The Venus Complex Read online

  Together, we strolled down University Avenue until we got to Genesee Street. It was comforting to know that Elene is such a creature of habit.

  I have tried to avoid following her too much, simply because I don’t want to get noticed, but also to space out the enjoyment. I loved watching Elene move. I liked lingering over her legs and ass as she walked down the hill. She reached back to smooth down her hair and I imagined that her hand was my hand. That I was the one touching her soft, silky hair. Then I had to bring myself up short. It’s not safe fantasizing about someone when you are walking down a busy sidewalk. I could just see myself ambling in front of a bus, while my eyes were glued to her damn calf muscles.

  We arrived at Phoebe’s, but I didn’t follow Elene in. I went down the block and had a quick sandwich at Goldie’s Delicatessen. Then I walked back to Marshall Street, got in my car and drove home.

  I have to pace myself with all this following business. Oh, who am I kidding? This stalking business. Stalking, that is exactly what I am doing. At least I can fool myself that I am not hurting anyone. Elene couldn’t care less. After all, ignorance is bliss. As long as she doesn’t realize that I am following her, what harm is being done?

  ENTRY 27:

  I can’t believe it, but I found a book by Elene on the Internet! It wasn’t on Amazon.com, but a smaller, more obscure forensic psychology web site. It is called Death In My Pocket: Inside The Minds Of Serial Killers. My cup runneth over! I ordered it directly from the web site. The chances of my finding it somewhere else were minuscule because, unfortunately for Elene, it was out of print. Since it’s such a popular subject, I didn’t think books about serial killers could go out of print, but I guess that’s the book biz.

  ENTRY 28:

  Elene’s book arrived today. I’m afraid to say that after reading a few chapters, I can see why it didn’t race up the New York Times Bestseller List. It is a starkly clinical look at such a juicy topic. Still, I was fascinated by Elene’s take on the subject. I feel like I have been given a key to the door into her mind. Now I will be able to understand her more fully through her work.

  One passage at the beginning struck me. Elene was explaining how some killers and psychopaths regarded themselves as different than the rest of us. They were similar to poets and artists in that way. They saw themselves as outsiders—not belonging to the rest of the human race …

  “To be an outsider means that these individuals perceive the human race as we really are. Outsiders rise above the mundane, everyday realities of life that inevitably wear us down. They have a bird’s eye view (or even a God’s eye view) of the human condition. If one views life from such a perspective, then it is easy to say, ‘What’s the use?’ What’s the use of the job, the mortgage, the kids? What does it all add up to in the end, but a lot of heartache? To the outsider, it means nothing. Hence his feelings of uselessness and detachment, coupled with a compulsive sense of superiority. That kind of combination can only lead to frustration and we all know where frustration can lead to …

  “To have these feelings of superiority and no release for them—no talent to channel them—must be supremely disconcerting. Unlike the poet or the artist, who have their talents to comfort them, a man on the outside with homicidal tendencies has nothing to fall back on. To feel like a god, to have the lofty detachment of a god and yet to be bereft of power. How does one confront these feelings? How does one deal with the anger that this condition would engender? To the potential serial killer, the natural and logical way to achieve that kind of godlike power is to take someone’s life. To move amongst the sheep and pluck a victim as randomly as any other act of Nature—touching down on a soul like a tornado touches down on some God-fearing trailer park in Florida.”

  When I read the preceding passage, I wondered if I were an outsider. Someone who is condemned to sit at a shadowy side table in the Restaurant of Life and observe the rest of humanity getting on with things. On the other hand, maybe being an outsider isn’t such a terrible thing. To be a member of the herd is so demeaning, so humiliating, so normal.

  I want.

  I want … I need … to make a difference somehow. I cannot bear this dullness I feel, this unrelenting boredom with my existence. Maybe I should go out and kill someone. It would be the ultimate transgression, the ultimate high. The ultimate.

  ENTRY 29:

  Elene doesn’t have time to see me. Dr. Cuntface said that he could recommend someone else, but I told him that I didn’t have the time at the moment and that I would get in touch later.

  I am not taking this personally.

  I am not taking this personally.

  I AM NOT TAKING THIS PERSONALLY.

  Elene doesn’t even know me. She doesn’t know who I am. She just didn’t have the time to take on a new patient.

  I should have realized that. I can see how busy she is. I don’t blame her in the slightest. I don’t blame her, really.

  I am very disappointed.

  My wonderful plan is in tatters.

  What do I do now?

  Fuck, FUCK, FUCK!

  ENTRY 30:

  I got drunk last night. Angry drunk. On tequila, which is as close as you can get to being high on alcohol. I carefully went around the house and systematically smashed everything that reminded me of Angie. Then I went into my den and finally ripped out all the photographs of her in our albums and threw them on the fire. After that, I found all the pictures of my father that I had left and ripped them up and tossed them on the merry blaze as well. I was surprised to see how many I had, but Mother had refused to get rid of them and I inadvertently inherited them.

  The old bastard. I looked carefully at each photo before I destroyed it, bringing back the memory of the time and place when it had been taken. There’s dear old Dad with his movie star looks, wearing swimming trunks and lounging in a lawn chair, cool as Cary Grant. There he is with Uncle Danny, both of them leaning on a 1962 turquoise and white Chevy Impala Coupe, looking sporty and daring. (Nice Uncle Danny, my Mother’s brother, tried to sodomize me when I was eleven. I only escaped because he couldn’t get it up. He told me never to tell anyone because if I did, then God would punish my Mother. Uncle Danny was a real charmer.)

  My father dumped us when I was ten years old. One day, he just upped and left. No note, no word of explanation, no good-byes. Mother was devastated, but she gritted her teeth and went back to teaching art. We survived somehow. After all, it wasn’t as if Dad had been some tremendous breadwinner or anything. As a matter of fact, I was always hazy about what he actually did for a living. Something in sales, I think. It was years later that my mother admitted to me that he was an unrepentant serial adulterer. He went off my mother after she got religion. I guess he finally said, “Fuck this!” and disappeared with one of his floozies to a warmer and happier clime. Mother did have the occasional boyfriend after that, but no one was like dear old Dad. She never allowed a word against him.

  I wonder where he is now? That’s a lie. Fuck him. I hope he’s rotting somewhere, poor and lonely. How dare he leave me with HER? My Mother and Uncle Danny. What a great combo. The irresponsible artist who didn’t have a clue about raising a child and the sodomizing pederast uncle. It’s a miracle that I am as sane as I am.

  I am sane, aren’t I?

  ENTRY 31:

  I woke up this morning and decided to go to New York City. If I am going to go to a prostitute then I am going to pick up one down there. I know a few places where the girls aren’t too bad. They are not street girls—more like call girls. Very discreet. They demand that their customers wear condoms, which suits me down to the ground because catching AIDS would not exactly brighten up my day.

  Even if I don’t get up the nerve to get some relief, then a change of scene would be good for me. A change is as good as a rest, they say.

  I called up Darlene, my travel agent, and asked her to book the flight and hotel. I will stay at the Larchmont in the Village, a very quiet little Bed and Breakfast on West 1
1th Street. I have the money to stay at the Sheraton, but I don’t think that I could stand being at a big hotel. I don’t want to negotiate the gauntlet of a huge lobby every day, dodging obsequious staff and roving packs of gawking tourists.

  ENTRY 32:

  Watching television is now making me physically ill. What are we the people supposed to do when confronted with the likes of Jerry Springer and his guests? There they are in all their glory, “ordinary people” trotting out their miserable little lives. I suppose we are meant to sit and wonder. Or are we meant to sit and feel nauseous? Who cares about these nonentities and their penny-anti problems? “MY HUSBAND RAN OFF WITH MY 16 YEAR-OLD BABY-SITTER!”

  Who truly gives a shit? And who can blame the poor sad clod of a husband when you see the blimp-like wife appear from backstage? What is it with the large proportion of American women? They get married, say “to hell with it” and then proceed to gain sixty pounds, give or take a few ounces. It’s repulsive. Yet does hubby ever ask why? “Why does my wife now resemble the Hindenburg?” Could it be possible that she piled on the pounds so she could repel all boarders, i.e., her paunchy, balding loser of a mate?

  And what about the 16 year-old? What in God’s name is going on in her bean brain? What would possess a groovy young thing like her to run off with the aforementioned has-been? Well, she is like any other example of today’s feckless youth, with an intellect just this side of plankton. She probably thinks that screwing an older man gives her some cachet; that it makes her “cool.” Maybe the dim teen imagines that she’s Catherine Zeta Jones to his Michael Douglas. Yeah, and I’m Brad Pitt. Maybe she thinks that he will “teach” her something. Yeah, sure. He will teach her how to suck his wizened cock for two minutes until he spasmodically has a half-orgasm while he dreams of wifey’s pot roast.

  Springer’s guests and audience are all so shriekingly common that I can only stand to watch ten seconds of these diabolical shows at one time. Just seeing the subject matter of that day’s program is enough to make me gag: “MY SON IS A TRANSVESTITE!” or “MY FIVE YEAR-OLD LIKES BEAUTY PAGEANTS AND HE IS A BOY!” I am just waiting for “MY HAMSTER LIKES IT UP THE ASS AND SO DOES MY HUSBAND!” to make my life complete.

  Yes, I only need to see the title and then take in the baying crowd—with Jerry goading them on like some demented master of ceremonies at the Roman Coliseum—and my gorge rises.

  It’s a shame that there isn’t an UGLY button on the television remote control, like the mute button. If anything offensive appears on the screen, just press the UGLY button and “shazam!”—only the truly beautiful will be left to pirouette in front of our bedazzled eyes. Trouble is, that would eradicate 95% of today’s television content. All that would remain would be the girls of the Baywatch reruns—they must have waxed their bikini lines every day, you never see a whisper (I’ve checked with a magnifying glass right up against the TV screen, so I should know)—and Heather Locklear.

  To be brutally honest, ordinary people should be put out of their misery as soon as humanly possible. How ludicrous to think that by spilling the sordid details of their mundane lives on nationwide TV that they will somehow become as famous as, say, the unfortunately named, asparagus-thin Gwyneth Paltrow or hunkier-than-thou Tom Cruise. We admire celebrities for their slim figures and cleanness of limb, their brighter-than-bright smiles and sparkling lives. There is no comparison between these glittering stars of the Hollywood firmament and the circus chimps that we see on display on the Springer show.

  I saw Jerry Springer being interviewed once and he said, “If you don’t like the show, you don’t have to watch it.” But that is an oversimplification of the problem. This kind of stuff is a disease. It is a pestilence. A plague of tasteless, low common denominator-type of programming that is rotting the collective brain of the nation. It isn’t just Jerry, it’s Leeza and Ricki and Sally and Maury and Oprah. It’s Survivor and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? and Temptation Island and American Idol. It’s a virus out of control, an Ebola of the mind.

  Someone should be held responsible.

  ENTRY 33:

  I spent the weekend in New York City and did nothing. I couldn’t get up the nerve to phone a call girl. I left my hotel room only to eat and see movies. I saw six movies. When I wasn’t eating and watching movies, I was gazing with dead eyes at the television.

  It would have been a complete waste of time and money, but something happened. That THING that I have been waiting for finally arrived in my head and now I have to decide what to do about it. It was quite extraordinary.

  My world rage came out and metamorphosed into something else. Something that doesn’t have a direction yet, but will soon, I feel it.

  Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, I was standing on a street corner in the Upper East Side, waiting for the green WALK sign. As I stepped off the sidewalk, police motorcycles appeared and the cops waved the pedestrians back. Then two limos whizzed past through the red lights. The occupants were fat, complacent, diplomat types.

  Now, what really burned me was that these guys broke the law with the help of the law, just because they were VIP’s. By the way, I’m only assuming that they were diplomats. There weren’t any little flags on the cars or anything. They just looked smug enough to fill the brief.

  Why did I get so angry? Was it because I was a white man being forced back on the sidewalk by two carloads of self-satisfied looking Africans? Yes, these guys were black and somehow I just knew that they weren’t Afro-Americans. I don’t think that race had anything to do with it. No, what infuriated me way beyond any logical level was that I knew that they knew that they were better than me. They were off to do important business—much more important than anything in my life. I was part of the crowd of “little people” and they were part of the ruling class—those fortunate few who could command the attention of the police and get the cops to do their bidding. It messed my head up. Right then and there, I decided that I didn’t want to be a little person anymore—drugged into submission by the elite on lethal doses of TV, the lottery and basketball games. The scraps they throw us to keep the population manageable.

  When I flew home that night, I threw away my television set.

  All the news I need I can get from the papers and the glorious Internet, spiritual home to potential nutcases everywhere. I have decided to go on a media diet: no TV, no sports, no playing the lottery. It’s tough giving up “24-Hour Breaking News!”—but I’m sure that I’ll survive.

  I know now that I need to slim down my flabby mental processes. I have to stop playing around in my fantasies and stand up to be counted. I need to make a difference. I am forty already and my life is splintering away into a million inconsequential pieces meaning fuck all. I haven’t made a dent in the impervious shell of life in general. I want to feel powerful again, like you do when you are twenty-one and have the world in your pocket.

  I need a cause.

  I have to think about this deeply. I have to make some choices. I know that this is all going to revolve around Elene somehow. She has to notice me. I want contact. I need her.

  What am I willing to do to feel powerful again? What am I going to do?

  I can’t answer these questions now, but I somehow feel that they will be answered for me soon enough. There is something bubbling away beneath the surface of my mind, a dark shadow of an idea. It is swimming with the sharks of my unconscious.

  ENTRY 34:

  Fucking Christmas is already on its merry way. Halloween isn’t even here yet and the Carousel Center has outfitted its so-called “Christmas Shoppe” so all the sad little shits can buy their Xmas cards early. Of course, if you were really wretched, you would have already bought your cards in last year’s after-Christmas sales. The other day, one of my more sad-sack neighbors, Wilbur Cartwright, said to me, “Isn’t it a shame how commercialized Christmas has become, Michael?” I was astounded he had said this to me, because:

  A. Did he really think I gave a flying fuck?

  B. Di
d he really think he had said something original?

  C. Did he really think that I cared what he thought about in the first place?

  Christmas long ago lost any meaning to just about anyone. I once knew a couple at the University who were both atheists. Keith and Lucy Burgess were their names. (Now why would I remember that useless piece of information? I should throw my head away.) Anyway, Keith and Lucy were Botany teachers or some damn thing and not only were they atheists, they taught their kids to be atheists, too. When anyone ever said, “Oh, my God,” they would always answer back sassily, “You called?”—as if they were Jackie Mason or something, and had just said the most hilarious joke in the world.

  Now you think that these people would eschew the trappings of an originally pagan festival celebrating the birth of a nonexistent Son of God, wouldn’t you, but, no, they went Christmas Crazy every year. They sent out hundreds of Christmas cards to people, accompanied by a newsletter lovingly penned by Lucy, detailing all their boring little escapades of the previous year. The package was topped off by a slew of nauseating pix of their little darlings. While these abominations were being perpetrated on their innocent friends, Lucy and Wilbur carefully preserved their objectivity by choosing to say “Season’s Greetings” instead of “Merry Christmas” on their cards. Excuse me, but why send them at all if you don’t believe in the damn thing? They bought the tree and loads of presents for the kids and took tons of mawkish photographs on Christmas morning with the children screaming and opening presents. Of course, the day was topped off with an enormous turkey dinner with all the trimmings—finally ending with the family going to bed with distended stomachs, so they could happily fart themselves to sleep.