Seven Days in Rio (16 page)
Reluctantly, I decided it was time to take my leave of Uva. I had no illusion that Brittany would follow me, since I’d lost her long ago as I wandered “Les Caves,” where, in addition to face-sitting, vaginal examination, and intercourse, Uva’s many patrons were doused with urine, spanked, slapped, placed on the rack, and in one case fucked in the ass by a beautiful Crystal wearing a strap-on. As I came up the cellar steps, emerging from the darkness into the moonlight of the ancient streets, I again encountered the toothless old Charon who had led me to this inferno of desire.
The old man greeted me like a long-lost friend and made it plain that he had been waiting for me and expected compensation for all his efforts on my behalf.
“Where’s my thousand dollars?” He spoke the line, which he had undoubtedly lifted from some American gangster film, with an almost perfect Brooklyn accent.
Having paid the wages of sin, I started to walk away. But I questioned why I was even leaving. I had waited this long for pleasure, and now that I’d found it, I wondered if it was simply my childhood fear of asphyxiation that was forcing me to let it slip through my fingers. Nothing was making sense to me, and the prospect of returning to room 1269 to stare into China’s vagina while she watched her soccer championships, with the eventual goal of understanding my personality, didn’t seem half as enticing as lying in one of Uva’s caves with Brittany’s beautiful ass in my face. The one similarity with analysis, of course, would be the prone position, although the highly verbal nature of the analytic relationship makes face-smothering counterproductive.
Nevertheless, I began making my way back toward the Copacabana, where some sort of squall seemed to be brewing. The narrow streets gave way to large boulevards, and my obsessive desire turned into a feeling of relief. I had been to hell — a very nice part of hell, but hell nonetheless — and I’d returned to civilization from the infernal regions where sinners burned in the eternity of their unruly desires. Even though I still couldn’t shake the conviction that if I weren’t so afraid of death I would have given up my last ounce of
reality
to have Brittany sit on my face forever, I was now beginning to get a toehold on my old life of trying to create a real relationship with a prostitute. I couldn’t wait to tell China everything that had happened to me, though I was painfully aware that our first session would be over even before I had a chance to get through a fraction of my story. Part of the problem was that I was partial to the slow process of free-associating, abreacting, and describing my dreams. Even in a normal session, by the time I had done all of these things, I would have used up my time. With China, I’d had particular difficulty trying to discuss any of my adventures with the Tiffanys I’d met in Rio. I ended up trying to rehash what I hadn’t finished in the previous session, and it could take five or six sessions to get across a minor bit of biography, figuring in the awkward silences with which each session began. At the end of a session, China would inevitably cut me off by saying, “We’ll continue next time,” at which point I would pause awkwardly to savor a moment of humiliation at being interrupted in the act of expressing an emotion of earth-shattering import. By mutual agreement, I would get up to leave her suite, pause ten seconds, ring the bell, and start it all over again. Having so many sessions in close proximity, we both felt it was best to go through the formality of initiating a new session after a token intermission. It was the cross we had to bear, but it somehow made sense to both of us.
My past analyses were generally slow-going affairs that took place over many years, so the notion that I could have a complete analysis with China in three days, leaving time for the termination process, seemed at first impossible. But I began to look at the analysis with China as one of those life-changing experiences, like climbing Mount Everest or attempting an Iron Man triathlon, in which the human mind is radically altered in a short period of time. Not only would I henceforth look at life totally differently, my view of everything that had happened to me in the past would be shaped by the intense interaction that was taking place as I ogled China’s vagina while she shifted in her seat and cheered for her favorite soccer teams. What was essentially going on in the hotel room was a form of shock therapy, in which I came and went so many times that I eventually started to come to grips with my core issue — separation anxiety. Actually, I wasn’t totally unfamiliar with the therapeutic approach that China was practicing, since I had once employed it on my dog. Years before, I’d had a basset hound who started to howl every time I left the house. Due to the complaining of my neighbors, I was forced to hire a dog therapist, who diagnosed Hubert’s problem as separation anxiety, with the treatment involving the same coming and going that China was applying in my case. Of course, there was more to our analysis than the animal psychology used on my dog. B.F. Skinner notwithstanding, China was plainly interested in behavior modification only to the extent that it helped me to understand the deeper sources of my neurosis.
The true nature of my suffering was a notion that only started to hit me during the latter part of my work with China. During my second day of treatment, after I’d returned from Uva, I started to entertain the notion that China was really only a glorified Tiffany — at least as far as I was concerned. It dawned on me that the only reason I had gone to see her in the first place was to get into her underpants, if she had ever worn any. My whole torrid history started to come back to me — the guilt toward my mother for having worn tight-fitting pants that accentuated my crotch and my general inability to communicate with other human beings, in particular women. I felt like a computer whose hard drive had shut down, and was now coming back to life with distressingly random words, numbers, and images appearing on the screen.
It was early morning and the city was awakening much like my consciousness, which had become short-circuited when my synapses were overheated in Uva. I realized it would soon be time to return to room 1269 to begin what would be the period of the analysis when the patient’s transference and the analyst’s counter-transference are like two football teams that have ascended to the top of their conferences and are now ready for the Super Bowl. It also reminded me of Hegelian dialectics. If the transference was the thesis, the counter-transference, comprised of the analyst’s projections onto the patient, was the antithesis. These two gave birth to a child, or in Hegelian terms, the synthesis, which was the newly psychoanalyzed patient, who had hopefully made his unconscious desires conscious.
I had to shower and freshen up, since my face still smelled of Brittany’s ass and I didn’t want China to lose her analytic neutrality because of a sudden bout of jealousy, or to say something like, “you smell like shit,” which, however truthful, might have hurt my feelings. It would all come out in our sessions, but why put it right in her face, so to speak? There were better ways of communicating my experiences. Normally, I would begin a session by telling my analyst about the dreams I’d had the night before, though in this analysis I had been handicapped by the time structure, which didn’t allow for the same kind of elaboration. I was additionally impeded in using this tool of analytic work by the fact that I hadn’t slept and could describe no more than my salacious daydreams, which have statistically been found less effective in providing an avenue to the unconscious. As I walked toward the elevator, passing in front of the grand ballroom where the meetings and lectures of the psychoanalytic convention were posted, I noticed that the centerpiece of the day’s presentations was “Erotomania: the Sequel,” given by Dr. Francesco Levi, from Parma. My curiosity piqued, I continued on my way to China’s room.
“I was totally obsessed with Brittany’s asshole,” I began as soon as I lay back. “There was a moment at Uva when I thought I would do anything to get her back, to have her ass smothering me. At the same time, I wanted to dive into her pussy and swim upstream, as if I could paddle into her uterus and be reborn.” As I said this, it dawned on me that even though China was a psychoanalyst, she was also a woman, and I became fearful that she might be offended by the explicitness of the imagery. There was also a bit of dishonesty to my romanticized depiction. I was trying to add a philosophical element, using the dogged quest for rebirth and transcendence as justification for my bawdy fantasies. In truth, I hadn’t thought of anything as spiritual as being reborn when I was feasting on Brittany. I was just in love with her ass and the oblivion of unmitigated pleasure it represented. It was as simple as that. I realized I had to be more truthful with China about my feelings if I was ever going to get better.
“Now that I think about it,” I continued to ramble, “what is to be found in an asshole or a cunt? I was never satisfied by the attainment of the love object. Once I was licking her ass, I felt strangely bereft. All I was aware of was the mixture of shit and Handy Wipe, like the stench of camphor in a musty closet. Once you gain access to a body part, it loses its symbolic value. Only when it is taken away, as it was when Brittany disappeared into the crowd at the club, does the nimbus that had endowed her organs with otherworldly magic return. I felt like I was in search of the Holy Grail, but now that I am back here in analysis, the feeling is beginning to subside. I’m beginning to realize that Brittany was just a whore. There is something very suspicious about freedom. Nature made breasts, assholes, and cunts to be sacred, and when they are freely exhibited and easily attainable they simply become flesh and bone. There is a certain democratization that goes on at the Copacabana, where the girls walk around topless. After all, the nipple is just calcified skin. The private parts lose their aristocratic quality. The breast, for example, is the child’s first sexual object, so it’s no wonder that when a grown man finally sees a woman’s breast he goes nuts. It’s the powerful pull of infantile sexuality in its adult form.”
I must say I felt very proud of myself as I finished this little dissertation. I was sure that China would be impressed with the sophistication of my analytic insight, and I was ready and willing to give her credit for having educated me.
“So your mother is just made of skin and flesh and bones like everyone else?” China inquired, raising her eyebrows dispassionately. Somehow her comment reminded me of Shylock’s “pound of flesh” in
The Merchant of Venice
, and I imagined my mother taking off her girdle and having her flesh — her breasts, vagina, her stomach — weighed on a scale. I had a sudden urge to get on the next flight back to New York, to leave the Tiffanys and Brittanys of Rio, even to leave my China, and abruptly terminate the analysis. It was apparent that China either hadn’t been listening or hadn’t understood a word I’d said, because I was making precisely the opposite point: my mother wasn’t just skin and bones, any more than China was. It was the way in which the personality infused all this flesh that made a breast more than just a breast. China wasn’t just a vagina. Her vagina had symbolic resonance, at least until she had made her brutally insensitive remark. My irritation would soon pass, but for a second I regarded China as no more than a cunt.
She must have been aware of how much her comment upset me, because she dropped her veneer of analytic neutrality and used the remote to lower the volume on her television, despite the fact that she was watching a very important playoff between Brazil and Argentina.
“I think we need to discuss the fee,” she said. I felt it was an odd choice to bring up the subject of money when I was in the middle of an emotional discussion about my mother’s body. Unfortunately, my time was up. When we began a new session, I immediately explained to China how upset I was with her for discussing fees at a time when I was feeling so fragile. “You’re always discussing your mother,” she shot back, “even when you think you’re not.” Then she added, “We’ll continue next time.” At that moment I felt a rush of contempt for China. I couldn’t imagine how we had ever become doctor and patient, much less lovers.
“I hate this Oedipal stuff. It’s psychobabble,” I blurted. “You know the
Sandinistas
? Well, you sound like a
Jargonista.
It’s always the same stuff with loving the mother and hating the father. My father wasn’t even in the picture. He was no match for me. It was all about my mother and me. I thought that Lacanians were supposed to be more linguistically orientated. I thought we would be talking about post-structuralists like Barthes, Foucault, and Kristeva. This is the same stale stuff that the classic Freudians were peddling back in the ’50s, to go with the Danish modern furniture in the waiting rooms. Sure I loved my mother. Everyone wants to fuck his mother. You don’t have to be a patient in psychoanalysis to learn that. I’m actually quite functional. I love women and I simply need to find the right whore to settle down with.”
“Do you mind if I suck your cock?” China interjected placidly.
“Sure, but I insist on paying.”
China didn’t bother to respond as she got down on her knees and started to unzip my fly. When she finally got my dick out, she paused for a moment to listen to a roar from the Brazilian soccer fans on the television, as their goalie made an improbable save. Then she placed me in her mouth.
“You’re very eloquent,” she said. The words were muffled by the fact that my penis was between her lips, so it would have been dishonest for me to return the compliment. China really knew how to suck a cock, and unlike some Tiffanys she looked you straight in the eye as she did it. Her eyes were actually welling up as she stared at me, as if she were experiencing some powerful emotion.
Perhaps more was happening for her than the simple application of a blowjob. I have to say that I remained curiously rational, despite the oceanic pre-Oedipal feelings that she was stirring up in me. I was painfully aware that my desire was due to the powerful transference that had taken place, and that, like many an analytic patient before me, I had simply fallen in love with my analyst. This is something that is generally more prevalent with women patients, who fall in love with their handsome or fatherly male analysts. But it’s perfectly natural for a man to turn his mother figure into a whore. The fact that by blowing my brains out China was giving up her veneer of analytic neutrality complicated matters, but still, all the feelings that were transpiring between us were an inevitable part of the analytic work, and in fact totally appropriate at this stage of the process.