related to human ecology, biology and anthropology. Michael was studying the bearded pigs of Sumatra, Steven the cat tail wetlands of New Jersey, and I was studying the reproduction patterns of tyras in northeastern Brazil. A good deal of my time was spent hunting for tyra scats because you get to know a lot about an animal through its excrement. Obviously, these are all subjects the world cares immensely about. But we were undaunted and sacrificed years of our lives studying things that have about as much relevance to the average person`s life as Jupiter`s moons or the keeper of the heads in medieval London.
It was a Saturday night and Michael had been invited to a party to which he asked us to accompany him. None of us wanted to go straight to the party and rather juice our moods with beer beforehand to unleash our social skills in the remarkable way alcohol does.
We congregated at a bar called The Cellar. Why anyone would go to this bar was a legitimate question. It was dark, decorated principally with heads of unfortunate deer and smelled of beer and wood. There were two pool tables and a darts board and many of the empty tables were cluttered with beer bottles which no one had bothered to clear away. The amount of people hovering outside smoking cigarettes gave away the fact that most of its patrons were working class. The person designing the place must have decided that aesthetics were for pussies and that sparseness, ugliness and general disrepair were in fact the appropriate setting for real, blue collar people. As opposed to wimpy wonks like us, with our fancy ideas and uncallused hands.
Brian was studying the sexual mores of the transvestite population of Aruba, again another subject of inestimable relevance to human history. His academic advisor was infamous in academic circles for doing things like traipsing around his office naked while smoking copious amounts of pot. This professor had long ago crossed the line between eccentric and bonkers though his pioneering studies on patterns of incest in Papua New Guinea assured him permanent employment. And anyone who wasn`t mad would have been able to guide Brian to a doctorate and with it some kind of legitimacy.
Our parents always tell us that honesty is a noble characteristic which we should strive to enact and cultivate throughout our lives. But in fact, we spend a lot of our lives lying blatantly, as when we ask our work colleagues how their weekend was when in fact we couldn`t care less or say how nice someone looks when in reality that person`s ugliness cannot transcend any amount of make-up or elegant clothes. In fact, lying ensures a certain social cohesion.
The problem with Brian was he was incapable of lying. He had gone through many jobs, the last one lasting but one day after he questioned who ‘the fucking retard was who designed the filing system’ and being told that that person was his new boss who almost immediately became his ex-boss. For people like Brian, the rest of the world is at fault for his travails in being unable to maintain relationships or steady employment.
We entered the bar to polite but wary nods from some of the regulars and having ordered a couple of pitchers of beer an argument almost immediately ensued between Brian and Michael.
“I can`t believe someone as intelligent as you could believe such an asinine theory. Hooligans fight because it’s fun, it’s so fucking obvious.”
This was Brian’s way of arguing with someone he thought was a friend. They had diverged on the causes of violence between soccer fans. Michael, who had a benevolent view of humanity and thought depraved behavior explainable by economic hardships, countered.
“In the Britain of the seventies and eighties, there was no hope for the working classes, what with the shutting down of the mines and shifting of industry abroad. They were desperate so of course this took the form of violence.”
Brian was unconvinced.
“That’s utter bullshit. Soccer fans were in fact mostly middle class, how else could they travel to all those game? You’re talking out of your ass.”
Michael, familiar with Brian’s inability not to be rude, did not take umbrage. We continued to talk of this and that, the main purpose being to achieve the kind of buzz that makes us and other people more interesting. There was a juke box which contained mostly Bruce Springsteen songs, him being one level down from Jesus Christ among people from Jersey. An occasional ACDC or Led Zeppelin song broke the Boss’ monopoly on the musical repertoire. There was not a lot of R&B or soul music being chosen. Make that none at all.
At around ten we left the bar, and walked in the direction of the house where the party was being held. Michael gave us some background. The house was shared by four women who were studying things like women’s empowerment, gender identification, the evils of patrician societies or the West`s role in female circumcision. Michael warned us that it was `best to stay away from telling dumb blond jokes’ or sympathizing with the president of Harvard who had said recently that woman were hampered and hindered by nature to be good scientists. This would likely be viewed dimly.
We stopped at a local store owned by Koreans who behind plexi-glass accepted your money for the beer they provided. In the store there was a group of Asians, two Ethiopian descended teenagers, a few American born whites and blacks. Outside, Palestinian taxi drivers drank coffee, smoked cigarettes and talked their guttural Arabic. This is the kind of scene the Ku Klux Klan depicts in recruitment drives, the darker masses slowly taking over.
The house was in a typically upper middle class neighborhood, but the signs outside the houses made it clear that these people were comfortable but enlightened. US Troops Out of Iraq placards were plentiful and the rainbow flag on more than one house. This was a street where humanity was loved, although not necessarily represented.
The garden of the party house was just kempt enough to not have neighbors ring the cops. The bushes and plants were slowly being strangled by ivy and weeds would soon be the majority plant. If you want to rent a house to students, kiss goodbye to your garden for a while.
As the door opened the energy of the party whooshed out onto the street and we walked in. Unconsciously, we held up the two six packs of beer we had bought to make sure people knew we weren`t chumps. Jimmy Hendrix was playing and a few people ran their fingers along their palms pretending to be a guitarist and emulate the God of guitar in a rather cringe-making fashion. Little groups had formed, as they do, and laughter in the air floated a bit like smoke.
We headed over to the table where the food was laid out. Predictably, soy made up a good deal of the composition of the food, this being a vegetarian household. In fact two of the girls were vegans and regarded drinking cow’s milk as a crime against the universe.
“What if we stuck a big, fat bloody steak bang in the middle of this shit right now?” Brian suggested this less than tactfully and loud enough to be heard by those around. This produced a series of disapproving glances and should have foretold of what was to come. We moved over to the fireplace, where some bowls with cut vegetables and dip were our immediate victims since we hadn’t eaten dinner.
The place had that typical feel of a group house filled with people who would probably not shed a tear if someone tortured Dick Cheney to a slow death. There was a poster of Martin Luther King on the wall with a small exert from his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Another poster announced a massive pro-choice march that was held in Washington some years back. Surprisingly, Sweet Honey and the Rock and Holly Near were the musical entertainment. On another part of the room, a large poster of Mercedes Sosa adorned almost an entire side of a wall. El Pueblo Unido Nunca Será Vencido.
A bookshelf was sparsely occupied by a couple of Alice Walker books, an Erica Jong book placed quite prominently to show no one here was a prude. The New Our Bodies Ourselves and not much else. Chairs were arranged around a television, a couple of plants made up the rest of the sparse furnishings.
Unfortunately, Brian was getting drunk and this led to his talking about his love life. As I hope is clear from my description, the fact that Brian`s romantic experiences have been disastrous, rancorous, seedy and full of bitterness should come as no surprise. His one true love, a black woman with whom he was married (and would come up in conversations when he was accused of saying something racist), had left him for her cousin.
“Their parents were brother and sister for fuck`s sake,” he said once in disgust.
The latest travails for Brian involved a graduate student who had not managed to immediately see that Brian was not someone her parents would approve of and when she did, she dumped him with little ceremony.
“She wrote me an email. “You`re a real asshole, Brian,” it said. She was a real cunt.”
A woman who had been walking past suddenly stopped dead. She had scraggly dreadlocks and was wearing the multi-colored clothes Mayan woman in Guatemala use. She was likely to have had a lesbian experience at some point in her life but decided she wasn`t gay. She narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips and glared at Brian.
“I would very much appreciate it if you would not use that word in this house.”
We were all a bit taken about since the aggression in her voice belied her attempts to appear polite. This was one of those situations where some groveling would have rectified the situation. I mumbled an apology which was almost immediately drowned out by Brian’s indignant voice.
“Excuse me, but I didn’t think I was talking to you.”
Why people use words or phrases like “excuse me” or “I`d appreciate it,” when clearly they feel neither of these noble sentiments, is interesting. This little confrontation had rippled through the party and people’s attention suddenly focused on the scene.
“That is a foul and derogatory word and it’s not appropriate in this setting.”
She was wagging her finger now, and another woman had joined in the fray and nodded her head vigorously. Brian was unmoved and unrepentant.
“You`re probably the type that thinks that pornography exploits woman; that prostitutes are forced into selling their bodies. Why the fuck are you studying anthropology?”
Michael and I looked at each other a little incredulously. Where had he come up with that one, we both wondered?
She seemed startled by this new line of argument, which she called ‘heinous’ and ‘misogynist.’
“What is your problem? Do you hate women?” Her head was wobbling like Indians in those films where they`re being chewed out by some British colonial officer with a stupid looking mustaches.
“No, I love woman, especially having sex with them.”
“You’re basically a sexist I would say.”
Brian was enjoying the confrontation and the attention it was attracting. To capitulate in an argument was about as foreign to him as rationality for those who take the words of the bible literally.
“Well I would say you’re basically a fucking cunt.”
When Hitler invaded Poland, he made war with Britain inevitable. In a venue of infinitely less importance, Brian’s last statement made our expulsion from the party a question of time. In fact, it was almost immediate. Our Guatemalan loving friend literally screamed for us to get out or she’d call the police. Briefly I wondered what a cop would make out of this scene. He’d probably have more serious matters to attend to, I reasoned. But like the ‘here, here’ in the House of Commons, others in the party were loudly voicing their disapproval of our presence. It was clearly time to go.
I had never been kicked out of a party before and we really didn’t know what to do. Expletives continued to pour out of Brian’s mouth, his complaints about how we were being ‘throttled by self-righteous assholes,’ and intellectual discourse was now being censored’ struck a chord among us.
We went back to the Cellar bar where last call was being announced. Brain used the ‘c’ word several more times that night and nobody seemed to care. Obviously the people hadn’t studied enough anthropology.

Beaches in Bahia

When I’m forlorn, melancholy or generally baffled at what life throws at us, the best remedy for me is to go to the beach. Amidst the swirls of humanity there to enjoy the surf and sun, you can immerse yourself into a world where all senses are piqued. This causes a degree of recuperation to the soul, slightly diminished on the ride home where egregious driving by drunk beach revelers reminds us of how reckless people cause such disharmony in society.

But let’s stay on the positive. Fortunately for me, a beautiful beach is ten minutes from my house. Last Saturday, we parked in a lot that advertized a five real fee. A team of people instruct you on how to park your car efficiently to cram as many cars as they can into this space. This is classic informal economy stuff, nobody is paying any taxes there. But if you chose to not pay the fee, there is nothing the people running the lot can do about it.

We have a spot where the wait staff know us. Our main waiter, a large square man with an operatic voice and charm which he uses to make sure you tip him well, was not there.

“His knee was bad, plus the owner here refuses to pay us our tips. I am going to be moving on after the season is over; it’s impossible to live on what he pays us.”

This is partly what makes Brazil such an unequal society, this tendency to exploit to the maximum, the incapacity for long term thought in things that involve profit. The idea that having happy workers matters is irrelevant when there is a teaming pool of desperate poor ready to work under miserable conditions to replace any discontents. Squeeze as much money as you can and keep another people in thrall while doing it, capitalism in its basest form.

I must admit I spent rather less time than I should have considering these terrible issues of human exploitation, instead revering the magnificence in front of me. The aquiline water, intersected by cauldrons of white created by the waves, invited compellingly.

Our waitress finished digging a hole in which to place a large sun umbrella to protect us from the scorching sun. Pedro gave us about ten seconds to sit down and relax before wanting to jump into the ocean. There we went. Pedro, now six, has lost fear of the ocean and knows how to avoid the punches it throws at you and take advantage of its blessings in the form of waves and relief from the heat. He simply loves it now and will spend all day there if you let him.

Claudia gallantly agreed to play a bat and ball game popular here with Pedro, not such a mind-numbing task anymore as he is quite competent and fun to play with. This gave me a chance to sit back, sip my coconut water and look about.

Everyone knows Brazilians wear swimsuits designed to show as little as possible of the ‘genital’ areas and for woman, to have much of the bottom revealed. Many woman of impressive beauty and curvature pass by, confidently showing off what God has given them. Few men would not derive some kind of pleasure from watching a stream of gorgeous and semi-clad woman stream by in front of them.

Many men wear the kind of speedo trunks that makes any man from an English-speaking country recoil with disgust but are favored here. As they are by the European tourists, some of whom wear even more revolting versions of this unfortunate design of swimming apparel.

The human body is an amazingly versatile thing. There are so many different versions of it, those of us with short legs and large torsos, those with the opposite, short, tall, fat thin. Some bodies look like letters, people with oversized or protruding heads resembling a capital P, others with protruding stomachs looking like an E, a curved body somewhat like a C, an erect one an I. Most people are overweight, large bellies already formed or in their incipient stages. This phenomena seems to accompany a society getting richer.

For whom the workings of the market are like a wet dream, this place is paradise, a veritable hub of economic activity, again of the type that does not show up in government statistics. Popsicle vendors ring bells which seem directly linked to a component of every Brazilian child’s brain that says immediately, ‘I must have a popsicle.’ Pedro is no exception.

The list of merchandise for sale is impressive. Small kites, little plastic parachute men, beach sarongs, sunglasses, sun block, pirate CDs and DVDs, hammocks, cigarettes and sweets, bikinis, dresses, hats stacked in piles two meters high, dish towels, and much else.

The food offers that pass by are also plentiful. Barbecued cheese is available from vendors that carry around a can with coals that miraculously manage to stay alit the whole day. They carry molasses and oregano to sprinkle on withered, melted stick of cheese. It’s excellent. Vendors display raw oysters with lemon on a plate for those brave people who like a thing that slithers down your throat and dies in your stomach. Boiled peanuts and cashews done in various forms, salted and sweet, are for the taking. Fruit salads and natural sandwiches are provided by people who look like they should be in advertisements for clean living.

There is a breed of people in the world who make artisan jewelry. Some in this tribe have an aversion to bathing, most have adopted a lifestyle descended from the precepts of hippy philosophy. They frequent towns where tourists go, and often provide the extra service of scoring pot for anxious visitors from Europe dying to augment their already heightened spirits.

One nearly managed a sale to a young woman sitting at a table near to us. He set down his work pinned to a felt covered screen which he carried around all day. His hair was curly and unkempt, and around it he wore a Jimmy Hendrix type bandana. He had a leather band around his bicep, wore an old waistcoat with no shirt, had two bracelets the principal content of which was shells. A large tattoo of a Joshua tree spilled from his back to his stomach. His shorts were yellow and black, with a portrait of Bob Marley. His leg was tattooed with a replica of one of his earrings, a kind of handy advertising method. If this guy attempted to cross any international border, the probability of him getting bodily searched would be about 100%.

Alas, the woman did not bite and he hoisted up his creations to trundle along elsewhere. Walking in the hot sun over sand for eight hours should be compensated better. Another service offered that should be scrutinized is henna tattoos. Not because they’re not nice, but because the salesman will swear that they last 15 days. This had happened several times to us, and at the most the things last three days, if you take regular baths. That’s a fifth of the time advertised, but what are you going to do, sue the guy?

The beach was packed, lots of groups playing soccer with small goals where coconuts were the posts. The wind made everyone’s voices into small unintelligible fragments, almost like birdsong, punctuated occasionally by the shouts from the game. It was a perfect day, the only clouds irrelevant to the piercing blue sky which overwhelmed but could not totally banish them.

We ate a small sardine like fish covered in batter which you could feel clogging your arteries as it entered your body. We drank beer so called it hurt your teeth. And we took turns servicing Pedro’s unending energy which we hoped would make him fall asleep earlier. It didn’t.

If you have lived by the beach for any length of time, it is hard to imagine life anywhere away from it. It feels as if the world is open to you, you are linked with the rest of humanity somehow. And in Brazil, there is the added spectacle of beautiful women keen to show as much of their body as they can get away with, though that obviously is a minor factor in the beach’s overall attraction. Being an intellectual sort, I tend to ignore the bouncing bottoms passing in front of me and rather contemplate the great Portuguese navigators who opened up the world 500 years ago. I can’t think why my wife doesn’t believe me.

Happy Birthday Parties in Bahia

It sounds a bit pathetic, but ninety percent of my social life consists of attending birthday parties. In fact, in the last two weeks I have gone to two. And both of the people whose birthday was being celebrated will have absolutely no recollection of these events because they are one and two respectively. This does not seem to bother most Brazilians, who go to great expense to give a party that really is just a pretext for getting family and friends together.

The difference in the way birthdays are perceived here as opposed to the English speaking world is straight away obvious from the songs.

Let’s face it, ‘Happy Birthday to you’ is hardly the most inspiring song around, though apparently the most played. What a lame song that is.

The Brazilian equivalent is a veritable poem, accompanied by clapping and impassioned exhortation.

Congratulations to you, on this special date
Much happiness, many years of life.

It starts off with a bang, to be alive is a great joy, reaching milestones something to celebrate. Then the Brazilian one outdistances the others for length.

It’s now the time to blow out the candles, let’s sing that little song
Congratulations to You, congratulations to you on this your birthday
That God gives you much health and peace, and the angels say amen
Congratulations to You, congratulations to you on this your birthday.
Boom, boom vatiboom ( a word nobody seems to know what it means).

The party last week was at a close friend of Claudia who she grew up with and whose family she knows well. We have been to many of their parties and are pretty typical of what goes on elsewhere.

The first essential component for my possible enjoyment of such a gathering is beer. If there is beer, then everything is much easier. There are parties, however, where there is beer but the waiters have been instructed to serve as little of it as possible.

This is the result of two reasons: either the guy is too poor to buy enough beer to satisfy everyone but doesn’t want to lose face; Or the guy giving the birthday party is cheap and controlling, two things which tend to go hand in hand.

The only people who give evening birthday parties without beer are evangelists and I don’t ever seem to be invited to their parties, thank God.

This party was none of that, given by a doctor married to Claudia’s beautiful friend. Someone analyzing this couple would immediately notice the great discrepancy in looks since many positive things the husband undoubtedly is, but calling him anything approaching physically attractive in any way would be a stretch. My father, a wise man, once said to me, “you can be bald or fat, but not bald and fat for women to still look at you. Or of course, you can be rich, then it doesn’t matter how you look.” This may have been an illustrative case. I knew from experience the beer would be plentiful, a great relief.

It was in what they call the ‘playground’ pronounced ‘plegrownji’ as the mezzanine levels of apartment buildings are known here which are equipped with areas to give parties. What was immediately noticeable was the incredible amount of balloons, all in shapes of princesses and other Disney figures.

“Eight thousand,’ my host told me after I’d commented on the brightness of the place.

The little girl for whom all the hoopla was being laid on ran around full of coca cola and sugar, being obliged to greet guests who kissed her and said how lovely she was before depositing their gifts in a massive box off to the corner. They’ll have to dig new landfills for the amount of presents she received.

There were tables full of finger food and others full of sweets and chocolates. Waiters paraded with trays of soft drinks, beer and whiskey and not just any whiskey, but Ballantines. Whiskey has real symbolic value here and being able to lavish it on many guests is proof of your prosperity.

But our host was not happy. The electrical system had collapsed under the weight of all that was being demanded of it which included sky lights, an air slide, a sound system, a film projector. It’s when things like this happen that you wonder why the hell you would ever want to give a party.

We sat down and savored the many snacks and liquids that passed our way through waiters whose efficiency on a scale of one to ten was five, which is good in Bahia. The idea of swift service seems alien to some people here, unfortunate especially when they work in the service industry. What’s the big deal if something comes two minutes later? They have a point.

The sound system spring to life and we were blessed with the kind of children’s music whose dreadfulness diplomats might kindly call grating. Untrained choirs of children’s voices should be banned, they are so painfully cheesy, in appalling bad taste and any other adjective or phrase to describe something that causes embarrassment and discomfort. We got the extra treat of having a DJ introduce each song and encourage us to dance. Pedro showed no desire at all to do that, we thanked Christ.

People like to get dressed up and were fastidious. I talked to a nephew of Claudia’s friend who had just returned from Winnipeg and a six month exchange program. It had got to minus forty degrees, the kind of temperature where your snot freezes and the outdoors hostile and dangerous. The balmy weather of Bahia must have seemed like another planet from there.

His sister, who just turned 19, had recently decided to have liposuction. I thought, unfairly perhaps, as I watched her down three glasses of coca cola and eat things that immediately make your stomach bloat, “maybe if you get off your fat ass, do some exercise and eat properly, you wouldn’t need to go through a surgical procedure.”

Rather than externalizing these snide contemplations, I kissed her on the cheek and shook hands with her boyfriend who looked like he’d much rather be somewhere else. He looked like he’d made a deal. ‘I’ll go to your family party, you put out later.’ Men are bad, and twenty year old men, in sexual terms, are one small step up from dogs.

My wife’s friend has a stream of relatives who all seem to show up at these family events. Warts are not a particularly attractive feature on any part of the body, and on the face, with a little hair sticking out from them, do not enhance the person’s appearance. In addition, all of the aunts had massive cheeks which spilled over into other areas of their face where they didn’t fit, invading, for instance, an area rightly belonging to the chin. This seemed to be a family trait among our friend’s aunts, who are a little scary to kiss on the cheek given what you have to avoid.

Meanwhile, our host was frantic. As we walked in there was a slide show being projected onto a big screen, mostly of the birthday girl with various relatives. There was background music to this moving photo display, the kind of music that Michael Jackson might sing to the kids who slept in his bed; or some Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that for some unfathomable reason attracts hordes of people who have made him a very wealthy and even more obnoxious man. This slide show had suddenly failed to work, a great deprivation for us, and our host was none too pleased.

“I’m going home to get the other copy of the presentation,” he declared to his wife, he thought it a poor idea. “I spent hours compiling this thing so I’m bloody well going to show it!”

You had to admire his tenacity if dread having to put through more photos displays which describing with the word ‘corny’ is far too mild given its cringe-making nature. So off he went to speed half way around the city to fetch the other copy. He finally returned and we were treated to more moving pictures of his daughter. It was a fine way to end the evening.

The only remarkable thing about the other birthday party, equally ornate and with beer flowing, was the complete racial diversity of the guests. The little girl is lily white with blond locks; this despite having a grandfather who is black. This is considered a success story in a Brazil that claims racism is minimal but which nonetheless from its very inception sought to ‘whitify’ the race. Our friends have done a great job, and if this girl ends up marrying a pure bred European, then all vestiges of the African continent in her off-spring will be wiped out. Congratulations, indeed.

Andre Agassi et al.

I usually would not read a sport’s biography. The best sportspeople tend to be the least interesting people, since they’re usually uneducated and so focused on winning that a certain humanity is lost in this fervent pursuit. Listening to an interview with Tiger Woods, Pete Sampras, David Beckham, Chris Evert or many other people who have excelled at their sport is about as interesting as analyzing the movement of a sea cucumber. Filled with clichés and bad grammar, at the end of these ordeals you sometimes wish you had a regime like the North Korean one so you could simply ban interviews with most athletes.

But I was given this book called ‘Open’ the autobiography of Andre Agassi. Having a passion for tennis, I was immediately hooked as Agassi described his last tournament and how his body was wracked by pain but he still managed to win a couple of matches. What I hoped for was an insight into the tennis world, how it works, the personalities that I have followed over the years. What was John McEnroe like? Was Serena Williams really as awful as she sounds? Who were Agassi’s heroes and tennis role models?

Instead I was subject to something that mostly consisted of Andre Agassi so far up his own behind that, so self absorbed, so prone to view the world in terms of heroes and villains, frankly someone you hope never have to chat with at a party.

He claims to hate tennis. This is mostly due to his tyrannical father who is described as heartless, calculating and spiteful. In the book there is not one positive thing said about him. It seems improbable the son could harbor any love at all for this fiend. Tennis is murder for young Andre, a relentless pursuit mostly fueled by his ranting father and Agassi trying to satisfy him. He knew of course that he was better than nearly everyone, indeed for most of his losses Agassi never credits his opponents and blames something that he lacked that day. In other words if he’d been mentally and physically intact, then he could demolish anyone.

I admit another reason that spurred me to read the book was a commonality between Agassi and me, though obviously not in terms of tennis ability, but our destiny in being among the bald tribe. This consternating process for Agassi results in his loss of the French Open final because the night before his hair weave fell apart. He develops eternal hatred for Thomas Muster because he patted his head (and fragile fake hair) after beating him. Finally he faces the truth and shaves off all his hair in an almost ritualistic ceremony with his new wife Brooke Shields. I would have loved to be a fly in the wall for that one.

Of course part of the reason we read books by famous people is to titillate our pathetically prurient minds with information about other celebrities. Agassi was married to Brooke Shields for a few years. According to his descriptions of her general interests in life, like George Bush, she serves as an indictment to the Ivy League universities.

She could muster no interest for his tennis, and he found her acting milieu frivolous and uninteresting. He walked off the set of Friends where Brooke was making a guest appearance (and who repeatedly told him that Friends was the most popular sitcom in the world) because he was disgusted at what his wife had to do. I have to say I agree with Andre on that one. Shields plays a stalker and part of this entails putting the entire the hands and parts of the arms of her victim in her mouth. Who thought that one up?

He also became friends with Barbara Streisand and the two of them get on with each other like a ball on fire. He loves her music and that of the likes of Celine Dionne, artists who when a song of theirs comes on the radio, you curse and immediately switch the channel. His constant referral to Barry Manilow and even citing lines of songs as if it was deep poetry, causes one to grimace a bit. But if you’re looking to get behind the stories of those people who appear in Hello magazine, don’t bother to read this book.

There is also precious little about the world around which Agassi traveled extensively for nearly twenty years. Actually, there is nothing. Andre did manage to go to the Louvre once, but in his next visit to Paris, he holed up in his hotel room and ordered McDonalds and Burger King for food, only going to his matches and then seeking refuge in the hotel so as not to have to confront people whose language he couldn’t understand. Agassi’s curiosity about global culture is impressively shallow.

Of course it was primarily for the tennis that the book interested me. I can’t say Agassi has the most generous comments for some of his piers nor the system that made him millions of dollars. Pete Sampras always came across as a lugubrious yet glib troglodyte despite the glorious tennis he played. Agassi adds to this by saying he’s cheap as shit, giving a parking valet a one dollar tip.

“I mean that guy has earned over 40 mil.”

This tight wadness is in contrast of course to Andre’s generosity, who gives the guy a ten dollar tip. He berates Michael Chang for invoking Jesus after every win, well done on that one, but gives Chang absolutely no credit for the numerous times he lost to him. Similar professional disrespect, by basically ignoring him even though they had multiple contact in their youth, was Jim Courier. He resents the fact that after getting his ass whipped by Courier, in the locker room after the match Courier put on running shoes and started jogging in place to show his exertion on the court was insignificant. Talk about rubbing it in!

He hates Becker and the image we get of Jimmy Connors, one of the idols of my youth, is as the embodiment of an asshole. It’s probably true though. John McEnroe comes out smelling okay and Agassi seems to like Aussies and Eastern Europeans.

The problem is the paucity of information on this world. We learn almost nothing about what the people are really like, only how they affected Agassi, the classic path of analysis taken by those unable to see past their own nose. And our most base curiosity, what it’s like to have so much money, is barely addressed. He acts like it’s normal to buy a case of some wine that costs $500 a bottle or rent out an island all to himself. What does that feel like, I wondered? But in vain.

In place of this, we are treated to the thrilling existential subjects that are written about extensively in self-help books. He talks about this psychobabble bullshit for many hours with members of his team, some of whom have a special deistic link (represented partly by having to listen to this crap). It is this team that protects and harbors Andre, and his physical trainer/bodyguard seems a direct descendent of Buddha or Gandhi but who could kick people’s asses. He eventually finds true love in Steffi Graf, about whom we learn little except that she’s ‘the greatest person I’ve ever known.’

I should be more generous, I suppose. After all, here is this kid who grew up in Las Vegas of all weird places, had a crazy Armenian father, dropped out in eighth grade and has done nothing but play tennis all his life. And let’s give him credit, he has set up a charter school and seems genuinely interested in boosting the fortunes of those less fortunate. It’s probably a lot more than Pete Sampras or Jim Courier or even Jesus lover Michael Chang is doing.

What I’m angry about is the fact that I was sucked in and wasted precious hours that could otherwise have been employed in my usual pursuit of erudition. I ploughed through nearly 400 pages of self-analysis by someone who is, quite frankly, boring as hell. I got aced on this one.