Morocco, the striptease theater in Recife

Yesterday's anniversary of the city of Recife prompts me to republish the text about the Teatro Marrocos from our "Dicionário Amoroso do Recife" (Recife's Loving Dictionary). And the reason is quite funny. I've observed elsewhere, and I'll observe it again here, that young people lack a memory of their city because no one tells them about the human reality of the land, and in this way they walk in historical ignorance of the world. 

Let me explain quickly. Once, I was returning from Old Recife with my daughter and her friends when we passed by the Santa Isabel Theater. Everyone knows this theater, or rather, everyone sees it. So I turned my face to the other side of the avenue and pointed; 

Morocco was located there. 

"But Morocco is still here," the most knowledgeable one replied. 

"No," I replied, "that building there is a branch of Caixa Econômica. I'm referring to the Teatro Marrocos, perhaps the only theater in Brazil to have striptease shows. Do you know what that is? It's a show where the starlet takes off her clothes, slowly becoming naked in front of the audience to the sound of music." 

Seriously?! That's awesome! Top-notch!

So I'll continue now with what I couldn't say that day. I'm copying the text I published in the Dicionário Amoroso do Recife (Recife's Dictionary of Love). 

It was located there, in the vicinity of the Santa Isabel Theater, the Palace of Justice, and the Government Palace, also known as the Campo das Princesas Palace. With such noble neighbors, the Marrocos Theater could not possibly survive. For the younger generation and for outsiders—a way of being young in a city, because they know little of its history—I note that the Marrocos Theater was the promise of sex in a world of repressed sex in Recife. That is to say, according to what teenagers saw in newspaper advertisements: there at the Marrocos, the performers took off their clothes, performing a striptease to the climax of voyeurism. Before the culminating point, there were revue theater pieces with their showgirls whose thighs dominated the view, who raised their legs high to reveal the desirable, beloved, and fleshy curves of their buttocks. 

It could be said that, given the evolution of the scene, where later there would be the bliss of an apotheotic striptease, those buttocks could do anything: lower the sky, raise the earth, bring down the moon, change the course of the planets, destroy the Church, morality, and the proclaimed good customs. In that space of freedom, of destroying everything, resided its immense power of seduction. For is there a more irresistible temptation than the allure of the forbidden? When we were boys, we would open the newspapers and the advertisement for the Teatro Marrocos, by the Companhia Barreto Júnior, on the same page as the day's films, was a spectacle greater than the epic of Cecil B. DeMille. While the image of Moses parting the Red Sea in the grandiose *The Ten Commandments* was shown, a venomous showgirl announced that today there was "Bi-bi-bi" at the "Bó-bó-bó." What was that? The boys held the Ten Commandments, but imagined the true phenomenon of parting the Red Sea: what could be bi-bi-bi in the bo-bo-bo? Then it could only be everything, bi-bi-bi was sex at its best bo-bo-bo. Then we closed the newspaper page, and in a way, as would happen in our mature years with the haunting impression of a good poem, we closed the page, but the image of the striptease wouldn't leave us. Inappropriate until 18 years of age. 

On the occasions when we went to downtown Recife, to the city, as it was called, and passed in front of the Teatro Marrocos, which advertised the show on signs with little stars in the sky against a dark background, like the Grand Circus of Moscow, we could hardly look at the sin we so desired. “Today there’s Bi-bi-bi at Bó-bó-bó.” And we continued on our way, when the most humane thing would have been to stand in front of the sign, caress it and say to it, “Today I’m first in line, without fail.” But we continued, seeing the future that would come later. Then the men, the older boys, the lucky ones of the time, entered that future. And they fell into the joyful perversion of customs, into the world of naked women. Paradise, the thighs, the spectacle was well thought out. The showgirls would arrive in tiny bikinis, a wide smile on their ruby, crimson, red lips, brighter than the apple in Eden, and they would crack jokes with double and triple meanings, which all boiled down to one: "Shall we have some fun? The bed is a party. Shall we?" 

There they proclaimed promises of bliss, because beyond the Buarque de Macedo Bridge there were the night-time boarding houses on Rio Branco, Marquês de Olinda, Chantecler, Bahiana, Iê-Iê-Iê Drinks, which was spelled with a Y, yê-yê-yê. You know? The boys had the same feeling as the boys at Sunday matinees, when the cinema preceded a birthday party with cake and guaraná, a prelude to joy. Then the showgirls at the Marrocos cinema announced what was to come, with the insinuation of real sin for men. Ah, then she, the supreme one, the greatest star appeared, sometimes with fireworks, band music, and little by little, in music changed to razor-sharp jazz, she would undress, step by step, piece by piece, while the boys clamored for heaven to be swifter. The bad thing, or rather, the almost bad thing about striptease, was that it was given in drops to thirsty, voracious mouths that wanted to encompass everything. But no. Sometimes, to the music of Henry Mancini, from The Pink Panther, she would remove gloves, stockings, blouse, and there, at the very limit of patience, she would display the desired sex, simple, pure and natural, but so denaturalized by repression and fetish. Then shouts of barbarism and stomping feet, jumps, open arms and more indecent and vulgar proposals would echo. But the tantalizing woman would smile and the curtains would close. Oblivious, the intended, as if deaf to the invitations of the rich gentlemen who threw champagne, jewels, houses, luxuries and a car with a chauffeur at her feet for a few nights. 

That's how it was. But "I don't know if it was all that great. The show was even tame, there wasn't even a hint of pornography," say those who had the good fortune to attend the Teatro Marrocos. I don't know if the reader agrees, but the Marrocos was much better in the imagination of the boys who never got to see a single show. Because that's how the Marrocos was, exactly as imagined. The boys' dreams are a legitimate domain of reality.