"Settle thy studies Faustus and begin to sound the depths of that thou wilt profess."
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (New York: New American Library, 1969), p. 24.
I.
He was handsome in a rugged, beat-up kind of a way. Dragging his six foot frame out of bed, he headed for the bathroom, tore open the medicine cabinet and swallowed however many aspirin tablets were left in the bottle. He was coping with a hangover. After ten years as a detective, eight of them with the NYPD, he was paying the price for the lifestyle. He had a twenty in his wallet and $35.00 in the bank to last 'till payday, some tunafish and two Campbell soup cans, besides a case of beer and a bottle of cheap vodka in the freezer. "My body is a temple," he thought.
He tried to remember the night before and the women who came home from the bar with him. One was named Karen, or was it Carol? Something like that. There was nothing for them to steal in this dump and he had not paid for sex, except for the alcohol. Anyway, they were gone and the t.v. was still in place and his wallet still had the twenty in it. Everything other than the t.v. had come from the ninety-nine cent place on the corner. It was a classy ninety-nine cent place. The words were actually spelled out on their sign: "Everything Ninety-Nine Cents." And "ninety-nine" was spelled correctly. In his neighborhood, that sign made the establishment the equivalent of "Bloomingdales."
As a younger man, he had made all of the young man's mistakes. Now he was looking at forty-something and was all alone. He lived in a large two bedroom apartment on the northern tip of Manhattan, in a pre-war building, about a block from the subway entrance. He lived at the last stop -- in every sense -- of the A-line. A few more steps in a northerly direction and one might fall off the face of the earth and into a realm where dragons fed on human carcasses, better known as the Bronx. Come to think of it, he liked the Bronx better than the chi-chi sections of the "lower" borough.
In the Bronx you were struggling with the English language and fighting for something better for your kids. In the Bronx every street had several families living the American dream. Everyone faced towards the future there. It was all about poverty as a fashion statement in similar neighborhoods in Manhattan. With all of its faults, he couldn't deny his love for New York, all of it, and could never live anywhere else. Every other city -- including Paris -- no matter how beautiful or enticing, no matter how glittery with wealth and dream-like architecture, was a substitute for New York.
A truth that he had never questioned because he felt its powerful reality on an hourly basis is that, romantically, there is only one woman for a man (and he will spend his life searching for her or reinventing other women in her image, if he cannot find the original) and only one city that he can love passionately. There is only one city that he can call "his" city. Maybe the city and woman that capture his heart share some quality. For Jack, that quality might be a quiet strength, a large measure of grace, something indestructible and feminine, a sassiness that gets to him. New York is a beautiful and elegant woman, but she chews gum and has a tattoo -- and she can kick your ass.
Although he had seen some beautiful women in his time, in Europe and California, and in U.S. farm country, there would never be any women, for him, like New York women -- knowing and charming when they wish to be, gritty, tough, alluring, able to convey every nuance of emotion and meaning with their favorite word these days ... "asshole."
You have not lived until a New York woman stares into your eyes and in a voice that makes your knees wobble, says: "Come on, asshole, let's go home. I'm going to make dinner for us." They don't just say that to anyone, you know. The sweet version of that word is something that you have to earn. If they don't like you, then it's "Mr." or "Madison" (o.k., graduate students, notice the shift to the first person here!), that's my last name, by the way, like the avenue. When you're liked or loved, when New York women don't feel that they have to put on the armor of make-up or fancy feminine stuff, when they're not being polite or hidden in distancing business suits, when they really, REALLY like you, it's "asshole." They'll smile, grab your arm and say, "You are such an asshole."
Don't laugh at the last name, by the way, it could've been worse. I might've been called "Park," or worst of all, "Seaman." This word "asshole" becomes a description for all of masculine humanity. "They're all assholes," they say. When used for the special man in their lives the music of the word changes radically. Like I say, it's the greatest sound in the world to have a New York woman you love and who loves you, refer to you with that level of intimacy and affection. What they're really saying is: "O.K., he's an asshole, but he's my asshole."
Most people, from other places, will not get it. (Notice the shift, once again, to the first person, proving that I am into the whole John Fowles-John Barth-postmodern-metafiction thing.) I know what it means. It means that they've got our numbers. They have understood us. They figured us out, forgive us our faults, and love us anyway. No human being can ask for more than this. And I still feel that in any relationship between man and woman -- or in the overwhelming majority of them anyway -- it is the man who gets the better deal. Queen Victoria was right: "All women marry beneath themselves."
I am missing my city woman at the moment. I cope with the pain, with loss, with an aching and longing that hurts like a kick in the balls. I do my work. I try to write and read. I made it just past a Master's degree at CCNY in philosophy. My place is filled with books. For a modest fee, you get first-rate detective work and philosophical conversation on the side, a shared quest for wisdom. I'll tell you all about what got stolen and who did it, then I'll chat with you about Foucault or Adorno for no extra charge. Sometimes clients will pay more to avoid the tutorial, but they're stuck with me. If you want a stupid or unreflective private eye -- and for some jobs that's ideal! -- then I am not your man.
I sit down at my kitchen table to have a cup of coffee, when there is a knock at my door. I get up and open the door. Sure enough, there's a woman standing there looking exactly like Veronica Lake in "The Glass Key." She is wearing some beautiful, expensive clothes, a dark suit, nice jewelry, sandy blond hair falls over her green eyes and she is smoking. It's a pretty neat trick to manage this look so early in the morning. In a low voice, she says: "You going to invite me in? Or should we chat in the hallway?"
She's obviously bashful. Definitely a New York woman. "Come on in. Sorry about the mess."
She takes a look around and pulls up a chair at the kitchen table. I offer some coffee, but she turns it down because "I'd have to sanitize the cup for about a week." She looks at the place and at me as though we were something under a microscope that had been dissected two days earlier in her high school biology class. "Sit down, relax," I say.
With a smile, she answers: "Don't go to any trouble on my account."
I get myself a cup of coffee and sit down opposite to her. I suddenly realize that I am wearing nothing but my boxer shorts and a CUNY t-shirt.
"Do I know you?" This is not my best opening line ever, but I am a little disconcerted since beautiful women rarely stroll into my apartment this early in the morning.
She just looks at me like she's trying to figure out how to tell a retard that his foot is on fire. "Yes, you do. Jack, I'm God." Great, that's all I need, a fucking beautiful lunatic this early in the morning.
"Excuse me ..." I am in shock, which is a rare event. She stares right at me with those big green eyes and a face that melts the butter in my refrigerator.
"Relax, Jack. Nothing is going to happen here that you couldn't write into the Bible. I knew I'd get your attention in this get-up. Not bad, huh?" I nod my head. She is beautiful.
"I know how you think, remember. And I use the word 'think' very loosely. No wonder you never got past the Master's degree. All you could 'think' about was banging that woman in the front row in your logic course. You're a walking fallacy, Jack. Just like the rest of your species, but I have a soft spot for you people. Call me a sentimentalist. There's something about a species that is at its best in confronting itself at its worst. Maybe that's me too. Anyway, I'm here because you're 'it' this millennium. Congratulations."
Suddenly there were balloons all over the place and confetti, music was playing.
"You see, every thousand years or so, Lucifer (by the way, she's a brunette!) and I pick up some mortal asshole -- that's you -- and we have a contest to decide on the fate of humanity for the next thousand years. It all depends on your moral choices, of course. You better leave the thinking to us. You've got 'free will' -- that's something else I should've thought twice about. We don't want you to hurt yourself trying to figure out all of this shit. We decided on this a few thousand years ago, like I said, when we were bored and getting all dolled up for a big bash in the cosmos. We might have had a few drinks at the time. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea then."
He wondered whether she was dangerous, also where all the balloons and stuff came from. Suddenly the coffee tasted better and things were getting magically cleaner and neater in his apartment. He felt weird, like he was floating or half asleep, as in deep hypnosis. He thought it best to play along.
"Right, it makes perfect sense to me. So what do I have to do again?"
She just looked at him and lifted an eyebrow, while placing a hand at her hip. "Don't work up a sweat trying to figure this out, o.k., kid? Just leave the brain work to us. You'll be 'approached,' if you'll excuse the expression, by this Queen of Evil, and she'll try to make a deal for your soul. She won't hesitate to try anything to get it. Believe me, if you sign the contract, you're screwed and in a not-so-nice sense, for eternity -- oh, and humanity gets a thousand years of misery, just like the last thousand. So do what comes naturally -- and no, I don't mean that -- but in a moral sense. I know that you're a good guy. By the way, I almost had you people reproduce by self-duplication, without sex -- but it was a slow week and I knew that this sex thing would be a million laughs. Boy, if I'd known the trouble that it would lead to ... "
Suddenly the music changed to a sultry, New Orleans jazz tune.
"She uses the sexual angle, Jack. I am usually above that sort of thing. I appeal to your better nature and intellect. In your case, that'll be tough."
She smiles and rises to get coffee from a pristine cup that appears on my perfect cabinets. There are fresh flowers in a lovely vase on the living room coffee table and the place has new furniture in it, as my guest walks from room to room. Everything smells better, birds are singing and I am feeling better than I have ever felt.
She has the most powerful quotient of that special tenderness that I have seen in some women's eyes that seems to make the world's troubles disappear. Despite the toughness, this woman -- or whatever she is -- exudes a quality of serenity and security. Besides, what she is saying does fit some of my theories about the universe. The universe is a gigantic cat fight between these two women, that's why everything kind of flips out once in a while and things are always collapsing and breaking. Every once in a while, a galaxy breaks a nail or the heels on your shoes fall off for no reason. Philosophers call this "the Absurd."
"You'll be O.K., Jack." As she heads out the door, she stops and stares at me with infinite pity and a smile on her glossy lips, she whispers: "Think with the right head."
MEPHOSTOPHILIS: "Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands
Which strikes a terror to my fainting soul!"
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (New York: Penguin, 1969), p. 52. (Marlowe's spelling of "Mephostophilis," O.K.?)
II.
Jack was sure that this must be the elaborate after-effect of all the drinking. He would stop now. He would never drink again. He looked around the room and saw the empirical evidence of a transformation that could not be denied -- a transformation accomplished in minutes that would have taken dozens of men days to achieve. The beauty of the surroundings, the sense of peace and joy, the mood conveyed by the arrangement of colors, the paintings on the walls, and new furniture might be the result of the best work of a number of artists and interior decorators, working together for months to achieve what was effortless and casual for that strange being who entered his life, altering it forever in a few moments.
As a matter of fact, the effect on his physical surroundings of this woman's visit could only be compared to the effect of a woman's love in a man's life. Everything became prettier and better, neater, cleaner, more purposeful. He felt different and stronger somehow, more together. The powerful sense of a feminine presence that was protective and soothing lingered in the air. For a while, he could only walk around the place from room to room in a state of bewilderment. He showered and shaved, threw on some clothes, denims from the GAP; a soft, light blue shirt with a button-down collar, black Converse All-Stars. Then there was a more methodical and louder knock at his door.
When he answered the door this time, he found a stunning brunette -- an Ava Gardner look-alike -- standing there in a black leather outfit, tight skirt, with a slit at the side, in high heels, holding a tiny blood red bag, which she saw him notice. "This is where I keep my little trinkets, Jack."
Her eyes were big and black, like two dark pools of light. Her smile displayed a row of even, pearly white, sharp and flawless teeth. Her lips were as red as her bag. There were diamonds in her earrings, she wore a platinum watch, and a silver necklace with a ram's head on it in diamonds.
"May I come in?" Her manners were exquisite, when she wanted them to be, and her voice was so beguiling, even hypnotic.
"Sure."
"I know you received a visit from my sister -- my older sister -- earlier today."
"Your sister?"
"Well, in a manner of speaking. Call me Luci, by the way" That smile again. As she stepped into the room, everything seemed to melt and change yet again. I was living in a painting by Salvador Dali. The decorations became much more stark and postmodern, spare leather furniture in sharp colors, punctuated by lots of black; abstract expressionist paintings in primal colors on the walls, beautiful but terribly cold and alienating, with a smell of something damp or dead and foul hovering in each room as she walked through it. We sit opposite to each other in the kitchen.
"I am here to make your dreams come true. And all I want is something that you will barely miss. Something trivial, nothing really. Politicians can't wait to give it to me; lawyers don't realize that they lost it years ago and are surprised that they can't find it; behaviorists are unaware that they have it in the first place -- and some of them don't! In Hollywood, people have usually traded it in for a few extra 'points' on their next deals long before I can get to them. I have my people call their people. But in your case, Jack, I thought I'd make a special visit, up close and personal."
That smile flashed on her lips, like a panther greeting a deer. "I am actually bringing you up to date, Jack. All of this shit about being moral and your interest in philosophy makes you very cute. A sort of ... 'relic.' " She chuckled at this. "You belong in a different century, my boy, no one gives a shit about any of the things that you think are important. No one cares about being good or God (and this drives her up the wall, by the way). No one cares about the 'struggle for truth,' or about beauty. It's all relative anyway." I'm a postmodern nihilist, Jack. That's a popular philosophy this week, in Hollywood, where I live."
She sipped Chinese Green Tea from an egg-shell thin Sung tea cup that suddenly appeared in her hand.
"Passionate romantic love that you cherish and that you'd give your life for is a joke these days. I know about that woman down the hall. What's her name? Marilyn? Yes, that's it. You'd die for her. You've known her all your life and haven't spoken to her because of self-doubt, because you don't have much to give her, because -- like the 'asshole' that you are -- you want to marry her and you don't feel you have enough to take care of her."
She leaned back in her seat flashing some serious cleavage and crossing long elegant legs, so that I could not resist a ... reaction.
"Get it through your skull, Jack. She's nothing. She's just pussy. Maybe you can't buy love, but you sure can rent it. I can give you every kind of pussy there is." She whispers: "You want young or old, professional or innocent, you want kinky? Look!"
She waived her arm and there was a huge flat-screen, plasma t.v. over the stove, suddenly, and it came to life with images of me engaged in every conceivable sexual act, with every kind of woman. I seemed to experience in reality the sensations depicted on the screen when, after what seemed like hours of physical pleasure, it suddenly stopped.
"Just sign here." She was now in a pinstripe business suit, still with a tight skirt and that slit at the side. She produced a large document with letters written in an ancient language from a red leather attache case. Was it Hebrew? Greek? Latin? Or Aramaic? She said: "I used to work as an agent in Hollywood. ... Oh, and you may want to initial these clauses in red type."
"I can't read this."
"Don't worry your pretty little head, it's all in order. You get a hundred years. You'll be rich, good looking, women will fall all over you; your work will be celebrated, fame, status, effortless 'success.' And after your death, you'll spend eternity with me and lots of my friends ... having fun, attending a never-ending party, Jack, having sex all the time. You'll go to the Oscars and meet lots of celebrities. I've got most of them. I offer you everything that your time and place defines as 'the Good.' I offer you all that you understand by happiness in this dismal moment in history -- my moment, incidentally. You know that you want these things, Jack. Everybody does. Just ask around. Here they are. Without guilt, without Sunday school bullshit. There is no need to figure out anything because there's nothing to understand. It just happens. Everything just 'is.' It's all about power. I provide you with the atheistic existentialist equivalent of eternal bliss. A good time forever. All for the measly price of one flawed and worm-eaten little soul. What do you say?"
"Money, sex, fame and will you throw in knowledge? All the philosophy ever written at my finger tips?"
She laughed heartily at this. "Sure, I'll throw in all of that bullshit, even a professorship at the university of your choice." I've got most of the tenured faculty at the big schools too.
"What about meaning and love?"
"Huh?" She seemed genuinely puzzled.
"An eternity of pleasure would be boring. It would be hell, in fact, after a short while. The sameness of wealth, power or fame without love for an equal, without a reason to give of myself, would only lead to misery. It would produce the sick narcissism I see on daytime television and on all of those red carpets. I would become that character in the Borges story who lives forever. You offer me the agony of centuries of pointless, excruciating boredom. The woman I love is not a body part. She is a human being, flawed, suffering, noble because she copes with those flaws and that suffering -- and what you can't give me is an hour, five minutes, or a second of her freely-given company. Her conversation and love, her concern and attention, are only her's to give, freely, and without conditions or a price tag. Any other kind of contact -- including sexual contact -- taken under pressure or for money from any human being, much less someone I love, does not interest me. You can't give me peace, love, creative satisfaction. You can't give me that ONE moment that I might wish to linger forever, that eternal now, the fleeting happiness that I might affirm always. Yes, I have been reading Goethe and listening to Boito's Opera, not just Marlowe. You must have had your claws in poor Christopher! I know about you."
There was a look of stunned incomprehension on her face.
"Oh, and I do love her, the woman down the hall -- and yes, her name is Marilyn -- because I want to give to her, not to take from her. I want her peace and happiness much more than my own. I would choose my suffering and misery, my squalor (which is undeniable), if it would mean that her life will be better, even a tiny bit better." Real joy comes not from physical satisfaction, as Mick Jagger might say -- Nietzsche was right about that, 'only the Englishman,' and maybe only a utilitarian, really wants 'happiness' -- joy comes from fulfillment, satisfaction in moral accomplishment. Love is giving, not taking. And this has nothing to do with money."
I then found myself saying something that I was unaware of knowing or believing until that moment:
"A human being can endure anything for a worthy purpose, like the welfare of someone deeply loved. That's the problem with you nihilists: You don't think enough about others. What people cannot abide is pointless suffering, uncertainty, meaninglessness."
She stood at this and screamed: "You are a fucking moron!"
I had to admit that she had a point there. I blinked and she was gone. Worse, my apartment was the same filthy mess it had always been. I had to wonder whether the whole thing had been some kind of delusion or fantasy. For minutes I was frozen to the spot. Then I walked around in a daze, looking at my books, searching for something to serve as proof of what I had just experienced.
III.
Marilyn as Metaphor: "I remember when I got the part in 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,' Jane Russell -- she was the brunette in it and I was the blonde -- she got $200,000 for it and I got $500 a week, but that to me was, you know, considerable. She, by the way, was quite wonderful to me. The only thing was I couldn't get a dressing room. I said, finally -- I really got to this kind of level -- I said, 'Look, after all, I'm the blonde and it is 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.' Because they always kept saying, 'Remember, you're not a star.' I said, 'Well, whatever I am, I am the blonde.' ..."
"Interview" with Marilyn Monroe, in Life, August 3, 1962.
Had I suffered some kind of psychotic episode? There were small tell-tale signs that something important had happened. I had a shiny new coffee cup that never needed washing, no matter how I dirtied it, and a sudden total lack of interest in acohol. There were other items of empirical evidence from which I could draw Sherlock Holmes-like conclusions.
I was coming home from the grocery store one day when I saw my neighbor, Marilyn. I walked right up to her and I said, "You look so beautiful today." She laughed, but she didn't walk away. One conversation led to another and a few weeks later, we bumped into one another again, this time stepping out of the subway train. We chatted as we walked into our building. She just stopped and said: "Come on, asshole. I'm making dinner for you tonight -- and you'll get to meet my kids."
I knew that she was a single mom and I couldn't wait to meet her children. Then it dawned on me that with her sandy blond hair and green eyes, she looked very much like the woman I had seen who said she was ... Well, I accepted her invitation and explained that I'd shower and change and get some things for dessert. Then I ran to my apartment and looked up a passage I remembered in a book that I'd read some time ago. It was in a book by John R. Haule, entitled: Pilgrimage of the Heart: The Path of Romantic Love (Boston: Shambhala, 1992), at page 8:
"What religion calls the love of God expresses the foundational and central activity of the human psyche, and human love is real and satisfying only insofar as it expresses this root matter. Because the human psyche has the structure that it has, human love is but a species of divine love. The mystics recognize this in seeing the love of God as the meaning of human love. And, having arrived at this insight, they have traditionally seized upon romantic love as a model to explain the love of God to their followers. ... Whether our beloved is human or divine, there is no escaping love's madness or its pain."
