Seven Days in Rio (17 page)

“I just find that you are the most interesting patient I have ever had. You are very special,” China said, momentarily ejecting me from her mouth like a DVD. I noted that she was very special too, particularly in regard to her ability to perform psychoanalysis and fellatio at the same time.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to say things like that. Every patient always thinks they are special and has a fantasy that the analyst likes him more than all the others.”

“But what if I told you that a part of our analysis might be the recognition that you are very special to me, and that I have fallen in love with you.”

“But I just want you to be my whore. I want to continue paying you for the sex as well as the analysis.”

“I never said you weren’t going to pay.”

In many ways I was the typical sex tourist. I had come to Rio for the whores, not for love. I’d never even thought of paying for love, but perhaps that was just another way of looking at marriage. You pay a whore for sex and a wife for love. I still had a hunch I was going to be better off paying the whore for sex. Lots of guys I know got married and paid for love, without getting any sex in the bargain.

“I have begun to realize that I have fallen in love with you even if you are my patient,” China reiterated. Our session ended just a few seconds later. Normally, I would have been troubled if an analyst dropped such a heavy revelation on me at the end of the session, but in this case all I had to do was walk out of the hotel room, wait ten seconds, then ring the buzzer and come back in.

“Don’t you have to work on your counter-transference before you know if you really love me,” I began.

“You’re using a lot of big words. Why don’t you just tell me how you feel?”

That was precisely the problem: my intellectuality is a defense that I often use to avoid confronting my issues. I still play the good student, coming home to mommy and looking for approval. I have always tried to impress my analysts with how much I know about analytic theory. But it’s not limited to psychoanalysis. I know just as much about automobile repair as I do about analysis or prostitution. For instance, when I had a problem with the knocking sound coming from the engine of my beat-up, old Ford, I was more knowledgeable about what was going on with the distributor than the mechanic. Like the old comedian Professor Irwin Corey, I’m one of those guys who tries to be the “world’s foremost authority,” but sometimes I actually succeed. That was part of the problem. Not only was I gratifying my fantasy of being the best and most interesting patient China had ever had in her practice, I also felt that I could one-up her at her own game. I might not have been able to be a good whore, but I did have the disconcerting feeling that I might have out-analyzed my own analyst. If indeed she had fallen head-over-heels in love with me, as appeared to be the case, I could conceivably be more on top of the situation than she was. Even if I had also fallen for China, I’d been able to maintain my neutrality as a patient. In other words, if she hadn’t gotten down on her knees and sucked my cock, I certainly would have been able to curb the turbulent emotions China had aroused in me by exposing the organ that rhymed with her namesake.

“Have you run all this by Schmucker?” I inquired.

“Of course. He’s my lover.”

A sudden burst of homicidal jealousy served as a good indicator of the depth of my passion for China. While it was considered a breach of professional ethics for an analyst to have sex with his or her patient, there had been many celebrated cases of such goings-on, especially in the early years of analysis, the most famous involving a young woman named Sabina Spielrein, who had been a patient of Jung’s.

“He’s also your supervisor, isn’t he?” I said, thinking that China might consult with Schmucker about me, in the way that Jung had consulted Freud about Spielrein. As I listened to China try to address both my amorous and competitive fantasies, I began to think that someday I might use all the knowledge I’d gained through the painful and joyous experiences of my time in Rio to help other people. I might not become a full-fledged analyst, as Spielrein had, but at the very least I had enough onsite experience to become a counselor to prostitutes.

I’d read about the movement toward intersubjectivity in analysis, in which the notion of the analyst as a distant tabula rasa on which the patient projects his or her fantasies had been questioned. It was widely acknowledged that the benefits of neutrality are often outweighed by the inequities of a one-sided, at times authoritarian relationship. I wondered if the changing relationship between China and me wasn’t reflective of some of the new currents in the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic communities. Even though we had only been seeing each other for a relatively short period of time, it was obvious that there was a sea change between our first few minutes together and what was now beginning to transpire. Whether the deeper changes in analytic theory were affecting us or not, there was no doubt that China needed me as much, if not more, than I needed her. One of the by-products of this particular analysis was that the patient and the analyst had reversed roles, with the patient now performing a therapeutic and healing function for his own analyst.

“I think you should probably run this by Schmucker,” I suggested.

“I don’t think that what has been going on during this session can be called analysis,” China confessed. Our session ended, more or less as quickly as it had begun, and when she answered the door after the requisite ten-second interval, her demeanor was markedly changed. She had arranged her blouse and her hair and she seemed remarkably composed. She flipped on the television, as was her custom.

“I don’t know where to begin today,” I began, pretending that I was a run-of-the-mill analytic patient who came for his 50 minutes once a day, four days a week.

“I feel self-conscious for some reason,” I added.

There had never been any pretense about our unconventional schedule at any time during the previous day’s sessions. I simply came in and out of the hotel room, neither acknowledging nor denying that it was a strange practice. I just went along with the arrangement, to say nothing of the fact that China often seemed to be more interested in what was on TV than in the analysis itself.

“Why don’t you simply talk about your feelings?” she offered.

“I guess what I’m worried about is that I’ve gotten to like you. You’re the kind of whore I could make a life with, but you’re my
analyst
. My discomfort is compounded by the fact that I will be returning to New York in a couple of days and I don’t even know where your practice is. Of course, you’re my analyst, so it’s not necessarily important that I know anything more about you other than where I have to go for my appointments. But I feel like it wouldn’t be totally unprofessional if you told me a few things about your life in New York. Can we at least make an appointment?”

China looked in her appointment book, which lay on the hassock on which she rested her legs. She had a look of concern on her face. I had to be realistic and confront the fact that it was unlikely she would see me as intensively as she had in Rio. I was afraid that she was going to tell me she couldn’t fit me in, but I was flabbergasted when she informed me that, while she had available sessions, she wasn’t sure how it would work into my schedule, since she didn’t live and practice in New York at all, but in Vancouver.

“Vancouver!” I cried. “I’ve been telling you I live in Manhattan. Listen, I’d gladly move to Vancouver to marry you and pay you for love, but I’m still trying to find a relationship with a whore I can pay for sex. I guess I was thinking I could get a two-for-one and pay someone to be both my whore and my analyst.”

“You feel you are paying for my favors?” she asked, raising one of her perfectly groomed eyebrows.

“Well you wouldn’t have seen me unless I’d paid, and I don’t think we would have tried to have sex unless we’d had the transference that resulted from the analysis. I’ve been getting two services for the price of one, and for all intents and purposes I would have been quite satisfied, that is until you informed me that you were geographically challenged.”

“Life isn’t perfect,” China said. She abruptly flicked off the television. The sound of the cheering crowds that had always accompanied our sessions was suddenly gone, and we were just facing each other in silence. I noticed that China’s legs were crossed primly in a way that no longer let me see her vagina. Even though she didn’t say anything, something had changed between us. Perhaps I’d inadvertently terminated the analysis with my last outburst. Like a good analyst, China had heard what I wasn’t yet able to admit to myself. She’d seen that I was beginning to understand the inherent limitations of the analytic situation, and that the person I felt the most intimate with was also someone who wasn’t really a part of my life.

I got up and left the room. I could have waited a few seconds and rang the doorbell, pretending nothing had happened, but I didn’t. For a moment, standing in the elevator down to the lobby, I wondered if there’d really been an understanding between us, and if the therapy was in fact over.

On a pragmatic level, I also wondered if she was going to charge me for missing our last sessions. I knew in my heart that what I’d seen and felt was true, but, compulsively, I told myself that I ought to go back to room 1269 just to check. I could tell her that I was coming back because I wanted to give her a billing address so she could mail me a final invoice. I would tell her to send the bill to my office, just to make it clear that I wouldn’t be coming anymore.

As I walked past the grand ballroom, I noticed that the farewell address of the convention was entitled, “Eros and Agape,” and I felt another burst of jealousy and remorse when I saw that the presenter was Herbert Schmucker.

It might defuse the considerable emotional charge left over from our final, dramatic session to come back to her room under the lame pretext of giving her my billing address. But my whole life has been a series of anti-climaxes. Once again, I was making a fool of myself, even if it was for a good cause.

I could just imagine the contempt on China’s face when I came slinking back to her room, stammering my tired excuses. If my actions revealed ambivalence about terminating the analysis, they were totally unambiguous in killing any shred of desire she might have had left for me. The elevator was packed with beautiful Tiffanys, all curiously indifferent to me. I would undoubtedly have to deal with this in my next analysis, though at this point I couldn’t begin to imagine who I would undertake it with, particularly since I now realized nothing was going to stop me from heading back to her room.

When I finally got my courage up and knocked on China’s door, there was no answer. I ran down the corridor, thinking I might find her at the convention. By the time I got to the grand ballroom, there was only a smattering of analysts milling around, and no sign of China, who I assumed had already retired to Schmucker’s suite, where no doubt they were passionately embracing in a final lovemaking session before flying home. Beyond the fact that she practiced in Vancouver, I knew almost nothing about China. But Schmucker was a well-known New York psychoanalyst who practiced in Yorkville and had a wife and family. I’d even heard that his children attended Dalton, one of Manhattan’s most elite private schools. Any impulse I had to rush up to Schmucker’s room to make a final gallant attempt to inform China of my billing address was curbed by a dawning sense of the futility of it all. Perhaps this was what China was trying to demonstrate to me all along, as she watched soccer matches and spread her legs while I poured my heart out to her. My issues with my mother, prostitutes, and tight-fitting jeans were important, but they couldn’t compare to the problems that people less fortunate than myself face every day in cities all over the world. Maybe China was trying to give me a little perspective.

I felt a cleansing sadness as I once again walked through the lobby. I’d come across a number of Tiffanys during my stay in Rio, not to mention a Brittany and a China that I was still very attached to. My mind was spinning. I was trying to come to grips with my singular condition, yet I found myself in the middle of a crowded hotel lobby five thousand miles from home trying to inventory my latest tawdry conquests.

I decided to make my way back to the concierge desk where I’d begun my journey. If China had provided me with psychoanalytic insights, the concierges I had dealt with had provided me with therapy of a more practical kind. I had to get back to basics. I’d come to Rio to have sex with Tiffanys, and perhaps what I needed was a Tiffany who was just a good old-fashioned call girl, one who came to my room, did her business, and left. My real problem was the desire to find the perfect whore to settle down with. I didn’t need a Tiffany who was the next Anna Freud.

Sometimes the simple pleasures are the best. I hadn’t thought about it for a long time, but many men went to prostitutes because they wanted to have sex without the emotional entanglements of a relationship. Perhaps I was complicating matters by looking to have a relationship with someone I just wanted to fuck, especially since my intent was simply to enjoy an innocent sex vacation in Rio.

I immediately recognized the attractive woman at the concierge desk. I didn’t need to be reminded by the silver nameplate on her protuberant chest that it was Suzanne, and I immediately remembered the pledge I had made to myself about asking her if I could purchase the pleasure of her company. Big breasts often create the illusion that they’re coming out at you even when they’re completely stationary. But everything is a matter of perception, and if you choose the quantum view of the universe, which holds that all things are in flux, the Newtonian applecart is easily overturned. As it happened, Suzanne’s apples strained the laws of physics, Newtonian or otherwise. Having such enormous breasts was probably a handicap, since most men look at breasts before they notice a face, and I could tell that Suzanne was starved for eye contact.

Roused from the enchantment of her mammaries, I noted the urgency in her voice when she asked if she could be of assistance. I started to hum the words of a Leonard Cohen song: “Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river, you can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her.” Suzanne seemed to appreciate my singing because she broke into a smile.