Xmas weekend part 3 (of 3)

With the party over everyone trudged back to the house, relieved that it was all over. I was tired but not so much that I wasn’t ready to go out. But I was still pretty tired – I’d slept 4 hours at Ivanildo’s house and then off and on for about 5 hours in the car on the way to Central.

Earlier, while the speeches were being given in the school, Elaine, who I’d been following around and vice-versa during the party, asked me if I wanted to go out to a Forro dance/music party in the center of town which included a number of different bands and a guaranteed crowd. The catch was that I’d have to pay R$10 in advance which is so not a big deal but some people think it is. Anyway, our plan for the evening was to go to this. It is a gross understatement to point out that when I saw the ratio of women to men in our group (me, Tomas, maybe Ivanildo, and 10 women) I was *psyched*.

Before dinner Ivanildo’s brother Luciano sat me down on the back porch and we talked for a while about how I could help out his organization. I was taken aback at how seriously he was taking me, almost as if I was some sort of (gulp) peer. He’s the owner of a very successful company in Rio, to the point where he doesn’t do anything at this point except own and leaves the operations to someone else (he explained this to me at this time). I became extra self-conscious when I noticed that a lot of the family brought out chairs to (gulp) listen to what I had to say to him, too, which is not good since I can’t freakin speak Portuguese. But in this case I think someone was on my side, and I was able to come across (I think, who knows what I really sounded like) relatively articulately. I think I may have said too many times that I wanted to help them out however I can – I wish I’d come across as a little less enthusiastic on that particular point, but overall I felt very good about our talk.

He told me that Central, and Bahia in general, had an agricultural economy which was way too dependent on the weather and therefore entirely unstable. In recent years there’d been more drought than rain, and people were just barely getting by, if at all. Few were able to sustain themselves without assistance. And there wasn’t a whole lot of assistance available, at least not from the government. Luciano mentioned corrupt politicians, which is a huge problem in all of Brazil. I think he even said that his brother (Ivanildo, I guess, or maybe another – I didn’t understand it all) had run for local office but was beaten by a presumably more seasoned politician who bought at least 60 votes to put him over the top. Buying votes is common because people are so poor, and for obvious reasons this makes the whole process seem relatively hopeless. Lack of faith in politicians, said Luciano, was one of the things that motivated him to start the organization to try to help people out who weren’t being helped otherwise.

He went on to say that they had to find alternate means of sustaining themselves. One of these was to sell home-crafted goods abroad, and as he said this he had one of the older women of the family bring out some knitted handbags and placemats, and some glass-blown and color decorated / painted cookie (or whatever else) jars, among other things. Everything was very beautiful, and had the price tags on them showing prices that were unbelievably low for the quality of the craftsmanship. I didn’t get it all, but I think he said that he was hoping that I would be able to take some of these crafts back to the States, or New York, and see if there was an interest in selling them by means of fair trade, where they could be sold at a price that was profitable to both the seller and the craftspeople. I repeated that I’d do whatever I could to help him. He explained some things in English when I didn’t get all of what he said, but for the most part he talked slowly and I could understand him just fine. He said he’d taken an English class a while back when he was getting an MBA at a UC Berkeley-affiliated school in São Paulo. This was the only time anyone said anything to me in English during the whole weekend, except for a few one- or two-word phrases that most folks who have taken a few years of English in high school remember.

We had dinner, which wasn’t a whole lot different from lunch, which was fine with me. Beans and rice are a staple, along with some kind of meat which was I think a side of pork. Meat is a big deal in Brazil, more so than in the US, especially in churrasco (Brazilian barbecue) and so most meals include the possibility of large portions of meat. There’s also the fried manioc flour, called farofa, that’s often mixed with beans (it was here) and is an absolute staple with every Bahian dish. Luckily for me this combo hits the spot every time so I was more than happy to put away a couple of portions of everything. And it’s always topped off with the (as I’ve mentioned before) in my opinion ultra-sucky strong mini-coffee with sugar known as cafezinha. It’s quite lame, yes, but this doesn’t keep me from drinking it. You just know who the foreigner is (if you didn’t already by the too baggy clothing) by looking for the one with four times the normal serving of cafezinha in his cup, who’s also complaining that he doesn’t feel one iota of caffeine buzz.

So the women got *all* decked out for the party. If you haven’t been keeping track, I’ll point out that this was at least the second time they had all changed clothing on this particular day. I had plans to wear the same goddamn thing I was wearing all day, which really sucked, but at the last minute I remembered that I had an obscene neon-yellow polyester shirt which was *perfect* for this kind of thing, and which probably by itself made me look about 10 years younger.

The women wore, for the most part, brightly colored blue or green tops, all of which had the characteristically Brazilian very low cut neck in the front (nice!), and either dark short skirts or dark shorts. In minutes they went from looking like they had been doing hard labor all day (which they were) to heading out to own the night, which they also did. I don’t have a picture of this because I am a total idiot, but if it ever happens again (and I really hope it does) I’m making a mental note right now not to forget to capture it on film.

Before we left to go out I jokingly asked Ivanildo if he was coming with us, and he made some joke about how his wife wouldn’t let him out and I laughed. She’d just had their third child, a daughter (they also have two sons, Mateus, 10 and Tiago, 6) and had the perpetual baggy eyes and slow movements of a full-time mom. Later I saw that Ivanildo was changing his clothes again, and it turned out that he *was* going, which was awesome, because he’s a very social guy with a great sense of humor, and although I was thrilled to be going out with a lot of women, it always helps to have a little guy support too. Someone to stand next to when you don’t have the balls to ask a woman to dance but at the same time don’t want anyone to think you’re their alone.

Around 6 people piled in Ivanildo’s little car and the rest of us walked. I assumed we were going to meet them there but it turned out that Ivanildo just drove slowly beside us as we walked toward the town center. At one point I very loudly asked “Why don’t you guys just walk?” and to my utter joy this evoked peals of laughter from both inside and outside of the car. I was getting real nervous about having to dance, and when everyone laughed I was able to relax enough to take a deep breath and tell myself I was not going to be thought of as a complete idiot when we hit the club. Self-deception can help you out a lot in situations like this.

By this time I’d began to realize that Elaine’s interest in me had gone beyond simple curiousity, since we’d been sort of hanging out together for most of the day whenever there was free time, and there was a lot while things were getting set up, etc. I had no problem with this because she’s very friendly, very different from anyone else I’ve ever met, she doesn’t speak a word of English. I don’t know if she’s attractive in the conventional sense although she has a knockout body, but even for a superficial male like me things like this are immaterial when you’re in a completely new and different place with people who have adopted you into their family and circle of friends as one of their own.

So as we walked to the center of town, ready for a night out, Elaine stuck by me as if she were attached to my elbow. I thought about how just a few days earlier she’d shaken her head at me, annoyed and frustrated that she couldn’t understand me nor I her, and now she was talking my ear off about life in Bahia and the different types of music and parties they had. I was really happy that we’d gotten to know each other so much more, and likewise with everyone else.

The center of town, I must say, was *hopping*, especially given the fact that it was dead as could be during the day. There were motorcycles parked everywhere, guys driving through with pimped-out little cars blasting loud heavy-bass music, and there was a roar of many voices that came from the crowds of people walking down the street and the others sitting in outdoor restaurants or on the edges of bars. This was all in a small town-square kind of area. We stopped in front of what looked like a club and waited a while. Eventually it was determined by whomever was in charge (no one) that we were in the wrong place so we started down some side streets towards a large outdoor facility that was either a concert venue, or a football stadium, or more likely both.

There were a lot of people inside the stadium but it definitely wasn’t packed, and for a while people in our group just stood around and talked. The minute we got there, though, Elaine took me out towards the stage and ordered me to learn to dance Forro with her, which I was more than happy to do. There really isn’t that much to it; it’s so simple I don’t know why they call it Forro dancing because it’s not terribly distinctive from other dancing with a partner, except you move your feet in a very natural way to a semi-samba beat. After we had been dancing for ten minutes or so, and the music changed songs, I yelled to her “So that’s it? That’s all there is to it?” She didn’t understand what I was trying to say, and I spent the next 10 minutes trying to explain what I meant and failed utterly. The music started up again and we went back to dancing.

She asked me what I liked most about Bahia. I said the people, the food, the weather – standard answers. She asked what I didn’t like. I said the coffee. I asked her the same and I don’t remember what she said she liked, but I do remember her saying the thing she disliked the most was the violence, which I understood. You may not see violence every day in Salvador and the outlying cities, but the threat is always there, and that’s almost as bad as the violence itself – the fear that some fucked up shit might happen when you’re least prepared to handle it, like walking home from the grocery store carrying a bunch of bags and thinking what a dick your boss is.

I danced with Elaine for the first few songs but sensed that she was trying quite unsubtly to steer us away from our crowd, which made me a little nervous, so I suggested we head back and hang with them for a while, which we did but everyone was still standing around mostly except for Adriana who was dancing crazy but she’s just that kind of person. The kind that demands to have fun regardless of the circumstances and isn’t letting a bunch of lame-assed squares get in her way. She’s the kind of person you want to watch dance because she just makes it look fun. Anyway, she eventually made her way over to me and demanded that I too dance with her, which I did for a while, and it was great.

There are a few moments of that night that I’ll never forget, but I know that one of them was later on, maybe about an hour before we left (we left at 3am), when Adriana uncharacteristically spoke very slowly to me, yelling over the music, to tell me essentially this: “It was really good to get to know you this weekend. We will all miss you when you leave tomorrow.” She couldn’t have done anything else that would have made my day more than that. 24 hours before, she and I in a room alone was like opening the icebox to get out some ice cream, and then she said what I’d been thinking exactly, how very fortunate I was to have made so many new friends who I knew were really good people, who know how to have fun and have a realistic perspective on what is important in life. I don’t regret a damn thing about picking up and leaving New York now. I never really did, but any shred of a doubt left my mind that night.

I danced with them all, and they are all beautiful women one way or another. I’ve had many days here which I felt were in at least the top 100 best days of my life, and this one was one of them. I was nervous to dance at first, but with Elaine’s help I got past it, and later on when we were dancing in a group and in a circle, and I started to get self conscious, I said to myself “just … relax” and I was able to do it without getting bent out of shape out of self-consciousness again. I couldn’t do that – be myself, completely – very much in the States. Maybe here I feel like I can start over. I think, though, that there’s something about the people here that makes me feel less self-conscious, although at times when I’m conscious of being a foreigner that’s clearly not the case. But when I’m with friends like these, it doesn’t seem like there’s much that’s important other than now, the moment.

One of the women eventually got a little too tipsy and fell over, and was led by a few other folks in the group over to a seat on the side of the dance area. I took this to mean that we were leaving soon but I was way wrong. It was another hour or so before we left.

When we did leave, eventually, we were all able to pile into the car because a few others stayed back and provided enough room for the rest of us to all sit squashed together in the car, which, when you consider the male/female ratio again, was pretty cool. We arrived back at the house, and the drunk girl had to be helped out of the car and sat down on the couch in the living room. This was all done good-naturedly and no one blamed her for being an idiot, and she didn’t do anything obnoxious like pass out or puke or anything. She did, however, start crying once she sat down on the couch, for what reason I don’t know, but I think “because she was drunk” is sufficient explanation.

And then the craziest thing happened. With the drunk and crying girl things seemed to be sort of descending into chaos, which, hey, is no problem, but then I think someone else needed to be helped out of the car, and one of the women helping the other woman get out is maybe the most beautiful woman in the world, and she asked me to hold her shoes while she pulled her coworker out of the car. I’d danced with her before and was more nervous about it than with anyone else because she’s so good looking, and because she was clearly a very good dancer, and I clearly am not. So she got her friend out, and I sort of pushed the shoes in her direction (they were very girly and I was uncomfortable carrying them around). She grabbed them, and my hand, which I was also very happy about, and led me back to the front door of the house where people were standing in the doorway not knowing what to do about the crying girl. As we approached the doorway her grip on my hand grew tighter and tighter, to the point where I’m sure she was squeezing as hard as she could. It didn’t hurt (I have very bony hands) and hey, I wasn’t complaining, but then suddenly she released her grip and fainted on the ground, in the dirt, right next to me.

I was so shocked and surprised that I didn’t have time to react and try to catch her or anyhing. I just looked down and she was on the ground. She’d passed out in a way that was almost like in the movies, too, where she didn’t hit the ground very hard but did it rather gracefully. For this reason also I thought fleetingly that she was faking. I’ve never seen a woman just faint like that before, although I’ve heard it happening a million times. I bent over her and Ivanildo ran over, checked her pulse and paused for a minute. I said something like “What … (the hell)?” but he just gave me the hand (a polite hand) and told me to wait a minute. Maybe she did this a lot, because within a minute or so she woke up and we pulled her back up, and without even dusting herself off went and sat down on the couch to console her drunk and crying coworker.

My reaction, of course, was “But what about our holding hands? Did you forget about that already?” I really hoped there wasn’t an amnesia component to her fainting spell, because the hand-holding really was a highlight for me. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.

Approximately 3 minutes later I did a face plant into a bed in Ivanildo’s grandmother’s guest room, which I shared (the room, not the bed) with Tomas. We slept for 3 hours before we had to get up to go wait for a bus for an hour which then took 11 additional hours to get back to Salvador. I’ll save that story for the epilogue to my book.