the adventures of me

I went to Ibirapeura Park in Sao Paulo a few weeks ago.  I grew up in a small town and spent all summer camping as I was growing up and I love nature, but I also love the city.  So wherever I have lived as an adult, I have lived in a city but close to the biggest piece of nature that I could find within it.  Ibirapeura Park is probably that piece of nature in Sao Paulo, which is otherwise mostly a jungle of concrete and steel and asphalt.

Any place you have a large park in an urban area, you’ll find gay men checking each other out.  It is even more the case in developing countries – except where policy brutality is particularly brutal – because there are fewer social outlets for gay men in those societies and they are less likely to live alone due to economics and the importance of family and community ties.  In these parks gay (or bisexual) men will probably also find a spot to have sex.  It is simple mathematics:  add the factors mentioned previously to the fact that, in general, men are sexually stimulated pretty easily, and there you have it.

One doesn’t even have to be looking for it to find it.  Sure enough, I stumbled across such a place in Ibirapeura Park.  In a place as sex-positive as Brazil and a park as big as Ibirapuera, there are probably several such spots.  I hung out in that spot for a while and saw the transition.  During the day the location was pretty deserted, with the occasional gay man cruising.  In late afternoon and early evening it was a flurry of joggers and bikers.  With darkness, it quickly morphed into a testosterone-infused sexual free-for-all.

A couple of guys were checking me out, and I was checking a couple of them out.  One man came up to me and began grabbing at me, but even in the dark I didn’t find him attractive.  A younger guy came up and started up a conversation, asking me why I didn’t play around with the other guy and commenting, “I don’t like old guys.”  The irony there was that I am probably at least ten years older than that other guy.  Then other guys came around us and suddenly there were a dozen men jacking themselves and each other off.  The younger man moved away and disappeared into the crowd.

I was the whitest one, and probably the only foreigner.  There is a pervasive belief among people of all colors that the darker the skin of the man, the bigger his penis.  I have had sex with lots of different men of lots of different colors, including lots of dark ones, and that hasn’t been my experience.  Still, I found myself a little surprised that I won that contest hands down.  My dick is big but it certainly isn’t huge and there were lots of other men there, so the odds of that being the case would have seemed to be small – no pun intended.

In the midst of my making this observation, three or four motorcycles ridden by cops sped up and the crowd dispersed like scared rabbits.  There was no way that they could secure all of us perverts, and I just kept walking briskly out of there.  No one came up behind me to accost me, and I was free.  As usual, I found myself wondering how the others fared.  Would they be taken to the police station and cited?  Would money be extorted from them there, as would be the case in Rio?  Would they be physically abused?

To my surprise, the younger man appeared at my side on the path out, and started another conversation.  He too was wondering what would come of the others.  In the U.S., men who meet in overtly sexual situations want no words exchanges, and act like you have violated some cardinal rule if you open your mouth (unless it is to put their dick in it).  Brazilians being more social, they are more likely to talk with you, as if you are actually a human being instead of just a piece of meat.  We had a nice chat and he walked me the not insignificant distance to my bus stop.  He was a sweet boy, in his early twenties, no doubt.  He commented that I looked like I was around his age in the dark.  I didn’t ask him how old he thought I was now that he was seeing me in a bit more light.  I accepted the compliment for what it was, and secretly hoped that he wouldn’t be so prejudiced against us old guys, considering I am probably twice his age.

Posted by Me at 01:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I find it ironic that Bush is apparently so loved in Africa.  I doubt that his policies in general are good for the continent, and it seems to be mostly about the HIV/AIDS money that he throws at African countries.  Too bad he isn’t as willing to throw money at the ADAP programs in the U.S. which allow African-Americans (among others) to access anti-retroviral medications, and instead lets them die while sitting on waiting lists that result from inadequate funding.

I guess he is more concerned about his legacy on the African continent than he is here.  Perhaps there he will be remembered as a decent president, while history here will record that he was one of the most ignorant and incompetent leaders we have ever elected to that office.

Posted by Me at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I witnessed an interesting spectacle the other day.  I was in a park near my house when I saw two guys go together into the bushes.  I figured they were going to have sex.  Within minutes of their going into the bushes, two cops on motorcycles came into the park and positioned themselves to enter the trail down which the two men had gone.  I was sort of at the other end of that trail.

I went down closer to where they had entered the woods and called out, “The police are here!  The police are here!”  I tried to call loud enough so that they might hear me without calling loud enough so that the cops might hear and get pissed off and then target me.  I decided after calling out a few times that I’d better move back to my original position, to stay out of everybody’s way.

Sure enough, the police came upon the two men and they brought them out of the woods.  They kept them on the path near the entrance to the woods, in a location still secluded from others, next to a cement wall.  I manage to see everything from a place where none of the others could see me – or if they did, I might even be able to get away before they could get to me.  I was a little worried about my own safety, but not much.

I could clearly see the older guy and the cop who was harassing him.  I wasn’t sure what had happened to the younger guy and the other cop.  It began to seem like the cops were keeping the two a long time:  usually they assault and/or rob their intended victims and let them go pretty quickly.  This situation was different.

Finally the older man was allows to leave and walked past me as he left the park.  I didn’t say anything to him and he didn’t say anything to me.  The cops stayed where they were, talking and making noises like they were rustling around in the bushes.  Again, this seemed odd.  I started to hear a clapping sound, so I got to where I could see better.  They had broken off a piece of tree and were spanking the bare ass of the younger guy.  I couldn’t figure out from that distance if they were hitting him hard or not.  Was this was some sort of perverted sexual play or were really trying to hurt him?  What was going on?

Then I saw them slam something against the wall.  I thought it was the kid’s backpack.  Suddenly the youth darted away from them and ran toward me.  I had to move quickly to obscure myself a little in case the cops came after him, otherwise they would have seen me right away and perhaps known that I had been observing them the whole time.  Lucky for me, though, the cops had apparently desisted in their “work”.  As the boy passed me, I asked him if they had been hurting him, and while fighting back tears he told me that they were trying to break his bones.  It dawned on me that he had probably been attached to the backpack that they slammed against the wall, and decided when they did that he had had enough and made a run for it – perhaps even for his life.

Later I wondered if they would have stopped beating on him if I would have shown myself, pretending to enter the area at the very moment they began the assault on their latest victims.  I waited a while and didn’t hear or see anything else, so I decided to take a chance and venture over there.  I wanted to try to catch at least a glimpse of them, to see who they were, to keep tabs on which of the police officers who frequent that park to beat up and rob people were the guilty parties this time.  After all, I pass through that park rather frequently.  The cops had already gone to another part of the park and although I could see them, I couldn’t make out details of their faces.  I decided not to move any closer.

Later still I wondered why I hadn’t thought to offer to testify on behalf of the young guy, should he decide to press charges.  It didn’t even cross my mind at the time that he might be interested or willing to file a complaint, since that’s not the way people typically think in Brazil no matter what they have been through with governmental authorities (problems will never get better; the police are all-powerful; etc).  Of course, I also might then have to fear for my own life, as the police would then have my name, address, and so on.  Although they generally don’t beat up or kill foreigners, there are always exceptions.  (See how the do-nothing thinking can be contagious?)  As a foreigner with little money and political power it would be next to impossible for me to positively impact the system here, and still I found myself feeling vaguely guilty for having done nothing but watched.

Posted by Me at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)