All Dressed Up and No Place to Go

This evening, as I looked out my front door and saw Brazilians young and old walking purposefully toward the downtown area, my curiosity was piqued. Where are all of these people going, while I am homebound, writing in my journal and reading news about human-made catastrophes thousands of miles away?

So, I took a shower put of some of my most chic plaid denim shorts, and some other new clothes from my favorite department store, and I set out to follow the crowd, like one follows the curiosity seekers toward a fire.

Although the mass exodus had stopped by the time I was outside, I walked in the same general direction and found restaurant bars full of people eating and drinking beer and soda, and talking. For the most part, they were couples and families, although I had seen many younger and unaccompanied people during the earlier exodus. The people I saw were eating pizza and pasta, crepes and hamburgers at various venues. Apparently, this is how many people spend Sunday night in this Brazilian city.

Silvio Rodriguez wrote these lyrics:

"Tu me recuerdas el mundo de un adolescente
un seminiño asustado mirando a la gente"
http://letrasyacordes.net/cancion/53483

Translated: You remind me of the world of an adolescent:
Part-child, shocked as he looks at world.

There are basic aspects of human behavior that to me are only barely comprehensible, or less accessible than a U-turn on the New Jersey Turnpike. What people do on Sunday night, and why and how they enjoy it fits into that category of the only barely comprehensible.

And yet, I reflect on my weekly meetings with my friends at Primo's Bar and Restaurant in Porto Seguro, where we ate barbecued beef and chicken, sipped soda and chatted about all sorts of things, and I know I have had the experience that these people in this little town are engaging in. I just don't have anyone with whom to engage yet.

Returning from downtown, I went to a bar twenty yards from my house and sipped a coke with lime and ice. Many of the people I had seen there last night were there again tonight, in groups, in couples, and some alone and apparently lonely. I was not interacting with them, but merely observing them, like an adolescent trying to figure out what's going on. Most adolescents intuitively understand much better than I do.

Walking there, I was cheered by a Meatloaf song of which I only remember the following lyrics:

But every Saturday Night,
I felt the fever grow.
Do you know what it's like?
All revved up and no place to go?
Do you know what it's like?
All revved up and no place to go!
http://www.amandashome.com/meatloaf.html

Now that I read the lyrics for the first time, I realize they are about sexual hunger rather than a mere lack of social outlet on Saturday night, if there is any difference between the two.