After two years living in Sao Paulo and reporting on the city's fashion, design, music and lifestyle scenes for CoolHunting.com and JoshSpear.com, journalist Phuong-Cac Nguyen built up valuable information about the metropolis to bursting point. The splatterings are in her 176-page Total Sao Paulo: A Guide to the Unexpected book, out April 29 on Unhinged Jaw Press, a veritable newcomer to the tourist guidebook industry that targets creative types preferring to take jaunts through off-the-beaten-track locales and check out the Red Light District over the standard foreigner mob scenes.

Interspersed between the spotlights on neighborhoods and tips on where to find the best $2.50 caipirinhas, are interviews with Paulistanos from a diverse range of professions, from a vinyl shop owner to Phuong-Cac's favorite interview of the bunch, a garota de programa (aka program girl, the Portuguese euphemism for prostitute).

Cleo is 23 and has been hustling as an escort for almost two years in São Paulo's sex biz, where she makes a killing doing it with clients at R$300 for two hours. Her bills include R$1,750 to maintain an apartment near Avenida Paulista and R$650 a week to a website that publishes her ad, but she still has enough left over to put away for a house. The money definitely beats the crap salary she was paid as a receptionist.

Here's an interview excerpted from the book, with a little extra length thrown in exclusively for SuicideGirls.



Phuong-Cac Nguyen: How long have you been doing this?

Cleo: A year and a half.

PCN: How did you begin?

Cleo: I met a girl who did programas in a swingers club in Sao Paulo. We became friends and I ended up interested.

PCN: How many clients do you have?

Cleo: Three or four a day, from Monday to Friday. On weekends not as many; one or two. The clients have kids, and 80 percent are married.

PCN: And the youngest?

Cleo: He was 17 and a virgin. He was underage at the time but I only found out later. Later I spotted him at the reception, probably waiting for another girl. He must have liked it.

PCN: Explain how a programa works.

Cleo: I charge R$300. It's the minimum. If I lower the price clients want an even bigger discount. There are so many idiots here you wouldn't believe it. A guy even asked me if he could pay the day after.

PCN: When are the busy hours?

Cleo: Lunchtime. Also after 6 p.m., when men leave work. And during soccer games. They go to the stadium, have time off.

PCN: What do you like about your work, compared to others?

Cleo: I like the freedom. I don't like to have a schedule, having to go to work on time, decide how much I want to earn. I also like people, having contact with them.

PCN: And the bad side?

Cleo: Well, there are some guys that are annoying, hard to get on with. It's unpleasant.

PCN: Which things should clients watch out for here?

Cleo: There's a lot of cheating. You call a girl but the person you are dealing with is not the one in the photo. If someone if sick, for example, they send their friends. Some girls change their attitude once they meet their client.

PCN: What are the foreign clients like?

Cleo: The gringos are more attentive. I never had any trouble with them regarding payment or time. They're more polite. They expect you to be on time. Brazilians have a fetish for anal sex. The gringos are not so crazy about that. They prefer petting and kissing.

PCN: Do clients bring their own toys?

Cleo: No, I have mine. I have a dildo I normally use. I have a bag with costumes. A lot of them ask me to wear lingerie.

PCN: What's the most requested fantasy?

Cleo: They like fetish gear. Corsets.

PCN: So, give us the dish on these sessions.

Cleo: One time this guy wanted me to pee on him. We were two girls, and he didn't want to see us. We blindfolded him and took him to the bathroom. We didn't have sex with him. Some guys like to switch roles. They ask me to fuck them with a dildo, businessmen and married men in particular. Once I received married doctors with children. I met them in a hotel and they were fucking each other. A very important businessman used to hire around six girls. He liked to watch us six fucking. I never received less than R$1,500 from him. I went out with him for three months. Then all of a sudden he disappeared.

PCN: What was the lamest experience you've had?

Cleo: Sometimes not everything is clear, and when clients arrive they expect more. This guy wanted anal and was being very rude. The main problem is anal, because that's all they want. Timing is also a problem. For instance, I normally offer two hours and some guys think that means fucking nonstop. Some guys take pills and want to fuck four, five times in a row. I fuck twice at the most.

PCN: Were you afraid to put your photo on the escort's website?

Cleo: Not really. Not even my friends [know]. My parents don't have Internet. My boyfriend is an excellent cover.

PCN: And so he's cool with it all, I assume.

Cleo: We've been together from the very beginning. He's been very supportive. He's my bodyguard. I always tell him where I will be, so he keeps an eye on me and when he can he comes here.

PCN: Before doing this, where were you working?

Cleo: I worked as a receptionist and a secretary. Promotions for malls. The thing is, women are very poorly paid here in Sao Paulo. On average women don't make more than R$600 a month. I used to work from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m. for only R$350. I had to help my mother.

PCN: Where do you want to go with this?

Cleo: I have plans to stop. [My boyfriend and my] goal is to buy a house. After that I'll quit. I also want to study.

PCN: Explain the different levels of girls.

Cleo: There was a very high-class house called WE. But it was shut down by the federal police. Now there are a lot of TV girls doing programas. But it's in secrecy. There are negotiations. But they're very expensive, some of them charge up to R$6,000 a night. Some girls [on the escort site I'm found on] are quite known, because they appeared in a Brazilian men's magazine called Sex. So they consider themselves famous. But the top earners are the TV girls. Guys pay that much just to say they went out with them.

PCN: We're doing this interview right after hearing about ex-New York City Mayor Eliot Spitzer's connections with a Brazilian prostitute. Your opinion?

Cleo: I think that in every profession one must have ethics. She didn't have any. It's a secret one must know how to keep. It's about reputation. But in Brazil it's also about self-promotion, so girls go on TV and declare that they are prostitutes. To scandal is not cool.

PCN: Which restaurants do you like?

Cleo: A very good one is Famiglia Mancini. They serve pasta and it's excellent. There's a churrascaria called Vento Aragano. It's the best one in town, and it's very expensive. But since it's the client who's paying, I eat a lot.

PCN: Tell me about the motels here. Which are the nicest?

Cleo: Lumini. Pousada do Cowboy. Studio A; they have swimming pool, are very clean, have solar panels. Opium is also very beautiful. A very famous one is Faraos, with an ancient Egypt theme. There are also a lot of drive-ins. You have sex in the cars. In Brazil, drive-ins are private garages. Some have even beds next to the parking space.


Excerpt from Total Sao Paulo: A Guide to the Unexpected courtesy of Unhinged Jaw Press. Text copyright (c) Unhinged Jaw Press 2009. Printed with kind permission of Unhinged Jaw Press.

Total Sao Paulo: A Guide to the Unexpected book is available from TotalSPGuide.com.

Blowing away all previous gay pride events, like ever, Brazil’s Sao Paulo Gay Pride Parade managed to draw an incredible crowd of over 3 million party-people yesterday. According to AP writer Stan Lehman:

Sorry America and Europe, you just can’t compete with that Brazilian pride. A friend of mine attended the LA parade this past weekend and he mentioned that the turnout kind of sucked. Regardless, it’s clearly a great thing to generate such a huge turnout for an event where the goal, says organizer Nelson Matias Pereira, is to create a “world where racism, sexism and homophobia, in all their forms, no longer exist.”

Saying to hell with stereotypes, there were apparently lots of “trucks blasting disco and electronic music” and the atmosphere was that of an all around kick-ass party. Here’s some video footage shot by the lovely Jezel:



You'd better believe those Brazilians can shake it. Cheers to the world for being cool for a day.