The Third Fucking World

I love Brazil. I want that clear, before you read anything that follows. I love Brazil, third world though it may be. Uncaring, injust, cruel, the very representation of injustice though it may be. Even though my neighbors might occasionally throw their garbage through my kitchen window, I love Brazil. And part of why I love Brazil, part of what I cannot explain to people who have not lived here, is the very third worldness of it. That doesn't mean that what follows is only found in the third world -- it isn't. That doesn't mean that I like what follows -- I don't. It just means that there is something about Brazil -- its beauty, its slow pace, its shocking lack of humanity -- that I can't, now that I know it well, imagine living without. I guess I could leave Brazil, but I would never want to. Where would I go? Peru? Liberia? I don't need to live in a warzone, but neither can I imagine living in the US again. There's an impact that Brazil has, and once it hits you, you can't even consider going long without it.

I haven't left Brazil since I arrived here. Or, I left once, to spend a week in Buenos Aires. Which was nice, but it wasn't Brazil. And as nice as it was to walk on clean streets (which don't exist as such in Recife), I was happy to get back. And I haven't felt a desire to leave since then. I have been thinking about leaving Brazil recently (not by choice), and these are not pleasant thoughts.

But that doesn't mean that all of my experiences here in Brazil are positive.

This afternoon I just wanted to read Tbogg when someone knocked on my window. (I had meant to write something about this. Because I live on the ground floor, next to the gate to the building, people seem to think it's okay to knock on my window at whatever hour to ask if their friend is home.) She had meant to ask how to buzz my apartment, but due to dumb luck, she knocked on my window, so I let her in. She was about an hour early for our dinner (to celebrate her birthday).

She became, without telling me, a vegetarian about three months ago. No problem. I spent six and a half delicious years as a vegetarian myself. (Of course, then I visited Peru and moved to Brazil, and those two acts alone guarantee that I eat a lot, and I mean A LOT, of pig meat.) So to celebrate her birthday I made an "Indian" dinner for her -- chickpeas simmered with cinnamon, cloves, garlic, hot peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, cilantro, and a little bit of black pepper (which was, oddly enough, to be the subject of tonight's essay before life threw me something of a change-up). She liked it. So did I.

We drank mango nectar with vodka, and because her reputation had preceded her (I jest -- it wasn't a reputation, it was my experience in her company), I had bought a second bottle of vodka -- just in case. And that case, unsurprisingly, happened, and we kept on drinking even after the mango nectar ran out and we had to drink peach nectar (no great sacrifice).

And, after dinner, she suggested we go to a bar to drink a beer or two. And that seemed like a great idea to me, so off we went.

The bar in question is, if not my favorite, one of my favorites (bet on the first option). We drank three beers, at which point she wanted to leave, so I offered to pay. She said, "No, let's drink one more so we both pay five reais." And that made sense, so I asked for one more.

During the fourth beer she started talking about personal tragedies. (This after I had told her a hilarious story about a cousin's wife insulting my grandmother after the wedding.) (Which has nothing to do with the third world. Everybody hurts.) And goddamn, were her tragedies ever tragedies. Okay, that's fine. It deserved a fifth beer. I paid the bill while she was in the bathroom (it was her birthday, after all).

We drank the beer (if I haven't mentioned this before, Brazilian beers are bigger than American beers and they are meant to be shared) and then left the bar. We said goodbye to the owner (a friend of mine -- his bar will some day be the subject of an ode [believe me, if a Grecian urn deserves an ode, this bar deserves one, too] -- who she had met that night) and set out toward the bus stop. She almost made it to the corner before asking me, "Is it full of animals, or is it just my impression?" Was I wrong to misunderstand the question? I asked her what she had just said, and she repeated herself. And then fell backwards onto what passes for pavement in Recife. Very softly, I must say, without even dirtying here clothes. I held her hands and waited for her to come to. Which happened quickly, without too much trouble.

When I had her on her feet again, she was all the more determined to take a bus (actually, she would have to take two busses) home. I purposely steered her toward the second-closest bus stop so she would have to pass a taxi stand. As we passed the taxies one of the drivers (who all know me because during the carnaval season I would come home at four or five in the morning by bus and stop and talk to them -- and the prostitutes, who are by nature interesting -- and so I know that any taxi driver who works at the night-time stand near my apartment can be trusted) asked if we needed a taxi. I told him that yes, we did, but my friend was insulted and declared that we needed no such thing. (The third world has yet to enter into this tale of unhappiness.)

We made it all the way to the bus stop, arguing every step of the way, me telling her that I loved her and wanted only the best for her and could not take the bus with her and did not trust her to get off the bus (I could tell her which bus to take at first) at the right stop and then get the second bus to take her home. The result of which was her cursing my neighborhood (unfortunately, I more or less agree with her) and declaring that she didn't want to spend her money on the taxi. (Let's see -- I bought the food, cooked the food, paid for the beer, and she ...?)

And the, out of nowhere, she decided to take a taxi. I would have walked her across the street to the taxi stand, and the only drivers I trust, but a taxi happened to be passing at that very moment and she hailed it and got in. Probably because of my (very foreign) presence, he declined to give her a discount price, and I gave her ten reais to pay half of her fare and (hopefully) get her home safely. (There has yet to be mentioned anything to do with the third world.)

The taxi drove off and I resisted the urge to send it on its way with a one-fingered salute. I had almost reached the corner when the light changed, and I looked across at the very driver who had originally asked me if I needed a taxi. I shrugged my shoulders at him, but something sent me across the asphalt to encounter the true unhappiness of the night.

When I arrived on the other side of the street, the prostitutes' side of the street, I saw a girl of about fifteen years old, in a skirt that would make Ally McBeal blush, telling a key-ring vendor (the third world involves some strange professions) that as much as she liked the key-ring showing a woman lovingly embracing a penis as tall as her (and twice as thick), she didn't have the money to buy it.

I told the taxi driver that I had told my friend to take his cab. I told him that I trusted him, and the other drivers (who were nowhere to be found) who used the same taxi stand. I told him that my friend was in such a state that, if her cabbie wanted to, he could do whatever he wanted with her and she probably wouldn't remember in the morning. (Minutes after it happened she didn't remember passing out on the sidewalk.) He nodded. I looked at the children, who I guessed to be seven or eight years old, playing next to his taxi, and I looked at the two prostitutes, sitting in front of a closed newsstand. I told him that I loved Brazil, and that I chose to live in Brazil. I asked him how old the prostitutes were. He said that one was nineteen, and that the other was eighteen. I reminded him of the fact that I'm not retarded. I asked him if he had seen their government-issued ids. He said that one was nineteen, but that he didn't trust the other one. I asked him which one. He pointed to the obviously underaged one. The one who had no fear. The one who was clearly not on her first, nor second, nor third, night on the stroll. I told him that as much as I love Brazil, as much as I don't want to leave, I told him that sometimes I wonder why I'm here.

And I walked home.

At least I had the chance to read Tbogg once I was back inside my apartment.