by U
Nick spoke each line slowly, like he was making it up as he went
along. The crowd went wild at the end, clapping and cheering. It will
probably take weeks of sarcastic comments to deflate his ego back to
a normal level. All in all, the poetry fest, like Nick’s poem, was a
huge success.
Of course, it was not without its negative side. Mary Wong left me
a note afterwards permanently terminating our friendship. She is
angry because I took Megan to the poetry fest instead of her. Mary
seems to believe (wrongly, I might add) that Megan and I slept
together afterwards.
Goddamn. These women are so possessive, so jealous. It gets to
be pretty old. I know Mary has other boyfriends. She has told me as
much. So why does she give me shit about Megan?
I don’t get it.
Up to page 62 on The Dark City. It has taken me a whole month to
complete a five page chapter, Chap. 11. I wrote it twice, as a matter
of fact, just to make sure I had it right.
When I was up in Portland, I showed parts of the manuscript to
Lloyd and Randy. They thought it was absolutely nuts. Lloyd said
the sex and violence read like a pulp fiction story.
That is exactly the effect I want to achieve. Lloyd is actually pretty
literate. It was he who first introduced me to Bukowski. However, I
don’t know who I am writing The Dark City for exactly. Myself, I
guess. Basically, I would classify myself as a kind of comic novelist,
still trying to refine my jokes.
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Only comedy and exaggeration work for me at this point. If I were
a musician I would be a punk rocker. Call me the poet of punk lit.
Teach me three chords and let me annoy people. The hell with
technique, revision, craft, all that bullshit. I prefer cut and paste.
I like typos. I like to see grimy, dirty, ripped, torn, ratty, beer-
stained pages. Gimme blood, guts, kinky sex, violence, murder, flesh-
eating plants, cannibal aliens, zombies, murder, horror, sadism,
perversion, and madness. Let it all hang out. Barf it all up. Be lurid
as hell.
A comic book using words alone.
Don’t they get the point? I want it grotesque.
Everything we’ve been fed is a lie. Who killed the Kennedys? The
criminals are on top. They rule the world. Fuck the System.
Freedom is Slavery. War is Peace. Life is Death. Love is Hate.
The Dark City comes straight from my subconscious mind, a
message from the id. I am not quite sure what impels this work, but it
arrives.
Slowly, but it arrives.
In the future, I feel like writing some more poetry. Once The Dark
City is complete, I will write scads of poems. This constant prose
writing is like a turd blocking the pipes. I need the poem like a
plumber’s helper to send things down.
Got a nasty letter from Katrine last week. She demands to know
why I never return her calls. The next letter I get from her I will
return unopened. I have no energy for her anymore. I’m sorry that I
ever tried to have a relationship with her.
It simply didn’t work.
She is exquisitely beautiful but her personality makes for tiresome
company. Too many demands. Too needy. I want a woman with
fewer problems than I have, not more.
I’ve told the receptionist never to put Katrine through to me. I
can’t talk to her. I don’t want to talk to her. I refuse to talk to her. I
just want her to leave me alone.
* * * *
March 8, 1979
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Work. I drive to my job every day and work. Megan has left
again, ostensibly to make arrangements for her divorce. Meanwhile
the job has been a total bitch because she and Josie are both gone
now. I have to do all three caseloads by myself. A total of 459 cases
– mine, all mine. I blame the idiot managers for running Josie off the
farm. The fucking clients have me coming and going.
It’s a goddamned zoo.
Got a letter yesterday regarding my ten year high school class
reunion. Has that much time passed already? I have no enthusiasm
whatsoever for this affair. Can’t we just let the past die? It all seems
so pointless. I have no desire to see the "winners" or listen to their
success stories.
Of course, it’s probably because I have no success stories of my
own to relate, although I do have some darned riveting failure stories.
They could make interesting conversation whilst I hold beer in hand...
My goals have eluded me thus far and it looks like I will die on the
vine, a wasted talent.
Talked to Chesley about the reunion on the phone yesterday. He
said I should go. He says both Randy and Lloyd plan to attend. But I
wonder: Will Andrew Cogswell be there? How about Meredith?
They are the only two people I really care to see and Andrew is dead,
a suicide in 1972. Meredith is married now to that guy she took up
with after I dumped her.
The rest mean nothing to me.
More problems with The Dark City. It goes so slowly. Can I
actually write it? Will I ever finish? Is it the right thing for me to
write, right now?
Who the fuck knows?
* * * *
March 13, 1979
In Eugene at the Black Angus. Food stamp training. They are
changing the whole goddamned program around once again and we
must be ready for the resulting chaos. What a bore. I can barely
maintain my interest in this stupid shit.
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We are spending eight hours on something that is worth maybe
twenty minutes tops. I’ve already got it all figured out and know what
to do. Bring it on and let me get the fuck out of here. My mind is on
other things.
Megan is coming to the next session tomorrow. She is back from
her confab with Mark. We haven’t spoken much since her arrival on
Sunday. I wonder what goes.
Stayed with Charles last night in Eugene at 312 East 16th Street. I
really love that old house. Also enjoyed an excellent dinner with him
and afterwards smoked dope with Ed, his neighbor. Ed’s brother
Frank is fifteen now and goes to high school in Metairie, Louisiana.
While talking to Charles last night I realized I am pissed off at
Chesley for skipping our poetry fest. As soon as he got into this scene
with Shirley he immediately blew off his friends. It’s like something
a guy in high school would do.
Oh, and here’s a real nugget: When Chesley tried having sex with
Nurse Shirley for the first time, he couldn’t get a hard on, he told me.
No stiffy. Limp as a noodle.
Oooooh. A bad sign. A very bad sign, I said. But Chesley has
apparently overcome this problem by seeing a shrink.
Apparently the shrink convinced him that it was perfectly okay to
have sex with a woman who looks, behaves, sounds, and thinks
exactly like your horrible mother.
Now Chesley says it is plenty good and hard when he sinks it in
good old Shirley. I think about them doing it and I cringe. That really
must make for great sex, fucking a carbon copy of your mom. Goo-
goo. Remind me never to see a shrink. What a bunch of fucking
quacks.
I’m afraid Chesley is ignoring a red flag warning here.
Beep! Beep! Warning! Warning, Will Robinson Harlan!
Chesley’s penis realizes that Shirley is a scrag and responds
accordingly. The horrid slut shrivels his dick.
Can’t he see what’s wrong?
One of the things Chesley and I have always had in common was
our grossly repellent mothers. Fortunately, I failed in my efforts to
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marry a carbon copy of Lois by resisting the other one’s corrupt,
controlling behaviors.
Unfortunately, Chesley may succeed where I failed.
Exactly the opposite problem with Megan and me. She turns me on
more than words can say but I won’t be played for a sucker. It has
happened in the past but I refuse to let it happen again.
I would venture to say that Chesley is even more self-destructive
than I am. Nurse Shirley is a witch and her ankles are fatter than
fence posts. He is insane.
Of course I am also a mess. I think about suicide on a daily basis
and wonder if that is normal. Even if I am a "success" someday, who
gives a shit? Years from now no one will know or care if I ever lived
or died. No one will know what I thought or what I did. No one.
Poor Charles is likewise suffering from love. Dumped by Arianna,
he spends his days doing his artwork and laying plans to move to New
York.
Perhaps somebody should have told him years ago that the
beautiful and gracious Lori Sanchez was desperately in love with him.
In my opinion, Charles would have done a lot better taking up with
lovely Ms. Lori rather than conniving Arianna.
* * * *
March 15, 1979
Had a huge fight with Megan yesterday after we went to Yachats
for a home visit. We were at this park south of town. A beautiful
seaside setting for our worst quarrel ever. A lot of harsh words got
passed between us.
No progress yet on the divorce. She denies sleeping with Mark
again but I really wonder.
I had to expand on what I told her earlier:
Until she’s divorced – no dice. I distrust her emotionally and I’m
not convinced that she isn’t still trying to use me as a club to beat him
into line. She said that she was lying in January when she said she
was going back to him.
Oh? I told her that such deceptions only made things worse as far
as I am concerned. I’m sick of feminine manipulations.
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She’s still married. That is the bottom line. She has not hired a
lawyer or filed for divorce. They are doing their taxes together, all
that stuff. I suspect she wants to have it both ways, like Dona Flor
and her two husbands. I may be stupid, but I’m not that stupid.
The tricks and charades she is pulling to convince me only make
me more certain that I would be better off without her. I told her that
as long as she is still married, I am going to go right on sleeping with
other women.
I said that I probably wouldn’t be taking this approach except that
her going back to Mark when she did ruined everything. I said that if
she can do what she fucking well pleases, then so can I.
Megan grew very angry about that. She cried and slammed the
door of the state car before she got in and drove off. Every scene she
throws just drives another nail in the coffin as far as I am concerned.
Megan is really beginning to remind me of the other one, who saw
her old boyfriend behind my back while she continually pestered me
to declare my love for her alone. It was ridiculous how she acted,
given the way things turned out.
I think about it now and I seethe. How fucked up can you get?
Women like the other one are allowed to have it both ways, but not
men. They want to pick and choose to their heart’s content but woe
unto you if you claim the same right.
* * * *
March 17, 1979
This next part I will again write as a non-fiction novelization,
because I’m not sure how else to approach this material.
Yesterday afternoon I nearly left town – for good. The scene with
Megan had me so thoroughly pissed off that I decided I was just going
to split. Quit my job and move to California. Just like that. If
Charles can move to New York, I can move to Los Angeles.
Why the fuck not?
Nick can have the furniture, I thought. He has almost none.
Clarice got it all in the divorce. He can take my deluxe double bed,
my overstuffed sofa, matching chair, cedar chest, waterfall vanity,
night stand, and mirror.
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He can have my solid oak coffee table and assorted knick knacks.
All the cool stuff I’ve painstakingly accumulated since moving back
from Atlanta in 1975.
All I intended to take was my table, one straight backed chair, my
Olivetti typewriter, clothes, books, linen, towels, photos, journals,
papers, underground comix, sleeping bag, pillow, pots, pans, and
cooking stuff.
By midnight I had the bus packed and was ready to go. I went to
work as usual in the morning. A feeling of peace and contentment
such as I have never known settled over me. I was escaping all the
hassles here.
I spoke to Megan cordially twice, both times about work issues.
Otherwise I ignored her. She was supposed to come over later in the
evening to advise Nick about planting some herbs in the garden. By
then, I figured, I would be long gone. At noon I came home and
loaded the last of my stuff. On the kitchen table I left a note for Nick,
brief and to the point.
Moving to California, it read. Don’t expect me to return. The
furniture is yours. Good luck in The Future.
This is the way to do it, I thought. To hell with Megan. Fuck the
job. Fuck this town. Fuck everything and everybody. Los Angeles is
my next destination.
The last items on the agenda were cleaning out my bank account
and closing my PO Box.
I was leaving Megan behind. That was the important thing. If she
thought about me at all, she could ponder what went wrong during
slow moments at the welfare office. Let her get on with her life. As
the years go by, it would eventually become crystal clear that we were
never meant for each other.
No fucking way.
Just another blip, a failed affair. My guess was that she would
eventually wind up back with her husband, or some similar half-assed
upwardly mobile dork.
Such guys are a dime a dozen.
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A song by Nicolette Larson ran through my head as I prepared to
leave:
salt sea air
your windblown hair
reflections on a dream
thoughts of you
with who knows who
flow through me
like a stream
and I get a feeling
I’ve seen the last of you
Rio de Janeiro blue
En route to the bank I stopped by the river and took one last look at
the house on Cox Island. I read somewher
e once that that the house
on Cox Island served as the model for the Stamper residence in Ken
Kesey’s novel, Sometimes A Great Notion. It’s a beautiful old house,
slowly decaying by the river. I took a B&W photograph of it as a
keepsake. Hope it turns out.
At the bank, I discovered that I left my goddamned passbook
behind at Nick’s place. When I went back to retrieve it, he was
standing in the kitchen reading my note.
"What the hell is this all about?"
"I’m outta here," I told him. "I’m moving to California."
Nick shook his head.
"Are you kidding? You need to be a little more forgiving," he said,
"if you want to get anywhere in life."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked. The passbook was on the
table, beside a rubber-banded deck of cards. The nine of diamonds
was on top, facing up.
I picked up the passbook.
"This is all about Megan, isn’t it?" Nick said.
"Mostly," I admitted.
"I can’t believe you are still pissed off because she had her moment
of doubt. C’mon, aren’t you being a little harsh? Having doubts is
perfectly natural for a woman. It comes with the territory. Jesus,
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Patrick, she left her husband to take up with you. Most women would
have played you guys off a hell of a lot longer than she did."
"But she’s still married."
"So what? That’s a mere formality at this point. Aren’t you doing
exactly what you claim that other woman did to you before? Getting
all pissed off because you wouldn’t go at her speed? Megan was in a
much tougher spot than the one you were in, Patrick. She strikes me
as pretty courageous, leaving him for you."
"I don’t know. You can look at it any way you want to," I said. I
was starting to acquire his habit of emphasizing certain words in
sentences. Doing it annoyed me, though.
Nick lit a cigarette and blew out the match.
"Don’t you see? Don’t you get it?" Nick said. "Isn’t it obvious
how ironic this is? You are doing the same thing to Megan that other
woman did to you."
"Oh bullshit."
"No, it’s true. You push, she pulls away. You gotta let her take the
lead, Patrick. Leaving your husband ain’t easy."
Nick pointed out that Megan had said she was sorry, that she had
