Sleeping Around

by Brian Thacker

  We were handed a ‘Drink Card’ as we stepped inside. All drinks purchased at the bar were marked on the card and you paid at the end of the night. I imagine that after a big night you could be in for quite a surprise. ‘What happens if you go crazy at the bar and don’t have enough money to pay?’ I asked Pedro—or actually screamed over the music.

  ‘They won’t let you leave, so you have to get money from a friend,’ he shouted back. ‘I had to ring up my mum once at four in the morning to bring me some money. What’s worse, though,’ he continued, ‘is if you lose your card and then find it later on the bar after people have bought drinks for everyone on it.’

  Around two in the morning I was sitting quietly enjoying my fifth or possibly eighth beer when a gorgeous Brazilian girl asked me for a dance. Well, when I say dance it ended up being more of a stumble. She was blind drunk. ‘Would you like to fuck a Brazilian girl?’ she bellowed in my ear.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Not me!’ she slurred. ‘I don’t really like you, but I can find someone for you if you like.’

  When we left at three o’clock, she had found someone she did really like and was busy trying to get her tongue down into his lungs.

  Pedro lit up a joint when we got back to his house. ‘My first step-father liked cocaine,’ Pedro said in between puffs. ‘That was the main reason why they split up.’ Pedro was an only child, but his mum had remarried twice and he now had four half-siblings and two step-siblings. ‘My real dad is an art teacher at university, but he is also a very famous illustrator of children’s books,’ Pedro said proudly. ‘The only problem with illustrating, though, is that he’d spend months on a job putting his heart and soul into it and get paid hardly anything. One book he illustrated has been a bestseller for thirty years and he only got a one-off payment.’ He showed me the book, which—with its fantastically psychedelic illustrations—looked as if he was the one who had sniffed some cocaine, not the first step-father. Or was it the second? It was getting very late.

  Sometime after 4 a.m. I staggered off to bed, leaving Pedro playing with his chords again. My couch-surfing trip was slowly turning into a flaking-out-on-a-couch-in-a-drunken-stupor trip.

  Ah ha, so that was why Pedro had stayed up! He was waiting for someone. I might not have ‘fucked a Brazilian girl’, but Pedro obviously had. When I stumbled upstairs at midday, I found a young, and somewhat large, woman in the kitchen cooking something on the stove with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Pedro’s ‘friend’ spoke no English, so we smiled at each uncomfortably for a minute. Then she started washing the dishes. Gee, that’s all right, I thought. Most pick-ups just leave in the morning.

  Pedro eventually tottered down the stairs looking, not surprisingly, rather sheepish. ‘I didn’t get to sleep till six,’ he said warily.

  ‘I bet,’ I said with a sly wink.

  Pedro said something to his lady friend and she stopped washing the dishes and went upstairs.

  ‘The kitty litter needs changing,’ Pedro said matter-of-factly.

  Boy, maybe I should have picked up as well. I needed my laundry done and there was also that tear in my shorts that needed sewing.

  ‘Um, she seems nice,’ I observed cheerfully.

  ‘Yeah, she’s great,’ Pedro said. ‘Rosângela has been my maid since I moved in here. She comes once a week and cleans the entire house and makes me meals as well.’ Oops. They should add ‘Don’t make assumptions about your host’ to the ‘How to be a good guest’ list.

  Pedro paid his maid US$30 for ten hours’ work and she also worked for Pedro’s mum and two of his aunties. ‘Maids are always found through someone you know,’ Pedro told me. ‘Often people will try to “steal” someone’s maid, because a good one—an honest, skilled and hard-working one—is hard to find.’

  ‘Do many people have a maid?’ I asked.

  ‘A lot of middle-class people have one and it’s usually a black lady that lives with a white family. Many apartments have a small room off the laundry or kitchen, which is the maid’s room. It goes back to the casa grande e senzala, or the landlord’s house and slave’s house tradition. Back in the old days the husbands or teenagers would have sex with the maids. Now you can see why most Brazilians have mixed blood.’

  Rosângela was making my ‘couch’ when we left to go to the market for brinner (we were eating so late that breakfast had almost become dinner). We ate at Restaurante do Mercado, a small traditional Brazilian buffet restaurant where you paid according to the weight of the food on your plate. There was an array of delectable-looking salads and meats, but apart from choosing a tiny salad and a small piece of grilled chicken, I got a bit carried away with the chips—I could thank my hangover for that. Pedro scoffed down his food because he had to get to work. It was also time for me to say goodbye to Pedro who had become, after just two days, a good friend. I only hoped I had got drunk enough to qualify as one of the people that Pedro enjoyed.

  I devoted most of the afternoon to walking, or more like plodding, to Pão de Açúcar, Rio’s famous Sugarloaf Mountain. Pedro said that it would take me an hour to walk there. It took me two. I was tired (yes, okay, and a little hungover) but I also did stop twice to buy a pair of Havaianas. They were on sale just about everywhere. I saw racks of Havaianas in a chemist, a video hire shop, a juice shop, a newsagent and even a florist (‘It’s my wife’s birthday, so I’ll have a bunch of pink and white Havaianas please’).

  I can now tick off another location on my James-Bond-filming-sites-of-the-world tour. It was the cable supporting the Sugarloaf Mountain cable car that Jaws tried to bite through in the film Moonraker. Bond might have been fighting the forces of evil, but I bet he didn’t have to fight his way through a gaggle of tour bus groups just so he could take a photo of yet another [insert superlative here] view of the city.

  It was 7.30 by the time I got back to Pedro’s house, which didn’t leave any time for my planned, and much-needed, nap. Mariana had said to ‘get ready to party hard because we hardly ever sleep’ but, to be honest, I was more ready to sleep hard and hardly ever party.

  7

  ‘I’m the coolest Carioca in Rio and the happiest girl you’ll ever meet.’

  Mariana Violante, 26, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  CouchSurfing.com

  ‘I’ve invited my friend to stay as well just in case you are a rapist or a mass murderer,’ Mariana said casually as she greeted me at the door.

  ‘Well, I’m not!’ I said quickly and in the process sounded, even to myself, like I very much was.

  Mariana’s friend, who had been hiding behind the door, popped her head out and gave me a nervous smile. ‘This is Paula,’ Mariana said brightly. ‘She is my best friend and the second coolest girl in all of Rio.’ Mariana did live in one of the coolest parts of town, in a swanky apartment block which even had a swanky doorman in full uniform in the foyer. The apartment was only one building back from Copacabana beach, which you could see from the lounge-room window. Well, you could glimpse a sliver of it. There was a thin strip of water and sand just visible in a gap between buildings. On my tour of the small apartment we bypassed the couch and I was shown to my very own tiny bedroom with a tiny bed and an even tinier ensuite (so tiny in fact that you could wee in the toilet while standing in the shower—not that I tried to, I hasten to add).

  Mariana told me that I was her first couch-surfing guest and that she was a little nervous. It didn’t show. She was incredibly bubbly and excited about showing me ‘the best time in Rio’. The girls were dolled up in readiness for a big night out. Mariana’s long, straight, jet-black hair was perfectly coiffured and she was wearing designer jeans and a white halter-top showing off her deep golden tan, while Paula, who had long wavy mousey-blonde locks, looked ravishing in a stunning floral dress.

  ‘Is it okay if we just stay in tonight and eat at home and watch a DVD?’ Mariana asked apologetically.

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said, trying not to sound too overjoyed.

  �
�Are you sure?’

  Oh yeah, I was sure. And so was my liver. I was still sure even when Mariana held up a DVD and gushed excitedly, ‘We’re watching Pride and Prejudice.’

  Mariana worked as an architect/interior designer in a business that she’d set up with two other friends from university after they’d graduated three years previously. ‘I’ve had a real busy week, so I need to rest tonight. Then tomorrow I can show you why I’m the coolest girl in all of Rio,’ Mariana said with a beaming smile. ‘I’ve got our entire itinerary planned out.’ Our itinerary went something like this: beach—lunch—beach—disco dancing—sleep—beach— lunch—beach—samba dancing. ‘I’m a true Carioca girl,’ Mariana said. ‘I love the beach and samba dancing.’

  ‘I hate the beach and I hate samba dancing,’ Paula retorted.

  ‘We have nothing in common,’ said Mariana, giving Paula a hug. ‘But we are still best friends.’

  We wandered across the road to the supermarket, which overlooked the beach, to get some chocolate. ‘You can’t watch a movie without a little bit of chocolate,’ Mariana said. The ‘little bit of chocolate’ turned into four large blocks of chocolate.

  Mariana loved chocolate so much that she had become a member of the ‘Chocolate Lovers’ group on CouchSurfing. com, which I later discovered has 1017 members from 38 different countries. Chocolate Lovers is just one of a few thousand diverse groups that have been set up by couch-surfing members. Mariana told me that the members of the Chocolate Lovers group discuss chocolate, have lengthy debates about which country makes the best chocolate and organise chocolate meetings.

  By far the largest group on CouchSurfing, apart from specific country or city groups, is the Queer Couch Surfers, with 10 680 members. Other large groups include Photographers (2668 members), Cyclists (2198 members), Beer Lovers (1641 members), and the Tattooed and Pierced Club (1148 members).

  Most of the groups have relatively small numbers, although I still found some of them surprisingly popular. The Masturbators group has 179 members (so to speak). The welcoming spiel to the Masturbators group page reads:

  Have you jerked at work? Played with the fun dot in the wrong spot? Handled your meat in an airplane seat? Got a fever and played with your beaver? You are not alone! Cum on in.

  I imagine some of those masturbators are also among the 106 members of the Virgins Club. One or two of them may also be among the 18 Gay Cyclists, the 15 We Love Panties Group or the 11 Gay Vegetarian Nudists.

  Some groups are just plain weird. There are 165 Dumpster Divers, 11 members of the Midget Tossing Society, 29 in the Ikea Couch Club, 9 Lovers of the Pickle, 9 Mayonnaise Experts, 8 Marmite Lovers, 5 in the Anti-Marmite Movement, 5 Kitchen Cupboard Organisers, 87 International Party Girls Seek Toy Boys, 101 in the David Hasselhoff Appreciation Group, 41 Atheists with Biblical Names, and 163 in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

  What’s a bit of a worry, though, is that only 4 of the 150 000-plus couch surfers are members of the ‘Nice People’ group. Some groups have an even lower membership—as in only one member. These exclusive groups include: Irish Dancing; Pakistani Bi Men; Well-dressed; People against War; Radical Feminists; Gay Chefs and Perverts.

  When I got home I decided to start my own group called The Karaoke Club—our slogan is ‘Karaoke is everything’. There are currently eleven members who hail from such places as the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Canada, Australia, Iceland, Denmark and the US.

  I’m a member of six clubs (I’ve also since joined Chocolate Lovers), but some people get a little carried away. Mark from Melbourne, Australia, is a member of 242 groups including: Surfing for Peace; The Church of Lasagne; The Moderate Non-alarmist Socialists; Food not Bombs; I Joined Too Many Groups; and How Do You Delete Groups?

  Mariana obviously wasn’t one of the the 337 People Who Like Cooking because as she rummaged through a pile of plastic containers in the fridge she said, ‘I can’t cook. I’m terrible.’

  Mariana had a maid who came twice a week and cooked all of her meals. ‘Tonight we’re having . . . um, crumbed chicken and pasta . . .’ Mariana was checking the neatly marked labels on the plastic containers to see what tonight’s fare was. ‘. . . And salad and quiche.’

  The food was delicious, although the crumbed chicken was only lukewarm. ‘I’m not even good at heating up food,’ Mariana explained cheerfully.

  ‘I was told that Copacabana was full of old women,’ I said to the girls over dinner.

  ‘I’m an old woman,’ Mariana sighed. ‘I turned twenty-six last month.’

  At 26 years old, Mariana is the average age for a couch surfer. In fact, the website is mostly surfed by folk in their twenties, and 72 per cent of couch surfers are aged between twenty and 28. Mind you, it’s not all young folk. There are some antediluvians like myself on it as well, with more than 30 000 aged between 40 and 49. At the last body count there were even 146 registered couch surfers over the age of 80.

  We tried to watch the movie, but the phone kept ringing. Mariana was a popular old woman. One of the callers was Paula’s boyfriend. A boyfriend, incidentally, who she’d never met. Paula had ‘met’ him through wayn.com (Where Are You Now), which is similar to CouchSurfing.com, but without the couch. Fellow travellers chat online and meet up if they are in the same city. Paula had been ‘chatting’ to Dave from Sydney for a year and they had started ‘dating’ four months ago. ‘I hope to meet him soon,’ she beamed.

  ‘My boyfriend hasn’t called me all week,’ Mariana sniffed.

  ‘That’s because he’s an arsehole!’ Paula cried indignantly.

  Mariana rolled her eyes. ‘Paula calls him “The Arsehole”.’

  Mariana had been dating ‘The Arsehole’ for seven months. Nunoo was from Portugal and had been working for Shell in Rio for the past twelve months.

  ‘I saw him last Saturday night,’ Mariana said. ‘I went to a nightclub and he turned up. We had a lovely night and we had breakfast together and everything. He said he would call me, but he hasn’t called all week. Is that strange?’

  ‘No, he’s probably just using you for sex,’ I wanted to say, but instead I said, ‘Yeah, a bit strange.’

  ‘It’s not strange,’ Paula said musingly. ‘It’s because he’s an arsehole.’ Except Paula pronounced it ‘asshole’ with an American accent. In fact, Paula said everything with an American accent. ‘I learnt English from watching the TV show Friends,’ she drawled. ‘I watch it every day.’

  ‘I learnt most of my English from Sex and the City,’ Mariana declared.

  I thought ‘The Arsehole’ might have called when Mariana started crying during one of her many phone calls.

  ‘It was my mum,’ Mariana said afterwards. Mariana’s mum worked as a doctor in a small village five hours’ flight north of Rio. ‘She calls every day and she misses me so she cries and then she makes me cry. I’m the only child and I’m her princess.’

  When both girls started getting teary during a scene in the movie with the rather droll Mr Darcy, I made my excuses and snuck off to bed.

  ‘I’m so sorry about the weather,’ Mariana said sadly as she looked out the window at the drizzling rain. ‘I feel terrible about it.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s your fault,’ I said. ‘We can do something else. What does a Carioca girl do if she can’t go to the beach?’

  Mariana’s face lit up. ‘We go shopping of course!’

  We had planned to catch a bus, but once we’d started walking to the bus stop we kept on walking the 6 kilometres to Ipanema. The rain had stopped and, although it was overcast and gloomy, it was still warm and we just about had the whole of the Copacabana beachfront to ourselves as we shuffled past deserted restaurants and cafes. On our two-hour hike we talked about Mariana’s job (she not only did the designs for refurbished apartments, but also did the interior design, including choosing all the furniture), we talked about her family (her parents divorced when Mariana was two years old and her dad had only recently got in touch with her ‘because I
’m now successful’) and we talked about Nunoo: ‘He goes back to Lisbon in five months and I keep thinking that he is the one. But maybe Paula is right. Maybe he is an arsehole.’

  ‘I have a Havaianas addiction,’ Mariana said as she stopped to buy a white pair with 10-centimetre high heels. My addiction wasn’t coming along too badly either. I bought another two pairs of Havaianas, making it four pairs in just two days.

  Mariana did love to shop. I lost count of how many clothes shops, jewellery shops, hat shops, belt shops, handbag shops and shoe shops we went into. ‘Are you bored?’ Mariana asked me in a lingerie shop full of stunning women trying on bras. ‘No, not really,’ I said, wiping the dribble from my chin.

  ‘I go to this church most Sundays,’ Mariana said as we passed a small church in the middle of some fashion boutiques. ‘I pray for more money, so I can do more shopping.’

  Just when I thought that I’d finally got The Girl from Ipanema out of my head we stopped for a late lunch (as in starting at 4.30) at The Girl from Ipanema restaurant (or the Garota de Ipanema in Portuguese). It was at this very restaurant that Tom Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes wrote the song that has come to be Brazil’s most iconic soundtrack (as well as the second most recorded song of all time after the Beatles’ Yesterday).

  We grabbed a table by the window and I very quickly figured out why Tom and Vinícius wrote the song there. I said ‘aaahh’ a number of times as tall and tanned and young and lovely girls from Ipanema went by in the street. The restaurant was packed with locals and loud American tourists, but the service was efficient and friendly and we shared a main course of Picanha a Brasileira, which was a generously laden sizzling plate of superb, thinly sliced rump steak with rice, chips and farofa.