Whale Time: Re: Avram

Re: Avram
Pernambuco, Maracaipe

all stories and essays by Avram Klein

Gay Friend Rebound

I ended up not getting any sleep at all the second night as I dealt with the mosquitoes living next to my bed.

The next day in Tamandare, Bahiano kids with gray eyes and kinky hair forced me to let them do backflips out of my hands into the water. I needed to find a better place to stay.. I was still completely delirious, so I decided to try to get to Maracaipe where I knew I could surf.

I fell asleep in a truck that offered to take me to Maracaipe. When we pulled up to the beach, it was pretty raging. It was the first Saturday after Carnival, overcast, glassy, two meters high and the line-up was crowded with hundreds of surfers.

Across the street from the line-up, in the palm trees, was an illegal tent city all set up with cars pumping jungle and reggae out of their trunks. I set up my tent and went to find some aftersun lotion. I met one of the local beachfront restaurant owners named Monica. She sold me what I needed and set me up with a better place to camp.

Karen had told me that a lot of sketchy, teenaged crackheads vacation at free camp areas, so I grabbed my stuff and got out of there. Saturday night I slept and missed the partying. The next day I busted out my fun board and found a hole in it. I had the board patched down at the beach and rented a regular board from Monica.

The next day I traded my fun board to Monica for a regular board. This turned out to not be a good trade because the board was really narrow and difficult to ride. It also had been focused down the middle and wasn't worth as much as the fun board.

I did, however, make friends with a girl from Santa Catarina named Kelly while visiting with Monica. Kelly traded me surf lessons for English lessons.

I wasn't able to sleep well the whole week. It was too hot to sleep with the fly on my tent. It would rain every night at about 3 a.m. and I would have to wake up and cover my tent and then the dawn would wake me up at 5 a.m.

I was too exhausted to give Karen any thought. It took me a while to put all of my frustrations into perspective, but I bumped into a local from Maracaipe named Rua and everything just seemed to be looking up. Rua (pronounced Howl), is the local expert surfboard shaper in Maracaipe and is really what's happening in town. He's a short, pure, bone-and-muscle surfer with a high-pitched, raspy voice that he uses to call all the shots around his shop.

He works out of a tiny brick building behind his house where he lives with his brother, both their wives, and his two sons. One son is helping build the house; the other son is only three. The shaping room is bright turquoise with a magenta ceiling. There's a second room filled with used boards to choose from and a third room completly covered from floor to ceiling in white styrofoam dust. He's a master designer. He pumps out perfect boards in two days and he's also pretty incredible with his paint jobs.

At first, I went back to Monica and tried to get my fun board back to trade to Rua for credit towards a new board. She had already sold the fun board, so I went back and got 80R credit for the board I had and bought a used six-four for 50R and had a cherry, custom, six-zero wrapped in paper to be mailed to the US for 400R.

This is when I started to get a little more sleep and also when I started to learn to surf. Maracaipe is for the most part deserted. There is almost nowhere to eat breakfast or dinner on any given day, including weekends. The place is decked out with tons of posadas and restaurants, but there's just nobody there.

The population of the town is mostly local teenagers, middle school kids, and waiters who rip waves apart all day surfing. There were three gringos staying in town who made for some good company.

Pernambuco in the summer is burning hot. Being here, you don't get what are considered the "smart travelers," who crowd Rio and the Amazon during the spring, planning their trips around the weather. Rather, you get crazy cats who don't give a shit where they are, 110-degree weather or not.

There was a guy from Australia and a guy from Britain traveling together who claimed they had stayed in a mansion in Salvador for Carnival. They said they were staying with a Brazilian millionaire and that there were girls continuously waiting in the living room to go to bed with them. They also claimed that they could order any kind of food, clothes, or drugs from their beds.

There was another guy I became friends with who was there on his own from Australia. His name was Alex and he was hilarious. He had been surfing in Ecuador and had partied through the holidays in Bogota, Colombia. He was constantly stoned off the local brown weed and would break into comedy in a soft, almost inaudible voice, telling stories, for instance, of how there's no tipping in Australia and sometimes he'll be starving to death and the waiters will chat in front of him for an hour before taking his order because they have no incentive to work.

This is how I learned to smoke joints of brown weed. Alex introduced me to a guy who I could buy from and I started out by dumping half the eighth into a napkin and rolling a giant yellow Cheech and Chong joint. It was quite enjoyable.

I hadn't gotten enough sleep until I met Alex, and I started to feel lovesick for Karen. Karen had only written me back once, seemingly only to say goodbye forever. The fact that Alex was about to leave caused an additional pang of agony in my heart. When he did finally leave, the pain in my heart disappeared, leading me to realize that I had rebounded on Alex.

So I guess I had a gay rebound, but just as friends.

It seems as though this phenomenon should be named "a gay friend rebound," but gay friend usually refers to a friend who is gay. Thus, the name should be "gay rebound, just as friends." In addition to this, I was also made sure that the pain in my heart was a gay rebound, just as friends, because as soon as he was gone, I became incredibly horny for a new girl, Shushu, the local hamburger cook working in the Lancheria behind the campsite.

The fact that Karen didn't stay in touch could only mean one of a few things:

1) One of the guys I met at the rave was her boyfriend, who she was treating badly, causing her to become upset and leave.

2) She really wanted to have a serious relationship with the girl.

3) She just didn't want to become attached to a gringo.

I'm not sure. The important, life-changing occurence that came out of all of this was that I learned to surf.

I also got the balls to ask Rua to shape me my own board. I got a wide-bodied six five with a concave bottom and a fish tail. Having a board shaped is like learning to surf in that it seems to make sense as it's happening, but once it's done, the end result is so incredible, you have no idea how it happened.

I learned that Rua is one of the most important representatives of the Brazilian chapter of the International Christian Surf Riders' Coalition, Jesus Christo. He's studying to become a pastor and worked hurriedly so that he could hand over my board before heading to Recife to attend a seminary lesson.

Rua went to town on my board. He would yell instructions with his high-pitched voice through the brick wall of his shop to his friends or one of the teenagers who came to hang out. Without looking, he would then slam the electic foam chipper down onto the board, letting the white shavings spray up onto his arms.

The workbench was almost chest high, forcing Rua's elbows up near ear level as he sculpted, sporting a gas mask and goggles. I designed a flame to be painted on the top of the board. I was stoked and within two days the board was in the water.

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