Lost and Found

Check it:

Got the place to meself. Got some nice cornbread coffee water and teeth cleaning utensils. Settling down to attend a film in my home. Life is really nice right then. 

The doorbell rings. I go to answer it. An old woman stands there staring. As she asks for Ernani, the wind slams the door shut. Locked. It did not become funny until later. Because now, I was standing in nothing but gym shorts in a hallway with an old woman with an accent as thick as...bacon. Thick sliced bacon. And I had no way to nowhere. Ernani would arrive late. In many hours from then. (My tenses are fucked up because my brain is just reemerging from having entered into screws)

We descended. I could tell she felt bad. After fiddling around with the doorman for awhile, calling expensive locksmiths, etc, I decided I was going to find a way into the damn apartment. I reascended and called on our kind neighbors. Their balcony is adjoined to ours...by a narrow strip of concrete over a 100 foot drop. Oh, I considered it. Daniel Day Lewis was calling me from oh so very close....

The visions of my bones cracked brains guts spattering the sidewalks and the headlines and the looks on my family's and friends' faces deterred me. 

Options: 

1) wait and mope
2) beach

Which do you think I chose? When in doubt...you got it. 

The doorman was so kind to let me borrow flip-flops and a shirt. And so I departed (warnings were given about the dangers of the city at night. I am foolhardy and adventurous...and surely a bit arrogant as well).

I felt like a street kid. It felt...liberating. To be on the other side of things. To not have to worry about getting robbed. To see people scatter when they saw me and hastily enter their cars and homes for fear of being violated by this bearded hoodlum. Yeah--it isn't quite the same thing. I just ate a filling dinner and 3 desserts. Even so, it was a taste. 

I needed a smoke. My plan was to bum 3 cigarettes from 3 different people then get some matches and head to the beach and enjoy the moon. They don't give out matches free here at gas stations like they do up north, and so the begging began. 50 centavos, anyone? Yeah, they all had 50 centavos. But I think my completely true and ridiculous story made me even less believable. The money never came. But cigarettes did, thankfully. 

I approached the beach. The beach at night is glorious. I hastily slipped off my borrowed clothes and dove into the mighty Atlantic. I felt so wonderful. Here I was, my comfy life at home interrupted by what could have been an extremely bothersome occurrence--but no! Nicky grabbed life by the horns and took the opportunity to go skinny-dipping under the moon! 

All was well until I was violently accosted by 3 insecure gentlemen accusing me of homosexuality and threatening physical violence. I slinked away defeated.

Back-up plan: shopping mall. A haven in the rough. The Portuguese word for mall is "shopping." Like, "let's go to the shopping!" And so I went. On my way I found a cigarette on the ground. Being temporarily homeless was taking a turn for the better. 

Upon arriving, the Dunhill treasure that I placed between my upper earlobe and wet hair was completely ruined. Life works in circles, people. 

The mall was more comforting than the beach. 

WAIT A MINUTE NO I DID NOT JUST SAY THAT I SHOULD BE BURNED JOAN OF ARC STYLE FOR SUCH BLASPHEMY

But I would die honorably, for although honesty has been known to warrant death, such a demise has never been for naught. 


It must have been the cupcake stand.

I got some nice free water at Burger King (which you would think is The Ritz judging by the outlandish prices. I guess the cows here have lawyers), free water being an extremely strange concepts to Brazilians and a valuable commodity to come by, and then was reeled in by the phone booths. I am grateful for my numerical memory. Having not a calling card on me, I somehow magically recalled the number of my calling card. First try too. But I could not remember my account number! So I hung up and tried again. Still nothing. Hung up...tried again...but now I could not remember the first number! But the account number suddenly popped into my mind! After pacing around the food court for 15 minutes racking my brain, I decided I just needed to let my fingers do it automatically. 

And so they did. I punched in all 3 numbers--each 10 digits--like BAM BAM BAM

Got a message machine, but hey, I felt like I had won. 

By this time, home was most likely re-opened. So I trudged back feeling half wonderful and half annoyed. Only to find out from the doorman that he called Ernani who came home to drop off a key for me an hour back.

And then, the grin broke across my soiled lips and it became funny. 

A night in the life of Salvador da Bahia.