On my way back into the hotel from one of my earlier excursions out to the Copa, I’d noticed busloads of scholarly looking men wearing horn-rimmed glasses, unloading outside the lobby. I later learned that the hotel was hosting an international convention of psychoanalysts, and that many of the events, which were to be held in English, would be open to the public. I have always been interested in psychoanalysis because it deals with two of the things I tend to obsess about: love and work. Maybe attending some of the lectures might be of help as I struggled to find the perfect Tiffany. My interest in psychoanalysis dated from my days as a Scout. I wanted to be an analyst the way some kids want to be rock stars, and I even stood in front of the mirror and had fantasies of being cheered on by the huge crowds that accompanied Freud’s first and only trip to the US, when he gave lectures at Clark University. Even after I became an accountant, I toyed with the idea of being a lay analyst, that is, someone who practices without an MD degree. I was young, and it seemed like a great way to get laid.
Now, as I walked through the lobby, I noticed a chef splitting coconuts with a large machete in front of one of the auditoriums, where a poster advertised that morning’s lecture, “Ego Splitting, Homeopathy and Psychopathy in Adolescent and mid-life Peyronie’s Patients.” The abstract beneath read simply, “The effect of a crooked penis on the male psyche will be explored.” I decided to give it a try.
Walking into the auditorium, I could see a lot of empty seats. The few people in attendance looked more like curious hotel staff than professionals, and I realized that most of the analysts had probably gone to the beach in search of sun and fun. While the presenter, Dr. Arnold Sunshine, was setting up his PowerPoint presentation, a short woman in what looked like a blond wig sat down next to me. She was wearing polka-dot hot pants, a tight halter-top, and heels so high they were feats of structural engineering. Most of the female analysts I had met back in Manhattan had severe-looking cropped hair and wore smock dresses. This being an international conference, I knew that many cultures would be represented, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that the distaff members of the Brazilian analytic establishment dressed like whores. I also wouldn’t have been the least surprised if they had names like Tiffany. The woman in the polka-dot hot pants leaned over and blew in my ear, murmuring something that I didn’t understand. Figuring that it was an important analytic issue having to do with the conference, I motioned her to follow me out to my concierge friend, who would be able to translate.
She repeated to him what she had said to me.
“Uh, the translation is: ‘Getting fucked in my hot cunt drives me crazy,’ ” Victor whispered slyly. I figured she must be a working girl, so I responded politely by saying, “Thank you, Tiffany, but I’m otherwise occupied.”
When I got back to the ballroom, the lights had been turned down and Sunshine’s PowerPoint presentation had begun. On the screen was a picture of a crooked penis.
I noticed that the audience, though small, seemed intent on Sunshine’s lecture. Did they allow themselves to feel any stimulation or to entertain any prurient thoughts of their own, even if as analysts they were supposed to be objective?
After Sunshine had concluded his presentation, there was a little break in which the analysts gathered around a table to have
schnecken
and coffee. It was just like being in New York. Many stragglers must have come in during the slide show, because I noticed that the crowd had thickened and that there was even some degree of competition for the pastries, which seemed to be one of the main attractions for the hungry analysts.
As I bit into a tasty cinnamon
schnecken
with raisins, I found myself staring into the eyes of a petite Asian woman whose breasts spilled out of her tight blouse. She was wearing highheeled platform shoes and a short skirt.
“Hi, Tiffany,” I blurted. “I’m Kenny Cantor from New York.” I knew that Brazilians were a mixed race, made up of Portuguese, Spanish, Indian, and sometimes even Asian blood, so it wasn’t much of a leap to assume that she might be a Rio whore, even though she looked Chinese or Japanese.
“Perhaps you are mistaking me for someone else. I’m Dr. Dentata. What institute are you with?”
“Well I’m certifiable, if that’s any help.” Dr. Dentata didn’t seem to get the joke. “I’m a CPA.”
“Oh, a CPA with analytic training, I find that very interesting. I think that more analysts need to take courses in accountancy. I remember that song that Pete Seeger used to sing: “Well, Doctor Freud, oh Doctor Freud/ How we wish you had been differently employed/ But the set of circumstances/ Still enhances the finances/ Of the followers of Doctor Sigmund Freud.”
I don’t think Dr. Dentata realized how loudly she was singing, because a crowd had gathered around her, several of them humming along to the tune. I half expected one of them to pull out a Fender and start playing the bass line.
After her impromptu concert, Dr. Dentata held out her hand. “Well it was nice talking to you,” she said.
“You too, Dr. Dentata.”
“Just call me China.”
“China Dentata, that sounds like Vagina Dentata, a syndrome in which the vagina is deemed to have teeth, which then turn it into an agent of castration.”
“Yes, everyone says that. I don’t know what my parents were thinking. My grandparents were among the Japanese who were put in internment camps during the war, but that doesn’t explain why my parents didn’t name me something more common, like Yoko. They were ’60s hippies who took acid and practiced free love, and they were into giving their children unusual names. My father was Dick and they named my brother Moby.”
“Well, it was nice to meet you. Goodbye, China.” I realized that she was an analyst, and that analysts usually don’t have sex with their patients unless they are suffering from very severe counter-transference. But I wasn’t her patient — yet.
Despite my childhood fantasies, it may seem odd that a CPA would know so much about psychoanalysis, but I’m from New York, and all educated New Yorkers are experts in psychoanalysis, whether they undergo treatment or not. H. Rap Brown once said violence is as American as cherry pie. Well psychoanalysis is as New York as Pakistani cab drivers. Many German and Viennese analysts who had been refugees from the Nazis settled in Manhattan, which sports as many psychoanalytic institutes as England has soccer teams. The New York Psychoanalytic Institute is the Manchester United of the lot. Growing up in Manhattan in a family with aspirations to be culturally
au courant
, I amassed statistics about psychoanalytic stars like A.A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sándor Ferenczi, Ernst Kris, and Phyllis Greenacre the way some kids memorized the batting averages of Joe Dimaggio, Yogi Berra, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron. My favorite was the French analyst Janine Chasseguet-smirgel, author of the tome
Creativity and Perversion.
She was the equivalent of an excellent minor league player, to the extent that her work was only known to the relatively small coterie who collected psychoanalytic memorabilia.
China was carrying one of those quart bottles of Volvic water, which she gulped lasciviously as she entered the central atrium of the hotel. I almost followed her, thinking I might find her turning tricks like so many of the other inhabitants of Rio. I was sure that China was a very good therapist. She was attentive and empathetic, but I was also certain that she could equal if not better her reputation by changing her name to Tiffany and adopting the life of a whore. She had the looks, and every bone in my body told me she had the talent.
Our parting had felt a little like the last scene of
Casablanca
. There was no plane waiting to take her away from me, there was no heroic resistance leader standing between us, no war, and I wasn’t a hardened American expatriate named Rick. Yet I felt I could hear the strains of “As Time Goes By” playing on the piano in some beat-up North African café. China — the very name created a frisson.
When would I ever see my China again? It didn’t take long to answer the question, as she walked right back into the auditorium, swigging from an even larger bottle of water. I still hadn’t decided what my approach was going to be. If I took it for free, we would be in a real relationship, where raw emotion was the currency. And if I became China’s patient, I would have to put her in the position of employing the transference in an unethical manner. I felt I needed a therapist just to work out the mess I’d gotten myself into.
Unfortunately, I was again deviating from my plan. I was well into my second day in Rio without having enjoyed the abundance that was supposed to be everywhere, if I was to believe the sex tourism guides and online reviews of Rio nightlife. When I had first considered taking my vacation in Rio, I had simply Googled “Rio + prostitution.” The sheer number of results, along with the four-star ratings and exuberant descriptions, had played a large role in my booking a flight.
But all was not lost. Even though I hadn’t yet gotten what I came for, the psychoanalytic conference being held at the hotel was a welcome, frequently titillating diversion. I had a lump in my throat as I read the notices for the afternoon panels: “The Oldest Profession: the Neuro-Anatomy of Streetwalking” and “Working Girls: Parallels in Phone Sex and Telephone Analysis.”
Now is probably as good a time as any to talk about how a nice Jewish boy like me came to spend most of his adult life with prostitutes. It was really very simple. From an early age, I knew there was something wrong with me. I didn’t have any friends, and no girls seemed to like me. But the sluttiest girl in my high school class, Janet Borges, agreed to go to the senior prom with me. With thick lips, smudged from countless make-out sessions, and huge tits, she was crudely sexy. She always wore a short cheerleader skirt with no underpants, even though she wasn’t a cheerleader. Most of the members of the school’s varsity football team had fucked her, and no one considered her respectable prom material. I purchased the usual corsage, which was the price I had to pay for my first fuck in life.
We started to see each other the summer of my senior year, before I started college, and one night I jokingly offered her money for sex, which she unjokingly took, saying, “I never thought you would ask.” Besides the fact that our sex, which had been tentative up until then, took off into a whole new stratosphere, it was the beginning of her career as whore and mine as a john.
By my freshman year in college, Janet was fully set up in the business, and so successful that I realized my heart would be broken unless I started to play the field and see other whores. My first analysis in my twenties had enabled me to break with my mother. My father was a business type, and my mother and I had a confidant relationship in which she talked to me about things that my father wasn’t interested in, like emotions and art. The analysis had gotten me to the point of addressing my early inclination to pay for sex. Had I continued, I might have been able to form a relationship with a woman that wasn’t a monetary transaction. I had made the transition from the mother/confidant to the mother/whore figure, which was a great leap, but I was aware there were other feelings toward women that had yet to be added to the palette.
I was an ambitious young man, and shortly after I graduated from college I had already drummed up enough business to support a Midtown accountancy office manned by a staff of loyal employees. Who had the time or the money to see an analyst four days a week? But in the end, this is precisely what I would do, as I returned to analysis repeatedly over the years. However, the Rio conference was enabling me to view analysis from a different perspective. I had always been limited to the patient’s point of view, which is mostly prone. But here I was seeing analysts eye-to-eye, watching them as they exchanged valuable insights with each other. I was seeing the kind of people they really were.
If I had met China in a professional situation, in which she demonstrated analytic neutrality, she would simply have been a very good-looking Asian piece of ass. At worst, I might have tried to look up her skirt during my initial intake. I would have stared at her platform heels and wondered to myself
what kind of an analyst wears shoes like that?
I probably would have thought something like
I bet she’s a really good fuck
. I might even have communicated these thoughts to her in the course of a session, and we would have dealt with it as part of the transference.
My last analyst, Sam Johnson, was a short man who had such thick stubble that he always looked unshaven, though he was very proper. He wore industrial grade, rubber-soled shoes, blue blazers and gray pants, and rarely said anything. I frequently communicated to him my perception that he was a virgin whom no woman would ever go near. I discovered on the Internet that he was married and had children, but I still had fantasies about his private life. My previous analytic work had gotten me used to indulging in fantasy and free-association, even when I wasn’t in treatment. For instance, I was sure that even if Victor the concierge seemed like a normal male, he was a secret cross-dresser who hid his penis between his legs when he was putting on women’s panties.
But getting back to China, I had gone so far as to imagine the moment in our first consultation when she would suggest I move to the couch. Was I to take this as an invitation to classic Freudian analysis, or to sex? Maybe her chaise longue was little more than a proverbial casting couch.
My reverie about China was interrupted when I saw Dr. Sunshine return to the auditorium. He was surrounded by a coterie of followers, bearded men in wool suits who looked like they had stepped out of turn-of-the-century Vienna and could easily have been members of Freud’s inner circle. I even overheard some conversations in what sounded like German, though many New York analysts talk so quickly and enigmatically that it is often difficult to tell what language they’re speaking. I wanted to introduce myself to Sunshine, but as he walked by I had a Tourettic moment, emitting a muffled, involuntary cry of “Daddy!”