Off The Reservation

I'm pretty sure that Nash's stories are 100x better than mine, and the way he tells them is clearly better - that said, as long as he keeps asking me for more, I'll have to oblige.

About 4 years ago I was invited to give a presentation in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I was living in Chicago at the time, which is about a 10.5 hour flight. My company was kind enough to pay for a business class ticket; unfortunately, it was the worst redeye (overnight) flight I've ever taken. The seats were wide, but almost didn't recline - the coach flights I've taken to Europe put this business class to shame. Needless to say, I landed in Sao Paulo and felt less than wonderful. I figured it would be no big deal; I'd head straight to my hotel room and take a nap.

As soon as I enter the lobby of the hotel I see good friends of mine at the bar. It's around 10am at this point, which is dangerously early, but we are on a 'trip' - might as well make the most of it. They convince me to run upstairs, shower and come back down and join them - no nap. I return within 15 minutes and the drinking begins. I couldn't remember what was in a caipirinha, but I remembered it was Brazil's national drink and it tasted damn good. It seemed like the perfect drink to start my day with.

Fast-forward 5 hours and about 6 drinks and we're leaving the hotel to go downtown with friends and a few locals (friends of friends). The friends want to show us a few local sights, and the locals want to run a few errands while we're there. The next few hours were a blur of sightseeing and watching my friends unsuccessfully try to pick up local women at local bars (I'm sure my luck would have been the same, but I was lucky enough to be spared the embarrassment - due to already being married). Then the errands needed to be run, and one of the guys asks us to follow him, but "keep your eyes down and forward. I'm getting a good deal on some speakers, but we have to go to a part of town that isn't always kind to tourists". I'm drunk enough, and not familiar enough with the area that I don't think too much about the request and the group of us head into what was probably the sketchiest neighborhood I've ever been in.

We arrive at the spot where the speakers are being sold, but it's 'closed' and the gate is down. There's a guy out front, standing around smoking a cigarette and one of the locals approaches him. By now I'm looking for an exit to this situation, but there's no cabs to be found. The guy smoking the cigarette (let's call him the guard) nods and opens the gate and everyone begins to walk inside. I'm definitely concerned with being locked inside this place, but I'm not sure being outside alone is a better alternative - so I follow. The time inside turns out to be anti-climatic, and the guard calls us a cab - "you don't want to carry this stuff around in the open on this street, and your friends don't look like they're ready to argue with anyone on your behalf".

We make it out and I'm more than relieved, but now we're back at the hotel with nothing to do - naturally, we head back to the bar. The next few hours are a blur of caipirinhas and a short trip to a nearby churrascaria - great times were had by all, but everything was wrapping up and everyone shared cabs back to the hotel. As soon as we're back, I see one of my best friends hopping into a car with two locals. The smart move was to go inside, but I'm fired up on far too many caipirinhas to know how stupid it is to go back out - they tell me that we're headed to 'a bar'.

We arrive at the 'bar' and there are several large doormen and plenty of fancy cars. I think: that's weird, but at least we should be safe. The doorman looks at us and says: 130 reais. I pause and do a bit of quick math, about $70, which seems like a high cover, I hesitate. (I was too drunk to notice what my friends were doing.) Next the doorman says: You get 4 free drinks. I do some more math, not bad if I compare that to the nicest places I drank in Chi - if my friends want to go in, I wont have a problem with it (not that I need 4 more drinks, but that kind of logic is definitely beyond me at this point). Then comes the doorman's final selling point: I have over 200 girls inside. Ah, it's all clear now, the cover is high because it's a strip club. My friends nod and we all walk in.

I've been to my fair share of bachelor parties, conferences, etc, and a trip to a strip club isn't at all uncommon in those situations. Like most women, my wife isn't exactly excited about that situation, but she's fine with turning a blind eye to the occasional lap-dance.

So, we settle in and order our first round of drinks - I also partake in a cuban cigar. At that point I was as happy as a dog with two tails; drinking and smoking a cigar is pretty much my favorite pastime. Now, I'm beyond drunk and manage to drink my 4 free drinks and smoke my entire cigar before really looking up from the table. We'd all been chatting away and I'd pretty much forgotten that we were in a strip club.

Eventually there's a lull in the conversation and I notice 2 girls in bathing-suits walking about 10 feet away from us - but staring in our direction. This strikes me as weird, and then I remember that we've been in a strip club this whole time; so why hasn't a single girl approached us in the hour that we've been there? I ask one of the local guys and he simply says: oh, if you want one of those girls, you just ask her to come join you - and if you give her $200, she'll go back to your hotel with you. oh. OH. Well, we're not where I thought we were. Okay then.

I ask the locals if I can pass on the all night option and just get an 'American lap-dance'. For the next 15 minutes the local guys are trying to explain to this Italian girl what I'm asking for, and what I don't want. I assume she spoke Portuguese, but she couldn't understand what I wanted. I know a bit of Italian, so we tried that as well, but that was even less helpful - it turns out that my drunken, broken Italian is not good enough for negotiating custom deals. The locals are no longer interested in trying to explain; "she doesn't get it man, the lap-dance deal is a no go, it doesn't translate."

This entire process takes awhile - kind of killing the mood, and we're done with our free drinks, so we decide to take off. We head back to the hotel and I immediately call my wife to share the entire story with her. When I'm done describing the situation she says: so, you went to a whorehouse. No, I say, we went to, uh, hmm, yeah, we went to a whorehouse didn't we? I'd been drunk and hadn't really thought about it, but when you take a step back and look, there's no getting around calling it what it is.

I've always been completely honest with my wife (even when I know it would be smarter to tell a white lie), and she's very forgiving when it comes to my stupid drunken decisions. I don't cross certain lines, and she just laughs at the situations I get myself into - luckily, that's what happened here as well. To this day she still makes fun of me for being dumb enough to think it was just a strip club, in a place where it's common to buy your friend a prostitute on their 16th birthday. We definitely weren't in Kansas anymore.