Notes of a Dirty Old Man

by Charles Bukowski

  I looked around. all the waitresses were praising me and some of the customers too. it was very nice. recognition at last. the Atlantic and Harper’s be damned. genius would always out. I smiled at them all and took a big drag.

  then one of the waitresses screamed at me:

  “NO SMOKING IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD, BROTHER!”

  I put the cigarette out. I finished the coffee. then I went outside and looked at the lettering on the window:

  FATHER DIVINE’S MISSION.

  I lit another cigarette and began the long walk back to my place. when I got there nobody would answer the bell. I finally stretched out on top of the garbage cans and went to sleep. I knew that down on the pavement the rats would get me. I was a clever young man.

  I was so clever that I even got a job the next day. and the next night, hungover, shaky, very sad, I was at work.

  two old guys were to break me in. they’d each been on the job since the subways were invented. we walked along with these heavy sheets of cardboard under the left arm and a little tool in the right hand that looked like a beercan opener.

  “all the people in New York have these little green-colored bugs all over them,” one of the old guys said.

  “izzat so?” I said, not giving the least damn what color the bugs were.

  “you’ll see ’em on the seats. we find ’em on the seats each night.”

  “yeh,” said the other old man.

  we walked along.

  good god, I thought, did this ever happen to Cervantes?

  “now watch,” said one of the old guys. “each card has a little number. we replace each card with the little number with another card with the same number.”

  flip, flip. he beercan-opened the strips, flipped in the new advertisement, replaced the strips, took the old advertisement and put it on the bottom of the pile of cards under his left arm.

  “now you try it.”

  I tried it. the little strips didn’t want to give. I had a bum can opener. and was sick and shaky.

  “you’ll get it,” said an old guy.

  I AM getting it, you fuck, I thought.

  we moved along.

  then we stepped out of the rear of the car and they went ahead stepping along the railroad ties between the tracks. the space between each board was about three feet. a body could easily fall through without even trying. and we were elevated about 90 feet from the street. and it must have been 90 feet to the new car. the two old guys skipped over the boards with their heavy cardboard load and waited for me at the new car. there was a train stopped across the way picking up passengers. it was well-lit around there, but that was all. the lights from the train clearly showed me the three foot gap between the boards.

  “COME ON! COME ON! WE’RE IN A HURRY!”

  “god damn you and your hurry!” I screamed at the two old guys. then I stepped out on the boards with my load of cardboard under my left arm and the beercan opener in my right hand. one step, two steps, three steps … hungover, sick.

  then the train that was loading pulled out. it was dark as a closet. darker than a closet. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t take the next step. and I couldn’t turn around. I just stood there.

  “come on! come on! we got a lot more cars to do!”

  finally my eyes refocused a bit. I began the wobbly steps again. some of the boards were soft, were worn round and splintered. I ceased to hear their shouting. I took the transfixed strides one after the other, expecting each next step to be the one that sent me on down through.

  I made the other car and threw the cardboard ads and the can opener on the floor.

  “watza matta?”

  “watza matta? watza matta? I say, ‘FUCK IT!’ ”

  “what’s wrong?”

  “one misstep and a man can get killed. don’t you idiots realize that?”

  “nobody’s gotten killed yet.”

  “nobody drinks like I do, either. now, come on, tell me, how do I get the hell out of here?”

  “well, there’s a stairway down to the right but you’ve got to walk across the tracks instead of along them and that means stepping over two or three third rails.”

  “fuck it. what’s a third rail?”

  “that’s the power. you touch one and you’re gone.”

  “show me the way.”

  the old boys pointed to the stairway down. it didn’t seem too far away.

  “thank you, gentlemen.”

  “watch the third rail. it’s gold. don’t touch it or you’ll burn.”

  I stepped on out. I could sense them watching me. each time I reached a third rail I stepped high and fancy. they had a soft and calm look to them in the moonlight.

  I reached the stairway and was alive again. at the bottom of the stairway there was a bar. I heard people laughing. I went into the bar and sat down. some guy was telling stories about how his mother took care of him, made him take piano and painting lessons and how he managed to get money out of her, one way or the other, to get drunk on. the whole bar was laughing. I began laughing too. the guy was a genius, giving it away for nothing. I laughed until the bar closed and we broke up, each going our different ways.

  I left New York soon after, never went back, never will. cities are built to kill people, and there are lucky towns and the other kind. mostly the other kind. in New York you’ve got to have all the luck. I knew I didn’t have that kind. next thing I knew I was sitting in a nice room in east Kansas City listening to the manager beat up the maid because she’d failed to sell me a piece of her ass. it was real and peaceful and sane again. I listened to the screams while sitting up in bed, reached for my glass, had a good one, then stretched out among the clean sheets. the guy could really lay it on. I could hear her head bouncing against the wall.

  maybe the next day when I wasn’t so tired from the bus trip I’d let her have a little. she had a nice ass. at least he wasn’t beating on that. and I was out of New York, almost alive.

  ________

  those were the nights, the old days at the Olympic. they had a bald little Irishman making the announcements (was his name Dan Tobey?), and he had style, he’d seen things happen, maybe even on the riverboats when he was a kid, and if he wasn’t that old, maybe Dempsey-Firpo anyhow. I can still see him reaching up for that cord and pulling the mike down slowly, and most of us were drunk before the first fight, but we were easy drunk, smoking cigars, feeling the light of life, waiting for them to put two boys in there, cruel but that was the way it worked, that is what they did to us and we were still alive, and, yes, most of us with a dyed redhead or blonde, even me. her name was Jane and we had many a good ten-rounder between us, one of them ending in a k.o. of me. and I was proud when she’d come back from the lady’s room and the whole gallery would begin to pound and whistle and howl as she wiggled that big magic marvelous ass in that tight skirt — and it was a magic ass: she could lay a man stone cold and gasping, screaming love-words to a cement sky. then she’d come down and sit beside me and I’d lift that pint like a coronet, pass it to her, she’d take her nip, hand it back, and I’d say about the boys in the gallery: “those screaming jackoff bastards, I’ll kill them.”

  and she’d look at her program and say, “who do you want in the first?”

  I picked them good — about 90 percent — but I had to see them first. I always chose the guy who moved around the least, who looked like he didn’t want to fight, and if one guy gave the Sign of the Cross before the bell and the other guy didn’t you had a winner — you took the guy who didn’t, but it usually worked together: the guy who did all the shadow boxing and dancing around usually was the one who gave the Sign of the Cross and got his ass whipped.

  there weren’t many bad fights in those days and if there were it was the same as now — mostly between the heavyweights. but we let them know about it in those days — we tore the ring down or set the place on fire, busted up the seats. they just couldn’t afford to give us too many bad ones. the Hollywood Legion ran the bad on
es and we stayed away from the Legion. even the Hollywood boys knew the action was at the Olympic. Raft came, and the others, and all the starlets, hugging those front row seats. the gallery boys went ape and the fighters fought like fighters and the place was blue with cigar smoke, and how we screamed, baby baby, and threw money and drank our whiskey, and when it was over, there was the drive in, the old lovebed with our dyed and vicious women. you slammed it home, then slept like a drunk angel. who needed the public library? who needed Ezra? T.S. E.E.? D.H. H.D.? any of the Eliots? any of the Sitwells?

  I’ll never forget the first night I saw young Enrique Balanos. at the time, I had me a good colored boy. he used to bring a little white lamb into the ring with him before the fight and hug it, and that’s corny but he was tough and good and a tough and good man is allowed certain leeways, right?

  anyway, he was my hero, and his name might have been something like Watson Jones. Watson had good class and the flair — swift, quick quick quick, and the PUNCH, and he enjoyed his work. but then, one night, unannounced, somebody slipped this young Balanos in against him, and Balanos had it, took his time, slowly worked Watson down and took him over, busted him up good near the end. my hero. I couldn’t believe it. if I remember, Watson was kayoed which made it a very bitter night, indeed. me with my pint screaming for mercy, screaming for a victory that simply would not happen. Balanos certainly had it — the fucker had a couple of snakes for arms, and he didn’t move — he slid, slipped, jerked like some type of evil spider, always getting there, doing the thing. I knew that night that it would take a very excellent man to beat him and that Watson might as well take his little lamb and go home.

  it wasn’t until much later that night, the whiskey pouring into me like the sea, fighting with my woman, cursing her sitting there showing me all that fine leg, that I admitted that the better man had won.

  “Balanos. good legs. he doesn’t think. just reacts. better not to think. tonight the body beat the soul. it usually does. goodbye Watson, goodbye Central Avenue, it’s all over.”

  I smashed my glass against the wall and went over and grabbed me some woman. I was wounded. she was beautiful. we went to bed. I remember a light rain came through the window. we let it rain on us. it was good. it was so good we made love twice and when we went to sleep we slept with our faces toward the window and it rained all over us and in the morning the sheets were all wet and we both got up sneezing and laughing, “jesus christ! jesus christ!” it was funny and poor Watson laying somewhere, his face slugged and pulpy, facing the Eternal Truth, facing the six rounders, the four rounders, then back to the factory with me, murdering eight or ten hours a day for pennies, getting nowhere, waiting on Papa Death, getting your mind kicked to hell and your spirit kicked to hell, we sneezed, “jesus christ!” it was funny and she said, “you’re blue all over, you’ve turned all BLUE! jesus, look at yourself in the mirror!” and I was freezing and dying and I stood in front of the mirror and I was all BLUE! ridiculous! a skull and shit of bones! I began to laugh, I laughed so hard I fell down on the rug and she fell down on top of me and we both laughed laughed laughed, jesus christ we laughed until I thought we were crazy, and then I had to get up, get dressed, comb my hair, brush my teeth, too sick to eat, heaved when I brushed my teeth, I went outside and walked toward the overhead lighting factory, just the sun feeling good but you had to take what you could get.

  ________

  Santa Anita, March 22, 1968, 3:10 p.m. I can’t catch Quillo’s Babe the even-money shot with Alpen Dance. the 4th race is over and I haven’t touched a thing, I am $40.00 down, I should have had Boxer Bob in the 2nd with Bianco, one of the best unknown riders at the track at 9/5; any other jock, say Lambert or Pineda or Gonzales, the horse would have gone at 6/5 or even-money. but I’ve got an old saying (I make up old sayings as I walk around in rags) that knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge at all. because if you’re guessing and it doesn’t work you can just say, shit, the gods are against me. but if you know and don’t do, you’ve got attics and dark halls in your mind to walk up and down in and wonder about. this ain’t healthy, leads to unpleasant evenings, too much to drink and the shredding machine.

  all right. old horseplayers don’t just fade away. they die. hard and finally, on east 5th or selling papers out front with a sailor’s cap on, pretending it’s all a lark, your mind split in half, your guts dangling, your cock without sweet pussy. I think that it was one of Freud’s favorite pupils, who has now become a philosopher of some renown — my x-wife used to read him — who said that gambling was a form of masturbation. very nice to be a bright boy and say these things. and there is always a minor truth contained in almost every saying. if I were an easy bright boy I think I would say something like, “cleaning the fingernails with a dirty fingernail file is a form of masturbation.” and I would probably win a scholarship, a grant, the king’s sword on shoulder and 14 hot pieces of ass. I will only say this, out of a background of factories, park benches, two-bit jobs, bad women, bad weather of Life — the reason the average person is at the track is that they are driven screwy by the turn of the bolt, the foreman’s insane face, the landlord’s hand, the lover’s dead sex; taxation, cancer, the blues; clothes that fall apart on a 3rd wearing, water that tastes like piss, doctors that run assembly-line and indecent offices, hospitals without heart, politicians with skulls filled with pus … we can go on and on but would only be accused of being bitter and demented, but the world makes madmen (and women) of us all, and even the saints are demented, nothing is saved. so shit. well. according to my figures I’ve only had 2500 pieces of ass but I’ve watched 12,500 horse races, and if I have any advice to anybody it’s this: take up watercolor painting.

  but what I am trying to tell you is, that the reason most people are at the racetrack is that they are in agony, ey yeh, and they are so desperate that they will take a chance on further agony rather than face their present position (?) in life. now the big boys are not as half-ass as we think they are. they sit on mountain tops studying the ant-swirl. don’t you think Johnson is proud of his bellybutton? and don’t you realize, at the same time, that Johnson is one of the biggest assholes ever fomented upon us? we are hooked, slapped and chopped silly; so silly that some of us finally love our tormentors because they are there to torment us along logical lines of torture. this seems so reasonable, since there isn’t anything else showing. it’s got to be right because that’s all there is. what? Santa Anita is there. Johnson is there. and, one way or another we keep them there. we build our own racks and scream when our genitals are torn off by the subnormal keeper waving the big silver cross (gold is out). let this explain, then, why some of us, if not most of us, if not all of us are there, say on a day like March 22, 1968, an afternoon in Arcadia, Calif.

  end of 5th race won by the 12 horse Quadrant. the board reads 5/2 and I have to win on the nose. horse won big, running past horses in the stretch and drawing out. I have ten win and am $40.00 down and wait on the official sign. a 5/2 shot pays between $7.00 and $7.80 and so ten win means a return of between $35.00 and $39.00. so I figure I am about even. the horse was three on the line and never moved from 5/2 all during the betting. the official payoff was flashed on the board:

  5:40.

  right on the toteboard. $five-four-oooh. which lies halfway between 8/5 and 9/5 and is not 5/2 at all. earlier in the week, in an overnight gesture, the track doubled the parking fee from 25 cents to 50 cents. I doubt that the parking lot attendants’ salaries were doubled. also they snatched the whole $2.00 instead of the $1.95 on entering. now, $5.40. god damn. a slow unbelievable moan went across the grandstand and through the infield. in watching nearly 13,000 races I had never seen an occurrence like this. the board is not infallible. I have seen a 9/5 pay $6.00, and other slight variances, but never have I seen a 5/2 pay close to 8/5 nor have I ever seen a 5/2 drop in one flash (the last one) from 5/2 to close to 8/5. it would have taken an almost unbelievable amount of money bet at the last mom
ent to do this.

  the crowd began to BOOOOO BOOOOOO BOOOOO! it died, then began again. BOOO, BOOOOOO, BOOOOO! and each time it began it lasted longer. the mob smelled rotten fish plus greed. the mob had been knifed, again. $5.40 meant a return to me of $27.00 instead of a possible $39.00. and I wasn’t the only one affected. you could feel the mob writhing, stung; to many out there each race meant rent or no rent, food or no food, car payment or no car payment.

  I looked down at the track and there was a man out there waving his program, pointing at the board. he was evidently talking to a track steward. then the man waved his program at the crowd, waving them in, asking them to come out onto the track. one man came through, leaping the rail. the crowd cheered. another man found the gateway opening in the rail. now there were three. the crowd cheered. people were feeling better. now they came, more and more and the crowd cheered. everybody was feeling better. a chance. a chance? something of some sort. more came. there must have been between 40 and 65 people spread across the track.

  the announcer came on over the speaker: “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE ARE ASKING YOU TO PLEASE CLEAR THE TRACK SO THAT WE MAY BEGIN THE 6th RACE!”

  his voice was not kindly. there were ten track policemen down there in their Santa Anita grays. each man carried a gun. the crowd booed, BOOOOOOOED!

  then one of the players down there noticed that the next race was on the turf. hell, they were blocking the dirt track. the crowd moved on over to the grass infield which circles inside the dirt track as the horses came out for the post parade. there were eight horses led by the outrider in his red hunting jacket and black cap. the crowd spread across the track.

  “PLEASE,” the announcer said, “CLEAR THE TRACK! PLEASE CLEAR THE TRACK! THE TOTEBOARD WAS UNABLE TO REGISTER THE LAST FLASH DOWN IN THE BETTING. THE PRICE IS CORRECT!”

  the horses moved slowly toward the waiting crowd. those horses looked very big and nervous.

  I asked Denver Danny, a guy who has hung around the tracks much longer than I, “what the hell gives, Denver?”