Whale Time: Re: Avram

Re: Avram
Bahia - Part 4

all stories and essays by Avram Klein

Counting Backwards

Before I met Karen, I was on the island of Morro do Sao Paulo near Salvadore, camping for a week. This island had about fifty restaurants, twenty bars, and ten dance floors. I mostly just ran on the beach, did yoga, and danced all night.

I became the yoga instructor for a girl who was working on her Masters at MIT. Her name was Tennaz, and she was from Iran and had gone to Tehran University. She explained a lot of things to me, including why the Bush Administration should retire and never show their faces again. She also explained why the Third World will never be able to compete with the US and Europe, how having a shared currency among nations, like in Europe, would be imposible in the Americas, and how capitalism is ultimately not self-sustainable.

I also met a music teacher from Rio who explained to me why Rio has fevelas and how the state is trying to cope with the influx of people. He also explained how matriarchal the northeast is. He said that if the landowners on the island told all of the townspeople to leave the island, they would just pack up and move.

Before I was on Morro do Sao Paulo, I was in Itacare which is an awesome surf town north of Ilheaus. I just practiced my surfing and watched some of the best capoiera and Afro-Brazilian dancing I've ever seen.

I also started to come down with jock itch.

It started as a rash from my surfing trunks. By the time I got to Morro, the rash had spread from one thigh, across my balls (which had swelled like a baboon's ass), over to the other thigh, and then up my stomach to my belly button. I bought some cream and some medicated soap.

I also got blisters from running on the beach. The blisters would wrap all the way around my toes, bust open, and fill with sand, so I'd rip off all of the skin to help them heal.

Around this time, Tennaz described to me how exercising after drinking doesn't make you healthy, but rather is just the act of your body burning alcohol, which is incredibly bad for your body. So I quit drinking.

Before Itacare, where I left my surfing shorts, rash guard, and two of my favorite tsongas on the clothes line, I was in Ilheus. And before this, I was in Sao Paulo with Hoochie.

Hoochie Timeline:

I am with Hoochie in Sao Paulo.
She tells me to visit Bahia and then come back in three weeks and be her boyfriend and live in Sao Paulo and teach English.
I am a little bewildered, but I go to Bahia.
After two weeks, she writes a letter telling me that she has gotten back together with her boyfriend.
I meet Karen.
Hoochie writes me again to say that she has split with her boyfriend again.
Hoochie writes me again to say that she and her boyfriend have fallen back in love and are planning for the future.

The one thing is, is that she has my skateboard, which I've had for twelve years and has some of my only existing artwork on it from when I was a teenager. I met a great guy from Manhattan who told me the board is gone and I should forget about it.

Karen wanted me to go back to Sao Paulo with her and I thought maybe I could get my skateboard back then, but now I have no idea how I'm going to get it back.

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