I had just finished the first part of my interview with a character in my documentary WHY BRAZIL. I left my camera with my subject at the table in a beachside bar, and went downstairs to the ladies room. After paying my 2 reals to the restroom attendant I went to a stall, saying 'escupa' as I brushed by the attendants girlfriend who was leaning over an overstuffed backpack and in the middle of a discussion. I thought nothing of it. It was around 11pm and in relaxed Rio seeing an attendant talking to a friend while working was no big deal. I went back to the table. my subject, a well brought up Nigerian man asked if I wanted another cerveza and I said sure. He continued telling me about the difference between loose woman and the nice girls that went to church that he had met in Rio.
Beer doesn't stay in my system long so I went back to the restroom. I noticed after I'd paid that the same backpack was on the floor of the first stall. I finished and went to wash my hands and realized the same girl had changed from Jean shorts to a red sequined dress that barely covered anything. She had plugged the curling iron into a socket next to the electric hand dryer and it caused the hand dryer not to work. She politely took her plug out but I shook my hands and my head and left the bathroom.
I am surprised that I didn't see a red letter on her forehead, when I first saw her in the bathroom. SHE SEEMED LIKE A REGULAR GIRL! Not like a hooker, loose woman, street or should I say beach walker, at all. I was to find myself surprised often in Brazil but that was one of the last times I went anywhere without my camera.
A part of me thinks stealing a picture of the girl curling her hair would be judgmental and the filmmaker in me deeply regrets not having the image to explain in a quicker way, this dark side of Brazil.
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