Notes of a Dirty Old Man

by Charles Bukowski

  “the board reads properly,” he said, “that’s not the bitch. each dollar bet is recorded. when the machines closed the board read 5/2; the board flashed again and there were the final variances but the 5/2 remained. now the French have an old saying, ‘who is to guard the guards themselves?’ as you recall, Quadrant was the obvious winner a 3rd of the way down the stretch, drawing out. a number of things could have happened. perhaps the machines were never locked during the running. when Quadrant was the obvious winner management could have stood there and kept punching out winning tickets. others say that one or two machines can be fixed to remain open and in use when the others are locked. I really don’t know. all I know is that some SHIT went on and everybody else here knows it too.”

  the horses moved on toward the crowd. the outrider and the front horse, a monster, RICH DESIRE, br. g.4, Pierce up, moved toward the line of waiting people. one of the boys called the track police something very filthy and three of the cops took him over to the rail and roughed him up a bit. the crowd got on them and they let him go and ran back to their positions in front of the line of people spread across the track. the horses kept moving forward, and you could see that they intended to go through. the orders were in. this was the moment: men on horses against men with nothing. two of three guys lay down in front of the horses, right in front of the line of march. this was it. the outrider’s face distorted suddenly, it got as red as his hunting jacket, and he grabbed the number one horse, RICH DESIRE, by the rein, spurred his horse and rammed through human flesh, eyes shut. the horse got through. I’m not sure whether he broke anybody’s back or not.

  but the outrider had earned his salary. a good management boy. and some of the few scabs in the stands cheered. but it wasn’t over. a few of the guys grabbed at the number one horse and tried to pull the jock out of the saddle and to the ground. then the police moved in. the other horses got on through but the boys momentarily had the number one horse and Pierce was almost pulled out of the saddle. this was the final sway of the tide.

  I’m sure that if they could have gotten Pierce out of the saddle they would have ended up burning the grandstands and smashing up the whole damn dumb scene. meanwhile the cops were working over the boys pretty good. no guns were pulled but it looked like the cops were enjoying the action, especially one cop who kept hitting an old man along the top of the head, back of the neck and along the spine. Pierce got on through with RICH DESIRE, an aptly named gelding, and the horse warmed up for their mile and one half on the turf. the cops seemed particularly vicious and energetic and the protesters didn’t seem too interested in fighting back. the game was lost. so the track was cleared.

  the next voice that went up was: “DON’T BET! DON’T BET! DON’T BET!”

  what a thing that would have been, eh? not a dollar for the vultures — fat subnormal slobs thrown out of Beverly Hills homes. all too good. there was already six grand in the mutuels when they started to holler, “DON’T BET!” we were hooked, bleeding, gotten forever … there was nothing we could do but bet again and again and again and take it.

  ten cops stood along the infield rail. proud and true and sweating, they’d earned a hard day’s pay. the winner of the 6th was OFF, who read nine to one and paid that. if the board has paid eight or seven there would be no Santa Anita today.

  I read that the next day, Saturday, there were around 45,000 people at the track, which was about normal.

  I was not there and I was not missed and the horses ran and I wrote this.

  March 23, 8 p.m., Los Angeles the same damn sadness and no place to go.

  maybe next time we’ll get that number one horse.

  it takes practice, a little laughter and some luck.

  ________

  this guy in the army fatigues came up to me and said, “now that it happened to Kennedy you’ll have something to write about.” he claims to be a writer, why doesn’t he write about it? I’ve always got to pick up their messy balls and put them into a little literary sack for them. I think we’ve got enough experts on the case now — that’s what this decade is: the Decade of the Experts and the Decade of the Assassins. and neither one of them worth crystallized dog turds. the main problem with a thing like that last assassination is that we not only lose a man of some worth but we also lose political, spiritual and social gains, and there are such things, even if they do seem high-sounding. what I mean is, that in an assassination crisis the anti-human and reactionary forces tend to solidify their prejudices and to use all ruptures as a means of knocking natural Freedom off the goddamned end seat at the bar.

  I don’t want to get as holy about being active and involved with mankind as Camus did (see his essays) because basically most of mankind sickens me and the only saving that can be done is a whole new concept of Universal Education-Vibration understanding of happiness, reality and flow, and that’s for the little children who ain’t murdered yet, but they will be, I’ll lay you twenty-five to one, for no new concept will be allowed — it would be too destructive to the power gang. no, I’m no Camus, but, sweetheart, it bothers me to see the Klankheads making hay out of Tragedy.

  Gov. Reagan’s statement, in part: “The average man, decent, law-abiding, God-fearing, is as disturbed and worried as you and I about what happened.

  “He, and all of us, are the victims of an attitude that has been growing in our land for nearly a decade — an attitude that says a man can choose the laws he must obey, that he can take the law into his own hands for a cause, that crime does not necessarily mean punishment.

  “This attitude has been spurred by demagogic and irresponsible words of so-called leaders in and out of office.”

  but, God, I can’t go on. it’s so dreary. the Father-Image with ye old razor strop to whip our ass. now the good governor is going to take away our toys and put us to bed without dinner.

  lord lord, I didn’t murder Kennedy, either one of them. or King. or Malcom X. or the rest. but it’s fairly obvious to me that the Left Wing Liberal forces are being picked off one by one — whatever the reason (a suspect who once worked in a health food store and hated Jews) — whatever the reason, the left-wingers are being murdered and put into their graves while the right-wingers don’t even get grass-stains upon their pantscuffs. and weren’t Roosevelt and Truman also shot at? Democrats. how very odd.

  that the assassins are sick, I will admit, and that the Father-Image is also sick, I will also admit. I’m also told by the God-fearing that I have “sinned” because I was born a human being and once upon a time human beings did something to one Jesus Christ. I neither killed Christ or Kennedy and neither did Gov. Reagan. that makes us even, not him one up. I see no reason to lose any judicial or spiritual freedoms, small as these may be now. who is bullshitting who? if a man dies in bed while fucking, must the rest of us stop copulating? if one non-citizen is a madman must all citizens be treated as madmen? if somebody killed God, did I want to kill God? if somebody wanted to kill Kennedy did I want to kill Kennedy? what makes the governor, himself, so right and the rest of us so wrong? speech-writers, and not very good ones at that.

  a very curious aside: I had no reason to drive throughout town June 6th and 7th and in the Negro districts nine out of ten cars had their headlights burning in daylight in tribute to Kennedy; driving North the ratio lessened until along Hollywood Blvd. and along Sunset between La Brea and Normandie it became one in ten. Kennedy was a white man, babies. I am white. as I drove my headlights did not burn. nevertheless, while driving between Exposition and Century, I got some cool and wonderful chills that made me feel better.

  but like I say, everybody including the governor has a mouth and almost everybody let go, ingraining their prejudices, making personal hay outa tragedy. those who got wanta keep and they are going to tell you how wrong everything is that might strip them of their golden drawers. I am apolitical but with these murky curve-balls these reactionaries throw, I might get pissed and into the game yet.

  even the sportswriters g
ot into the game, and as anybody knows the sportswriters are the worst of the worst when it comes to writing and especially when it comes to thinking. I don’t know which is worse, their writing or their thinking, but whichever is on top it is a union which will only bear illegitimate and unendearing monsters. as you must realize, the worst form of humor takes its dreary tool in extreme exaggeration. so does the worst form of ego-patronizing and emotional-patronizing type of thinking.

  one sportswriter on our largest non-striking newspaper came on like this, in part (while R. Kennedy was in surgery):

  “The Violent State of America: A Nation in Surgery”

  “… once again America the Beautiful has taken a bullet to the groin. The country is in surgery. The Violent States of America. One bullet is mightier than one million votes …

  “It’s not a Democracy, it’s a Lunacy. A country that shrinks from punishing its criminals, disciplining its children, locking up its mad …

  “the President of the United States is chosen in a hardware store, a mail order catalogue …

  “Freedom is being gunned down. The ‘right’ to murder is the ultimate right in this country. Sloth is a virtue. Patriotism is a sin. Conservation is an anachronism. God is over thirty years old. To be young is the only religion — as if it were a hardwon virtue. ‘Decency’ is dirty feet, a scorn for work. ‘Love’ is something you need penicillin for. ‘Love’ is handing a flower to a naked young man with vermin in his hair while your mother sits home with a broken heart. You ‘love’ strangers, not parents.

  “I like people with curtains on the window, not people with ‘pads.’ The next guy that calls money ‘bread’ should be paid off in whole wheat. I am sick of being told I should try to ‘understand’ evil. Should a canary ‘understand’ a cat?

  “The Constitution was never conceived as a shield for degeneracy. You start out burning the flag and you end up burning Detroit. You do away with the death penalty for everyone but Presidential candidates — and presidents …

  “… Men of God become men of the Mob. The National Anthem is a scream in the night. Americans can’t walk in their own parks, get on their own buses. They have to cage themselves.

  “ ‘Get off your knees, America!’ people cry, but it is ignored. Bare your teeth, they say. Threaten to fight back. The lion bares his teeth and the jackals slink away. A cowering animal invites attack. But America is not listening.

  “… neurotic students with their feet on desks they couldn’t make, pulling down universities they wouldn’t know how to rebuild.

  “…it all begins with that, the deification of drifters, wastrels, poltroons — insolent guests at the gracious table of democracy overturning it on their dismayed hosts…

  “… Pray God our healers can repair Bobby Kennedy. Who is going to repair America?”

  do you want this guy? I thought so. too easy. pre-graduate purple prose colored only from a survival viewpoint of present position. do you drive a garbage truck? don’t feel bad. there are better jobs, done worse.

  lock up the mad. but who is mad? we all play our little game, depending upon the positions of the pawns, the knights, the castles, the king, the queen, ah, what the hell, I’m beginning to sound like him.

  and now we will have the headshrinkers, the thinkers, the panels, the appointed presidential boards trying to figure out what’s wrong with us. who’s mad, who’s glad, who’s sad, who’s right, who’s wrong. lock up the mad, when fifty-nine out of sixty men you meet on the street are cuckoo with industrial neuroses and wives and strives and no time to loosen up and find out where they are or why, and when money which has kept them boosted and blinded for so fucking long, when that’s no good no longer, then what we gonna do? come, baby, the assassins have been with us for a long time. only it ain’t been a blast, just a man with a face like sawdust and eyes like shitstains, so many men like that and women too. millions of them.

  and soon we will have the reports from the headshrinker panels, which like the poverty panels which told us that some men are starving downstairs, they will tell us that some men are starving upstairs; and then everything will be forgotten until the next little emotional little murder or city burning, and then they will assemble again and utter their dull little expected words, rub their hands and disappear like turds down a flushing pot. it really seems that they don’t care so long as the balance board is maintained. and those little headshrinkers, flashing their magic aces, conning us with words, saying this is so because your mother had a clubfoot and your father drank and a chicken shitted in your mouth when you were three years old and therefore you are a homosexual or a punchpress operator. everything but the truth: simply that some men feel bad because life is bad for them the way it is and that it could easily be made better. but, no, the headshrinkers with their mechanistic baubles that will some day be proven completely false, they will continue to tell us that we are all mad and they will be well-paid to do so. we’re just not taking it right. remember some of the songs?:

  “lucky lucky me

  I can live in luxury

  because I’ve got a pocketful of

  dreams …”

  “it’s my universe

  even with an empty purse

  because I’ve got a pocketful of

  dreams …”

  or:

  “no more money in the bank

  no more people we can thank

  what to do about it

  oh, what to do about it:

  let’s turn out the lights and

  go to sleep.”

  what they won’t tell us is that our madmen, our assassins do spring from our present mode of life, our good old All-American way of living and dying. Christ, that we are all not outwardly raving, that’s the miracle! and since we have been rather sombre here, let’s end it on the light fantastic, speaking, as we are, about madness. I was down in Santa Fe one time speaking to, no, rather drinking with, a friend of mine who was a headshrinker of some renown, and in the middle of one of our drunks I leaned forward and asked him, —

  “Jean, tell me, am I crazy? come on, babe, let me have it. I can take it.”

  he finished his drink, put it on the coffee table and told me, “you’ll have to pay me my fee first.”

  then I knew that at least one of us was crazy. Gov. Reagan and the Los Angeles sports writers were not there. and the second Kennedy had not yet been assassinated. but I got the odd feeling, sitting in that room with him that things were not well, not well at all, and would not be, would not be for another couple of thousand years at least.

  and, so now, my friend in the army fatigues, you write yours …

  ________

  “it’s over,” he said, “the dead have won.”

  “the dead have won, have won, have won,” said Moss.

  “who won the ballgame?” Anderson asked Moss.

  “I dunno.”

  Moss walked to the window. he saw a male American walking by. he shouted out the window — “hey, who won the ballgame?”

  “Pirates, 3 to 2,” answered the male American.

  “you heard it, didn’t you?” asked Moss of Anderson.

  “yeh. Pirates, 3-2.”

  “I wonder who won the ninth race?”

  “I know that one,” said Moss. “Spaceman II. 7 to 1.”

  “who rode?”

  “Garza.”

  they sat down to their beer. they were not quite drunk.

  “the dead have won,” said Anderson.

  “tell me something new,” said Moss.

  “well, I’ve got to get some pussy pretty soon or I’ll go goofy.”

  “the price is always too high. forget it.”

  “I know. but I can’t forget it. I’m starting to have crazy dreams. I screw chickens in the ass.”

  “chickens? does it work?”

  “in the dream it works.”

  they sucked at their beer. they were two old friends in their mid-thirties with dull jobs. Anderson had been married once,
divorced once. two children somewhere. Moss married twice, divorced twice. one child somewhere. it was Saturday evening at Moss’ apartment.

  Anderson tossed an empty beer bottle through the air in a great arc. it landed on top of the others in the large wastebasket. “you know,” he said, “some men just aren’t any good with women. I never was any good with women. the whole thing seems a terrible bore, and when it’s over you feel like you really been screwed.”

  “you tryin’ to be funny?”

  “you know what I mean: gyped, short-changed. the panties on the floor there with just the slightest of a summer shit-stain on them and her plodding to the bathroom, victorious. you lay there looking at the ceiling with your limp meat and wonder what the hell it means, knowing you’ve got to listen to her empty-headed chatter the rest of the evening … and I’ve got a daughter too. umm, listen, do you think I’m Victorian or queer or something?”

  “naw, man. I know what you mean. you know, reminds me, one time at this gal’s place, I knew her only slightly, a friend had more or less sent me over. I showed up with a pint and slipped her a ten. it wasn’t bad and I figured no spiritual intimacy, no soul-stuff. I rolled off feeling fairly free, stared at the ceiling, stretched, and waited for her to make her bathroom run. she reached under the springs and pulled out this rag and handed it to me to wipe off with. it took the heart out of me. the damn rag was almost stiff all over. but I played the pro. I found a soft spot and wiped off. it took some searching to find the soft spot. then she used the rag. I got out of there fast. and if you want to call that Victorian, go ahead, call it Victorian.”

  they were both quiet a while, drinking the beer.

  “but let’s not be pricks,” said Moss.

  “uhhh?” asked Anderson.

  “there are some good women.”

  “uuhh?”

  “yeah, I mean when everything works well. I had a girl friend once, jesus, it was pure heaven. and no demands on soul or anything like that.”

  “what happened?”

  “she died young.”

  “tough.”

  “tough, yes. I damn near drank myself to death.”