PARADOXIA (8 page)

T
he garbage between the front and back building seemed to ebb and flow. A couple of middle-aged bums had taken up camp in the firebombed remnants of the tenements flanking either side of my apartment. Shadows from candlelight would perform ghoulish dances under the night sky. The scent of kerosene lamps, their greasy pungency mingling with the neighbors' rice and beans lent a Third World smell to the new ten-foothigh pile of trash stewing in the courtyard. The old Puerto Rican widow on the third floor had painted a pink crucifix on her door, frightened by recent events. First the suicide of the previous tenant whose apartment Johnny and I now inhabited (our presence alone enough to warrant curses), then the bums, then the rumors spread by the landlady who claimed to have seen giant snakes, massive boa constrictors, slithering through the landfill of debris. The landlady never thought to simply have the junk hauled away. Her apartment itself, a testimonial to trash collection. Every surface, including the prerequisite bathtub in the kitchen, was loaded ceiling-high with old
TV Guide
s
, Variety,
the
New York Post
, cereal-box tops, record covers, coupons, clippings, cutouts, clothes, mail correspondence, empty tissue boxes, cracked plates, bent silverware, hairbrushes, nail clippers, Coke cans, and candy-bar wrappers. In short, a total pigsty. Haven for roaches.

Johnny and I had been cooped up in our cave for a couple of months. The honeymoon was on the wane. We were driving each other nuts. His hot Irish temper, maniacal jealousy, rampant voyeurism driving me crazy. He couldn't stand me turning tricks unless he came along. Hated it when I'd sneak out with my girlfriend Connie, but wanted to hear every detail. Loved watching me get fucked by every prick that made me itch so he had something to yell at me about. Horrible arguments turned into foreplay.

One lazy summer night I decided to run down to the corner store to refuel our supplies. Marlboros and vodka. A couple cans of Coke. Hershey's bar or two. He was pissed when I refused to change before leaving the house. It was fine if I wanted to flaunt myself in all manner of provocative dress, as long as he was leading the parade. But dare I depart the fetal cave in simple black mini and thigh-high boots without him, I was doomed to interminable discussions whose frenzied ravings would rattle the rooftops.

One night just to piss him off even further after yet another ridiculous tirade, I slammed the door and ran across the street to fuck the Jewish/Puerto Rican jazz musician who I'd been stalking since we'd first moved in. Quick thirty-minute fuck and suck.

Upon returning I found Johnny passed out on the floor. Two empty bottles of Seconals washed down with a fifth of Smirnoff. No idea how many caps he had swallowed. Didn't know whether it was just a drunken attempt to impress, that perhaps he had only taken a few and hid the rest, hoping to incur sympathy, or a melodramatic suicide attempt, in keeping with the apartment's tradition.

Cold water splashed in his face. Deep kicks to his kidneys. The slapping of both cheeks. Banging his head against the floor. Nothing I did could rouse him. Not even a flutter of eyelash. I ran out of the apartment, down the six flights, three or four blocks before I could find a pay phone whose receiver was still attached. I dialed 911, gave the address. They told me to go wait outside. They'd arrive within the hour. I screamed into the mouthpiece that by that time he might already be dead. Or even worse, brain dead. The weary operator insisted there was nothing more she could do. She placed the call. I'd just have to wait.

I ran back upstairs to check on Johnny. Who had already turned a sickly hue. I was so fucking mad at him, I stood over his near corpse cursing the son of an Irish bitch. Screaming at him to wake up, get up, before I fucking killed him. I wanted to fucking kill him. I should have fucking killed him. But I couldn't. I loved him too much. Loved his evil, sleazy grin. His greasy demeanor. His long, skinny legs. His big, nasty dick. His cruelty. His jealousy. His insanity. How insane he made me. His perversion.

(A horrible incident: Two weeks before we'd met. He had to be inoculated for a virulent strain of canine gonorrhea. Which he had picked up while fucking his friend's dog on a bet. Won twenty-five dollars. The doctor's visit and shots cost double. I loved his sickness.)

The ambulance pulls up sirens blaring. I run downstairs to summon them. The neighborhood kids surround it as if it's the Good Humor truck. They grumble when I warn the attendants that we're on the top floor. Complicates their procedure. We rush upstairs. They take vital signs, barking out orders, questions. Radio into the hospital. Bellevue. Strap him to the plywood stretcher. Halfway down the six flights, one of the attendants pauses to brush a cockroach from his shoulder. It had fluttered down from the ceiling. This causes a pile-up from the rear which sends Johnny and the contraption he's strapped to bouncing down ten or twelve steps. Face turning mushy against the bannister. If it wasn't so horrible it would have been funny.

They wheeled him into the ICU amidst the ear-splitting din of a Friday night's pandemonium. Every plastic seat in the emergency room occupied. Screaming children, laughing and hysterical, gathered around puddles of congealing blood. Dirty little feet, some barefoot, others in summer sandals or running shoes, make a mosaic in scarletred. Their mothers making the sign of the cross, fingering prayer beads, cursing and crying for the salvation of the fathers. Victims of stabbings, gunshots, lurid accidents, barroom brawls, foolish bravado. Dirty looks shot at my back, as we're rushed straight through, no time left for the preliminary of endless paperwork. That can wait till morning. Now it's time for the stomach pump. A horrendous attempt at intervention from death's doorstep. As soon as the doctors have Johnny stabilized, they advise me to go home, get some rest. As if I could sleep. I stupidly take up silent vigil surrounded by the wounded and long waiting. The wailing of old women finally lulls me like siren song into unsound sleep. At 6:00 a.m. there's still no word whether Johnny will recover or remain semi-vegetive. At this point I wish he would just die. Be dead and done with it. Not wake up. Meet his maker, that retired iron worker in the sky, whose battered Irish face, like Johnny's own, is sprinkled with pale freckles, luminescent green eyes both cruel and playful. I wonder if in his coma he's finally at peace. No longer struggling, no longer fighting in himself what he hated in his father, yet turned out to emulate. I imagine a spidery cocoon clouding consciousness with a bear hug's embrace. Bliss.

Thirty-six hours later he wakes up. A groggy smile, he asks for a cigarette. A Coke. Wants to go get a hamburger. Starts to dismantle the I.V., various tubes, and monitors which he's hooked up to. A young, green candy striper rushes over admonishing. Tells him he can't do that. He lets slide a sleepy, sidelong grin and says, “Sure I can. Don't tell anybody.” Gives a wicked little laugh, impish. Irresistible. “I'm checking myself out. Wanna come?” She shrugs and runs off looking for the head nurse. Johnny slips into his jeans, tight black T-shirt, and unlaced Converse. “Did you miss me?” he whispers, snuggling into my neck, scooping me up, plopping me on the hospital bed. I mouth back, “Yes, baby, I missed you,” not meaning a single fucking word. I wish he was dead.

Most of the men I have lived with have attempted suicide at least once. I was always disappointed that none of them actually succeeded. I secretly wished them all dead at one time or another. Longed for the badge of widowhood. A reason to mourn their passing. Wished they had the guts to go through with it. Angered by their pathetic plea for attention. Intervention. Always believed suicide was the brave man's way out. The ultimate gamble. Definitive Fuck You. That there were justifiable reasons for suicide. Any coward can live, cowering for years under the bullshit. The agony. The pain. Self-inflicted or not. It was the weaklings who kept sticking their chins out. To be pummelled again and again. Under the heavy weight of a karmic bruise. Some souls were born to be forever tortured in this life. Never to find peace. Relief. Sanctuary. Never to be released from the burden of their heredity. Bad genetics. Battered psyche. Tortured libido. Fractured ego. Twisted id. Shattered nerves. Adrenal chaos. Their torture a springboard for torturing others. Victim becomes victimizer. Could suicide throw a kink into the transgenerational link through which the family tradition of psychotic behavior was bred?

O
ur relationship took a serious nosedive with Johnny's recovery. Violent arguments would escalate into physical battery. With him as recipient. I took to sleeping with a knife under my pillow for precaution anyway. Alcohol blurred reason, turning minor squabbles vicious. He'd accuse me of instigating petty indiscretions that he had orchestrated. Then turn around and sodomize my dire enemy, a catty Oriental dominatrix, on the floor of the same bathroom we had first made it in. One of us would start an argument, but he was always the first one out the front door, heading down to the local old man's bar to cool off. When I tried to leave first, he'd chain me to the kitchen sink with handcuffs. One time he came back dusty from head to toe. Claiming to have been waiting for the LL train to run him over. He fell asleep on the tracks. A bum pulled him to safety as the train was entering the station. His whole life was a series of near misses. He was proud of a stunt he had pulled off in Florida that went out over the Associated Press wire. He had climbed to the top of a huge power transformer, transistor radio in hand blaring doo-wop. Cigarette pack rolled into his sleeve, extra Brylcreem to keep his hair in place. Supposedly just to have a think, smoke a cigarette. Someone called the police, fearing he was going to jump. The cops called the fire station, who called the ambulance. Who all arrived simultaneously, sirens blaring. He laughed once he figured out they were there for him. The cops tried to coax him down easy, words of encouragement cooed through a bullhorn. All he wanted was a cigarette. Trouble is, he forgot his lighter. Twenty feet from the ground, he called down to one of the cops asking for a match. Smirking. As soon as he hit terra firma, the cop punched him in the jaw, put him in an armlock, and handcuffed him behind his back. He was taken away on trespassing charges. The AP wire reduced the entire episode to a blurb which read,
Request for last cigarette as suicide attempt is foiled by St. Pete Police.

Typical Johnny.

After every horrendous argument, Johnny on a peacekeeping mission would bring home another animal. A futile attempt at pacifying the demise of my tolerance. First came a huge white rabbit, whose cute yet idiotic demeanor could diffuse even the most irritable of moods. Until it started to piss on the bed. Then a cat for the rabbit to play with, maybe it was lonely, hence the bedwetting. The rabbit would often beat the shit out of the cat, kicking it relentlessly with strong hind legs, a cheery glee etched on its stupid face. Like my own, when physically taunting Johnny. Followed by a skunk, iguana, and gecko, whose bumpy flesh shared the chameleon's talent for infusing itself in various disguises. Left out of its cage to roam freely, the gecko turned home exterminator, devouring every last spider, fly, and roach. A helpful low-rent pet that every New Yorker should invest in.

Next, a four-foot-long Burmese python, whose projected growth might one day reach twelve feet. A possessive creature spoiled on slithering under my clothes, seeking muchneeded body heat. I'd sleep with it wrapped around my arms or legs, safe from Johnny in its protective embrace. Its slow languid movements a tonic for stress. Irritation.

To feed the snake, we started to breed mice. Cheaper than visiting the pet store, who were already into us for crickets, cat food, rabbit pellets, flea spray, room deodorizers, and scratch posts.

The amount of time and energy necessary for the up-keep of such a motley menagerie took nothing away from our now daily bickering. We'd argue about money, sex, drugs, the weather. Johnny landed a job with a construction company assembling condos on the Upper East Side. He complained about the hours, the other workers, the boss, the management, the pay. Spoiled from his gig in Florida, where as the union leader's son he could come and go as he pleased, and still pull in seventeen-fifty an hour. With no clout at the new job, he was reduced to showing up on time and working as hard as everybody else. A slight unbearable for such a fragile ego. He'd come home half plowed, encouraging me to imbibe in his favorite drink, the Ashtray—a shot of vodka slipped inside the neck of a Budweiser. I used alcohol as a firestarter to enhance whatever pills I was popping. Alone I found it boring, bloating, dull. His last overdose wasted our stash of Seconals. Which I was still pissed about. The doctor at the Second Avenue clinic cut us off after being contacted by the staff at Bellevue, curious about the prescription. My sobriety rubbed Johnny the wrong way. He accused me of being intolerant, bitchy, cold, a cunt. I was. Drunk, he was affectionate, happy, sweet, until about the fifth drink. The brutish sailor would emerge. Full of destructive urges whose targets were usually my possessions. I took to storming out of the house, by now bored of his infantile tantrums. One night, after rejecting his drunken advances and being accused of being both a frigid bitch and a flaming whore, I took shelter at a girlfriend's house. When I returned the next morning, sure he'd already be at work, the entire apartment was destroyed. The bed had been set on fire, a small hole still smoldering weakly, curtains and blinds ripped from their rods, trunks of clothes turned upside down, rifled through, left in tatters. Holes punched in the walls with bizarre messages scrawled, arrows pointed into the gaping maw with,
Help me I'm in here
,
Brother can you spare a drink?
,
I love how you hate me
, scribbled in black magic marker. And all the animals, save the snake, killed in a senseless bloody rampage. All the mice had their eyes poked out. The lizards were beheaded. The cat skinned. The rabbit trussed up like a turkey dinner, already roasted, set out on a platter on the kitchen table. Years later I was to find out he actually gave the rabbit skins to a friend of mine, who used them as decoration on a small drum kit. I packed a small bag, rifled through his dirty clothes for money. He had just been paid. Three hundred and seventy-six dollars in his pocket. I left him a ten-spot and headed to the airport. Blew the Iranian cab driver in exchange for the forty-dollar fare.