KillerWhalePettingZoo

photographed by Ben DeCamp

After going out for 23 nights in a row (personal record) I came to realize that a lot of guys are approaching women in the wrong way. Actually the approach is usually not an approach at all, the typical first step is to buy all your bros and anyone in 3ft vicinity over-priced vodka Red Bulls and hope that girls think you have enough money to flaunt that they will come over and sit on your lap. My Australian friend loves vodka Red Bulls, we were in a club in Brazil and he kept guzzling them down and serving them to gorgeous brunettes. The club scams you because they set you up with a tab on some sort of debit card. So every time you buy a drink it adds up onto your imaginary credit, no cash exchanged. It’s genius. The cover is $40, each drink is $10. He had eight or ten of those concoctions and then lost the card. Well it wasn’t lost; some overeager slum lord picked it up and kept swiping away till it maxed out at $300. They figure if you’ve reached 30 cocktails, you’re probably dead.

By sunrise he lost his wallet. Earlier in the night I had had enough of the samba music, so I took a city bus back to Ipanema. There weren’t any girls like in that dorky song, and I got off at the wrong stop. I was deep in Copacabana walking 5 miles back to our apartment through dimly lit streets, on what the Travel Channel rates as “The Most Dangerous City in the World.” I wasn’t really sure how you earn a rating like that, but I figured it would eventually present itself.
The other approach guys use is what I call “wolf pack.” If you travel with enough bros maybe one will become the alpha-wolf and break off while the rest of the baby-wolves cheer him on as the vodka surges through his veins to talk to the hottest girl in the…oh wait, she’s a cocktail waitress. She’s paid to flirt with me. Fucking Christ.
I started running down the middle of the road swinging my shirt around in the air like I was at Super Bowl XXXIVIXXIVIX. This was appropriate because 3 or 4 guys were pursuing me. I don’t know if it was 3 or 4 because even if one person is following me (now at 5am) in “The Most Dangerous City in the World” I ought to be concerned. I figured the only tactic I had besides fashioning a toothbrush prison shank would be to act so crazy they’d think I was a one-man-death-squad and quickly disperse.

The whole wingman thing usually works pretty well, but I found the best way is to roll with an inflatable one. That way you don’t look so creepy because you have a buddy and he’s not trying to cut in on your ass quota. I was supposed to pawn off the blondes, while he gave me the brunettes. But the shark seems to get laid more than me, so the whole 50/50 deal kinda went down the drain. Someone was pounding on the door at sunrise, I figured the Australian brought home one of the Adriana Lima hookers…
I took off my shirt and continued swinging it wildly around in the pouring rain. I ran as fast as I could in sporadic circles down the center of the road and kicked a few metal garbage cans over just for effect. The guys looked at each other and for all I know probably said something in Portuguese like “What the fucking hell? Let’s go get a Chicago deep dish pizza.” They stopped following me after a while and I made it back to the pad where the derelict security guard laughed at my story, not because it was funny but because he couldn’t understand English and my wild hand gestures after waking up from a 6-hour nap.

Two timelines are converging now, when I get back from the club soaking wet, and when my kangaroo wingman stumbled in. The pounding didn’t turn out to be him with a beautiful Brazilian, it was the club owner (some feminist fuckwad) and two gigantic Ju-Jitsu Jedi bouncers lifting my wingman six inches off the ground and demanding to go to the ATM. Bank of America had frozen my account several days prior for irrational foreign spending (via plane tickets, steak restaurants, and hooker nightclubs). I couldn’t figure out a Brazilian payphone to save my life. I bought some imaginary tokens and turned my laptop into an international satellite phone. I Skyped Bank of America’s 1-800 number and some asshole in India answered. I didn’t know what to do, could barely hear him and certainly didn’t know what the hell he was saying. The Australian and the three Brazilians were all tense, poised on the edge of the bed, anticipating my next move; I broke out into a sweat. I couldn’t figure out where the mic was; I just kept yelling into the screen at some imaginary Indian and hitting the keyboard for effect, occasionally glancing over to judge their reaction. Either they thought that I was fucking crazy or they had plans to beat my roommate in the alley. I wasn’t sure, but thank God they eventually left; so I walked downstairs and sat at the default smoothie shop. I didn’t even like the smoothies there, but the juice bar was strategically positioned between two of the largest gyms in Rio, which meant guaranteed ass at 7am.