PARADOXIA (10 page)

I
woke up in the emergency room. Six scrubs in babyblue, three doctors, and a couple of nurses flanking my gurney. Sugar-water I.V. in one hand, stabbing the other eight or nine times with a hypodermic trying to draw blood, administer drugs to wake me up, knock me out. Evil spawn tore a hole in my tube like the return of Rosemary's Baby. Had to be cut out. Killed. Or be killed. By little fists beating to get out of my insides. Devil child, unholy terror tears a scar on Mommy's tummy, from hip to hip. We had to snatch the little wretch from his hiding spot. Tunnel dweller burrows a root up the wrong canal. Alien termination.

Nightmare in the operating theater. Anesthesia wears off midway through abdominal surgery. Bloody skin flaps clamped open exposing raw flesh. Vision and sound return in a scramble as I astral project over the table. Engulfed in a blanket of pain, silent shriek of prayer begging to be released from the agony of organs being scraped by the scalpel. Mute pleading to the Latin Gods of the Apothecary,
Have mercy with the ether, O Lord God on High …
No mercy is granted, as I, for what seems like hours, roam above the butchery and bloodshed pretending to catalog my sins, beseeching every god, goddess, and even the Great Dark One himself to deliver me from this endless agony. Surgical rape. Gross mutilation.

A week of morphine did nothing to mask the pain of soft tissue fusing. Crawling in and out of consciousness, the sluggish stupor of fevered sleep. Vicious hallucinations. Altered dreamstates. Visions of alien abduction, insemination, vivisection. Horror.

* * *

Released. On the probation of abstinence for six weeks. The final nail in the coffin of my relationship with Marty. I couldn't stomach the thought of someone else having to take care of me. Made me bitter, withdrawn. Resentful. Blamed his evil prick for tricking one of my eggs to scramble. Couldn't stand to be looked at, touched, talked to. Wanted to be left alone, sick kitten on the corner of the bed. Left to recuperate. I asked him to split. Maybe we'd hook up again when I was functioning. Neutered, I was nothing. Angered, he packed up his shit. Loaded up the truck. Took off. I hated myself for doing it. But I had to.

Like sexually frustrated teenagers, poltergeists began dancing around the house. Bizarre geometric patterns of softly colored lights would configure around the windows and doors, warning that something or someone was either attempting to gain entry or had decided to flee. Hoping to capture release. Interior windows would self-destruct, shattering into large splinters which somersaulted into the floor. The mailman had warned me of strange gray shadows hovering on the porch in front of the door. Made him too frightened to climb the three small steps. I'd have to make other arrangements to pick up my post.

Mysterious fires began to appear on the land bordering my backyard. The neighbor's dog would stand in my driveway, howling for hours, chasing its own tail in wide circles. Voices which sounded dwarfed, muffled, emanating from under my bed. I was being haunted. Probably by myself, the ghost of my aborted child signifying that it still lingered. Stubbornly clinging to the only life it knew. A netherworld of endless possibilities forever stifled.

Two weeks later I got a call. Marty's brother. Now he was in intensive care. Had crashed the truck on the Malibu freeway. Steering column forced itself into liver, bruising kidneys, breaking ribs, smashing hip bones. Didn't know if he'd make it out. The passenger in the oncoming car wasn't so lucky. D.O.A. The driver struggling to recover from massive head trauma. Told me not to go to the hospital. Marty hadn't come out of the coma. Might never come out. Too early to predict. There was nothing I could do except wait.

Marty spent sixty-three days hooked up to tubes, monitors, machines that flushed the bruised kidneys. His liver had been severed in two. Multiple operations to sew it up, drain it out. More blood was flushed through his system than anyone else in the hospital's history. He made it though. Can't kill someone that fucking stubborn. Proud of the scar that now ran from breast to pelvic bone. The parents of the other victims dropped the charges of vehicular homicide still pending. Said he'd suffered enough. He's still suffering. Through his third hip replacement operation all these years later. Never complained though. Not once.

Marty had a unique relationship with pain. It was almost a reminder of his existence. A safety zone where he could retreat to divest himself of all other responsibilities. Extreme physical pain elevates you to a zenlike state that shuts everything else out. It is the great divider, separating those who know how to embrace it, be cleansed by it, heal from it, almost enjoy it, from those who would shirk from it, avoid it at any cost, wither from the threat. Rather die than face life-threatening injuries, numerous operations, hospitalizations. Those who have been there share an uncommon bond that can never be severed.

By my early twenties I had already suffered through numerous cartilage ligament reconstructive surgeries, lymph node removals, an appendectomy, cryosurgery, an ectopic pregnancy with partial tubal ligation, and two years taunting death with Marty. We were amazed by the other's capacity to flaunt injury and smile, a badge of outrageous courage, that neither man nor machine could strip us of. Virtually indestructible. Unless you broke us up into little pieces. Which we've both been trying to do our entire lives. Spit in the devil's eye. Shit in the face of history.

Chicken-hawking teenage cholos whose hot hands reinvigorated my energy lapse. Plotting my next move, something had to give. Night panic started setting in. Feared my death wish would soon overcome, sending spiraling waves of magnetic energy in a pooling vortex whose pull would reel in the wrong asshole. You can never choose your executioner. They always choose you.

Early Sunday morning, a knock on the back door. Johnny. Tracked me down through vague connections I had maintained in New York. Stupid ear-to-ear grin. Invites himself in. Crusty and hung over. Drove up from San Pedro where he'd been holed up hiding out from the cops. I'd heard rumors that he'd been on a two-year bender since I'd left New York. Decorated our old apartment as shrine, candles stuck in old shoes I had left behind, illuminated pictures of the two of us, hand-drawn frames etched in blood. He ended up in Southern California via Florida after a nasty incident with a middle-aged trick he had picked up in Times Square.

He wrapped the Burmese python around his neck and headed south, robbing mom-and-pop grocery stores, gas stations, banks in southern Georgia, on his way back to St. Petersburg. Nickel-and-diming chump change to feed his heroin habit, incurred supposedly on the heels of my abrupt departure from New York. Headed west, hoping to avoid the heat.

Even wrecked, that Brando edge was spellbinding. You were afraid to take your eyes off him. No idea what he'd try to pull next. Fascinating, like a burning building, televised surgery, alien autopsy. Charmed bastard. Roadblocking harm's way.

He pulled out a small bindle of China White. I had somehow managed to avoid heroin, never done it before. Saw it take out too many assholes: years wasted on useless pursuit. Outrageous expense. Permanent stupor. Kick and kick again. Wasteful. He convinced me to take a hit. Small toke like your first joint. Knocked me flat on my ass. Passed out to wake up and puke. He stood over me laughing. Said it was the usual first response. That I'd get used to it. Learn to love the vomit. I told him to fuck off. It was my first and last experience with that shit. Never touched it again. Glad I did it though. Cured my curiosity.

Straightened out the next morning. Johnny in bed beside me. Propped up on one elbow, smirking. I had lost twenty-three hours to a somnambulant blur. Couldn't even remember if we'd fucked or not. I was still in recovery from surgery. Prayed he hadn't plowed his monstrous prick into my delicate flower. Filthy bastard. Grinning. I screamed at him to get the fuck out. Not come back. Lose my address. Split or I'd call the pigs and turn him in. He smiled sweetly, kissed my forehead, got dressed, and left. Fucker.

I
sold what little shit Marty and I had accumulated. All the furniture, the stereo, my books, records, and most of my clothes. I had to evacuate L.A. immediately. Before I got sucked back into Johnny's bullshit. Finagled enough for a one-way ticket to Europe. Standby.

Amsterdam. A psychedelic Disneyland littered with sex shops, tattoo parlors, and street after street of window after window of aging whores. Felt right at home. Pot shops on every other corner. Hundreds of cafés full of thousands of tourists, artists, would-be artists, filmmakers, and every other form of degenerate imaginable. The influx of drunken Italians, stoned Moroccans, ignorant Americans, and the loutish English made it a pickpocket's paradise.

Had the number of a deejay who specialized in underground music. When such a thing still existed. Met him a few years before at a performance I had pulled off at the International Theater of Poetry and Pain. He offered me his apartment for the month of August, if I could help him meet his deadline. Organizing his yearly summer marathon, which was programmed to run in his absence. He was leaving for Thailand in thirty-six hours. Another lucky fluke.

He suggested I call Babbette. A deliciously overripe avant-garde filmmaker. Her specialty was in-depth documentaries on '70s radicals. She had just been awarded a small grant to produce an independent feature for French TV and was looking for someone to help with all aspects of production. I signed on. Pilfering twenty percent of the budget. Turning in a screenplay whose themes of jealousy, erotic madness, isolation, and rejection were mirror images of escapades I had been orchestrating for years.

I had three weeks to pen the beast before shooting began. Three weeks to stalk the flea markets, bookshops, art galleries, after-hours clubs, and drug emporiums in between manic bursts of frazzled note-taking which would be razored into the script. The filming began the day after I turned the screenplay in. A jumbled mess of raw emotion.

I met Styn on the shoot. He was in charge of special effects. Mysterious doors that opened and closed. Holes drilled into the forehead. Bloody noses. Battle wounds. I was already sleeping with two of the actors, had bedded a few of the women who catered the meals. He offered respite from the grueling task of writing, codirecting, and starring in a film that would never be seen anyway.

We'd take long breaks from the set, wandering into the wooded gulleys which flanked the massive crumbling estate in which we'd been marooned for weeks. I was endeared to his European upbringing, higher education, and relaxed good manners. A different species altogether. Admitted, much like myself, to being indifferent to remorse, jealousy, guilt. Claimed the well of his emotion was a shallow pool beyond which intellect was the master. Reason took over when the heartstrings swelled, sparing him the self-inflicted wounds of lost love, fractured ego, tortured relationships. A challenge to find the pocket in which he smoldered.

He'd seduce me with stolen passages from Blanchot, Bataille, Foucault. I'd escape into small monologues whose beauty filled me with ennui, melancholy. When reduced to the verge of tears, he'd laugh softly, cooing that it was time to return to work. The film was ready to wrap.

Styn suggested we celebrate, inviting me over for dinner. A second-floor bachelor pad overlooking one of the many canals crisscrossing the city. Soft white lights, non-descript music made no mention of the nightmare which was to follow. Smooth white fish, a tureen of pale soup, fruit, wine. Simple. Elegant.

Until I became nauseous. Dizzy. We hadn't even finished the meal before a small spin circled the edges of the room. My vision jellied. I was on the verge of collapsing. Drunk, but not on wine. I questioned whether he had drugged my drink … perhaps a slight poisoning. A mild arsenic. Belladonna.
Blue of Noon
played itself out. Styn appeared concerned, yet amused by my predicament. Led me gently to his bed, began to bathe my face with a cool cloth. Suggested that perhaps the food was too rich, too sweet, spoiled. He began to flatter me, cooing how beautifully sickness suited me. How it created a lustrous pallor, a luminous sheen to my already pale skin. He claimed I was radiant, enthralling, a vision. It was making him hard. Erect. Would I mind if he simply released himself from his trousers, allowing his excitement some breathing room. He was choking in his pants. Murmuring all the while how sickness became me.

I begged him to assist me to the bathroom. I could no longer control the spasms racking my body. I needed to vomit, piss, shit. I was about to soil myself. He lovingly removed my dress, panties, bra, folding them neatly, and arranged them on the towel rack. His sophisticated manners reminding me of a well-paid man servant. He insisted I kneel at the toilet, purge myself, not be shy. He'd stay to help me. He hovered beside me, checking pulse, my temperature. The pupils of my eyes. The glare of the stark white tiles reflected off each other causing a vertiginous blur. My stomach heaved. I began to expel copious amounts of food, bile. Simultaneously pissing, shitting, all over the toilet, the tiles, my thighs. Racked with convulsions, my insides shooting out from every opening.

Passing in and out of consciousness. I lost track of time. Had no idea how long I lay crumpled beside the toilet. Shivering. My belly rumbling. The rapid-fire machinegunning from the shutter of his camera startling me. The bastard had been photographing my entire seizure. Slowly I began to recover. Had the strength to raise my head, ask for a glass of water. Styn smiled sweetly, turning the shower on. Removing the huge gooseneck from the wall. Testing the temperature. He aimed it at the tiles above my head, a baptism of cool spray. He traced my outline on the floor, tickled my feet with pulsing jets, adjusting the nozzle, running the liquid massage up between my legs. Seductively upping the force. Holding it there just long enough for my pulse to race.

Then he hit my mouth. A cold hard fist of water, forcing lips apart, forcing me to swallow. Smiling as I began to choke. Shiver. He started to pull on his prick, which had remained exposed during the entire episode. Giving it a few strong pulls as he continued to focus the camera. Prodding my legs apart with the tip of his shoe. Planting a thick hose of water against my tiny blossom. My legs began a spastic thrash. My head pounding. Dry heaves ebbing. Orgasm mounting. The occasional flash bouncing off the white walls. I was too weak to protest. Vanity was useless. We both exploded. Burning this sickly vision into our collective memories like a short film for future recall.

He dropped the shower hose and knelt beside me. Kissing my feet. Murmuring in French, German, Dutch, litanies to my beauty. Gently washing me. An angelic smile kissing his lips. I was completely exhausted, paralyzed with fatigue. He carried me to his bed. Urging me to rest, sleep, gather my strength. Unable to protest the notes he was taking as the camera rewound.