To Sunga or Not to Sunga
So it came down to this. Women of course are used to the idea of a bikini. In Brazil the only difference is that they make the bikinis smaller, if you can imagine that (If you are a man I am willing to bet you will certainly try). For men however, at least those from other countries, the idea of wearing something smaller than your average tighty whitey underpants on a beach seems a little too… flamboyant? No that’s not it. Exhibitionistic? Nope, not that either. Gay? Yep, that’s it. It just seems really, blatantly, flamingly homosexual. Which is of course completely acceptable, if you are in fact gay and trying to attract men. The average heterosexual male in the US, and in many other countries I've been to, would not likely feel comfortable so barely vested.
So what can you do? My friend Curtis, semi-resident Brazil expert, informed me that the locals think men who wear board shorts on the beach look weird. He repeatedly told me the story of the woman he dated, who after several dates asked him “why are your upper legs so white?” He realized he was an uncool gringo, and she ridiculed him for having a strange tan line. After that he got his first sunga. As he told me, it only feels gay if you’re the only one on the beach dressed that way. If everyone has sunga and you have bermudas, well, that’s when you start to feel a little weird.
So trying to keep a straight face, I stepped from the dressing room, while Curtis, his wife, and her female friend Nici looked on. It was a brave effort but I couldn't help giggling because, after all, it was my first sunga. And then they were giggling because it was my first sunga, and I was clearly a little nervous to step out. At least I hope that’s why they were giggling. Anyway, after some shopping around I bought one, and the next day wore it to the beach under some bermudas. When we got to our spot on the beach I busted them out. Nobody cared. "That’s cool," I thought. "Nobody cares."
Whenever a man walked by, Rose, Curt’s Brazilian wife, gave me the cutting play by play as the subject strutted his stuff. Like some Sunga Idol judge she tore the contestants apart, one by one.
"These guys know nothing about the sunga," she said. "Look at the colors they have chosen. Sunga is not the place to go crazy with four different pastel colors. Simple is best."
"Look at that guy!" She laughed out loud. A man walked by oblivious, in a pair of camouflage-patterned speedos. "Rambo Sunga," she laughed, holding her hands over her face to hide her mirth. "Oh, meau Deus, he thinks he is going to war in a banana hammock!"
Another group passed, tanned and well-muscled, wearing flower-patterned skivvies. "All gay," she told me in confidence. "And if they tell you they aren’t its just because they don’t know it yet. You should never wear sunga with flowers."
I was suddenly overcome by the knowledge that the same grueling standards that women use to judge themselves, they also apply to men. I was happy I’d decided on a modest sunga, basic black with a couple of stripes on the side. God forbid I get mangled like that by a bunch of girls while passing. Then again, on second thought, I really didn’t care. The difference between guys and girls of course is that we are more shameless in many ways. I lounge around the house in total comfort in my underwear. If I get to do it in public and nobody hassles me so much the better. The truth is the small bathing suit is much more comfortable. It dries in minutes, instead of chafing your legs half the day with collected wet sand like a pair of board shorts does. They may look weird at first, but all fashion is just a question of frequency of exposure and cultural acceptance. When in Rome and all that. The answer of course, is to sunga.
Here is a picture of the stunning beaches in Morro. What? Were you expecting maybe for me to post a picture of myself in sunga on the internet? What am I, crazy?
Attention Girl from Ipanema:
I will be traveling to Brazil for a week. I leave tonight. I will be on the Island of Morro, off the coast near Salvador do Bahia. I have heard a lot about you, but I have never had the pleasure of meeting you. Should you be somewhere around there, I will be the tall guy with brown hair, probably sunburned, and trying to speak very bad Portuguese. Call me?!
On a totally unrelated note, here are some photos of the trees around Recoleta. The greenery in Buenos Aires is remarkable.
Bad Santa
Santa Claus: The Personification of Everything that's Wrong with our Culture.
First of all: he's fat. He puts a "positive" role model image on a negative state. It's not good to be fat, yet he's jolly and always throwing presents around. He seems like the life of the party, even though when you weren’t looking he probably ate all the hors de'ouvres. The state of being fat can make you feel bad about yourself and harm your body. It can ruin your sex life. The fat kid is the one that is always handy to be the butt of jokes. As if it's not hard enough to go through school without any extra reasons to be picked on. Kids that follow his example will find more disappointments in life than the simple fact that they won't be able to slide into tight spaces like chimneys.
Santa’s physical state is actually the least of his problems. He is an emotionally inaccessible pseudo-paternal figure that replaces the true depth of human connections with cold, transitory, material satisfaction. He's a sugar daddy for developing minds. A training tool for the future whoring of our nation's youth. Do what I tell you and you will be rewarded. Do not, and I will demonstrate the strength of my pimp hand (with a piece of coal in it). Is this what we really want to teach our kids?
Santa is solely focused on commercial gain. Emulating the worst of our giant corporations, he takes what he needs to serve his purposes and the rest be damned. He overworks a race of diminutive, foreign indentured servants (read: illegal immigrant midget slaves) in sweat shop conditions to meet an impossible goal: gift the world's three billion children in a cyclical, never-ending, one-year deadline. Amnesty international has declined to make this issue their top priority why, exactly?
Santa has a very disturbing interest in pre-teens, which, quite frankly, borders on the pedophilic. He can be seen all across the world whiling away the hours in his revoltingly lascivious manner, ho-ho-hoing with a small tyke bouncing away on his leg, whispering into his lecherous ear. It's appalling and disgraceful. The man should be behind bars. We could go on at some length about his criminal nature, but in the interests of time we'll just gloss over the MILLIONS of acts of breaking and entering he routinely performs. And who else but a bad person has so many aliases? Santa Claus, a.k.a. Chris Kringle, a.k.a. Saint Nick, etc. What has he got to hide that he's going by so many different names?
And oddly enough, considering this checkered past, he tries to claim some kind of moral high ground. Mr. Claus comes from a supercilious and ethically bankrupt point of view, which seeks to compartmentalize all human behavior into impossible black and white standards. Good/evil, naughty/nice, etc. Is there no tolerance for the ambiguous positions many young children find themselves in? For example, it's "naughty" to steal. But is it worse to watch your smaller siblings die from hunger, or to acquire for them a loaf of bread from someone who may have plenty? I am not making an ethical judgment here either way, but Santa certainly has no compunctions about doing so. Too bad he can't turn that light onto his own red-clad corpulence and consider the wrongs that he himself performs in his twisted machiavellian quest to be the biggest stranger-with-candy in the history of human kind. (Seriously, he makes Michael Jackson look positively normal by comparison.)
Doesn't anyone realize that placing such a blanket duality over everything just numbs the young minds and makes them that much more pliable to accept the nincompoop-like simplicity of a governmental system that offers two choices, democrat or republican; or one country's "just" wars versus their enemy's "genocidal invasions;” or Coke versus Pepsi? Clearly to any remotely intelligent and rational person the items being compared are the same. Are you kidding me? Naughty or nice my ass. Get real Santa, nobody's moral compass has just two cardinal directions. Clearly he's mad; holding everything to such an impossibly monochromatic standard. Imagine how he must beat the elf that forgets to glue wheels onto a toy!
And last but not least is the baby Jesus. What is supposedly the holiest of holy days for Christians all across the country (the birth of their savior and divinity made human), has been usurped by the fleshy, material-centric, invader from the North. Like some horrific crimson conqueror from the land of the midnight sun he comes, driving his pack animals before him, frothing and bellowing and howling, to overshadow the one spiritual claim the country formerly practiced with any uniformity, leaving a material excess and an accompanying metaphysical vacuum in it's place. Even Jews and Muslims acknowledge that Jesus was a great prophet and teacher. Most Buddhists will freely admit that Jesus had most likely achieved enlightenment. Jesus' birth was something that really almost anyone could appreciate. But no, every year his special day gets squatted upon by a big, fat, cookie-scarfing pagan.
For all we know, Santa probably ate the baby Jesus.
Traveler's Remorse?
We have all experienced the feeling. You buy something, and you think it's the cat's nuts when you try it on, or test it out. But somehow, once you get home, the doubt begins to creep into your consciousness. You didn't plan to own something just like this; maybe in your mind you envisioned it being or feeling a little different. Although subtle, the difference is enough from what you imagined to make you regret the choice. It's enough to make you say: this is not for me.
But I don't think that exists with travel. Traveler's remorse can only come from two sources: the desire to have stayed at home, or the feeling that somehow the very adventure you just completed could have been done better. But as an experience, as an event, it cannot be "remorsed" in the sense that you would return it. It is not solely a physical item that you have to exchange. It was precious moments of your life, lived and experience and catalogued. To take that away by trading it in, if it were possible, would be a horrific fate. You'd wake up being the same person you were before you left, having lost that valuable experience, whether you percieved it to be good or bad. The perception of the experience in the short term is especially unimportant, because often the real lesson from an experience can only come much later, even years later.
I think back on all the times I've traveled. Mostly I did it when I couldn't really afford to. I had other stuff that needed to be bought or paid for, other places to allocate funds. But looking back on those moments now, all I remember is the trips I did. The wonderful moments of actual living stolen from the daily struggle and drudgery we all face. I can't for the life of me remember what it was I was going to spend my money on. In fact it almost feels as though all the money I've ever made was invested into those precious travel experiences. Who cares what else I wanted to buy? I've been to places I had always dreamed of going. Is there such a thing as traveler's remorse? Not in my world.
Continued Gender Issues and Tango
So a great friend of mine asked for a bit of clarification on what I meant exactly regarding dances such as tango helping kids to define themselves sexually and as future men and women. He's actually a brilliant medical student with more than a little experience in the study of gender issues.
His question was basically "how would your theory work when considering that the simple dualistic nature of tango might not permit the inclusion of those that want to live in a different gender identity, or simply to live as one attracted to their own gender?"
Oddly enough I think it could still work. I danced the other day at a class with too few women, but there were a couple of men there that were training to be instructors (so they had to know both the men's and women's steps, which are very different and complex), and they both offered to occassionally play the women's part in the dance. One was a japanese guy and he was very fluid and a great dancer and he adapted to the part beautifully. It was actually cool to think that a child that might want to learn the other's role could, and it could work. A pleasant thought, to offer the individual in question a harmless way to explore their personal boundaries at an early age in a non-sexual, non-judgmental manner, perhaps helping to simplify and clarify their understanding of their own developing nature.
The man yeilded and followed like a woman, but it was very different because he knew the man's steps such that he could tell me what to do as I led him. Which of course makes me laugh at the ridiculous nature of what I am proposing. I've completely transgenderfied what is supposed to be my "simpler" solution. A man playing the woman leading the man who is supposed to be leading the woman, who is, in fact, a man.
As most people must suspect, dancing with the opposite sex in class is by far the norm, but it happens occassionally that one or another might momentarily "switch teams" to help each other practice. Perhaps my friend then said it best: "Maybe you can just think of the dance as a Platonian abstraction of the ideals of both sexes? Then the two halves simply come together in a melodic interplay of archetypes." Leave it to a science nerd to boil it down to it's bare essence. Well said, you gender-savvy geek!
Riding in Cabs
The taxi is an integral part of Buenos Aires culture. Because nobody wants to spend the extra money, people usually opt for the "often-good" public transportation system of buses. So the taxis are both equally reviled by the fiscally conscious Argentines (sadly accustomed to having to do more with less by generations of governmental and big business chicanery), and esteemed because they are just so much more comfortable and easy. And a cab becomes invaluable when there is a city-wide problem, or when one is in trouble.
Tonight, for example, there was a problem. Heavy rains followed by flash floods left everyone on street corners huddled under umbrellas, and all the taxi services were suddenly slammed. I got a ride tonight with some luck, but then it ran out when the driver decided to stop and not take me any further. I had to walk 30 blocks or so home in the rain. Surprisingly I didn't mind really, it was a nice walk.
The cabs here mostly run on methanol, so they are quite easy on the city air, which is a good thing because nothing else is really. But the cabs vary greatly in quality and if you stop one you are just as likely to get a pleasant fellow with nice music and the AC blasting as you are to get a smelly curmudgeon chain-smoking through his tracheal stent, in his sauna-like hooptie.
The thing I like to do lately is ask the taxistas for their best stories. And they have the most amazing stories. So far I've had Taxi drivers sing tango songs, talk to me about lost loves, and complain about transvestite elitists from Spain. As you might suspect, all manner of sexual perversions and bizarreness happen in cabs, from the profoundly sad (a girl in her early teens climbing a cab and telling the driver he can do whatever he wants with her, if only he'll buy her a sandwich), to the humorous (a cabbie gets propositioned by a visiting Brazilian bombshell, and upon leaving her he withdrew his wallet to pay for her services and instead she paid him for the cost of the room plus $300 pesos).
I asked about crime and using judgment to decide who one should and should not pick up. One cabbie simply said "if I judged everyone one the street by their looks before I picked them up I'd starve to death." Another driver, wiry and dark, told a related story about how the eyes deceive. Three months earlier a well-dressed man with a briefcase got in and asked to go across town. When they got to the destination the man removed a gun from his attaché and took everything the driver had, down to his cell phone, Ferrari key fob, and car stereo. But then most bizarrely, the thief held him captive in the car for four hours (!) before finally letting him go.
But of course appearances work the other way too. One driver told me about the elderly gent he stopped for. Immediately he regretted it because the old man seemed the type to take a cab two blocks to a restaurant, complaining the whole way. Instead, he asked to be taken across town. As they rode the old man asked if he owned the cab they were in. The driver said he did not, and then when he began driving he chose instead to invest his money in a house, and then used the money he made to support his three children and wife. He said there wasn't enough left over to save for a cab, and he could not obtain a loan without putting his house at risk, which of course was unacceptable. The old man listened attently to all this and asked for his card. One week later the cabbie got a call from the old man, and took him on a much longer trip. Then two more big trips again the next week. On the fourth meeting, the gentleman said "I expect you are the kind of man who repays his debts. Would you permit me to loan you money to buy a car?" The cabbie was beside himself, and he accepted. "This happened 45 days ago" he told me, "and this car is mine."
Amidst all this recounting of tales and histories, perhaps it's best to keep in mind what one cab driver said about taxistas in Buenos Aires. "You want a cabby’s story," he said. "Sure you can ask, but believe at your own risk. Buenos Aires hacks are the worst kind of liars!"
Today...
...a dear friend referred to me as the "questing, dancing, flexing bear, that should be turned into a cartoon," which cracks me up. That is all.
P.S. I've perhaps had a little too much vino tinto, and maybe that's why it's so funny.
Life's not Always Puppies and Sunsets over the Port
But sometimes, in fact, it is. Here's another view from my apartment--there's a rainbow in there somewhere but it's hard to see as the light was fading. Never saw a rainbow in a sunset before.
And here's a photo of my cousin's pup Clota. She's so freaking adorable it's just sick. Cuteness must be a product of Darwinian evolution. If she wasn't so darling she would have been punted off the terrace by now because like most puppies she pees all over everything. Seriously, who could not love this face?
Tango Time
I've become a fan of tango. I enjoy dancing in general, but I particularly like couples dances such as swing or more formal ballroom dances. I have often felt that a serious problem with our culture has stemmed from the diffuculty we have in exemplifying gender roles for our youth. One way this can be helped is by certain types of dance. The recent resurgence of swing in the USA has done a lot to illustrate my point. My views on all this stem in no small part from the the frustration I had growing up when all dancing with members of the opposite sex consisted of bobbing up and down in a semi-rhythmic manner within a few feet of your partner. Which, of course, is nothing like actually dancing together. In a moment's notice, your partner Mary, in her little bows and whatnot, could capriciously turn away and face a friend or another boy, and suddenly you'd find yourself just bobbing in the middle of the floor like a fool, all by yourself.
Once I learned swing I saw the beauty of being able to share something as a couple, to demonstrate two halves of the same coin, and how they can be different, yet equally important and beautiful. In a sense it's one of the few times in our confusing modern culture where the sexes can be comfortable in their roles and not feel the need to compete with each other. By mutual consent we split the work between us, and make something that is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps in that way it's not unlike how a couple can work together to create a child. Those moments are too far and few, in my humble opinion.
So, I like tango. And even more importantly, tomorrow I buy tango shoes!
"That's freaking awesome dude!" (I inserted that line for those, that, like the swine they are, will have no idea what a majestic pearl I just bounced off their foreheads).
One who understands tango will understand that for me, tomorrow is the true gentleman's equivalent of a Jedi building his first light saber. It's the Queen touching a blade to my shoulders. It's my dad handing me the keys the first time I am to pick up my date alone. My tango shoes baby! (Shoes are key because a lot of the passes and turns and such require a special non-stick surface to perform. Modern rubber souls are the bane of Tangeros.) I can't wait to see what I get.
And I'll tell you something else. Tango is the bomb. Any couple could do themselves a world of good making time for a class twice a week. Crazy awesome sex is bound to ensue. It's great to have a dance that so clearly defines roles, yet permits each half of the pair to revel in their particular part and have equal merit. In this age of sexism, gender ambiguity, and x versus y battles, a man is suddenly and gratefully commended for being a MAN, and a woman is shamelessly elevated to the highest pedestals of femininity and raw seductive power, and for which, because of that brief instance, she is forever after remembered in that realm by those who witnessed her.
In tango, as in most couple's dancing, the woman is the flower. But in tango it's done in such an intricate and profound way that the woman is displayed with utter delicacy, grace, and elegance. She is not simply "led," she also has the option to insert a lot of flair into her movements, thus adding her personal mark, which many dances do not so readily permit. The man is the lead, and as such is the pinnacle of strength, dominance, and support to display the woman. But because there are so many subtle variations in the dance, the man has options in his lead, thus individualizing himself by individualizing the pair. Kind of like a great conductor makes great musicians sound even better. A great tango pair improvising in the moment is indescribable in the beauty it creates. It's what jazz is in a couple. It's seduction on another level. There's a line by the Counting Crows that talks about a girl doing flamenco:
She dances while her father plays the guitar,
she's suddenly beautiful.
And we all want something beautiful,
man, I wish I was beautiful.
That's how it is with tango. (And I apologize for quoting you the Counting Crows, but it fits.) You may see two of the fugliest people step up to the
pista and be cringing at the train wreck you are certain must follow, but imagine your surprise when, of a sudden they are moving together, as if their plain bodies had been swapped by aliens, leaving a dashing man and beguiling woman in their place, and they are dancing well and owning the space around them with the wondrous design they create together. Immediately the grace and inescapable beauty available to the least of us becomes evident and undeniable.
And just as abruptly, you may be struck with a pang of jealousy, for that formerly unfair maiden has a most charming skill that you lack, and God help you, she
IS suddenly beautiful. That homely man can do something that makes women pause to admire him, women that would otherwise not throw him a piece of trash with the time written on it. And you will know and envy their skill, and maybe, just maybe, you might be less likely to judge the next book you see by the fugly cover.
That is the power of art made manifest in movement. And its power may force you to reconsider many things. Real art changes lives. Particularly when it's so accessible. And with that realization you may very quickly head to the next tango class you can find. I highly recommend you do. Because if you can learn the tango, you will never again have to wish to be beautiful.
