Friday, September 18, 2015

Sex on the Beach 2: FAVELA STYLE



He kept telling me to loosen up. Telling me that I was too closed and that I needed to relax. Well, I wasn’t sure exactly how I was supposed to relax considering he was sitting there 2 (very small) feet away from me.  Or at least he WAS because he soon found an excuse to edge his way next to me on the mats (yeah that’s right I have mats at my house and ingeniously hid my bed behind my desk so that visitors don’t take liberties on my bed like this fool was taking on my mats!).

I’m not exactly sure why the hell I even let him in my house. I can’t deny the things he was saying were making complete sense. I really did need to loosen up. My physical therapist, and masseuse tell me the same thing all the time; I'm too tense. Considering I am always trying to avoid some kind of unwanted physical contact, whether it be getting my guard passed in training, or a friendly hug that is lasting entirely too long, it just comes as second nature to treat all physical contact as a potentially hostile threat (probably indicative of some psychological damage I'm inflicting on myself but oh well I love what I do). 


Connection Rio 
my home away from home
All physical contact should be handled 
with hostility, especially at Connection Rio,
cause seriously he should just slap me!


I thought of my friends, A and J, who would be flooded with words or know exactly what to say. Better yet, they would know exactly who he was because they grew up together there in Galo.

So maybe that why I let him in, maybe it was a subconscious effort to try and be more social and integrate myself into the community. To not feel so isolated all of the time.

I often wonder what it would be like to shed my gringo skin and see the favela through the Cria perspective. Maybe then I would be more relaxed with him instead of internally slapping myself across the head for letting a drug dealer in my house. Maybe then he would just be a dumb kid from down the street and then maybe words would flow easier and I would have something to say to him.

Tudo 2 (all 2) is something I used to say all the time. Then my friend 
from Nova Uniao swore to me it was a gang phrase from my neighborhood. 
 Well if they can put it on a wall than it can stay in my vocab! 


But unfortunately that is not the case. I didn’t know him (despite seeing him everyday). So, I’m sitting about a foot away from this guy with one knee up and hands positioned to deflect any attempt to either pass or worse ENTER my guard. Just to be thorough, I made sure to keep my knee “live” or turned out and kept my hand close to my ankle to avoid it getting snatched up and me being laid out on my back (since I’m so small, people take advantage of any minor flaw in my posture to muscle me onto my back and pass my guard). Despite the attention to detail that I put into my posture, my girl Claudinha always tells me the best defense is offense, so any attempts to kiss me where going to be met swiftly and violently with an elbow.

Yes, that’s actually what I was thinking about while this guy was talking to me.
No, I’m not exaggerating not even in the slightest.

Don’t get me wrong I wasn’t actually scared of him. He was a drug dealer, true, but he had gone home and dropped off his bag of drugs before coming over and from what I could tell there was no gun under his thin, white Nike T-shirt. So, no, I wasn’t scared of him, we just had a severe conflict of interests that were eventually going to clash (titan style). In a short period of time, I was going to want to go to bed because I had wrestling in the morning and he... well he wanted to get a little wrestling done then and there. So there I sat tense AF!

I’m not sure what the hell I’m supposed to say to this guy and it wasn’t just the language barrier, we just didn’t have much in common. Tomorrow I was going to get up and go train wrestling, Jiu Jitsu, and Muay Thai. He, on the other hand, was going to sit for 12 hours and watch for police. He likes to go out and dance… and I want to be a world champion.


View from Terere's room in Galo of  neighoring favelas 
pavao/pavaozinho and Copacabana beach

Maybe I’m just as bad as he was. Maybe I was just playing with him. I knew why he was there, but I was curious to see how he was going to go about his business. I didn’t want to generalize and stick all Brazilians in a box so I gave him a chance to escape from his little box where I had neatly compartmentalized him and brushed him off as with most male suiters that come my way. 

He didn’t do much to restore my faith, instead he proceeded along the normal script, “Loosen up, lighten up, let things flow.” I’m tired of hearing that shit. Actions speak louder than words and so far I have yet to meet someone who I can let my guard down around. The fact that they never actually "let things flow doesn’t help either"! Instead they persist with one advance after another until I’m ready to grab my mouth guard and hand wraps.  


I will admit, however, that while I don't agree with the Brazilian propensity to wantonly sleep around, they are straight forward and direct. They don't beat around the bush or make promises they never intend to fulfill. They tell you straight up what they want and they don't bother to sugarcoat it with trips to movies or any other sort of romantic endeavor.

So naturally, when some non Brazilian offered to walk to the entrance of the favela (which is feared by most gringos), I was caught off guard. I've become so jaded by the animalistic sex instincts that run rampant along the beaches of Rio that if someone where to go so far as open a car door for me I might literally drop dead of a heart attack... and/or suspicion!

My bro
Terere and his badassery before class!



So here I am today. Almost a year later (with not much success since) receiving relationship advice from my bro and BJJ legend Fernando Terere:

“Oh so nothing happened? But did you grab the snake? He’ll change his game up once you go there”

Oh duh. Why didn’t I think about that? Instead of sulking around the fringes of the dreaded “friend zone” I should have just grabbed his Johnson and immediately dispelled any unnecessary doubts!


To be continued: 
Sex on the Beach 3: 'Murica

Fun from the Favela

a little look into the cut of the Cantagalo Favela. This is a house that was built by a friend of mine and parent of one of the kids at the social project. They used to live in a cement house with the rest of their family (a good 6-7 people including kids in a small room) and build this house down here to be able to have some privacy. This is more than one house.