Adventures of a Gringa

Brazilian Oddities Book: Vulgar Love Affairs

In the third chapter of the Brazilian oddities book, the author tells about several stories about love, marriage, sex, and dating in Brazil, albeit very unusual stories. Some aren't as interesting, so I'm going to highlight the best ones.

The first story is about a guy named Joao from a small town in the north of Brazil who has 3 wives and 22 children, and 2 of his wives are sisters. In the North, these types of common law marriages, and polygamous marriages, are common, since poverty obliges people to rely on multiple partners for basic necessities, like food and a home. There are also sometimes more available women than men. Joao says, "Well, if there are more women than men, what will those poor women do? They'll be single forever?"

The second story is about a man in Acre, a state with a small population and a former center for rubber exploration. There are very few women. The star of this story is an eighty-year-old man who is married to a 38 year-old woman, who he married when she was 17.

The third story is about a tradition is a small town in the state of Ceara, in the north of Brazil. Each year on the Festival of the Divine, they celebrate the Festival of Saint Anthony's "Pau." (Pau means a tree trunk, but also means penis). During this festival, men carry a huge tree trunk through the town, and all of the town's single women run after the procession to get a chance to touch the pau, which supposedly gives them good luck and luck to get a man or a husband. The catch: there are dozens of men carrying the pau, and they are all very drunk. When a woman gets through to touch the pau, they push and shove her so that a different body part touches the pau (bringing her luck), in a wild raunchy ...religious festival. One of the possible origins of the festival is that in this town, and in some parts of Brazil, there are far more women than men, causing a shortage of eligible bachelors.

In one of the funniest stories in the book, the author tells about the marriage of two families in a small town: the Pinto family and the Brochado family. Alone, their last names are embarrassing. Put together, they are just hilarious. Most of the children and relatives of the family now use their middle names instead of their combined last name, Pinto Brochado, because they are so embarrassed. Because in Portuguese, Pinto means penis and Brochado means droopy or shriveled.

In recent years in a small town in Rio Grande do Norte, a 19 year-old discovered a cave with drawings, which have since been examined by archaeologists. There is a scene of a dance around a tree, and also a scene of group sex, and also of a couple having sex in the desert.  It dates back approximately 10,000 years, before the Portuguese came to Brazil, drawn by indigenous people of the north.

Finally, the author tells a story of a man from the state of Para in the Amazon, who claims to be a son of a woman and a river dolphin (boto). Since there are so few people where he is from, he claims his mother "cheated" by sleeping with a boto (the botos are also know for having human-like private parts), and he was born, though he also mentions that his father was a sailor. He wears a hat all the time, he says, to hide the blow-hole on his head.

The Huge Ones: Brazilian Oddities Book

Random note: Eliseu and I, being the nerds we are, solved Einstein's Riddle last night. Apparently only 2% of people who try it can figure it out. You try!

Below is a summary of the next chapter in the Brazilian oddities book, and I'd just like to point out that all of these stories are REAL, and were televised and later made into a book.

In a small town near Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais, there is a local soccer team called "The Huge Ones." They're not a very serious team; one of the team members admitted that their games were just an excuse to drink beer. When they do play, they parade out onto the field holding a coffin, in which the team captain lies while the other team members cheer for their team. They lay the coffin out on the field, where the team captain waves, and then later they start the game.

Why "The Huge Ones?" Apparently, all of the team members have a special liking for huge women. Not fat women, but HUGE women. When they go out together, their goal is to get huge women. But at first, they didn't have much luck. They decided they needed a way to attract women period, since they couldn't even get skinny women. They thought of wearing Indian costumes, constructing an Arabian tent on the beach, scuba diving naked, and putting a huge speaker on the back of their truck. But in the end, they decided on a weirder idea: bring the coffin to the beach.

So the whole team went off to the beach, where they placed the empty coffin near their towels. A few women wandered over to ask what the hell it was, and then wandered away. So they decided to change their tactics. They lined the coffin with aluminum, filled it with ice, and then put in dozens of cans of beer, and covered the coffin. They brought the coffin to the beach again, and this time, they had more luck. If a man came over to ask about the coffin, they waved him away. But if a woman came over, they opened the coffin and offered her a beer. This tactic worked really well, and apparently every team member scored more "goals" on the beach than on the soccer field. Whenever they are sad and lose a game, the coffin trick on the beach never fails to cheer them up and score them some "huge ones."

Me Leva Brasil, Chapter 1: The Price of the Key

So from now on I will share with all of you this amazing book about the strange and funny stories and characters that exist mostly in the parts of Brazil that most tourists, let alone Brazilians, never venture. Since this book is not yet in English you all will get to hear some of the stories!

A man named Ze from the northern province of Piaui left his home state to visit Rio for the first time when he was 50. Though it was a clash of cultures, Ze owns the largest private museum in Brazil, which has over 13,000 pieces, from articles from the times of slavery to random oddities, like a goat head with 4 horns and the pink strollers used by the famous twin midgets of Brazil. Nevertheless, Ze has never visited a museum before.

After 4 stopovers and nearly getting locked in the airplane bathroom, Ze arrives in Rio. He can´t figure out how to use the elevator since it has so many buttons, and he calls for help and a hotel guy comes to push the right floor for him. In his room, he nearly burns himself in the shower, which has 3 handles with hot water, which he has never experienced before. He wears jeans, a huge belt, and a cowboy hat to the beach, and all the vendors on the beach flock to him, thinking he is a rich Texan.

In the museum where he lives and works, he usually sleeps in a chair, which he gets to by pushing aside mountains of stuff. But when he comes home late from the club (yes, the club), he doesn´t want to wake his family, so he grabs hold of a meathook hanging from the ceiling and sleeps standing up. (You never let go in your sleep? the interviewer asks. Never, he says). In Rio, he has a huge bed, a great curiousity.

So, Ze goes to a club in Copacabana with some friends. There, he starts dirty dancing with a pretty black girl, but excuses himself when he sees his friends laughing at him. "That´s a transvestite!" they tell him. "What the hell is that?" he asks. They explain. He is horrified and makes to go over and beat up the lady/man. "In Piaui we only have gay guys!" he exclaims. After that, he finds another lady to dance with. This time, he is prepared. He goes up to her and grabs her crotch, to make sure there is no package. There isn´t, so he dances with her. After that, he asks her a question:

"How much for the key?" he asks. She is confused.

In his tiny town, the local whorehouse rented keys to the johns, so they paid for a key, picked a room, opened the door, and then took the prostitute over to a bed without a mattress, buffetted with banana leaves. In Rio, things don´t quite work like that.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2, "The Huge Ones," about a soccer team made up of guys who only like extremely fat women.