Seven Days in Rio. Francis Levy

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 tipsy I could relax, and in all likelihood find myself surrounded by beautiful Tiffanys before I knew it. I decided that before I got to The Gringo I would stop in the first reasonablelooking bar and have a few drinks to loosen up.

      The first place I found was an American bar called The New York Yankees Club House, which broadcast Yankees games on cable. It was midwinter in America and not the time for a Yankees game, but the place looked just like one of those classic Irish taverns, with old men sitting cross-legged on benches, staring up at a television and not saying a word to each other.

      “What’ll ya have, Mack,” the bartender said as I sat down. This place was the real McCoy. They sold “crisps,” cheap bags of Planters Peanuts, and hard-boiled eggs, and they had Harp and Guinness on tap. The whole place smelled of urine. I noticed that even though all the regulars looked like Irish doormen out of central casting, the bartender himself, despite his thick Bronx accent, appeared to be a Rio native—dark, slim, and handsome—and not the kind of sallow-faced, beer-bellied creature I was likely to find at a similar establishment in Manhattan.

      When I got closer to the television, I noticed that everyone in the bar was watching Bob Hope perform for troops on some aircraft carrier. I quickly surmised that they were watching a tape of one of Hope’s overseas performances during the Vietnam War. Bob Hope alternated on the television with some equally musty broadcasts of Yankees games, featuring the sportscaster Phil Rizzuto. I knew this was one place where I wasn’t likely to run into any head-turning Tiffanys, but I experienced a moment of homesickness. Back in New York, when I wasn’t seeing prostitutes, I enjoyed getting inebriated all by myself, and this was just the kind of place, with cold, inexpensive beer, that I liked to frequent. In fact, I knew that if I wasn’t careful, I might end up spending the rest of my time in Rio in this nostalgic dump.

      One of the predictable things about Irish bars for someone like me is that the bartender and the patrons always glare suspiciously at newcomers, and I knew that whenever I got up from my stool to take a piss, someone would say perceptive things about me like, “Who the bloody feck is that?” There were a couple of portly fellows with reddened cheeks who looked like retired New York City cops. I figured most of the Irish-doorman types must have been employed in a section of Rio where there were the same kind of elegant pre-war high-rises you find along Park Avenue. This was just the sort of place that you could find in what was left of old Yorkville, with its tenements and momand-pop grocery stores.

      As I would later learn, most of the Irish doormen at The Club House had been brought down by a Jewish developer who had built several high-rises to cater to the needs of the growing American expatriate community in Rio. He’d felt that the extra New York touch would make his buildings competitive with the towers that had been constructed by Brazilian developers going after the same market.

      I’m the kind of guy who can’t stop thinking about the one woman who won’t talk to him at a party. Instead of moving on when I feel I’m not wanted, I go back for more. So instead of having a beer or two and proceeding on to The Gringo, I set out to win acceptance