Brazilian Flirting 101

The flirting scene here takes some getting used to, but once you catch on it's a hell of game. At first you notice that you're seeing couples kissing in public more often than you're used to. REALLY kissing. Couples locked in deep, open-mouth kisses that last for minutes, just right out in the open, on buses, on street corners, in bars.

THEN you notice that after the kiss finally ends (ten minutes later) they walk in opposite directions and each of them starts kissing somebody else!

So, the flirting here seems to pretty much START with deep kissing. Before you even know the other person's name. The kissing doesn't mean anything; it's almost an introduction, a game, a sport. Not all Brazilians play this game, but, in Lapa at least, most are ready and waiting. Once you catch on to the possibility, if you're a girl - of ANY age, I might add - you can walk up to any group of Brazilian guys in a music club (as long as they don't have girls on their arms), just stride right on up and you can practically grab one at random, even if they're right in the middle of sentence to somebody with their back to you, just grab them and turn them around and start kissing, without even saying hello. It's completely normal.

They're astonishingly fast on the uptake - they'll stop whatever they were saying to their friends, stop mid-sentence, and switch to kiss mode instantly.

If you're feeling a bit more formal, you can preface it with a polite "Boa noite, voce quer um beijo?" (Would you like a kiss?) That's all it takes.

And - this is the best part! - you can just walk away right afterwards. "Thanks! Have a good evening! Bye!"

And yeah, you can sure take it further if you wish! Especially around Carnaval; anything goes. I've just left it at the kissing myself - but I get an average of about one obvious opportunity (for more) every other night. And I'm 42. A friend of mine who is about a decade older is getting even more offers!

(Later when you get back to the States, the men seem bizarrely reserved, almost autistic. You start feeling insulted - "Why isn't anybody kissing me? Did I do something wrong?")

I was trying to explain all this to a young American boy who had just arrived for Rio for the Very First Time yesterday night. He got a demo soon enough. A bunch of people from our hostel, including him, were out to see some choro at Trapiche Gamboa. Tuesday is always the choro night at Trapiche Gamboa - always a fantastic bunch of musicians, with one of my favorite pandeiro players, a great mandolin and seven-string guitar, and a truly phenomenal sax player (one of the very best sax players in Brazil, reportedly ). Plus the club is lovely - a charming, three-story high, airy, brick-walled space filled with soft lights and tiny balconies. It's a soothing, calm, beautiful place, a great interlude between escola nights. And, it turns out, great cachaca. (A few of us have gotten on a kick of shots of straight cachaca. We ask for the best cachaca in the house and just have it straight up. It's cheaper and better than a caipirinha.)

After the last set, while the musicians were packing up, one of the musicians started SERIOUSLY giving the eye to one of my female friends from the hostel, who I will call Hostel Girl 1. I decided to help things along by inviting him over and sitting him next to her, and asking dozens of Perfectly Innocent Questions About Choro (I was the most Portuguese-enabled of the bunch, so it was up to me to keep the conversation flowing), and Oh By The Way, Have I Introduced You To My Girlfriend? One thing led to another and soon enough we had all piled in a cab together to Lapa. So sure enough, Choro Musician 1 & Hostel Girl 1 started making out madly in the back seat. There were FOUR of us in that back seat, mind you, me on one side and the fresh-off-the-plane American Boy on the other - the two of us shooting snickering glances at each other over the kissing couple.

We all ended up at a hopping little bar in Lapa. (You know the one. The one that's ALWAYS packed and chattering.) Two choro musicians and a bunch of hostel folks laughing ourselves silly after-hours over an enormous and growing stack of beer bottles. Me translating like crazy back and forth. It was a great translation experience - we got deep into a conversation about the worst swear words in both languages, and everyone was drunk and laughing (including me) the whole time, and yet I felt practically fluent, though that's probably the cachaca talking. Then, drinking terms. I was trying to explain the concept of "saidera" to the American - "It's the Brazilian word for the last drink of the evening, except, they always seem to have a first last-drink and then a second last-drink and then a third last-drink" ... I translated this for Choro Musician 2 and he agreed amicably "Saidera is like a friendly little lie that we tell ourselves." We were on maybe our third saidera and laughing about Choro Musician 1 creeping steadily closer to my Hostel Girl 1 again, when I realized there was an arm around my back: Choro Musician 2 moving in!

Choro Musician 1 said, about Choro Musician 2, "He's a great dancer," and Choro Musician 2 said "No, no, no, not really, I can't really dance that well. But I'm a great kisser!"

Well, there's really only one response to that, really, right? "Me mostra" - Show me!