Journal entry — Carnaval — Fat Tuesday. After Midnight.
Shit. It looks like they’ve cranked open the gates of hell down here at the Prado Júnior. The Pussy Arcade. Coked up gangs of funny faced whores standing ready to face the ashy dawn like grim determined warrior ants of the apocalypse. A hot wind is blowing in over the water from Mother Africa, the full moon is lighting up my mind like an old time pinball machine and it’s on…
They’re all out here tonight, last fucking night of Carnaval. Some standing in pairs or threesomes, others huddled in larger protective gaggles. All talking wild shit, waiting for the next car to roll up, the next boring exchange of futile ho-stroll banalities. Bored and boring creatures of the night. Creatures of habit with their easy come and go grabby mentalities. So dumbly predictable. Same cheap synthetic gaudy colored outfits, same worn out plastic heels, crappy tattoos and saggy flapjack baby-sucked breasts.
I cruise up slowly and park — taking it all in again.
Same old dejected faces of eternal disappointment and mental slavery… and that odd ghostly glimmer of innocent heroic optimism. All eyes alive down here tonight, flashing like searchlights, looking for the big last-minute score, the legendary Hundred Dollar Gringo Trick. But the competition is thick tonight, ten or twenty young girls for every swinging dick out here. And more where they come from — packed like showroom dummies into their cramped little one-room Copacabana back street flats that reek of garlic and howling babies, transvestite piss, stale beer, pot smoke, geriatric pussy farts, poverty, loud music, angry shouts and the occasional gunshot from down the hall.
The lucky ones emerge from the Disco Club hand in hand with their gringos; muscular well tanned Italian boys in tight jeans and crisp designer shirts or balding sloppy sunburned Americanos. Walking out of the boite, I watch as they’re all dutifully bombarded by the usual army of beggars and pushers, hollow-faced flower peddlers, strong arm taxi drivers, pimps, killers, low level hustlers, shakedown cops, thugs and glassy-eyed glue-sniffing eight-year-old wallet snatchers.
I sit curbside on the bike waiting for a break, watching the whole depressing freak show parade of lost souls and demons and dregs again from my invisible crow’s nest perch here. Another idea pops into my brain like a cartoon light bulb above my head. I fire up the motor and blast off, cruising down the twinkling yellow Avenida Atlantica.
I roll up to the next crowded ho-stroll in front of the Holiday bar. The same sleazy old Copacabana whorehouse where I found Narcisa just a few months before. Now it all seems like another lifetime. I park the bike and get off, looking around at these familiar old surroundings. I walk through the crowd feeling slightly disgusted by the whole tired scene. The same stale old loveless mating rituals I’ve walked through a thousand times before. Gringos and whores. Whores and gringos. Sex tourists, lonesome horny refugees from the frigid Puritan wastelands of the North where sex is a virtual video game played by lonely white men on glowing computer screens. A pathetic perversion of the real world. But this is the real world here. Another kind of perversion. Little Ignácio’s familiar old world in living color. Sight, sound, smell, touch, memory. Gringos, cab drivers, cops and muggers and pushers and whores. Whores. Whores. Whores. All sizes, shapes, heights and colors. But mostly just the same old common nondescript dusky brown misshapen Mulattas and Caboclas all clustering in the shadows like so many hungry rats. The odd lonely Brazilian playboy and a few local businessmen hopping the conjugal fence for one last boozy Carnaval night out. Bo-ring!
And the girls are all out here too, milling around in hungry giggling rodent droves. Packs of faceless, graceless loud-mouthed fast-talking razor-sharp bitches straight out of the teeming dirt-poor whore-factories, the dusty slums of the Baixada. Predatory pussy eyeing the nervous little groups of snappy gringos like so many slobbering jackals watching a hen house. The tricks are all dressed up in their white linen suit jackets and straw hats and other typical gringo party wear for their big Copacabana Carnaval Adventure. The same fucking gringos who kept little Ignácio in food and clothing and drugs and lodging and whores way back in another time, another life, another dream.
Shit. Easy enough to spot the cokeheads here. Always was. Easy to pick out as donkeys at a horse race. I shoulda been a shakedown cop. Just keep an eye on the men’s room and watch for the gringo coming out rubbing his nose with that ‘just did a bump’ look on his guilty little pink gringo mug. Easy pickings down here, as always.
And all the girls are wearing the same tasteless frilly short skirts and cheap high-heel shoes, same old poorly tailored gaudily colored low-cut blouses. The Uniform. They look like they all just popped out of the same fucking cookie-cutter hooker mold! Ruthless ghetto girls out on the prowl for that fabled Magic Gringo Short-time Carnaval Dollar-dispenser, or maybe even a whole week shacked up in some fancy beachfront hotel with trips to the shopping mall and a nice bonus at the end of the programa… if they get lucky.
Same old Whores. Same old Gringos. Same old hustle. Same old shit.
Some things never change.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010.
hanks for your comments… well, i can certainly see where u both are coming from, especially having been an editor myself for many years, and having done over 50 edits of this book already, both alone and with another professional book editor.
However, this piece of the text in particular is taken out of context from the rest of the book. It’s really just a sliver of the main character’s inner thought process where he’s just kinda going off and riffing in a stream-of-consciousness rant in the privacy of his own fucked up head. A sort of fly-on-the-wall look for the reader into his thoughts.
The next excerpt which I’ll post in a few days brings it back to the main body of the story. There you will see a much different and much sparser writing style entirely…
Thanks again for your thoughtful comments..