Whale Time: Re: Avram

Re: Avram
On the Move

all stories and essays by Avram Klein

Isla Grande

I have been busy getting completely shit-faced every day. I went to the beach with a girl from Spain who was pretty cute. She changed out of her dress into her bikini right in front of me, which just had me completely heated. That's how things pretty much started off during my visit to Isla Grande.

I was living in my tent on an island near Rio de Janeiro. The campsite is like the house where a lot of guys just kick back and drink.

I was fighting with this one dude called "Late Night" like at three in the morning in the middle of the campsite just waking everybody up. I was barefoot, kicking this dude in the chest over and over again, like full on body blows. moved it into the bathroom and I kicked him against the wall and then he open-hand punched me in the face. It was pretty tight.

Also I fasted, right, and all the toxins came out of my body as one, pitch-black shit that looked like the mud in the marsh that used to be used as a trash dump next to my middle school in Marin. The second shit I took looked like a piece of coral covered with glistening algae growing next to a nuclear vent. The rest of my shits didn't have glistening fat on them, but they stuck to the toilet like fuckin' clay or something. I consider the fast a complete success.

I met a doctor on the island who explained to me why I got completely sick after the fast. To actually lose weight, you need to eat like every hour or two hours during the day. When you wake up in the morning, your stomach starts up like the engine of a car. About four hours later, it slows down and stops. If you eat after your stomach stops, it doesn't start up again, so those meals turn to fat.

So if you eat lunch like four or five hours after you eat breakfast, that meal will turn to fat and so will dinner. If you keep the engine in your stomach running, it will burn up all the food you eat all day and will continue into the night. If you keep it up until you go to bed, your stomach will still burn fat until you reach, I think, the third level of deep sleep, which is like your REM sleep.

I did some other cool stuff on Isla Grande. Some buddies I made in Rio while downhill skating had this house on the island. My friend Pedro grew up going to Isla Grande, and he took me to an awesome beach on the other side of the island where there was a great rock cliff peninsula jumped off into the water.

I walked home for like more than an hour in the dark one night with a lantern made out of a two-liter soda bottle and a candle. I was climping straight up this hill in my flip flops in the forest while holding this candle and a boogie board.

The last night or two I was there, I played with a local reggae band. They let me play the congas and this Brazilian shaker which is like a wheel with a handle and some beads around the wheel that makes a shaker sound. I was rocking out on this thing in the bar, and the singer from the reggae band decided she liked me.

She's from Bahia and her name is Dogama, so now I have good Dogama. I kind of felt like Chris Rock, just going with the flow, because she didn't speak any English. She told me she was 25, but some of these 25-year-olds look like they're pretty young. She sang like Tracy Chapman, looked like Halle Berry, and lived in a shack up on the side of the mountain making money knitting bikinis for tourists. I just kicked it with her and all these great musicians.

They fed me all kinds of awesome traditional Brazilian food and took me to this great beach where saw a giant lizard and a giant blue butterfly. The water was super warm and they played guitar and sang "Girl From Ipanema" and all these awesome songs. I drank a lot and kicked it with a lot of travelers.

There was a guy there from Berkeley who was telling me about how Berkeley High used to be, which was really funny. He was buddies with a really successful English web designer who had one of those crazy dual fuel tank race cars they use in Gum Ball which is the race across the country where they outrun the cops the whole way. I guess he partied with the guys from Jackass, or at least partied with the guys who were on Jackass when Jackass did the Gum Ball in Europe. He almost did it, but he sold the car and took his wife, I think, to South America instead.

I met a pretty great kid from an island in Maine, and just kicked back. Then met a guy from Canada who told us he was in the Amazon and they were shooting Survivor up there. I guess he works in television and works a lot and went to the Amazon to get away from work and his whole hotel was full of camera crews. He was there visiting a Brazilian friend he made on the Internet, a girl from São Paulo. She was there with her friends and one of her friends was so hot, like really cute and her name is Rute which is pronounced Hoochie. When I heard her name I was just so on it. She's an English teacher and she is super interested in becoming pen pals with me.

This whole crazy thing happened when I was hanging out with my downhill skating buddies. Pedro has two dogs that I was playing with a lot. He gave me this crazy giant fruit that I tried to eat, but I just got the sap all over my hands. So I was told to use olive oil to get the sap off my hands, which I did when I went out for dinner.

Please try to understand that while here in Brazil, all I wear all day is a Speedo, which here is called a tsunga, pronounced songa. So I sit down in the restaurant and rub the sap off my hands with the oil and then I start getting this crazy rash on my stomach. Then Rute walks by, and I jump up and invite her to eat with me. So she sits down and start talking and my frickin' eyes swelled shut.

Like, I looked like a lab animal. Like, I seriously looked like Bjork, or like a guy from Iceland after having, like, crazy chemicals rubbed in my eyes. I was all trying to play it off like it was all good, but I didn't really realize what I looked like.

What I guess happened was the dogs were on my hands, and then with the oil on my hands, I rubbed the dogs into my eyes. I ended up going to the nurse's office on the island and they gave me this crazy Brazilian shot in the ass with allergy medicine. They told me it wouldn't hurt, but I was just howling. I could feel the serum running down into my foot.

About thirty minutes later, I passed out, which was cool, because I think I'm not allergic to a lot of stuff anymore. But I missed out on dancing with Rute, and it was Saturday night on a holiday weekend. The next morning, Rute was by my side when I woke up, like watching me sleep, standing outside my tent, so I was pretty stoked. Her friend from Canada, Paul, told me, "you might have something there," with Rute. She kind of looks like the bad girl from Goldeneye. The bad girl from Goldeneye also plays a really good-looking girl in City of Industry.

I think that's pretty much it. I was walking home from the beach in Rio yesterday, and I walked right up on Diane with her husband Marcos. I played it off like I was just an acquaintance of Diane's and chatted with them for a while after introducing myself to Marcos, and then I split. I don't think Marcos caught on, and Diane was like shocked, because I can be kind of slick like that.

I'm kind of like her laid-off lover. The thing is though, is she told me that this guy was like really intelligent and rich and all this shit. He spoke like the same English as the bros I kick it with on the Island and he looked like shit, man, and he didn't look rich really. And Diane is staying with this random dude because of revenge reasons.

She's back to working as a model. She once pointed out this great model who roller blades stoned on the beach. She was out tonight, so I stepped up and got her number. She's kind of young, but I feel pretty good right now. I think, really, maybe I should move to Israel and be a stripper. Like really, I might. In Brazil, being a bro is an accepted way of life and consists of a large part of the population and is pronounced brodare. So, all right brodare, take it easy.

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