Perforated Heart

by Eric Bogosian

  Eventually, believe it or not, my new friend joined me in my apartment “for a nightcap.” When I finally told her who her companion for the evening was, turned out she’d never heard of me! Nor was she impressed! Hmmmm! This independence made her more not less interesting to me. She was not a run-of-the-mill suburbanite. No, she was a diamond-in-the-rough. An enchantress with clear skin and great bones. Not very young, but not old either. Mid-thirties? Single. An American beauty.

  But as soon as I began the physical overture, I became a Chinaman speaking Mandarin! She missed every hint. Apparently in Cincinnati strangers don’t have sex. Ever. Not only do strangers not have sex, strangers don’t want to have sex with anyone other than their spouse. It would never cross their mind. Where she came from, men and women enjoy each other’s company simply because it is enjoyable. There are no ulterior motives in Ohio.

  As the evening wore on (and my initial surprise that this young woman was willing to trust a stranger wore off), impatience replaced curiosity. Impatience and irritation. Not only did I want to get on with it, I resented the fact that she saw me as so safe that she could walk off into the night with me and remain unmolested.

  I was determined to give her an experience she would be afraid to confess to her beloved brother and dog.

  But first things first. The ice needed to be broken. I had to make her understand that this adventure was going to bring her manifold pleasures. I pretended to be intoxicated with her charm. I popped bottles of vintage champagne, called in caviar sushi from the new, very expensive, Japanese place near the park. As we drank and noshed, I read her passages from my work. She sipped from her champagne flute as I massaged her shoulders, her bare feet. How could she resist me? I was the maestro.

  But when I moved to kiss her on the mouth, she ducked her head and smiled like she was embarrassed for both of us. (She’d probably been warned about the voracious sexual appetites of East Coast Jews. I could imagine her telling her friends: “Well he was a very interesting man, despite, you know, his perversions.”) My lips grazed her bare shoulder and she separated from me and stood up.

  Every woman has a key, you only have to find it. I baldly confessed to her of my past love affairs, and she admitted to her own disappointments in love. We retrenched and, with relief, blabbed on about sex and adventures and life and opportunities missed and…on and on and on. Plato never wrote more thorough dialogues.

  I hung in there, determined to see it through. But after two hours of this circular seduction ad absurdum, I tired. It was obvious that since I had forgotten to refill my monthly supply of date-rape potions, I could confess and connive and debate this lovely young woman (not that young, not that lovely) until dawn and I would not so much as lick a nipple, nor touch a hair on her head. My icy resolve melted into a puddle of soggy frustration.

  When the evening finally died a natural death, I lied and claimed that I’d had a great time with her. In a way perhaps I did. It was something different. And clearly she had not been offended by my siege. She was delighted by everything, every distraction. Finally, she threw me a bone and admitted to having been tempted, but added, “I know my boundaries.”

  You can’t buy the tour of New York City I gave her. The cab ride, champagne and food set me back two hundred and fifty-six dollars. I gave her a precious evening of my time. It was annoying to have generosity left unanswered.

  Exhausted and witless, I packed her into a cab and said adieu. She promised to write me, her new (Jewish) friend, the New York author (“He has books on Amazon!”). I promised to send her my most recent published work. Of course I had dozens of copies in the apartment. But I couldn’t stomach the thought of her reading my words.

  Her car merged with the downtown traffic, and I headed upstairs. I finished the bottle of champage on my own, and fell into bed. So what? That’s life.

  May 12, 1977

  Gave a reading of my story “My Lucky Day” with a bunch of new writers at the St. Mark’s Church Poetry Project. This is a famous place. Allen Ginsberg reads there. Also Patti Smith, who is this amazing new poet.

  Didn’t pay much attention to what the other people were reading. Except this one skinny guy, Jim Carroll, who was pretty cool (he’s famous for being a heroin addict). Most of them just seemed stoned. I was fifth on the bill. As soon as I stepped up to the podium, I could see that no one had ever heard of me, didn’t know me at all, and so they weren’t going to like what I read, no matter how well written it was.

  Overall I’d say that what I read was mostly misunderstood. On the other hand, I actually got up there and did it. I give myself that credit. I transferred the story from an idea to a tape recording of the junkie to writing it all down to actually producing a written piece. Something I originated as a concept became something that existed within the coordinates of TIME and SPACE. Out there in the world. This is the beginning. Even if no one got what I was doing, I get what I’m doing.

  Afterward went out with Dagmara and some friends of hers she had dragged along to my reading. We took over a booth at one of the Slavic restaurants over on Second Avenue. Dagmara ordered in Polish. Her friends were incredibly square girls. All giggly and weird. As a group, they had a certain appeal, but individually they fell flat. Each one had a defect of some sort, one was too heavy, one had horribly pale skin, like she was dying. I drank two bottles of beer while they devoured Polish sausage and pierogis. The beer loosened me up and I flirted with the almost pretty one, but then Dag shot me the Gypsy evil eye and I realized no way was I gonna pull that off.

  Worst of all, I don’t think they got my writing at all. They kept saying how “funny” it was. But they also agreed that it was “depressing” and “negative.” On the other hand, they fell in love with some coy crap that this overweight, incredibly homely poet wrote. He was describing the hair on his stomach and they loved that. I ended up taking the subway uptown with Dagmara. It’s hard to go home with someone who you’re not actually sleeping with. Especially after a big night and a couple of beers.

  Haim wasn’t there when we got home, so we started fooling around in the kitchen but she stopped me when I slipped my hand under her cashmere sweater and fondled her brassiered breasts. She has this weird Eastern European Catholic mystery about her. She brought out a bottle of port wine. We got real drunk and I woke up around three a.m. Dagmara had already gone to bed. No idea where Haim was.

  I split the apartment and trooped across Central Park. I sat on a bench in the dark for almost an hour watching anonymous figures moving through the glow of the old-fashioned streetlamps. I realized that I need a level of intensity beyond anything that’s in my life right now. I need to get as close to madness as I can. I thought, this is my life. Right now. Sometimes I am so alone.

  May 12, 2006

  Visited Tullio Lombardo’s Adam at the Met. A perfect artifact. The Renaissance at its best. Locked into that sculpture is a moment from four centuries ago. Art as time machine.

  The quiet crowds and hallways of the vaulted airy building calmed me. Visiting the Adam put my troubles in perspective. I sipped an espresso in the little café, pondered the families and tourists around me. As I left, I felt joyous.

  I descended the marble steps and noted the freshness of the air, so I took a sharp turn ’round the building aiming for the park. On the asphalt pathway just south of the museum, I passed an ice cream vendor. For some reason, I glanced at him as I passed and he, in response, nodded. I nodded back in turn.

  The moment meant nothing to me. On the street, the city people often meet my eye and since there’s always the possibility that they know me from the dust cover of my books or an appearance on Charlie Rose, I make it a habit to greet people with a small nod. There’s also always the possibility they are an acquaintance I don’t recognize. So for insurance I nod as if to a friend. I do this without thinking. It’s a reflex action.

  But yesterday, as I moved on, I had an urge to take another look at this ice cream vendor. He had his eye on me to
o. Our gaze met once more. And this time there was a genuine spark of recognition.

  I said, “Do I know you?”

  He said, “Of course.”

  I said, “How?”

  He said, “Haim.”

  Tony the ice cream guy snapped into focus. Thirty years later. How old was Haim when I lived in that apartment? Thirty? So this guy, his peer, would be what? Sixty? Not that old. Not retired yet, probably has no choice but to work.

  I said, “You’re Tony.”

  He said, “I know.”

  A tourist came up and bought a King Kone from Tony. After he had pocketed the two bucks, I learned that Haim had abandoned New York fifteen years ago, reluctantly returning to Tel Aviv. The ice cream man produced a folded piece of paper from his wallet upon which was scrawled a fourteen-digit phone number. I copied it onto the margins of a Met floor plan.

  As I reentered the sun-dappled park, I was struck by the coincidence. Only days before, I had been reading in my journals about this ice cream guy. Here he was in the flesh. I never would have recognized him if I hadn’t been reading about him. I had memorialized him into existence.

  I passed one of the ornate black iron streetlamps that decorate the pathways throughout the park. I checked the small stamped aluminum tag riveted to its base. A four-digit number, which I knew was code for the cross street corresponding to this latitude of the park. 8803. Eighty-eighth Street. I smiled to myself, feeling privy to a New York secret only real New Yorkers know. “I am a New Yorker,” I thought. It’s taken thirty years to become one, but I am one now, for better or for worse. I have walked this path many times with no inkling of what the future held for me. As a young man, could I have imagined that someday I would be standing here, published, celebrated, rich and…old? Or perhaps I did have an idea of that. And the idea became who I am now.

  Around me park visitors pushed prams, blabbed on cell phones and bagged canine feces. On the main road, blinkered horses hitched to hackney coaches passed, the Rollerbladers pumped by with ease, the parksmen raked old leaves from the fresh grass. A lazy river of humanity. I was but a leaf adrift upon it.

  June 1, 1977

  A couple of weeks ago, five people were killed when a helicopter flipped off the Pan Am Building. Then last week, a guy climbed the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Made it all the way to the top. New York is about buildings. We are small compared to buildings. But we build the buildings.

  Dag isn’t speaking to me for some reason.

  June 8, 1977

  (written June 9)

  What would it be like to be extremely famous and celebrated and rich?

  To have that kind of total and absolute power? Especially in the arts? To have everyone begging to do whatever you wanted them to do whenever you wanted them to do it? There are people who have that. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

  Last night MOMA held a special “professionals night” in which they opened the museum to people who work in the arts. Jonathan has access to special events there because we’re a nonprofit arts organization. So he laid a pair of tickets on me. The Cézanne show has been a big hit and this was an opportunity to go see it without standing in line or enduring the crowds. A highlight in my boring life.

  Katie seemed like the right person to invite. The ticket is almost impossible to get and she’s an artist so I figured she would say yes and she did. We met at the museum. The thing about Katie is she’s very, very attractive and she knows it. Curly blond hair, blue eyes. Highly intelligent and sarcastic. Definitely someone I would like to have an ongoing sexual relationship with, maybe fall in love with.

  So we went. And the show was magnificent. The walls were hung with canvas after canvas of blazing chips and chunks of color. As we worked our way around the spacious gallery, from one pile of green apples to a poplar-strewn landscape to the next set of orange rooftops, I was in visual ecstasy. I assumed Katie was sharing my experience. I thought, we’re bonding. I checked her reaction. But her focus was not on the paintings, it was elsewhere. She smiled brightly and said, “See that guy over there?” As she asked her innocent question, I thought, this girl is really beautiful. But she’d already turned away from me, lifting her chin in the direction of the middle of the room, where a disheveled man in an oversized trench coat stood looking lost. He wasn’t viewing the exhibition, he seemed to be simply hanging out with his buddies. None of them paid any attention to the paintings.

  Katie continued, “The guy in the middle. That’s Al Pacino!”

  I said, “Really?” Whatever this man, this movie star, was in my imagination, in real life he was only a man in a coat that was too big for him. I didn’t want Katie to know that I thought he was one of the greatest actors of our time. I was hoping my disinterest would inspire Katie to cool down and refocus on more important things, like the lifework of Cézanne, or me.

  Katie was not the only one interested in this man—the entire room was roiling with restless energy. All these art world folks, people who supposedly were drawn to a more complete engagement with life, were all, like my date, riveted. Al Pacino was the work of art on display. An unremarkable man in a scruffy trench coat was more visually interesting than the greatest paintings of all time.

  Katie was practically panting with excitement. With perfect aplomb she stage-whispered, “If I offered Al Pacino a blow job, do you think he’d let me?”

  I thought, it’s such a lovely question. It accomplishes so much with so few words!

  I said, “You want me to ask him?” But of course, she didn’t, which proved this was nothing more than viciousness aimed at me. Eventually Al Pacino wandered off with his entourage. Everyone in the room exhaled.

  Later I lied to Katie and told her I lived in Brooklyn so that I could tag along on her train downtown. At Prince Street, her stop, I asked, “Maybe I should come up for some coffee?”

  Katie replied sweetly and clearly, “I’ve stopped drinking coffee.” And exited the train. No kiss. No thank you. Probably in a rush to get up to her place so she could plug in the vibrator and fantasize about Al Pacino. Probably.

  I rode the train down to the City Hall station and walked the Brooklyn Bridge. I considered jumping off, didn’t, turned around, made my way up the Bowery, found a bar that Jack and I sometimes hung out in, got drunk on boilermakers and had a long conversation with a pimply punk rocker named Bobby Battery. He works at CBGB tuning guitars, setting out mike stands and rolling up cable. Bobby claimed to have done drugs with Sid Vicious, the bass player with the Sex Pistols. Bobby is from Brooklyn, dyes his hair black and has terrible skin.

  I got home at three. Haim was watching TV in the living room while gobbling whole peaches and spitting the pits onto a copy of the Daily News. I gave him a summation of the evening, and in my retelling, gained his opinion that Katie is a fucked-up bitch and that I am a great man for loving Cézanne. We smoked a joint and drank some kind of vicious Israeli brandy that seared the lining of my throat. I woke from a blackout three hours later, Haim splayed out beside me, the TV gurgling like a pebbly brook. Mary Tyler Moore was on the little screen crowing about something while the audience screamed with laughter. Mary Tyler Moore looked a little like Katie and I hated her for it. I crawled to my bed in the dinette area and passed out.

  June 11, 1977

  I’m not supposed to be drinking but every now and then I allow myself a beer. I ran into that writer Zim. We spent the afternoon in a bar discussing Philip K. Dick. He laid more cocaine on me. Then when I left, he laid a half-gram on me and said I could pay him when I had the money.

  When I’m working in the library, I sniff a line in the bathroom and can focus nonstop for hours. The coke definitely helps me write. Also I’ve been hanging around John’s. I try to listen carefully because he says interesting things. I wouldn’t dare tape-record him, so it’s difficult to get it all down exactly. Is it possible you can be in the presence of a great man who lives outside of history altogether. I mean, no one knows him, but he’s great all
the same?

  I arrived at John’s loft about one a.m. last Thursday night. I had been writing in the library, but I got tired and restless. I needed something. I needed John, so I caught a train out to Brooklyn. Some gang kids shuffled onto the car with me. They gave me the once-over, but they knew I had nothing, so they left me alone.

  John was hanging out with two men who didn’t seem like Americans. Perhaps they were from South America or the Middle East. Maybe they were his connection. I don’t know. John seemed happy to see me when I walked in.

  Big John was his usual self, tilted back in his chair, stoned. His hair was all tufted up and he was red in the face as if he had been wrestling with these strangers just before I came in. Clearly he wasn’t into anything physical now. They were passing around an enormous pipe of weed mixed with hash. I found my usual spot on the couch and confiscated the pipe.

  When I finally stopped coughing, I asked, “How’s it going, John?”

  He said, “We are revisiting the debate over the body-mind duality.” The two foreign-looking guys looked pretty blown out. I think one was asleep. As far as I could tell, no one was debating anybody. When I passed the pipe to the one who was awake, he snatched it without meeting my eyes. His fingers were encased in enormous carved silver rings, the kind that act like brass knuckles in a fight. Not only did he not appear to be debating with John, he did not appear to be listening to John at all.