Wild Abandon

A reader recently wrote in that she felt my recent posts were lacking my usual ‘wild abandon.’ I thoroughly appreciated her insight and in an attempt to redeem myself, figured I’d divulge a recent experience below.

Since my emotional state of well-being often resembles the sine graph (for those who you who don’t remember what that is or failed high school math, click here for a visual), it’s not uncommon for me to spend one night in, alone, wallowing in misery and the next sporadically strapping on stiletto boots and singing annoying things to my girlfriends like the ‘Party All The Time’ song, which FYI is also a highly amusing video.

On this particular night, I was feeling pretty neutral but forced myself out since I’d promised my friend Femme that I’d help her model / promote these clothes (don’t ask) that a designer friend of hers had wanted us to wear out. We were going to Lollipop (which I just wrote a review of here), but getting together at her apartment first to drink and don our outfits.

I’ve written before about pheromones and how I’m utterly fascinated by them. Technically defined, pheromones are “a chemical secreted by an animal that influences the behavior or development of others of the same species, often functioning as an attractant of the opposite sex.” Well, my pheromone alert button starting wailing at an emergency level the moment I entered Femme’s apartment. This isn’t something that happens often. I had to do a 360 scan to visually locate the apparent object of my desire. I looked right, left, then BOOM – dead center in front of me beyond Femme’s open kitchen, I saw my guy.

Next I was confused because this guy was not my type at all (an article discussing my type available here) but it’s essentially classy, euro casual, long hair, slightly taller than me but not too tall. The man my pheromones directed me too, while goodlooking, was outrageously tall, non-euro, and sporting a shaved head.

Huh?

Pheromones have a way of bringing people together quickly, so it didn’t take long until we were talking and I learned he was from Brasil. Suddenly, this made slightly more sense. I recently caught South America fever and in the past six months have traveled to Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. We therefore had a lot to say to each other. We chatted until I was dragged upstairs to change my outfit. My girlfriends stripped, prodded and changed me, warring over whether I should wear this stylish headband that I felt made me look like a pirate.

This headband was so tight that by the time we got to Lollipop, I felt like it was molesting my brain. I took it off so I could focus fully on chatting with the Brazilian – the only social activity either of us had been engaged in for the past hour. Now however, we’d dangerously entered bottle service land. It was also a Saturday so there was no reason not to consume drinks with bravado. I’d been switching between vodka and champagne all night and stared at the Brazilian aghast when he proceeded to pour a flute of Vueve into my mixed vodka drink. As if I wasn’t already wasted, now I was drinking vodka flavored champagne.

As I emphasized in my review, Lollipop’s shoe box level small so it’s practically impossible not to invade other people’s personal space. So put the equation of pheromones, Saturday night, drinks, and small space together and you get touchy-feely with someone pretty fast. What’s amazing about the Brazilian people is their utter directness in regard to love/sex. It’s not uncommon for someone just to look you square in the eye after knowing you ten minutes and proclaim:

“I like you.”

This often leaves Americans dumbfounded because we feel you should go on a date, hold hands, watch football and attend a barbeque before making blanket statements this bold. It’s hard to take a comment like that seriously because the person barely knows you. The flip side is: In all seriousness, don’t we form a subconscious opinion on someone in about ten seconds flat? We are animals. Our general instincts about somebody are usually right.

So in Brazilian style, after what must have been at least three hours of ‘get to know you’ time, he moved for a kiss, which I darted. I’m always out seeing people I know and truthfully pretty shy about sexual things, so never engage in the public make out move. I find PDA of all forms annoying so remain super hesitant to engage in it myself (unless of course I’m madly in love and accidently flaunting my happiness…that doesn’t happen often either.) I did my best to explain this to him and he smiled at me with warm eyes:

“Don’t worry. I totally understand,” he said. Before I could heave a sigh of relief he added, “I’ll wait for you in the bathroom.”

He then disappeared down the stairs while I double-taked.

I responsibly labeled myself incapable of handling the situation so deferred to my ever faithful roommate Tatas, who naturally let out some sort of squeal when I told what just happened.

“Go down there!” she urged.

I felt pretty uncomfortable because while some may think “it’s not a big deal, it’s just a kiss,” I am one of those people who doesn’t kiss lightly. I don’t recreationally make out. If I go as far as to kiss you, it means I’m all the way in, and would probably be pleased to do many other things together as well. So for me, a kiss is essentially my mental point of no return. Which is why I was quaking in my heels as I crept down the stairs.

His strong arms instantly appeared and swept me into the bathroom. Before I even had a chance to open my mouth, his lips were on mine in a pheromonal frenzy. The best part of this story is that he was wearing / modeling this designer’s clothing as well, and therefore in dress pants and a dress shirt. Since I’m a fan of checking out what you’re dealing with ASAP, I began unbuttoning his shirt (I mean, that just seemed like the correct next move when you’re in a bathroom making out with a Brazilian.) Then I had my second head spin of the evening when underneath the designer linen I revealed tattoos, nipple piercings, the works. I think I physically took a step backward and made a ‘Time Out’ hand signal.

I had no words.

The formal attire was just such a shocking contrast to what I found underneath that I felt helplessly confused.

“Yeah,” he explained, “I used to everything pierced.” He motioned to his ears and face. “These are all that’s left cause no one can see them.”

I remained dumbfounded and uncomfortable, but finally turned to confront our paused reflections in the bathroom mirror. For some reason it hit me that my mother would utterly disapprove this man without his shirt on…and that is perhaps the steamiest, sexiest thought in the universe. So I just grinned glided back toward his mouth, then helping him rebutton before we rejoined our friends upstairs for a long night out.

Beat Me With Bay Leaves, Baby

Why enjoy a traditional massage with aromatherapy candles and elevator music when you can get the shit beaten out of you by a Russian sumo-wrestler in two-hundred degree heat?

I’ll explain.

This past weekend, my friend Jewel took me waaaay downtown on an adventure to a banya, the Russian version of a hamam or Turkish bath. I was full steam onboard with this plan since I’m a steam room junkie. Nothing feels as fabulous as sweating out your toxins before catapulting yourself into freezing water, then slowly getting warm again. Since I have zero circulation and am chronically cold, the steam room’s extreme temperatures actually serve to help me normalize. And let’s not forget my ultimate fantasy is sweaty, slithering sex in Turkish bath, an unfulfilled daydream that I imagine works infinitely better in my imagination than in reality.

So Jewel and I slipped into our bikinis and began exploring the spa like curious children. There was a dining area, a lounge, a billiards table, an area to watch sports, a swimming pool, Jacuzzi and then steam rooms, saunas and baths all of varying temperatures. Essentially an adult playground.

We lounged in the steam and then the sauna gossiping while sprawled out like infants until it was time for our massage, by massage I mean beating.

Jewel is already deeply addicted to this ritual so tried to prep me for what I was about to experience.

“You’re in the hottest sauna of two-hundred degrees and they beat you with hot, wet bunches of leaves.”

Me: “Does it hurt?”

Her: “Yeah.”

Me: “Why leaves?”

“It increases circulation. It’s also a purification ritual.”

Back in the day, the bath houses were apparently all about religious practice and spiritual cleansing. Don’t ask me for details since I’m clueless, and Wikipedia and I are on a relationship break this week (we had a fight). But I find the whole topic fascinating. We decided Jewel would go first so I could watch the whole process from start to finish before being subjected to it myself.

A very large Russian man in a bathing suit and what looked like a straw elf cap laid Jewel down before beating the crap out of her with two fists of leaves. He was pounding away as if she were a pair of bongo drums. Soon, I was subjected to the same thing and flipped over so he could pound my front side as well. My thought throughout the whole thing:

“It’s really hot; if I don’t pass out and have to have a stretcher take me out of here, I’m a winner.”

Because it is really hot. When your massage (I mean beating) ends, you’re so dizzy your Russian wrestler has to essentially carrying you to the freezing water pool as if you were blind. Getting dumped into a vat of ice cold acqua is subsequently the best feeling on earth. You get out quickly though, because your skin is tingling on a painful level.

My Russian then grabbed me by the back of the neck and forced my head under a cold shower for a few minutes. Then he instructed me to lie in one of the cooler steam rooms for ten minutes.

Those ten minutes may have been the best of my life. You know how in drug movies you see people shoot up heroin and then just pass out in ecstasy. I felt like I finally understood what they were going through. My head pounded with perhaps the largest endorphin release of my life. My body tingled. I could feel my circulatory system actually functioning. I could feel the blood gushing through my veins. Honestly, I could’ve probably laid there looking at that wooden, dripping ceiling till 2010, but my body eventually instructed me to go get water.

So we sprawled out in the lounge area hydrating and munching on delicious watermelon. My glow lasted for days and I left the place revitalized, healthy, and feeling like someone in a Neutrogena commercial.

Cost of the whole Russian bath day, entrance to beating to food…around $75. When you consider one facial in Manhattan is $100, this could be an affordable addiction.

It's still me, Bartok!

So, after nearly 2 weeks of silence, I have finally gotten word from Miss Model Behavior!!! Since her departure, an unfamiliar silence with echoes of loneliness and an impending sense that I am destined to be an old cat lady, has descended over my life in the absence of our almost constant contact - as only good friends who live in different cities and therefore could never get sick of each other because we only see each other once a month - can tolerate. We do also switch up the mode of communication we exercise no discrimination or favoritism between our three main modes of communication: phone calls, text messages, and emails. On the upside, this technological vacation that has been imposed on my life as a result of her departure has opened up my schedule, and increased my level of productivity, letting loose all sorts of creatitity, ambition, and alternative occupations. In addition to having joined the BBC French Steps program in an effort to ajouter le français to my repetoire of romance languages, one of my favorite past times over the past two weeks has been trying to imagine, as my Italian cohorts would say, che fino ha fatto Miss Model Behavior. My three winning theories - assuming that she was not abducted or beaten to death with tropical fruits by fellow travellers because of her good fortune in chooseing the lone functional pay phone in the Miami airport, and did manage to leave the country - were that she had:

1. Died of too much fun. That perhaps on the yacht of some South American prince, maybe surrounded by the new line of Calvin Klein models, or, perhaps, if she was really lucky, in the company of the boys from my Dieux du Stade calendar (it's hanging next to my desk right now, I tell my boss it's for inspiration). Who knows, maybe she was finally overwhelmed by the amount of fun she was having and spontaneously combusted! I mean, it's feasible...




2. Gotten married and had ran away to some exotic and remote island like Fiji or the Quirimbas Archipelago. I, personally, happen to have an overwhelming and inexplicable interest in both places. Should this be the case, Miss MB would currently be surrounded by servants who are fanning her, attractive young men, and dressed like an empress. This is the saddest possibility for me, since, although still alive and happy, she would clearly have no intention of ever coming home.




3. That she never actually made it to Punta, but was lured away with the trick of some kind of linguistic misunderstanding due to the language barrier, and walked right into her own kidnapping. Who knows, she could be being held hostage somewhere in Buenos Aires as we speak. This theory does not have the sense of tragedy that the other two do, but the idea of her attempting to negotiate her way out of a situation like this using fragments of whatever language most resembled that of her captors and maybe some charades is entertaining. There is also the potential for some romantic rescue and happy ending in this theory too. No pain, no gain.

To my great relief none of my very rational and well developed theories are true! I received an email from Miss MB yesterday evening stating that she was back on the mainland of South America, bouncing around the country of Argentina for her remaining days in the Southern Hemisphere.

As I have been fantasizing about the fun that every other 20-something girl is having, while I, alone, suffer through monotonous days of responsibility and obligation and am forced to brave the misery of non-tropical January weather (BTW, thanks to all the hard work of previous generations and their efforts to pollute our planet, global warming has finally reached a point where the city of Washington, D.C. appears to be on the same thermostat as my apartment - it’s been in the mid 60’s all week). I have created a conception of Punta to be some sort of isla bonita de Sheer-Delight-and-Party. This fantasy of mine has, somewhat, taken over my mind, at least to the extent of replacing my games of virtual chess at work, and Punta has become some kind of mythical land that exists somewhere over the rainbow, requires a treasure map to reach, and is inhabited only by people whose company and compansionship I enjoy, or think I might enjoy based on similar interests (see photo at top of post).

Needless to say, my days are pretty dull.

So, to give you a feel for the island as it exists in reality, and prove that this isn't another one of my delusional attempts to entertain myself, I have included some quotes from Miss MB’s email:

“There has been some rain so we’re hoping weather will get better. When sunny is heaven.”

“The parties are out of this world, I actually have redefined the definition of party after this trip.”

And for sentimental reasons as well as for any of you who can relate to this sentiment,

“I miss writing soooooo much and would kill to be at a computer long enough to do an entry. Punta was incredible!!!!!”

So, there you have it, proof that Miss Model Behavior survived the first part of her escape from reality, seemingly unharmed. In fact, she may be returning, as anyone should from travels in foreign lands and cultures, optimistic (see quote 1); with a broadened or altered perspective on one's own culture or humanity as a whole (quote 2); and both re-enthused and energized about our own occupations and reality (quote 3). All signs point to her trip being a great success!

Just for a little variation and contrast, I’ll write more about my own life later.