Beach Volleyball

Those who visited Rio for the first time were amazed by the profusion of volleyball nets spread across the sandy beaches. Today it is even an Olympic sport: beach volleyball.

With its own rules and highly organized tournaments, those volleyball nets were true NGOs (non-governmental organizations), with honest purposes, belonging to groups of people who pooled their money to buy the equipment and pay someone to set up, take down, maintain, and store the net and the boundary tapes for the court. They were genuine, well-managed clubs. A person could only "join" if introduced by someone who was already a member, or by gradually becoming part of the group, with a great deal of tact. Matches were played with either two or four players on each side of the net, including mixed teams made up of young men and women. Nowadays there is also a great deal of the so-called "footvolley," which began a little later but still during that period.

In front of the old Fred's (from 1975 or 1976 onward it became the Meridian Hotel with the famous Regine's nightclub, later the Windsor, and today the Hilton), on the corner of Atlântica Avenue and Princesa Isabel Avenue, there was one of those groups organized around a volleyball net, with bylaws and even a name ("Dolphins Club"?). In Rio slang, that area is part of the Leme neighborhood, at the eastern end of Copacabana Beach. He had long been a regular at that stretch of beach, but with the swimmers from Guanabara Club and residents of the Botafogo neighborhood. It must have been around 1969 or 1970 when another college friend, Jorge, who lived in Leme and was already a "member" of that volleyball group, introduced him to it.

At those volleyball nets, everyone knew everyone, and yet nobody really knew anyone very well. Most people would arrive, say hello, chat for a while, play a few matches, leave, and little was known about them. Others, however, formed closer bonds. There were around thirty paying members, who had priority to play, and another thirty non-paying participants, who only played when there were not enough paying members to complete the teams or when they were exceptionally good players and the team "owners" invited them. There was an unspoken hierarchy that he never quite understood. Perhaps nobody there really understood it, but it certainly existed.

Our friend Adir says that those groups formed around the volleyball nets, with their organization, coexistence, and unique culture, deserved an anthropological study at doctoral level. Did anyone ever do one? Or did they simply keep copying and adapting foreign dissertations?

At the "Dolphins," there were about six people considered "old-timers" (which at the time meant around forty-five years old or older). From his own age group, he remembers Guilherme, Maurício, who had already been with Lucia since they first met, Alberto, Caio, Júnior, Neto, Orlando, Juarez, and a few young women. They were all in the prime of life, which is to say they were all beautiful.

Former members of the Brazilian national soccer team also frequented that volleyball net, such as Jairzinho and Telê, who lived nearby and always brought—or attracted—well-known people. But no one became particularly excited because Telê was very bossy, complained about everyone during the volleyball matches, and was not a very good player. In the end, he was returned to his insignificance, hahaha. In truth, Telê was pleasant and a wonderful person, a genuinely nice man, but unbearable during beach volleyball games.

Yesterday, while walking along the beach there, by chance he ran into Orlando. He had not seen him in more than twenty years. He does not even know how they recognized each other. They were so happy to meet again that they went across the street to have a few drinks and something to snack on at Taberna Atlântica, which is still there today (it must be more than eighty years old). They began by remembering the girls. The reference point was the year 1977 or 1978 because of some particularly memorable episodes that had taken place.

The first one they remembered was Terezinha, a petite brunette, well-proportioned, a real beauty as people used to say at the time. She was about twenty years old, lived in Botafogo, worked as a secretary, and was studying secretarial studies at FGV.

Another was Terezinha's cousin, Carla, about twenty-two years old, also petite but slightly taller and slimmer, a psychology student. She also went to that same beach. Although her figure was even more attractive, Terezinha had the prettier face.

Another was Terezinha's cousin, Carla, about twenty-two years old, also petite but slightly taller and more slender, a psychology student. She also went to that beach, but although her figure was even more attractive, Terezinha's face was considered prettier.

There was competition between the two cousins. Whenever one of the young men became interested in one of them, the other would step in first, and sex was almost certain to follow. Those who experienced it—or rather, were experienced by them, certainly by both—came to know the remarkable way both women's skin would shiver during lovemaking. Deep down, they were the ones who decided everything: who, when, how, where, and how many times. Just like the Amazons of legend.

There was also Ruth, about twenty-eight years old, neither particularly pretty nor unattractive in the face, a striking blonde with green eyes, a recently graduated physician, with a beautiful figure, slightly taller than Carla and Terezinha. Ruth was charming and friendly, but introverted. She kept to herself and maintained a certain distance from the young men, in other words, she was less of a "conqueror of the seven seas."

Everyone gathered there at the beach every Saturday, Sunday, and holiday, with very few absences. Everyone was tanned. No one used sunscreen; on the contrary, tanning oils were the norm, and tattoos were virtually nonexistent.

During Carnival (1977? 1978?), the volleyball groups in the surrounding area organized beach volleyball matches in "cross-dress costume," meaning everyone dressed as the opposite sex, for Sunday. By Saturday, everyone was already in the Carnival spirit, a little, shall we say, uninhibited. Orlando (then about thirty years old), who flirted with anyone passing by, gathered his courage and asked Ruth, who lived just across the avenue, whether she had some old women's clothing he could wear for the next day's match. To his surprise, she immediately offered to find him an outfit, but said she also wanted a man's outfit, likewise something disposable.

The deal was made, and somehow Ruth involved Terezinha in the story. It became two men's outfits (old suits) in exchange for one woman's outfit. Ruth then went to her apartment, directly across the street on Atlântica Avenue, to fetch a used dress. When Orlando realized it would need the work of a seamstress to fit him, Ruth arranged for them to ride to Orlando's apartment on his motorcycle so they could collect the suits he no longer wanted and make the necessary alterations that evening with temporary stitching. Who knows what the two women talked about along the way. The three of them rode on Orlando's Honda 360. He could hardly believe he had both women, wearing bikinis, riding behind him, while at the same time thinking that one would surely get in the way of the other once they reached his apartment, where he lived alone near Morro da Viúva.

He was at the handlebars, Terezinha directly behind him holding tightly onto him, skin against skin, and finally Ruth holding onto Terezinha. They themselves had arranged to sit in that order. Terezinha was the filling in the sandwich.

When they arrived at his apartment, he took out two suits he no longer wore and, in disbelief, watched Ruth switch off the bedroom light, leaving the room in semi-darkness, remove her own bikini and then Terezinha's as well so they could try on the clothes, all right in front of him. Terezinha seemed somewhat embarrassed and as though she did not quite understand what was happening, yet she wanted to appear experienced, modern, and uninhibited, so she went along with it. Then Ruth could no longer contain herself. She embraced Terezinha and began kissing and caressing her. Terezinha shivered, every pore and every hair on her body standing on end in an astonishing way, and from that point on everything unfolded naturally.

While Ruth held Terezinha down on the bed in a movement resembling a judo grappling hold, the two women's bodies, slick with arousal, passed in front of Orlando. At a certain moment, he could no longer restrain himself. He moistened himself with saliva and penetrated the woman who seemed most immediately accessible to him. He believed it was Terezinha, but it was Ruth. He only realized it when she tried to protest, but by then it was too late to undo what had happened. As the saying goes, "If it's inevitable, relax and enjoy it." And that was exactly what happened.

Ruth kept complaining that Orlando had "done her wrong," that he was not wearing a condom, and that he had ejaculated inside her. In the end, however, she accepted the consequences of the risks created by the very situation she herself had initiated and took the opportunity to prolong and take charge of the ménage while they adjusted the clothes. Her main concern was becoming pregnant, and for about a month that possibility worried her greatly, but she did not become pregnant, and from then on they developed a friendship that led to many situations together. Better accompanied than alone...

As an epilogue, with the departure of Aloysio, the longtime president of the "Golfinhos(?)", who moved to Santos, the little club gradually came to an end and no longer exists. The space was redistributed after a heavy storm surge knocked down all the posts that had been planted there. At least half of the 100 to 150 members, men and women, who had passed through that volleyball net between 1970 and 1990 moved away from Rio, and half of those settled abroad, some permanently, others for many years. Terezinha married a European, had three children with him, moved overseas, and returns once a year. Carla moved to the Curitiba region, and there has been no news of her for many years. Everyone quietly followed their own path. Those who had become closer remained in touch for the rest of their lives. Most of them still appear there from time to time and end up meeting someone they once knew. Increasingly less often, however; time spares no one.

The sad note is that, some ten to fifteen years later (1992?), it became known that Ruth had thrown herself from the window of the eighth floor apartment where she still lived with her parents, right there across the avenue on Atlântica Avenue. She left a letter, but what was written in it never leaked out.

These are Orlando's confidences, shared at Taberna Atlântica more than forty years later, his voice choked by age, whiskey, and memories.

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler, and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Engineering. # written between 2020/2021 R2025dec Ri,  9.154 characters