“Well, sit down a moment, mama, and then we’ll go home,” says the girl in the short short short skirt with the nyloned legs of magic on the high high black tight heels. God.
My mind got at me good: Idiot idiot peepfreak lost lost. Fool, you WASTED all this time! She’s the DAUGHTER! No CLAP! No nothing! Just the miracle of all those legs looking at you FREE, oh god have mercy, those clean miracle legs. WUNDERBAR!!!!
I began to leer over the top of a 4-week-old copy of LOOK.
I just got something GOING when mama and daughter rise and LEAVE. The daughter has on this short black slip, red dress, green panties, and after mama leaves out the doorway, she rather pulls the red dress down, stretches, bringing up the breasts, out the ass, then she is gone after mama and I am left with a shaft of pale sunlight in the doorway.
Then what happened? What could happen? The doc called in the guy with the crutch and I took down one of the paintings of a castle on the Rhine, took it down the elevator. Hit floor one, carried the castle on the Rhine to my car, threw it in the back seat and drove off.
What did I do that for? I don’t know. Maybe it was all I had left of the nylon legs, the green panties, I don’t know. Rather like taking one ant out of the eye of a living pigeon. Not much. Throw me a beer. I told you it was a funny peepfreak story. Why aren’t you laughing?
What? The line in my ass. It went away. I’d like to phone the doc and find out when the old lady is going to have the stitch out of her eye. But if I can’t hang up a simple roll of toilet paper then you know that I can’t do that either. Listen, Frank, I said THROW ME A BEER. I’m not feeling well, I told you so . . .
Going east. In the barcar. They had sent me money for the barcar. Of course, I’d had a pint getting on, and had stopped for a pint at El Paso. I was the world’s greatest poet and he was the world’s greatest editor and bookmaker (and I’m not talking about horses).
2,000 people in America read poetry and 900 of them bought books of poetry if they could be conned into it by word or format. The old boy took care of the format and I took care of the word. I spoke the language of the people through the mind of something else. “Charles Bukowski and the Savage Surfaces”: Northwest Review. I wasn’t supposed to have a mind. What I believed in was the clarity of the word. If I wanted to scream I screamed. Fuck them.
The old man bought paper that would last for 2,000 years. Put my words on the paper, but I wasn’t going to last any 2,000 years. I knew I didn’t have that much; I began late and would have spit it out 5 years back, but the others, the famed and the fancied, wrote so badly they made it difficult for me to quit.
So balls, the first book had sold out, all 750 copies—now the things went for 25 bucks and up at rare book dealers and I had one pair of old shoes and a long haul to Valhalla. The old man had a backer, a New York publisher. They were going for 3,000 copies and I wrote the stuff straight into the press, didn’t even send it off to the mags. The old man had sent back 5 for every one I wrote but he’d finally got enough, and I threw the others away.
I looked out that barcar window and remembered all my days on the bum, seeing that same dry dull frightening endless brown yellow yawning zero of land—travelling with track gangs, back and forth on hot stupid buses—all that senseless land—they told me the world was overpopulated? Nothing, nothing, nothing. And here, at last, I was in a barcar, playing poet. How odd it is, really, I thought, what a bunch of horseshit. I am no different than I ever was. I might have even been a better man then, though I doubt it. The older I got the better I got. What a crazy elixir! Elixir? What was that? It sounded good, but not a savage word.
“Bukowski is a beast,” said the woman at the party. “He’s horrible!”
“Oh come now,” said the professor, “do you really think that?”
(Dear old Dr. Corrington, he always said I was a “savage,” not a “beast.”)
But I couldn’t get a drink in the barcar. All those picture windows, and no drink. All that dry desert, wanting my bones and my ass; snakes to crawl through my eye-sockets, and no drink.
2 porters or waiters or whatever they were, they were standing in the vestibule (how’s that for a word?) talking to each other about the stockmarket and pussy and the stupidity of the white man. It had gone on for about 10 minutes and I had sat at the table, waiting. I always felt inferior around those neatly white-jacketed black men, as if they knew something that I didn’t. But they really didn’t know anything that I didn’t know, so I finally got up and weaved toward them, stood there a foot from them and listened to them talk. They ignored me. Finally their talk bored me so much that I broke into it:
“Pardon me, please. Pardon me.”
“Yes?” one of them asked.
He would have said “yes sir” but I was already a bit drunk.
“Can one of you gentlemen tell me where I can find the bartender or just who is the bartender?”
“Oh,” said the other one, “I am the bartender.”
“Would it be possible to get a scotch and water fairly soon or is the bar closed?”
“Oh no, the bar is open.”
“Then, please, I’d like a scotch and water. Beer chaser.”
“Beer chaser, sir?”
“Yes, please, if you will.”
“Any kinda beer?”
“No and yes. The best.”
The savage went over and sat down. The s & w and beer arrived. The bill was atrocious, of course, and I also tipped atrociously. The other people in the barcar were well-dressed; I was the only poorly-dressed one, my shoes, in particular, being badly scuffed and worn. But now that I had found the bartender, everybody wanted him. I had spoiled his day. But the day of the train was over. The rich rode the jets and crashed to their deaths in planeloads totaling 186, or ended in Cuba, hijacked, pissed and scared. Only the poor rode the trains. The Mexicans, the Indians, the Negroes, the poets. The porters sniffed and lifted their noses at us. They remembered the better days. When everybody was laughing and throwing money. Now it was over.
I ordered again. The same. I liked the picture window. It was a horror show. I kept imagining myself out there with the snakes and toads and cacti, and it was horrible. And then I imagined myself back on the train with the white-jacketed aristocratic blacks and the poor blacks and the starving Mexicans and Indians and it was still horrible, in or out, up or down; I drank it down. There wasn’t a woman on the train under 40. It was a shitty trip. Even on the first trip traveling toward that first book I had picked up a looker; all right, she had 2 small children, but what a body and legs, and we’d sat ass to ass, one of the kids in her lap, one in mine, both asleep, and she’d run that tongue down my throat while our flanks were together, and I’d felt her all over. Hardly a fuck, but it helped time go. And during the day I’d felt like a married man, but I allowed myself to drink all I wished and it was rather funny. Then helping her off at the New Orleans station and then skipping off to the great editor and his wife. “Bye bye, dear.” I’d bet she’d thought she’d hooked a damn fool. Well, she would have, I suppose. Thank god for the great editor and his pages that last 2,000 years.
Now there was nobody. Not a cunt under 40 within 400 miles. Life could be bitter. Even for a mindless savage.
I stayed on in the barcar, through the afternoon and into the night. Everything looked better at night because you couldn’t see it as well. That’s why it’s best to screw in the dark if you can’t go grade A. The less you can see of a human being, for screwing or even for looking, the more you can forgive.
Anyway, by the time I made New Orleans this second time I was further drunk and further flung apart than ever before. Poet? What the hell was that? I didn’t play freak games.
The great editor and his wife were there to meet me.
“Hello, Buke,” the great editor said with a tiny smile. He was the kool one.
“What do they call you?” people would ask me.
“Buke to rhyme with Puke,” I always told the people. This sat
isfied them.
We got into a cab and they took me to my chosen room. Their own place was stacked high with pages of Bukowski poems, page one, 3500 high, standing there. Page two, 3500 high standing there. Pages in the bathtub, in trunks, pages everywhere. You couldn’t shit for pages. They even put the bed on stilts high up in the air. Bukowski under the bed. Bukowski in the shitter. Bukowski in the kitchen.
“Bukowski, Bukowski, Bukowski, Bukowski EVER-WHERE! Sometimes I think I’ll go mad! I can’t stand it!”
He was the kool one. She was Italiano—the fire. I loved her. Everybody did. No bullshit about her.
“But we love you, Bukowski.”
“Thank you, Louise.”
“Even though you are a bastard most of the time.”
“I know. But sincerely, I don’t try to be.”
“You don’t have to try, Buke,” said the old man.
I made them stop for a pint somewhere. I hadn’t eaten in a couple of days but I wasn’t hungry. We got to the room, Louise paid the cabbie and we went on in.
Now, me, I’m crazy. I like solitude. I’ve never been lonely. There is something wrong with me. I have never been lonely. So when I saw this place, I saw it wasn’t for me, because look, the whole place ran long, front to back. I mean you came in through the shuttered doors, and here was the front room and you just walked straight on down through to the rooms. It was like one long hall, kitchen in the back, get it, only the shitter was a little off to the side but everything was lined-up like a long snake and you had to pass through one room to get to another, no doors. Shit, for a monk of solitude it shook me—I mean, I’ll take a whore for a one-night stand but who wants the whole world forever?
So, we all went in back, to the kitchen, and here was my landlady. They had arranged it. Nice clean place. Sure, and she was fat, very fat, my landlady was very fat in a big pink and white housegown and we all sat at the table and I opened the pint and the landlady got out some beers.
“This is Charles Bukowski, the great poet,” said the great editor.
“This is Shirley.”
“Poor and savage,” I said, “pleased ta.”
“Pleased ta,” said big sad fat Shirley. Lonely.
(Oh, god have mercy upon my spare and worn parts.)
Well, the beer got around and I didn’t let anybody touch my pint. I was worried about my solitude. I guess Shirley had gotten up early. Maybe worried about meeting Charles Bukowski. They had probably given her a bit of a line, not a line to them. The old man had once told me, “you’ve ruined me for all other poets. You lay it down so hard, like a railroad track straight through hell.”
Well, I wasn’t that good, but he got the message.
So, Shirley was drooping with me. Shirley in her big fat housegown, and me, a bum, playing the role of Charles Bukowski. The world is full of literary-hustlers and the less talent they have the more they hustle; me, I didn’t have to hustle very much. I didn’t have to hustle very hard. But there was Shirley. And when people figure they are around a writer, especially a poet, they just have to open their soul-pores. Shirley opened up.
Well, really, tho, it’s nice talking in kitchens, esp. if you have a lot to drink. Kitchens are where you can really talk. It’s harder to lie in a kitchen or while you are taking a shit, than in a fancy front room. However, it can still get itchy, sticky. I was only an emotional man when it concerned my own problems. I was still growing, but very slowly, and I knew it. I knew I’d have to hit 50 before I got a bit of sense, got a bit objective, and then I’d be too tired to make it interesting. In short, I was fucked.
So Shirley started dropping these tears down her fat, materialistic face, human still, real still, she was an old gal who’d been there, the mill. I’d met dozens of them, but they could be as cruel as the rest. It was a hard slam. She was talking about a good Jewish boxer she’d known, married. I wasn’t Jewish, but I knew my boxing. When a Jew laced on those gloves he’d show you a battleship full of guts. In those days, there were quite a few good Jewish fighters.
“Jackie,” she said, “he beat everybody. But the champs wouldn’t get into the ring with him. He was too good. And he never trained. All he did was drink. That was his training. But they locked him out. The championship went from one man to another. He blew all his purses. Bought drinks all up and down the bar, all up and down the street. He loaned money and they never paid him back. He died one night fast, just died in bed. He just let out this loud moan and died. Everybody was at his funeral, everybody. He was such a great man.”
The tears were rolling.
I was finally quite drunk. “What the hell,” I said, “he can’t do you any good in the grave! He can’t fuck you from the grave. I can lay it to you. I’m right here! I can shove you ten inches!”
Then she really started to cry.
I lifted my drink: “Ten inches. Solid.”
Everybody started acting rather peculiar, so I took my bottle and went to the place they said was going to be my bedroom, stripped down to my shorts, and sat there drinking from my pint.
“Hey,” I screamed, “you sons of bitches rolled me! Which one of you rolled me?”
I kept screaming for my money until I found I had hidden it under the pillow. Then I had another drink, crawled into bed and went to sleep. Shirley was frightened of me and didn’t want to let me stay but the great editor said I was all right—long train ride, too much to drink. When they told me the scene the next day I didn’t remember any of it. Shirley owned an eating place in the French Quarter. When she went to work I went out and bought two dozen red roses and put them on the kitchen table. She kept those roses until they fell to pieces. And she kept the card. And pressed one rose in a book.
Meanwhile, the old man had me signing pages. 3500 pages to make sure that we got 3000 good ones. I had to sign them with a silver pen, mostly, and various different colored pens, a kind of thick ink paint. It was slow. It took each page 8 minutes to dry. I had pages spread all over the bed and on chairs and dressers. When Shirley got in from work, there I’d be, all covered with pages and drunk on beer. I got tired of straight signings. I’d sign my name, then say something, and then draw a picture, any kind of picture. This slowed up the process but it took the dullness out of it. Shirley wasn’t frightened of me anymore. On the beer, I was just mellow. She’d cook me a good dinner and then tell me about the store, the café.
“Jesus, I burned two pots of strawberries today, two whole pots! It was awful.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah. I was in the other room talking to a friend a mine and she said, ‘I smell something burning!’ and I ran into the kitchen and there were burned strawberries boiled over everywhere! God!”
“You oughta keep your mind on your business.”
“I like you Buke. You remind me of Jackie.”
“I can’t fight a lick.”
“No, I mean you don’t come on with a lot of phony talk the way most people do.”
After dinner I go back to the bedroom and sign more pages. Then around ten I’d take my beer into the kitchen and Shirley and I would watch television together until midnight, sometimes one or two a.m. All the time she was making these little dolls which she sold at her place. She was very good at it. And she made hats. The hats were good too. Very unusual.
“Business ain’t what it used to be. People don’t even carry money anymore. Everything is credit and travelers checks. I can barely make it. Want a little nip of whiskey?”
“O.K. Shirley, thanks.”
It was the same every night. I could lay around and play poet. I’d never have to leave. All I had to do was lay it into her. But she was so fat. So fat. I didn’t have the desire.
“Have another little nip.”
“O.K., Shirley, thanks.”
“Do you ever hear them people next door?”
“No.”
“Oh, that’s right, they’re on vacation. Wait until they get back. The minute he gets home he starts hollering at her, calli
ng her a whore, all sorts of things. Then he beats her. Then he fucks the shit outa her. You can hear the whole walls shake.”
“Jesus.”
“Every night, the same thing.”
“Ummm, ummm. Well, Shirley, I have to go to bed now. See you tomorrow.”
“Sure, baby.”
Then I’d go to bed. Alone. About noon I’d go over and take the editor the pages I’d signed. When I finally got finished the stack of pages was 7 feet high. But I didn’t finish until my last night in town. Sometimes I’d drink over at the editors and tell them some bullshit stories. They liked them. The roaches ran up and down the walls and Bukowski was everywhere.
I met their fiction editor in a bar one night in the Quarter. They introduced me. He was deaf and dumb. We wrote messages on paper napkins all night. He came on good. We wrote messages on those napkins until I drank him under, then I made my way back to Shirley’s place. Another night, I am sitting in a bar with a guy at the piano playing and clowning, then he grabbed the mike and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us tonight, the poet, Charles Bukowski.”
I waved and the bastards applauded. I’m sure they never heard of me. Later, back in the crapper while taking a leak, some guy walked up to me.
“Are you the Charles Bukowski they announced up front?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, would you mind telling me where you have been published and when?”
“Fuck you, buddy!” I zipped up, washed my hands and walked out.
I never stuck it into Shirley. Night after night, I never. It looked like back to Los Angeles for me. At least in the Quarter I was a half-celebrity. Back in L.A. I was just another guy without money. Louise stood on a corner trying to sell paintings while the great editor rolled Bukowski off the press. And the roaches lazed in the sun. It was a quiet and easy time. I signed the last of the pages while drinking at their place and when I was done, we had a stack seven feet tall. 3500 Bukowski signatures and drawings. I had done it. The book was going to go for $7.50. CRUCIFIX IN A DEATHHAND. And how.
More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns Page 3
