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.
“But I’m not six inches,” I said, looking at the shriveled carrot that was left in the wake of my unconsummated foreplay with China.
“Fully extended it’s an easy six,” she said. She even measured my balls and wrote down a two on her pad, indicating, I suppose, that they were both accounted for.
The speed with which my jeans arrived made me wonder if this wasn’t some kind of racket. I imagined a sweatshop in the basement of the hotel filled with illegal immigrants toiling day and night to fit the made-to-order desires of American guys who wanted to accentuate their penis size. In America I might not have wanted to broadcast the fact that I had a substantial package, since many of the girls who work the streets will do anything to avoid the kind of stud who is going to leave them hobbling in their platform shoes.
One of the toothless Brazilian cleaning women brought up the pants. No sooner was I holding them against my waist to check the length than Tiffany had hooked her fingers over the bottom edge of her tiny skirt and was threatening to pull it up. I closed my eyes and begged her not to tempt me again, as it would ruin my meal. I’m referring of course to the constant warning I used to get from my parents about not eating too many hot buns when we went out for dinner, lest they spoil my appetite. I have a different attitude about buns now that I’m a grown man — I believe that if you want to gorge yourself on buns, you should go right ahead. True, I had come to Brazil to have a good time with as many girls as possible. But as charming and professional as Tiffany was, I really had to start playing the field. It’s like people who go to France to see the sites. The Eiffel Tower is nice, but you also want to go to Chartres, Mont St. Michel, the Louvre, Versailles, Aix en Provence, and naturally, Pigalle, which is still filled with clubs populated by decrepit, overpriced hookers