Perforated Heart

by Eric Bogosian

  Wait, before I go any further, I have to add that John stuttered every few minutes. In the middle of a sentence, he would get hung up on a word and while locking eyes with us, misfire syllables in a staccatto geh-geh-geh-geh or teh-teh-teh-teh. He would be flying along and then, like an aerial barnstormer who had been doing tricks high overhead and who suddenly ran out of gas, John would drop into a sickening dive. We sat, frozen, while he sputtered and spasmed his way out of whatever mental turbulence he’d run into. Just when I thought he might be having a brain seizure, he snapped out of it and finished his sentence. John didn’t acknowledge the stuttering. I’m not sure he even noticed it himself.

  John was talking about how they tried to execute Rasputin (“The fucker died three times!”) leading somehow to Zen Buddhism and the Tokugawa feudal regime and Japan during World War II and the Black Dragon Society and the “Zen of decapitation” (the Zen monks would teach the Japanese Imperial officers how to find transcendence by beheading their prisoners with one strike of a razor-sharp samurai sword). He was so exuberant, he made me laugh harder and harder, even though he was talking about blood and death and horror. I stopped to catch my breath when a chasm of panic opened beneath my feet. It was as if I were on a high wire a thousand feet above the ground and John in his stuttering mental aeroplane was flying circles around my head. This cherubic, laughing weed-brain was starting to freak me out.

  I focused on the coffee table.

  It looked like an ancient door, stolen from a Moroccan mosque, its dark brown timbers strapped one to the other with lengths of beaten black iron. It was heaped high with all kinds of stuff. At first all I could register was a disorganized pile of books, but then I noticed that the books (one title: Paris Sewers and Sewermen, another: Sexuality, Magic and Perversion) were only part of the rubble. Mixed into this slush of printed matter were ancient Life magazines featuring black and white portraits of Hitler and Churchill; faded “naturalist” (nudist) journals celebrating toothy sun-drenched Scandinavians all bushy and flaccid tossing beach balls; luridly multicolored Tales from the Crypt comic books and vintage Mad magazines.

  There were dog-eared phone books from places like Moscow and Melbourne. Glossy 8 x 10 photographs of anonymous actors and actresses, Polaroids of prize-winning farm animals, yellow pamphlets authored by the Pope, and bound manuscripts (one which was labeled “EYES ONLY!”) which might have been screenplays or novellas or top secret government documents.

  Mixed in were generous Baggies of marijuana buds, prescription drug vials, dried-out oranges and lemons and limes, spent machine gun shell casings, loose Oreos, engine parts, miniature Buddhas and an assortment of tiny black dolls made of cloth. A huge twisted ram’s horn the size of my forearm, a mean-ass bone-handled Bowie knife and a cruel-looking rust-smeared hatchet with feathers bound to its haft. A genuine glass eyeball, watching me. This last item transformed the pile into a living thing. An archaeological puddle of quicksand in which floated a chunk of every aspect of humanity, alive and waiting to pull me into it.

  I picked up a miniature metal statuette, green with patina. I didn’t think John would notice because at that moment he was demonstrating the correct way to hold a samurai sword. But I guess nothing gets past John. He halted in mid-sentence, pointed at the statuette and said, “You are familiar, of course, with the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755? Destroyed the whole city. Killed a hundred thousand people. Never been anything like it. Shook people’s faith in God. Everyone thought it was the end of the world. The king lived in a tent for the rest of his life. Never set foot in a real building again. But that’s human nature. Always think it’s the end of the world. But usually, it isn’t.” John took a hit from the pipe and coughed, then his eyes grew moist. I thought he might start stuttering but he continued. “That figurine is from the Archbishop’s bedroom. Tomás Torquemada’s great-great-nephew. You know Torquemada, right? He was the Grand Inquisitor during the Inquisition. Skinned people alive. Stretched ’em on racks, drove nails into their skulls. You ever read Edgar Allan Poe? ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’? If you haven’t you should. Poe was the real deal. Was one of the great navigators of the mind’s oceans. Big gambler, married his cousin when she was thirteen. Was addicted to absinthe. And wrote like a demon, invented the mystery story. People were much more interesting in those days.”

  I gently placed the little sculpture back on the table. Jack’s eyes were closed and he was nodding his head as if listening to some music very far away.

  That was when ’Gitte entered the room. She floated along the periphery of the available light so I couldn’t quite discern her features. I was so wasted, I wasn’t sure if she was an apparition. She slipped up alongside John and laid one delicate white hand on his head while he circled her waist with his powerful arm.

  Her hair was flaxen and parted down the middle, falling to her shoulders. She wore no makeup. Easy, lovely lips. About medium height. A peasant blouse. Some simple silver jewelry graced her lithe throat. That’s all. ’Gitte’s only defect, if you can call this a defect, was that her body did not conform to the Hollywood norm. Her rib cage was smallish, though her breasts, if not large, were not small either. Her hips were slightly wide for a woman with such a slight frame. She projected a girlish fertility.

  ’Gitte’s face came into focus. I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to true beauty before. Her eyes met mine and an enormous charge ripped through my gut. I was paralyzed with love. In that one glance, all the promise, all the possiblities of insane bliss hit me. Not that she was promising any of that to me, but I understood in the most concrete way, in that one moment, that bliss was actually possible. This truth entered me and this truth rocked me. In that half-second when our eyes met, a massive flood of love and blood and happiness and sadness and the future and the past and everything that I had ever desired in the world and the reason for that desire poured into me. A shiver ran across my chest. I don’t think anyone noticed, and then ’Gitte whispered something in John’s ear, he smiled and she slipped out of the room as smoothly as she had sailed into it.

  What did she say that made John smile? That she loved him? That she was waiting for him? That she was going to make him feel good? What a prize, what a gift to have a woman like ’Gitte whisper in your ear! All the treasure in the world couldn’t buy it.

  Where was she going? Maybe she was returning to the perfumed bedroom where she and this gregarious pot dealer spent their private time together. Or maybe a study where she could continue reading philosophy, or a studio, where she would resume her oil painting. The loft was so spacious, she might as well have been leaving the city. I wanted to join her, wherever she was going. But I wasn’t even sure she had seen me.

  John continued his narrative without acknowledging that his lady had just visited. I was now completely in his thrall, because a new fact about this man had been added to the equation. I knew that he was loved by an unbelievably beautiful creature. And obviously any man who could be loved by such a woman must be a man of great wisdom and substance.

  After we left the loft and were making our way down the deserted Brooklyn streets, a radiant sky brightening overhead, I asked Jack, “Who is Big John? Where’d he come from?”

  Jack said he was pretty sure that John was an ex-professor of literature from some Ivy League school and that Brigitte had been his student and they had been thrown out together sometime in the sixties. Which made sense to me. Then Jack added that there were conflicting theories. It was also rumored that John was actually a disgruntled ex-CIA agent who left the Agency when he discovered all the nasty shit they were doing. Another theory was that he had been a banker who had become wealthy selling counterfeit bonds for the Mafia before he ate some peyote and “dropped out.” Jack said he also knew someone who knew someone who claimed to have known John in Vietnam when John was a gonzo journalist for Reuters. And someone else who said he saw John get run out of Vegas for counting cards at the blackjack tables.

  Finally, Jack also heard
of someone whose brother-in-law served time in Attica who swore that John was an ex–Hell’s Angel motor captain from Oakland, California, where he served ten years for killing a man with an axe. Over a woman.

  I liked the guy. I want to go over to his place again sometime.

  March 1, 2006

  I can’t escape my dark, dark discouragement. I sit by the window watching the clouds and cry. I wander the house, touch things that Elizabeth once touched and think, “This was my life. It happened. It is behind me now. What did I do?”

  Am I famous? I guess I am to the degree that I have made a big enough impression that someone, perhaps hundreds or thousands of people are meditating on my simulacrum, i.e., my writing. They think they “know” me. What do they know? Words. What does anyone know of any author? Virgil, Goethe, Mann, Nabokov, Mailer. “Advertisements for Myself.” “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” Etc. Words. Not reality. Words.

  Of course my fame is not like real fame, real “stardom.” I’ve never achieved that. I can see the peak, but I’ve never stood upon it. Elizabeth was/is genuinely famous. She’ll always be famous. She’s tattooed with fame. Probably even when she’s aged, she’ll be famous. Like Brigitte Bardot or Lauren Bacall. In the nursing home, the children of her fellow patients will approach her, hat in hand. “I don’t want to bother you, but my mother was a huge fan of yours. It would make her so happy if you could sign this napkin. Do you need help with your wheelchair?”

  For a while, I shared her fame. I’d be traveling on a six-city book tour and would catch up with Elizabeth in Seattle or Toronto, where she would be shooting. Once I messengered a freshly completed manuscript to Leon, called a car service, hit the airport and grabbed a seat on the Concorde so I could attend her SRO play in the West End. The Clar-idge’s hotel suite in which we romped was bigger than most New York City apartments. Room service would knock on our door and we would shout out, “Come on in!” Happy, half-naked, damp with fuck-sweat, I wouldn’t even bother to leave the bed to sign the check. Entwined in our sheets, we would pick at breakfast while watching ourselves being interviewed on the boob tube.

  We both got sacks of fan mail. Our names appeared in crossword puzzles. We made more money than we could spend. Who could touch us? We were golden. We laughed at a world of nobodies swarming fruitlessly far beneath our feet. We were the kind of duo that seizes the public imagination: a star of stage and screen and a cynical author who would entertain his beautiful Juliet forever with his stories. What a great combo we were.

  And I had special access, I knew Elizabeth’s secrets. I knew about her bouts with bulimia. I knew about her bizarre relationship with her father. I knew how hard she worked to gain the appearance of effortlessness because, in fact, she was deathly afraid of cameras and audiences. I would watch from my orchestra seat, hundreds of people seated behind me, and think, “That woman up there doesn’t belong to you, she belongs to me. Because I know her in a way you can never know her.” The ultimate transaction had been struck between us. She loved it as much as I did.

  Reading my ridiculous journals depresses me. To relieve my mood, I uncorked a bottle of Bordeaux and organized my stock portfolios. There are two things in this world that cheer me up: my library and my money. If inflation doesn’t eat it all up, I should be pretty comfortable in my old age. In fact my CPA called last week and informed me that he liquidated a “basket” of investments we bought ten years ago. I made something like forty percent on the transaction. So I’m financially comfortable enough to never write again, to sit and read all the Henry James and Kierkegaard I never got to first time around. Maybe I should move to someplace exotic to do my reading. Amsterdam? Bangkok? Tangier? And what would change?

  March 4, 2006

  Sarah arrived at noon. My only warning was a ten-second cell call from the interstate highway. She bushwhacked me. I had forgotten it was my birthday.

  She brought lunch along, of course. A crisp green pea soup from Bouley and an assortment of smoked fish from Russ & Daughters. Small white paper bags of dried fruit. A miniature crate of clementines. Organic cashews. A freshly baked strudel. A bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc. And her lovely self.

  She smelled of flowers, and her skin was still flush from her morning Pilates class. Probably spent the entire previous day in the spa tenderizing herself for me. She curled up in my ancient leather armchair scanning copies of The Paris Review while I noshed. She knew better than to rush things and kept her distance. Then, restless, I found myself leading her over to the couch, stroking her, the warmth of her body soothing me. She makes it so easy. She asks for nothing. The cuddling morphed into smooching which led to a trip to the bedroom. I’m a slow starter now, but it’s all still there. As I orgasmed, strong ripples of intense euphoria ran over me, and for a moment, I thought, if this is it, it’s over. This is the way I leave the world.

  While I lay unstrung aside her long body, I fell into an empty dream. The house finches twittered outside. Sun-warmed air blended with the last cool northern breezes wafting in through an open window. I opened my eyes to find Sarah nuzzling my neck, one breast heavy on my ribs.

  How can I expect her to back off? Especially since that’s not precisely what I want. I like talking to her. I like having sex with her. I like her taste in clothes. Plus she keeps me organized. No question, Sarah slipping into my life once every two weeks is good for me. In a “rehab” sense of good.

  When Sarah and I started up, I didn’t make any promises. The autonomy made the relationship function well. I showered her with praise, she felt good about herself and we fucked. She always knew to make a large detour around the subject of commitment or “living together” and not to label what we had as a “relationship.” I thought, she’s younger, she’s more open-minded, she likes the flexibility. This is what she wants. She sees all this noncommitment as a positive. She’s a freethinker. A graduate student having a fling.

  The problem is that though she is all those things, she’s also a woman and proximity is never enough for her. Like a boa constrictor, she gets closer and closer and then too close. Maybe I could do this with someone who is more of a sterile goddess. Is it because Sarah was my student that things are both easier and more difficult with her? She never dares to lock horns with me. Is that a problem? Or is it that she is so damn fertile? The girl is aching to be pregnant, whether she knows it or not.

  In fact, one of our favorite topics of discussion was the straitjacket of marriage! We would lie next to one another after sex, stare at the ceiling, and share banal anecdotes culled from the lives of our happily married sisters, brothers, best friends, etc. I thought we were completely agreed that one of the greatest enemies of artistic endeavor is familial comfort. It’s all about priorities, isn’t it? You either want to make art or you want to make babies. With babies comes nursing and protecting and schooling and worrying and God knows what else. How can one make art when new problems and crises burst from the family corpus like mushrooms off a rotting log? I made it clear to Sarah, this was something I could not and would not do. I’m fixed for God’s sake! I thought she felt the same way. I thought she was committed.

  After dinner I drank an espresso and feigned exhaustion. We hit the sack, no sex, no nothing. Once she was knocked out next to me, I limboed myself out from between the sheets, and out the door.

  She’s in the adjoining room as I write this. Sleeping like an innocent. What’s wrong with that? That’s good, right? I should be happy to have such a beautiful girl under my roof. Tonight I’d rather sleep on the couch, tonight I need isolation. And even though that is what i want, some perverse streak of responsibility will take control, and I will do what she wants and needs. I will return to the bed and lie next to her and hold her in my arms. And I will probably “make love” to her before she leaves tomorrow. (She is leaving tomorrow. No question about that.) Of course, no child will ever come of our union. At least I’ve been honest.

  What possible motive could there be fo
r me to try to make Sarah happy? So she will like me even more? Because it’s the “right thing to do”? So that when she discusses me with her friends, which I’m sure she does, she will say nice things? Because I actually do care about her? No, it’s none of that, it’s because I’m weak.

  The world continues apace. A hurricane almost destroyed New Orleans six months ago. Last week they celebrated Mardi Gras anyway. Nothing stops humanity.

  Also Elizabeth called. Says if she doesn’t hear from me in two weeks Russell will file papers in court and get an injunction against the book. I asked her if she was going to wish me a happy birthday and she hung up on me.

  February 10, 1977

  Huge snowstorm. Turned the roaring city into a fluffy white kitten.

  I am making tape recordings of random people I meet. I hung out with this raggedy but dapper guy f or two hours yesterday. He wore a fake leather coat and very shiny shoes, his brilliantined hair was slicked straight back. I bought him an egg salad sandwich and a coffee and let him jabber while I smoked cigarettes and kept my mouth shut. This is the transcription of his “monologue” (which I “improved” in places):

  Damn. All right? So I…so what happened was, wait a minute, so I gets my ass down to Welfare, right? And I gets my check. And then I scores my methadone, right? Planning ahead, ’cause I’m that kind of person, a planner. I say to myself I’ll pick up a carton of Benson & Hedges, go home, drink my zombie juice, space, then I’ll order up some chicken wings and shrimp balls. I love my shrimp balls. Maybe take a bath, watch a little Donahue with Snowball on my lap. I deserve it. I deserve it. I’ve been very stressed lately. What with my old lady calling me night and day. She never gives it a rest. Always bitchin’ about the kid. (coughing) (inaudible)…in college now.