End of the day. Copacabana. Chilly summer Sunday’s end. Sitting at my regular seaside table at the end of the beach, observing the crazy moving beehive hieroglyphic puzzle of early night’s activity, people walking past the bar here. People, disjointed illegible figures. They’re all out tonight; a weird mix of lost dog gringos, fuzzy-looking mulatta whores, faceless locals and bitter-faced street beggars with distilled cachaça livers and deathly shit-brown botiquim patinas; all sharing the dirty sidewalk with crummy piss-picker pigeons — nature’s answer to rats in this place.
And I sit here at the end of Copacabana, looking out over world’s edge, a green coconut descending into my hand, my stomach full of beans and rice. The good life; watching the waves roll in peopled by the colorful ant-dots of surfers praying to the last waves of dusk. A white white cruise ship disappears over the green to gray post-sunset horizon. I reflect on the ho-stroll conversations raging around my ears here, conjuring up a fond memory of last night… the warm feeling of homecoming as I flew through the night air on the growling black wasp, leaning into the familiar curve of Prado Junior.
Sugar Loaf Mountain to my back and the green blur of the Aterro de Flamingo still bouncing around in my nostrils, I pulled up to the curb and ground the bike to a stop to greet my little group of curbside hookers. They were all out on the street, lounging on parked cars like cynical scrawny crows on a ghetto fence. Prada Junior whores… hipster legends of the lost spirit nights of Copacabana. My raggedy pirate-eyed friends. I get along well with these streetwise coked up old alkie whores. Better than I ever did with straight chicks. I especially love their ribald mortuary humor. Their off-color stories are as dark and raucous and irreverent as the redlight hallways they patrol from town to town like a tribe of gypsy crabs, peddling pussy and personality with that timeless tough-luck courage that gives them more balls than the average guy whose tired grunts they fondly tolerate with their legendary quickwitted cool. Man, if the average woman had a thimbleful of these bitch’s class and courage, I think as I hand a sweaty banknote to Brenda.
Brenda struts off to buy her and her partner a couple of doses of cheap white rum. As soon as she’s out of earshot, my friend Shirley, Brenda’s longtime neighbor on their curbside perch here, eases up and leans into the crook of my elbow, talking out the side of her mouth through crowded teeth, all flashing black eyes and skinny hair and pointy angles.
“I’m sick of her shit, Cigano,” Shirley drawls. “Yeh… there goes one useless old ho… lissen to this: I get us a class trick last night with a high rollin’ gringo. Fancy hotel, jacuzzi bath, panoramic view, got the whiskey and the cashew nuts, room service, the fucking works, hein? The gringo’s gonna give us 200 each. Sweet deal, right? So soon as we get up to the room, off comes my clothes and splish splash, rub a dub, right into the tub. Sure baby. Cash in the hand, panties on the land. Whaddya think? Shirley’s gonna get paid! Fat City gringo trick…”
She cocks a razor-sharp sneer towards the corner bar where Brenda’s disappeared with my money to get their booze. “That one, hah, all she’s good for, gimme a buck here, gimme a buck there, no, fuck no… go go go— nada! She’s just along for the ride again while I do all the fucking work and then she wants her half. Her half!?! Some fucking balls! Fucking boozy old freeloading chicken! Hah! Me and the gringo in the tub playing hide the salami and ya think she’d even take her fucking clothes off? Hah! Shit, not even one shoe came off while she’s hitting the frigo-bar, and she’s drinking the gringo’s hotel bill into orbit, munch munch, cashew nuts gone… at 10 bucks a can! Two cans! Down the hatch! Whiskey? Gone. Beer? Not a drop left, and it’s glug glug munch munch chomp while the gringo’s wearing my fucking pussy out, and he don’t even get to see the color of her fucking toenail polish…
“… and just when he’s finally popping his nut and it’s time for me to get paid, then this lazy old ho nearly breaks an elbow sticking her hand out. Hah, well, the gringo ain’t having none of that shit. No no no. He hands me my 200 sweet as can be, then he just puts his wallet back in his pants, doesn’t even look at her and that’s where she starts in. You get me up here and now you won’t pay me blah blah blah … now the gringo’s getting pissed, I can see it coming. And I’m getting pissed off too. Sure, I’m gonna get clobbered by some fucking gringo on account of that bitch?! Then what am I supposed to do? Run to the cops? Sure, that’d be the deal. All the gringo’s gotta do is tell em whatever the fuck he wants to tell em in gringo talk, whatever, like we tried to rob him or whatever. What am I gonna say? I don’t even speak a word of gringo! So then I’m off to the pokey for the cops to pluck my 200 off me and give me the back of their hand if I talk back? No thanks, Brenda.
“…last time I ever go out on a call with that lazy old bitch. Let her ass collect cobwebs sitting on this fucking car hood waiting for some sucker who’s too drunk to fuck, cause that’s the only kind she goes out with, just a hand job, quick half a blow job in the car maybe and then she’s out the door with his money before he peels the fucking rubber off. Can you believe it? Fucking useless parasite. The rest of us down here, we get customers. That bitch gets victims…”
Then, without missing a beat as Brenda slides up with their drinks, Shirley starts cooing like a horny pigeon”…oiiiii, Brenda dear” with a big cheery smile. “We were just talking about you, baby. I was just telling the Gypsy here what a good friend you are. Best partner a girl could ever have in the zona… right, Cigano?” she says, nudging me with a jagged elbow. I nod like a cab driver’s little doggie dashboard ornament.
To be continued on Sunday, August 22, 2010.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010.
your stories speak for themselves and need no further comment. “Flying in on a black wasp…” Your poetry is music to my ears. That’s the thing that keeps us alive when we’re travelling through hell, eh? yeah… that life-affirming poetic honest is what keeps me coming back here. Thanks.
honesty, too