and it stays down.”
we talked some more and then I left.
now the old women ask me, “where is he? where is your
friend?”
I don’t think he wants to see them.
I’ll always remember him when there was trouble
around this place
running out of his apartment in back
himself large and confident
in the moonlight, long cigar in mouth
ready to right what needed to be set
right.
now it’s simple and clear
that he waits as alone as a man can get.
even the devil has company, you know.
the old ladies stay inside
the taco stand has lost its lure
and when the police helicopter circles
over us in the night
and the searchlight invades our windows
illuminating the blinds it doesn’t matter
like it used to matter. it’s as simple
and clear as that.
Nana
she has fucked 200 men in ten
states.
5 have committed suicide
3 have gone entirely mad.
every time she moves to a new city
10 men follow her.
now she sits on my couch
in a short blue dress
and she seems
quite healthy and chipper
even looks innocent.
“I lose interest in a man,”
she says,
“as soon as he begins to care for
me.”
I refill her drink
as she pulls her dress up,
shows me her black panties.
“don’t these look sexy?” she asks.
I tell her that they do look sexy.
she gets up, walks across the room
through my bedroom and into the bathroom.
soon I hear the toilet flush.
her name is Nana and she has been living on
earth for the past
5,000 years.
poor Mimi
poor Mimi Trochi
she is probably the most beautiful woman I know
and young too, still young, but
she keeps running into trouble,
twice in the madhouse,
shacked up and deserted
beyond counting
but she knows I am one of those rare old-fashioned men
and she comes to me for strength
but all I can give her are hot kisses,
and we are always interrupted by lightning or chance
or bad luck
and poor Trochi and I never seem to get beyond the
hot kisses,
and I am usually luckier that way,
and she certainly must be—if you want to call it luck—
with her several children to prove it.
for one of the handsomest women on earth
this all could be a puzzle
especially since she has a mind and a soul, but
Trochi simply chooses wrong,
she chooses indifference to begin with,
she believes indifference is strength, and
I have suffered right along with Mimi Trochi and
her indifferent men and
although I have never stuck it into her
she keeps coming back
with stories and sobs
looking more handsome than ever,
we don’t even kiss anymore,
all those hot kisses gone forever,
I am just not indifferent enough.
“you had your chance,” she tells me,
showing me her newest baby.
I don’t know what to do about it
so I phone my girlfriend and say,
“do come over. Mimi is here with her baby
and we are celebrating.”
my girlfriend comes over, picks up the baby and
tortures it in her loving way
just as she does me.
and then I tell Mimi that we must leave for dinner,
my girlfriend and I,
and Mimi says, well, all the traffic
now, it’s 5 in the afternoon, could I stay a while?
and so we leave handsome Mimi Trochi
there and drive off,
and I don’t worry too much
because I feel that Mimi does love me in her own
way,
and coming back the next morning
I find nothing missing,
only a small phone bill later,
a call to Van Nuys and a call to Pasadena,
hardly anything for a woman in her state,
you know how it usually is:
a call to New York or Philadelphia
or London or Paris or worse.
I have her phone number written down
and I am going to invite her to my New Year’s party
if she’s still in town
then.
that day we left her at my place
she said she was going to try to get a job
as a belly dancer
at the Red Fez. a Turk, she said, owned the Red
Fez and he was giving her some real
trouble
but might offer her the job
anyway.
having known Mimi Trochi this long
I was afraid to ask her
what the trouble was.
a boy and his dog
there’s Barry in his ripped walking shorts
he’s on Thorazine
is 24
looks 38
lives with his mother in the same
apartment building
and they fight like married folk.
he wears dirty white t-shirts
and every time he gets a new dog
he names him “Brownie.”
he’s like an old woman really.
he’ll see me getting into my Volks.
“hey, ya goin’ ta work?”
“oh, no Barry, I don’t work. I’m going to
the racetrack.”
“yeah?”
he walks over to the car window.
“ya heard them last night?”
“who?”
“them! they were playin’ that shit all night!
I couldn’t sleep! they played until one-thirty!
didn’t cha hear ’em?”
“no, but I’m in the back, Barry, you’re up
front.”
we live in east Hollywood among the massage parlors,
adult bookstores and the sex film theatres.
“yeah,” says Barry. “I don’t know what this neighborhood
is comin’ to! ya know those other people in the front
unit?”
“yes.”
“well, I saw through their curtains! and ya know what
they were doin’?”
“no, Barry.”
“this!” he says and then takes his right forefinger and
pokes it against a vein in his left arm.
“really?”
“yeah! and if it ain’t that, now we got all these
drunks in the neighborhood!”
“look, Barry, I’ve got to get to the racetrack.”
“aw’ right. but ya know what happened?”
“no, Barry.”
“a cop stopped me on my Moped, and guess why?”
“speeding?”
“no! he claimed I had to have a license to drive a Moped!
that’s stupid! he gave me a ticket! I almost smashed him
in the face!”
“oh yeah?”
“yeah! I almost smashed him!”
“Barry, I’ve got to make the first race.”
“how much does it cost you to get in?”
“four dollars and twenty-five cents.”
“I got into the Pomona County Fair for a dolla
r.”
“all right, Barry.”
the motor has been running. I put it into first and pull
out. in the rearview mirror I see him walk
back across the lawn.
Brownie is waiting for him,
wagging his tail.
his mother is inside waiting.
maybe Barry will slam her against the refrigerator
thinking about that cop.
or maybe they’ll play checkers.
I find the Hollywood freeway
then the Pasadena freeway.
life has been tough on Barry:
he’s 24
looks 38
but it all evens out finally:
he’s aged a good many other people
too.
the dangerous ladies
they come visit and
sit across from me and talk
and their voices are very loud
and they laugh too much
and soon I have a headache
as they tell me about their men
how they had to throw this one out
and how the other one tried to
kill himself when they left him,
and they talk on
smiling
laughing
nodding
and most of them are a little bit
heavy and a little bit
blonde
and after they leave
I think about the men who needed them:
those are the kind of men who would consider
turning on the gas if they lost their jobs
as stock boys at
Sears-Roebuck.
those are men who need women like they once
needed their mothers.
those are men who need loud laughing
wenches of little
spiritual or physical
attraction.
and the women feast on those men
like candy
like peanuts
like sunflower seeds
and throw away the wrappers and shells
as they tell others of their womanly
conquests
while holding a warm can of Coors in one hand
and a Marlboro in the other.
sloppy love
Sally was a sloppy
leaver. she was good with farewell
notes,
she wrote them in a large
indignant hand.
Sally was always indignant, she was
good at that.
and she always took most of her
clothes,
but I’d
sit and look about—
and there’d be a pink slipper
under the bed.
I’d
get down under the bed
to get that pink slipper to
throw it in the trash
and next to the pink slipper
I’d find a pair of stained
panties.
and there were hairpins everywhere:
in the ashtray, on the dresser, in the
bathroom, and her magazines were also
everywhere with their exotic headlines:
MAN KIDNAPS GIRL, THEN
THROWS HER BODY FROM
400 FOOT CLIFF.
9 YEAR OLD BOY RAPES
4 WOMEN IN GREYHOUND DEPOT RESTROOM.
Sally was a sloppy leaver.
in the top drawer next to the Kleenex
I’d find all the notes I’d written her,
neatly bound with rubber
bands.
and she was sloppy with her
photos:
I’d find one of both of us
crouched on the hood of our
’58 Plymouth—
Sally showing a lot of leg
and grinning like a Kansas City moll,
and me
showing the bottoms of my shoes
with the holes
in them.
and, there were photos of dogs,
all of them ours,
and, photos of children,
most of them
hers.
she’d leave and an
hour later
the phone would ring
and it would be
Sally
and in the background
music from a juke
box, some song I
hated, and while she talked
I’d hear men’s
voices too.
“Sally, Sally,” I’d say,
“come on back,
baby!”
“no,” she’d say, “there are other men in the
world besides you. but
I could have loved you forever, Chinaski.”
“get fucked,” I’d say and hang
up.
I’d pour a drink
and while looking for a scissors in the bathroom
to trim the hair around my ears
I’d find a brassiere in one of the drawers
and hold it up to the light.
I’d drink my drink
then begin to trim the hair around my ears
deciding that I was quite a handsome man
but that I’d need to lift weights
go on a diet
get a tan,
and so forth.
after a while
the phone would ring again
and I’d lift the receiver
hang up
lift the receiver again
and let it
dangle
by the cord.
I’d trim my ear hairs, my nose hairs, my
eyebrows,
then lie down
and go to
sleep.
I’d be awakened by a sound I had never
heard before—
it felt and sounded like the warning of an
atomic attack.
I’d get up and look for the sound.
it would come from the telephone
still off the hook.
I’d
pick up the
phone.
“sir, this is the desk clerk, your phone is
off the hook.”
“all right. sorry. I’ll
hang up.”
“don’t hang up, sir. your wife is in the
elevator.”
“my wife?”
“she says she’s Mrs. Chinaski.”
“all right, it’s
possible.”
“sir, can you get her out of the
elevator?
her language is abusive
and she says she won’t budge
until you come and
help her…and, sir…”
“yes?”
“…we didn’t want to call the
police…”
“yes?”
“she’s laying on the floor in the
elevator, sir, and, and…she has…
urinated on
herself…”
“o.k.,” I’d say and
hang up.
I’d walk out in my shorts
cigar in mouth
and press the elevator
button.
it would come up slowly:
one, two, three, four…
the doors would open
and there would be
Sally.
I’d
pick her up and
carry her out of
there.
I’d get her to the apartment
throw her on the bed
and pull off her wet
panties, skirt and stockings.
then I’d put a drink on the coffee table
nearby
sit down on the couch
and
wait.
suddenly she’d sit straight up and
look around the
room.
she’d ask
“Hank?”
“over here,” I’d
wave my hand.
“oh, thank god…”
then she’d see the drink and
gulp it
down. I’d get up,
refill it, put cigarettes, an ashtray and
matches
nearby.
then she’d sit up again:
“who took my panties
off?”
“me.”
“me?”
“Chinaski.”
“Chinaski, you can’t
fuck me.”
“you pissed
yourself.”
“who?”
“you…”
she’d sit straight
up then:
“Chinaski, you dance like a
queer, you dance like a
woman!”
“I’ll kick your god-damned
ass!” I’d say.
then she’d put her head back on the
pillow: “I love you, Chinaski, I really
do…”
she’d start snoring then.
after a while
I’d get into bed with
her. I wouldn’t want to touch her
at first. she needed a bath.
I’d get one leg up against hers;
it didn’t seem too
bad. I’d try the
other.
I’d remember all the good days and the
good nights
slip one arm under her neck,
then I’d put the other around her
belly
gently.
her hair would fall back
and climb into my face.
I’d feel her inhale, then
exhale. we’d sleep like that
most of the night and into the
next afternoon. then I’d be the first to get up and
go to the bathroom
and then she’d get up and
have her turn.
winter: 44th year
I am sad
like
a
dead angel
I am sad
like
porksalt
I am mad
like
a
dead angel
a woman has
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire Page 10
