"Little Jack is a nice guy. We're happy together."
I sucked at my beer.
"I don't want to fuck," she said, "I'm tired of abortions, I'm really tired of abortions…"
"We'll figure something out."
"I just want to smoke and talk and drink."
"That's not enough for me."
"All you guys want to do is fuck."
"I like it."
"Well, I can't fuck, I don't want to fuck."
"Relax."
We sat on the couch. We didn't kiss. Mercedes was not a good conversationalist. She wasn't interesting. But she had her legs and her ass and her hair and her youth. I'd met some interesting women, God knows, but Mercedes just wasn't high on the list.
The beer flowed and the joints went around. Mercedes still had the same job with the Hollywood Institute of Human Relationships. She was having trouble with her car. Little Jack had a short fat dick. She was reading Grapefruit by Yoko Ono. She was tired of abortions. The Valley was nice but she missed Venice. She missed riding her bicycle along the boardwalk.
I don't know how long we talked, or she talked, but much, much later she said she was too drunk to drive home.
"Take off your clothes and go to bed," I told her.
"But no fucking," she said.
"I won't touch your cunt."
She undressed and went to bed. I undressed and went into the bathroom. She watched me coming out with a jar of Vaseline.
"What are you going to do?"
"Just take it easy, baby, take it easy."
I rubbed the Vaseline on my cock. Then I turned out the light and got into bed.
"Turn your back," I said.
I reached one arm under her and played with one breast and reached over the top and played with the other breast. It felt good with my face in her hair. I stiffened and slipped it into her ass. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her ass toward me, hard, sliding it in. "Oooooohh," she said.
I began working. I dug it in deeper. The cheeks of her ass were big and soft. As I slammed away I began to sweat. Then I rolled her on her stomach and sunk it in deeper. It was getting tighter. I nudged into the end of her colon and she screamed.
"Shut up! Goddamn you!"
She was very tight. I slipped it even further in. Her grip was unbelievable. As I rammed it in I suddenly got a stitch in my side, a terrible burning pain, but I continued. I was slicing her in half, right up the backbone. I roared like a madman and came.
Then I lay there on top of her. The pain in my side was murder. She was crying.
"Goddamn it," I asked her, "what's the matter? I didn't touch your cunt."
I rolled off.
In the morning Mercedes said very little, got dressed and left for her job.
Well, I thought, there goes another one.
73
My drinking slowed down the next week. I went to the racetrack to get fresh air and sunshine and plenty of walking. At night I drank, wondering why I was still alive, how the scheme worked. I thought about Katherine, about Lydia, about Tammie. I didn't feel very good.
That Friday night the phone rang. It was Mercedes.
"Hank, I'd like to come by. But just for talk and beer and joints. Nothing else."
"Come by if you want to."
Mercedes was there in a half hour. To my surprise she looked very good to me. I'd never seen a mini-skirt as short as hers and her legs looked fine. I kissed her happily. She broke away.
"I couldn't walk for two days after that last one. Don't rip my butt again."
"All right, honest injun, I won't."
It was about the same. We sat on the couch with the radio on, talked, drank beer, smoked. I kissed her again and again. I couldn't stop. She acted like she wanted it, yet she insisted that she couldn't. Little Jack loved her, love meant a lot in this world.
"It sure does," I said.
"You don't love me."
"You're a married woman."
"I don't love Little Jack, but I care for him very much and he loves me."
"It sounds fine."
"Have you ever been in love?"
"Four times."
"What happened? Where are they tonight?"
"One is dead. The other three are with other men."
We talked a long time that night and smoked any number of joints. Around 2 am Mercedes said, "I'm too high to drive home. I'd total the car."
"Take your clothes off and go to bed."
"All right, but I've got an idea."
"Like what?"
"I want to watch you beat that thing off! I want to watch it squirt!"
"All right, that's fair enough. It's a deal."
Mercedes undressed and went to bed. I undressed and stood at the side of the bed. "Sit up so you can see better."
Mercedes sat on the edge of the bed. I spit on my palm and began to rub my cock.
"Oh," Mercedes said, "It's growing!"
"Uh huh…"
"It's getting big!"
"Uh huh…"
"Oh, it's all purple with big veins! It throbs! It's ugly!"
"Yeh."
As I kept beating my cock I moved it near her face. She watched it. Just as I was about to come I stopped.
"Oh," she said.
"Look, I've got a better idea…"
"What?"
"You beat it off."
"All right."
She started in. "Am I doing it right?"
"A little harder. And spit on your palm. And rub almost all of it, most of it, just not up near the head."
"All right… Oh, God, look at it… I want to see it squirt juice!"
"Keep going, Mercedes! OH, MY GOD!"
I was just about to come. I pulled her hand away from my cock.
"Oh, damn you!" Mercedes said.
She bent forward and got it in her mouth. She began sucking and bobbing, running her tongue along the length of my cock as she sucked it.
"Oh, you bitch!"
Then she pulled her mouth off my cock.
"Go ahead! Go ahead! Finish me off!"
"No!"
"Well, goddamn it then!"
I pushed her over backwards on the bed and leaped on her. I kissed her viciously and drove my cock in. I worked violently, pumping and pumping. I moaned and then came. I pumped it into her, feeling it enter, feeling it steam into her.
74
I had to fly to Illinois to give a reading at the University. I hated readings, but they helped with the rent and maybe they helped sell books. They got me out of east Hollywood, they got me up in the air with the businessmen and the stewardesses and the iced drinks and little napkins and the peanuts to kill the breath.
I was to be met by the poet, William Keesing, who I had been corresponding with since 1966. I had first seen his work in the pages of Bull, edited by Doug Fazzick, one of the first mimeo mags and probably the leader in the mimeo revolution. None of us were literary in the proper sense: Fazzick worked in a rubber plant, Keesing was an ex-Marine out of Korea who had done time and was supported by his wife, Cecelia. I was working 11 hours a night as a postal clerk. That was also the time when Marvin arrived on the scene with his strange poems about demons. Marvin Woodman was the best damned demon-writer in America. Maybe in Spain and Peru too. I was into writing letters at the time. I wrote 4 and 5 page letters to everybody, coloring the envelopes and pages wildly with crayons. That's when I began writing William Keesing, ex-Marine, ex-con, drug addict (he was mostly into codeine).
Now, years later, William Keesing had secured a temporary teaching job at the University. He had managed to pick up a degree or two between drug busts. I warned him that it was a dangerous job for anybody who wanted to write. But at least he taught his class plenty of Chinaski.
Keesing and his wife were waiting at the airport. I had my baggage with me and so we went right to the car.
"My God," said Keesing, "I never saw anybody get off of an airplane looking like that."
I had on my dead
father's overcoat, which was too large. My pants were too long, the cuffs came down over the shoes and that was good because my stockings didn't match, and my shoes were down at the heels. I hated barbers so I cut my own hair when I couldn't get a woman to do it. I didn't like to shave and I didn't like long beards, so I scissored myself every two or three weeks. My eyesight was bad but I didn't like glasses so I didn't wear them except to read. I had my own teeth but not that many. My face and my nose were red from drinking and the light hurt my eyes so I squinted through tiny slits. I would have fit into any skid row anywhere.
We drove off.
"We expected somebody quite different," said Cecelia.
"Oh?"
"I mean, your voice is so soft, and you seem gentle. Bill expected you to get off the plane drunk and cursing, making passes at the women…"
"I never pump up my vulgarity. I wait for it to arrive on its own terms."
"You're reading tomorrow night," said Bill.
"Good, we'll have fun tonight and forget everything."
We drove on.
That night Keesing was as interesting as his letters and poems. He had the good sense to stay away from literature in our conversation, except now and then. We talked about other things. I didn't have much luck in person with most poets even when their letters and poems were good. I'd met Douglas Fazzick with less than charming results. It was best to stay away from other writers and just do your work, or just not do your work.
Cecelia retired early. She had a job to go to in the morning. "Cecelia is divorcing me," Bill told me. "I don't blame her. She's sick of my drugs, my puke, my whole thing. She's stood it for years. Now she can't take it any longer. I can't give her much of a fuck anymore. She's running with this teenage kid. I can't blame her. I've moved out, I've got a room. We can go there and sleep or I can go there and sleep and you can stay here or we both can stay here, it doesn't matter to me."
Keesing took out a couple of pills and dropped them.
"Let's both stay here," I said.
"You really pour the drinks down."
"There's nothing else to do."
"You must have a cast-iron gut."
"Not really. It busted open once. But when those holes grow back together they say it's tougher than the best welding."
"How long you figure to go on?" he asked.
"I've got it all planned. I'm going to die in the year 2000 when I'm 80."
"That's strange," said Keesing, "That's the year I'm going to die. 2000. I even had a dream about it. I even dreamed the day and hour of my death. Anyhow, it's in the year 2000."
"It's a nice round number. I like it."
We drank for another hour or two. I got the extra bedroom. Keesing slept on the couch. Cecelia apparently was serious about dumping him.
The next morning I was up at 10:30 am. There was some beer left. I managed to get one down. I was on the second when Keesing walked in.
"Jesus, how do you do it? You spring back like an 18 year old boy."
"I have some bad mornings. This just isn't one."
"I've got a 1:00 English class. I've got to get straight."
"Drop a white."
"I need some food in my gut."
"Eat two soft-boiled eggs. Eat them with a touch of chili powder or paprika."
"Can I boil you a couple?"
"Thanks, yes."
The phone rang. It was Cecelia. Bill talked a while, then hung up. "There's a tornado approaching. One of the biggest in the history of the state. It might come through here."
"Something always happens when I read."
I noticed it was beginning to get dark.
"They might cancel the class. It's hard to tell. I better eat."
Bill put the eggs on.
"I don't understand you," he said, "you don't even look hung-over."
"I'm hungover every morning. It's normal. I've adjusted."
"You're still writing pretty good shit, in spite of all that booze."
"Let's not get on that. Maybe it's the variety of pussy. Don't boil those eggs too long."
I went into the bathroom and took a shit. Constipation wasn't one of my problems. I was just coming out when I heard Bill holler, "Chinaski!"
Then I heard him in the yard, he was vomiting. He came back.
The poor guy was really sick.
"Take some baking soda. You got a Valium?"
"No."
"Then wait 10 minutes after the baking soda and drink a warm beer. Pour it in a glass now so the air can get to it."
"I got a bennie."
"Take it."
It was getting darker. Fifteen minutes after the bennie Bill took a shower. When he came out he looked all right. He ate a peanut butter sandwich with sliced banana. He was going to make it.
"You still love your old lady, don't you?" I asked.
"Christ, yes."
"I know it doesn't help, but try to realize that it's happened to all of us, at least once."
"That doesn't help."
"Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you."
"Cecelia's a wonderful woman."
It was getting darker. "Let's drink some more beer," I said.
We sat and drank beer. It got really dark and then there was a high wind. We didn't talk much. I was glad we had met. There was very little bullshit in him. He was tired, maybe that helped. He'd never had any luck with his poems in the U.S.A. They loved him in Australia. Maybe some day they'd discover him here, maybe not. Maybe by the year 2000. He was a tough, chunky little guy, you knew he could duke it, you knew he had been there. I was fond of him.
We drank quietly, then the phone rang. It was Cecelia again. The tornado had passed over, or rather, around. Bill was going to teach his class. I was going to read that night. Bully. Everything was working. We were all fully employed.
About 12:30 pm Bill put his notebooks and whatever he needed into a backpack, got on his bike and pedaled off to the university.
Cecelia came home sometime in the mid-afternoon. "Did Bill get off all right?" "Yes, he left on the bike. He looked fine." "How fine? Was he on shit?" "He looked fine. He ate and everything." "I still love him, Hank. I just can't go through it anymore." "Sure."
"You don't know how much it means to him to have you out here. He used to read your letters to me." "Dirty, huh?"
"No, funny. You made us laugh." "Let's fuck, Cecelia." "Hank, now you're playing your game." "You're a plump little thing. Let me sink it in." "You're drunk, Hank." "You're right. Forget it."
75
That night I gave another bad reading. I didn't care. They didn't care. If John Cage could get one thousand dollars for eating an apple, I'd accept $500 plus air fare for being a lemon.
It was the same afterwards. The little coeds came up with their young hot bodies and their pilot-light eyes and asked me to autograph some of my books. I would have liked to fuck about five of them in one night sometime and get them out of my system forever.
A couple of professors came up and grinned at me for being an ass. It made them feel better, they felt now as if they had a chance at the typewriter.
I took the check and got out. There was to be a small, select gathering at Cecelia's house afterwards. That was part of the unwritten contract. The more girls the better, but at Cecelia's house I stood very little chance. I knew that. And sure enough, in the morning I awakened in my bed, alone.
Bill was sick again the next morning. He had another 1:00 class and before he went off he said, "Cecelia will drive you to the airport. I'm going now. No heavy goodbyes."
"All right."
Bill put on his backpack and walked his bike out the door.
76
I was back in L.A. about a week and a half. It was night. The phone rang. It was Cecelia, she was sobbing. "Hank, Bill is dead. You're the first one I've called."
"Christ, Cecelia, I don't know wh
at to say."
"I'm so glad you came when you did. Bill did nothing but talk about you after you left. You don't know what your visit meant to him."
"What happened?"
"He complained of feeling real bad and we took him to a hospital and in two hours he was dead. I know people are going to think he o.d.'d, but he didn't. Even though I was going to divorce him I loved him."
"I believe you."
"I don't want to bother you with all this."
"It's all right, Bill would understand. I just don't know what to say to help you. I'm kind of in shock. Let me phone you later on to see if you're all right."
"Would you?"
"Of course."
That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
As sick and unhappy as he was, Bill just didn't look like somebody who was about to die. There were many deaths like that and even though we knew about death and thought about it almost every day, when there was an unexpected death, and when that person was an exceptional and lovable human being, it was hard, very, no matter how many other people had died, good, bad or unknown.
I phoned Cecelia back that night, and I phoned her again the next night, and once more after that, and then I stopped phoning.
77
A month went by. R.A. Dwight, the editor of Dogbite Press wrote and asked me to do a foreword to Keesing's Selected Poems. Keesing, with the help of his death, was at last going to get some recognition somewhere besides Australia.
Then Cecelia phoned. "Hank, I'm going to San Francisco to see R.A. Dwight. I have some photos of Bill and some unpublished things. I want to go over them with Dwight and we're going to decide what to publish. But first I want to stop in L.A. for a day or two. Can you meet me at the airport?"
"Sure, you can stay at my place, Cecelia."
"Thanks much."
She gave me her arrival time and I went in and cleaned the toilet, scrubbed the bathtub and changed the sheets and pillow cases on my bed.
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