The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way

by Charles Bukowski

  “Yes, he does . . .”

  “Maybe I can work my hand into there . . .”

  “June, let’s go . . .”

  “Look, I’ve got my hand in there . . . I can touch him . . .”

  “Wonderful! Will you let me touch him?”

  “No, he’s my husband!”

  “Come on, let me touch him!”

  “No, I won’t allow it, nothing doing . . .”

  She touched him awhile and then we walked out . . .

  I packed that night for the drive back to Los Angeles. June had stopped giving me beer money and she remained faithful to Clyde. She was a good woman. I tried to kiss her again that night but she fought me off . . .

  “I’m the greatest poet since Rimbaud,” I told her.

  “You’re shit,” she said.

  “All right,” I said. I picked up my suitcase and walked to the door. There she sat next to those false teeth in the glass, those uppers. I’d watched her brush them. And outside the glass, sitting in front of the glass was the plaque—Name, Date of Birth, Date of Death, Donated to the University of . . .

  Thirty-two years are hard to give up. Close, that’s what they had been. Most marriages don’t work. This had been the marriage of marriages, and all for the good of poetry too, most of it mine. I closed the door and got into the car and drove off. Well, he’d been a good editor, he’d discovered a great poet. That made a full lifetime for any man. It was nighttime. I turned on the car lights, turned on the radio and lit a cigar. A thousand women wanted to screw me but June had said no. Life was sad, death was sad. June and Clyde. And on the long trip to Los Angeles I decided that I would honor them both by writing about them.

  epilogue:

  I was recently paid a visit by Clyde’s son. We had some beer and he told me that June returned to the University some months later and demanded the bones and the skull. She was very insistent. The University gave her the bones but kept the skull. I think that’s fair.

  L.A. Free Press, April 14, 1972

  Notes of a Dirty Old Man

  We walked in and our reservation was a nice table over the water and I sat down with her and there were six at the other table and they were all talking at once.

  “They’ve come to see the STONES too,” she told me.

  The hostess came up. “Look,” I said, “can’t we get a table to ourselves, I mean, alone? I really don’t need the ocean this bad.”

  “Surely, sir.”

  Suddenly there was silence at the other table. One of the men at the table made a polite remark about what a son of a bitch I was. The hostess seated us at a table further in the back, but elevated. The ocean was still there.

  We had drinks and the lobster dinner. Unlike the people, the lobster dinner was perfect. But we hadn’t paid for the people. We finished, got out of there, got in her car and drove toward the ROLLING STONES. . . .

  Walking from the parking lot to the auditorium I realized that in order to get the performance down right there were several things I would have to realize. First, that rock had to have its values. It stimulated many people and what stimulated many people could also stimulate me. Just because I preferred classical music needn’t make me a classical snob. Areas change, people change. I liked some rock, now and then. I disliked some classical music, now and then. It wasn’t the form, then, it was the manner of doing.

  Now there was also something else. Seeing a personality or a world-renowned group could make you accept things as holy and/or arty-worthy, whereas with a less advertised group it might even bore you. Then you have the reverse. Take anybody who has made it up to the top. There is always this group of untalented people who affect artistry and who say, “That’s shit, that’s shit! I can do better than that!” When, of course, they can’t and never will.

  To be a good critic is difficult. It would seem to me that it is far more difficult to be a good critic than a good artist . . .

  So I walked in with her and we had seats 10 rows from the stage, that’s all right, you know, and there I was the oldest person in the building, hahaha, ha. There were little trebles of excitement winging through the air. I tried to grab some of them. I missed.

  Four guys in front of us were smoking a joint. There were some attempts at seat-stealing. But it seemed so futile. Every seat was sold. It was the ROLLING STONES.

  There was music over the intercom. People had waved at her as we had come in to sit down. Now she had to get up and go a few rows down and talk to some people.

  Hell, I thought, don’t they know who I am? I am one of the better horseplayers of the world. I almost break even.

  She came back. I never worried about her. About other men, about phone calls, and how she got them by the dozens as I lay in her bed. Or the nights we decided to skip, I didn’t worry about them either.

  The intercom music was still on. I looked about. There were no empty seats. It was getting hot. Directly over topstage was the upper balcony, which ran all around, but I could view the topstage balcony comfortably, and here was this young blonde in a tight-fitting dress, spangles and beads, she was built like an hourglass, she was sparkling and she was happy and the rhythms fell upon her like a shower of light rain, like blessings, the sound crawled around her and she voluted, but it was not a dance of sex to attract other men, it was a dance of joy, she voluted in joy, and her young man next to her, peering about through a spyglass was also happy, happy with her and with himself and happy with the music. . . .

  The front show came on. Three black girls with a definite sense of beat. You had two girls who sang and one girl to fall in love with—the third one, long dark hair, eyes that threw the searchlights back. You could fall in love with her. I fell in love with her while waiting for the STONES.

  Then there was the black strong male type, the garage mechanic type. Might be cruel. Beat his kids. Get drunk on Saturday night. Maybe even Thursday. Smoke shit. Sniff H.

  He was all right. He sweated. It was hot under the lights. His best key was a low beat down beat zombie zig. Like a lion trying to roar with his throat cut. But when he got on out he couldn’t climb the ladder. He was just a drunken mechanic warbling under an oilchange job. He tried. Being blind didn’t help. Maybe it did. He might not have been quite as good seeing everything. . . .

  Then they said it: “THE STONES!”

  Here he was. Mick Jagger. A little blue star pasted near each eye. An outfit on like your hip spade dude would be wearing tomorrow morning. His joint was showing through his tight hot jism pants, and he was dressed to fuck the world, but basically he had style, the style that comes with champions. I liked him right off and at the same time I thought, why does he have to fuck himself up like that?

  He was the Light, he was the Cross, he was the Cunt and the Cock, he was wolves running across snow, the balling in Florida hotels where the sea is pink and green and filled with blood, he was the Monster with the inflamed TONSIL, and yet and yet, he was not that much. And I kept telling him:

  do it,

  do it, kid.

  it can be done

  light us all up

  I am willing to be

  lit

  do it.

  He had the energy, this Jagger I had never seen before, he was spartan, he drank little gulps of Coke to cool his throat while the U.S.C. football team threw his admirers back up the aisles.

  He was good because he still had soul and he was reaching down into what was left of soul and he didn’t need Beethoven and he didn’t need Bach, he had his own gas and his own leverage and his own way, but he was tiring, it was like a shadow following, a shadow to an eternal doom of weariness where it finally didn’t matter anymore, and maybe that was wisdom. I kept calling inside for him to come on, I said inside, Mick, forget my delicate little Chopin nocturnes that I listen to in roominghouses while two weeks behind in the rent, with suicide a spider’s cunthair away. Mick, show me, show me, show me. . . .

  He tried. And he was wonderful. He spilled more blood on th
at floor than a five-thousand-man army, but he didn’t make it. He’d been tricked into acceptance, tricked just like they trick every artist. Or almost every artist. The others go into madness or kill themselves.

  Mick tried. He tried very well. He did better than anybody watching him could. But it wasn’t enough. He was tired. He was too much money in. He was too famous. He sucked at the crowd. He tried to remember how it was when he first worked it. How it was when he was really and purely real. It’s difficult, too, it’s so difficult. It comes to us and it leaves us. Imagine being the Pied Piper and losing your flute. Yet it happens to all and every. The remainder of us do the best we can. Mick was doing the best he could, which was very good but none of what any of us expected, which was more MIRACLE MIRACLE MIRACLE.

  He finally took off his leather belt and flogged the floor, playing the sex maniac bit. It wasn’t too bad. And at least the words were clear and the meaning.

  (Let’s get it all clear. There was only one champion in that place that night and that was Mick Jagger. People like this don’t come along easily. Let’s give him his money and his fame and his glory, because his glory is our glory no matter how much he laughs at us in back rooms. You did all right, Mick. I forgive you.)

  Then there was the final bit. They were all supposed to go mad and clap. Show biz. The final number.

  I wanted to be linked to and with all of them. The sound rose like ten thousand motherfucking sparrows masturbating in the dirt. I thought of all the wonderful and terrible things that had happened to me and you and the rest of us, the wars, the sell-outs, the political parties, the old cars rusting and smashed in the junkyards, everything so sad finally unless it’s love, unless you can grab a little piece of love, not to say, that’s mine but to say it’s nice it’s nice it’s nice it’s nice it’s nice. . . .

  We went back to the motel and we drank and we talked a long long time, mostly we talked, it was easy. And then we took a shower and I took a shower, and then we made love and then we made love and then me and she made love, and Mick took the next plane out, and we forgot about him and I remembered him and we each remembered many things about our lives, as we will do, and the sea beat up and down against us, and it was really peace at last, and for a classical guy I wanted to tell you what happened the night the STONES came to Long Beach, and after doing her in, in, in, I felt my piece in her mouth and they heard me all along the shore:

  “I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU!”

  But I wasn’t sure whether I was saying it to her or to all the women I’ve loved, or maybe to all the women I will love or should have loved, how can you tell?

  Thanks for coming by, Mick. I admire you. And I admire you for everything you are or could have been. 90,000 temples ring for love or hope or kindness or realism. All our lives are set down to a singing that can never come true.

  You sang us some good songs. This is my song back to you.

  I get 20 dollars for writing this, Mick. You mustn’t expect too much.

  L.A. Free Press, June 23, 1972

  Notes of a Dirty Old Man

  I’m not in the mood for an immortal column today so I’ll go into the chitchat bit that the others get away with, hope that it gets by D. Fife, and next week I’ll be back with the good stuff, let’s hope. . . .

  The heaviest woman in the history of the world died the other day in Milwaukee. 46 years old, she weighed 880 pounds. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the former heaviest woman of all time weighed 850 pounds and died in Baltimore in 1888.

  Our new record-holder was 6 feet tall and wore a size 62 dress. They said eight sheriff’s deputies and several attendants were needed to carry the body into the morgue.

  No offense to the lady, but knowing the human race I can’t help imagining some of the comments that were made while they were carrying her in.

  “Hey, her leg’s slipping off here!”

  “Christ, don’t drop it!”

  “Wonder how she ever sat on a toilet?”

  “She dropped a load, you can bet!”

  Me, of course, I wonder about her sex life, her possible loneliness. But I see she was listed as a Mrs. W________. Mr. W________, our condolences. . . .

  There was this one lady, a friend of a friend, she was at the beach one day and felt the need to excrete and there weren’t any restrooms about so her husband held a blanket around her and she did it in a bucket. She was a very heavy lady, damned fat to be explicit, and when she finished and rose the bucket was stuck to her behind, the fat mashed down there with the droppings plus the suction and she tugged and tugged but couldn’t get the thing off her ass. . . . “Oh, Harry, what am I going to do?” and Harry said, “Well, there’s only one thing to do!” and he dropped the blanket and with the lady standing there holding her dress up he tugged and tugged. It took some minutes, and then the bucket came off with an explosive sound and the turds and the seagulls whirled through the air. . . .

  “Oh, I was so embarrassed!”

  “Oh, I was so embarrassed!”

  The lady laughs when she tells the story now, years later, she laughs the fat lady’s laugh. . . . And if The League to Liberate the Obese is about to attack me, let me say that I weigh in at 220. Striped, stripped, or stoned. . . .

  Was at Santa Anita this last Monday, the holiday, and I have this system I have been working on, based on the first flash of the board against general public information.

  You see, anybody can lose at the track, I like to lose with method. The problem with systems is that few of us have the consistency or the character to ride them out. That 30-minute wait between races gives us too much time to think. Well, that’s all right, let’s look at the first race. I have all my figures before me. The board flashes, Sir Larry Jay is 20 on the line. The Racing Form has him at the bottom at 30 to one. The L.A. Times handicapper has him at 25. He opens up at 14 to one. That’s my play. I mark it. Then during the betting Sir Larry rises to 35 to one. My mind cracks and I jump to Sake Tsuin at 7 to one. Sir Larry Jay is blocked at the 5/16th pole, Toro has to check him, that cost three lengths; he still comes on to win by a length at a payoff of $79.80. Sake Tsuin gets up for 3rd.

  In the second race the system is no play. The first flash all goes on the favorite Money Truck, opening at 3/5 off a rating of 8/5, 5/2 over a morning line of 5/2. Too standard. I blow a deuce on Vicar General who places at 10 to one. Money Truck broke down and the favorite players’ faces pinched up a little more.

  In the 3rd race Glory Isle opens up at 18 off a morning line of 20, once again against public information, and then it rises up to 35 to one. They’re not going to run in the same play twice in one day, I think. Glory Isle goes off the longest shot in the race and wins by three and a half lengths, paying $74.60.

  I’ve got a saying that knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge at all. Because it hurts, that’s why. So by the 4th race I am convinced. Broadway Frank, a name I like anyhow, rates 20-50 over a morning line of 15 and opens right on the line, 15. That’s hidden action. B.F. hasn’t been out for a year. No good workouts. The only other action is on Stand Straight who opens as the even money favorite. That’s standard. I chance a deuce on B.F. who rises to 21 to one, is checked while blocked on the turn, came through the rail to win with authority at 45.80. The system stopped working there and I know why now, but this is hardly the place to mention it.

  I’ve been asked, Bukowski, if you ever taught a writing class, what would you do? Well, besides staring up the legs of the girls in the front row and giving an A to every lady who went to bed with me, my first assignment would be to make every student go to the racetrack and make a $2 win bet on every race and then come back and tell me what they felt and what they had learned. The racetrack is a bloodpit almost everybody loses. The 15 percent take on the dollar is too much, plus just ordinary bad betting. And it’s boring. The faces are boring, the 30-minute wait between races is boring, everybody is dying and desperate and insolent and dried-out and tired and lo
st and losing and stupid. They came to the track because they didn’t know what to do. Well, over seven percent of their money (and mine) goes to state taxes, 25 cents for a little candy bar, 25 cents for a small cup of coffee, 50 cents for a hotdog, one dollar and a quarter for a sandwich, 35 cents for a coke, one dollar for a Racing Form, 35 cents for a program, 75 cents for parking, $2.25 to get in, then maybe you can bet. If you want a pack of cigarettes, it’s 55 cents and you’d better ask for matches.

  I once said to my girlfriend, “Horse players are the lowest of the breed.”

  “What are we doing out here?” she asked.

  “Look,” I said, “the four horse is getting unwarranted action. . . .”

  The racetrack, though, is a place where you enter the arena and see the people, quite not like you see the people anywhere else. I believe it helps creation. Win or lose you have learned something or re-learned something. But I wouldn’t suggest the track more than once a week unless you are on a winning streak. I can understand why Hemingway needed the bullring. It set the stage to move his people on. It was a quick review of death and life and movement. The boxing matches too are fine teachers, but only when you attend them live and get the smell and feeling of the crowd and fighters. Well, enough of that.

  I left the track a small loser, falling into the exact trap which goes for $5 a ticket. I made it back to my ’62 Comet and got in and here came a little old man with white hair and a shopping bag. I knew what he wanted. He ran up. “Listen, you going to Los Angeles?” “Listen, buddy,” I said, “I don’t have any auto insurance. If I crack you up and you’re injured, you’ll sue my ass.”

  I don’t like little old men with white hair and shopping bags, I’m too close to that myself.

  “I’ll give you a dollar,” he said, “a dollar for a ride.”

  “Get your head out of my window,” I said, “I’m moving out.”

  Actually I don’t mind the beaten and broke horseplayer too much but I’ve driven too many of them. I used to pick up an old guy at the Santa Monica entrance to the Hollywood freeway. He was bearded and in rags and slept in the bushes. His toes came out of his shoes and he stank. We made Los Alamitos almost every day. I haven’t seen him lately. I think he finally died. He claimed the jocks got together in the jockey room every day and decided on a number, say number 5. He claimed they’d run in #5 almost all day long, just altering it enough so it wouldn’t be obvious. Well, maybe he wasn’t any crazier than the rest of us.