More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

by Bukowski, Charles

  25

  A criminal might be defined as one outnumbered by those who generally don’t do what he does except in secret or different ways.

  26

  Check your ass for the shining candle.

  27

  Of all the women who have claimed they have hated me I have believed all of them.

  28

  It’s exactly as good as it’s ever going to get.

  29

  Will Rogers once said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” I never liked Will Rogers. But I liked his statement. I liked some men, temporarily. But somehow I didn’t like him. But he was probably luckier than I was and most probably a better man to be around. If you liked pussycats.

  30

  One night Babe Ruth, who was one hell of a drinker, held Rabbit Maranville, the shortstop, out of the window of their 12th-floor hotel room by his heels.

  “Go on, you fucker, drop me!” the Rabbit screamed in this story I read.

  I like that story. It would have been a much better one if he had dropped him.

  31

  One of the great things is when a Suicide meets a Suicide (it helps more when one is a man and the other a woman) over drinks and they talk about all the times they’ve botched their tries and they begin to laugh about that, and it’s really very funny because you really meant to do it. Now the radio is on, there’s a pack of cigarettes on the coffee table and the rug is upon the floor, and life is almost delightful, for a moment . . .

  32

  That’s enough. See you in Dresden.

  I was past midnight. The drinks had come, I never knew quite from where, and some cigarettes too. And the juke just blazed away. Hours of stale cigarette smoke had turned the air blue gray, and the flies and roaches were dulled and sickened and drunk, and the patrons too. It was a place no sensible being would ever want to be in, but not being a sensible being, there I was.

  The urinal was impossible, walking in there you were hit by a deadly waft of a century of piss and puke. And nobody ever used the toilet, it was dark and caked and dry and there wasn’t any water in the tank. And the lid had long been gone, the tank lid, the toilet lid, and the whiskey and beer spiders had taken over, threading their webs in there, waiting for something.

  I refocused on myself and found myself sitting next to this guy I had never seen before. He was in his mid-30s, wore this leather jacket. Maybe he had been buying me drinks. I didn’t know. Nobody else sat near us.

  He had a pack of cigarettes near his drink. Pall Malls. I reached for his pack, got it, pulled a smoke out and lit up.

  “Did I tell you you could have a cigarette?” he asked me.

  “No.”

  “Don’t go touching my cigarettes again!”

  He pulled the Pall Malls back in front of him.

  Everything was so weary. There was always somebody flexing up against you. They couldn’t bear up with the slightest joke, the tiniest confrontation. Everything was a challenge to them. They awakened angry every morning and they stayed that way. They didn’t want to lose and they didn’t know how to win. Constipated lives full of shit.

  I reached over, pulled the Pall Malls back, took a cigarette out, broke it in half, threw it back into the ashtray.

  He just sat there.

  He sat there a long time.

  He looked straight forward.

  Then he spoke.

  “Listen, I just got out of jail for aggravated assault! I don’t want to go back there again!”

  “Don’t fuck with me then.” I told him.

  We both sat there. It was a hot stupid night. We breathed in the gray blue smoke as the rich were out on their sailing ships or drugged to sleep. The trouble with life was that there were only tiny periods of action between all the vast spaces and the people just waited as Death sat on his red hot laughing ass.

  “Just don’t fuck with me!” he repeated.

  “Get yourself a hobbyhorse with a wooden asshole and you’ll feel better,” I said.

  I could feel the anger ripping through him. I wasn’t lucky enough to have anger. With anger you could react, wrong or right. I just had a pale and tired disgust. He was drinking whiskey. I was at the bottom of a stale bottle of beer.

  “Buy me a drink,” I said, “a whiskey.”

  He motioned Tommy down.

  “Two whiskeys.”

  They arrived and I drained mine down. He drained his.

  “Two more whiskeys,” he said to Tommy.

  “It’s all right,” I told the guy, “I don’t want to overbum.”

  “Drink up,” he said. “I’m getting ready to kick your ass.”

  The whiskeys were before us.

  “You mean if I drink this, you’re going to kick my ass?”

  “Right.”

  “You know I can’t turn down a drink?”

  “I know.”

  “It’s not fair,” I said. then reached down and got the whiskey, drained it.

  He drained his.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “One more,” I said, “to dull the pain.”

  “Two whiskeys,” he said to Tommy.

  The whiskeys arrived. They sat there golden and powerful among the dead flies and the half-dead patrons. My father had always warned me that I would come to this. He had wanted me to be an engineer. Jesus Christ, that would have been worse than this.

  I drained my whiskey. The guy got his. Then I stood up and walked toward the front bar door, opened it and walked out. It was dark out there. He was lit up a moment in the doorway, my mind noted a neon sign and I didn’t even see it coming.

  I was flat on my ass. Sprawled like a fucking land crab. No pain. Just a slight tinkle of wonder. The guy was good. I was too. At absorbing punches, punches and drinks. I could take all they could offer. Sometimes I just wore them down; other times, I didn’t.

  I got up, swung and missed, but as he sidestepped he slipped into some fresh puke somebody had recently deposited and I hit him in the throat, heard him give a little gulp, his eyes rolled a bit in surprise—he was used to winning—then I dug a left hook toward his gut, he blocked it with his elbow, countered with a hard right to my chin and I was down on my ass again, feeling strange, as if I were in too deep with no place to go. He kicked at my head. I saw it coming, grabbed his shoe, was surprised to have it, lifted it up as I stood up—and he was on his ass.

  I stood back then, thinking maybe we could call it like that. Let it be, you know.

  I knew I had been lucky. He knew it too.

  He got up and came on in. I shot a jab. It was useless, I didn’t have my shoulder behind it. I took his next shot fairly well, was almost proud, then he blasted me with his next and I was down on my ass again as the prowl car pulled up. I saw it. I was happy to see it. I sat there smiling at the prowl car.

  Then I felt him lifting me up. I heard him saying, “I’m just taking him home, officers, he’s going to be all right.”

  They sat and watched as he walked me toward his car, unlocked it. Then he put me in the front seat. Then he got around the other side and got in, started the car. The cops watched us drive off.

  He kept driving through the city streets, then we were in a dark area, open country, much space, many trees. He just drove along.

  Maybe he’s taking me out here to try to finish me off, I thought.

  But that wasn’t bothering me.

  “Hey,” I said, “I need a goddamned drink.”

  “There’s a pint in the glove compartment. What’s your name?”

  “Hank,” I said, reaching in and getting the bottle.

  “I’m Robert,” he said.

  I peeled the pint, opened it, took a hit. I passed the bottle to Robert, he took a hit, passed it back.

  “What do you do?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  We drove along and then Robert said, “Watch this . . .”

  There was a small
car in front of us. Robert pulled up alongside and stared at the two guys in the other car. They were a couple of kids, maybe 19. Robert kept driving along and staring at the guys. They looked scared. They pulled ahead and Robert went after them. He caught up with them and then banged the side of his car into them. They almost went off the road. They both started screaming.

  “Hey, what the fuck are you trying to do?”

  “Are you crazy?”

  Robert just drove alongside of them and stared. Then he banged his car into theirs again.

  “Hey! Jesus Christ, you asshole!”

  Robert banged them again, and this time the driver lost control, he spun off the road, piled into some brush. Robert drove off the road blocking their exit.

  “Which one do you want?” he asked me.

  “I’ll take the guy who gets out second.”

  We climbed out and waited. The car door opened and a kid in a gray sweatshirt got out. A nice blond boy.

  “You fucking guys crazy?” he asked.

  Robert walked up and cracked him with a right. The kid dropped to his knees and held his head.

  “Jesus, what did you do that for?” he asked.

  Robert grabbed him by the hair and banged his head against the side of the car.

  My guy got out of the other side of the car. I walked toward him. Before I could get to him he reached into his back pocket, got his wallet and threw it toward me.

  “Please take it,” he said, “just don’t hurt me.”

  I picked up the wallet, took the bills out, stuck them in my pocket, threw the wallet back.

  “You should never turn down a fight,” I told the kid. “It weakens the will.”

  I turned and looked over at Robert. His guy was out cold and he was stripping him of his wristwatch and a ring.

  “Come on, Robert, let’s get out of here.”

  Then the guy had me from behind, he had me in a good choke hold, I couldn’t breathe, shots of bright red flashed; I kicked backwards, landed on one of his shins. His grip slipped slightly and I was able to turn sideways but he got the grip on me again, but I reached for his balls, yanked, and he let go. He doubled over, holding his parts. I walked around and kicked him in the ass. He flopped over on the ground, moaning. I stood there looking at him. Just a kid who wanted to fuck the chicks. Just a kid who wanted to go to college.

  Robert walked up beside me. He kicked the kid in the head, hard. The kid straightened fast, like he had been electrocuted, then he went limp.

  “You don’t have to do that, Robert. Show some mercy.”

  “Mercy is for suckers.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yeah, I did. Now forget it.”

  “I didn’t like that.”

  “What you don’t like doesn’t matter.”

  We walked back toward the car, got in. Robert kicked it over and we were back on the road. I took a hit of the scotch, passed it toward Robert. He waved it off: “Naw, I don’t drink with weaklings.”

  “Good. All the more for me.”

  We just drove along through the night and I sucked at the scotch.

  “Just like a baby with his bottle. You alkies are weak,” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “You can’t cut it without the booze, can you?” Robert asked.

  “No.”

  I took another hit as we drove along. I wasn’t interested in being weak or strong. I just wanted to get by the hours. I wasn’t even interested in impressing myself.

  “My father was a drunk,” Robert said.

  “Did it kill him?” I asked.

  “The cops killed him.”

  “Oh.”

  This guy evidently came from a long criminal line. I could feel it sitting inside of him, locked there. I sensed something else in him, something that wanted to be kind and easy but the other part was too overpowering. He was just naturally and automatically dangerous. I liked some of that but not all of it. His fury had no humor. It was like a job.

  “I’ll take that drink,” he said.

  I passed the bottle over. He took a hit, handed it back.

  “Mom just got out. She did five years. Homicide.”

  “Great. Sounds like a great woman. “She is. You done time?”

  “Nothing,” I said, “just the drunktanks.”

  “Stick with me. I’ll put you through college.”

  “Yeah.”

  We drove along. It was a nice warm night. I felt relaxed. It was nice to get out of that bar for a moment. Those people sitting on those stools were just lonely. It was a lonely world. With everybody pretending it wasn’t, pretending that they were handling it. They couldn’t even wipe their bungholes. Nothing was drabber than the masses and that’s all there was.

  “If you want,” said Robert, “we can work together every night. You’ve got a certain cool that most guys don’t have.”

  “I’m not cool,” I said, “I’m just tired.”

  “That don’t matter. We can work together.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  What was worrying me was that the pint was almost empty. And I knew that Robert’s criminal insanity would not be so enthralling without drink. Nothing was without it. Drink elevated me. Without it I was common. I didn’t want to be common. It was too hard.

  I sucked at the bottle.

  “Drink is a form of escape,” I told Robert. “I like to escape.”

  He just kept driving. I liked the sound of the motor and the darkness going by. It was like sailing through Time untouched. Movement was unchallenged action.

  “Hey,” he said, “I think we got one!”

  There was a car ahead. I could sense him elevating into his life-meaning. He was like a tiger closing in on the wildebeest.

  It was a small model car, a guy and his girl driving along, a young couple. Robert pulled up next to them and stared. They just looked straight ahead pretending we weren’t there. But we were there.

  “Robert,” I said, “let’s let them go. They just want to live.”

  “That’s their problem.”

  The guy in the other car reduced speed, thinking maybe we would go on. It was his mistake. Robert braked and slowed next to them. Then he just leaned his car against theirs and pushed them off the road.

  We got out of our car. And the kid got out of his. Ow, he was big. A little drunk, hair down in his eyes. But he was large, big, he was going to protect his girl. Probably a highschool football star, somebody used to winning.

  He stood there in the moonlight and puffed out his chest. He was magnificent and he knew it.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll take either one of you guys. Who wants it first?”

  “Listen, sir,” I said, “we were just kind of clowning around. Let’s call it off.”

  Robert looked at me.

  “What are you, some kind of homo?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, I’ll handle this hot dog.”

  Robert moved toward the big kid. His girl got out of the car. She was magnificent too. Long hair, great body. They were the magnificent pair. The kid would someday be a corporate lawyer. She would be a fashion model. They were winners geared to get it all. I felt as if we were trespassing some holy land of the future.

  “Kick his ass, Lance!” screamed the girl.

  “No problem, Darlene.”

  The big kid and Robert moved toward each other. Then they circled. It was very quiet. You could hear their feet moving in the dirt. The moon seemed to be watching. Everything inhaled. The weeds inhaled, the trees inhaled, the clouds; then there was a movement, fiercely a fist landed upon a head and Robert dropped.

  He got right up.

  What am I going to do? I thought, if this guy kicks Robert’s ass?

  All I wanted to do was to be back in my dirty room, in that bed, covers pulled up, staring at the ceiling, waiting. I did that a lot.

  There was another sound. And the big kid was down on the ground. You couldn
’t even see those shots coming. It wasn’t a fight of men, it was a fight of rattlesnakes.

  The big kid got up and Robert landed again, not as solid this time but enough to stagger the kid. And as Robert moved forward the girl hit him with something from behind. It stopped him a moment and then he looked at me:

  “Take care of the broad while I finish this guy!”

  I ran over to the girl and grabbed both of her hands. Christ, she was beautiful! Her eyes blazed in anger and fright, her body whirled, convoluted. I actually got a hard-on just holding her like that. Even in the confusion she seemed to notice that.

  She spit in my face. “You ugly beggar!”

  Then she brought her knee up and tried to de-ball me. She just missed and I slapped her hard, saw her stagger in the moonlight, her long blond hair jumping deliciously into space. I grabbed her and kissed her, she bit my lip, I screamed, landed one in her gut and she dropped, her skirt falling back, showing long sheathed legs glistening magically.

  Then Robert was standing next to me.

  “I finished him off,” he said. He looked down at the girl. “Let’s fuck her.”

  “No.”

  I reached down and helped her up. She was a bit crazed. She was very close to me. She looked at me.

  “Don’t kill him, please don’t kill him. I love him!”

  “It’s going to be all right,” I told her. “Please don’t worry.”

  “Hey! What’s with you?” asked Robert. “I’m going to fuck this bitch!”

  “No,” I said, “it’s not right.”

  “Do you think anything we’re doing is right? Why do you keep drawing lines?”

  He gave me a hard push and then grabbed the girl, pushing her toward some brush.

  “No, no, no! Please!” she said.

  “Shut up,” said Robert.

  Then she must have attacked him, done something against him. He retaliated. She screamed and he dragged her to the brush. I walked back to the car, got the pint and had the last hit. Then I walked over and looked at the guy. I bent over him. He looked asleep. I could see him breathing. He wasn’t dead. Fine. He could still be a corporate lawyer. Then I walked over to their car, opened the door, got in. There was a bag on the floor. I looked in there. It was a bottle of expensive wine, only a bit of it gone. My life was renewed. I went back to Robert’s car, leaned against it and sucked at the wine.