Perforated Heart

by Eric Bogosian

  September 25, 1976

  A guy named Jack has been in and out of Erehwon picking up and returning tripods and lenses for the past couple of days. He’s not a video artist, but he works for a guy who makes videos. Jack is a “camera assistant” and he’s twenty-six, like me.

  Anyway, he told me there’s this club, Max’s Kansas City, where you can hear live bands. It’s mostly punk rock, which I have absolutely no interest in. People who push safety pins through their lips are losers. I told him I haven’t been into rock since Hendrix died but he insisted that this place was different.

  So the point is, it’s nine a.m. I just got back to the apartment. Haim and Dagmara are asleep. Me and Jack went to this Max’s Kansas City place and it was actually very interesting and crowded (Jim Morrison used to hang out there with Andy Warhol!!!). The band was punk but really they sounded like any old band from back home. Very loud. They were called the Dead Boys and they put on a good show. I guess the lead singer hangs out with the Sex Pistols and is a heroin addict.

  This guy Jack likes to drink, so after a set we split to a Polish bar where the booze was cheaper. From there we headed to another bar (Old Town), and finally ended up in this basement speakeasy over in the East Village (I think). Then around two a.m. Jack asked me if I wanted to go dancing, and I suddenly thought, oh, that’s what this is all about, another gay guy! I said, “I’m not gay.”

  Jack said, “That’s okay, they’ll let you in anyway. They let me in.”

  We walked ten blocks east and ended up in what appeared to be a completely abandoned block. No sign of life on the street anywhere. Jack lit a fat joint and passed it to me. Then he coughed out the words, “Follow me,” and we entered this gloomy warehouse building. Inside we were in a long empty hallway, strung with bare bulbs in the ceiling. At the end of the corridor, bathed in murky blue light, an old guy sat at a little table. We handed him ten bucks each. Then he pushed a button and a door in front of us opened a crack and a roar flowed over us like the crashing sea. A throbbing beat, flashing lights, sweat.

  The place was an enormous cave called Infinity. Probably the biggest indoor space I’ve ever been in. Like the old gym at my high school, but with really high ceilings and everything wrapped in pulsing neon. The way it was laid out it gave the impression of extending in every direction, limitless. On the main floor were about five hundred people dancing to the loudest music I’ve ever heard. The sound was like a vast molten sea and everyone was drowning in it. The beat was so strong it shook my guts.

  Jack wedged himself into the crowd, dancing with nobody in particular. The throng swallowed him up and I lost him. Lots of gays were there, dancing with each other. But lots of women too. (Lesbians?) Everyone happy and wild. People wearing cowboy hats, some in shimmery sequins, other folks naked from the waist up. Dancing was all there was. I timidly imitated Jack, and danced by myself, as if anyone could give a shit. After I built up some confidence, I danced with women, sometimes with men. But if I tried to talk to any of the women, they smiled deafly and danced away.

  It was like everyone in the place was on a mission to dance themselves to death. I caught the fever and didn’t want to stop either. Any sense of time disappeared as one tempo flowed into the next. Then someone handed me a tiny brown bottle of liquid and indicated that I should sniff it. Before I could react to the strong chemical smell of the vapor, the room exploded like massive mirrors shattering. The splinters spun into cyclones of color. The walls fell away.

  I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was surfing on a kaleidoscopic euphoria swirling into oblivion. My knees went weak. My heart pounded. My brain roared. I tried to hang on to my senses, then realized that even if I did collapse the gut-thumping music was so powerful it would prop up my physical body. I was safe! Pretty soon I was reaching out for the little brown bottle whenever it passed by.

  I got very fucked up. But by dancing as hard as I could, I burnt the intoxication out of my veins. I was high but in a totally physical way. And even though I didn’t know one single soul in the whole magnificent place (besides Jack) I was an essential part of this gigantic endeavor, like a bee in a swarm. The place was a hive and we were bees on speed going faster and faster and faster.

  I got thirsty and went looking for Jack and found him upstairs in the middle of a vast mezzanine overlooking the dance floor. He was lying on a kind of bed-couch with someone, a woman. I approached him, all smiley and shit and then realized that Jack wasn’t just with this woman, he was actually having sex with this woman. Right there in the middle of everything with people coming and going all around them. No one gave a shit. Jack glanced at me sideways but keep pumping away. He didn’t smile.

  Later on, Jack came dancing up beside me. The woman was gone. He didn’t say anything about me seeing him flagrante delicto. It was as if I had caught him eating a slice of pizza. Not worth mentioning. He disappeared a couple more times and then hours later shouted into my ear, “Time to go home.”

  We stepped out of the warehouse onto the street, where pigeons pecked at the night’s crumbs and spills. The sun was edging up over the rooftops. We made our way down Broadway as the tense workers flowed up from the subway entrances ready for another day of boredom. Jack and I were like the invisible dead, seeing but unseen.

  We shambled east along Houston Street, thick-headed and semiblind in the morning glare. Insomniatic winos burned scrap wood in iron barrels. Buses and cabs roared and honked and hissed. Everyone was on a mission to contribute to the new day. Jack tugged me into the doorway of a diner. We sat down at the counter and ordered fresh coffee and fresh doughnuts. What could be better than this? I was deliriously happy, like a jet-lagged tourist.

  Jack nodded toward a gaggle of girls dressed up in sequined blouses and tiny cutoff jeans. Lots of eye makeup. I knew these were hookers, having a quick bite before heading home to shoot up drugs and hit the sack. One girl smiled at me. Flattered, I smiled back until Jack whispered in my ear, “She thinks you’re a hustler.”

  In one corner, a muscular black guy stood alone, having a conversation with nobody in particular. Every so often, one of the girls would drift up to him and bring him coffee, or a sugar doughnut, and he would touch her face gently with the back of his hand and then she would drift away again. Of course he was wearing an enormous diamond on his pinkie. Clichés are built on some kind of truth, right?

  I tried to hear what Superfly was saying, but all I could pick up were non sequiturs. His words flowed like bubbling champagne: “See, that’s what I’m saying, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m not into the specifics. I don’t want to know the specifics. I just want to see the stack. Because there might be, might be some kind of, you see what I’m saying here, situation, in which, on occasion, I just might not be around. Could be anywhere. Connecticut, New Orleans. I don’t know. I don’t want to commit myself like that. But under that specific occasion, see what I’m saying, the business has to be able to run itself. You get too close, see what I’m saying, you get too hands-on, well, then that’s what gets a man killed. If everything is organized right, you never gonna have that problem, you hear what I’m talking about?” He must have said “You know what I’m talking about” or “That’s what I’m saying” at least fifty times. And I’m not sure that anybody did. I don’t even know who he was talking to.

  Suddenly I was back home crawling into the cool sheets of my bed. I closed my eyes and then what seemed like two minutes later blasted out of bed and raced off to work. I had a surprisingly huge amount of energy all day. Jonathan was sucking up to someone he thought was an important artist so he left me alone. Jack called around five and asked if I wanted to “hit the beaches,” his expression for barhopping, but I told him I had already made plans. Which was a lie.

  About an hour later this woman came by Erehwon. She was using one of the duplication video machines we own and as she squatted down to loop some tape onto a reel, she had an almost perfect bum, so I started up a conversation with he
r. Turns out she’s really into Thomas Pynchon and I’ve been reading Gravity’s Rainbow so we’re seeing each other tomorrow on my day off.

  January 27, 2006

  Elizabeth did not rise as I leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. Like kissing marble. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Her looks and celebrity, as usual, attracted attention from those seated around us. The waitress drifted over and we ordered skim cappuccinos.

  Once upon a time, her beauty was unleashed upon me in all its raw, unadulterated, fully naked power. It was a gift. But it was also the weapon she used to bring me down. Beauty is a double-edged sword. What did Dostoyevsky say? “The dull edge is the worst”? Back then, I exalted and suffered simultaneously. Now, all I get is the unforgiving hammer of the dull edge. She knows that even now as I despise her, I ache for her. So she hides herself behind a dozen frigid veils, refusing to meet my eye the way I want her to.

  Elizabeth asked, “How’s your girlfriend?”

  “Sarah?”

  “Is there a new one?”

  There’s no upside in being honest with Elizabeth. So I told her that Sarah and I weren’t seeing much of each other. I steered the conversation to my heart surgery, making sure to impress her with the bloody details. Building on her revulsion (empathy?), I painted in broad strokes the portrait of a man, alone, ill, softened by his encounter with death. I wanted her to understand that I’d “changed.”

  I could see she was confused.

  Because she’s never, ever thought of me as vulnerable. Such a thought would bring the whole house of cards down. Bitterly and over time, Elizabeth has constructed a mental Richard voodoo doll into which she can stick pins of resentment and accusation. This voodoo doll, fully dressed in my sins, is essential to her worldview. Elizabeth needs to be certain about me. The Richard in her mind behaves in a certain way. He is an evil force. Without me to hate, Elizabeth might have to look at herself. What use am I to Elizabeth with my weak heart, my mild demeanor? I saw an opening, so softly I asked, “Are you okay?”

  Perhaps she was visualizing my funeral, wondering if she would attend. I would have liked to know the answer to that question too. “Elizabeth?” She lifted her chin and I saw that her eyes were clear and hard. I’d misunderstood her silence. She wasn’t buying this new Richard.

  She launched her attack. “I hate this book Richard. I like it less than anything you’ve ever written.”

  How is it that some beautiful people remain beautiful for their entire lives? She was a beautiful little girl and she’ll be a beautiful old lady. It is the eternal passport that gets her through all borders. Her all-day ticket. Her license to kill. But like the proverbial fish that doesn’t know it’s wet, she takes for granted this feature of her reality. It is the common denominator in every equation she shares with every person.

  Fact: It is the undying hope of every physically beautiful and highly intelligent heterosexual woman that she will someday find a man with whom she can commune as deeply in mind as in body. But the ancillary truth is, beauty, the very passport that opens all doors, contaminates any real intellectual communion. It is a distraction when it is in full flower and a headache when it begins to wilt.

  I said, “You’ll have to get in line, Elizabeth. Many people hate my book.”

  “Really?”

  “I must be doing something right.”

  She stirred her coffee and tightened her mouth, as if saddened by my failure as a writer. “Doing something right? Is that the way you look at it, Richard? You are pathological!”

  “You mean, fucked up.”

  “Yes. Fucked up. Disconnected. Weird. Whatever.”

  When we were first together, she had a real appetite for my work. She’d snatch up pages of manuscript, find a quiet corner and dig in. Total concentration. Wouldn’t let me interrupt her. A better reader than any editor, any fan. And then she would share her thoughts, which were always to the point and always perceptive. I don’t know what excited me more, knowing her criticism would make my work that much better, or knowing that I possessed this amazing woman. Entering her mind was almost as thrilling as entering her body.

  She tended my garden and my work thrived because of her. (Maybe. No. It did.) But her influence extended beyond that. Not only did my writing grow sharper because of Elizabeth, but so did my personal style. I matured because of her. I spoke more carefully in public. I was funnier when I sensed she was listening. I dressed better. My sideburns were trimmed properly. And my friends envied me because Elizabeth was mine.

  Elizabeth knows all of this. But if I ever read her the paragraph above, she’d claim she had no idea what I was talking about. She doesn’t see things the way I do and that’s what gave her so much insight to me and my work. The irony is that even though I’m delighted she’s been reading my work again, I can’t allow her to see that. It would concede too much. Concede that when I was writing the book, I was always thinking of her.

  She continued her attack. “There are people called ‘empaths.’ These are people who feel emotions of others deeply. You’re the opposite, you don’t feel them at all.”

  I gazed into her lovely eyes and said, “There’s no such word as ‘empath.’”

  “Richard! The book is not that interesting. Can’t you see that? It’s one-dimensional. There is no insight. There’s no interplay between the characters, no subtext. I don’t know who these people are. They are disconnected from any specific circumstance or consequence. They have no context.”

  “‘Context’! ‘Empathy’! You sound like a therapist on Oprah! I have a reputation for being objective. That’s my value to the world. I am unsentimental. I am honest.”

  A million years ago, when Elizabeth and I were first seeing each other, sleeping together, touching each other, glorying in the unaffected experience of being near one another, she had her opinions and I hung on her every word. But in the beginning, her braininess, which is indeed considerable, only made me love her more. We would dissect my writing as part of a larger, ongoing dialogue on politics, art, philosophy, science, love, humanity, even spirituality. This was before every gesture and remark we shared had become infected with our mutual animosity. By the end, I stopped giving her my opinion on any subject whatsoever. I wouldn’t even bring up a new movie, because any remark of mine, anything at all, would trigger a nasty argument.

  Did I just call her “brainy”? Well, she was. But intellect was never a priority for her. She had nothing to prove. She was a fine actress, lauded for her work onstage and in film. She was too good for Hollywood and she knew it. When she tired of me, the intellectual discourse only served to piss her off more. After a while, I think she played dumb to hurt me. And so it ended.

  “Elizabeth, I hope we’re not having coffee so that you can critique my book. I thought you wanted to see me. I thought this was personal.”

  “It is personal. Personal and public, obviously. And know this, this is not a vendetta on my part. The book is bad. Bad for you.”

  “And bad for you?”

  “Yes. Bad for me. Obviously.”

  As if reading my thoughts, she tried to dam the stream: “This character, this pathetic, neurotic nymphomaniac, is me. Right? I mean off-the-record, she is, right?”

  “Elizabeth, we lived together for fifteen years.”

  “Which gives you a right to invade my privacy? As if my life is something you own? A franchise?” It interested me that Elizabeth was absolutely sure of her position. How can anyone be so confident? Intellect creates this assurance. But beauty seals the deal.

  I was forced to attack. “We lived together. We have discussed my work many, many times. We have discussed other people’s reactions to my work. You’ve attended readings of my work. You’ve heard the idiotic questions. I’m sure that on several occasions, in response to one nitwit or another—and this is not a verbatim quote—I have, in your presence, responded with something like: ‘These are not actual people, these are constructs.’ Constructs, Elizabeth, constructs. I am an art
ist, I contrive, I build a thing out of words. To make a statement like ‘This character is me…’ what could you mean by that? You’re a woman, yes. The character in my book is a woman. Beyond that, how can a fictional fabrication be a ‘real’ person? No such thing. Scribbling on a page. A person is not two-dimensional. Every portrait is an abstraction.”

  “Stop.”

  I waited for the tears. She may be smart and cool but she cries “just like a woman.” “Elizabeth, do you want an answer to your question or not?” It was imperative to herd the dialogue back to the fundamentals. My power versus her power. Once upon a time, this turned her on, my hold on her. Now it only angered her. But it was the cornerstone of our relationship. If I lost this argument, I might as well let her stick a knife in my heart as I sat there at the café table. Get it over with.

  She lowered her chin, so that she was looking up at me. One of her most intense expressions and she knew it. “You are a bully. You possess zero empathy. That is why I was so happy to have you out of my life.”

  “Is ‘empathy’ the word of the day?” I was reminded of how much attention she once required. Like babysitting a four-year-old.

  “I wake in the night and try to understand how I could ever have loved you.”

  “But you did. You did love me once Elizabeth. And I think whatever feelings we had for each other, they can never be completely eradicated.”

  “Richard, you do not want to go there. Not today. I will walk out of this café and you will never see me again.” An empty threat. Because she did love me and no matter what she said, she couldn’t change the past. The historical record was clear. I cheated on her. I broke her heart. She left me because I hurt her. Because she loved me. If she loved me deeply enough, we’d be together still.