Charles Bukowski

by Howard Sounes

  Although she placated him on the telephone, the letters Linda sent from Utah seemed designed to make him jealous.

  She sent this on 1 July, 1971*:

  Dearest Buk …

  I’m saving my pussy for you. Talking … dancing … flirting don’t count. It’s who gets the pussy that counts. You should know that. Now if you don’t want the pussy I’m sure there’s others who would, but the only thing is that it’s got to liking your kind of petting REAL GOOD. There’s nobody who can make it purr quite like you … When I get back to town I’m going to kiss you about an hour before I do anything else … I’m just going to tease that SHIT out of you … I’ll run my tongue along over the top of your penis and just tickle it. Not really touch it. God damn you … I’ll tease you so much that you’ll have to kiss my pussy like you’ve never kissed it before … Goddamn I love you … I want that crooked cock of you’re hard. I want to bite it all the way up and down in a hundred little bites that don’t hurt, just feel good. I’m going to kiss that thing so much. And I’m going to kiss you so much, I’m going to tease you until you’re a madman and you finally lose all sense of what real and what isn’t real and you finally have to rape me or go screaming and pulling the hair from your head. Yah, that’s what I’ll do. You’re going to have to make that rape scene in your head a reality. I’m not going to kiss you. I’M NOT going to kiss you. YOU’RE going to have to MAKE me … if you think you can. You Son of a Bitch. If I had you up here right now I’d take you out and rape you right in these Boulder pines. I’d throw you down in the dirty and get on top and ride you until you had sand, pine needles, ants and rocks glued to your ass … I tie you to one of these goddamn trees bare-assed with only a dangling set of cock and balls free and then I’d work them over until they were no longer dangling, but looked like part of the branches of the tree. And while you are tied to the tree I’d bring four guys and dance with them all right in front of you …

  See you in LA

  Linda

  There were many other letters like it. In one she wrote that, when she danced with men in Utah, she didn’t think about him at all. Bukowski almost went mad when he read it. He smashed his hand down and cut himself so deeply he could see bone.

  The affair continued after she returned to Los Angeles, and they split many times. Whenever this happened Bukowski got the head she had made, and given to him, and took it back to her, leaving it on the doorstep if she wouldn’t let him in. Linda responded by mailing him venomous letters.

  ‘Piss on you Bukowski,’ she wrote in September, ‘you’ve been puking on the woman race too long.’ She wrote that she would never have sex with him again, and he should know a few home truths, now they were finished: he had never faced up to his drinking for what it was, a weakness. Her mistake was not realizing he was doing exactly what he wanted, ‘killing yourself a drink at a time’. She also harangued him for writing for pornographic magazines: ‘you men sell the dirty mags. men buy them. write for the men – they’ll love you.’

  When they made up, as they always did, she brought the head back to De Longpre Avenue. Bukowski’s friends got to know that if the head was missing there was trouble with Linda. If it was at his bungalow, everything was OK between them.

  ‘It was exciting,’ says John Martin, who watched with amusement. ‘She was young and she was probably the first real sexual relationship he’d ever had in his life and he was in his fifties. He had Jane, but that was a drinking relationship. I don’t know how sexual it was.’

  Although he loved her with all his heart, there was a distinctive admixture of misogyny in Bukowski’s relationship with Linda. He was never quite sure whether she was an angel come to save him, or a devil who wanted to humiliate him in front of his friends. He expressed his ambivalent feelings in an extraordinary letter to Steve Richmond, in November, 1971:

  … don’t wait for the good woman. she doesn’t exist. there are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts. the female loves to play man against man. and if she is in a position to do it there is not one who will not resist. the male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. the female is skilled at betrayal. and torture and damnation. never envy a man his lady. behind it all lays a living hell.

  The police were called to Bukowski’s bungalow three times in November, 1971, once to the bloody aftermath of another party. Before the guests arrived, Bukowski and Linda had promised each other that, whatever happened, they would stick together during the evening. They were sick and tired of fighting. But he got drunk and insulted her so viciously she had no choice other than to go outside and cool off. When she came back, Bukowski asked everybody to leave. When the room was cleared, he came towards Linda as if to kiss her, at least that’s what she thought he was going to do, to say he was sorry for carrying on. Instead he punched her in the face. He punched her so hard he broke her nose.

  In the morning she woke with two black eyes. She remembered Bukowski saying he’d never hit a woman, and despised men who did. That was a laugh. He had probably done it many times, probably hit Jane when he thought she’d stepped out of line.

  Linda wrote him a farewell letter:

  Well Bukowski, it’s really sad that our relationship had to end with so much violence. I hated to see that last display of weakness on your part … My nose will heal … maybe a little wider and a little crookeder and my black eyes will go away in time, but there’s something in you that isn’t going to heal … You’re sick … You really wanted to wipe my face out didn’t you. That had nothing to do with your feelings for me. It was hatred inside of your coming out. I didn’t even raise up my hand to defend myself … You’ll have to do some tall writing spiced with a lot of lies to get around this one, but you’ll do it. You’ll glorify Bukowski for whatever he does. I guess that’s it. Linda

  It wasn’t the end. Not long afterwards, Linda moved into bungalow number four at the back of Bukowski’s court. She began getting more involved in writing poetry herself. She contributed to a chapbook, An Anthology of LA Poets, which Bukowski edited, and she and Bukowski collaborated on Me and Your Sometimes Love Poems, a chapbook which, as she wrote, documented:

  … our kisses and fights

  and fuckings

  Mad and wonderful

  By this stage, the fights arrived daily for their sustenance, like breakfast pancakes, sweetened with jealousy. He accused her of having sex with a host of people, even a blind priest he believed she was seeing, and became convinced she was having an affair with her dentist. He said her bad tooth was not the only part of her that got filled when she went to the surgery.

  Indignant that this was untrue, and furious that Bukowski was flirting with other women when he got the opportunity, Linda took off for Utah in the spring of 1972, leaving behind a pair of her panties and a note:

  Hank

  I’ll be gone by the time you get back. You used to have all of me, but now all you have are my yellow panties to smell when you jerk off.

  Yellow, as she knew, was his favorite color. It would give him something to write about until she got back.

  * Spelling, syntax and grammar have not been changed in Linda’s letters, or in Bukowski’s.

  9

  WOMEN

  Liza Williams was watching Bukowski poke round her office. He was an ugly old buzzard, for sure, but she found him strangely attractive and knew he was on the prowl for a new girlfriend.

  Bukowski and Liza had known each other since they wrote for Open City and, when the paper folded, the LA Free Press picked up both their columns. Liza had a day job as well; she was a senior executive with Island Records.

  She was not as sexy-looking as Linda King, and she was almost as old as Bukowski himself, but Liza was smart and funny and Bukowski knew Linda
was jealous of her. He leaned over the desk and gave her a great big kiss, which shocked Liza because she thought him so ugly.

  ‘You wanna come out?’ he muttered.

  ‘Sure!’ Liza replied, brightly. She was intrigued by his personality, and thought she might find out more about what made him tick if they dated.

  A few days later, Bukowski sent a special delivery letter to Linda in Utah, writing that he was with Liza. He didn’t love her, he said, but she had fallen in love with him and he feared she might try and kill herself if he ended it, so he was going to stick with her for a while. He hoped Linda didn’t mind.

  Linda thanked him by reply:

  Dear Bukowski, …

  I was so happy to hear she is intelligent, kind loving, warm, but really I don’t care for the details. Next thing I know you’ll be letting me know how you ate her cunt and how she panted in pleasure … It does sound like you have a lot in common … at least you both believe in suicide …

  Just as Linda predicted, Bukowski was soon boasting in his letters about how good the sex was (although Liza says the relationship was hardly sexual at all).

  Linda replied:

  Bastard Bukowski,

  Just as I predicted you got me told, more or less, how you kissed Liza’s pussy and how she panted in pleasure. Listen, you slob, I want you to know once and for all I don’t want to hear how Liza trembled …

  GO PISS UP A ROPE …

  Linda

  While Linda was enjoying her 4 July holiday, Liza took Bukowski on vacation, at her expense, because she noticed he never went anywhere or did anything apart from drink, play the horses and write. They flew to the resort island of Catalina, twenty-six miles off the coast of California, and booked into the Hotel Monterey in the port town of Avalon, the best room in the house with a view over the bay. Bukowski’s habits were unchanged by being away from home. He bought beer at the corner liquor store, stripped to his undershirt and shorts, tuned the radio to a classical station and sat in an easy chair by the window to drink in his solitary, mournful way.

  ‘Wait ’til I give you my purple turnip,’ he muttered, taking a swig. It was a pet name for his cock, but Liza had heard it all before.

  ‘The relationship was not really sexual at all, even though he talked a big sex line, because he was always drunk,’ she says. ‘He might have liked to screw if he had been sober enough, but after drinking two six-packs, which would be his regular evening ration, he couldn’t do anything.’

  She went out exploring and he stayed in the room to write a poem, ‘cooperation’, about being taken on holiday by a wealthy woman and not knowing quite how to behave:

  she’s going for a walk

  on the island

  or a boatride.

  I believe she’s taken a modern novel

  and her reading glasses.

  I sit at the window

  with her electric typewriter

  and watch young girls’ asses

  which are attached to

  young girls.

  the final decadence.

  When she got back laden with parcels, Liza told him about all the exciting things she had seen and done, and the fun they could have together.

  ‘Oh Hank, I had such a great day,’ she said. ‘I ate … and went on a boat taxi, and saw …’

  ‘The fucking boat taxi,’ he said, dropping an empty can in the bin. ‘Who wants to go on the fucking boat taxi? You’re crazy.’

  ‘Oh, well … What did you do, Hank?’

  ‘I wrote another immortal poem.’

  The vacation continued in this desultory fashion for seven days. They toured the island, ate out and met friends of Liza’s, but mostly Bukowski stayed in the room on his own writing poems. He spent so much time in the room, Liza bought a budgerigar to keep him company.

  When they got back to LA, Bukowski spent a lot of time at Liza’s house up on Tuxedo Terrace, in the Hollywood Hills. He lazed about in her double bed, drank cold beer from her refrigerator and goggled at programs on her color television while she was out at work. ‘Hank, who had been bereft his whole life, thought he was living in a palace,’ says Liza. ‘It goes with a flash, music business lady.’ Indeed when he came to write his third novel, Women, Bukowski made much of Liza’s up-market lifestyle, using her as the basis of the character Dee Dee Bronson.

  In the evenings, she took him to rock concerts, and hosted parties at her house where Bukowski met many of the most notable musicians and artists working in California. One of these was R. Crumb, famous for his Mr Natural and Fritz the Cat drawings.

  ‘You know, your stuff is good, kid,’ said Bukowski when Crumb came over to say hello. ‘It’s the real thing. Just keep away from the cocktail parties.’

  The advice stuck with the artist who shared many of Bukowski’s negative feelings about society, and later became the most successful illustrator of Bukowski’s work, collaborating on books including Bring Me Your Love and The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship. ‘The guy just says it right for me,’ Crumb explains. ‘I do believe that it takes a strong dose of alienation to make a good artist or writer in the modern world. You can’t be too well-adjusted and still have anything interesting to say.’

  When Liza saw Bukowski and Crumb getting along so well, she decided to introduce Bukowski to another artist, Spain Rodriguez.

  ‘Spain’s a cartoonist, too,’ she said.

  Bukowski took an instant dislike to Rodriguez, possibly because he was handsome and Bukowski tended to feel threatened by handsome men.

  ‘I bet you can’t cartoon worth a shit,’ he said. Rodriguez slammed his fist down and challenged Bukowski to step outside. ‘Oh, I bet you are a great cartoonist really,’ Bukowski said, backing down. He later wrote a poem, ‘trouble with spain’, describing the meeting and how he made a fool of himself in front of Liza’s friends:

  met this painter called Spain,

  no, he was a cartoonist,

  well, I met him at a party

  and everybody got mad at me

  because I didn’t know who he was

  or what he did.

  …. I said:

  hey, Spain, I like that name: Spain.

  but I don’t like you. why don’t we step out

  in the garden and I’ll kick the shit out of your

  ass?

  … everybody’s angry at me.

  Bukowski, he can’t write, he’s had it.

  washed up. look at him drink.

  he never used to come to parties.

  now he comes to parties and drinks everything

  up and insults real talent.

  I used to admire him when he cut his wrists

  and when he tried to kill himself with

  gas. look at him now leering at that 19 year old

  girl, and you know he

  can’t get it up.

  Bukowski and Liza met Gypsy Lou Webb who came though LA in 1972 after Jon Webb died. Bukowski had written an outrageous column in the Free Press based on Jon’s death, calling the Webbs ‘Clyde and June’. In the story, he wrote about how June was almost demented with grief, snatching Clyde’s false teeth as a keepsake and pushing her hand into his vault to touch the body. The narrator of the story tries to seduce her after the funeral, saying Clyde can do nothing for her now, that his body is only fit for medical students to practice upon. The students would chop him up like a frog. This was a particularly unpleasant reference to Gypsy Lou donating Jon’s organs to a teaching hospital.

  ‘June, the dead are dead, there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s go to bed …’

  ‘Go to bed?’

  ‘Yes, let’s hit the sack, let’s make it …’

  ‘Listen, I knew Clyde for 32 years …’

  ‘Clyde can’t help you now …’

  ‘His body’s still warm, you bastard …’

  ‘Mine’s hot …’

  ‘Everybody knew it was me even t
hough he disguised my name,’ says Gypsy Lou. ‘I got mad and told him off: “That’s a dirty, lousy trick.”’

  When she finished telling him off, Gypsy Lou told Bukowski and Liza a story even more bizarre than the one he’d made up. Hanging around her neck was a chain strung with a silver pill box and a pair of red dice, the type used in casinos.

  ‘These are Jon’s dice,’ she said.

  Bukowski said he remembered them.

  ‘And these are Jon’s ashes,’ she said opening the lid of the box. She took a pinch of ash and tossed it in her mouth. ‘Every day I eat a bit of him. I dug up my little baby, too … then I mixed his ashes in with Jon’s, so now I’m eating both of them. When I die, we will be together, forever.’

  Although he and Liza had fun together, Bukowski was still in love with Linda and spoke to her frequently on the telephone. Liza was angry when she found out about the calls.

  ‘Here you are living with me, and when she phones you forget everything!’ she said. ‘I was with Linda sixteen months. I loved her and things grow between people,’ Bukowski said, defending himself. ‘I still love her.’

  ‘But you said you loved me. You said if I helped you through it that you’d never leave me. Now you want to leave. Is it because she’s younger? Maybe you just like women who treat you mean. You’ve gotten used to that kind of woman.’

  ‘I didn’t say she treated me mean. I want to go see her. I want to find things out.’ ‘All right, you go on up there. But I can’t promise how I’ll feel about you when you get back.’