buggery.org

Have uploaded some more photos from Rio to Flickr.

The conference is finished, which means I have much more sporadic internet access than before, and I have to pay muitos reais for it. Will post something longer when I can.

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Every now and again, just when you least expect it, the universe sees fit to knock you out of your comfort zone by hurling a great steaming lump of shit in your direction.

Yesterday was one of those days. I got mugged.

Rio de Janeiro is infamous for its high level of petty crime, something the guidebooks dwell greatly on. And indeed, since my arrival in Rio a few days ago, it’s been apparent this advice was based on fact. But still, you don’t expect it to happen to you.

There I was, 7 AM on a beautiful Rio morning, pressed against an iron railing, a knife at my throat, with three thugs rifling through my pockets. Not a pretty picture, especially when you’re in the middle of it.

I’d been walking down the street, just had a few blocks to cover to my destination, and was feeling fairly relaxed and untroubled. I’d been keeping an eye out for trouble, as one does when one is in this town, but I didn’t see what was coming. Suddenly, I heard a commotion behind me and I was surrounded. The main guy had a huge knife – about ten inches long – and it was immediately apparent that this was not the time for heroics. I put my hands up and hoped I’d escape with my life.

“No police, no police,” the main guy said while his accomplices relieved me of my wallet and anything else of value. My heart sank when they went for my wedding ring, but they couldn’t get it off easily enough so I still have it. I’d have been heartbroken to have lost that.

The whole business probably took no more than 30 seconds from start to finish, but it seemed like an eternity. Before they split the main guy checked to make sure I didn’t have anything concealed in my trousers. The experience of having someone gripping my cock while holding a knife an inch from my pounding heart will stay with me for a long time. It was not hot.

Then they were gone. Off into the distance with my wallet, about a hundred bucks in cash, two credit cards, my watch and phone. I headed for the nearest safe place I could – Tom’s hotel room. I’m sure he didn’t expect to be woken up by a distressed and terrified Australian, but he took care of me while I calmed down and escorted me home.

Thirty-six hours later, as I write this, I’ve taken care of the formalities (cancelled my cards and phone service, filed a police report, had a stiff drink, etc.) and the experience is fading into memory. It hasn’t changed my opinion about this lovely city, just increased my distrust of its inhabitants.

I hope my assailants got a good price for my treasured possessions – enough to buy the food or drugs or whatever it was they needed to drive them to such misery and despair that they felt the need to do what they did. I have a lingering mental image of their faces – not enough to identify them in a line-up, but enough to know how they were feeling as they robbed me.

Terrified.

My first full day in Rio was spent wandering around the Copacabana area, looking at the sights and enjoying the warm sunshine.

When I say “looking at the sights” I mean, in large part, looking at the men. Rio is perv city and even for someone as cool and aloof as I usually am, it sometimes takes an effort not to stare. There are men of all shapes, sizes and colours, but this city seems to have an abundance of stop-dead-in-your-tracks gorgeous men. Dead-set spunks, as we say in my country.

They are walking the Avenida Atlantica, selling drinks in the kiosks, playing futebol, operating the elevators, collecting the garbage and generally getting in your face everywhere you turn. Just to make matters worse, most of them aren’t wearing shirts. I think my tongue got sunburned, it was hanging out of my mouth so much of the time.

I’m trying not to let this post degenerate into a slavering narrative of boy-lust – there are plenty of other blogs out there who do that much better than I ever could – but I am trying to be faithful in recording my journey and the truth is that this unremitting parade of semi-naked manflesh has been impossible to ignore and has insinuated itself into every conversation I’ve had today with my friends and colleagues who are here for the conference. It’s a subject of constant discussion and impossible to ignore: we look at the men, we talk about the men, we talk about looking at the men and then we look at the men some more. The men don’t look back, at least not often enough.

There’s been time for this perv-fest today, but tomorrow (Sunday) we start work. The conference opening ceremony isn’t until 7.30 PM, but there are meetings and satellites and people to catch up with all day. I expect to be at the conference venue at 9.00 AM, and it’s an hour by bus from hotel to convention centre, so that pretty much rules out any hope of dancing the night away tonight.

I doubt I could dance anyway, having just had a massive seafood dégustation (“dégustation” is so much classier than “all-you-can-eat”, don’t you think?) I don’t know when I’ve ever consumed so much seafood at one sitting – oysters, salmon, mussels, scallops, prawns, clams, sea bass, octopus, sardines, crab, crayfish, and god-knows-what-else. All of it char-grilled perfectly and in greater abundance, even, than lickable boys on Copacabana Beach. The restaurant’s name is Marius Crustáceos, if you’re ever in this town and feeling ravenous.

Despite the distractions and fun of today, as I go to bed tonight I’m missing Brent really badly. We have never been great at being apart and it doesn’t take very long before I start to feel the pain of our separation. We’re in touch by text message numerous times each day but it’s not the same as crawling into bed together, or sharing our day’s stories over a glass of wine in the kitchen, or knowing he’s just there if I need him. I’ll take that over a truckload of hot Brasilieros, any day.

I´m in an internet café in Rio, where I´ve just seen buggery.org via IE/Win for the first time since the redesign. If you´re an IE user, you have my apologies (get Firefox!).

I´ve uploaded some snaps from this morning to this Flickr set; I´ll add more as the week goes on. Enjoy!

The last thing you want to hear when sitting the back of a taxi, hurtling at white-knuckle speed through the darkened streets of an unfamiliar city, is the sound of the driver snoring.

Exactly how the driver managed to sleep and drive at the same time I can’t explain, nor do I know whether his eyes were closed as well (perhaps just the one?) but his undoubted skill in sleepdriving was not something from which I drew any comfort.

The spectacle of our cabbie catching a few zeds on the freeway was just the tail end of a long and exhausting journey which took more than 30 hours from point to point. Travelling is hard work, and long-haul travel is bloody hard work. Australians, blessed with inhabiting the arse end of the planet, know and accept the rigours of shlepping from continent to continent, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Yesterday I travelled on four airplanes operated by three different airlines from three different countries. I changed the time on my watch three times, and wandered zombie-like through five airports. I have been asked a half-dozen times if I would prefer the chicken or the beef, and I have hopefully peeled back the tinfoil on a half-dozen airline meal trays only to be saddened by what I found underneath. I have drunk red wine across multiple time zones and at times of day when my body clock suggested orange juice would have been more appropriate. I have watched some of the most god-awful movies ever made (showing of movies like The Pacifier and Guess Who? to captive air passengers should be against the Geneva Convention). I have not joined the Mile High Club (although if the guy sitting next to me between Santiagao and São Paulo had raised one eyebrow and nodded his head towards the lavatory, I’d have been there in a heartbeat).

Eventually after the olfactory wonders of the cab ride (Rio’s city planners, in a stroke of genius, appear to have placed the sewage treatment works between the airport and the city) our narcoleptic drive delivered my colleague David and I to our respective hotels. He’s in the flash-sounding Windsor Palace, while I’m at the distinctly down-at-heel Hotel California (yes, I’m humming it as we speak).

The Hotel California Othon Classic isn’t listed in my guidebook, but if it were I dare say it would be described as “having seen better days”. It’s definitely working hard for each and every one of its three stars, but it’s clean and secure and rather nicely located smack-bang on the beachfront at Copacabana (yes, I’m humming that too). The hot water isn’t, there’s no soap, the bidet is broken and there are only three coathangers, but what do I care? I’m in Rio de Janeiro, happy to be here and ready for a week of hard work, fun and adventure.

The clock on my computer says it’s 4.20 AM on Saturday; the clock on my wrist says its 2.20 PM on Friday, and the clock in my hippocampus says it’s confused.

I’m in Santiago Airport in Chile, waiting for a connection to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. They have free wireless internet here, who knew.

I feel like I’m a competitor in The Amazing Race (although I have much more highly-developed social skills). There have been numerous challenges, road blocks and detours along the way so far. The first came at the airport this morning. My air ticket was supposed to be waiting for me when I arrived, but it wasn’t, and the sales desk couldn’t do anything about that until 9.00 AM when their Sydney office opened. My plane was due to take off at 9.25, and between getting my ticket I needed to clear immigration, security and so forth. I got my ticket at 9.17 AM and was escorted through the immigration barrier (friendly Qantas staff took me through the aircrew express lane) and made the flight, in the end, with seconds to spare.

As the ticketing guy assured me, the plane couldn’t leave without me anyway, but I was relieved to be spared the accusing looks of fellow passengers if I arrived a half-hour after they’d boarded. Next time I’m on a plane and they purser says “we’re just waiting for one more passenger…” I won’t feel so cross. Shit happens.

Anyway we got to Auckland without too much trouble, apart from the Captain announcing that he’d asked for some fire tankers to attend the landing “just as a precaution”. Yay.

On the flight to Chile we were sitting with an Australian sporting team in their team uniforms – soccer I think. Usually this is a troubling development, but these lads were all under drinking age so no troubles there. It’s eleven hours from there to here so I’m kind of buggered, just two more hops to go before I can crash in my comfy (please) hotel bed.

Airplanes: they’re evil flying contraptions where you get cooped up for extended periods with dozens of strangers with whom you have nothing in common except a shared desire not to die in a burning fireball, breathing the same stale air and eating the same revolting food. If it weren’t for the booze they’d be completely horrible.

Today, a whole sequence of airplanes is being lined up and coordinated to convey your humble scribe first to New Zealand, then to Chile and finally to the Cidade Maravilhosa itself, Rio de Janeiro. Not sure how blogworthy I’ll be after 30 hours in a flying steel virus bucket, but I’ll try post regular updates. God knows you deserve it.

Ate lago for now.

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