The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way

by Charles Bukowski

  “It’s better chilled or with ice. Sorry, I don’t have ice.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I guess the hangovers are the worst. You can get in a very depressive state lying in some bedbug bed two days behind in the rent and listening to the landlord’s footsteps outside. There’s hardly a chance in this land unless you have a definite trade. Being over 45 and not having a trade, you might as well be dead. A dishwasher’s job is hardest to get. I used to show up at one of the big hotels downtown. About 50 of us showed up and they only took three or four. It was almost useless. Now they have dishwashing machines. All you need is the initial outlay and a little oil. I don’t know what the rest of us are supposed to do. A lot of us can’t do that bracero stuff. They ran the braceros off and what happened? They ran a lot of machinery in. Do I have a right to live or don’t I have a right to live?”

  “Some think you don’t.”

  “I can’t help getting scared sometimes. I can’t help drinking myself sick. It’s a very brutal and cruel situation. I thought maybe the Watts thing would open up doors for all of us but they only gave them a little sweettalk and wrote new manuals on how to break up riots.”

  “Are there any other jobs open to those at the end of the rope?”

  “Yeah, there’s a place you stand downtown and a truck comes and picks you up. They take you to a restaurant for a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Then they take you in this big room and everybody fights over the paper-carriers, those things you throw over your back. Then they take you back in the truck and dump you off at a corner with a little map. It’s indicated where your papers are stacked. You walk around throwing these newspapers onto porches, newspapers filled with ads. When you’re done you wait until the truck comes and picks you up. They take you back. The whole process takes about 12 hours. Then you wait until they call your name and then walk up and pick up the money. It’s not very much. I think it was three dollars last time. I asked the guy, ‘Don’t you know the wage laws?’ and he said, ‘You’re only paid on an estimate of your average actual working time. Also we deduct for transportation and food.’ By food, he meant the coffee and doughnut. Most of them are glad to get the three dollars. You get four dollars for giving blood. Any other city in the country you get six dollars. Only in Los Angeles do you get four dollars. This is the coldest city in the world.”

  “I’m going to leave you with a couple of bucks for wine. And thanks for the talk. Have you ever heard of the Los Angeles Free Press?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Well, our little talk might be in there.”

  “Will it do me any good?”

  “No.”

  I put the money down and walked to the door.

  “Are you a communist?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t want to appear in any communist newspaper! I still believe in America, this is my country. Things may get a little hard now and then but this is still my country!”

  “Very noble,” I told him, “although some people might consider you an asshole for a statement like that.”

  He lifted his wine glass and drained it.

  “Ronald Reagan would love you,” I said.

  “OUT! GET OUT!”

  I left him in there. My beloved patriot. I turned into the first bar for a scotch and water. “Hi, sweetie!” an old woman sitting at the bar smiled at me. I drank the scotch and got out.

  L.A. Free Press, March 17, 1967

  Notes of a Dirty Old Man

  “Can’t you keep those motherfuckers quiet?” he screams.

  He gets up and knocks one of his kids for a loop.

  Then she hits one of her kids.

  They wear sweaters with each other’s names on them. She had 4 kids. He has 3. He has just traded in his ’67 Caddy for a ’68.

  “Read this,” he says, “my new novel.”

  I sit there and begin reading.

  He tells me, “We’re going to knock out a back rear wall and make a large writing studio for me. It’ll cost two thousand dollars to soundproof. I made 25 grand writing last year. How ya like the novel?”

  “I’ve just begun.”

  “How do you like my new wife?”

  “She looks good all right. You were always good with the ladies.”

  “But I still worry about Jeri.”

  “Why? You divorced her.”

  “Well, she’s fucking this 22-year-old. I don’t like it. I’m paying alimony, child support and every time I take the kids back there’s this 22-year-old punk sitting on the couch.”

  “She’s got to live too, Herm.”

  “But that 22-year-old kid’s got no class. That’s why I got the white Caddy, she sees me in the white Caddy, and she flips. She knows what she’s missing.”

  “Maybe the kid’s got a lot of string.”

  “Hey, that ain’t funny! . . . How do ya like the novel?”

  “Hard to read with all the noise.”

  “Hey, Toni, I TOLD you to keep those motherfuckers QUIET!”

  “No,” I said, “the noise: I mean us talking. . . .”

  “Oh, yeah, well, anyhow, how are you doing?”

  “Well, it’s my hands, mostly.”

  “Yeah, hey, what ya doing with those gardener’s gloves on?”

  “Sores all over my hands. Can’t type. Some kind of malady and madness. Then there’s dizzy spells, insomnia, excessive fear, lack of sexual intercourse.”

  “Man, you’re really fucked up! Hard to believe you were the one who wrote the foreword to my first book of poems!”

  “Yes, isn’t it?”

  “How much did you make writing last year?”

  “About the cost of stamps.”

  “How do you live?”

  “In somebody’s cellar.”

  “You’re kidding. . . .”

  “No, I’m not kidding. And I figure I’m very lucky.”

  “Well, O.K., but how do you like the novel?”

  “Christ, what does it matter what I like as long as it sells?”

  “Oh, it’ll sell, all right, it’ll sell! Hey, remember the old days when we used to drink together and you’d cuss me and I’d give you those karate shots over the eyes and across the neck? I could have killed you but I didn’t.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now I know all the big boys. I was on the Joe Pyne show a while back. I had coffee with Pyne before the show—I said, ‘Listen, man, you mess with me and I’ll rip you wide open!’ He went easy on the show, did you see the show?”

  “I don’t have a TV.”

  “Oh, you’re one of those Arty guys, eh? TV’s too good for you?”

  “I told you, I live in somebody’s cellar.”

  “Man, I thought you were kidding!”

  “No.”

  “Hell, you can stay here! You can help build my new studio! You can walk the dogs, drive the kids to school . . . no damn need to live in a cellar! I’ll even pay you a bit! Why suffer?”

  “I don’t want to suffer.”

  “Then come live with us.”

  “I appreciate it, but let me think it over.”

  “Sure, sure, and I know I can trust you with Toni. I know you don’t have a lot of string, and then too, you wrote the foreword to my first book of poems. And to think, I was just out of a madhouse then!”

  “The poems were very good.”

  “And how about the novel? You been reading as we been talking. How do you like the novel?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “It figures.”

  “Why?”

  “Professional jealousy. Your eyes won’t let your head see the greatness in the work. Professional jealousy.”

  “You might be right.”

  “I know damn well I’m right! You really don’t like it?”

  “Why do you keep asking me? I can’t change my mind.”

  “Just like a cunt, eh? That’s what you are, just like a cunt—can’t change your mind!”

  “I’ve g
ot to go, Herm.”

  “You think a man’s a bad writer because he makes money at it?”

  “No, it works many ways. Tolstoy got bad when he gave up on money. Gorky stopped being an Artist when the revolution was won. A guy like Mailer just goes on and on in a kind of drizzling intermediate stream.”

  “And you live in a cellar and call my novels bad.”

  “Right.”

  “Get the hell out!”

  “Going. Save the karate.”

  “Someday you’ll know what it all means. Someday you’ll know which of us was the writer!”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Back to your damned basement!”

  “Cellar.”

  “Back to your damned cellar!”

  He slams the door behind me. Passion. The great ones always had passion. I always felt dead. Therefore, maybe I was. Too bad.

  I pass his white Caddy and don’t even spit upon it. I didn’t even want it. I am 48 years old. He is 32. I walk away from his huge home. I walk toward my basement. I walk toward my cellar. Psychotic as my gardener’s gloves.

  National Underground Review, August 2–8, 1968

  Bukowski’s Gossip Column

  Wonder if I could write a nice little gossip human column like the boys do?

  Finally got my phone number today: BUKOWSKI. I had BUKOWSKI when I lived in Detroit and when I lived in Iowa. Dial BUKOWSKI and see what happens? Do you know what the Iowa State Flag is? See this column next week. . . .

  My collection of UNKNOWN WRITERS OVER 45 will be out next week. You’ve never read anything like it . . . to officer Hanjob: Hanjob, you can take that traffic ticket and jam it up your cookie jar. Ticket #67834. Got it in your book there? Every time you guys see this beard on my face you go ape . . . lots of talk because Zigzag of the STOOPS finked on ape. What’s wrong with a beard on the face/you guys don’t seem to mind it someplace else. And skin pigment. Every time you guys see my wrinkled white skin, you go ape. Lots of talk because Zigzag of the STOOPS finked on his buddies on a Mary charge. The cops put him under the white light and he sang like he never sang before. He copped-out on Trenor, Asp, and Delirium Harry in that order. What’s wrong with a guy copping out on his buddies? I think we are too hard on Zigzag. What’s finking got to do with his music, his artistry? . . . At a Black Belt Karate tournament last Saturday I am sure I saw one of the Beatles mixing in with the crowd. He had on a boyscout uniform with green piping . . . Miracle Man Botello hung it out the window the other night and 8 full-grown women fainted. He lives on S. New Hampshire Street with an unlisted phone number. Weird cat. You go see him, he just sits in this broken overstuffed chair and leers out at you with slit-eyes and smiling . . . Woman saw me in the supermarket with my beard the other day. She spit on the floor and snarled, “oh you dirty, shit, why don’t you wash your stockings?” Poor thing. I didn’t have any stockings on . . . whatever happened to Tim Leary? I asked my girlfriend the other night, “whatever happened to Tim Leary?” and she started spitting hair and eggshells, “Oh SHUT UP! He’s a great man, a wonderful man, a real man, a gorgeous man! All you little shits are always knocking his wondrous talents! What’s wrong with him?” “Well,” I said, “to begin with . . .” “Now, don’t you say a goddamn word! If you didn’t have that beard I’d leave you in a minute!” “All right, pass me that razor and a pack of Gillettes.” . . . Russian horserace fix scandal. A former burglar nicknamed Intelligent and a furniture craftsman known as The Souse hanging around in a seedy café called The Contemporaries, fixing the races. They paid off and beat up the jocks, depending upon which way they went. One jock named Grechkin was so scared he guided his horse right off the track to make sure he didn’t win. Intelligent and The Souse. For Christ’s sake, can’t they come up with better names than that? Hardly Hip at all, you know. And it’s not just Russia. They tell me that in Europe that the best-known American writers are E.A. Poe and Jack London. I almost believe it . . . Dial Bukowski . . . “Listen,” I ask my girlfriend, “why do these guys like Leary . . .” “There you GO again!” She starts throwing things. A real spitfire. Remember Lupe Velez? No, you’re too young. “I mean,” I said, “they wear these white bathrobes, with sashes, bathrobes that look like beachtowels . . .” “That’s to center the SOUL, to let the SOUL breathe! Don’t you understand, you ox? If you ever shave your beard, I’m leaving!” “You shave yours . . .” Pershing Square has not changed . . . I saw Tiny Tim buying bologna at the Invisible Market. God bless Tiny Tim . . . Saw an old Charlie Chaplin film the other night. As usual, it bored me. Made me seasick. It’s like they weren’t even trying. Very sloppy stuff. When we walked out of the theatre, my girlfriend said, “A great man. A wonderful man, a real man, a man, a gorgeous man, an artist!” “I’d like to see him in one of those beachtowel bathrobes.” “There you GO again!” “Sorry dear, a bit jumpy, haven’t had my 11 today.” . . . I expect to be machinegunned, stepping out the front door by early July of this year. My column will be taken over by Matt Weinstock . . . Saw Tiny Tim at Barney’s Beanery, eating sausage and eggs. God bless Tiny Tim . . . God might as well bless Maharishi and John Thomas too . . . Steve Richmond—Earth Rose, Fuck-Hate Fame, and one Charles Bukowski have cut a record, Richmond reading his poetry on one side, Bukowski his poetry? On the other . . . will be released this week. See Earth Rose bookshop, Venice, one dollar. This beats buying an ad from Bryan . . . Jack Hirschman helping Bill Margolis edit new lit. mag. Send manus to Jack H 21 Quarter Deck, Venice . . . To the guy who wrote me about his brother dying and then finding all the Bukowski books and stuff at his place—this is straight—I lost your address somewhere, meant to respond to your letter but just can’t find the thing. If you’ve been thinking me inhuman, I’m not. Entirely . . . To Milly Pavlick of N.Y.: I spent the dollar you sent me for soup on beer. Send more soup money . . . To King Arthur of N. Vine Street: no, I don’t need any help writing this column, but will admit you sound more like a Dirty Old Man than I do. In fact, your whole wine-scrawled missile was nicely depraved. I admire you, but don’t come around . . . To the doctor who showed up at my door a couple of times and offered to help me write my column, and wore those yellow-striped pants, and sent me all the little literary bits on slips of paper which fell to the floor from my hangover bed, you are also nicely depraved but not a very good writer, but keep subscribing to OPEN CITY. We need you. And I think that my hemorrhoids are coming back. God Bless Baron Manfred Von Richtofen. He did a good job . . . AT TERROR STREET AND AGONY WAY, poems, $4, Black Sparrow Press, p.o. box 25603, Los Angeles Calif. 90025. POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE LEAPING FROM AN 8 STORY WINDOW, $1, c/o Darrell and Litmus Press, 422 East Harvard, Glendale, Calif. Both books will be released early May, never mind the author. They released him last week . . . The Willie has hit the road again in a 1955 Cad. 2 jugs of stomach-murdering dago red 8 miles to the gallon. He left Rachel behind but I’m sure Rachel will not be lonely very long . . . People are always more clever than I am in conversation yet I always have this vague idea that they are not clever at all . . . God Bless Baron Manfred Von Richtofen’s daughter who married D.H. Lawrence. That took a lot of guts . . . Extremism is a mind with but one eye but it often gets things done . . . I swear, I think the mini-skirts are getting shorter and I don’t know what the next step can be, but whatever it is, I’m for it . . . Listen officer Hanjob, take that ticket and . . . Which reminds me, a friend of mine said he was stopped by a cop and given a ticket and the cop was so nice about it that my friend thanked him for the ticket. It’s true. Some of those boys can really grease it in. But actually, I prefer the mid-thirties (you’re too young) when a cop would stop you for speeding and come up ready to fight, strolling up, really angry saying, “Hey fucker! Where’s the fire!” At least you knew who your enemy was still do but you know what I mean. Maybe I do need help writing this thing. SIT DOWN, King Arthur . . .

  I once cleaned crappers for Chandler’s TIMES at night. NOW look at me. Tomorrow the WORLD! Got fired for sleeping in the ladies’ crapper.
The L.A. TIMES simply doesn’t appreciate talent . . .

  Do you get uptight when you ask for cigarette papers? Tell them they are paper bandaids for the asshole of a cardboard bee you’ve designed for the state fair . . . There is something very discouraging about Bobby Kennedy but we don’t want to admit it, not yet, right after old dull whipboy Johnson; but lord, lord, when’s a man going to come along??? . . . This country, right now, on the point of revolution, can go any way, can go fascist, can go communist, socialist, can remain within the democratic mold with changes. But the whole thing reminds me of a headless horse running down a midnight street. And it’s sad. For I live here and I want to see it go well . . . And let that be the end of this type of column for I have winded up with the deep deep blues. It’s best to create the mold directly from life and let the others talk about it. Amen, men . . .

  Open City, April 19–30, 1968

  More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

  You may not believe it but there’s nothing as dull as tits and haunches and buttocks when you’ve seen enough of them and have seen them continually. Furthermore, there’s nothing as sexless as a bathing suit: sand spread across the crotch, wrinkles under the butt, wrinkles above and below the hips, and also, here and there—warts, moles, and all the twitchy little infirmities the human body gathers. Look at that single long hair growing under her chin. Doesn’t she see that? What’s that blotch? And worse than a bathing beauty is a nude. If man has any imagination, he can forget it now. Look at her—whipped cream and pork rinds, soft balloons, and the sexual machinery in the center, almost a threat.

  Sometimes, since I often write for the sex mags, I enter a mag store which deals exclusively with periodicals of that content. Since I create quite a realistic story I have to check the mags for their editorial courage. Here in Hollywood there are quite a few of these sex mag dungeons. So when was it? Saturday? Anyhow, I walk into one of these stores and I am stopped by a man who stands high in a pulpit-like structure.

  “Psst!” he says, “Sir! Sir! Stop!”