ABSTRACT
This chapter is the result of a joint research project by the two authors, who carried out an urban ethnography of scenes involving sexual encounters in public or semi-public places, often with the LGBT population, and occasional interactions with heterosexual people and couples, in three cities in Brazil: Salvador, Porto Alegre and São Paulo. The main interest was to analyse the interactions in which the boundaries of race, sexual orientation, social class, generation and gender cross. Our ethnographic work seeks to record sexual interactions that do not involve paid sex, just erotic exchange. The events and descriptions in this chapter highlight the connections between sex and pleasure. Each of the scenes described was derived from field research we have been conducting over the last few years. The names of the places mentioned are real, but the anonymity of the individuals involved has been preserved.
