2002 - Any human heart

by William Boyd

  Nat seemed content to drink and talk until he reached a certain plateau of drunkenness, waiting for the booze to trigger the precise moment. Suddenly he threw the dust sheets off the other two completed panels of the triptych. There was, first, a nude, an orthodox odalisque, more yellow than flesh toned, and then, in the second panel, was another version of it, more stylized and crudely flashy—very sub-de Kooning. Nat stood staring at the two panels, drinking, and then, putting the bottle down, literally attacked the big canvas with a wide brush and tubes of cadmium yellow, laying on great swathes of colour. He seemed almost deranged to me. I left after an hour with my still life and he was still at it, rubbing off most of what he had done with a rag, then going at it again, this time with black and green.↓

  ≡ For a fuller account of Nat Tate’s life, see Nat Tate: An American Artist by William Boyd (21 Publishing, 1998).

  He has some talent, Nat, but he seems unduly tormented. One wants to say: relax, enjoy life a little more, creation need not always be so apocalyptic—look at Matisse, look at Braque. It doesn’t have to be all Sturm und Drang to be good. However, this is hardly a message to be heeded in New York in this day and age. The Jack Daniel’s had given me a thirst so I stopped off in a couple of bars. Drank more whisky when I came home. I realize I’m alone again and drinking too much. I’m unhappy: it’s not my natural state—I need to be married, or living with someone. Mind you, I have to say I drank as much when I was with Alannah and the girls.

  Friday, 5 June

  I told Byrne I was feeling depressed and he prescribed me some tranquillizers and Seconal to help me sleep. He advised me not to mix them with excessive amounts of alcohol. Define ‘excessive’, Dr Byrne. I can have a couple of Martinis, some wine—that sort of level. Any amount of beer is fine.

  Byrne asked me about my sexual fantasies and pronounced them pretty banal. I suppose they must be, given the stories he hears in this place. He seized on one that I mentioned, however: the idea that’s always tempted me of going to bed with two women at the same time. You should try it, he suggested. His theory is that it is a fantasy associated with my married, familial life. Now that I’m alone, my indulging in it will be a form of liberation, a watershed, a sign that I had moved on—a sense that my time with Alannah was truly over. Fine, I said, but how do I set about realizing it? You got a girlfriend? Byrne asked. I mentioned Janet. So tell her to bring a friend on your next date. I told him that wouldn’t work. Byrne shrugged: well, I guess you’re just going to have to pay for it.

  Saturday, 6 June

  My mood has lifted. Perhaps Byrne has a point: I’ve been thinking seriously about his theory. Anyway, this evening, after 10.00, I go down to Times Square and take a stroll around the streets that lead west off it. There are a lot of hookers and a lot of worrying-looking men. I am offered the opportunity to buy drugs at least a dozen times.

  On 45th and Eighth I see a girl standing by a small neon-lit bar. My first thought is that the image could be from an Edward Hopper painting. The girl must be in her late twenties, quite heavy, with a pronounced bosom. Her cheap clothes are creased tight on her and she has a curious coppery glint to her hair that catches as highlights the flashing neon of the beer signs—blue, yellow, green and blue again—above her head. She’s wearing a matching jacket and skirt, high heels and a red satin blouse. I go up to her. ‘Hi,’ I say, ‘can I buy you a drink?’

  ‘What do you want, mister?’

  ‘How much for a whole night?’ I feel curiously calm: this takes me back to my youth—mine was a generation that unreflectingly went to prostitutes, almost in the same way as one would go to the theatre. She looks me up and down and I know she’s making calculations based on my clothes, my manner, my accent. ‘A hundred,’ she says, ‘and any extras are extra.’ I ask her if she’s here most nights. Yes and no, she says. I say I’ll be back on Wednesday. ‘Oh, sure,’ she says disgustedly.

  I keep walking and end up on Sixth Avenue, where I find a medium-sized, medium-priced hotel. It has a big lobby—good for discretion—and there’s a bank often elevators to take you to the rooms above. No one should notice a couple of hookers coming in and out of a place like this. I book a junior suite for Wednesday night.

  Thursday, 11 June

  It’s over. It’s done. Write it down quickly while I remember.

  I have everything ready in the room- Scotch, gin, mixers, some beers, six packs of cigarettes—different brands—peanuts, pretzels, chewing gum.

  At about 10.00 I go back to the corner of 4⁄th and Eighth but the girl isn’t outside the bar. Then I see her across the street. She’s wearing the same clothes as on Saturday. I saunter over, my heartbeat audible to passers-by, it seems to me.

  §

  ME: Hello, remember me?

  §

  GIRL: No.

  ME: I’m the one who asked you for a whole night.

  GIRL: Oh, yeah…

  ME: I’m ready now but I have another request. Can you bring another along? GIRL: A guy?

  ME: No, no. Another girl. A hundred dollars each. GIRL: Extras are extra.

  I give her the address of the hotel and my room number and hand her a $20 bill as a token of my sincerity. I return to the hotel, where I sit in my junior suite for an hour and a half, becoming increasingly angry with myself- how naive can you be? The easiest twenty bucks she’s ever earned. I switch on the TV set and he doorbell rings. It is my girl, with another in tow: smaller, darker, with a nervy, shifty gaze. They come in, I pour them a drink and we introduce ourselves: Logan, Rose (my girl) and Jacintha (her pal). In the light of the room I have a better look at them. Rose is buxom, hefty. Jacintha is grubbier, her print dress stained, her cardigan has a hole in the elbow. They both smoke.

  §

  ME: Do you two know each other?

  ROSE: I seen her around.

  JACINTHA: Yeah. This is the whole night, yeah? Hundred bucks?

  ME: Absolutely. Help yourself to a drink.

  §

  They do and sit down with their drinks on the two available armchairs while I perch on the edge of the bed. I switch on the radio and try to find a jazz station. The girls drink, smoke and munch peanuts—Rose asks about the room rate. I suggest we all take our clothes off.

  When we are naked the girls go automatically into a different mood, one of routine coquettishness. I’m glad to see I have the makings of a respectable erection. Jacintha asks about rubbers and I tell her I have a drawerful. I go over to Rose and take her in my arms as if we are going to dance to the crackly jazz emanating from the radio. I try to kiss her and she says, ‘No kissing.’ We agree on $5 for a proper kiss with tongues and I get my five dollars’ worth. I’m very aroused now and Rose and I fell on the bed as I fumble for a condom. Rose could be a pretty girl—prettier, anyway—if she lost about twenty pounds. The fat she’s carrying distorts her face, plumps her cheeks unattractively. We fuck and I come very quickly. Meanwhile Jacintha has switched on the television. Rose asks if she can take a shower and disappears into the bathroom. I sit on the rumpled bed, looking at Jacintha, then I look down at my flaccid dick—I feel not an ounce of sexual interest in my entire body. Jacintha turns round.

  §

  JACINTHA: You know, you look a bit like one of those guys in ‘Sergeant Bilko’. The dark one—what’s his name?—Paparelli.

  ME: Thanks a lot.

  JACINTHA: You from out of town?

  §

  I wander over to her. She can’ hardly tear her eyes from the screen but she reaches out and gives a few tugs to my cock. I cup her breasts. Close to, her body looks unhealthily pale: I can see the fragile fluted cage of her ribs, the grey square screen of the TV set reflected in her dark eyes. I turn away and go to pour myself another drink. Rose comes out of the bathroom, all steamy and pink, a towel around her waist. ‘They got great soap,’ she says. So Jacintha goes to take a shower in her turn. Rose pours herself a big gin, lights another cigarette and looks squarely at me. ‘So, how’s it goin’, L
ogan?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘The night is young.’

  We watch a movie, a western, the three of us lying on the bed at my request—me the meat in the hooker sandwich. Occasionally I grab one of their hands and place it on my cock and they jerk away desultorily for a while. I get hard and reach for Jacintha but she says she’s enjoying the movie and we’ve got all night. I nuzzle Rose’s big bubs and she pushes my head out of the way.

  After the movie Jacintha gives me a blow-job ($15) and when I’m hard I whip out a condom. I stay hard but I heave away for what seems hours without coming. Eventually I withdraw.

  §

  JACINTHA: It’s better with two guys and a girl. Free advice. ME: Why?

  ROSE: Two guys can always be doing things—more variation. JACINTHA: Yeah. You got two girls—one of them is always sitting around, twiddling her thumbs. Unless they got a lesbian thing going.

  ROSE: And think about it: you have another guy in here, you split the price and you only pay for one girl. ME: I think it’s the idea of another man in the bed with us—a stranger with a hard on—it would put me off. ROSE: Don’t be so squeamish. ME: Prudish. ROSE: Whatever.

  JACINTHA: So, how long’re you in town, Logan? LOGAN: 1 live here. ROSE: Can we order room service?

  §

  We order some sandwiches (the girls hide in the bathroom when they’re delivered). We eat, talk, drink (I’m fairly drunk, by now) and smoke. Then we all admit we’re kind of tired and clamber into bed. When Rose and Jacintha are asleep I do actually feel a sensual thrill—feel I’ve achieved a form of sexual revelation. Their flanks touch mine, I hear their breathing, smell the soap, booze and cigarette smoke on them. Outside on Sixth, the traffic roar waxes and wanes, the sirens yip, the night gets on with its business. It is over. Alannah is past—1 can start again.

  In the morning Rose shakes me awake. It’s very early—not yet 6.00—and she’s dressed. ‘I got to go,’ she says. I haul myself out of bed—Jacintha sleeps on—and find my wallet (hidden behind the radio in the bedside cabinet). I give her $150—I’m truly grateful. ‘Can I take these cigarettes?’ she asks. ‘Leave a couple of packs for Jacintha.’ At the door she says, ‘See ya—any time, Logan.’ She blows me a kiss. I leave the door open a crack and watch her saunter off down the corridor.

  I pull on my robe, order up breakfast (taking the tray at the door) and pour a slug of gin into my orange juice to help my headache. I sip my coffee and watch the sun climb the facades of the buildings opposite. Jacintha wakes and I bring her some coffee. ‘Want a shot?’ I say and top up her coffee with whisky. I explain that Rose left early.

  §

  JACINTHA: Want to fool around? ME: What’ve you got in mind?

  §

  JACINTHA (lighting up): Want to do something weird?

  §

  ME: What do you mean?

  JACINTHA: Well, I figure this must be some kind of big orgy-thing fantasy—right? Seems to me you must want to do some more stuff. ME: How about a passionate kiss?

  §

  So Jacintha kisses me ($5) with lots of tongue work and little grunts and groans of ersatz passion. Then she runs through various options: in the ass, doggy-fashion, 69, spanking. But suddenly I feel weary, my brain busy analysing the events of the past few hours, wondering why the occasion has been so straightforward, so un-erotic, unexciting. So clear-eyed in its ordinariness. It’s my fault, I decide: it’s precisely because I over analyse, am too observant, am too interested in the details, savouring the quiddity of the two girls. A true punter would have just got on with the job and satisfied himself- do this, do that—while I’m noting what brand of cigarettes Rose smokes and that Jacintha has got a scab on her knee. Sweaty, brusque Rose with her weight problem; thin, damaged Jacintha, with her preposterous name. I should be more selfish, less curious, less—

  JACINTHA: By the way, my name’s not Jacintha. It’s Valerina.

  ME: That’s a nice name. Is it Russian?

  JACINTHA: My Dad was Russian. I think. You think it’s OK?

  ME: Sure.

  JACINTHA: I don’t think a Russian name will work in America.

  These days. ME: It’s a point.

  §

  She slips out of bed and goes to the breakfast tray to butter toast. ‘Nice hotel,’ she says for about the fortieth time. Then her eyes brighten. ‘I got an idea,’ she says. ‘I could piss on you if you like. Some guys like that.’

  §

  ME: They do?

  We agree on a rate of $30—it’s a new day, Jadntha says: last night was last night. She leads me through to the bathroom and I take off my robe.

  §

  ME: How exactly does this work?

  §

  JACINTHA: Lie down in the bath. I was thinking: I need to take a piss. Shame to waste it, you know, maybe he likes that stuff. ME: (lying down in bath) You never can tell. I just don’t want it anywhere near my face. JACINTHA: I’ll be careful.

  §

  Jacintha straddles me, says, ‘Ready?’ I look up at her body, very foreshortened from my unique point of view. I nod and she lets fly. I keep my eyes open and instruct every sense to record and evaluate in minute detail. This is a first. This night has yielded something new. This is real, true experience. It’s oddly humbling to know that life can still surprise you after fifty-three years.

  When she finishes and steps out of the bath I draw the shower curtain and shower off. Lots of soap. When I come out—actually beginning to feel a bit frisky—Jacintha is already back in her sad dress. ‘I got to go,’ she says, ‘I got to pick up my kid from my sister.’ I give her $200.

  ‘Thank you, Jacintha,’ I say. ‘It was amazing, the whole thing. Really.’

  ‘Yeah. Any time, Logan,’ she says when she leaves, managing to inflect her voice with some fictitious enthusiasm—but she can’t do anything with her dead smile. ‘It was swell.’

  Sunday, 9 August

  Mystic House. I tell myself I enjoy being up here on my own but I’m always half conscious of Alannah and the absent children, now that they never come here any more. Peterman has a place up the Hudson River. I should probably pack it in. Alannah and Peterman, it turns out, had been sleeping together for nearly a⁄year when I caught them out. This is the knowledge that really Inirns—twists the gut. Again and again you go back over that time, charting and logging the lies and duplicities that you missed; acknowledging and realizing that those moments of fun, of peace, of happiness, of sex, were feigned and fraudulent, and that the affair was running like a pestilence through your ordinary life, poisoning everything. I read back through these journals, thinking: she was seeing Peterman then, and then, and then. So much for your fabled powers of observation, Mountstuart. Yes, but it’s also clear from these pages that I was busy betraying her too, my own lies blinding me to hers. Alannah wasn’t as complacent as I. When I blustered, outraged, about her infidelity she said, ‘Save it, Logan, I know you’ve been fucking Janet Felzer for years. Don’t bother preaching to me.’

  Writing a piece for Udo about Rauschenberg. This second generation seems to me more interesting, more depth: Rauscheriberg, Martha Heuber (I don’t think Todd will make the first grade), Johns, Rivers. There seems more intellectual weight here: an acknowledgement of art’s traditions, even as they turn away from them, or cast them anew to fit their purposes.

  Walked down to the shore this evening and stood on the rocks, looking out on the Sound and swigging gin from my hip flask. A warm sunny evening, the plash and gurgle of the waves in the rock pools, the rush of the cold gin. I thought for the first time of my novel, abandoned, all these years, and I came up, unprompted, with the perfect title. Octet. Octet by Logan Mountstuart. Perhaps I will surprise them all, yet.

  I should note down here another strange development in my career as a gallery director. Jan-Carl Lang [of the Fulbright-Lang Gallery] came to see me on Friday of last week and asked if we had any Picassos. We had three, as it turned out, but his real interest was for the worst
and most recent. It was a big stylized nude in front of a window with a bay and palm trees beyond. Very fluent, some texturing of the oil with the handle of the brush, but too facile, in the end: you feel he could churn these out all day, one every hour or so. Price-tag $120,000. Jan-Carl said to me that he had a client who would buy it for $300,000. Was I interested in learning more?

  Jan-Carl is a tall balding blond man in his forties, vain, charming, impeccably dressed in every season. We went to the Carlyle Hotel for a drink and he explained his plan more fully. The ‘collector’, whom he wouldn’t name, is European, domiciled in Monte Carlo, but clearly some vastly wealthy merchant prince. The plot goes like this. Leeping Fils sell this Picasso to collector X for a record sum—announcements in trade journals, press releases, interviews—but no money actually changes hands. However, the picture, ‘Nude by a Window’, has now become famous, celebrated, notorious and, more importantly, its provenance is highly respectable—a notable French gallery operating out of New York. And it has a ludicrous price-tag. A year later, two years later, the picture turns up at auction somewhere in the world. Ah! Picasso’s ‘Nude by a Window’. Wasn’t that the one that, etc, etc. The art market being what it is, an indifferent famous picture is worth more than an excellent unknown one. The reserve is set at $500,000. It could go higher. 50 per cent for Leeping Fils for providing the picture and the provenance; 25 per cent each for Jan-Carl and collector X (who, I suspect, is not as rich as all that). Everybody makes a lot of money and a new buyer is very happy with his celebrated painting.

  Jan-Carl lit his cigarette with delicate precision. ‘All we do is create renown. Or call it notoriety, if you must.’ I smiled at him: ‘I’ll call it dishonesty. All we do is commit fraud.’ He chuckled: ‘Don’t be so precious, Logan. We’re exploiting our market. We do it every day. You do it every day. If a rich man only wants to buy a famous painting it’s hardly our fault.’ I said I’d get back to him; I needed to talk it over with Ben. No hurry, said Jan-Carl. Take all the time you want.