Seven Days in Rio (6 page)

I looked down by Tiffany’s chair and noticed she was reading Herbert Marcuse’s
One-Dimensional Man
. The Marxist tome, which had been popular in the ’60s, proposed the theory of “repressive desublimation.” It was a book that I was sure was out of print. It would have been hard to come by in Rio or anywhere else. In any case, I imagined it must have once been banned in a country where hedonism was a religion. It was doubly odd to find it in the hands of an aging hooker.

Just then, I noticed two beautiful Tiffanys walking right toward us. “
Senhoras
!” I said, trying as best I could to tamp my eagerness. “Let’s get real. Show me your vaginas.”

The darker of the two, who seemed an exotic mix of African, Indian, and Asian, walked right up to me.

“You want to see my vagina?” she said in perfect English. “Are you familiar with Gracie Jiu-Jitsu?” It turned out I was looking at two members of Brazil’s championship martial arts club, and before I knew it I was indeed staring right at her vagina, from the ground, as she administered a punishing submission.

I had studied enough Jiu-Jitsu when I was in high school to realize that the hold she had me in was like a noose. The more I resisted, the tighter it would become. I wrapped my legs around her waist as I had been taught to do. The next step, as I recalled from my early lessons, was to try to roll her over. But I was starting to enjoy having her on top. It gave me an excellent view down her blouse, the areolae of her lovely breasts just visible over the top of her lacey black brassiere.

I have always liked a little bit of pain. Fingernails clutching at my back, the feeling of being smothered by tight buttocks descending over my face, teeth tugging at my ear, all figure in my repertoire of pleasures. Finding myself on the ground, knowing that my fate was in the hands of a beautiful Tiffany, added to the list of titillations and thrills that constituted my ideal of love. Maybe during the rest of my trip I’d seek out beautiful Tiffanys who would lock me in my hotel room closet, handcuff me to the bed, or just hogtie me for sport. I’d seen the usual S&M imagery — whips, rubber bodices, leather masks, pierced penises and testicles — but I had never so clearly related such esoteric pleasures to my own life. For the most part, my sex life was limited to the missionary position and what is known as “half and half” or “around the world,” meaning your basic suck and fuck.

I had previously enjoyed being smothered because it reminded me of my relationship to Mommy, but that really was as far as I would go when it came to sexual experimentation. Now, lying under the light of a street lamp on a deserted Rio street, I felt I was on the verge of experiencing a totally new realm of the senses.

In fact, it reminded me of being bullied as a kid. I would be playing punch ball in the schoolyard, and when it started to get dark a gang of kids would inevitably show up and start pushing us weaker kids around. Robbery was not the real motive, since most of us had empty pockets. These kids came from the local parochial school, where the nuns hit them regularly. They got their pleasure from domination. The panic I felt was that I was never going to escape. Rationally I knew that everyone had to go home for dinner at some point, but when a kid kept pushing me back into the fence every time I tried to leave, or pushed me to the ground and pinned me down, I was overwhelmed with irrational fears.

Adding to my buffet of sensations and memories was the simple fact that I liked the smell of this Tiffany. But if in the end she was just going to practice her Jiu-Jitsu moves on me and never let me pay for sex, I was wasting my time. The trip had already been a learning experience, but I didn’t want to be one of those perpetual students, constantly auditing courses but never applying my learning to real-life situations. Right now I was majoring in the ins and outs of the Rio sex industry without having enjoyed any actual sex.

Still, I wasn’t about to break out of any of the submissions Tiffany had me in, which she seemed to enjoy alternating every two or three minutes. I figured at least I was doing a good turn by helping her to show off her moves to her friend. Ultimately, I have faith in the goodness of humankind, and I was sure she would let me go when she was through with me.

I must have blacked out in one of her chokeholds. When I came to I found myself lying alone in the middle of the street. I had the feeling I sometimes get when I wake up with a strange dream, still at the edge of consciousness. Luckily, my Susan-Sontag-and-Herbert-Marcuse-reading friend appeared, having seen everything. When I asked her what had happened, she remarked, “They always wrestle johns on the way to practice.” Slowly, the finale of my wrestling bout started to come back to me like a grainy black and white film. Tiffany had maneuvered me into yet another chokehold, and I was really having trouble breathing. At the same time, she had me in such a position that her breasts were right in my face, and I was so turned on that I didn’t care if I lived or died. I noticed that my pants were wet and realized that I’d either peed on myself out of fear or shot my wad, though the burning sensation on my leg made me think it must have been the former. In any case, I had probably passed out from sheer ecstatic relief.

Before I left New York, I’d read a horrible story about a teenager who accidentally hung himself while trying to masturbate in a state of semi-asphyxiation. The thrill of danger and the lack of oxygen were meant to create a superlative, self-induced high. Here I was, inadvertently finding myself in a life-threatening situation brought about by sexual urges I couldn’t control. I didn’t want to die, but the delicious confinement and unimaginably pleasurable pain I had experienced had obviously left an imprint on the neurogenic pathways of my brain. If I started to seek out dangerous situations with other Amazonian Tiffanys, I would have to make an appointment for a consultation with an expert like Herbert Schmucker or, better yet, China Dentata, although I might feel timid telling China about my ecstatic ejaculations.

“I just want to get to The Gringo to have a good time,” I said, wiping the dirt off my seersucker suit. I straightened my bowtie. The problem I had now — the cross I had to bear — was the conspicuous stain in my crotch. Even the most freewheeling Tiffany, as accustomed to touching, smelling, and swallowing semen as the average woman is to bubble baths, would look askance at a john sporting an egregious cum- or urine-stained crotch. The kind of john who is so horny that he has accidents before he even starts to have sex usually turns out to be a compulsive who may be interested in violent sexual practices. I realized that before I set foot in The Gringo I probably would need to change my pants. I had a hunch that The Gringo could turn into a hub for me, the way Newark is for Continental or Minneapolis-St. Paul for Northwest. If I was going to catch my connecting fucks at The Gringo, I had to start out on the right foot. I wanted to walk in strong and self-assured, not apologizing for an unseemly crotch. For johns and Tiffanys alike, appearances are everything. I may know all about Susan Sontag, Gilles Deleuze, and the
anti-Oedipus
, but the average Tiffany won’t care about my erudition when she spots me standing at the bar sporting a crotch stain. In fact, my education had never really produced results when it came to my relationships with Tiffanys. In all my years frequenting dens of sensuality, I had never found that my intellectual credentials got me better-looking girls or discounted fees.

You never know what is going to come out in conversation. That is one of the basic principles I learned in my years of psychoanalysis. When I first went into treatment, I had no inkling of all the shit that existed inside of me, both literally and metaphysically. One of the first reactions I had to analysis was that I couldn’t stop going to the bathroom. It went on for days. No sooner had my intestines quieted down than all the excreta of my childhood, which had been forgotten in the bowels of my personality, pressed insistently for immediate evacuation.

I noticed the old, used-up literary Tiffany staring at me quizzically. “How are you enjoying the Marcuse?” I blurted out, apropos of nothing.

“I love all these Marxist guys from the Frankfurt school, but I was finding it hard to concentrate with all the hullabaloo,” she shot back, a wry grin curling her lips.

“You don’t happen to know of a decent dry cleaner who does spot work?”

“With your American dollars you’re almost better off buying a new pair of pants.”

It turned out that in addition to her life as a hooker and displaced New York intellectual, Tiffany ran a haberdashery out of her brothel. She had a few samples of her wares right there in her doorway. It turned out she had been married to a garmento named Sammy Cohen, who had manufactured piece goods in a loft on 37th Street and who was, in fact, a major supplier of trouser legs. She knew all about the kind of Brooks Brothers seersucker suit I was wearing.

“I don’t know if I can match them exactly, but I can give you something that will get you through the night, and then I’ll set you up with a real Hong Kong-style tailor tomorrow.”

Tiffany laid aside her book and led me up a rickety flight of stairs. Even though she was an old woman, she was still practiced in having a man follow her into the grimy room she used to turn tricks. She had varicose veins and walked with a slight limp, but still had the air of a lady of the night ready to weave a magic spell over her john. There are certain men who are attracted to older women, and I was sure that Tiffany had her loyal clientele, even if I knew I wasn’t going to be one of them. I was prepared to walk out if she started taking her clothes off. As it happened, I was the one doing the undressing in the stark room, with its single cot and scattered piles of washcloths. The only touch of color was provided by one of those old posters of Che Guevara in his signature beret, making the place look like my Columbia dorm room circa 1967.

Tiffany told me to take my pants off while she dragged a big box of garments out of a closet and started to root through it for slacks. I was afraid she was going to offer to throw in a little favor at no extra charge, maybe a blowjob to go with my new slacks.

I had removed my pants and was standing in my boxers. I still had on my seersucker jacket, my button-down collar shirt, and my bowtie when she instructed me to take everything off.

“We have to work from the bottom up in a case like this.”

I tend to be shy, hiding myself under the sheets even in the presence of the most immodest Tiffany, so I just imagined I was going to my internist for an annual check-up. I soon found myself standing buck-naked in front of her with my hands crossed chastely over my crotch. I suddenly had more sympathy for women in similar situations who had more goods to hide. She threw me a tiny pair of black bikini briefs. I had never even worn a jockstrap, and when I put on the briefs, with a modest piece of cloth in front and narrower strip at the rear, I felt like the victim of a wedgie. Next came the pants, a pair of bell-bottom jeans with fake rhinestones running down the leg that looked like they had been part of the wardrobe for
Saturday Night Fever.
I’d had the impression Tiffany would be providing me with a duplicate pair of conservative-looking slacks, but the jeans she produced were so tight that they cut off the circulation to my groin. I was afraid that they would cause my penis to become gangrenous, but Tiffany assured me that this was a popular style of dress in Rio.

“If you wear these, the nice Tiffanys will know you are looking for them. But before you go to The Gringo, you should go to The Catwalk. It’s an old-fashioned club that used to be in Havana when Batista was alive. All the girls are totally naked, and they even have a Superman who fucks the young virgins live onstage. There you will find many girls who will show you their vaginas. In fact, that is all they do. If nothing else, you have to see it because it’s one of the most famous sites in Rio. It’s like the Eiffel Tower of sex.”

“But I’m not just interested in seeing vaginas,” I cried out. “I want to make love.” I was surprised at the vehemence of my protestations. From a psychoanalytic point of view, my strong reaction was a sign of conflict. As Queen Gertrude says in
Hamlet
, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Even though the new pants were chafing my thighs, I had to get back into vacation mode and return to my objective, making love to as many beautiful prostitutes as I could in the remaining five days of my visit to Rio. Before saying goodbye to my fashion consultant, I left her some extra
reality
to have my seersucker pants dry-cleaned. She informed me that the dry-cleaning wouldn’t be ready until Friday.

“Friday!” I exclaimed. “I’m leaving Saturday. Can’t I pay extra for next-day service?” Tiffany explained that Rio was not New York and that things moved at a much slower pace since people spent so much of their time making love. I offered to give her enough money to cover a motivational blowjob for the dry-cleaner, but she wasn’t sure the incentive would guarantee next-day service. Blowjobs, which were a dime-a-dozen in Rio, had lost their value as persuasive currency for most locals.

Tiffany had wanted me to trade my bowtie and jacket for one of those tight-fitting tropical shirts worn open at the neck, but I didn’t have any gold chains and I wasn’t sure it was the right look for me. My mother had always stressed the importance of dressing for success and looking like a gentleman, and I didn’t feel comfortable when I wasn’t wearing the bowtie that had become my calling card. Besides, if I dressed in typical Rio attire, I would just look like everyone else.

Rolling her eyes at my obstinacy, Tiffany pointed me in the direction of The Catwalk, which wasn’t far away, telling me that once I got there, any of the girls would be able to tell me how to get to The Gringo.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a live vagina in almost 18 hours, having gotten waylaid at The Club House and then pinned to the ground by an Amazonian Jiu-Jitsu master. My heart was pounding in my chest as I started to make my way toward The Catwalk. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be confronted with so many vaginas all at once. I have heard that blind people who get their sight back often suffer from a condition called agnosia, in which they can’t recognize common objects. I was worried that I had been so deprived of the sight of naked women that I might not be able to tell one vagina from another. In New York, unlike Rio, only about twenty-five percent of the female population become prostitutes. And many of those don’t even realize their true calling. They simply end up marrying men they don’t love just for the money, and once they get the hang of it they tend to do the same thing over and over. Some people just call that being married more than once, but I believe it describes a woman who has chosen a life of prostitution.