Francis Levy - Seven Days in Rio

“We have to work from the bottom up in a case like this.”

I tend to be shy, hiding myself under the sheets even in the presence of the most immodest Tiffany, so I just imagined I was going to my internist for an annual check-up. I soon found myself standing buck-naked in front of her with my hands crossed chastely over my crotch. I suddenly had more sympathy for women in similar situations who had more goods to hide. She threw me a tiny pair of black bikini briefs. I had never even worn a jockstrap, and when I put on the briefs, with a modest piece of cloth in front and narrower strip at the rear, I felt like the victim of a wedgie. Next came the pants, a pair of bell-bottom jeans with fake rhinestones running down the leg that looked like they had been part of the wardrobe for Saturday Night Fever. I’d had the impression Tiffany would be providing me with a duplicate pair of conservative-looking slacks, but the jeans she produced were so tight that they cut off the circulation to my groin. I was afraid that they would cause my penis to become gangrenous, but Tiffany assured me that this was a popular style of dress in Rio.

“If you wear these, the nice Tiffanys will know you are looking for them. But before you go to The Gringo, you should go to The Catwalk. It’s an old-fashioned club that used to be in Havana when Batista was alive. All the girls are totally naked, and they even have a Superman who fucks the young virgins live onstage. There you will find many girls who will show you their vaginas. In fact, that is all they do. If nothing else, you have to see it because it’s one of the most famous sites in Rio. It’s like the Eiffel Tower of sex.”

“But I’m not just interested in seeing vaginas,” I cried out. “I want to make love.” I was surprised at the vehemence of my protestations. From a psychoanalytic point of view, my strong reaction was a sign of conflict. As Queen Gertrude says in Hamlet , “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Even though the new pants were chafing my thighs, I had to get back into vacation mode and return to my objective, making love to as many beautiful prostitutes as I could in the remaining five days of my visit to Rio. Before saying goodbye to my fashion consultant, I left her some extra reality to have my seersucker pants dry-cleaned. She informed me that the dry-cleaning wouldn’t be ready until Friday.

“Friday!” I exclaimed. “I’m leaving Saturday. Can’t I pay extra for next-day service?” Tiffany explained that Rio was not New York and that things moved at a much slower pace since people spent so much of their time making love. I offered to give her enough money to cover a motivational blowjob for the dry-cleaner, but she wasn’t sure the incentive would guarantee next-day service. Blowjobs, which were a dime-a-dozen in Rio, had lost their value as persuasive currency for most locals.

Tiffany had wanted me to trade my bowtie and jacket for one of those tight-fitting tropical shirts worn open at the neck, but I didn’t have any gold chains and I wasn’t sure it was the right look for me. My mother had always stressed the importance of dressing for success and looking like a gentleman, and I didn’t feel comfortable when I wasn’t wearing the bowtie that had become my calling card. Besides, if I dressed in typical Rio attire, I would just look like everyone else.

Rolling her eyes at my obstinacy, Tiffany pointed me in the direction of The Catwalk, which wasn’t far away, telling me that once I got there, any of the girls would be able to tell me how to get to The Gringo.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a live vagina in almost 18 hours, having gotten waylaid at The Club House and then pinned to the ground by an Amazonian Jiu-Jitsu master. My heart was pounding in my chest as I started to make my way toward The Catwalk. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be confronted with so many vaginas all at once. I have heard that blind people who get their sight back often suffer from a condition called agnosia, in which they can’t recognize common objects. I was worried that I had been so deprived of the sight of naked women that I might not be able to tell one vagina from another. In New York, unlike Rio, only about twenty-five percent of the female population become prostitutes. And many of those don’t even realize their true calling. They simply end up marrying men they don’t love just for the money, and once they get the hang of it they tend to do the same thing over and over. Some people just call that being married more than once, but I believe it describes a woman who has chosen a life of prostitution.

My new pair of pants was definitely a double-edged sword. If I made it as far as The Catwalk, I would very likely meet more prostitutes, but I began to doubt that I would be able to do anything about it if circulation to my crotch was cut off. All through childhood I had heard stories about men losing their testicles due to untreated hernias. Risky as it was, I decided it made more sense to jettison the pants and just show up at The Catwalk in my new bikini briefs. In this case, my mother’s instruction to always wear a tie came to the rescue. No one could accuse me of being inappropriately dressed. Even without pants, I wasn’t going to be turned away from a nightclub if I was wearing a jacket and tie. Besides, this was a tropical climate where it wasn’t unusual to wear shorts even for the most formal get-togethers. If anyone asked about my thong, I’d tell them I was on my way to a midnight shark hunt and that it was just a bathing suit.

Finally, in the distance, I saw what looked like a totally naked woman standing under a canopy. The only items of clothing she seemed to be wearing were a baseball cap and stiletto heels. As I watched her take a set of keys from the driver of a cherry-red Porsche and execute a flawless three-point turn into a tight spot further down the street, I realized she was the valet. I wouldn’t need to ask her if I could see her vagina, since even from a distance it was plainly visible. I could also see that she was an old-school girl who didn’t shave her thick muff. I’d heard about Brazilian hot waxing, and it was the one thing that had almost made me decide to change my vacation plans, as the trend toward clean shaving struck me as a form of collective pedophilia.

I licked my lips as I approached the little velvet rope that was presided over by a trio of imposing bouncers. I noticed that neither the bouncers nor the nude valet seemed to pay the least attention to me.

Figuring that I didn’t know the customs, I proceeded to unlatch the velvet rope myself. Suddenly I felt a hand clamping down on my shoulder. “It’s closed for a private party,” one of the bouncers said. As before, I wondered how so many of the natives knew to address me in English, but it was neither the time nor the place to linger on such details. Other men, whose cars were parked by the naked valet, walked right past me and were ushered to the gates of heaven unimpeded. When I tried to point out this inconsistency in the admissions policy, I was simply told, “We cannot accommodate your party tonight.” I didn’t understand. This was Rio, where everything was supposed to be free and open. Yet I was blocked by a velvet rope like I was at Studio 54 in its ’70s heyday.

During a slight lull in the traffic, the naked valet came over to me. She rubbed her thumb and fingers together to remind me that a little reality was more persuasive than words. Obviously, I was thinking too analytically about something that required a simple solution. I waved one of the bouncers over and, just as he was about to shoo me off with another “I can’t accommodate your party,” reached out my hand, proffering a 100 real note. The change in his attitude was dramatic. Suddenly, I was treated like a long-lost friend and ushered into the club, where a bevy of beautiful Tiffanys with gigantic breasts and uncharacteristically big bushes sat me down at a VIP table and started asking challenging questions like, “Can I blow you?” and “Do you want to fuck?” They were all so alluring I didn’t know what to do, or with whom. I decided that since I’d waited this long, I was going to savor the moment and delay gratification. I didn’t want to use up all my juice before the evening ended. If the girls at The Catwalk were this enticing and willing, there was no telling what bounty The Gringo would hold.