Whale Time: Re: Avram

Re: Avram
Ever Learning

all stories and essays by Avram Klein

S. Brasil

I'm fucking exhausted, as I usually am when I'm in Rio. I've been sleeping on my brother's couch and he's injured and has been home from work, and his girlfriend also got really sunburned, and I'm totally allergic to their place, so all together I'm kind of just hanging on.

The truth is I just had one of the most incredible weeks of my life. I was living on an island in the southern state of Parana called Ilha do Mel. While I was there, I met one of the most incredibly cute girls I've ever met.

I realize we kind of had the "fun period of the relationship, when you first meet" thing going on, and the "summer thing" going on, and the "I can't understand a single word you're saying" thing going on, but still, it was seriously... seriously... seriously... nice.

First, Alexandra cooked me the best fish I've ever tasted in my life. Two nights later, she cooked a plate of fifty shrimp for me and a group of guests. It was the best I've ever had in my life. The shrimp were so large, they tasted like lobster.

Two nights after that, her friend took me out crab hunting with a flashlight and a machete and we ate like fifty crab. We threw the crabs in a pot with a lot of rice, and I was drunk and pretty tired, so I ended up eating a lot of the rice, which had a lot of sand in it.

The next morning, I asked her if I could leave my surfboard at her place while I visited my brother in Rio. She told me she was already dating someone before she met me and she wasn't going to quit him. So I went back to my campsite and shit cement.

She persuaded me to stay one more night, which was awesome. Her family was there and one of her cousins was an English teacher so we were able to exchange some solid information.

Alexandra is a southern blonde Brazilian. She also has lived on Ilha do Mel, a nature preserve with no cars, for more than 20 years. She also is really smart and runs a posada for her family and stopped going to school after second grade. All of these things together, in my opinion, make her the most real southern blonde Brazilian in Brazil.

There is only one island in southern Brazil with no cars and is really Brazilian with the old forest and fishermen. Also, southern Brazil is famous for blonde girls, and Alexandra is the only blonde girl from Ilha do Mel.

After being torn from her like a conch from a rock, I traveled for 20 hours back to Rio without sleeping.

Then I didn't sleep well for a few nights after that. I decided to ease the pain by shopping for really expensive aerosol deodorant on Copacabana Avenue. I only found a bright red canister of Ferrari Deodorant, I went to the beach and shook my fist at God and punched my perfectly formed fisherman hat into the sand.

It's Friday night and if I don't dance all night tonight, I might seriously crash and burn.

Because I thought I was going to get back to Alexandra, I cancelled some plans with a message to Hoochie (Rute), and she wrote back so pissed, that you'd think I lent her car to a stranger and used her credit card to buy a house.

I wrote her back and smoothed things out, but now she's in Rio and I'm also in Rio. So now what? I'm so far from my smiling self, I don't know if a woman named Hoochie can save me. This, of course, is a crazy way to think. Of course hanging out with a woman named Hoochie will make me feel better. I don't know how I'm going to turn this situation around, but it's going to take some tsonga wearing and some serious ass-bending and deep-breathing techniques.

Epilogue

I was broken hearted to leave this island I was on and then I called the girl and she has to be the cutest girl I've ever met. I hung out with another girl last night and had an awesome time. I thought God had hit me with an ugly stick for my faults, but really my face was swollen from putting Ben Gay with menthol in my nostrils to help soothe my intestines, which was recommended by a Chinese healer.

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