Carnival
all stories and essays by Avram Klein
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Re: Avram
Seriously Freaked
Adriana would push me away during a lot of the Catherine Zeta-Jones scenes. I spent some time scoping Queen Latifah's performance, remembering the "Yo! MTV Raps" at her house when she raps after eating a green Jolly Rancher.
The next day Adriana and I sat on the beach in Recife. I had forgotten my razor, which doesn't make for good kissing and tried to make up for it by doing some pull ups.
Night hit and Tina took us out to a little unmarked space between two buildings where there were four different gourmet restaurants all playing different kinds of techno and jungle music. It was loud and gay and good and we took off from there to go dancing.
We drove downtown right through where the rave had been and pulled up to a Brazilian rock night. The club was big, with a stage and a balcany. There were three bands all playing early 80s rock and the classic hits. They played a variety from O'Rappa and Chico Science to "Centerfold."
There were a lot of people dressed up, including a girl in front of us dressed like Olivia Newton John with a blond pony tail sticking out from one side and a large loose 80s style blouse missing one shoulder.
Adriana disapeared for a while. There was a guy named Bruno who she had met on Fernando de Noronha who came to meet her at the club. She didn't introduce me to him and then took off with Tina for a while. Tina came back without her and I started to get a little nervous.
Then a stocky Brazilian with a head of curly hair pushed back in a headband started grabbing the back of Tina's head, pressing his mouth hard on her face so that she couldn't get away. He pinned her to the wall, putting his hands on either side of her and I finally tapped him on the shoulder. He was completly passive when I talked to him, and Tina said it was okay.
Being sober with the headlock kissing and not knowing where Adriana was kind of made me dizzy. Adriana came back though, and she was completely gorgeous. She was wearing a little frilly top like the Colombian pop star, Shakira, with her long brown hair pulled loosely back.
She told me that she had been at the bar, and she seemed a little shit-faced. I didn't mind; I was stoked.
The next day we slept in and went back to Porto de Galinas. We had lunch and laid on the beach and kissed in the water. I wanted Adriana to stay and meet the guys in Maracaipe, but after a few hours she took off.
I knew my friend Leo thought that I had left for Pipa without saying goodbye. I found him with one of the boys at the surf school on the beach. There was electricity in the air as I brandished unsmoked joints from the trip to Recife and the good news of Adriana.
Leo held the joint and yelled, "Maasssaa!" I then headed to bed. On my way to the tent, I was headed off by Ze, the campground owner who wanted me to pay up. I paid so he invited me into his house to smoke a joint.
We sat down and he pulled out a joint of straight-up favela dank. The growing of this weed is something of a mystery because not many people know how or where these guys grow this stuff or how they're able to grow it so strong. This weed was so strong, it may have been poisonous.
We sat and smoked and then Ze started to try to tune in the war coverage in Iraq while I was holding the joint. I hit it quite a few times while he was working on the TV and within a few moments I was wasted. Ze's face was completely fucking gray from drinking and he was asking me all of these simple questions like my name and what country I was from.
I had just lived in his backyard for three weeks. I thought perhaps I should offer him a joint although I knew the weed I had wasn't quite on par with his chronic. I pulled a joint out of my pocket and in the same moment, he jumped out of his seat and grabbed the phone off the wall above the TV. My blood froze.
He scared the living shit out of me. I knew he was just calling a friend or a girl, but I couldn't help being afraid that he was selling my ass off to the cops for some extra weed money.
As the blood drained out of my face and I pretended to smile, my ears were glued to every word he said into the phone. He said something about just getting back from the favela and having the Bob Marley and how the guy should stop by and this and that.
I figured it was all good, but I was already too frightened to think rationally. Captau the dog was running outside and his shadow on the fence looked like a crazed ghost. Then it sounded as if somebody's sneakers were walking around on the porch outside the door when it was just one of the dogs.
There wasn't anything I could do to keep from being seriously freaked, so I excused myself, went and laid in my tent, and stared at the street lamp. The next day I didn't feel too hot and then the day after I woke up at dawn.
I went down to the beach to watch the sunrise and found three white horses nibbling at the grass. I tried to corral them onto the beach so that I could take their picture with the sunrise in the background, but after a half hour they outsmarted me and ducked into an open gate leading into a field. I tried to run in front of them, but they took off, running and shaking their rumps and hooves from side to side, getting away.
After the sun had fully risen, I decided it was time to take off. I packed up my stuff, leaving behind my soccer ball and my sunglasses, and then said goodbye to Leo. He hooked me up with one of his boys to drive me to the bus for 5R and I noticed the kid was wearing my shorts.
I had left my laundry at the hostel where the kid worked and I guess he had plucked the shorts from the pile. I asked him, "Que onde para essa?" Meaning "where for these," pointing to the shorts.
He said he got them in Porto de Galinas, and Leo was like, you don't shop in Porto de Galinas, but I didn't say much else about it.
We went back to my campsite and I picked up my other pair of the same shorts in a different color and said, look we have the same shorts, pretending I hadn't realized that he had stollen his pair. This freaked him out a little bit and he took off for a moment, maybe to go yell at the actual thief who had given him the shorts.
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