IT IS WHAT IT IS
By Claude L Arango
Living in Rio is like living in another world; you either feel right at home or like you just stepped off of a spaceship. The Carioca’s moral code is paper thin and culture shock is inevitable. The Brazilian’s put their sexuality out there in the open, on full display, and sometimes you wonder what the hell is really going on.
Slowly but surely you slip into your own decadent routine, that if practice anywhere else in the world, would be considered questionable, if not intolerable. But, eventually, your transformation is complete, and to your temperate surprise you no longer give a damn what people think. Your emotional equilibrium has been tampered with, and your moral code has shifted to some place just this side of anything goes.
While in this state of mental flux your insight has been rendered useless, and by the time that you figure things out, things have changed, for better or worse. Your social acumen has slipped, and you don’t know if you are feeding the monkey or the monkey is feeding you. There seem to be women everywhere that show more than a passing interest, but often their motivation is suspect; should you give in to temptation, and hope that their genuine interest is in you and not your fiscal endowment. Time to get real brother, this is Rio.
Rio de Janeiro is a tropical conundrum wrapped in a coconut paradox, a city that promotes insomnia, a city that never sleeps. Where personal convictions are constantly being tested, and even those of a secular mind know that debauchery is rampant, in the biblical sense. Self indulgence becomes a way of life, and for more than a few, moral corruption is complete. Rio is definitely a balancing act, but who is to say who's got it right.
Some would say that Morris Tucker got it right. He was living the good life in Rio de Janeiro. He had three young girlfriends, in his rotation, each of them less than half his age. He was in good health, and he had money coming in each month, enough so that it was not a concern.
His biggest problem was that he had scruples. He would not take advantage of situations just because he could. When he first arrived in Rio he didn’t have a clue as to how things worked. He had to mend his ways and alter his thinking in order to make, what seemed like extra ordinary happenstance, palpable.
Reluctantly but inevitably, he slowly succumbed to the city’s vices. The endless opportunities for sexual escapades, without any strings attached, would appeal to most men, and in the process weaken any man’s moral resolve. Pay as you go became his mantra, and he gladly paid, not for their service, but for them to leave, afterwards. When you think about it, not a bad situation to find yourself in if you are totally narcissistic, but don’t think about it too long, narcissism is not a team sport. It gets lonely playing by yourself.
He wasn’t even aware of it, when Karma added one more position to his sutras, and flipped the script. He fell hard for a Hooker.
It happened suddenly, to his complete surprise, when he realized that the fundamental dynamics in his relationship with Lori, the top girl in his rotation, had changed. His normal routine would be to see one of the three girls, at least once a week. He treated all of them as equal. The girls had their own separate lives, they had boyfriends or girlfriends, and it didn’t make a difference to him. He was not a jealous man. He didn’t care who they were banging, and he was magnanimous towards them, as long as they came when he called.
They were in it for the money and he was in it for the sex, which are the usual dynamics in May-December relationships. But a hooker’s shelf life is measured in dog years, and by the time that they hit thirty they should be out of the game. So, it’s get what you can while you can, and leave the rest for posterity.
Lori was no exception to the rules of nature and lustful men. She turned thirty four on her previous birthday, and time was beginning to take its toll. She could no longer get away with doing things that she did get away with when she was 22. But she wasn’t about to change her mind or her ways; she was stubborn and selfish, which didn’t set well with her clientele. Her phone had begun to ring less often, except for calls from Morris, the Americano. In fact he was calling her more often than before. He was seeing her at least twice a week, which only reinforced her false self-image of being a young desirable vixen, totally in control.
When she came to visit Morris, she had the habit of telling him small details of her encounter with other clients. Morris didn’t particularly want to know about her escapades with other men, and he didn’t like the term client, but what else could he be to her, but a client. When she came to visit him he usually fixed dinner for two and one time she told him that all of her men cooked for her. This tidbit of information made him angry, and he told himself that it would be the last time that he would cook for her, but the very next time that she was there he had prepared spaghetti, her favorite. He also would buy chocolate for her, because he knew that she liked like it, even though it made her skin break out.
These small gestures were innocuous by themselves, but when he thought about its collective meaning, it demonstrated his affection for her, an affection that he did not have for the other girls. This realization made him wary. He had violated rule number one. Never fall for a programmer; it’s only about the money.
How do you un-ring a bell? Now he found himself worrying about her, and they would talk to each other on the phone almost every day. After three years of seeing each other, at least three times a month, Lori hadn’t budged an inch as far as not treating him like a client. It was always about the money and nothing more.
Morris wasn’t stupid, he knew that this was a one sided affair. He purposefully stopped calling her every day, and started seeing other women. He needed to stop seeing her altogether, but this turned out to be easier said than done. If she didn’t hear from him for a few days she would call him, going through her client list to see who wanted to see her. He began to ignore her calls, but sooner or later he would give in, and tell her to take a taxi and come over.
One night after they had sex, they were lying in bed watching a video CD, and out of nowhere he told her that he loved her. He regretted it as soon as the words came out of his mouth. She patted her pussy and told him that this is what you love, you don’t love me. He told her that he would care for her always, because that was the way he was, and he had no control over the way he felt. He felt stupid telling her that, knowing that she didn’t feel a thing for him, but he told himself that it is what it is.
Now he knew that he would have to cut their ties, because it would never move beyond what it was. After all, she was a whore, and a selfish one at that. But he really did have feelings for her and he didn’t understand why, but be that as it may, he knew that this wasn’t going to have a happy ending, and he had to end it as soon as possible.
He stopped seeing her for several weeks, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He kept busy dating other women, but his mind kept drifting back to her, he had it bad. Then one night he ran into her at the local club. She was on the hunt looking for a trick, she needed money. She saw Morris and stopped to talk to him briefly, and then she told him she had to use the bathroom, and she was gone.
This brief encounter only served to reaffirm his suspicion that she was embarrass to talk to him in public or at least that was the impression he got every time that he ran into her in the street.
The truth of the matter was that whenever a Brazilian girl was seen with a gringo in public in Copacabana she was thought to be a prostitute. To some girls this didn’t matter, but to others it meant loosing face, so it seemed that Lori subscribed to the latter, although this seemed to be out of character for her.
They soon fell back into their old routine, but something had changed, he could feel it. He never brought up his feelings for her again; he knew that it had been a mistake to do so.
Now their sex seemed to be by route, like she wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. He was beginning to feel like a client more and more, and he called her on it. Oh no, baby. Its normal was her reply, but he knew better.
In the morning he liked to have sex, he had a natural hard on. But when he reached for her she pulled away and looked at the clock. Baby its 8 o’clock. Are you crazy? This infuriated him, and he told her that that was why she was there. I pay you for sex, have you forgotten why you are here. He reached for his wallet and gave her two hundred reais, and told her that it was time to go.
They hadn’t talked for a week, then one night she called him and said that she wanted to see him, and that she would grab a taxi and be right over. He waited for her all night but she never showed.
He called her the next evening, and she told him that she had fallen asleep. A lame excuse if he ever heard one. She promised that she would come that night and that she would call him, she never did.
He wondered what kind of game she was playing, and he had had about enough of her lying. He text her a message saying that he had had enough and that he couldn’t continue this way.
Then he called his number two, and told her to come right over. She said that she was on her way. She was there in half an hour, and told him that it had been a long time since they were together. He told her that he had been tripping, but that he was OK now. He asked her if she was hungry. She said yes, and he walked into the kitchen and started to make spaghetti, but then thought about it, and then asked her if she liked pork chops. She said that that would be fine.
