Seven Days in Rio Read online

  Annotation

  "The funniest American novel since Sam Lipsyte's The Ask."

  — Village Voice

  "A ribald chronicle of [a] 60-something Manhattan accountant, who's come to Rio de Janeiro as a sex tourist. [A] fever dream of a novel."

  — New York Times Book Review

  "Levy delivers a visceral blend of hilarious satire and study in human sexuality, taking us on a deviant tour of Rio."

  — Interview Magazine

  I have come to regard almost everything that happens in human life as a form of therapy.

  So muses Kenny Cantor, always dapper in his seersucker suit from the Brooks Brothers 346 collection. Kenny is a CPA, amateur psychoanalyst, and sex-tourist vacationing in Rio when he gets waylaid at a psychoanalytic conference.

  What ensues is a provocative journey that merges sex and psychoanalysis through Rio's tawdry netherworld of Susan Sontag-quoting denizens as only an incendiary voice like Francis Levy could imagine.

  * * *

  Francis LevyPRAISE FOR FRANCIS LEVY’S EROTOMANIA: A ROMANCE

  AUTHOR NOTE

  SEVEN DAYS IN RIO

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  * * *

  Francis Levy

  Seven Days in Rio

  For Titus, Zeno and Hallie.

  I never thought group therapy would lead to this.

  PRAISE FOR FRANCIS LEVY’S EROTOMANIA: A ROMANCE

  *Queerty.com Top 10 Book of 2008.

  *Inland Empire Weekly Standout Book of 2008.

  “Levy is our generation’s D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Charles Bukowski rolled into one.”

  — INLAND EMPIRE WEEKLY

  “[Erotomania] is a great book, written with flawless verve by a tremendous fictioneer and thinker, and it deserves glory. A classic.”

  — ANDREI CODRESCU

  “Levy seems to have an eye for detail for all that is absurd, commonly human, and uniquely American.”

  — BOOKSLUT

  “Sex is familiar, but it’s perennial, and Levy makes it fresh.”

  — LOS ANGELES TIMES

  “The book’s raw but thoughtful carnality comes off as at once serious, clever and crude in sending up the absurdities of contemporary hookings-up. It’s not a traditional love story, but debut novelist Levy puts thought and genuine feeling behind all the doings.”

  — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “[Erotomania] can just as easily be a bookend to the beautifully nuanced prose of Milan Kundera as it can be a long-version story for a nudie mag minus the accompanying photographs. It’s all in the context — as it is with most relationships.”

  — THE QUARTERLY CONVERSATION

  “Erotomania wields a comedic punch that makes it, above all, a fun novel to read.”

  — NERVE

  “A high-minded yet slapstick take on erotic desire.”

  — TIME OUT CHICAGO

  AUTHOR NOTE

  None of the characters in this novel are real, nor are the places or psychoanalytic movements, even though the name Rio may conjure the real city of Rio de Janeiro. Lacanian analysis as described in the novel bears no resemblance to the branch of psychoanalytic practice initiated by the French analyst Jacques Lacan. Even the duration of time stated in the title bears little resemblance to what is commonly known as seven days. So don’t start writing irate letters to my blog correcting this or that or asking for refunds.

  SEVEN DAYS IN RIO

  I went down to the Copacabana on my first night in Rio. I was told that most of the women were prostitutes who would gladly sleep with me for a hundred American dollars. I saw a sexy woman wearing high heels and an abbreviated bikini and decided that there was no sense in hesitating, since from what I’d heard about the lovemaking habits of Brazilians, one would be as talented as the next. I pursed my lips and made purring sounds like a pussycat to get the idea across, but the woman didn’t seem to notice me, even though I was wearing a seersucker suit from the Brooks Brothers 1818 Collection. There aren’t too many men wearing Brooks Brothers suits (or any suits for that matter) down by the Copacabana, and I would have thought I stood out from the crowd.

  I have always found communication between myself and other human beings to be a problem, and often worry that I haven’t succeeded with women where I otherwise might because my words get caught between my teeth. So I just held out my hand to her as she waited for the traffic light to change. “I’m Kenny,” I said. “Do you understand anglais? I am new to your country and I wanted to introduce myself while also initiating myself into your highly permissive sexual culture. I will put my cards on the table: I’d be glad to engage you to perform sexual acts on me for a fee.”

  I don’t speak a word of Portuguese, so for a moment I entertained the idea of simply squeezing her breasts and spanking her very ample and exposed buttocks. But common sense prevailed. I intuitively knew that it wasn’t a good idea to touch the merchandise until we had worked out our fiduciary arrangement.

  Even as she walked away from me I was convinced that if I had been more outspoken or demonstrative we might be on our way to a hotel room. Fuck, for instance, is one of those words that crosses cultural and class boundaries. I have said “fuck you” in hundreds of cities around the world, and everyone seems to know what I mean. Whether you’re in Bangkok’s famed Soi Cowboy, San Francisco’s Tenderloin, Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, or Amsterdam’s Rossebuurt, fuck is as easily understood as the skull and bones. Fuck can be an expression of disgust or of longing. I should have simply asked, “Do you want to fuck?” and then we could have dealt with the logistics.

  I had checked into my hotel room at the Copacabana only a few hours earlier. Both the young ladies at the reservations desk were absolutely astonishing. In fact, with their shiny, dark hair pulled tightly back and their ample cleavage adding just the right contrast to the formality of their blue uniforms, I could barely tell one from the other — though I did take note of a nameplate reading “Suzanne” on one of them, pledging to myself that by the end of my stay I would get up enough courage to offer her remuneration for her body. Upon arrival in Brazil, I immediately wanted to have sex with everyone, and by now I was already feeling nostalgic for that first flush of Brazilian pulchritude. I had carefully read the sex blogs, which described the easy familiarity of Brazilian women and the murky line that exists between prostitution and ordinary human interchanges.

  I refused to allow the sting of my first encounter to deter me, so I lit off for an establishment called Café Brazil, which I had noticed when I drove up to the hotel. What better place to get into the spirit of a country than a bar named after it? Later on, I told myself, I would seek out the more exotic spots, like Café Erotique. For all I knew, there might be a Café Whore, perhaps even a Café Nympho.

  I had heard that although Rio was a paradise teeming with available women, you did have to look out for pickpockets and petty criminals. There were even some rumors about kidnappings by gangs of sexy women who titillated you even as they held you for ransom. But I hadn’t reckoned with the simpler notion of being overcharged. In the great European capitals, American tourists are routinely handed menus with higher prices than what the locals pay. It was only after I had left Café Brazil, having made several clumsy and abortive attempts to wrangle a female escort, that I realized I had paid over $5 for my Diet Coke.

  Returning to the hotel empty handed, I decided that it might be easier to simply go to the concierge desk and ask for sex. Come to think of it, it was probably included in my package deal.

  “Sim, Senhor Cantor, I can arrange your girl,” the concierge said after I very un-surreptitiously placed a pile of reals in his hand. “And what kind of girl are you looking for?”

  “I
want a sexy girl. Can you make sure she’s sexy? I want someone with all the best features.” It reminded me of the way my mother ordered fish over the phone: “I want a nice big piece of salmon, not too fatty.”

  I congratulated myself on my resourcefulness and headed back to my room to prepare for my first encounter with a Rio whore. I was so overwrought with anticipation that I practically jumped out of my shoes when I heard her knock on my door. She was darkly beautiful, with hair that hung almost to her waist, wearing a tight red cocktail dress. But she was like a New York City cab driver, chattering on her cell phone even as she lifted her skirt to show me her goods, whispering that she wanted the equivalent of $l00. It felt so much like being in a New York cab that I accidentally blurted out “Forty-third and Fifth!” instead of telling her to dance a sexy merengue in the nude. As it turned out, this activity was not on the menu that she had handed me, with its numbered items printed in English and Portuguese. It was a rumpled sheet of paper that was divided into two columns, “Subversive” and “Dominican.” The items under the “Subversive” heading were “shrimping,” “rimming,” “bandage,” and “spanky.” The “Dominican” list was more traditional, and included “fuck,” “blowjob,” “sixty-nine,” “around the world,” “half and half,” and “caning”—this last item seeming rather anomalous and harsh.

  I had a beautiful room that overlooked two ten-ton air conditioning units, whose vibration I could feel when I tried to pry open one of the sealed windows to let in some fresh air. I didn’t want to lose the Carnival-like mood that was beginning to infect me, even if I had my doubts about the prospect of making love to somebody who was on the telephone. She was talking loudly and animatedly, all while trying to demonstrate her lovely private parts, and seemed like the kind of person who was perfectly capable of doing two things at once. I gave her a handful of reals.

  “Look, Tiffany,” I said, using my pet name for prostitutes, which I’d always thought should be mandated by the UN as an identifier in travel documents for international sex workers. “You’re a gorgeous, wonderful, and special woman. I wanted to pay you a little extra for taking the trouble to perform your services while multi-tasking. But instead, I’m just going to pay you a kill fee so you can get on with your conversation and I can form a more focused relationship with another puta.” I surprised even myself with this about-face, but Tiffany didn’t seem to miss a beat. She continued with her conversation in rapid-fire Portuguese, picked up her things, and walked out as if she had rejected me and not the other way around.

  Night was falling and there was an ambitious selection of adult films on pay-per-view. But I was in the sex capital of the world and I didn’t want to resort to experiencing Brazilian life vicariously — at least not yet. I realized that Rio had a rich cultural history and that there were other things to do besides look for prostitutes, but I knew in my heart that I was only interested in sex.

  There were probably as many Tiffanys on the beach outside the Copacabana as there were rats in the New York subway system. I just had to locate one who didn’t insist on being plugged into a headset while she was administering fellatio. As I came to the bank of elevators on my floor, I noticed two middle-aged women who I assumed were retired prostitutes. I had imagined that aging whores retired to other cities like São Paulo, which is noted for its efficient mass transit system, so I was sure they were back in Rio for some recreational sex. Their skin was lined and leathery and they looked like they had been ravaged by age, but now they could use what was left of their looks to enjoy sex without having to worry about where the next real was coming from.

  Since they were plainly over the hill, I thought they might be able to offer an objective view about where the best hookers could be found in Rio. I was sure they could give me a few tips on how to enjoy the rest of my stay. “Excuse me, ladies, my name is Kenny Cantor and I’m a tourist from Manhattan.”

  “Ah, Manhattan,” they both sighed with deep Brazilian accents.

  “I take it you are natives of Rio, real Brazilians. Carnival, the Copacabana…”

  “Carnival is funny,” the shorter one said. “Samba!” She started to dance with me, pushing me toward the elevator door just as it was opening, so that I lost my balance and almost careened into several hookers who were already in the elevator. The old whores were still laughing as the door shut without our even having had a chance to say goodbye.

  I could have propositioned the girls coming down from their assignations, but I employ the same attitude toward prostitutes that I do toward baked goods—get ’em while they’re hot. I had wanted to get to know the two old pros because I was sure they could tell me where all the fresh, young women congregated, where the supply was greater than the demand. I wanted to start my visit with a woman who hadn’t become jaded and stale from overuse. I sincerely hoped that my first experience had been an anomaly and that the prostitutes of Rio were not like New York cabbies, constantly speaking to people in other countries.

  With the advent of the Blackberry and the iPhone, it was going to become very difficult to find prostitutes who were free of the multi-tasking that had become a fixture of modern life. The old-fashioned streetwalker was obsolete. Paying for sex was becoming more like a promotional transaction, with the constant incentive to purchase a host of related services. Who knows what would have happened had I asked Tiffany if I could use her phone?

  Just as I was beginning to put these thoughts to rest, the concierge of the hotel waved me over to his desk. He was dressed in a tuxedo, high-collared shirt, and bowtie, although his five o’clock shadow made him look like he had recently been making wanton love.

  “Sir, it’s the girl you were with. She says she likes you and asks if she can come back up to your room. She is sorry that she had to be on the phone so much, but she promises that if she comes back she won’t take any long-distance calls.”

  I couldn’t help myself.

  “Oh, of course. Tiffany.” He was nonplussed. He plainly wasn’t familiar with my pet name for prostitutes. I wanted to explain to him that it was a little like the euro, that having a universal name for all sex workers was a form of globalism that facilitated commerce.

  “Is she for real?” I asked.

  “Yes, for reals,” he misinterpreted. “She’s a working girl, but I can tell she really likes you. I know that girl and she wouldn’t give up her long-distance calls for just anyone.”

  I knew there were a million girls who would love to have my reals. Brazil is a land where flesh is cheap, but I was afraid that despite all the possibilities available, I could end up emptyhanded after my first day in Rio, waking up in the morning to an empty bed. I would be like the Buridan’s ass of medieval philosophy, which ended up starving or dying of thirst because it couldn’t decide whether it wanted hay or water. “Send her up,” I told the concierge.

  Before I knew it, Tiffany was back in my room guaranteeing in broken English that she only had three more phone calls to make. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and with all my waiting I was now ready for a hot night of lovemaking. I called down to the concierge and told him that I would need Tiffany for the whole night, no matter what the cost. I figured that despite the language barrier, I couldn’t get bored with all the activities — fellatio, nude dancing, doggy style, missionary — I had picked from the menu. I didn’t count on the fact that Tiffany would treat my room like it was her office.

  In fact, by the end of the evening Tiffany had so many calls coming in, and was carrying on so much business with swarthy teenaged boys who dropped off packages that looked like everything from stock certificates to hard drugs, that I seriously thought of taking another room just so I could get some sleep. The most interesting part of our evening together was that it was very much like a real relationship. I wanted sex and Tiffany was continually too busy for it. The one time we actually did try to have sexual intercourse in the doggy style that I prefer, she was, from what I could tell, on the phone with a Chinese pharmaceutical compa
ny in which she apparently owned a small interest. She shook free of me during a particularly heated exchange with her Chinese counterparts, before I had time to finish. I couldn’t help remarking how the circumstances reflected our new global economy. The only word of Chinese that Tiffany knew was something that sounded like “gong,” and from what I could tell, her counterparts weren’t fluent in Portuguese, so both sides were forced to speak broken English. There had been several news reports about contaminated shipments of the blood thinner Heparin, which was produced in China, and I hoped for Tiffany’s sake that the company she had invested in was not one of those involved.

  Besides sex, one of my obsessions is clean air, and I try to engage in sexual acts that don’t release any toxins into the atmosphere. So I was a little bit upset when, amidst all the telephoning, Tiffany pulled out a cigarette and lit up. Never mind that it was a non-smoking room, Tiffany was violating environmental standards that I frankly supported. This was the only moment during our night of thwarted passion that I felt serious tension, despite our differing ideas about the quid pro quo of the hooker/client transaction. It was just a night, but who’s to say that what we were experiencing was not a relationship? Like many couples, we were having a conflict over values, and I didn’t want to tell her (and couldn’t, since I didn’t speak Portuguese) that I was glad the extent of our issues was limited to smoking. Larger questions of religious affiliation or belief in God trip up so many couples. In fact, this is the benefit of the so-called one-night stand (especially when the sex is for hire): you get all the intimacy of a relationship without the side effects.

  Tiffany’s negotiations with the Chinese pharmaceutical company continued late into the night, and even though she was kind enough to conduct most of her affairs while sitting on the toilet with the bathroom door closed, I could hear her scream out “O-la!” in disgust at what I supposed was some piece of bad news. The gorgeous sunrise over the Copa was, of course, not visible from my hotel room window, which, beyond the two ten-ton condensing units, faced another bank of hotel rooms whose occupants were also fated to miss the ocean view. I sometimes think that there should be a support group for people who, like myself, are always missing something.