Faith? No More

So then she turns to me and says "Bel, they're IN São Paulo! Do you understand what that means?"

I did understand. It meant we were not going to be able to go to their concert. So I turn to her and I says...I says "well, Anette, do you know what that means?" She didn't, so I explained it to her as though she were 8 years old. "That means we must find a way to go to the hotel where they're staying and see them, meet them, see if we can talk to them, somehow, since we can't hear them play." But how? We were broke, 13 (me) 15 (Anette) and 13 and a half (Anette's sister, Lili), and it was a weekday.

I don't normally talk about my personal life on here but just last week I came across an album that blew my mind. Yes, it was Mike Patton -- again. He still has the ability to make me stop and listen, which happens less and less frequently the more I approach old prunedom.

"Let's just take a bus and go there, ffs." Anette was daring, far more than I was. Problem was: end of the week, allowance a distant memory.

So we took the bus and hoped the controller wouldn't ask us for the tickets. He did. We begged him to pretend he hadn't noticed. He did.

São Paulo city centre, 2PM, 3 teenagers in Catholic school uniform, roaming the streets holding a camera...but no film. No money to buy it either. "Well...you know what that means, don't you?" Anette asks both me and Lili. She liked asking these Qs to which she'd then provide an answer. We all did. It somehow made us look clevererer. "What?", both I and Lili ask. "We'll have to...shoplift."

We walk into the Korean shop nonchalantly and start asking the hardworking, far clevererer than we were (yes, even then, even in Brasil, that stereotype was known) shopkeeper if we could have a look at the 36-exp. films they had...you know, so we could compare prices and all...also, while you're at it, could we have a look at some of those cameras? They look awfully nice. Anette, being 15, was a little quicker than both Lili and I, and knew exactly what to say. Before we went in, she told me what the plan was, so I just went along, albeit quite eagerly.

I put the film in my pocket as they distracted the shopkeeper with endless requests, and walked out. They took a little longer to leave the store, and we all met at the hotel (Hilton) where we'd heard Faith No More were staying. We got it right, they'd been staying there... except they'd just left as we arrived.

"Oh shit. What now?" Against yrs of parental advice as well as our better judgment, we took a taxi to SP Int'l airport, without a penny to call our own.

Halfway there we realize we had no idea where Faith No More were going next, and that they could very well have gone to the domestic airport instead. Too late. Forward, always.

Upon arrival, we ask every single security officer if he's seen a hard rock band walking past. "As a matter a fact I have," says one of them, "if you mean men with dirty long hair." So we rush to the departure lounge, hoping to catch them.

And we managed. We actually managed to meet these ppl. I remember screaming this man's name from about 500metres away (Mike!! Wait UPPPPP!), waving the by then loaded camera above my head and running in my school uniform toward them. I now see they were quite amused by this completely ridiculous display and so indulged us. In less than perfect English I ask "can we have a photo, maybe? We've come all the way from the Hilton without money!" He said "oh sure...no problem, but walk while you take the photo, we're late." So I run ahead of them...and as I'm getting to a point where a good-ish photo can be taken, I fall down. It hurt like... like something that hurts a lot, and I was embarrassed, but I took the photo from where I was, on the floor, as they approached me. Then another. The bass player helps me up, we all laugh... they carry on, I'm left to nurse my ankle.

I'll never know what the photo turned out like since Anette had the camera confiscated by her stepmother when she found out what we'd been up to all afternoon, after she got a call from a certain taxi driver who had Anette's ID card & phone number (the only way we could persuade him not to call the police on us) and wanted to be paid for the airport drive. I wonder if she ever found out how we came back from the airport...

It was worth it though.

Then:

Now:

Epilogue

Later that evening, I called Anette on the phone and demanded she come with me to the parish where I woke up the school priest and confessed to everything. Not a very hard rock attitude, but that was never my intention anyway.