large this or that or none at all. I once heard of a prostitute who had a vagina with no hole, and she had plenty of customers, believe it or not. She’d had some kind of industrial accident before she became a working girl, and all her orifices had to be put in different places. I think she peed from her belly button and went to a gynecologist when she had a toothache. I know it sounds totally unbelievable, but apparently there was a harmonious logic to her whole body. So, Adolphe, tell me, where are all the good Tiffanys?”
I leaned over conspiratorially. Adolphe looked in both directions to see if anyone was listening and whispered, “Victor is now the bartender at The Café Gringo. It’s very dark in there, but he will get you nice girls.”
I was so happy that Victor had found gainful employment that I stopped feeling horny and frustrated for a moment, although when I thought of Herbert Schmucker making passionate love to a Tiffany in his room, I was filled with penis envy.
I was sure I saw the face of an Asian woman in a crowd of people waiting for the elevators at the end of the lobby, and my heart skipped a beat thinking it might be China. It was at that point that I understood something that neuroscientists have known for years: our emotions are often ahead of our thoughts. I was more involved with China than I could have possibly realized, and was already feeling troubled by the prospective complexities we would face. I have looked into the eyes of dogs and cats, and I know there is a tendency to anthropomorphize them, to believe that somehow they are thinking about you. China almost had the opposite effect on me. When I’d looked into her eyes I saw a hungry animal with only a veneer of culture, consciousness, and sensibility. I had the urge to dart across the lobby, if only to stand next to her in the elevator, if only to feel the warmth of her body close to mine. I seethed with jealousy when I imagined that the patient waiting for Schmucker in his room was not a Tiffany at all, but China Dentata. As it happened, the Asian woman I had spotted across the lobby was indeed China—en route, I assumed in my jealous delirium, to Schmucker’s room. Analysis was just like every other profession—good-looking women routinely fucked their way to the top.
But I stopped myself before I could go any further. If China and Schmucker were an item, standing next to her in the elevator and wishing her a nice afternoon would get me nowhere, unless I had some chloroform and a pair of handcuffs. Having neither, I elected to continue with my original plan and head off to The Gringo to consult with Victor. There was no sense in chasing windmills. I realized I was coming deathly close to having my seven days in Rio turn into nothing more than my other 358 days in New York, where all my interactions with Tiffanys were fraught with anxiety.
My heart was in my throat as the doors opening onto the Copa swished open. It was late afternoon. I imagined China in the arms of Schmucker, their writhing bodies in an almost perfect psychoanalytic embrace, in which love and work, like the stars in a John Donne poem, were “perfectly conjoined.” I started mentally undressing the women who now paraded themselves before me. I had been thinking I ought to get one of those sandwich boards they use to shill discount suits in Manhattan. Mine would say, “American with Reality Seeks Available Girls.” Not everyone would get it, but enough so that I would enhance my selection. As it was, I noticed so many Tiffanys in tiny thongs that I didn’t know which one to pick first.
I assumed that as an attractive, partially psychoanalyzed American with reals, every Tiffany would be after me. But it was no use even trying. It was a situation that is known in psychoanalytic literature as a double bind, in which the patient gets conflicting messages. If I wanted to get attention I had to advertise it, but if I advertised it I would get more propositions than I could handle. Besides, I had begun to develop an indifference toward the Rio girls, which, even if it was manufactured in my head, was becoming stronger by the minute. The fact that I couldn’t get my first Tiffany off the phone with her Chinese clients probably didn’t help matters. I have learned that experiences of this kind can traumatize a patient, or a john, and shape his view of the world.
I turned to a Tiffany standing to my right and asked, “Senhora, do you know a place called The Gringo?” She was gorgeous, and even though I knew her body was for sale, I figured she was like one of those Michelin five-star restaurants where you have to make a reservation years in advance. She had olive-colored skin, dark braided hair, and a perfect chin. She was a “10.” In fact she looked like a Latin version of the character Bo Derek played in the movie. Her breasts stood perfectly motionless, like soldiers at attention. I decided to take a businesslike attitude, holding out my hand and introducing myself.
“By the way, Tiffany, I’m Ken Cantor.” It turned out she spoke very good English, but I can’t remember what she said, since I was too flabbergasted by the fact that someone so spectacularly beautiful was talking to me. This Tiffany was no mere whore. She was a call girl, an escort, a courtesan. Whatever the highest rank one can give to someone who sells her body, she deserved it.
Tiffany looked me up and down like she was inspecting a new car. Deep inside I maintained the hope that she would say, “You don’t need to go to The Gringo. Why don’t you come back to my apartment?” Though there are lots of Tiffanys in Rio, the kind of Tiffany I was looking at was a rarity, and could surely command top dollar, or real, as was the case. For her it was always a seller’s market. I was sure that she occupied a lavish condo with a balcony overlooking the Copacabana. She was not a whore who worked out of one of those dingy hotel rooms with hourly rates.
“Oh yes, I am quite familiar with The Gringo,” she said with a smile. It was only when I noticed her voice was a little lower than I expected, and saw that she had an Adam’s apple, that I realized she was a man, one of the legion of beautiful pre-op transsexuals who are a famous feature of Rio nightlife.
Even though Tiffany was more beautiful than any woman I had ever encountered, I didn’t need something stiff and hard when that’s what I already had. It’s like meeting someone who thinks just the way you do. At first you get excited about finding a like mind, then boredom sets in as you anticipate every word they say. It’s what’s known as prolepsis in the world of rhetoric, and I hadn’t flown five thousand miles to experience an evening of it in phallic form.
It turned out The Gringo was located across the road that ran along the Copacabana, in a warren of side streets that were plastered with flashing neon signs shaped in the forms of palm trees and half-naked females. The streets were lined with old hotels whose doorways were filled with bored-looking Tiffanys. For a moment, like Orpheus, I had the desire to turn back for my Eurydice. Looking around, I was suddenly filled with premonitions of disaster, and this last Tiffany’s Adam’s apple had a reassuring appeal. She was just one of the guys, after all. I imagined what it would be like to massage her breasts. At the same time, I had disturbing thoughts about her penis. People solicited pre-ops because they presented a buffet of sexual pleasures. If you had homosexual inclinations or were AC/DC, you got the pleasure of being able to indulge all of your desires at the same time. Taking a democratic point of view, I asked myself, “Why not?” Before long I was imagining what it would be like to put Tiffany’s big cock in my mouth or to have her hardened nipples gently tickle my back as I felt something hard nudging my ass.
I quickly silenced my deviant thoughts and proceeded into what was apparently one of Rio’s most vice-infested areas, an area where, I was told, everything was permitted, making the old Havana of the ’50s, with its cock-wielding Superman and naked sex clubs, look like Mr. Roger’s neighborhood. In short, I was headed into an area into which only the most intrepid sex traveler dared to venture.
I’d been so busy dealing with the analytic convention and dismantling the business office that the first Tiffany had set up in my hotel room (in fact I was still fielding calls from China and a number of so-called “emerging markets” where she’d been involved in venture capital deals, including a sub-prime mortgage situation in Uzbekistan), I hadn’t had time to lie back and sip on a caipirinha. Everywhere I went I saw waiters carrying around exotic drinks with colorful little umbrellas. I knew that if I got a little
