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“I’m so tired” Narcisa said suddenly, out of breath. She lay down by a waterfall in the park.
“We’re supposed to go see Ana Lucia the Reike healer, remember?” Jonathan reminded her.
“I know Cigano but I’m just so…. tired…” She closed her eyes.
We sat there for a while without saying anything until Narcisa’s eyes popped open. “Pumpkin soup! Now! Go!”
And she sprinted back down towards the art school cafeteria. We followed behind her and sat down next to her at a small table. The old woman who’d witnessed her pushing the cat in the pool an hour earlier looked at us with a mix of trepidation and pity.
Narcisa ordered her pumpkin soup, and I ordered a tomato soup.
Jonathan ordered a cold soft drink.
We waited for the soup to come as Narcisa’s eyelids grew heavier. When it came she scarfed it down without conversation.
Then she belched loudly. “Tiiiii-red.” She repeated.
“I know, Princess, but Ana Lucia is expecting us at 4. Why don’t we go to Copacabana for a while and wait there?”
“Good. We go then.” She got up and left, disregarding the bill, naturally.
“Stupid cat,” she muttered as she walked by the fountain again.
We caught up to her and Jonathan started up the bike to give her a lift to the bottom of the hill, since at that point she had resided to half-dragging herself down it like a broken robot saying “Tiiiii-red Cigano… so so tiiii-red.”
She slept the whole taxi ride to the beach. We got out at the last kiosk before the little military fort separating Copacabana from Ipanema. Jonathan was already there, typing away on his Crackberry, eating an ice cream bar. 

Narcisa rubbed her eyes, looked at the ice cream bar, and then the feeding frenzy was on. She snatched the ice cream from him, quick as a gila monster, swallowing the whole thing in one bite and spitting out the stick. She then called over a boy who was selling empadas and ordered four guava and cheese flavored ones. When she was done with that she called over another boy who was selling “Globo” wafer biscuits, ravaged those, crumbs flying all over the place. Pigeons began to crowd around the mess.
“Get away!” She spat as more crumbs flew out of her mouth.
“You planning on eating any of that?” Jonathan laughed.
“I love you Cigano! You are the beautiful man.” She said as, squeezing his head, she kissed his cheek. “Now we must go to see the Ana Lucia!”
He looked at his watch and nodded. “Okay, yeah. Let’s go.”
Narcisa stomped at a few pigeons and yelled at a taxi that came to a screeching halt.
“Come Alessandra we have to go!”
I jumped in the cab. “See you there!” I yelled to Jonathan, not sure at this point if “there” was even where we were headed….

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.

As the taxi bumped through Botafogo traffic, Narcisa began to smile brightly.
“Is SO good this day, Alessandra,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
She paused a beat, thinking with gleaming eyes.
“Is like this. I don’t expect I EVER gonna leave the house again. I CAN NOT to leave the house because I’m always e’scared of the peoples and the things are going to kill me, or rap-ed me, or arrest me. Or the extra terrestrial shit. Some crazy shit gonna happen to the Narcisa all the time, and all the things like this. You know? That shit man, I e’smoke, and then I become the crazy girl. Afraid of the shadow! No to ever leaving even my little room!” She said, waving her hands around, then she thought a second longer. “But now I am here, in the taxi cab. And the sun is so good on my face. And I’m HAPPY to be alive. I WANT to do thing with my life. I don’t want to smoke the crack right now…. Is crazy! And you are here, and we gonna go to my favorite place on the whole Rio. You gonna love the Parque Lage, man.”
She was silent the rest of the ride.
Upon arrival at the park gates, she descended the cab like a queen from a horse-drawn carriage. I  grabbed  my purse, payed the driver and clumsily followed behind, scratching the mosquito bites on my ankles, making “psst psst” noises at a nearby cat. The cat scurried over to Narcisa and me and a did a few laps of 8’s through my legs as Narcisa leaned down to pet it. This went on for a minute, until she grabbed me by the hand.
“Let’s go find Cigano,” she said and we walked up the cobblestone driveway to the building where the art school is.
Jonathan was waiting for us next to his bike, typing away on his ratty silver laptop.
As we greeted him, a couple more cats came around, weaving through our respective legs, until they too realized we had no food and went back into the big tropical brush to tend to their cat business. There were many cats. Beautiful cats, everywhere.
We walked through the big entry way of the colonial-style art college into a big courtyard with many rooms off of it where art was being displayed. Narcisa yelled at a plant.
“Why you looking on me like that!??!” She said to a leaf on which
someone had placed a sticker of their face. “This is the most e’steew-pid art exposition I ever see. Ruining the plants to make the shit art that no one even notice? Re-tarded!”
“Do you want some pastels?” Jonathan asked Narcisa, poking his head into the little art supply store.
“Yes, Cigano. Right now, and the psychedelic color only. I’m e’staying here with my friend Alessandra now. Go!”
I felt a slight surge of panic as Jonathan disappeared into the little store. We were alone now. Babysitting Narcisa. In public. I lit a cigarette and thought about all the stories I’d heard of Narcisa in public places. Crazy stuff.
Off crack now a full eight hours, Narcisa was a ticking time-bomb. I shrugged it off as she told me a story about Israel, half-ready for an overdue critical meltdown.

PAST RIO ADVENTURES

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.

After sufficiently stuffing her face with everything she ordered, and then eating the shrapnel, Narcisa promptly informed Jonathan and I that we would be taking a field trip to the Parque Lage, the famed place of many of her crimes, such as this one:

“Soon I getting com-for-table inside there, Cigano, I make light up an’ go for take it one big hit an’ then, boo! I look him an’ he sitting right over there at the rock by side of me…”
“Who!?”
“The e’scorpion!”

And this one!

“an’ then it come all for sudden the big e’sploding with the… morcegos, how to say it? The bat. Bat! Hundred the bat Cigano, an’ all come fly fly fly out on the back the cave, hundred the terrible little bat, flipping flipping all over me, squiking like the mouses an’ the rats, attack on to my head, flopping flopping squiking an’ fly fly all over my eye. “

Let’s not forget this one:

“Yes, the monkey, Cigano! They attack-ed to me! An’ they all e’stand-ed ’round me all e’scream on me, an’ they make the throw the thing on to me, the branch an’ the rock, all thing like these.”

She also informed me that she and I were taking a cab and that I was paying.

“Ey! Vamo pra Parque Lage, okey?” She screeched at one of the cab drivers who was at that time enjoying a beer.

The cab ride to the Parque Lage was interesting, not as interesting as the ride HOME, but that is for later. She told me of her childhood in the small town of Penedo, about her siblings and about her love for babies, her hope to one day have one, which was another surprise to me. Narcisa was starting to seem more like a girl than this ghost that I’d always viewed her as.

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.

After putting the crack monster to bed, JS decided to wake me up out of my own hazy sweaty slumber so we could take the motorcycle over to Copacabana and meet up with his new friend, an airline pilot, whose
name happens to be Captain Kirk. He had been telling me about this guy since he met him on the beach a few days ago in Leme, so I said alright even though I was sleepy and begrudgingly I threw my clothes on and stumbled down the stairs to the garage, rubbing my eyes and holding onto the banister of the big winding staircase.

I hopped on the bike and we blasted into the Rio madrugada.

When we pulled up in front of Help, the quintessential gringo whorehouse, we saw a group of pink-faced middle aged whiteboys sitting around a table yelling at eachother like typical kracker-jacks and, without greeting them, Jonathan turned to me behind him, rolled his eyes and said “no fucking way”. I was totally fine with that because at the very moment he turned around to look at me I was struck with what seemed like a mild case of Dengue Fever and was positive that I was- at any given time- about to start shooting excrement from every orifice of my body.

“Okay” I gurgled and he fired up the bike, but before he pulled off, I heard a funny Southern drawl behind us.

“Hay there buddy”.

 I looked at the guy. Then I looked at Jonathan. Then I really looked at the guy, examined him and the skinny nappy whore who dangled on his arm like a fucking arm-hemmheroid. I looked at the beer in his hand.

Then he spoke. “Man, this whore right here just loves me! I donno how ta tell ‘er I only like em if they’re more than a hunderd keelos”. Jonathan winced, looked at me, shrugged and chuckled.
You have got to be kidding me. This is Captain Kirk? This is the guy you woke me to come meet at 3 in the morning? No. I leaned over and dry heaved as my preconceived notions, and whatever bug was infesting my stomach got the best of me.

But as soon as he started talking, it was only friendly intelligent things that came out of his mouth and I warmed up to him. He seemed to appreciate Narcisa and what Jonathan was doing as a writer and it really felt like he was one of us so I got off the bike sat down on the black and white bubblegum spotted tiles, afraid that if I stood up I would wind up on my face anyway so I might as well go down gracefully.

Jonathan was hungry and decided we should go to the pizzeria down the street. I thought if I walked a bit I might feel better.

We sat down at a little table and Jonathan ordered some sort of pasta dish that I’m becoming nauseous thinking about and Captain Kirk ordered a beer. He told us stories about his travels and the general
misconceptions of being an airline pilot. He told us that he was planning on working in South America for a few years until he could save up enough money to go back to Kansas City to drop acid, live on
the river, attend Burning Man and write the next great American novel. Right on to that.

I was starting to feel a little better after drinking some soda, thank God. After about an hour of rapping back and forth about real estate, flying commercial planes, and corrupt politicians Captain Kirk said
“OH- BRIG- GOT-OOOOO” and paid the tab and we walked back toward the ho-stroll where the bike was parked, me having gotten through the night without shitting myself and also learning, once again, for the
nine-millionth time, that you really can’t judge a book by its cover.

Even if the cover is a Gulf War vet who has a thick southern accent and a fat-girl fetish.

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.

It’s so good to be back in Rio and I just wanted to check in let everyone know that- no, sorry- we haven’t disappeared. I’m sitting here in Gloria sort of melting but enjoying the heat because it’s winter here and heat, therefore, is a blessing.

I’m watching airplanes fly over the Guanabara Bay out of Santos Dumont and wondering how I got so lucky to be here, again, in my favorite city on Earth. No matter how hot, no matter how many mosquitos are out for my gringo flesh, this view of the opposite side of the moon from the opposite side of the equator beats the view of downtown Los Angeles any day.

Speaking of the opposite side of the equator. Flushing the toilet has at once become my new favorite activity. Why? Yes, because I am weird, but more because the water swirls in the opposite direction and that is fucking COOL! Hello.

So so so I’m here to tell you not only that but to please stay tuned for new blogs, pictures and detailed accounts of adventures here in Cidade De Deus.

The tracer bullets are flying, the sun is out, the beach is warm, Narcisa is beautiful and capitivating as she always is, so now I must go.

It’s time for lunch.

Beijos beijos beijos,

Alessandra

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos os autors 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.

NARCISA in the window of St. Mark’s books!

Thanks Wes for sharing the pic.

For those who need a little history lesson:

“Before St. Mark’s underwent its mass “yuppification”, it was
essentially a small, tight-knit, ghetto community where Jonathan’s groundbreaking Fun City Tattoo (NY’s first store-front studio back when tattooing was still illegal) played a
major role. Everyone on the block knew Jonathan well and looked out
for him. He did business with everyone. The cops would drive by as he
stood with his size twelve motorcycle boot on someone’s face and wave
to him without stopping. Everyone was on his side… There was always
a whole vibe over at Fun City, kids outside smoking, laughing,
fighting. Everyone seemed to get along fine though, living
harmoniously in a dysfunctional ecosystem of artists, freaks, losers
and weirdos.”

-From “True Art” by Alessandra DeBenedetti (full article here)

“When the world famous Shaw Fun City studios opened in New York City, this relatively arcane practice was not simply taboo, it was illegal. By citing the mythologies of criminality as relates to Shaw is to understand a very particular creative lineage of social outsiders.”

- From “Illicit Ink” Carlo McCormick of Paper Magazine (full article here)

“On St. Marks Place, a new marriage of caffeine and commerce has popped up with an East Village flavor. “Cappuccino and Tattoos” reads the bright orange awning over No. 94, yoking two businesses: Jonathan Shaw’s 20-year-old World Famous Fun City Tattoos, and the Lynda Diva Go-Cart Cafe, an outdoor coffee stand run by poets that will celebrate its first anniversary this summer.”

-New York Times, 1996 (full article here)

“…A stranger-than-fiction, true-life journey through the twisted world of an authentic art terrorist.”

- Billy Shire, La Luz De Jesus Gallery

Check out Billy’s new Gallery, BSFA, here.

 Tonight she got a big bad buzzing bumble bee up her ass again about some fucking thing or another.
 I could only guess… at her mental state, since she doesn’t have the slightest ability to express her feelings in calm dialogue. At least not when she’s in her shit.
 Which is often.
 Every time I try and talk about feelings or memories or traumas with her she tells me to shut the fuck up, shunning any meaningful discussion like the Plague.
 She only wants to forget forget forget it ALL and have fun. Fun fun fun…
 But it’s long gotten past the point where the drugs she takes to have her fun and relief are any fun or relief anymore at all. She is simply living in a dark, twisted little world of self-induced psychosis and blatently irrational self-justified, self-authorized, self-obsessed self-destruction.
 And still she insists, MUST insist she’s just having her innocent, harmless adolescent little fun.
 Today I watched her take a big hit of crack then choke on it like a cat hacking up a hairball. Finally she vomited a handful of greenish bile into a baseball cap she’d been wearing, casually dumped it out the window, then put the cap back on her head.
 That was it.
 After that, I just hadda split and let her have the rest of her big fucking fun alone for the rest of the day. Even a fucking lovesick hungry buzzard like me has his limits. I split.
When I finally went to look in on her many hours later, her deep-seated self-induced abandonment complex was on full blast and she just started brewing. Brewing and brewing, till, before I knew it, another violent, embarassing public scandal was in full raging insanity.
 Now I’m sitting all alone at my little sanctuary by the rolling waves at the far end of Copacabana under a cloudy full moon sky, waiting for dawn and trying to put it all together.
 It all started cuz she spent the last 12 hours locked in a little room smoking crack alone. Now, I know I left her alone, knowing full well that Narcisa doesn’t like to be alone. But what else could I do?
 Thinking about it all now I’m thinking that, for someone who hates to be alone, it’s really quite ironic that she’s chosen to dedicate her life to the constant pursuit and adulation of the one drug that most completely and effectively cuts one off from the human race like a gangrous limb, sucking her right down into a swirling whirlpool of paranoid, psychotic, self-obsessed dementia and endless isolation.
 I know she felt abandoned today after two days being left alone to smoke in the big abandoned house on the hill. But I couldn’t stay around her to watch her doing what she does.
 Not today.
 She’s been up for a few days again. And now she’s gotten to the point where she hasn’t bathed or changed her clothes in a whole week now. What the fuck?
 I’m the only one left who can tolerate her shit, and even I can only take it in small doses now. Its very sad, but there you have it.
 So when I finally went back after all those hours to look in on her, she’d already gotten herself worked up into a pretty good little snit about being left alone.
 She never said it, since Narcisa rarely expresses herself in a conventional sense. Narcisa acts. Tonight her act consisted of walking off haughtily as an offended queen until she found a crowded plaza to sit in smoking a joint. When I caught up with her, she studiously ignored me. Finally I got back on the bike and started it up.
 ”That’s it, Cigano. Just run away like a little bitch,” she snapped loudly for all the world to hear.
 ”I’m not running away. I just wish you would get on the bike so we could go and talk without an audience…”
 ”What’s wrong, Cigano? You afraid what people gonna think?”
 ”Lissen, baby, I’m not gonna continue this discussion with you here. If you wanna come with me, maybe we could go for a little ride and talk.”
 ”You wanna talk, Cigano, you can talk right here,” she declared loudly, digging in her heels. Heads turned to watch the show. Narcisa loves an audience for her scandalous tantrums. She was just getting started.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.

NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção - registrados na Biblioteca Nacional como ficção com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. 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 vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

Narcisa’s been nagging me to get her a full-length mirror for weeks now. She says she needs it to practice her balancing acts and juggling and acrobatic moves with, but I know she just likes to watch herself dance.

I like to watch her dance too, so I got her the mirror, a meter-long full length affair in a cheap wooden frame.

Now she carries it around the house with her everywhere she goes,propping it up in front of herself, looking at herself as she goes through her weird, spun-out days and sleepless nights tweaking and doing whatever the holy fuck it is she does.

She’s spent the last few days up again, all spun out, tongue tied and paranoid, like some bug-eyed zombie ghost. I sat around and sat around waiting for her to reanimate, and… nothing.

Finally I gave up and left her there alone walking around in terrible little circles of doom.                              

After a bowl of hot spicy vegetable soup and fresh bread at the Paderia Santo Cristo, I went home.

I climbed up the little ladder to my loft bed, turned on the classical music channel, and sunk into a fluffy cotton cloud of pillows, drifting away into the happy realms of deep sweet delta unconsciousness. Sleep.

Of course she came back to life around midnight, just when I’d finally fallen out, just in time to wake me out of a sound sleep, dragging my high-flying astral body back down to this accursed bloody, beaten earth.

She’s like some glowing white nocturnal albino moth flying up out of a musty tomb to haunt my nights, wings fluttering eerily at the doors of my own demented psychic perception.

Shit.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.

NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção - registrados na Biblioteca Nacional como ficção com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. 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 vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

ALTHOUGH THE BOOK SOLD OUT ON AMAZON IN THE FIRST NINE MINUTES OF ITS RELEASE, IT IS STILL AVAILABLE ON HEARTWORM’S WEBSITE.

REMEMBER THERE ARE LIMITED COPIES, SO HURRY UP AND GET IT!!!!

CLICK HERE.

ALSO, IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT OR HAS SEEN IT, PLEASE LET US KNOW!

WE WILL BE POSTING  A LIST OF SELECTED BOOKSTORES WHERE IT CAN BE FOUND SOON.