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!”
It turned out that Sunshine was a charismatic and controversial figure whose attempts to broaden the audience for Freud’s insights had included showing ’70s porn films, with famous stars like John Holmes, Harry Reems, and Linda Lovelace, as illustrations of his theories of narcissism and idealization. Sunshine had been brought up in an orthodox Jewish family in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. His parents had actually been members of the Satmar sect, led by Moses Teitelbaum and his feuding sons, Aaron and Zalman. Sunshine was not a practicing Jew, but he was no stranger to feuds. The once close relationship with his student David Moldauer had fractured over the fundamental aim and purpose of using pornographic films to illustrate his theories, mirroring the famous split between Freud and his Aryan disciple, Jung. (Sunshine’s famous maxim, “We aim to please, will you aim too, please?” displayed above the toilet in his office bathroom, was another bone of contention between the two men).
The position once occupied by Moldauer had been taken over by someone named Herbert Schmucker. Schmucker had a whole theory of Oedipal rivalry that argued it was best to be as blatant about it as possible. This explained the fact that he named his institute after himself instead of after his esteemed mentor, Sunshine, and favored a porn film entitled Three Some, in which a physically appealing couple invite their sad-sack friend to watch them having sex, while never allowing him to join in. Schmucker had argued on more than one occasion that sexual satisfaction derives from a feeling of superiority in getting something that someone else doesn’t have. The guilt from such feelings of rivalry, he believed, is what any good analysis should attempt to alleviate. There were all kinds of paradoxes in analysis. For instance, one of the most famous centers for the study of analysis in Manhattan is the Karen Horney Clinic, but what kind of inducement is a name like that? How could Karen Horney help me? Why wouldn’t I go to a place honoring someone named Karen Un-Horney, where the name at least held out a hope?
Sunshine and Schmucker were like an argumentative married couple. Over the remainder of my stay in Rio, I would frequently find them sniping at each other in the halls, and in one case overheard a furious battle in which Sunshine actually brought up the naming of Schmucker’s institute, telling Schmucker in a petulant voice that could be heard throughout the hotel lobby, “You’re behaving like you just got off the boat. You’re behaving just like a schmuck!” Indeed, I learned from Wikipedia that Schmucker’s parents had been humble German immigrants, and that Schmucker had grown up in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. Schmucker’s parents had occupied a tenement on 86th Street above the Old Heidelberg restaurant. But the old German neighborhood was in the same district as the silk-stocking PS 6 (which I would attend years later) and Schmucker was able to get an education that allowed him to rise out of his immigrant roots, attend medical school at NYU, and eventually become a prominent psychoanalyst.
China had been close-lipped when Sunshine had come up in our conversation, but she spoke with great reverence about Schmucker, whom she plainly regarded as one of the gods of Olympus. It was clear from her attitude that Sunshine had become a mere footnote in the arc of Schmucker’s career.
I returned to the lobby to look for Victor the concierge. He hadn’t been much help, but it has always been my philosophy that it’s good to do the same thing again and again even if it fails to produce results. I remember my analyst telling me that there are people who in fact unconsciously want to bring about the outcomes they so often complain about. There is even a word for it in the psychoanalytic literature: parapraxis.
I was thrown into a tailspin when I arrived at the concierge desk to find that Victor wasn’t there. In his place was a small, dark, unshaven man with the face of a rodent. I immediately dubbed him Rat Man, after Freud’s famous patient. His nametag read, “Adolphe.” When I asked when Victor was coming back, Adolphe was evasive. He pulled the language card, pretending he didn’t understand what I was saying. As far as Adolphe was concerned, he was the concierge now and Victor didn’t exist anymore. I felt very much the way I did years before when my analyst got sick and set me up with a dentist named Dr. Klein, a good friend of his who had had analytic training, but for some reason had chosen to become a dentist instead. For months I went to Klein’s office on 57th Street, using his dental chair as an analytic couch. As then, I dreaded having to tell my story all over again, especially to someone like Adolphe, who didn’t seem to be the kind of person with whom I could be comfortable expressing my desires. In the middle of this awkwardness, Schmucker appeared. He seemed already to know Adolphe well.
“Ah yes, Dr. Schmucker, the patient is waiting in your room.” There was something oddly unsubtle about Adolphe. The way he addressed Schmucker made it apparent that the word “patient” was a euphemism for what in all likelihood was a Tiffany.
I have always been a kind of groupie when it comes to mental health professionals, so I impulsively put out my hand as Schmucker turned in my direction. When I said, “I’m Kenny Cantor from New York and I’ve really been enjoying your conference—especially the films,” he gave me a withering look that communicated exactly how irrelevant I was to him. I could see he was perspiring profusely, so I figured he was already somewhat worked up about the “patient” who was waiting for him in his room.
“So, Adolphe, give me the real run-down on what happened to Victor,” I said, after Schmucker had hustled off to his assignation. “Did they can him?”
“All major canning companies in Brazil are in the São Paulo area.”
“No, can is an American expression that means fire. You ‘fire’ someone when you remove him from his job and tell him he can’t work for you anymore. You can also say a senhora has a nice ‘can.’ ”
Adolphe responded with an expression that was equal parts confusion and bemusement. I pointed to a cream-colored Tiffany who looked like she was just coming on for her evening shift and seemed to have a condition, more common in Africa than Brazil, called steatopygia, which is a distended rear end. It was a deformity, but it illustrated my point.
“For instance that senhora with the tight pants has quite a can,” I said.
“One hundred dollars American,” Adolphe shot back.
“I admire her extension, which reminds me of a guest house attached to a larger estate. But I’m looking for your normal sexy Brazilian whore with a nice butt. I’m all for helping people with their troubles, but one thing I learned in my years of therapy is that you don’t have sex with someone because you feel sorry for them. Anyway,
