City of lights

Preparing to leave, I realized Americans have two ideas about Brazil. First, that violent crime is continuously threatening to end your life and rob you of all possessions leaving you naked and bleeding in some dark alley. The other is that Brazilians are stunningly gorgeous with a smoldering sense of sexuality. Langurous eyes shaded by palm fronds beckoning... I started to get a little nonplused by the constant insinuations that I would soon be engaging in almost constant orgies with the gods.
*wink


Oooookay then... Welcome to Rio!

Soon after depositing my things at some friends' apartment, we set off together to walk down the beach front. Copacabana, Arpoador, Ipanema, Leblon... Rio's mountains draped in surf, a fresh, high sun overhead: Sunday afternoon, the city was out strolling. People trotted next to us on a marathon. Neighbors chatted in bars down the beachfront. Kids on tired old powerwheels and bikes with training wheels cruised through a moving forest of legs. Since it's winter, there were but a few surfers, a few beggers both brozed by innumerable beach afternoons - each in their own way, diehards...

We wound through the cool, tall streets of the Zona Sul. The black and white mosaic sidewalks tinted green under our feet from the light filtered through arcades of trees. Men unloading furniture. The fat taxi driver dozing shirtless in his cab. The bustle of an open-air craft market. Shoppings, stores, restaurants, bars, supermarkets.

Glancing through the hundreds of faces, I thought, to be honest, few Brazilians fit American's ideas of beauty. Most are too skinny, too fat and/or shall I say it? Too dark. Yes, every once and a while a man with the most perfectly chisled body would saunter down the street, a cocky smile on his well-porportioned face. But you would meet more gymbunnies in Chelsea on a single city block. The fact that I even had this thought told me I was looking for support for Americans' Brazilian beauty myth.

No, as much as it pains me to burst your bubble, Brazilians are pretty much like people anywhere... pretty, ugly, big, skinny, hairy, young, old, scarred, trashy, sophisticated, slight, thick... would you really want it anyother way? After all, if you wandered into a room of half-naked underwear models, most likely you would be too worried about sucking in your gut to get a hard on.

I left Rio on a dingy, snuffed out cigarette of a night. Hurtling towards the bus station in one of those wild, off the track roller coaster cars they call taxis here, I was lost in thought about all that I had seen. We careened down a street and turned a corner -

suddenly, between the buildings the black sky was filled with a galaxy of stars. It was so unexpected, it took a moment to realize they were the distant lights of one of Rio's infamous shantytowns precariously ascending up the invisible mountain face before me. Poverty, ignorance, violence, dead ends all transformed into constellations of lives hanging above the fitfully sleeping city.

Beauty.