Rio de Janeiro: First Time With an Escort

Until my first trip there in March of 2003, I had three images of Rio de Janeiro in my mind: Carnival debauchery, the huge statue of Christ, and pristine beaches whose names I didn’t know. Copacabana, to me, was a Barry Manilow song. I also knew the song “Girl from Ipanema”, but I didn’t know it referred to a beach in Rio. Half the time I’d confuse Rio with Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It was Ian who’d paved my way, bombarding me and his other friends with emails about the prostitutes he’d met abroad. He’d go to Latin America every few months. Then he’d work himself into a funk comparing his ease overseas at finding a Girlfriend Experience (GFE) to his lack of success with American women. “They treat you like a king in Rio” he’d tell us. “Of course they do”, we’d snicker. “You’re paying them to.” We’d tell him that there was nothing wrong with enjoying himself while on vacation, but that he had to stop living there in his mind when he was home. He needed to push himself more to meet women in New York.

As if I were qualified to preach on the topic. I’d screwed up all of my major relationships, and now I was having a rough time even getting dates. But dry spell or not, I liked going out, and after a few beers, I enjoyed the challenge of approaching women. If one could compile a scorecard of these approaches since I’d started going out in my late teens, the number of rejections would no doubt be staggering. Still, I’d met most of the girls I’d dated–including the three I’d come closest to marrying–in the nightclubs and bars of New York City and its suburbs. But now, I was in my late thirties and, like Ian, I was wondering what the hell I had to show for it.

Ian would often urge me to travel with him to Brazil. But no matter how lonely I felt, I still couldn’t justify taking a ten-hour flight to purchase sex. I didn’t even do that at home, unless you counted buying porn. I’d hone with a hooker once–a friend bought me a hand job by the West Side Highway for my eighteenth birthday. She had fingers like sandpaper, which was just as well, because the AIDS epidemic was just getting underway in America, and the last thing I needed was develop a taste for the ladies of the night.

So to me, there were two types of prostitutes: disease-ridden, drug-addled streetwalkers who couldn’t pay me to sleep with them, and gorgeous call girls who were beyond the limits of my bank account.

Ian claimed that Rio’s garotas de programa (“program girls”, Brazilian slang for prostitutes, in honor of their having a schedule, or program, of appointments with clients) occupied a magic middle ground: call girl quality at streetwalker prices. But I still wasn’t sold. Pursuing women was as much about validation as sex. What good would paying for it do? Was that the only way I could get laid? If anything, I thought it would make me feel disgusted with myself.

“GFE” was Ian’s mantra. “If she likes you, it’s almost like dating” he said. “She’ll see you when she’s not working. Shit, she’ll travel with you around the country if you want.”

“You still pay the girls for their time, right?”

“Depends how much they like you. You take them out to eat, of course. And they love presents. Clothes, toys for their kids, little knick-knacks.” Ian would scour the cheap gift shops in Manhattan’s Chinatown before a trip to Rio and load up on junk for the garotas.

I was sure there was more than a bit of self-delusion in Ian’s glowing depiction of Rio. But I’d been thinking about going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and Ian’s obsession with Rio got me thinking about Carnival. The Catholic holiday right before Lent, Carnival comes from a Latin phrase that essentially means “last chance for meat”. But seeing as it has evolved into one of the wildest festivals on the globe, it’s probably no longer the kind of flesh fest that the Church had in mind.

Like Ian, I initially saw Carnival as an opportunity to meet “normal” women–tourists or locals fired up by the anything-goes atmosphere.

I got a good deal at the Guanabara Palace, a hotel in Centro, Rio’s business district. Ian had arrived in town two days before me, and was staying in an apartment in Copacabana.

I phoned him after I checked in. As if he’d been sitting by the phone for hours, obsessing over the opportunity to take me to Help Discoteca, Rio’s hooker central and his favorite stomping ground, the first thing out of this mouth was “We have to go to Help tonight”.

“Hooker heaven, right?” I asked.

“Say garotas. It sounds better.”

“You don’t understand” I said. “It’s my first night. I want to meet regular girls.”

“Joe, everything’s open all night. We’ll go to Help for a little while, then somewhere else.”

I took a bus to Avenida Atlantica and walked toward Help’s yellow neon sign, about a quarter-mile ahead. As I passed by the Marriott and other large hotels, I noticed that the weather was comfortable, though it was the height of Brazilian summer. It felt like New York City in May, but without the brutal tropical humidity I’d expected.

The sidewalk in front of Help Discoteca was thicket of street commerce: old women selling beers from Styrofoam coolers; barefoot kids waving gum and cigarettes in my face or thrusting out their hands for money; teens with shoe-shine boxes. Ian had warned me about those. I spotted Ian and we got on line. Help was set way back from the street, and the line stretched nearly to the curb.

I scanned the crowd, surprised, despite what Ian had told me, by the lack of girls dressed trashy-sexy, like streetwalkers do in the States. There were a few like that, sure, but most–in tight skirts, high heels, and belly shirts–were dressed no more provocatively than girls in any large city out for a night of partying. Some of the girls were beautiful, but a greater number were just attractive–again, just like in any big club. I had yet to fall under Rio’s reputed spell.

“You sure they’re prostitutes?” I asked Ian.

“I told you” he said. “The garotas look like college girls.”

“Most of these girls are not garotas. They can’t be.”

“Ninety-nine percent. I know, because I’ve been with lots of the girls here.”

The walls inside Help were a canopy of metallic blue discs. As we headed to the bar, Ian pointed to the love seats on the catwalk above. “That’s where you get to test-drive the girls a bit.”

I had my first caipirinha, Brazil’s national cocktail. It tasted like crap, but its cachaca (a liquor similar to rum) was strong enough to give me the quick buzz I wanted. Now everyone became more alluring. As I watched the garotas gyrate to samba and other Latin rhythms, I started to understand why Brasileiras are widely considered to be the sexiest women on earth.

I often get an exaggerated sense of power when alcohol first hits me, and I got it in my head that I could score with these girls without “tainting” the achievement by paying them. Hookers or not, they were still human and would be susceptible to my charms, I foolishly reasoned.

Not quite! I approached six or seven girls, none of whom fell for my charms. Getting rejected by any girl stings. But a prostitute? It’s an exquisite form of devastation, like getting slammed in the balls with a Louisville Slugger. What the hell was I doing here?

Eventually, I’d figure out that Help’s garotas have a sixth sense about men who don’t intend to honor the rules. And the cardinal rule, of course, is no pay, no play.

I went back to Ian, who had settled in by the bar. He was already holding hands with a petite brunette. She was smiling at him, hardly noticing me. “This is Silvia” Ian said. “Remember? I emailed you the photo.”

He’d emailed it about a thousand times. Ian had this habit of repeatedly clicking the send button. Not only that, but he’d send it to all of my email addresses–home, work, etc., just to make sure I got it.

“We’re going” Ian said. “Are you okay?”

“Where are we going?”

“No I’m leaving with Silvia. Is that okay?”

“Yeah. When are you coming back?”

Ian chuckled. “Not tonight. Stay here as long as you want. You’re in fucking Paradise now.”

I still had doubts about that but I kept them to myself.

“Just make sure you take a cab to your hotel” Ian said. “Don’t take a bus this late. I’ll call you tomorrow?”

“Sure” I said. I was angry, but I wasn’t about to make Ian my babysitter.

I had enough of Help, though. I left the club and wandered through Terraco Atlantico, the sidewalk cafe next door. It was teeming with garotas. But they were friendlier, or at least more aggressive, than the ones in Help. “Hey, baby” a girl said as she grabbed my crotch. “To where you wanna go?” This was more like it. Her friend also rubbed my fly. “Safado” she cooed. Brazilian hookers were always calling gringos “safado” which literally means “shameless”. It’s slang for a super-horny motherfucker who can’t keep his dick in his pants. Depending on the context, “safado” could be high praise, meaning that you’re a sex machine who they’d adore having between their legs. Other times it was a garota’s way of calling you a cheating bastard who just wants to screw everything that moves.

This particular garota was one of the girls who’d blown me off in Help. Fuck you, I felt like saying. You had your chance.

I made my way toward a pair of girls sitting near the hedge. One of the girls had light-brown hair and a silk blouse with diagonal black and pink stripes. She smiled. “American?”

I nodded. “New York.”

She introduced herself as Antoinette and asked me to sit. Her friend was tired and left after a few minutes. I was amazed at how well Antoinette spoke English. She seemed awfully poised for a working girl, and looked thirty-two or thirty-three, older than most of the garotas I’d seen that night. Maybe she was just in town for Carnival, and I’d stumbled onto a chance, I stopped myself from asking straight off if she was “working”.

The more we spoke, the more turned on I got. She was from Sao Paulo, where she owned a beauty parlor and taught dancing. She had a three-year-old daughter whom she couldn’t wait to get back to. Now and then, Antoinette would sprinkle our conversation with Portuguese to help me practice.

“E voce?” she asked.

“Wait. I know what that means–and you.”

“Perfeito! What do you do?”

I was working at the time for an advocacy group that fought for tougher laws against crime. “We need that here” Antoinette said. “Crime in Brazil is terrible.”

A chunky man with his arms around a blonde and a brunette waddled by on the sidewalk just beyond the edges. He barely came up to his dates’ chins, and his toupee kept kicking up in the ocean wind. The didn’t dampen the girls’ apparent zeal for leaning over and kissing him on the mouth, though.

Meanwhile, a muscular young American at the next table told his friends “I did one of those girls last night”. His pals high-fived him. Maybe “doing business” with the garotas wasn’t so bad. Everyone seemed into it, even these jock-types who I imagined had no problem getting laid back home.

I was beginning to feel more relaxed about being in Rio, and hoped that Antoinette would make an encouraging gesture, like touching my knee or cheek. But she limited things to conversation. Soon, though, she moved her chair closer (“Is this okay?” she asked) and brushed my hair back with her fingers. “I can see your eyes better now.”

“Do you want to… um… ?” I asked.

“Yes Joe?”

“Um… go somewhere?”

She smiled. “Go where?”

“I feel weird asking you, but to my hotel.”

“This is possible.”

I still wasn’t sure what was going on. Were we talking business, or was Antoinette genuinely attracted to me?

“I need to ask you something first, and I hope you won’t be offended” I said.

“Yes?” She had a knowing grin.

“It’s just that, given where we are, with all the garotas and…”

She held her finger to my mouth. “Yes, Joe. I come to Rio to make program.”

“But you don’t seem like the other girls here.”

“I only do this for Carnival and the New Year’s” she explained. “Or when I have a client in Rio.”

Antoinette said that most work in Brazil, even owning your own business, paid shit. She made more money in a few weeks as a prostitute than at her other jobs the rest of the year.

“I’ve never been with a garota” I said. “Do we talk money first?”

“If you want. Or we can do that later. In the morning.”

“But what if I don’t have enough?”

She played with my hair again. “You worry about everything, don’t you?” she said. “If I was only concerned about making the most money, I would not have relaxed here with you all this time. This is your primeira vez–first time–in Rio. All you should think about is enjoying it.”

Back at the hotel, it was impossible not to enjoy it. Antoinette peeled off her blouse to reveal a flat tummy and small, beautifully shaped breasts. Can breasts have personality? They seemed perky as hell when Antoinette was bouncing on me. Bouncing, like a kid on a trampoline, deliriously happy.

In the morning, she asked what I wanted to pay.

“Is $60 good?” I meant it just as an opening bid, and was stunned that she accepted it without negotiation.

Ian would later tell me that he was also surprised: “Most of the girls by Help want to bang out a deal as soon as they meet you. They ask for ‘$200 American’ which is insane and they know it. Then you laugh at them–but warmly, as if you know they’re joking–and say ‘$200? I’ll give you $40′.”

“For a whole night? Shit!” I said. “I paid too much.”

“No, forty is low” Ian explained. “Remember, you’re negotiating. Usually, it’ll end up somewhere between $60 and $100. But your girl didn’t even try to bargain. She’s probably counting on you for repeat business. As well as gifts, dinner.”

“She’s well worth it” I said. “She’s incredible.”

“I told you” Ian responded. “You’ve got the bug.”

He was right, too. Antoinette had ended my aversion to prostitutes. The transaction hadn’t made me feel at all like a loser. Instead, she had lifted the curtain on a sexual Disney World. Sure, I’d had to pay. But for one of the most thrilling encounters of my life. And there were countless attractions here yet to explore.