Give me your money!

October 29, 2011:  I was told the Lapa area in Rio was an amazing place to be on a Thursday night.  It is not the norm for me to go out drinking, but last night I bent the rules by an exuberant amount making it till about 4am.  I started off with consuming a few oversized cans of beer and after that, I will only say that it grew to great unimaginable proportions.  For someone who lacks poundage and typically has a two drink self imposed limit for certain but good reasons, I was dangerously drunk. 

At around 2am, I was seeing double and at times triple as I attempted to walk down the street with an Israeli man trying to find a local samba bar we visited earlier in the evening. I was completely oblivious to what was going on when we were approached by a 20 year old man who I originally thought was trying to start a fight.  He first pointed a thick wooden skewer in my face ranting about something in Portuguese that I could not understand.  He then turned away from me and toward the Israeli, after he saw that I didn’t understand anything and was having a difficult time trying to focus on what he was pointing at me.  

I can only guess that the guy was expecting to make some easy money – as he buried his chest into the Israeli, sounding like a broken Portuguese record.  It was quickly turning into a possible fight, knowing that I needed to get focused…which my body seemed ready, but my brain had an difficult time coming out of a drunken spin, as I began to calculate my impaired blows if the man crossed an unquestionable line.

With us both continuing to walk forward throughout the whole charade, the man eventually stopped repeating himself and spun away.  Asking my friend on what he was saying, he told me it was something in the effect of, “give me your money.” Oh…maybe I need to make sure this two drink rule doesn’t get broken again. 

The evening continued to get more and more memorable as the minutes ticked away.  I read in my travel guide that prostitutes tend to visit normal establishments and blend in with the normal clientele.  With this said, when any girl would speak to us, I would lean over to my friend and whisper, prostitute.  A few were more obvious than others…and others just got the label because I was well past my two drink limit. 

When two model quality girls that asked if they could sit next to us and then asked for us to buy them some drinks, I feel this was one of the times I correctly identified their profession as I leaned over and this time I accurately said prostitute.  My friend then gets up to go to the restroom - nice move I thought...leaving it up to me to deny them a free drink.  Once he was gone, I apologized and told them that he has my money. Feeling really awkward since they didn’t speak English, nor do I speak Portuguese - but more importantly I was not interested in being a future recipient for some new herpes cream.   I excused myself as I got up and stood a little bit away hoping my friend was going to quickly come back so we could leave.

Today I woke up quite earlier given that I went to bed so late – or early…it depends on what time zone you live in.  I wanted to wake up earlier but the guy in the bunk bed across from me who told me he was going to set his alarm on his iPad to wake me, was just laying there with his eyes wide open - not at all in a rush to wake me up.  Once getting off my bed I saw the reasoning why…it was the tall slim blonde woman from Belgium who was on the bed below me, with her legs gaping open as she slept in her underwear.  I am going to have to label her as a good girl…she was not sleeping bottomless.  For those that have been following my blog…I wrote a post on June 16, 2010 labeled, “Do good girls sleep bottomless…in a hostel?”  According to Google, this is still the most visited post on my blog…sad, but numerically true.