“Listen, you son of a bitch, I’m tired of your drinking. I had enough of that with my father …”
“Oh hell, it’s not all that bad.”
“It is, and I’m not going through it again.”
“I tell you, you’re making too much of it.”
“No, I’ve had it, I tell you, I’ve had it. I saw you at the party, sending out for more whiskey, that’s when I left. I’ve had it, I’m not going to take any more …”
She hung up. He walked over and poured a scotch and water. He walked into the bedroom with it, took off his shirt, pants, shoes, stockings. In his shorts he went to bed with the drink. It was 15 minutes to noon. No ambition, no talent, no chance. What kept him off the row was raw luck and luck never lasted. Well, it was too bad about Lu, but Lu wanted a winner. He emptied the glass and stretched out. He picked up Camus’ Resistance, Rebellion and Death … read some pages. Camus talked about anguish and terror and the miserable condition of Man but he talked about it in such a comfortable and flowery way … his language … that one got the feeling that things neither affected him nor his writing. In other words, things might as well have been fine. Camus wrote like a man who had just finished a large dinner of steak and french fries, salad, and had topped it with a bottle of good French wine. Humanity may have been suffering but not him. A wise man, perhaps, but Henry preferred somebody who screamed when they burned. He dropped the book to the floor and tried to sleep. Sleep was always difficult. If he could sleep three hours in 24 he was satisfied. Well, he thought, the walls are still here, give a man four walls and he had a chance. Out on the streets, nothing could be done.
The doorbell rang. “Hank!” somebody screamed. “Hey, Hank!”
What the shit? he thought. Now what?
“Yeah?” he asked, lying there in his shorts.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
“Wait a minute …”
He got up, picked up his shirt and pants and walked into the front room.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting dressed …”
“Getting dressed?”
“Yeah.”
It was ten minutes after 12. He opened the door. It was the professor from Pasadena who taught English lit. He had a looker with him. The prof introduced the looker. She was an editor in one of the large New York publishing houses.
“Oh you sweet thing,” he said, and walked up and squeezed her right thigh. “I love you.”
“You’re fast,” she said.
“Well, you know writers have always had to kiss the asses of publishers.”
“I thought it was the other way around.”
“It isn’t. It’s the writer who’s starving.”
“She wants to see your novel.”
“All I have is a hardcover. I can’t give her a hardcover.”
“Let her have one. They might buy it,” said the prof.
They were talking about his novel, Nightmare. He figured she just wanted a free copy of the novel.
“We were going to Del Mar but Pat wanted to see you in the flesh.”
“How nice.”
“Hank read his poems to my class. We gave him $50. He was frightened and crying. I had to push him out in front of my class.”
“I was indignant. Only $50. Auden used to get $2,000. I don’t think he’s that much better than I am. In fact …”
“Yes, we know what you think.”
Henry gathered up the old Racing Forms from around the editor’s feet.
“People owe me $1100. I can’t collect. The sex mags have become impossible. I’ve gotten to know the girl in the front office. One Clara. ‘Hello, Clara,’ I phone her, ‘did you have a nice breakfast?’ ‘Oh yes, Hank, did you?’ ‘Sure,’ I tell her, ‘two hard-boiled eggs.’ ‘I know what you’re phoning about,’ she answers. ‘Sure,’ I tell her, ‘the same thing.’ ‘Well, we have it right here, our p.o. 984765 for $85.’ ‘And there’s another one, Clara, your p.o. 973895 for five stories, $570.’ ‘Oh yes, well I’ll try to get these signed by Mr. Masters.’ ‘Thank you, Clara,’ I tell her. ‘Oh that’s all right,’ she says, ‘you fellows deserve your money’ ‘Sure,’ I say. And then she says, ‘And if you don’t get your money you’ll phone again, won’t you? Ha, ha, ha.’ ‘Yes, Clara,’ I tell her, ‘I’ll phone again.’”
The professor and the editor laughed.
“I can’t make it, god damn it, anybody want a drink?”
They didn’t answer so Henry poured himself one. “I even tried to make it playing the horses. I started well but I hit a slump. I had to stop. I can only afford to win.”
The professor started to explain his system for beating twenty-one at Vegas. Henry walked over to the editor.
“Let’s go to bed,” he said.
“You’re funny,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, “like Lenny Bruce. Almost. He’s dead and I’m dying.”
“You’re still funny.”
“Yeah, I’m the hero. The myth. I’m the unspoiled one, the one who hasn’t sold out. My letters are auctioning for $250 back east. I can’t buy a bag of farts.”
“All you writers are always hollering ‘wolf.’”
“Maybe the wolf has finally arrived. You can’t live off your soul. You can’t pay the rent with your soul. Try it some time.”
“Maybe I ought to go to bed with you,” she said.
“Come on, Pat,” said the prof, standing up, “we’ve got to make Del Mar.”
They walked to the door. “It was good to see you.”
“Sure,” Henry said.
“You’ll make it.”
“Sure,” he said, “goodbye.”
He walked back to the bedroom, took off his clothing and got back into bed. Maybe he could sleep. Sleep was something like death. Then he was asleep. He was at the track. The man at the window was giving him money and he was putting it into his wallet. It was a lot of money.
“You ought to get a new wallet,” said the man, “that one’s torn.”
“No,” he said, “I don’t want people to know I’m rich.”
The doorbell rang. “Hey Hank! Hank!”
“All right, all right … wait a minute …”
He put his clothes back on and opened the door. It was Harry Stobbs. Stobbs was another writer. He knew too many writers.
Stobbs walked in.
“You got any money, Stobbs?”
“Hell no.”
“All right, I’ll buy the beer. I thought you were rich.”
“No, I was living with this gal in Malibu. She dressed me well, fed me. She booted me out. I’m living in a shower now.”
“A shower?”
“Yes, it’s nice. Real glass sliding doors.”
“All right, let’s go. You got a car?”
“No.”
“We’ll take mine.”
They got into his ’62 Comet and drove up toward Hollywood and Normandy.
“I sold an article to Time. Man, I thought I was in the big money. I got their check today. I haven’t cashed it yet. Guess what it reads?” asked Stobbs.
“$800?”
“No, $165.”
“What? Time magazine? $165?”
“That’s right.”
They parked and went into a small liquor store for the beer. “My woman dumped me,” Henry told Stobbs. “She claims I drink too much. A bareass lie.” He reached into the cooler for two six-packs. “I’m tapering off. Bad party last night. Nothing but starving writers, and professors who were about to lose their jobs. Shop talk. Very wearing.”
“Writers are whores,” said Stobbs, “writers are the whores of the universe.”
“The whores of the universe do much better, my friend.”
They walked to the counter.
“‘Wings of Song,’” said the owner of the liquor store.
“‘Wings of Song,’” Henry answered.
The owner had read an article in the L.A. Times a year ago about Henry’s poetry and had nev
er forgotten. It was their Wings of Song routine. At first he had hated it, and now he found it amusing. Wings of Song, by god.
They got into the car and drove back. The mailman had been by. There was something in the box.
“Maybe it’s a check,” Henry said.
He took the letter inside, opened two beers and opened the letter. It said,
“Dear Mr. Chinaski, I just finished reading your novel, Nightmare, and your book of poems, Photographs From Hell, and I think you’re a great writer. I am a married woman, 52 years old, and my children are grown. I would very much like to hear from you. Respectfully, Doris Anderson.”
The letter was from a small town in Maine.
“I didn’t know that people still lived in Maine,” he told Stobbs.
“I don’t think they do,” Stobbs said.
“They do. This one does.”
Henry threw the letter in the trash sack. The beer was good. The nurses were coming home to the highrise apartment across the street. Many nurses lived there. Most of them wore see-through uniforms and the afternoon sun did the rest. He stood there with Stobbs watching them get out of their cars and walk through the glass entrance, to vanish to their showers and their tv sets and their closed doors.
“Look at that one,” said Stobbs.
“Uh huh.”
“There’s another one.”
“Oh my!”
We’re acting like 15-year-olds, Henry thought. We don’t deserve to live. I’ll bet Camus never peeked out of windows.
“How are you going to make it, Stobbs?”
“Well, as long as I’ve got that shower, I’ve got it made.”
“Why don’t you get a job?”
“A job? Don’t talk like a crazy man.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Look at that one! Look at the ass on that one!”
“Yes, indeed.”
They sat down and worked at the beer.
“Mason,” he told Stobbs, mentioning a young unpublished poet, “has gone to Mexico to live. He hunts meat with his bow and arrow, catches fish. He’s got his wife and a servant girl. He’s got four books out looking. Even wrote a Western. The problem is that when you’re out of the country it’s almost impossible to collect your money. The only way to collect your money is to threaten them with death. I’m good at those letters. But if you’re a thousand miles away they know you’ll cool off before you get to their door. I like hunting your own meat, though. It beats going to the A & P. You pretend those animals are editors and publishers. It’s great.”
Stobbs stayed around until 5 p.m. They bitched about writing, about how the top guys really stank. Guys like Mailer, guys like Capote. Then Stobbs left, and Henry took off his shirt, his pants, his shoes and stockings and went back to bed. The phone rang. It was on the floor near the bed. He reached down and picked it up. It was Lu.
“What are you doing? Writing?”
“I seldom write.”
“Are you drinking?”
“Tapering off.”
“I think you need a nurse.”
“Let’s go to the track tonight.”
“All right. When will you be by?”
“6:30 O.K.?”
“6:30’s O.K.”
“Goodbye, then.”
He stretched out in bed. Well, it was good to be back with Lu. She was good for him. She was right, he drank too much. If Lu drank like he did, he wouldn’t want her. Be fair, man, be fair. Look what happened to Hemingway, always sitting with a drink in his hand. Look at Faulkner, look at them all. Well, shit.
The phone rang again. He picked it up.
“Chinaski?”
“Yeah?”
It was the poetess, Janessa Teel. She had a nice body but he’d never been to bed with her.
“I’d like you to come to dinner tomorrow night.”
“I’m going steady with Lu,” he said. God, he thought, I’m loyal. God, he thought, I’m a nice guy. God.
“Bring her with you.”
“Do you think that would be wise?”
“It’ll be all right with me.”
“Listen, let me phone you tomorow. I’ll let you know.”
He hung up and stretched out again. For 30 years, he thought, I wanted to be a writer and now I’m a writer and what does it mean?
The phone rang again. It was Doug Eshlesham, the poet.
“Hank, baby …”
“Yeah, Doug?”
“I’m tapped, baby, I need a five, baby. Lemme have a fiver.”
“Doug, the horses have smashed me. I’m flat, absolutely.”
“Oh,” said Doug.
“Sorry, baby.”
“Well, all right.”
Doug hung up. Doug owed him 15 right then. But he did have the fiver. He should have given Doug the fiver. Doug was probably eating dog food. I’m not a very nice guy, he thought. God, I’m not a very nice guy after all.
He stretched out in bed, full, in his unglory.
—HOT WATER MUSIC
the shoelace
a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire; fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard …
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse, death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood …
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse …
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
the dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there—
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
constipation
speeding tickets
rickets or crickets or mice or termites or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
lightswitch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
Sears Roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out—
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, Christ and Christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.
or making it
as a waitress at Norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of
80.
suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and China and Russia and America
, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in and
the other one around your
gut.
with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.
so be careful
when you
bend over.
if we take—
if we take what we can see—
the engines driving us mad,
lovers finally hating;
this fish in the market
staring upward into our minds;
flowers rotting, flies web-caught;
riots, roars of caged lions,
clowns in love with dollar bills,
nations moving people like pawns;
daylight thieves with beautiful
nighttime wives and wines;
the crowded jails,
the commonplace unemployed,
dying grass, 2-bit fires;
men old enough to love the grave.
These things, and others, in content
show fife swinging on a rotten axis.
But they’ve left us a bit of music
and a spiked show in the corner,
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
a small volume of poems by Rimbaud,
a horse running as if the devil were
twisting his tail
over bluegrass and screaming, and then,
love again
like a streetcar turning the corner
on time,
the city waiting,
the wine and the flowers,
the water walking across the lake
and summer and winter and summer and summer
and winter again.
4
one more creature
dizzy with love
the strongest of the strange
you won’t see them often
for wherever the crowd is
they
are not.
these odd ones, not
many
but from them
come
the few
good paintings
the few
good symphonies
Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader Page 26
