Beam Ten #reboot: Beautiful Beast

When innocence becomes a loaded gun.

“May I take a closer look?” she asked. Photo courtesy of Pexels

You look at them and you don’t see a child. But a woman. A very cunning woman. It seems they are born with the self-awareness of their femininity and developed a strong sexual power since an early age and you can see it in their eyes. Social boundaries are weaker in the land of Brazil; they are weaker in tropical and equatorial territories, where moral codes are not observed by most people, due to the lack of a well-consolidated history, education and behavioral development.

Acts of violence towards young women reach their peak in those lands and Brazil makes no exception. But there is the other side of the coin that reflects its evil face; the fact that innocence is a deadly weapon.

Women of the Old World.

In the First World, we have a path designed for us since we are born. We go to nursery school, then to primary, secondary, high school and then eventually we choose to attend university, get a master degree and start our sparkling and amazing career. Our parents would pay for the studies, sometimes for our driving license (the smarter ones among us would save money with part-time jobs and pay it by themselves, acquiring pride scores) and when we get our brand new job thanks to our hard work as students, we will pay back our parents for their precious help and focus on our career and life. In the meantime, we receive moral education, how-to guides, meet mentors and friends, professionals and specialized persons who will illustrate to us what the attitude of the standard human being is, the prototype society accepts and wants. The one who stands and behaves within the law and who fits with everyone.

Women receive a certain kind of education in our world, that is, let’s remember, the First World. I am talking from a 38-year-old point of view; when I was a kid the world was a different place and people were different but still, in this world, which still is the old world, high education, the one that stands within moral codes, which generates into us the ability to discern an action dictated by instinct from another produced by rational thought is still present more than ever. Our girls grow up learning this and behave consequently. They learn the value of distance, of pondered interaction with the male universe, the value of decency. With all due exceptions, of course.

This is how it works, this is how we were used to exist in the world we know.

But there are other worlds than this. And I am talking nothing spiritual. In this worlds, all I just talked about does not exist. Or at least, it is very rare and does not come close to being the way we know it.

The Age of Not-So-Innocence.

Many aspects of Brazil puzzled me during my three-year residency. One of these was how women are sexually active since an early age. Their self-conscience makes them precocious and since their mind is devoid of all the codes we are fed, their attitude towards men is clear and focused. I saw ten-year-olds make eyes to me and I have to admit those were cunning and well aware eyes.

I was at the supermarket with my wife one afternoon, where we used to buy some bread for a snack. While we were queuing at the cash register, I saw a little girl standing at the beginning of one of the aisles of the place. She was with her grandmother and was looking at me. She had tanned skin, bright blond hair and blue eyes; must have been ten or eleven years old. She didn’t blink and I kept looking at her, like looks get hooked to one another casually. When I saw she did not shy away a bit, I nodded and smiled as a hail sign. Her face lighted up with a beautiful, broad smile and her gaze glued on mine even more. That look she had now had nothing to do with a childish look. She was peeking, scanning my face and my body as a whole. I felt embarrassed and I turned my face away.

Some other time, Persefone and I went to a thermal center; there are a lot of them in the city we were living. We were bathing in a hot swimming pool and chatting with a lady who was there with her niece. Out of nothing, the niece came closer to me. She was a mulatto girl with overgrown breasts and a slender body. She was thirteen but her physical traces made her look older.

“Now look at these eyes.” she said.

We were in the hot water, both pretty much naked except for the bathing suit.

“May I take a closer look?” she asked.

I laughed and couldn’t help but say yes. So she came closer, her smile almost bewildered in amazement.

“God, are they beautiful?” she whispered in owe.

“I want them for me.” she giggled.

She was so close to me I could have kissed her. Persefone told me later that she was expecting the kid to grab my mouth with hers.

There’s a lot of stories of adult men ending up in jail because they abused underage girls, but the truth is, many underage girls are eager to seduce adult men in Brazil, most of the times because of their social status. This does not happen only in Brazil but it is way more common there. Some other times it is a matter of physical attraction, or magnetism due to experience or simply because the adult could not resist the temptation of taking a chance on a young and beautiful girl.

The seduction game can be a well staged performance in order to pull out the girl’s family off of poverty; this has become a commonplace. Foreign men fall for young, beautiful and well disposed Brazilian girls and on the North-East coast, underage prostitution is a daily practice, a kind of business in the area.

But a lot of men ended up in jail after being accused of rape by minor girls, sometimes rightly, sometimes not. I’ve heard of an innocent man who stood years of detention and was largely abused by other convicts and in the end, the girl who had accused him confessed she had lied, because the men had resisted her in the first place. She confessed after being informed of the treatment he had endured all those years.

Sometimes it is a look, which lingered too much, sometimes a wrong word uttered in the presence of the wrong person. Fact of the matter is, a man is subject to being pushed adrift by the cunning and careless behavior of these young women, whose only fault is that of being born in a poor, savage and harsh country. And European men always like an adventure and mostly, they think they can manage their wild initiatives. I have seen this almost happen before my eyes and I couldn’t believe a guy older than me was getting into this kind of trouble. He was behaving like a teen, because he had had an infatuation for a twelve year old.

Discerning the roles: how Wisdom takes it all.

We are grown, well-read, wise and mature individuals. Or at least, we should be. Beauty is present in a very big amount in this world and once we discover it, chances are we can be driven crazy by it. But again, we have our judgement to hold on to. With the eyes of judgement we can discern the difference between the indecent and the fair, the convenient and the dangerous, the right and the wrong. As men, we are made of flesh and thus subject to fall for beautiful beings we have only dreamed of. When we set our eyes on a heavenly creature, our judgement may be dazed, but it is up to us to put our inner strength at work. In cases like the ones I have talked about here, we have to foresee the consequences and appeal to wisdom, let us put in practice our experience and our discernment. We know it is very easy to be led into temptation, a part of us wants to give ourselves to it, because of the immediate promise of joy. But we are better than that.

I could have easily reached out for the body of that girl under water, in the hot swimming pool at the thermal center. I could have done it without my wife noticing. In the end, that’s what the girl was waiting for; her approaching was intentional. But what would she do then? Would she tell her aunt I had touched her and she had liked it or that an adult man had abused her? And the aunt, would she intentionally charge the story with further, false details in order to transform me into a rapist, a monster and have me behind bars in less the twenty-four hours? And what would my wife Persefone think of me? She, who had been raped at age fourteen? She, who had two young daughters.

This I never wanted to find out, because this is not what I am. What I am is the power of my will, the action taken with my rational mind, the strength of mind over matter and the judgement that God gave me. What I am is a man who found enlightenment beyond the big waters, far away from home and can use that enlightenment to do good. To help. Maybe to help those very kids to become the better version of themselves.

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Originally published at alessandrotinchini.wordpress.com on August 25, 2017.

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Alessandro Tinchini

Written by

Author. Scholar in Dance-therapy. I published “Day-job writers”, a guide for writers busy with demanding day-jobs. NaNoWriMo 2019 winner.

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