Whale Time: Re: Avram

Re: Avram
On the Move

all stories and essays by Avram Klein

São Paulo

I'm fasting for the second day in a row, I just went for a run on the beach, and it's way past dinnertime.

I just found out my online art teacher is giving me an F. I am so pissed off. She is giving me an F and I've been on top of the class during my travels in Brazil. I'm at the Internet lab on my way home from body surfing, looking at guys in Santa Rosa who've morphed their faces with a scanner program. Beer-drinking, regular, working guys with stretched out faces and psychedelic fire beards and crap.

And all the projects look the same because everybody is using the same lab and I got an F because "it needs more." I'm weak from thinking about it.

I just went to São Paulo and it was kind of the bomb. I guess it was one of those trips that was fun, but actually really, really dangerous, and I just didn't know what was happening around me.

The first night we ate at a great Italian restaurant which was Austin Powers meets ET's space ship. All the waitresses were down to party like every night and the guys either had tattoos and pierces all over them or they were gay and down to party with us. The bartender had two pierces on the back of his neck. Everyone swore by this one gay bar that was in a sketchy part of town, and I eventually went to it, but the first night I went to this bar where they were playing alternative rock like the Strokes and the White Stripes and the crowd was mostly young, but it was going off.

The dance floor was totally packed at three in the morning and it was really four because of the time change and people were just jumping and dancing and singing in English. I was talking in English to a girl that was way younger than me, and after I killed my two twenty-twos of Bohemia and was pretty stoked.

There was this awesome chick my age who was there with her boyfriend and she was getting so down. I slept on the bus the night before, so I just leaned on the railing and let this chick dance in front of me with the strobe in full effect.

It was a lot like the INXS video, but real. The first floor of this place was all hot chicks making out with people and the second floor was all just people rocking out and talking on bean bag chairs.

The second night I went to a club playing the same kind of music, but at this place everybody was dressed so glamorous they looked like rock stars. It was like back stage at the Beck awards. The real difference between this place and all the other places I've gone to is that in every single room there were two guys like tongue wrestling and trying to tie rubber bands around each others nipples without looking. It was kind of a trip.

There were also vampire transvestites putting on a concert in the back and guys who looked like they were in the Strokes puking over a toilet with the door open so that everybody on the dance floor could see.

There were also some really hot chicks and luckily I was able to lean against the wall, sipping Malibu and juice, and just watch this chick rock out. All those years of head banging paid off pretty well. I also knew the words to the songs so I was able to turn heads. I was like, "Girl, don't you want me? You know I can't believe you when you say that you don't need me. Girl." And everybody kind of looked at me like people in the States do when your pop locking, like "Whoa, he's good at that."

But I left, because of all the craziness. And it was still early. It was midnight on Sunday, and I only knew about one other rave, and it wasn't starting for a while, and on the corner was another group of like over-fifty people drinking at an outdoor bar and they weren't chicks and they weren't straight.

So then I busted out my trusty Fodors guide and instructed a cab driver to take me to the Austin Powers bar described in my book as "grooving to various forms of rock until the daylight hours" to find that it was closed. It was also on the other side of town, or the other side of the middle of town, because São Paulo is huge.

So I went home and the cab ride only cost me like 45 bucks which was really like 12 bucks US. So at that point I felt kind of defeated, but then I found out there was a free porn station in my room so I stayed up until dawn anyway.

The next afternoon, I felt kind of bad like I shouldn't have done that, but then I realized this is exactly how you're supposed to visit São Paulo. So I stayed in and fasted because I´m on this health kick, constantly defining my firmed abs.

The next day when I had successfully not eaten, I looked out my window overlooking the Se Cathedral in the center of São Paulo, a few blocks away from the largest Japanese community outside of Japan and it was raining.

While I was fasting I became determined to stay in town and party until my tongue found its way inside something other than a giant bottle of Skol, but there was nothing to do because it was raining and I had already visited a lot of museums and the park and it was Monday and I knew I was just going to be sitting around until at least Wednesday. So I left and went to an island called Isla Bella.

On Isla Bella I watched a commercial showing how dangerous São Paulo is. The commercial starts with a guy in a car screaming and then you see a girl with blood all over the seat and coming out of her head. And then it looks like it was a car accident and then it shows a regular hip hop kid shoot her through the head while she's stopped in traffic. It was really violent and I decided to not go back to São Paulo and wander around by myself.

I'm feeling pretty light-headed right now, but not hungry. Which means, I think that my body is digesting the fat in my gut which is filled with all kinds of great things to snack on, like GH25 glutial maxidose or some shit. I wanted to not eat until I got hungry. But that might not be for a while.

Go to Isla Grande