Hot Water Music

by Charles Bukowski

  “Choke, Columbia, and the dead horses of

  my soul

  greet me at the gates

  greet me sleeping, Historians

  see this tenderest Past

  leapt over with

  geisha dreams, drilled dead with

  importunity!”

  I found my seat next to Vicki. “What’s he saying now?” she asked me.

  “He’s really not saying very much. Basically what he’s saying is that he can’t sleep nights. He ought to find a job.”

  “He’s saying he ought to find a job?”

  “No, I’m saying that.”

  “…the lemming and the falling star are

  brothers, the contest of the lake

  is the El Dorado of my

  heart. come take my head, come take my

  eyes, larrup me with larkspur…”

  “Now what’s he saying?”

  “He’s saying he needs a big fat woman to kick the shit out of him.”

  “Don’t be funny. Does he really say that?”

  “We both say that.”

  “…I could eat the emptiness,

  I could fire cartridges of love into the dark

  I could beg India for your recessive

  mulch…”

  Well, Victor went on and on, and on. One sane person got up and walked out. The remainder of us stayed.

  “…I say, drag the dead gods through the

  crabgrass!

  I say the palm is lucrative

  I say, look, look, look

  around us:

  all love is ours

  all life is ours

  the sun is our dog at the end of a leash

  there is nothing that can defeat us!

  fuck the salmon!

  we need only reach,

  we need only drag ourselves out of

  obvious graves,

  the earth, the dirt,

  the plaid hope of looming grafts to our very

  senses. We have nothing to take and nothing to

  give, we need only to

  begin, begin, begin…!”

  “Thank you very much,” said Victor Valoff, “for being here.”

  The applause was very loud. They always applauded. Victor was immense in his glory. He lifted his same bottle of beer. He even managed to blush. Then he grinned, a very human grin. The ladies loved it. I took a last hit on my bottle of whiskey.

  They were up around Victor. He was giving his autograph and answering questions. His art show would be next. I managed to get Vicki out of there and we walked along the street back to the car.

  “He reads powerfully,” she said.

  “Yes, he has a good voice.”

  “What do you think of his work?”

  “I think it’s pure.”

  “I think you’re jealous.”

  “Let’s stop here for a drink,” I said. “There’s a basketball game.”

  “All right,” she said.

  We were lucky. The game was still on. We sat down.

  “Oh boy,” said Vicki, “look at the long legs on those guys!”

  “Now you’re talking,” I said. “What’ll you have?”

  “Scotch and soda.”

  I ordered two scotch and sodas and we watched the game. Those guys ran up and down, up and down. Wonderful. They seemed very excited about something. The place was hardly crowded at all. It seemed the best part of the night.

  NOT QUITE BERNADETTE

  I wrapped the towel around my bloody cock and phoned the doctor’s office. I had to set the receiver down and dial with one hand while holding the towel with the other. Even as I dialed, a red stain began to blossom through the towel. I got the doctor’s receptionist.

  “Oh, Mr. Chinaski, what is it now? Did your earplugs get lost in your ears again?”

  “No, this is a bit more serious. I need an early appointment.”

  “How about tomorrow afternoon at 4 p.m.?”

  “Miss Simms, this is an emergency.”

  “What is its nature?”

  “Please, I must see the doctor now.”

  “All right. Come on over and we’ll try to work you in.”

  “Thank you, Miss Simms.”

  I fashioned a temporary bandage by ripping up a clean shirt and winding it about my penis. Luckily I had a bit of adhesive tape but it was old and yellow and didn’t grip very well. I had some problem getting my pants on. I looked like I had a gigantic hard-on. I was only able to partly zip up my pants. I made my way to my car, got in and drove to the doctor’s office. Getting out in the parking lot I shocked two old ladies coming out of the optometrist’s who was downstairs. I managed to get in the elevator alone and go to the third floor. I saw somebody coming up the hallway, turned my back to them and feigned drinking from the water fountain. Then I walked down the hall and into the doctor’s office. The waiting room was full of people with no real problems—gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis, cancer, and so forth. I walked up to the receptionist.

  “Ah, Mr. Chinaski…”

  “Please, Miss Simms, no jokes! This is an emergency, I assure you. Hurry!”

  “You can go in as soon as the doctor has finished with his present patient.”

  I stood at the partition that separated the receptionist from the rest of us and waited. As soon as the patient emerged I ran into the doctor’s office.

  “Chinaski, what is it?”

  “Emergency, doctor.”

  “I took off my shoes and stockings, pants and shorts, flung myself back upon the table.

  “What do you have here? That’s quite a bandage.”

  I didn’t answer. I had my eyes closed and could feel the doctor tugging at the bandage.

  “You know,” I said, “I knew a girl in a small town. She was in her early teens and she was playing around with a coke bottle. She got it stuck up there and couldn’t get it out. She had to go to the doctor. You know how small towns are. The word got out. Her whole life was ruined. She was shunned. Nobody would touch her. The most beautiful girl in town. She finally married a midget in a wheelchair who had some kind of palsy.”

  “That’s old stuff,” said my doctor, yanking the last of the bandage off. “How did this happen to you?”

  “Well, her name was Bernadette, 22, married. She has long blonde hair that keeps falling into her face and has to be brushed away…”

  “Twenty-two?”

  “Yes, she had on bluejeans…”

  “You’re rather badly cut here.”

  “She knocked on the door. She asked if she could come in. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ve had it,’ she said and she ran into my bathroom, half closed the door, pulled down her jeans and panties, sat down and began to piss. OOH! CHRIST!”

  “Take it easy. I’m sterilizing the wound.”

  “You know, doctor, wisdom comes at a hell of an hour—when youth is gone, the storm is over and the girls have gone home.”

  “Quite true.”

  “OW! OH! JESUS!”

  “Please. This must be properly cleaned.”

  “She came out and told me that last night at her party I hadn’t solved the problem of her unhappy love affair. That instead I had gotten everybody drunk, had fallen into a rose bush. That I had ripped my pants, fallen over backwards, hit my head on a large stone. Somebody named Willy had carried me home and my pants fell down and then my shorts, but that I hadn’t solved the love affair problem. She said that the affair was over anyhow, and at least I had said some heavy things.”

  “Where did you meet this girl?”

  “I gave a poetry reading in Venice. Met her afterwards in the bar next door.”

  “Can you recite me a poem?”

  “No, doctor. Anyhow, she said ‘I’ve had it, man!’ She sat on the couch. I sat in a chair across from her. She drank her beer and told me about it: ‘I love him, you know, but I can’t get any contact, he won’t talk. I tell him, talk to me! But, by god, he won’t talk. He says, “It’s not you, it’s something els
e.” And that ends that.’”

  “Now, Chinaski, I’m going to stitch you up. It won’t be pleasant.”

  “Yes, doctor. Anyhow, she got to talking about her life. She said she’d been married three times. I said she didn’t show that much wear. And she said, ‘I don’t? Well, I’ve been in a madhouse twice.’ And I said, ‘You too?’ And she said, ‘You been in a madhouse too?’ And I said, ‘No, just some women I’ve known.’”

  “Now,” said the doctor, “just a little thread. That’s all it is. Thread. A bit of embroidery work.”

  “Oh, shit, isn’t there another way?”

  “No, you’re too badly cut.”

  “She said she got married at 15. They were calling her a whore for going with this guy. Her parents were calling her a whore so she married the guy to spite them. Her mother was a drunk, in and out of madhouses. Her father beat her all the time. OH JESUS! PLEASE GO EASY!”

  “Chinaski, you have more trouble with women than any man I’ve ever met.”

  “Then she met this dyke. The dyke took her to a homosexual bar. She left the dyke and went off with a homosexual boy. They lived together. They used to argue over makeup. OH! CHRIST! MERCY! She’d steal his lipstick and then he’d steal hers. Then she married him…”

  “This will take any number of stitches. How did this happen?”

  “I’m telling you, doctor. They had a child. Then they divorced and he took off and left her with the child. She got a job, hired a babysitter, but the job didn’t pay much and after the babysitter’s fees there wasn’t much left. She had to go out at night and hustle. Ten bucks for a piece of ass. It went on for some time. She wasn’t getting anywhere. Then one day at work—she was working for Avon—she started screaming and couldn’t seem to stop. They took her to a madhouse. EASY! EASY! PLEASE!”

  “What was her name?”

  “Bernadette. She got out of the madhouse, came to L.A., met and married Karl. She told me how she liked my poetry and how she admired the way I drove my car on the sidewalk at 60 m.p.h. after my readings. Then she said that she was hungry and she offered to buy me a hamburger and fries, so she drove me to McDonald’s. PLEASE, DOCTOR! GO SLOWER OR GET A SHARPER NEEDLE OR SOMETHING!”

  “I’m almost finished.”

  “Well we sat at a table with our hamburgers, french fries, coffee, and then Bernadette told me about her mother. She was worried about her mother. She was also worried about her two sisters. One sister was so unhappy and the other sister was just dull and satisfied. And then there was her boy and she was worried about Karl’s relationship with the boy…”

  The doctor yawned and stitched another stitch.

  “I told her that she was carrying too much weight, to let some of those people float for themselves. Then I noticed that she was trembling and I told her I was sorry I had said that. I took one of her hands and began to rub it. Then I rubbed the other one. I slid her hands up my wrists under my coat sleeves. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, ‘I guess you just care. There’s nothing wrong with that.’”

  “But how did it happen? This thing?”

  “Well, when I walked Bernadette down the steps my hand was around her waist. She still looked like a high school girl—long silken blond hair; a very sensitive and sexy pair of lips. The only way you could tell about the hell was to look into her eyes. They were in a perpetual state of shock.”

  “Please get to the happening,” said the doctor. “I’m almost finished.”

  “Well, when we got to my place there was some fool standing on the sidewalk with a dog. I told her to drive further up. She double-parked and I pulled her head back and kissed her. I gave her a long one, pulled back, then followed with another. She called me a son of a bitch. I told her to give an old man a break. I kissed her again, a long one. ‘That’s not a kiss, man,’ she said, ‘that’s sex, that’s almost rape!’”

  “Then it happened?”

  “I slid out the door and she said she’d phone me in a week. I walked into my place and then it happened.”

  “How?”

  “Can I be frank with you, doctor?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, looking at her body and face, her hair, her eyes…listening to her talk, then the kisses, it had gotten me hot.”

  “So?”

  “So I’ve got this vase. It’s a perfect fit for me. I put it into this vase and started thinking of Bernadette. I was going good when the damn thing broke. I had used it several times before but I suppose this time I was terribly excited. She’s such a sexy-looking woman…”

  “Never never stick that thing into anything made of glass.”

  “Will I be all right, doctor?”

  “Yes, you’ll be able to use it again. You were lucky.”

  I got dressed and out of there. It still felt raw in my shorts. Driving up Vermont I stopped at the grocery. I was out of food. I pushed my cart about picking up hamburger, bread, eggs.

  Someday I must tell Bernadette about my close call. If she reads this, she’ll know. Last I heard she and Karl went to Florida. She got pregnant. Karl wanted the abortion bit. She didn’t. They split. She’s still in Florida. She’s living with Karl’s buddy, Willy. Willy does pornography. He wrote me a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t answered yet.

  SOME HANGOVER

  Kevin’s wife handed him the phone. It was Saturday morning. They were still in bed.

  “It’s Bonnie,” she said.

  “Hello, Bonnie?”

  “You awake, Kevin?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Listen, Kevin, Jeanjean told me.”

  “She told you what?”

  “That you took her and Cathy into the closet and took their panties off and sniffed their peepees.”

  “Sniffed their peepees?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Good God, Bonnie, are you trying to be funny?”

  “Jeanjean doesn’t lie about such things. She said you took Cathy and her into the closet and took their panties off and sniffed their peepees.”

  “Now wait a minute, Bonnie!”

  “Wait, hell! Tom’s really mad, he is threatening to kill you. And I think it’s awful, unbelievable! Mother thinks I should call my lawyer.”

  Bonnie hung up. Kevin put the phone down.

  “What is it?” asked his wife.

  “Now look, Gwen, it’s nothing.”

  “Are you ready for breakfast?”

  “I don’t think I can eat.”

  “Kevin, what is the matter?”

  “Bonnie claims I took Jeanjean and Cathy into the closet and took their panties off and sniffed their peepees.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Did you?”

  “God, Gwen, I was drinking. Last thing I remember about that party, I was standing out on the front lawn looking at the moon. It was a big moon, I had never seen a bigger moon.”

  “And you don’t remember the other?”

  “No.”

  “You black out when you are drinking, Kevin. You know you black out when you are drinking.”

  “I don’t think I’d do anything like that. I’m no child molester.”

  “Little girls 8 and 10 years old are pretty cute.”

  Gwen walked into the bathroom. When she came out she said, “I pray to God it happened. I’d be happy to God if it really happened!”

  “What? What the hell are you saying?”

  “I mean it. It might slow you down. It might make you think twice about your drinking. It might even make you quit drinking entirely. Every time you go to a party you’ve got to drink more than anybody, you have got to pour it down. Then you always do something foolish and disgusting, although usually in the past it has been with a full-grown woman.”

  “Gwen, the whole thing has got to be some kind of joke.”

  “It’s no joke. Wait until you have to face Cathy and Jeanjean and Tom and Bonnie!”

  “Gwen, I love those two
little girls.”

  “What?”

  “Oh shit, forget it.”

  Gwen walked into the kitchen and Kevin went to the bathroom. He threw cold water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. What did a child molester look like? Answer: like everybody else until they told him he was one.

  Kevin sat down to crap. Crapping seemed so safe, so warm. Surely this thing had not happened. He was in his own bathroom. There was his towel, there was his washrag, there was the toilet paper, there was the bathtub, and under his feet, soft and warm, was the bathroom rug, red, clean, comfortable. Kevin finished, wiped, flushed, washed his hands like a civilized man and walked into the kitchen. Gwen had the bacon on. She poured him a cup of coffee.

  “Thanks.”

  “Scrambled?”

  “Scrambled.”

  “Married ten years and you always say ‘scrambled.’”

  “More amazing than that, you always ask.”

  “Kevin, if this gets around, you are out of a job. The bank does not need a branch manager who is a child molester.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Kevin, we’ve got to have a meeting with the families involved. We’ve got to sit down and talk this thing out.”

  “You sound like a scene from The Godfather.”

  “Kevin, you’re in big trouble. There’s no way of getting around it. You’re in trouble. Put your toast in. Push it in slow or it will pop right up, there is something wrong with the spring.”

  Kevin put the toast in. Gwen dished out the bacon and eggs.

  “Jeanjean is something of a flirt. She’s just like her mother. It’s a wonder it hasn’t happened before now. Not that I’m saying there is any excuse.”