“The Batman is coming onto the program tonight. I wanna see the Batman!”
“Yeah?” I crawled back into bed.
I am especially sorry for my sins of impatience and anger, my sins of discouragement and rebellion.
The Batman showed up. Everybody on the program seemed excited. “It’s the Batman!” said Herb.
“Good,” I said, “the Batman.” Sweet Heart of Mary, be my savior.
“He can sing! Look, he can sing!”
The Batman had removed his Batsuit and was dressed in a street-suit. He was a very ordinary looking young man with a somewhat blank face. He sang. The song lasted and lasted and the Batman seemed very proud of his singing, for some reason.
“He can sing!” said Herb.
My good God, what am I and who are you, that I should dare approach you?
I am only a poor, wretched, sinful creature, totally unworthy to appear before you.
I turned my back on the T.V. set and tried to sleep. Herb had it on very loud. I had some cotton which I stuck into my ears but it helped very little. I’ll never shit, I thought, I’ll never shit again, not with that thing on. It’s got my guts tightened, tightened…I’m gonna go nuts for sure this time!
O Lord, my God, from this day I accept from your hand willingly and with submission, the kind of death that it may please you to send me, with all its sorrows, pains, and anguish. (Plenary indulgence once daily, under the usual conditions.)
Finally, at 1:30 a.m. I could submit no longer. I had been listening since 7 a.m. My shit was blocked for Eternity. I felt that I had paid for the Cross in those eighteen and one-half hours. I managed to turn around.
“Herb! For Christ’s sake, man! I’m about to have it! I’m about to go off my screw! Herb! MERCY! I CAN’T STAND T.V.! I CAN’T STAND THE HUMAN RACE! Herb! Herb!”
He was asleep, sitting up.
“You dirty cunt-lapper,” I said.
“Whatza? whatz??”
“WHY DON’T YOU TURN THAT THING OFF?”
“Turn…off? ah, sure, sure…whyn’t ya say so, kid?”
12.
Herb snored too. He also talked in his sleep. I went to sleep about 3:30 a.m. At 4:15 a.m. I was awakened by something that sounded like a table being dragged down the hall. Suddenly the lights went on and a big colored woman was standing over me with a clipboard. Christ, she was an ugly and stupid looking wench, Martin Luther King and racial equality be damned! She could have easily beat the shit out of me. Maybe that would be a good idea? Maybe it was Last Rites? Maybe I was finished?
“Look baby,” I said, “ya mind telling me what’s going on? Is this the fucking end?”
“Are you Henry Chinaski?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You’re down for Communion.”
“No, wait! He got his signals crossed. I told him, No Communion.”
“Oh,” she said. She pulled the curtains back and turned off the lights. I could hear the table or whatever it was going further down the hall. The Pope was going to be very unhappy with me. The table made a hell of a racket. I could hear the sick and the dying waking up, coughing, asking questions to the air, ringing for the nurses.
“What was that, kid?” Herb asked.
“What was what?”
“All that noise and lights?”
“That was the Dark Tough Angel of the Batman making ready The Body of Christ.”
“What?”
“Go to sleep.”
13.
My doctor came the next morning and peered up my ass and told me I could go home. “But, my boy, you do not go horseback riding, ya?”
“Ya. But how about some hot pussy?”
“Vot?”
“Sexual intercourse.”
“Oh, nein, nein! It vill be six to eight weeks before you vill be able to resume anything normal.”
He moved on out and I began to dress. The T.V. didn’t bother me. Somebody on the screen said, “I wonder if my spaghetti is done?” He stuck his face into the pot and when he looked up, all the spaghetti was stuck to his face. Herb laughed. I shook hands with him. “So long baby,” I said. “It’s been nice,” he said. “Yeah,” I said. I was ready to leave when it happened. I ran to the can. Blood and shit. Shit and blood. It was painful enough to make me talk to the walls. “Ooo, mama, you dirty fuck bastards, oh shit shit, o you come-crazy freaks, o you shit-mauling cocksucker heavens, lay off! Shit, shit shit, YOW!”
Finally it stopped. I cleaned myself, put on a gauze bandage, pulled up my pants and walked over to my bed, picked up my traveling bag.
“So long, Herb, baby.”
“So long, kid.”
You guessed it. I ran in there again.
“You dirty mother-humpin’ cat-fuckers! Oooooo, shitshitshit-SHIT!”
I came out and sat awhile. There was a smaller movement and then I felt that I was ready. I went downstairs and signed a fortune in bills. I couldn’t read anything. They called me a taxi and I stood outside the ambulance entrance waiting. I had my little sitz bath with me. A dishpan you shit in after you filled it with hot water. There were three Oakies standing outside, two men and a woman. Their voices were loud and Southern and they had the look and feel that nothing had ever happened to them—not even a toothache. My ass began to leap and twinge. I tried to sit down but that was a mistake. They had a little boy with them. He ran up and tried to grab my dishpan. He tugged. “No, you bastard, no,” I hissed at him. He almost got it. He was stronger than I was but I kept holding on.
O Jesus, I commend to you my parents, relatives, benefactors, teachers, and friends. Reward them in a very special way for all the care and sorrow I have caused them.
“You little jerkoff! Unhand my shitpot!” I told him.
“Donny! You leave that man alone!” the woman hollered at him.
Donny ran off. One of the men looked at me. “Hi!” he said. “Hi,” I answered.
That cab looked good. “Chinaski?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.” I got in front with my shitpot. I kind of sat on one cheek. I gave him directions. Then, “Listen, if I holler pull behind a signboard, a gas station, anywhere. But stop driving. I might have to shit.”
“O.k.”
We drove along. The streets looked good. It was noontime. I was still alive. “Listen,” I asked him, “where’s a good whorehouse? Where can I pick up a good clean cheap piece of ass?”
“I don’t know anything about that stuff.”
“COME ON! COME ON!” I hollered at him. “Do I look like the fuzz? Do I look like a fink? You can level with me, Ace!”
“No, I’m not kidding. I don’t know about that stuff. I drive daylight. Maybe a night cabbie might line you up.”
“O.k., I believe you. Turn here.”
The old shack looked good sitting down there between all the highrise apartments. My ’57 Plymouth was covered with birdshit and the tires were half-flat. All I wanted was a hot bath. A hot bath. Hot water against my poor asshole. Quiet. The old Racing Forms. The gas and light bills. The letters from lonely women too far away to fuck. Water. Hot water. Quiet. And myself spreading through the walls, returning to the manhole of my goddamned soul. I gave him a good tip and walked slowly up the driveway. The door was open. Wide. Somebody was hammering on something. The sheets were off the bed. My god, I had been raided! I had been evicted!
I walked in. “HEY!” I hollered.
The landlord walked into the front room. “Geez, we didn’t expect you back so soon! The hot water tank was leaking and we had to rip it out. We’re gonna put in a new one.”
“You mean, no hot water?”
“No, no hot water.”
O good Jesus, I accept willingly this trial which it has pleased you to lay upon me.
His wife walked in.
“Oh, I was just gonna make your bed.”
“All right. Fine.”
“He should get the watertank hooked up today. We might be short of parts. It’s hard to get parts on Sunday.”
“O.k., I’ll make the bed,” I said.
“I’ll get it for you.”
“No, please, I’ll get it.”
I went into the bedroom and began making the bed. Then it came. I ran to the can. I could hear him hammering on the watertank as I sat down. I was glad he was hammering. I gave a quiet speech. Then I went to bed. I heard the couple in the next court. He was drunk. They were arguing. “The trouble with you is that you have no conceptions at all! You don’t know nothing! You’re stupid! And on top of that, you’re a whore!”
I was home again. It was great. I rolled over on my belly. In Vietnam the armies were at it. In the alleys the bums sucked on wine bottles. The sun was still up. The sun came through the curtains. I saw a spider crawling along the windowledge. I saw an old newspaper on the floor. There was a photo of three young girls jumping a fence showing plenty of leg. The whole place looked like me and smelled like me. The wallpaper knew me. It was perfect. I was conscious of my feet and my elbows and my hair. I did not feel 45 years old. I felt like a goddamned monk who had just had a revelation. I felt as if I were in love with something that was very good but I was not sure what it was except that it was there. I listened to all the sounds, the sounds of motorcycles and cars. I heard dogs barking. People and laughing. Then I slept. I slept and I slept and I slept. While a plant looked through my window, while a plant looked at me. The sun went on working and the spider crawled around.
CONFESSIONS OF A MAN INSANE ENOUGH TO LIVE WITH BEASTS
1.
I remember jacking-off in the closet after putting on my mother’s high-heels and looking at my legs in the mirror, slowly drawing a cloth up over my legs, higher and higher as if peeking up the legs of a woman, and being interrupted by two friends coming into the house—“I know he’s in here somewhere.” My self putting on clothes and then one of them opening the closet door and finding me. “You son of a bitch!” I screamed and chased them both out of the house and heard them talking as they walked away: “What’s wrong with him? What the hell’s wrong with him?”
2.
K. was an ex-showgirl and she used to show me the clippings and photos. She’d almost won a Miss America contest. I met her in an Alvarado St. bar, which is about as close to getting to skid row as you can get. She had put on weight and age but there was still some sign of a figure, some class, but just a hint and little more. We’d both had it. Neither of us worked and how we made it I’ll never know. Cigarettes, wine and a landlady who believed our stories about money coming up but none right now. Mostly we had to have wine.
We slept most of the day but when it began to get dark we had to get up, we felt like getting up:
K: “Shit, I c’d stand a drink.”
I’d still be on the bed smoking the last cigarette.
Me: “Well, hell, go down to Tony’s and get us a couple of ports.”
K: “Fifths?”
Me: “Sure, fifths. And no Gallo. And none of that other, that stuff gave me a headache for two weeks. And get two packs of smokes. Any kind.”
K: “But there’s only 50 cents here!”
Me: “I know that! Cuff him for the rest; whatsamata, ya stupid?”
K: “He says no more—”
Me: He says, he says—who is this guy? God? Fast-talk him. Smile! Wiggle your can at him! Make his pecker rise! Take him in the back room if necessary, only get that WINE!”
K: “All right, all right.”
Me: “And don’t come back without it.”
K. said she loved me. She used to tie ribbons around my cock and then make a little paper hat for the head.
If she came back without the wine or with only one bottle, then I’d go down like a madman and snarl and bitch and threaten the old man until he gave me what I wanted, and more. Sometimes I’d come back with sardines, bread, chips. It was a particularly good period and when Tony sold the business we started on the new owner who was harder to beard but who could be had. It brought out the best in us.
3.
It was like a wood drill, it might have been a wood drill, I could smell the oil burning, and they’d stick that thing into my head into my flesh and it would drill and bring up blood and puss, and I’d sit there the monkey of my soul-string dangling over the edge of a cliff. I was covered with boils the size of small apples. It was ridiculous and unbelievable. Worst case I ever saw, said one of the docs, and he was old. They’d gather around me like some freak. I was a freak. I’m still a freak. I rode the streetcar back and forth to the charity ward. Children on streetcars would stare and ask their mothers, “What’s wrong with that man? Mother, what’s wrong with that man’s face?” And the mother would SHUUSSSHHH!!! That shuussshhh was the worst condemnation, and then they’d continue to let the little bastards and bastardesses stare from over the backs of their seats and I’d look out the window and watch the buildings go by, and I’d be drowning, slugged and drowning, nothing to do. The doctors for lack of anything else called it Acne Vulgaris. I’d sit for hours on a wooden bench while waiting for my wood drill. What a pity story, eh? I remember the old brick buildings, the easy and rested nurses, the doctors laughing, having it made. It was there that I learned of the fallacy of hospitals-that the doctors were kings and the patients were shit and the hospitals were there so the doctors could make it in their starched white superiority, they could make it with the nurses too:—Dr. Dr. Dr. pinch my ass in the elevator, forget the stink of cancer, forget the stink of life. We are not the poor fools, we will never die; we drink our carrot juice, and when we feel bad we can take a pop, a needle, all the dope we need. Cheep, cheep, cheep, life will sing for us, Big-Time us. I’d go in and sit down and they’d put the drill into me. ZIRRRR ZIRRRR ZIRRRR, ZIR, the sun meanwhile raising dahlias and oranges and shining through nurses’ dresses driving the poor freaks mad. Zirrrrrrr, zirrr, zirr.
“Never saw anybody go under the needle like that!”
“Look at him, cold as steel!”
Again a gathering of nurse-fuckers, a gathering of men who owned big homes and had time to laugh and to read and go to plays and buy paintings and forget how to think, forget how to feel anything. White starch and my defeat. The gathering.
“How do you feel?”
“Wonderful.”
“Don’t you find the needle painful?”
“Fuck you.”
“What?”
“I said—fuck you.”
“He’s just a boy. He’s bitter. Can’t blame him. How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“I was only praising you for your courage, the way you took the needle. You’re tough.”
“Fuck you.”
“You can’t talk to me that way.”
“Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”
“You ought to bear up better. Supposing you were blind?”
“Then I wouldn’t have to look at your goddamned face.”
“The kid’s crazy.”
“Sure he is, leave him alone.”
That was some hospital and I never realized that 20 years later I’d be back, again in the charity ward. Hospitals and jails and whores: these are the universities of life. I’ve got several degrees. Call me Mr.
4.
I was shacked with another one. We were on the 2nd floor of a court and I was working. That’s what almost killed me, drinking all night and working all day. I kept throwing a bottle through the same window. I used to take that window down to a glass place at the corner and get it fixed, get a pane of glass put in. Once a week I did this. The man looked at me very strangely but he always took my money which looked all right to him. I’d been drinking heavily, steadily for 15 years, and one morning I woke up and there it was: blood streaming out of my mouth and ass. Black turds. Blood, blood, waterfalls of blood. Blood stinks worse than shit. She called a doctor and the ambulance came after me. The attendants said I was too big to carry down the steps and asked me to walk down. “O.k., men,” I said. “Glad to oblige—don’t want you to work t
oo hard.” Outside I got onto the stretcher; they opened it for me and I climbed on like a wilted flower. One hell of a flower. The neighbors had their heads out the windows, they stood on their steps as I went by. They saw me drunk most of the time. “Look, Mabel,” one of them said, “there goes that horrible man!” “God have mercy on his soul!” the answer came. Good old Mabel. I let go a mouthful of red over the edge of the stretcher and somebody went OOOOOhhhhhhooooh.
Even though I was working I didn’t have any money so it was back to the charity ward. The ambulance was packed. They had shelves in the ambulance and everybody was everywhere. “Full house,” said the driver, “let’s go.” It was a bad ride. We swayed, we tilted. I made every effort to hold the blood in as I didn’t want to get anybody stinking. “Oh,” I heard a Negro woman’s voice, “I can’t believe this is happening to me, I can’t believe it, oh God help me!”
God gets pretty popular in places like that.
They put me in a dark basement and somebody gave me something in a glass of water and that was that. Every now and then I would vomit some blood into the bedpan. There were four or five of us down there. One of the men was drunk—and insane—but he seemed strong. He got off his cot and wandered around, stumbled around, falling across the other men, knocking things over, “Wa wa was, I am wawa the joba, I am juba I am jumma jubba wasta, I am juba.” I grabbed the water pitcher to hit him with but he never came near me. He finally fell down in a corner and passed out. I was in the basement all night and until noon the next day. Then they moved me upstairs. The ward was overloaded. They put me in a dark corner. “Ooh, he’s gonna die in that dark corner,” one of the nurses said. “Yeah,” said the other one.
South of No North Page 17
