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I’ve just moved to Rio de Janeiro. I’m being served a lazy afternoon lunch. Bossa Nova is playing with breeze, the rhythms of the street and ocean. Caju is brought to the table on a platter of tropical fruits. I am a caju virgin. My host, in his bare feet, tells me to eat it like an apple, hand to mouth. With my first bite, everyone in the room disappears. The flesh is soft, resistant and — this is barely a metaphor — human.
What is not sexy about Rio de Janeiro?
Down nine flights of stairs between parked cars, a monstrously large woman has pulled off her pants and is squatting to pee. She takes her time. Her voluptuous body fills the hard lines made by the cars. As she squats and tucks her head, her full ass rises and her hand pushes down and back between her thighs. She is adjusting her penis. It takes some effort.
A black sedan pulls up. She holds her penis in place with one hand, slides her beige panties up with the other. After one final adjustment, she emerges, leaving a puddle and its tributary behind. She joins the three other girls on the street. Cars drive past, the ocean roars and whispers, the high laughter of the prostitutes rises. She calls out -- to Yemanja, to passing cars, to potential customers, to other prostitutes, to me at my window -- the perfect-pitch catcall of a practiced performer, É o amor apaixonado, desejo e atração sensual.
Of course, Rio’s renowned sensuality exists in its legal prostitution, the nude carnival dancers on the street, the propensity for B-pornstars to become children’s television hosts, and the pornographic magazines on every corner newsstand. But with my fresh eyes, I also find this sensuality articulated in the spaces between the touches, the kisses (one on each cheek, three to marry), and the provocative stares.
It’s there, between half-naked men standing Speedo to Speedo reading the daily paper that is hanging next to the nudie pictures. It’s in the smell of tapioca pancakes with sun-dried beef, onions and cheese sold on the street and in the vocal resonance of vendors’ calling: “Mate leão,” “Biscoitos globo.” It’s at the market, where the grocer explains, with a hand on my shoulder and another on the greens: "These you can not cut. Tear them with your hands or they will burn your mouth. These you can cut but you must boil them or they will be bitter. And these you can cut and eat like they are. You will love them." Or, in the gestures of the man, in a bloodied, white apron, piling plucked fowl exactingly. My mother watches him work and says, “He cuts chicken like a jeweler.” And it’s there, at the corner, where the used book salesman has a makeshift cart. He loans my eighty-five-year-old neighbor what she likes. She reads the books and returns them to him. She once gave him her mother’s leather bound, twenty-four-volume set of famous works of art. “He would lie down for me to walk on him,” she says.
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