More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

by Bukowski, Charles

The doorbell rang about 10 minutes later and Janice got up and answered it. “Harriet! And I’m so glad you’ve got Timmy with you!”

  They walked in and Harriet was an almost carbon copy of Janice. She had some guy with her. He had on little boy’s pants—black—and a blouse, ruffled, silky and white; underwear with reindeer and stars interspersed with rockinghorses, and two ankle-length stockings, white.

  “Harold,” said Janice, “I want you to meet Timmy.”

  They shook hands. “How you doing, man?” Harry asked.

  “All right, I guess. How you doing?”

  “Fair to middling.”

  “Me too.”

  Timmy sat down in a chair across the way and Janice went in to mix new drinks. “I want you boys to get along now,” said Harriet.

  “Now,” said the parrot, “eat your spinach, darling!”

  “This recession is a living hell,” said Timmy to Harry.

  Janice brought the drinks back in and handed them out, then sat down. “Harold has been a very bad boy! Just this morning we had hard-boiled eggs and he said he didn’t like the yolk and he didn’t like the white. Then he dropped the jam right onto the front of his shirt!”

  “You think the Dodgers will repeat this year?” Timmy asked Harry.

  “It’s a cinch,” said Harry, “they’re going to learn how to use Ferguson, and Lopes will get off faster at the bat.”

  “Timmy has been very bad too,” said Harriet. “He left his tricycle out in the rain and all the spokes got rusted. He needs a spanking very badly!”

  “Harold needs a spanking very badly too. He pulled a little girl’s pigtail and then stuck it in the inkwell!”

  “I told you . . . she was . . .”

  “Harold.”

  “These boys are acting very badly! I think I’d better take mine home!”

  “Mine needs some chastising too.”

  “All right, Janice, I’ll phone you tomorrow. We’re leaving. Timmy!”

  “Christ, at least let me finish my drink!”

  “No, no, we’re leaving. Timmy!”

  And she took Timmy and led him out the door by one ear, the clear night wind blew in, and then they were gone.

  “Now,” said Harriet, “you go to the bedroom!”

  Harry walked into the bedroom. It was dark in there. But he did have his drink with him. He finished his drink and rolled the glass across the rug. He unlaced his shoes and stretched out on the bed. It was one of those neighborhoods where you could hear the crickets rubbing their legs together. He listened to the rubbing of the legs. It made things seem fairly all right.

  Then he wondered, should I take this stuff off and wait for her or should I let her undress me?

  It was the first bit of uncalculated, mathematical wisdom he had come upon in some days of weeks, but he still hoped she’d bring one last good drink.

  Harry bought a newspaper and walked into the travel agency. A woman in a yellow skirt, white blouse and high heels was bent over placing something in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. Her skirt hiked up and Harry stared at the back of her legs. The legs were good. When the woman turned around Harry elevated his glance. The woman was in her mid-40s but she still radiated sex. She was almost plump and the skirt fit tightly, so tightly that Harry could see the garter belt that held up the stockings.

  “Hello,” said Harry, “I need a ticket.”

  “Please sit down,” the woman said. All her clothing pulled at her as if she wanted to get out of it. When she sat down she crossed her legs and Harry found himself staring up her legs. She noticed and smiled slightly.

  “Where to,” she asked.

  “Detroit,” said Harry, “regular coach fare.”

  “Round trip?”

  “Yes, round trip.”

  “When do you want to leave?”

  “Oh, sometime Thursday afternoon. It doesn’t matter much when I arrive. I read Friday night.”

  “Read?”

  “Oh, pardon me, I’m a poet.”

  “Oh, a poet . . . how strange. Do they pay you to read?”

  “$500 plus air this trip.”

  “What kind of poetry do you write?”

  “Sex.”

  “Sex?”

  “Yes, sex.”

  The woman checked her schedules.

  “I can get you on a flight out of L.A. International at 2:48 p.m. American.”

  “Fine.”

  “Return trip open?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must lead an interesting life.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I’m Mrs. LeMon.”

  “I’m Harry Benson.”

  While Mrs. LeMon dialed the telephone Harry looked up her legs again. She had recrossed her legs and the skirt had climbed higher. It was hell to be a leg man and come across the rarity of high heels, long stockings and garter belt. All the modern women had gone to pantyhose, which de-sexified everything, or pants. Well, if women didn’t want to be sex symbols that was their right, and if they wanted to be that was their right too. Harry forced his eyes from her legs and read the paper.

  “Look,” said Harry, “here’s a Superior Court judge who has authorized castration for two men who pleaded guilty to child molestation.”

  Mrs. LeMon hung up. “I’ve got you on flight 248, American , 2:48 p.m. What did you say?”

  “These two guys have been molesting little girls and they might get their balls cut off.”

  “I think that’s terrible,” said Mrs. LeMon.

  “Me too,” said Harry. “Some girls are terrible little teases and a man gets hot.”

  “I’d like to read some of your books.”

  “You wouldn’t like them.”

  “What are they about?”

  “Just stories and poems.”

  “About what?”

  “Rape, child molestation, oral sex, garter belt freaks, high-heeled shoe fetishes, whips, leather, all that crap.”

  “And they pay you to read that?”

  “Oh, I mix in a little spring and love and death and laughter. It confuses them. Look here, it says that the exiled Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn is visiting Canada. He’s got it made. They toady to those kinds of freaks. He’ll probably lay five or six Eskimo virgins. He can’t write worth a damn.”

  “Do you like virgins?”

  “I like mature women, slightly overweight sex symbols.”

  “I like your sense of humor.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Cash or credit?”

  “Cash. How much is it?”

  Mrs. LeMon told Harry how much it was and he put the money down in front of her.

  “Mrs. LeMon, I know this making out of the tickets takes some time. I think I’ll go out and get a beer and a sandwich.”

  “Why don’t you go out and get your beer and drink it upstairs? My apartment’s right up that stairway. There’s meat in the refrigerator and some Russian rye. You can make a sandwich, drink your beer and rest while I’m making out the tickets.”

  “O.K. I’ll be right back.”

  Harry found a liquor store two blocks west. He got a six of Bud in the bottle and put a dime in the parking meter in front of his car as he walked past. When he got back to the travel agency Mrs. LeMon was making out the tickets. Her skirt was hiked higher. He didn’t look at her face, he looked at her legs and said, “Hi!”

  “Hi!” she answered.

  Harry went up the stairway. It’s like a movie, he thought. Someday I’ll write about this. He opened the door. It was a nice apartment. Female. Real female, old-fashioned female. Harry had once dreamt he had fucked his mother; it had been the wettest wet dream he had ever had. Sex was doing what you weren’t supposed to do. That’s one reason marriage didn’t work; it became a job instead of a raid into the unknown. He was really a puritan and the breaking down of the mores made him horny forever; that along with vitamin E and a late start in the game.

  He broke out one bottle of Bud an
d put the rest in the refrigerator. He had to be the best poet in the game today. Everybody agreed that Bukowski was slipping, Ginsberg was a nice old bore and Creeley was drinking a quart of whiskey a day. Duncan was too precious, Lowell was too careful and Ferlinghetti was hampered by an alcoholic wife.

  Harry sucked on the beer and walked over to her dresser. He opened the second drawer down and he was right—there were eight or 10 pairs of panties. He went through them and found a pair he liked: black, netted and laced. He unzipped and pulled it out. He took the panties and folded them over his cock and began rubbing them over his cock. Harry watched himself in the mirror, grinning, and he kept rubbing. His cock began to swell and the head puffed up and out of the panties. He watched himself in the mirror, then his mind said, Jesus I got stop or I’m going to lose it. He zipped up, poking it in and put the panties in one of his rear pockets. He finished the beer, went to the refrigerator and opened another one. He looked in there. Why was it that almost all women ate cottage cheese and yogurt and cheese? Soft stinking cheese. And doughnuts and See’s candies?

  He took the beer and walked over to the couch and sat down. He’d thrown the newspaper down there. He picked it up:55 FELLED BY FOOD

  Nuevo Laredo, Mexico (AP)—More than 55 persons who attended a Knights of Columbus luncheon at the Lion’s Club convention hall were hospitalized with food poisoning, officials reported.

  Bastards, thought Harry, serves them right. Anybody who goes to Mexico deserves to be reamed and creamed.

  The door opened. It was Mrs. LeMon. “Hi!” she said.

  “Hi!” said Harry, “who’s running the store?”

  “My son, Gary,” said Mrs. LeMon, sitting down.

  “Is he competent?”

  “Oh my, yes.”

  “Will he come up here?”

  “I told you he’s competent. I told him not to come up here no matter what happened.”

  “Suppose I’m some kind of kook.”

  “You’re not. Your face is too kind.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Pull your dress higher. I love your legs.”

  Mrs. LeMon pulled her dress higher. Harry bent down and kissed one of her knees. Then he spread her legs and bit her hard four or five inches above the knee.

  “Oooh, that hurt, don’t do that!”

  “Go in and piss.”

  “What?”

  “I told you to go in and piss. Women pissing make me hot.”

  “But I don’t want to pee.”

  Harry put the bottle down and slapped Mrs. LeMon across the face, hard.

  “Oh, don’t do that . . .”

  “I told you what to do! Now go ahead and do it!”

  Mrs. LeMon went to the bathroom. Harry finished his beer and brought out two more, opened them, put them on the coffee table. He heard the toilet flush. Mrs. LeMon came out and sat down.

  “Drink up and relax,” said Harry. “That Vietnam evacuation was really a mess. The whole goddamned army and their wives and their whores trying to scale the walls of the U.S. Embassy. Old people caught in barbwire and bleeding to death and Marines bayoneting anybody the TV cameras weren’t on. All to come to America and replace the Puerto Rican as the most despised racial group in America. Suck my dick!”

  “I don’t do that.”

  “70,000 collaborators swimming in the ocean and begging for mercy! Suck my dick!”

  “I told you . . .”

  “Well, then, drink your beer and show me more leg!”

  Harry drained the remainder of his bottle without stopping. “I saw some wine in there. Can I drink your wine?”

  “Sure.”

  The wine was three-quarters full. Harry stood in the center of the room and took a good hit.

  “Stand up!” he told Mrs. LeMon. “You got me hot. You got that ass and those legs. A woman your age doesn’t deserve to have that. You got me hot. STAND UP!” I said.

  Harry put down the wine bottle and took off his belt. He folded it double and then lifted Mrs. LeMon’s dress. He lifted it above her waist, exposing the thighs, the panties, the garter belt, the white skin between the stockings and the panties.

  Harry began to beat her alongside the legs, starting low around the ankles and working up, gradually increasing the tempo and the force, then he got to the upper thighs and thrashed, saying, “You whore, you goddamned whore . . .”

  Mrs. LeMon tried to hold in her screams so her son, Gary, downstairs, wouldn’t hear her. Then he spun her and beat upon her ass viciously. She fell to the floor, weeping. Harry disrobed. He walked over, took a good hit of the wine, then walked up to Mrs. LeMon. She appeared to be shivering. Harry grabbed her by the hair and pulled her upward. She screamed as he did so, loudly.

  “Goddamn you, shut up! If your son comes up here I’ll kill both of you!” He kissed Mrs. LeMon, spreading the lips of her mouth open. Her face was wet and she was convulsing. He worked her panties off and got it in, taking both hands and spreading the cheeks of her ass wide, extremely wide. He saw her ass in the mirror and himself bent over her like leprosy. They worked across the room knocking over the coffee table, banging into a wall. Her cunt was too large for him. Too many babies. He had to get her in front of the mirror and watch. He finally came. He threw her on the bed. She seemed to be convulsing. He saw a high-heeled shoe on her rug. He dressed, watching her. Fully dressed he opened his shirt a few buttons and dropped the high-heeled shoe in. Then he heard her voice: “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m going to Detroit, American, flight 248.”

  “I love you, Harry.”

  “What? That wasn’t love. That was raw sex shit, dementia. I’m not proud of it.”

  “I know I’ll never see you again. Kiss me goodbye, that’s all I ask.”

  “God, this is grade-B movie.”

  “Harry . . .”

  “All right!”

  He got into bed next to her with his shoes on. Her mouth opened. He closed on it. And held. She was crying, rushes of water coming out from under her eyelids. The high-heel shoe was between them in his shirt and the heel was stabbing into his chest. Harry pulled away. He got up and then noticed the nightstand on the other side of the bed. There was half a pack of cigarettes and a pack of matches. The matches said: “Save-on a GREAT place to shop! The quality drug stores . . .” He took out a cigarette and lit it. Lighted it, as the intellectual writers said. Then he noticed a book on the nightstand. He picked it up: Jong’s Fear of Flying. Mrs. LeMon seemed still at last. The wine bottle was on the floor on its side. He picked it up and found one last hit. Then he walked out the door and went down the stairway. Gary was down there. He looked bright but introvert, no challenge. “Is Mom all right?” he asked.

  “She’s pleased,” Harry told the kid. The kid caught it. He liked the kid’s kool. One thing about the new generation, they either understood very much instinctively or they became murderers without feeling. There was very little middle ground, and maybe they were right because it was the middle ground, that vast jelly-like totality of billions and billions following all central signals, that had kept the world crawling over and over itself again and again, bored, fatted, starving, inane, feeding on nothing, giving nothing, being nothing.

  Harry walked toward the door of the travel agency. He got his hand on the knob when Gary spoke:

  “Mr. Benson?”

  “Yes?”

  “You forgot your tickets.”

  “Oh?”

  Harry walked back. The kid handed him the tickets enclosed in a neat blue leather folder. “Thanks for coming to see our agency. I hope you’ll use us again on your next flight.”

  Harry took the tickets and walked back out the door. He walked back to his car. There were 12 minutes left on the parking meter. He got back in the car, it started; he took a left on 6th street and a right on Vermont. Traffic was bad and Paul Williams was on the radio. He didn’t like either one of them. It was, perhaps, a matter of utter obviousnes
s. He took out the high-heeled shoe and stuck it up on the dash. Yes, much better.

  He’d kill them in Detroit.

  I turned the car into The Bug Builders in Santa Monica and began walking. I’d blown an engine down there some months past, had gotten a rebuilt and was in for the 3,000 mile check-up. I lived in L.A. and knew I had hours to wait. It was 10:15 a.m. I found a restaurant open and walked in. There was only one man in there, at a back table. I took a table at about the center and the waitress brought me a menu. Breakfast. I ordered ham and eggs, scrambled. I was hungover but thought I might hold it down. I had a paper and opened it. “Dodgers lose.” That cheered me a tick. When the waitress brought my breakfast she refilled my coffee cup. Fine girl with an ordinary ass. I began eating and then two people entered—a boy of about 23 and a woman of 50. They took the table directly across from mine. “That Helen keeps coming in when I’m looking at television and she insists on talking. And she talks in this LOUD voice!” said the boy. “I tell you, next time she does that I’m going to turn my television on so LOUD she won’t be able to be heard! I’m going to do it, so help me!”

  When I finished eating I stood up and belched as I left the table.

  I walked down to the mall. A cop was giving two kids with bicycles citations. LEPKE was playing at the movie but it didn’t open until noon. A girl with very good legs and a miniskirt walked by. She saw me looking at her and turned her head and stared at me as she waited for the signal.

  What’s she thinking? I thought. If one only knew what they were thinking.

  She crossed the street and I watched her haunches revolve. Then I noticed that she had a wrinkle in her skirt where she had sat down and I lost interest.

  I walked down Santa Monica to Ocean, then crossed the street and walked through the park. I turned onto the pier and walked along it. The people on the pier were unconcerned; they were neither happy nor sad. They rattled about in the Penny Arcade and bounced against each other in the electric cars. The fishermen weren’t catching much. I walked down one side, came up the other. Coming up the other I came upon two young girls, each about 16. One was sunbathing on top of a cement bench, head down. The other was underneath the bench with her head sticking out toward the ocean. She had the sexiest lips I had ever seen on a woman, a girl. The appeal of those lips was jolting. One doesn’t expect lips like that from under a stone bench at 11:25 a.m. And between those lips, on the side toward me, stuck out a tiny tip of a tongue.