Curitiba, Brasil

Wow, I´ve been in Brazil a long time now I think! Has it really been a month? I can´t believe it, but I think it actually has. Time flies when you´re having fun, and, despite a few snags along the way, I really am loving it here. Like loving it to the point where I´m planning out how to learn Portuguese, get a motorcycle and live in this beautiful old neighborhood in Rio called Santa Tereza.
Anyway, after I left Sao Paolo I headed back to Rio, where I spent 10 days partying like I haven´t in a long time, care of my fabulous tour guide Juliana, who I met at Carnaval Reveluçao. Never mind the fact that I am consistently the way oldest person I find myself hanging out with here in Brazil (when the kids learn my age, their eyes get big and they look at me harder, like they are suddenly going to see the wrinkles materialize or something. It´s funny. Kind of.)- I still know how to have a good time! Already in Brazil my internal clock is set to go to bed around 6am, and as it turns out, everyone in Rio´s is too, so it actually worked out perfectly.
The only major downer was, of course, Jay and I´s failed attempt at meeting up to travel together again as friends. Without going into too much detail, I will just say that it is really apparent that we are so incredibly different now that there is not even a foreseeable way for us to be friends anymore, which really makes me sad since he has been my most reliable support for the past 3+ years. But old patterns die hard, and unfortunately our worst ones had already surfaced by his second day in Rio so we went our separate ways and now our plans are to travel separately. I think it is definitely for the best, but to be sure I would have liked it if we could still have been friends and gone through some of South America together. In the cities it can be really fun to be on your own, cause you meet tons of people that way, but my city time is about to be over as I prepare to head into Bolivia and Peru for the next few months, and I would really love it if I had someone to share the experience with. Anyone really sick of working?! Come on down and hang out with me!!!
Yeah, soooo...
Right now I am in the city of Curitiba, which is about 6 1/2 hours by bus southwest of Sao Paolo. Compared to SP, this is a small city, but still, it has 2 million people and it´s own little rad queer scene, so it´s kind of a nice change of pace. Okay, wait though, I´m totally getting everything out of order here though, so I will put things in a line first (I´m tired so I apologize for my whacked-out writing style right now)... Okay, so after Carnaval Revoluçao I hung out another week or so in Sao Paolo. Then I went to Rio for about 10 days, which felt more like a month, and did just about everything a local would do and basically nothing a tourist would do (well, okay, I did finally go to the beach on my last two days there). We wanted to go see the Jesus but it cost like 36 reals (something like $24 or so?) just to get the train up there, which you have to take, so I figured I could see him well enough from where I was and we skipped it. After much fun and fabulous street food in Rio, I got back on the bus and spent another 4 days or so in Sao Paolo, doing nothing much other than eating vegan ice cream. On my last day there I went walking all around the bougie part of town looking at galleries and fancy cool-people expensive toy stores and stuff with my adorable friend Andrei, who is the boyfriend of Juliana, my fabulous tour guide in Rio. Then there was a dub night happening at Espaço Impropio, where I was staying, so we all stayed up for that since Gui was working the bar. We were all surprised when the main crowd that showed up for the event was a bunch of Brazilian oi kids, which are kind of like skinheads only less racist and militant, but still into the fashion and quite nationalistic. This obviously made the folks who live at Impropio very wary and suspicious, since the neo-Nazi/ fascist/ skinhead movement is really big here in Brazil (who would´ve thought? Not me!) and skinheads regularly target anarchists, queers, punks and other "weirdos" to beat up at random. But nobody acted up and eventually we went and danced around a bit when we ascertained that these were probably just misguided youth and not actually friends of neo-nazis. My real mission that evening had been to locate and play pool in one of the mythical "lesbian snooker halls" that, according to my friend Helena in Rio, abound on the Rua Augusta, which is the main street leading to where I was staying. From what Helena had told me, it is kind of like this total phenomenon where a bunch of dykes kind of monopolize these pool halls, and often will break up into teams consisting of "butch", "femme", and "other"... (I forget exactly what the "other" is...) I just HAD to see it for myself, it sounded like such a bizarre and yet beautiful thing. So I cajoled Helena´s best friend Marina, who was in town visiting her parents, into taking me on a little tour of these mythical places, but when we finally hit the streets around midnight, it turned out that the main one she knew of was inexplicably closed (the night in Sao Paolo is just getting started around midnight), and the other two, smaller pool halls (called "sinuka" here, which is actually what we call "snooker") were already packed full of random, seemingly heterosexual young people smoking way too many cigarettes, so we turned back in confusion and just a little disappointment, though not after I did at least witness several lesbian couples using one table at the last place we checked. Hmph.
Anyway, as with my last night in Rio, I figured that rather than try to get a couple hours´sleep and then get up totally early to catch a 7am bus it was easier just to ride it out and sleep en route. So even though I was fading by 5:00am, I stuck it out and soon enough it was time to collect all my things and say goodbye, just as Impropio was finally closing and my friends were trying to convince me to come out with them to the bar. Everyone was so lovely, and I had so many nice goodbyes that by the time I was finally on my way to the subway I had to really hustle to make it in time, but make it I did, and at 7:10am I got on the bus, took a vicodin, and passed out for the 6 1/2 hour journey to Curitiba.
And now, here I am
After a bit of a drama where I thought I was going to have to stay in this insanely expensive hostel becuase the friend I came to visit lives in a weird boarding house and can´t have guests, I managed, through the magic of the international radical queer network, to find some really cool queer folks who, on 20 minutes notice, hooked me up with a place to stay AND even came and got me at the hostel. Then Tiago, the boy whose house I am at right this second, took me to go eat these insane vegan hot dogs with like 8 different toppings on them and it was sooo awesome. The guy who served us these hot dogs was none other than Ma-ma, an enormous, sort of Henry Rollins-looking character with massive tattoos covering his legs that say QUEER PUNK; he is something of a legend here in Curitiba, as he has fronted a number of well-respected hardcore bands, the most famous of which was Gay-O-Hazard, which never actually put out a record but did put out some amazing t-shirts (several of my friends in S.P. had them and they rule). Anyway, today a bunch of us hung out in front of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, which is shaped like a giant eye, and watched as literally dozens and dozens of rich people with various purebred dogs congregated to let the "dogs" play with one another. It was sooo weird- there was not a single mixed-breed dog there that I could tell and everyone was dressed to the nines, like they are all Paris Hilton or something. Brazil is kind of like that in some ways. I have to say I have noticed more fancy-schmancy designer dogs here than anywhere else I´ve ever been, noting, of course, that I haven´t ever spent much time in L.A. But still- come on.
Anyway, then we all went to eat Açai, which is The Best Thing Ever, though far more expensive and harder to find here in Curitiba than it was in Rio. It´s like this frozen berry from the Amazon that supposedly has all these amazing health properties (though I suspect that the freezing process probably eliminates most of those) and they blend it up with Guaraná, another fabulous product from the Amazon, to make a bright purple sorbet with this really weird, delicious flavor. I like mine with ammendoim (peanuts) and bananas on top. It rules.
Other than that, Curitiba is waaaay mellow (read: kind of boring) so even though I really love the kids I´m hanging out with, come Tuesday morning I think I´ll shove off to go see my friend Laura (who I met in Spanish school in Guatemala) in Florianopolis, which is another 4 1/2 hours or so south of here and is said to be gorgeous. Apparently it´s an island with 26 different beaches around its perimeter. Sounds good to me.
Yeah, so that´s the plan for now. I´ll be en route to Bolivia and Esperanza de Libertad by next week if all goes according to plan, so wish me luck! Huge hugs and all that stuff! xoxo Pike
Anyway. S