BLOCO!!!

I went to my first Bloco last weekend!  Yay!

Actually, I'm going to backtrack to a day before the Bloco, which was Saturday.  I came home from doing something boring... I think it was looking for a multifunction copy/scanning/faxing/printing/does-the-washing-up machine with my mum.  It had been pissing with rain all day.  I was in a bad mood, possibly because I was starting to suffer from cabin fever as a result of spending more time with my mother than is healthy at my age.

I got a text as I walked in the door from my new friend Kelly (Brazilian: friend-of-another-Brazilian-friend from London).  She had already mentioned the Bloco thing on facebook for Sunday, but as far as I was aware, I was having another 'cozy' night in with my mother in front of the television on Saturday night.
"Hi!!!!" the text said "There's a party at a friends house today. do you want to go?"
"Hmmm, do I want to go?" I said to my mother, "I'm tired."
"Go! Go, go, GO!" she replied.

I know when to take a hint.

I ate some dinner, spiked my squash with a small teaspoon of guarana powder (I still can't believe that stuff is legal) and zipped over to the other side of Bela Vista.  Kelly welcome me with a glass of wine (or two), we then walked to the nearest 24 hour store to pick up a LOT of beer and got on the metro to Belem.  At Belem we hung around in the spitting rain for a delightfully ditzy Luiz (Kelly's best friend) to work out exactly which metro station in Sao Paulo we were waiting for him, despite the fact that he grew up in Sao Paulo and he had been to Marco's (the guy who's birthday it was) house about 10 times before.  Gay men are the same everywhere, bless their little cotton socks.

When I got to the house, I was very pleased to discover it was my kind of house party: a pair of decks and loudspeakers blasting out good quality house music, a refrigerator (and freezer) full of alcohol, and gay men majorly outnumbering women in the room.

N.B. Despite being a lesbian, I don't actually enjoy hanging out with lesbians.  Not all of them (obviously, or I'd be terminally single), but a lot of them.  The following are lesbian traits I strongly dislike: veganism/vegetarianism (combined with a 'holier than thou' attitude), militant feminism (being a lesbian doesn't mean you have to hate men), lesbian drama (don't ask), drinking too much and getting into fights in the street/club/bar, and taking oneself too seriously.  I don't take myself seriously and I like to hang out with people of the same mindset.  I like going out, having fun, partying hard and generally just enjoying myself.  This is why I tend to get on very well with gay men, they tend to be rather light-hearted too.  Again, not all gay men are like that but there is a significant majority who are.  I am in my element when surrounded by gay men.  I love them, and (as far as I'm aware) they love me.

Long story short, I didn't get to sleep until 6.30am Sunday morning.  I woke up at 2pm to another text from Kelly:
"Are you alive?? I have a terrible hangover!!! Let's go to the bloco?  It's at 4."
I managed to get myself over to Kelly's flat around 4.30pm, just as it started to bucket down (yet again).  We hung around the apartment for another half an hour waiting for the rain to disperse, then made our way to Bloco.  After inexplicably getting lost despite being only 3 blocks away and hiding from the rain twice, we got to the Bloco.

It. Was.  AWESOME.  This particular Bloco was an 'alternative' one (it was called 'Bloco Academicos do Baixo Augusta').  The Porta Bandeira (usually a woman, carries the flag of the samba school at the front of the procession at Carnaval) was male and in a wheelchair.  It was held in what was probably a car park during the week.  They didn't have a license from the city to parade through the streets, so the party was literally held within the car park block.  The car park enclosure had completely filled out with people and there were people watching from outside the square on the streets, pissing off all passing cars I'll bet.  The music was played by a brass band.  They played everything: Brazilian contemporary/pop music - new and old, samba tunes, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder....they even played "Age of Aquarius".

It was raining cats and dogs; we got absolutely soaked.  Everyone was dancing & singing - the atmosphere wasn't dampened in the slightest.  There were people splashing about in puddles wearing canvas plimsoles, spraying foam from cans into the crowd, throwing confetti on each other.  And lots and lots of beer.  Brilliant.

Downside: everything I was wearing got soaked, I stubbornly refused to have a shower at Kelly's, preferring to wait till I got home, and ended up with an annoying cold on Monday & Tuesday.

Totally worth it.