The true nature of my suffering was a notion that only started to hit me during the latter part of my work with China. During my second day of treatment, after I’d returned from Uva, I started to entertain the notion that China was really only a glorified Tiffany — at least as far as I was concerned. It dawned on me that the only reason I had gone to see her in the first place was to get into her underpants, if she had ever worn any. My whole torrid history started to come back to me — the guilt toward my mother for having worn tight-fitting pants that accentuated my crotch and my general inability to communicate with other human beings, in particular women. I felt like a computer whose hard drive had shut down, and was now coming back to life with distressingly random words, numbers, and images appearing on the screen.
It was early morning and the city was awakening much like my consciousness, which had become short-circuited when my synapses were overheated in Uva. I realized it would soon be time to return to room 1269 to begin what would be the period of the analysis when the patient’s transference and the analyst’s counter-transference are like two football teams that have ascended to the top of their conferences and are now ready for the Super Bowl. It also reminded me of Hegelian dialectics. If the transference was the thesis, the counter-transference, comprised of the analyst’s projections onto the patient, was the antithesis. These two gave birth to a child, or in Hegelian terms, the synthesis, which was the newly psychoanalyzed patient, who had hopefully made his unconscious desires conscious.
I had to shower and freshen up, since my face still smelled of Brittany’s ass and I didn’t want China to lose her analytic neutrality because of a sudden bout of jealousy, or to say something like, “you smell like shit,” which, however truthful, might have hurt my feelings. It would all come out in our sessions, but why put it right in her face, so to speak? There were better ways of communicating my experiences. Normally, I would begin a session by telling my analyst about the dreams I’d had the night before, though in this analysis I had been handicapped by the time structure, which didn’t allow for the same kind of elaboration. I was additionally impeded in using this tool of analytic work by the fact that I hadn’t slept and could describe no more than my salacious daydreams, which have statistically been found less effective in providing an avenue to the unconscious. As I walked toward the elevator, passing in front of the grand ballroom where the meetings and lectures of the psychoanalytic convention were posted, I noticed that the centerpiece of the day’s presentations was “Erotomania: the Sequel,” given by Dr. Francesco Levi, from Parma. My curiosity piqued, I continued on my way to China’s room.
“I was totally obsessed with Brittany’s asshole,” I began as soon as I lay back. “There was a moment at Uva when I thought I would do anything to get her back, to have her ass smothering me. At the same time, I wanted to dive into her pussy and swim upstream, as if I could paddle into her uterus and be reborn.” As I said this, it dawned on me that even though China was a psychoanalyst, she was also a woman, and I became fearful that she might be offended by the explicitness of the imagery. There was also a bit of dishonesty to my romanticized depiction. I was trying to add a philosophical element, using the dogged quest for rebirth and transcendence as justification for my bawdy fantasies. In truth, I hadn’t thought of anything as spiritual as being reborn when I was feasting on Brittany. I was just in love with her ass and the oblivion of unmitigated pleasure it represented. It was as simple as that. I realized I had to be more truthful with China about my feelings if I was ever going to get better.
“Now that I think about it,” I continued to ramble, “what is to be found in an asshole or a cunt? I was never satisfied by the attainment of the love object. Once I was licking her ass, I felt strangely bereft. All I was aware of was the mixture of shit and Handy Wipe, like the stench of camphor in a musty closet. Once you gain access to a body part, it loses its symbolic value. Only when it is taken away, as it was when Brittany disappeared into the crowd at the club, does the nimbus that had endowed her organs with otherworldly magic return. I felt like I was in search of the Holy Grail, but now that I am back here in analysis, the feeling is beginning to subside. I’m beginning to realize that Brittany was just a whore. There is something very suspicious about freedom. Nature made breasts, assholes, and cunts to be sacred, and when they are freely exhibited and easily attainable they simply become flesh and bone. There is a certain democratization that goes on at the Copacabana, where the girls walk around topless. After all, the nipple is just calcified skin. The private parts lose their aristocratic quality. The breast, for example, is the child’s first sexual object, so it’s no wonder that when a grown man finally sees a woman’s breast he goes nuts. It’s the powerful pull of infantile sexuality in its adult form.”
I must say I felt very proud of myself as I finished this little dissertation. I was sure that China would be impressed with the sophistication of my analytic insight, and I was ready and willing to give her credit for having educated me.
“So your mother is just made of skin and flesh and bones like everyone else?” China inquired, raising her eyebrows dispassionately. Somehow her comment reminded me of Shylock’s “pound of flesh” in The Merchant of Venice, and I imagined my mother taking off her girdle and having her flesh — her breasts, vagina, her stomach — weighed on a scale. I had a sudden urge to get on the next flight back to New York, to leave the Tiffanys and Brittanys of Rio, even to leave my China, and abruptly terminate the analysis. It was apparent that China either hadn’t been listening or hadn’t understood a word I’d said, because I was making precisely the opposite point: my mother wasn’t just skin and bones, any more than China was. It was the way in which the personality infused all this flesh that made a breast more than just a breast. China wasn’t just a vagina. Her vagina had symbolic resonance, at least until she had made her brutally insensitive remark. My irritation would soon pass, but for a second I regarded China as no more than a cunt.
She must have been aware of how much her comment upset me, because she dropped her veneer of analytic neutrality and used the remote to lower the volume on her television, despite the fact that she was watching a very important playoff between Brazil and Argentina.
“I think we need to discuss the fee,” she said. I felt it was an odd choice to bring up the subject of money when I was in the middle of an emotional discussion about my mother’s body. Unfortunately, my time was up. When we began a new session, I immediately explained to China how upset I was with her for discussing fees at a time when I was feeling so fragile. “You’re always discussing your mother,” she shot back, “even when you think you’re not.” Then she added, “We’ll continue next time.” At that moment I felt a rush of contempt for China. I couldn’t imagine how we had ever become doctor and patient, much less lovers.