Perforated Heart

by Eric Bogosian

  So now Dagmara’s all happy because we had togetherness without sex but Haim isn’t speaking to me. I’m getting no work done in this apartment. I’m lonely even when I’m around people.

  A list of people I need to observe:

  Heroin addicts

  Pakistani cabdrivers

  Old Irish guys

  Sexual braggers

  Old Jews

  Club punks

  Doormen

  Wall Street fatsos

  Subway tellers

  Post office clerks

  Pizza countermen

  Catholic schoolgirls

  Black kids on the subway

  Businesswomen with padded shoulders and bow ties

  Dancers

  Chain-smokers

  Mafia guys who sit in front of clubs

  Chinese butchers

  Bartenders

  Barflies

  Winos on the street

  Bodega owners

  Dogwalkers (poodles, large dogs, nasty dogs)

  Porn store clerks

  Three-card monte dealers

  Leafleteers

  Strippers

  Steerers

  Pot dealer philosophers

  Techies

  Skateboarders

  Joggers

  Ladies who lunch at the Plaza

  Businessmen in suits and sunglasses

  Transvestites

  Retarded messenger boys

  Nickel bag sellers in the park

  Cops

  November 15, 1976

  Haven’t written for a while. Been working long hours for Jonathan. I got him to give me a raise. Yay!

  Dagmara’s buddy, Anita, showed up one afternoon when no one was home and we started kissing and then we had sex on my bed and then she left. Her breasts are more interesting when they are hidden under her clothing. They’re so massive they slip into the space between her arms and her chest when she’s lying down. Plus she must be at least twenty-nine or thirty. I don’t think I’m into older women.

  On that subject, Jack says that he always uses condoms because there’s this thing, “herpes,” going around. Plus of course the usual syphilis and gonorrhea. But who gets those diseases?

  Jack gave a party at his loft. Jack’s crowd is sarcastic and competitive. More people wearing black. Mainly visual artists and filmmakers. The filmmakers make work on Super 8 and video, not regular film (35mm?). This white-haired guy named Jim showed a short film on the ceiling. Everyone is into New Wave music and punk. And everyone drinks as much as they possibly can. Especially this writer, Zim, who explained to me that he is an alcoholic and will probably die by the time he’s twenty-eight. He drank four large tumblers of whiskey. I could never do that.

  Zim isn’t like the others. He’s more serious, more dedicated to getting fucked up. But also very intelligent and insightful when discussing work. He knew all about J. G. Ballard. He’s also read Finnegans Wake—or says he has.

  Zim also had cocaine.

  Cocaine is an excellent drug. Especially combined with pot and vodka. There are all these misconceptions about it. The truth is that it’s not physically addicting and, in fact, you can work while doing it. It’s typical of our culture to try to prevent us from using anything that feels good. God help us if we feel good! The dominant culture is invested in shackling our imaginations. The artist must be free.

  I spent the night trying to talk to this artist, Katie. Small breasts, big eyes and amazing hair. I’d catch her staring at me from across the crowded room, but when I’d approach her, she wouldn’t say much. In a blink she’d be gone. Later Jack told me that she’s a lesbian. I don’t think she’s a lesbian, I think she just doesn’t like me.

  I stuck around until all the booze was drunk and helped Jack clean up. Then Jack and I strolled around the Village till dawn. That’s when I like New York best. It’s like we’re adventurers exploring another country. I said I was hungry and Jack knocked on an unmarked door at the back of a building. Inside was a cavernous room filled with stacks of aluminum trays being tended to by bakers all dressed in white, wearing hats made of folded newspapers. White flour dust covered everything. They were baking bialys. Jack bought a dozen in a paper bag for fifty cents, then he and I rambled down the dark streets munching on the fresh bread and belting out “We are the Champions!” as the steam leaked from under the manhole covers and echo-y sirens wailed through the canyons. Doesn’t get any better than this. To be young and drunk and full of bread. Got home and played Pink Floyd really loud. On my headphones, of course.

  Reading about the CIA. And trying to read Yeats. Read Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Not sure if he’s a fake or the real thing. He walked by me one time in the East Village. Also saw Andy Warhol with his friends. Just walking around.

  February 18, 2006

  Sarah has stopped calling. Leon e-mailed, wants me to drive into the city to do press interviews. Why bother? The book is dead. No one wants it.

  I told Leon I’ll give interviews over the phone. Leon and I are playing a game here. If I don’t do the interviews, someday he’ll remind me that I did nothing to “support” the book. That it was my fault the book did no business. So I have to go through the motions now to protect my ass in the future. So I will do the interviews.

  Why do I have to support my own book? Wasn’t writing it enough?

  I spent the day sitting by the window tracking the winter birds as they pecked at the crusted snow beneath the feeder. Rachmaninoff and Beethoven string quartets on the stereo. Every day I push myself and go for strenuous walks in the clear freezing air, my breath hanging in wisps behind me. Hopefully my heart doesn’t burst and they find my frozen body on the path.

  This morning I opened my eyes and couldn’t move. No motivation to get out of bed and make coffee and write. There’s nothing to write, because there’s nothing to write from. The surgeons cut into my heart and now I’ve only got half a heart. The bad half. The petty half. The vivacious half is dead. Can’t even jerk off. The best part of the day is late morning after coffee when I peruse my old journals. “Portrait of the artist as a young idiot.” The most ridiculous aspect of my younger self is the supreme confidence. Particularly the sexual confidence.

  Truth is, I was never a great lover. Possibly not even a good lover. Average in every way. Then and now. This is the meaning of anonymity. To be nothing special. The pain of this acknowledgment stirs me. I thought I was special, but I wasn’t. I was only one among many. To acknowledge the anonymity of one’s own effort? Isn’t that a kind of death? The non-specialness. Total merging with the billions. One more molecule circling the sucking drain. Exactly that anticipation of nothingness, exactly that pain of awareness that goads me forward. To keep writing. To assure myself that I am indeed something special. (Rousseau: “I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence.”)

  Now. I am, now. Now I am unique. I wasn’t then. Then I was a naive idiot. A wannabe. But because I was so certain of my existence, I existed. A mirage.

  Every life is an arc. Begin as infant. Die a corroded old soul. Everyone reaches an apogee at some point. I’m past that apogee now. I will never again be as smart as I was, as strong as I was, as attractive, as fast as I once was. Never. I’m losing, day by day. And I have a lot to lose because I’ve had it all. The fame, the money, the women. No children. Could have had the children, I guess. But even if I did, dying alone would have been in the cards, because as an artist I would have compelled them to hate me. This is what all great men do. So it’s better they never existed and never knew me. Leon’s going to get what he wants. I’ll go back to the city and endure the charade. What choice do I have?

  December 15, 1976

  Bought along a little tape recorder today. Just left it on and taped people talking. Great way to capture the rhythms of speech. Taped Haim and his buddies. They will go on and on and it isn’t until I transcribe them that I find the totally Beckettes
que aspects of their speech. For example (the following is verbatim):

  Tony: “All the time.”

  Joe: “Bullshit.”

  Tony: “I’m telling you.”

  Joe: “When?”

  Tony: “Yesterday.”

  Haim: “I believe him.”

  Joe: “I don’t.”

  Haim: “What’s not to believe?”

  Joe: “Fuck?”

  Tony: “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Joe: “Not even talk to you?”

  Tony: “Talk and fuck.”

  Haim: “It’s happened to me.”

  Joe: “Bullshit.”

  Haim: “It did.”

  Joe: “Both of you.”

  Haim: “It’s true. You don’t believe?”

  Joe: “I don’t believe.”

  Tony: “It’s statistical.”

  Joe: “What?”

  Tony: “You ask ten. Five walk away. Two slap you. Two just stare and one says ‘Okay.’”

  Joe: “‘One says Okay’? Okay, what? What ‘Okay’?”

  Tony: “Okay, let’s go.”

  Joe: “Go where?”

  Tony: “Her place. Or a hotel room.”

  Haim: “You pay for a hotel room?”

  Joe: “So you say, ‘You wanna go to a hotel room?’”

  Tony: “Something like that, not that exactly.”

  Joe: “What exactly?”

  Etc. Etc. Kind of like Joyce. Right? (They were discussing Tony’s system for propositioning women.)

  Ran into that artist Katie on 13th Street. In contrast to the night at Jack’s, she was amazingly friendly. She took me by the arm and we had coffee. Then we walked all the way down to SoHo where she shares a loft with a girl named Lila. We smoked a joint and had sex. She has the nicest peach-colored skin. Smooth. I was so stoned when we screwed I barely remember it. I kind of fell asleep and when I woke up, she was dressed and talking to someone on the phone. I went into the kitchen and her roommate was there. Maybe beautiful Lila is Katie’s lesbian lover? While I was in the kitchen, Katie shut the door of her bedroom and after a while I left. I’ve wanted to call her, but I forgot to ask for her phone number.

  February 23, 2006

  Raccoons have taken up residence in the barn. If I had a dog, they wouldn’t dare hang around the place. Without a canine presence, I think they’re setting up house out there. I run out to the barn a dozen times a day, hoping to catch one of them. At night I shine my flashlight into the pitch-black and toss bits of driveway gravel at their glittering eyes. I told Sarah I was buying a shotgun. Everyone has a shotgun up here. She was horrified, of course.

  The sad thing is that it’s a beautiful old barn. Filled with a miraculous dry aroma of ancient hay and wood. Tiny, barely visible bats hang high in the rafters. Mice skitter under the floorboards. Spiders weave in the corners. And the raccoons? What do the raccoons do? Fuck? Dig holes? Write books?

  Why do the raccoons bother me so much? Because they are sneaky and they are occupying something that is mine. I’ve run out of people to get pissed at, the raccoons are substitutes.

  Still, I like spending time in that barn. I once thought I’d turn it into a studio, a serene place in which to write, but the sheer pretentiousness of the move turned me against it. It’s an old-fashioned affectation. Something that “serious” writers did back in the day of the federal work programs. Arthur Miller. Clifford Odets. The “artist” migrates from the smoke-filled city, finds a run-down farm, then writes in “the country.” Bellow was different, he remained in his beloved Chicago. So Jewish to find resonance in the “country.” Why is that? Because Jews are afraid of the wilderness, in it they see danger. Raccoons.

  It’s all gesture. Turn a barn into a writing studio. Turn a country house into an office. Everything represents something else. Even my money is symbolic. What is money? Sure, for the poor it’s a solution to a problem. But for me? A symbol only. I lose sleep over this new book. Why? Because it’s not selling? What should I care? I don’t need the royalties or the kudos. I need the symbolism of the sales. It would be better if I didn’t care anymore. Like a dog who has been fixed and lies on the couch all day. Forgets what he once was.

  I write at the kitchen table. It’s enough.

  January 20, 1977

  Jack and I have been out toasting Gary Gilmore’s death (by firing squad). I like this freedom. When I was at school or living with my folks, all nights ended safely in bed. Not something I ever questioned. But now, hanging with Jack, I realize that I never have to go home. Ever. It’s up to me when I come or go.

  We migrate from club to club, apartment to apartment, bar to bar. We end up in the most interesting places. We are explorers, nightcrawlers. The city is our home. Every fluorescent pizza parlor, every empty park bench, every private nightclub, all-night diner, hurtling subway car, every spit-stained sidewalk and bloodied pavement. It’s all a home away from home. Because the city is our home.

  Jack and I split up around two a.m. the first night out this week and I ended up at this girl’s place down on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy. Nice girl, pretty. She’s a modern dancer. Tall, strong. We got high. Talked. But man, her place was like something you see in those Jacob Riis photos of immigrant slums. Tin ceilings and walls. Roaches scurried across the floor while we made love. The roaches were probably sucking up my cum the minute it hit the sheets. If I wasn’t so stoned and drunk, I don’t think I could have handled it. Couldn’t sleep all night, kept waiting for a roach to crawl up a nostril.

  In the morning, we had a quickie, then she made espresso in a soot-blackened aluminum demitasse pot. No food. No nothing. Just one small bitter cup of coffee and a cigarette. I gulped it down, then took a lukewarm shower in her mildew-smeared bathroom, shook the roaches out of my underwear, got dressed and split. Now I’m hoping I didn’t catch one of those venereal diseases Jack’s been talking about. He says it’s the sweet-looking ones who are carriers.

  So I was blasting back to the watering hole on Spring Street and who did I run into but Katie with the peach-colored skin. Having just been fucked by aforementioned modern dancer, I had this weird idea that Katie could sense that I had been cheating on her. (When in fact, since we are not boyfriend/girlfriend, wasn’t really cheating.) The point was, I wanted to keep moving, so I finally got her number and told her I’d call her. She seemed intrigued as I ran off. Probably a good thing. And now I have her number.

  I found Jack at the bar hunched over a whiskey glass, unsurprised to see me, as if I’d been gone for two minutes to take a piss. I ordered a short beer for my breakfast. In the pissoir, we snorted a couple of lines of coke, knocked back a nasty shot of tequila for luck and charged out the front door into the cold morning air looking for real food down in Chinatown. Jack never asked me about the dancer, wasn’t curious at all about where I’d been for the last twelve hours, and in a few minutes I too had forgotten all about her.

  Yesterday, I finally made it back to the apartment in the late afternoon, jumping into the insane subway rush, making sure I got back home before Dagmara did, showered off the sex residue, changed my underwear and then shot back downtown and hooked up with Jack again around six. Espresso, cocaine, cigarettes, pep pills, Four Roses whiskey. Better living through chemistry. It works until it doesn’t. And then I crash.

  Sometimes it’s so easy to believe I’m the center of the universe.

  January 22, 1977

  Met this interesting guy, “Big John.”

  Last night, after I cashed my paycheck Jack informed me that we had to restock our inventory of marijuana. “Replenish the arsenal,” is the way Jack puts it.

  We caught a subway that crosses the East River to Brooklyn which spit us out in a neighborhood called Williamsburg. Jack dragged me through the mean streets of Brooklyn (I was freezing my nuts off because all I had on was my peacoat and a sweater). We trudged up hills and down dales finally ending up in this dark, dark neighborhood. It was a typical loft situation, old war
ehouse mid-nineteenth century, standing on what seemed to be a desolate overgrown alley. Not a soul could be seen.

  We entered through the typical anonymous door and ascended a massive staircase leading up to a metal door which in turn led into a humongous loft. At first, I thought we were in an abandoned factory. Camped out in the midst of this anarchic interior landscape of half-painted canvases and bookcases and mattresses and scrap lumber and a disassembled Indian motorcycle were four men draped over armchairs and old broken couches. The tang of righteous weed seasoned the air.

  It was obvious that Big John was the big guy in the Barcalounger, talking. I wasn’t introduced to the others. All the focus was on John.

  When we entered, John halted in mid-sentence, turned to face me full-on, squinted as if I were hard to make out, then popped his eyes wide and said, “You a narc?”

  I glanced at Jack, who shrugged. I said, “What? No!”

  John thrust a gnarled hash pipe at me and said, “Here! Smoke the peace pipe and we’ll ignore your shortcomings.” I grabbed the pipe and as I took a hit, he nodded, as if to say, “That’s right. I know what’s good for you.” I instantly trusted this “Big John.” He looked exactly like a stoned Santa Claus. Bearded, long-haired, cherry-cheeked and jolly.

  I dropped onto the couch and passed the pipe over to Jack. The three anonymous men had their feet up on the coffee table, so I put my feet up too. A TV stood off to one side, but no one was really watching it since the sound was turned off. A stereo somewhere was playing Dylan.

  I had assumed we were stopping by John’s to pick up the grass, then continue on our merry way. But I guess you don’t hit and run with John. You must get wasted to the point of cerebral paralysis. And then, once you’re in that state, you must listen.

  John was in the middle of a mini-lecture on “the heretical fucking proto-Protestants of southern France” and the bold knights and the invention of chivalry and romantic love and the mindless, bloodthirsty Crusades and fierce Saladin and the pathetic Children’s Crusade and the heretic Meister Eckhart (who, according to John, said, “Man must live without ‘why’”) and the hermit Walter Hilton, who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing (later I found this same book under my feet on the coffee table).