Tag Archives: brasil

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…his old jacket…

One afternoon, he decided to pull out the old Legionnaires’ uniform, and here he is looking pleased with himself… after 18 years, he can still Almost button it closed… double click to enlarge the brat.   This was 2006 in Rio.

I’m anticipating going through my storage soon, finding my old journals, and beginning to review the days when I was seeing Alcir.  It’s not all pleasure, be assured, for I will likely never see him again, and in some ways that chapter of my life is closed forever.  Stirring the memories is stirring the emotions, and they run deep and technicolor vivid.

As a being, he is etched upon my brain pans, like one of those movies you see over and over through the years, always creating the sensory overload, the tastes and smells, the cocktail chemistry, the brain bath rushing over skin, through veins, visions of sugar plum fantasies with someone who came so close to being a perfect match, yet membraned apart just enough to never quite get there.  There were moments, flashes of paradise…

Heart breakingly almost, tantalizingly dancing just out of reach, touching in and running away.  Begging for help, longing for true love, believing in conjoined souls, and terrified of love, that was he.

 

 

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…a new post on a new year…

Rio is the Hawaii of the Southern Hemisphere…

The same warm and comfortable.

The same body relax of mother warmth that says ‘all is well’.

The same Mix of world, clash of race and culture.

But with Nature, the Art of the gods… could they do better?

All the world of faces….skins …and…. cultures

There………For the taking..

Mixin it up.

It isn’t easy … going back to where I was…

Feeling and reviewing all of it.

But then again, it’s a good movie that I don’t mind sharing.

I think of my first impressions of Brasil, as i got off the plane… and later, as i walked the winding streets of the island we lived on…  The people are so individuated in their appearance.  Somehow the combination of races and cultures gives so much a variety to choose from when designing a body.  Indiginous, Portuguese, and African…. but then the place became a glamor spot in the twenties, where movie stars and the rich came to play, a glorious background to all their party pictures.

After WWII, the Japanese and the Germans came in droves.  One could escape to Brasil and never be seen again, it’s so huge.  So you see Asian faces and blue eyed blondes, full figured blacks and sinuwy brown skins.  The women for some reason have turned out to be some of the most gorgeous creatures on the planet, and they show it off, flaunt it, display their power fully, and it is likely their grandest power.   They shop at the local markets in skin tight pants, yet never shorts… that’s the sign of the professional.  Oh no, no shorts!  Just skin tight down to below the knees or longer.

Their hair is long, full and big, frequently lightly colored in stripes, as that’s what the news ladies on TV were wearing at the time.  Lots of Stripes.  Wild things!  And at one point, all those gorgeous news ladies also wore hair that curved in to the face in long curled, knife-like blades, five and six levels, all curving in like scythes, like Forks, ready to Bite you.  Fierce!

Their tops showed lots of cleavage and skin….after all, it is the Tropics, humid and hot.  They were Fully made up, with big hoop earrings, and heeled sandals….always heels, which accentuated their butts, jutting out to balance, the way heels make you do.  Not that they needed accentuating.  Most of the women had the most gorgeous asses the world has ever known.  That was the Black part that they all seemed to get, no matter what the rest of the creature chose.  Fabulous high round cantilevered asses that you just couldn’t Not look at.  I did not see Cracker asses, nope, just these great big perfectly proportioned booties.

The culture is backwards when it comes to male-female roles, and the men are not about to let it go.  Latin men do what they want, when they want, and they all drink together at the street pubs open to the sidewalks.  It’s an evening ritual, and although you do see couples mingling about, strolling the walks late at night, after the day has cooled, still it’s the men who are out late, talking story endlessly into the night.

My Alcir was steeped in the tradition, and seldom a night passed that he didn’t leave for a while.  “I’ll be back” became a joke, for the fact was once he left, i never knew when I’d see him again.  Sometimes he’d come back for a while, and then leave again.  Other times he’d be content to come home after a little, two or three liter bottles of  ‘Chops’ under his arm, the favorite beer locally, and freezing to the point of slushies… he’d shove it into the freezer to keep it that way, and we’d drink into the night, laughing and dancing wildly.  He got jolly when medium drunk, with lots of stories and tenderness.  But in the late nights, when he’d visited the favellas and scored the white powder he called coke, but knew better, he’d get mean.  I realized later that he snorted to get straight, so he could get drunk twice.

Yet through all this self abuse, he remained sinfully good looking.  Six foot, swimmers’ body, a natural grace and classic proportions.  Brown skin, white teeth, snapping dark brown, slightly slanted eyes, and thick salt and pepper hair, by then.  He was used to the female attention he’d gotten all his life, took it for granted, yet boasted on it too.  I remember one time in some charming bar, and when i returned from the restroom, he informed me that two blondes had chatted him up, and invited him to join them.

“Geeeesh,” I smiled…”I can’t leave you alone for five minutes!”

“Naaaa,” he’d reply, the smug creeping into his smile…
“I’m a gooood boy.
I tole them i was waiting for my fiancee…”   and looked proud
of himself.
I gave him a squeeze.

It was true, he was a good boy when I was there.  When I was gone was another matter.  A doctor’s visit proceeded my return, and although nothing was found, still his concern made it quite clear to me what he’d been up to.

Next…. the Second Time, which makes up for the First.

 

 

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….. in a Rio cafe…

As I proof read these pages, I think to myself that no one will actually believe this is real.  I know, it sounds like a movie.  And I’m not even referring back to my journals right now, because somehow as I take it step by step, it all comes back in its most minute details, and I can hear his voice, and know exactly the words he chose, and when a word isn’t quite right, I just know it.  That’s how deep the cut was…

Many years later, as we sat drinking ice cold beer in the little café bar with one side open to the wandering street, the cobblestone street, the one that winds up the hill to one of the oldest districts in Rio, the one that, as the story goes, that woman came down after the wild party, walking on her hands, to save the precious nectar inside her.  Later she would produce a child who sprang from the loins of the king of Rock n Roll… Mick the man.

Yes indeedy, sprang from a party up that hill, in some luxurious mansion, and now whenever the Stones play Rio, he visits the kid at his exclusive school.  And she?  She now has a talk show, and is an edgy bitchy and rich celebrity with very stripey like a zebra, highlighted hair.

Go figure.

Anyways, so he’s telling me these tales of Rio and streets and the kids at his school, and it’s hot and steamy, and the beer is so cold it’s almost a slushy, and it feels like we could be anywhere right now.  There are these darling young women sitting nearby, they have accents,  obviously European, and now and then they glance at us and smile.  Alcir of course thinks it’s because he’s so cute ….  Soon they join us at the table, and they are tittering away with soft giggles, telling us that they are on a journey from Germany, and staying in Brasil for a couple weeks.  They are intelligent, well educated, and speak very good English.  We begin to  answer their questions of who and why We are…..how an American comes to be here with a Brasilian in Rio, and I mention that it is all a movie, that it needs to Be a movie, and then of course, Alcir smiles and asks…

”So….. who weeell play Meee?”  ……and we all laugh.

“Benicio del Toro” return the girls, and there is a pause… Alcir obviously approves, smiles, nods his head, and the chatter turns to travels and more stories.

That was his edgy side, the side those girls picked up on.  The side that was more than a little dangerous, mysterious, thrilling and scarey…… and scarred.  He loved danger.  Craved it.

His family was an old aristocratic group that had pretty much lost it all.  They lived in a multi level home, with rooms and shuttered windows, each staying away from the other, hate and disgust seething from every floor.  The house was unkempt, and slowly melting away, but at one time exemplified class and grandeur.

A karmic layer cake, I used to call it.

When he was 14, he and his buddies used to steal cars and drive them to Uruguay to sell.  He didn’t need the money, just the thrills, the bad boy thrills.  His dad paid the tab at the local bar, but he needed more.  Defiant, he was beaten continually as a child until he stood up one day at 15 and announced to his father that right now,  if he laid a hand on him, he would beat the holy crap out of him.  And he never touched him again, not physically anyway.

But cruelty ran in the group, a very convoluted history that went back generations.

His mother never wanted a child, tried to rid herself of this creature inside her that would ruin her life and her figure, was unsuccessful, and never stopped reminding him of that.  Once while I was there, she came beating on his door at 6 am, screaming that she should have killed him then, she wished she had, and now she hated him, that he was ruining her life.

His grandmother had been his salvation….. his mother’s mother.  She adored him, somehow instinctively understood him, and from the pictures I’ve seen, she was a very sad woman later in life.  But absolutely Gorgeous as a young Indian woman.  Haunting…And that is another chapter in itself, the story of the young Indian girl, and the man who waited and watched for two years, until her father gave permission for him to marry her….  that was one set of grandparents.

When she died, Alcir was the one to wash her body, dress her, and make her ready to be laid down.  She had given him his haunting, dark slanting eyes, and his ferocious spirit, wild and untamable.  She had loved him singularly, and was quite alone in her understanding.

See?  That’s what I mean.  So many facets to this man, so much anger and pain, so much tenderness and depth, so much beauty.  It was a puzzlement that I had to unwind.

 

 

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… the first time….

It was so Almost There….

Almost……achingly Almost totally….. It.

Icons meet and clash, like warriors that bend and dance…

The depth of passion, in this life, I will not experience again,

Unless it’s at the birth of my child’s child…

Or the birth of my own.

Is there much more than birth, death and the deepest love.

And what is love? Does anyone know.

But crazy indeniably irresistibly magnetic to the point of

Insanity might begin to describe….

And isn’t that what we all crave somewhere…?

Oblivion…..the Somewhere Else place, where self and other

Blends and melt-melds into the great glorious mysterious All.

Yes, love and great sex can indeed, like fresh mushrooms,

And fresh homegrown…and the oldtyme LSD, the real sacrament.

they can take you to paradise, goneness,

Oblivion, out of here man, and I don’t care and I don’t know

And it’s all just OK.

OK… so….. This man has just given me the most perfect kiss ever… in my life anywhere.   It embodied the most pure, the most innocent…. And moved thru all the punches………To complete sexually blended bliss.  How can this be with just lips?

For the next week, I literally ran away from him.   He showed up the next morning, because ‘he’d left his watch’, that multi-hundreds state-of-the-arts at-the-time divers’ watch.

Oh, wait…….. I forgot to tell you about the rest of the evening…..                                                     (she sighs and drifts….)

So supposedly he’s too drunk to drive home, and can he camp on the couch.  Ok, whatever.  The couch is in my studio, below where I sleep.  He snores.  I sleep well in my king size, Steven joining me as cuddle buddy….  He leaves early for some new job on the wharf.

And then….. Someone knocks at the ladder….

Are you surprised, dear reader?  Oh I hope so….

“Hello?  Can I come up and see the view in the light?…”  and before I can answer, this head appears just above the floor…  and he says something, and he’s here next to me, and……he pulls back the covers and climbs in….

I’m half asleep, and say ineffectual words about Steven, and wait, and……. He’s inside me….. with full kisses and legs surrounding me.   And before I’ve caught my breath,….. he comes.

I instinctively draw in my breath ……………He sits up.

“Oh I did not expect That…”…. And he holds his head.  The white sheet falls around his brown skin…  I start to laugh…

“Oh, I hope I have not given you a bad impression of Brasilians .”                                      …..and I laugh again… damn, how adorable Is he….

And I softly say…”No…. actually it’s sort of flattering..”

And “Oh yah, flattering…very funny…” ….comes back, nervously.

Then he was bustling, getting dressed, off to work, gathering his wits, ready-ing for the cove and the guys and the dive.  Off to jump in the ocean, and away from whateverthefuck this is.

Late that day, he returned for his pride and joy, his divers’ watch, and I remember holding the door in front of me, a shield from his shine, because I felt so naked and vulnerable and it all scared the shit out of me, and…                     I was totally swept away.

So… for the next week, I avoided him.  He showed up along maybe Wed nite with his diver buddy, and I sat at the far end of the table, engrossed in whatever the what I was engrossed in, just as long as I didn’t have to make eye contact with him.  After lots of laughs and a couple beers, they jolly well leave, and my heart rate slows to near normal.

Once I saw him with a few guys, on the back of a truck in town, and he flashed his trademark wide grin.  Like a hungry animal…..I looked away.

That weekend was the Fourth of July parade and gala… oh yah, a gala in a 3000 people town, back in the backhills hideaway on the NorCal coast.

The parade was classic.  Always the flags, the hippie floats, and the local guns and bad ass boys, a couple horses.  And some pretty girls… lots of creativity everywhere.

So we’re on the street, near the little town store, my girls and I, and along comes Big Alcir, walkin that way he walks, sort of a bad boy walk, like I could Kick your fuckin ass, no problem, walk…. but he’s got long Indian hair, and there’s a style to him that you can’t deny… he’s got class.

“Good Morning Ladies” comes the warm refrain.  Oh god…

He makes pleasantries, and passes.  Damn… he is rather intriguing…ya think?   But what just happened that night, that morning… I still haven’t completely figured it out, but I’m getting close.  Very close.

So I’m there with my two little girls, waiting for the parade to start, and he’s across from me, on the other side of the narrow street, behind someone else sort of, but not, and we eye contact… I make a motion like ‘do you have a light for this thing?’ …. ok, it’s the eighties, and yes, I smoke.

He crosses the street, his Varnets intact, hair beautifully tousled, a neat plaid in soft tans adorns his ever more interesting body.  He walks like a cat.   So…what’s happening today, what’s the deals in this town, (where are you going) blahdeblah ensues.   So he mentions that this whole thing is just too Wholesome for him.  And I say……

“…hmmm… so why don’t you come over sometime, and take me away from all this wholesomeness. ”   ….Really…. No Really, I actually said that.                   And “Really…?” was what He said back to me…

The parade starts, he goes to the store, hands us something as he passes, a candy for the girls, and he’s gone.  The day with its barbeques and sweetness that only a small town can dish up, included a giant picnic at the park, and I was singing in a Blues Band.

I vaguely remember his face in the crowd as I concentrate on my vocals, coming and going, appearing once when I’m out dancing, watching me, offering me a light as I hang with friends.  But he’s etherial, and I’m relieved to see him that way.   I have, in my gut, been keeping him at arm’s length, and he is picking up on that, not pushing me, not rushing it, just being there and waiting…. like that kiss.   I like that.

The proceedings move day to night, and now it’s very dark.

I am sitting on a large log with my girls, facing the sea.

In front of me is a Gaugin painting, a Van Gogh of sand and crashing surf, dark but with well heard drums as background.  A huge bonfire erupts into the sky, and the sparks and stars combine and swirl (starry starry night) with the giant booms and flashes of fireworks, shot out over the ocean, enough to make the world dance forever.

Beautiful happy hairy hippies dancing and meandering round the fire, and I swear at that moment I thought to myself that I was in heaven.  The beauty was beyond any dream…. such sweetness…

And then I swear, I thought………… If only he were here….

And once again, I swear…. I hear over my left shoulder…

“Good Evening Ladies…”… that deep dark voice.

And he sits beside me, all of us hunkered down to warmth, and we talk……                        Like really talk  for the first time.

“So how are you?”

“Oh I’m great, just fine, oh ya….” …he trails off….there’s a wistfulness there…

“Not so great, actually…”

“Why?  What’s happening..?”

“Oh, new kid on the block, I guess…….I don’t know…”

“So… how’s your spiritual life?” I venture, and to this day I don’t know why…

“Oh ya, just great… hahahahaaa, and he nervously fills in the blank air.              I’ve thrown him a curve…

“Hmmm….” I mysteriously hmmmm.  I think now that I wanted to convey to him that there was more to me than the surface that he so enjoyed…                      I also sense he was looking for redemption somewhere, and I wanted to take him somewhere, lead him somewhere else, to some sort of new dawn.

Long pause.  We both look at the fire, the trailing sparks, the stars, the dancers….

“So…what are you doing after this?

“Oh, I have to take the girls home soon…. Ya,  pretty soon……”

“Oh really?  So…maybe could I come over later?”

“Umm… ya…. maybe later, maybe like 10 or so?”

“Ok…” and he smiles in the dark… I can feel the smile more than see it.

He says good evening, and wanders off.  My heart is now salsa dancing.

Oh god….what have I done?..

 

 

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….. brasil somemore …..

Well, it’s been how many days, and I have neglected you all, busying myself with…. oh no!… making money.  Yes, it’s true… and this is the time for sure.  Things are flowing, and I’m being a good girl and doing what I need to do right now.

Finding treasures to sell is a job in itself, but of course it’s one of the funnest ones… the other being collecting the money.  In between it’s cleaning up, photographing, writing clever descriptions and posting.  Then there’s answering questions and reminding people to pay.  But really, it’s fun.

So I’ve left you hanging on two counts… the variety of stories left from that dating site that started this whole thing, and…… the continuing saga of the Alcir-Brasil Story.

Last time we talked, he had been giving me the deadly Latin Stare across the room, and I was irritated, but amused.  What a little Brat, how dare he impose his great big eyes into my psyche, and irritate my inners…   the little Punk… We ate our dinner I guess, I can’t really remember much in that arena.  I think it was better than I thought it would be, that’s for sure.

At some point later, he turned to me directly, and asked for a tour.  Now at that time my home was this conglomerate that had evolved through decades of hippies and homesteaders.  Started with an A frame, then extended lengthwise to add a master bedroom-bath, then went up from there, up narrow stairs to create two more rooms, one square with windows, one long with low A frame ceiling, the top floor actually, of that master bedroom.  All very funky, rough wood, makeshift railings, odd stairs, but it all worked to make this really cozy nest, and a great party house.

At the other end was the newest addition, a large high ceiling-ed  get away with polished floors, surround windows and husky ladder leading to my loft bed.  This was my Studio, and since it was at the opposite end from the kids’ and teens areas, I could close its glass doors and have a world of my own.  Lovely.  My favorite house of all times, with odd little decks tucked here and there, and 360 views into the woods.

So we’re all a bit high on probably beer and some greenery, and we’ve been laughing for a couple hours, so I’m fine with this ‘Tour’.  I lead him to the master bedroom, which my oldest daughter had reserved, the upstairs rooms which my two younger girls enjoy, and then it’s the other end…. This place was like a Boat, long and narrow with each room having a different flavor and dimension.  We enter my studio and loft, and he checks out my art.  At that time I was making all sorts of creatures from clay and cloth, and sometimes skulls and bones.

“Oh,”  he says…”I’ve herrrd about weeemen like you…… you do Voodoo?  You do Voodoo forrr meee.  I wan a meeeelion doelars…”

We laugh.  I show him the large deck off one side.  It’s dark, and the lights cast shadows on the huge trees around us.  There are sighs.  It’s quiet.

We go back into the studio, and he looks up to the loft.

“Can I see up dere?” he asks, with tentative confidence.

“Ok, sure…I guess…”

We climb the ladder, he behind me, and I wonder if he’s staring at my ass.      No, actually I don’t wonder at all…

The loft is basically a large bed on the floor, with some space around it.  There are little drawers on each side, and it’s draped with gauzey flow-y stuff like I like.  The ceiling is low and peaked.  We go out on the tiny deck off to the right, and check out the view.   It’s getting intense…

The quiet of the night, the shadows and light of those giant redwoods, the total lack of conversation, all lend this eerie, other feeling to our togetherness.   He’s on my left, our arms almost touching.  Then suddenly, or quite slowly actually, his left hand reaches across and touches the left side of my face.   Gently, so gently, more gently than I could ever imagine this madman could be,  his fingers turn my face to his, and in slow motion, he bends down towards me.  So slowly…. All the while my brain is on fry, I can’t believe he’s doing this, how dare he do this, I don’t even know him, how can this be happening, and then… his lips float to mine.  They touch my lips so softly, and it’s forever a moment.  They just sit there, barely touching, and do not move.  He does not move.   I do not move.  My brain continues its soliloquy, spinning it’s doubts and indignations, the how can he, what is this, what the what….?

Yet slowly, ever so slowly, the mind quiets with this gentleness, this soft respect, this non invasive invasion.  Slowly the body relaxes.  And slowly, ever so gradually, I surrender in parts and pieces, tiny sections at a time.  And as I surrender, over what seems like minutes but are likely tens of seconds, my body and his draw together, nano millimeter by nano millimeter.   Slowly his hands touch my waist, slowly his arms begin to surround me.  And at some point far into the night,  in universe time, star time, moon walk time, I have melted into him and he to me, his arms holding me as tightly as he dares, and the kiss has become our entire reality.  Complete and absolute Surrender.  Our oneness hangs in time, the trees the only witness to our only-us, only-now moment.

“Mom…?  are you guys coming down soon…?” and the irridescent bubble breaks, the spirits draw back into corporal reality, and we abruptly part as daughter #2 appears up the ladder.

“Ya, we’re coming” I think I mumble, and we stumble stagger spin away from eachother, and down into the reality we have left.

Heh heh heh…. yes, this is the real story.  Didja like that part?  Hmmmm hmmm ….. so did I.  What a way to start a romance, huh?

 

 

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….it was a very good year….

....it was a very good year....

It’s 1986, and I’m having margaritas with Steven, the one who brought Alcir home with him and a frozen chicken. I cropped this one to send to Alcir, because he hated seeing me with anyone else…. even Steven.   I was 43… he was 33…. at least that’s what he Told me… later I found out he was 29.