Sleeping Around (11 page)

Just before midnight Nunoo turned up. Mariana spotted him in the crowd and waved him over. ‘My heart is beating
so
fast,' she gushed while her cousins all shot him filthy looks. Mariana went all giggly and girly when he gave her a peck on the cheek, and when he went to the bar to get a drink she said, ‘He told me that he didn't call me because he wanted to come here and surprise me. He's
so
lovely.'

The disco, which was upstairs, started at midnight and all the groovy and hip people headed up to dance to the groovy and hip
Don't Go Breaking My Heart
by Elton John and Kiki Dee. Mariana and Roberta dragged me up to the dance floor, but when the Doobie Brothers came on I skolled my drink so that I had an excuse to go back downstairs. ‘Ask Nunoo to come up for a dance,' Mariana yelled in my ear as I left.

Nunoo was busy. He was busy flirting outrageously with a blonde girl at the bar and playing with her hair.

‘I couldn't find him,' I shrugged when I got back upstairs.

‘I'll find him,' Mariana said.

This should be interesting.

I stayed on the packed dance floor with Roberta who bent down and hollered into my ear, ‘It's like dancing in a barrel of fish!'

‘More like a barrel of giraffes,' I said to her right hip.

I told Roberta about Nunoo and the blonde and she said that we should go down to see if Mariana was all right. She was more than all right. We found Mariana and Nunoo draped on the bar with their tongues down each other's throats.

Fifteen minutes later I found Mariana slumped on the stairs in tears. ‘He's left me and now he has broken my heart,' she whimpered. ‘Why doesn't he want me? I'm beautiful, smart and funny.'

‘He doesn't know what he's missing out on,' I said.

‘He told me that I was perfect . . .' Mariana sniffed as mascara trickled down her cheek, ‘. . . but not perfect enough.'

I then reeled out all the rest of the old clichés to try and console her:

‘He's not good enough for you.'

‘There's plenty more fish in the sea.'

‘You'll find someone new, someone better.'

‘He's a fucking arsehole!' Roberta summed it up rather more succinctly when I dragged Mariana upstairs. ‘She needs to drink and she needs to dance,' Roberta added. When I came back with a Cosmopolitan (Mariana drank Cosmopolitans because that's what Carrie drank on
Sex and the City
), she was dancing while bawling her eyes out. I left her with Roberta and went downstairs to the bar and chatted to a fellow from Australia, because no matter where you travel in the world you'll usually find another Australian to chat to. ‘I think I've found heaven,' he said as two stunning girls threw themselves all over him.

By 3.30 I was ready for bed. And it seemed Mariana was ready to take someone to hers. I found her upstairs making out rather zealously with a new Nunoo. When I'd told her that she would ‘find someone new', I hadn't meant within the hour. ‘Come sit with us,' Mariana said brightly.

I sat and watched a replay of some local football game on the big-screen TV while Mariana and her new beau sat next to me exchanging tongues. In fact, half the crowd seemed to be making out with a boyfriend, girlfriend, friend-friend or possibly just a random stranger. ‘I'm sorry, Brian,' Mariana said in between kisses. ‘I'm still the
coolest
girl in Rio, aren't I?'

I finally dragged Mariana away from the nightclub at five o'clock just as the first traces of morning appeared in the sky. The entire city still seemed to be up and the kiosks along Ipanema beach were full of late-night (or early morning) revellers drinking from large coconuts and eating sandwiches. It had taken only four days, but I'd finally become one of them. I was now officially nocturnal.

Mariana might have to change the bit in her profile where she said ‘I'm the happiest girl you'll ever meet'. She spent most of the morning in bed sobbing and howling into the phone. She eventually crawled out of bed at one o'clock for breakfast.

My meal times were now totally out of whack. We had breakfast at 1.30, which meant that I'd probably be having lunch at seven and dinner sometime the next day. I went to wash the breakfast dishes and Mariana said, ‘Don't do that! My maid has to have some work to do.' She wasn't going to be happy with me then. I made the bed.

Although I hadn't actually seen too much of the bed, I gave it the highest couch rating so far:

Couch rating: 8/10
Pro: A
real
bed plus an ensuite
Con: The bed was a bit short (if I'd brought home one of the Amazonian cousins—and I'm only talking hypothetically here of course—I would have needed to fold her in half).

‘Would you like to come and watch democracy at work?' Mariana asked. ‘I have to vote today.' Voters could choose the venue where they wanted to cast their vote (school, local hall, etc.) and Mariana chose the very exclusive Leme tennis club, which had a restaurant and pool overlooking the beach. ‘I'm, how you say?' Mariana said, turning up the tip of her nose with her finger, ‘. . . a snob.'

On the short walk to the tennis club we were both handed a dizzying array of flyers promoting candidates. ‘We have to vote for six different positions, including the president,' Mariana explained. Some of the candidates looked a bit creepy. Luiz Sérgio looked like Borat wearing his grandma's glasses while João Pedro looked suspiciously like Charles Manson. The creepiest one of all, however, was a fellow in an ill-fitting business shirt, beard and a grey wig who hadn't done himself any favours for the photo by wearing his smarmiest smile and sticking his thumbs up in the air.

‘Who'd vote for him?' I chortled. ‘He looks like a used-car salesman.'

‘That's Lula, our president!' Mariana said. ‘He's okay compared to some of the other politicians we've had.' Those ‘other politicians' included President Fernando Collo de Mello, who won the 1989 presidential election by promising to fight corruption. Then in 1992 he was thrown out of office after being accused of siphoning off more than US$1 billion of public funds. Another was Congressman Hildebrando Pascoal, who was arrested for making cuts, not to the budget but to a man's arms and legs with a chainsaw.

Although we were in an upmarket area, the city's poverty was painfully apparent in everyday scenes: men and women sleeping in the street; destitute boys juggling for spare change at a major intersection; and tiny girls peddling gum outside chic restaurants. The poor were also queueing with the wealthy to vote.

Tables inside the tennis club were set up for voting according to age group. The folk manning the tables were volunteers—well, volunteers in that they would have been sent a letter from the government telling them that they were volunteering. Mariana had ‘volunteered' twice before.

‘Who did you vote for?' I asked Mariana when she'd finished.

‘The used-car salesman,' she said with a grin.

Deciding the fate of the nation takes its toll and we both concluded that we needed a good lie down. I was getting used to this nocturnal caper.

By 7.30 we were showered and changed and on our way to a brothel. Well, a former brothel at least. Casa Rosa (The Pink House) was now a samba club and Sunday night was the
roda de samba
party. The seven-dollar entrance fee included dinner (or lunch in our case) and a perpetual parade of girls wiggling their perfect bottoms. Most of the action was taking place in the large and very pink outdoor area. Mariana described it perfectly: ‘It's like a party in someone's backyard.'

The band were all sitting around a table that was covered in bottles of beer and the musicians were singing while thumping drums (
surdos
) and bongos and swinging their
cavaquinhos
(the diminutive guitars that give samba music its characteristic tink). The music was contagious and I couldn't help but wiggle my not-so-perfect bottom. This is what couch surfing is all about. I really felt like I was in Brazil. I was with a local in a local samba bar eating authentic local food.

The languid and tanned locals were still dancing even while waiting in line for food, which was a typical Brazilian dish called
feijoada
. The plate was piled high with
arroz e feijão
(rice and black beans),
farofa
,
linguiça
(slices of spicy pork sausage) and a surprisingly tasty salad made with cabbage and oranges.

I could barely move after all the food. Well, that was my excuse for constantly stomping on Mariana's toes while she attempted to teach me how to dance the
forró
, a fast-paced dance originating in the country's northeast. We were in the
forró
room, which was one of three other dancing rooms in Casa Rosa. The rustic accordion-driven music seemed a tad folksy for a city hooked on glamour, but the Cariocas transformed the tiny room into a sweaty pit of sensuality. Sadly, though, my dancing was more nonsensical than sensual. The dance is ‘performed' in pairs and the couple dance very close together. The man's left hand holds the woman's right hand as in the waltz, with his right arm around her back and her left arm around his neck. The man's right leg then stays in between the woman's legs. The dance somewhat resembles a dog trying to have sex with a person's leg.

I really am quite a terrible dancer and I just can't get the whole rhythm thing going. Everyone else was in a perfect groove and doing fancy spins while I stared at my feet, mumbling to myself ‘1, 2, 3 turn 1, 2, 3 turn 1, 2, 3 stomp . . . oh sorry!' Mariana was incredibly polite. I must have stood on her toes a dozen times, but she was very patient. Mind you, when I suggested that we go outside, she did agree rather too enthusiastically.

We went to another room where a band was playing a jazz samba fusion. I loved it. So did Mariana. I think Mariana particularly liked it because it was the type of music that you danced solo to. ‘It's a happy place,' Mariana said, smiling serenely. It really was. Every person in the room was dancing. And it was really joyous exuberant dancing, not the usual stand-in-one-spot-around-the-handbag-waving-your-arms-now-and-again type you see in most nightclubs.

We had a very early night. We left at 1.00 a.m. But not before Mariana walked up to a good-looking guy she'd never met before, said ‘Don't I know you from somewhere?' and gave him her telephone number.

I awoke early. Well, in my new nocturnal life, ten o'clock was early. ‘I'm so sad that you are going,' Mariana said before leaving for work. ‘You are my new best friend,' she added, squeezing me tightly. This was what couch surfing was all about (and I don't mean getting squeezed tightly by gorgeous Brazilian girls). Mariana had taken me into her life and treated me like a dear friend after only a few short days. And it was because of that generosity and friendship that I was given opportunities to see and do things that wouldn't have happened if I wasn't couch surfing.

I still had a few hours until my flight to the States, so I had a bit of a lie down on the couch when Mariana had gone. I was only a quarter way through my Couch Surfing Tour and I was already exhausted. I needed a break from partying (and drinking). But I had no hope that Bob, my couch-surfing host in Chicago, was a teetotaller and liked nice quiet nights in front of the telly. Not when he lived above a liquor store and, according to his profile, liked to ‘drink beer and loot and pillage'.

USA