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On Drinking

Page 10

by Charles Bukowski


  “He did that?”

  “Rodin was sitting next to me. He kept telling me, ‘Make him keep quiet! Make him keep quiet!’ He just doesn’t know you. Anyhow, you finally ripped your translation earphone off, took a last hit of wine and walked off the program.”

  “Just a drunken slob.”

  “Then when you reached security you grabbed one of the guards by his collar. Then you pulled your knife and threatened all of them. They weren’t quite sure whether you were kidding or not. But they finally got to you and threw you out.”

  * * *

  The trip down [to Nice] took ten hours. We arrived at 11 P.M. that night. There was nobody to greet us. Linda made a phone call. Evidently they were in. I could see Linda talking and gesturing. It went on some time. Then she hung up and came out.

  “They don’t want to see us. Mother is crying and Uncle Bernard is raging in the background—‘I won’t have that type of man in my house! Never!’ They watched the tv program. The moderator was one of Uncle Bernard’s heroes. Uncle got on the phone and I asked him where they had been that day and he said they had deliberately gone out so they wouldn’t have to answer the phone. He let us come all this way for nothing, he deliberately let us come all this way to get some fucking type of revenge. He told mother you were thrown off the station! It’s not true, you walked off!”

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s get a hotel room.”

  We found one across from the train station, got a second floor room, got out of there and found a sidewalk cafe that served fairly good red wine.

  “He’s brain-washed mother,” said Linda, “I’m sure she won’t sleep one bit tonight.”

  “I don’t mind not seeing your uncle, Linda.”

  “It’s mother I’m thinking of.”

  “Drink up.”

  “To think he deliberately let us take that long train ride for nothing.”

  “Reminds me of my father. He used to do little things like that continually.”

  Just then the waiter came up with a piece of paper.

  “Your autograph, sir.”

  I signed my name and made a little drawing.

  There was another drinking place next door. I looked to my right and there were 5 French waiters laughing and waving their arms. I laughed back, raised my drink to them. All 5 French waiters bowed. They stood a while at that distance, talking to each other. Then they walked off.

  the drunk with the little legs

  he fell down a stairway as a child

  and they had to operate on his legs

  and when they were done

  his legs were about half the length

  they were meant to be

  and that’s the way he grew into

  manhood

  with those very short legs

  he hung around the Paris cafes

  and sketched the dancing girls

  and drank very much.

  (it’s strange that most of those

  who create well seem to have some

  malady.)

  he was subsisting on his paintings

  many of them used by the cafe

  as advertising posters

  when along came the beautiful

  and terrible whore

  and he painted her

  and became involved

  short legs and all.

  she, of course, was hardly faithful,

  and one night, defending her

  faithlessness

  she told him about his legs.

  that ended the affair.

  he turned on the gas jets

  then shut them off

  to finish a painting.

  he was a little gentleman.

  at least he was in this movie

  I saw.

  he liked to wear a top hat

  and he sketched his things

  while drinking;

  doing it like that,

  cutting through the odds,

  he had it down tight and

  clean,

  he sketched all the dancing

  girls

  that would never be his,

  and one night

  he got it all down and

  done,

  tumbling drunk down a

  stairway

  little legs whirling

  he became involved with that

  other

  terrible and beautiful

  whore.

  Hemingway

  she said, it was in Havana in 1953

  and I was visiting him

  and one day I saw him

  and it was in the afternoon

  and he was drunk

  he was stretched out on these pillows

  drunk

  and I took a photo of him

  and he looked up and said,

  “don’t you dare give that photo

  to anybody.”

  when she came from Italy this summer

  to visit me

  she told me about it,

  and I said, “that must be some

  photo.”

  she told me that my house was very

  much like his house.

  we drank, had dinner somewhere,

  then she had to take a plane

  out.

  the photo is framed at the bottom

  of my stairway now

  looking north.

  he was fat and he was drunk

  and he’s in the right

  place.

  Mozart wrote his first opera before the age of fourteen

  I was all right when I moved in here: on the 3rd

  day the neighbor to the east saw me

  trimming the hedge and offered me his

  electric hedge-trimmer.

  I thanked him but told him I needed the exercise.

  then I leaned down and petted his tiny quivering

  dog.

  then he told me that he was 83 years old

  but still checked in at work every day.

  it was his company and they did a million dollars

  worth of business every day.

  I couldn’t match that so I didn’t say anything.

  then he told me that if I ever needed anything

  to let him and/or his wife know.

  I thanked him, then went back to the hedge.

  each night I could see his wife watching television,

  she looked at about the same things I did.

  then one night I went mad on drink and ran up and

  down the stairway screaming things at the woman I

  live with. (some nights I drink 5 or 6 bottles of

  wine and my mind becomes a freighter loaded with less

  than evangelists; I usually scream loudly and dramat-

  ically, running about naked; it lasts an hour or

  two, then I go to bed and sleep.)

  I did this type of thing twice during the second week

  of living around here.

  now I no longer see his wife watching television:

  the venetian blinds are drawn closed,

  and I no longer see the old man and his tiny

  quivering dog

  and I no longer see my neighbor to the west

  (although on the 4th day I gave him many tangerines

  from my tangerine tree.)

  everybody has vanished.

  come to think of it

  my woman isn’t even here tonight.

  on the hustle

  I suppose

  one of the worst times was

  when

  after a drunken reading and

  an all-night party

  I promised to appear at

  an eleven o’clock English

  class

  and there they sat

  nicely dressed

  terribly young

  awfully comfortable.

  I only wanted to sleep

  and I kept the wastebasket

  close

  in case I

  pu
ked.

  I think I was in the state of

  Nebraska or Illinois or

  Ohio.

  no more of this,

  I thought,

  I’ll go back to the factories

  if they’ll have me.

  “why do you write?”

  a young man asked.

  “next question,”

  I responded.

  a sweet birdie with blue eyes

  asked, “who are your 3

  favorite contemporary

  writers?”

  I answered, “Henry Chinaski,

  Henry Chinaski and Henry . . .”

  somebody asked,

  “what do you think about Norman

  Mailer?”

  I told them that I didn’t think

  about Norman Mailer and then I

  asked, “doesn’t anybody have a

  beer?”

  there was this silence, this

  continuing silence and the class

  and the prof looked at me and I

  looked at them.

  then the sweet birdie with

  the blue eyes

  asked,

  “won’t you read us

  one of your poems?”

  and then that’s when I

  got up and walked

  out

  I left them in there

  with their prof

  and I walked down

  through the campus

  looking at the

  young girls

  their hair

  their legs

  their eyes

  their behinds . . .

  they all look so good,

  I thought, but

  they’re going to grow up

  into nothing but

  trouble . . .

  suddenly I braced myself

  against a tree and began

  puking . . .

  “look at that old

  man,” a sweet birdie with

  brown eyes said to a sweet

  birdie with pale green eyes,

  “he’s really

  fucked-up . . .”

  the truth, at

  last.

  night school

  at the drinking driver improvement school

  assigned there by Division 63

  we are given yellow pencils

  and take the test

  to see if we have been listening

  to the instructor.

  like the minimum incarceration for a

  2nd drunk driving conviction is:

  a) 48 days

  b) 6 months

  c) 90 days

  there are 9 other questions.

  after the instructor leaves the room

  the students begin asking each other

  questions:

  “hey, how about question 5? that’s a

  hard one!”

  “did he talk about that one?”

  “I think it’s 48 days.”

  “are you sure?”

  “no, but that’s what I’m putting

  down.”

  one woman circles all 3 answers

  on most questions

  although we’ve been told to

  select only one.

  on our break I go down and

  drink a can of beer

  outside a liquor store.

  I watch a black hooker

  on her evening stroll.

  a car pulls up.

  she walks over and they

  talk.

  the door opens.

  she gets in and

  they drive off.

  back in class

  the students have gotten

  to know each other.

  they are a not-very-interesting

  bunch of drunks and

  x-drunks.

  I visualize them sitting in

  bars

  and I remember why

  I started drinking

  alone.

  the course begins again.

  it is found that I am

  the only one to have gotten

  100 percent on the test.

  I slouch back in my chair

  with my dark shades on.

  I am the class

  intellectual.

  fooling Marie

  he met her at the quarter horse races, a strawberry

  blonde with thin hips, yet well-bosomed; long legs,

  pointed nose, flower mouth, dressed in a pink dress,

  wearing white high-heeled shoes.

  she began asking him various questions about the

  horses while looking at him with her pale blue

  eyes . . . as if he were a god.

  he suggested the bar and they had a drink, then

  watched the next race together.

  he hit twenty win on a six-to-one shot and she

  jumped up and down gleefully.

  then she stopped jumping and whispered in his ear:

  “you’re magic, I want to fuck you!”

  he grinned and said, “I’d like to, but when?

  Marie . . . my wife . . . has me timed down to the

  minute.”

  she laughed: “we’ll go to a motel, you fool!”

  so they cashed the ticket, went out to parking,

  got into her car . . . “I’ll drive you back when

  we’re finished,” she smiled.

  they found a motel about a mile and one half

  west, she parked, they got out, went in, signed in

  for room 302.

  they had stopped for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s

  on the way and he took the glasses out of the

  cellophane as she undressed, poured two.

  she had a marvelous body and sat on the edge of

  the bed sipping at the Jack Daniel’s as he

  undressed feeling awkward and fat and old

  but also feeling lucky: his best day at the

  track.

  he too sat on the edge of the bed with his

  Jack Daniel’s and then she reached over

  and grabbed him between the legs, got it, bent over

  and kissed it.

  he pulled her under the covers and they played.

  finally, he mounted her and it was great, it was the

  miracle of the universe but it ended, and when she

  went to the bathroom he poured two more Jack Daniel’s,

  thinking, I’ll shower real good, Marie will never

  know.

  I’ll finish the day off at the track, just like

  normal.

  she came out and they sat in bed drinking the Jack

  Daniel’s and making small talk.

  “I’m going to shower now,” he told her, getting up.

  “I’ll be out soon.”

  “o.k., cutie,” she told him.

  he soaped up good in the shower washing all the perfume-

  smell, the woman-smell, the sperm-smell away.

  “hurry up, daddy!” he heard her say.

  “I won’t be long, baby!” he yelled from under the

  shower.

  he got out, toweled off good, then opened the bathroom

  door and stepped out.

  the motel room was empty.

  she was gone.

  on some impulse he ran to the closet, pulled the door

  open: nothing but coat hangers.

  then he noticed that his clothes were gone: his underwear,

  his shirt, his pants with car keys and wallet, his

  shoes, his stockings, everything.

  on another impulse he looked under the bed:

  nothing.

  then he noticed the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, half full,

  on the dresser.

  he walked over and poured a drink.

  as he did he noticed a word scrawled on the dresser

  mirror in pink lipstick: SUCKER!

  he drank the drink, put the glass down and saw himself


  in the mirror, very fat, very old.

  he had no idea of what to do.

  he carried the Jack Daniel’s back to the bed, sat down,

  lifted the bottle and sucked at it as the light from

  the boulevard came in through the blinds.

  he looked out and watched the cars, passing back and

  forth.

  [To Jack Stevenson]

  March 1, 1982

  [ . . . ] I did a lot of time in bars, mostly back east, mostly in Philly where the people were fairly natural and fairly inventive and fairly unpretentious. I don’t mean they were any great wow, but even the fistfights were clean. I just got so I couldn’t find too much on a barstool anymore, I gave it a long try. Finally, I just started taking the bottle or bottles up to my room and I found that I didn’t mind that at all, I liked it, alone. Me and the drink, and the shades pulled down. Not thinking too much about anything. Just smoking and drinking, flipping through the newspaper, getting into bed and checking the cracks in the ceiling, maybe listening to the radio. When you realize that there isn’t very much on the streets, somehow an old beat-up rug or say a chair with the paint peeling can have a certain native charm. Also, it’s always nice to think about not being in jail or not trying to talk some ugly woman into your bed or trying to get rid of her the next day (when they start washing the dishes you know it’s time to start putting on your crazy act). I guess with me it’s really having more a taste for the drink than a taste for Humanity. Mix them together and you can waste a night easily, and that’s not so bad unless the day has been exceptionally bad (like usual). Those Hollywood and Western bars, strictly dogshit havens—no heart, no line, no chance. I had a girlfriend who went to work in one of those places as a barmaid. Joint used to be called The Big Ten. I didn’t say anything to her. I didn’t complain. I just knew she knew less than I ever thought she did—I mean, no instincts, you know. I knew we were finished. I just let her drop into the bog and a new one knocked on my door, even worse. Well . . .

  * * *

  [To Gerald Locklin]

  May 9, 1982

  [ . . . ] Let an old man give you some advice. You know, man, that beer can kill you quicker than anything. You know what it does to the bladder, that amount of liquid just ain’t supposed to pass on through the body, not even water. I know it makes for better conversation and keeps you out of alley fights behind the bar (most of the time) but the beer headache and the beer heaves are deathly. Of course, there’s nothing like a good old beer shit. But a good wine will add ten years to your life as compared to drinking that green stuff out of the bargain pitchers. I know you prefer the bars and that when you ask for a glass of wine in a bar the tender reaches for this large dusty jug with a splash of dark coagulation hanging to the bottom, which is pure poison. I guess you just gotta go with the beer in the bars. The trouble with bars is that they’re just like racetracks: the dullest and the most obnoxious go there. Well, hell, forget it. I’m drinking this here wine and rambling . . .

 

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