I rode home from the mall in a gloomy silence, too tired to say anything to Narcisa who was hopping around on the back of the bike like a hyperactive monkey, go go go. Not that it would’ve made any difference anyway.
My brain was melting under her ceaseless barrage of compulsive talk and childish ego-chatter as we went up to my apartment. She took a shower and tried on all her new rags, scattering stuff around the little flat
till it looked like a hurricane had hit. I tried to hug and kiss her, feeling a bit like Pepe Le Peu as she pushed me away like a frigid old Jewish princess.
But I accepted it. Just for today, there would be no sex.
At least not for now. And certainly not the crazy, unrestrained paranormal cosmic sex we always shared when she was high as a screaming meteor. Things are different now. Now, just for today, Narcisa is clean. Now sex is only a memory. And quite a traumatic one still for my poor little Narcisa.
And I guess I gotta be willing to just let that go and flow with whatever new adventure’s unfolding.
With Narcisa, its always best to keep an open mind to whatever.
She will always surprise you, no matter what.
She really teaches me – often harshly – to just go with the flow.
So with the flow I go…

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

Some dark carnival…

We ascended the winding path up the favela, keeping our feet from the watery sludge that was pouring down the same path that doubled as a sewer system.
A baby sat naked in the middle of it all, clenching her fists, crying, and I knew I was in another world. A place where the vibe was sinister and controlled, but the children making pow pow sounds and playing cops and robbers didn’t seem to notice.
One of the kids recognized Narcisa, and pointed up up up. She turned around to make sure I was still behind her as she started
winding between the shacks of the hillside shantytown.
Fascinated, I followed. This world was not unlike the projects in Harlem that I once knew so well. Our reason for being there was certainly the same.
We got to a small clearing, where a skinny black guy sat at a fold-up table.
On the table was about a pound of weed and a machine gun. Two younger boys stood around behind him, holding hand guns. One of them kicked a soccer ball against the stone wall a couple times.
He looked at Narcisa, nodded, and threw her a plastic bag full of weed.
She tossed a ten-spot on the table and placed the bag down her pants as the guy at the table eye-balled my tattoos up and down a few times, intently, fucking me with his eyes.
I did not shift uncomfortably, as I wanted to. I just stood still.
“Valeu.” Narcisa said to the guy, and gave him a thumbs-up. She nodded to me and we turned around to descend the filthy path we came up from, back through the maze of shacks and crying babies and barking dogs and children going pow pow pow with their little hands.
This surreal world I have always been intrigued by.
“Hey!” Narcisa said, grabbing my shoulder, snapping me out of my fear and curiosity-based trance. “They think you tough up here… Only the criminal peoples in
jail have the tattoo. Ha!” She laughed.
I laughed too, gaining a little wind back.
Then we were out of there, back in stately Santa Tereza. Just like that. Off to ride helicopters and eat sushi and other things that those people back there would probably never live to do.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw e Alessandra DeBenedetti. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

 When we got to the bookstore where the poetry readings are held, it was like waking up in another dimension. Suddenly we’re in the fancy, pretentious,  upscale neighborhood of Leblon, with all its hoity-toity Americanized expensive bars and eateries.
 The bookstore is right in the middle of it, tucked away in a corner of that exclusive watering hole of elitist culture and high society.
  Narcisa vaulted off the back of the bike before I pulled to a stop in front, eliciting the usual shocked and curious stares of a small crowd of fancy looking new-age egghead types standing out front.. I didn’t blink. I’m getting used to it all by now… life with Narcisa.
   I looked around. No sign of Tonico. We walked inside, Narcisa talking loud, vibrating fast and frantic as a walking electrical jolt, drawing more stares like dogshit drawing flies from the people inside.
  There was a whole bunch of people gathered. I didn’t know any of them. And no Tonico.
  Shit. Now what?
 ”Let’s got the fuck outa here, Cigano! Hungry hungry, pizza pizza! FOOD!”
 More stares.
 ”Just lemme try and find Tonico, baby,” I reasoned. “We came all this way to be here…”
 ”This is shit, Cigano! Shit place, shit peoples. FOOD! FOOD, go go!”
  I stubbornly stumbled through the gathered crowd of gawking poets, fans and hangers-on, looking for Tonico, Narcisa following disjointedly in my wake. An irate pirate’s shadow, chattering away incoherantly like a stumbling drunken monkey.
 No Tonico.
 We went upstairs to the little cafe. It was packed there too, nowhere to sit.
 Narcisa brushed past me as I scanned the room looking for a familiar face. Nobody. She made a bee line for the bar.
 ”Chocolate cake, the biggest piece for me.” I heard her say to the astonished lady behind the counter, pointing at a big bolo de chocolate on a tray.
 ”Come here, Cigano, pay for these shit,” she yelled as all heads turned in comical unison. I cringed in embarrassment.
  “Don’ need it,” she said to the woman behind the counter as she handed Narcisa a fork, as she grabbed the slice of cake right off the plate with her filthy, grubby claws. She brushed right past me again and walked out onto the street, leaving me standing there to pay the bill. Of course. There ya have it, kids… Narcisa!

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

 As soon as I pulled the bike onto the dark little back street I saw her standing there, all skin and bones, long white legs and bare belly in her customary uniform of hot pants and skimpy, ragged cut off tank top and flip flops, slouching there glowing defiantly like a big white moth under the hanging HOTEL sign of the shabby ancient LOVE HOUSE Hotel. Standing there across from the little eatery, bathed in an otherworldly sepia glow, looking like the poster girl for the world’s oldest gig, like a teenage Jodi Foster in Taxi Driver.
 And I was Robert De Niro, standing there watching her like a cartoon wolf.
 ”Fuck these place, Cigano, let’s go! Go go!”
  I didn’t even ask. I assumed she’d just managed to get in a fight with somebody on the street in the five minutes she’d been waiting for me there. That’s Narcisa. Don’t ask.
 She jumped up on the bike behind me, dodging the greasy greetings that rained down on her from the drooling idiot empire of well known bums and losers in that hellish corner, her extended family of lost souls before I’d found her and dug her out of the ground like a precious rough gem.
  “Go go go, Cigano!” She breathed urgently into my ear, pinching my kidneys with her knobby Lolita knees, and off we went, off to the poetry reading…

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

 I awoke in a cold sweat just one fucking minute before my phone rang. Paranormal telepathic spirit communications. Again. Shit. Narcisa.
 ”You sleeping?”
 ”Just woke up, baby.”
 ”I am bored, Cigano. Let’s do something.”
 ”Like?”
 ”Poetry reading. Midnight. Leblon. Remember, no?”
 There it was. She’d actually remembered that we we’d been invited by Tonico to read some of our stuff at the all-night bookstore’s regular poetry session. He said he would get up and introduce her and all.
 Of course he’d flaked though, never even called me that evening to confirm.
 Now she wanted to go and read the poems she just told me the day before she would never expose to public scrutiny.
 Narcisa.
 ”Come to meet me in Lapa, Cigano, I’m tired sitting ’round that house.”
 ”Why don’t you just walk over to my place, baby? It’s closer than Lapa…”
 ”I don’ wanna walk in the Rua da Gloria with all these transvestite freaks. I hate that place!”
  Bad memories. I had ‘em too.
 ”Come an’ meet me at the restaurant at Joaquim Silva,” she whined. ”I am hungry…. Can I order the meal, Cigano?”
 What could I say?
 An impromptu date with Narcisa…
 I hung up the phone and threw on my clothes and sped off into the foggy night to go meet her.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

“We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.”

-Aitareya Upanishad

 I stopped the bike to sit out the rain at Marcelo’s hot dog stand next to the old whorehouse in Praca Lido. Standing under the black plastic tarp it’s a shoving match of the usual Friday night pimps and whores and half-drunk working types and locals out for a pre-midnight stroll.
  Everybody’s crowding around the plastic ketchup and mayonnaise bottles on the stainless steel counter, trying to dodge each other’s elbows and greasy fingers and the big drops of rain water rolling off the tarp as it comes rolling down from the early summer night sky.
  I get my cheeseburger and stand there in the mix, squeezing the plastic bottles of red and white goo onto the burger.
  The big fluffy black dog sitting at my feet looks up. I don’t know if he’s looking at my burger or my shoe. I move a couple of steps away. The whore standing beside me sits down on her haunches and begins petting the dog. Her girlfriend watches in amusement as her short skirt rides up around her ample black ass.
 ”I think he can see my panties,” the first whore giggles.
 ”Him and the rest of Copacabana can see your panties, girl,” the second whore says. “You should get right in front of him… Dogs like to look at the pussy!”
  The first girl ignores her partner and keeps petting the dog. She’s really massaging it now, kneeding its big fluffy mane with both hands like it was bread dough. The dog seems happy enough with the arrangement.
  “Here, lemme show you,” the second girl says, coming around in front of the dog.
  She hikes her skirt up and gets down on her wide black haunches, flashing the dog. The dog jumps right up and starts barking at her.
  “Damn! You musta scared him with that ugly black widow spider!” The first girl howls with laughter.
 ”Fucking pussy hating faggot dog,” the second girl cries, wagging her finger at the confused animal.
 I finish my burger and wander off in the rain, looking for something to do.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.