YOU'RE WRONG
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board
You'll like Sao Paolo, Mykel, it's got an edge to it.
--Martin, formerly of Los Crudos
[Note: All quotes in CAPITALS were originally spoken in Portuguese. I translate here for your convenience.]
Rio's been wet. Wet as in rain. Wet as in Antarctica, the beer of punk choice. Wet as in the promise of the ocean or self-induced juices running down my legs.
It's time to move my sopping body south. First stop: Sao Jose Dos Campos. That's where Erico, aka Korn, lives and operates homocore Brazil. He's gonna put me up for a day or two. Then it's off to Sao Paolo.
I wrote about Erico last month. He's the tall blonde with the lower-lip spike. Friendly, attractive in a white way, I met him in Rio. In Sao Jose, he's a little late meeting me at the bus station. That's all right. It strengthens his punk credentials.
Now he's without his lower-lip spike, a normal young man you might meet on a Swedish street corner. We go out to eat.
"Take me to something Brazilian." I ask him.
We go to Habib's, an Arab chain restaurant.
"It's all that's open now," he explains. "Besides, if you want to eat like the locals, this is the place to go."
I order some brown things, shaped vaguely like the hard rolls you get in a diner. They're filled with a reddish something with the consistency of partially-digested ground beef. Actually, it's not bad.
Then it's off to his apartment. He lives there with his large, roommate.
She's an expert on satellite mapping. She does all this cartographic stuff I don't have a clue about. She's smart and funny and goes a long way toward proving my oft-stated theory that fat people are just cooler than the rest of us. But back to Korn.
"So Korn," I say, "why don't you take me into your room and show me your CDs."
He does. I mean he really shows me CDs. One after the other, the most obscure collection of homocore stuff I've ever seen. He puts one on. Then another. Good stuff, but I didn't go into his room to actually listen to records. Maybe he needs a hint.
I lie on the bed. An inviting double mattress, put directly on the floor. Korn rushes to get another CD. He pops it in the CD player. Then lies down next to me.
Yes!
"Don't you like this?" he says.
"It's great!" I say, sqinching closer to him.
"Nice guitar in addition to the vocals, don't you think?" he continues.
"Aaargh!" I don't say as I move closer.
Just then the CD ends. Korn jumps up. "OK, Mykel," he says, "I've got to get up for work tomorrow. I'll get your bed and set it up in the livingroom. You'll be very comfortable there."
Aaargh! Aaargh! Aaargh!
The next day, I'm off to the local beach, where I throw myself into the waves and let them dash me against the sand. Coming back, I call Junior, punkrocker and journalist, in Santos. I need to make arrangements for the next few days.
"I'm going to be in Sao Paolo," he says, "Bad Religion and The Offspring are playing there. I need to do an interview for the newspaper. Want to go to the show?"
"I don't think so." I tell him. "I didn't come to Brazil to see The Offspring."
"Okay Mykel," he says, "take care if you go to Sao Paolo. Don't show your wallet. Just take a little money and put it in your pocket. Don't walk on the street alone after dark. Even during the day, watch where you go and who you speak to. It's dangerous."
The next morning, I bid farewell to Korn and his roommate, and leave for Sao Paolo.
*****************************************
Aside: Crime or at least its threat is the price you pay for real life. For excitement. Crime is what you pay for fewer cops and more freedom. Only the most boring or timid want to be safe. For me, where there's crime, there's life.
Listen Rudy! Mug me once a year, if you like, but give me back my city! As for you, dear reader, maybe I'll see you in hell. I'm going to Times Square on New Year's Eve.
*********************************************
Sao Paolo. Wow! It's New York twenty years ago. Dangerous, sleazy, dirty. You have to constantly watch your wallet... and your back. I love it.
Eduardo meets me at the bus station... actually he's about 45 minutes late.
"Yo Mykel," he says, "good to finally meet you. We did a mail interview a few years ago. I had a fanzine then."
"You don't have it any more?" I ask.
"Oh no," he says, "I need to live. You can't live off a fanzine unless you're Tim Yohannon... and he died."
"So you're not in the punk biz anymore?" I say.
"No," he answers, "sorry to disappoint you. I'm in porno now."
Some disappointment.
Turns out Eduardo is a big man in Brazil porn. He's a friend of the notorious Buttman, and was there the night a depressed Buttman let a transvestite whore penetrate his little rosebud. Buttman now has AIDS.
[A warning... remember, when you go to parties, wear your party hat. I always bring too many.]
Eduardo's pal, Paolo, has set me up with my own apartment. About three blocks from the subway, it belongs to a Japanese girl who is now in Japan. Free rent, internet access and a double bed! Yeah!
The first night in town we go to the good part. Guys stand in the doorway of every club. Each offers a better show and a bigger discount than the next. Eduardo passes 'em buy. We're headed for the class. Kilts, built in a kitsch parody of a castle. Huge, white, with pink lights on it. 20 reals to get in. We pay and head through the door.
It takes a few seconds for my eyes to calibrate themselves to light. Once they do, a few more seconds lets my blood calibrate my floppy into a hard drive. There, on the small stage, on the bar, walking around the club. In skimpy bathing suits, in bikini bottoms, in nothing at all. Is the most beautiful collection of girls I've ever seen. Brown skinned, light skinned. Blonde, Negro-haired, skinny, 8-shaped, all of it. Why die? Heaven can't be any better than this.
Dancing on the bar, a blond girl who looks as if she'll soon celebrate her 16th birthday, dances completely naked. She wears a dreamy look of absent mindedness. She wraps her tight-muscled legs around the barpole. Her expression doesn't change as she raises and lowers her body against that pole.
"HELLO, WHAT'S YOUR NAME?"
I turn and see a slim Negress wearing what Tim Curry wore in Rocky Horror. She looks even better than he did.
"I DON'T SPEAK MUCH PORTUGUESE." I tell her.
She says something else. Eduardo answers for me. Then the two of them begin a long conversation. Filled with laughs, I catch what I think sounds like "New York" and "famous rock'n'roll star."
We have a bit more of a conversation and the woman says something to Eduardo. Then she kisses me lightly on the cheek and heads off to talk to a fat guy with a mustache.
"She said it was fun talking with you," explains Eduardo, "but she's got to go to work."
The disco music lowers. The lights dim. Eduardo leads me and Paolo to a seat near the stage. It's the fuck show. A big beefy fellow, strips down to nothing. He's muscular and hairy. Not what I'm interested in. A dark-haired girl, with teacup tits and big round eyes-- like a character in a Japanese comic-- drops to her knees in front of the guy.
She reaches down to caress his limpness. She strokes it once or twice, then sucks it into her mouth. Using her mouth and hand, she strokes it to ninety degrees. Jeezus fuckin' Christ! I'm at forty- five degrees without the suck! Fire that guy and hire me!
As it turns out, ninety is enough. The girl turns her back to the audience. Bends down. Puts her head between her legs, exposing her shavedness, and naked twin cavities. Then, still in this awkward position, she turns around so the hardish guy has easy access. He goes for the bigger slot.
So, they're fucking on stage. This position, that position. It's not as thrilling as it should be. It's hard to be hard when the guy's so ugly. At least Ron Jeremy is funny!
My attention wanders. It wanders to a girl sitting at the table ahead of me. Another blonde. (What is it with blondes this trip? I usually find them hideous! Playboy cheerleaders. Yuck! But these have an innocence and exotitude lacking in the homegrown centerfold types. Hello there.)
She looks at me. Half opens her mouth. Sticks her tongue out and runs it along her top lip. Then she says something.
"I DON'T UNDERSTAND." I tell her, "I'M FROM NEW YORK."
Eduardo translates. "She says you can go to a hotel with her. Only 200 reals."
"SORRY," I say, "I DON'T HAVE MUCH MONEY."
She says something else. Again Eduardo translates.
"She says she really likes you and she'll do a special deal for 150 Reals. She also says you don't need to understand Portuguese because her body will do all the talking."
150 Reals is more than $75! Does my ethnicity get in the way of my hormones? I don't know, but I somehow refused her.
The next day I call Henrike, singer for The Blind Pigs, one of my favorite new Brazilian bands. We make a date to meet.
"Great Mykel," he says. "There's been so much stuff I've wanted to do, but I had no one to do it with. You know, my friends really want to do it, but it's 'not punk rock.' Or it's 'objectifying' or something. Now that you're here, I can do anything!"
Later that day, I meet Henrike and his friend Gordo. Henrike has green hair and wears shorts and a baseball hat. His English is nearly perfect. He could come from California. Gordo is quiet, more Brazilian looking.
We're off. First to an amazing conglomerate of record stores. There must be fifty stores, together, in the same building. Fabio, oldest punk in Brazil (til I showed up), runs the punk store. He sings for Ohlo Sehko. who, along with Colera and Ratos de Porao, helped put Brazil on the punk map in the 80s. He still sings, and now runs a record store too. He's got an incredible collection of CDs and even a bit of vinyl. I trade him some GG CDs I brought from New York.
Then we go to the skateboard shop where I meet the singer for GRITANDO. An attractive young man with coffee skin and a mohawk. He shows me a video of his band on Brazilian MTV.
"We're anarchopunks," he explains.
Then he gives me stuff. CDs, t-shirts, everything. Wow! If he were any more friendly.... He isn't THAT friendly, but he does put his arm around my shoulder. Supercool guy. (Wanna come over and listen to my CDs?)
Then come the girls. Highschool girls, half a dozen of 'em. They hear Henrike speaking to me in English.
They scream, "OFFSPRING! OFFSPRING!"
Henrike smiles and waves.
"Can we your signing?" says one girl wearing a Catholic schoolgirl uniform. They hold out pens and paper. Henrike signs his name.
"You too!" They say to me.
I sign Jello Biafra and hand the paper back. The girls hug the papers to their budding breasts. One sighs, as if she's just reached the finnish line after a long race.
We return to the skateboard shop, and laugh at the adventure. Not for long. Here's a dozen more girls, screaming, running through the building.
"WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE'S OFFSPRING?"
We huddle into a corner, behind some sweatshirts. A joke is one thing. A mob is something else.
We can run, but we can't hide. The Gritando singer knows how to fill his shop. He calls to the girls.
"RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW! FOR A LIMITED TIME! THE OFFSPRING! IN OUR SHOP. STEP RIGHT UP! THEY'LL SIGN AUTOGRAPHS. MAYBE THEY'LL KISS YOU!"
They stampede, the screaming horde of girls. They encircle us, thrusting pens and scraps of paper into our hands. We scribble furiously. For each signature, there are ten more. The girls pack tighter and tighter around us. One tugs at my sleeve. Another grabs Henrike around the neck. They pack the tiny store worse than a Tokyo subway. A little girl, no more than 12, slips on a skateboard. It flies into us. WHACK! Shin level.
"Let's hit the door!" I say, limping toward that aperture. Somehow we get out... and run. Down the stairs, out the building, followed by a pack of screaming girls.
Running down the street, I hear Henrike say, "Now! Turn!" He tugs me by the shirtsleeve. We're in a small passageway, filled with kiosks selling stamps and old coins. Like in a movie, the screaming girls pass us right by. We escape out the back of the passageway.
It's off to sexland. Not the classy stuff. This time, we go for the sleaze. Last night's entrance was 20 reals. Today, it's two.
Upstairs in the small club a single woman dances on stage, without much enthusiasm. When we sit down to our Antarctica beer, a chubby girl with dirty red hair comes over to us.
"I DON'T KNOW YOU." she says.
A strange introduction, but I pick up on it.
"Sure you do." I tell her. "We're in a band called THE OFFSPRING.... Ow!"
Henrike has kicked me.
"OH PUNK ROCKERS. YOU'RE PUNK ROCKERS. THAT'S WHY THEY THOUGHT YOU WERE MY FRIENDS."
A voice comes over the loud speaker. It's time to go on stage. And there she is, the chubby little redhead. Stripping away... to The Ramones.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Never in my life have I seen someone strip to The Ramones. My God! I AM in heaven!
Next, we enter a big old theater. On stage is a plump blonde, and three guys. The males have obviously been pulled from the audience.
"WHO'S GONNA FUCK ME?" asks the blonde.
"WE ARE." say the three hopefuls.
Then, it's Let's Make A Deal. The blonde points to guy number one. He's a square-shaped man with curly dark hair, khaki pants, and a Hawaiian shirt. He points to himself with the index fingers of both hands, nodding his head to encourage the audience. A few people applaud.
Guy number two is a Brazilian W. C. Fields. He's got a bulbous nose, a pot belly, and pants two sizes too tight. He gets some laughs, but not much in the applause department.
Finally, there's a guy whose picture should be in the dictionary next to the word "Hispanic." Skinny, mustachioed, with loose fitting pants and a brightly colored shirt. He's about 30 years old. When she points to him, the crowd bursts into applause.
"Luigi! Luigi! Luigi!" they yell. (Is Luigi a Brazilian name?)
He wins.
Bang, he's out of those baggy pants. Bang, out of his underpants. Standing there: drooping meat and potatoes. The woman on stage says something funny. The audience laughs. The guy pulls his pecker. Hand furiously pumping. Nothing gives. The chubby blonde looks directly at him and laughs. Mmm boy, nothing like a woman laughing in your face to get you hard. Yeah right.
The guy fails. Can't do it. Can't even manage the 90 degrees of the ugly guy in Kilts. Zero. Pointing down. Like a dowser that's found water. The party's over.
Dejected, he puts his pants back on. The audience applauds and the woman sits on the stage. She removes her tight leather pants and panties.
"OK, HERE COMES ANOTHER TREAT," she says. A stagehand gives her a bag of something. It's hard to see exactly what. But she reaches into the bag, then reaches between her legs.
"COME AND GET IT!" She says.
There's a mad rush for the stage. She sits at the edge of that platform, leans back on her elbows and spreads her legs wide.
First on line puts his head between those spread legs. There's a quick fart sound and a click, like a penny hitting glass.
"Next!"
One by one, the action repeats.
"Come on Mykel," says Henrike, pulling me out of my seat. "Get on line."
"I don't know," I say, "I like the idea-- and I certainly don't have inhibitions about putting my face there. I like that better than fucking... but... all that other saliva. I mean, there's more spittle in that twat than on all the rattles of my nephew's day-care center."
Henrike shakes his head and runs for the stage. Soon he's back, with a big round piece of sucking candy between his lips.
"She just shoots it out!" he says. "You put your face there and pop! Right in your mouth. It's too late now."
Another in my life's long list of missed opportunities. I will return from this trip without ever having tasted Brazilian pussy sucking candy.
The rest of the day is strip club to strip club. Henrike bargains a deal for the three of us (Gordo is there too!) at every club. What a great fun-filled day of nudity, sex and perversion. Toward the end I suggest.
"How 'bout if we go to a transvestite place," I say. "I wanna see some boys take off their clothes."
"Sorry," says Henrike, "that would be just too weird for me."
We part company, that second day in Sao Paolo. Despite the single gender focus, it's some day.
By now, my moaning hormones are begging for release. Three times that night, I spill my liquid seed into own my clenchedness. It doesn't solve the problem.
The third day: I'm on the subway, going back to the multi-record store. I figure I'll find some eager little girl who wants more than an autograph from THE OFFSPRING. I sit on the seat, looking at my map, trying to figure out where Eduardo said, "You mustn't ever go if you value your life."
I feel a tap on the brim of my hat. Then again. I look up. It's Erico, in Sao Paolo for a movie festival. His piercings are back. This time there's a nosering in addition to the lip spear.
"Hello there," he says. "Do you come here often?"
We decide to go out for lunch and make the tour of the super record store store, where the groupies mobbed Henrike and I yesterday.
I don't suppose I'll have much success today picking up groupie girls. Erico's wearing a DIE HETERO SCUM t-shirt. Not very inviting to the "opposite" sex. Still, Erico's fun, and now that I have my own apartment, you never know...
"I've got to get back home," says Erico after shopping.
"No rush," I say, "you're welcome to stay at my place..."
"Thanks for the offer," he says, "I'd like to stay, but..."
Yeah right.
Ah well, I still have the night. I'm meeting Eduardo and Paolo, again. This time, before we hit the strip clubs, we're going to "a special restaurant."
"I think I'll have the Piranha soup." I say, looking over the menu. "What are you going to get?"
It doesn't taste like chicken.
After dinner, we hit the strip clubs again. We pass through the classy area and move toward a somewhat seedier location. Off on a side street is a small bar with a woman's ass in neon, It flashes first in red, then in blue. The place looks dirty, worn out. The last stop on the stripper express.
"Let's go there." I say to the guys.
We go in. There's no entrance fee. We only have to buy a beer each. There are only a few girls here. Not the beauties of KILTS, but girls next door. Real girls with real faces. Here's a transcript of the notes I made about that trip:
I fell in love again,
this time with
a stripper in Sao Paolo. Her stage name is
Liza like Liza Manelli. Real name:
Patricia. Not a beautiful face, but a
beautiful smile, wonderful body and cafe-
con-leche skin.
In Portuguese,
"duro" means both
"hard" as in like a rock and
"broke" as in
completely without money.
"Can you take me to
your apartment?"
She asks.
"Io so duro, mais
duro." (I'm hard,
but hard (broke)) I say.
She laughs.
She does a private strip
show for our
little group, looking only at me.
Afterwards, she comes to our table and
talks. Her hands rest on my legs the whole
time. When the club closes, we go out to
have coffee together. I ask her to marry
me. I tell her about our life in New York
together. And how I'll take her away from
all this and how once she's with me she'll
only strip in the best places.
She laughs.
She's with her friend and
roommate, a
rectangular blonde who says she has a kid.
"I would come to
your place, for
free," she says, "but I have to make sure
my friend gets home ok. It's dangerous to
travel by yourself in Sao Paolo."
We hug. Make vows of
staying in
touch. She gives me her address. A tear
runs down my cheek.
Tomorrow, I'm off to meet Junior in Santos. Then on to Buenos Aires, but that's another column.
ENDNOTES: [Visitors to my website: www.freeyellow.com/members2/seidboard/index.html, or subscribers (email to: MykelB@ix.netcom.com) will receive a few extra endnotes.]
"Can you tell me in your own words what happened?" he asked the man.
Willhester replied, "I'm a mathematician dealing in the nature of proof."
"Yes, go on," said the judge.
"Well, I was at the library and I found the books I wanted and went to take them out. They told me my library card had expired and I had to get a new one. So I went to the registration office and got on another line... and filled out my forms for another card. Then I got back on line for my card."
"And?" asked the judge.
"And the man behind the counter asked 'Can you prove you're from New York City?' ....So I stabbed him."
This leads Thomas Kirkwood, a Manchester biologist, to the conclusion "when the body commits more of its resources for reproduction, fewer might be available to support a long life."
I say, check out that mom dealing with the kid pulling shit off the shelves at the local A&P. Reasons for a short life become immediately apparent.
You'll have to register to contribute, but it's worth it.
He 22-year-old Reston man was found dead yesterday after he tried to bungie jump of a 70-foot railroad trestle in Lake Accotink Park, Virginia.
Fairfax County police said Barcia, taped a bunch of bungie straps together and wrapped on end around his foot. The other, he tied to the trestle.
The police found him dead on the pavement below.
The problem, according to police as that "The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground."
Here's the book and review as I got it:
THE FABULOUS KINGDOM OF GAY ANIMALS: by Bruce Bagemihl
The scientist gasps and drops the binoculars. A notebook falls from astonished hands. Graduate students mutter in alarm. Nobody wants to be the one to tell the granting agency what they're seeing. A female ape wraps her legs around another female, "rubbing her own clitoris against her partner's while emitting screams of enjoyment."
Six bighorn rams cluster, rubbing, nuzzling and mounting each other.
A zoo penguin approaches another, bowing winsomely. The birds look identical and a zoo-goer asks how to tell males and females apart. "We can tell by their behavior," a researcher explains. "Eric is courting Dora." A keeper arrives with news: Eric has laid an egg.
There are homosexual and bisexual animals, ranging from charismatic megafauna like mountain gorillas to cats, dogs and guinea pigs. There are transgendered animals, transvestite animals (who adopt the behavior of the other gender but don't have sex with their own), and animals who live in bisexual triads and quartets.
Bruce Bagemihl spent 10 years scouring the biological literature for data on alternative sexuality in animals to write "Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity,"
I'm still at PO Box 137, Prince Street Station, NYC 10012 USA. Yeah!
--Mykel Board http://www.MykelBoard.com email: TheBoss@MykelBoard.com