on the big rock jesus mountain * plus boobs

Rio de Janeiro is a heartbreakingly beautiful city with spectacular beaches, friendly people, tons of fun things to do, and a big rock Jesus perched impossibly high on a mountain.

But more importantly, me.

In Rio I learned that I'm cripplingly afraid of heights.

I started to notice something off on Day One, when we climbed to the top of the Jesus.

(When I say 'climbed,' I of course mean 'took the tram thing'.)

I felt oddly nervous on the tram-thing, and then a little off on the Jesus himself. I remember thinking it was probably just residual nausea from the previous day's road trip, combined with the light sadness that comes when I'm about to be separated from Mark. (I know it's lame, but it's the truth.) Mark was returning to São Paulo the next day and Tickby and I would continue to Manaus.

So I felt woozy and unhappy. I avoided looking over the sides of the thousands-of-feet-high Jesus pedestal on which we stood.

But it was just a little, and the rest of the day was great. Spent laughing a lot, taking pictures of the Jesus, from the Jesus, and about the Jesus. We met young Mr. T on the Jesus (not kidding). At night we went to a plaza where there was live music, cold beer, and funny people.

Cut to the next day. Tickby and I went to the Pão de Acúcar - 'Sugarloaf,' - essentially two giant boob-like mountain peaks busting out of Rio. You take a gondola up to the first extremely-high-up nipple, and from there take another gondola up and across to the even-higher boob.

My hands began to tremble in the first gondola. I started to feel extremely sleepy, and had this weird sensation that the areas beneath my eyes were hollowing out. This, I thought, would cause my eyelids to slam shut and the rest of me to crumple like a bathrobe falling off a hanger.

I turned away from the window- which is funny because gondolas are kind of just a bunch of windows- and concentrated like Tiger Woods on staring at the mid-sections of people in the middle of the gondola. I think my idea was to look for familiar vistas. Just seeing midsections made this look more like the normal subway-like crowd it was, and would further the premise that there was a floor in the gondola which was intact and this wasn't dangerous. It kind of worked.

I felt a little better when we got out onto the first boob. The first boob was big and had a museum on it and a sculpture garden, and looked almost like a normal city block. So you could forget that you were unnaturally high up and could die from sneezing too hard.

Also me and Tickby had a photo-shoot of me doing inappropriate things with the sculptures, which helped.

And lastly, when Tickby did go to the edges to take photos of Rio-from-on-high, it wasn't horrifying because if you looked over the edge you saw that there were other tiers right below. In other words, if you did fall over the edge you'd just land like six feet lower and feel dumb. Not die of fast-fall heart failure.

But then Tickby wanted to go to the other boob.

Mind over matter! said I. To myself. We got into the gondola and i did the stare-at-strangers'-crotches meditation again.

But still was overcome with the same limb-weakening symptoms as before. I also started feeling nauseous, and most interestingly: hysterical. I kept it all hidden inside because i'm a ninja, but I felt like my heart was breaking while a swarm of killer-Al-Qaeda bees were hating me in the face. I felt my pulse banging faster and louder until I was pretty sure I was going to die.

Predictably, I didn't die. Which was good. So I got off at the second boob. Which has no other tiers. And is just a slab of floor roosting atop a million-foot-high blade of grass.

The only thing there that separates you from becoming a blood-pancake is an old, rusty, wide open railing. Tickby ran off the gondola and right over to the edge to start snapping photos. I followed her on the WEIRDEST, most alien, rickety legs that used to be mine.

And here is probably the climax of this journey through irrational-fear-hell. As i wobbled toward Tickby --who had her back to me-- and tried to process the sight of my sister standing inches away from a million-mile drop, she LEANED FORWARD, over the railing, to take a picture. And I almost passed out.

It felt like the midsection of my body had been annihilated and my shoulders would now crash down to my hips. My hands were shaking so impossibly hard they looked like they were in disco lights.

I admitted to Tickby now that I was now learning I didn't like heights. We both laughed for a minute, at the weirdness of it all, and then I went to find a place to sit down. I came across a wonderful little pocket or non-death - an area between two buildings, with a bench! - and sat down to wait.

And CRIED for like five minutes.

Even as it happened, I was weirdly fascinated by all of this. I knew that there was nothing to cry about. I knew in my head that I wasn't sad, that it was a great day. I was in a beautiful place. I knew I wasn't in danger, that people ride these gondolas and visit these boob-mountains all day every day and none of them die from fear-fainting over the sides. I knew all of this, and yet could not stop the woozies, or the super-sads, and this was very interesting. I thought that as soon as I got home I would find and scour tons of reading material on irrational fears and learn all about whatever psychiatrists have discovered and concluded about them.

I of course didn't do this, because, you know, BORING, but I sure thought I would that day on the boob.

thanksgiving aboboros

Last week i made a pumpkin pie that was so delicious my clitoris fell off. For serious, it was like, 'Sorry Cill, I can't compete with this shit. Peace. (Thunk.)'

It was disturbingly delicious. Mark and I tasted it at the same moment and both froze. I didn't know what was happening. Mark started talking in one word sentences: 'This. Is. The. Best. BEST. Pie. I've. Ever. Had.' My eyes felt like they were exiting my head in slow motion.

Context: I'm not a very good baker. I don't do it often, and when I do the results are middling at best. I almost never eat desserts and sweets and stuff, so the art of making them has never been a priority.

But I found myself two days before Thanksgiving with a long list of cooking and baking tasks because my GERMAN fiance said he would love to celebrate the holiday, and I don't have a job so felt obligated to make it happen.

Something I learned about Brazilians: They don't make pies. Something else: They don't seem to want you to make pies either.

Not one of the zillion shops I looked in had the things you buy before Thanksgiving. NOT ONE OF THEM.

So I had to make pumpkin puree, which involved buying a pumpkin, severing it Jeffrey Dahmer style, piling it into the oven Albert Fish style, pulling it out and peeling off the skin Eddie Gein style, blending it in batches Richard Chase style, and then cramming it all into tupperware like Dahmer again.

I also had to make pie crust. Do not read blogs that tell you it is easy. It is not easy. Or maybe the actual assembling of the dough is kind of easy, but the shit makes a huge mess and every second of it is a shrill reminder of how unhealthy pastries are, fistfuls of butter and flour and sugar. The only ingredient I actually include in my diet was the ice water.

Another necessity: 'pumpkin pie spice.' You can of course just buy a jar of this shit in the USA. But not here. Because Brazil tries to thwart pie. This was easy enough, just cinnamon and nutmeg and clove and ground ginger, but this seemed like a lot of things to to buy and then only use tiny amounts of.

So anyway, all this felt like a trail of rabbit holes, but finally culminated in a pie in the oven. And I had to admit that it smelled like nirvana-paradise-heaven. It also looked beautiful, because the puree was a very vivid bright orange. When i buy a can of puree in the states it's a more browny orange. This was like stoner-vision.

Anyway, I was cooking tons of other things and they smelled nice too and I let the pie cool and set in the fridge and forgot about it until we were at the table and it was time for dessert.

And then as you know I tasted it and my clitoris quit its job and left town.

Furthermore, something you should know about Mark: whenever something tastes good he says he wants to put his dick in it. He's said it about cashew cream, butternut squash bisque, and vegetable risotto. And he of course said it about this pie.

And a thought occurred to me.

"Do it," I said. "Put your dick in it. There's nobody else here, it's just us. No one else would ever know."

He hesitated.

I emphasized, "This might never be possible again. Nothing is stopping you right now in this moment from putting your dick in a pie at the Thanksgiving table. Do it. Put your dick in it. Put your penis in the pie."

And he said: "I would actually rather like to eat it."

Not after serious consideration, but he chose eating this pie over a ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY to put his dick in a holiday dessert. THAT'S how delicious it was.

We have been trying since to figure out what is going on here making this pie so special. We made two more pies, thinking they wouldn't be as good. The plan was to make one for our neighbors who are always giving us fresh veggies from their garden. But we made two, because we figured my beginner's luck would run out and it wouldn't be good and our neighbors would choke on its horrible taste and die and it would be our fault and no more free veggies.

But we tasted the control pie and it was every bit as terrifyingly delicious as the Thanksgiving one. Mark had it for breakfast, with lunch and before and after dinner.

And our stoic elderly german neighbor saw me on the sidewalk later and shouted, with a GIGUNDUS GRIN, 'The cake is fantastic good!'

And his wife returned the plate within two days and asked for the recipe. She too is now on the case for what is making it so confounding-ly good. And she's going to make it for her family at christmas.

We think it's a combo of awesome Brazilian produce, the American kinds of spices, and maybe even the condensed soy milk i found somewhere, which was surprisingly not disgusting.

This mystery may never be solved. and Mark will likely never put his ween in a pie. And I, clitless, return to the familiar, quiet peace of no desserts.