<\/p>\n
Let me tell you this: it\u2019s difficult to feel sexual desire when you fear for your life. My girlfriend and I have spent ten sexless days at her parents house in S\u00e3o Paulo, and as she drives us in her family\u2019s Fiat through the late-night streets of Brazil, I think only of the muggings, the car jackings, the home robbery stories her family has related throughout the week. We\u2019re searching for a motel\u2014a particular one her best friend recommended, one she and her boyfriend have used many times even though they live here.<\/p>\n
In the United States, somewhere in the 1960s and \u201870s, our culture lost the subtle difference in meaning between a motel and a hotel. \u00a0In Brazil, the difference is clear, a firm line that separates the casual traveler seeking rest (the hotel) from a couple desperately trying to have sex in private (the motel). Even though my girlfriend is thirty-three and I\u2019m thirty-six, we\u2019re trying to escape, for one night, the watchful eyes and ears of her parents. I feel like a teenager searching for a room on senior prom night. Even if we lived in Brazil, we would probably still be under our parents\u2019 roofs because we\u2019re not married. For example, the best friend we left at the bar is a dentist in her thirties and lives with her parents. Not a dental assistant struggling to get by, a full-on dentist. Her boyfriend is also gainfully employed but lives with his parents as well. That\u2019s the culture. And it’s why motels are crucial in Brazil.<\/p>\n
While in the United States there are some motels that rent rooms by the hour, they immediately conjure prostitution and are the exception. In Brazil, motel rooms by the hour are the rule, and people don\u2019t necessarily associate them with prostitution, though that\u2019s not ruled out. Motels, for the most part, rent space by the hour for young Brazilian couples wanting to act like Portuguese explorers with one another\u2019s bodies or for lovers and their unscrupulous trysts\u2014the married boss and his secretary. \u00a0Or for one horny American tourist and his thin Brazilian girlfriend.<\/p>\n
You should know we\u2019ve spent the last ten nights at her parents\u2019 house in suburban S\u00e3o Paulo, only a few miles from here, sleeping on separate twin beds, too nervous to attempt anything beyond a goodnight kiss. You should also know that her immigrant Uruguayan parents only speak Portuguese and Spanish, and I\u2019ve only taken two semesters of Spanish. While I could easily order dinner from them and inquire as to where the bathroom is, I can\u2019t hold a real conversation. A few days ago, her father wanted to talk about WWII over beers in their lovely garden, but my command of the past tense failed us. They also communicate with my girlfriend through a form of combative argumentation, every sentence a firm declaration, which is totally foreign to me.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve ended up in the bedroom much of the time, on my assigned twin bed, napping and reading in order to avoid labored conversations and conflict. My girlfriend has reprimanded me several times for not trying hard enough to speak Spanish. After five minutes of conversation with her parents, I tend to stare at the wall while they speak to one another, interrupted in my spacing out only when her mother asks me a direct question.<\/p>\n
When we visit her friends, few of them attempt to speak English, and most don\u2019t know much Spanish, so I strain my ears during their conversations to pick out Portuguese and Spanish cognates. In these moments, I feel dumb. I smile and nod much of the time and understand what Japanese tourists\u2014minus the cameras\u2014must feel like in America. It\u2019s tiring.<\/p>\n
Even through all this, I still desperately want to see my girlfriend naked. I want to touch the smooth skin on the small of her back where it curves away from her spine up the slope to her perfectly round bottom.<\/p>\n
She makes a left turn and drives the car deeper into this neighborhood instead of back the way we came. \u201cMaybe we should just call it a night,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s got to be around here,\u201d she says. After a few more lefts and rights, to my relief, she heads toward the freeway, toward the safety of her parents\u2019 house. Toward more abstinence.<\/p>\n
Right before she reaches the freeway, our ticket to high speeds and safety, she makes another right. We drive on a frontage road parallel to the freeway, which is only one chain-link fence away from us. I stare at the freeway with desire. It\u2019s right there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I see some,\u201d she says. Up ahead, there are neon lights glowing in the softer lights of the neighborhood bordering the freeway.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it the one your friend suggested?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEric, relax,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
We get closer to the blurry neon lights and they become focused into shapes and designs not unlike vacancy signs back home. There are just exponentially more of them: red arrows pointing down a driveway lined with more red neon tubes, a white stripe-bordered planter box, an entire motel sign wrapped in a glowing blue line. They have names like \u201cMotel Free Love\u201d and \u201cMotel Belle.\u201d Large red lips adorn the Motel Belle\u2019s sign. We\u2019ve hit the motel jackpot. I lean forward and grab my seat with both hands.<\/p>\n
My girlfriend drives up and down the motel row. Back home, nothing good can come from cruising a motel row. \u201cWhat about that one?\u201d I say. It\u2019s the one with blue neon lights and a temporary banner strung up that reads, \u201cMotel Free Love,\u201d contradicting the main sign, which says, \u201cFree Love Motel.\u201d It\u2019s a matter of semantics, but the former sounds like the loving is free and the latter like the room is free. Out front sits a well-lit dead palm tree with one frond dangling.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t be serious, Eric. Look at it.\u201d She\u2019s right. She drives up the road and points to the Motel Belle, saying, \u201cI guess this one is fine.\u201d Even with the red lips on the sign and the red neon arrows leading down the hill, the long driveway with its ivy-covered stucco walls make it look somewhat posh, if such a thing can be said about a motel in Brazil. Earlier she made it clear that if I wanted the \u201cfull Brazilian motel experience,\u201d then I was paying. I hesitate as the car idles at the entrance to the Motel Belle. It\u2019s a well-established fact in our seven-month relationship that I can be tight with money. Frugal, my dad says. Major cheap ass, my siblings would say. But now is no time to be frugal or cheap.<\/p>\n
She pulls the car into the driveway, and we make the long descent. We arrive at what looks like a hybrid of a Four Season\u2019s guard gate and a McDonald\u2019s drive-thru. The woman at the guard gate asks my girlfriend what we want. We look at one another and giggle like children whose parents just found them playing doctor. Everyone involved in this transaction knows what we want, but there are options, and some rooms have extras such as a hot tub. We order the most basic room and receive a key.<\/p>\n
We drive into what looks like a mini-storage parking lot: rows of parallel pastel buildings with shiny corrugated metal garage doors that don\u2019t quite reach the roof or the cement floor. It looks like the garages are wearing silver half-shirts. The only door to the room is located inside the garage, for extra privacy, I guess. We pull in and I step out into the parking lot to take pictures of the buildings and garages. My girlfriend pokes her head out and smiles for the camera.<\/p>\n
Once inside the room, I can\u2019t stop laughing. I\u2019m not sure what I expected\u2014something like a plain American motel room?\u2014but it wasn\u2019t this. The bed has a row of red heart-shaped pillows dangling from a silver bar across the top, providing a comfortable headboard if things should get wild. The entire ceiling is mirrored, of course. Clean white sheets grip the mattress, which a thin plastic cover protects from fluids. There is no bedspread or blankets to speak of, no mistaking what\u2019s to take place here. Opposite the bed, massive dark red lips\u2014like those on The Rocky Horror Picture Show\u00a0movie poster\u2014dominate the wall and are parted to reveal a mirror. To the right of the mirror, in the middle of the room, is what can only be described as the \u201cporn tower\u201d: a red fireman\u2019s pole that, halfway down, houses a television\u2014playing nonstop porn movies\u2014and a fully stocked mini-fridge suspended in midair.<\/p>\n
Next to the bed, on a little glass shelf screwed chest-high to the wall, are various snacks and beverages: two bottles of wine, a red and a white; a small canister of original Pringles; a bag of Brazilian potato chips; regular M & Ms, Twix, a couple other candy bars I\u2019ve never seen, and a semi-phallic tube of Toblerone chocolates.<\/p>\n
Below the glass shelf, in the corner of the room, a two-tiered fake granite counter\/nightstand juts out from the wall. Arranged thoughtfully on the counter\/nightstand are various sexual aids: KY jelly; packaged oils in round plastic colored containers that look like finger paints; a packaged, realistic-looking strap-on dildo; and two kinds of packaged vibrators\u2014one realistic, the other a tapered church candle, batteries included. No joke, the brand of the vibrators and dildo is \u201cAmerican Dreams.\u201d \u00a0A laminated (of course!) menu of prices lies next to all these goodies. In the corner between the shelf of pre-and-post-coital snacks and the \u201clips of desire\u201d mirror hangs a leather sex swing. My girlfriend suggests, half-jokingly, that we try it. I wouldn\u2019t touch it with someone else\u2019s ass.<\/p>\n
When we exit the motel later, the gate guard will hold us, idling in the car, while she radios a room surveyor whose job is inventorying the room and radioing back, announcing not so discreetly the list of consumed items. At that point, I will be glad I don\u2019t enjoy sex toys, and it will be the only moment on this trip that I\u2019m happy I don\u2019t speak Portuguese.<\/p>\n
Like I said, I can\u2019t stop laughing in the room. Who finds this shit sexy? What elicits desire in individuals is so idiosyncratic, is composed of so many genres and subgenres, that you can\u2019t possibly appeal to everyone, but who decided dark red lips and heart shaped pillows are sexy? This is someone else\u2019s clich\u00e9d idea of what induces desire, not mine. For me, there\u2019s nothing sexier than a woman in a summer dress or, on the opposite end, a small T-shirt and some boy-shorts underwear, something that leaves a little mystery in the mix. I don\u2019t get the appeal of this room. By some standard, it may be considered the sexiest room in the world, but I\u2019ve never felt less sexy in my life. For me, it\u2019s like wanting to have sex at Disneyland surrounded by cartoon characters (which for some people, I\u2019m sure, is sexy). In fact, I\u2019d rather have sex at Disneyland than in this room; at least I\u2019d be fetishizing the place and not feel like the place was fetishizing me.<\/p>\n
While I\u2019m sure motels and hotels in the U.S. are home to nearly as much sex as these motels in Brazil, there isn\u2019t anything there to remind you of other people\u2019s experiences. Even in a Motel 6, there is always a false sense, once you remove the unwashed bedspread, that you are the first person to ever stay in that room, that you are a trailblazer of mediocre hotel rooms. That\u2019s not possible here. It feels more like an adult bookstore than a clean motel room. Whatever desire and sexual frustration we felt over the past ten days evaporates, and we lounge about opposite sides of the bed, never touching.<\/p>\n
Apparently, our neighbors aren\u2019t having any trouble getting into the mood. We hear animalistic male grunting and female screaming filtered only by sheetrock and tile. I look at my girlfriend lying on the white sheets, and we both laugh. \u201cThis is crazy,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re paying for the room, so we might as well use it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
I walk over to the mini-fridge and take out a reasonably priced Brahma beer. I crack the top and take large gulps while sitting on the corner of the bed facing the porn tower. My girlfriend flips from one station to the next. \u201cAre there any channels showing something besides porn?\u201d I ask. She finds one showing a semi-scrambled soccer match. \u201cThat\u2019s better,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
I down the rest of my beer and think about opening another one. \u201cEric, love, come here.\u201d It takes some time and some kissing that feels like a junior high school make-out session, but we finally get around to doing what we came here to do. Nothing about it seems quite right. I don\u2019t feel like myself. I feel like an actor. Like people are watching me perform the most intimate act a human can experience. I feel extra exposed and vulnerable. So naked. How do the people on the television do this?<\/p>\n
At one point, when I open my eyes, it\u2019s as if I\u2019m floating above the scene. While I\u2019m flat on my back looking up, I\u2019m staring down at my girlfriend\u2019s back in the ceiling mirror, my legs seemingly growing out of her bottom, my dumb face poking out from the side of her head. We are the pre-separated four-limbed human duad Aristophanes describes in Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/em>, not yet separated by Zeus for our hubris. Yet her and I exist on separate planes, having separate experiences. And I know our relationship, though it will survive this night, will not last because we are too different, our personalities too polar.<\/p>\n Watching us flailing there, trying to live up to the atmosphere of the room, I can see just how ridiculous, how un-sexy we all can be in the wrong context.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “It\u2019s difficult to feel sexual desire when you fear for your life.\u00a0I think only of the muggings, the car jackings, the home robbery stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-eric-parker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8938"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11627,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8938\/revisions\/11627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}