Perforated Heart

by Eric Bogosian

  Lately I’ve been enjoying William Kapell recordings from the fifties. Exquisite pianist. Brahms, Chopin. You can feel the fire under the form. He died at thirty-one in a plane crash and now he is barely remembered. Gould made it to fifty. Because one man lived longer, he is better known? Each work of art is the protector of the earlier effort. Kapell did not record enough to shelter his own output.

  Also been making my way through a Randall Jarrell translation of Goethe’s Faust (Part One). Jarrell was about my age when he died in a car accident. Suicide? Who knows? Spent years translating Goethe’s poetry for the simple reason he felt it had to be done. Probably didn’t make a penny. Beautiful job. Listen to this:

  Care nests here at the heart’s core, uneasily Hatching out secret miseries, spoiling all happiness, all peace, Putting on, always, her new masks: She comes as house and home, as wife and child, As fire and water, dagger and poison; You tremble at all that doesn’t happen, You weep for everything you’ve never lost.

  Nice huh? Goethe, on the other hand, lived to be about nine hundred years old. Him and Tolstoy and Shaw. These guys, unlike most of those old-school European cats, did not contract syphilis and did not die raving lunatics, kept writing right to the end.

  Goethe wrote about the essence, the thing that can barely be touched. TRUTH! But couched the problem in a story about a guy who wants to get laid. This is a play written almost two hundred years ago. In Goethe’s world, the sexual urge lives inside of all other urges. Like nested Russian dolls. Freud said this too, didn’t he? Underneath it all, sex. Under that, infancy. Or for some, “God.” Freud claimed the spirit was only an illusion. Said our innate sense of spirituality is nothing more than memories of the amniotic womb-sea. The music of the spheres is only a vague memory of mom’s belly juice sloshing around.

  I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by the artistic giants of literature. Like mountains along the horizon, viewed from a distance, I’ve taken them for granted and imagined climbing them one day. But they were so far away, when I finally got close enough to climb them, only then could I appreciate how truly immense they were. Why bother writing at all?

  Sarah keeps calling. I think she figured out I was in the city with Elizabeth. Maybe someone saw us together. How did I end up married to Sarah? Oh, that’s right, I didn’t. So she should fuck off. My great-aunt Sadie has bequeathed to my sister and me five thousand dollars each. I cried when the lawyer called to tell me.

  October 1, 1976

  Jack, who I think is an alcoholic, wants to go barhopping every night. But I need time to stay home and write! This is complicated by the fact that Dagmara’s always wandering around the apartment smoking or bleaching her upper lip or cooking. Also, she has gotten into the habit of bringing a female friend home with her, Anita, also from Poland. They hang out in the living room and drink cups of Turkish coffee and smoke and nosh chocolate cake and whisper. Every so often they laugh like they’re drunk. Anita always gives me the eye as she’s leaving the apartment. If Dag isn’t hanging around, then Haim is watching TV in the living room. This place is too small.

  Jack and I barhop either Greenwich Village or the Bowery. I like the Bowery. Lots of dark little places that have been there since Eugene O’Neill was a young alcoholic. Crumpled white-haired men cluster around the bare wooden tables. The bartenders grimly pour and move on, feeding the old drunks like pets. This crowd is not chatty or easygoing like in TV shows and movies. The old men are like zombies. Jack told me they sign their Social Security checks over to the bar and live in the tiny rooms upstairs until the next check comes. They never see the money. Drink it all. Pretty horrific. I should interview one of these guys and write a story based on that. Am I a bad person for wanting to do that?

  Oh, and by the way, I got mugged. I wasn’t frightened until afterward. Just walking down the street and a skinny black guy brushed past me. I forgot about him in an instant. Then I half-noticed him up ahead of me, talking to two other guys who were leaning against a car. They all turned and one nodded at me, like he was saying hello. The first guy said something to the two at the car and then they all started walking toward me and then another guy I hadn’t seen before jogged over from across the street and before I knew what was happening I was surrounded by four men and could feel the blade against the back of my neck. I was trying hard to think. Trying hard to come up with a plan in case they started hitting me. The main guy said, “Look down! Look down at your feet!” So I did.

  I gave them the twenty bucks I had. Plus my watch. When I got back to the apartment, I told Dagmara and she suddenly got all mothering and loving. It broke the ice that has formed between us. I think she realizes I’m not a terrible person. Did she fall in love with me? Is that what this is about?

  I didn’t call Dad. He would only yell at me and tell me to move back home.

  October 4, 1976

  After work today, I cruised up to 42nd Street to write in the library without the chaos of Haim and Dagmara. So I was sitting at this giant oak table and this scruffy guy sat down across from me. I thought he was talking to himself. But then I figured out that he was talking to me. His face was all dark like he’d been in the sun for weeks. He was wearing four layers of clothing. Said he hasn’t eaten in two days. His hands had sores on them. His bloodshot eyes were boring holes into me. He wanted money.

  I said, “If you’re hungry, I’ll buy you something to eat.”

  In an angry tone of voice, like I was lying, he growled, “Where?” So I said, “I know a place.” And I got up and left the library with this guy tagging along. He didn’t say anything while we walked and I didn’t either. I was making my way along 42nd Street with an impoverished street denizen. I didn’t even know his name. We headed into Times Square to the Nedick’s. This place is like an emporium, it could be a betting parlor, but instead people swarm around chomping on hot dogs and huge soft salt pretzels. I bought the guy two hot dogs and a root beer.

  I watched him while he picked at his food, chewing slowly. He had a furious knot in his brow. When we left he didn’t say “Thank you,” he just walked away and blended back into the crowd. One more anonymous New Yorker.

  I’m glad he didn’t shake my hand. He probably had fleas. But why was he angry at me? It was as if I had done him wrong by not understanding that what he was really asking for was money. Like I was the asshole.

  Doesn’t matter if he knows it or not. I will write about him someday. He will live on in my pages.

  Been reading a novel by this guy J. G. Ballard. Crash—absolutely perfect book about a guy who wears black jeans and intentionally crashes cars into other cars and has an orgasm each time he does it. I wish I could write like that.

  October 7, 1976

  So I was at work and this woman was returning a tripod while I was wrapping these packages with twine and I needed to wrap the twine somewhere, so I spooled it around this little teddy bear that Jonathan keeps on a shelf. I made a joke to the woman about the little “bondage bear” and this woman, Sally, turned to me and said, “Are you into that?” And perversely (again trying to be funny) I said, “Sure.” She invited me out to Ken’s Broome Street Bar for a drink.

  She was blond, pretty in a tough way, nice body. So we had a drink and while we were sitting there she pulled out this paperback book and dropped it onto the table. It was The Story of O. She looked deep into my eyes and asked me if I’ve ever read it. I said, “Of course.” She said, “What O is into in this book? That’s what I’m into.”

  We left the pub and shared a cab and when I dropped her off at her place, she kissed me on the mouth. I was like wow, I have a girlfriend!

  Anyway, long story short, we got together the next day and surprise, surprise, she really was a masochist! Which was interesting.

  We met up to go to a movie but we never got to the movie. She asked me up to her place. It was a cramped, glum railroad apartment. Macrame on the walls. Tiny kitchen with a spice rack on the wall and dirty dishes in the sink. Everything
had a greasy film of dust on it.

  Sally pulled me into the bedroom and a cat scooted out. I was standing there, not sure what I was supposed to do, and she started rummaging around in the closet and pulled out a coil of clothesline. Then she stripped naked and had me tie her hands and ankles together. I barely knew her. I didn’t even know her last name. We were supposed to be going to see this new Lina Wertmuller movie, Seven Beauties, and instead here I was tying her up. I was trying to figure out the right attitude to take toward all this, but she was being very serious. Moving things right along. Not smiling or even looking at me. On the other hand, she was acting so submissive it was getting me hot. And she was naked and I wasn’t.

  I tied her wrists together and then I tied her ankles together, which was a very intimate act to perform with someone I’d just met who was naked when I wasn’t. Once she was all tied up, I wasn’t sure what the next step should be. But she rolled onto her side and I just opened my fly and entered her from behind which, because she couldn’t move her hands very well, was extremely awkward. Plus she wasn’t particularly wet. But she seemed to like it. She said she did anyway.

  After I came, she wanted me to hit her, but instead I untied her. I needed a break, the whole enterprise was exhausting. We smoked a j. Then she demanded that I spank her. It was surprising to see her white ass-skin turn pink. But I wasn’t really into this spanking thing, especially since I had just had sex and wouldn’t have minded lying down for a while. She didn’t want to stop, but since I was the boss she had to do what I told her to do. That’s part of the domination thing. So I dominated her into taking a break.

  The situation was ironic because sometimes when I masturbate I fantasize about tying up beautiful women and having sex that way but while I was actually doing this stuff with Sally it didn’t feel like anything special or exciting. It just felt clumsy and nonerotic. Too much thought had to go into it. Kind of ruined the mood. As far as I was concerned we were just goofing around. Except we were not “we.” It was just me who was goofing around. Sally was very serious. She really wanted me to hurt her. Badly. She had this determined look in her eyes.

  The good news is, I got laid. Also she likes to drink, which compensates for the nonsatisfying sex. Plus she wanted to be my slave so she cooked a meal for me after we fucked. The downside was that she’s not a very good cook. Plus she’s smart as a whip (sorry, couldn’t resist) but she didn’t seem that interested in talking about anything other than sex and bondage and other ways I could torture her. I wanted to discuss Pynchon and Ballard, but it went nowhere.

  October 9, 1976

  After work, Jonathan dragged me off to a concert by some friends of his, the Philip Glass Ensemble. A clarinetist and keyboards and a sax. Very loud. And very repetitive. Like a massive wall of sound, like a tidal wave of sound. About halfway through, I floated into a trance state. Which according to Jonathan, is the whole point. It’s called “minimal” music. I liked it, I think. Not the kind of stuff you’d dance to, but interesting. I guess this guy Glass is some kind of genius. I met him and he seemed more like a very tired nice guy than a genius. Actually I don’t know what a genius should look like.

  Everyone in the audience was wearing black.

  Jack was there, videotaping the event, looking very professional. After he packed up his stuff, we all walked down to Spring Street to this underground hangout called the Byrd Hoffman School of the Birds. It was surreal because the streets in SoHo are cobblestoned and the door to this place was very small, maybe half the size of a normal door. I had to crouch down to enter. Made me think of Alice in Wonderland.

  Inside the space people were dancing to normal music, but not the normal type of dancing. They were spinning with their arms out straight, while staying in one spot. And in the middle of all this spinning was this mildly retarded guy named Christopher Knowles. He’s what’s called an idiot savant. He is the leader of the place. This petite woman with jet black hair was always by his side, and seemed very suspicious of anyone who approached him. I tried the spinning for a while. Finally Jack and I escaped to Fanelli’s and had some beers.

  Tried to read a book about “structuralism” by this guy Roland Barthes. About ten pages in, I realized I had no idea what he was talking about so I stopped.

  February 6, 2006

  Today I can’t get Sarah out of my mind. A little voice says, “Watch out, keep her, she may be the last one. Eventually the sexy grad students will lose interest in you. And Richard Morris will not find a female like Sarah again. Because he’s old now.” Because sooner or later there will be the last one. And I don’t want my last “love” to be some wheelchair-bound, thick-nosed crone camped beside me in the sunroom of a stinking nursing home. You only get so many trysts in this life, and if I still have a chance to touch a living, breathing, vital feminine female, I should take it.

  Sarah’s good in every way. Thank God for her patience. Thank God for her enthusiasm, because I don’t have any. Thank God for her moist womb, her rich flowing tresses, her pink skin. I can almost get sentimental about this girl. All she wants is to be with me. She doesn’t infringe on my freedom. She doesn’t even want exciting sex from me. She’s happy to nurse me and blow me and feed me. The problem is that I find any desire on her part annoying. At times, her very existence irritates me. Why can’t she just take a break? What’s the old country song? “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?”

  There is a kind of defeat in totally surrendering oneself to what women desire. In that surrender, you lose your mystery. The truth is, in the larger context, in order to survive, mystery must be preserved. As I give in to her, she starts forcing her domestic agenda on me and I become a mediocre artist. She becomes bored and leaves me. So I can’t give in to her. She claims that “underneath it all,” I’m a nice Jewish boy. How does she figure that? “I know you,” she says, “deep down.” But she’s wrong. She doesn’t know me.

  The affable artist is the bad artist. Only the ornery artist is the good artist.

  October 10, 1976

  Out with Jack until four last night. Tremendous hangover. My teeth hurt. Drinking gin with some tall blond Dutch guy who had the most intense green hashish. We got completely wasted in the Dutch guy’s room at the Chelsea Hotel. He insisted he is going to bring me to Amsterdam as a “visiting artist,” whatever that means. Not even sure how I got back to my apartment.

  In the morning, I woke up to the sound of yelling and screaming. But it wasn’t actually screaming, it was just Haim and Dagmara making breakfast, clattering around in the kitchen, only a few feet from where my head lay on my pillow. I have to get out of here.

  I spent the afternoon taking it easy, sipping herbal tea and smoking. Dagmara perpetually buzzing around. Haim was at work. I think Dag and I have made some kind of peace. But no way is she going to let me have sex with her, that’s pretty clear. It’s like she lost the battle but won the war.

  Dagmara’s friend, Anita, came by. She’s more savvy than Dag. She’s been in the States longer. She’s married to a truck driver. Huge breasts. While she waited for Dag to come home, Anita hung out with me and we discussed literature. She actually knows who Franz Kafka is! She’s read everything by Dostoyevsky. She also smokes nonstop. I’m curious to see what her nipples look like.

  Dad called. Wanted to know why I don’t call him more often. Said he’s “worried about me.” I lost my temper and hung up on him.

  Dagmara came home, then she and Anita finally left the apartment and I drank four espressos and wrote a bunch of shit which I got really excited about, then threw it all away. I investigated Dagmara’s underwear drawer and found her panties and jerked off. It’s like I’m falling in love with her because she won’t sleep with me.

  Sally called, wants to go see this movie everyone’s talking about: Taxi Driver. It’s playing at the discount movie theater down on St. Mark’s Place—why not?

  I’ve been reading Stephen King, Salem’s Lot—kind of cool. Listening to Queen and Bad
Company a lot. I ended up smoking a giant spliff while reading and fell asleep on my bed. Woke up, wrote this, ran out the door to see the movie. Work tomorrow.

  October 12, 1976

  Broke up with Sally, but before I get to that, I have to notate here that Taxi Driver is, in my estimation, the greatest movie ever made. This guy Robert De Niro is completely fearless. Can’t imagine what he is like in person. I had seen him before in this Harvey Keitel movie, Mean Streets, and he was pretty great but in this movie he is like Christ reborn. Plus Cybill Shepherd is so intensely blond and perfect I get hard watching her onscreen.

  After the movie, we went over to Sally’s place. Sally wanted me to fuck her in the ass. So we worked that out but then her butt started bleeding and it was gross and I lost my erection. She saw the blood and got all turned on. She wanted to suck my dick with the blood and microscopic shit on it. I had a mini-breakdown and told her I cared about her and that I could never hurt her. She got angry at me. She said she didn’t need a psychoanalyst for a boyfriend, that she just wanted to get beat up. She said I had really let her down. It made me feel impotent. Not hitting her is like not getting it up.

  The confusing thing is I have feelings for Sally. It was nice hanging out with her. Having some kind of companionship with an intelligent woman. But it was doomed from the start. And deep down I know the value of every experience is that I can write about it someday. My life is only a by-product of my writing.

  Got home and for some unknown reason Dagmara gave me a shoulder massage and made me tea. She’s so sweet to me. We ended up falling asleep in front of the TV and didn’t wake up until Haim got home. He found us on the couch. After that he didn’t say much, then I heard him banging around in the kitchen roasting chicken legs in the broiler.