We caught the bus back to Mariana’s because she had to get home for a ‘beauty’ appointment. ‘I’m going to get my fingernails and my footnails done and get my hair blow-waved,’ she explained. ‘Brazilian women spend a lot of time and money to look beautiful.’ Mariana went to the beauty salon at least once a week and saw her personal trainer three days a week. ‘I have to look good for the beach!’ she said brightly.
‘If my boyfriend rings when I’m out,’ Mariana said, ‘tell him that I’m busy and that I’m going out tonight with a nice boy from Australia.’ I wasn’t too keen on getting her boyfriend jealous. Mariana had shown me a photo of Nunoo standing on the beach in little white bathers, showing off his muscles. Muscles that were a hell of a lot bigger than mine.
Mariana came back from the salon looking suitably gorgeous. ‘Now I have to get ready,’ she said. ‘It will take me at least an hour,’ she added before disappearing into the bathroom. I tried to watch TV. Mariana had cable TV but, as with cable TV the world over, there was nothing on. We left for Melt nightclub with two of Mariana’s leggy cousins at eleven o’clock—at which time on a Saturday night at home I’m either in bed or dozing off in front of the television.
Melt nightclub looked very chic and hip, just like the people standing in the queue to get in. It was so chic and hip that the drink cards were credit cards and the doorman wore a three-piece suit. ‘I come here every Saturday night,’ Mariana said as we were ushered to the front of the slow-moving queue—which was handy because as well as meticulously checking IDs, they were punching everyone’s name and details into a computer.
Two more of Mariana’s leggy cousins were waiting for us inside at one of the candlelit tables in the ground floor bar. The bar was full of so many glamorous and beautiful people that it looked like the final of Search for a Supermodel. I don’t speak Portuguese but I could tell that some of them were looking over at me and saying: ‘Who invited the ugly bloke?’ I was doing all right for an ugly bloke, though. I was surrounded by a gaggle of gorgeous girls who were all chatting rapidly to each other in Portuguese. ‘They are saying that all Brazilian men have a screw loose,’ Mariana’s Amazonian cousin Roberta told me.
Just before midnight Nunoo turned up. Mariana spotted him in the crowd and waved him over. ‘My heart is beating so fast,’ she gushed while her cousins all shot him filthy looks. Mariana went all giggly and girly when he gave her a peck on the cheek, and when he went to the bar to get a drink she said, ‘He told me that he didn’t call me because he wanted to come here and surprise me. He’s so lovely.’
The disco, which was upstairs, started at midnight and all the groovy and hip people headed up to dance to the groovy and hip Don’t Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John and Kiki Dee. Mariana and Roberta dragged me up to the dance floor, but when the Doobie Brothers came on I skolled my drink so that I had an excuse to go back downstairs. ‘Ask Nunoo to come up for a dance,’ Mariana yelled in my ear as I left.
Nunoo was busy. He was busy flirting outrageously with a blonde girl at the bar and playing with her hair.
‘I couldn’t find him,’ I shrugged when I got back upstairs.
‘I’ll find him,’ Mariana said.
This should be interesting.
I stayed on the packed dance floor with Roberta who bent down and hollered into my ear, ‘It’s like dancing in a barrel of fish!’
‘More like a barrel of giraffes,’ I said to her right hip.
I told Roberta about Nunoo and the blonde and she said that we should go down to see if Mariana was all right. She was more than all right. We found Mariana and Nunoo draped on the bar with their tongues down each other’s throats.
Fifteen minutes later I found Mariana slumped on the stairs in tears. ‘He’s left me and now he has broken my heart,’ she whimpered. ‘Why doesn’t he want me? I’m beautiful, smart and funny.’
‘He doesn’t know what he’s missing out on,’ I said.
‘He told me that I was perfect . . .’ Mariana sniffed as mascara trickled down her cheek, ‘. . . but not perfect enough.’
I then reeled out all the rest of the old clichés to try and console her:
‘He’s not good enough for you.’
‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea.’
‘You’ll find someone new, someone better.’
‘He’s a fucking arsehole!’ Roberta summed it up rather more succinctly when I dragged Mariana upstairs. ‘She needs to drink and she needs to dance,’ Roberta added. When I came back with a Cosmopolitan (Mariana drank Cosmopolitans because that’s what Carrie drank on Sex and the City), she was dancing while bawling her eyes out. I left her with Roberta and went downstairs to the bar and chatted to a fellow from Australia, because no matter where you travel in the world you’ll usually find another Australian to chat to. ‘I think I’ve found heaven,’ he said as two stunning girls threw themselves all over him.
By 3.30 I was ready for bed. And it seemed Mariana was ready to take someone to hers. I found her upstairs making out rather zealously with a new Nunoo. When I’d told her that she would ‘find someone new’, I hadn’t meant within the hour. ‘Come sit with us,’ Mariana said brightly.
I sat and watched a replay of some local football game on the big-screen TV while Mariana and her new beau sat next to me exchanging tongues. In fact, half the crowd seemed to be making out with a boyfriend, girlfriend, friend-friend or possibly just a random stranger. ‘I’m sorry, Brian,’ Mariana said in between kisses. ‘I’m still the coolest girl in Rio, aren’t I?’
I finally dragged Mariana away from the nightclub at five o’clock just as the first traces of morning appeared in the sky. The entire city still seemed to be up and the kiosks along Ipanema beach were full of late-night (or early morning) revellers drinking from large coconuts and eating sandwiches. It had taken only four days, but I’d finally become one of them. I was now officially nocturnal.
Mariana might have to change the bit in her profile where she said ‘I’m the happiest girl you’ll ever meet’. She spent most of the morning in bed sobbing and howling into the phone. She eventually crawled out of bed at one o’clock for breakfast.
My meal times were now totally out of whack. We had breakfast at 1.30, which meant that I’d probably be having lunch at seven and dinner sometime the next day. I went to wash the breakfast dishes and Mariana said, ‘Don’t do that! My maid has to have some work to do.’ She wasn’t going to be happy with me then. I made the bed.
Although I hadn’t actually seen too much of the bed, I gave it the highest couch rating so far:
Couch rating: 8/10
Pro: A real bed plus an ensuite
Con: The bed was a bit short (if I’d brought home one of the Amazonian cousins—and I’m only talking hypothetically here of course—I would have needed to fold her in half).
‘Would you like to come and watch democracy at work?’ Mariana asked. ‘I have to vote today.’ Voters could choose the venue where they wanted to cast their vote (school, local hall, etc.) and Mariana chose the very exclusive Leme tennis club, which had a restaurant and pool overlooking the beach. ‘I’m, how you say?’ Mariana said, turning up the tip of her nose with her finger, ‘. . . a snob.’
On the short walk to the tennis club we were both handed a dizzying array of flyers promoting candidates. ‘We have to vote for six different positions, including the president,’ Mariana explained. Some of the candidates looked a bit creepy. Luiz Sérgio looked like Borat wearing his grandma’s glasses while João Pedro looked suspiciously like Charles Manson. The creepiest one of all, however, was a fellow in an ill-fitting business shirt, beard and a grey wig who hadn’t done himself any favours for the photo by wearing his smarmiest smile and sticking his thumbs up in the air.
‘Who’d vote for him?’ I chortled. ‘He looks like a used-car salesman.’
‘That’s Lula, our president!’ Mariana said. ‘He’s okay compared to some of the other politicians we’ve had.’ Those ‘other politicians�
� included President Fernando Collo de Mello, who won the 1989 presidential election by promising to fight corruption. Then in 1992 he was thrown out of office after being accused of siphoning off more than US$1 billion of public funds. Another was Congressman Hildebrando Pascoal, who was arrested for making cuts, not to the budget but to a man’s arms and legs with a chainsaw.
Although we were in an upmarket area, the city’s poverty was painfully apparent in everyday scenes: men and women sleeping in the street; destitute boys juggling for spare change at a major intersection; and tiny girls peddling gum outside chic restaurants. The poor were also queueing with the wealthy to vote.
Tables inside the tennis club were set up for voting according to age group. The folk manning the tables were volunteers—well, volunteers in that they would have been sent a letter from the government telling them that they were volunteering. Mariana had ‘volunteered’ twice before.
‘Who did you vote for?’ I asked Mariana when she’d finished.
‘The used-car salesman,’ she said with a grin.
Deciding the fate of the nation takes its toll and we both concluded that we needed a good lie down. I was getting used to this nocturnal caper.
By 7.30 we were showered and changed and on our way to a brothel. Well, a former brothel at least. Casa Rosa (The Pink House) was now a samba club and Sunday night was the roda de samba party. The seven-dollar entrance fee included dinner (or lunch in our case) and a perpetual parade of girls wiggling their perfect bottoms. Most of the action was taking place in the large and very pink outdoor area. Mariana described it perfectly: ‘It’s like a party in someone’s backyard.’
The band were all sitting around a table that was covered in bottles of beer and the musicians were singing while thumping drums (surdos) and bongos and swinging their cavaquinhos (the diminutive guitars that give samba music its characteristic tink). The music was contagious and I couldn’t help but wiggle my not-so-perfect bottom. This is what couch surfing is all about. I really felt like I was in Brazil. I was with a local in a local samba bar eating authentic local food.
The languid and tanned locals were still dancing even while waiting in line for food, which was a typical Brazilian dish called feijoada. The plate was piled high with arroz e feijão (rice and black beans), farofa, linguiça (slices of spicy pork sausage) and a surprisingly tasty salad made with cabbage and oranges.
I could barely move after all the food. Well, that was my excuse for constantly stomping on Mariana’s toes while she attempted to teach me how to dance the forró, a fast-paced dance originating in the country’s northeast. We were in the forró room, which was one of three other dancing rooms in Casa Rosa. The rustic accordion-driven music seemed a tad folksy for a city hooked on glamour, but the Cariocas transformed the tiny room into a sweaty pit of sensuality. Sadly, though, my dancing was more nonsensical than sensual. The dance is ‘performed’ in pairs and the couple dance very close together. The man’s left hand holds the woman’s right hand as in the waltz, with his right arm around her back and her left arm around his neck. The man’s right leg then stays in between the woman’s legs. The dance somewhat resembles a dog trying to have sex with a person’s leg.
I really am quite a terrible dancer and I just can’t get the whole rhythm thing going. Everyone else was in a perfect groove and doing fancy spins while I stared at my feet, mumbling to myself ‘1, 2, 3 turn 1, 2, 3 turn 1, 2, 3 stomp . . . oh sorry!’ Mariana was incredibly polite. I must have stood on her toes a dozen times, but she was very patient. Mind you, when I suggested that we go outside, she did agree rather too enthusiastically.
We went to another room where a band was playing a jazz samba fusion. I loved it. So did Mariana. I think Mariana particularly liked it because it was the type of music that you danced solo to. ‘It’s a happy place,’ Mariana said, smiling serenely. It really was. Every person in the room was dancing. And it was really joyous exuberant dancing, not the usual stand-in-one-spot-around-the-handbag-waving-your-arms-now-and-again type you see in most nightclubs.
We had a very early night. We left at 1.00 a.m. But not before Mariana walked up to a good-looking guy she’d never met before, said ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ and gave him her telephone number.
I awoke early. Well, in my new nocturnal life, ten o’clock was early. ‘I’m so sad that you are going,’ Mariana said before leaving for work. ‘You are my new best friend,’ she added, squeezing me tightly. This was what couch surfing was all about (and I don’t mean getting squeezed tightly by gorgeous Brazilian girls). Mariana had taken me into her life and treated me like a dear friend after only a few short days. And it was because of that generosity and friendship that I was given opportunities to see and do things that wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t couch surfing.
I still had a few hours until my flight to the States, so I had a bit of a lie down on the couch when Mariana had gone. I was only a quarter way through my Couch Surfing Tour and I was already exhausted. I needed a break from partying (and drinking). But I had no hope that Bob, my couch-surfing host in Chicago, was a teetotaller and liked nice quiet nights in front of the telly. Not when he lived above a liquor store and, according to his profile, liked to ‘drink beer and loot and pillage’.
USA
8
‘ABSOLUTELY NO REPUBLICANS!
Sorry, I am firm on this rule. I’m sure there are some good ones out there but they aren’t staying here.’
Bob Fields, 31, Chicago, USA
GlobalFreeloaders.com
‘What’s the name of the person who are you staying with in the US?’ the surly American security officer asked me at Rio airport.
‘Bob.’
‘Bob who?’
I shrugged. ‘Err . . . I don’t know.’
‘Well, where did you meet him then?’
‘Um, we’ve never actually met.’
‘So, how do you know him?’
‘I met him through Global Freeloaders and I’m staying on his couch.’ I tried to explain the concept of couch surfing, but it was all too much for the security guy and he waved me through.
The only problem with visiting the States nowadays is, gee whiz, it’s a nuisance to get into. I got asked exactly the same questions again at security check No. 2—and bewildered another security officer. At security check No. 3 they made me take off my belt and checked my Havaianas for nuclear warheads. At security check No. 5 the security officer grilled me about my iPod. ‘Where did get your iPod from?’ the security goon asked me.
‘It was a Christmas present.’
‘Who from?’
‘Um . . . my wife.’
I was getting my first taste of the whole post 9/11 security blitz and I was still more than 7000 kilometres away from the land of the free and the home of the brave, but I couldn’t do a Couch Surfing Tour of the Globe without the good ol’ US of A on my itinerary. It is, after all, the centre of the universe—well, according to a lot of Americans, at least.
‘Are you seeking to engage in criminal or immoral activities?’ Although Bob had told me we were going looting and pillaging, I didn’t tick the ‘yes’ box on the Security Immigration Form at Chicago airport. I can’t really imagine too many criminals ticking it either, to be honest. Mind you, if people were honest, 9/11 would never have happened because the hijackers would have ticked the ‘yes’ box next to ‘Are you a terrorist?’
The plan for my couch-surfing jaunt was to go to places where I hadn’t been before and, although I’d been to the States a number of times, I’d only been to ten of the 50 states. Even so, I still had plenty of couches to choose from. Out of the 217 countries represented on the three websites, the USA has by far the most couches with more than 100 000 people registered. Incidentally, on CouchSurfing.com the countries with the smallest membership—with only one member each—are Antigua and Barbuda, Turkmenistan, Guinea, Palau, Burundi, Central African Republic, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Vatican City (I checked, by the way, and th
e couch in Vatican City didn’t belong to the Pope).
So why did I choose Chicago? Simple really: Jake and Elwood. I’d seen the city in so many movies (including, off the top of my head, The Blues Brothers, The Fugitive, Risky Business, High Fidelity, Home Alone and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ) that I felt like I’d been there already and wanted to finally see it in the flesh. And it’s not just celluloid that makes Chicago famous. It is (or was) home to everything from Jerry Springer to Oprah, Playboy magazine to Pullman, McDonalds to Kraft, Frank Lloyd Wright to Hemingway, Al Capone to Walt Disney, Miles Davis to Muddy Waters, and the Cubs to the Bulls.
During my search for a couch, I soon discovered that it wasn’t just the city that was intriguing. So were some of the profiles I found on GlobalFreeloaders.com. Jonathon’s was rather short and blunt:
You can stay in my backyard. It’s all right, not very comfortable, but whatever, you’re a freeloader, what do you care?
I can’t imagine what Ron had in mind for entertainment when you stayed with him:
Plenty of room for travellers. Limited tools available.
If you came from Venus or Saturn you’d be welcome to stay with James:
We’ll consider hosting anyone, but please be considerate (i.e. don’t bring a lot of drugs and don’t come in totally plastered at 4am, puke loudly on the carpet, and then snore and sleep until afternoon). I don’t have any preferences, male, female, bi, les, gay . . . as long as you’re not from the planet Mars or Pluto.
And I’m not sure what planet Daniel is from:
I like lemurs and three-toed sloths. I like waterparks, especially the long twisty slides when they don’t require you to be in a frikken innertube. I own a minivan, but don’t hold it against me. It hauls a lot of gear. Blue Ice Vodka is my drink of choice. Or water, if I need to operate heavy machinery. I am addicted to shopping for office supplies and I own a parrot, so no cats allowed.
Bob’s profile seemed relatively normal compared to some of the others:
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