It was only after I entered the suite that I noticed the video equipment and realized that I had walked onto the set of an S&M film, in this case a remake of Lubitsch’s
The Blue Angel
, replete with a masochistic professor and nightclub vamps. The professor was being played by the guy with the hairy stomach. In this version, the Marlene Dietrich character sat on his face. I had never aspired to be an actor, and while I was attracted to the bevy of young Tiffanys, I didn’t entertain the possibility that I could successfully audition for a role. In addition, my
reality
was beginning to burn a hole in my pocket. After all my abortive attempts at consummation, I needed to pay someone for sex or therapy, or both. The lure of any fame or fortune I might have inadvertently experienced as a porn star paled in comparison with the pleasure I derived from paying for sex.
With a sigh of regret I closed the Pandora’s box of untold perversions and headed one flight up to seek my China. I was under the illusion that I was on an important mission that would affect the nature of what analysts call the compromise formation, which develops as a patient comes to terms with his inner conflicts. In one sense, I was cutting off my nose to spite my face, since by informing her of the fact that we were missing the convention, I was potentially curtailing the amount of time she would have to spend with me.
I walked down the hallway of the twelfth floor with trepidation. I had heard rumors among the analysts at the conference that China’s grandmother was one of the first Chinese psychoanalysts in Peking, and that her career was cut short by Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Being a strong woman, China’s grandmother would not be stopped by the infamous Band of Four, and the type of Lacanian analysis that China herself practiced had its roots, the rumor went, in her mother’s need to conclude her sessions abruptly when Communist cadres appeared at her door and forced her to get back to rooting potatoes.
My knees were shaking as I knocked on China’s door. Undoubtedly, she would interpret my appearance as having a significance that went deeper than a mere scheduling conflict. That is one of the problems with analysis — nothing is ever accepted as having a mundane meaning. I knocked very softly, somehow thinking that China was sitting on tenterhooks awaiting my arrival. (My tendency to believe that the world revolves around me is one of the subjects we had discussed in a memorable one-minute session.) When there was no answer, I realized that I was being unrealistic. I decided that if I was going to knock on her door, I had to really knock. With the edge of my fist I pounded once more. The doors in the hotel were quite thick, in all likelihood purpose-built to muffle the constant ululations of the guests. But when I put my ear right up against China’s door, I could hear the murmurings of CNN. For a moment, I thought that she might very well be seeing another patient. Of course, she could also have simply been relaxing and watching television, though I had a sneaking suspicion that China was a workaholic who only allowed herself to watch TV when she was doing something else. Like many analysts I had encountered, she undoubtedly was very committed to her work — writing papers, attending conferences and teaching, in addition to seeing patients.
As I was about to give up and walk away, thinking that she simply couldn’t hear me over the din of the television, a repressed memory was liberated in me and I recalled that the last time I had been in analysis, I’d rung a buzzer that was located conveniently halfway down the door jamb, near the knob of the door which led into my former doctor’s office. I took a deep breath, searched for a bell and, finding it, rang. I don’t know what I expected. Did I expect China to come wafting across the floor of her suite, flashing her vagina at me as she opened the door? Would I discover an expectant China? Patients always fantasize about what their analysts do in their spare time. In my case, I imagined that China and her beloved Schmucker had ordered up a gourmet meal and that they were dining by candlelight as the full moon cast a magical light over the sand and sea beyond the Copacabana.
When I was a little boy, I would climb into my parents’ bed in the middle of the night when I was awakened by a bad dream. Now I wanted to crawl into China’s bed — not because I was having a bad dream, but because I wanted to fuck her. Even I was surprised by the intensity of these forbidden thoughts. It’s one thing to read about the Oedipus complex in a textbook, but quite another to see it in action. When such transgressive desires stare you in the face, they can cause the kind of guilt that now flooded my brain.
I rang the bell again and again. If I was already on my way to hell, I might as well fly off in a hand basket. If China wasn’t there, I would raise her up from the underworld with an unholy racket and exorcise my demons at the same time. I became convinced that even though she wasn’t in the room, she could still hear the buzzer, wherever she was. I must have been ringing on and off for a good half-hour before China came to the door, wearing a black lacey bra, high heels, and nothing else.
Analysts insist on seeing their patients four and sometimes five days a week because each session opens up the doors of the unconscious, and in order to allow upsetting emotions to emerge on any given day, a patient needs the reassurance of knowing there will be another session the following day. I was plainly running to China because I needed to follow up on some anxiety that’d been evoked in our last session, i.e., my increasing attraction to her, which I’d subverted with some superficial nonsense about missing the conference. Seeing China for the first time without her clothes on, I was faced with a totally new problem. Hopefully this encounter with her naked body was something that I could deal with the next day in analysis. Barring that, she might be willing to work through things right then and there.
Staring at China, my vision momentarily clouded over. I could see her face, but after the initial shock of seeing her nakedness, I could only see a dark blur when my eyes traveled down to her glorious bush. All of a sudden I found myself in her arms. I was not able to recollect the activity that ensued, but I was sure it would come back to me later as déjà vu, especially if we had finally ended up having sex. At the very least, I imagined that it was better than any foreplay that Johnny Holmes, the legendary Buttman, or any of the great porn stars had ever enacted.
The downside was that it had occurred without a concomitant facility to appreciate it, or even to know it was happening. It reminded me of the old philosophical question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
I had my wits about me enough to know that whatever was happening would be a subject of discussion in our next analytic session. What goes on between analyst and patient is the substance of analysis itself; it is the content of the transference, significant in that it shows the patient the behaviors and emotions he demonstrates in all situations of his life. I was having fantasies about my analyst similar to the ones I had with all the women in my life — except of course my mother. I imagined fucking them, which wasn’t surprising since the women I was attracted to were inevitably prostitutes, whose role in life is to entice men into paying them for sex.
The hotel room was now cast in shadows. We lay in each other’s arms and then switched into the spoon position, which is how we slept for the next forty-five minutes, a span of time that exceeded any of our sessions. Yes, I was in room 1269, but the space was totally transformed — not only was it dark, but there was no television on. When I awakened, I was sure that this was going to be it. My penis was swollen and looked like one of those booster rockets that sends the space shuttle into the stratosphere, but my expectations for consummation and release were disappointed when China jumped out of bed and cried out, “I’m missing Germany and Spain!” I’d fallen into a deep sleep and was disorientated for a moment. Could our passionate prelude have created sudden longings of the Teutonic and Castilian varieties? I wondered why she had chosen the European Union when she was of Japanese and Chinese descent. But then I realized that as an avid soccer fan, she was talking about the championship match that was occurring that day. She flipped on the lights so she could find the remote, and for the first time I was able to see my analyst from head to toe in all her nakedness. Like the aristocratic Tiffany I met at The Catwalk, she too had a dramatic Venus mound and large dark nipples of the kind I have found prevalent among women of Asian extraction.
My mind was suddenly racing with all the new issues the prospect of a sexual act with my analyst raised — issues that I plainly hadn’t wanted to face. Among them was whether I could now call China Tiffany. I was paying China and was at least on the verge of having sex with her. But the payments were for psychoanalysis, and I wasn’t sure that the money I forked over for our sessions could be credited toward sex. There was also the question of professional ethics and the fact that China was taking unfair advantage of me due to the strong transference I was experiencing. But if we looked at the counter-transference — the fantasies and feelings the analyst has about his or her patient — the tables could be turned and I could be accused of taking advantage of her. In the end, the financial issue was shaping up to be the biggest mountain I would have to climb, and I was beginning to realize that I might have to pay my analyst separately for sex if I was going to continue having an amorous relationship with her while in treatment.
Despite the fact that I knew I would probably have to wait until the next day’s sessions to address the question of actual lovemaking, I expected China would have plenty to say. After all, while there have been cases of analysts sleeping with their patients, it’s not exactly business as usual. It can also be cause for an analyst to lose his or her professional accreditation. Naturally, I wasn’t going to turn China in, but I thought she would at least exhibit some misgivings about her behavior, or show some sign that what had transpired was out of the ordinary. At the very least she would acknowledge that our interaction had a modicum of significance. But as I got out of bed to retrieve my bikini briefs and seersucker jacket, I was hard put to get her attention at all. She was totally riveted by the soccer match. She was perfectly willing to agree with my observations when I commented “good save” or “nice pass,” but when I tried to inject a personal note by referring to the fact that we had a session the next day, she shushed me. I couldn’t take my eyes off China’s vagina, but I knew I had to leave if I was ever going to get to The Gringo. No matter how badly I wanted to fuck China, I made a commitment to myself to go back to my hotel room and put on a pair of slacks. I realized that China was an analyst at heart and could never be a real prostitute, no matter how hard she tried. Even if I could pay her for sex, she would never qualify as a real whore in Rio or anywhere else.
I tried to tell myself that I was just a normal male who wanted to get laid. In a place like Rio, if you believe the travel literature, it’s easier to do than breathing on a smoggy day. My denial notwithstanding, I knew that a sea change was going on inside of me and that the last shreds of my rationality were quite possibly slipping away. I immediately ran back to my hotel room to change into the extra pair of seersucker slacks that my mother always taught me to bring on trips in case I stained myself. But they no longer looked right. Instead, I had an urge to wear tight jeans that outlined my crotch. My failure to get my rocks off in one of the world’s great sex capitals, at least while conscious, was changing me. Even though The Gringo was loaded with Tiffanys who preferred men whose pockets were stuffed with
reality
, I still wanted to show off my other assets. I was tired of dressing up like a nice Jewish accountant, feigning respectability in my Brooks Brothers attire.
I was suddenly filled with a sense of mortality. Confronted with the specter of my inevitable demise, I wanted to live life to the hilt, to be as sexy as the Tiffanys whose services I sought. I wanted prostitutes to stare at my crotch just as eagerly as I stared at theirs.
I could easily have walked out into the local marketplace and found a shop that sold tight jeans, but I felt an inexplicable rush of prudish misgivings about walking around the lobby of the hotel in my bikini underwear. I called down to the concierge’s desk and explained my problem to the woman who answered. She told me she would have to come up to measure me so she could procure the jeans I needed.
When she came up to the room, the first thing I noticed was the gold nametag that was pinned to her breast. It read “Tiffany.” Dropping all pretenses, she hiked up her skirt so I could see what she had underneath. The only problem was that she shaved. Even though I had come to Brazil for sex, I dreaded Brazilian hot waxing, which I still couldn’t help but associate with pedophilia.
“I guess you’re not a Tiffany in name only,” I managed to say. Her skirt still rolled up to her waist, Tiffany sauntered over to my room’s entertainment console and switched to a channel featuring ’70s disco tunes.
“In Brazil, prostitution is totally legal and in fact encouraged, since sex tourism is such a vital part of our economy,” Tiffany volunteered as she danced with her skirt hiked up and her hands held behind her head. “I learned English in school so that I could communicate with the customers I started to see as soon as I turned 18 and my parents felt I was ready to turn tricks.”
“It’s great that your parents encouraged your independence.”
“I learned that my body was a commodity. People often think of Brazil as a third-world country, but we have an exceptional educational system. I learned about Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction in high school history. It’s what finally made me see how I could effectively exploit my own assets.” Many American women remain too attached to their parents to become whores, so I found Tiffany’s liberal upbringing and her references to the famed Schumpeter work,
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
, to which most American secondary school teachers only give a polite nod, to be enlightening. After primping herself in the bathroom, Tiffany returned to the initial reason for her visit and began to measure my crotch for the tight jeans she was going to procure. She pulled my penis out, measured it, and said “six” with a knowing smile.