“Deus escreve certo por linhas tortas“
— Saint Teresa of Avila
When I was a kid, I had this habit of putting stickers on my bed. More specifically, on the wooden headboard, where I could admire them whenever I wanted. There wasn’t a lot of room, and the stickers didn’t come off without leaving a nasty paper scar that looked horrible and pissed my mother off, so I chose my stickers carefully. One might say it was one of my earliest acts of commitment in life. One of the stickers was Luke Skywalker holding a laser gun because, like most kids my age, I was totally infatuated with Star Wars. I also had one or two Italian soccer players on there, the result of a visit to Italy where my cousins introduced me to soccer and gifted me dozens of stickers of various international players to take back with me to the United States.
Another sticker, which I placed directly in the middle of my headboard, was one of the Brazilian flag. This sticker, along with flags from several other countries, was included in the soccer stickerbooks that my cousins gave me. As everyone knows, soccer (futbol) is a global sport, and back in the 1970s, the best international players played on Italian club teams. Accordingly, stickers of their countries’ flags were always included in these sticker books.
Of course, I didn’t know anything about Brazil when I was 7, and I couldn’t have found the country on a map if my life depended on it. All I knew from my Italian cousins was that Brazil was a soccer powerhouse that produced some of the best players in the world, including soccer legend Pelé, who was so skilled and well-known that he even managed to break through the consciousness of notoriously soccer-ignorant Americans. I also learned that unlike American athletes, Brazilian soccer players went by a single name: Pelé, Ronaldo, Cafu, Kaká, Neymar, Romário, Zico, Ronaldinho…
Brazil even had a player names “Sócrates”. His full name was Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, which is a little long and doesn’t fit very well on the back of a jersey, so one can understand why they cut it down. Still, can you imagine being called “Socrates” by everyone in the world and having them know who you are more than the actual philosopher? How awesome is that?
If you’re great, one name is all you need, amirite? So you can call me “Tim.”
But my introduction to soccer isn’t why I gave the Brazilian flag prime real estate on my headboard as a young boy. No, my reasoning was far more basic. I put the Brazilian flag front and center because I thought it looked really f’ng cool. I still do. I mean, look at it. I dare anyone to find a better looking flag anywhere:
I love the colors. I love the design. I love that big blue globe in the middle. Navy blue is my favorite color, and I love how the flag seems to be embracing the entire world, and not just Brazil itself. I also love the constellations at the bottom, the precision of their arrangement, and the flag’s allusion to astronomy, which was a real passion of mine as a kid. You’ve got the Southern Cross in there, you’ve got your Scorpius and your Hydra. They’re like Easter eggs that compel you to dig deeper to find their meaning. Does any other flag have a constellation on it, much less several of them? I don’t think so.
Why does the Brazilian flag contain this particular celestial arrangement, you may ask? Why these constellations in particular? I looked it up. These are the constellations that were in the night sky over Rio de Janiero on November 15, 1889, the day the Republic of Brazil was proclaimed. So they’re a snapshot in time from Brazil’s independence day, just like a photograph. As is well-documented here, photography is another passion of mine, and coincidentally, November 15th is my father’s birthday.
What about the phrase “Ordem e Progresso”? I looked that up too. It’s a shortened version of a motto by the French philosopher Auguste Comte who said: “Love as its principle, order as its foundation, and progress as its goal; such, according to this long preliminary discourse, is the fundamental character of the definitive regime that positivism is about to inaugurate.” These are some of the major components of the way I’m trying to live my life, with love, order, progress, and positivity.
So many strange synchronicities between me and that flag. It’s totally novel, completely different from any other flag, and cool as hell to me. I absolutely love it, even now, all these years later. Of all the flags I could have chosen to put on my childhood bed, including the Italian flag–the flag of my heritage and the first country I ever visited outside of my own–the Brazilian flag is the one I chose, the flag of a country I knew almost nothing about and would not visit for another 50 years.
But this isn’t supposed to be a dissertation on the Brazilian flag, is it? It’s supposed to be about my first trip to Brazil and what happened with the woman I met in person for the first time after months of connecting through a cell phone. So maybe I should get to the point?
Patience, Grasshopper. Patience.
My Pre-flight Agida
First, let’s set the scene with a brief pre-trip prologue. Be warned, it ain’t pretty.
Given the distance involved–nearly 5000 miles–and the fact that my romantic counterpart and I were meeting in person for the first time after communicating on the phone for three months, one can imagine how anxious we both were before this trip. For my part, this wasn’t me jumping on a Metro North train to Grand Central, or driving to Edgewater, New Jersey, to meet someone for dinner to see if we gelled. No, this was me getting on two planes and traveling 11 hours to a country I’d never been to, and where I didn’t speak the language, to meet someone I was really into, but couldn’t be 100% sure about until we could be together in person and feel each other’s energy. A person’s energy matters a lot to me. You can’t feel it until you’re with them in person. Before that, you’re just guessing.
This uncertainty is why I hedged my feelings for this person before I made this trip, out of self-protection. I really hate surprises, especially in my love life. Really and truly. I hate getting my hopes up about someone and then being disappointed. More than that, I hate being blindsided due to my own failure to see a person or situation as they really are, not as I want them to be. When you first meet someone and become infatuated by them, it’s easy to put them on a pedestal and ignore things that are right in front of your face, including things they are actually telling you or showing you about themselves. I’ve done this a million times before, but maybe for the first time in my life, I’m approaching a new situation and new person with as much intention and self-awareness as I can muster.
The unexpectedness of this entire connection, and the appearance of this person in my life after two plus years of dating futility still makes my head spin. When I posted my “2025 Wrapped” summary last December and mused about the future and what 2026 might bring, traveling to Brazil (or anywhere in South America for that matter) was definitely not in my plans. I was considering a trip to Asia–Thailand or Vietnam. Maybe a return to Japan. Not Brazil.
But then this witty Brazilian found me in January. Megawatt smile. Magnetic. Positive. Open to possibilities. Clear and honest about who she is and what she wants out of life. A skillful navigator of my initial jadedness and skepticism about love, relationships, and connecting with someone on another continent. Like me, she’s just fine with being alone but would prefer not to be if the right person comes along and aligns with her in a way that makes her happy and improves her life. A lot of instant alignment between us.
This witty Brazilian came out of nowhere, saying nothing. Just a simple swipe for me to accept or reject. Something (or someone?) compelled me to respond. And so my plans changed. Brazil entered the chat.
It happened that fast, but this is what makes life magical, isn’t it? You have one plan for yourself, then a page unexpectedly gets turned, and suddenly you have another plan and you’re on another path in the multiverse. A path that you chose, but that was also chosen for you. I believe both are true. I believe we meet the people we meet because we have something to learn from them and they from us, and this is why things synchronize when they’re supposed to. I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in spiritual purpose.
Of course, the unconscious mind has a role to play too because it’s a pattern-recognition machine that never lets one completely forget the past. In this case, my pre-trip anxiety derived from similar long-distance trips I’ve made to meet people in the past that went uh… sub-optimally, to put it charitably. As the day of my flight to Brazil approached, I became really anxious about meeting this person who lives so far away, and also about going to Rio, which too many TikTok videos described as exceedingly dangerous and convinced me that I was either going to get pickpocketed or have my phone or camera stolen at knifepoint by an angry favela-dweller. I started to seriously second-guess myself:
What the fuck are you doing? This is crazy! You are going to meet someone who lives 4000+ miles away, and it’s an 11-hour flight, for God’s sake! What the hell are you going to do if there’s no attraction or connection in person? Stare at the hotel wall? Fake it til you make it? Trips aren’t easy with people you already know well, let alone someone new. What happens if you realize you don’t get along in person? What then?
Like most people, I’m not my best self when I’m anxious. Of course, I didn’t want to subject her to my nervousness because it would have turned this into an anxiety tornado for both of us before we even got there, and made me sound like a total pussy. She had also told me not to freak her out any more than she was already. So I hid it the best that I could, suffered in silence, and tried to focus on viewing this trip as an adventure. Then, a couple of days before my flight, a voice in my head took the wheel and finally put this trip in its proper perspective:
Listen. One day you’re going to be dead, my brother. Before that, you may be stuck in a nursing home for years, or incapacitated in a hospice, waiting for your end to arrive, just like Dad. No matter what happens on this trip or what’s happened on your ill-fated romantic fliers before this, at least you can say you’ve LIVED. You’ve lived a LIFE. You took chances. You didn’t let fear control you. Good things have always happened for you when you controlled your fears and left your comfort zone. And even bad experiences are still experiences, right? They’re still memorable. They’re still chapters in the book of your life. And it’s been an interesting book, hasn’t it? So embrace this trip, don’t run from it. What’s the worst that can happen? You experience a new city with a wonderful person you’re seriously attracted to and excited about meeting in person and with whom you’ve already established a solid connection? You won’t get along and she leaves and you need to venture out on your own? You’ve done that before many times. There are much worse things in life, my friend. Much worse. Live for the plot. You’re going to be fine. You always are.
This voice, wherever it came from, finally got my mentals straight. Honestly, it wasn’t that hard once I changed what I was choosing to focus on. So many of our emotions in life are the result of what we choose to think about. Once you change your focus, your outlook can change too. We have more freedom of choice over this than we realize. Still, none of this was easy, for me or for her. She lives in southern Brazil, not Rio, and got on two planes herself. She was meeting someone new in person for the first time too–a man she’d only known for a few months. To women, men are inherently dangerous, no matter how well you think you know them. They’re like toasters. 99% of them work the way they’re supposed to, and they make great toast. But if you buy the wrong toaster, a defective one that isn’t constructed properly, there’s a serious chance that you’re going to electrocute yourself. This is why toasters come with warning labels. Men don’t. Men are a crapshoot for women. Always.
The Big Reveal
Fortunately, all of our angst and anxiety proved to be for naught. Before this, we agreed that this trip would be deemed a success if we ended up connecting and missing each other afterwards, and this is exactly what ended up happening.
It’s impossible to describe what it’s like to travel so far, to fly all of those hours and miles after speaking to someone for months, to commit to that journey, and then to have her suddenly appear right. in. front. of. you. Open the door, and there she is. Right there. You’re looking directly at each other with no phone between you. It’s head-spinning. Then you touch each other for the first time in a deep embrace and 2-D becomes 3-D in an instant. You feel each other’s bodies and skin for the first time, a reward for your patience and all that delayed gratification. It’s a massive dopamine rush. Massive. And beyond surreal.
I’m not going to do a play-by-play of everything we experienced together, except to say that we got along really well given the circumstances, and there was virtually no awkwardness in the beginning, which was a bit surprising. It felt like we’d known each other much longer than a few months, and it didn’t take long for us to adjust to the new reality of being in each other’s presence. Also, because we didn’t get to touch each other for months and had been subjected to this involuntary sensory deprivation against our will due to the distance, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other when we were finally together. I’m pretty tactile generally, but it was a huge relief to learn that she’s like this too, and we were similar in that way. Touch is a seriously underrated sense.
All of this was a promising start, to say the least. But what mattered even more to me is that we showed each other our full selves, warts and all. We didn’t hide anything, and there were no fairytales or rose-colored glasses when we were together. We did surprisingly well at managing the new things we were learning about each other in real time, including our differences and communication styles. We’ve both had relationships with people who weren’t all in, and for whom we served as emotional or physical crutches, and I think this brought a shared experience and appreciation for each other that’s unique and difficult to explain. What’s also hard to explain is how incredible it feels to want and be wanted by someone at the same time. To know that they’re as invested in you as you are in them. That both of you genuinely want to see where this could lead. That feels new to me. The geographic distance between us, how hard it is to see each other in person, and the effort involved to make that happen makes it impossible to half-ass anything or waste the other person’s time. This was just one step in getting to know each other, which we are still doing, but it was a significant one.
There are also no rose-colored glasses here because we’re alike in many ways but we’re also different and honest about those differences with each other. We talk about them, and there are no masks. What you see is what you get, and that brings authenticity. We both know it takes time to get to know someone, that occasional conflict is a natural part of a relationship, especially when you’re still learning the other person’s boundaries and come from different places. We also know that there is only so much a person will change at this point in life. If one requires a lot of change in the other person in order to be happy, then it’s not a good fit, is it? We both know how important it is to see and accept the whole person, positive and negative, if a connection is going to grow and evolve.
This sounds distinctly logical and unromantic, but let me tell you, it’s the total opposite. When you can exhale and be yourself with someone, show your true self, for better or worse, and they still choose you (and vice-versa), it’s incredibly romantic. Hot even. This is not something I’ve ever experienced in my life, which is one of the biggest reasons I’m still single. But it’s what I’m searching for and will never settle for living without. It’s easy to love someone’s good qualities. Seriously, how hard is that? It’s why you become attracted to people in the first place. But true love is embracing the whole person, even the things you don’t like about them, and working through those things, tolerating those qualities, or at least managing them in your own mind, and reaching a new place together. Navigating all of this is what true love is to me. I haven’t found it yet, but I do believe it exists.
We’ll see if this new relationship aligns with the above over time. It’s still early.
Some quick highlights about her/us before I get to my observations about Rio:
- This was my first time traveling with someone in years, and it required a mental adjustment on my part because I love to travel solo, wander and explore where and when I feel like it, and just get lost in a city. I couldn’t do that in Rio for reasons I’ll get to, but also because I wasn’t alone and this wasn’t that kind of trip. But I discovered that I’ve really missed traveling with someone too. It’s a totally different perspective when you travel with someone else, and a completely different experience. I’d forgotten how enjoyable it can be, and how the sacrifice of one’s independence brings other rewards.
- This trip wouldn’t have been the same for me without her. She’d been to Rio a few times before and knew the city extremely well, so she was like a walking talking guidebook and Portuguese translator. Before the trip, she asked me what I really wanted to see in Rio, and then mapped things out so that we hit all of those things in the limited time that we had together. She accompanied me to some of these sites even though she’d already seen all of them before, which I can imagine would have been boring for a lot of people. This was incredibly thoughtful of her, and I appreciated all of it.
- She’s a confident extrovert who will talk to anyone: waitresses, Uber drivers, strangers on the street to ask for directions–anyone. As I’ve said before, I love extroverts because of the contrast with my own, more introverted self. So I found this incredibly hot.
- Also hot: just listening to her speak Portuguese. The whole cultural difference between us is sexy as hell to me. I’ve never dated someone from another country before. We have a lot in common and are almost too much alike in some ways, but there are enough differences between us, including cultural differences, to keep things interesting. I wasn’t able to comprehend these things well on the phone, but I saw them up close in Rio and really liked it (for the most part). She speaks perfect English, but when she segued into Portuguese with people, it really got my motor running.
- She’s much more of a foodie than I am, and food is a big part of Brazilian culture, so we selected our restaurants with forethought. I didn’t have a single bad, or even a subpar meal the entire time I was there. She made sure that I tried pão de queijo, queijo coalho (toasted cheese on skewers bought from beach vendors), coconut water drunk from actual coconuts, Brazilian empanadas, bolinhos, and of course, açaí, and caipirinhas. I know I left some off the list, but I swear I gained 5 pounds on this trip because the food was so damn good. And the coffee? Some of the best I’ve ever had in my life. She bought me three different bags of coffee to take home as a gift. Really thoughtful.
- She can be so blunt sometimes, she reminds me of my mother. Again, I’m not used to being with someone 24/7, traveling with them, etc., so my emotional regulation breathing exercises came in handy during these moments, with one or two exceptions. I can be pretty blunt too, so I think we understand and tolerate each other regarding this character trait, but we’ll see how it progresses.
- Example, and one thing I’m still laughing about: We took Ubers everywhere because (a) they’re cheap, and (b) you need to do that in Rio for safety and other reasons. One time, a few seconds after I ordered the Uber, she asked me if we had one yet and how many minutes it would be before it arrived. I responded that I still didn’t have a confirmation yet but would let her know when I did. (As all Uber users know, it sometimes takes a minute or longer to get one.) This happened a couple more times before it started to make my right eye twitch. The third time it happened I said in a half-joking manner (or so I thought) “I don’t have a confirmation yet–don’t worry, I’ll let you know when it gets here. It takes a minute or two sometimes.” Deep breath.
But then it happened again, and my censor took the rest of the hour off. Wondering exactly how high maintenance and impatient this person was, I said with a litttttle too much bite: “M., it’s not here yet. You really don’t need to ask me five seconds after I order it — it always takes a couple of minutes. I promise you I’ll tell you when we have one. I promise.”
She said nothing, and I mentally thought back to every snappy thing I’ve ever said to someone once I’ve gotten fed up and my censor bailed on me. I guess we’ll see how it goes this time!
So we walk to the Uber, which sure enough, arrived a minute later. Then, under her breath, but loud enough for me to hear, she says in this singsong voice:
“Chatooo de galoooochaaa.”
To me, it sounded like “Chatt-oh Dee Galoshes.” Well, I’m no idiot. I know when I’m being insulted, whether it’s in English, Italian, or Portuguese. We get in the car, I plug “Chatt-oh Dee Galoshes” into Google Translate on my phone (totally misspelled but it didn’t matter), and here is what I got:
“Chato de galocha” is a Brazilian colloquial expression to describe an extremely annoying, inopportune, heavy or arrogant person. The phrase intensifies the level of harassment (being annoying), suggesting that the person is persistent and is not aware of the inconvenience that results, comparable to someone who enters a house without taking off their dirty boots (galoshes). Wiktionary, the free dictionary Wiktionary, the free dictionary +2 Key details about the expression: Meaning: Refers to someone who complains all over the place, constantly interrupts or behaves in an arrogant manner. Origin: It comes from the idea of an inconvenient visit that does not take off the gum boots (galoshes) upon entering, soaking everything and demonstrating a lack of consideration. Variations: Either a chata (male) or a chata (female) galoshe is worn. Usage: It’s a humorous but blunt way of deciding that someone is “unportable” or “very burdensome”.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
God damn, that made me laugh. It still does. Better that she meet my Chato De Galocha sooner, rather than later. May as well get it over with–if they really don’t get along, it might save me a few plane tickets.
So I looked at her and said with a smile, “Heyyy. I know an insult when I hear one. I do believe that I’ve been insulted, Chato. Or is it ChatA in the feminine?”
She started laughing because she’d been caught ripping me in Portuguese. Then I started laughing and just kept saying “chato” over and over again. The Uber driver heard all of this, and he started laughing, and she explained to him what was going on. Then she confirmed for me that yes, chatA de galocha is the feminine version of this handy phrase, which is great, so I’ll know how to properly use it in the future when necessary. Like when someone asks me when the Uber is arriving three seconds after I hit “Confirm location.” - Speaking of Uber rides, there’s one particular ride we shared that I’ll never forget, not even in the nursing home.
A Cidade Maravilhosa
Some quick observations about Rio, a city I didn’t think I’d love nearly as much as I did.
- The very first thing I noticed about Rio through bleary eyes on the ride to my hotel from the airport was how these beautiful mountains were interspersed throughout the city. Rio is absolutely beautiful in the way nature merges effortlessly with the industrial, including with the chaotic, yet organized favelas that litter the mountainsides in rainbow patterns. It’s difficult to describe this in words, so hopefully my photos will do a better job of showing this. It’s one of the most naturally beautiful cities I’ve ever visited.
- The second thing I noticed about Rio–or maybe it was the first thing, because I heard them before I saw them–was the scooters. They. Were. Everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE, including on the highway. Picture these Honda scooters beeping behind your car, beeping incessantly to warn you about their approach before passing you on the dotted white passing lines that separate your driving lane from the two driving lanes on either side of you. One, two, three, four, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty of them. One after the other. They passed us on the left and the right at the same time, beeping all the way like a thousand annoying Road Runners, then flying by us in the 3 to 4-foot space between us and the cars to our left and right.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and it didn’t stop for the entire ride to and from the airport. I swear there were more scooters than cars on the road. And I do mean SCOOTERS, not motorcycles. I saw a few motorcycles, but almost all of these things were scooters. Scooters with single riders, some carrying delivery packs, but mostly with two people on them. They’d weave in and out of lanes after passing you, just to get to where they wanted to go. I’ve never seen anything like it. Apparently this is illegal in Brazil, but no one enforces it, including the police I saw sitting in their car doing nothing when these scooters flew by us. I’m sure part of this is financial necessity–cars are very expensive in Brazil and most people can’t afford them. But these people are literally taking their lives into their own hands with the way they drive. One wrong move by a car, who couldn’t possibly see them coming up behind them every single time, and these people will be roadkill. What shocks me the most is I didn’t see a single accident the entire time. Unlike me, car drivers were insanely patient and unfazed by all of it, so I guess everyone there knows what they’re doing, but it was quite insane to my North American eyes.
- As mentioned, Rio isn’t the kind of city where you can walk around, explore, and take pictures safely like I did in Prague, Budapest, and Vienna last year. There’s a significant amount of poverty there, and like any city with a large population in poverty, crime is a potential issue. As a safeguard, I left my best camera at home, and took my backup Nikon instead. Rio is a fantastic city for all kinds of photography, especially street photography, but I just didn’t feel safe doing carrying my camera around very much after all the warnings I’d received from M., my guidebooks, and TikTok, all of which told me to put it right back in the bag after every photo instead of carrying it around my neck or on my hand like I typically do. I was seriously worried I wouldn’t get many photos at all due to my fear of having it ripped off, which would have been a real bummer. I did end up taking a decent amount, but mostly of the tourist sites rather than the local people, which is annoying. At least I still have my camera and the photos I took, instead of losing them because I was too reckless.
- In terms of specific sites, we visited the Christ the Redeemer statue, which is one of the seven wonders of the world and has long been on my travel bucket list, Sugar Loaf Mountain, which was incredible in its own right, and the Escadaria Selarón, which were built as a tribute to the Brazilian people by Chilean artist Jorge Selarón. All of these places were stunning, and I can’t do them justice by trying to describe them in words, so I’ll let my photos do the talking once I process them. Christ the Redeemer was surreal to see in person. It’s huge, but if I’m being honest, the best vantage point for seeing it is from further so you can fully appreciate its scale and grandiosity.
Here I am being redeemed for my many sins by the Big Man Himself:
- We watched the sunset from Sugar Loaf, and M. really took one for the team there because it was windy as hell and she was really cold, but she was willing to wait for the sun to go down so I could try and get some photos of the sunset. This proved to be a challenge because a six-foot four moose was blocking the best spot for a half an hour, which pissed a lot of people off because it made it impossible for anyone to take a decent photo. All of these places were crowded, even though it was shoulder season there. If you go, I recommend you buy a fast pass for everything and buy in advance. Best money I ever spent.
- Brazilian people are incredibly friendly and kind. Everyone we met, from wait staff to Uber drivers to strangers on the street were warm and approachable. And many of them, most of them, were in incredible shape, both men and women. Especially on the beach. Holy shit. I don’t know why this surprised me, but it really did. The Brazilian men I saw were totally ripped–even the older ones–with these deep dark tans, muscular bodies, tight abs, and all tatted up. They played volleyball and futevôlei on the beach, both in groups using the volleyball nets that littered the beaches everywhere, and on their own where there was space. The women were also gorgeous, toned, and effortlessly beautiful. I’ve never seen so many thong bikinis in my life, including the best one of all that was sitting right next to me. All of this was pure heaven to a bunda fan like me.
Rio is like Miami on steroids, except unlike in Miami, all of these gorgeous people are unpretentious and easygoing, not self-promoting, arrogant assholes. M. and I definitely had a lot of fun admiring these stunning people together, pointing out attractive ones to each other, and…. uh… Yadda yadda yadda. - We stayed in Copacabana because it was more centrally located and had the biggest beach, but it’s really seen its heyday and was more run down than some of the other beaches. If I go back–and I’d love to go back one day–I’ll stay in Ipanema or Leblon, which were a bit quieter, more safe, and where we spent a lot of our time at night.
- When you’re on the beach, these vendors approach you every 30 seconds to sell you anything from necklaces to food to drinks to sarongs to hats to t-shirts to massages. Most don’t take an initial “No” for an answer and will try to negotiate around your “No” to get you to a “Yes” for a minute or two. Of course, their biggest targets are white gringos on vacation like me who may as well have the word “MONEY” tattooed on their forehead, and we got the hardest sells of all. Yes, it’s annoying until you consider that this is how these people make a living. It’s how they survive. They walk the beach all day long in incredible heat in the hope of making a few bucks based on the whims of these rich vacationers.
I bought two bracelets from “Davide,” this really nice kid from Colombia, one for me and one for M., which she loved, and four boxes of Mentos candy from this 17 year-old kid in braces who looked like he was 12 and was one of the best salesmen I’d ever seen. He started his pitch by asking where I was from and then in perfect English, he told me that I looked like Brad Pitt and then Sylvester Stallone, which made me laugh my ass off. Humor gets me every time. Then he closed with a very credible tale of how he’d been working the same beach since he was 11 years-old and used the money for his family. True or not, I really liked this kid and let him upsell me from two boxes of Mentos for 10 reals to four for 20 reals (which is like 4 dollars, a pittance). I don’t even like Mentos — I gave them all to M. when I got home.
I turned down way more people than I bought from, but I’m going to remember all of their faces. Rio reminded me in very stark terms that his world is a rich, layered, and complex place, full of haves and have-nots who are separated only by the fortune and whims of geography and familial birth. It also reminded me to try and slow down and enjoy life more. The local people I saw playing volleyball on the beach had far less privilege than I have, but they seemed incredibly happy just doing something as simple as kicking a ball or playing volleyball with their friends. They seemed way more present and in the moment than I am. Way less in a hurry. I feel like there’s a lesson there for me. - On my last day there, after M. had left, I got up at dawn to watch the sun rise on the beach and take some photos. Copacabana was mostly empty and unnaturally peaceful and quiet–unlike any other time of day. No crowds. No umbrellas. No vendors. No haze, so you could see the mountains clearly as the sun slowly made its way over the horizon. Watching the sun rise in such a legendary place was one of the most memorable things that I’ve done in a long time. Just magical.
Even with nearly a week in Rio, it was impossible to see everything. On my next visit, I’d love to do a tour of the favelas, some of which are pacified, and experience them first-hand. M. suggested it, but I was too chickenshit to try it. I sort of regret this now. There are also hikes one can take as well and more nature to experience next time, as well as sailing trips you can take to nearby islands, which look amazing. There’s also samba to experience. Now that I’ve seen the two major sites–Christ the Redeemer and Sugar Loaf–I’ll have more time to do other things on my next visit. It’s weird, before the trip I doubted I’d ever want to go back, but now having been there, I’d love to return one day.
This trip and this special woman who has so unexpectedly entered my life, have made me deeply curious about Brazil and eager to see more of it. It’s a country full of beauty, passion, incredible food and music, and really warm people. Thanks to my addictive personality, I now want to see other parts of Brazil and get to know the country in a deeper way. Rio is Rio, not Brazil. As M. has told me, Rio is just one small slice of the country, which, much like the United States, has many different communities and subcultures. I want to see those other parts first-hand and get to know locals in a more serious way.
I guess it’s also time for me to learn some Portuguese so I can speak to M. in her own language, not just in English like some kind of chato de galocha.
