HEART OF DARKNESS

Anybody who reads this blog knows how much I enjoy poking fun at Brooklyn, with its Old School mix of fat people, runaway SUV’s, shootings, baseball bat concussions and delectable random instances of sundry miscellaneous animal brutality that makes The New York Post police blotter column such a daily hoot to read.

But it is the uncharted reaches of the Borough of Queens, with its mile upon mile of deceptively tranquil row houses, unsullied by even the faintest hint of anything even approaching human culture where, like a swamp, the placid scum-coated surface belies a thriving underworld of stifled ambitions, suppressed longings and vengeful loathing.

Queens is a municipality, not quite urban and not quite suburban, where, like a tropic marshland of the human heart, a tranquil stroll can suddenly erupt in deadly panic in a split second as a giant python attacks, locking itself around the unsuspecting victim and instantly choking the breath out of it before ingesting it whole, not leaving even a trace.

Not surprisingly, a large number of these predators are females, who are driven by more voluptuous needs and darker desires than the male of the species. And the victims, like those pathetic creatures on the margins of a herd of wildebeest who are the natural prey of the lions and jackals that surround them, waiting to pick off the most defenseless, are the aged and the infirm; desperate, lonely old men with a fortune of assets locked away and nothing to do with their time except while away their lives in anticipation of a visit from the Angel of Death.

The news reports are replete with dramas that a modern-day O’Henry would ignore because they take place tucked away in a far corner of the city too remote to occasion a visit by any literate person. But the heart beats nevertheless. And the desperate longing, which can eat away at a person like battery acid devouring human flesh, lies not far beneath the deceptively calm surface of everyday metropolitan life.


Witness the horror of 78 year-old Charles Schlechtiger, lured to a park by his 32 year-old paramour, Liat Corman, where he is ambushed by her confederate and beaten to death when he refuses to surrender the keys to his house.

Or 85 year-old Louis Bruno of Howard Beach, who met 19 year-old Natasha Marks outside a supermarket and told her, “That’s a beautiful coat you’re wearing.”

“I think you’re cute too,” she said, and proceeded to fleece the old geezer over the course of several months for a grand total of $800,000.

Now, the fact that these guys, living in working-class neighborhoods, have managed to amass so much in assets is a good indication that they have little or no experience in the ways of women. They obviously have lived their lives very frugally, only to find themselves old and rich with little in the way of eventful memories to comfort them in their old age.

This writer has had rather the opposite experience. Years of nightlife and fooling around with women and no money left. With the supercharged libido I inherited from my progenitors, my destiny was never in doubt. But at my stage of the game I can at least state unequivocally that I have a profound understanding of the nature of women.

Aside from my sentimental education, can I say that my money was well spent? The great American philosopher, Howlin’ Wolf, once sang, “If I had the money I spent on women, I’d be a millionaire.” Yeah, and a perfect patsy for a teenage jackal with a predilection for Perla lingerie.

At this stage of the game, I have to say that I am more or less immune to the seductive temptation of young women. Every time one passes by, I think of Howlin’ Wolf and say to myself, “There goes my money.” Then I think of George Thorogood singing, “She ain’t gonna get nuthin’!”

When you see these young girls, you got to think about the great baseball players of history. A guy with a lifetime batting average of .400, which is practically impossible, means that he hit four for ten. Most players don’t get close to that. The same goes for scoring with women – I figure batting for pussy, you’re doing good to be batting .200. That means four dates of spending your money, having to put up with lame conversation about the new musical about “The Grinch That Stole Christmas” and getting a handshake for every one time you get your pecker wet. And this being New York, you’re just as likely to get hit up for cabfare, a twenty-dollar loser’s penalty, so that her lazy butt can ride back to the Bronx in the lap of luxury while you take the subway home with all the lunatics on the N train for company.

Uh-uh! Like George Thorogood sang, “She ain’t gonna get nuthin’!”

Look at Giacomo Casanova, the Babe Ruth of pussy. He made and lost multiple fortunes in eighteenth century Europe, always blowing his money on women. When he got old and ran out of steam he had to take a job as librarian in the castle of a Prussian nobleman, where all the working stiffs, subway riders of their time, intensely jealous of his worldwide reputation as the World’s Greatest Lover, hounded him on a continual basis, “Hey, loverboy, you ain’t so hot now!” until the day he died. Meanwhile, the women had all his assets.

It’s sort of like the black widow spider, where, after mating, the female kills the male and sucks him dry of all his bodily fluids, as General Jack D. Ripper so delicately described the process in “Dr. Strangelove.” Except with human American women, they just suck you dry and let you live (sometimes).

The reigning Queen of all this nasty sucking process for our time has got to be Anna Nicole Smith, who cleaned out her old boy to the tune of eight hundred million dollars, which is more than some whole countries live on.

Not for Anna Nicole Smith the American Dream of hard work and smart investing. She made her money the old-fashioned way, by sucking the dick of an eighty-five year old man, though, to be fair, when she got on her knees in front of the wheelchair, the pedals must have made for a very uncomfortable blowjob.

No matter, the old boy couldn’t do enough for her in return. “Someday all this will be yours,” he told her. And then he croaked.

I fell bad for Anna Nicole Smith. She had a son, whom she loved, and then she had a little daughter. The photo of the three of them together showed how happy she was, and I certainly wished them all well.

Then her son, who was a moron, died of an overdose about an hour after that picture was taken. This kid was heir to hundreds of millions of dollars. She certainly would have given him anything he wanted. Instead of enjoying a rich young life, he wore a trucker’s cap and drowned to death on his own vomit.

His mother, as lucid and focused a person as ever existed, sizing up the situation very clearly, shed a tear for him as a star-crossed loser and got him planted in the ground in time to make it to her next fashion shot. Life goes on, and she had a new daughter. Let’s hope she has better luck with her latest child.

In the meantime, I have taken up the harmonica to get my mind off the women. You want me to blow you a song?

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Posted on 10/7/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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