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haul away millions in wheelbarrows from the racetrack, tax-free. human greed
will not relent, it will continue to feed itself. the com- munist party be
damned.
all right, that's bad enough. let's take something else. besides the
public being automatically wrong just by instinct (ask the stock- broker -
when you want to know which way to move just move the opposite from the big
crowd with the small, 'scared, tight money). but the something else is this:
a possible mathematic. taking the dollar base - you invest the first dollar,
you get back 85 cents. automatic take. second race, you have to ass15 cents,
then another 15% take. now take 9 races and take a 15% take on a break-even
basis - upon your original dollar. is it just 9 times 15% or is it much
more? it would take one of these Caltaech cats to tell me and I don't know
any Caltech cats. anyway, if you have followed me up to here, you must
realize that it is very difficult to make a "living" at the racetrack as
some starry-eyed dreamers would like to do.
I am a "hard-nose": that is, any given day at any track you just ain't
gonna take much money from me; on the other hand, I ain't gonna make much.
naturally, I have some good plays and I'd be a damn fool to reveal them to
everybody because then they would not work. once the public gets onto
something it is dead and it changes. the public is not allowed to win in any
game ever invented and that includes the American Revolution. but for "Open
City" readers I have a few basics that might save you a little money. take
heed.
a/ watch your underlay shots. an underlay is a horse that closes in
odds under the trackman's morning line. in other words, the trackman lists
the horse 10 t0 1 and it is going off at 6 to 1. money is much more serious
than anything else. check your under- lays carefully, and if the line is
just not a careless mistake by the trackman and the horse dos not show any
recent fast works or a switch to a "name" jockey, and if the horse is not
dropping weight and is running against the same class, you will probably get
a fairly good run for your money.
b/ lay off the closers. this is a horse, that say closed from 5 to 16
lengths from the beginning call to the last and still did not win and is
coming back against the same or similar. the crowd loves the "closer,"
through fear $ tight money and stupidity, but the closer is generally a lard-
ass, lazy and only passes tired horses who have been running and fighting
for the front end. not only does the crowd love this type of junk-horse but
they will consistently bet him down to odds less than 1/3 of his worth. even
though this type of horse continually runs out, the crowd out of fear will
go to him because they are tight up against the rent money and feel that a
closer possesses some kind of super stength. 90% of the races are won by
horses on the front end or near the front end of all the running, at
plausible and reasonable prices.
c/ if you must bet a "closer" bet him in shorter races, 6 or 7
furlongs, where the crowd believes he does not have time "to get up." here
they go for the speed and are stuck again. 7 furlongs is the best closer's
race in the business because of only one curve. a speed horse gets the
advantage of being out in front and saving ground on the turns. 7 furlongs
with one curve and the long backstretch is the perfect closer's race; much
better than a mile and a quarter, even better than a mile and one half. I am
giving you some good stuff here, I hope you heed it.
d/ watch your toteboard - money in American society is more serious
than death and you hardly get anything for nothing. if a horse is listed at
6 to 1 on the morning line and he is going off at 114 to 25 to 1, forget it.
either the trackman had a hangover when he made his morning line or the
stable just isn't going that race. you don't get anything free in this
world; if you don't know anything about racing, do bet horses that go off to
their morning line. large overlays are nil and almost impossible. all the
little grandmamas go home to eat bitter toast with gummed teeth upon Papa's
retire-ment death certificate.
e/ only bet when you can lose. I mean without ending up sleeping on a
park bench or missing 3 or 4 meals. the main thing, get the rent down first.
avoid pressures. you will be luckier. and remem- ber what the pros say, "If
you've got to lose, lose in front." in other words, make them beat you. if
you're going to lose anyhow, then to hell with it, get you a dancer out of
the gate, you've got it won until they beat you, until they pass you. the
price is usually generous because the public hates what they call a
"quitter" - a horse that opens daylight on the pack and still manages to
lose. this looks bad to them. to me a "quitter" is any horse that does not
win a race.
f/ any profit-loss venture is not based upon the number of winners you
have but upon the number of winners at the price. to basics, you can have
three 6 to 5 winners in 9 races and wash out, but you can have one 9 to 1
and one 5 to 1 and get over. this does not always mean that a 6 to 5 is a
bad bet, but if you know little or next to nothing about racing, it might be
best to hold your bets between 7 to 2 and 9 to 1. or if you must indulge in
wild fancies, keep your bets between 11 and 1q9 to 1. in fact, many 18 or 19
to 1's bounce in if you can find the right ones.
but, actually, a man can never know enough about horse rac- ing or
anything else. just when he thinks he knows he is just begin- ning. I
remember one summer I won 4 grand at Hollypark and I went down to Del Mar in
a new car, cocky, poetic, knowledgeable, I had the world by the nuts, and I
rented myself a little motel by the sea and the ladies showed up as the
ladies will when you are drinking and laughing and don't care and have some
money (a fool and his money are soon parted) and I had a party every night
and a new broad every other night, and it was a kind of joke I used to tell
them, the place was right over the sea, and I'd say, after much drinking and
talking, "Baby, I come with the WOOSH OF THE SEA!"
===
the harness racing season has been under way, as they say, for a week
or 2 now, and I have been out 5 or 6 times, perhaps breaking even for the
course, which is a hell of a waste of time - anything is a waste of time
unless you are fucking well or creating well or getting well or looming
toward a kind of phantom love-happiness. we will all end up in the crud-pot
of defeat - call it death or error. I am not a word-man. I do suppose, tho,
as one keeps making adjustments to the tide, we can call it experience even
if we are not so sure that it is wisdom. then too, it is possible for a man
to live a whole life of constant error in a kind of numb and terrorized
state. You've seen the faces. I've seen my own.
so during all the heat wave they are still out there, the bettors,
having gotten a little money somewhere, the hard way, and trying to beat the
15 percent take. I sometimes think of the crowd as hypno- tized, a crowd
that has nowhere to go. and after the races they get into their old cars,
drive to their lonely rooms and look at the walls. Wondering why they did it
--- heels run down, bad teeth, ulcers, bad jobs, men without women, women
without men. Nothing but shit.
there are some laughs. there have to be. walking into the men's room
between races the other day I came upon a young man gagging, then shouting
in fury: "god damn son of a bitch, some god damn son of a bitch didn't flush
his shit away! HE LEFT IT THERE! the son of a bitch, I walked in and there
it WAS! I'll be he does that at home too!"
this boy was screaming. the rest of us were standing there pissing or
washing our hands, thinking about the last race or the next one. I know some
freaks that would be delighted to come upon a potful of fresh turds.but
that's the way it works - the wrong guy gets it.
another day I am sweating, battling, scratching, praying, jack- ing to
stay 10 or 12 bucks ahead, and it is a very difficult harness race, I don't
even think the drivers know who is going to win, and this big fat woman,
ponderous whale of healthy stinking blubber, walked up to me, put that
stinking fat against my body front, and squeezed 2 little eyes, a mouth and
the rest into my face and said,
"what are the hands on the first horse?"
"the hands on the first horse?"
"yes, what are the hands on the first horse?"
"god damn you lady, get away from me, and don't bother me. get away!
get away!"
she did. the whole track is full of crazy people. some of them come
there when the gates open. they stretch out on the seats or on a bench and
sleep all through the races. they never see a race. then they get up and go
home. others wall around just vaguely aware that a race of some kind is
going on. they buy coffee or just stand around looking as if life has been
stunned and burned out of them. or sometimes you see one standing in a dark
corner, jamming a whole hot dog down the throat, gagging, choking, delighted
with the mess of themselves. and at the end of each day you see one or 2
with their heads down between their legs. sometimes they are crying. where
do losers go? who wants a loser?
essentially, in one way or another, everybody thinks that he has the
key to beating the thing, even if it is only such an unjustified assumptions
that their luck must change, some play stars, some play numbers, some play
strictly time, others play drivers, or closers or speed r names or god knows
what. almost all of them lose, contin- ually. almost all their income goes
directly into the mutuel ma- chines. most of these people have unbearably
fixed egos - the are tenaciously stupid.
I won a few dollars Sept. 1. let's go over the card. Andy's Dream won
the first at 9/2 from a morning line of 10. good play. unwarranted action on
beaten horse running from outside post. 2nd race - Jerry Perkins, 14 year
old gelding nobody wants to claim because of age, drops into $15 claimer. a
good horse, consistent within his class, but you had to take 8/5 under a
morning line of four. won easy. third race won by Special Product, a horse
that broke in his last four races at long odds. he broke stride again this
time, pulled up, righted himself and still came on to beat the 3/5 favorite
Golden Bill. a possible bet if you are in touch with God and God is
interested. ten to one. in the fourth race, Hal Richard a consistent 4 year
old gelding won at three to one, beating out two shorter choices that showed
better times but no winning ability. a good bet. In the fifth, Eileen Colby
wins after Tiny Star and Marsand break and the crowd sends off April Fool at
3/5. April Fool has only been able to win four races out of 32, and one
local handicapper tabs him "better than these by five lengths." all this on
time effort of last race in better class when April Fool finishes seven
lengths out. the crowd is taken again.
then in the sixth race, Mister Honey is given a morning line of 10 but
is sent off as second choice of 5/2 and wins easy, having won three out of
nine in tougher class at short odds. Newport Buell, a cheaper horse is sent
off at even money because he closed ground in last at nine to one. a bad
bet. the crowd doesn't understand. in the seventh, Bills Snookums, a winner
of seven out of nine in class and with the leading rider Farrington up is
made the new 8/5 favorite and justifiably so.
the crowd bets Princess Sampson down to 7/2. this horse has won only 6
races out of 67. naturally, the crowd gets burned again.
Princess Sampson shows the best time in a tougher race but just does
not want to win. the crowd is time-happy. they do not realize that time is
caused by pace and pace is caused by the discre- tion - or lack of it - of
the lead drivers. in the eighth, Abbemite win gets up in a four or five
horse scramble. it was an open race and one I should have stayed out of. In
the ninth, they let the public Have one. Luella Primrose. the horse had
failed consistently at short odds and today got on its own pace without a
challenger. 5/2. one for the ladies, and how they screamed. a pretty name.
they'd been losing their drawers on the thing all through the meet.
most of the cards are as reasonable as this, and it would seem possible
to make a living at the track against the 15 percent take. but the outside
factors beat you. the heat. tiredness. people spilling beer on your shirt.
screaming. stepping on your feet. women showing their legs. pickpockets.
touts. madmen. I was $24 ahead going into the ninth race and there wasn't a
play in the ninth.
being tired, I didn't have the resistance to stay out. before the race
went off I had dropped in $16, shopping, feeling for a winner that didn't
show. then they sent in the public play on me. I was not satisfied with a
$24 day. I once worked for $16 a week at New Orleans. I was not strong
enough to take a gentle profit, so I walked out $8 winner. Not worth the
struggle: I could have stayed home and written an immortal poem.
a man who can beat the races can do about any thing he makes up his
mind to do. he must have the character, the knowledge, the detachment. even
with these qualities, the races are tough, especially with the rent waiting
and your whore's tongue hanging our for beer. there are traps beyond traps
beyond traps. there are days when everything impossible happens. the other
day they ran in a 50 to one shot in the first race, a 100 to one in the
second, and crapped off the day with an 18 to one in the last race. when you
are trying to scrape up pesos for the landlord and potato and egg money,
this kind of day can very much make you feel like an imbecile.
but if you come back the next day they will give you six or seven
reasonable winners at fair prices. it's there but most of them don't go
back. It takes patience and it's hard work: you have to think. It's a
battlefield and you can become shell-shocked. I saw a friend of mine out
there the other day, glaze-eyed, punched-out. It was late in the day and it
had been a reasonable card, but somehow they had gotten past him and I could
tell that he had bet too much trying to get out.he walked past me, not
knowing where he was. I watched him. he walked right into the women's
crapper. they screamed and he came running out. it was what he needed. it
pulled him out and he caught the winner of the next race. but I would not
advise this system to all losers.
there are laughs and there is sadness. there is an old boy who walked
up to me one time. "Bukowski," he said very seriously, "I want to beat the
horses before I die."
his hair is white, totally white, teeth gone, and I could see myself
there in 15 or 20 years, if I make it.
"I like the six horse," he told me.
"luck," I told him.
he'd picked a stiff, as usual. an odds-on favorite that had only won
one race in 15 starts that year. the public handicappers had the horse on
top too. the horse had won $88,000 LAST year. best time. I bet ten win on
Miss Lustytown, a winner of nine races this year. Miss Lustytown paid 4/1.
the odds-on finished last.
the old man came by, raging. "how the hell! Glad Rags ran 2:01 and 1/5
last time and gets beat by a 2:02 and 1/5 mare! they oughta close this place
up!"
he raps his program, snarling at me. his face is so red that he appears
to have a sunburn. I walk away from him, go over to the cashier's window and
cash in.
when I get home, there is one magazine in the mail, THE SMITH,
parodying my prose style, and another magazine, THE SIX- TIES, parodying my
poetic style.
writing?what the hell's that? somebody is worried or pissed about m y
writing. I look over ans sure enough there's a typewriter in the room. I am
a writer of some kind, there's another world there of maneuvering and
gouging and groups and methods.
I let the warm water run, get into the tub, open a beer, open the
racing formt phone rings. I let it ring. for me, maybe not for you, it's too
hot to fuck or listen to some minor poet. Hemingway had his pulls. give me a
horse's ass - that gets there first.
===
AN UNDERGROUND NEWSPAPER
There were quite a few meetings at Joe Hyans' house at first and I
usually showed drunk, so I don't remember much about the inception of Open
Pussy, the underground newspaper, and I was only told later what had
happened. Or rather, what I had done.
Hyans: "You said you were going to clean out the whole place and that
you were going to start with the guy in the wheelchair. Then he started to
cry and people started leaving. You hit a guy over the head with a bottle."
Cherry (Hyans' wife): "You refused to leave and you drank a whole fifth
of whiskey and kept telling me that you were going to fuck me up against the
bookcase."
"Did I?"
"No."
"Ah, then next time."
Hyans: "Listen, Bukowski, we're trying to get organized and all you do
is come around and bust things up. You're the nastiest damn drunk I'veeve
seen!"
"OK, I quit, Fuck it. Who cares about newspapers?"
"No, we want you to do a column. We think you're the best writer in Los
Angeles."
I lifted my drink. "That's a motherfucking insult! I didn't come here
to be insulted!"
"OK, maybe you're the best writer in California."
"There you go! Still insulting me!"
"Anyhow, we want you to do a column."
"I'm a poet."
"What's the difference between poetry and prose?"
"Poetry says too much in too short a time; prose says too little and
takes too long."
"We want a column for Open Pussy."
"Pour me a drink and you're on."
Hyans did. I was on. I finished the drink and walked over to my skidrow
court thinking about what a mistake I was making. I was almost fifty years
old and fucking with these long-haired, bearded kids. Oh God, groovy, daddy,
oh groovy! War is shit. War is hell. fuck, don't fight. I'd known all that
for fifty years. It wasn't quite as exciting to me. Oh, and don't forget the
pot. the stash. Groove, baby!
I found a pint in my place, drank it, four cans of beer and wrote the
first column. It was about a three-hundred-pound whore I had once fucked in
Philadelphia. It was a good column. I corrected the typing errors, jacked
off and went to sleep-
It started on the bottom floor of Hyans' two-story rented house. There
were some half-assed volunteers and the thing was new and everybody was
excited but me. I kept searching out the women for ass but they all looked
and acted the same --- they were all nineteen years old, dirty-blonde, small
ass, small breasted, busy dizzy, and, in a sense, conceited without quite
knowing why. When- ever I'd lay my drunken hands upon them they were always
quite cool. Quite.
"Look, Gramps, the only thing we want to seeyou raise is a North
Vietnamese flag!"
"Ah, your pussy probably stinks anyhow!"
"Oh, you are a filthy old man! You really are-so disgust- ing!"
And then they'd walk off shaking those little delicious apple buttocks
at me, only carrying in their hand --- instead of my lovely purple head ---
some juvenile copy about the cops shaking down the kids and taking away
their Baby Ruth bars on Sunset Strip. Here I was, the greatest living poet
since Auden and I couldn't even fuck a dog in the ass-
The paper got too big. Or Cherry got worried about my loung- ing about
on the couch drunk and leering at her five-year-old daugh- ter. When it
really got bad was when the daughter started sitting on my lap and looking
up into my face while squirming, saying, "I like you, Bukowski. Talk to me.
Let me get you another Beer, Bukow- ski."
"Hurry back, sweetie!"
Cherry: "Listen, Bukowski, you old letch-"
"Cherry, children love me. I can't help it."
The little girl, Zaza, ran back with the beer, got back into my lap. I
opened the beer.
"I like you, Bukowski, tell me a story."
"OK, honey. Well, once upon a time there was this old man and this
lovely little girl lost in the woods together-"
"Cherry: "Listen, you old letch-"
"Ta, ta, Cherry, I do believe you have a dirty mind!" Cherry ran
upstairs looking for Hyans who was taking a crap. "Joe, Joe, we've just got
to move this paper out of here! I mean it!"-
They found a vacant building up front, two floors, and one midnight
while drinking portw wine, I held the flashlight for Joe while he broke open
the phone box on the side of the house and rear- ranged the wires so he
could have extension phones without charge. about this time the only other
underground newspaper in L.A. ac- cused Joe of stealing a duplicate copy of
their mailing list. Of course, I knew Joe had morals and scruples and ideals
--- that's why he quit working for the large metro daily. That's why he quit
working for the other underground newspaper. Joe was some kind of Christ.
Sure.
"Hold that flashlight steady," he said-
In the morning, at my place, the phone rang. It was my friend Mongo the
Giant of the Eternal High.
"Hank?"
"Yeh?"
"Cherry was over last night."
"Yea?"
"She had this mailing list. Was very nervous. She wanted me to hide it.
Said Jensen was on the prowl. I hid it in the cellar under a pile of India
ink sketches Jimmy the Dwarf did before he died."
"Did you screw her?"
"What for? She's all bones. Those ribs would slice me to pieces while I
fucked."
"You screwed Jimmy the Dwarf and he only weighed eighty- three pounds."
"He had soul."
"Yeh?"
"Yeh."
I hung up-
For the next four or five issues, Open Pussy came out with sayings
like, "WE LOVE THE L.A. FREE PRESS," "OH, WE LOVE THE L.A. FREE PRESS,"
"LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THE L.A. FREE PRESS."
They should have. They had their mailing list.
One night Jensen and Joe had dinner together. Joe told me later that
everything was now "all right." I don't know who screwed who or what went on
under the table. And I didn't care-
And I soon found that I had other readers besides the beaded and the
bearded-
In Los Angeles the new Federal Building rises glass-high, insane and
modern, with the Kafka-series of rooms each indulged with their own personal
frog-jacking-off bit; everything feeding off of every- thing else and
thriving with a kind of worm-in-the apple warmth and ther I was given a time
ticket for that amount and I walked into the Federal Building, which had
downstairs murals like Diego Rivera would have done if nine tenths of his
sensibilities had been cut away ---American sailors and Indians and soldiers
smiling away, trying to look noble in cheap yellows and retching rotting
greens and pissy blues.
I was being called into personnel. I knew that it wasn't for a
promotion. They took the letter and cooled me on the hard seat for forty-
five minutes. It was part of the old you-got-shit-in-your- intestines. And
we-don't-have routine. Luckily, from past experience, I read the warty sign,
and I cooled it myself, thinking about how Each of the girls who walked by
would go on a bed, legs high, or Taking it in the mouth. Soon I had
something huge between my legs --well, huge for me --- and had to stare at
the floor.
I was finally called in by a very black and slinky and well- dressed
and pleasant Negress, very much class and even a spot of soul, whose smile
said she knew that I was going to be fucked but who also hinted that she
wouldn't mind throwing me a little pee- hole herself. It eased matters. Not
that it mattered.
And I walked in.
"Have a seat."
Man behind desk. Same old shit. I sat.
"Mr. Bukowski?"
"Yeh."
He gave me his name. I wasn't interested.
He leaned back, stared at me from his swivel.
I'm sure he expected somebody younger and better-looking, more
flamboyant, more intelligent-looking, more treacherous-look- ing-I was just
old, tired, disinterested, hung-over. He was a bit gray and distinguished,
if you know the type of distinguished I mean. Never pulled beets out of the
ground with a bunch of wet- backs or been in the drunktank fifteen or twenty
times. Or picked lemons at six a.m. without a shirt on because you knew that
at noon it would be 110 degrees. Only the poor knew the meaning of life; the
rich and the safe had to guess. Strangely then, I began thinking of the
Chinese. Russia had softened; it could be that only the Chi- nese knew,
digging up from the bottom, tired of soft shit. But then, I had no politics,
that was more con: history screwed us all, finally. I was done ahead of time
--- baked, fucked, screwed-out, nothing left.
"Mr. Bukowski?"
"Yeh?"
"Well, ah-we've had an informant-"
"Yeh. Go ahead."
"-who wrote us that you are not married to the mother of your child."
I imagined him, then, decorating a Christmas tree with a drink in his
hand.
"That's true. I am not married to the mother of my child, aged four."
"Do you pay child support?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"I'm not going to tell you."
He leaned back again. "You must understand that those of us in
government service must maintain certain standards."
Not really feeling guilty of anything, I didn't answer.
I waited.
Oh, where are you, boys? Kafka, where are you? Lorca, shot in the dirty
road, where are you? Hemingway, claiming he was being tailed by the C.I.A.
and nobody believing him but me-
The, old distinguished well-rested non-beetpicking gray turned around
and reached into a small and well-varnished cabinet behind him and pulled
out six or seven copies of Open Pussy.
He threw them upon his desk like stinking siffed and raped turds. He
tapped them with one of his non-lemonpulling hands.
"We are led to believe that YOU are the writer of these col- umns ---
Notes of a Dirty Old Man."
"Yeh."
"What do you have to say about these columns?"
"Nothing."
"Do you call this writing?
"It's the best that I can do."
"Well, I'm supporting two sons who are now taking journalism at the
best of colleges, and I HOPE-"
He tapped the sheets, the stinking turd sheets, with the bot- tom of
his ringed and un-factoried and un-jailed hand and said:
"I hope that my sons never turn out to write like YOU do!"
"They won't," I promised him.
"Mr. Bukowski, I think that the interview is finished."
"Yeah," I said. I lit a cig, stood up, scratched my beer-gut and walked
out.
The second interview was sooner than I expected. I was hard at work ---
of course --- at one of my important menial tasks when the speaker boomed:
"Henry Charles Bukowski, report to the Tour superintendent's office!"
I dropped my important task, got a treavel form from the local screw
and walked on over to the office. The Tour-Soup's male secre- tary, an old
gray flab, looked me over.
"Are you Charles Bukowski?" he asked me, quite disappoint- ed.
"Yeh, man."
"Please follow me."
I followed him. It was a large building. We went down several stairways
and down around a long hall and then into a large dark room that entered
into another large and very dark room. Two men were sitting there at the end
of a table that must have been seventy- five feet long. They sat under a
lone lamp. And at the end of the table sat this single chair --- for me.
"You may enter," said the secretary. Then he shorted out.
I walked in. The two men stood up. Here we were under one lamp in the
dark. For some reason, I thought of all the assassina- tions.
Then I thought, this is America, daddy, Hitler is dead. Or is he?
"Bukowski?"
"Yeh."
They both shook hands with me.
"Sit down."
Groovy, baby.
"This is Mr. - - - - from Washington," said the other guy who was one
of the local topdogturds.
I didn't say anything. It was a nice lamp. Made of human skin?
Mr. Washington did the talking. He had a portfolio with quite a few
papers within.
"Now, Mr. Bukowski-"
"Yeh?"
"Your age is forty-eight and you've been employed by the United States
Government for eleven years."
"Yeh."
"You were married to your first wife two and a half years, divorced,
and you married your present wife when? We'd like the date."
"No date. No marriage."
"You have a child!"
"Yeh."
"How old?"
"Four."
"You're not married?"
"No."
"Do you pay child support?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"About standard."
Then he leaned back and we sat there. The three of us said nothing for
a good four or five minutes.
Then a stack of the underground newspaper Open Pussy ap- peared.
"Do you write these columns? Notes of a Dirty Old Man?" Mr. Washington
asked.
"Yeh."
He handed a copy to Mr. Los Angeles.
"Have you seen this one?"
"No, no, I haven't"
Across the top of the column was a walking cock with legs, a huge HUGE
walking cock with legs. The story was about a male friend of mine I had
screwed in the ass by mistake, while drunk, believing that it was one of my
girlfriends. It took me two weeks to finally force my friend to leave my
place. It was a true story.
"Do you call this writing?" Mr. Washington asked.
"I don't know about the writing. But I thought it was a very funny
story. Didn't you think it was humorous?"
"But this-this illustration across the top of the story?"
"The walking cock?"
"Yes."
"I didn't draw it."
"You have nothing to do with the selection of illustrations?"
"The paper is put together on Tuesday nights."
"And you are not there on Tuesday nights?"
"I am supposed to be here on Tuesday nights."
They waited some time, going through Open Pussy, looking at my columns.
"You know," said Mr. Washington, tapping the Open Pussies again with
his hand, "you would have been all right if you had kept writing poetry, but
when you began writing this stuff-" He again tapped the Open Pussies.
I waited two minutes and thirty seconds. Then I asked: "Are we to
consider the postal officials as the new critics of literature?"
"Oh, no no," said Mr. Washington, "we didn't mean that." I sat and
waited.
"There is a certain conduct expected of postal employees. You are in
the Public Eye. You are to be an example of exemplary behavior."
"It appears to me," I said, "that you are threatening my free- dom of
expression with a resultant loss of employment. The A.C.L.U. might be
interested."
"We'd still prefer you didn't write the column."
"Gentleman, there comes a time in each man's life when he must choose
to stand or run. I choose to stand."
Their silence.
Wait.
Wait.
The shuffling of Open Pussies.
Then Mr. Washington: "Mr. Bukowski?"
"Yeh?"
Are you going to write any more columns about the Post Office?"
I had written one about them which I thought was more humorous than
demeaning --- but then, maybe my mind was twisted.
I let them wait this time. Then I answered. "Not unless you make it
necessary for me to do so."
Then they waited. It was kind of an interrogation chess game where you
hoped the other man would make the wrong move: blurt out his pawns, knights,
bishops, king, his queen, his guts. (And meanwhile, as you read this, here
goes my goddamned job. Groovy, baby. Send dollars for beer and wreaths to
The Charles Bukowski Rehabilitation Fund at-)
Mr. Washington stood up.
Mr. Los Angeles stood up.
Mr. Washington said: "I think that the interview is over."
Mr. Washington said: "Meanwhile, don't jump off of any bridges-"
(Strange: I hadn't even thought about it.)
"-we haven't had a case like this in ten years." (In ten years? Who was
the last poor sucker?) "So?" I asked.
"Mr. Bukowski," said Mr. Los Angeles, "report back to your position."
I really had an unquieting time (or is it disquieting?) trying to find
my way back to the work floor from that underground Kafka- esqueish maze,
and when I did, here all my subnormal fellow workers (good pricks all)
started chirping at me:
"Hey, baby, where ya been?"
"What'd they want, daddieo?"
"You knocked up another black chick, big daddy?"
I gave them the Silence. One learns from dear old Uncle Sammy.
They kept chirping and flipping and fingering their mental assholes.
They were really frightened. I was Old Kool and if they could break Old Kool
they could break any of them.
"They wanted to make me Postmaster," I told them.
"And what happened, daddieo?"
"I told them to jam a hot turd up their siffed-up snatch."
The foreman of the aisle walked by and they all gave him the proper
obeisance but me, but I, but Bukowski, I lit a cigar with an easy flourish,
threw the match on the floor and stared at the ceiling as if I were having
great and wonderful thoughts. It was con; my mind was blank; I only wanted a
halfpint of Grandad and six or seven tall cool beers-
The fucking paper grew, or seemed to, and moved to a place on Melrose.
I always hated to go there with copy, though, because everybody was so
shitty, so truly shitty and snobby and not quite right, you know. Nothing
changed. The history of the Man-beast was very slow. They were like the
shifts I'd faced when I first walked into the copy room of the L.A. City
College newspaper in 1939 or 1940 ---all these little hoity-toity dummies
with little newspaper hats over their heads while writing stale, stupid
copy. So very important --- not even human enough to acknowledge your
presence. Newspaper people were always the lowest of the breed; janitors who
picked up women's cuntrags in the crappers had more soul --- naturally.
I looked at those college freaks, walked out, never went back.
Now. Open Pussy. Twenty-eight years later.
Copy in my hand. There was Cherry at a desk. Cherry was on the
telephone. Very important. Couldn't speak. Or Cherry not at the telephone.
Writing something on a piece of paper. Couldn't speak. the same old con of
always. Thirty years hadn't broken the dish. and Joe Hyans running around,
doing big things, running up and down the stairs. He had a little place on
top. Rather exclusive, of course. And some poor shit in a back room with him
there where Joe could watch him getting copy ready for the printer on the
IBM. He gave the poor shit thirty-five a week for a sixty-hour week and the
poor shit was glad, grew a beard and lovely soulful eyes and the poor shit
hacked out the third-rate piteous copy. With the Beatles playing full volume
over the intercom and the phone ringing contin- ually, Joe Hyans, editor,
was always RUNNING OFF TO SOME- PLACE IMPORTANT SOMEWHEREA. But when you
read the paper the next week you'd wonder where he'd run. It wasn't in
there.
Open Pussy went on, for a while. My columns continued to be good, but
the paper itself was half-ass. I could smell the death-cunt of it-
There was a staff meeting every other Friday night. I busted up a few
of them. And after hearing the results, I just didn't go anymore. If the
paper wanted to live, let it live. I stayed away and just slid my stuff
under the door in an envelope.
Then Hyans got me on the phone: "I've got an idea. I want you to get me
together the best poets and prose writers that you know and we are going to
put out a literary supplement."
I got it together for him. He printed it. And the cops busted him for
"obscenity."
But I was a nice guy. I got him on the phone. "Hyans?"
"Yeh?"
"Since you done got busted for the thing, I'm a gonna let you have my
column for free. That ten bucks you been paying me, it goes for the Open
Pussy defense fund."
"Thanks very much," he said.
So there he was, getting the best writing in America for noth- ing-
Then Cherry phoned me on night.
"Why don't you come to our staff meetings anymore? We all miss you,
terribly."
"What? What the hell you saying, Cherry? You on the stuff?"
"No, Hank, we all love you, really. Do come to our next staff meeting."
"I'll think about it."
"It's dead without you."
"And death with me."
"We want you, old man."
"I'll think about it, Cherry."
So, I showed. I had been given the idea by Hyans, himself, that since
it was the first anniversary of Open Pussy the wine and the pussy and the
life and the love would be flowing.
But coming in very high and expecting to see fucking on the floor and
love galore, I only saw all these little love-creatures busily at work. They
reminded me very much, so humped and dismal, of the little old ladies
working on piecework I used to deliver cloth to, working my way up through
rope hand-pulled elevators full of rats and stink, one hundred years old,
piecework ladies, proud and dead and neurotic as all hell, working, working
to make a millionaire out of somebody-in New York, in Philadelphia, in St.
Louis.
And these, for Open Pussy, were working without wages, and there was
Joe Hyans, looking a bit brutal and fat, walking up and down behind them,
hands folded behind his back, seeing thateach volunteer did his (her) duty
properly and exactly.
"Hyans! Hyans, you filthy cocksucker!" I screamed as I walked in. "You
are running a slave-market, you are a lousy pewking Simon Legree! You cry
for justice from the police and from Wash- ington, D.C. and you are the
biggest lousiest swine of them all! You are Hitler multiplied by a hundred,
you slave-labor bastard! You write of atrocities and then triple them
yourself! Who the fuck you think you're fooling, mother? Who the fuck you
think you are?"
Luckily for Hyans, the rest of the staff was quite used to me and they
thought that whatever I said was foolishness and that Hyans Himself stood
for Truth.
Hyans Himself walked up and put a stapler in my hand.
"Sit down, he said, "we are trying to increase the circulation. just
sit down and clip one of these green ads to each of newspapers. We are
sending out leftover copies to potential subscribers-"
Dear old Freedom Loveboy Hyans, using big business methods to put over
his crap. Brainwashed beyond himself.
He finally came up and took the stapler out of my hand.
"You're not stapling fast enough."
"Fuck you, mother. There was supposed to be champagne all over this
place. Now I'm eating staples-"
"Hey, Eddie!"
He called over another slave-labor member --- thin-cheeked, wire-armed,
pnurious. Poor Eddie was starving. Everybody was starving for the Cause.
Except Hyans and his wife, and they lived in a two-story house and sent one
of their children to a private school, and there was old Poppa back in
Cleveland, one of the head stiffs of the Plain Dealer, with more money than
anything else.
So Hyans ran me out and also a guy with a little propeller on the top
of a beanie cap, Lovable Doc Stanley I believe he was called, and also
Lovable Doc's woman, and as the three of us left out the back door quite
calmly, sharing a bottle of cheap wine, there came the voice of Joe Hyans:
"And get out of here, and don't any of you ever come back, but I don't mean
you Bukowski!"
Poor fuck, he knew what kept the paper going-
Then there was another bust by the police. This time for print- ing the
photo of a woman's cunt. Hyan's at this time, as always, was mixed up. He
wanted to hype the circulation, by any means, or kill the paper and get out.
It was a vise he couldn't seem to work properly and it drew tighter and
tighter. Only the people working for nothing or for thirty-five dollars a
week seemed to have any interest in the paper. But Hyans did manage to lay a
couple of the younger female volunteers so he wasn't wasting his time.
"Why don't you quit your lousy job and come work for us?"
"How much?"
"Forty-five dollars a week. That includes your column. You will also
distribute to the boxes on Wednesday night, your car, I'll pay the gas, and
you write up special assignments. Eleven a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Fridays and
Saturday s off."
"I'll think about it."
Hyans' old man came in from Cleveland. We got drunk to- gether over at
Hyans' house. Hyans and Cherry seemed very un- happy with Pops. And Pops
could put away the whiskey. No grass for him. I could put away the whiskey
too. We drank all night.
"Now the way to get rid of the Free Press is to bust up their stands,
run the peddlers off the streets, bust a few heads. That's what we used to
do in the old days. I've got money. I can hire some hoods, some mean sons of
bitches. We can hire Bukowski.
"God damn it!" screamed young Hyans, "I don't want to hear your shit,
you understand?"
Pops asked me, "What do you think of my idea, Bukowski?"
"I think it's a good idea. Pass the bottle over here."
"Bukowski is insane!" screamed Joe Hyans.
"You print his column," said Pops.
"He's the best writer in California," said young Hyans.
"The best insane writer in California," I corrected him.
"Son," Pops went on, "I have all this money. I want to put your paper
over. All we gotta do is bust a few-"
"No. No. No!" Joe Hyans screamed. "I won't have it!" Then he ran out of
the house. What a wonderful man Joe Hyans was. He ran out of the house. I
reached for another drink and told Cherry that I was going to fuck her up
against the bookcase. Pops said he'd take seconds. Cherry cussed us while
Joe Hyans ran off down the street with his soul-
The paper went on, coming out once a week somehow. Then the trial about
the photo of the female cunt came up.
The prosecuting attorney asked Hyans: "Would you object to oral
copulation on the steps of the City Hall?"
"No," said Joe, "but it would probably block traffic."
Oh, Joe, I thought, you blew that one! You shudda said, "I'd prefer for
oral copulation to go on inside the City Hall where it usually does."
When the judge asked Hyans' lawyer what the meaning of the photo of the
female sex organ was, Hyans' lawyer answered, "Well, that's just the way it
is. That's the way it is, daddy."
They lost the trial, of course, and appealed for a new one. "A roust,"
said Joe Hyans to the few and scattered news media about, "nothing but a
police roust."
What a brilliant man Joe Hyans was-
Next I heard from Joe Hyans was over the phone: "Bukowski, I just
bought a gun. One hundred and twelve dollars. A beautiful weapon. I'm going
to kill a man!"
"Where are you now?"
"In the bar, down by the paper."
"I'll be right there."
When I got there he was walking up and down outside the bar.
"Come on," he said, "I'll buy you a beer."
We sat down. The place was full, Hyans was talking in a very loud
voice. You could hear him all the way to Santa Monica.
I'm going to splatter his brains out against the wall --- I'm going to
kill the son of a bitch!"
"What guy, kid? Why do you want to kill this guy, kid?"
He kept staring straight ahead.
"Groovy, baby. Why ya wanna kill this sunabitch,huh?"
"He's fucking my wife, that's why!"
"Oh."
He stared some more. It was like a movie. It wasn't even as good as a
movie.
"It's a beautiful weapon," said Joe. "You put in this little clip. It
fires ten shots. Rapid-fire. There'll be nothing left of the bastard!"
Joe Hyans.
That wonderful man with the big red beard.
Groovy, baby.
Anyhow I asked him, "How about all these anti-war articles you've
printed? How about the love bit? What happened?"
"Oh come on now Bukowski, you've never believed in all that pacifism
shit?"
"Well, I don't know-Well, I guess not exactly."
"I've warned this guy that I am going to kill him if he doesn't stay
away, and I walk in and there he is sitting on the couch in my own house.
Now what would you do?"
"You're making this a personal property thing, don't you understand?
Just fuck it. Forget it. Walk away. Leave them there together."
"Is that what you've done?"
"After the age of thirty - always. And after the age of forty, it gets
easier. But in my twenties I used to go insane. The first burns are the
hardest."
"Well, I am going to kill the son of a bitch! I'm going to blow his
goddamned brains out!"
The whole bar was listening. Love, baby, love.
I told him, "Let's get out of here."
Outside the bar Hyans dropped to his knees and screamed, a long milk-
curdling four-minute scream. You could hear him all the way to Detroit. Then
I got him up and walked him to my car. As he got to the car door on his
side, he grabbed the handle, dropped to his knees and let go another hog-
caller to Detroit. He was hooked on Cherry, poor fellow. I got him up, put
will not relent, it will continue to feed itself. the com- munist party be
damned.
all right, that's bad enough. let's take something else. besides the
public being automatically wrong just by instinct (ask the stock- broker -
when you want to know which way to move just move the opposite from the big
crowd with the small, 'scared, tight money). but the something else is this:
a possible mathematic. taking the dollar base - you invest the first dollar,
you get back 85 cents. automatic take. second race, you have to ass15 cents,
then another 15% take. now take 9 races and take a 15% take on a break-even
basis - upon your original dollar. is it just 9 times 15% or is it much
more? it would take one of these Caltaech cats to tell me and I don't know
any Caltech cats. anyway, if you have followed me up to here, you must
realize that it is very difficult to make a "living" at the racetrack as
some starry-eyed dreamers would like to do.
I am a "hard-nose": that is, any given day at any track you just ain't
gonna take much money from me; on the other hand, I ain't gonna make much.
naturally, I have some good plays and I'd be a damn fool to reveal them to
everybody because then they would not work. once the public gets onto
something it is dead and it changes. the public is not allowed to win in any
game ever invented and that includes the American Revolution. but for "Open
City" readers I have a few basics that might save you a little money. take
heed.
a/ watch your underlay shots. an underlay is a horse that closes in
odds under the trackman's morning line. in other words, the trackman lists
the horse 10 t0 1 and it is going off at 6 to 1. money is much more serious
than anything else. check your under- lays carefully, and if the line is
just not a careless mistake by the trackman and the horse dos not show any
recent fast works or a switch to a "name" jockey, and if the horse is not
dropping weight and is running against the same class, you will probably get
a fairly good run for your money.
b/ lay off the closers. this is a horse, that say closed from 5 to 16
lengths from the beginning call to the last and still did not win and is
coming back against the same or similar. the crowd loves the "closer,"
through fear $ tight money and stupidity, but the closer is generally a lard-
ass, lazy and only passes tired horses who have been running and fighting
for the front end. not only does the crowd love this type of junk-horse but
they will consistently bet him down to odds less than 1/3 of his worth. even
though this type of horse continually runs out, the crowd out of fear will
go to him because they are tight up against the rent money and feel that a
closer possesses some kind of super stength. 90% of the races are won by
horses on the front end or near the front end of all the running, at
plausible and reasonable prices.
c/ if you must bet a "closer" bet him in shorter races, 6 or 7
furlongs, where the crowd believes he does not have time "to get up." here
they go for the speed and are stuck again. 7 furlongs is the best closer's
race in the business because of only one curve. a speed horse gets the
advantage of being out in front and saving ground on the turns. 7 furlongs
with one curve and the long backstretch is the perfect closer's race; much
better than a mile and a quarter, even better than a mile and one half. I am
giving you some good stuff here, I hope you heed it.
d/ watch your toteboard - money in American society is more serious
than death and you hardly get anything for nothing. if a horse is listed at
6 to 1 on the morning line and he is going off at 114 to 25 to 1, forget it.
either the trackman had a hangover when he made his morning line or the
stable just isn't going that race. you don't get anything free in this
world; if you don't know anything about racing, do bet horses that go off to
their morning line. large overlays are nil and almost impossible. all the
little grandmamas go home to eat bitter toast with gummed teeth upon Papa's
retire-ment death certificate.
e/ only bet when you can lose. I mean without ending up sleeping on a
park bench or missing 3 or 4 meals. the main thing, get the rent down first.
avoid pressures. you will be luckier. and remem- ber what the pros say, "If
you've got to lose, lose in front." in other words, make them beat you. if
you're going to lose anyhow, then to hell with it, get you a dancer out of
the gate, you've got it won until they beat you, until they pass you. the
price is usually generous because the public hates what they call a
"quitter" - a horse that opens daylight on the pack and still manages to
lose. this looks bad to them. to me a "quitter" is any horse that does not
win a race.
f/ any profit-loss venture is not based upon the number of winners you
have but upon the number of winners at the price. to basics, you can have
three 6 to 5 winners in 9 races and wash out, but you can have one 9 to 1
and one 5 to 1 and get over. this does not always mean that a 6 to 5 is a
bad bet, but if you know little or next to nothing about racing, it might be
best to hold your bets between 7 to 2 and 9 to 1. or if you must indulge in
wild fancies, keep your bets between 11 and 1q9 to 1. in fact, many 18 or 19
to 1's bounce in if you can find the right ones.
but, actually, a man can never know enough about horse rac- ing or
anything else. just when he thinks he knows he is just begin- ning. I
remember one summer I won 4 grand at Hollypark and I went down to Del Mar in
a new car, cocky, poetic, knowledgeable, I had the world by the nuts, and I
rented myself a little motel by the sea and the ladies showed up as the
ladies will when you are drinking and laughing and don't care and have some
money (a fool and his money are soon parted) and I had a party every night
and a new broad every other night, and it was a kind of joke I used to tell
them, the place was right over the sea, and I'd say, after much drinking and
talking, "Baby, I come with the WOOSH OF THE SEA!"
===
the harness racing season has been under way, as they say, for a week
or 2 now, and I have been out 5 or 6 times, perhaps breaking even for the
course, which is a hell of a waste of time - anything is a waste of time
unless you are fucking well or creating well or getting well or looming
toward a kind of phantom love-happiness. we will all end up in the crud-pot
of defeat - call it death or error. I am not a word-man. I do suppose, tho,
as one keeps making adjustments to the tide, we can call it experience even
if we are not so sure that it is wisdom. then too, it is possible for a man
to live a whole life of constant error in a kind of numb and terrorized
state. You've seen the faces. I've seen my own.
so during all the heat wave they are still out there, the bettors,
having gotten a little money somewhere, the hard way, and trying to beat the
15 percent take. I sometimes think of the crowd as hypno- tized, a crowd
that has nowhere to go. and after the races they get into their old cars,
drive to their lonely rooms and look at the walls. Wondering why they did it
--- heels run down, bad teeth, ulcers, bad jobs, men without women, women
without men. Nothing but shit.
there are some laughs. there have to be. walking into the men's room
between races the other day I came upon a young man gagging, then shouting
in fury: "god damn son of a bitch, some god damn son of a bitch didn't flush
his shit away! HE LEFT IT THERE! the son of a bitch, I walked in and there
it WAS! I'll be he does that at home too!"
this boy was screaming. the rest of us were standing there pissing or
washing our hands, thinking about the last race or the next one. I know some
freaks that would be delighted to come upon a potful of fresh turds.but
that's the way it works - the wrong guy gets it.
another day I am sweating, battling, scratching, praying, jack- ing to
stay 10 or 12 bucks ahead, and it is a very difficult harness race, I don't
even think the drivers know who is going to win, and this big fat woman,
ponderous whale of healthy stinking blubber, walked up to me, put that
stinking fat against my body front, and squeezed 2 little eyes, a mouth and
the rest into my face and said,
"what are the hands on the first horse?"
"the hands on the first horse?"
"yes, what are the hands on the first horse?"
"god damn you lady, get away from me, and don't bother me. get away!
get away!"
she did. the whole track is full of crazy people. some of them come
there when the gates open. they stretch out on the seats or on a bench and
sleep all through the races. they never see a race. then they get up and go
home. others wall around just vaguely aware that a race of some kind is
going on. they buy coffee or just stand around looking as if life has been
stunned and burned out of them. or sometimes you see one standing in a dark
corner, jamming a whole hot dog down the throat, gagging, choking, delighted
with the mess of themselves. and at the end of each day you see one or 2
with their heads down between their legs. sometimes they are crying. where
do losers go? who wants a loser?
essentially, in one way or another, everybody thinks that he has the
key to beating the thing, even if it is only such an unjustified assumptions
that their luck must change, some play stars, some play numbers, some play
strictly time, others play drivers, or closers or speed r names or god knows
what. almost all of them lose, contin- ually. almost all their income goes
directly into the mutuel ma- chines. most of these people have unbearably
fixed egos - the are tenaciously stupid.
I won a few dollars Sept. 1. let's go over the card. Andy's Dream won
the first at 9/2 from a morning line of 10. good play. unwarranted action on
beaten horse running from outside post. 2nd race - Jerry Perkins, 14 year
old gelding nobody wants to claim because of age, drops into $15 claimer. a
good horse, consistent within his class, but you had to take 8/5 under a
morning line of four. won easy. third race won by Special Product, a horse
that broke in his last four races at long odds. he broke stride again this
time, pulled up, righted himself and still came on to beat the 3/5 favorite
Golden Bill. a possible bet if you are in touch with God and God is
interested. ten to one. in the fourth race, Hal Richard a consistent 4 year
old gelding won at three to one, beating out two shorter choices that showed
better times but no winning ability. a good bet. In the fifth, Eileen Colby
wins after Tiny Star and Marsand break and the crowd sends off April Fool at
3/5. April Fool has only been able to win four races out of 32, and one
local handicapper tabs him "better than these by five lengths." all this on
time effort of last race in better class when April Fool finishes seven
lengths out. the crowd is taken again.
then in the sixth race, Mister Honey is given a morning line of 10 but
is sent off as second choice of 5/2 and wins easy, having won three out of
nine in tougher class at short odds. Newport Buell, a cheaper horse is sent
off at even money because he closed ground in last at nine to one. a bad
bet. the crowd doesn't understand. in the seventh, Bills Snookums, a winner
of seven out of nine in class and with the leading rider Farrington up is
made the new 8/5 favorite and justifiably so.
the crowd bets Princess Sampson down to 7/2. this horse has won only 6
races out of 67. naturally, the crowd gets burned again.
Princess Sampson shows the best time in a tougher race but just does
not want to win. the crowd is time-happy. they do not realize that time is
caused by pace and pace is caused by the discre- tion - or lack of it - of
the lead drivers. in the eighth, Abbemite win gets up in a four or five
horse scramble. it was an open race and one I should have stayed out of. In
the ninth, they let the public Have one. Luella Primrose. the horse had
failed consistently at short odds and today got on its own pace without a
challenger. 5/2. one for the ladies, and how they screamed. a pretty name.
they'd been losing their drawers on the thing all through the meet.
most of the cards are as reasonable as this, and it would seem possible
to make a living at the track against the 15 percent take. but the outside
factors beat you. the heat. tiredness. people spilling beer on your shirt.
screaming. stepping on your feet. women showing their legs. pickpockets.
touts. madmen. I was $24 ahead going into the ninth race and there wasn't a
play in the ninth.
being tired, I didn't have the resistance to stay out. before the race
went off I had dropped in $16, shopping, feeling for a winner that didn't
show. then they sent in the public play on me. I was not satisfied with a
$24 day. I once worked for $16 a week at New Orleans. I was not strong
enough to take a gentle profit, so I walked out $8 winner. Not worth the
struggle: I could have stayed home and written an immortal poem.
a man who can beat the races can do about any thing he makes up his
mind to do. he must have the character, the knowledge, the detachment. even
with these qualities, the races are tough, especially with the rent waiting
and your whore's tongue hanging our for beer. there are traps beyond traps
beyond traps. there are days when everything impossible happens. the other
day they ran in a 50 to one shot in the first race, a 100 to one in the
second, and crapped off the day with an 18 to one in the last race. when you
are trying to scrape up pesos for the landlord and potato and egg money,
this kind of day can very much make you feel like an imbecile.
but if you come back the next day they will give you six or seven
reasonable winners at fair prices. it's there but most of them don't go
back. It takes patience and it's hard work: you have to think. It's a
battlefield and you can become shell-shocked. I saw a friend of mine out
there the other day, glaze-eyed, punched-out. It was late in the day and it
had been a reasonable card, but somehow they had gotten past him and I could
tell that he had bet too much trying to get out.he walked past me, not
knowing where he was. I watched him. he walked right into the women's
crapper. they screamed and he came running out. it was what he needed. it
pulled him out and he caught the winner of the next race. but I would not
advise this system to all losers.
there are laughs and there is sadness. there is an old boy who walked
up to me one time. "Bukowski," he said very seriously, "I want to beat the
horses before I die."
his hair is white, totally white, teeth gone, and I could see myself
there in 15 or 20 years, if I make it.
"I like the six horse," he told me.
"luck," I told him.
he'd picked a stiff, as usual. an odds-on favorite that had only won
one race in 15 starts that year. the public handicappers had the horse on
top too. the horse had won $88,000 LAST year. best time. I bet ten win on
Miss Lustytown, a winner of nine races this year. Miss Lustytown paid 4/1.
the odds-on finished last.
the old man came by, raging. "how the hell! Glad Rags ran 2:01 and 1/5
last time and gets beat by a 2:02 and 1/5 mare! they oughta close this place
up!"
he raps his program, snarling at me. his face is so red that he appears
to have a sunburn. I walk away from him, go over to the cashier's window and
cash in.
when I get home, there is one magazine in the mail, THE SMITH,
parodying my prose style, and another magazine, THE SIX- TIES, parodying my
poetic style.
writing?what the hell's that? somebody is worried or pissed about m y
writing. I look over ans sure enough there's a typewriter in the room. I am
a writer of some kind, there's another world there of maneuvering and
gouging and groups and methods.
I let the warm water run, get into the tub, open a beer, open the
racing formt phone rings. I let it ring. for me, maybe not for you, it's too
hot to fuck or listen to some minor poet. Hemingway had his pulls. give me a
horse's ass - that gets there first.
===
AN UNDERGROUND NEWSPAPER
There were quite a few meetings at Joe Hyans' house at first and I
usually showed drunk, so I don't remember much about the inception of Open
Pussy, the underground newspaper, and I was only told later what had
happened. Or rather, what I had done.
Hyans: "You said you were going to clean out the whole place and that
you were going to start with the guy in the wheelchair. Then he started to
cry and people started leaving. You hit a guy over the head with a bottle."
Cherry (Hyans' wife): "You refused to leave and you drank a whole fifth
of whiskey and kept telling me that you were going to fuck me up against the
bookcase."
"Did I?"
"No."
"Ah, then next time."
Hyans: "Listen, Bukowski, we're trying to get organized and all you do
is come around and bust things up. You're the nastiest damn drunk I'veeve
seen!"
"OK, I quit, Fuck it. Who cares about newspapers?"
"No, we want you to do a column. We think you're the best writer in Los
Angeles."
I lifted my drink. "That's a motherfucking insult! I didn't come here
to be insulted!"
"OK, maybe you're the best writer in California."
"There you go! Still insulting me!"
"Anyhow, we want you to do a column."
"I'm a poet."
"What's the difference between poetry and prose?"
"Poetry says too much in too short a time; prose says too little and
takes too long."
"We want a column for Open Pussy."
"Pour me a drink and you're on."
Hyans did. I was on. I finished the drink and walked over to my skidrow
court thinking about what a mistake I was making. I was almost fifty years
old and fucking with these long-haired, bearded kids. Oh God, groovy, daddy,
oh groovy! War is shit. War is hell. fuck, don't fight. I'd known all that
for fifty years. It wasn't quite as exciting to me. Oh, and don't forget the
pot. the stash. Groove, baby!
I found a pint in my place, drank it, four cans of beer and wrote the
first column. It was about a three-hundred-pound whore I had once fucked in
Philadelphia. It was a good column. I corrected the typing errors, jacked
off and went to sleep-
It started on the bottom floor of Hyans' two-story rented house. There
were some half-assed volunteers and the thing was new and everybody was
excited but me. I kept searching out the women for ass but they all looked
and acted the same --- they were all nineteen years old, dirty-blonde, small
ass, small breasted, busy dizzy, and, in a sense, conceited without quite
knowing why. When- ever I'd lay my drunken hands upon them they were always
quite cool. Quite.
"Look, Gramps, the only thing we want to seeyou raise is a North
Vietnamese flag!"
"Ah, your pussy probably stinks anyhow!"
"Oh, you are a filthy old man! You really are-so disgust- ing!"
And then they'd walk off shaking those little delicious apple buttocks
at me, only carrying in their hand --- instead of my lovely purple head ---
some juvenile copy about the cops shaking down the kids and taking away
their Baby Ruth bars on Sunset Strip. Here I was, the greatest living poet
since Auden and I couldn't even fuck a dog in the ass-
The paper got too big. Or Cherry got worried about my loung- ing about
on the couch drunk and leering at her five-year-old daugh- ter. When it
really got bad was when the daughter started sitting on my lap and looking
up into my face while squirming, saying, "I like you, Bukowski. Talk to me.
Let me get you another Beer, Bukow- ski."
"Hurry back, sweetie!"
Cherry: "Listen, Bukowski, you old letch-"
"Cherry, children love me. I can't help it."
The little girl, Zaza, ran back with the beer, got back into my lap. I
opened the beer.
"I like you, Bukowski, tell me a story."
"OK, honey. Well, once upon a time there was this old man and this
lovely little girl lost in the woods together-"
"Cherry: "Listen, you old letch-"
"Ta, ta, Cherry, I do believe you have a dirty mind!" Cherry ran
upstairs looking for Hyans who was taking a crap. "Joe, Joe, we've just got
to move this paper out of here! I mean it!"-
They found a vacant building up front, two floors, and one midnight
while drinking portw wine, I held the flashlight for Joe while he broke open
the phone box on the side of the house and rear- ranged the wires so he
could have extension phones without charge. about this time the only other
underground newspaper in L.A. ac- cused Joe of stealing a duplicate copy of
their mailing list. Of course, I knew Joe had morals and scruples and ideals
--- that's why he quit working for the large metro daily. That's why he quit
working for the other underground newspaper. Joe was some kind of Christ.
Sure.
"Hold that flashlight steady," he said-
In the morning, at my place, the phone rang. It was my friend Mongo the
Giant of the Eternal High.
"Hank?"
"Yeh?"
"Cherry was over last night."
"Yea?"
"She had this mailing list. Was very nervous. She wanted me to hide it.
Said Jensen was on the prowl. I hid it in the cellar under a pile of India
ink sketches Jimmy the Dwarf did before he died."
"Did you screw her?"
"What for? She's all bones. Those ribs would slice me to pieces while I
fucked."
"You screwed Jimmy the Dwarf and he only weighed eighty- three pounds."
"He had soul."
"Yeh?"
"Yeh."
I hung up-
For the next four or five issues, Open Pussy came out with sayings
like, "WE LOVE THE L.A. FREE PRESS," "OH, WE LOVE THE L.A. FREE PRESS,"
"LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THE L.A. FREE PRESS."
They should have. They had their mailing list.
One night Jensen and Joe had dinner together. Joe told me later that
everything was now "all right." I don't know who screwed who or what went on
under the table. And I didn't care-
And I soon found that I had other readers besides the beaded and the
bearded-
In Los Angeles the new Federal Building rises glass-high, insane and
modern, with the Kafka-series of rooms each indulged with their own personal
frog-jacking-off bit; everything feeding off of every- thing else and
thriving with a kind of worm-in-the apple warmth and ther I was given a time
ticket for that amount and I walked into the Federal Building, which had
downstairs murals like Diego Rivera would have done if nine tenths of his
sensibilities had been cut away ---American sailors and Indians and soldiers
smiling away, trying to look noble in cheap yellows and retching rotting
greens and pissy blues.
I was being called into personnel. I knew that it wasn't for a
promotion. They took the letter and cooled me on the hard seat for forty-
five minutes. It was part of the old you-got-shit-in-your- intestines. And
we-don't-have routine. Luckily, from past experience, I read the warty sign,
and I cooled it myself, thinking about how Each of the girls who walked by
would go on a bed, legs high, or Taking it in the mouth. Soon I had
something huge between my legs --well, huge for me --- and had to stare at
the floor.
I was finally called in by a very black and slinky and well- dressed
and pleasant Negress, very much class and even a spot of soul, whose smile
said she knew that I was going to be fucked but who also hinted that she
wouldn't mind throwing me a little pee- hole herself. It eased matters. Not
that it mattered.
And I walked in.
"Have a seat."
Man behind desk. Same old shit. I sat.
"Mr. Bukowski?"
"Yeh."
He gave me his name. I wasn't interested.
He leaned back, stared at me from his swivel.
I'm sure he expected somebody younger and better-looking, more
flamboyant, more intelligent-looking, more treacherous-look- ing-I was just
old, tired, disinterested, hung-over. He was a bit gray and distinguished,
if you know the type of distinguished I mean. Never pulled beets out of the
ground with a bunch of wet- backs or been in the drunktank fifteen or twenty
times. Or picked lemons at six a.m. without a shirt on because you knew that
at noon it would be 110 degrees. Only the poor knew the meaning of life; the
rich and the safe had to guess. Strangely then, I began thinking of the
Chinese. Russia had softened; it could be that only the Chi- nese knew,
digging up from the bottom, tired of soft shit. But then, I had no politics,
that was more con: history screwed us all, finally. I was done ahead of time
--- baked, fucked, screwed-out, nothing left.
"Mr. Bukowski?"
"Yeh?"
"Well, ah-we've had an informant-"
"Yeh. Go ahead."
"-who wrote us that you are not married to the mother of your child."
I imagined him, then, decorating a Christmas tree with a drink in his
hand.
"That's true. I am not married to the mother of my child, aged four."
"Do you pay child support?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"I'm not going to tell you."
He leaned back again. "You must understand that those of us in
government service must maintain certain standards."
Not really feeling guilty of anything, I didn't answer.
I waited.
Oh, where are you, boys? Kafka, where are you? Lorca, shot in the dirty
road, where are you? Hemingway, claiming he was being tailed by the C.I.A.
and nobody believing him but me-
The, old distinguished well-rested non-beetpicking gray turned around
and reached into a small and well-varnished cabinet behind him and pulled
out six or seven copies of Open Pussy.
He threw them upon his desk like stinking siffed and raped turds. He
tapped them with one of his non-lemonpulling hands.
"We are led to believe that YOU are the writer of these col- umns ---
Notes of a Dirty Old Man."
"Yeh."
"What do you have to say about these columns?"
"Nothing."
"Do you call this writing?
"It's the best that I can do."
"Well, I'm supporting two sons who are now taking journalism at the
best of colleges, and I HOPE-"
He tapped the sheets, the stinking turd sheets, with the bot- tom of
his ringed and un-factoried and un-jailed hand and said:
"I hope that my sons never turn out to write like YOU do!"
"They won't," I promised him.
"Mr. Bukowski, I think that the interview is finished."
"Yeah," I said. I lit a cig, stood up, scratched my beer-gut and walked
out.
The second interview was sooner than I expected. I was hard at work ---
of course --- at one of my important menial tasks when the speaker boomed:
"Henry Charles Bukowski, report to the Tour superintendent's office!"
I dropped my important task, got a treavel form from the local screw
and walked on over to the office. The Tour-Soup's male secre- tary, an old
gray flab, looked me over.
"Are you Charles Bukowski?" he asked me, quite disappoint- ed.
"Yeh, man."
"Please follow me."
I followed him. It was a large building. We went down several stairways
and down around a long hall and then into a large dark room that entered
into another large and very dark room. Two men were sitting there at the end
of a table that must have been seventy- five feet long. They sat under a
lone lamp. And at the end of the table sat this single chair --- for me.
"You may enter," said the secretary. Then he shorted out.
I walked in. The two men stood up. Here we were under one lamp in the
dark. For some reason, I thought of all the assassina- tions.
Then I thought, this is America, daddy, Hitler is dead. Or is he?
"Bukowski?"
"Yeh."
They both shook hands with me.
"Sit down."
Groovy, baby.
"This is Mr. - - - - from Washington," said the other guy who was one
of the local topdogturds.
I didn't say anything. It was a nice lamp. Made of human skin?
Mr. Washington did the talking. He had a portfolio with quite a few
papers within.
"Now, Mr. Bukowski-"
"Yeh?"
"Your age is forty-eight and you've been employed by the United States
Government for eleven years."
"Yeh."
"You were married to your first wife two and a half years, divorced,
and you married your present wife when? We'd like the date."
"No date. No marriage."
"You have a child!"
"Yeh."
"How old?"
"Four."
"You're not married?"
"No."
"Do you pay child support?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"About standard."
Then he leaned back and we sat there. The three of us said nothing for
a good four or five minutes.
Then a stack of the underground newspaper Open Pussy ap- peared.
"Do you write these columns? Notes of a Dirty Old Man?" Mr. Washington
asked.
"Yeh."
He handed a copy to Mr. Los Angeles.
"Have you seen this one?"
"No, no, I haven't"
Across the top of the column was a walking cock with legs, a huge HUGE
walking cock with legs. The story was about a male friend of mine I had
screwed in the ass by mistake, while drunk, believing that it was one of my
girlfriends. It took me two weeks to finally force my friend to leave my
place. It was a true story.
"Do you call this writing?" Mr. Washington asked.
"I don't know about the writing. But I thought it was a very funny
story. Didn't you think it was humorous?"
"But this-this illustration across the top of the story?"
"The walking cock?"
"Yes."
"I didn't draw it."
"You have nothing to do with the selection of illustrations?"
"The paper is put together on Tuesday nights."
"And you are not there on Tuesday nights?"
"I am supposed to be here on Tuesday nights."
They waited some time, going through Open Pussy, looking at my columns.
"You know," said Mr. Washington, tapping the Open Pussies again with
his hand, "you would have been all right if you had kept writing poetry, but
when you began writing this stuff-" He again tapped the Open Pussies.
I waited two minutes and thirty seconds. Then I asked: "Are we to
consider the postal officials as the new critics of literature?"
"Oh, no no," said Mr. Washington, "we didn't mean that." I sat and
waited.
"There is a certain conduct expected of postal employees. You are in
the Public Eye. You are to be an example of exemplary behavior."
"It appears to me," I said, "that you are threatening my free- dom of
expression with a resultant loss of employment. The A.C.L.U. might be
interested."
"We'd still prefer you didn't write the column."
"Gentleman, there comes a time in each man's life when he must choose
to stand or run. I choose to stand."
Their silence.
Wait.
Wait.
The shuffling of Open Pussies.
Then Mr. Washington: "Mr. Bukowski?"
"Yeh?"
Are you going to write any more columns about the Post Office?"
I had written one about them which I thought was more humorous than
demeaning --- but then, maybe my mind was twisted.
I let them wait this time. Then I answered. "Not unless you make it
necessary for me to do so."
Then they waited. It was kind of an interrogation chess game where you
hoped the other man would make the wrong move: blurt out his pawns, knights,
bishops, king, his queen, his guts. (And meanwhile, as you read this, here
goes my goddamned job. Groovy, baby. Send dollars for beer and wreaths to
The Charles Bukowski Rehabilitation Fund at-)
Mr. Washington stood up.
Mr. Los Angeles stood up.
Mr. Washington said: "I think that the interview is over."
Mr. Washington said: "Meanwhile, don't jump off of any bridges-"
(Strange: I hadn't even thought about it.)
"-we haven't had a case like this in ten years." (In ten years? Who was
the last poor sucker?) "So?" I asked.
"Mr. Bukowski," said Mr. Los Angeles, "report back to your position."
I really had an unquieting time (or is it disquieting?) trying to find
my way back to the work floor from that underground Kafka- esqueish maze,
and when I did, here all my subnormal fellow workers (good pricks all)
started chirping at me:
"Hey, baby, where ya been?"
"What'd they want, daddieo?"
"You knocked up another black chick, big daddy?"
I gave them the Silence. One learns from dear old Uncle Sammy.
They kept chirping and flipping and fingering their mental assholes.
They were really frightened. I was Old Kool and if they could break Old Kool
they could break any of them.
"They wanted to make me Postmaster," I told them.
"And what happened, daddieo?"
"I told them to jam a hot turd up their siffed-up snatch."
The foreman of the aisle walked by and they all gave him the proper
obeisance but me, but I, but Bukowski, I lit a cigar with an easy flourish,
threw the match on the floor and stared at the ceiling as if I were having
great and wonderful thoughts. It was con; my mind was blank; I only wanted a
halfpint of Grandad and six or seven tall cool beers-
The fucking paper grew, or seemed to, and moved to a place on Melrose.
I always hated to go there with copy, though, because everybody was so
shitty, so truly shitty and snobby and not quite right, you know. Nothing
changed. The history of the Man-beast was very slow. They were like the
shifts I'd faced when I first walked into the copy room of the L.A. City
College newspaper in 1939 or 1940 ---all these little hoity-toity dummies
with little newspaper hats over their heads while writing stale, stupid
copy. So very important --- not even human enough to acknowledge your
presence. Newspaper people were always the lowest of the breed; janitors who
picked up women's cuntrags in the crappers had more soul --- naturally.
I looked at those college freaks, walked out, never went back.
Now. Open Pussy. Twenty-eight years later.
Copy in my hand. There was Cherry at a desk. Cherry was on the
telephone. Very important. Couldn't speak. Or Cherry not at the telephone.
Writing something on a piece of paper. Couldn't speak. the same old con of
always. Thirty years hadn't broken the dish. and Joe Hyans running around,
doing big things, running up and down the stairs. He had a little place on
top. Rather exclusive, of course. And some poor shit in a back room with him
there where Joe could watch him getting copy ready for the printer on the
IBM. He gave the poor shit thirty-five a week for a sixty-hour week and the
poor shit was glad, grew a beard and lovely soulful eyes and the poor shit
hacked out the third-rate piteous copy. With the Beatles playing full volume
over the intercom and the phone ringing contin- ually, Joe Hyans, editor,
was always RUNNING OFF TO SOME- PLACE IMPORTANT SOMEWHEREA. But when you
read the paper the next week you'd wonder where he'd run. It wasn't in
there.
Open Pussy went on, for a while. My columns continued to be good, but
the paper itself was half-ass. I could smell the death-cunt of it-
There was a staff meeting every other Friday night. I busted up a few
of them. And after hearing the results, I just didn't go anymore. If the
paper wanted to live, let it live. I stayed away and just slid my stuff
under the door in an envelope.
Then Hyans got me on the phone: "I've got an idea. I want you to get me
together the best poets and prose writers that you know and we are going to
put out a literary supplement."
I got it together for him. He printed it. And the cops busted him for
"obscenity."
But I was a nice guy. I got him on the phone. "Hyans?"
"Yeh?"
"Since you done got busted for the thing, I'm a gonna let you have my
column for free. That ten bucks you been paying me, it goes for the Open
Pussy defense fund."
"Thanks very much," he said.
So there he was, getting the best writing in America for noth- ing-
Then Cherry phoned me on night.
"Why don't you come to our staff meetings anymore? We all miss you,
terribly."
"What? What the hell you saying, Cherry? You on the stuff?"
"No, Hank, we all love you, really. Do come to our next staff meeting."
"I'll think about it."
"It's dead without you."
"And death with me."
"We want you, old man."
"I'll think about it, Cherry."
So, I showed. I had been given the idea by Hyans, himself, that since
it was the first anniversary of Open Pussy the wine and the pussy and the
life and the love would be flowing.
But coming in very high and expecting to see fucking on the floor and
love galore, I only saw all these little love-creatures busily at work. They
reminded me very much, so humped and dismal, of the little old ladies
working on piecework I used to deliver cloth to, working my way up through
rope hand-pulled elevators full of rats and stink, one hundred years old,
piecework ladies, proud and dead and neurotic as all hell, working, working
to make a millionaire out of somebody-in New York, in Philadelphia, in St.
Louis.
And these, for Open Pussy, were working without wages, and there was
Joe Hyans, looking a bit brutal and fat, walking up and down behind them,
hands folded behind his back, seeing thateach volunteer did his (her) duty
properly and exactly.
"Hyans! Hyans, you filthy cocksucker!" I screamed as I walked in. "You
are running a slave-market, you are a lousy pewking Simon Legree! You cry
for justice from the police and from Wash- ington, D.C. and you are the
biggest lousiest swine of them all! You are Hitler multiplied by a hundred,
you slave-labor bastard! You write of atrocities and then triple them
yourself! Who the fuck you think you're fooling, mother? Who the fuck you
think you are?"
Luckily for Hyans, the rest of the staff was quite used to me and they
thought that whatever I said was foolishness and that Hyans Himself stood
for Truth.
Hyans Himself walked up and put a stapler in my hand.
"Sit down, he said, "we are trying to increase the circulation. just
sit down and clip one of these green ads to each of newspapers. We are
sending out leftover copies to potential subscribers-"
Dear old Freedom Loveboy Hyans, using big business methods to put over
his crap. Brainwashed beyond himself.
He finally came up and took the stapler out of my hand.
"You're not stapling fast enough."
"Fuck you, mother. There was supposed to be champagne all over this
place. Now I'm eating staples-"
"Hey, Eddie!"
He called over another slave-labor member --- thin-cheeked, wire-armed,
pnurious. Poor Eddie was starving. Everybody was starving for the Cause.
Except Hyans and his wife, and they lived in a two-story house and sent one
of their children to a private school, and there was old Poppa back in
Cleveland, one of the head stiffs of the Plain Dealer, with more money than
anything else.
So Hyans ran me out and also a guy with a little propeller on the top
of a beanie cap, Lovable Doc Stanley I believe he was called, and also
Lovable Doc's woman, and as the three of us left out the back door quite
calmly, sharing a bottle of cheap wine, there came the voice of Joe Hyans:
"And get out of here, and don't any of you ever come back, but I don't mean
you Bukowski!"
Poor fuck, he knew what kept the paper going-
Then there was another bust by the police. This time for print- ing the
photo of a woman's cunt. Hyan's at this time, as always, was mixed up. He
wanted to hype the circulation, by any means, or kill the paper and get out.
It was a vise he couldn't seem to work properly and it drew tighter and
tighter. Only the people working for nothing or for thirty-five dollars a
week seemed to have any interest in the paper. But Hyans did manage to lay a
couple of the younger female volunteers so he wasn't wasting his time.
"Why don't you quit your lousy job and come work for us?"
"How much?"
"Forty-five dollars a week. That includes your column. You will also
distribute to the boxes on Wednesday night, your car, I'll pay the gas, and
you write up special assignments. Eleven a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Fridays and
Saturday s off."
"I'll think about it."
Hyans' old man came in from Cleveland. We got drunk to- gether over at
Hyans' house. Hyans and Cherry seemed very un- happy with Pops. And Pops
could put away the whiskey. No grass for him. I could put away the whiskey
too. We drank all night.
"Now the way to get rid of the Free Press is to bust up their stands,
run the peddlers off the streets, bust a few heads. That's what we used to
do in the old days. I've got money. I can hire some hoods, some mean sons of
bitches. We can hire Bukowski.
"God damn it!" screamed young Hyans, "I don't want to hear your shit,
you understand?"
Pops asked me, "What do you think of my idea, Bukowski?"
"I think it's a good idea. Pass the bottle over here."
"Bukowski is insane!" screamed Joe Hyans.
"You print his column," said Pops.
"He's the best writer in California," said young Hyans.
"The best insane writer in California," I corrected him.
"Son," Pops went on, "I have all this money. I want to put your paper
over. All we gotta do is bust a few-"
"No. No. No!" Joe Hyans screamed. "I won't have it!" Then he ran out of
the house. What a wonderful man Joe Hyans was. He ran out of the house. I
reached for another drink and told Cherry that I was going to fuck her up
against the bookcase. Pops said he'd take seconds. Cherry cussed us while
Joe Hyans ran off down the street with his soul-
The paper went on, coming out once a week somehow. Then the trial about
the photo of the female cunt came up.
The prosecuting attorney asked Hyans: "Would you object to oral
copulation on the steps of the City Hall?"
"No," said Joe, "but it would probably block traffic."
Oh, Joe, I thought, you blew that one! You shudda said, "I'd prefer for
oral copulation to go on inside the City Hall where it usually does."
When the judge asked Hyans' lawyer what the meaning of the photo of the
female sex organ was, Hyans' lawyer answered, "Well, that's just the way it
is. That's the way it is, daddy."
They lost the trial, of course, and appealed for a new one. "A roust,"
said Joe Hyans to the few and scattered news media about, "nothing but a
police roust."
What a brilliant man Joe Hyans was-
Next I heard from Joe Hyans was over the phone: "Bukowski, I just
bought a gun. One hundred and twelve dollars. A beautiful weapon. I'm going
to kill a man!"
"Where are you now?"
"In the bar, down by the paper."
"I'll be right there."
When I got there he was walking up and down outside the bar.
"Come on," he said, "I'll buy you a beer."
We sat down. The place was full, Hyans was talking in a very loud
voice. You could hear him all the way to Santa Monica.
I'm going to splatter his brains out against the wall --- I'm going to
kill the son of a bitch!"
"What guy, kid? Why do you want to kill this guy, kid?"
He kept staring straight ahead.
"Groovy, baby. Why ya wanna kill this sunabitch,huh?"
"He's fucking my wife, that's why!"
"Oh."
He stared some more. It was like a movie. It wasn't even as good as a
movie.
"It's a beautiful weapon," said Joe. "You put in this little clip. It
fires ten shots. Rapid-fire. There'll be nothing left of the bastard!"
Joe Hyans.
That wonderful man with the big red beard.
Groovy, baby.
Anyhow I asked him, "How about all these anti-war articles you've
printed? How about the love bit? What happened?"
"Oh come on now Bukowski, you've never believed in all that pacifism
shit?"
"Well, I don't know-Well, I guess not exactly."
"I've warned this guy that I am going to kill him if he doesn't stay
away, and I walk in and there he is sitting on the couch in my own house.
Now what would you do?"
"You're making this a personal property thing, don't you understand?
Just fuck it. Forget it. Walk away. Leave them there together."
"Is that what you've done?"
"After the age of thirty - always. And after the age of forty, it gets
easier. But in my twenties I used to go insane. The first burns are the
hardest."
"Well, I am going to kill the son of a bitch! I'm going to blow his
goddamned brains out!"
The whole bar was listening. Love, baby, love.
I told him, "Let's get out of here."
Outside the bar Hyans dropped to his knees and screamed, a long milk-
curdling four-minute scream. You could hear him all the way to Detroit. Then
I got him up and walked him to my car. As he got to the car door on his
side, he grabbed the handle, dropped to his knees and let go another hog-
caller to Detroit. He was hooked on Cherry, poor fellow. I got him up, put