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MUSEUM SUBMISSION 71-2005

She was working as a volunteer at an NGO in Rio de Janeiro. We were together for nearly a year. She moved into my apartment and got her visa renewed so she could spend more time in Brazil. Marriage really never came up, but we knew it was one way for her to get a permanent visa.

It was the first time we had spent Carnaval together in Rio. I tried to explain to her that crazy things happen. Like why do you think the government distributes condoms by the tens of thousands every Carnaval? There’s the heat and the drums and beer and caipirinhas and bodies and we know what’s on everybody’s mind. It’s not a normal time. When I told her this she looked at me in one of those lost-in-translation moments.

So this girl came up to me when we were at the Sambodromo and started dancing right next to me. Then she put her mouth to my ear and said she had been in a class with me at university. I didn’t remember her, but maybe she was. She kind of looked familiar. When I turned to respond, she started kissing me. And then I found that I was kissing her back and she pulled me to her and grabbed my ass and maybe I grabbed hers. For a minute I forgot about my American girlfriend standing right beside me.

That’s Carnaval. That’s what I’d tried to tell her.

I don’t know how much time passed. When I turned I saw my girlfriend take off through the crowd. I went after her but I couldn’t find her. It’s like thousands of people. I tried calling her mobile but she didn’t answer. I went back to where we were sitting and waited but she didn’t return.

She came back to my apartment two days later.

I asked if she was okay and she started kissing me and told me she was sorry and it didn’t matter and would I forgive her no matter what she did and pretty soon we were on the floor taking each other’s clothes off.

Later that same night, she packed and left. She wouldn’t tell me anything else. Where she was going, anything.

This is the condom package and the flyer they handed out that year at the Sambodromo. It was the health ministry’s way of getting back at the Catholic Church, which said that condoms promoted infidelity and promiscuity. The condoms came with this drawing of a friar, a nun, and a devil, that says: “Beyond good or evil, use condoms.”

I wrote her emails: two or three a day for weeks. Short ones: Write me, please. Please, I want to talk. Or: I miss you. Or, some days: I love you.

Sometimes I wrote longer ones. She never wrote back.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2005