Rourke and Otis were deeply in love, but really, really bad for each other. They married in 1992 and divorced in 1994, but reconciled shortly thereafter. He stalked her. There was a well-publicized incident of Otis being beaten black and blue that resulted in Rourke's arrest in 1994; previous to that there was an "accidental shooting" wherein Otis took a bullet while hanging around a film set with Rourke in Arizona. Otis now claims she was strung out on heroin a good deal of that time in response to Mickey's numerous infidelities. She is now a sober, rehabilitated Buddhist and in-demand plus-size model. Rourke has spent a good deal of time over the years groveling to get her back.

I used to see them at Gold's Gym in Hollywood a few times a week in 1995; it was the general consensus that they looked like they'd been living on nothing but Ho-Hos and bourbon for the previous 18 months, and in Mickey's case, steroids. Rourke once became enraged at "China Beach" star Jeff Kober for speaking to Otis and gave him a black eye in front of the gym.

In 1997, Rourke was reduced to making "Another 9-1/2 Weeks," aka "Love in Paris," wherein sadistic John is still looking for kicks but discovers that rubbing blondes' nipples with a straight razor just doesn't do it for him anymore.

Rourke's face is ruined. His upper lip is freakishly swollen, his nose puffy and flat, and one cheekbone protrudes like a purple walnut, presumably from a combination of boxing and ill-advised surgeries. Like a bad portrait tattoo of himself, Rourke is only recognizable when you squint. His voice has a strangely alcoholic gasping lilt, like Jan-Michael Vincent's or Harry Dean Stanton's. The producers would have been wise to replace Rourke: He has no chi left. Angie Everhart drags him around the screen like an arthritic dog. This worthless if artily shot film is a horrifying document of how much Rourke's inner demons had defaced him. The French, apparently, had no problem with this devolved version of Rourke and loved him more than ever.

I saw him once in 1997, in the Harry Cipriani restaurant at the Sherry Netherland in New York. He looked like his head had been sculpted out of wet cat food. He was huge and red, his face looked minced and swollen; his hair had been aggressively re-blonded, and he resembled no one so much as the apocalyptic cartoon character RanXerox. He was almost wholly unrecognizable.

One wonders if Rourke might have been happier if he could have stomached more bad, cartoonish, Hollywood Stallone roles like "Rambo," or Russell Crowe roles that called for more acting, fewer fisticuffs and less sexual boasting. His magazine portraits now, puckering in thuggy gymwear and stocking cap, suggest that he has become in real life a character much less complex and interesting than most of those he played on-screen. He consciously and aggressively gives off the impression that he is a dumb-ass tough guy; this seems to underline that he is insecure and haplessly needy. The tougher a guy looks and acts, as a general rule, the more frightened he is by life's searing personal confrontations.

The gym muscles, cosmetic surgery and box-tanning that have become Rourke's armor only suggest how thin his skin really is. This is a man crucified by an emotional volume knob that is always on 11, who, I reckon, has done more than his share of crying. Ultimately, all the available information on Rourke paints a sad picture of an incurable pussy hound who stuck his pretty face in front of fists and butchers until it wasn't pretty anymore, who fucked up the biggest love of his life by having no self-control, and screwed up his career by being unable to exact a mature compromise with the contemptible Hollywood status quo.

But for an actor superficially labeled as an idiotic bad boy, he didn't spare himself by coasting on a ridiculous image. His heart was full of bloody holes that he generously shared with audiences, much the way a cat brings headless chipmunks to the door as an act of love. He worked hard and turned out some pearls that the swine never picked up on.

I read one report about Rourke staggering down the street in Los Angeles with several Chihuahuas, talking to himself. He got kicked out of a coffee shop for bringing his little dogs in, and without argument went staggering off, mumbling, unable to ungrip his little dog friends long enough to buy coffee. Men with torrential feelings invariably become lonely monsters. One can only hope that now that nobody wants to see Mickey Rourke's vigorously clenching white ass in flagrante anymore, Hollywood can begin to appreciate and nurture his genuinely interesting and flexible talent for a certain flavor of desperate truth.

(For more information on Mickey Rourke, I recommend the excellent article "Call of the Mild," by Jessica Berens, available on the Simply Mickey Rourke Web site.)

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