place.
Bukowski thought Mickey Mouse was a nazi; Bukowski made an ass out of
himself at Barney's Beanery; Bukowski made an ass out of himself at Shelly's
Manne-Hole; Bukowski is jealous of Ginsberg, Bukowski is jealous of the 1969
Cadillac, Bukowski can't understand Rimbaud; Bukowski wipes his ass with
brown hard toilet paper, Bukowski will be dead in 5 years, Bukowski hasn't
written a decent poem since 1963, Bukowski cried when Judy Garland... shot a
man in Reno.
I sit down. stick the sheet in the typer. open a beer. light a smoke.
I get one or two good lines and the telephone rings.
"Buk?"
"yeah?"
"Marty."
"hello, Marty."
"listen, I just ran across your last 2 columns. it's good writing. I
didn't know you were writing so well. I want to run them in book form. have
they come back from GROVE yet?"
"yeah."
"I want them. your columns are as good as your poems."
"a friend of mine in Malibu says my poems stink."
"to hell with him. I want the columns."
"they're with ---- ----."
"hell, he's a pornie-man. if you go with me you'll hit the
universities, the best book stores. when those kinds find you out, it's all
over; they're tired of that involute shit they've been getting for
centiries. you'll see; I can see bringing out all your back and unavailable
stuff and selling it for a buck, or a buck and a half a copy and going into
the millions."
"aren't you afraid that will make a prick out of me?"
"I mean, haven't you always been a prick, especially when you've been
drinking... by the way, hoh've you been doing?"
"they say I grabbed a guy at Shelly's by the lapels and shook him up a
bit. but it could have been worse, you know."
"how do you mean?"
""I mean, he could have grabbed me by the lapels and shook me up a bit.
a matter of pride, you know."
"listen, don't die or get killed untill we get you out in those buck
and a half editions."
"I'll try not to, Marty."
"how's the 'Penguin' coming?"
"Stanges says January. I just got the page proofs. and a 50 puond
advance which I blew on the horses."
"can't you stay away from the track?"
"you bastards never say anything when I win."
"that's right. well, let me know on the columns."
"right. good night."
"good night."
Bukowski, the big-time writer; a statue of Bukowski in the Kremlin,
jacking off; Bukowski and Castro, a statue in Havana in the sunlight covered
with birdshit, Bukowski and Castro riding a tandem racing bike to victory -
Bukowski in the rear seat; Bukowski bathing in a neat of orioles; Bukowski
lashing a 19-years-old high-yellow with a tiger whip, a high-yellow with 38
inch busts, a high-yellow who reads Rimbaud; Bukowski kukoo in the walls of
the world, wondering who shut off the luck... Bukowski going for Judy
Garland when it was too late for everybody.
then I remember the time and get back in the car. just off Wilshire
Boulevard. there's his name on the big sign. we once worked the same shit
job. I am not too crazy about Wilshire blvd. but I am still a learner. I
don't block out anything. he's half-coloured, from a white mother, black
father combo. we fell together on the shit job, something manual. mostly not
wanting to wade in shit forever, and although shit was a good teacher there
were only so many lessons and then it could drown you and kill you forever.
I parked in back and beat on the back door. he said he'd wait late that
night. it was 9:30 p.m. the door opened.
TEN YEARS. TEN YEARS. ten years. ten years. ten. ten fucking YEARS.
"Hank, you son of a bitch!"
"Jim, you lucky mother..."
"come on up."
I followed him in. jesus, so you don't buy all that. but it's nice
especially with the secretaries and staff gone. I block nothing. he has 6 or
8 rooms. we go in to his desk. I rip out the two 6 packs of beers.
ten years.
he is 43. I am 48. I look at least 15 years older than he. and feel
some shame. the sagging belly. the hang-dog air. the world has taken many
hours and ten years from me with their very dull and routine tasks; it
tells. I feel shame for my defeat. the best revolutionary is a poor man; I
am not even a revolutionary, I am only tired. what a bucket of shit was
mine! mirror, mirror on the wall...
he looked good in a light yellow sweater, relaxed and really happy to
see me.
"I've been going through hell," he said, "I haven't talked to a real
human being in months."
"man, I don't know if I qualify."
"you qualify."
that desk looks twenty feet wide.
"Jim, I been fired from so many places like this. some shit sitting in
a swivel. like a dream upon a dream upon a dream, all bad. now I sit here
drinking beer with a man behind a desk and I don'y know anymore now than I
did then."
he laughed. "baby, I want to give you your own office, your own chair,
your own desk. I know what you're getting now. I want to double that."
"I can't accept it."
"why?"
"I want to know where my value would be to you?"
"I need your brain."
I laughed.
"I'm serious."
then he laid out the plan. told me what he wanted. he had one of those
stirring motherfucking brains that dreamed that sort of thing up. it seemed
so good I had to laugh.
"it'll take 3 months to set it up," I tell him.
"then a contract."
"o.k. with me. but these things sometimes don't work."
"it'll work."
"meanwhile I've got a friend who'll let me sleep in his broom closet if
the walls fall in."
"fine."
we drink 2 or 3 more hours then he leaves to get enough sleep to meet
his friend for a yachting next morning (Saturday) and I tool around and
drive out of the high rent district and hit the first dirty bar for a closer
or two. and son of a bitch if I don't meet a guy I used to know down at a
job we both used to have.
"Luke!" I say, "son of a bitch!"
"Hank, baby!"
another coloured (or black) man, (what do the white guys do at night?)
he looks low so I buy him one.
"you still at the place?" he asks.
"yeah."
"man, shit," he says.
"what?"
"I couldn't take it anymore where you're at, you know, so I quit. ma, I
got a job right away. wow, a change, you know. that's what kills a man: lack
of change."
"I know, Luke."
"well, the first morning I walk up to the machine. it's a fibre glass
place. I've got on this open neck shirt with short sleeves and I notice
people staring at me. well, hell, I sit down and start pressing the levers
and it's all right for a while and next thing you know I start itching all
over. I call the foreman over and I say, 'hey, what the hell's this? I'm
itching all over! my neck, my arms, everywhere!' he tells me, 'it's nothing,
you'll get used to it.' but I notice he has on this scarf buttoned up all
the way around his throat and this long-sleeved working shirt. well, I come
in the next day all scarfed-up and oiled and buttoned but it's still no good
- this fucking glass is shiving off so fine you can't see it and it's all
little glass arrows and it goes right through the clothing and into the
skin. then I know why they make me wear the protective glasses for my eyes.
could blind a man in half an hour. I had to quit. went to a foundry, man, do
you know that men POUR THIS WHITE HOT SHIT INTO MOLDS? they pour it like
bacon-grease or gravy. Unbelievable! and hot! shit! I quit. man, how you
doing?"
"that bitch there, Luke, she keeps looking at me and grinning and
pulling her skirt higher."
"don't pay any attention. she's crazy."
"but she has beautiful legs."
"yes, she has."
I buy another drink, pick up, walk over to her.
"hello, baby."
she goes into her purse, comes out, hits the button and she's got a
beautiful 6 inches swivel. I look at the bartender who looks blank-faced.
the bitch says, "one step closer and you got no balls!"
I knock her drink over and when she looks at that I grab her wrist,
twist the swivel out, fold it, put it into my pocket. the bartender still
looks neutral. I go back to Luke and we finish our drinks. I notice it's ten
to 2 and get 2 six packs from the barkeep. we go out to my car. Luke's
without wheels. she follows us. "I need a ride." "where?" "around Century."
"that's a long way." "so what, you motherfuckers got my knife."
by the time I am halfway to Century I see those female legs lifting in
the back seat. when the legs come down I pull down a lond dark corner and
tell Luke to take a smoke. I hate seconds but when first haven't been for a
long time and you're supposed to be a great Artist and an understander of
Life, seconds just HAVE to do, and like the boys say, with some, seconds are
better. it was good. when I dropped her off I gave her the switchblade back
wrapped in a ten. stupid, of course. but I like to be stupid. Luke lives
around 8th and Irola so it's not too far in for me.
as I open the door the phone begins ringing. I open a beer and sit in
the rocker and listen to it ring. for me, it's been enough - evening, night
and morning.
Bukowski wears brown b.v.d's. Bukowski is afraid of airplanes. Bukowski
hates Santa Klaus. Bukowski makes deformed figures out of typewriter
erasers. when water drips, Bukowski cries. when Bukowski cries, water drips.
o, sanctums of fountains, o scrotums, o fountaining scrotums, o man's great
ugliness everywhere like the fresh dogturd that the morning shoe did not see
again; o, the mighty police, o the mighty weapons, o the mighty dictators, o
the mighty damn fools everywhere, o the lonely lonely octopus, o the clock-
tick seeping each neat one of us balanced and unbalanced and holy and
constipated, o the bums lying in alleys of misery in a golden world, o the
children to become ugly, o the ugly to become uglier, o the sadness and
sabres and the closing of the walls - no Santa Claus, no Pussy, no Magic
Wand, no Cinderella, no Great Minds Ever; kukoo - just shit and the whipping
of dogs and children, just shit and the whiping away of shit; just doctors
without patients just clouds without rain just days without days, o god o
mighty that you put this upon us.
when we break into your mighty KIKE palace and timecard angels I want
to hear Your voice just saying once
MERCY
MERCY
MERCY
FOR YOURSELF and for us and for what we will do to You, I turned off of
Irola until I hit Normandie, that's what I did, and then came in and sat and
listened to the telephone ring.
===
Night streets of madness
the kid and I were the last of a drunkman party at my place, and we
were sitting there when somebody outside began blowing a car horn, loud LOUD
LOUD it was, oh sing loud, but then everything is axed through the head
anyway. the world is done, so I just sat there with my drink, smoking a
cigar, thinking of nothing - the poets were gone, the poets with their
ladies were gone, it was fairly pleasant even with the horn going. a
comparison. the poets had each accused other of various treacheries, of bad
writing, of having slipped; meanwhile, each of them claiming they deserved
better recognition, that they wrote better than so and so and so forth. I
told them all that they needed 2 years in the coal mines or the steel mills,
but on they chattered, finky, precious, barbaric, and most of them rotten
writers. now they were gone. the cigar was good. the kid sat there. I had
just written a foreword to his second book of poems. or his first? well.
"listen," said the kid, "let's go out there and tell them to fuck-off.
tell him to jam that horn up his ass."
the kid wasn't a bad writer, and he had the ability to laugh at
himself, which is sometimes a sign of greatness, or at least a sign that you
have a chance to end up being something else besides a stuffed literary
turd. the world was full of stuffed literary turds talking about the time
they met Pound at Spoleto or Edmund Wilson in Boston or Dali in his
underwear or Lowell in his garden; sitting there in their tiny bathrobes,
letting you have it, and NOW you wew talking to THEM, ah, you see. "... the
last time I saw Burroughs..." "Jimmy Baldwin, jesus, he was drunk, we had to
trot him out on the stage and lean him on the mike..."
"let's go out there and tell them to jam that horn up their ass," said
the kid, influenced by the Bukowski myth (I am really a coward), and the
Hemingway thing and Humphrey B. and Eliot with his panties rolled. well. I
puffed on my cigar. the horn went on. LOUDE SING KUKOOO.
"the horn's all right. never go out on the streets after you've benn
drinking 5 or 6 or 8 or ten hours. they have cages ready for the like us. I
don't think I could take another cage, not one more god damned cage of
theirs. I build enough of my own."
"I'm going out to tell them to shove it," said the kid.
the kid was under the superman influence, Man and Superman. he liked
huge man, tough and murderous, 6-4, 300 pounds, who wrote immortal poetry.
the trouble was the big boys were all subnormal and it was the dainty little
queers with the fingernail polish on who write the tough-boy poems. the only
guy who fit the kid's hero-mold was big John Thomas and big John Thomas
always acted as if the kid weren't there. the kid was Jewish and big John
Thomas had the mainline to Adolph. I liked them both and I don't like very
many people.
"listen," said the kid, "I am going to tell them to jam it."
oh my god, the kid was big a little on the fat side, he hadn't missed
too many meals, but he was easy inside, scared and worried and a little
crazy like the rest of us, none of us made it, finally, and I said, "kid,
forget the horn. it doesn't sound like a man blowing anyway. it sounds like
a woman. a man will stop and start with a horn, make musical threats out of
it. a woman just leans on it. the total sound, one big female neurosis."
""fuck it!" said the kid. he ran out the door.
what does this have to do with anything? I thought. what does it
matter? people keep making moves that don't count. when you make a move,
everything must be mathematically set. that's what Hem learned at the
bullfights and put to work in his work. that's what I learn at the track and
put to work in my life. good old Hem and Buk.
"hello, Hem? Buk calling."
"oh, Buk, so glad you called."
"thought I'd drop over for a drink."
"oh, I'd love it, kid, but you see, my god, you might say I'm kinda out
of town right now."
"but why'd you do it, Ernie?"
"you've read the books. they claim I was crazy, imagining things. in
and out of the bughouse. they say I imagined the phone was tapped, that I
imagined the C.I.A. was on my ass, that I was being tailed and watched. you
know, I wasn't really political but I always fucked with the left. the
Spanish war, all that crap."
"yeah, most of you literary guys lean left. it seems Romantic, but it
can turn into a hell of a trap."
"I know. but really, I had this hell of a hungover, and I knew I had
slipped, and when they believed in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, I knew that the
world was rotten."
"I know. you went back to your early style. but it wasn't real."
"I know it wasn't real. and I got the PRIZE. and the tail on me. old
age on me. sitting around drinking like an old fuck, telling stale stories
to anybody who would listen. I had to blow my brains out."
"o.k., Ernie, see you later."
"all right, I know you will, Buk."
he hung up. and how.
I went outside to check on the kid.
it was an old woman in a new '69 car. she kept leaning on the horn. she
didn't have any legs. any breasts. any brain. just a '69 car and
indignation, great and total indignation. a car was blocking her driveway.
she had her own home. I lived in one of the last slum courts on DeLongpre.
someday the landlord would sell it for a tremendous sum and I would be
bulldozed out. too bad. I threw parties that lasted until the sun came up,
ran the typer day and night. a madman lived in the next court. everything
was sweet. one block North and ten blocks West I could walk along a sidewalk
that had footprints os STARS upon it. I don't know what the names mean. I
don't hit the movies. don't have a t.v. when my radio stopped playing I
threw it out the window. drunk. me, not the radio. there is a big hole in
one of my windows. I forgot the screen was there. I had to open the screen
and drop the radio out. later, whilst I was drunken barefoot my foot (left)
picked up all the glass, and the doctor while slitting my foot open without
benefit of a shot, probing for ballsy glass, asked me, "listen, do you ever
walk around not quite knowing what you are doing?"
"most of the time, baby."
then he gave me a big cut that wasn't needed.
I gripped the sides of the table and said, "yes, Doctor."
then he became more kindly. why should doctors be better than I am? I
don't understand it. the old medicine man gimmick.
so there I was out on the street, Charles Bukowski, friend of
Hemingway, Ernie, I have never read DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON. where do I get a
copy?
the kid said to the crazy woman in the car, who was only demanding
respectful and stupid property rights, "we'll move the car, we'll push it
out of the way."
the kid was talking for me too. now that I had written his foreword, he
owned me.
"look, kid, there's no place to push the car. and I really don't care.
I'm going in for a drink." it was just beginning to rain. I have a most
delicate skin, like an alligator, and soul to match. I walked off. shit, I'd
had enough wars.
I walked off and then just as I about got to my front court hole, I
heard screaming voices. I turned.
then we had this. a thin kid, insane, in white t-shirt screaming at the
fat Jewisj poet I had just written a foreword to poems for. what had the
white t-shirt to do with it? the white t-shirt pushed against my semi-
immortal poet. he pushed hard. the crazy old woman kept leaning against the
car horn.
Bukowski, should you test your left hook again? you swing like the old
barn door and only win one fight out of ten. when was the last fight you
won, Bukowski? you should be wearing women's panties.
well, hell, with a record like yours, one more loss won't be any big
shame.
I started to move forward to help the Jewish kid poet but I saw he had
white t-shirt backing up. then out of the 20 million dollar highrise next to
my slum hole, here came a young woman running. I watched the cheecks of the
ass wobble in the fake Hollywood moonlight.
girl, I could show you something you will, would never forget - a solid
3 and one quarter inches of bobbling throbbing cock, oh my, but she never
gave me a chance, she asshole-wobbling ran to her little 68 Fiaria or
however you spell it, and got in, pussy dying for my poetic soul, and she
got in, started the thing, got it out of the driveway, almost ran me over,
me Bukowski, BUKOWSKI, hummm, and ran the thing into the underground parking
of the 20 million buck highrise. why hadn't she parked there to begin with?
well.
the guy in the white t-shirt is still wobbling around and insane, my
Jewish poet has moved back to my side there in the Hollywood moonlight,
which was like stinking dishwater spilling over us all, suicide is so
difficult, maybe our luck will change, there's PENGUIN coming up, Norse-
Bukowski-Lamantia... what?
now, now, the woman has her clearence for her driveway but she can't
make it in. she doesn't aven angle her car properly. she keeps backing up
and ramming a white delivery truck in front of her. there go the taillights
on first shot. she backs up. hits the gas. there goes half a back door. she
backs up. hits the gas. there goes all the fender and half the left side, no
the right side, that's it the right side. nothing adds. the driveway is
clear.
Bukowski-Norse-Lamantia. Penguin books. it's a damn good thing for
those other two guys that I am in there.
again chickenshit steel mashing against steel. and in between she's
leaning on the horn. white t-shirt dangling in the moonlight, raving.
"what's going on?" I asked the kid.
"I dunno," he finally admitted.
"you'll make a good rabbi some day but you should understand all this."
the kid is studying to be a rabbi.
"I don't understand it," he said.
"I need a drink," I said. "if John Thomas were here he'd murder them
all. but I ain't John Thomas."
I was just about to leave, the woman just kept on ramming the white
pickup truck to pieces, I was just about to leave when an old man in a
floppy brown overcoat and glasses, a real old guy, he was older than I, and
that's old, he came out and confronted the kid in the white t-shirt.
confronted? that's the right word ain't it?
anyhow, as they say, the old guy with glasses and floppy brown overcoat
runs out with this big can of green paint, it must have been at least a
gallon or 5 gallons, I don't know what it means, I have completely lost the
plot or the meaning, if there ever was any in the first place, and the old
man throws the paint on the insane kid in the white t-shirt circling around
on DeLongpre ave. in the chickenshit Hollywood moonlight, and most of it
misses him and some of it gets him, mostly where his heart used to be, a
smash of green along the white, and it happens fast, like things happen
fast, almost quicker than eye or the pulse can add up, and that's why you
get such diverent accounts of any action, riot or fist fight or anything,
the eye and the soul can't keep up with the frustrating animal ACTION, but I
saw the old man go down, fall, I think the first was a push, but I know that
the second wasn't. the woman in the car stopped ramming and honking and just
sat there screaming, screaming, one total pitch of scream that meant the
same thing as her leaning on the honker, she was dead and finished forever
in a '69 car and she couldn't fathom it, she was hooked and broken, thrown
away, and some small touch inside of her still realized this - nobody ever
finally loses their soul - they only piss away 99/100ths of it.
white t-shirt landed goon on the old man on the second shot. broke his
glasses. let him flopping and floundering in his own brown overcoat. the old
man got up and the kid gave him another shot, knocked him down, hit him
against as he got halfass up, the kid in the white t was having a good time
of it.
the young poet said to me, "JESUS! LOOK WHAT HE'S DOING TO THE OLD
MAN!"
"humm, very interesting," I said, whishing I had a drink or a smoke at
least.
I walked off back toward my place. then I saw the squad car and moved a
bit faster. the kid followed me in.
"why don't we go back out there and tell them what happened?"
"because nothing happened except that everybody has been driven insane
and stupid by life. in this society there are only two things that count:
don't be caught without money and don't get caught high on any kind of
high."
"but he shouldn't have done that to the old man."
"that's what old men are for."
"but what about justice?"
"but that is justice: the young whipping the old, the living whipping
the dead. don't you see?"
"but you say these things and you're old."
"I know, let's step inside."
I brought out some more beer and we sat there. through the walls you
could hear the radio of the stupid squad car. 2 twentytwo years old kids
with guns and clubs were going to be the immediate decision-makers upon
2,000 years of idiotic, homosexual, sadistic Christianity.
no wonder they felt good in their smooth and well-fed stretched black,
most policemen being lower-middle class servants given a steak in the frying
pan and a wife with halfway decent ass and legs, and a little quiet home in
Shitland - they'd kill you to prove Los Angeles was right, we're taking you
in, sir, so sorry, sir, but we've got to do this, sir.
2,000 years of Christianity and what do you end up with? squad-car
radios trying to hold rotting shit together, and what else? tons of wars,
little air raids, muggers in streets, knifings, so many insane that you just
forget it, you just let them run the streets in policeman's uniforms or out
of them.
so we went inside and the kid kept saying,
"hey, let's go out there and tell the police what happened."
"no, kid, please. if you are drunk you are guilty no matter what
happens."
"but they are right outside, let's go to tell them."
"there's nothing to tell."
the kid looked at me as if I were some kind of chickenshit coward. I
was. the longest he had ever been in jail was 7 hours under some kind of
east L.A. campus protestation.
"kid, I think that the night is over."
I threw him a blanket for the couch and he went to sleep. I took 2
quarts of beer, opened both, set them on the headboard of my rented bed,
took a big swallow, stretched out, waited on my death as Cummings must have
done, Jeffers, the garbage man, the newspaper boy, the tout...
I finished off the beers.
the kid woke up about 9:30 a.m. I can't understand early risers.
Micheline was another early riser. running around ringing doorbells, waking
everybody up. they were nervous, trying to push down walls. I always figured
a man was a damn fool if he got up before noon. Norse had the best idea -
sit around in silk robe and pajamas and let the world go its way.
I let the kid out the door and off he went into the world. the green
paint was dry on the street. Maeterlinck's bluebird was dead. Hirschman sat
in a dark room with a bloody right nostril.
and I had written another FOREWORD to another book of somebody's
poetry. how many more?
"hey, Bukowski, I've got this book of poems here. I thought you might
read the poems and say something."
"say something? but I don't like poetry, man."
"that's all right. just say something."
the kid was gone. I had to take a shit. the toilet was clogged; the
landlord gone for 3 days. I took the shit and put it in a brown paper bag.
then I went outside and walked with the paperbag like a man going to work
with his lunch. then when I got to the vacant lot I threw the bag. three
forewords. 3 bags of shit. nobody would ever understand how Bukowski
suffered.
I walked back toward my place, dreaming of supine women and everlasting
fame. the former would be nicer. and I was running out of brown bags. I
mean, paper bags. 10 a.m. there was the mailman. a letter from Beiles in
Greece. he said it was raining there too.
fine, then, and inside I was alone again, and the madness of the night
was the madness of the day. I arranged myself upon the bed, supine, staring
upward and listened to the cocksucking rain.
===
Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip
I WALKED AROUND outside and thought about it. It was the longest one I
ever got. Usually they only said, "Sorry, this did not quite make the grade"
or "Sorry, this did't quite work in." Or more often, the regular printed
rejection form.
But this was the longest, the longest ever. It was from my story "My
Adventures in Half a Hundred Rooming Houses." I walked under a lamppost,
took the little slip out of my pocket and reread it -
Dear Mr. Bukowski:
Again, this is a conglomeration of extremely good stuff and other stuff
so full of idolized prostitutes, morning-after vomiting scenes, misanthropy,
praise for suicide etc. that it is not quite for a magazine of any
circulation at all. This is, however, pretty much a saga of a certain type
of person and in it I think you've done an honest job. Possibly we will
print you sometime, but I don't know exactly when. That depends on you.
Sincerely yours,
Whit Burnett
Oh, I knew the signature: the long "h" that twisted into the end of the
"W," and the beginning of the "B" which dropped halfway down the page.
I put the slip back in my pocket and walked on down the street. I felt
pretty good.
Here I had only been writing two years. Two short years. It took
Hemingway ten years. And Sherwood Anderson, he was forty before he was
published.
I guess I would have to give up drinking and women of ill-fame, though.
Whiskey was hard to get anyhow and wine was ruining my stomach. Millie
though - Millie, that would be harder, much harder.
...But Millie, Millie, we must remember art. Dostoievsky, Gorki, for
Russia, and now America wants an Eastern-European. America is tired of
Browns and smiths. The Browns and the Smiths are good writers but there are
too many of them and they all write alike. America wants the fuzzy
blackness, impractical meditations and repressed desires of an Eastern-
European.
Millie, Millie, your figure is just right: it all pours down tight to
the hips and loving you is as easy as putting on a pair of gloves in zero
weather. Your room is always warm and cheerful and you have record albums
and cheese sandwiches that I like. And Millie, your cat, remember? Remember
when he was a kitten? I tried to teach him to shake hands and to roll over,
and you said a cat wasn't a dog and it couldn't be done, Well, I did it,
didn't I, Millie? The cat's big now and he's been a mother and had kittens.
We've been friends a long time. But it's going to have to go now, Millie:
cats and figures and Tschaikowsky's 6th Symphony. America needs an Eastern-
European....
I found I was in front of my rooming house by then and I started to go
in. Then I saw a light on in my window. I looked in: Carson and Shipkey were
at the table with somebody I didn't know. They were playing cards and in the
center sat a huge jug of wine. Carson and Shipkey were painters who couldn't
make up their minds whether to paint like Salvador Dali or Rockwell Kent,
and they worked at the shipyards while trying to decide.
Then I saw a man sitting very quietly on the edge of my bed. He had a
mustache and a goatee and looked familiar. I seemed to remember his face. I
had seen it in a book, a newspaper, a movie, maybe. I wondered. Then I
remembered.
When I remembered, I didn't know whether to go in or not. After all,
what did one say? How did one act? With a man like that it was hard. You had
to be careful not to say the wrong words, you had to be careful about
everything.
I decided to walk around the block once first. I read someplace that
that helped when you were nervous. I heard Shipkey swearing as I left and I
heard somebody drop a glass. That wouldn't help me any.
I decided to make up my speech ahead of time. "Really, I'm not a very
good speaker at all. I'm very withdrawn and tense. I save it all and put it
in words on paper. I'm sure you'll be disappointed in me, but it's the way
I've always been."
I thought that would do it and when I finished my block's walk I went
right into my room.
I could see that Carson and Shipkey were rather drunk, and I knew they
wouldn't help me any. The little card player they had brought with them was
also bad off, except he had all the money on his side of the table.
The man with the goatee got up off the bed. "How do you do, sir?" he
asked.
"Fine, and you?" I shook hands with him. "I hope you haven't been
waiting too long?" I said.
"Oh no."
"Really," I said, "I'm not a verv good speaker at all -"
"Except when he's drunk, then he yells his head off. Sometimes he goes
to the square and lectures and if nobody listens to him he talks to the
birds," said Shipkey.
The man with the goatee grinned. He had a marvelous grin. Evidently a
man of understanding.
The other two went on playing cards, but Shipkey turned his chair
around and watched us.
"I'm very withdrawn and tense," I continued, "and -"
"Past tense or circus tents?" yelled Shipkey.
That was very bad, but the man with the goatee smiled again and I felt
better.
"I save it all and put it in words on paper and -"
"Nine-tenths or pretense?" yelled Shipkey.
"- and I'm sure you'll be disappointed in me, but it's the way I've
always been."
"Listen, mister!" yelled Shipkey wobbling back and forth in his chair.
"Listen, you with the goatee!"
"Yes?"
"Listen, I'm six feet tall with wavy hair, a glass eye and a pair of
red dice."
The man laughed.
"You don't believe me then? You don't believe I have a pair of red
dice?"
Shipkey, when intoxicated always wanted, for some reason, to make
people believe he had a glass eye. He would point to one eye or the other
and maintain it was a glass eye. He claimed the glass eye was made for him
by his father, the greatest specialist in the world, who had, unfortunately,
been killed by a tiger in China.
Suddenly Carson began yelling, "I saw you take that card! Where did you
get it? Give it here, here! Marked, marked! I thought so! No wonder you've
been winning! So! So!"
Carson rose up and grabbed the little card player by the tie and pulled
up on it. Carson was blue in the face with anger and the little card player
began to turn red as Carson pulled up on the tie.
"What's up, ha! Ha! What's up! What's going on?" yelled Shipkey. "Lemme
see, ha? Gimme tha dope!"
Carson was all blue and could hardly speak. He hissed the words out of
his lips with a great effort and held up on the tie. The little card player
began to flop his arms about like a great octopus brought to the surface.
"He crossed us!" hissed Carson. "Crossed us! Pulled one from under his
sleeve, sure as the Lord! Crossed us, I tell you!"
Shipkey walked behind the little card player and grabbed him by the
hair and yanked his head back and forth. Carson remained at the tie.
"Did vou cross us, huh? Did you! Speak! Speak!" yelled Shipkey pulling
at the hair.
The little card player didn't speak. He just flopped his arms and began
to sweat.
"I'll take you someplace where we can get a beer and something to eat"
I said to the man with the goatee.
"Come on! Talk! Give out! You can't cross us!"
"Oh, that won't be necessary," said the man with the goatee.
"Rat! Louse! Fish-faced pig!"
"I insist", I said.
"Rob a man with a glass eye, will you? I'll show you, fish-faced pig!"
"That's very kind of you, and I am a little hungry, thanks," said the
man with the goatee.
"Speak! Speak, fish-faced pig! If you don't speak in two minutes, in
just two minutes, I'll cut your heart out for a doorknob!"
"Let's leave right away," I said.
"All right," said the man with the goatee.
ALL the eating places were closed at that time of the night and it was
a long ride into town. I couldn't take him back to my room, so I had to take
a chance on Millie. She always had plenty of food. At any rate, she always
had cheese.
I was right. She made us cheese sandwiches with coffee. The cat knew me
and leaped into my lap.
I put the cat on the floor.
"Watch, Mr. Burnett," I said.
"Shake hands!" I said to the cat. "Shake hands!"
The cat just sat there.
"That's funny, it always used to do it," I said. "Shake hands!"
I remembered Shipkey had told Mr. Burnett that I talked to birds.
"Come on now! Shake hands!"
I began to feel foolish.
"Come on! Shake hands!"
I put my head right down by the cat's head and put everything I had
into it.
"Shake hands!"
The cat just sat there.
I went back to my chair and picked up my cheese sandwich.
"Cats are funny animals, Mr. Burnett. You can never tell. Millie, put
on Tschaikowsky's 6th for Mr. Burnett."
We listened to the music. Millie came over and sat in my lap. She just
had on a negligee. She dropped down against me. I put my sandwich to the
side.
"I want you to notice," I said to Mr. Burnett, "the section which
brings forth the marching movement in this symphony. I think it's one of the
most beautiful movements in all music. And besides its beauty and force, its
structure is perfect. You can feel intelligence at work."
The cat jumped up into the lap of the man with the goatee. Millie laid
her cheek against mine, put a hand on my chest. "Where ya been, baby boy?
Millie's missed ya, ya know."
The record ended and the man with the goatee took the cat off his lap,
got up and turned the record over. He should have found record #2 in the
album. By turning it over we would get the climax rather early. I didn't say
anything, though, and we listened to it end.
"How did you like it?" I asked.
"Fine! Just fine!"
He had the cat on the floor.
"Shake hands! Shake hands!" he said to the cat.
The cat shook hands.
"Look," he said, "I can make the cat shake hands."
"Shake hands!"
The cat rolled over.
"No, shake hands! Shake hands!"
The cat just sat there.
He put his head down by the cat's head and talked into its ear. "Shake
hands!"
The cat stuck its paw right into his goatee.
"Did You see? I made him shake hands!" Mr. Burnett seemed pleased.
Millie pressed tight against me. "Kiss me, baby boy," she said, "kiss
me."
"No."
"Good Lord, ya gone off ya nut, baby boy? what's eatin' at ya? Sompin's
botherin' ya tonight, I can tell! Tell Millie all about ut! Millie'd go ta
hell for ya, baby boy, ya know that. Whats'a matter, huh? Ha?"
"Now I'll get the cat to roll over," said Mr. Burnett.
Millie wrapped her arms tight around me and peered down into my upward
eye. She looked very sad and motherish and smelled like cheese.
"Tell Millie what's eatin' ya up, baby boy."
"Roll over!" said Mr. Burnett to the cat.
The cat just sat there.
"Listen," I said to Millie, "see that man over there?"
"Yeah, I see him."
"Well, that's Whit Burnett."
"Who's that?"
"The magazine editor. The one I send my stories to."
"Ya mean the one who sends you those little tiny notes?"
"Rejection slips, Millie."
"Well, he's mean. I don't like him."
"Roll over!" said Mr. Burnett to the cat. The cat rolled over. "Look!"
he yelled. "I made the cat roll over! I'd like to buy this cat! It's
marvelous!"
Millie tightened her grip about me and peered down into my eye. I was
quite helpless. I felt like a still live fish on ice in a butcher's counter
on Friday morning.
"Listen," she said, "I can get him ta print one a ya stories. I can get
him ta print alla them!"
"Watch me make the car roll over!" said Mr. Burnett.
"No, no, Millie, you don't understand! Editors aren't like tired
business men. Editors have scruples!"
"Scruples?"
"Scruples."
"Roll over!" said Mr. Burnett.
The cat just sat there.
"I know all about ya scruples! Don't ya worry about scruples Baby boy,
I'll get him ta print alla ya stories!"
"Roll over!" said Mr. Burnett to the cat. Nothing happened.
"No, Millie, I won't have it."
She was all wound around me. It was hard to breathe and she was rather
heavy. I felt my feet going to sleep. Millie pressed her cheek against mine
and rubbed a hand up and down my chest. "Baby boy, ya got nothin' to say!"
Mr. Burnett put his head down by the cat's head and talked into its
ear. "Roll over!"
The car stuck its paw right into his goatee.
"I think this cat wants something to eat," he said.
With that, he got back into his chair. Millie went over and sat on his
knee.
"Where'd ya get tha cute little goaty?" she asked.
"Pardon me," I said, "I'm going to get a drink of water."
I went in and sat in the breakfast nook and looked down at the flower
designs on the table. I tried to scratch them off with a fingernail. It was
hard enough to share Millie's love with the cheese salesman and the welder.
Millie with the figure right down to the hips. Damn, damn.
I kept sitting there and after a while I took my rejection slip out of
my pocket and read it again. The places where the slip was folded were
beginning to get brown with dirt and torn. I would have to stop looking at
it and put it between book pages like a pressed rose.
I began to think about what it said. I always had that trouble. In
college, even, I was drawn to the fuzzy blackness. The short story
instructress took me to dinner and a show one night and lectured to me on
the beauties of life. I had given her a story I had written in which I, as
the main character, had gone down to the beach at night on the sand and
began meditating on the meaning in Christ, on the meaning in death, on the
meaning and fullness and rhythm in all things. Then in the middle of my
meditations, along walks a bleary-eyed tramp kicking sand in my face. I talk
to him, buy him a bottle and we drink. We get sick. Afterward we go to a
house of ill-fame.
After the dinner, the short story instructress opened her purse and
brought forth the story of the beach. She opened it up about halfway down,
to the entrance of the bleary-eyed tramp and the exit of meaning in Christ.
"Up to here," she said, "up to here, this was very good, in fact,
beautiful." Then she glared up at me with that glare that only the
artistically intelligent who have somehow fallen into money and position can
have. "But pardon me, pardon me very much," she tapped at the bottom half of
my story, "just what the hell is this stuff doing in here?"
I COULDN'T stay away any longer. I got up and walked into the front
room.
Millie was all wrapped around him and peering down into his upward eye.
He looked like a fish on ice.
Millie must have thought I wanted to talk to him about publishing
procedures.
"Pardon me, I have to comb my hair," she said and left the room.
"Nice girl, isn't she, Mr. Burnett?" I asked.
He pulled himself back into shape and straightened his tie. "Pardon
me," he said, "why do you keep calling me 'Mr. Burnett'?"
"Well, aren't you?"
"I'm Hoffman. Joseph Hoffman. I'm from the Curtis Life Insurance
Company. I came in response to your postcard."
"But I didn't send a postcard."
"We received one from you."
"I never sent any."
"Aren't you Andrew Spickwich?"
"Who?"
"Spickwich. Andrew Spickwich, 3631 Taylor Street."
Millie came back and wound herself around Joseph Hoffman. I didn't have
the heart to tell her.
I closed the door very softly and went down the steps and out into the
street. I walked part way down the block and then I saw the lights go out.
I ran like hell toward mv room hoping that there would be some wine
left in that huge jug on the table. I didn't think I'd be that lucky,
though, because I am too much a saga of a certain type of person: fuzzy
blackness, impractical meditations and repressed desires.
Bukowski thought Mickey Mouse was a nazi; Bukowski made an ass out of
himself at Barney's Beanery; Bukowski made an ass out of himself at Shelly's
Manne-Hole; Bukowski is jealous of Ginsberg, Bukowski is jealous of the 1969
Cadillac, Bukowski can't understand Rimbaud; Bukowski wipes his ass with
brown hard toilet paper, Bukowski will be dead in 5 years, Bukowski hasn't
written a decent poem since 1963, Bukowski cried when Judy Garland... shot a
man in Reno.
I sit down. stick the sheet in the typer. open a beer. light a smoke.
I get one or two good lines and the telephone rings.
"Buk?"
"yeah?"
"Marty."
"hello, Marty."
"listen, I just ran across your last 2 columns. it's good writing. I
didn't know you were writing so well. I want to run them in book form. have
they come back from GROVE yet?"
"yeah."
"I want them. your columns are as good as your poems."
"a friend of mine in Malibu says my poems stink."
"to hell with him. I want the columns."
"they're with ---- ----."
"hell, he's a pornie-man. if you go with me you'll hit the
universities, the best book stores. when those kinds find you out, it's all
over; they're tired of that involute shit they've been getting for
centiries. you'll see; I can see bringing out all your back and unavailable
stuff and selling it for a buck, or a buck and a half a copy and going into
the millions."
"aren't you afraid that will make a prick out of me?"
"I mean, haven't you always been a prick, especially when you've been
drinking... by the way, hoh've you been doing?"
"they say I grabbed a guy at Shelly's by the lapels and shook him up a
bit. but it could have been worse, you know."
"how do you mean?"
""I mean, he could have grabbed me by the lapels and shook me up a bit.
a matter of pride, you know."
"listen, don't die or get killed untill we get you out in those buck
and a half editions."
"I'll try not to, Marty."
"how's the 'Penguin' coming?"
"Stanges says January. I just got the page proofs. and a 50 puond
advance which I blew on the horses."
"can't you stay away from the track?"
"you bastards never say anything when I win."
"that's right. well, let me know on the columns."
"right. good night."
"good night."
Bukowski, the big-time writer; a statue of Bukowski in the Kremlin,
jacking off; Bukowski and Castro, a statue in Havana in the sunlight covered
with birdshit, Bukowski and Castro riding a tandem racing bike to victory -
Bukowski in the rear seat; Bukowski bathing in a neat of orioles; Bukowski
lashing a 19-years-old high-yellow with a tiger whip, a high-yellow with 38
inch busts, a high-yellow who reads Rimbaud; Bukowski kukoo in the walls of
the world, wondering who shut off the luck... Bukowski going for Judy
Garland when it was too late for everybody.
then I remember the time and get back in the car. just off Wilshire
Boulevard. there's his name on the big sign. we once worked the same shit
job. I am not too crazy about Wilshire blvd. but I am still a learner. I
don't block out anything. he's half-coloured, from a white mother, black
father combo. we fell together on the shit job, something manual. mostly not
wanting to wade in shit forever, and although shit was a good teacher there
were only so many lessons and then it could drown you and kill you forever.
I parked in back and beat on the back door. he said he'd wait late that
night. it was 9:30 p.m. the door opened.
TEN YEARS. TEN YEARS. ten years. ten years. ten. ten fucking YEARS.
"Hank, you son of a bitch!"
"Jim, you lucky mother..."
"come on up."
I followed him in. jesus, so you don't buy all that. but it's nice
especially with the secretaries and staff gone. I block nothing. he has 6 or
8 rooms. we go in to his desk. I rip out the two 6 packs of beers.
ten years.
he is 43. I am 48. I look at least 15 years older than he. and feel
some shame. the sagging belly. the hang-dog air. the world has taken many
hours and ten years from me with their very dull and routine tasks; it
tells. I feel shame for my defeat. the best revolutionary is a poor man; I
am not even a revolutionary, I am only tired. what a bucket of shit was
mine! mirror, mirror on the wall...
he looked good in a light yellow sweater, relaxed and really happy to
see me.
"I've been going through hell," he said, "I haven't talked to a real
human being in months."
"man, I don't know if I qualify."
"you qualify."
that desk looks twenty feet wide.
"Jim, I been fired from so many places like this. some shit sitting in
a swivel. like a dream upon a dream upon a dream, all bad. now I sit here
drinking beer with a man behind a desk and I don'y know anymore now than I
did then."
he laughed. "baby, I want to give you your own office, your own chair,
your own desk. I know what you're getting now. I want to double that."
"I can't accept it."
"why?"
"I want to know where my value would be to you?"
"I need your brain."
I laughed.
"I'm serious."
then he laid out the plan. told me what he wanted. he had one of those
stirring motherfucking brains that dreamed that sort of thing up. it seemed
so good I had to laugh.
"it'll take 3 months to set it up," I tell him.
"then a contract."
"o.k. with me. but these things sometimes don't work."
"it'll work."
"meanwhile I've got a friend who'll let me sleep in his broom closet if
the walls fall in."
"fine."
we drink 2 or 3 more hours then he leaves to get enough sleep to meet
his friend for a yachting next morning (Saturday) and I tool around and
drive out of the high rent district and hit the first dirty bar for a closer
or two. and son of a bitch if I don't meet a guy I used to know down at a
job we both used to have.
"Luke!" I say, "son of a bitch!"
"Hank, baby!"
another coloured (or black) man, (what do the white guys do at night?)
he looks low so I buy him one.
"you still at the place?" he asks.
"yeah."
"man, shit," he says.
"what?"
"I couldn't take it anymore where you're at, you know, so I quit. ma, I
got a job right away. wow, a change, you know. that's what kills a man: lack
of change."
"I know, Luke."
"well, the first morning I walk up to the machine. it's a fibre glass
place. I've got on this open neck shirt with short sleeves and I notice
people staring at me. well, hell, I sit down and start pressing the levers
and it's all right for a while and next thing you know I start itching all
over. I call the foreman over and I say, 'hey, what the hell's this? I'm
itching all over! my neck, my arms, everywhere!' he tells me, 'it's nothing,
you'll get used to it.' but I notice he has on this scarf buttoned up all
the way around his throat and this long-sleeved working shirt. well, I come
in the next day all scarfed-up and oiled and buttoned but it's still no good
- this fucking glass is shiving off so fine you can't see it and it's all
little glass arrows and it goes right through the clothing and into the
skin. then I know why they make me wear the protective glasses for my eyes.
could blind a man in half an hour. I had to quit. went to a foundry, man, do
you know that men POUR THIS WHITE HOT SHIT INTO MOLDS? they pour it like
bacon-grease or gravy. Unbelievable! and hot! shit! I quit. man, how you
doing?"
"that bitch there, Luke, she keeps looking at me and grinning and
pulling her skirt higher."
"don't pay any attention. she's crazy."
"but she has beautiful legs."
"yes, she has."
I buy another drink, pick up, walk over to her.
"hello, baby."
she goes into her purse, comes out, hits the button and she's got a
beautiful 6 inches swivel. I look at the bartender who looks blank-faced.
the bitch says, "one step closer and you got no balls!"
I knock her drink over and when she looks at that I grab her wrist,
twist the swivel out, fold it, put it into my pocket. the bartender still
looks neutral. I go back to Luke and we finish our drinks. I notice it's ten
to 2 and get 2 six packs from the barkeep. we go out to my car. Luke's
without wheels. she follows us. "I need a ride." "where?" "around Century."
"that's a long way." "so what, you motherfuckers got my knife."
by the time I am halfway to Century I see those female legs lifting in
the back seat. when the legs come down I pull down a lond dark corner and
tell Luke to take a smoke. I hate seconds but when first haven't been for a
long time and you're supposed to be a great Artist and an understander of
Life, seconds just HAVE to do, and like the boys say, with some, seconds are
better. it was good. when I dropped her off I gave her the switchblade back
wrapped in a ten. stupid, of course. but I like to be stupid. Luke lives
around 8th and Irola so it's not too far in for me.
as I open the door the phone begins ringing. I open a beer and sit in
the rocker and listen to it ring. for me, it's been enough - evening, night
and morning.
Bukowski wears brown b.v.d's. Bukowski is afraid of airplanes. Bukowski
hates Santa Klaus. Bukowski makes deformed figures out of typewriter
erasers. when water drips, Bukowski cries. when Bukowski cries, water drips.
o, sanctums of fountains, o scrotums, o fountaining scrotums, o man's great
ugliness everywhere like the fresh dogturd that the morning shoe did not see
again; o, the mighty police, o the mighty weapons, o the mighty dictators, o
the mighty damn fools everywhere, o the lonely lonely octopus, o the clock-
tick seeping each neat one of us balanced and unbalanced and holy and
constipated, o the bums lying in alleys of misery in a golden world, o the
children to become ugly, o the ugly to become uglier, o the sadness and
sabres and the closing of the walls - no Santa Claus, no Pussy, no Magic
Wand, no Cinderella, no Great Minds Ever; kukoo - just shit and the whipping
of dogs and children, just shit and the whiping away of shit; just doctors
without patients just clouds without rain just days without days, o god o
mighty that you put this upon us.
when we break into your mighty KIKE palace and timecard angels I want
to hear Your voice just saying once
MERCY
MERCY
MERCY
FOR YOURSELF and for us and for what we will do to You, I turned off of
Irola until I hit Normandie, that's what I did, and then came in and sat and
listened to the telephone ring.
===
Night streets of madness
the kid and I were the last of a drunkman party at my place, and we
were sitting there when somebody outside began blowing a car horn, loud LOUD
LOUD it was, oh sing loud, but then everything is axed through the head
anyway. the world is done, so I just sat there with my drink, smoking a
cigar, thinking of nothing - the poets were gone, the poets with their
ladies were gone, it was fairly pleasant even with the horn going. a
comparison. the poets had each accused other of various treacheries, of bad
writing, of having slipped; meanwhile, each of them claiming they deserved
better recognition, that they wrote better than so and so and so forth. I
told them all that they needed 2 years in the coal mines or the steel mills,
but on they chattered, finky, precious, barbaric, and most of them rotten
writers. now they were gone. the cigar was good. the kid sat there. I had
just written a foreword to his second book of poems. or his first? well.
"listen," said the kid, "let's go out there and tell them to fuck-off.
tell him to jam that horn up his ass."
the kid wasn't a bad writer, and he had the ability to laugh at
himself, which is sometimes a sign of greatness, or at least a sign that you
have a chance to end up being something else besides a stuffed literary
turd. the world was full of stuffed literary turds talking about the time
they met Pound at Spoleto or Edmund Wilson in Boston or Dali in his
underwear or Lowell in his garden; sitting there in their tiny bathrobes,
letting you have it, and NOW you wew talking to THEM, ah, you see. "... the
last time I saw Burroughs..." "Jimmy Baldwin, jesus, he was drunk, we had to
trot him out on the stage and lean him on the mike..."
"let's go out there and tell them to jam that horn up their ass," said
the kid, influenced by the Bukowski myth (I am really a coward), and the
Hemingway thing and Humphrey B. and Eliot with his panties rolled. well. I
puffed on my cigar. the horn went on. LOUDE SING KUKOOO.
"the horn's all right. never go out on the streets after you've benn
drinking 5 or 6 or 8 or ten hours. they have cages ready for the like us. I
don't think I could take another cage, not one more god damned cage of
theirs. I build enough of my own."
"I'm going out to tell them to shove it," said the kid.
the kid was under the superman influence, Man and Superman. he liked
huge man, tough and murderous, 6-4, 300 pounds, who wrote immortal poetry.
the trouble was the big boys were all subnormal and it was the dainty little
queers with the fingernail polish on who write the tough-boy poems. the only
guy who fit the kid's hero-mold was big John Thomas and big John Thomas
always acted as if the kid weren't there. the kid was Jewish and big John
Thomas had the mainline to Adolph. I liked them both and I don't like very
many people.
"listen," said the kid, "I am going to tell them to jam it."
oh my god, the kid was big a little on the fat side, he hadn't missed
too many meals, but he was easy inside, scared and worried and a little
crazy like the rest of us, none of us made it, finally, and I said, "kid,
forget the horn. it doesn't sound like a man blowing anyway. it sounds like
a woman. a man will stop and start with a horn, make musical threats out of
it. a woman just leans on it. the total sound, one big female neurosis."
""fuck it!" said the kid. he ran out the door.
what does this have to do with anything? I thought. what does it
matter? people keep making moves that don't count. when you make a move,
everything must be mathematically set. that's what Hem learned at the
bullfights and put to work in his work. that's what I learn at the track and
put to work in my life. good old Hem and Buk.
"hello, Hem? Buk calling."
"oh, Buk, so glad you called."
"thought I'd drop over for a drink."
"oh, I'd love it, kid, but you see, my god, you might say I'm kinda out
of town right now."
"but why'd you do it, Ernie?"
"you've read the books. they claim I was crazy, imagining things. in
and out of the bughouse. they say I imagined the phone was tapped, that I
imagined the C.I.A. was on my ass, that I was being tailed and watched. you
know, I wasn't really political but I always fucked with the left. the
Spanish war, all that crap."
"yeah, most of you literary guys lean left. it seems Romantic, but it
can turn into a hell of a trap."
"I know. but really, I had this hell of a hungover, and I knew I had
slipped, and when they believed in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, I knew that the
world was rotten."
"I know. you went back to your early style. but it wasn't real."
"I know it wasn't real. and I got the PRIZE. and the tail on me. old
age on me. sitting around drinking like an old fuck, telling stale stories
to anybody who would listen. I had to blow my brains out."
"o.k., Ernie, see you later."
"all right, I know you will, Buk."
he hung up. and how.
I went outside to check on the kid.
it was an old woman in a new '69 car. she kept leaning on the horn. she
didn't have any legs. any breasts. any brain. just a '69 car and
indignation, great and total indignation. a car was blocking her driveway.
she had her own home. I lived in one of the last slum courts on DeLongpre.
someday the landlord would sell it for a tremendous sum and I would be
bulldozed out. too bad. I threw parties that lasted until the sun came up,
ran the typer day and night. a madman lived in the next court. everything
was sweet. one block North and ten blocks West I could walk along a sidewalk
that had footprints os STARS upon it. I don't know what the names mean. I
don't hit the movies. don't have a t.v. when my radio stopped playing I
threw it out the window. drunk. me, not the radio. there is a big hole in
one of my windows. I forgot the screen was there. I had to open the screen
and drop the radio out. later, whilst I was drunken barefoot my foot (left)
picked up all the glass, and the doctor while slitting my foot open without
benefit of a shot, probing for ballsy glass, asked me, "listen, do you ever
walk around not quite knowing what you are doing?"
"most of the time, baby."
then he gave me a big cut that wasn't needed.
I gripped the sides of the table and said, "yes, Doctor."
then he became more kindly. why should doctors be better than I am? I
don't understand it. the old medicine man gimmick.
so there I was out on the street, Charles Bukowski, friend of
Hemingway, Ernie, I have never read DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON. where do I get a
copy?
the kid said to the crazy woman in the car, who was only demanding
respectful and stupid property rights, "we'll move the car, we'll push it
out of the way."
the kid was talking for me too. now that I had written his foreword, he
owned me.
"look, kid, there's no place to push the car. and I really don't care.
I'm going in for a drink." it was just beginning to rain. I have a most
delicate skin, like an alligator, and soul to match. I walked off. shit, I'd
had enough wars.
I walked off and then just as I about got to my front court hole, I
heard screaming voices. I turned.
then we had this. a thin kid, insane, in white t-shirt screaming at the
fat Jewisj poet I had just written a foreword to poems for. what had the
white t-shirt to do with it? the white t-shirt pushed against my semi-
immortal poet. he pushed hard. the crazy old woman kept leaning against the
car horn.
Bukowski, should you test your left hook again? you swing like the old
barn door and only win one fight out of ten. when was the last fight you
won, Bukowski? you should be wearing women's panties.
well, hell, with a record like yours, one more loss won't be any big
shame.
I started to move forward to help the Jewish kid poet but I saw he had
white t-shirt backing up. then out of the 20 million dollar highrise next to
my slum hole, here came a young woman running. I watched the cheecks of the
ass wobble in the fake Hollywood moonlight.
girl, I could show you something you will, would never forget - a solid
3 and one quarter inches of bobbling throbbing cock, oh my, but she never
gave me a chance, she asshole-wobbling ran to her little 68 Fiaria or
however you spell it, and got in, pussy dying for my poetic soul, and she
got in, started the thing, got it out of the driveway, almost ran me over,
me Bukowski, BUKOWSKI, hummm, and ran the thing into the underground parking
of the 20 million buck highrise. why hadn't she parked there to begin with?
well.
the guy in the white t-shirt is still wobbling around and insane, my
Jewish poet has moved back to my side there in the Hollywood moonlight,
which was like stinking dishwater spilling over us all, suicide is so
difficult, maybe our luck will change, there's PENGUIN coming up, Norse-
Bukowski-Lamantia... what?
now, now, the woman has her clearence for her driveway but she can't
make it in. she doesn't aven angle her car properly. she keeps backing up
and ramming a white delivery truck in front of her. there go the taillights
on first shot. she backs up. hits the gas. there goes half a back door. she
backs up. hits the gas. there goes all the fender and half the left side, no
the right side, that's it the right side. nothing adds. the driveway is
clear.
Bukowski-Norse-Lamantia. Penguin books. it's a damn good thing for
those other two guys that I am in there.
again chickenshit steel mashing against steel. and in between she's
leaning on the horn. white t-shirt dangling in the moonlight, raving.
"what's going on?" I asked the kid.
"I dunno," he finally admitted.
"you'll make a good rabbi some day but you should understand all this."
the kid is studying to be a rabbi.
"I don't understand it," he said.
"I need a drink," I said. "if John Thomas were here he'd murder them
all. but I ain't John Thomas."
I was just about to leave, the woman just kept on ramming the white
pickup truck to pieces, I was just about to leave when an old man in a
floppy brown overcoat and glasses, a real old guy, he was older than I, and
that's old, he came out and confronted the kid in the white t-shirt.
confronted? that's the right word ain't it?
anyhow, as they say, the old guy with glasses and floppy brown overcoat
runs out with this big can of green paint, it must have been at least a
gallon or 5 gallons, I don't know what it means, I have completely lost the
plot or the meaning, if there ever was any in the first place, and the old
man throws the paint on the insane kid in the white t-shirt circling around
on DeLongpre ave. in the chickenshit Hollywood moonlight, and most of it
misses him and some of it gets him, mostly where his heart used to be, a
smash of green along the white, and it happens fast, like things happen
fast, almost quicker than eye or the pulse can add up, and that's why you
get such diverent accounts of any action, riot or fist fight or anything,
the eye and the soul can't keep up with the frustrating animal ACTION, but I
saw the old man go down, fall, I think the first was a push, but I know that
the second wasn't. the woman in the car stopped ramming and honking and just
sat there screaming, screaming, one total pitch of scream that meant the
same thing as her leaning on the honker, she was dead and finished forever
in a '69 car and she couldn't fathom it, she was hooked and broken, thrown
away, and some small touch inside of her still realized this - nobody ever
finally loses their soul - they only piss away 99/100ths of it.
white t-shirt landed goon on the old man on the second shot. broke his
glasses. let him flopping and floundering in his own brown overcoat. the old
man got up and the kid gave him another shot, knocked him down, hit him
against as he got halfass up, the kid in the white t was having a good time
of it.
the young poet said to me, "JESUS! LOOK WHAT HE'S DOING TO THE OLD
MAN!"
"humm, very interesting," I said, whishing I had a drink or a smoke at
least.
I walked off back toward my place. then I saw the squad car and moved a
bit faster. the kid followed me in.
"why don't we go back out there and tell them what happened?"
"because nothing happened except that everybody has been driven insane
and stupid by life. in this society there are only two things that count:
don't be caught without money and don't get caught high on any kind of
high."
"but he shouldn't have done that to the old man."
"that's what old men are for."
"but what about justice?"
"but that is justice: the young whipping the old, the living whipping
the dead. don't you see?"
"but you say these things and you're old."
"I know, let's step inside."
I brought out some more beer and we sat there. through the walls you
could hear the radio of the stupid squad car. 2 twentytwo years old kids
with guns and clubs were going to be the immediate decision-makers upon
2,000 years of idiotic, homosexual, sadistic Christianity.
no wonder they felt good in their smooth and well-fed stretched black,
most policemen being lower-middle class servants given a steak in the frying
pan and a wife with halfway decent ass and legs, and a little quiet home in
Shitland - they'd kill you to prove Los Angeles was right, we're taking you
in, sir, so sorry, sir, but we've got to do this, sir.
2,000 years of Christianity and what do you end up with? squad-car
radios trying to hold rotting shit together, and what else? tons of wars,
little air raids, muggers in streets, knifings, so many insane that you just
forget it, you just let them run the streets in policeman's uniforms or out
of them.
so we went inside and the kid kept saying,
"hey, let's go out there and tell the police what happened."
"no, kid, please. if you are drunk you are guilty no matter what
happens."
"but they are right outside, let's go to tell them."
"there's nothing to tell."
the kid looked at me as if I were some kind of chickenshit coward. I
was. the longest he had ever been in jail was 7 hours under some kind of
east L.A. campus protestation.
"kid, I think that the night is over."
I threw him a blanket for the couch and he went to sleep. I took 2
quarts of beer, opened both, set them on the headboard of my rented bed,
took a big swallow, stretched out, waited on my death as Cummings must have
done, Jeffers, the garbage man, the newspaper boy, the tout...
I finished off the beers.
the kid woke up about 9:30 a.m. I can't understand early risers.
Micheline was another early riser. running around ringing doorbells, waking
everybody up. they were nervous, trying to push down walls. I always figured
a man was a damn fool if he got up before noon. Norse had the best idea -
sit around in silk robe and pajamas and let the world go its way.
I let the kid out the door and off he went into the world. the green
paint was dry on the street. Maeterlinck's bluebird was dead. Hirschman sat
in a dark room with a bloody right nostril.
and I had written another FOREWORD to another book of somebody's
poetry. how many more?
"hey, Bukowski, I've got this book of poems here. I thought you might
read the poems and say something."
"say something? but I don't like poetry, man."
"that's all right. just say something."
the kid was gone. I had to take a shit. the toilet was clogged; the
landlord gone for 3 days. I took the shit and put it in a brown paper bag.
then I went outside and walked with the paperbag like a man going to work
with his lunch. then when I got to the vacant lot I threw the bag. three
forewords. 3 bags of shit. nobody would ever understand how Bukowski
suffered.
I walked back toward my place, dreaming of supine women and everlasting
fame. the former would be nicer. and I was running out of brown bags. I
mean, paper bags. 10 a.m. there was the mailman. a letter from Beiles in
Greece. he said it was raining there too.
fine, then, and inside I was alone again, and the madness of the night
was the madness of the day. I arranged myself upon the bed, supine, staring
upward and listened to the cocksucking rain.
===
Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip
I WALKED AROUND outside and thought about it. It was the longest one I
ever got. Usually they only said, "Sorry, this did not quite make the grade"
or "Sorry, this did't quite work in." Or more often, the regular printed
rejection form.
But this was the longest, the longest ever. It was from my story "My
Adventures in Half a Hundred Rooming Houses." I walked under a lamppost,
took the little slip out of my pocket and reread it -
Dear Mr. Bukowski:
Again, this is a conglomeration of extremely good stuff and other stuff
so full of idolized prostitutes, morning-after vomiting scenes, misanthropy,
praise for suicide etc. that it is not quite for a magazine of any
circulation at all. This is, however, pretty much a saga of a certain type
of person and in it I think you've done an honest job. Possibly we will
print you sometime, but I don't know exactly when. That depends on you.
Sincerely yours,
Whit Burnett
Oh, I knew the signature: the long "h" that twisted into the end of the
"W," and the beginning of the "B" which dropped halfway down the page.
I put the slip back in my pocket and walked on down the street. I felt
pretty good.
Here I had only been writing two years. Two short years. It took
Hemingway ten years. And Sherwood Anderson, he was forty before he was
published.
I guess I would have to give up drinking and women of ill-fame, though.
Whiskey was hard to get anyhow and wine was ruining my stomach. Millie
though - Millie, that would be harder, much harder.
...But Millie, Millie, we must remember art. Dostoievsky, Gorki, for
Russia, and now America wants an Eastern-European. America is tired of
Browns and smiths. The Browns and the Smiths are good writers but there are
too many of them and they all write alike. America wants the fuzzy
blackness, impractical meditations and repressed desires of an Eastern-
European.
Millie, Millie, your figure is just right: it all pours down tight to
the hips and loving you is as easy as putting on a pair of gloves in zero
weather. Your room is always warm and cheerful and you have record albums
and cheese sandwiches that I like. And Millie, your cat, remember? Remember
when he was a kitten? I tried to teach him to shake hands and to roll over,
and you said a cat wasn't a dog and it couldn't be done, Well, I did it,
didn't I, Millie? The cat's big now and he's been a mother and had kittens.
We've been friends a long time. But it's going to have to go now, Millie:
cats and figures and Tschaikowsky's 6th Symphony. America needs an Eastern-
European....
I found I was in front of my rooming house by then and I started to go
in. Then I saw a light on in my window. I looked in: Carson and Shipkey were
at the table with somebody I didn't know. They were playing cards and in the
center sat a huge jug of wine. Carson and Shipkey were painters who couldn't
make up their minds whether to paint like Salvador Dali or Rockwell Kent,
and they worked at the shipyards while trying to decide.
Then I saw a man sitting very quietly on the edge of my bed. He had a
mustache and a goatee and looked familiar. I seemed to remember his face. I
had seen it in a book, a newspaper, a movie, maybe. I wondered. Then I
remembered.
When I remembered, I didn't know whether to go in or not. After all,
what did one say? How did one act? With a man like that it was hard. You had
to be careful not to say the wrong words, you had to be careful about
everything.
I decided to walk around the block once first. I read someplace that
that helped when you were nervous. I heard Shipkey swearing as I left and I
heard somebody drop a glass. That wouldn't help me any.
I decided to make up my speech ahead of time. "Really, I'm not a very
good speaker at all. I'm very withdrawn and tense. I save it all and put it
in words on paper. I'm sure you'll be disappointed in me, but it's the way
I've always been."
I thought that would do it and when I finished my block's walk I went
right into my room.
I could see that Carson and Shipkey were rather drunk, and I knew they
wouldn't help me any. The little card player they had brought with them was
also bad off, except he had all the money on his side of the table.
The man with the goatee got up off the bed. "How do you do, sir?" he
asked.
"Fine, and you?" I shook hands with him. "I hope you haven't been
waiting too long?" I said.
"Oh no."
"Really," I said, "I'm not a verv good speaker at all -"
"Except when he's drunk, then he yells his head off. Sometimes he goes
to the square and lectures and if nobody listens to him he talks to the
birds," said Shipkey.
The man with the goatee grinned. He had a marvelous grin. Evidently a
man of understanding.
The other two went on playing cards, but Shipkey turned his chair
around and watched us.
"I'm very withdrawn and tense," I continued, "and -"
"Past tense or circus tents?" yelled Shipkey.
That was very bad, but the man with the goatee smiled again and I felt
better.
"I save it all and put it in words on paper and -"
"Nine-tenths or pretense?" yelled Shipkey.
"- and I'm sure you'll be disappointed in me, but it's the way I've
always been."
"Listen, mister!" yelled Shipkey wobbling back and forth in his chair.
"Listen, you with the goatee!"
"Yes?"
"Listen, I'm six feet tall with wavy hair, a glass eye and a pair of
red dice."
The man laughed.
"You don't believe me then? You don't believe I have a pair of red
dice?"
Shipkey, when intoxicated always wanted, for some reason, to make
people believe he had a glass eye. He would point to one eye or the other
and maintain it was a glass eye. He claimed the glass eye was made for him
by his father, the greatest specialist in the world, who had, unfortunately,
been killed by a tiger in China.
Suddenly Carson began yelling, "I saw you take that card! Where did you
get it? Give it here, here! Marked, marked! I thought so! No wonder you've
been winning! So! So!"
Carson rose up and grabbed the little card player by the tie and pulled
up on it. Carson was blue in the face with anger and the little card player
began to turn red as Carson pulled up on the tie.
"What's up, ha! Ha! What's up! What's going on?" yelled Shipkey. "Lemme
see, ha? Gimme tha dope!"
Carson was all blue and could hardly speak. He hissed the words out of
his lips with a great effort and held up on the tie. The little card player
began to flop his arms about like a great octopus brought to the surface.
"He crossed us!" hissed Carson. "Crossed us! Pulled one from under his
sleeve, sure as the Lord! Crossed us, I tell you!"
Shipkey walked behind the little card player and grabbed him by the
hair and yanked his head back and forth. Carson remained at the tie.
"Did vou cross us, huh? Did you! Speak! Speak!" yelled Shipkey pulling
at the hair.
The little card player didn't speak. He just flopped his arms and began
to sweat.
"I'll take you someplace where we can get a beer and something to eat"
I said to the man with the goatee.
"Come on! Talk! Give out! You can't cross us!"
"Oh, that won't be necessary," said the man with the goatee.
"Rat! Louse! Fish-faced pig!"
"I insist", I said.
"Rob a man with a glass eye, will you? I'll show you, fish-faced pig!"
"That's very kind of you, and I am a little hungry, thanks," said the
man with the goatee.
"Speak! Speak, fish-faced pig! If you don't speak in two minutes, in
just two minutes, I'll cut your heart out for a doorknob!"
"Let's leave right away," I said.
"All right," said the man with the goatee.
ALL the eating places were closed at that time of the night and it was
a long ride into town. I couldn't take him back to my room, so I had to take
a chance on Millie. She always had plenty of food. At any rate, she always
had cheese.
I was right. She made us cheese sandwiches with coffee. The cat knew me
and leaped into my lap.
I put the cat on the floor.
"Watch, Mr. Burnett," I said.
"Shake hands!" I said to the cat. "Shake hands!"
The cat just sat there.
"That's funny, it always used to do it," I said. "Shake hands!"
I remembered Shipkey had told Mr. Burnett that I talked to birds.
"Come on now! Shake hands!"
I began to feel foolish.
"Come on! Shake hands!"
I put my head right down by the cat's head and put everything I had
into it.
"Shake hands!"
The cat just sat there.
I went back to my chair and picked up my cheese sandwich.
"Cats are funny animals, Mr. Burnett. You can never tell. Millie, put
on Tschaikowsky's 6th for Mr. Burnett."
We listened to the music. Millie came over and sat in my lap. She just
had on a negligee. She dropped down against me. I put my sandwich to the
side.
"I want you to notice," I said to Mr. Burnett, "the section which
brings forth the marching movement in this symphony. I think it's one of the
most beautiful movements in all music. And besides its beauty and force, its
structure is perfect. You can feel intelligence at work."
The cat jumped up into the lap of the man with the goatee. Millie laid
her cheek against mine, put a hand on my chest. "Where ya been, baby boy?
Millie's missed ya, ya know."
The record ended and the man with the goatee took the cat off his lap,
got up and turned the record over. He should have found record #2 in the
album. By turning it over we would get the climax rather early. I didn't say
anything, though, and we listened to it end.
"How did you like it?" I asked.
"Fine! Just fine!"
He had the cat on the floor.
"Shake hands! Shake hands!" he said to the cat.
The cat shook hands.
"Look," he said, "I can make the cat shake hands."
"Shake hands!"
The cat rolled over.
"No, shake hands! Shake hands!"
The cat just sat there.
He put his head down by the cat's head and talked into its ear. "Shake
hands!"
The cat stuck its paw right into his goatee.
"Did You see? I made him shake hands!" Mr. Burnett seemed pleased.
Millie pressed tight against me. "Kiss me, baby boy," she said, "kiss
me."
"No."
"Good Lord, ya gone off ya nut, baby boy? what's eatin' at ya? Sompin's
botherin' ya tonight, I can tell! Tell Millie all about ut! Millie'd go ta
hell for ya, baby boy, ya know that. Whats'a matter, huh? Ha?"
"Now I'll get the cat to roll over," said Mr. Burnett.
Millie wrapped her arms tight around me and peered down into my upward
eye. She looked very sad and motherish and smelled like cheese.
"Tell Millie what's eatin' ya up, baby boy."
"Roll over!" said Mr. Burnett to the cat.
The cat just sat there.
"Listen," I said to Millie, "see that man over there?"
"Yeah, I see him."
"Well, that's Whit Burnett."
"Who's that?"
"The magazine editor. The one I send my stories to."
"Ya mean the one who sends you those little tiny notes?"
"Rejection slips, Millie."
"Well, he's mean. I don't like him."
"Roll over!" said Mr. Burnett to the cat. The cat rolled over. "Look!"
he yelled. "I made the cat roll over! I'd like to buy this cat! It's
marvelous!"
Millie tightened her grip about me and peered down into my eye. I was
quite helpless. I felt like a still live fish on ice in a butcher's counter
on Friday morning.
"Listen," she said, "I can get him ta print one a ya stories. I can get
him ta print alla them!"
"Watch me make the car roll over!" said Mr. Burnett.
"No, no, Millie, you don't understand! Editors aren't like tired
business men. Editors have scruples!"
"Scruples?"
"Scruples."
"Roll over!" said Mr. Burnett.
The cat just sat there.
"I know all about ya scruples! Don't ya worry about scruples Baby boy,
I'll get him ta print alla ya stories!"
"Roll over!" said Mr. Burnett to the cat. Nothing happened.
"No, Millie, I won't have it."
She was all wound around me. It was hard to breathe and she was rather
heavy. I felt my feet going to sleep. Millie pressed her cheek against mine
and rubbed a hand up and down my chest. "Baby boy, ya got nothin' to say!"
Mr. Burnett put his head down by the cat's head and talked into its
ear. "Roll over!"
The car stuck its paw right into his goatee.
"I think this cat wants something to eat," he said.
With that, he got back into his chair. Millie went over and sat on his
knee.
"Where'd ya get tha cute little goaty?" she asked.
"Pardon me," I said, "I'm going to get a drink of water."
I went in and sat in the breakfast nook and looked down at the flower
designs on the table. I tried to scratch them off with a fingernail. It was
hard enough to share Millie's love with the cheese salesman and the welder.
Millie with the figure right down to the hips. Damn, damn.
I kept sitting there and after a while I took my rejection slip out of
my pocket and read it again. The places where the slip was folded were
beginning to get brown with dirt and torn. I would have to stop looking at
it and put it between book pages like a pressed rose.
I began to think about what it said. I always had that trouble. In
college, even, I was drawn to the fuzzy blackness. The short story
instructress took me to dinner and a show one night and lectured to me on
the beauties of life. I had given her a story I had written in which I, as
the main character, had gone down to the beach at night on the sand and
began meditating on the meaning in Christ, on the meaning in death, on the
meaning and fullness and rhythm in all things. Then in the middle of my
meditations, along walks a bleary-eyed tramp kicking sand in my face. I talk
to him, buy him a bottle and we drink. We get sick. Afterward we go to a
house of ill-fame.
After the dinner, the short story instructress opened her purse and
brought forth the story of the beach. She opened it up about halfway down,
to the entrance of the bleary-eyed tramp and the exit of meaning in Christ.
"Up to here," she said, "up to here, this was very good, in fact,
beautiful." Then she glared up at me with that glare that only the
artistically intelligent who have somehow fallen into money and position can
have. "But pardon me, pardon me very much," she tapped at the bottom half of
my story, "just what the hell is this stuff doing in here?"
I COULDN'T stay away any longer. I got up and walked into the front
room.
Millie was all wrapped around him and peering down into his upward eye.
He looked like a fish on ice.
Millie must have thought I wanted to talk to him about publishing
procedures.
"Pardon me, I have to comb my hair," she said and left the room.
"Nice girl, isn't she, Mr. Burnett?" I asked.
He pulled himself back into shape and straightened his tie. "Pardon
me," he said, "why do you keep calling me 'Mr. Burnett'?"
"Well, aren't you?"
"I'm Hoffman. Joseph Hoffman. I'm from the Curtis Life Insurance
Company. I came in response to your postcard."
"But I didn't send a postcard."
"We received one from you."
"I never sent any."
"Aren't you Andrew Spickwich?"
"Who?"
"Spickwich. Andrew Spickwich, 3631 Taylor Street."
Millie came back and wound herself around Joseph Hoffman. I didn't have
the heart to tell her.
I closed the door very softly and went down the steps and out into the
street. I walked part way down the block and then I saw the lights go out.
I ran like hell toward mv room hoping that there would be some wine
left in that huge jug on the table. I didn't think I'd be that lucky,
though, because I am too much a saga of a certain type of person: fuzzy
blackness, impractical meditations and repressed desires.