We were going to Brazil. Where the nuts come from, I thought.
I was excited. I had been excited ever since I had sat in the Brazilian consulate in New York waiting to hand in my visa application and US$ 140 fee and had watched a Brazilian morning television program, shown with the sound turned off, co-hosted by a bleached, plump-lipped, and face-lifted woman in late middle age and a talking puppet parrot.
I was excited because Brazil was a country that was so big, it could ignore the rest of the world in the same way that the United States did. Brazilians didn't need to learn other languages or travel outside their country to have a variety of interesting cultural and geographic experiences. It wasn't like Ireland or Canada or Denmark, where the presence of threatening larger neighbors could almost never be blocked out. I thought about how it was sad to go into a store in Hungary and see German products with a rudimentary Hungarian label slapped on them, or to see all of those American companies in Canada that reformatted their logo to include a red maple leaf, or even to see that one could withdraw United States currency from bank machines in Peru and Argentina.
I remembered having been thrilled that most Japanese banks wouldn't accept American cards.
Brazil was like that: a universe unto itself.
We watched as an attractive, square-jawed, middle-aged American man was removed from his exit-row seat by the glamorous flight attendants because he couldn't speak Portuguese. He gave a standard American response: "But I paid for this seat!"
The Brazilians didn't care. He was removed.
I got in a small fight with the women in the row in front of us, owing to their immediate seat-back reclining upon take-off which resulted in knee crushing for my spouse-elect and me.
The Brazilians didn't care. My knees were crushed.
I stared at Lake Titicaca, knowing I would soon be in the strange and new mundo lusófono.
I saw grass fires from the plane as we landed in São Paulo. We had been warned about the severe crime for which we needed to be prepared. Cars were apparently allowed to go through red lights at night, since stopping often resulted in carjacking or kidnapping.
I wondered what our taxi to our hotel would do.
The airport wasn't very nice, but I was still excited. As we headed to the baggage claim, the women who had crushed my knees saw me limping -- for reasons unrelated to them -- and started laughing.
Brazil! Brazil! Brazil! I thought.
Asaph went to change some of the torn, devalued US currency into expensive reais. The bills that had been rejected by the Peruvians were accepted without hesitation by the Brazilians. They didn't care.
I no longer felt like I was in the Third World.
The air was abuzz with excitement. We waited in a short line for a powder-blue taxi and headed into the city.
From the car, it looked like Los Angeles.
We arrived at our hotel without being kidnapped. It was quite fancy. We greeted some of Asaph's business-school colleagues. Since he was in a so-called executive program, for people who had already established careers, these students had expensive tastes. Many were wearing suits, even though it was night. Some were heading out to expensive clubs, where they would be ripped off and disdained by the local population without realizing it.
We went up to our room.
Civilização avançada! I thought.
My spouse-elect and I had a heated discussion about what we would do. There were disagreements, and he decided that he just wanted to stay in. I was too excited to stay in, so I decided to walk around São Paulo, by myself, at night.
Earlier that morning, in the Cusco airport, after reading in a guidebook about all of the dangers in Brazil, I had said, "It's not like I am planning on walking around São Paulo by myself at night!"
It didn't feel especially dangerous. It seemed like a prosperous city. There were plenty of people walking around, and no one seemed very threatening. It felt like being in a cross between Canada, Spain, and Japan. I knew that it must be poorer, but it didn't really look it.
Many buildings had large antennas that were lit in a festive manner.
This seemed East Asian to me.
After walking around Avenida Paulista for long enough to realize I wasn't going to get murdered or abducted, I went back to the fancy hotel to tell Asaph all about it. He grumbled.
In the morning, Asaph had to get up early to attend an orientation session and then visit a Brazilian company with his business-school colleagues.
I looked out the window.
New York seemed like a small, leafy trading post between two rivers.
I turned on the television. I couldn't believe it!
I showered in the luxurious bathroom and went down to breakfast. "Tudo bem?" asked the pretty hostess. She directed me to the business-school area in which I was encouraged to sit.
My spouse-elect was already done eating, but there were many of his colleagues, along with their spouses and equivalents, still there, so I awkwardly sat with them. I looked around the room. It was dominated by persons from my spouse-elect's school, but there were other random businesspersons, vacationers, and two muscular middle-aged non-heterosexual men wearing tank tops and shorts. I did not feel like I was in the Third World.
I chose a selection of pãos de queijo from the buffet, along with some eggs.
Since I had just completed a 40 kilometer, high-altitude hike, I felt like I could go back for more.
After taking an assortment of tropical fruits, one of the breakfast-room servers not assigned to coffee duty came around and gave me a small glass of glop made with the fruit of the açaí palm. It was tasty.
I had signed up -- at considerable expense -- for a bus tour of São Paulo being offered for spouses and equivalents. Asaph had nothing but negative things to say about the travel agency that had organized it -- and many of the site visits and other events for the business-school students -- but he encouraged me to do it anyway. So I went to a lower-level conference room and paid an absurd sum to a gangly and well-scrubbed American woman who seemed to be the exact opposite of a Brazilian.
I sat in the stylish lobby waiting for the tour. The other spouses were all women, with two exceptions: a non-homosexual Chinese (meaning: from China) man and a non-heterosexual Mexican (meaning: Chicano) guy. The women were from a diverse assortment of countries -- India, Puerto Rico, Korea, et cetera -- but they were all equally foreign to me. They seemed to be talking mostly about shopping and the zany antics of their free-spending husbands.
I had a bad feeling about this tour.
A surprisingly sullen and dumpy Brazilian woman arrived and announced that she would be our guide. We all went out and got into a small bus.
I sat by myself, although the Chinese husband was interested in talking to me.
"There is a lot of traffic, so it may take us some time to go around," said the dumpy Brazilian woman. The female spouses weren't even listening to her; they were busy chatting about shoes and other topical topics. The non-heterosexual Chicano spouse had his eyes closed.
"Can you adjust the temperature?" asked one of the spouses.
"Can you turn up the volume? We can't hear you," asked another.
"Can we stop somewhere to buy water? The area around our hotel is very expensive."
I overheard one say, "He got so drunk last weekend in Rio he woke up in a favela!"
Another said, "We spent $3000 on dinner!"
This bus tour was a bad idea.
Later I realized that any bus tour of São Paulo was not such a good idea. A tour of São Paulo that involved multiple sites would always require extensive waiting in traffic, unless it was done on foot, which would require walkaboutian levels of trekking, or in the middle of the night.
We finally got out of the bus. Our sullen and dumpy guide said that we were at the Monumento às Bandeiras. She couldn't really explain what it was -- something about the founding of Brazil.
The Chinese guy took a lot of photos. The women stood and continued to talk amongst themselves about unrelated subjects.
"Do you want to walk into the Parque Ibirapuera?" asked our guide, morosely. "It is like our Central Park."
The women just continued to talk to one another, ignoring our guide, who was much less pretty than any of them.
"I would like to go," I said.
We walked over.
The female spouses stood around looking slightly irritated. The Chinese male spouse and I took photos, but of different things.
"Do you want to take a little walk to see some museums designed by Oscar Niemeyer, our most famous architect in Brazil? Because it is Monday the museums are closed, but you can look at the buildings from outside."
"Yes," I said. No one else said anything.
We started walking.
As it was almost spring, the Jacarandas were in bloom.
"The Jacarandas are in bloom" sounded like something a drunk sixty-year-old non-heterosexual man wearing a kimono might say, with a Southern accent.
"That's a monument from when São Paulo went to war with the state of Minas Gerais," our guide said, in an offhand manner with no further explanation.
I felt ashamed that I knew nothing about Brazilian history. It sounded quite interesting. I knew nothing about a civil war with Minas Girais.
We arrived at a building. "This is the Auditório Ibirapuera," said our guide.
"Why are we looking at closed museums?" said one of the female spouses, annoyed and with rising intonation, but not directly to anyone.
The Chinese guy and I took photos.
We walked by a few more closed museums. The female spouses were in a state of bemused incredulousness.
"This is called the Oca," said our guide.
I thought it was amazing.
It was sunny and hot and we were in a beautiful and clean park, but the sound of traffic was audible in the near distance. The massive urbanização was always present.
"We will now go to the Catedral da Sé. It is very dangerous there, so you shouldn't take any photos. Don't even take out your cameras. And you should hold your purses like this," she said, placing a purse over her shoulder and clutching it tightly to her chest. "If you want I can hold your cameras for you."
That didn't make sense, I thought. If it was so dangerous, why wouldn't a flabby and glum Brazilian woman holding a bunch of cameras also be a target? Maybe she knew some tricks.
We arrived, and I took a photo anyway.
She took us to the official center of São Paulo. Others were emboldened to take photos.
Although I was uninterested in church buildings outside of Europe, the Middle East, or the Caucasus, we went inside.
Someone was confessing his many sins. I assumed that theft was one of them.
We went back to get on the bus, but it had had to start driving around to avoid being ticketed. There was a juice shop on the corner, so people went in and started ordering. I didn't recognize many fruits other than coco and laranja.
I had something containing maracujá. "Oh, passion fruit!" said the beautiful Puerto Rican spouse. I was disappointed that it was only passion fruit.
I also ordered a very sweet piece of cake that looked and tasted nothing like American cheesecake, but its name contained the word queijo. I ate half of it while talking with the spouses. There was one who was a bit less pretty than the others. She always looked like she had just gotten out of the shower; her hair refused to dry. I had once read that wet hair indicated loose morals in the Arab world.
I didn't want to eat the rest of my cake, as I wanted to maintain the weight loss achieved on the Inka Trail. I walked a few steps looking for a trash can. A tall teenage boy approached me and aggressively pointed at the plastic container I was holding, lightly tapping it. I handed it to him and he walked away.
"Oh, my God!" said one of the spouses. "Did you just get mugged?"
"I don't know," I said. "I was trying to throw that away. Does it count as a mugging in that case?"
The spouses began murmuring about my brush with Brazilian street crime. Several approached me to get a first-hand account of the incident.
"I don't know if it counts... I was trying to throw it away," I said. I did concede that I wasn't sure what would have happened had I not wanted to part with the cake, which was very moist and delicious.
The minibus arrived and we boarded.
"This is the end of the tour," announced the guide, sadly.
Already? I thought.
We sat in traffic for an hour or so and eventually made it back to the hotel. Still, I was so excited to be in Brazil. I didn't mind just looking out the window. It was enough.
I walked around our neighborhood a bit. It had a wonderful name: Jardins. In Portuguese, that sounded wonderful, not like it would it French or Spanish.
At the recommendation of my proctologist, we had made a reservation at a fancy steak restaurant located under a large tree. The reservation was just for a few of my spouse-elect's colleagues and their spouses, but while waiting in the lobby of the hotel, we learned that a large mob of business students numbering over 40 was also heading there. Many of these were the more stereotypical type of executive business student, prone to profligacy, dipsomania, casanovism, machismo, braggadocio, and excessive carpaccio.
As a frugal, teetotaling vegetarian, Asaph didn't want to get stuck splitting a massive bill with this group, who drank alcohol in a medically improbable manner and often sought out the most expensive dish on any menu. We all amazingly raced to taxis to get to the restaurant before they did.
An attendant came by to affix the women's purses to their chairs with plastic cable ties, so that no one could run in to the restaurant and grab them. The neighborhood had seemed very safe to all of us, so this action had a slightly chilling effect.
It was a bit awkward when the large group of business students arrived. We greeted them sheepishly.
The food was delicious.
Asaph and the others in our party went off to a school drinks function at a fancy hotel designed by a Japanese-Brazilian architect.
I just went back to the room and watched television.
Asaph got home and started doing school work and work work.
The next day I decided to walk around by myself, to see some of the areas I had looked at longingly from the minibus.
The city seemed so vibrant!
I loved being immersed in the Portuguese language. I had been to Portugal with Centfocs and his mother -- his mother had continually angered the natives by speaking to them in Spanish -- but Brazilian Portuguese was much prettier.
Even the ugly buildings of São Paulo had a charm to them, I thought.
Or maybe not.
The population of the city was much more European in appearance than I had expected. I knew that São Paulo was full of the descendants of European immigrants, but my main idea of what Brazilians were supposed to look like came from the 1959 French film Orfeu Negro.
Brazilians of African descent seemed to be a small minority here. Most people looked sort of like Spaniards, but fatter.
That was a surprise: I had expected everyone to be ridiculously attractive. They weren't. They were above average, on a global scale, of course, but there was none of the involuntary double-taking triggered with respect to young men in Israel and Italy and women in the Slavic lands.
However, people were much nicer than I had expected. I had expected them to be arrogant and assholish, but I was not having that experience.
I felt so happy to be there.
Even though everyone in New York I told that I was going to São Paulo had said, "Why are you going to São Paulo?"
I walked and walked.
I got into some slightly sketchy areas, all with my camera in hand.
I didn't feel threatened. The beautiful language was always a comforting presence.
Although São Paulo looked like a nightmarish urban hellscape from the air, it was surprisingly pleasant at ground level.
I located a club that I had heard had at least one night dedicated to non-heterosexuals. In a massive, liberal city of millions and millions of persons, we were having trouble getting recommendations for places to go out.
I filed its location away for later reference.
There were still signs of past non-heterosexual events.
I appreciated the concern with cleanliness.
I stumbled upon an entrance to the metro.
I hadn't seen something this beautiful since I had ridden the metro in Kyoto (京都) with my parents in 2002, or 2003. (I couldn't remember anymore.)
I was almost brought to tears. I felt myself being brought back to the dreamlike state in which I had spent my entire visit to Japan.
I decided to keep walking anyway.
I stopped into a shopping mall to use an immaculate restroom.
Why had I not been to Brazil before? I asked myself. I was a fool.
I saw some vegetarian propaganda.
I had evidently arrived during pedestrian safety week.
I decided to skip lunch.
I went to one of the few old buildings from the coffee barons left on Avenida Paulista: the Casa das Rosas.
The rosas were wilting.
I stopped into a store for soda.
I felt a surge of excitement unknown since my youth.
I headed towards the Japanese neighborhood.
São Paulo was already Japanese enough for me.
The tile told me I that I had arrived.
It was a tad disappointing.
The streetlights seemed merely kitschy.
The rest of São Paulo was more Japanese than this, I thought.
I continued on my way.
I arrived at a plaza, or praça.
If you knew Spanish, you could fake some Portuguese, just by swapping some Ls and Rs, adding some Is and removing some Is, throwing in some Hs, changing Ns to Ms, throwing in some Xs, and getting rid of the Ñs. Some words were randomly more like Catalan: vermelho ("red") was like vermell. But this got me mixed up: even though "water" was água, I kept accidentally calling it aigua. I realized this was something only a real simpering pedant nerd loser would do.
I walked and walked and walked. My feet were raw and bleeding, but my heart was filled with joy.
That night my spouse-elect and I went out to a trendy and expensive restaurant that had been recommended to us by fancy non-heterosexual friends back in New York. It felt very glamorous. Here, everyone was gorgeous.
I ate steak covered in gorgonzola cheese, with no side dishes.
There were no scheduled activities for Asaph's school the next day, so he had organized another bus tour for anyone who was interested. Everyone assembled at a restaurant, but I had just eaten breakfast so I just had coffee.
It was tasty.
Everyone had already been told about the mediocre bus tour for spouses on Monday, so Asaph took steps to make sure that this tour would be better. The guide was a bit more lively, although he had no discernible or memorable appearance.
The first stop was the hotel designed by the famous Japanese-Brazilian architect.
It seemed pretty.
It reminded me of a hotel in New York with which I had developed negative associations.
We were allowed inside in groups of five at a time.
It, in fact, was pretty.
I imagined that the persons I knew who often posted photos on social-networking websites of their first-class seats on various airlines would have chosen this hotel for their stay in São Paulo.
The hotel in which we were staying was very fancy, but the price was somewhat hidden, as it was included in Asaph's tuition.
The tour brought us back to the extremely dangerous center of town.
Someone asked what sé meant. I wasn't happy with the guide's explanation. "You know see, like the Holy See?" I butted in. I had an Aspergerian level of impatience.
As we left the cathedral, I wondered, as I did when visiting any country but Canada, why we had such terrible license plates for cars in the United States? And why were they getting worse?
We arrived at the birthplace of São Paulo.
The incorrect spelling in Hebrew was intriguing.
Coffee beans were on display.
People were more interested in ordering coffee and pastries from the museum café than in visiting the birthplace.
I strolled around outside the birthplace.
Downtown São Paulo was quite grubby, but it had some allure.
There was a display to show someone's anger regarding taxes.
We headed to the Municipal Market. We were immediately directed to some grotesque sandwiches.
Asaph looked for a vegetarian option.
There were a few.
There were large stacks of salted, dried cod.
I wondered if all of these products were from Brazil.
It was kind of a strange market. It didn't seem entirely designed for tourists, who seemed somewhat rare in São Paulo anyway. But the food was very high-end: lots of prepared sandwiches, wine, meat, fish, and very expensive fruit.
There were no vegetables.
There were restaurant stalls of questionable cultural sensitivity on a second level.
I looked at some pineapples -- the symbol of hospitality in the Colonial South -- for comfort.
There were plenty of things that were totally unfamiliar to me.
Asaph was still hungry, but since he wouldn't even eat an apple, the expensive and bizarre fruits available were not appealing.
For some reason, I started thinking about whether we would find non-heterosexual nightlife in São Paulo.
Finally we came upon a meatless treat: a fried pastry filled with hearts of palm and cheese.
I burnt my mouth and hands trying to eat it as quickly as possible.
We headed to an older soccer stadium to end our tour.
We were to attend an actual football match that night, at a newer stadium a bit out of town. We were excited and scared.
I wondered if there would be riots. We were told that the two teams playing were big rivals.
We arrived back at the hotel. Asaph went off to meet with some colleagues while I shared the elevator with a South African Airways crew. The female flight attendants were beautiful and glamorous in a 1960's way; the white male pilot and a South Asian first officer were speaking Afrikaans together.
It was so exotic I thought I might faint.
Even though none of those persons were Brazilian, they fit my fantasies about how Brazilians should be -- like a photo taken by Swiss photographer René Burri -- more than the actual Brazilians all around me.
After resting a bit, I went down to the lobby to wait for the buses that would take us to the soccer game.
It started to rain. Inside the buses there were monitors showing a British documentary about major moments in world soccer.
We drove through extremely wealthy neighborhoods where houses were hidden behind high walls covered with electric wire.
We arrived at the stadium and were ushered through the throngs of fans by the company that had been hired to take us to the game. Asaph struck up a conversation with the young guy who had started the company and noticed that the travel agency used by his school had added $50 to the already elevated cost of the ticket. He was going to do something about that.
The mascot for the team we were supposed to support was a tad disappointing.
There was heavy security.
The fans of the opposing team -- the Corinthians (βλεπομεν γαρ αρτι δι εσοπτρου εν αινιγματι) -- had been bussed in and were kept in a special section protected by riot police.
Occasionally a small rocket would be fired by the São Paulo fans into the Corinthians section.
"It's just like Gaza!" I said to my spouse-elect.
I was happy about the Portuguese spelling of "gnocchi". I went with Asaph to get some.
Asaph and his colleague were having a great time, but the Brazilians disapproved.
I noticed that the opposing team was a bit sexier.
I felt a bit bad about that.
The business students were happy to see data regarding revenues.
The game ended as so many soccer games do.
I wondered if this was the closest we would get to going out.
As we boarded our bus, an angry São Paulo fan started macho-posturing, assuming that we were the bussed-in Corinthians fans.
He continued his assault until, suddenly, four mounted policemen surrounded him. I looked away. I assumed that he was killed.
We found somewhere to go out that night. It was fine. The bartenders often gave a cute thumbs up gesture to indicate that they had understood our order.
I was excited about breakfast.
I made big plans for the day as I looked down from our window.
I boarded the metro.
It was so wonderful and civilized.
I thought about the terrible New York subway and what we settled for.
I decided to go to the Museum of the Portuguese Language, so I took the metro to the Luz station.
I bought my ticket and then tried to enter, but was told, in Portuguese, that I needed to check my backpack. I understood!
I boarded an elevator with a group of other visitors. We were asked by the elevator operator if we were all Brazilians. Everyone nodded except for me, but I wasn't noticed, so the operator, relieved, began her explanation of what we would expect in the museum.
We were led into a dark auditorium where we were shown an artsy short film about the history of the Portuguese language. Then we were brought into another large dark room where we listened to poetry read by Brazilian celebrities while the words were projected on the walls, ceiling, and floor in an artistic fashion.
I didn't understand too much.
We were finally let out into the regular museum exhibits.
Amazing! I thought.
Portuguese was wonderful. I was glad about my high degree of written comprehension.
I felt a little sad, suddenly, since I remembered a funny incident in Sicily with my mother, wherein I translated the words of our apartment-share landlord without being able to say anything back to him.
I took the elevator back down to the ground level and confessed to the operator in an improvised version of Portuguese that I was, in fact, a non-Lusophone. She smiled.
Brazilians really were surprisingly nice, I thought.
I passed large groups of schoolchildren as I exited and walked over to the adjacent park.
There were creative public art exhibits.
A lot of people in the park were just sitting on benches, not reading or doing anything. It seemed a bit odd.
I walked over to an area in the corner of the park.
It was a free free-weight area.
The deliberately unfancy weights were quite charming.
Brazil publicly subsidized the muscles of its population!
I got back on the metro.
I went to an area I had seen from the bus the day before.
It was more Oscar Niemeyer.
Blood alone moves the wheels of history, I thought.
I decided to make the long march back to the hotel on foot.
I walked to a park. There were chickens wandering around everywhere.
I was tempted to have a coconut.
There was white water.
Feeding the fish was forbidden. In Portuguese this was beautiful.
It seemed that Jewish-Arab cooperation was possible.
There was another free public place for exercise, this time for those in the Third Age.
I thought about my lack of flexibility.
It was a lovely park.
There were no tourists, only Paulistas.
I was thirsty, but not very trusting.
I walked through a bamboo forest.
There was an area for children with riddles and rhymes.
Toalha!
I left the park and kept walking.
São Paulo wasn't so bad from the street.
I thought about Queens.
I realized that I was walking through an affluent area.
I was able to walk up big hills without panting. I loved Brazil! I loved São Paulo! I loved sea level!
Itabaquara! Pacaembu! Such wonderful words!
I arrived at another park. Again, I was reluctant to drink.
I wasn't so crazy about the amateur public art here, however.
I didn't like art that could so easily become indistinguishable from garbage.
At least it could be recycled, I thought.
I realized that my spouse-elect would be upset about the breed-specific regulations, even though we weren't able to have a dog because he would be "sad when it died".
I got back to the hotel and lay in the bed watching Brazilian television for a bit.
We went out again, but it was less successful. Still: I loved Brazil!
The next day I walked to the large park we had visited the first day.
I walked through neighborhoods that seemed very Californian.
Would Brazil ever be a superpower? I wondered.
It seemed like it was on its way, at least economically.
Would I enjoy living here? I wasn't sure that I would make a good Brazilian.
I arrived at the park.
It was a beautiful day.
There were attractive Brazilians exercising everywhere.
I saw some impressive abdominals.
The park was perfect.
There were some limits.
It was the first day of spring.
There was something vaguely Japanese about the surroundings.
Brazil! Brazil! Brazil! I thought.
Its dangers had been overstated.
It was really quite orderly.
There were stations where one could be misted by cool water. I wished I was running with the beautiful shirtless Brazilian men.
I spied my least favorite word in Portuguese, however, slightly marring the wonderful experience.
I had to head out of the park.
I walked by a medical clinic that some of the business-school students had visited earlier in the week.
I felt like there was a delay amongst the population in adjusting to the new drop in crime.
I got lost, briefly.
I was hungry.
The currency sign was really the only disappointment about Brazil. That and the fact that the guys were slightly less hot than expected.
The language alone was worth the trip.
I took a final shower in our luxurious bathroom.
We watched a helicopter take off from a nearby building as we packed. The rich in São Paulo used helicopters to escape the terrible traffic.
I wished we were taking one to the airport.
We boarded a taxi with a married couple with whom we had become friends. The young man was in the business program with my spouse-elect, and he had the same name as my political-scientist cousin. His young wife had the same name as my cousin's wife, so it made things easy and confusing. We were all flying to Rio de Janeiro for the weekend.
The traffic was awful, of course. I sat in the front, and our driver wanted to talk. He only spoke Portuguese, so it was challenging. I tried to make up Portuguese by changing the pronunciation of Spanish, but it was unsuccessful much of the time.
"Pipoca?" he suddenly said.
I didn't know what that was. He tried to explain, but I couldn't understand. Asaph and the young couple got involved from the back seat, with no progress. Finally he opened the window and summoned a street vendor (we had come to a total standstill), who handed him a bag that he handed to me.
"Popcorn!" we all screamed.
It was coated with sugar and seemed disgusting, so I didn't eat any. The back seat crowd gulped it down like ravenous jackals, however.
Later the conversation just devolved into him calling out the names of various popular music stars, and we would cry out to acknowledge that we knew who they were. It was an odd game. The mention of both Ricky Martin and Madonna produced some awkward back-and-forth.
I had thought he was quite young -- early 30s, maybe -- but he showed us a photo of a daughter in late pubescence. I thought about how the actor Josh Brolin, who was only slightly older than I was, had a 23-year-old son.
I can't believe it. I forgot to have children! I thought.
After two hours, we arrived at the airport. We had traveled 30 kilometers. I gave him a tip, even though we had read that it wasn't customary. "For the pipoca," I said.
After check in, we headed to the gate. We noticed that our gate was in the international section. We wondered if there had been a mistake, since we were only flying to Rio. But all of us had the same gate marked on our tickets.
An initial check by an airport agent verified that we were going to the right place, but then doubts resurfaced as we found ourselves in a line for exit passport control.
An English-speaking man overheard our conversation.
"You must be in the wrong place; this is only for international flights," he said, unhelpfully and somewhat condescendingly.
"Yes, but this is where our gate is," I said, annoyedly and smugly. Jerk, I thought.
My spouse-elect and I approached the passport-control agent.
"We are only going to Rio -- are we in the right place?" we asked.
"Eu só falo português," she said.
Really? I thought. Border control? Brazil! Brazil! Brazil!
We pointed at the words "Rio de Janeiro" on our tickets.
"Ah, Rio!" she said -- except she pronounced it in the Portuguese way [ˈʁi.u] -- and waved us on.
We waited for our flight in a strange airport lounge that had a wide variety of magazines in Arabic available. It was slightly dirty and full of children. I ate cheese bread.
When we boarded our flight, we realized why we were in the international section. We were flying the 50 minutes to Rio on a gigantic plane that was being repositioned for a flight to Paris. Most of the other passengers were crew members.
The flight took a long time to depart, because they were loading up the plane with supplies for the trans-Atlantic voyage. I started watching a movie that was barely half-way done when we had to land.
Our baggage took forever to show up, adding to our already late arrival. We were all getting cranky. It was almost midnight when we got into a taxi.
We dropped the young couple off at their hotel in a slightly seedy part of the Copacabana neighborhood. Rio seemed a bit more run down than São Paulo. We headed to our hotel on the beach in Ipanema.
Even though our hotel was absurdly expensive, it was quite old fashioned and not very fancy. I felt like I was in a hotel in Italy in the 1970s.
I looked out the window of our room.
I was excited!
We went to meet a friend of a friend who had promised to show us around. He was with a friend of his and her mother. The mother was probably in her late 60s, but she was extremely beautiful. She sat at the table smiling silently with her hands folded in her lap. It was alarming.
After the woman and her mother went home, the friend of a friend showed us around the Ipanema area. We passed a non-heterosexual bar that seemed crowed with young and relatively attractive persons. The friend of a friend seemed like the kind of person who didn't go out much, and he tried to encourage us to move along, but we insisted on going in.
It was quite fun. There was more of the cute thumbs-up from bartenders when they understood our order. I hoped we weren't unwittingly receiving an obscene gesture.
We walked back to the hotel, the lights of a favela sparkling against the ocean in the distance.
When we woke up it was cloudy.
Still, I was in Rio!
We walked to get breakfast, since the hotel didn't offer any. There was a large rock-music festival going on nearby (which had increased the already inflated price of hotels), and a group of fans were camped out in front of another beach-front hotel where the Barbadian singer Rihanna and the American irritant Katy Perry were staying.
We ran into two of Asaph's colleagues at breakfast. Asaph had arranged for a bus tour of Rio later that day for those from his program who were in town, but these two women were not going. They wanted to relax.
We weren't really allowed to relax.
We strolled around a bit.
It wasn't beach weather.
That was a bit disappointing, I had to admit.
I liked the logo for the city.
A muscular young man staggered onto the sidewalk in front of us. He seemed to have been influenced by something.
Asaph speculated that he was open for business.
We went to meet the bus that Asaph had arranged. The students from his program and their spouses and equivalents slowly arrived, and then some left again to buy water or snacks. The real big-spending and hard-partying persons from his program had gone to Rio the week before the São Paulo sessions. They wouldn't have gone on a bus tour anyway.
Once everyone got settled, our guide told us that we would first ascend to Christ.
The bus ride was a bit harrowing. We then parked and transferred to buses run by the Corcovado park. The views were amazing.
We then took a small escalator up to Jesus.
There he is, I thought.
This city had the most dramatic geography of anywhere I had ever been.
It made Miami look like Kansas City.
It made San Francisco look like Boston.
The clouds rolled in.
We got back to our bus. Our guide pointed out a favela.
"Houses in that favela now cost around $200,000," he said.
We headed to the Santa Teresa neighborhood. The famous tram had ceased operations because of an accident that had killed five pessoas.
We took a brief walk.
Some of Asaph's colleagues asked some really stupid questions. Ivy League? I thought.
We headed to the metropolitan cathedral.
I saw an old friend.
We headed to the steps renovated and decorated by the Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón.
I found tiles relevant to my spouse-elect.
And also to me.
I wanted to walk all the way up, but our guide said it was dangerous. It did seem like a run-down neighborhood.
The artist himself was walking around, talking to visitors.
Asaph made me look into a shabby and dilapidated hotel because there was an attractive shirtless man sitting inside.
I thought that cão was a great word.
We then headed to the Pão de Açúcar (also great words). We went up in the cable car first to the Morro de Açúcar.
We watched planes landing in a dramatic fashion.
Everyone made noises of pleasure, satisfaction, surprise, or great joy.
We looked down at a wealthy neighborhood.
Our guide provided some guidance.
We looked over at Jesus.
We continued on to the summit.
It was scary.
Incredible! I thought.
It was very windy and cold at the summit.
After some intense blowing, we were told that the wind was too strong for the cable cars to operate. We were stranded!
We bought snacks and waited for the wind to subside. It was fun. Asaph ate a large piece of cake.
Finally we were allowed to descend.
The bus let us off in Copacabana.
We walked back to our hotel along the beach.
"Why didn't we ever come here before?" asked Asaph. We felt like idiots. Morons.
We took a taxi to a pizza place that had been recommended to us. Weirdly, our taxi driver spoke fluent English. We were surprised.
After eating we walked back to our hotel.
There was a small pool on the roof. We sat there for a bit.
Asaph wanted to go out to a big dance club that would require taking a taxi for 20 minutes, or more. I was fine with the idea.
"Let's take a little nap beforehand," he said.
"I don't think that's a good idea," I replied. It was so late already. I knew what would happen.
"I really need to rest a bit," he said.
I could feel the impending doom.
We got into bed.
Of course, we just slept through the night.
Asaph was very disappointed the next morning. We went out to take a walk.
Not even increased investment in infrastructure could make up for the disappointment.
"I can't believe we came to Rio and didn't go out to a [non-heterosexual] party!" he said.
"We went to that bar," I reminded him.
"We are really lame," he said.
We headed to a famous open-air craft market.
I suddenly started crying, since my first thought had been to buy something for my mother. I hadn't forgotten that she was dead, of course. But, in the past, my priority in a place like this would have been to get her something.
We forgot about how we had failed to be fabulous.
We headed back towards Copacabana.
I stopped and used public restrooms located inside the lifeguard stations.
There was more subsidization of musculation.
We went onto the beach. Quem ama cuida.
The weather was only good for surfing.
We watched for a bit.
We headed into a park with very Brazilian rules.
I wondered if I should be exercising here.
I maybe had a few years left.
We stopped in what would have been called a chiringuito in Spain.
It was nice, but there were some aggressive beach vendors.
The national cocktail was attractive. I liked the word cachaça.
We walked back to Ipanema and stopped again. Asaph had something more natural.
Lots of people were strolling.
"I love Golden Retrievers, but they are such an obvious status symbol here," Asaph said. We had seen a lot of this breed of dog in Rio.
I found another restroom. I was hydrated, apparently.
In spite of the clouds and the clubbing debacle, I loved Rio.
We went and sat on the beach in spite of the weather.
It seemed refreshing that people could drink alcoholic beverages right on the beach, unlike in the United States or Gaza Strip. Although we had seen people drinking alcohol long before noon.
We went to the antiquated spa in the hotel to relax before our flight. There were more nice views.
I was reminded that we had failed to go out clubbing, however.
We headed to the airport.
We had to wait for a very long time in line to check in. We were flying an American carrier -- one of the worst airlines in the world -- back home. We saw an extremely muscular non-heterosexual guy who was around seven-feet tall checking in at the first-class counter. His presumed boyfriend was much smaller and had earphones on. They weren't speaking to each other much.
We were able to use the airport lounge for this terrible airline. It was extremely crowded. People were walking up to someone and asking for autographs and for recorded video messages. We did some quick research and learned that it was a drummer named Chad Smith.
His daughter, who looked like a slightly younger version of the actress Claire Daines, was sitting with his entourage, perkily typing on a computer and talking about her life plans. She was just out of college. I thought again about the forgetting to have children issue. This drummer was eight years older than I.
I saw the gigantic non-heterosexual in the lounge, drinking a protein shake and a diet soda.
We boarded the terrible flight. I noticed that the drummer's daughter had to sit in business class, not with her father in first.
We headed to our tiny seats with no in-seat video. No cabin crew members said a word to us in greeting.
The flight attendants ranged from rude to hostile. But as an aggressive woman was angrily offering us drinks, Asaph asked her about the pin she was wearing.
"It's from the union," she said. "I wear it to piss off my employer."
I chuckled inside a bit. I couldn't imagine a flight attendant on any international airline saying anything like that to a customer, but there was something a bit awesome about it. She saw that I was reading a book about Machu Picchu. "Did you go there?" she asked.
We explained about our trip, and then Asaph explained about the marriage proposal. People behind us had to wait for their drinks. It was tough for them.
"That's really great," she said.
She finally continued the drink service. I could hear her mocking and berating the other passengers.
Another flight attendant approached us a bit later.
"Tammy would like to buy you guys drinks," she said.
Tammy?
We were surprised.
After the argumentative meal service -- the meals were served in a strange order that seemed designed to elicit questions from passengers that could then allow the flight attendants to respond in an exasperated and dismissive fashion -- Tammy came back over.
"I'm getting you guys a free bottle of champagne from the duty free," she said.
We were shocked.
We slept fitfully until our arrival in New York or New Jersey.
As we were disembarking, we saw Tammy sitting and reading and ignoring the departing passengers.
"Thanks so much," we said to her. It was so odd to be singled out for special treatment, or for satisfactory treatment.
I went straight to work after stopping briefly at the apartment. I had learned that it was a good strategy to go immediately to work after an international flight, because you could tell people what you had just done and they didn't expect you to really do any work, but you didn't have to use vacation time.
At lunch, I felt mocked by a bus-shelter tourism campaign. So many wasted years had passed without Brazil!
What had I been thinking?
