The Art of Living Other People's Lives

by Greg Dybec

  What Brasilia did have to offer was a newly renovated soccer stadium just in time for the World Cup, and my travel partner Kyle and I had tickets to two games there. We’d have to sacrifice the beachside festivities of Rio, but as they say, it’s all for the love of the sport. This decision is not surprising when you consider that when we attended the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, we decided we’d see more games if we stayed in Johannesburg, a veritable murder and crime capital, rather than Cape Town, one of the most beautiful destinations in the world.

  Even the hotel concierge had a difficult time suggesting what we do in Brasilia. The only real options for two twenty-four-year-olds were a mall directly across the street from the hotel and a small strip of bars along a lake called Lago Sul. The few restaurants worth trying in the city were out of the question since they’d already been booked for the week. Some people had at least done their research.

  After only one day we realized the mall had nothing to offer and Lago Sul’s bar scene was anemic. There’s also something borderline insulting about looking out onto a lake when you had visions of a clear blue ocean.

  On our second night we decided to stay in the hotel room. Watching Brazilian television shows we didn’t understand and drinking all the beer in the minifridge seemed like a more worthwhile option than going out just to be disappointed.

  At about midnight, after already restocking on cans of the local beer, I stepped onto the room’s balcony to escape the blaring Portuguese commentary coming from the TV. Our third-floor room overlooked a sketchy, dark side road, and down below was a group of three women, each one in skirts shorter and heels higher than the next. I watched as cars crept down the street and the girls perked up, taking slow, delicate strides toward the road as if walking a runway.

  I stood motionless, afraid of being spotted, and whispered into the room: “Kyle, I think there are prostitutes outside our window.”

  The only experience I’d ever had with a prostitute was back in New York. A friend of mine, Jay, was visiting from California and decided to make a late-night call to a number he’d found online. The website promised “quality female companions for all occasions.” I was on my couch with my roommate Phil when Jay walked in with Destiny and introduced her like a last-minute prom date.

  Destiny looked us up and down and said, “Y’all aren’t those crazy kind of white boys are you?”

  We shook our heads no.

  “You guys interested in a gangbang?” she asked.

  It was the first time anyone had ever pegged me as someone willing to participate in a gangbang. The thought had never crossed my mind, but suddenly I felt like a different person. The next day I had the urge to tell everyone I came in contact with. It took everything in me not to lean over to the Starbucks barista and say, “Hey, I’m not sure if you know this about me, but I turned down a gangbang last night. I could have done it if I wanted to.”

  The Brazilian prostitutes were different, though. They were doing all the stereotypical, street-corner things you’d expect a prostitute to do. They were either really good at their jobs or watched a lot of movies.

  Eventually a pickup truck pulled over and one of the girls made her way to it. She leaned her entire upper body through the passenger-side window. I called for Kyle, this time in a voice he’d hear over the television: “There are definitely prostitutes outside our window.”

  We spent the next thirty minutes studying the girls’ every move from the balcony. They’d wave to cars and accentuate their backsides by leaning slightly to one side. Some cars would only honk and flash their lights as they drove by, but at least one would pull over to talk every five minutes or so.

  “Why haven’t the cops come yet?” Kyle asked. A quick Google search revealed that street prostitution was perfectly legal in Brazil, and it turned out that Brasilia was the place to go if you were looking for a good time. The hotel district, where we were staying, apparently had some of the best hookers in the country. No wonder no one was spending money on drinks at the lake or shopping at the mall.

  “These are the best of the best,” I told Kyle.

  “Yup. I can tell.”

  A half hour quickly turned into an hour. There was something mesmerizing about watching the girls go about their business. They’d each take turns approaching cars, and when traffic died down they’d run to a nearby tree and take quick swigs from a liquor bottle they’d stashed. What confused me was that nobody had struck a deal yet. Every car seemed to decide against going through with the deed at the very last minute, and the girl whose turn it was would walk back to the group increasingly disappointed.

  Kyle and I started taking bets on which girl would get picked up first and what kind of car Prince Charming would roll up in. Each time a new car pulled up we’d get giddy with suspense, like kids that had just found a peephole into the girls’ locker room. Though, as more cars came and went, leaving the girls alone on the corner, I couldn’t help but feel bad.

  We’d been watching them so long I’d begun to create back-stories in my head that I started to believe. The shortest one with the red miniskirt and black halter top worked as a waitress in a cafe during the day, but it wasn’t covering the expenses for her sick mother. The tall one with the fishnet stockings was one semester away from finishing school, and her close friend, the girl carrying the big purse, was trying the whole prostitution thing out for the first time ever. She figured it’d beat the wages she was making across the street at the mall.

  “I have to go down there,” I said to Kyle. “I have to meet them.”

  “There’s no way I’m going down there,” he replied.

  It took a full fifteen minutes and another beer each before Kyle agreed to take the walk with me. I could see it in his eyes—he was just as curious about these girls as I was.

  Once outside, we regrouped on the side of the building. I had no clue what I was going to say, but I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied until I saw the girls up close.

  “We’re just going to say hi,” I instructed. “Just a friendly hello.” Kyle followed my lead.

  The girl in the red miniskirt, the one with the sick mother and the job at the cafe, was closest to us. As we walked toward her she immediately shifted her stance and puckered her lips. She was a cute girl, no older than twenty-five. She had long dark hair and wide, bright eyes. It was hard to believe that after all the cars that had stopped at the corner not one guy had picked her up.

  “Hi, I’m American,” I said once I reached her. It was the first thing that came to mind.

  “Sexo for two?” she immediately asked, nodding toward Kyle, who was standing behind me.

  “No sexo,” I responded. “What’s your name? I’m Greg.”

  “Sexo for one?”

  “No sexo for anyone. We just wanted to say hello. This is our first time in Brazil.”

  Her eyes grew even wider and I could tell the other girls were talking about us.

  “Just hello,” I continued. “Friends. No sexo. Just talk.” Her face was blank.

  Desperate for her to understand my friendly intentions, I pulled out my phone and held it out in front of us. “Selfie?” I asked. She gave out a loud yelp and ran back to her friends while mumbling, “No, no, no, no.”

  “I think it’s time to go,” Kyle muttered.

  Back upstairs I watched as she waved down a car. After a few minutes of talking through the window she opened the passenger door and climbed in.

  “She got in a car,” I yelled to Kyle, but within seconds she was back outside with her arms folded.

  “False alarm,” I corrected myself. “She can’t catch a break.”

  The next afternoon we attended our first game of the World Cup, an exciting match between France and Nigeria. Suddenly there were other people in the city. I had no idea where they’d come from, but they packed into the stadium with a capacity of over sixty-five thousand. Based on their songs and endless chants, I gathered they were local Brazilians rooting for a Nigerian upset.r />
  Once the game was over and France claimed the victory, the crowd quickly dispersed, and the city flatlined. The few excited French fans wandered aimlessly, unsure where to celebrate. The even fewer Nigerians did the same, with no clue where to sulk. Kyle and I did the only thing there was to do and headed toward the mall.

  “There’s really something about those prostitutes I can’t get out of my head,” I admitted. “That one was so robotic. Sexo and nothing else.”

  “Sexo pays the bills,” Kyle concluded before we made the same rounds through the mall as we had the previous day.

  Back in the hotel room that night I found myself once again perched on the balcony, eager to see if the girls would return. At around ten they appeared and took their positions. Since it was earlier in the night they had to catwalk their way around the occasional tourists and families with children that strolled down the sidewalk.

  Kyle and I spent the next couple of hours watching the girls below and clearing out the restocked minifridge. Our next game was in four days. That meant four more days in Brasilia, drinking minifridge beer and spending more time in the same mall than the zombies from Dawn of the Dead.

  “We need to make friends or something,” Kyle announced.

  “They’re right down there,” I replied, excitedly pointing at the girls on the street. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say. They’re dying to be saved. You know how boring it must be standing on the same sidewalk?” I jumped up on the balcony railing and extended my arms, mimicking Christ the Redeemer, the iconic statue of Jesus that overlooks Rio, to the best of my wobbly ability.

  It took more than one beer to convince Kyle to take the trip downstairs with me again, but this time I had a plan. The idea was to offer the girl who denied my hello the previous night money to take a break. There’d be no sex. She could just translate the TV shows for us and have a beer. Anything that even for a short hour didn’t require her to flaunt her body to passing drivers on a dark side street. I had some money to spend anyway, considering we weren’t going out at all.

  As I approached her on the street she tensed up and began mumbling “no.”

  “No pictures,” I promised. “I have money. Money for you.”

  She walked over to give me a chance. “American money?” she muttered in a thick accent. I’d read reports before we traveled that free English classes were being offered to Brazilian prostitutes ahead of the World Cup.

  “How much money for you to come upstairs with no sexo?” I made sure to add extra emphasis to the “no.”

  “We can watch TV and drink beer. Just for one hour,” I added. “I pay you for no sexo.”

  “Only money for sexo,” she replied. “Sexo only.”

  I was shocked. If someone asked me my price to take an hour off work to drink beer and watch TV, I’m pretty sure I’d be able to come up with an answer on the spot: yes. And my price probably wouldn’t be all that much. In fact, I’d pay for the opportunity.

  “Look,” I said, in a less playful tone. “I want to save you from the sidewalk. Just for an hour. Take a break from this. I will pay you.”

  “Sexo,” she replied in a stern tone. For the first time she stopped fidgeting and looked me in the eyes. “No save me,” she said, her words precise and cutting. She turned and joined the two other girls and the three of them walked around the corner and out of sight.

  Kyle and I looked at each other, speechless.

  “Well, you scared them away,” he finally said. “I think it’s time to go again.”

  Before going to bed that night I made one last trip out to the balcony. The girls were back, but the tallest one, the girl with one semester left, wasn’t there. They leaned against the tree where they’d previously stashed the bottle. The gentle warm breeze caused the leaves above them to shake ever so slightly. I would have given anything to know what they were thinking, and why my offer seemed to offend them so much. Rejection is never easy to understand.

  The next day Kyle and I opened our first beers earlier than we had the other days. “About twelve hours till the show starts,” Kyle joked, referring to the prostitutes’ nightly appearance.

  “Check flights to Rio,” I replied. Kyle laughed at the idea. “I’m serious, check flights to Rio. We’re not staying here another night.” Once Kyle realized I was serious we were like crazed stockbrokers when the trading floor opens. We opened our phones and laptops and ran around the room like madmen spewing out times and screaming prices. We’d be able to stay in Rio for the next two days before our game back in Brasilia if we could find the right flights and a place to stay.

  “I found a reasonable round-trip!” Kyle finally shouted, after digging through every travel site the spotty hotel Wi-Fi would connect to.

  “Flight leaves in two hours. We book it now or it’s another lonely night on the balcony.”

  We made it to the airport with only a few minutes to spare and boarded the plane drenched in sweat and disheveled.

  When we finally touched down in Rio it was as if we’d been freed from prison after serving time for a crime we didn’t commit. It was difficult not to drop down and kiss the ground. After leaving our bags in the shared apartment we’d booked in the airport five minutes before our flight, we headed to the beach.

  It was nighttime, but the streets were buzzing with a dazzling mix of languages, all merging into one extravagant hum. Colombians played drums and danced. Americans chugged beers at small bars built on the sidewalk. Japanese women took pictures with local Brazilians. The trip we’d imagined in our heads was finally real.

  As we strolled along the edge of Copacabana beach, Christ the Redeemer eventually came into sight, perched high on top of a mountain overlooking the entire city below. Colorful lights illuminated its enormous body, which looked as if it were floating unattached in the night sky.

  “We’re the prostitutes now,” I joked with Kyle, pointing up at the statue.

  We laughed, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was being watched as we continued along the beach. Looking back up at the statue with its outstretched arms and chiseled features, it was hard to tell if it was asking our permission to save us or simply judging. Maybe I’d know the difference one day.

  The Spaces We Share

  A few weeks ago I found myself staring at pictures of two identical-looking gray couches for nearly an hour. I swiped back and forth between photos until my thumb was raw and eyes strained. I couldn’t, for the life of me, see a difference between them, except that one was from Target and the other from Wal-Mart. I put my phone down and took a long hard look at the couch I currently own. It’s a beat-up-looking brown leather hand-me-down. It has character in its creases and personality in its stains, and best of all it was given to my roommate and me for free. The new, sleek-looking gray couches were around six hundred dollars each, not including shipping. I didn’t know Wal-Mart or Target sold things for six hundred dollars. After finally picking one—the couch from Target, I think, because it had a cooler-looking pillow in the photo—I texted my decision to my girlfriend Brittany. She immediately texted back, “Yay!” Followed by, “It feels so official that we’re moving in together.”

  For the first time since we’d discussed living together months back, it did feel official. It’s not that I even had much of an opinion about which couch we got, but reading the descriptions about durable polyester and wooden frames with a handsome espresso finish felt like reading an obituary about the first twenty-five years of my life. I was in mourning for myself.

  When my father was my age, he was already married. My mother was four years younger at twenty-one. Times have changed of course. Couples are taking more time before getting married and making babies, and I’m certainly in that boat. But to think of my father married at twenty-five, preparing to buy a home and bring a child into the world, I feel slightly pathetic about the uneasiness I have about moving in with a girl for the first time.

  After two years of dating, Brittany started asking when
we’d take the leap and live together.

  “I really don’t want to give up my place and I don’t think Phil is going to move out,” I’d tell her.

  My apartment was a great find. It’s over a thousand square feet and the ceilings are about ten feet high. There’s even a clear view of the Manhattan skyline from my bedroom window. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but in New York City, you don’t question these things. You just thank the universe and try to be nice to at least one person a day. The apartment is a one-bedroom, but since it’s so big, Phil and I had a temporary wall installed to convert it to a two-bedroom. It was difficult for Brittany to argue with my concern over losing such a nice place.

  Then one day Phil asked if we could talk. He sat me down and said, “I’m going to move in with Arianna once the lease is up.” Arianna was his girlfriend of about a year.

  “How are you so sure?” I asked, slightly panicked.

  “I’m there all the time anyway,” he responded. “I’d rather give it a try sooner than later.”

  He was at her place every day and slept there every night. I’d basically been living alone in the apartment for the past six months with more space than I knew what to do with.

  “I guess you’re right,” I told him. “In that case, I think Brittany may move in.”

  “Why do you say it like that?” he asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re scared.”

  “Because I am.”

  I’ve had some memorable milestones in my life. I graduated college. I landed a dream job. I helped build Elite Daily to the point it got sold. I got a book deal. I watched my brother get into college and my parents turn fifty. Yet none of those events had ever made me stop and consider just how quickly life goes by. That only happened the moment Phil’s name was taken off the lease and Brittany began moving her things in. That was the first time in my life I could feel time tapping me on the shoulder and breathing down my neck. It could be because life is often measured by just a few landmark moments. If you think of the generic course of someone’s life, they grow up, get married, have kids, become grandparents, and die. Hopefully peacefully. Probably from cancer.