Limited Options
I’m always burdened with some sort of unidentifiable, profound guilt whenever I leave Rio and line up outside the bus with my bottle of Jagermeister to begin the 6 hour ride back home. It’s a strange, frothy mix of regret and upset stomach, both in the direct line of descent of the proud grandparents Heavy Drinking and Guilty Conscience. I never lost my better wits to that kind of unquestioning devotion to any other person, place, or prostitute, and I don’t even think of my own home with the same kind of nostalgia that still weighs on me from an easily-accessible city I left less than 24 hours ago. As a matter of fact, I don’t even think of my own home anymore. Home is quickly becoming a portable concept, as any citizen of Alabama could have told you years ago.
Arriving at 5:00 AM Friday morning at the station, I met Gaby, an artist formerly known as Piercer #2. She hadn’t slept in over a day, and she wasn’t about to put an end to a good thing, so she decided to go to her class at 7:30 and work in the mall until 4:00 while I slept until noon. I met her at the mall, hours passed by in her tattoo studio in Copacabana, and pretty soon it was time to drink.
The result was memorable in the fact that I don’t remember a single thing about that night. As I recall-and I don’t really do much of that for this particular period of my life-I drank a few beers and some whiskey and three cups of vodka in under an hour before going out with one of her friends at 10:00 to drink two more. I guess it was that last cup that really sealed the deal, because before I knew it, I was urinating in stairwells and locked out of Gaby’s apartment while she slept like a stone inside. Not that both of these things hadn’t already happened earlier in the day without such a convenient excuse, but still. I remember that I considered jumping from the hallway window to her kitchen window to enter her apartment. I gave up and fell asleep outside her door until 3:00 AM, when, as I am told, everyone’s drunken ass went to bed.
Waking up at 10:00 AM on Saturday, I was determined to make the most of the day. So I promptly fell back asleep until noon, when I went back to Gaby’s shop. I met her cousin with a penchant for tidy kitchens, who bought me fried bananas and coconut milk as some sort of ritual friendship exercise. Later that night, Gaby’s housemates all decided to go to a rave to try to sell homemade chicken sandwiches.
Six hundred homemade chicken sandwiches.
At a little over $2 a piece, you have to wonder-were they completely hammered when this idea came to them, or only a little buzzed? Even with my concerns of “I don’t think this is a good idea,” and “No, seriously, I don’t think people will want to buy chicken sandwiches at a rave,” they saw it as an unsinkable economic Titanic. “While they’re dancing with their arms twisting in the air,” they explained, bright-eyed and apparently oblivious to their impending home eviction, “they can have chicken sandwiches in each hand and be taking bites!”
I watched them make approximately six hundred of these sandwiches over a period of five hours, all equally damned by God and other affiliated government outfits as unfit for animal consumption. Marching to their doom in streamlined fashion, the first clue should have been the fact that the large cooler of chicken sandwiches wouldn’t even fit in the entire backseat of their car. Another omen could have been the sheer mathematical improbability of a party of 100 people consuming six sandwiches each, and paying $12 to have the pleasure of eating shit that wouldn’t even be marketed under the name of “Fancy Feast.” Some say that the failure to fasten more lifeboats was a decisive factor as well, but I’m more partial to the failure of the Californian to arrive earlier.
As the housemates tended the stand at the rave, I was with Gaby and three of her friends, drinking, buying drinks, and trying to find free drinks. The party ended with the arrival of the police at 4:30 AM, who were quite angry for being uninvited, right after the net total of chicken sandwiches sold over a four hour period arrived at an even 13.
On the way to her house in the bus, we passed by Ipanema beach and noticed that the sun was rising. We stopped being drunken assholes and everyone just stared at it for a few seconds in complete silence. I don’t know what it was about it, but it made everyone silent. It was truly other-worldly. Soon after, we abruptly turned down a dark street, heading to the city center.
I spent Sunday sleeping until noon and drinking for Gaby’s birthday party all day. The housemates spent the afternoon on the beach, unsuccessfully pedaling chicken sandwiches. The party was nice, met some new people, and soon it was time to go. With Jagermeister at my side, she brought me to the bus stop and apologized for not getting to do more things with me over the weekend. She was also too drunk to pierce me again, so I couldn’t take her up on the offer. She offered me the choice of either chicken sandwich or chicken sandwich to carry on the bus. I chose the chicken sandwich, and that was that.
Arriving at 5:00 AM Friday morning at the station, I met Gaby, an artist formerly known as Piercer #2. She hadn’t slept in over a day, and she wasn’t about to put an end to a good thing, so she decided to go to her class at 7:30 and work in the mall until 4:00 while I slept until noon. I met her at the mall, hours passed by in her tattoo studio in Copacabana, and pretty soon it was time to drink.
The result was memorable in the fact that I don’t remember a single thing about that night. As I recall-and I don’t really do much of that for this particular period of my life-I drank a few beers and some whiskey and three cups of vodka in under an hour before going out with one of her friends at 10:00 to drink two more. I guess it was that last cup that really sealed the deal, because before I knew it, I was urinating in stairwells and locked out of Gaby’s apartment while she slept like a stone inside. Not that both of these things hadn’t already happened earlier in the day without such a convenient excuse, but still. I remember that I considered jumping from the hallway window to her kitchen window to enter her apartment. I gave up and fell asleep outside her door until 3:00 AM, when, as I am told, everyone’s drunken ass went to bed.
Waking up at 10:00 AM on Saturday, I was determined to make the most of the day. So I promptly fell back asleep until noon, when I went back to Gaby’s shop. I met her cousin with a penchant for tidy kitchens, who bought me fried bananas and coconut milk as some sort of ritual friendship exercise. Later that night, Gaby’s housemates all decided to go to a rave to try to sell homemade chicken sandwiches.
Six hundred homemade chicken sandwiches.
At a little over $2 a piece, you have to wonder-were they completely hammered when this idea came to them, or only a little buzzed? Even with my concerns of “I don’t think this is a good idea,” and “No, seriously, I don’t think people will want to buy chicken sandwiches at a rave,” they saw it as an unsinkable economic Titanic. “While they’re dancing with their arms twisting in the air,” they explained, bright-eyed and apparently oblivious to their impending home eviction, “they can have chicken sandwiches in each hand and be taking bites!”
I watched them make approximately six hundred of these sandwiches over a period of five hours, all equally damned by God and other affiliated government outfits as unfit for animal consumption. Marching to their doom in streamlined fashion, the first clue should have been the fact that the large cooler of chicken sandwiches wouldn’t even fit in the entire backseat of their car. Another omen could have been the sheer mathematical improbability of a party of 100 people consuming six sandwiches each, and paying $12 to have the pleasure of eating shit that wouldn’t even be marketed under the name of “Fancy Feast.” Some say that the failure to fasten more lifeboats was a decisive factor as well, but I’m more partial to the failure of the Californian to arrive earlier.
As the housemates tended the stand at the rave, I was with Gaby and three of her friends, drinking, buying drinks, and trying to find free drinks. The party ended with the arrival of the police at 4:30 AM, who were quite angry for being uninvited, right after the net total of chicken sandwiches sold over a four hour period arrived at an even 13.
On the way to her house in the bus, we passed by Ipanema beach and noticed that the sun was rising. We stopped being drunken assholes and everyone just stared at it for a few seconds in complete silence. I don’t know what it was about it, but it made everyone silent. It was truly other-worldly. Soon after, we abruptly turned down a dark street, heading to the city center.
I spent Sunday sleeping until noon and drinking for Gaby’s birthday party all day. The housemates spent the afternoon on the beach, unsuccessfully pedaling chicken sandwiches. The party was nice, met some new people, and soon it was time to go. With Jagermeister at my side, she brought me to the bus stop and apologized for not getting to do more things with me over the weekend. She was also too drunk to pierce me again, so I couldn’t take her up on the offer. She offered me the choice of either chicken sandwich or chicken sandwich to carry on the bus. I chose the chicken sandwich, and that was that.