Seven Days in Rio (10 page)

The sole thing I was capable of blurting out was, “That banana really looks hard!” to which Tiffany replied with a tantalizing, “Ooooh,” shaking her bum at me as she sashayed over to the table occupied by China. Schmucker had signaled to the waitress for the bill in the impatient manner typical of New Yorkers. For a moment I mused on the differences between Brazilian waitresses and their counterparts in the States. To begin with, relatively few waitresses who work the dining rooms of luxury hotels in the States are hookers, although they might as well be, considering how they debase themselves for a good tip. Secondly, few waitresses I had met would have chosen to use a name like Tiffany during working hours (even if it was their given name), and fewer still would have stuck bananas in their uniform pockets in Tiffany’s suggestive manner.

I felt a moment of yearning, but I also realized that I had to seize an important opportunity to get the help I needed. Once the talk on erotomania started, both China and Schmucker would become absorbed in the presentation, and even though I might get into an academic discussion with them, it would be hard to shift the conversation to my personal sufferings. It was now or never.

I drifted over to the table where Schmucker and China were seated and was lurking behind Schmucker, hoping he wouldn’t notice me approaching. It was only when China slunk back into her seat and asked Schmucker, “How much do I owe you?” that she noticed me and exclaimed, “Dr. Cantor!”

For a moment I wasn’t going to say anything. After all, my mother had always wanted me to be a doctor. But I realized that with time being so short, it made no sense for my therapeutic progress to perpetuate a lie.

“I’m not an analyst. I’m not even a doctor. But I need one.” I tend to be a macho male when it comes to making myself vulnerable or expressing emotion. But all of a sudden I was overcome both with tears and a countervailing feeling of total humiliation. Walking around in my underwear might have been mildly embarrassing, but now I felt totally ashamed. At the same time, I was cognizant of the fact that I had been through a lot and that this was my way of asking for help. I felt China’s heart going out to me, as her eyes welled up in response to my emotionality, and her empathic response made me think that she would be the perfect analyst for me — at least for the duration of my stay in Rio. For some reason, I had the idea that she would empower me. I also thought that if she empathized so deeply with my desires, she might end up going to bed with me.

“Dr. Dentata,” I managed to stammer through my tears.

“Just call me China,” she said, reiterating what she’d said to me the first time we’d met.

“Oh, my experience is that most analysts like to be called Dr. and refer to their patients as Mr. or Ms.”

“Yes, but there has been a whole breakdown in the notion of analytic neutrality,” China explained. “Basically, the world has been turned upside down. Patients are becoming friends with their analysts, and in some cases even sleeping with them. The idea of the analyst as a distant figure who should be a tabula rasa, a vehicle for transference, has been disproven. It was becoming obvious that patients knew a lot about their analysts, and that to pretend otherwise was patently dishonest. Analysts who once watched their beautiful patients suggestively hike up their skirts in silence have become freer to express themselves. It’s like the Russian Revolution. Neutrality and professionalism are now looked on as Czarist, as forces of repression to be toppled. There was some precedent for this during the ’60s in the Sullivanian communes in New York, where doctors slept with their patients, exclusivity and possessiveness were frowned on and boundaries broken. But this is the first time we have seen this kind of change in analytic technique on such a mass scale.”

“So, can I make an appointment?” I ventured.

“Would you like to come back to my room?” Schmucker fixed his gaze on me when China posed this question, looking at me with a mixture of pity and beneficence, as if he were a priest bestowing forgiveness. At this point I can only say this: careful what you wish for. Here I was getting an invitation to analysis and what looked like a proposition for sex all in one shot. It was every patient’s dream come true, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that such serendipity would occur in a city that stood on the edge of the heart of darkness, with its primitive tribal history and huge Amazonian wilderness.

“I just want to make sure I don’t miss the lecture on erotomania,” China added wistfully.

China looked at me quizzically when I responded: “It would be great if you could fit me in.” I wanted to get into the brisk rhythm that I’d imagined for my analysis. In truth I was a bit taken aback by China’s willingness to have me come right up to her room. I have always wanted to enter my analysts’ inner sancta, but now that I was given access, I was apprehensive. I didn’t want to know China’s inner workings. I wanted to keep her at a distance as the idealized parent who would one day rescue me from myself. I was concerned that her analytic couch was in fact her bed. If we proceeded to undertake a full analysis, and simultaneously began an affair in keeping with the latest trends in analysis, where would I find the time to meet whores? I still hadn’t been to The Gringo.

Schmucker was wearing his customary outfit — blue blazer, rep tie, and thick rubber-soled shoes. I wondered if there was a chain of stores that catered to analysts like Schmucker, supplying certified non-descript attire. I was aware that he seemed to be disturbed about something. He was fidgeting with the check and seemed to be reading over the figures with great concern.

“I think I had more than you,” Schmucker said. “I had three eggs over, bacon, juice, and toast, and you only had two scrambled eggs.”

“Why don’t we split it right down the middle,” came China’s endearing response.

Even though I make a good amount of money as a CPA, I have always been particularly careful in negotiating my fees with analysts. The fact that China exuded an air of magnanimity when it came to financial matters was encouraging to me. Although I could already have been negatively transferring, I also got the impression that Schmucker was smirking to himself about getting a few slices of bacon at her expense.

Once the bill was settled, I followed China across the lobby. Her clothes looked so good on her that I couldn’t stop thinking about taking them off. Clearly, I was already getting my wires crossed. Whenever I picked up a hooker back in the States, I would inevitably follow her to the sleazy hotel she used with her customers. Once again, I was following a sexy woman whom I was about to pay, even if nominally it wasn’t for sex. But I knew that even if China wasn’t a hooker, there was some relief in store. I would be able to say whatever came to my mind, even if it was something lurid about my analyst, like the fact that she dressed like a little whore and I wanted to reach under her flowery skirt and pull her little thong down to her ankles and then fuck her in the doggy position. I made a firm commitment to myself that I would tell her this and anything else that came into my head, no matter how embarrassed I felt or how difficult it was to utter the words. I’d never had a woman analyst before, so expressing my desires to her would be a first. Had I chosen Schmucker as my analyst, I would have found myself in the position of criticizing him for being a weak asexual male. I would have told him that I felt superior to him because I would be the winner in the imagined contest I was having with him for China’s affections. The triumph was so real to me that I was already feeling Oedipal guilt for vanquishing the father figure in the competitive struggle for mommy’s love.

China was wearing high sandals that laced up around her calves and a tight-fitting leotard top that accentuated her pert breasts, whose nipples were already hardened by the time we stood facing each other in the elevator. Besides her Japanese background, China plainly had some Chinese blood in her too. In fact, she looked a little like Chiang Kai-shek. I wondered if she was of aristocratic lineage. Perhaps she was Chiang’s great granddaughter. Maybe her great grandparents had even witnessed the Long March, in which Mao and his Communist forces retreated from the Kuomintang. Perhaps they’d even known Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic. I suddenly had an urge to ask her about the status of Taiwan and the two small islands of Kimoy and Matsu. To mitigate my nervousness, I attempted some banal small talk. “I’ve never actually walked into an appointment accompanied by my analyst,” I said. “Usually my analyst is already there.”

“Yes, usually the analyst is seeing other patients before and after your appointment,” China replied somewhat blandly. “It’s different now because I am not waiting for you, and you probably don’t anticipate taking leave of me in the normal manner after your session has ended. This breakdown in the normal order of things is causing an upsurge of fantasies that you may not be entirely ready to handle. There may be fantasies of triumph, and countervailing fantasies of retribution for the success you are afraid you don’t deserve.”

The elevator swooped up to the twelfth floor and I followed China out. I started to shake as we walked down the long corridor. I began to worry that I was going to pee in my pants, even though I still wasn’t wearing any. China swiped her key card and ushered me into her suite. When I saw how neat and clean everything was, I decided that the air of order and calm must have been an indication of her Taoist origins.

Her room had a beautiful view of the ocean. I immediately started to compare it to mine, which only had the so-called “garden view,” meaning that it looked out on the enormous condensers that cooled my wing of the hotel. I was feeling short-changed, which, of course, was only more grist for the analytic mill. Some women experience classical penis envy, but I had always suffered from vagina envy. I wanted to be a beautiful woman who was taken care of by rich men, and who effortlessly commanded the kind of view that I was looking at now. I was tired of being a guy who had to scrape his way through life, depending on the kindness of concierges. Our rooms epitomized the two different worlds that we operated in. My room had practically no natural light, while hers was filled with a blinding sunlight that I imagined illuminated every fold of the organ that rhymed with her name. I was fortunate to have an analyst whose name evoked the very organ I so envied. I knew that sex-change operations were possible, but in the end I am not an adventurous spirit. If I got a vagina, I would be limited to having lesbian relationships with Tiffanys. I wasn’t sure how I was going to resolve these feelings. I both wanted to be a woman and to fuck them.

China pulled the chair out from her writing desk, which was equipped with a phone and fax machine. She nonchalantly flipped her television to CNN and proceeded to slide into her armchair, affording her a good view of the impressive plasma screen behind my head. The arrangement felt a little odd, but I wanted to let my first one-minute session take its course.

“Well, we’ll continue next time,” she said without any prompting from me. I got up and immediately sat down again. I knew that China was a Lacanian, but it was as if she were reading my mind. How had she figured out my preferred therapeutic parameters? Each of our initial sessions lasted exactly one minute, and after 16 of them, back-to-back, she went over to her computer and printed out an invoice.

I’d had therapists who made valiant but not always successful attempts to keep their eyes open during sessions. But this was the first time I had an analyst who insisted on watching television while I went on about my problems. What was particularly unfair about it was that, with the television behind me, I couldn’t see anything except China’s face. This was an unusual configuration for analysis, in which patients and their doctors don’t ordinarily make eye contact. In the past, when I’d been in a session with a sleepy therapist, I’d grit my teeth and force myself to talk about the discomfort I was feeling. (In one unfortunate instance, I fell asleep on the couch myself, only to wake up to find that we were both sleeping through the session, my analyst snoring softly behind me.) But I was having trepidation about opening up to China, considering the secret longings I harbored for her.

During most of our early sessions, China watched CNN International, but there were times when I could see she was bored or irritated by the news, especially reports about the refusal of the Chinese to revalue their currency. At these moments, she picked up the remote and switched to a sports network that carried soccer games. She loved the Brazilian team, but she also turned out to be a major David Beckham fan, and felt the best thing that ever happened to the American economy was recruiting Beckham for the Los Angeles Galaxy. On several occasions, I tried to talk about my personal history and early upbringing, but it was hard to get a word in edgewise, between China’s vexation about currency fluctuations and her lusty enthusiasm for
futebol
.

“You know what they did to the Iraqi soccer team when they lost under Saddam Hussein? They tortured them.” I wasn’t sure if China was recommending torture over steroids, but I began to suspect that there might be a method to her madness, and that all her television watching was some new Lacanian technique aimed at causing my long-repressed emotions to spew forth. I got the distinct feeling that she discounted the importance of my early years and my long-winded recollections of playing with those pink Spalding rubber balls in Kew Gardens. I wasn’t sure which parts of my past were of analytic significance, and with only a minute per session, it was often difficult to discriminate.

Only 32 minutes had passed, but I had already paid my bill for two months worth of sessions and I could feel a sea change in my personality. China had excused herself to go to the bathroom, and through the door I could hear her tinkling. In all my years of therapy, I had never seen or heard a shrink go to the bathroom, and there were times when I had the distinct feeling that, like parthenogenesis, in which fertilization occurs without the necessity of insemination, there were therapists who never went to the bathroom at all. China was plainly someone who pissed and shat as we all do. She was a real person.