The Nazis have begun their liquidation of Lvov, randomly murdering Jews for the sport of it and trucking away thousands to concentration camps. Here is a time and place of torture and death where everyone steals from everyone else to stay alive and nobody can be trusted—especially a sour and burly hamhock of a sewer worker and petty thief named Leopold Socha. Between robberies, he one day encountered some Polish Jews trying to escape from the ghetto before the Gestapo found them. For a price, he showed them how to climb down from a hole in the street into the murk and foul-smelling slime of the underground tunnels. Living with rats, eating a raw onion if they were lucky, separating from their families, giving birth to children surrounded by excrement, they miraculously survived for 14 months. When their money ran out, this accidental hero and his hardened, calloused wife above ground somehow discovered a conscience they didn’t know they had and protected their “children of war” from one near-fatal mishap after the next. In time, the lives of dependants and reluctant saviors alike intertwine with such inspired candor and force that the ensemble cast literally takes on the souls of the characters. They are so real that after a while you forget you are watching actors at all. This is especially true of Robert Wieckiewicz, an expressive and celebrated stage star in Poland who does wonders depicting the conflicting moral and religious instincts of Socha, a tough, emotionally detached sewer inspector and predatory crook whose criminal instinct for self-protection was betrayed by his new-found empathy for the disenfranchised. Only a handful of his Jews came through the ordeal alive, but the real Socha has since been honored for his humanitarian efforts, along with other brave Poles who altered human destiny by saving persecuted Jews from the gas chambers—specifically Oskar Schindler.

Warsaw-born director Holland, whose native epics about World War II, such as Europa, Europa, have always surpassed her more commercial English-speaking work (The Secret Garden, Washington Square), does such a thorough job depicting authenticity that the filth and degradation of the claustrophobic sewer eventually get to you. There’s an actual childbirth and the smothering of a baby I could not watch, as well as a deathly flood that proves to be an act of betrayal. It is to the credit of a sound screenplay by David Shamoon that the film carefully balances the fear and selfishness of the victims without sentimentality. Neither Socha nor the Jews are angels. Some of them are despicable on both sides of the equation. Without overdoing the atrocities, Ms. Holland attempts to illustrate the many cruel aspects of war’s effects on its victims as well as its perpetrators. The title is apropos, because most of the film submerges the viewer into a labyrinthine subterranean blackness that makes it difficult to share the experiences. We squint to watch them, and struggle to feel the sexual and emotional attractions that keep their minds from closing the bridge to insanity.

In Darkness is gloomy and hard to take for a running time of 145 minutes, but it’s an important film, related with deep conviction, and uncompromising in its understanding of the remarkable things members of the human race have done—to, for, and against each other—in the wilderness of war.

rreed@observer.com

IN DARKNESS

Running Time 145 minutes

Written by David F. Shamoon

Directed by Agnieszka Holland

Starring Robert Wieckiewicz, Benno Fürmann and Agnieszka Grochowska

3.5/4

Gentile Bellini’s portrait of Catarina Cornaro.

Times may be tough for New York’s museums, but that isn’t stopping the Metropolitan Museum of Art from mounting a major loan exhibition later this year. On December 19, the museum opens “The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini,” a blockbuster that will include about 160 works from more than 40 museums around the world.

Just the other day, The Observer noticed, the Met quietly put one of those major loans on view: Gentile Bellini’s portrait of Catarina Cornaro, the queen of Cyprus, comes from the Szepmuveszeti Muzeum in Budapest.

Like many Renaissance paintings, this one, which has just been cleaned and restored by the Met in preparation for the show, tells the story of a powerful figure humbling herself before a genius artist. The inscription on Bellini’s portrait of the queen states: “The senate of Venice calls me daughter.  Cyprus, seat of nine kingdoms, is subject to me.  You see how important I am, yet greater still is the hand of Gentile Bellini, which has captured my image on such a small panel.”

The Bellini painting's current sneak preview will be brief. “The Renaissance Portrait” opens in Berlin at the end of August at the Bode Museum, so the painting will hang at the Met only until it’s whisked off to Germany and then return with the full show in December.

The Bode, which co-organized the show, announced in June that Leonardo da Vinci's painting Lady With an Ermine will make an appearance there as part of “The Renaissance Portrait” before that painting travels on to the Leonardo exhibition at London’s National Gallery.  Will the Leonardo then travel to New York before heading back home to Poland?  The Met curator of this show, Keith Christiansen, was unavailable for comment, but his office, reached today, said no.

Maybe that will change, what with the London papers reporting yesterday that the Leonardo painting’s owner now doubts that the National Gallery is secure enough to protect its painting from something like the recent spray paint attack on a Poussin painting there.  Can New York hope for the Met being substituted for the National Gallery?  Stay tuned.

In related news, The Met, according to its website, is still looking for a corporate sponsor for “The Renaissance Portrait.”  Price tag:  $1 million.

I wake up feeling sick today, nauseous and tired. I dry heave off the side of the bed uncontrollably. Todd rouses, "You OK?"

"I'm fine, just need to eat." I scamper to the kitchen and open the fridge. Nothing looks appealing so I grab a cold Poland Spring and head to the bathroom to get ready for the day. I close the door behind me, inexplicably crouch over, rest my head on the toilet and I cry.

Saturday Afternoon.

We are at World Pie, a yummy eatery in Bridgehampton, excited to meet a potential florist. We're seated at an oversized booth, surrounded by crispy calamari and decadent veal parmigiana. (Fortunately I've overcome my nausea.) In between bites, Laura, the cute and spunky florist, shows us her designs: Pale pink tea roses in potted in terra cotta, sunflowers brimming with joy in tall cylindrical vases.

"Let's see," she begins, "you'll need seven bridesmaid's bouquets and one for each of your mothers and will there be any grandmothers present?"

"Yes," I say, "but no need to give her a bouquet."

"Well," Laura says, "it's nice to give her a bouquet."

"Right," I add, "but I'm not going to give her one."

Laura flips her straight blonde mane to the other side as she writes down "grandmother's bouquet."

"No," I repeat, "I really mean it, no bouquet for my grandmother." Laura smiles sweetly at me as if she wants to ship me to the loony bin.

To contextualize my grandmother, we all call her "the Godfather." Last Passover she sat at the head of my parents' extra long table draped with cousins, aunts and uncles, wore sunglasses through the entire dinner and did not say one word. Her favorite saying echoes Machiavelli: "It is better to be respected than loved." She can't stand Todd, ever since she convinced herself that he didn't want to sit next to her at Rosh Hashanah dinner two years ago. As a result she no longer kisses him or me hello at family functions.

Trying to change the subject I ask, "What do you think about draping some beautiful flowers on the long tables instead of in vases?"

"That could work but August is soooo hot! It could be 100 degrees! And then the flowers would wilt. I remember my wedding in August. It was insanely hot! You could do calla lilies but even those might dry up in August." Oblivious to my mounting anxiety at the prospective heat she continues, "I think it's brave to do an outdoor wedding in August..." Todd cuts her off, "I think you're freaking Gabby out."

"Yeah--" I add, "the heat was my biggest concern about doing a wedding at the vineyard in the first place." Never mind the fact that it's NOT MY DREAM WEDDING I shriek silently to myself. "I really wanted a beach wedding," I explain, "but everyone said if it rained we'd be in trouble."

"Oh well, it will be nice even if it is hot!" Laura says smiling, as we get up to leave. "I'll email you with a quote next week." She hugs Todd and me goodbye as if we're her best friends and walks out.

Monday morning:

The phone rings. It's my little sister, who at 28 is not so little but to me she always will be.

"Hiiiiii! How are you?" she asks.

"Nauseous," I say. It's 9 am and I'm still in bed.

"You're pregnant!" she half-jokes.

"No I'm not, impossible." Although I think about the one time two months ago when Todd and I let it slide. But that was one time.

"Go get a test right now. Mom thinks you're pregnant," she adds.

"Why would she say that?"

"You spoke to Dad this weekend and told him you weren't feeling well! Go out and get a test and call me back." She hangs up the phone. My little sister was born wise, confident and whip smart.

20 minutes later.

I have just peed onto the EPT pregnancy stick. I actually peed onto my hand, the toilet seat and the bathroom floor but enough probably splashed onto the white ominous rod. The blue line becomes visible and soon a pale, pale blue line appears crossing the darker line creating a plus sign. Plus for pregnant. But it's too faint to be sure. I walk into my living room which doubles as my office and I present my stick to my assistant who's been working quietly away since 8 am.

"OK, is this positive?"

"Good morning!" she greets me with her usual youthful cheer. Looking closely she says, "Looks positive to me." She then proceeds to read the directions which I failed to bother with: "Even a light blue line is positive."

Feeling queasy and light-headed I excuse myself and head to the bathroom. I take a long hard look in the mirror. I notice the fine lines etched in the corners of my eyes. I see the raven roots peaking from my otherwise blonde hair. I am too busy to have a baby and I am not ready.

One time without protection, I think to myself. Perhaps this is meant to be. And then it dawns on me. Maybe this is Immaculate Conception. Maybe this is God's child. But then I think maybe the Virgin Mary did it once with a sheepherder that she fell in love with but was ashamed and said that she was still a Virgin. Maybe once is enough.

This is the first New York exhibition for Mr. Adach, a native of Poland who lives and works in Paris. His art is typical of the Chelsea norm, which, at this point, is the international norm. (Ah, the benefits of globalism.) He paints from photographs and does so in a smart, savvy and slick manner.

But there's a difference: Mr. Adach is particular about the photographs he employs, and that particularity evinces a not-insignificant foundation. Some of the photos are from family albums; some are found; others are gleaned from periodicals and books. All of them share a palette (predominantly black and white) and a mood (somber). Even if you didn't know that Mr. Adach was preoccupied with communism and fascism-makes sense, given the land of his birth-you'd realize that oppression is his subject.

The paintings are burdened by narrative and feel drab with acceptance. The images can be prosaic (men on a wharf, nondescript architecture), redolent of disaster (a sinking ship, a dilapidated building) or filled with curious portent (those hot-air balloons, a rowboat on the lake). Mr. Adach's figures are either automatons or symbols; individual flesh and blood isn't his forte. A dour, unwelcome vein of nostalgia runs throughout the work, quickened at times (and just barely) by vaporous trails of red, pink and orange.

More an image-maker than a painter, Mr. Adach isn't up to the task of giving body to the weight of history. Mistaking a lax hand and a lot of drips for painterliness, he doesn't bother with developing a picture. His adroitness with a brush can't disguise an abiding callowness-he doesn't dig very deep. Still, the pictures aren't without spark; they certainly aren't without rationale. At the very least, Mr. Adach's art acknowledges the permanence of history. That's something in our amnesiac age. This is an auspicious debut; let's hope success doesn't go to his head, or D'Amelio Terras to his aesthetic.

Adam Adach: New Paintings is at D'Amelio Terras, 525 West 22nd Street, until April 30.

Goberism's

I did ultimately make it to Robert Gober's installation at the Matthew Marks Gallery. It has to be seen to be believed-but can it be understood? A Robert Gober Lexicon, two volumes published in conjunction with the current exhibition and available for 40 bucks at the front desk, looks to be the Rosetta stone for everything Goberesque.

Flipping through the pages, I noted references to Greek mythology, avowals of handicraft and photographs of paintings by Grünewald and Salvador Dali, and a section on the Elgin Marbles. Is it possible to comprehend Mr. Gober's work without a user's manual? Sex and death are a constant in the mix, yet with an artist as famously cryptic as this one, you need all the help you can get.

Strolling around the exquisitely arranged provocations at Marks-to name three: prints of the Sept. 12, 2001, edition of The New York Times printed both backwards and forwards; two waxy sets of legs ensconced in tubs threatening to overflow; and a sculpture of the crucifixion featuring a headless Christ with water streaming from his nipples-I felt, at last, that I had come to know Mr. Gober. He is a man of profound feeling and rare intellectual scope, a visionary troubled to the depths of his soul by the awful-just awful!-march of history.

That's what Mr. Gober would like us to believe. The truth is more mundane. The clammy neo-Dadaist mementos-did I mention the package of diapers displayed as if it were the Shroud of Turin?-are testimony to the revelations of a man who doesn't much venture outside the sticky confines of his psyche. Did you know that 9/11 was a significant and terrible event? Or that the 2004 Presidential election was, like, a big deal?

That Mr. Gober came to these realizations is a healthy sign-recognition of the outside world being a firm first baby step away from the strictures of self. All the same, it doesn't mean that the work gains in authority or that he's a changed man. If anything, it proves that art predicated on nihilism and narcissism is inherently ill equipped to illuminate world events. Mr. Gober can point, point, point to 9/11. What he can't do is convince us that it's anything more than a prop for his obsessions. That's the trouble with fetishists: They engage in experience only if it is funneled through the prerogatives of an intensely private need.

If you're inclined to meet Mr. Gober on his own icky patch of turf, you might find his 9/11 memorial, with its attendant digs at the Republican Party, a major and perhaps even moving piece of art. If you think art is a matter of expanding, redefining and deepening the turf, you'll puzzle over Mr. Gober's major rep. If you're outraged that someone should exploit history to satisfy his own ugly compulsions, you'll ask Mr. Gober to please keep it to himself.

Robert Gober is at the Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street, until April 23.

I made a beeline for the candles and threw them away–my first attempt at restoring my turf. I had been reluctant to sublet in the first place, and I wasn't looking forward to dealing with the artifacts invariably abandoned by the tenants. I was not prepared for what else I found.

The reason for the sublet was work-related. I had co-written and co-directed a movie called Knockaround Guys . The film was shot in Canada, finished in Los Angeles, and had kept me in those places for most of the past year.

The sublessors were a young woman in her early 20's and her ailing brother, age 10. She had left college in Boston during her senior year to take care of him here in New York. The boy, whose name is Logan, suffers from brain cancer and had to undergo radiation treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Their divorced mother was an international business executive temporarily forced to live in Poland. Her job was a financial necessity for the family. The father visited, but didn't live in the area.

The type of cancer Logan has, medulla blastoma, had once responded well to surgery and chemotherapy. Recurrence of this type of tumor after treatment, however, was something from which there was virtually no statistical chance of recovery. Soon after the early courses of chemo, Logan's cancer had recurred. The kid faced a death sentence.

The grounds for their stay had given me great pause when my wife and I were deciding whether or not to rent to Logan and his sister. I felt for them and their situation in a vague way, but the idea of a gravely ill person living, and possibly dying, in my apartment was not appealing.

There is also the matter of an inner hardness that I've wrestled with since I was young–a wall that I have built around my heart. It is a marshaling of my gifts against my own shortcomings and against the onslaught of the outside world. I'd probably started it around the time of my parents' divorce when I was 9, or perhaps it was a few years earlier when I lost my first Little League game. It is a ring of protection, of blindness, of youth and vigor against loss and infirmity and death. My wall quietly quaked upon first hearing about our potential renters.

My wife and I talked it over. She met with the sister, and we decided to rent to them.

Back from my sojourn, I toured the apartment and found the usual aftermath: burned-out light bulbs, some broken glasses, an area rug that, they warned us, had succumbed to a double hit of olive oil and red wine.

I also discovered a number of possessions that they had left behind. In the bedroom that the sister had used were several yoga tapes, a set of hand weights, three cacti. In the kitchen, a cappuccino grinder and a few bottles of fancy liqueur bore testament to a vital, modern life in progress.

Logan's castoffs were in the den where he had slept: a toy basketball hoop that glowed in the dark (called "The Luminator") and its accompanying ball, a book titled The Summer of the Monkeys , a souvenir cup-and-pencil set from the Jekyll & Hyde theme restaurant, a yellow whistle and the entire Harry Potter canon.

Seeing them, I felt I had glanced through a tiny window into the delicate soul of a little boy in struggle. I had never met Logan, but he became immediately vivid to me: a typical yet totally unique kid. He was inquisitive, active. He had an imagination and a sense of humor. He was brave. I wondered how he was facing his illness, and exactly how he spent his time in the apartment.

I thought of his sister. When I was her age, my sum obligations consisted of progressing through college with respectable grades and doing something job-like during the summers. My priorities then ranged from choosing which campus bar I might attend at night, to wondering how I might find employment once I graduated.

How did this young woman bear the weight–of caring for her brother, of seeing to his treatments, of watching him face his mortality–at a time in her life when the world was supposed to be hers?

I'd heard from my wife that Logan had asked his sister if he could live his "whole life on chemotherapy." She began to explain that no, he could not; that the body couldn't withstand it, and that the tumors would eventually become resistant and grow–

"Oh, no," he'd cut her off, "don't go any further."

Logan and his sister left the States for Poland shortly before we returned to the apartment. His treatment finished, he was reunited with the family dogs he loved so much. In an e-mail to my wife and me, his sister wrote that when she asked Logan if he wished for anything, he told her: "Donate to a charity for animals." Other than that, there was nothing he wanted.

That wall inside me, I realized long ago, functions poorly. While it can sometimes keep the pain out, it too often keeps feelings locked in. Despite this recognition, I have been, by and large, unable to dismantle it. Old habits die hard.

But in my apartment that day, the wall crumbled completely. I was beset by a consuming, impotent anger at the cruel unfairness of life. I was ashamed at the thousand "problems" I allowed to distract me from the simple beauties and gifts of daily life. I found myself in tears for a boy I'd never met, for his sister to whom I'd never spoken.

Until that moment, a "charmed life" had been just a concept to me. It was something I wished for, could momentarily taste in my own best times, and it was what I envied others for having during my worst. But Logan, who had left something of himself behind in my apartment, taught me that those words are not a mere concept, that they are inextricably linked. He left me hoping that he will beat the odds and live the long life he deserves. He left me feeling deeply for him and his family. He left me totally exposed, and wanting to remain that way.

six-decades-late apology by the president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski,

for the raw and unprovoked murder of the 1,600 Jewish men, women and children

of Jedwabne by their Christian neighbors. It's no surprise that this apology

angered the local priest, as well as Cardinal Józef Glemp, who raised the ugly

question of the extent of Jewish collaboration with the Soviets as the Germans

moved in. (Why wouldn't Jews collaborate with the Soviets? They weren't trying

to exterminate them.) Protesters and objectors across Poland were wounded in

their pride, believing in their nationalist hearts that their suffering under

the Nazis has been diminished and that they have been falsely dishonored. The

apology is an odd and not-entirely-wanted thing. It appears to me as if a skunk

has entered my house, and I am as afraid of it as it is of me.

The work of historian Jan T. Gross seems to have clearly

brought us the facts surrounding the 1941 massacre. German soldiers were in the

town, but they didn't participate in the rounding up and burning of Jews in a

barn or the brutal beatings of those who tried to escape. This was done by

Poles. This comes as no surprise to most of us; we have long known that Polish

anti-Semitism ran wild in those years. When the German planes first flew over

Warsaw, unruly crowds of Polish youth rushed to the Jewish sections of town,

beating anyone they found. When Jews released from Auschwitz returned to their

town, Kielce, in 1945, they were killed 

by Poles who didn't want them to reclaim their homes. Polish

anti-Semitism grew in the space between the rich landowner, his Jewish manager

and his peasants. It grew because the church taught it to generation after

generation. It was there in the 16th century, when Poles believed that Jews had

brought the plague to their towns, or that Jews were murdering Christian boys

in order to make matzo for the Passover ceremony. There is no news in this

story.

It is also true that there were Poles who risked their lives

to save Jews. Some hid them. Others turned them in to the Gestapo. It is true

that some fought in the resistance and rescued Jews who had fled into the

forests to become comrades in arms. Other members of the resistance found Jews

in the forests and handed them over to the enemy. Jews who were hidden or

existing on false papers during those years were afraid of all Poles. Some were

friends, but many were not.

The president of Poland was careful to say that he didn't

believe in collective guilt, but then he announced: "For this crime, we should

beg the souls of the dead and their families for forgiveness. I ask pardon in

my own name and in the name of the Polish people whose consciences are shocked

by this crime." The problem is that Mr. Kwasniewski didn't do it. Neither did

most of the Poles now living in Jedwabne. It is a stain on the national name,

but it is not a stain on the souls of the Poles who weren't born yet, or those

who helped Jews, or those who suffered acutely from the German occupation. And

besides, you can't apologize for someone else's act any more than I, as a Jew,

can forgive it. It is only for the dead to forgive, and only for the ones who

poured the gasoline, the ones who took a child and smashed her against the

ground, to apologize. And if we imagine that apology-"I'm so sorry that I

locked the door and lit the match"-we see clearly that there are no words, no

apology, no forgiveness possible.

Adam Michnik, the Polish dissident writer, has both written

an essay in The New York Times and

published a letter to Leon Wieseltier in The

New Republic in which he argues for the many Poles who behaved righteously

in hard times. He points out that Jews acted as police inside the ghetto,

collaborating with the Germans in the extermination of their own kind. Mr.

Wieseltier replied that there were many more Poles who didn't lift a finger to

save their erstwhile citizens. He states that there is a stain on Polish

identity that is not so easy to erase, and that ignoring or denying it will not

serve any desired end.

The Jewish view (and there is always more than one) is that

the Poles know exactly what we know. There is no debate that Poles suffered in

the war. Poles were rescuers, and if only more of them had tried, more Jews

might have survived. There is also no debate that the Jewish community of three

million souls was virtually wiped out and that Polish anti-Semitism helped

serve the Nazi purpose. The populace continued to ride the merry-go-round

outside the ghetto walls as the Jews starved within. It is no coincidence that

the camps were placed within Poland's borders. The Polish priests who for so

long saw Jews as Christ-killers (which they are not and were not) did not

denounce from the pulpit what was happening before their eyes.

But I don't want an apology. I don't believe in collective

guilt. If I did, then I would be guilty for slavery and the slaughter of the

Native Americans and the deaths in My Lai. I, too, am connected to my country

and want to be proud of all its people, but they are far too diverse-our

history too long, our beliefs too different-for me to take responsibility for

everyone else's actions. I am not the Ku Klux Klan, and I am not the Aryan

Nation, and I am not a toxic dumper or Baruch Goldstein. I believe it is

important for the Poles to know what happened and who among them turned beast

when the hour permitted. I do not believe it is important or sensible to

collect apologies from state dignitaries.

When we make other people feel guilty, they get very nasty.

They would much prefer to be victims than victors. Those who were harmed by the

Nazis certainly feel angry. The rescuers of Jews are bruised, as if their acts

didn't matter. Look how even the decent Mr. Michnik feels called upon to talk

about Israeli misdeeds as if they were equal to Holocaust crimes. Guilt seems

to be something that people will squirm any which way to avoid. In this matter,

the Poles are just like everyone else, as I suspect they are in all

matters-which is not to say much for them at all. History should tell the story

as best it can so that the myth-makers and wishful thinkers are pushed to the

margins. But we cannot expect the Poles to beat their breasts because many of

them were brutal when allowed to be so. Since they so value their national

pride, they should build it on solid ground. They should never harm another Jew

or Gypsy or human soul for the next 10,000 years. In the meantime, my anger is

not sated by "I'm sorry." My anger breathes with my breath, and nothing changes

that.

On the evening of Aug. 12, Houston the porn star was getting ready to go on stage in the basement dressing room of Legz Diamond's Burlesque Theatre, an all-nude, no-alcohol strip club on West 54th Street, across from the Ed Sullivan Theater.

There was only half an hour before show time Houston was sitting naked in a chair applying her makeup. Her blond hair was pulled back. She was drinking a cherry wine cooler and smoking a Marlboro Ultra Light. In some ways it was just like the sexy interrogation scene in Basic Instinct . But in other ways, it really wasn't. Marc Medoff, Houston's personal photographer and business partner, was taking pictures.

"I want to do some shots with the labia," Houston said, picking up what appeared to be a sculpture. It was three surgically removed pieces of her labia encased in Lucite on a marble stand.

"I wanted smaller pussy lips," Houston explained of her two-hour operation earlier this year. She figures she'll get $100,000 for the labia sculpture. "Sky's the limit," she said.

"Yeah, we definitely think there's some schmuck out there," Mr. Medoff said. "Houston's probably the most popular, most notorious porn star of all time."

Houston started doing porn at age 27. She's been in over 200 films and she travels the world making appearances most of the year. She'd been in Manhattan for a week, performing at Legz and promoting her most famous movie, The World's Biggest Gang Bang III: The Houston 500 , in which she had sex with 620 men in one day. She's also famous in New York for attending the prom of an 18-year-old Staten Island high school senior as part of a contest on the Howard Stern show. This was her last night at Legz Diamond.

Mr. Medoff was now shooting her with the labia sculpture. "Closer, close to your face," he instructed. "Close to your tongue, like you're licking your own pussy. How's it taste? Good. Good. Good. Now hold it up to your cheek like you did before. Good. Excellent. O.K., hold it down by your pussy so we can compare the two. But squat up on top of it–yeah, excellent. Awww, perfect, perfect. Hold it. Camera's having trouble focusing. Good. Good. Good. One more. It hurts?"

"It's so hot in here," Houston said.

"O.K., just squat back on top of it. Look at me," he said. "That's it!"

A lot of people know the public side of Houston the porn star, but very few know the real Houston. It's a side she keeps hidden from her public.

"I travel all over the world greeting people. I brought, what, $1,000 worth of dog food to an animal shelter in Poland. I put flowers on the Unknown Soldier's grave in Poland. I want to run an idea past the porn companies to have all the top players in the adult industry do a movie, have it called United We Lay and give all the money to the Free Speech Coalition. If I don't have them, I don't have a career."

She said she's supporting Al Gore for President: "I don't think we've done wrong with Clinton, and he preaches pretty much the same thing. I think as far as the adult industry goes, we need Gore."

What about Mayor Giuliani?

"He's closed down a lot of clubs I like. Like Wiggles."

She put on a black thong. She was getting ready to go on stage.

Mr. Medoff said he'd known Houston for five years. "A lot of the girls in the business are real fucking wack jobs," he said. "She's just a pleasure to be with."

Houston, do you ever think you're going to Hell?

"No. I have a big faith in the Lord and I pray and I've actually got this tattoo of an angel on the back of my neck, before I did the gang bang, as a sort of forgiveness to the Lord. My parents are very religious. My father is so religious and he basically prays for me every day. I've been blessed! I really have. My career is my career and somehow I differentiate the two. I mean, I'm so Kim and I'm so Houston. That's my real name but I don't want people to know."

She turned to Mr. Medoff. "Remember in Poland they called me the Antichrist? And it's so far from that. I have a tattoo of an angel on my neck! I did that to show the Lord that I love Him and that, you know, I'm sorry for this. I did it right before the gang bang. 'Sorry for doing the gang bang!' But I had to go there."

Houston, a gang bang. Why?

"I was able to be with my fans and have the same personality all day long for ten hours and get fucked . You know, that was an accomplishment … everyone came on me, it was amazing."

The best day of your life–what was it?

"The best day of my life was when Dallas came around."

The TV show?

"My daughter."

Houston put on a skimpy orange construction outfit and a work belt. Upstairs the club was packed and the crowd was going nuts.

"So once again, Houston!" the emcee was saying.

–George Gurley

Theories of Air Conditioning

"The universe began like an empty refrigerator," said refrigerator and air conditioner repairman Nelson Cabezas recently over coffee at Big Cup Tea and Coffee in Chelsea. Mr. Cabezas is the owner of Aleph Air Inc., a repair company that he runs out of his black Ford van. He was at Big Cup to fix a refrigerator that had broken a few days earlier. "First [God] creates a vacuum," Mr. Cabezas continued. "Then he shoots energy through it. The energy has DNA in it. The energy explodes, and it starts to create the walls of ten different universes–and in the center, that's the material universe."

Mr. Cabezas, 52, the son of the Nicaraguan Ambassador to the United Nations, got into the refrigeration repair business in 1995, first with his brother and later, after they stopped getting along, by himself.

Mr. Cabezas has a theory of the universe.

"It's all about vibration of energy. I'll tell you what it's like. Con Ed's got thousands and thousands of volts of energy in the big transformers. And those little plugs, they break it down to 115 [volts] so that you could use it. Step-down transformers step down the power. That's what the universe is like. God is so potent that it takes 10 universes–10 transformers–to create Earth. Energy converts to matter. The universe consists of the balance. When you're balanced, you throw your energy circuit-breaker on. As soon as you throw yourself off balance, the circuit breaker stops. The positive energy stops coming into you, and only the negative energy keeps going."

What do you think about when you fix refrigerators?

"It's too dangerous for me to concentrate on anything else than what I'm doing," he said. "I work with live voltage. You can't take chances. What I do find, though, is that I get very lucky with things when I go to work. Sometimes things don't work. There'll be something wrong with a refrigerator that won't allow, say, the electric compressor to go on. And then it just starts to work all of a sudden. But I won't even do anything to it, I'll just come to it, just turn it on. There's a lot of positive vibration that I pass on."

Mr. Cabezas had an explanation for that, too.

"I guess these are all low-voltage controls. Some of them probably aren't damaged enough that a good charge of positive energy can't get 'em going again."

He went outside to his van. On one side was a diagram of the universe with lots of stars and figures. "This is like the idea of electrical energy," he said, pointing to it. "It kind of looks like the grill in the back of a refrigerator–the condensing coils that cool the gas back there." Painted on the other side of the van were various Hebrew names for God.

Sometimes Orthodox Jews bother Mr. Cabezas about his van. "They'll say, 'You can't drive around on the Sabbath with this.' I'll say, 'I'm not Jewish, don't come up to me. I got my own philosophy. With Jews, all they think is you die and that's that. To me, that is absurd. What the Cabala teaches is to live forever. I'm going to live forever. This isn't a religion. This is a science."

–Ian Blecher