Seven Days in Rio (11 page)

At first I thought it was my imagination, but I started to notice that there were moments when China was actually paying more attention to me than to the television, and I wondered if her kindly gaze was showing far more than mere compassion for the sufferings of her patient. I wasn’t sure exactly what to do, but I realized that this was a situation in which all my years of paying for sex would come in handy — if only I could endure 16 more minutes before asking her if I could purchase some kind of sexual service along with the psychoanalysis. (It would be rude to interrupt in the middle of a billing cycle.)

There are many men and women for whom sex isn’t a financial transaction. After all, not all women are whores, even in a place like Rio. But a situation in which I was already paying for a woman’s services as a therapist segued naturally, in my mind at least, into offering her compensation to slake my carnal desires.

Despite the question of whether our analysis would evolve into prostitution, and the puzzle as to why China insisted on keeping the television on during our sessions, this early period of the analysis, especially the first 192 sessions (the equivalent of a year’s worth in a little over three hours), were some of the most fulfilling of all the work we would do together. In fact, we were so engrossed in the analysis that we both forgot about the erotomania lecture we were supposed to attend. About halfway through that first “year,” I discovered that China was not wearing underpants, and from what I could see, China’s vagina was a hairy one. The effect of her all-natural bush was rather dramatic in exciting the drives that were the essence of my manhood. It took me a while to get up the courage to talk to China about the fact that I could see her vagina and that it was having an effect on the analysis, but when I did she was remarkably calm in response, saying only, “I was wondering how long you were going to continue denying what was right in front of your eyes.”

Naturally, this also brought up childhood memories of my mother, whose vagina was visible to me through the diaphanous nightgowns she insisted on wearing around the house. But China crossed her legs and said, “We’ll continue next time,” just as I was about to address the memories that the constant exposure to my mother’s genitals elicited in me.

Even though the next session would start seconds later, it was always a major break in momentum for me. I found myself behaving as if I were a patient in any conventional therapy, first talking about how I was feeling that day before reviewing the themes I had brought up in previous sessions, if I could remember them. For years, my therapists and analysts had told me that the tendency to forget or repress is totally natural, but I found it upsetting that the frequent interruptions totally disrupted my chain of thought.

Of course, I could have proposed that we abandon the Lacanian approach and undertake a shorter number of sessions of the traditional 50-minute length, but I wanted to return from my vacation able to tell everyone I knew that I’d not only had sex with a lot of beautiful Brazilian Tiffanys, but that I’d undergone a complete analysis to boot.

At one point, China asked me if she reminded me of my mother. My first response was, “Why do you ask?” Analysts never answer when you pose a question, and never respond when you pour out your heart. In any case, the session was over before we could delve any further into the subject, and by the time we started our next session, I had forgotten why I’d even asked the question.

It struck me as obvious that she should ask me if she reminded me of my mother — after all, she was a woman and she was exhibiting her cunt to me just the way my mother had. If anyone was guilty of not being forthcoming, it was I. I was the one who was resistant to seeing the connection. I was the one who was avoiding analytic insight by posing the kind of rhetorical question a logical positivist might ask, rather than allowing my mind to soar to a vibrant state of free association. I was the one who was being literal, who didn’t understand the symbolic, metaphoric element that existed in all things. Of course, China didn’t look like my mother. She was much better looking.

Even in Lacanian analyses there are relatively long periods of time when nothing seems to happen. In my case, ten minutes passing could seem like a lifetime, since over ten sessions were involved. In actuality, the subject of the relationship between China and my mother’s vagina would eventually become more prominent and take up even more time than that. Psychoanalysis is often invidiously compared to short-term behavioral therapy or drug regimens, in which a good degree of affect modulation can become apparent in fewer than ten visits. My analysis with China was paradoxical, in that while it was nominally long-term analysis, it was taking place in much less time than your classic short-term therapy would. But, living in a universe in which the uncertainty principle was used to explain the facts of life, I was not at all surprised by the existence of such contradictions. All these ideas were swimming in my head, but I rarely had a chance to communicate them to China, who seemed constantly prepared to end a session the moment it began. There was no doubt that her insistence on keeping to the therapeutic regimen we had established was an attempt to make a point about the limits of what an analytic session could be.

I looked at this relatively long middle stretch of the analysis, which in the end must have added up to a full day’s work, as the period in which we forged a true therapeutic bond. I was learning to trust China even at those moments when she pulled her legs into her chest so that I was looking straight up her snatch. This is what is known in analysis as “working through.” I was coming to terms with the distrust I felt toward my mother during my childhood, a period of my life when I was powerless to do anything about the stimulation I experienced.

What was emerging from the therapeutic interaction was the notion that, under normal circumstances, if I met a woman like China who showed me her vagina, I was totally empowered to touch it. I could even enjoy the notion that I might like to stick my penis into it. I think we agreed that in a situation like this, it was imperative that I follow the laws of whatever land I was in, being careful to ask permission prior to insertion.

In retrospect, I think that seeing China’s vagina for so many sessions in a row, particularly in the early period of the analysis, had a profound effect on our relationship. Analysis has come a long way from the days when the analyst was regarded as a distant figure who rarely uttered a word. Many of the blatantly non-egalitarian elements of the relationship (in particular, the one in which the therapist gets to know everything about the patient, but the patient knows virtually nothing about the person treating him) have been legislated out of existence in some of the recent amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The study of transference can no longer be used as a vehicle for discriminatory behavior against patients. I am thankful to the great civil rights leaders of the ’60s, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who in bringing about racial equality also opened the doors for affluent analytic patients whose rights were being violated on the Upper East Side by double standards that evoked the plantations of the Old South. Patients in analysis were no longer treated like indentured slaves who toiled to pay for their therapy and often received little in return. On the other hand, what was going on between China and me was perhaps going a step beyond the liberties that had been envisioned by the courageous freedom fighters who had come before us.

After our 480th session came to a close at the end of the first day, I decided to go out on the town to see what kind of effect my newly gleaned insights had on my relationships with the local Tiffanys. I had to get out of the frying pan and into the fire, as it were, and The Gringo was probably the best place to start.

The acquisition of knowledge can be a double-edged sword. As I walked through the lobby of the hotel, I found that my view of the world had changed. I was painfully aware that looking for Tiffanys had become a job, and that my mind, and heart, was hopelessly preoccupied with China.

I had been a good student at Columbia and always got my assignments in on time. If my reason for coming to Rio was to fuck as many prostitutes as possible, I was going to do my homework and turn in the term paper, or in this case give the oral report. But my heart wasn’t in it. My face wasn’t hot and I didn’t experience skin respiration when I thought of Tiffanys.

I was like a ghost walking through the lobby. I didn’t even stop at the concierge desk to speak to Adolphe. Soon enough, I was filled with still more trepidation. There are many rough barrios in Rio, and I’d heard that there were some occasions when sex tourists were susceptible to being mugged — for example, when they got stinking drunk in the Copa and someone slipped them a Mickey and rolled them. More commonly, their minds were so consumed with desire they were unaware of dangerous characters who leaped out of doorways with machetes and lopped off their protruding sex organs. The more passionate they were, the more likely they were to be relieved of their money-clip or even their penis by a Tiffany who also happened to be a serial castrator, a Jack the Ripper in reverse. I didn’t want to get sidetracked, let alone victimized, by extraneous carnal desires. I had to stay focused on one question: could I allow myself to seriously contemplate the notion of having an affair, let alone a full-blown relationship, with my analyst? I was reminded of the predicament faced by the Duke of Windsor, who abdicated the throne to marry the woman he loved. Of course, I didn’t have to abdicate anything, but I sensed in myself the willingness to go to similar lengths. Perhaps what I was thinking about was abdicating my role as patient in order to become China’s lover for the remainder of my vacation in Rio.

I found myself watching the sunset from the Copa, wondering if China played with herself after a long day of seeing patients. I could only imagine what a woman who thought nothing of exposing herself to her patients would do when left to her own devices. I suddenly felt jealous of her fingers for being able to climb their way into the orifices I longed to fondle. Seeing that she was part of the army of therapists who devote their lives to fighting the repression of human instinct, I could only wonder about the extent of the liberties she took with her own body. I imagined her throwing off her little skirt, turning up the volume on her television, and wildly finger-fucking herself while she watched the Brazilian team slam home another penalty kick. She reminded me of Pussy Galore and Lotta Vagina and the rest of the great cinematic heroines named for their phenomenal private parts. I stared out at the sea, whose surface was as calm as glass, noticing a few stray Tiffanys emerging from the surf in their string bikinis. The lazy Rio afternoon would give way to a torrid night of sex for hire, and all I could think about was bursting into China’s room to demand emergency therapy.

I would tell her that I loved her and would be willing to pay twice her usual rate if she would only consent to breaking down the barrier of therapeutic discretion and turning our suggestive talk into action. I felt that she held a power and knowledge that would be unleashed in me if only I could stick my penis into her. It was like siphoning fuel from a car.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I was caught off guard when an elegantly attired gentleman, who, with his thin moustache, bore an uncanny resemblance to Salvador Dali, came up to me and asked if I was staying at the hotel. After I informed him that I was indeed a guest, adding that I had obtained observer status at the analytic conference and had even begun my own analysis, he discretely pointed out that I might want to consider slipping into a pair of trousers. I explained to him that I would return to my room as soon as I recovered from the separation anxiety I was feeling from having to part with China for the night. The gentleman, not conversant in the language of psychoanalysis, probably thought I was upset at being separated from a set of expensive dishes. When he looked at me like I was crazy, I reassured him by saying, “That’s just an American joke. My pants are being pressed. I’m sure house services must have returned them to my room by now.”

I did an about-face and headed to the elevator bank. I figured I might as well go back to my room, but I was suddenly troubled by the thought that my analysis was preventing both China and me from attending the conference. This was as good a reason as any to knock on the door of her room, especially since we had both just missed the lecture on erotomania.

I firmly expected China to be surprised, if not annoyed, to find me standing at her door. But I had rationalized my behavior in such a way that I felt perfectly comfortable telling her that it was a life-or-death matter, even though it was obvious to anyone that missing a lecture was no justification for arriving pant-less and unannounced at your analyst’s office-cum-hotel room.

In my overwrought state, I became distracted by one of the many Tiffanys who roamed freely in the hotel corridors. Her microskirt and lizard-skin platform high heels gave me a momentary case of vertigo, so when I knocked on the door of room 1169, I was sure it was room 1269. After knocking once with no answer, I tried again with a little more insistence. Finally I heard footsteps, and before I knew it a Tiffany, buck-naked except for her high heels, appeared at the door and asked nonchalantly in heavily accented English, “Are you here for the orgy?”

In the background, I could see a Tiffany who reminded me of Eurydice in
Black Orpheus
, sitting on the face of an older man. Even though I couldn’t see much of him, I made a quick guess that he was an American Midwesterner. He looked like a beached whale, with his hairy stomach flopping off to one side as he lay on his back.

For a moment I thought that I might have interrupted one of China’s group sessions. Most analysts don’t conduct group therapy, but China wasn’t exactly orthodox. Any analyst who shows her vagina to a patient doesn’t fall into the classic mode. I asked if anyone had seen China. The black Eurydice must have thought I said “vagina” since she replied, “There’s plenty of that here, honey. Why don’t you just go into the green room and take off your clothes?”