Back at my hotel in the early evening, I was bored and hungry. I was also slightly disappointed because I was hoping for some response from the Latin Euro ladies today but there was none. I thought what the heck and called the jinatera I met on Saturday. She agreed to "help me with Portuguese" over dinner before she went to work at a club. That was an interesting dinner.
The woman was 23 years old and lived with her mother and 2 (maybe 3, I forget) younger siblings. She helps her mother a great deal with the family. When she was 20 she spent 2 weeks in Spain visiting a friend who had married a Spaniard. The next year, she answered an ad offering work in France. She went to Paris and worked as a domestic in the home of a 30 something man. After 2 weeks he stated that he was interested in her as a wife and wanted to start a romance. She was not interested and put up with his advances for another week before returning to Brazil. She then got a job as a waitress but lost it last summer. She had been unemployed for 6 months before deciding to prostitute herself around 2 or 3 months ago.
She has not had good luck with Brazilian men. Her last boyfriend cheated on her and got the other woman pregnant. She has now sworn off Brazilian men and is only interested in foreigners. That was part of the reason why she approached me. She explained "I usually don't approach men in the street but I could tell you were not Brazilian." This woman was very attractive and was coming across to me as a nice, sincere, and decent person. I couldn't understand why a man would cheat on her. (Though the US, not Brazil, is my frame of reference.) I asked her if the other woman was even more attractive than she. "NO!!!" was the emphatic answer. She was ordinary, plain even. I asked what he saw in this other woman to want to cheat with her. "That's a good question. I don't know the answer but that's a good question." She seemed genuinely hurt and angry by his infidelity which didn't occur so long ago. She said she dumped him around 2 or 3 months ago, about the same time she started prostituting. To her knowledge, he has already dumped the pregnant woman and wants to get back with her. I developed a suspicion that she was prostituting more for self-esteem reasons than for economic reasons.
She exuded a sweetness and emotional vulnerability that tugged at my male instinct to rescue and protect. Under different circumstances I think I would have pursued this woman. Even under the current circumstances, with her life like a telenovela, my resolve was being seriously tested. She asked me to call her again. She wanted to exchange addresses so we could write each other after I returned to the US. If I struck out with the Latin Euro ladies I probably would have called her again. Fortunately (flash forward), I didn't strike out with them. In fact, I was too busy for the rest of my trip to see or speak to the jinatera again.
