Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts (1) There once lived a man who learned how to slay dragons and gave all he possessed to master the art. After three years he was fully prepared, but he found no opportunity to use his skill. Dschuang Dsi As a result, he began to write screenplays about dragon slaying. Angel Obregon 1 Manhattan spring night. A woman walks out of a brownstone on East 80th and walks toward Central Park. She is dressed in a clear incitement to rape: a black leather mini-dress polka dotted with brass eyelets, long lean black boots and about 15 lbs. of heavy metal junk jewelry. She's wearing disco makeup and a spindle top hairdo. Obviously some rich girl who has dressed up like a whore for a costume party. She has an impeccable upper class manner, the kind the English have forgotten and the Americans never learned. She is about 28 and blindingly beautiful. Her name is Victoria and, right now, Her face has an expression of carnivorous amazement. As she passes an apartment block, a man steps out of an alley labeled SERVICE ENTRANCE. His name is David, one of the handsome Black Irish, but oddly bookish looking. He's trying hard to look like a rocker, but his leathers are too expensive, it's all a costume like hers. This is beginning to have the quality of a sexual fantasy. He carries a heavy leather shoulder bag and, at the moment, he has the determined expression of an alley cat about to kill something small and defenseless. He follows Victoria along 80th Street and into the park. She looks back once and he lets the distance between them increase. She walks along a concrete path up over a hill in back of the museum, perhaps a 100 yards in front of him. As he follows her, 2 unholy looking 3rd world muggers bounce out of the bushes, muttering jubilantly, and begin to slouch after her with malignant intent. They do not have the wit to look behind them. David steps off the concrete onto the grass so that his boots wont make a sound. He shifts his shoulder bag to his left hand so that it wont make a noise by slapping against him. He pulls brass knuckles out of a back pocket and begins to run, a low crouching run. He's good at it. He's had some kind of training because he does all this soundlessly. He has no fighting ability. He's steady enough, he's had all the training there is, he just has no talent at it. But it doesn't matter, against an untrained man it works just like it does in the movies. He comes up behind the 2 muggers and still they haven't noticed a thing. He does a basic karate move, known as 'a skipping reverse punch', and catches the 1st Mugger in the back rupturing his spleen with his brass-knuckled fist. The 1st mugger falls over with a sharp intake of breath. The 1st is down before the 2nd has turned. David kicks him in the knee and then reverse punches him in the adam's 2 apple with the brass knuckles and the entire weight of his body behind it. The 2nd Mugger is gone like a blown candle. It's all over in a second, but Victoria has turned around in response to the sound effects. With a theatrical look of horror, She begins to run. Through plan or panic, she runs deeper into the park. David curses wearily and takes off after her. She's a jogger, but not a sprinter and he runs much faster than she does. She hears his steps getting closer and She dives in among a thicket of trees. She tries playing motionless, hoping to be invisible in the dark, but they're both panting by now. She cant control Her breathing and he is tracking her by the sound. She hears him coming closer and grunting with triumph. They play hide and seek among the trees. There's something oddly childlike about this, but her eyes are wide and rolling with terror. She doesn't have the presence of mind to scream or, perhaps, she's just too out of breath. Then David steps from out of the darkness behind her and throws an arm around Her neck. "Open. Open your mouth." Obediently, she opens her mouth, perhaps, a little too wide, a little too fast, and he inserts a gag. But something is a little wrong. It's a soft rubber strap gag of the kind sold in sex shops for people who like this kind of thing. he buckles it tightly at the nape of her neck. She wriggles in his grip, She gurgles and stamps her foot indignantly, but She offers no particular resistance. Perhaps, she's too frightened. Then he grips her by the shoulders and slowly guides her down to the grass. He pulls her hands over her head and fastens them together behind a small tree. But he uses fleece lined leather handcuffs. This is beginning to look suspiciously over prepared. he checks that he has her fixed securely then climbs on top of her and languorously rapes her. When he's done with her body, he opens his shoulder bag, takes out a bottle of Margot and opens it with a cork screw. He sets it to one side then gestures for her to turn her head. She does and he removes the gag and handcuffs, tidily putting them away in his bag. She doesn't make a sound. She sits up, elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. Her hair has come undone and it falls over her face. He sits staring at her in silence. She's not about to move. She's not about to say anything. For the 1st time, he doesn't know what to do next. Not worried, not guilty, 3 just baffled. "Are you alright?" She's still panting slightly. She says nothing. She wont look at him. Her only reaction is to brush some hair away from her face, but it immediately falls forward again. He's standing there in the starlight like a gravy spot in a lace doily. Growing up the only beautiful women he saw were in magazines. Of course, real women dont look like that. Only, this one does. She's fantasies made flesh and he has no defense against her. Male sexuality does not respond to messages; it responds to signals and, the hornier you are, the blurred the signals can be. They show this with pigeons. He starts out making love to a stuffed pigeon, then a block of wood. Finally, he's doing his mating dance to a shadow on a wall. I'm sure you've all done that one. But this time the signals are clear, in sharp focus point blank in front of him. He has no more choice of how to react than a stop light has about turning red. "Victoria, are you alright?" "Why did you open the wine first?" "It needs to breathe." "And I dont?" "I just work here." “That is true." He holds up the wine. "Want some? " (NO ANSWER) Your mouth must be dry. (NO ANSWER) You want to tell me what's wrong? (NO ANSWER) I have this recurrent fantasy about doing a slow tango with a mountain lion wearing blue lipstick and violet eye shadow." "I dont believe you." "Just trying to start a conversation." 4 "I believe that." "Then tell me what's wrong". "Nothing. It was perfect. All the little surprises, all the moments when it was almost out of control, everything that makes it real. More detailed than I ever could have imagined it." "But?" "You were supposed to leave me tied to the tree, all night abandoned." "You didn't want that. You wanted to pretend that it was going to happen, but you didn't really want it. Not really." 'Artists must take risks." "But they sacrifice other people, not themselves." She opens her shoulder bag and takes out 2 wine glasses wrapped in tissue. She opens a cosmetic bag. There's a pill bottle of ups and one of downs. Sighing deeply, she swallows a down. David takes that as a personal rejection. "That part makes sense. But I believe that for this to be great art you must feel that you have something personal at stake." "Your theories aren't my problem No, your theories are my problem." She's about to answer when he hears something we dont. He gestures her to be quiet, that someone is coming. He reaches into his shoulder bag and takes out a very ratty looking .38 belly gun. Clearly, he's brought everything but a Boy Scout Manual. Victoria sighs, "Oh, it's just lovers". "No, they're coming too slow, they expect trouble." His voice had changed, deeper., more confident, almost dreamy. 3 more muggers bounce out of the bushes. 5 "You dont want to get hurt, right?" "That's right." David shoots him through the head with the .38. It's an explosive bullet and pieces come off his head like petals from a flower. The other 2 muggers turn and run. David unapologetically shoots them in the back. "We better go, the police will be here". she says, primly "They cant tell where the shots were coming from, not with all the echoes off the buildings." "Let's go home." "Yes." They walk back the way They came. The left shoulder of her dress has been torn and the bra strap broken. Her left breast falls out. She tucks it back in then leans against him to hold it in place, arms around each other's waists. There are 4 cop cars with whirling bubble-gum machines. They're parked around the 2 muggers he'd knocked out. Their faces are covered. Apparently they're dead. A cop shines his flashlight on David and Victoria. He sees an upper east side couple and loses interest. Victoria hides her face in David's neck. "How horrible!" she says. "You shouldn't be in the park at night, it's too dangerous." says the cop."Thank you, Officer. I keep telling her that, maybe now she'll believe me." They walk away but, after they get 20 yards, Victoria begins to giggle. She clings to him tighter and buries her face against him, but then he begins to giggle too. Then her laughter exploded out of control. The cops hear it and turn to stare. 3 cops snap their flashlights on them. her left breast has fallen out again. David pushes her away and slaps her very hard. 6 "It's alright, Officer, she was just getting hysterical at the sight of..." He gestures at the corpses and two of the three flashlights are turned off. "The park closes at midnight. You're trespassing." Bring her over here, I want to talk to her. "Please, Officer, she's hysterical already." "Alright, but get her home and do it now." His flashlight goes out too. David and Victoria walk out of the park onto 5th Ave. She's rubbing her cheek and looking at him thoughtfully. Clearly, She has an idea. As always, it will be a very bad idea. He groans "Can it wait until morning? It's late and I'm very tired. NO ANSWER Did you get enough for the 1st chapter?" "I'm writing it in my head, but it's always the same, it just isn't Naked Lunch." "Try Faulkner, he's big on sexually dysfunctional decadent southern aristocrats. Only you're better at it." "I cant stand to read him. I always her his voice and he's speaking a private language of men that no woman can possibly understand, that no woman has any right to listen to. It's like I walked into an old time Memphis bar, the kind that has a sin saying :Booths for Ladies, and I heard someone telling the most wonderful stories in this slow growling southern drawl. And then everything stopped and they all turned to look at me and wondered what the hell I was doing there. And there was nothing for me to do except leave" "Well, yeah, but try thinking of it this way. There's a baseball pitcher and his name isnt Vida Blue or Dizzy, it's Irving Kolodna and he has so little charisma that 7 even his wife cant remember what he looks like. And he had broken every pitching record in the book but no one noticed or if they did they ascribed his records to someone else. Anyone in his right mind would have given up, but not him. He loved the game so, he started doing things like loading the bases with none out and getting 3 and 0 behind on the batter just to show that he could strike out the side with 9 consecutive pitches" Victoria smiles sidewise like Minnie Mouse "What's that got to do with Faulkner?" "Making things difficult form himself, just to keep himself interested, something like you. Her face transformed with delight and she pointed and said "Oh, look." but there was nothing in front of her except the bitter sleek darkness of 5th Avenue at night. Then she turned around 180 degrees and pointed back into the park. And there was Faulkner. All 5'2" of him with a Faulkneresque iron grey haircut and a Faulkneresque iron grey moustache, walking along in a Faulkneresque pose, eyes down, hands clasped behind his back, intensely preoccupied, totally unaware of his surroundings. All of which was quite bad enough, but horribly he had his 2 hound dogs with him, one white, one black and white spotted. It was Faulkner and his dogs looked intensely preoccupied too. The 3 of them walking down the over lit esplanade that fronted the band shell. All of which is merely an impossible coincidence except that Faulkner had been dead 30 years. And ghosts are like that, perfectly ordinary except they couldn't possibly be where you see them and always in the exact center of your field of vision. Well, yes, it could have been a Faulkner groupie who'd gone a little too far, but David had prowled the park for years; he knew all the park characters: the old man and woman who wore only purple and rode bicycles down the bridle path collecting horse manure for their garden, the fat little black man who had 20 cats 8 and had taught them to march in formation and all the rest. This was something entirely new. And...if it were a performance, he'd be watching from the corner of his eye to see what reaction he was getting. But he didn't seem to know they were there. David thought this over for a full half second and said, "Hold on to my hand tight and dont let go no matter what happens" "Shouldn't we talk to him?" "Kind of tactless to remind him that he's dead. He might get pissed and, anyway, if that's what I think it is, he couldn't see or hear us." "Well, yes, but we could say something. What if he answered?" "We'd spend the rest of our lives trying to convince someone that it really happened. This way we dont even really believe it ourselves." "So what?, you had a cheap date." He stops and stares at her in astonishment. He does a lot of that. She keeps walking. He keeps staring for a moment, then walks quickly after her. He looks back into the park. Faulkner is still well lit and perfectly ordinary. He needs a shave. David turned back and walked after her. The two wine glasses sit by the tree, one standing half full, the other on its side and empty. An angel in a stiff terra cotta robe floats by on an updraft. Her face is an unhealthy yellow and her wings are news-print grey. She holds a stone tower in her arms. It's Saint Barbara, the patron saint of thunder, artillery and the canceled space program. She's been de-canonized and her cult suppressed. You cant blame her for being pissed. CUNY SEMINAR ROOM David keeps nodding out. The Professor is staring at him in distaste. 9 The professor is white as a mime; he is paunchy and has a receding hairline; his face is all nose. He is a mess and, clearly, never looked any better. He is wearing an unpressed business suit. The seat of his pants is down to his knees. "David, when was the last time you had any sleep?" "I'm sorry. It's mono. You're sleepy all the time." "The longest lasting case in history". "It does that. It's like malaria, you're never really rid of it." The Professor decides to ignore him. "As we all know by now, Art can have any purpose we like: To entertain, to educate or even to bore you to tears." "No, Art has one purpose: Power. It's ritual magic." "David..." "Picasso bought a house in southern France in 1945. He bought it by painting a still life of it and trading the painting for the house. Because a Picasso was worth more than what it was a picture of." "David." "He did what artists have been trying to do since they were drawing antelope on the walls of caves. He got control of a thing by making a picture of it. He's the first one to make the magic work." "That's one purpose of Art, of course.". "No, the only purpose: Power." A squat shrewd looking Chinese student is frantically signaling David to shut up. The Chinese student is an obsolete model, a fire plug with eyes among the tall strong Western builds of the next generation, part of another age, another culture, piece of stage property that the grips forgot to drag into the wings when they dressed the set for the next 10 act. His name is Chen. The professor is still talking. "If that were true, then pointing a gun at you would be better art than the Sistine chapel." The other students giggle, including Chen. He chuckles then rolls his eyes, sticks his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and draws a finger across his throat. "For the kind of response you get from pointing a gun at someone, it is better art. Maybe that's why it's outlawed, it's a magic that actually works." "So, Picasso was a failed gunman." "He was a successful pornographer. It's the only art that delivers on it's promises. You have painting and sculpture and music and poetry, all these arts that are supposed to be completely transporting and they're not. They're essentially disappointing. If they kept their promises as well as pornography, they'd be outlawed too" "Then taking drugs is the most effective art of all." "That's been true for a very long time." "There's a name for this kind of desperate search for meaningful experience. It's called paranoid schizophrenia." "You're dating yourself. They call it 'magical realism now. What's your question?" "What the hell are you doing here?" "I dont think you would consider it an art." "Than you, David. I'm facing a difficult decision about you and you're making it very easy." He looks around the room, making it clear that he has re-established control. "'Surrealism was not primarily an artistic movement, 11 it was a spirit of revolt that chose art as its instrument. It no longest inhabits art and it may never again, but one day a poltergeist is throwing dishes in the kitchen, the next it shows up in the hall, and its very orneriness and perversity are a kind of innocence and for that reason a declaration of freedom and of hope.' Whom am I quoting?" David raises his hand. "Anyone besides David?" There isn't. The Professor nods. "The Shock Of The New by Robert Hughes." "I thought you'd know that one. Now, then..." "The TV series, not the book." "David, say one more word..." David widens his eyes in innocent surprise, but says nothing. "Now, then!" GRAD SCHOOL CAFETERIA David is standing in line with Chen in front of the cashier. "It's a valid question, what do you think you're doing?" There's no answer from David. They sit down and begin to eat. "You're impossibly dumb about people." "Yes." "No, it's not incompetence. To fuck up this completely, it has to be deliberate." "Yes." A French Professor walks by with his pants held up by a rope. He carries a tray with 8 cups of coffee and talks to himself. 12 "Is too difficult do mathematics." "Like criminal law with an imaginary client and a real judge and jury." The French Professor nods fatalistically and wanders off. Chen shakes it off like a punch. "Why? Why did you say that to him?" "I just thought of it. I thought it was kind of cute." "It is, that's the problem. Cute people dont get tenure." "I know." "If you come back this fall, you're walking into a meat grinder. You are not going to make it here and it's a waste." "I know." "What about Leslie? She's rich." "You Chinese are a very practical people, but somehow it looks better on you." "What about Sarah the nurse?" "She's doctor." "You need all the doctors in the world." "I'll flip you for coffee." "I'll buy, you're entitled to something." HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM David walks up to a desk with a nurse behind it. Over it is the sign 'TRIAGE' in neon lights. It flashes on and off. "Dr. November, please." "Fill out the form, please." 13 "Dr. Sarah November, have her paged, please." "Fill out the form, please." "I'm a personal friend." "Then you're not a patient?" "Well, yes, that too." "Please fill out." "I dont want to kill you." Sarah catches sight of him from the angle of a corridor and starts to run toward him. She stops then strides over fast. "David, what are you doing?" He takes her by the arm and marches her away. "I have to talk to you." "He hasn't filled out the admission form." It's alright. Sarah says over her shoulder. David sees an empty examination room and half shoulders her into it, pressing himself against her. He seems to be trying to avoid touching her with his hands. He follows her in and closes the door with deliberate slowness, elbowing it shut. He takes off his shirt without opening his fists. His back is covered with welts. She kisses them. "This is not my idea of an ideal relationship."
Copyright © 1999 Angel Obregon |