The Newbie Trip (Argentina)

Itinerary: 7 days in Buenos Aires and 7 days in Cordoba

Why You Should Go: The country is relatively safe and has lots of sights, making it a great place to break your South American cherry. Most importantly, it has women that will wow you, especially if you’re coming from fat America. Tourist infrastructure is well-developed and easy to use, though beginner Spanish will make your trip more enjoyable.

Why You Shouldn’t Go: There’s a high chance you won’t get laid.

Buenos Aires

The Easy Grenades & Old Rocks Trip (Peru)

Itinerary: 7 days in Lima and 7 days in Cuzco, the launching point for Machu Picchu

Why You Should Go: It’s cheap as hell, the archaeological sites will keep you busy, and Peruvian women think the white man is god, making it an ideal trip for game beginners to get their feet wet with flagging (as long as they’re not too picky).

Why You Shouldn’t Go: Women are generally ugly and you’ll probably get a foodborne illness.

Machu Picchu

Fun In The Sun Trip (Brazil)

Itinerary: 7 days in Rio de Janeiro and 7 days in Florianopolis

Why You Should Go: Assuming you visit during our winter (December-March), you’ll enjoy nice beaches while trying to bang sexy women. Brazilian culture is by far the most exciting and colorful in South America.

Why You Shouldn’t Go: It’s expensive and the women are becoming increasingly snobby.

Ipanema

Nonstop Game Trip (Colombia)

Itinerary: 7 days in Bogotá and 7 days in Medellin

Why You Should Go: Colombia is made for 24-7 approaching, particularly during the day and on the internet. If you go hard you should be able to pick up a couple notches.

Why You Shouldn’t Go: Girls are flakey and don’t speak much English. Conversational Spanish is somewhat required.

Colombian ass

South America is a huge continent and offers dozens of additional cities that are worth a visit, but I believe the above four itineraries are best for guys who don’t have a whole lot of time for long-term exploration. They’ll give you good experience for future trips within the continent.

For more tips on good travel locations, check out my travel forum.

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The Saddlebag Method

This is usually done with four bags. It leaves your hands mostly clear in case you need to carry additional items like toilet paper or a pack of Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

The T-Shirt Method

This method can only be done with two bags. You tie the ends of each bag together and put your head through the big hole as if you were putting on a t-shirt. I like this method when I want my hands to be completely free to text girls I met at the club.

I’ve never seen anyone carry grocery bags like this outside of Brazil, even in other South American countries like Argentina or Colombia. It’s a purely Brazilian innovation that I’ve been using for about two years. My hope with this post is to spread the idea throughout the world so I can see other people doing it while I’m doing it. I can only imagine the intense look that will be exchanged.

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In my entire life it had never occurred to me what the maximum speed of a city bus was, but I can now tell you it’s about sixty-five miles per hour. I know that because the bus driver gunned it during a three-mile stretch of freeway. He turned off the interior lights while barreling through tunnels and repeatedly changing lanes, probably without using his turn signal. The back of the bus was jumping and there were yelps from older women sitting up front who also uttered a few choice words. I’ve never been afraid of death, but I really had been hoping to check out Gheridge first.

The bus hit smaller streets and then slowly made its way through centro, the commercial zone of the city, a place every guidebook warns to avoid at night. Hundreds of homeless people were everywhere, hugging the buildings, either sleeping on cardboard or limping around with their meager belongings. The more we drove by the huge buildings, which were headquarters to Brazil’s biggest corporate giants, the more it felt like a city within a city, an underworld that I wasn’t supposed to see. I thought about how things must be really bad for a person to be homeless in Brazil and not even to be able to live in a shack perched on the side of a mountain.

“We’ve been on this bus for at least thirty minutes,” I said to Henrik. “Have you seen any train tracks?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ve never been to this part of Rio before.”

“Neither have I,” Henrik said. “It doesn’t look safe.”

“No shit, it’s deserted. My expectations for Gheridge are lowering.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have a good feeling about this.”

“You think Gheridge is like an oasis? A bar with beautiful, clean women that is surrounded by favelas on all sides?”

“Are you being sarcastic again?”

“I don’t even know anymore,” I admitted. “Hey, look—I think those are the tracks we’re looking for.”

They were indeed train tracks. Now we had to wait for the tracks to go over a bridge. The problem was that there were multiple bridges, all similar in size.

“How big is this bridge we’re looking for?” Henrik asked, looking concerned.

“Google Maps showed it as sort of big,” I replied. “It had arch supports, so I don’t think it’s one of those little interchange bridges.”

“Does it go over water?”

“I don’t think so.”

We were two gringos in the middle of a deserted part of Rio, looking for a bridge with arches while riding on the ghetto bus.

“Look at that bridge,” said Henrik. “It has arches.”

It did have arches, but it looked smaller than I’d expected. “I don’t think that’s the bridge we want,” I said. “Let’s keep going a while. If the tracks veer to the right, then that was the bridge.”

The tracks veered to the right. There was a “Fuck” and “Damn it” and then we got off the bus at least a mile away from Gheridge. Now next to a busy highway, we’d have to follow it back to the bridge.

“Come on, let’s start walking,” Henrik said after the bus had dropped us off.

“Hold on, let me think. You know we’re in a bad area, right?”

“It doesn’t look that bad.”

“Dude, it’s bad, and we’re both obvious gringos,” I said. “Maybe we should take a cab,”

“And how are we going to catch a cab by the highway? We’d have to get on a side street, but I can’t see one from here. All we need to do is walk that way for fifteen minutes and we’ll be there.”

“Okay, but take off your shirt,” I said while looking at a guy sitting on a small hill a couple hundred feet from us.

“What?” he asked.

“Just take off your shirt.” I removed mine.

“I knew you were gay!”

“Shut up. Whenever I’m in a bad neighborhood, I walk shirtless so the thugs will think I’m like them. No one has even been mugged with his shirt off.”

“Does it work?”

“Ask me if I’ve been mugged in Brazil.”

“Well, have you?”

“Never.”

Henrik immediately took off his shirt and his pale Danish skin seemed to glow in the dark. No one was ever going to believe that such a pretty boy was a thug.

He took the lead, walking several paces in front of me, going way too fast. “Slow down, Henrik, they’ll think we’re scared and trying to get away,” I complained. “Thugs walk slow. Just pretend you’re a thug.”

The guy on the hill was soon joined by two others, and not far behind us was a young man with a backpack, his eyes firmly planted on the ground. On our left I saw some makeshift tents made of green tarps, shelters for the homeless. Even though I didn’t have much in the way of valuables on me, my heart was pounding.

I wanted to keep looking back, but I knew that would have been a mistake. Then they would have known we had something worth stealing. Thugs only look back to see if there’s someone they want to rob, so giving frequent glances would only confirm that we were good targets.

What I did was stare hard at whoever was behind us and made sure they saw me looking at possessions like shoes and bags while verifying that the distance between us and what turned out to be a small flock of men wasn’t narrowing. Henrik was now well in front of me and if I was attacked he wouldn’t even hear me above the roar of the cars flying past us.

In the distance I saw a few convenience stores with people milling outside, and then, finally, the train bridge. Next to that was a wide road with various vendors setting up shop to sell beer and snacks. There would be many rock bars, with Gheridge being the last one at the end of the road. I looked back one more time and only saw the man with the backpack. The others had disappeared. We were safe.

“Should we ask someone where Gheridge is?” I asked.

“It should be easy. We’ll just walk down this road until we see the sign,” Henrik said as we put our shirts back on.

My body was sweaty and stinking of the street. I wanted to cool down. “You mind if we get a beer at one of these bars as a warm-up for Gheridge? That walk made me thirsty.”

It didn’t take long to find a dive bar. There were two guys and a transsexual wearing a choker that contained enormous spikes. It looked like a torture device. The barkeep was a large man with a beer belly that his wife-beater could not contain.

“Gheridge better be better than this,” I said.

“Don’t worry. My friend said Gheridge is a good spot. A lot of people go there. It’s going to be good.”

“How’s my breath?” I said, leaning in close. “I forgot to rinse with Listerine before leaving the house.”

“It’s fine.”

We sat in silence for a short while. Henrik was more comfortable with silence than the average American, content to not say anything for most of the time. I broke the ice. “Carnival was kind of shitty, no?”

“I can’t say it was the highlight of my time in Rio.” He took a swig from a tiny glass that needed refilling after just a few sips.

“I think Carnival sucks,” I said. “Brazilian Carnival is for Brazilians, not gringos. Did you notice how much harder it was to meet girls?”

“Yeah, they were always with big groups of friends. They didn’t seem as open.”

“Exactly! Let me ask you this: when was the last time you fucked a girl that you originally met while she was in a group of four or more?”

“Dream girl.”

“Fuck. Okay, how about another girl?”

I gave him not more than two seconds to think, then said, “See! When a girl is out with a big group, it’s much harder to get sex.”

“But you met that Argentine girl last week at the champagne bar,” Henrik countered. “She was with a big group.”

“Yes, but I didn’t approach her until she was alone outside.”

“Even so, I don’t know.”

“Look, my theory holds for most cases,” I insisted. “If a girl is in a group larger than three, there’s no use bothering unless you know how to make a straw rise out of her drink without using your hands.”

“You know how to do that?”

“No, but there’s a famous guy in America who picks up girls with magic. He wears goggles and a top hat and looks like a circus ringleader.”

“Does it work?”

“He’s considered the best pickup artist in the world. He even had his own reality show.”

Henrik laughed. “Only in America!”

The transsexual was making long stares at Henrik. “Looks like someone could be getting lucky tonight,” I said while elbowing Henrik in the arm. “You want me to make an introduction?”

“I think I’m okay, but thanks.”

We finished the large bottle of beer and went back outside. The crowd on the street had gotten denser with people who were hardcore grunge, or goth, or whatever you call it. No other color was acceptable except black. Girls had black lipstick, black nail polish, and black eye liner (the latter I didn’t actually mind). There were many spiky contraptions and chains.

I looked at Henrik and gave him a death stare, but he just put his hand on my back and said, “Relax, buddy. Wait until we get to Gheridge.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it will miraculously change at Gheridge.”

“Now that was sarcasm.”

On the bright side, we were the only gringos on the street. We got constant stares, especially Henrik, who was the only natural blond around. Everyone probably thought I was his Brazilian tour guide.

The road curved right and the sounds of people got louder. “I’m pretty sure Gheridge is this way,” Henrik said.

Then I looked to my left and saw a large pile of rubble. It seemed like the result of a missile or bomb attack. Concrete blocks were strewn about and I could see a gap where the main door must have been. Strangely enough, the rubble had become a hang-out spot, and at least three dozen teenagers had picked a concrete block to sit on, smoking and drinking. In the middle of the rubble I saw a young girl with black everything. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen, but she was absolutely stunning. I could easily see her natural beauty behind all that gunk on her perfectly proportioned face. And who had his arm wrapped around but a twig of a boy who I could have lifted with one hand. He also was wearing black lipstick and eyeliner. They started kissing.

“Look at that over there,” I said.

Henrik turned his head and said, “I’m used to that now. Brazil is weird like that.”

“Yup. Guys who would never get laid in the States are banging girls that are hotter than anything we have. Oh, life, why do you play such cruel tricks on me?!”

Our English was getting some attention now. Kids would look at us, only to realize that they were lowering their cool quotient in the process, then immediately look away.

“Well, we’re here,” Henrik said.

We stood in front of a tiny neighborhood bar with fewer people than the pile of rubble. There was rock music playing inside and a single pool table, but nothing more than a couple plastic tables and chairs. There were four or five ugly girls talking with guys.

Looking around in disbelief, I said, “Holy… fuck. You brought me all the way over here for this? What is this shit?”

“Strange,” Henrik replied. “This isn’t quite as good as my friend described it.”

“Not quite as good? The shitty juice bar next to our place has better-looking girls than this!” I took a deep breath. “Are you positive this is the right place?”

Henrik looked at the sign and said, “Yup, this is Gheridge all right.”

I looked at the sign myself, then looked at Henrik, then looked at the sign again. I stared at each letter very carefully, as if trying to change them with my mind. I closed my eyes for two seconds, then opened them again, but the letters didn’t change: G-A-R-A-G-E.

“Hey, Henrik,” I said, looking at the sign once more. “What does that sign up there say?”

“What?”

“Can you say that word for me?”

“Is this a joke?”

“No, it’s not a joke. Just say it, please.”

He looked at it for a few seconds, then said what I already knew he was going to say. I nodded, then put my hand up to my face, not sure whether I should laugh or cry.

“You… stupid… European! That says Garage, not Gheridge! I never would have come here if I knew it was Garage! There’s no good bar in the entire world that has a name like that!”

“Are you sure?” He was scratching his head. “It’s not pronounced Gheridge?”

“No, Henrik, it’s not pronounced Gheridge.”

“But how do you explain the word garbage. Why are the endings the same but the sounds are different?”

“I don’t know, man. But that’s definitely not Gheridge.”

We both stood staring at the sign in silence, as if it was a monument of some sort.

“So, you want to go to Emporio?” Henrik finally asked.

“Yeah, I’m down.”

We each bought a bottle of beer for the road and caught a bus to Ipanema.

One year later, I arrived in Copenhagen to visit Henrik. On my first night he took me for a walk through his Vesterbro neighborhood, pointing out the cool bars and cafes.

“Why are all these bikes unlocked?” I asked. The first thing anyone notices about Copenhagen is the bicycles.

“No, they’re definitely locked.” He showed me the small wheel locks that went on the back.

“But anyone can just pick it up and put it in a van!”

“Sometimes that happens, but you’ll get your bike back when the police catch the guys.”

“They catch bicycle thieves here? There must be no crime here then.”

“There’s quite a bit now,” he said. “We even have shootings between gangs, just like you do in America.”

“How many people die a year from shootings?”

“In Copenhagen? About ten. In the entire country, fifty or so.”

It was a world away from Brazil, or even the United States, but apparently such numbers were worrying to the Danes. They had even begun to have home invasions, something that hadn’t existed a few years earlier.

We sat down to eat at a kebab place to get caught up.

“I’ve started seeing a girl,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty, incredibly fun, and has the most beautiful brown eyes I’ve ever seen. I really, really like her.”

“Tired of blue eyes, huh?”

“Yeah, I never meet girls with brown eyes here.”

“Is she good in bed?” I asked.

“We haven’t had sex yet. I’m taking it nice and slow.”

I smiled and said, “You know, that sounds familiar.”

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“You got her over already, nice,” I said. “So was there sex?”

“Nope.”

“But you kissed her right?”

“Nope, not yet.”

It took everything in my power to restrain my displeasure with the speed of his seduction. I had to be gentle. “You know that she’s… Brazilian, right?”

“Yup.”

“And that they like kissing?” I couldn’t think of an easier girl in the world to kiss than a Brazilian.

“I know that, but I want to take it slow.”

“I understand. Actually I don’t, but—”

“I don’t want to mess this one up,” Henrik interrupted. “I have a good feeling about it.”

“Oh, dear. Well, I’m curious about how this will go.”

Many times in the past I had made the same mistake Henrik was making, where I changed my typical sleazy game for a girl that I considered “special,” and then watched as she slipped through my grasp. The moment I thought about giving her the special game was the moment I started to lose her. By valuing her as a worthy human being, neediness leaked out from my every pore. She would eventually pass on me in favor of a guy who treated her more (in)appropriately.

Over the years, I’ve learned to be the McDonald’s of game. No matter where you get a McDonald’s cheeseburger, you’re going to experience the same taste, as if the same Mexican from your home city had been teleported to a foreign McDonald’s just to microwave your Big Mac. Whether a girl is ugly, cute, or beautiful, whether she has a great personality or not, I put her on the same fuck track. I don’t slow down my game for the better girls. I don’t take them to fancier bars and I definitely don’t bring in any additional stories or gimmicks designed to make her see me as a more valuable man. When I started to see them as the same, I started getting “higher quality” girls with more regular frequency. My dick has thanked me for it, especially since I don’t need to use condoms on hot girls due to them being cleaner than uglier girls.

I saw what Henrik was doing and wanted to tell him about my McDonald’s theory of game, but that would have offended him, especially since he seemed confident about putting her in his dream girl pipeline. If we were BFF’s, I could have been more vocal, but any heavy-handedness on my part could have damaged our budding friendship. So I bit my lip.

Predictably, things went south with the dream girl. He did kiss her, at least, on date four or so, and I got to hear a vivid description of how wonderful her lips were, but she started taking longer and longer to reply to his messages. She’d interrupt their Facebook chats and not resume them, even though she was obviously online. Henrik’s instincts told him to try harder and do more to win her favor, while hers told her to pull back even further. His dream girl was slipping away, but he was still reluctant to hit on other girls during our Casa and Emporio outings. He said talking to other girls would make it feel like he was cheating.

“Can I study your dream girl?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to study her so I can see exactly what she does to get guys like you wrapped around her finger. Then I want to use those moves on girls.”

I think my influence was working, because within two weeks he was approaching girls again. Finally he’d had enough. She never bothered to contact him after returning from a trip, and the next time we went out, he actually kissed a girl at Emporio.

“Why didn’t you treat your dream girl like the random skank you kissed tonight?” I asked.

“Because she wasn’t my dream girl,” Henrik replied.

“Exactly! Do you see it now? When you call a girl your dream girl, you won’t fuck her! By not caring, you put out the best game!”

“I don’t know.” He put his hand on his chin and thought for a short while. “Maybe you’re right, but I’ve gotten my dream girl before, up in João Pessoa.”

He told me the love story, which I admit was romantic and involved several transatlantic flights and declarations of love.

“How did it end?” I asked.

“She dumped me for another guy.”

I pointed in the air, as if was further proof of what I was saying. It was all making crystal clear sense to me. Henrik was too much of a romantic in a modern world where everyone is self-absorbed and selfish with barely an ounce of compassion or empathy. The current model of human female from the factory floor isn’t made to handle the Henriks of the world. He was setting himself up to be repeatedly crushed by the very girls he liked most.

The Monday after he kissed the random girl at Emporio, he sent a message to the dream girl. It went something along the lines of “I don’t know what type of game you’re playing, but thanks to you I did something really stupid with another girl over the weekend.” He didn’t go into detail, but it wouldn’t be hard for the dream girl to conclude that he had fucked another girl.

She replied back almost immediately. “What do you mean? I was just busy. How are you? We need to meet up.”

She agreed to come by for a movie several days later, but flaked on the day of the date. I told Henrik it was completely hopeless and that she was just playing him for shits and giggles, but he tried again and set up a new date. This time there was no cancellation.

I squeezed his arm, looked him in the eye, and said, “Tonight, you’re going to fuck her. No more ‘dream girl’ bullshit. You know she’s not reliable, you know she’s playing games, and you know she has other gringos chasing her. She’s not a dream girl, she’s a slut, and I want you to tell her that as you pump her hole tonight.”

“She’s not a slut.”

“She is! She’s a gringo slut and you have to treat her like one! You know she is—everything she’s done to you has pointed to her being a game-playing slut.”

He frowned, reluctant to accept the truth.

“Look—just fuck her silly,” I said. “Assume this is the last time you’re ever going to see her. Has she given you any indication that she’ll come through for you in the future?”

“No.”

“Has she done anything to earn your trust or respect?”

“No.”

“Hell, it’s a miracle she’s even coming over tonight!” I said. “I expect to hear her screams coming through the walls. Just do it.”

I was in disbelief when she actually walked through the door, but then again Henrik is a charming man and easily more interesting than the other frat boy gringos she was meeting at Emporio every week. They went straight to his room and stayed there for at least two hours. A couple times I put my ear to the door to see if I could hear any sex noises, but there was nothing besides his television and a faint squeaking sound that could’ve been anything.

I saw three possibilities. The first was that he was treating her like a Brazilian princess and snuggling next to her as the movie played. The second was that he had made a strong effort to fuck her and had been rebuffed. The third was that he had made the effort and she had opened her golden brown vagina.

My door was open when Henrik walked her out. From the corner of my left eye I saw her for not more than half a second, but I swear her gait had changed. It was flatter and less bouncy than when she walked in. Even her walking speed was at least half a mile per hour slower. Something had happened.

Henrik walked in about five minutes later and stood in my doorway. I looked up at him from my desk and he stared back without any expression on his face. We had a mini staring contest for ten seconds.

“Well, come on,” I said. “Do I have to ask?”

His lips started curling upward. “I fucked her.”

I stood up, nodded, and gave him a double high-five, yelling, “Thank you, god! That’s what I’m talking about!”

After the celebration had died down, I asked how the pussy was.

“It was a great pussy,” he said. “Tight and wet.”

“It’s a miracle you fucked her,” I said. “Now take it and move on. I’m proud of you, bro.”

I knew he would never experience that pussy again, no matter how much he tried. We ran into her at Emporio several times after that. She was always with a new gringo, tall and blond, just like Henrik.

The night before Gheridge, we went to Zero Zero, an upscale club in the Gavea neighborhood. We arrived early to avoid the hefty cover charge and picked a nice spot by the bar on the patio. It was one of the most expensive clubs in Rio, not a place for easy pickings, but we started to grow tired of the mediocre quality of women at Casa and Emporio. Other spots we tried, particularly in Lapa, weren’t much better. There was too much luck involved in finding the next dream girl (a term I started to jokingly use with greater frequency), and our conversations started turning to other Brazilian cities where we could ply our trade. Henrik had his eyes set on São Paulo, while mine were veering slightly northwest, to the state of Minas Gerais.

I bought the first round, a pair of fruity caipirinhas that were feminine in color. Many nights I bankrolled Henrik’s drinks because he had no money. He never asked me to buy him anything, but I fed them to him without asking anything in return because I wanted him to get into a good state that would put me into a good state. I’d estimate that he bought me a drink for every four I bought him, and while I thought about the imbalance at times, I kept the liquor flowing because I enjoyed his company and knew our time was limited.

We were sipping on our drinks when he said, “Roosh, I think it’s time to upgrade your wardrobe.”

He took a hard look at my plaid shirt with the skull-and-bones patch. I looked at it, too, as if wondering whether he was seeing what I saw.

“Look at how baggy it is. It’s like a dress. That’s for the day, but you need something better for the night. Look at all these Brazilian guys here in their t-shirts and sneakers. If you step it up just a little, I think you’ll get a lot more winks.”

Even the Brazilian guys in their basic t-shirts were at least wearing something that showed off their muscles. I spent a lot of time at the gym to get decent-sized, but I was hiding it at the moment, like a girl with a wonderful ass wearing baggy jeans. When I went back to the States, I spent several hundred dollars upgrading my wardrobe, using Henrik as a model. I hate to say it, but he was right—now I get approached by women complimenting my clothing whereas it never happened before.

There were a couple older girls in the corner, and Henrik started the conversation with his cigarette line, but neither of us were motivated to stick with them. I talked to another girl for a while, but it eventually went cold.

“Remember the Danish girls we met at Casa the other week?” I told Henrik. “For a second I thought I was going to fuck a Dane without even having to go to Denmark.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised they flaked like that.” Flake was a word I had taught him.

“And the thing is, I don’t even know how it ended,” I said. “They were completely down, got into the cab with us, and then suddenly changed their minds.”

“They must have done sign language or something. One of the girls kept wrinkling her nose. Maybe that’s the abort signal among their circle of friends.”

“At least we made them pay their share of the cab ride,” I said. “Hey, if I go to Denmark, will I be a rock star and get laid with absolutely zero effort? I’m talking about not even having to shower daily.”

“No, you’ll have to shower and look sharp, but I think you’d do well because your gorilla hair suit will be very exotic. I don’t want to get your hopes up, though, because our girls aren’t that much better than Americans. I mean, they’re better, but there’s a reason I’m chasing Brazilian girls and not Danish girls.”

“Makes sense.”

“Yeah. Those Brazilian girls from Wednesday night were nice, though.”

“It would have been nicer if I had fucked mine.”

“You were close,” he said.

“I think I was a little farther than close. I’m telling you it was that huge heap of garbage right in front of her hotel that did me in. It totally killed the moment. It smelled like we were standing on a mountain of dirty diapers. She ran into the building before I could even weasel my way inside.”

“That’s tough luck, man.”

“It happens.” An idea I had been working on entered my head. “Have you thought about the amount of luck that goes into having sex with a random girl? Like how many little events have to work out perfectly up to the moment of penetration? When you don’t bang, it looks difficult and hard, but when it works, it’s the easiest thing in the world.”

“Banging dream girls is difficult.”

“Fuck, I’m saying it shouldn’t be difficult. If it is, then you’re putting way more into it than you’re ever going to get out of it. Look at you with your dream girl—all that work for one little fuck.” I paused, then added. “You know, I still don’t believe you banged her. That made me question my whole model of game. If I witness something like it again, I may have to update my theories.”

“Are you going to write a book on it?” he asked sarcastically.

“I might. I’ll call it The Man Who Made Every Mistake In The Book But Still Got Laid.”

He smiled. “Shut up, you stupid American. You don’t know how to treat a woman.”

I thought of calling him a snobby European, but I concluded that he would have taken it as a compliment, so I just said, “Whatever, fancy boy European.” Then I mocked the effete way he smoked his cigarettes, but I was disappointed in my insults because they just didn’t have the same bite as “stupid American.”

The club got crowded and we talked to a dozen girls, exchanged numbers that wouldn’t lead to dates, and warded off incredibly mediocre English groupies who wouldn’t take no for an answer. In the cab ride home, I asked him if he thought Gheridge would be good the following night.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he replied. “The girls will be nicer and cuter, with more of a rock style, so wear your white v-neck.”

“The deep one?”

“The deep one.”

By the night of Gheridge I’d lived in the favela for a little over two months, with only three weeks left. Henrik had two weeks left, so it would be his second-to-last Saturday in Rio. It was dangerous to experiment with new bars with so little time remaining instead of hitting our usual haunts, but as I said, the mediocre quality had been getting to us and plus we were starting to run into the same girls over and over again. We craved a fresh scene with something different. Maybe Gheridge would be so good that I’d look forward to coming back to Rio someday, a prospect that was becoming unlikely as I began to tire of the city, its congestion, its heat, and its gringo-fatigued women.

The day was normal enough. I hopped on a bus to the Leblon mall to camp out at their Starbucks (it had air conditioning—our apartment didn’t). There I did some research on how to get to Gheridge, since Henrik wasn’t very good with directions. He didn’t even have an address, just the name of a little neighborhood way up in a part of town we’d never been before.

I found a bus line that would get us there, but it would be tricky knowing when to pull the cord for our stop, since we didn’t know what the neighborhood looked like. There was going to be a raised train track that ran parallel to the bus, and the moment the track went over a bridge and diverged from the bus route, we’d have to pull. I drew a little map on a napkin with a “Pull Here” label. We had to get it right the first time because neither of us had maps. I would’ve been open to taking a taxi, but Henrik didn’t have much money and I didn’t want to shoulder the entire fare.

I’ll be the first to admit that I take a long time to get ready at night. I have to cook my dinner, eat it, then do the dishes as soon as I’m done (I hate coming home and having to do dishes). Then I take a shower, shave, floss, brush my teeth, rinse with mouthwash, put on deodorant, make sure my hair is perfect, listen to some music, get my condoms, earplugs, copy of my passport, and so on. It takes me about ninety minutes from start to finish. Most guys eat some leftover junk food and then throw on their clothes (total time: ten minutes). On the night we visited Gheridge, I had to do some additional preparation: trim my nose hair, ear hair, and a bit of my chest hair so it didn’t seem like a carpet was trying to fly away. I also had to clean my shoes. By the time we were out the door, it was already 11:30.

“You take longer to get ready than a girl,” Henrik teased.

The walk to the bus stop in front of Botafogo’s dirty beach took fifteen minutes. The bus came a couple minutes after that. We boarded and paid the woman working the turnstile. I could immediately tell that the bus was either going by or directly to the ghetto, and most likely by many ghettos, because the people on board were several shades darker than what you’d see on Ipanema beach. In South America the easiest and most reliable way to judge a person’s place on the socioeconomic ladder is how dark their skin is. It’s not fair, but that’s the reality.

Anywhere else in Rio we’d just be two typical sex-hungry gringos, but on that bus we got stares from everyone. We sat next to each other and I pulled out the crude napkin map.

CONTINUED: PART FIVE

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There weren’t many clubs in Botafogo, the neighborhood where we lived, but there was Casa do Matriz. The first time I went there was years ago when I met Mariana, and since then I hadn’t been able to find a place in Rio where I could pull so consistently. Of course I didn’t get laid every time I went, but smooching was common and I once had a seven or eight night streak where I got at least that much. I hadn’t been able to accomplish that type of run anywhere else.

Everything about Casa was perfect for my purposes. It had a main bar room that wasn’t too loud for talking, two dance floors for touching, a lounge room for kissing, and little nooks and crannies for picking off girls as they walked by. The cover charge wasn’t much (about $5 if you got there before midnight), the drinks were reasonably priced, and the music wasn’t bad either. But there was one problem: the quality of girls was low.

Casa attracted lazy Brazilian girls who wore dirty Converse shoes and old t-shirts, so finding a diamond in the rough takes time. Lucky for me, I had plenty of it and lived only three blocks away, so in a dozen or two visits I was able to land a handful of decent girls. At worst I kissed an average girl, but even that got the pipes going well enough that I could satisfy myself with a solid jerk at home.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that it was a little cheesy to go back to the same place, spitting the same exact lines, and getting the same results—I was like a stand-up comedian who hadn’t changed his monologue in years. It was pure laziness, but can you blame me? I’ve always had to work to get laid, so why shouldn’t I enjoy a spot where I barely have to? While I got sick of the place toward the end of my time in Rio, every now and then I get all nostalgic and blubbery about it in retrospect.

For our first night out, Henrik asked how he should dress and I told him that Casa was casual. I wore my regular blue jeans and a red plaid collared shirt that had a skull and bones patch. Henrik slicked back his long blonde hair and wore black skinny jeans, a bit faded from too many machine washings, a grey collared shirt with some type of repetitive flower design, and a black vest. He looked like an obvious foreigner while I looked like a Brazilian hipster whose clothing could have been better fitted. It was a good contrast and ensured that no girl would like us both simultaneously.

We walked to Casa and found it was dead. Halfway into our first drink, it was obvious the place wasn’t going to pop.

“Sorry it sucks tonight,” I said. “It’s usually a lot better than this. Maybe it’s a holiday or something.” I noticed a huge line at another bar nearby, Pista 3, and wondered if that party had drawn the Casa crowd. “How about I buy you another round and then we go somewhere else since it’s still kind of early.

We finished the round and then he said, “How about we go to Emporio?”

I paused a couple seconds, trying to remember the two times I had gone there during my last trip. “Doesn’t it have a ton of gringos?”

“Sure it’s a gringo bar, but the girls who go there like gringos.”

“Yeah,” I thought to myself, “but they’re even lower quality than Casa. Prostitutes go there, for fuck’s sake!” I then said, “Hold on, let me think if I know of a better place.”

I knew of a club in Lapa, but it was too late for that. There were other clubs scattered around, but they had high covers and we were sure to encounter a line. Most had awful logistics for meeting a girl. For being such a huge city, Rio sure did have shitty nightlife options.

Finally, I said, “Alright, let’s go to Emporio. It can’t be worse than this.”

When we got to Emporio, Henrik bought a round of beers from the back of a van parked half a block away. The bar itself was more a gathering point than a bar because most people just hung out in front, buying cheap beer and soft drinks from the van, which probably made as much money each night as the bar itself. We picked a strategic spot by the main entrance and sipped our beers. Henrik pulled out a cigarette and held it in a peculiar way, with all his fingers curled into a half-fist and his thumb pointing straight up to the sky. The butt of the cigarette was close to touching his palm, and when he took a drag it looked like was covering his entire mouth.

“Do you approach women?” I asked.

“What do you mean by approach?”

“Like when you see a girl you like, do you go up to her and start a conversation?”

“Sometimes. I like to wait for a sign first. If she looks at me a couple times, then I go in.”

“What’s your line?”

“Something about borrowing a cigarette or a light,” he said.

“What do you do if you’re in a bar that doesn’t allow smoking?”

“I can still ask her if she has a light as I’m on my way out for a smoke.”

“That’s probably the most natural line in a bar.”

“What do you use?”

“Usually something situational, but lately I’ve been opening by asking if the bar plays a certain type of Brazilian music called tecnobrega. Or I ask for clarification on what a word means somewhere on the wall or menu. I like to get conversations going about having her help me in some way because it lowers her guard. It’s also kind of a test—if a girl can’t even assist you on a basic human level, she probably isn’t interested in meeting someone. Your line does the same thing.”

“I never analyzed it like it.”

“It’s my job,” I said, matter-of-factly.

“What do you do?”

When I told him what I write about, he was intrigued but skeptical at the same time, a common response I get from guys who aren’t into the game. I made sure not to insinuate that my approach or methods were better than his. I never criticize the game of other guys unless they explicitly ask for advice, because I can only imagine how annoying it would be if someone I just met started shoving their dogma down my throat.

“Have you been to America?” I asked.

“Yes, about five years ago,” Henrik replied. “I did a backpacking trip with my friend and visited something like twenty states.”

“Shit, you’ve seen more of my country than I have. What do you think of the girls?”

“Honestly?”

“Dude, I’m not a patriotic American, don’t worry.”

“The girls weren’t very pretty. Your country has some beautiful parks and natural things like that, but I didn’t like the girls. They were all fat.”

“The sad part is that things have gotten worse in only the five years since you’ve been there. It gets worse every year.” I shook my head and looked down at the ground.

“Why is it like that?”

“There’s probably a hundred reasons why, but I like to think it’s what happens when you intersect feminism, capitalism, suburban living, and a lack of tradition that guides people to live balanced lives. Keep in mind that America is barely 200 years old. We have no customs, nothing that’s passed on from generation to generation like say, Denmark. Instead, we just do what the corporations tell us to, and they want us to buy more, eat more, and be more shallow and brain-dead.”

Henrik was interested in hearing about America’s problems and we’d have many more enlightening discussions in the kitchen over the next couple months. The last one had me saying things along the lines of, “Fuck America… it’s not worth saving… it will eventually happen everywhere… have you been to Eastern Europe?”

A lot of people were starting to come to Emporio. Henrik told me that people go to their main destination first and then bounce to Emporio afterwards, which serves as the after-hours spot and your last chance to hook up on a weekend night in Rio. Even though there is rarely more than two cute girls at any time (usually surrounded by dudes), the turnover is rapid. If you stay a while you can squeeze in quite a few approaches on decent girls who are guaranteed to speak English.

I began to understand why he liked Emporio so much: it was perfect for his cigarette line and poor Portuguese. The irony was that I never fucked a girl I met at Emporio and he never fucked one that he met at Casa, so the great compromise for the remaining months, which I’m sure cost me a couple notches, was for us to go to Casa first so I could run my game, then go to Emporio so he could run his.

He was glancing at a girl twenty feet away from us. It wasn’t the casual kind of glance that I would do, just to see what the situation was, but a blatant, penetrating stare.

“What’s going on there?” I asked.

“That girl is beautiful.”

“She’s not bad.”

“Not bad? Look at her body, her face, her hair.”

“No, she’s good,” I said. “I just like them really petite. Small girls make my dick seem huge, like a horse’s dick, and I like that.”

“What?”

“Horse’s dick. You know, a baby’s arm. Funny story… this one girl I fucked was so petite that my dick was just as wide as her wrist. We measured them side by side. It was like she was getting fucked by her own arm! We had a good laugh about that—well, at least I did. It turned me on immensely.”

“You’re sick. You’re probably going to be a pedophile when you get older.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I’d considered that prospect myself. “But, hey, that girl is cute and rather voluptuous. Too bad she’s surrounded by three gringos.” One of the guys actually looked like a Henrik clone, tall and fair-skinned, but his shorter hair gave him more of a jock feel than Henrik’s European romancer vibe.

“I just need a look,” he said. “Once I get that look, I can go in, but I can’t without it.”

It was comical how hard he was staring at her. While she did glance over for a couple milliseconds, he needed something more sustained. Finally, fifteen minutes later, it came.

“There it is!” he said. “Did you see it?”

“I must’ve missed it.”

“I think she smiled. I could be seeing things, but her lips raised a little.”

“But how about the three guys? You think they’re going to let you talk to her?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

He slid a cigarette from his pack, placed it in his half-fist smoking position, then started walking. He passed not one, not two, but three groups that had an active smoker, before stopping at her group. I couldn’t hear anything, but I knew he was asking for a light. One of the gringos offered it.

Five minutes later he was having a one-on-one conversation with the girl while the three guys diddled their dicks off on the side, letting it all happen. I couldn’t believe it. After almost an hour, I got tired of waiting for him to come back, so I took a bus home.

Not until the next evening did I catch Henrik. He was in the kitchen cooking a curry dish when I was on my way out for a run by the beach. I stood in the doorway and gave him a huge grin. He smiled back.

“So?” I said.

“What’s up?”

“Tell me what happened with the girl!”

“Oh, yeah, the girl.” He paused, pretending like he hadn’t already thought about what he was going to tell me. “It was very nice, man. She’s dreamy. I think I’ve met my dream girl.”

“Really? Wow.”

“Yeah, we just talked and talked all night and I got her number. I feel happy.”

“She speaks English and everything?”

“She has perfect English.”

“Who were those guys with her?”

“Her friends.”

“Did you kiss her?” I asked.

“No, she’s too good for that. I want to take it slow with her. She’s special.”

“Oh, no, he’s putting the pussy on a pedestal!” I thought. Then I said, “I see. Well, what’s the next step?”

“I’m going to call her in a day or so. What was that bar you were telling me about in Ipanema? They had a samba band or something.”

“It’s called Conversa Fiada. It’s kind of expensive though.” I gave him the disclaimer because I knew his funds were even more limited than mine. I was making American dollars selling books while he was making Brazilian reals teaching English to flakey clients.

A few days later, their first date went down at the bar I recommended. There was no kiss. For their second date, she came over for one of his homemade dinners, where I met her for the first time. When she left the shack, Henrik had a big smile on his face.

CONTINUED: PART FOUR

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Henrik was icy toward me at first. He was careful with his words and didn’t ask any other questions besides where I was from. I pegged him as a snobby European who hated America. Plus he was from Denmark, a country that, according to my high school history class, was so insignificant that it might as well have never existed.

The German girl was nicer, as were the other three roommates, who were all Brazilian. It’s a shame, really, because I wouldn’t have minded having an English-speaking guy to go out with. While I dislike going out to clubs alone, I was determined to do my work, solo or not.

All interaction between my roommates occurred in two places: in front of the door to the bathroom or in the kitchen. The latter wasn’t much larger than the bathroom and had a tiny rusted table with a lone chair where I’d eat my meals (everyone else ate in their rooms while watching television). I’d be sitting, eating my rice and chicken, and a roommate would come by to grab a snack from the refrigerator or to do a load of laundry.

It was because of the refrigerator that things started turning sour with the German girl. The problem was that it had a habit of not closing unless you put a bit of muscle into it, something I wasn’t used to in my first couple weeks. I’d accidentally leave the door cracked open for hours, sometimes overnight. No food spoiled, but it was a situation that needed to be remedied. The young Brazilian guy gently reminded me to close the door, and I made a mental note to be aware of it, but it still took a little while to get the hang of it.

One day I was eating dinner when the German girl walked into the kitchen to grab some food. Apparently I had just left the door cracked again because she yelled, “WHO KEEPS LEAVING THE DOOR OPEN. OH MY GOD I DON’T BELIEVE THIS. JESUS CHRIST.”

She knew it was me—it couldn’t have been anyone else—so unless she was yelling to herself, which I doubted, she was yelling at me. She stormed out of the kitchen, leaving me to finish my meal in anger and vowing never to forget her grievous insult.

Two weeks later I had a Brazilian girl over and wanted to get her drunk on caipirinhas to guarantee access to her vagina. There was no ice in the freezer, so I went to the store to buy a five-pound block of ice, the only size they had. I had to smash it against the cobblestone street in front of my building to break it up into smaller chunks.

The German girl came into the kitchen while I was making the drinks (she seemed to come by every ten minutes when I had a visitor over, the nosy bitch), looked at my girl, looked at the bag of ice, looked at the limes I was cutting, and said, “You bought that whole bag of ice just to make one caipirinha?” Then she snickered, one of those smug I’m-better-than-you snickers.

I wanted to snap back at her, especially since I was still stewing from the refrigerator door incident, but my cute date was right there, eagerly awaiting her drink. I knew that was the night we’d fuck, so I contained myself. Later, in bed, I was extra forceful with my hip thrusts to make the Brazilian girl moan loud enough so the German girl could hear, though I’ll never know if she did.

The initial interactions I had with Henrik in the kitchen were informational in nature. I’d ask him something about internet downtime, what day the maid came, where the bathroom squeegee was located, or why the twenty-year-old washing machine was overflowing and making horrible grating sounds like it was about to explode. He did his best to help, answering right to the point, but giving no extra information for me to latch onto. I wasn’t exactly chatty around him, either, because he was a snob and I don’t mix with snobs. I was really just trying to be friendly and to create a pleasant living environment.

But I couldn’t help myself when one night I saw him bring home a dark-skinned girl. I was in the kitchen, cooking something barely edible, and saw her enter the apartment and go straight to Henrik’s room. She walked by so quickly I couldn’t even properly check out her body.

They were in the bedroom for less than an hour. Then he walked her to the front of the building to put her in a taxi. I guessed it wasn’t a first-time seduction and he had made love with her beforehand.

Our front door had to be locked with a key, even from the inside, so as he was fumbling with the keys to lock the door on his way in, I asked, “What that a first date?”

“Who, her? Oh, no. I’ve been seeing her for a little while.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“An internet dating site. It’s called Brazilian Cupid.”

“Are those sites any good here?” I asked. “I tried that a bit in Colombia, but the quality can be hit or miss. It takes a while to go through all the profiles to find the cute girls.”

“It’s not bad here. I don’t even do anything, really, just put up a profile and let the girls show interest by giving me a wink.”

“A wink?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s a button they can click to show they like you. It’s like, um, a poke on Facebook.”

“Oh, right. Some sites call those smileys. Either way, I never got winks in Colombia.” I had a flashback of club nights where I worked like a mule just to get a number or kiss on the cheek. “I’m not a fan of internet stuff because too many times I’ve met girls that seemed fine online but were ugly or retarded in person. I always feel tricked, because she knows I won’t immediately dip out.”

“Usually I talk to them online for a while to make sure they’re decent, because otherwise, yeah, you can meet a lot of duds,” Henrik conceded.

“If I’m in a bind and need a slump-buster, I’ll hit up the internet and message anything with four limbs, but otherwise I’d rather make it work in the bars.”

“Do you put up a lot of photos?” Henrik asked. “That could be why you don’t get winks.”

“I put up a sexy photo of me on a Colombian beach, but I can’t say it helped. You do have blonde hair and blue eyes, though, which is pretty exotic here. How many guys on the dating site look like you?”

“Not many.”

Henrik was a couple years older than me but much better looking, and I say that as a staunch heterosexual. He was tall with an athletic body from practicing kung fu, he had two tasteful tattoos (one of some ancient medieval dagger and another of a joker), and he was classically handsome in a European way. From my experience in Rio, I knew he was quite a catch for Brazilian girls, but by judging from his internet gaming, I guessed that he was like other good-looking guys I’d met and was far lazier about approaching than I was. That meant we probably got a similar amount of poon.

Don’t get me wrong—if I had the option of being incredibly good-looking I’d pick that in a heartbeat, but working hard does help equalize things somewhat. If a guy like Henrik worked as hard as me to get laid, it’d be impossible for me to keep up, no matter how many girls I approached and what tactics I used. There’s an eventual ceiling that no man can overcome unless he becomes famous.

Henrik and I talked about internet game for a while before he went back to his room. He told me which bar he liked going to (Emporio) and I told him my favorite (Casa do Matriz). He expressed interest in going to Casa with me, but I was hesitant to mess up my Casa mojo if Henrik turned out to be a poor wingman. Plus I was getting used to running solo game, which was becoming easy thanks to being able to play the I’m-new-in-town-and-I-don’t-have-any-friends angle.

Still, no matter how well I can do on my own, I eventually need to bond with another man. I need someone to appreciate my dry humor and to hear my latest theories about life and stories about women. I can’t stand having girl stories die in my head. I hate when something funny or crazy happens and I have no guy to tell it to. If all sorts of interesting things happen to me, but I don’t tell them to anyone, and they fade faster from my memory as a result, did they really happen?

I went out alone that weekend, but the following Saturday afternoon I knocked on Henrik’s door and asked if he wanted to come with me to Casa. He accepted. That was the night he met his dream girl.

CONTINUED: PART THREE

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There was always someone in the bathroom. That’s what happens when there are six adults living in an apartment with just one toilet. If I left my door open, I could see part of bathroom door, enough to know if it was being used or not. I had to be quick when it was free before someone else walked in.

One night I was preying on the bathroom when I heard the front door open and close. Everyone else was home so I knew it was my Danish roommate, Henrik, returning from kung fu practice. His room was at the end of the hall, so if I left my door open it was a guarantee he’d stop by to have a little chat.

“Hey buddy,” he said, with a little gym bag hanging from his shoulder.

“Hey buddy, what’s up?”

“I chatted with Vanessa today. Remember that girl you met at Emporio?”

“Yeah, the girl with all the piercings,” I said.

“Right. Well she told me about this new bar we should check out.”

“Yeah?” I wasn’t enthusiastic.

The week before we had gone to some shithole in Larenjeras and while our current spots in Botafogo and Ipanema weren’t that great, we were at least getting some action. Neither of us had much time left in Rio and I didn’t want to waste it with nightlife exploration when it was possible that we’d already found the best spots.

“It’s a rock bar up in the north zone, a little farther out than Lapa. Actually, it’s a lot of bars in a small area,” Henrik said.

“The north zone? Aren’t the girls ugly there?”

“No, the girls are better. My friend made a comment that they like rock types. She said they’d like you. You just have to wear your tightest jeans.”

“She really said that?” I asked.

“She did. The best day to go is Saturday.”

“Saturday? But that’s Casa do Matriz night. I always get something there. That’s prime time!”

“This new bar will make Casa do Matriz look like camel shit.”

I stroked my chin. “What’s the name of this rock bar?”

“Gheridge.”

“Gheridge?

“Yes, GHER-idge.”

“Sounds like a luxury condominium development. Good evening, sir, and welcome to the Gherrrridge.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Hey, maybe I can meet my dream girl there!”

“Yeah, and maybe she won’t turn out to be a bitch slut.”

I laughed. He was still sour about the dream girl.

“So how do you spell this Gheridge?” I asked, changing the subject.

“How would I know? I’m not good at spelling words in English. Just Google it.”

“How am I going to Google a word that I don’t—”

Right then the bathroom door opened and Bruno, the unofficial leader of the apartment since he’d been there for eight years, stepped out wearing nothing but underwear. His age was something of a secret, but I put it at around fifty-five.

Just as I was about to put my hands on the armrests of my chair to hoist myself up, Henrik started to walk away, saying, “Hey, I have to use the bathroom. Let’s talk about it later, okay?”

Before I tell you about our night out at Gheridge, I should give you some background information about how I found the apartment.

I arrived in Rio in early December during peak tourist season to find rental prices to be through the roof. People were asking over $800 to rent a crappy room with a shared bathroom. I holed up in a $15 a night hostel in the meanwhile, firing off messages to promising listings I found on Craigslist and other rental sites. Most of the landlords didn’t write back to my English/Portuguese hybrid message. I knew that a lot of gringos wired deposits without even looking at the places, so I wondered if my request to check things out may have pegged me as a high maintenance gringo.

After a week in the hostel with no solid leads, I started to get worried. My plan to spend summer in Rio without blowing my wad was in jeopardy and I began thinking about going to Argentina, land of crazy women, until after Carnival when rental prices would be cheaper. My Brazilian acquaintances didn’t offer any encouragement, telling me that, yes, getting a rental was hard and I should leave and come back later.

Then I met an English girl in my dorm room who changed everything, and the irony was that she was Indian. Thing is I hate Indian girls. Not only do they have the flattest asses on Earth, but they’re the most frigid and masculine, making American girls seem like quality romance material. But I have found an exception to that rule: Indian girls who don’t like being Indian. If all her friends are white then she probably hates her heritage, and therefore Indian in appearance only. This particular English girl acted whiter than other white girls, so I was in the clear to spend time with her.

On her last night we went out for drinks at a bar near the hostel and chatted a little about life, relationships, and how difficult it was to use condoms consistently. She had a fiancé at home in England, but she talked about him with a barely perceptible tone of annoyance that my advanced cheat-dar was able to pick up. All the time I’ve spent in hostels has given me the uncanny ability to tell if a traveling girl with a boy back home is likely to cheat, and how far she’ll go.

I expressed my frustration in finding a room to rent.

“You’ve only been trying a week,” she said.

“Yes, but I’ve tried everything. I even asked everyone who works at the hostel. I think I’ll just go to Argentina for a few months and then come back after the high season passes.”

“What was your original plan?”

“Well, to live in Colombia for six month, Brazil for six months, then Argentina for as long as it takes to get tired of the women. Two months max, I figure.”

“And how long have you been in Brazil so far?”

“I reckon a month.” With English people I like to use fancier words so they understand me better.

“So you’re ready to throw away your plan after just one week’s worth of difficulty?”

“Yes, but—”

“I don’t know, it just sounds to me that you don’t want to stay here after all. If I had a plan likes yours, I’d stick to it. I wouldn’t give up so easily.”

I listened.

“Have you heard of choicelessness?” she asked.

“I haven’t.”

“It’s a Buddhist term where you imagine that you have no other choices or options and that you must face your current situation and make it work, no matter what. So applying that to your situation…”

“I have no choice but to find an apartment and I can’t leave until I do?”

“There you go.”

I sat in silence for a minute, thinking about her concept. “I don’t want to blow your head up,” I said, “but that’s pretty brilliant. Such a great idea from such a young woman. How old are you again?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Oh, well, that’s not that young.”

“Hey!” she said, pushing my shoulder.

We smooched a little that night, but by the next day she was so wrought with guilt that she was extremely short with me. It didn’t matter—I had already tapped her value with the Buddhist lesson, and just as I was about to hit all the rental sites again, I found an email in my inbox from a Brazilian woman. She had a room available and left her phone number. I hadn’t emailed her before and she wasn’t from one of the sites—had someone else given her my address? I took it as some sort of heavenly sign and called her immediately. Within the hour I was on my way to her apartment.

One thing about Rio is that you’re always within rifle range of a favela. If there is an open space on a mountain, there will be shacks, and where there are shacks, there will be industrious young men packaging drugs for sale to Rio’s middle class. The irony of Rio’s drug problem is that the sons and daughters of those who are fighting the drug war are supplying dealers with money through their marijuana and cocaine purchases. No one talks about the demand side of the drug problem—it’s entirely the fault of the dealers, and any means necessary must be used to take them down.

Sort of like how a little child is instinctively afraid of snakes and spiders, it doesn’t take watching grisly news reports or hearing gunshots to know that a favela is not a place you want to be. So I was getting a little nervous when the favela in the distance got closer and closer as I triangulated the address of the apartment.

“This has to be a mistake,” I thought, but then under the address I looked at the quoted monthly price again: 750 R$. That was about $400. I hesitated when I crossed the favela border that began at the end of the paved road.

Any normal person would have turned back. Any normal American person, anyway, but something inside me spun to life. I was out of the gringo zone now, and while I was still in Brazil, a “dangerous” country, for the first time since my return trip I felt nervous. My heart was beating fast and my hands became even more sweaty than its normally moist state. Probability of death rising… rising. That feeling is like a drug to some men, and though I hadn’t yet looked at the apartment, it was obvious to me that I would accept it, regardless of what it was like. I was going to live in a favela, whereas five minutes earlier I would have scoffed at the idea.

My tour of the room was a mere formality that took no more than two minutes. It didn’t matter that the building was over sixty years old, that the front gate was stubborn to lock, that the kitchen was crawling with gigantic cockroaches, or that I’d share one bathroom with five other adults. Even though I wasn’t in one of those shacks perched up on the hills, I was so close that from my bedroom window I felt like I could reach out and touch them. I handed my first month’s rent over to the landlady and moved in a few days later for what would be a three-month stay.

CONTINUED: PART TWO

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Contents

The 64-page Compendium is organized into four chapters:

• Girls & Game
• Guides
• Stories
• Favorite Reader Comments

Here’s what you’ll find inside…

• The minimum number of approaches you need to do to get your Argentine flag
• The optimum dick vibe you should possess that doesn’t overdo it (with examples)
• Description of strange cultural features and effective countermeasures
• How to avoid the most common trap that an Argentine girl will lay on you
• What you need to know about eye contact
• The two principle strategies you should use to bang an Argentine girl that accounts for the length of your trip
• A simple line to transition to a love hotel
• Enlightening techniques from a local on how to bang his country’s women
• Whether you should start your approaches in English or Spanish
• The type of Argentine girl that is as easy to lay as a Colombian girl
• Ten key insights I learned upon my second trip to Argentina
• Why approaching ugly girls acts as a gateway to better poon
• The reason you can’t escalate on an Argentine girl like you can with a Western slut

The Compendium contains travel and logistical information…

• The logic (or illogic) or traveling to a country that is harder to get laid than in the U.S.
• Humorous analysis that compares Brazilian, Argentine, and American girls
• Detailed guides with day, nightlife, and cheap lodging recommendations for Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Rosario, Salta, Mendoza, Puerto Iguazu, El Calafate, and El Chalten
• Breakdown of street safety for the entire South American continent
• My favorite reader comments that offer additional insight and analysis on Argentine girls, cities, and culture

I also include a handful of more lengthy pieces…

• The shame I felt after my dealings with a Buenos Aires bag lady
• How visiting Argentina has forever desensitized me to beauty
• Blow-by-blow account of my time in Patagonia
• Review of the best sights in Buenos Aires

Two Argentine Game Tips

It’s usually obvious when an American girl likes you because she asks personal questions and starts touching. You can then escalate the encounter and go for a kiss. Argentine girls are a little more tricky. Even if she’s touching, you still have to restrain yourself and wait just a bit longer until she starts giving you a focused look or smiles when there’s nothing to smile about. This is important because if you bite too early, she will close up and you’ll get nothing.

Let me share another quick tip…

Argentine nightlife is pretty easy to figure out. You’ll find tons of bar and club listings on the internet or in guidebooks, but you should do your damndest to avoid those spots because the girls will be excruciatingly hard to lay. Even though Argentina is relatively poor, clubs with their own web sites attract the “rich” and white Argentine girls who are ten times harder to bang. If you want to meet girls who are easier, venture into the seedier bars where they’re are a little darker but no less “Argentine.” Chances are you’ll be the other gringo in the place.

The Compendium is filled with tons of tips like the two above, things that are not common sense to guys who are used to American or English girls. It’s intended for guys who don’t want to spend a lot of time struggling to get Argentine women in the sack and rather learn from a man who dedicated the bulk of his three months in Argentina to figuring out the women. This isn’t a “magic” book that claims you won’t have to put in effort and creativity, but I share so much potent insight and analysis that I guarantee your job at banging Argentines will be far easier.

Order Your Copy

The eBook edition of Roosh’s Argentine Compendium (containing both PDF and ePUB formats) costs only $4.99 and is processed by your choice of Google Checkout or Paypal. That’s about the same price as a large bottle of Argentine Quilmes beer. It comes with a 1 year money back guarantee (overkill, I know). If you don’t like it for whatever reason, email me at roosh (at) rooshv.com and I’ll refund your purchase no questions asked. Click the image below to order the ebook package…

The paperback edition costs $10.97 and comes with a 30-day money back guarantee from Amazon, and the Kindle edition comes with a 7-day money back guarantee. Click the image below to order the paperback or Kindle edition from Amazon…

Good luck in Argentina!

P.S. I'm huge on Twitter, with over 1 billion followers. Click here to check out my feed.

There should be no doubt in your mind about the superiority of Brazilian women. If you’re interested in learning more about them, learn more about the Brazil Compendium.

I’m regularly asked when I’m going to drop knowledge on Iceland. Unfortunately it’s taking longer than I thought to package my notes and stories into what’s turning out to be a huge series of posts. I don’t see that trickling out before May. The good news is once the orgasm begins, there will be nonstop ejaculation of travel data from multiple countries.

Since I know a bulk of you don’t care about travel topics, I’ll aim for no more than one travel post per week, but understand they will be a steady fixture on the blog as long as I’m on the road. I’m confident, though, that most of you will be entertained about how Scandinavian, Eastern European, South American, and American women all stack up, including tips on getting with the two former groups. I consider my current travels to be part of a perverted anthropological project that may result in my strongest work.

The other project I’m working on is the day game book, which I’m happy to say is progressing faster than I anticipated. My best guess right now is a July or August release.

P.S. I'm huge on Twitter, with over 1 billion followers. Click here to check out my feed.

Roosh’s Brazil Compendium is the result of what happens when you let a horny man loose in Brazil for seven months—a man who believed the best way to understand Brazilian culture was to sleep with its women. The book can best be described as a hybrid of The Game and Lonely Planet’s Brazil Guide, giving travel information on fourteen Brazilian cities while sharing the best advice and analysis on how to pick up the women. Its main purpose is to help you sleep with Brazilian women in Brazil without having to resort to prostitutes. It is available in paperback or ebook.

Contents

The Compendium is logically organized into five chapters:

• Girls & Game
• Guides
• Stories
• Carnival
• Favorite Reader Comments

It comes out to 98 pages of nothing but Brazil, with a word count that is almost double that of my Bang Colombia guide.

Here’s what you’ll learn inside:

• Descriptions of Brazilian girls by socioeconomic class and how each reacts to Western men
• The personality, look, vibe, and game of the average Brazilian girl
• An explanation into the hyper-fast kissing culture
• The difficulty in pinning down an optimal game to use on B girls
• One important thing you can optimize that has little to do with “game”
• How to reliably identify a B girl who is open to having sex with a Westerner
• A strategy to picking out bars or nightclubs that maximizes your chance of hooking up
• The aggressive strategy that Brazilian guys use to kiss their women
• How to set up an optimal bang progression that doesn’t stall after the kiss
• How to tailor your game for the women of Espirito Santo, a state north of Rio
• Dozens of little tips and tricks that increases your B girl notch count
• How it’s like to run game in Brazil when you have blonde hair and blue eyes
• My thoughts on trying to pick up in Brazilian gyms
• Why you shouldn’t bother trying to meet B girls outside of Brazil
• My favorite reader comments that offer additional insight and analysis on Brazilian girls, cities, and culture

In addition, the compendium contains details on specific cities…

• Travel overviews of Fortaleza, Natal, Praia de Pipa, Recife, Salvador, Foz do Iguaçu, and Ilhéus, with nightlife and lodging recommendations for each
• How to prepare for a trip to Rio with the goal of getting laid, including details on lodging options, day activities, nightclub recommendations, study materials, logistical tips, and ways to mentally prepare
• Detailed travel guides for Vitoria and Belo Horizonte, with a primary focus on where to find girls and how they stack up to what you can find in Rio
• Overview of three pleasant colonial towns (Ouro Preto, Diamantina, and Tiradentes) that are ideal for when you want to take a break from the cities
• A discussion on the merits of a visit to gignormous São Paulo
• An obsessive-compulsive comparison of Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia that will help you plan for future trips
• A detailed report on Rio’s Carnival, and why it may not be the best time for you to get laid

I also include four stories, which will help you further understand Brazilian culture and women. You’ll find out…

• The secret to a Brazilian girl’s mojo that Western women desperately need to take note of
• Why it’s so important for men to attempt difficult or dangerous tasks
• What I did when an upper-class Brazilian girl tried to steal my cheap bottle of champagne
• How a simple meeting with a B girl in an airport affected me in a meaningful way

Two Brazilian Game Tips

I’m sure you’ve probably heard that Brazilian women are fast kissers. Some guys get excited about this and try to kiss as fast as they can, only to be disapointed when the interaction quickly fades afterwards. Through experience I’ve learned that you should not kiss a girl just because she wants it—it’s better to make her wait instead as long as possible to drive her crazy enough that you’re much more likely to get her all the way in bed.

Let me share another quick tip…

Did you know that most hotels (and definitely all hostels), don’t allow you to bring a Brazilian girl back in the room? Luckily for us, there are “love hotels” in every major city where you can cheaply rent a room for a couple hours. I share how to locate a love hotel upon your arrival, put the address in your cell phone, and then simply show that address to a taxi driver when your girl is ready for sex. This avoids the whole “so where are we going” awkwardness that may cause her to change her mind, especially since it’s a guarantee she’ll live with her parents.

The Compendium is filled with tons of tips like the two above, things that are not common sense to guys who are used to American or English girls.

This book is intended for guys who, instead of spending a lot of time struggling with getting Brazilian women in the sack, want to learn from a man who dedicated the bulk of seven months in Brazil to figuring out the women. This isn’t a “magic” book that claims you won’t have to put in effort and creativity, but I share so much potent insight and analysis that I guarantee your job at banging Brazilians will be ten times easier. In fact, a reason I created this Compendium was in response from guys who gained so greatly from my Colombia guide and asked me to do the same for Brazil.

Order Your Copy

The eBook edition of Roosh’s Brazil Compendium (containing both PDF and ePUB formats) costs only $4.99 and is processed by your choice of Google Checkout or Paypal. That’s about the same price as a visit to a Rio juice bar. It comes with a 1 year money back guarantee (overkill, I know). If you don’t like it for whatever reason, email me at roosh (at) rooshv.com and I’ll refund your purchase no questions asked. Click the image below to order the ebook package…

The paperback edition costs $11.97 and comes with a 30-day money back guarantee from Amazon, and the Kindle edition comes with a 7-day money back guarantee. Click the image below to order the paperback or Kindle edition from Amazon…

There are two types of men in the world: those who haven’t been to Brazil, and those who are trying to go back. I hope you can get into that second category. Good luck!

P.S. I'm huge on Twitter, with over 1 billion followers. Click here to check out my feed.

The crowd at the champagne bar was typical: older professionals who wanted to wind down after work. We sat next to each other at a huge table that ran the length of the bar. I caught her up on my life in Rio.

“When I first came here, I fell in love with the city and imagined myself living here, but now I don’t know if I’m ever coming back.” I took a sip of champagne, which was extremely cold because of the salt solution the bartender had put into our ice bucket.

“Why don’t you like Rio?” Mariana asked.

“Well, it’s expensive and dangerous, the traffic is bad, the nightlife sucks, there’s too many gringos, it’s either unbearably hot or raining, it’s dirty, smelly, making friends is hard, and I don’t even like the beach that much. It’s like Rio was a girl who I fell hard for, but once I got to know her, I realized we didn’t have a lot in common. I think it was you who…”

I paused.

“Me who what?” she asked.

“The first time I was here, you made the city better than it actually is.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t have to, but there’s no reason for me to stay here now, or even to come back.”

I noticed that she was touching me often and shifting nervously in her seat. I had gotten her to meet me under the guise of friendship, and while I didn’t expect more, I was sure hoping for it.

“Remember that guy you told me you had just ‘started’ seeing?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, I think that was a lie. I think you invented him to make me feel better.”

“No, I really was seeing a guy! But I’m not seeing him anymore.”

“Oh.”

“And then there was another guy.”

“What?”

“But it was really quick. Very short.”

“So you’re not seeing anyone right now?”

“No.”

“Well, good, because after this bottle of champagne you can come to my place and we can make love one last time.” I smiled, but not too hard since I wanted her to believe I was mostly serious. Just testing the waters.

“Oh, baby, no.” She shook her head. “Let’s just be friends. ”

“I’m leaving in ten days—it’s not like I’m asking for more. But anyway…”

“So did you meet any girls?”

“A couple, but nothing serious. After you ended it I wasn’t too upset because I thought it would be easy to find your replacement, especially since I met you only a week after I arrived in Rio.” I paused a moment. “But I haven’t been able to find another Mariana.”

She smiled, but said nothing. I asked if she was still on her allergy medication. She said she wasn’t. I kept filling her glass and eventually ordered a second bottle.

I was having trouble containing my feelings and said some things I knew I shouldn’t have, but it felt right and she seemed to be getting closer to me. I went with it. There was no need to lie or pretend.

“When I came back,” I said, “I was ready to give us a shot, to see only you.”

“I don’t believe that. I know your type, going from country to country. You probably have girls in each country that you keep in touch with.”

“No, well… no, you’re wrong. No one I really care about,” I said, searching for the right words. “The last time we talked, I got the feeling that you wanted me to make a stronger commitment, to invest more.” I paused again, then asked the question that was on my mind for the past couple months. “I guess what I’m asking is… if I lived here, would things be different?”

She looked at me for what seemed like eternity and said, “Yes, they would.”

I nodded, then the conversation drifted into silence. I tried to kiss her a few minutes later, but she turned her head at the last moment.

“We’re only friends,” she said. “Friends don’t kiss.”

“They don’t?”

“Well, sometimes,” she said softly. Then she gave me a look that said, “I’m going to be vulnerable now… please be gentle.”

I approached again slowly, and when our lips touched, I felt something unusual—something electric that seemed to paralyze my body. Only my lips and mouth were alive, and they were heating up. For the next thirty seconds I felt this heat coming into my mouth, increasing in temperature with every moment. The movements of her tongue triggered flashes of white light on the back of my eyelids. My head seemed to separate from the rest of my body. The people and the music faded into the background until we were completely alone, until I processed not a single thought or sensation besides the heat in my mouth and the lights dancing in my vision. I don’t know how long the kiss lasted, but she pulled away first, leaving my lips hanging in the air. It took several seconds for the sounds of the bar to reenter my consciousness and for my body to reattach itself. I looked at her, confused, as if coming out of a hypnotist’s trance. I swallowed hard and began to rub my hands over my face. Then I excused myself and went into the bathroom so she wouldn’t continue to see the effect she had on me.

The champagne continued to flow and like an octopus I let my hands explore her body, slowly creeping up her leg until she smacked them back down. I just wanted to have her one more time, and then we could be done for good.

Getting her back to my place took quite a bit of convincing. I had to basically sign a contract stating that she’d stay no more than fifteen minutes and that we’d only hug and kiss. Of course she couldn’t help herself once she was lying on my bed, and neither could I.

When it was over, I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling fan, trying to keep my eyes focused on one of the rotating blades, wondering how a petite Brazilian girl gained so much power over me.

I turned on my side to face her and said, “I don’t see you for three months and I’m leaving, but now we’re… doing things.”

“Well, yes, that’s why,” she said. “This is how I protect myself. Why would I get too close to someone who’s staying a short time?”

We stared at each other for a long moment, and then I said, “I love you.” I didn’t smile.

She laughed.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because you’re not serious.”

“How do you know I’m not serious?”

“Because you’re not ready!”

I saw her twice after that, once for a movie and the other for a walk through a park. Things were decidedly more friendly and nothing got past simple hand-holding or light kissing. She made a reference to having “drunk too much” the night at the champagne bar, and I got the hint. We were just friends—and there would be no additional sex.

After the park, we went for a quick açai and grabbed the same bus. I was emotionally numb. I wanted to get off the roller coaster ride she had put me on and if she wanted to only be friends then fine. It didn’t matter anyway—I was leaving in two days. Even if she wanted to stay with me, I wasn’t ready to move to Rio just for her. She was right.

I told her my stop was coming up. I looked over to her and saw tears streaming down her face, more tears than when I had first left her about two years earlier.

I had trouble understanding why she was so upset. I stared at the back of the seat in front of me until I broke the silence with, “Quero cafuné.” It was a phrase she had taught me, which means, “I want to gently stroke your hair.” She laughed and told me to be sure to use it on other girls.

“I guess our time was two years ago,” I said.

“Yes. I was more open then.”

“I’ll always remember it.”

We both knew I wouldn’t be coming back to Rio again. I gave her a quick kiss, then pulled the cord and walked towards the back of the bus.

It was finally over for good.

If you liked the epilogue, download the first chapter for free to see how it all started.

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“I think we should just be friends,” she said.

I’d been dumped many times before, where things simply faded away and a girl stopped agreeing to go out with me. Maybe I would run into her later and we’d have sex again for old time’s sake, but not once in seven years had a girl I genuinely liked sat me down and said she never wanted to be romantically involved with me again. The last time I had been hurt, but this time I was angry.

She was about to tell me why when two businessmen sat next to our table. She asked if I wanted to talk on the beach. I agreed. We walked without saying anything, then sat on the sand.

“You don’t have to give me a reason,” I said. “I don’t care, whatever you want.”

“No, but I want to tell you. When we first met, my heart was open, but I can’t do this. I can’t see you for two months and then have you go away again. I can’t suffer like that.”

Oh, god. She was giving me the excuse I had been using on girls for the past year—a spin-off of the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ routine.

“I understand completely,” I said. “If that’s what you want. I knew something was wrong anyway, because it didn’t feel like last time. You were colder, and from the moment you postponed our date, I knew something wasn’t right.”

“But I wasn’t feeling well,” she protested. “I had allergies.”

“Look, if I was in a hospital bed, half-dying, I’d still crawl out to see you after two years. You just weren’t excited. I told myself, ‘I’m 100% sure she’s seeing a guy,’ and that’s what I still think.”

I looked deep in her eyes because a part of me wanted to know the real reason, even though that reason would ultimately boil down to her not wanting to see me. I needed to know if she had something else going on instead of preferring to watch telenovelas at home rather than spending time with me.

“He’s not better than you, but he’s here. You’re going to leave in two months. Then what am I going to do?”

“The other night you were telling me that you were thinking about having a kid in a year or two,” I said. “When a woman says that, what she really means is that she wants a child right now, and I understand that. You’re at the age where you’re ready to find something long-term, but I can’t give you that.”

“I know you can’t.”

“I guess the only reason we got together in the first place was because you had just broken up with someone. I was the rebound.”

“Yes my heart was open then. I knew you were leaving soon and it wouldn’t mean anything.”

I winced and turned away, my eyes falling upon a group of guys in skimpy Speedos playing foot volleyball.

“But now it’s harder, because you’re staying longer, but you’ll still be leaving again. You’re too…” She fumbled for the right word. “Light.”

“I’m sorry I’m not a Brazilian citizen. I’m sorry I can only stay a couple months at a time, but it’s because I’m light that we even met. It gives and it takes, I understand that. You think this conversation we’re having right now is the first time for…” I wanted to talk to her as if she was a therapist and discuss the pros and cons of living the lifestyle that I’ve chosen, but I stopped short and started making patterns in the sand with my book.

“And you barely kept in touch while you were away,” she said. “Do you know the word cultivar?”

“Yes, to cultivate.”

“That’s what I want. Something that grows. You sent me two postcards, a couple emails, and we talked once on the phone.”

“So you wanted me to call so you could ask when I was coming back, only for me to say, ‘I don’t know, maybe soon.’ What would we have talked about? ‘Hey, Mariana, I’m going out with my friends a lot and writing. Oh, yeah? Great. I can’t wait to have açai again.’”

“Well let’s be friends. And I mean that,” she said. “This Saturday I’m going out dancing with my friends, and I’d like it if you’d come along and meet them.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to be just friends. No, it’s either all or nothing with me.”

“So you don’t even want to see me again?”

“We can exchange emails, and maybe have lunch before I leave the country.”

She frowned and tightened her lips. Part of me felt bad for her because after all she was a girl I really liked, but another part of me was pleased that I was hurting her.

“I can’t believe you don’t want to be my friend. You’re blackmailing me! This isn’t how Brazilians do it. We keep in touch. We see each other.”

“Yeah, well, I do things differently,” I said flatly. “I have enough friends anyway.” That was a lie. There was only one other person in Rio I could call.

“Then the only thing you really want from me is my body.”

I said nothing, wondering about the question myself.

She told me that every other guy she’d ever broken up with had jumped at the chance to stay in touch and that I was being silly not to want the same. I refused to reward her decision to dump me with friendship. I wanted her to wonder if she made the right choice by letting me go. She needed to feel genuine loss. I had to inflict either pleasure or pain—nothing in between. I had to burn my bridges because it was the right thing to do.

“I think it’s time for me to go,” I said.

We got up and she insisted on escorting me to my hostel. On the way she continued to push the friendship idea, but I said little, thinking that I wanted her to feel what I was feeling: utter rejection.

“You really don’t have to walk me back,” I said, as if she was following me like a pest. At the end of the block she stopped, but I kept walking.

“Wait!” she called after me.

I stopped, looked back, and said, “Yeah?”

“Aren’t you at least going to give me a hug?”

I sighed, then gave her the most awkward hug I could muster, my body leaning so far forward that only the boney tops of my shoulders touched her body. She stood on her tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek, but I pulled away as soon as I felt her lips make contact with my skin.

It was another goodbye, two years and two blocks away from the last one. I took three steps back and stared into her big eyes, which were glassy with tears. She smiled wanly, as if encouraging me to say something comforting, but all I wanted to do at that moment was destroy something beautiful. I raised my hand and said, “Take care.”

I didn’t wait for a response. I immediately turned and walked away.

A couple weeks later I got into a fight with Paula’s best friend, Joana, at a samba club. She had discovered my writings and tried to use them against me. The entire night I endured things like, “So when are you going to bang these girls?” “Are you going to learn samba so you can bang a lot of girls?” and “What clubs do you go to so you can bang girls?” I bit my lip. I didn’t want to create a scene, but at the end of the night, while hailing a taxi, she said, “The night is still young enough to bang girls. You should stay out.”

I’d finally had enough. “Can you shut the fuck up about that already. Are you going to do that all the time from now on?”

The ride home was awkward. Of course she told Paula, who cooled toward me afterward, taking days to reply to one of my text messages instead of the usual hour or less. I now had no friends in Rio.

One night about a month after Mariana dumped me, I went to Lapa alone. While walking up the stairs of the club, I ran into her. She was with her sister and didn’t offer to introduce me, as if I was a distant acquaintance, so I just nodded as if to say I see how it is and kept walking.

She found me later and asked what had happened. “You tell me what happened,” I said. “You seemed like you didn’t want to talk and didn’t even offer to introduce me to your sister.”

“You looked upset! It seemed like you wanted to walk away from me!”

I stuck with her for the rest of the night. We sat on the couch and talked about emotions, love, and all sorts of nonsense my friends back home would have made fun of me about. Whenever I looked away, she wiped away her tears. We gently stroked each other’s hands and when she stared at me, I got the feeling that she wanted me to make a commitment and say, “Baby, I’m going to live in Brazil. Let’s do it!” That’s what she wanted, and I felt confident that if I said those words, she would have been mine as long as our relationship could last.

I imagined how my life would be if I chose that route. I’d have to make a permanent move to Rio, and the only way to do that legally would be to get married. We’d be husband and wife, with our own little apartment in Copacabana. Three nights a week I’d cook American food, three nights a week she’d cook Brazilian food, and one night a week we’d go out. I’d support her in her career and listen to her troubles at work. We’d take trips into the Brazilian countryside to get away from the city. We’d be best friends. I’d become an English teacher or get some other job that brought in a regular income. We’d have a Little Rooshinho and I’d find out if I had what it took to be a good father. We’d outgrow our apartment in Copacabana and get a bigger one in Ipanema. I’d become fluent in Portuguese. I’d visit my family and friends in the States once a year. I’d become a family man and have a regular, pleasant life. If our marriage worked, we’d make each other happy until our last days, companions until death. Our graves would be side by side.

I remained silent.

“You were never in love with me anyway,” she finally said.

Besides my gentle touches, I offered Mariana no reason to dump the guy she had just “started” dating to get with me. I made my choice, and I was ready to live with it.

We walked out when the club closed at five in the morning. When we hugged, she closed her eyes and practically dived in my chest, but she didn’t let me hold her long enough to kiss her. She hopped into a cab and at that point I realized she was too sure of what she wanted to be weak for another night or two. I could accept that, but I went to bed wondering how I was going to meet another girl like her. For my remaining three months in Rio I didn’t.

Those were shallow times, going out to drink and fuck random girls in my favela apartment while building very little of substance. There was the pretty daughter of a gastroenterologist, who spoke French and treated me well, but I just couldn’t fall for her. There was a telenovela actress from São Paulo who was gorgeous but spoke no English and was hard to pin down. There was an Argentine girl with a magical booty who tasted like a bar ashtray. There were traveling American girls I slept with only hours after meeting. It’s after these girls, ten days before I was set to leave Rio for good, that I had an overwhelming desire to see Mariana again. I didn’t care if it was “bad game” to contact her or not, so I called and said I needed to see her before I left. She agreed to a date.

CONTINUED: PART FOUR

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Nostalgia is a powerful thing. I had a constant smirk on my face while doing all the simple things I had done before, like getting a folhado at my favorite bakery, recharging my cell phone balance at the mobile shop, doing pull-ups on the beach bars in Ipanema, and eating lunch at Delirio Tropical. In Copacabana, I visited Marcelo’s juice bar and was surprised to see him still working there. I walked up to the counter and before I could say anything he squinted in a flash of remembrance.

“I was here two years ago,” I said.

“What’s your name again?”

“Roosh.”

“Roooooooosh, that’s right!”

He put out his hand and gave mine a healthy shake. We chatted for maybe thirty seconds and then he went back to work. I think I was more sentimental about our relationship than he was judging by how quickly the smile evaporated from his face. I wanted him to be more than just my juice guy, but I knew he saw a dozen gringos like me every day and I was lucky he had remembered me at all.

Eventually I ran out of nostalgia. I walked around Ipanema, by the McDonald’s, KFC, and expensive boutiques I’d never stepped into, then thought, “Okay, now what?” I did it. I had come back, just as I’d told everyone I would, and I was about to reunite with my girl, but the mission that had consumed my thoughts for the past two years was almost complete. I felt a little empty, and then I remembered something someone had once told me: “Sometimes wanting something is better than having it.” That was probably why I hesitated in Vitória before returning to Rio. I stayed there ten days instead of three, perhaps subconsciously conflicted about the fact that I was about to finish what I set out to do. I wanted to hold on to wanting just a bit longer.

I had no complaints when Mariana pushed our date back one day (because of allergies, she told me) to Saturday night, which was a more proper time for a reunion. We were supposed to meet at the subway station, but it began pouring, so she texted me her address instead. At our meeting time I stood partially hidden under a tree in front of her building, waiting for her to come out.

I stared at her for a good five seconds before she noticed me. It was a careful stare, trying to see what had changed and what hadn’t. Her hair was longer—longer than mine, finally. Her body still looked great and it’s wasn’t obvious that she had aged two years. She smiled when she saw me hiding behind the tree. I gave her a hug, but she seemed decidedly cool, only giving me a weak embrace. The first thing she asked was where the taxi was, and when I told her I had let it go, she sounded annoyed, asking me twice why I’d done that, almost scolding me like a child. If she was happy to see me, I couldn’t tell.

We decided to walk up a steep hill to some local bars in her neighborhood. She had a tiny umbrella, so we both got wet as we lost our breath climbing, and several times she criticized herself for not bringing a bigger one. She was tense and made little effort to help with the conversation. The silences were painful. We hadn’t seen each other in two years, but after five minutes we had almost nothing to say. I thought either she had a serious boyfriend and was simply giving me a token meeting or needed time to warm up to me again.

When we finally settled into the bar twenty minutes later, I decided to approach it as just another date: I’d talk my ass off, tell her the interesting things I had been doing, make her laugh, and touch her more and more as the evening progressed.

“So my book is done. I finally finished it—and you’re in it,” I said.

“Oh, no!” She laughed.

“No, it’s nothing bad. Meeting you was a good way to end the story, I think, after all the bad stuff that happened.”

“What name did you give me?”

“Mariana.”

“How did you pick that?”

“Well, I went on the internet and did a search for Brazilian names, and you seem like a Mariana, so I went with that.”

I told her about the book, carefully avoiding its sexual theme and focusing on the friendships and cities I had visited. Mariana is the type of girl who didn’t care much about my past, but I still didn’t feel comfortable with her knowing about all the girls I had tried to get with before getting with her. I didn’t want to trivialize our relationship by saying it was the culmination of dozens of approaches and brainstorming and effort and game. There’s no romance in that.

By the second hour of our date, we had settled into a fun conversation. She opened up more, telling me about the time she had been robbed at knife-point, the traveling she had done, and the productions she had acted in. There were many moments where we relived our time together and I’d say, “I put that in the book!” Even though she had never seen the book and had no idea what filled its nearly 300 pages, she seemed pleased that she was in it. The whole time I held on to the hope that our reunion wouldn’t be anything less than worthy of the two-year wait.

We moved to a sushi bar and as we walked, she hooked her arm through mine. She seemed to laugh harder at my jokes and gave me longer stares. She asked more questions, and if this had been any other date, I would have been thinking, “This is going well.”

After four hours of talking, we decided to call it a night. On the walk to her apartment we held hands, but at the front door she was prepared to say goodbye and send me on my way. I couldn’t let that happen.

“Can I use your bathroom?” I said. She didn’t answer. Without skipping a beat, I added, “Okay well can you point me to an alley where I can go? Hopefully I won’t be robbed.”

She paused for a few seconds. “No, that’s fine,” she said. “You can come in.”

I knew I’d be staying a while when she offered me a drink. I went into her room and saw that the pictures of her guru were still there, but the shelf of herbal remedies was gone.

“Where’s all your medicines?” I asked.

“What medicines?”

“You know, the natural medicines you used to have in those dropper bottles.”

“I think you imagined that.”

“Are you sure? Because I put it in the book.”

The last bit of nostalgia I had was with her and I milked it for all it was worth. I wanted the wait to be validated. I wanted to be correct that she wasn’t just another notch. I had so many relationships that were meaningless that I needed this one to be real.

“The last time I was here,” I said, “I was a bit messed up, I think. When I went home, I hibernated in my dad’s basement and it took two months until I felt normal again. I’m telling you this because I didn’t want to leave you. There’s a lot of things we didn’t do together.”

“You didn’t have time,” she said.

“I could’ve made time. I could’ve stayed longer. I…”

She put her hand in mine. A few minutes later she led me to her bedroom.

There was a peculiar moment the next morning when I left. She gave me a kiss goodbye and said, “Take care.”

“Take care?” I replied.

“Yeah, take care,” she repeated. “Isn’t that what Americans say?”

“Well, ‘take care’ is something you say to someone you’re not going to see for a while. If you run into an old college friend you haven’t seen in years and you chat for a couple minutes, you say ‘take care’ at the end. It means ‘See you in a few years, maybe.’”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I meant at all,” she said. Then she gave me a more proper farewell as I left.

I really wanted to say that she was indeed the one, that I ended the game because of her, that we feel in love and had beautiful Brazilian babies, and that I lived out my days in a tropical country. But that wasn’t the case.

Five days later we met for lunch at her suggestion. Beforehand, I debated whether I should comment on her coolness. I knew something was wrong because all the signs were there: rescheduling our date, getting annoyed at my letting the taxi go, excusing aloof behavior with a made-up illness (allergies), not inviting me back to her place, and giving me an impersonal goodbye. I remembered the first time we met, when she had asked me to come over, but the previous night I had to weasel my way in as if she was any other girl. Her kisses were also different—quicker, colder, and not as sensual. Our lovemaking was more detached. I decided to not say anything and see what would happen. Well, I didn’t have to wait long.

During lunch she barely said a word. Like on our date, I talked and talked to get something out of her, but she responded with simple one-word replies. I had brought a book with me, Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and the only time she really said anything was when she explained that she had liked his most famous work, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. Did I have to bring one of his books on every date just to get something going? Whether she was no longer interested in me or not, there is no way I can date a girl who doesn’t talk to me. Disappointment set in.

We finished our meal in silence, then she said, “I have to tell you something.”

I knew what was coming.

CONTINUED: PART THREE

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“So how was the Northeast?” Paula asked.

“It was just like you said—poor, but with great beaches. I went to Fortaleza, Natal, Pipa, Recife, Salvador, and Vitória. I liked Vitória the most because I swear I was the only gringo there.”

“Vitória? Only businessmen travel there.”

“Exactly. I’d go to a club and guys would come up to me and say, ‘Hey, you’re the gringo, right? I heard you talking outside in English.’ I’d ask questions about how to get girls, just to make them feel like they were teaching the gringo something. The girls didn’t really care, though, and would brush me off. After my last trip, I kind of thought I’d be more welcome by the women if there were no other gringos around, but I guess that’s not always the case. Overall I had a fun time and believe it or not, nothing bad happened!”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “Now something bad will happen. Do you want to get another beer?”

She looked just like I remembered her from when she and her friends had showed me around Rio while I was dealing with my health and mental problems. I initially had planned to stay in a hostel in Ipanema, but she insisted that I crash at her place for a few nights.

In Vitória I ended up staying with a guy who worked at my hotel. He didn’t have a guest bed or sofa, so I had to buy a $40 foam mattress. I hoped it would last the week, but after the first night the foam flattened until it felt like I was sleeping directly on the floor. When Paula told me she didn’t have a mattress, I reluctantly rolled and tied the piece of shit up with rope and hauled it to Rio by bus. I’m certain other Brazilians thought I was homeless because I hadn’t shaved for a few weeks.

Paula and I caught up on things in the bar by Copacabana’s beach. I arrived two hours prior and for the last half of the bus ride my stomach was grumbling loudly, but I wrote it off as a bad case of gas. Not once in the past seven months, the first six spent in Colombia, had I gotten a stomach illness. During my last trip I had learned to cook most of my meals and limit the street food, but in the last month I had gotten cocky and started eating from the street again. At the Vitória bus station I ate an odd-tasting coxinha de frango, a deep-fried chicken and cheese ball that was neon orange on the inside. I figured it contained a kind of cheese I hadn’t had before.

There wasn’t a whole lot to tell Paula about the previous seven months. In Medellín, I had written a new book, studied Spanish, and put a lot of energy into sleeping with Colombian women. It included going to the university to hang out in the common areas to ask girls for help with my Spanish. Instead of being the old guy in the club, I was the old guy in school, but thankfully girls like men around 30 years old. I made a couple new friends, dated a really nice girl who pokes me every now and then on Facebook, and played blackjack in the casinos. Life was good, easy, and most importantly of all, cheap.

Colombia had spoiled my return to Brazil because it competed so well on many fronts, including quality of life, cost of living, and women. I had held Brazilian women on a magic pedestal for a long time after my return to the States, but now Colombian women were almost there with them. Picking one over the other would come down to a matter of personal taste because I doubt different men who have experiences with both would consistently arrive to the same conclusion.

My stomach continued to churn as Paula gave me updates on her life and her new boyfriend. I started sweating and figured I could squeeze my ass cheeks together for another half hour before using the bathroom at her place, but it’s amazing how the human digestive system can move at the speed of sound when it wants to. I finally excused myself to visit the bar’s restroom.

The lone toilet was covered with drops of urine and the toilet paper was out, so I quickly grabbed a dozen paper towels from above the sink, put four on the seat, and sat down. My body shook with a tremendous explosion as the entire contents of my bowels ejected in less than three seconds. There was a loud “bloo-bloop” sound and then, just like that, it was over. I lifted my ass to take a peek at what was underneath and thought, “That wasn’t so bad.”

We left the bar soon after and went back in her place, where I had to go again. The only problem was that her bathroom was inside her room, only six feet from the bed. There was nothing I could do to mask the embarrassing ass explosion sounds, not even a dinky ventilation fan. Over the next ten hours I had to go to the bathroom at least fifteen times while Paula slept. Poor girl—I’m sure she thought I was shitting on her head. My anus became so abraded and raw from all the wiping that it felt like I had been sodomized with a Brillo pad. During brief moments of sleep I crossed my legs, for fear that I’d accidently shit on my foam mattress.

Two days later, after a few meals of rice and potatoes, I was fine again. No fever, no lingering pain, and no constant gas. No five-month ordeal like last time.

“Whenever I see you, you’re sick,” Paula said, shaking her head. “Maybe you should see a special doctor.”

“I was healthy the past seven months, I swear!” She probably thinks I was a premature baby and now have to deal with some type of lifelong immune system disorder.

Not wanting to impose, after three nights at her place I checked into a hostel and began looking for an apartment.

“It’s so good to hear from you,” she said.

“Guess where I am right now.”

“Rio de Janeiro.”

They say you can tell when someone is smiling or not on the phone, and I like to think she was during our conversation. We chatted for a few minutes and made plans to hang out in two days.

Over the previous 23 months I had thought of her often, but I didn’t overdo it. I didn’t think of her as the solution to my problems and I’d stop myself if I wandered into any girlfriend fantasies. It’s true that she had rarely popped in my head when I was seeing a new girl, but after the dust had settled and I was alone again, I’d remember our time together and wonder if it was the real deal or not. Was I romanticizing a short relationship made intense by what I was going through my last time here, or was she really the one?

Now that I was back in Rio, I had trouble holding back. I got excited. For the next day, all I could do was think about what our reunion would be like. Should I pick her up when we hug? Should I go for the kiss right away? Should we end up in a club after a drink or two at a quiet bar? Should I dress up or keep it simple? Should I trim my beard or keep it a little long? I found myself thinking about things I didn’t usually worry about.

We agreed to meet the next afternoon at 5pm. At first I thought she wanted to meet early because she couldn’t wait to see me, but then I realized she probably had other plans later that night. I was ready to jump to the conclusion that she had another guy. After all, it had been two years. What did I expect? Was she supposed to greet me with open legs and scream, “Take me, Roosh! I’ve been waiting for you all this time!” Back to reality, and that reality is that a lot of time had passed, and people meet other people. Still, her having a boyfriend would destroy my plans for picking up exactly where we left off.

CONTINUED: PART TWO

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In Bogota a few years ago I was talking to a HOT Colombian girl. She asked for a drink. I bought one for her and then she walked away. I was pissed. An old Colombian guy at the bar said, “You are new here and do not know what the hell you are doing.” I guess I don’t. He said, “Buy me a beer and I will give you an education that you cannot buy with money.” What the fuck, I might as well lose two drinks.

He gave me the best advice I have ever had that ended up landing me more Colombian pussy than I can count. He said the most valuable thing a guy has, especially an older guy (I was almost 40 then), is his dignity. (Yea, I am older now, but I am living in Brazil with a 22 year old smoking hot girl, with a few more on the side… yea, yea and a cabinet full of Viagra).

He told me the best way to handle when a girl asks me for a drink. First look at your watch and remember the time. Then completely ignore her comment about the drink. Change the subject and just bullshit for five full minutes. He said make sure you time it. You gringos will not be able to stand this situation and it will seem like an hour. After five full minutes, as part of the conversation, ask her what she is drinking, then wait another few minutes. Excuse yourself, go to the bar and get her and yourself a drink (preferable where she cannot see you), and bring it to her. This does a few things for you.

1. You are in charge of the situation, not her. She does not control you.
2. You will use your position of power to take care of her needs.
3. Buying her the drink is on your terms and your timetable, not hers.
4. You do not respond well to commands, especially from a woman. You ignore her commands.
5. You do not get angry with her commands because they are meaningless to you and you are above that.
6. It is okay for her to let you know what she wants, but it is entirely up to you if she gets it, and when she gets it.

The old guy told me that when I immediately bought her a drink she felt uncomfortable being in charge of the situation, and that I was easy and not to be respected or followed. I dated a lot of Colombian women and each of them kicked hard against me. After a while I realized that what they were really asking is “Are you strong enough for me to trust you to lead me?” After a while (weeks) most of the smart one learned to be very sweet and whisper in my ear, “I am getting a little thirsty,” with a sweet Colombian smile.

That place is fucking AWESOME. I got more Colombian stories than you can imagine.

Grandpa

P.S. The doctor who said if your woodie lasts longer then 4 hours, go to the doctor did NOT live in Colombia or Brazil… Happy Hunting.

This email reminds me of my first night going out in Colombia back in April 2009 (it feels like forever ago). In Bogota I went with a tall Croatian man I met at the hostel to a bar in the La Candelaria neighborhood. Almost immediately we started talking to two Colombian girls. The Croat was bursting with energy and doing all sorts of crazy dance moves to hook his girl, while I took on a more laid-back vibe with mine. About twenty minutes into the interaction, she asked me to buy her a drink.

I didn’t have any experience when a girl asks me that in South America, because even in my previous trip it never happened. So I gave her my typical American response: “Do you want me to just write you a check?” The interaction then terminated.

The next morning, the Croat told me how he fucked his girl without a condom and was scared of contracting a sexually transmitted disease.

“Too bad my girl wasn’t open,” I said.

“No dude, your girl was open. You just went with the wrong game. You needed to be more playful instead of bitching her out. Back at the other girl’s place, I thought I was going to get a threesome for a second. I was so close!”

What he said didn’t really register, but over the next several months I realized that my worth to women—especially South American women—was not only in my humor or intellect or even game. It was also my ability to provide, made obvious when you consider the average Colombian girl can barely afford to buy herself a drink. It took me a little too long to realize their value system was different than Western girls.

I had the notion, from my upbringing in America, that a girl must like me for me and not my money or anything “superficial.” I was stubborn about letting this go at first (“But my jokes are so great!”), until I noticed that fucking a girl who likes my jokes versus fucking a girl who likes the fact that I can buy her an imported beer makes no difference to my dick, or ultimately, my happiness. As long as I’m not getting used for either it’s all the same, and I’d be a moron not to use whatever strength I possess to hit the attraction buttons of the local women. Let’s just say that highlighting my ability to provide—in a casual, non-flashy way—did not hurt my results with Colombian women, and is something I’m more aware of displaying in poor countries. It’s a careful balance because if you overdo it you can look like a total douche bag, but then again you shouldn’t go out of your way to hide the fact that you make a couple bucks.

Whenever I think back at the night with the Croat, asking the Colombian girl if she wanted me to write her a check, I cringe. What a rookie mistake.

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Believe it or not, easiness of women is only a minor factor for choosing where I travel to. What’s more important is if the women are of high quality, because I don’t mind putting in a moderate amount of energy to snag something special. It’s only when the women disappoint me with cold or strange attitude, like in Argentina, do I get turned off and search for greener pastures.

That is sort of what happened in Vitória. The girls weren’t warm by Brazilian standards and simply didn’t hint to me that they were worth the trouble. So I was surprised when an attractive girl from Vitória started an email correspondence with me. She suggests that the attitude is just a front. Here is her enlightening analysis, which I’m sure holds true for other lower tier Brazilian cities as well:

I’ve heard the same complaint from many (Brazilian) people about the capixabas [people from Vitória] not being very open and friendly. I could think of many reasons for that, but mostly I think it’s just because Vitória is an island and used to be a “green barrier” (barreira verde, don’t know how to say that in English) to protect Minas Gerais. So we have spent a lot of time without much contact with other people, and I guess we have grown a little “suspicious” of everyone.

We’re not used to having tourists visiting, even from Brazil (except for the mineiros). You’d be surprised to know that a lot of Brazilian people don’t even know where Vitória is. I get a lot of “Vitória da Conquista?” (a city in Bahia) when I travel. People joke saying that Bahia is North of Rio (meaning that Espírito Santo doesn’t exist). We’re a small town—we only have twice as many people as Copacabana, a *neighborhood* in Rio. So I guess we’re like an unpopular high school gang, just hanging out together and looking out for each other. It’s hard to get in (and no one cares to try), but once you do, you’ll realize how cool we are. :)

The problem with being an American guy trying to get girls in Vitória, I think, is that a lot of us have the natural “anti-American” instinct (as we also have the “anti-carioca”, the anti-anything that we consider better than us). As in “Did you really think it would be that easy to get me to bed just because you’re from Rio/New York/Paris?” We have an inferiority complex that we try to make up by being snobish and playing hard to get. But, it usually doesn’t last long. Girls in Rio are used to gringos, we’re not used to anyone. That *will* become an advantage eventually, but it does take a lot of game.

And, everyone knows everyone here. Women (at least my girlfriends and I) try to be very careful with what they do, because the next day everyone is already talking about it. And when I say that everyone knows everyone, I really mean it (it’s crazy).

There’s another problem that is very specific to Vitória too: there are a LOT of girls, and not too many guys. This *could* mean that girls would be easier here (out of desperation!), but this is what happens: guys have become the biggest assholes (not alpha assholes; just plain assholes). They think you have a moral obligation to worship them. So if they approach you and you’re not interested, they’ll immediately start cursing at you or trying to offend you. I’ve seen it happen a lot. Sometimes we *are* interested, just not in the mood to play their caveman game. So most girls in Vitória have grown tired of that, I think, and end up being more interested in hanging out with their girlfriends than putting up with one of these guys. You’ll see a lot of us dating guys from other states (who don’t live here, and whom we’ve met in Rio or other cities).

A capixaba girl will behave completely different in another city, with other men (and without other capixabas around to make gossip). But maybe what I’m saying is all just bullshit and we *are* actually snobs. But I don’t think we are.

I can vouch for capixabas acting different (i.e. sluttier) in other cities: my Danish roommate had a one-night stand with one staying in Rio. But then again that’s true for all women.

I’m ready to come to the conclusion that Vitória is only worth your time if you live there, and not traveling through. Unless you want an ultimate-test-of-your-game type of challenge by coming here for a weekend or two, stick to the other gringo-friendly cities instead.

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My front gate shows up at 0:40. The green-tarped kiosk at 0:56 is like a mini 7-11, where I bought staples such as milk, Guarana soda, and snappers. Only once did I go around the corner deeper into the favela (I was curious), and while it wasn’t dangerous, I didn’t exactly blend in. I knew a gay Algerian guy who lived in the deepness and he didn’t have any issues taking back his “crazy” B boys for nights of fun.

Here’s a video of a couple gringos riding their mountain bikes down the same favela. They end in the place where the BOPE troops from the previous clip walk up to.

You can hear the encouraging crowd in the background. I find that even the thuggish favela dwellers are rather friendly and deferent, while in America a group of approaching urban youth can be intimidating, not yielding the path and maybe even making derogatory comments (especially towards women). In Brazil this never happened to me—they’d get out of the way before I even thought about it.

Here’s a news clip talking about how the favela is the first to be hooked up with free internetche. It has some nice panoramic views of poverty:

While I don’t miss living in a favela, I do miss bragging about it, and most of all I miss the location. Right in the middle of Botafogo, it was close to everything and within 10 minutes walking distance to my favorite club to pull one-night stands (Casa do Matriz). I hated the actual apartment (it was old, there were five other roommates sharing 1.5 baths, and the kitchen had thousands of cockroaches of at least three different breeds I’d never encountered before), but it suited my leisure needs more than any Washington D.C. suburb I’ve lived in. Toss in the danger factor that got many a panties wet, and I’d definitely live in a favela again.*

*As long as it had a 24-hour police protection and I was living on the edge of the favela, not inside it. It also must have high-speed internet, hot water, and reliable electricity, with nary a hint of raw sewage odor.

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A few people commented that he is a “loser” or “pathetic,” but I never thought that of him. Though he had his drug issues, I enjoyed his company and was truly saddened when he left. At risk of sounding gay, I looked forward to when he would come in my room to regale me with crazy stories from his past. Sometimes I even left my door halfway open to encourage him.

I can see how Karl could be considered a loser by most hyper-educated American office workers. He doesn’t have a car, a condominium, disposable income for fancy restaurant dining, and he certainly doesn’t have health insurance or a retirement savings. He’s not well-read. He goes against everything us Westerners are trained to become, but if I had a choice between spending a night with Karl or with educated Chad, the dutiful government contractor with pleasant features, I’m going with Karl every time. One is interesting and exciting while the other is safe and boring. A night out with Karl was a trip into the unknown, with a level of uncertainty that I had trouble handling at times.

I’m not trying to justify Karl’s lifestyle, but it works perfectly for him. He’s with the beautiful girl he wants, back in Colombia in the apartment that they share, doing his booze and drugs, barely working, hatching his next scam. He’s living his dream and I respect him for that. There’s not a lot of people I can say that for. Fact is most do what they’re told, not what they desire.

If I ever run out of things to write about, all I have to do is hit up Karl and tell him to start from the top. I think his life would be a very successful book. I’d definitely include his business plan on how to run a successful trans-Atlantic cocaine empire. It’s all about having a GPS system worked out, he said. What you have to do is…

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A few weeks went by when Karl booked a ticket back to Sweden. He wanted a good-paying job for a few months so that he could return and properly marry his girlfriend. He told me it would be “easy” for him to get a job on an oil rig in Norway, but I had my doubts since he had no oil rig experience. In fact he had no professional experience at all, unless you counted his internet scamming and operation of a bar that got shut down by the Greek authorities.

“Did you call Miguel for the weed?” I asked.

“Oh yeah I forgot. How many bags do you want?”

“Two. That should last me for the rest of my time here.”

“You still have a shitload from the first bag. Are you sure you need two?”

“It’s only $5 a bag. I might as well.” It crossed my mind that I’d have a lot of excess to get rid by the time I was ready to leave the country.

“Hey have you been to a casino yet?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“You know I forgot to tell you that casinos are pretty good for meeting girls. There was this American guy I knew that would only pick up girls in the casinos. I mean you go there and there’s a dozen beautiful girls just standing around, and if you’re a gringo who isn’t disgusting you’ll do well. All the other people who go there are deadbeats.”

“I’m kind of off gambling though. I always lose.”

“You really don’t need to gamble. Just play some slots and drink and talk to them. He got a lot of girls from that, and you have to think about why those girls are hired—for their looks. Let’s go now, you’re not doing anything.”

“Okay but I still have to cook dinner. That’s going to take about an hour.”

“Fuck you I’ll get you an empanada. But first let me do a pick-me-up.”

He was already pretty drunk from drinking beer and rum all day, but after he inhaled half a gram of coke he livened up real fast. He was swaying but surprisingly lucid.

We walked into the casino and there were a dozen girls in their tight outfits staring at us, looking bored out of their minds. There was more staff than gamblers.

We sat down at a $2.50 blackjack table with three other Colombians and cashed in $30 each. The blackjack action was far from world-class. A gentleman sitting next to Karl split everything, including 6′s when the dealer was showing a face card. The girl sitting next to him would stay on 12 when the dealer showed an ace. The third person would wait for the dealer to announce her count total before making a move. They kept losing and cashing in more money, at a rate of over $50 an hour. I wondered how people so stupid could have so much money to blow.

Karl and I were the only ones at the table who understood English. I was able to safely mouth off.

Let’s see what this idiot is going to do now.

What the fuck he’s messing up the deck!

Karl lost his $30 immediately, not winning a single hand. It was especially ironic since his job is to game online casinos. I hung in there and kept the drinks coming so he wouldn’t leave. We had some laughs in between moments when I refused to take his advice on how much to increase my bets, even though in the end it would have won me more money. Sometimes Karl annoyed me with his constant inebriation and potential to get my killed, but he was an addicting guy to have around and I knew I was going to miss him when he left.

When it was time to go home (I broke even), he told me he wanted to do some more coke. “You won’t be able to sleep if you do more,” I said.

“Oh it’s okay I have some Ambien.”

The next night was his second-to-last in Colombia. He invited his girlfriend and her family to the gringo mansion for a goodbye dinner. I came back from an impulsive visit to the casino after losing $50 at both blackjack and poker, the latter of which was especially embarrassing since I played in a table tournament and busted out on the first hand dealt. Inside the house I saw balloons and streamers decorating the living room. I took a meek peek inside. A large, half-eaten chocolate cake was on the coffee table with dirty plates surrounding it, and Daddy Yankee was playing at low volume on the portable stereo. Everyone stopped talking to look at me. I introduced myself to Karl’s girlfriend, her parents, her sister, her uncle, her two cousins, her sister’s boyfriend, her sister’s boyfriend’s sister, and a little 2-year-old who was chasing a balloon on the floor. They were friendly but stiff, as if something was wrong. Karl was not in the room.

I walked towards the kitchen to put away some avocados I bought on the street and saw Karl slumping against the wall in the hallway with his head gyrating back and forth. A bottle of beer was in his hand and he was mumbling something I couldn’t understand. True to form, Karl got completely trashed in front of his girlfriend’s parents.

The mother approached me in the kitchen and in a soft voice asked that I take care of him, but there was really nothing I could do. When some guys get drunk they simply can’t hear anything remotely connected to reason or logic, and Karl was way past that stage. The girlfriend’s family gradually left, whispering things to each other with concerned looks on their faces, and no one but the little toddler wore a smile. I felt bad for Karl’s girlfriend, who I doubt has ever been more ashamed in her life.

Every five minutes after that I heard a big crash when Karl fell on the floor in his bedroom. He’d howl my name and tell me to get dressed so we could go to a strip club. “Come on fucker I’ll buy you an empanada,” he repeatedly yelled. “I just need to do a pick-me-up and I’ll be fine. I’m fucking calling Miguel right now.” I closed my door and ignored him. It didn’t take very long for everything to become quiet.

The next day he came into my room groaning in pain. He looked old and beaten.

“I think you have a drinking problem,” I said. “The only time you should not get drunk is in front of your girlfriend’s parents, but you got the drunkest I’ve ever seen you.”

“No it’s these new pills I’m taking. They make me drunk really fast. I’m not used to them.”

“You’re blaming one addiction on the other! It’s just an excuse! Look I don’t care, but your girl has to have a heart of fucking gold after what you did last night.”

“Hah yeah she’s great.”

“Though honestly I’m getting used to your drug problems. Hey speaking of drugs did you call Miguel? I still would like those two bags of weed.”

“Look at you, you drug addict!”

“Please, once or three times a week is not an addiction.”

That night I was on my way out for a date with a cute girl I met at a local university. Karl walked me to the front door where his girlfriend was already waiting behind the gate. She was going to spend one last night with him before he left the country. It was only one day after the dinner party debacle and she was visibly angry, greeting him with the word borracho (drunkard).

“Well at least he’s not drunk right now,” I said, with a cheesy smile.

“Yes but he needs to change,” she said.

“Well maybe a little, but who doesn’t? He’s a great man and I’m lucky to know him.” I squeezed his shoulder like he was my best friend in the world (at that moment he was), and said goodbye. It was the last time I saw him.

The next day a 53-year-old American man with bad arthritis took Karl’s room after the maid decontaminated it with potent chemicals. He immediately asked me how to score some weed and pussy.

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Karl came into my room while I was working on my laptop. “Hey I’m about to call my drug dealer. You want anything?”

“Yeah a joint, a small one though,” I said. “What are you getting?”

“Some benzos. I have anxiety lately.”

“The shakes?”

“I don’t know what it is, but I’m trying to get off my Ambien addiction and it’s harder than I thought.”

“You can be addicted to Ambien?”

“Ooph yeah. Just one pill and it gives you a better high than cocaine—you feel light and happy. I started taking one a day to help me sleep, but after a month I was taking seven a day. The girl at the pharmacy knew me and had my Ambien ready when I came in because here you don’t need a recipe.”

“You mean prescription?”

“Yeah prescription. I got the Dutch guy hooked on it too.” He gave one of his deep laughs and then took a swig of beer. “I asked him if he wanted one to help him sleep and a month later he’s taking five a day. That’s why you’re only supposed to use it for a couple weeks, because more than that and you get addicted. I’m trying to wean myself off it and I’m down to two a day, but I was sitting in bed with the shakes and knew I needed something else.”

“So to fight your addiction to one drug, you use another drug?”

“Yeah it’s like using methadone to quit heroin. Soon you’ll be off both.”

“Yeah I’m sure this will work.” I let out a snort.

“It was getting so bad with the Ambien that I was using it during the day as an upper after a night of partying. I’d get up feeling miserable from alcohol and coke and just pop one. It’s great for hangovers.”

“It didn’t put you to sleep?”

“No not when I’m hungover. It makes me feel… normal.”

I wondered how many people Karl has gotten hooked on drugs. Possibly dozens. He’s convincing without being pushy, along the lines of “Just try it once and if you don’t like it then you don’t have to try it again, no worries.” But of course you’ll like it. I swore never to take any pills or coke from him.

One hour later we were in front of the patio waiting for his dealer.

“He’s a taxi driver but doesn’t make shit so he sells drugs on the side,” Karl said.

“How much does he make a day driving the taxi?”

“About 20,000 pesos.”

“That’s nothing!” It was about $300 a month, which would barely cover my food and coffee shop expenses.

“Yeah because he doesn’t own the car. If you don’t own your taxi it’s hard to make a lot of money.”

The taxi came and Karl went to the window to get his benzos. He then told me to pay 10,000 for the weed. I asked the taxi driver for his name to get on a friendly basis with him just in case. The driver slipped me something half the size of a cigarette pack and I immediately put it in my jean pocket. Back in the room I took it out and placed it on the table.

“Ooph look how much weed that is!” Karl said, laughing. It was a lot of weed, packed tightly inside a baggie wider than it was long.

“There’s at least fifteen joints of weed in there,” I said. “I just wanted one joint! What am I going to do with all this shit?!”

“Smoke it! Do some right now and make sure it’s good.”

Karl gave me a cigarette and showed me how to take out the filter, empty the tobacco, insert a roach on the filter end with a rolled up piece of business card, and then stuff the weed through the other end with a thin pen cartridge. The final step had to be done slowly to not tear the cigarette paper, which became very fragile after removing the tobacco. It was a laborious process that I’d repeat quite a few times because I couldn’t find a goddamn place that sold rolling paper anywhere in the city.

“Why is it so sticky? I don’t remember weed being like this,” I said.

Karl rubbed a clump between his fingers. “I’m not sure. Maybe because it’s organic, not like that hydro stuff you have in America.”

The joint was ready and I smoked it while Karl was hitting a high on his happy pills. I collapsed on the bed with a big grin on my face while Karl sat at my desk drinking a beer.

“Look at you, you’re high!” he yelled.

“Huh?”

“Huh?” Karl mimicked me. “Your mouth is about to fall off. Feels good?”

“Yeah it’s pretty good. I haven’t smoked in a while.”

“And look at the bag it’s like you barely touched it.”

“Huh?”

“Hey did I tell you about when I owned a bar on an island in Greece?”

“Nope.”

“We had a closet that we’d rent for sex, fifteen minutes at a time. It was on the menu, right underneath the martini drinks.”

“Did people use it?”

“Every night. Hey you mind if I roll a joint for myself?”

“Go ‘head.”

“But yeah the closet was so small you could only do doggy style. Me and my friends would target the out-of-town girls by giving them free drinks all night and then inviting them to the closet. I fucked a lot of girls like that. It was so great.”

I laughed for what seemed like forever.

CONTINUED: Part 5

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