Francis Levy - Seven Days in Rio

I was apprehensive. On the plane I’d read an article about the international slave trade, and while I didn’t see myself as a likely candidate for sexual slavery, I was concerned that I might suddenly be drawn into an illegal activity for which I could conceivably be viewed as an accomplice. I have an active imagination, and my free-floating guilt, which was a constant subject of discussion with China, always makes me feel that I am in danger of facing some sort of retribution for imagined crimes. There had been periodic sweeps of Rio’s underworld traffic in sex slaves. I had no idea what sights lay before me as I crossed the river Styx into my fantasy Hades.

As it turned out, I was simply wafted along on a wave of uncontrollable lust. As I approached the stairs leading down to the basement of the club, I spotted one of the most beautiful Tiffanys I’d ever seen. She looked like a Cherokee Indian, with straight black hair that hung to the waist of her backless dress. When I got a closer look, she turned out to be even more beautiful than my initial impression — turquoise eyes, pouting lips, and a spectacular ass that made Jennifer Lopez’s prodigious fundament look like a ham hock. Following her, I instinctively called out “Tiffany!”

“It’s actually Brittany, darling, like the rocky province in France.”

“But doesn’t that break the Geneva conventions, wherein the UN established Tiffany as the name used for all sex workers?”

She immediately put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Not in Uva. Everyone here is either Brittany or Crystal.” It turned out that Uva was a renegade club in many ways, not only because of its Brittanys and Crystals, but also in the unusual practices that were commonplace on the dance floor and in the warren of private back rooms, which were called “Les Caves.” As I carefully made my way down the steps into the darkness, using only the glowing flesh of Brittany’s ass as a beacon, all I could think of was Britney Spears, another conflicted person who, while she might have made a great Tiffany, was also in need of psychoanalysis.

“You don’t look like a Brittany,” I said, barely able to control a spontaneous outbreak of tardive dyskinesia, or uncontrollable licking of the lips. I had never wanted a Tiffany as much as I wanted Brittany. I didn’t even want my China in the same way, although, in retrospect, I must have realized that I had penetrated China’s veneer of professionalism in a way that I could never achieve with Brittany. I could tell that Brittany was what psychoanalysts would term “very well defended.” I knew I could never get truly close to Brittany, but nevertheless I plunged right into her both physically and mentally. We might have succeeded in having sexual intercourse within three minutes of meeting, but rather than leading me toward consummation, the sexuality only heightened my desire to be seduced. Three minutes were like an eternity. I removed her tight blouse, pulling it over her head and unsnapping her bra with a deftness that recalled the great lovers of the European cinema like Mastroianni, Giannini, Léaud, the Belmondo of Breathless , and Depardieu. I reached under her tight leather skirt to find nothing and everything at the same time. Even though she was Brittany, she was the kind of Tiffany whose very being released a Pandora’s box of emotions and sensations. I was both transported and in control. Was this the mental health I’d been searching for all these years with prostitutes and analysts — a state of heightened desire whose consummation ultimately eluded me?

After we got up from the floor, where we weren’t the only couple who had been expressing their uncontrollable passion, and where I’d had a chance to worship the perfection of Brittany’s bottom, I found myself following her in a daze like a lost lamb, not even realizing that I had forgotten to zip my fly. My still totally erect penis was jutting out of my pants like a missile about to leave its silo.

I hadn’t had a chance to really discover the world of Uva, but as I started getting my bearings again, I realized that the interior was designed to look like the inside of a uterus. I had once seen laparoscopic photos of the inside of the female procreative system, so there was no doubt as to the inspiration for the club’s décor, with its pinkish theme interrupted by striations of white. I realized the whole atmosphere was just like a gynecologist’s office, where women remove their underwear before climbing into the stirrups for an exam. It was the first time I’d been to a sex club with such a medical theme. If I’d been qualified, which I obviously wasn’t, I would have written a paper on it for The New England Journal of Medicine . There was even one area that I thought might actually be an on-premise gynecological practice. A woman with her legs spread and raised on something that looked very much like an examination table was attended to by a long line of men who performed cunnilingus on her after they had given her both vaginal and rectal exams, throwing their used rubber gloves in a huge recycling bin when they were finished. It reminded me of the old Mardi Gras Saturday mornings at the Harmony Burlesque in Times Square back in the ’70s, when New York was both literally and metaphorically a wide open city. I would have joined the long line of men who were treating Crystal’s pudenda as if it were an ice cream cone if I hadn’t been so in love with Brittany. My love was actually clouding my ability to take an objective view of my surroundings. What I saw was a succession of sated diners, relaxing together in a huge living room, as the men feasted on pussy and the women seemed to enjoy a spiritual experience that would eventually enable their souls to transcend the limitations of the flesh.

I knew I had to keep my wits about me, but every time I said to myself, You almost had a fantastic lay and now it’s time to get back to your China , I thought of Brittany’s magnificent ass. I wanted to kiss it and hold it. If Brittany had proposed an arrangement whereby she sat on my face indefinitely in exchange for a certain amount of reality , I might have agreed. At one point, wandering into one of the more infernal areas of “Les Caves,” which reminded me of Manhattan’s infamous Hellfire Club, I came across a whole room of men with beautiful Brittanys and Crystals sitting on their faces. These fellows were acting out what I only dreamt of, which was to seek oblivion in the perfect ass of an adored whore. In fact, many of these men looked like wastrels in an opium den, as though they had decided to take a life-altering voyage from which they had little interest in returning. I contemplated the strength of the dollar and wondered how much reality it would take to have Brittany sit on my face for the remainder of my stay in Rio. But for the moment, Uva had exceeded my wildest dreams and was far beyond anything I had hoped to find at The Gringo. If it weren’t for the ongoing repairs at The Gringo, I never would have discovered Uva, Brittany, and the whole world of renegade Tiffanys who, with their rebellious attitudes and untamed beards, reminded me of the beat poet Allen Ginsberg, although in this case the beards were between their legs. But would I ever be able to extricate myself from the thrall of desire that had overwhelmed me and get back to my dream of building a healthy and loving relationship, either with my China or a real whore?

Reluctantly, I decided it was time to take my leave of Uva. I had no illusion that Brittany would follow me, since I’d lost her long ago as I wandered “Les Caves,” where, in addition to face-sitting, vaginal examination, and intercourse, Uva’s many patrons were doused with urine, spanked, slapped, placed on the rack, and in one case fucked in the ass by a beautiful Crystal wearing a strap-on. As I came up the cellar steps, emerging from the darkness into the moonlight of the ancient streets, I again encountered the toothless old Charon who had led me to this inferno of desire.