Notes of a Dirty Old Man

by Charles Bukowski

  “sure,” said J.C. then he flew down the stairway and left us there.

  we had the park locked tight. nobody in there but the ballteam. and with their hangovers and looking at the guy with the wings they thought it was some publicity gag. or a practice for one. they put the team on the field and the kid at the plate. but you should have been there to see those bloodshot eyes OPEN when the kid tapped a roller down the 3rd base line and FLEW to first base! then he touched down and before the 3rd base man could let go of the ball the kid flew on down to 2nd base.

  everybody just kind of swayed in the early 10 p.m. sunlight. playing for a team like the Blues you figured you were crazy anyway but this was something else.

  then as the pitcher got ready to throw to the batboy who we had put at the plate, J.C. flew on down to third base! he jetted on down! you couldn’t even see the wings, even if you had had time for two alka seltzers that morning. and by the time the ball got to the plate, this thing had flown in and touched home plate.

  we found the kid could play the whole outfield. his flying speed was tremendous! we just brought in the two other outfielders and put them in the infield. that gave us two shortstops and two second basemen. and as bad as we were, we were hell.

  that night would be our first league game with Jimmy Crispin in the outfield.

  first thing I did when I got in was to phone Bugsy Malone.

  “Bugsy, what are the odds against the Blues finishing first?”

  “ain’t no odds. the bet is off the board. no damn fool would bet the Blues even at 10,000 to one.”

  “what’ll you give me?”

  “are you serious?”

  “yeah.”

  “250 to one. you wanna bet a dollar, is that it?”

  “one grand.”

  “one grand! now wait a minute! let me call you back in two hours.”

  the phone rang in an hour and forty-five minutes. “all right, I’ll take you. I can always use a grand. somehow.”

  “thanks, Bugsy.”

  “you’re welcome.”

  that first night game, I’ll never forget it. they thought we were pulling some laugh stunt to get the crowds in but when they saw Jimmy Crispin rise into the sky and pull down an obvious home run that would have cleared the left centerfield fence by ten feet, then the game was on. Bugsy had flown down to check things out and I watched him in his box seat. when J.C. flew up to grab that one Bugsy’s five dollar cigar dropped out of his mouth. but there was nothing in the rulebook that said a man with wings couldn’t play baseball so we had them by the balls. and how. we took that game easy. Crispin scored 4 times. they couldn’t hit anything out of our infield and anything in the outfield was a sure out.

  and the games that followed. how the crowds came in. it was enough to drive them mad to see a man flying in the sky but the fact that we were 25 games out and with such little time left was also what kept them coming. the crowd loves to see a man get off the deck. the Blues were driving. it was the miracle of the times.

  LIFE came to interview Jimmy. TIME. LIFE. LOOK. he told them nothing. “I just want to see the Blues win the pennant,” he said.

  but it was still tough, mathematically, and like a storybook ending it came down to the last game of the season, tied with the Bengals for first place and playing the Bengals, and winner take all. we hadn’t lost a game since Jimmy joined the team. and I was pretty close to $250,000.00. what a manager I was!

  we were in the office just before that last night game, old man Henderson and I. and we heard the noise on the stairway, and then a guy fell through the door, drunk. J.C. his wings were gone. just stumps.

  “they sawed off my motherfucking wings, the rats! they put this woman on me in the hotel room. what a woman! what a broad! man, they loaded my drinks! I got on top of this cunt and they began SAWING MY WINGS OFF. I couldn’t move! I couldn’t even get my nuts! what a FARCE! and all the time, this guy smoking a cigar, laughing and cackling in the background … — oh god, what a beautiful woman, and I couldn’t get it … — oh, shit …”

  “well, baby, you aren’t the first guy a woman has fucked-up. is there any bleeding?” asked Henderson.

  “no, it’s just bone, a bone-thing, but I’m so sad, I’ve let you fellows down, I’ve let the Blues down, I feel terrible, terrible, terrible.”

  they felt terrible? I was out 250 grand.

  I finished the pint on the desk. J.C. was too drunk to play, wings or no wings. Henderson just put his head down on the desk and began crying. I found his luger in the bottom drawer. I put it into my coat and went out of the tower and down into the reserve section. I took the box right behind Bugsy Malone and some beautiful woman he was sitting with. it was Henderson’s box and Henderson was drinking himself to death with a dead angel. he wouldn’t need that box. and the team wouldn’t need me. I’d phoned down to the dugout and told them to turn the thing over to the batboy or somebody.

  “hello, Bugsy,” I said.

  it was our field so they had first at bats.

  “where’s your center fielder? I don’t see him,” said Bugsy, lighting up a five buck cigar.

  “our center fielder has gone back to heaven due to one of your $3.50 Sears-Roebuck hacksaws.”

  Bugsy laughed. “a guy like me can piss in a mule’s eye and come up with a mint julep. that’s why I am where I am.”

  “who’s the beautiful lady?” I asked.

  “oh, this is Helena. Helena, this is Tim Bailey, the worst manager in baseball.”

  Helena crossed those nylon things called legs and I forgave Crispin for everything.

  “nice to meetcha, Mr. Bailey.”

  “yeah.”

  the game began. it was old times. by the 7th inning we were behind 10 to 0. Bugsy was feeling damn good by then, feeling this broad’s legs, rubbing up against her, having the whole world in his pocket. he turned to me and handed me a five buck cigar. I lit up.

  “was this guy really an angel?” he asked me, kind of smiling.

  “he said to call him J.C. for short, but damned if I know.”

  “looks like Man has beat God nearly everytime they have tangled,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but the way I figure it, cutting a man’s wings off is kind of like cutting his cock off.”

  “maybe so. but the way I see it, the strong make things go.”

  “or death makes things stop. which one is it?”

  I pulled the luger out and put it at the back of his head.

  “for Christ’s sake, Bailey! get hold of yourself! I’ll give you half of everything I’ve got! no, I’ll give you everything I’ve got — this broad, everything, the works — just take that gun away from my head!”

  “if you think killing is strong, then TASTE some strong!”

  I pulled the trigger. it was awful. a luger. parts of eggshell head, and brain and blood everywhere: over me, over her nylon legs, her dress …

  the game was held up an hour while they got us out of there — the dead Bugsy, his crazy hysterical woman, and me. then they finished out the innings.

  God over Man; Man over God. mother preserved strawberries while everything was so very sick.

  it was the next day in my cell when the screw handed me the paper:

  “BLUES PULL IT OUT IN 14th INNING, WIN 12-11 GAME AND PENNANT.”

  I walked to the cell window, 8 floors up. I balled the paper up and jammed it through the bars, I jammed and jolted the paper up and shoved it through the bars and as it fell through the air I watched it, it spread, it seemed to have wings, well, horseshit on that, it floated down like any piece of unfolding paper does, toward the sea, those white and blue waves down there and I couldn’t touch them, God beat Man always and continually, God being Whatever It Was — a cocksucker machinegun or the painting of Klee, well, and now, those nylon legs folding around another damn fool. Malone owed me 250 grand and couldn’t pay off. J.C. with wings, J.C. without wings, J.C. on a cross, I was still a little alive and I walke
d back across the floor, sat upon that prison pot without a lid and began to shit, x-major league manager, x-man, and a slight wind came through the bars and a slight way to go.

  ________

  it was hot in there. I went to the piano and played the piano. I didn’t know how to play the piano. I just hit the keys. some people danced on the couch. then I looked under the piano and saw a girl stretched out under there, her dress up around her hips. I played with one hand, reached under and copped a feel with the other. either the bad music or copping that feel woke up the girl. she climbed out from under the piano. the people stopped dancing on the couch. I made it to the couch and slept for fifteen minutes. I hadn’t slept for two nights and two days. it was hot in there, hot. when I awakened I vomited in a coffee cup. then that was full and I had to let go on the couch. somebody brought a large pot. just in time. I let it go. sour. everything was sour.

  I got up and walked into the bathroom. two guys were in there naked. one of them had some shaving cream and a brush and was lathering up the other guy’s cock and balls.

  “listen, I got to take a shit,” I told them.

  “go ahead,” said the guy being lathered, “we ain’t bothering you.”

  I went ahead and sat down.

  the guy with the brush said to the guy being lathered, “I hear Simpson got fired from Club 86.”

  “KPFK,” said the other guy, “they can more people than Douglas Aircraft, Sears Roebuck and Thrifty Drugs combined. one wrong word, one sentence out of line with their pre-baked conceptions of humanity, politics, art, so forth, and you’ve had it. the only safe guy on KPFK is Eliot Mintz — he’s like a kid’s toy accordion: no matter how you squeeze him you get the same sound.”

  “now go ahead,” said the guy with the brush.

  “go ahead what?”

  “rub your dick until it gets hard.”

  I dropped a big one.

  “jesus!” said the guy with the brush, but he no longer had the brush. he’d thrown it in the sink.

  “jesus what?” said the other guy.

  “you got a head on that thing like a mallet!”

  “I had an accident once, it caused it.”

  “I wish I could have an accident that way.”

  I dropped another one.

  “now go ahead.”

  “go ahead what?”

  “bend way back and slip it between your upper legs.”

  “like this?”

  “yeah.”

  “now what?”

  “bring your belly down. slide it. back and forth. make your legs tight. that’s it! see! you’ll never need another woman!”

  “oh Harry, it just ain’t like pussy! what you giving me? you’re giving me a lot of shit!”

  “it just takes PRACTICE! you’ll see! you’ll see!”

  I wiped, flushed and got out of there.

  I went to the refrigerator and got another can of beer, I got 2 cans of beer, opened them both and began on the first one. I figured that I was someplace in North Hollywood. I sat across from some guy with a red tin helmet on and a two foot beard. he’d been brilliant for a couple of nights but was coming down off the speed and was out of speed. but he hadn’t hit the sleep stage yet, just the sad and vacant stage. just maybe hoping for a joint but nobody was showing anything.

  “Big Jack,” I said.

  “Bukowski, you owe me 40 dollars,” said Big Jack.

  “listen, Jack, I have this idea that I gave you 20 dollars the other night. I really have this idea. I remember this 20.”

  “but you don’t remember, do you Bukowski? because you were drunk, Bukowski, that’s why you don’t remember!”

  Big Jack had this thing against drunks.

  his girl friend Maggy was sitting next to him. “you gave him a 20, all right, but it was because you wanted some more to drink. we went out and got you some stuff and brought you the change.”

  “all right. but where are we? North Hollywood?”

  “no, Pasadena.”

  “Pasadena? I don’t believe it.”

  I had been watching these people go behind this big curtain. some of them came out in ten or twenty minutes. some of them never came out. it had been going on for 48 hours. I finished the 2nd beer, got up, pulled the curtain back and went in there. it was very dark in there but I smelled grass. and ass. I stood there and let my eyes adjust. it was mostly guys. licking assholes. reaming. sucking. it was not for me. I was square. it was like the men’s gym after everybody had worked out on the parallel bars. and the sour smell of semen. I gagged. a light colored negro came up to me.

  “hey, you’re Charles Bukowski, aren’t you?”

  “yeh,” I said.

  “wow! this is the thrill of my life! I read CRUCIFIX IN A DEATHHAND. I consider you the greatest since Verlaine!”

  “Verlaine?”

  “yeah, Verlaine!”

  he reached out and cupped a hand around my balls. I took his hand away.

  “what’s the matter?” he asked.

  “not just yet, baby, I’m looking for a friend.”

  “oh, sorry …”

  he walked on off. I kept looking around and was just about ready to leave when I noticed a woman kind of leaning against a far corner. she had her legs open but seemed rather dazed. I walked on over and looked at her. I dropped my pants and shorts. she looked all right. I put the thing in. I put in what I had.

  “oooh,” she said, “it’s good! you’re so curved! like a gaff!”

  “accident I had when I was a child. something with the tricycle.”

  “oooooh …”

  I was just going good when something RAMMED into the cheeks of my ass. I saw flashes before my eyes.

  “hey, what the HELL!” I reached and pulled the thing out. I was standing there with this guy’s thing in my hand. “what do you think you’re doing, buddy?” I asked him.

  “listen, friend,” he said, “this whole game is just one big deck of cards. if you want to get into the game you have to take whatever comes up in the shuffle.”

  I pulled up my shorts and pants and got out of there.

  Big Jack and Maggy were gone. a couple of people were passed out on the floor. I went and got another beer, drank that and walked outside. the sunlight hit me like a squad car with the red lights on. I found my short pushed into somebody else’s driveway with a parking ticket on it. but there was still room to get out of the driveway. everybody knew just how far to go. it was nice.

  I stopped at the Standard Station and the man told me how to get on the Pasadena freeway. I made it home. sweating. biting my lips to stay awake. there was a letter in the mailbox from my x-wife in Arizona.

  “… I know you get lonely and depressed. when you do, you ought to go to The Bridge. I think that you would like those people. or some of them, anyhow. or you ought to go to the poetry readings at the Unitarian Church …”

  I let the water run into the bathtub, good and hot. I undressed, found a beer, drank half, set the can on the ledge and got into the tub, took the lather and the brush and began dabbing at the string and knobs.

  ________

  I met Kerouac’s boy Neal C. shortly before he went down to lay along those Mexican railroad tracks to die. his eyes were sticking out on ye old toothpicks and he had his head in the speaker, jogging, bouncing, ogling, he was in a white t-shirt and seemed to be singing like a cuckoo bird along with the music, preceding the beat just a shade as if he were leading the parade. I sat down with my beer and watched him. I’d brought in a six pack or two. Bryan was handing out an assignment and some film to two young guys who were going to cover that show that kept getting busted. whatever happened to that show by the Frisco poet, I forget his name. anyhow, nobody was noticing Neal C. and Neal C. didn’t care, or he pretended not to. when the song stopped, the 2 young guys left and Bryan introduced me to the fab Neal C.

  “have a beer?” I asked him.

  Neal plucked a bottle out, tossed it in the air, caught it, ripped the c
ap off and emptied the half-quart in two long swallows.

  “have another.”

  “sure.”

  “I thought I was good on the beer.”

  “I’m the tough young jail kid. I’ve read your stuff.”

  “read your stuff too. that bit about climbing out the bathroom window and hiding in the bushes naked. good stuff.”

  “oh yeah.” he worked at the beer, he never sat down. he kept moving around the floor. he was a little punchy with the action, the eternal light, but there wasn’t any hatred in him. you liked him even though you didn’t want to because Kerouac had set him up for the sucker punch and Neal had bit, kept biting. but you know Neal was o.k. and another way of looking at it, Jack had only written the book, he wasn’t Neal’s mother. just his destructor, deliberate or otherwise.

  Neal was dancing around the room on the Eternal High. his face looked old, pained, all that, but his body was the body of a boy of eighteen.

  “you want to try him, Bukowski?” asked Bryan.

  “yeah, ya wanta go, baby?” he asked me.

  again, no hatred. just going with the game.

  “no, thanks. I’ll be forty-eight in August. I’ve taken my last beating.”

  I couldn’t have handled him.

  “when was the last time you saw Kerouac?” I asked.

  I think he said 1962, 1963. anyhow, a long time back.

  I just about stayed with Neal on the beer and had to go out and get some more. the work at the office was about done and Neal was staying at Bryan’s and B. invited me over for dinner. I said, “all right,” and being a bit high I didn’t realize what was going to happen.

  when we got outside a very light rain was just beginning to fall. the kind that really fucks up the streets. I still didn’t know. I thought Bryan was going to drive. but Neal got in and took the wheel. I had the back seat anyhow. B. got up in front with Neal. and the ride began. straight along those slippery streets and it would seem we were past the corner and then Neal would decide to take a right or a left. past parked cars, the dividing line just a hair away. it can only be described as hairline. a tick the other way and we were all finished.