The Boy on Ipanema Goes Thinking: Bloody Periods and A Toothy-Gerbil

Towel in hand and my bottle of water and the new book that I picked up yesterday I'm walking back from the beach and I laugh thinking about last night, I'm scratching a mosquito bite and Ray on the bottom-bunk opposite me says it's too bad we don't have a screen on this window, how bout that expression, it's "too bad". It sounds like something my six year old nephew invented, because he kicks ass (another expression) and could prob invent stuff if he wanted, and it would be legit, but it's something I say all the time, such an archaic expression. It's not only bad, it's too bad. Ray rolls his eyes and says okay, it's unfortunate. I pause and say, "yes, we are without fortune." But now I'm on the sidewalk walking into this jazz club/record store and, still smiling and I see all these listening stations and I spot Gotan Project which I haven't heard in a year and I play it and I'm transported to the more romantic neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, to the milongas of the madrugada, to a time and place I don't know, to one that doesn't exist maybe, but fuck this music is so good and familiar and I scream out "Yes Yes!" and I don't know if anyone hears or cares or is looking over, everyone so numb, but not me and how do I communicate this? How do I transfer what's going on in this head, all coiled up. But maybe there's hope I say, a journey of a thousand begins with a step goes the proverb, and hope yet and some can be saved, but what do I know, a displaced Angelino of but little thought. But I want the Here and Now, the Rio de Janeiro, the Brazil not Buenos Aires, my home of so many months and I switch the CD to ELECTROFUNKSAMBAGROOVE by Luciano Huck, and it works, I'm listening to Marcelinho da Lua's Cotidiano and grooving to it, or maybe I'm electrofunksambagrooving, to it. Then a track by Sergio Mendes and one from Bebel Gilberto and Yes! Yes! I'm in the Here and Now.

. . .

I think it's like three a.m. or so and everyone's in the other room drunk and loud from wine and I'm sprawled out on this red couch adjacent to the pool table and I put down my book on my chest and yawn and think it's time to go to bed but I've been addicted to checking email so I'll go do that maybe. I've been thinking that this hostel's decent, even the cockroaches seem to hold it in favorable opinion, the mosquitoes are undecided as they're sometimes there and sometimes not, but I'm gonna start naming the roaches soon. I'm at the computer checking my email, even though I just checked it two hours ago. There's a new Myspace message and two forwards from my cousin, two facebook messages and a new friend request only I don't recognize the name. Intrigued I log onto the site and check this guys profile, I don't think I've ever seen him, I mentally scan the faces of people I've met and am pretty sure, almost positive I've never met the guy, and I see that all his friends messages are all in Spanish and I think of writing him "te conozco?" But no I don't care if I know him, but still I click on his photos and he looks pretty gay and I check his "interested in" and it says "women" and then I see a picture of his friend, this girl who's pretty cute so I click on her profile and yes, definitely cute, and I begin reading interests: Running, my girls, music, chilling w/ my man, that's annoying I think but continue reading and: laughing, singing, sushi, spending time with God, dancing, wait- spending time with God? And I scroll down and it says Jesus=Love, and under "favorite books": Just like Jesus, and The Bible, and I sigh and sort of scratch my head and there's an irrelevant quote from Sir Francis Bacon, and it's late I think and sign off and there are two new girls from Barcelona that checked into our room and are annoyingly already asleep which means I'll have to be absurdly quiet to not wake them when I go in, because I'm nice and if I was like ninety-one percent of the people who stayed in my room in these hostels I'd just turn on the lights and bang and clang things and maybe say something stupid audibly to no one like "what a night", or "oh, I'm tiiiired" or yell out someone's name who's not even in this room, but I'm not that inconsiderate. The last couple that was in our room was actually pretty cool, although the way I met the girl was interesting. I was sprawled out on my bed, on the bottom-bunk reading, and I knew someone new was above me because there was a stuffed animal on the bed and a pair of jeans and a girly-top, and all of the sudden the door flings open and this girl comes charging in and flies by me and into the bathroom and begins yakking her guts out, I mean vomit-city for like six minutes, and then comes out and casually walks past me and is about to close the door, but then, almost as an afterthought looks back and says "oh hey," and I just sort of look at her blinking, and she amends "that must have been like totally gross huh?" and instinctively I ask "are you okay now?" And then realizing we haven't been introduced say in a sort of asinine way "I'm Matt nice to meet you." And the next two days were gross-free until I think she was on her period and simultaneously forgot how to flush the toilet, and I was slightly shocked to see that, not because of the period but because it wasn't flushed and there was a tampon in the trash and I didn't feel like dealing with it so I left the room and went to the bathroom in the hall and closed the door and locked it and lifted the lid of the toilet and staring back at me was a piece of Rhinocerous-poop, or perhaps a medium sized elephant snuck in and let out a wail of anguish and then exploded a turd the size of an anaconda that swallowed a toothy-gerbil and three bloated parakeets sewn together and there's no way that thing is getting sucked down and seriously did that come out of someone's asshole? So helplessly I unlocked the bathroom and Thank God no one saw me come out and defeated I went back to "my" bathroom that was less zoo-like and did some stuff. Only now it's like, pretty late and I'm gonna go upstairs and get my toiletries and try not to wake up the girls from Barthhelona.

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