Factotum

by Charles Bukowski

  “Are you able to work?”

  “Are you willing to work?”

  “Will you accept employment?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” I always said.

  I also had to turn in a list of three companies where I had applied for work during the previous week. I took the names and addresses out of the phonebook. I was always surprised when one of the unemployment insurance applicants would answer “no” to any of the three questions. Their checks were immediately withheld and they were walked into another room where specially trained counselors would help send them on their way to skid row.

  But in spite of the unemployment checks and the backlog of racetrack money, my bankroll began to vanish. Both Jan and I were totally irresponsible when we were drinking heavily and our troubles kept arriving by the carload. I was always running down to Lincoln Heights Jail to bail Jan out. She’d come down in the elevator with one of the dyke matrons at her elbow, almost always with either a black eye or a cut mouth and very often with a dose of the crabs, compliments of some maniac she’d met in a bar somewhere. Then there was bail money and then court costs and fines, plus a request by the judge to go to A.A. meetings for six months. I too gathered my share of suspended sentences and heavy fines. Jan managed to extricate me from a variety of charges ranging from attempted rape to assault to indecent exposure to being a public nuisance. Disturbing the peace was one of my favorites too. Most of these charges did not involve actually serving any time in jail—so long as the fines were paid. But it was a huge continual expense. I remember one night our old car stalled just outside of MacArthur Park. I looked into the rearview mirror and said, “O.K., Jan, we’re in luck. We are going to get a push. He’s coming up right behind us. There are some kind souls in this ugly world.” Then I looked again: “Hold your ASS, Jan, he’s going to HIT us!” The son of a bitch had never slackened speed and he hit us straight on from the rear, so hard that the front seat collapsed and we were thrown flat. I got out and asked the guy if he had learned to drive in China. I also threatened his life. The police arrived and asked me if I cared to blow up their little balloon. “Don’t do it,” said Jan. But I refused to listen. Somehow I had the idea that since the guy had been in the wrong in hitting us, that I couldn’t possibly be intoxicated. The last I remember was getting into the squad car with Jan standing by our stalled car with the collapsed front seat. Incidents such as this—and they came along one after the other—cost us a lot of money. Little by little our lives were falling apart.

  51

  Jan and I were at Los Alamitos. It was Saturday. Quarter Horse Racing was a novelty then. You were a winner or a loser in eighteen seconds. At that time the grandstands consisted of row after row of simple unvarnished planks. It was getting crowded when we got there and we spread newspaper on our seats to show that they were taken. Then we went down to the bar to study our racing forms…

  Along about the fourth race we were $18 ahead not counting expenses. We placed our bets for the next race and went back to our seats. A small gray-haired old man was sitting in the center of our newspapers. “Sir, those are our seats.” “These seats aren’t reserved.” “I know these seats aren’t reserved. But it’s a matter of common courtesy. You see…some people get here early, poor people, like you and me, who can’t afford reserved seats, and they lay newspapers down to indicate that the seats are taken. It’s like a code, you know, a code of courtesy…because if the poor aren’t decent to one another nobody else is going to be.” “These seats are NOT reserved.” He spread himself just a bit more on the newspapers we had placed there. “Jan, sit down. I’ll stand.” Jan tried to sit down. “Just move it a bit,” I said, “if you can’t be a gentleman, don’t be a hog.” He moved a little. I had the 7 / 2 shot in the outside post. He got bumped at the start and had to make a late run. He came on in the last second to hang a photo on the 6 / 5 favorite. I waited, hoping. They put up the other horse’s number. I’d bet $20 win. “Let’s get a drink.” There was a tote board inside. The odds were up on the next race as we walked to the bar. We ordered drinks from a man who looked like a polar bear. Jan looked into the mirror worrying about the sag in her cheeks and the pouches under her eyes. I never looked into mirrors. Jan lifted her drink. “That old man in our seats, he’s got nerve. He’s a spunky old dog.” “I don’t like him.” “He called your card.” “What can a guy do with an old man?” “If he had been young you wouldn’t have done anything either.” I checked the tote. Three-Eyed Pete, reading 9 / 2, looked to be as good as the first or second choice. We finished our drinks and I went $5 win. When we got back to the stands, the old man was still sitting there. Jan sat down next to him. Their legs were pressed together. “What do you do for a living?” Jan asked him. “Real estate. I make sixty thousand a year—after taxes.” “Then why don’t you buy a reserved seat?” I asked. “That’s my prerogative.” Jan pressed her flank against him. She smiled her most beautiful smile. “You know,” she said, “you’ve got the nicest blue eyes?” “Uh huh.” “What’s your name?” “Tony Endicott.” “My name is Jan Meadows. My nickname is Misty.” They put the horses into the gate and they broke out. Three-Eyed Pete got the first jump. He had a neck all the way. The last fifty yards the boy got out the whip, spanking ass. The second favorite made a tiny last lunge. They put up the photo again and I knew that I had lost. “You got a cigarette?” Jan asked Endicott. He handed it to Jan. She put it in her mouth, and with their flanks pressed together, he lit her cigarette. They looked into each other’s eyes. I reached down and picked him up by the shirt collar. He sagged a bit but I kept holding him up by his shirt collar. “Sir, you are in my seat.” “Yes. What are you going to do about it?” “Look down between your feet. See the opening under your seat? It’s a thirty-five foot drop to the ground. I can push you through.” “You don’t have the guts.” They put up the second favorite’s number. I had lost. I got one of his legs down and through, dangling. He struggled and was surprisingly strong. He got his teeth into my left ear; he was biting my ear off. I got my fingers around his throat and choked him. There was one long white hair growing out of his throat. He gasped for air. His mouth opened and I pulled my ear out. I pushed his other leg through. A picture of Zsa Zsa Gabor flashed in my brain: she was cool, composed, immaculate, wearing pearls, her breasts bulging out of her low cut dress—then the lips that would never be mine said, no. The old man’s fingers were clinging to a plank. He was hanging from the underside of the grandstand. I lifted one hand off. Then I lifted the other. He dropped through space. He fell slowly. He hit, bounced once, higher than one would expect, came down, hit again, took a second small bounce, then lay there motionless. There wasn’t any blood. The people about us were very quiet. They bent over their racing forms. “Come on, let’s go,” I said. Jan and I walked out the side gate. People were still filing in. It was a mild afternoon, warm but not hot, gently warm. We walked outside past the track, past the clubhouse, and looking through the chain link fence at the east end we saw the horses come out of the stalls, making the slow circle to parade past the stands. We walked to the parking lot. We got into the car. We drove off. We drove back to the city: first past the oil wells and storage tanks, and then through open country past the small farms, quiet, neat, the stacked hay golden and ragged, the peeling white barns in the late afternoon sun, tiny farmhouses sitting in front on higher ground, perfect and warm. When we got to our apartment we found there was nothing to drink. I sent Jan out for something. When she came back we sat and drank, not saying much.

  52

  When I awakened I was sweating. Jan’s leg was thrown across my belly. I moved it. Then I got up and went to the bathroom. I had the running shits.

  I thought, well, I’m alive and I’m sitting here and nobody’s bothering me.

  Then I got up and wiped, looked; what a mess, I thought, what a lovely powerful stink. Then I vomited and flushed it all away. I was very pale. A chill convulsed my body, shaking me; then there was a rush of warmth, my neck and ea
rs burned, my face reddened. I felt dizzy and closed my eyes and leaned on both hands over the washbowl. It passed.

  I went and sat on the edge of the bed and rolled a cigarette. I hadn’t wiped myself very well. When I got up to look for a beer there was a wet brown stain. I went into the bathroom and wiped myself again. Then I sat on the bed with my beer and waited for Jan to awaken.

  I had first learned that I was an idiot in the school yard. I was taunted and poked at and jeered, as were the other one or two idiots. My only advantage over the other one or two, who were beaten and chasen, was that I was sullen. When surrounded I was not terrified. They never attacked me but would finally turn on one of the others and beat them as I watched.

  Jan moved, then awakened and looked at me.

  “You’re awake.”

  “Yes.”

  “That was some night.”

  “Night? Hell, it’s the day that bothers me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Jan got up and went to the bathroom. I mixed her a port wine with icecubes and set it on the nightstand.

  She came out, sat down and picked up the drink. “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Here I’ve killed a guy and you ask me how I feel.”

  “What guy?”

  “You remember. You weren’t that drunk. We were at Los Alamitos, I dropped the old guy through the grandstand. Your blue-eyed would-be lover with $60,000 a year.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Jan, you get on the booze, you black out. I do too, but you’re worse than I am.”

  “We weren’t at Los Alamitos yesterday. You hate quarter horses.”

  “I even remember the names of the horses I bet on.”

  “We sat here all day and evening yesterday. You told me about your parents. Your parents hated you. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So now you’re a little crazy. No love. Everybody needs love. It’s warped you.”

  “People don’t need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn’t be.”

  “The Bible says, ‘Love thy neighbor.’”

  “That could mean to leave him alone. I’m going out to get a paper.”

  Jan yawned and lifted her breasts. They were an interesting brown-gold color—like tan mixed with dirt. “Get a little bottle of whiskey while you’re out.”

  I dressed and walked down the hill toward Third Street. There was a drugstore at the bottom of the hill and a bar next to that. The sun was tired, and some of the cars went east and some of the cars went west, and it dawned on me that if everybody would only drive in the same direction everything would be solved.

  I bought a newspaper. I stood there reading through it. There was no mention of a murdered horseplayer at Los Alamitos. Of course, it had happened in Orange County. Maybe Los Angeles County only reported their own murders.

  I bought a half pint of Grand Dad at the liquor store and walked back up the hill. I folded the paper under my arm and opened the door to our place. I threw the half pint to Jan. “Ice, water and a good jolt for both of us. I am crazy.”

  Jan walked into the kitchen to mix the drinks and I sat down and opened the paper and turned to the race results at Los Alamitos. I read the result of the fifth race: Three-Eyed Pete had gone off at 9 / 2 and had been beaten by a nose by the second favorite.

  When Jan brought the drink I drank it straight down. “You keep the car,” I said, “and half the money I have left is yours.”

  “It’s another woman, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  I got all the money together and spread it out on the kitchen table. There was $312 and some change. I gave Jan the car key and $150.

  “It’s Mitzi, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t love me anymore.”

  “Stop the shit, will you?”

  “You’re tired of fucking me, aren’t you?”

  “Just drive me down to Greyhound, will you?”

  She went into the bathroom and started getting ready. She was sore. “You and I have lost it. It isn’t like it was at the beginning.”

  I mixed myself another drink and didn’t answer. Jan stepped out of the bathroom and looked at me. “Hank, stay with me.”

  “No.”

  She went back in and didn’t say anything more. I got the suitcase out and began putting my few things in there. I took the clock. She wouldn’t need it.

  Jan left me outside the Greyhound bus depot. She hardly gave me time to lift my suitcase out and then she was gone. I walked in and purchased my ticket. Then I walked over and sat down on the hard-backed benches with the other passengers. We all sat there and looked at each other and didn’t look at each other. We chewed gum, drank coffee, went into restrooms, urinated, slept. We sat on the hard benches and smoked cigarettes we didn’t want to smoke. We looked at each other and didn’t like what we saw. We looked at the things on the counters and display racks: potato chips, magazines, peanuts, best sellers, chewing gum, breath-chasers, licorice drops, toy whistles.

  53

  Miami was as far as I could go without leaving the country. I took Henry Miller with me and tried to read him all the way across. He was good when he was good, and vice versa. I had a pint. Then I had another pint, and another. The trip took four days and five nights. Outside of a leg-and-thigh rubbing episode with a young brunette girl whose parents would no longer support her in college, nothing much happened. She got off in the middle of the night in a particularly barren and cold part of the country, and vanished. I had always had insomnia and the only time I could really sleep on a bus was when I was totally drunk. I didn’t dare try that. When we arrived I hadn’t slept or shit for five days and I could barely walk. It was early evening. It felt good to be in the streets again.

  ROOMS FOR RENT. I walked up and rang the doorbell. At such times one always places the old suitcase out of the view of the person who will open the door.

  “I’m looking for a room. How much is it?”

  “$6.50 a week.”

  “May I look at it?”

  “Surely.”

  I walked in and followed her up the stairway. She was about forty-five but her behind swayed nicely. I have followed so many women up stairways like that, always thinking, if only some nice lady like this one would offer to take care of me and feed me warm tasty food and lay out clean stockings and shorts for me to wear, I would accept.

  She opened the door and I looked in.

  “All right,” I said, “it looks all right.”

  “Are you employed?”

  “Self-employed.”

  “May I ask what you do?”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “Oh, have you written books?”

  “Oh, I’m hardly ready for a novel. I just do articles, bits for magazines. Not very good really but I’m developing.”

  “All right. I’ll give you your key and make out a receipt.”

  I followed her down the stairway. The ass didn’t sway as nicely going down the stairway as going up. I looked at the back of her neck and imagined kissing her behind the ears.

  “I’m Mrs. Adams,” she said. “Your name?”

  Henry Chinaski.”

  As she made out the receipt, I heard sounds like the sawing of wood coming from behind the door to our left—only the rasps were punctuated with gasps for breath. Each breath seemed to be the last yet each breath finally led painfully to another.

  “My husband is ill,” said Mrs. Adams as she handed me the receipt and my key, she smiled. Her eyes were a lovely hazel color and sparkled. I turned and walked back up the stairs.

  When I got into my room I remembered I had left my suitcase downstairs. I went down to fetch it. As I walked past Mrs. Adams’ door the gasping sounds were much louder. I took my suitcase upstairs, threw it on the bed, then walked downstairs again and out into the night. I found a main boulevard a little to the north, walked into
a grocery store and bought a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. I had a pocket knife and would be able to spread the peanut butter on the bread and have something to eat.

  When I got back to the roominghouse I stood in the hall and listened to Mr. Adams, and I thought, that’s Death. Then I went up to my room and opened the jar of peanut butter and while listening to the death sounds from below I dug my fingers in. I ate it right off my fingers. It was great. Then I opened the bread. It was green and moldy and had a sharp sour smell. How could they sell bread like that? What kind of a place was Florida? I threw the bread on the floor, got undressed, turned out the light, pulled up the covers and lay there in the dark, listening.

  54

  In the morning it was very quiet and I thought, that’s nice, they’ve taken him to the hospital or the morgue. Now maybe I’ll be able to shit. I got dressed and went down the hallway to the bathroom and sure enough I did. Then I walked down to my room, got into bed and slept some more.

  I was awakened by a knock on the door. I sat up and called, “Come in!” before I thought. It was a lady dressed entirely in green. The blouse was low-cut, the skirt was very tight. She looked like a movie star. She simply stood there looking at me for some time. I was sitting up, in my shorts, holding the blanket in front of me. Chinaski the great lover. If I was any kind of man, I thought, I would rape her, set her panties on fire, force her to follow me all over the world, make tears come to her eyes with my love letters written on light red tissue paper. Her features were indefinite, not at all like her body; there was the general round shape of her face, the eyes seemed to be searching mine but her hair was a bit messy and uncombed. She was in her mid-thirties. Something, however, was exciting her. “Mrs. Adams’ husband died last night,” she said. “Ah,” I said, wondering if she felt as good about the noise stopping as I did.