This isn’t because I didn’t like the blocos I’ve gone to. I went to new blocos, traditional blocos, crowded ones, half-empty ones, most of them playing the marchinhas that got my heart racing back on the first day, and it was incredibly fun. But even the best moments on the best days – singing “Carinhoso” along with the crowd, seeing the sunset through showers of confetti, beholding the communion of the Sambódromo – just didn’t make me as happy as translating a long article, or reading a good book on a still, bright afternoon. I have been made to understand that this is some sort of profound failing of character.

As a people, we’ve made great strides in the recognition that not every holiday is for everyone. It’s become mildly sociably acceptable to be irritated by Christmas, want to flee from the Fourth, and spend Easter making cracks about Zombie Jesus. But if you squeak out the tiniest of reservations about Carnaval, there is something wrooooong with you. One headline on the Globo‘s site brings this home quite nicely: “Blocos espalham alegria pela cidade.” Even the press, that noble institution, gets carried away on the strength of Carnaval’s auto-mythologizing. I can guarantee that I saw many people who were less than alegres – those who had to pick up afterwards, for one thing.

Nothing that achieves the status of myth can remain untarnished. Cariocas have been swearing up and down to me that Carnaval has gotten much worse in the past couple years, that before the commercialization of the blocos it was more fun and more, dare I use the a-word, authentic. To my eye, this has to be taken with many grains of salt. When I got back last week, I started interrogating my friends who’ve grown up in Rio about what they did during Carnaval. For some reason I assumed that they’d all been weaned on confetti and warm beer, and that Carnaval is a rite of passage for every carioca. But they seemed just as confused about it as I was. “We still haven’t figured out what people do in blocos,” said one with an air of perplexity. “Once during Carnaval I was walking down this street,” proffered another, gesticulating over at Dias Ferreira, “and I saw a guy just pull down his pants and take a crap in the street.” I got the impression that he had tried very hard to forget it. But for him, that was Carnaval.

On one hand, the appeal of Carnaval is obvious. I know I’ll be back, if only to found my bloco that plays only Noel Rosa songs. (It. will. be. amazing.) Even so, there must be so many poor souls out there who feel a sort of obligation to love Carnaval and drag themselves from bloco to bloco in the vain hope that things will get more fun, or just in order to be able to say they went, feeling bad if the reveling isn’t as transcendent as it’s supposed to be. I saw plenty of shuffling, sunburned foliões who seemed not to know exactly why they were there. Of course, it’s equally possible that this is just me, projecting, trying to assuage a guilty conscience and fend off accusations of being no fun. (I suspect that this will not really help.) The fact of the matter is that Carnaval really just reinforced what I already knew: I am a big geek who finds true alegria in books and quiet and music and writing and good conversation. And for that I’m grateful.

First things first. The recipe for a good bloco, in my opinion, is almost insultingly simple: good music and people who want to enjoy it.

It sounds obvious, but so much of Carnaval ignores that rule. I can’t for the life of me see why people go to the blocos that are known – famous, even – for being painfully crowded. (What’s up, Bola Preta?) That’s why the several billion gringos who flooded the Aterro on Monday (me proudly among them) loved Sargento Pimenta so much.

I study marchinhas de Carnaval, so I’m a bit of an exception. I had even more fun at Sassaricando and the Trapiche Gamboa ball and Gigantes da Lira, since they’re pretty much the high temple of marchinhas originally recorded by Orlando Silva, Carmen Miranda, even dear old Chico Alves. When Alfredo Del Penho, dressed regally in a sparkly yellow bikini at Sassaricando, introduced the top “marchinha que vocês  nunca ouviram falar” and it was Cidade Mulher, which I not only know but know all the words to and freaking love, my Carnaval was already made.

But my American and European compatriots must have felt a bit sad amidst the crowds of singing cariocas. And after a couple days of drunkenly pretending to know the words to “A jardineira,” they could finally sing along to songs that they knew and loved. To quote the Associated Press:

If drinking till you pass out doesn’t suit your fancy, you might try racking up as many snogging partners as humanly possible during a single street party, a common Carnival game here. But even with such tantalizing diversions, it must be acknowledged that singing along to the blasting music — usually played live by a band atop a sound truck, with a cordoned-off percussion section trailing behind — is at least half the fun.

I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but for me this is exactly the secret of Carnaval’s magic.  Nor can I exactly explain what is so fun about jumping up and down and yelling the words to a great song while confetti showers down out of a too-blue sky. But the fact remains that music is the thread holding together the grand lurching illusion of the party.

The moment when you’re too far away to hear the band, or the bloco plays the same samba too many times, or you don’t know the words, is when the scales fall from your eyes and you suddenly start being bothered by the fact that you’re incredibly sweaty and stepping in black mud and your wig is askew and you haven’t slept in a very long time.  Before that point, it honestly doesn’t matter. Music is everything. If the acoustics were always perfect, Carnaval would never end.

I was at the Sambódromo on Monday, and I think that’s why Mangueira’s “paradona,” when the bateria fell silent in a misguided attempt at the avant-garde, failed. As soon as the drums stopped, it was shockingly clear how fast the life went out of the dancers. They kept sambaing, the baianas swishing their hyperbolic skirts, but in a sort of confused mechanical way. The crowd tried to sing along, but it just wasn’t cutting it. “It’s on purpose,” I assured my friend. “No, it can’t be,” he insisted. The tactic was so catastrophically awkward that, after the second or third time it happened, even I wasn’t sure. But if Mangueira had paid attention to the title of one of their carros – “O povo não perde o prazer de cantar” – they would have known better.

But business as usual in Riode Janeiro, it occurred to me, is pretty damn Carnavalesque already. “Vamos rir mais,” read one abandoned fan lying on the aterro, which struck me as really unnecessary. I’m not saying that the city is all sunshine and joy; I did live here for half a year, after all, and it takes a healthy dose of willful ignorance to buy into the tourist brochure. But, as cities go, Rio needs laughter much, much less than others. Detroit could really use some more laughter. Berlin could use some more laughter. London. Most of Europe, for that matter. Even Buenos Aires, with its crowds of besuited neurotic porteños irritated by the comparsas. “Son realmente muy alegres los brasileros,” said the taxi driver when he was taking me to the airport. “Tenemos que ser así.” And then he started singing that Charly Garcia song. “La alegría no es sólo brasilera, no, mi amor.”

Rio is the only city happy enough to be able to throw a party like Carnaval, and that’s precisely because it doesn’t need Carnaval. Again, this isn’t to say that life is just easier in Rio. People complain that the city doesn’t have enough culture, that it’s not serious enough, that it’s not organized; you don’t ever really hear that Rio doesn’t know how to have fun.  Same thing with New Orleans and Mardi Gras. When was the last time you heard a New Orleanian saying that the city could really use a chance to cut loose?

On the other hand, there are people who really could use a break during Carnaval, and they’re the ones who don’t get it. The sanitation workers, the supermarket clerks, the bus drivers all work harder than ever and are all massively inconvenienced. It’s beautifully perverse, when you think about it.

I’ll just fess up now – on Friday, that was me. If you happened to be an upright carioca commuter on your way to Glória that morning, you were faced with the eternal Carnaval question: how to react.  Do you stare? Do you comment? Do you look into the middle distance?

Personally, I found it horrifying. I had to go by the office on my way to a bloco, so I figured I’d cut out the clothes change and go in full regalia: a short white tunic with a gold sash, nothing particularly scandalous. But being the only reveler in sight will do strange things to your head. As the bus crawled along and I saw exactly zero costumed people in block after block, I realized what was happening. Carnaval was the most elaborate prank in the history of mankind, all designed to make me dress up like an idiot for all the cariocas to laugh at me. Any minute they were going to reveal the elaborate ruse. I maintained my dignity as best I could. It is absolutely normal for me to be dressed in a toga. I was the most stately Greek on the public transit system that day.

“I am the only costumed person in all of Rio de Janeiro,” I pronounced solemnly to my boss when I got into the piauí office.

“No, you aren’t,” he said comfortingly. “I saw a six-year-old girl dressed up as a fairy on the way over here. It’s you and her.”

The larger parable here is that the carnavalesco contract only truly functions when everyone buys into it. Having been the only foliã on the Metro, I found myself in the opposite situation a day later when I was coming back from Centro (in business casual) on the bus. I flagged down the first one heading in the right direction, but made the fatal mistake of stepping on before I surveyed its occupants. I had just bought a ticket on the party bus.

For the next 40 minutes, my fellow passengers beat on the windows, ceiling, and seats of the bus, screamed children’s songs, heckled gringos, fell over each other in the aisle, spilled their drinks, and were generally carnivalesque. A stubbly nun kept smacking the back of my seat in time with the songs. Eventually I turned around and asked him/her, in the most Christian possible terms, to cut it the fuck out. This was met with a blank stare and a brief respite before he/she got carried away by the music and resumed his/her faithful timekeeping once more. About 12 hours later, of course, I was on a bus headed in the opposite direction spilling my drink all over the floor and yelling about how ridiculous it is that there are no blocos dedicated to Noel Rosa. (The hottest bloco of Carnaval 2013, we’ve decided: the band plays exclusively Noel Rosa and Carmen Miranda songs, and you have to come dressed as one of the two. We’re still working on a name.)

During the weeks (not days, people, let’s be real) of Carnaval, the city seems to take on this Janusian tilt. Over the course of the first few days I slipped queasily between the two worlds, glee and crankiness, a transformation directly related to my rising or abating sobriety.  When you buy into the contract, take a swig from the bottle and put on a tiny hat, it’s all like the first hour of Orfeu Negro. When you don’t, it’s like the last half hour.

One of the guys who lives on the ground floor was “doidão já” and throwing a really impressive midafternoon shindig. His window faces the street, and passersby soon started inviting themselves in. There is a doorman, of course, but the neighbor’s new friends would whistle or knock on the gate and, having obtained the host’s gleeful approval, were let in. This was okay until they all started peeing in the garage. Which is, I believe, and let me just consult Emily Post on this one, not the recommended etiquette when one has just met one’s host.

Public urination is one of the things that the municipal police tries to crack down on during Carnaval; I read in the paper that over 700 people had been arrested (a very small fraction being women) since the start of the festivities. Given that there were 2.2 million people at the Cordão da Bola Preta alone and Avenida Rio Branco is going to smell like a gas station restroom for the next five years or so, either those 700 people had massively full bladders and rampaged across the city or police enforcement is not 100% in this respect. It wouldn’t have helped in our case, though, because the garage isn’t exactly public property.

I spent most of the day inhaling cups of tea, catching up on class readings, and feeling simultaneously guilty for not having done said readings earlier and for doing homework at all during Carnaval. Outside, the Acadêmicos do Vidigal paraded their slow boozy way down the avenue.

I did venture out late that night, mostly out of morbid curiosity. Fragrance totally aside, because I am a genteel person and do not wish to offend my readers’ sensibilities, the quantity of trash left by a good-sized bloco is really stunning. The sidewalks are littered with trash tumbleweeds, soiled plastic bags and cardboard fans and the odd beer can (the catadores do a very thorough job on that score). And a stomped-in malandro hat here or there.

The noise from my window – always underscored by the rattle of some drum during the day – has become more irregular as night falls. Traffic, the sea, far-off music, and groups of people communicating in exuberant shouts. Every so often I hear a “WOOOOOO” come wafting in, carried on the ocean breeze.

In this respect, successful Carnaval itinerary-making seems remarkably akin to discovering indie bands. Once I spent an entire afternoon trying to explain to my dad the fine and aggravating differences between “indie” and “alternative” and “alt” and God knows what else, with limited success and much arguing. What it tends to boil down to is being able to like a band before everyone else and then complaining about how mainstream it is. It takes the edge off your satisfaction if you jump on the bandwagon too late, or if the bandwagon never really gets going; nobody gets cred for liking an awful garage band that never takes off.

Blocos are just like that. They need people to function, but if they’re at all good they’re all fated to reach that terrible tipping point. Then it’s officially cheio demais, you can no longer hear the band, and you’re sweating and pressed between two Smurfs.

This, in the end, seems to be the secret of Carnaval: it would be great if not for the people.

Very, very bad, is the answer.

Carnaval is no joke if you’re a lone girl. At first I dodged the grabbing and the “oi gata”s and everything else, but things got worse as the bloco went on. I have never wanted a Y chromosome so badly. Making eye contact apparently is the same thing as singing, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” Soon I felt as though my mouth were under siege. The low point was probably when a freckled guy in a Wando wig started diving at my face and insisting amorously that I’d been looking at him – while I was trying to give directions to a friend over the phone. That’s what you call persistence. As I shielded my lips from Wando, I pondered wearing a Jason mask in all the next blocos.

But Don Juans aside, something seemed off about the bloco. When I got up the slope, I looked around to see if anyone looked as though they were having fun. In front of the bloco, people walked sort of aimlessly, squinting into the sun; on the sidewalks, people watched the masses go by with about the same excitement that I reserve for watching dough rise. I figured that I was in the wrong part of the bloco – I couldn’t hear the music at all, for one thing – so I waited on the side until the sound car got within striking distance and then sidestepped my way into the crowd.

An uninformed tourist at Carnaval might be forgiven for thinking that samba is danced by shoving.  At least at the Carmelitas, I didn’t see anyone, least of all me, managing to samba. It was all pushing. As I was jostled from side to side and arms gently rammed into my back, I couldn’t help but wonder where everyone was going in such a hurry. Carnaval’s not a race, is it? Or maybe it is and nobody told me.

I allowed myself to be pushed to the sidelines and tried to get even closer to the sound car. As soon as I managed this, I wished that I hadn’t. The crowd was so hellishly packed and pushing so aggressively (repito: para onde?) that I was struggling constantly to stay on my feet. The saddest sight was a tourist couple, sunglasses perched on their heads and clutching a map of the city, trying to make their way against the crowd without being separated. The woman’s face was a mask of terror. What is the point? I kept thinking. Nobody seemed to be enjoying themselves. Not even Wando.

Eventually I gave up and started walking at a normal pace, soon outstripping the mass of the bloco and going down a side street to get a breath of fresh air. On the way I saw a group of sem-camisa trying to start a fight with a guy for pushing them (which, under the circumstances, is kind of like getting angry at a plant for photosynthesizing). “Pega ele!” a bystander in a Botafogo jersey started chanting. He had a mean glint in his eyes. I went from a normal pace into a double-step, not wanting to get in the way of a stray fist.

“I give up, I give up, I give up,” I said as I stumbled back into the piauí office. “You can’t hear the music at all, nobody dances, fortões keep trying to make out with you, and when you can hear the music it’s just the same damn song.” This was not met with much surprise. “Is Carnaval always this awful?” They talked me down, chided me for going alone and helped me redo my bloco itinerary. “There’s Carnaval for the people who actually like samba, and Carnaval for the people who want to have an experience,” said one writer sagely. Mainly I was just exhausted. I was tempted to curl up on the floor of the office in a pile of piauís and sleep there until Ash Wednesday.

I do hold onto something. As I was fleeing Santa Teresa, I caught sight of something that gave me hope for Carnaval. A truck was parked on a side street blaring sambas-enredo, and an old lady dressed all in pink was out on her terrace, sambaing blissfully and alone. She was the happiest person I saw all day.

After one single ball, it’s become clear that Carnaval is going to have grave, long-lasting repercussions for my life. I never expected this. I was supposed to come back to Rio for a fun week and then go back to studying like nothing ever happened. But now it is the next day, I’ve taken a shower, changed clothes, had breakfast, and I am still glittery. This glitter will never, ever come off. I’m going to study in Argentina and I’ll still be glittery. I’m going to do thesis research and I’ll still be glittery. I’m going to graduate from Princeton and I’ll still be glittery. I’ll have to explain why I’m glittery to prospective employers. I will be glittery at my wedding. I will be buried glittery. And all this because I’d never heard the word purpurina.

I was enthusiastically offered some by a friend before we headed out the door to Trapiche Gamboa. Now, let me say that my command of Portuguese is, in fact, very good. But Machado de Assis and Fernando Pessoa don’t write about purpurina, and I managed to spend six months researching carioca popular music in the 1920s without having to write about purpurina. So when I heard the word I was suspicious, because it sounds like a kind of small larva or perhaps an expensive and debilitating club drug. “O que é mesmo?” “Purpurin,” one friend translated, giggling. A note to the peanut gallery, for the sake of Luso-Anglo relations: purpurina is not purpurin.

Then it was too late, because they were already glittering me. And since it is never coming off, I’ll have to accept that I am a glittery person. I guess this is my life now.

Somehow, in all my Carnaval preparations, it didn’t occur to me that in order to survive a series of blocos I might actually have to dress up, and therefore exercise my nonexistent costume-making skills. I got lucky in my first bloco – a very kind friend whipped together a costume for me out of nothing – but I knew that I’d have to put in a little more effort over the next week. Deep breath. Go to Saara.

I missed Rio ferociously while I was away, all of it. Just catching sight of the morros, as I walked through the city on the second morning, made me disproportionately happy. I’d glance up and smile, look away, and then look again just to make sure that the mountains were still there. I wanted to make sure that things were just where I left them in December. But, everywhere I looked, I could see Carnaval approaching, warping the city in tiny perceptible ways. Something was in the air.

Right after I got off the Metro, I noticed something off the bat: the guy who normally plays cheesy pop songs from his booth on the Largo da Carioca was playing sambas-enredo. I was heartened to see that not all the small vendors had succumbed to Carnaval fever; the guy who sells red garlic near the Largo de São Francisco de Paula was miraculously uncorrupted by the excesses of the season, and continued selling red garlic. But tons of little stalls were suddenly selling confetti and wigs and masks, and even some of the chic confeitarias near Centro were suddenly sporting Carnaval decorations in their display windows.

Saara had definitely caught Carnaval fever. I kind of forget what these stores sell when they’re not selling costumes, but it certainly looked like a one-stop costume shop now. It was immediately overwhelming.  Supermen flappers bikinis wigs havaianas capes feathers horns beads whips collars tails top-hats uniforms tutus short-shorts confetti confetti confetti.  I spotted a handful of very confused-looking tourists wending their way through the crowds. “Gringo, gringo, assim você me mata,” wailed one of the loudspeakers. I felt somehow offended.

Perusing the racks of costumes at Casa Turuna, I felt bad for the men. Most of their outfits looked like big tents: slippery “Arab” robes, a thick Peter Pan getup, uniforms, capes, bulky superhero outfits. Mustn’t that get horribly hot? Of course, as a woman, I felt sorrier for myself. Somehow I’d blocked out the fact that the majority of female Halloween costumes are a nightmare. Protestant prudery prevents me from covering less than a certain percentage of my body in public places, which  meant that I couldn’t go as a sexy schoolgirl, or a sexy panther, or a sexy Snow White, or a sexy clown, or a sexy cowboy, or a sexy cat, or a sexy duck, or a sexy ferret (I didn’t see one at Casa Turuna, but it’s a law of the universe that there’s a sexy costume for everything). Also I didn’t want to pay good money for a costume that I’d end up sweating on, having things spilled on, and generally get messed up – and probably wouldn’t take back to Buenos Aires anyway. Quiet despair.

In the end, I took my friend’s advice to heart: the less coherence, the better. My Carnaval arsenal now includes a tiny umbrella, stripy tank tops, a cowboy hat, a top hat, a tiny top hat, a tail, a red wig, and a feather boa which has already managed to shed all over my bed. Maybe I can make them all into one incredible costume. Then I will be the queen of Carnaval. No, let’s be real, this isn’t going to end well.

Part of the bait drawing me back from Argentina was the promise of a Chico Buarque show. “At least this one won’t cancel,” wrote a friend who’d accompanied the saga of the João Gilberto tour. I have a special fondness for Chico that dates from when I first started learning Portuguese. The introductory language course used a lot of music to help us learn and remember basic grammatical concepts – “Chuva, suor e cerveja” uses a lot of the negative command form, “Construção” is nothing but an exercise in the imperfect subjunctive – and just get used to hearing the sounds of the language.

“A Banda” was one of the songs we discussed in the first semester, and I remember being very proud that I could haltingly explain the metaphor. I can speak Portuguese today because I fell in love with the music that we listened to: before I could get through a complete sentence without stumbling, I could sing “A Banda” while I cleaned my room. If nothing else, I owe Chico one.

So, having burned all bridges in Buenos Aires and arrived in Rio in the wee hours that day, I caught the Metro up to Vivo Rio. This was an experience in and of itself. My carioquice only goes so far, and I still threaten to break out in hives if there’s any chance of my being late to something, so I was grinding my teeth the whole way. My car was full of people coming back from Suvaco do Cristo, to boot, which meant that it was, ah, lively. I was standing next to a guy in a Botafogo jersey, who was harassed from General Osório to Catete by six Flamenguistas bellowing chants from the other end of the car. Carnaval brings out the worst in people, it suddenly occurred to me. But Flamenguistas don’t really need an excuse, do they?

I ducked into the theater just as the show was starting. I don’t think I was emotionally prepared. I don’t think this is entirely unreasonable: it’s one thing to know that Chico writes plenty of songs about heartbreak and abandoned women, and another to have him sing a dozen of them in a row. Of course it was beautiful. But the cumulative effect was unbearably sad, something akin to watching several Lorca plays back to back.

Chico has a perennial dignity about him that seemed at odds with the show. Sitting or standing, he’s very straight-backed. I was reduced to watching the big TV screens for much of the show, because that way I could follow the play of expressions across his magnified face. Caetano does goofy dances, Gil yips and ambles his way across the stage, but Chico does most of his emoting with a delicate crinkling of those heavy Buarque de Hollandan brows. At most, he walked from one corner of the stage to the other (already sufficient to elicit howls of glee from those closest). When he sang “Sou Eu” with Wilson das Neves, the difference between their stage presences was incredible – where Wilson swaggered, Chico seemed almost bashful. He had the crowd on a string, but I got the sense that he would have preferred that everyone just sort of sit quietly while he sang.

I don’t mean this as a criticism at all. It always gets on my nerves when concert pianists sway exaggeratedly on their benches and singers swoon over their microphones, so Chico’s almost total stillness was both unexpected and refreshing. Distracting light effects aside, the show was stripped down to just that tumbling pained voice. I couldn’t shake the impression that he was embarrassed by it all: the flashing spotlights, the hysteria, the three encores. And of course all the shows are sold out. Coitado. I felt almost guilty, as an eager audience member and encore-demander, for making him go through all that. When the lights went up I wiped away a furtive tear (I told you I wasn’t emotionally prepared) and a thought occurred to me. After all this time, it seems that he still doesn’t know how to be Chico Buarque.