Gay Pride Parade Misadventure in São Paulo

São Paulo Gay Parade 2011

This may be one of the most memorable moments I had in São Paulo, though my writing about it months later can only do it so much justice. It was my last weekend there and I needed to quickly bargain for some souvenirs for my people back at home. I always do this last minute, you think I would have learned my lesson by now, since last time in Rome I was forced to go souvenir shopping with a black eye the night before I came home, but that’s another story…

Sr. Marinez, the principle of the school and kind of the “nun in charge” at the convent, took Michelle and I to an outside market. We didn't find much. Instead, I was thinking about the first market I went to in São Paulo where there were a million stands set up and you felt compelled to buy everything because you thought you'd never come across anything like it again. I always had wanted to go back but never did, so I asked Sr. Marinez if we could go there. She was hesitant to take us since this market was on the main avenue in downtown São Paulo and the gay parade was going on. (Naturally, I find out after the whole ordeal that it's the biggest in the world with over 4 million people) Many streets would be blocked off and we knew it would be really crowded. Anyways, after doing some research on the best way to get there, we ended up taking the bus downtown and then the metro which was an adventure in and of itself.  It was a dreadful, cold rainy day. Not a day where you want to be on a bus, and then a metro, and then walk outside for hours.


Now, go to this link. Parade Video You only need to watch the first few seconds of the video to see what we walked into...


Finally, we got out onto the street where the market was and it was hysteria, as you can see from the video.  Earsplitting techno music was booming all around us. There were intoxicated, half-naked people surrounding us, too much PDA, people peeing in the streets and on buildings...I had never been to anything like that in my life, and poor, poor Sr. Marinez…

We were so close to the market but it took us almost an hour just to walk a block there since we had to walk IN the parade to get past the blocked off streets. Yes, I made a nun walk in the biggest gay parade in the world. We were pushing through people and poor Sr. Marinez was beyond distraught and just plain mortified. It was blatantly obvious that she was absolutely and utterly shocked…all thanks to me needing to get souvenirs. The real kicker is that once we finally got to the market, it was closed! I knew an apology was in order, even though a million and one apologies could never erase the images that were charred in her head that day. I told her I was sorry, and she just nodded her head. Ouch. These were the absolute worst things a nun could ever see, and I exposed her to them. I have no idea how many Hail Mary’s it will take her to overcome that, if she is ever able to.


Oops.