Schmucker was wearing his customary outfit — blue blazer, rep tie, and thick rubber-soled shoes. I wondered if there was a chain of stores that catered to analysts like Schmucker, supplying certified non-descript attire. I was aware that he seemed to be disturbed about something. He was fidgeting with the check and seemed to be reading over the figures with great concern.
“I think I had more than you,” Schmucker said. “I had three eggs over, bacon, juice, and toast, and you only had two scrambled eggs.”
“Why don’t we split it right down the middle,” came China’s endearing response.
Even though I make a good amount of money as a CPA, I have always been particularly careful in negotiating my fees with analysts. The fact that China exuded an air of magnanimity when it came to financial matters was encouraging to me. Although I could already have been negatively transferring, I also got the impression that Schmucker was smirking to himself about getting a few slices of bacon at her expense.
Once the bill was settled, I followed China across the lobby. Her clothes looked so good on her that I couldn’t stop thinking about taking them off. Clearly, I was already getting my wires crossed. Whenever I picked up a hooker back in the States, I would inevitably follow her to the sleazy hotel she used with her customers. Once again, I was following a sexy woman whom I was about to pay, even if nominally it wasn’t for sex. But I knew that even if China wasn’t a hooker, there was some relief in store. I would be able to say whatever came to my mind, even if it was something lurid about my analyst, like the fact that she dressed like a little whore and I wanted to reach under her flowery skirt and pull her little thong down to her ankles and then fuck her in the doggy position. I made a firm commitment to myself that I would tell her this and anything else that came into my head, no matter how embarrassed I felt or how difficult it was to utter the words. I’d never had a woman analyst before, so expressing my desires to her would be a first. Had I chosen Schmucker as my analyst, I would have found myself in the position of criticizing him for being a weak asexual male. I would have told him that I felt superior to him because I would be the winner in the imagined contest I was having with him for China’s affections. The triumph was so real to me that I was already feeling Oedipal guilt for vanquishing the father figure in the competitive struggle for mommy’s love.
China was wearing high sandals that laced up around her calves and a tight-fitting leotard top that accentuated her pert breasts, whose nipples were already hardened by the time we stood facing each other in the elevator. Besides her Japanese background, China plainly had some Chinese blood in her too. In fact, she looked a little like Chiang Kai-shek. I wondered if she was of aristocratic lineage. Perhaps she was Chiang’s great granddaughter. Maybe her great grandparents had even witnessed the Long March, in which Mao and his Communist forces retreated from the Kuomintang. Perhaps they’d even known Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic. I suddenly had an urge to ask her about the status of Taiwan and the two small islands of Kimoy and Matsu. To mitigate my nervousness, I attempted some banal small talk. “I’ve never actually walked into an appointment accompanied by my analyst,” I said. “Usually my analyst is already there.”
“Yes, usually the analyst is seeing other patients before and after your appointment,” China replied somewhat blandly. “It’s different now because I am not waiting for you, and you probably don’t anticipate taking leave of me in the normal manner after your session has ended. This breakdown in the normal order of things is causing an upsurge of fantasies that you may not be entirely ready to handle. There may be fantasies of triumph, and countervailing fantasies of retribution for the success you are afraid you don’t deserve.”
The elevator swooped up to the twelfth floor and I followed China out. I started to shake as we walked down the long corridor. I began to worry that I was going to pee in my pants, even though I still wasn’t wearing any. China swiped her key card and ushered me into her suite. When I saw how neat and clean everything was, I decided that the air of order and calm must have been an indication of her Taoist origins.
Her room had a beautiful view of the ocean. I immediately started to compare it to mine, which only had the so-called “garden view,” meaning that it looked out on the enormous condensers that cooled my wing of the hotel. I was feeling short-changed, which, of course, was only more grist for the analytic mill. Some women experience classical penis envy, but I had always suffered from vagina envy. I wanted to be a beautiful woman who was taken care of by rich men, and who effortlessly commanded the kind of view that I was looking at now. I was tired of being a guy who had to scrape his way through life, depending on the kindness of concierges. Our rooms epitomized the two different worlds that we operated in. My room had practically no natural light, while hers was filled with a blinding sunlight that I imagined illuminated every fold of the organ that rhymed with her name. I was fortunate to have an analyst whose name evoked the very organ I so envied. I knew that sex-change operations were possible, but in the end I am not an adventurous spirit. If I got a vagina, I would be limited to having lesbian relationships with Tiffanys. I wasn’t sure how I was going to resolve these feelings. I both wanted to be a woman and to fuck them.
China pulled the chair out from her writing desk, which was equipped with a phone and fax machine. She nonchalantly flipped her television to CNN and proceeded to slide into her armchair, affording her a good view of the impressive plasma screen behind my head. The arrangement felt a little odd, but I wanted to let my first one-minute session take its course.
“Well, we’ll continue next time,” she said without any prompting from me. I got up and immediately sat down again. I knew that China was a Lacanian, but it was as if she were reading my mind. How had she figured out my preferred therapeutic parameters? Each of our initial sessions lasted exactly one minute, and after 16 of them, back-to-back, she went over to her computer and printed out an invoice.
I’d had therapists who made valiant but not always successful attempts to keep their eyes open during sessions. But this was the first time I had an analyst who insisted on watching television while I went on about my problems. What was particularly unfair about it was that, with the television behind me, I couldn’t see anything except China’s face. This was an unusual configuration for analysis, in which patients and their doctors don’t ordinarily make eye contact. In the past, when I’d been in a session with a sleepy therapist, I’d grit my teeth and force myself to talk about the discomfort I was feeling. (In one unfortunate instance, I fell asleep on the couch myself, only to wake up to find that we were both sleeping through the session, my analyst snoring softly behind me.) But I was having trepidation about opening up to China, considering the secret longings I harbored for her.
During most of our early sessions, China watched CNN International, but there were times when I could see she was bored or irritated by the news, especially reports about the refusal of the Chinese to revalue their currency. At these moments, she picked up the remote and switched to a sports network that carried soccer games. She loved the Brazilian team, but she also turned out to be a major David Beckham fan, and felt the best thing that ever happened to the American economy was recruiting Beckham for the Los Angeles Galaxy. On several occasions, I tried to talk about my personal history and early upbringing, but it was hard to get a word in edgewise, between China’s vexation about currency fluctuations and her lusty enthusiasm for futebol.