The Perfume Burned His Eyes. Michael Imperioli
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Table of Contents
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to Victoria, for a love inconceivable
to my children, for being my greatest teachers
I’ve known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you’re more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged. —from Marguerite Duras, The Lover
one
On this, the 24th of July in the year 1977, in the Borough of Manhattan of the State of New York, being of sound mind and body, I . . .
This was originally meant to be a last will and testament type of thing, maybe it still will be at some point. I don’t know. Right now I just want to get as much as I can down on paper. I have been praised for this effort and told that it may bring me some clarity. I was not aware I lacked clarity or that the events described here were unclear, but that is what I have been told by people who are supposed to know about such things.
I have also been informed that this is a very difficult time in one’s life and it’s not uncommon for folks my age to find themselves in similar situations. This brings me no comfort, and I feel it is important for me to state that for the record. Even if the record is a shitty little ninety-nine-cent notebook.
With this in mind, I would like to start at the most logical beginning. Although to be technical, dear sirs or madams, my birth would be the most formal or official beginning, and even further we could trace things back to my parents—how they met, their courtship and marriage, my conception . . . But I will spare you all those gory details and jump to the year when shit started to happen and people died and life as I knew it altered itself beyond recognition.
My parents split up a few days after the new year began so my dad hit the road in his shit-brown ’72 Chrysler Newport. He had three garbage