Perforated Heart

by Eric Bogosian

  I said, “Really?” as if I had any idea what John meant. I wanted these thugs to go away.

  John released a long stream of white smoke from his cherubic lips. He addressed the ceiling, “Of course it goes beyond the Cartesian problem, is pain ‘real,’ is intention ‘real’? These philosopher guys got so wrapped up in God. Like God requires thought. He doesn’t. That was what the Meister was getting at. God is a City on the Hill and we’re a dog running around in His city, pissing on His fire hydrants. We have no way to see the big picture. We’re just dumb dogs. Fuck Leibniz and his clocks!”

  John shot me a threatening, red-eyed stare. “You know what causes the most complications for humanity? The fact that everyone is walking around thinking they can read each other’s minds! ‘I know what he thinks about me!’—But you don’t have a fucking clue. You don’t know what people think of you and more than that, it is impossible to control what people think of you. You think you can affect their thoughts about you, but you can’t. All the same, you and me and everybody tries to be special, we dress a certain way, we achieve, we behave. Why? To make a good impression on everyone ‘out there’ in reality. But that’s impossible! Even do-gooders do good because they want to make an impression. Right? But you never know what the outcome of any action might be. You can’t know. All you can know is what you think you know and you don’t even know that for certain. It’s like poker. You can bluff some of the time, but not all of the time. Everyone conceptuates differently about everyone else. SO THERE CAN’T BE CONSENSUS. Can’t be. Each mind has its own unique pespective. Obviously. And no mind can see from the perspective of another mind!”

  I wanted to say, “There is no such word as ‘conceptuate.’” But I wasn’t sure. So I kept my mouth shut.

  John added that celebrities and other famous people who we see on TV and in magazines are not people “per se,” but representations of people. Then John said something about “That’s how Hitler took over so many people’s minds.”

  We passed the pipe. I was très stoned and had completely lost track of what John was talking about. I thought I was following, then I’d realize I was only watching his lips move. (That’s why I’m writing this all down now, to try to remember as much as I can. What’s the point of hearing it if I don’t remember it?) As the night wore on, John got into discussing death more and more. He likes to say that death is the “great equalizer,” that “no one gets out of here alive” and that death is part of “God’s plan.” He claims that not only can no one beat this rap, which makes us all equal, but that humans, unlike all animals, know that someday they will die and that being aware of your own death, that one day you’re not going to exist, changes everything, actually creates consciousness. (Not sure why that is.) John loves to quote stuff in Latin. He’ll stop talking, get quiet, stare at me and say something like “Memento mori.”

  I woke up on the couch and John was describing the enormous catapults the Kaffa Tartars used to heave plague-infested bodies over city walls to infect the inhabitants. The silent men were gone. Everything was quiet.

  On the train home, another gang of black kids got on. I was all alone in the car. But as usual, they didn’t bother me. They knew I was on their side.

  May 15, 2006

  I can’t write. I can’t move. What’s the point of writing? To preserve my reputation? To make money? I have plenty of money. Plenty of reputation. The problem is that my reputation will wither and die if I don’t come up with new work. I have to generate new writing to keep the old writing alive. Like children working for their father. One needs many children to survive. Even if the children will never be as great as the father.

  I guess my first book of short stories will live on no matter what. A task completed over twenty years ago, when I didn’t know my ass from my elbow. Now that I know how to write, now that I have something interesting to say, no one cares. Or the critics completely misunderstand. The irony is that I am the caretaker of the young man I once was. He’s my responsibility.

  June 20, 1977

  I’ve just slept for two days. Been kind of sick. But also hungover.

  Went out to John’s and found him all alone. Even ’Gitte was out. It was like it was a special occasion. He produced this little envelope of white powder and we each sniffed a couple of harsh lines and then he carefully put it away. I was surprised that he did that because I’ve never seen John do coke. After I snorted it, I didn’t get the usual numbing sensation. Nothing happened at all. I figured the stuff was no good, or that I was used to Zim’s shit. Then about five minutes later this little explosion erupted in the back of my brainpan and a thrill raced up my spine. John gave me a knowing look, produced a joint and we smoked it. I felt sexy and ticklish and powerful all at the same time. I asked John if it was a new kind of cocaine.

  He chuckled and said, “Young scholar, that wasn’t no coke, that was pure unadulterated crank.” Methamphetamine sulfate. Speed. Crystal. My jaw clenched and surges of physical rapture flowed over my loins, poured into the pit of my stomach, tore through my heart and dried out every mucous membrane in my body.

  The walls shimmered. The air grew hot and electric. Colors swam. I felt very, very good. I could feel my heart beat, hear my breath. I could even hear John’s breath. I could hear everything. I stood up. John said, “Sit down.” Then he passed me a bowl of hash.

  John began to talk. But this time, I started talking too. We were talking simultaneously, perfectly and with no effort at all filling in the gaps of each other’s logic. Like this mighty jazz duo, but instead of instruments, we were playing our brains. Even when John began to stutter, it made sense and I talked through it, around it. We were seated side by side at a magnificent conceptual loom weaving these infinitely complex idea-tapestries. We were figuring everything out, the structure of the universe, the exact nature of the soul and of God (John said “God in ented time so things wouldn’t happen all at once.”) but transcended even that as we went further and further out to the farthest reaches of space, time and thought, and then back again.

  John outlined my future career as a writer. He explained to me how I would conquer the literary world with my words, words exactly like the ones I was speaking at that very moment! He informed me that my words were the foot soldiers in my army, fighting for me, capturing territory, defeating my enemies. He said I had to train my army to be the best army. He announced that I would be a Napoleon of literature. And something in my gut told me he was right.

  Hours passed. John left the room and I tried to organize the junk on his coffee table. But every time I had it all straightened out, there would be a new angle I hadn’t thought of. (Organize by subject matter? Size? Type of publication?) I couldn’t get it right. I began to lose my ability to string thoughts together in coherent succession. I was forced to retrace the steps of my thinking. As soon as one brilliant thought entered my head, it would be replaced by another and I would forget the first.

  The ideas blossomed faster and faster, but so did the empty spots between them. I felt like I was traveling through my thoughts the way a spaceship slices through space, effortlessly, but surrounded by a total vacuum. I would pass a solar system, then a huge void. Then a star nebula. A galaxy, then more limitless space. I entered a mental black hole and couldn’t get out. My thoughts lost their way. I was becalmed in my spaceship, stuck in the middle of nowhere, drifting.

  Anxiety sparked and ignited all the clutter in my head and before I knew it a firestorm of panic was raging through my skull. I became deathly fearful that John had abandoned me. Perhaps left the building for good. Maybe he knew something that I didn’t know. Knew he had to get away. Before the “bad thing” happened. I became obsessed with the bad thing and anticipated the arrival of police. I had this crazy idea that John had been busted by narcotics agents somewhere in the loft and now they were watching me, waiting for me to trip up so they could make their move. I tried to remain as still as possible. If I didn’t move, maybe they wouldn’t see me. />
  Then John returned with a plastic bottle of liquid. He was half-naked and barefoot, wearing only drawstring pants. A thin strand of beads lay over his hairy barrel chest. Overweight, he almost had breasts. Despite his pale bare skin, he looked fierce. He handed me the bottle and commanded me to drink from it.

  We passed the jug back and forth, taking sips. It looked like tea but it tasted old and musty and bitter. I assumed it was some kind of alcohol, but it had no alcohol sting. Still, it got me drunk real fast, or what felt like drunk. I was speeding and stoned, my mind had nowhere to go, so I just got that much higher. John said it was ’shroom juice made from powder a Yaqui Indian had given him. That he kept it for special occassions. My mind finally began to quiet down. A faint peacefulness replaced the anxiety. I was conceptualizing in great, ephemeral blobs of color. I lay back and listened. John was talking about Antarctica, then about whaling (Moby-Dick is his favorite book), then about icebergs and massiveness and coldness and then finally about stillness.

  ’Gitte arrived. She whispered in John’s ear and led him into another room. As they left, John passed me a little pink pill. He said it would relax me. They never came back. I took the pill with more of the juice and after a while I did feel much calmer. Calm enough to leave the loft.

  When I stepped out onto the street the sky was much higher than usual, tinted an awesome robin’s egg blue striped with long pink clouds. If there is such a thing as a spiritual experience, it is walking across the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn as the sun burns its way into the city of New York.

  Exhausted and speeding at the same time, the tranquillity in my heart grew into elation. Little bursts of light flashed at the periphery of my vision. The speed was strong. It torched the hash high and the ’shroom high. But the little pill, whatever it was, took away the crispy feeling, exterminated the ants crawling all over my skin. I felt good and powerful and full of energy. I could see everything and be everything. Potential became equal to manifestation.

  As if I were standing on a huge conveyor belt, my legs moved me without my will. So I let them do what they wanted and I was propelled across the bridge, up through Chinatown. So much early morning bustle in Chinatown: people yelling in dialect, trash cans smashing and clanging, trucks honking their way through the narrow streets, stray cats mewing, sooty bums panhandling. The stink of fish stalls and fried dough hung over the shoving and jostling on the sidewalks as the harried Chinese squeezed past vendors selling dozens of different newspapers, lotto tickets, globs of food. Someone spat and the spit was trampled in seconds. Further north I passed by the white-bearded Bowery men in their overcoats (they don’t strip down until July) shoving broken wooden pallets into flaming barrels (also past the guys lying on the pavement, bruised faces crushed into last night’s vomit). Gray-faced junkies migrating toward the shitty little park, zeroing in on a fix. The ever-present hookers doling out their morning wake-me-up blow jobs in doorways and parked cars.

  I surfed through the East Village, which was pretty quiet, passing an area I don’t know the name of where old Polish guys stood in clusters, hands on hips, smoking and watching the passing traffic while muttering in dialect. Then past the Empire State Building, gleaming like a brilliant futuristic rocket waiting for lift-off. I banged a left and detoured through Times Square. Almost nothing was going on there, street sweepers, cops, more bums, then on up into Central Park, blissfully natural and verdant. By this time, the day had broken open, all breezy and hopeful, so there were dozens of people out in the bright sunshine walking their dogs, jogging, zipping along toward the next moment in their personal history.

  I made it as far as the reservoir, turned right and trotted the last few blocks to our building. I could feel my blood growing thinner and thinner. A slight dizziness strobed inside my skull. The elevator ride took forever—Latina house cleaners eyeing me with suspicion and more dog people. I danced in the front door just as Dagmara finished her morning powder and perfumage. She furrowed her brow when she saw me, said nothing, then split for her real estate job. I realized I had forgotten about my own employment. Haim was sleeping.

  Once Dag was gone, I sat down to write. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I’ve been reading this Raymond Carver short story book, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? It has inspired me. Describing what’s really there right under my nose. The plain, the unadorned. Carver understands that we never really know where we’re going, we just go. Go-go-go. It doesn’t matter what a person thinks. There is no interior “self,” there are only the facts of our existence.

  I wrote about my walk. I wrote about John. I wrote about the bums and Dagmara’s perfume. I wrote about fucking and eating and smoking cigarettes and drinking Little Italy espresso. Haim roused himself around noon. When he saw that I was writing he kept his distance. Anytime he sees me at my desk, he’s respectful, as if I were a rabbi at prayer. By three, I got restless and left the apartment. Dropped into a neighborhood bar and sucked down three cold beers. I had no appetite, but beer seemed to make sense. Calories. Vitamins. Again my brain began to drift into black holes and I caught myself staring into space, my head completely empty. But good empty, not scary empty.

  I went to a movie, Star Wars, and fell asleep and then woke up during this unbelievable interspace war scene. Very loud and fast. The action on the screen turned me on and the speed kicked in again. My heart was racing. My eyes popping out of my head. Also I was sitting in the second row, that might have had something to do with it.

  It was dark when I left the movie theater. I grabbed the IRT subway out to John’s place. He was kicked back on his Barcalounger watching TV with the sound off. Said he was meditating. We got pretty stoned and I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up around midnight and finally, exhausted, struggled back to my apartment. On the way I got slices of pizza at Ray’s. Every forty-eight hours should be like this.

  June 3, 2006

  I’m at the apogee of my life. Everything that I ever looked forward to has either happened or I’m in it now. So it’s all downhill from here. What am I supposed to do for excitement for the next twenty or so years? I can reminisce about the good old days I guess. I can ponder death. I can write my memoirs.

  I have a good life. No real pain yet. But pain is inevitable, right? Sooner or later I will begin to die and that will be painful.

  A turning point, twenty-five years ago. A dumb young writer, me, writes boldly with rash impudence and scores big time. Makes a million. This kid gives birth to the man I am now. One false move, one slip of chance, I’d still be an unknown scrabbler. Like all the other writers, all the other artists. Stuck and fucked in some vermin-infested Lower East Side railroad flat, still committed to the illusion that someday I might be discovered. But that’s not what happened. I was discovered. I had my day. Perhaps it’s better to never have had that consummation. To never know that being a big deal author isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.

  For years, I’ve enjoyed the certitude that all I have is the product of my efforts. “I” did this. But “I” did not do this. Not the “I” that I am now. No. The “I” I was then, that’s who laid the foundation for this life I have now. I am a guest in someone else’s house. The house belongs to the stupid “me.” The child “me.” The one who had no idea how reckless “I/he” was.

  June 5, 2006

  With perverse curiosity, I tried to find John and ’Gitte today. Yes, things hadn’t ended so well between us. In fact, threats had been made. But it couldn’t hurt to take a look at the old stomping grounds.

  I retraced my old route on the subway out to Brooklyn. I found the right stop, but when I emerged from underground I got lost immediately. The first obstacle was that the sun was shining. I had never visited John during the day. But more confusing was the fact that the neighborhood had no semblance to the broken warehouse district I used to frequent.

  Where the buildings once stood sealed and dark, probably not functioning for decades, now every exterior was newly sandblasted, every window lit u
p. The neighborhood, for it has become a neighborhood, teemed with a happy population of young upwardly mobile etceteras. The once empty ground floors of the stolid nineteenth-century structures were now grocery stores, coffee shops and boutiques specializing in infant sundresses, handmade organic candles and decorative pillows. I spied a furniture shop, an upscale hair salon and a French dry cleaners.

  Eventually I came upon the massive bulwarks of the bridges spanning the East River. These had not altered in thirty years, probably not in a hundred. From these I finally established my bearings. I recalled a couple of street names. I found myself standing before a gleaming lobby fitted with marble floors and a doorman. I was sure. This was once John’s building.

  It was a handsome red sandstone affair, freshly scrubbed clean of graffiti and posterage. It squatted in the middle of the block like old royalty. Every building in the row had been refurbished. Next door, a small billboard announced condos for sale “starting in the low 800s.”

  I entered. The doorman sat at his desk, perfectly lit by recessed fixtures. An elegant potted fig stood behind him. He paused writing in his journal and spoke before looking up. “Yes sir, how may I help you?”

  “A friend of mine once lived here. Years ago.” My voice was a squeaky croak.

  “Does he live here now?” This doorman was almost certainly an ex-cop.

  “No, as I said, he lived here years ago.” My voice found its proper register. I wanted him to know I was not afraid of his ersatz authority.

  “So how can I help you, sir?”

  “Would you have any records of the people who once lived here?” I smiled. I wanted him to know I meant no harm. I was his friend.

  “No, sir.” He turned his attention to his multi-buttoned phone console. He picked up the handset. “Yes? Yes, in about ten minutes. Yes, sir.” He hung up and returned to his writing, no longer interested in me.