Tales of Ordinary Madness

by Charles Bukowski

  “Look!” said Mad Jimmy, pointing to the coffee table. “Look at this silverware! Genuine antique!”

  He handed me a spoon. “Now just look at that spoon!”

  I just looked at the spoon.

  “Look,” he said, “do you have to let your robe fall open like that?”

  I threw the spoon on the table. “Whatsamatta, never seen a man’s cock before?”

  “It’s your balls! they’re so big and hairy! Awful!”

  I left the robe open. I don’t like to take orders.

  There he sat once again twisting that Panama. His stupid Panama and his palpitation over McBurney’s point (appendix). Inferior border of liver also tender to palpation. Spleen negative. Everything negative and palpitation. Even goddamned gall bladder palpitation.

  “Look, can I use your phone?” Mad Jimmy asked.

  “Local?”

  “Yes, it’s local.”

  “Make sure it’s local. I almost killed four guys the other night. Chased them all through town in my car. Finally, they pulled over. I parked behind them, cut the engine. I didn’t realize they still had theirs running. When I got out, they pulled off. Very disappointing. By the time I got rolling, they were out of sight.”

  “They made a long distance call on your phone?”

  “No; I didn’t know them. It was another matter.”

  “This is a local call.”

  “Go ahead then, mother.”

  I finished my first beer and smashed the empty beerbottle into the big wooden box (coffin-sized) in the center of the room. Although the landlord gave me two garbage cans a week, the only way I could get everything to fit into the things was to break all the bottles. I was the only two garbage can man in the neighborhood, but then, they say, everybody’s good at something.

  Minor problem, though: I always liked to walk around barefoot and some of the glass from the broken bottles did flip out on the rug and I picked up chunks of stuff with my feet. This also pissed off my good doctor – slicing the stuff out every week while some dear old lady in the waiting room was dying of cancer – so I learned to incision the larger pieces out by myself and left the small ones in to do whatever they wanted to do. And of course, if you are not too stoned you feel the things going in and get them then. That’s the nicest way. You pluck the thing out right then and the blood squirts out like jism and you feel just a little bit heroic – that is, I do.

  Mad Jimmy looked oddly at the telephone in his hand. “She doesn’t answer.”

  “Hang up then, asshole!”

  “The phone just keeps ringing.”

  “And I’m going to tell you one last time to hang up!”

  He hung up. “– A woman sat on my face last night. Twelve hours. I finally peeked out from under her cheeks and the sun was coming up. Man, I feel like my tongue is split in half, I feel like I got a forked tongue.”

  “That would be a real break.”

  “Yeah. I could do two pussies at once.”

  “Sure. And Casanova would shit in his grave.”

  He played with his Panama. Rectally, he showed some indication of hemorrhoid tissue. Rectal sphincter very tight. The Panama Kid. Prostate somewhat enlarged and tender on palpation.

  Then the poor fuck jumped up and dialed the same number over again.

  He played with his Panama. “It just keeps ringing,” he said.

  There he sat, listening to the ringing, musculoskeletal system fucked-up – I mean, shitty posture (kyphosis). At 5L (lower spine) shows possible anomaly.

  He played with his Panama. “It just keeps ringing.”

  “Of course,” I said, “she’s fucking somebody.”

  “Of course. And it just keeps ringing.”

  I walked over and hung the phone up.

  Then I screamed out, “Oh shit!”

  “Whatzamatta, man?”

  “Glass! There’s glass all over this fucking floor!”

  I stood on one foot and picked the glass out of the other. It was a nice. one. It beat squeezing boils. The blood popped right out.

  I walked over to my chair and took an old paint rag I used to wipe my brushes with and wrapped it around my bloody heel.

  “That rag’s dirty,” said Mad Jimmy.

  “Your mind’s dirty,” I told him.

  “Please close your robe!”

  “There,” I said, “You see?”

  “I know I see. That’s why I ask you to close it.”

  “All right. Shit.”

  I very reluctantly threw the robe over my genitals. Anybody can expose their genitals at night. At two p.m. in the afternoon it took some balls.

  “Listen,” said Mad Jimmy, “you know the other night you pissed on a police car in Westwood Village?”

  “Where were they?”

  “About fifty yards off, settling something or other.”

  “Probably jerking each other off.”

  “Maybe. But that wasn’t enough for you. You had to go back and piss on the car a second time.”

  Poor Jimmy. Really fucked-up. 1, 5 and 6C (neck) luxated.

  There was also a weakness of the right inguinal ring.

  And there he was complaining because I pissed on a police car.

  “All right, Jimmy, you think you’re hot shit, huh? With your little stolen bag of trinkets. Well, I’m gonna tell you something!”

  “What?” he asked, looking into the mirror and twisting the Panama again. Then he sucked at his wine bottle.

  “You’re wanted in court! You don’t remember but you busted Mary’s rib and then came back a couple of days later and hit her in the face.”

  “I’m wanted in COURT? In COURT? Oh no, man, you don’t really mean I’m wanted in COURT?”

  I smashed my second beerbottle into the huge wooden box in the center of the room. “Yes, my boy, you are crazy as hell, you need help. And Mary has an assault-and-battery out against you ...”

  “What’s ‘battery’ mean?”

  I trotted off for two more beers (for myself), came back.

  “Listen, asshole, you know what ‘battery’ means! You haven’t driven a bicycle all your life!”

  I looked at him. His skin was somewhat dry with loss of natural elasticity. I also knew that he had a small growth on his left buttocks (center).

  “But I don’t understand this COURT thing! What the hell does it mean? Sure, we had a little argument. So I went to George’s place in the desert. We drank port wine for thirty days. When I came back she SCREAMED at me! You should have seen her! I didn’t mean any harm. All I did was kick her big ass and tits ...”

  “She’s frightened of you, Jimmy. You’re a sick man. I’ve made a very close study of you. You know when I’m not jacking-off or stoned I’m reading books, all kinds of books. You are demented, my friend.”

  “But we were all such good friends. She even wanted to fuck you but she wouldn’t fuck you because she loved me. That’s what she told me.”

  “But, Jimmy, that was then. You have no idea how things change. Mary’s a very fine person. She ...”

  “God oh mighty! Close your robe! PLEASE!”

  “Ooooops! Sorry.”

  Poor Jimmy. His genital system – left vas deferens and somewhat on the right there appears to be some scar or adhesion tissue. Probably caused by some pathology in the past.

  “I’ll phone Anna,” he said, “Anna is Mary’s best friend. She’ll know. Why would Mary want to take me to court?”

  “Phone then, mother.”

  Jimmy adjusted his Panama in the mirror, then dialed.

  “Anna. Jimmy. What? No, it can’t be! Hank just told me. Listen, I don’t play these games. What? No, I didn’t bust her rib! I just kicked her big ass and titties. You mean she’s really going to court? Well, I’m not going. I’m going to Jerome, Arizona. Got a place. Two hundred and twenty-five a month. I just made twelve thousand dollars on a big land deal ... Oh shut up, goddamn you, about that COURT thing! You know what I’m going to do right now? I’m going
over to Mary’s right NOW! I’ll kiss her and chew her lips off! I’ll eat every cunthair off her snatch! What do I care about court? I’ll jam it up her ass, under armpits, between the tits, in her mouth, in her ...”

  Jimmy looked at me. “She hung up.”

  “Jimmy,” I said, “you should flush your ear canals. You show indications of symptoms of emphysema. Exercise and discontinue smoking. You need spinal therapy. For your weak inguinal ring there should be care in heavy lifting, straining at the stool ...”

  “What is all this bullshit?”

  “The growth on your buttocks appears to be verracae.”

  “What’s verracae?”

  “A wart, mother.”

  “You’re a wart, mother.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Where’d you get the bicycle?”

  “It belongs to Arthur. Arthur’s holding a lot of shit. Let’s go over to Arthur’s and smoke some shit.”

  “I don’t like Arthur. He’s such a delicate little snit. Some delicate little snits I like. Arthur’s the other kind.”

  “He’s going to Mexico for six months next week.”

  “Many of those delicate little snits are always going somewhere. What is it? A grant?”

  “Yes, a grant. But he can’t paint.”

  “I know that. But it’s his statues,” I said.

  “I don’t like his statues,” said the Panama Kid.

  “Listen, Jimmy, I may not like Arthur but I have been very close to his statues.”

  “But it’s the same old stuff – the Greek shit – gals with big tits and asses in flowing robes. Guys wrestling, grabbing at each other’s cocks and beards. What the hell is it?”

  So, reader, let’s forget Mad Jimmy for a minute and get into Arthur – which is no big problem – what I mean is also the way I write: I can jump around and you can come right along and it won’t matter a bit, you’ll see.

  Well, the secret of Arthur was that he built them oversize. Very very impressive. All that fucking cement. His smallest-sized man or woman loomed over eight feet tall in sunlight or in moonlight or smog, depending upon when you arrived.

  I tried to get into his place in the back there one night and here were all these cement people, all these big cement people just standing around outside there. Some of them were as high as twelve or fourteen feet. Huge breasts, pussies, cocks, balls, all about the place. I had just finished listening to The Elixir of Love by Donizetti. It didn’t help. I still felt like some kind of pygmy in hell. I’m out there screaming, “Arthur, Arthur, help me!” But he was on the hash or something, or maybe I was. Anyhow, the god-damned fear builds.

  Well, I am six foot and 232 pounds, so I just threw a body-block on the biggest sonofabitch there.

  I got him from the back when he wasn’t looking. And he fell face-forward, and I mean – he FELL! You could hear it all over town.

  Then, out of curiosity, I rolled him over, and sure enough I’d broken off his cock, one ball, and another ball neatly sliced in half; part of the nose gone too, and about half the beard.

  I felt like a killer.

  Then Arthur stepped out and said, “Hank, good to see you!”

  And I said, “Sorry about the noise, Art, but I stumbled into one of your little pets out there and the fucking thing tripped-up and fell apart.”

  And he said, “That’s all right.”

  So I went in and we smoked shit all night. And the next thing I knew the sun was up and I was in my car driving along – around nine a.m. – and I drove through all the stoplights and red lights. No trouble at all. I even managed to park the car a block and a half from where I lived.

  But when I got to my door I found I had this cement cock in my pocket. The damn thing must have been at least two feet long. I walked down and stuck the thing into my landlady’s mailbox, but there was plenty left over that stuck out, bending and immortal, and topped by that huge head, left to the mailman’s discretion.

  Okay. Back to Mad Jimmy.

  “But I mean,” said Mad Jimmy, “do they really want me in COURT? In COURT?”

  “Listen, Jimmy, you really need help. I’ll drive you to Patton or Camarillo.”

  “Ah, I’m tired of those fucking shock-treatments.... Burrrrrrr!!!! Burrrrrrr!!!!”

  Mad Jimmy rattled his body all about the chair taking the treatments again.

  Then he adjusted his new Panama in the mirror, smiled, got up and walked to the phone again.

  He dialed his number, looked at me and said, “It just keeps ringing.”

  He just hung up and dialed again.

  They all come to see me. Even my doctor phones me. “Christ was the greatest head-shrinker and ego of them all – claiming he was the Son of God. Throwing those money-changers out of the temple. Naturally, that was His mistake. They got His ass. Even asked Him to fold his feet so they could save one nail. What shit.”

  They all come to see me. There’s one guy with a last name like Ranch or Rain, something of the sort, and he’s always coming by with his sleeping bags and a sad story. He hits between Berkeley and New Orleans. Back and forth. Once every two months. And he writes bad, old-fashioned rondos. And it’s a fiver and/or a couple of bucks each time he hits (or as they like to say, “crashes”), plus whatever he eats and drinks. That’s all right, I’ve given away more money than I have cock, but these people have got to realize that I also have some trouble staying alive.

  So there’s Mad Jimmy and so there’s me.

  Or there’s Maxie. Maxie is going to shut off all the sewers in Los Angeles to help the Cause of the People. Well, it’s a damn nice gesture, you’ve got to admit that. But Maxie, buddy, I say, let me know when you are going to shut off all the sewers. I’m for the People. We’ve been friends a long time. I’ll leave town a weak early.

  What Maxie doesn’t realize is that Causes and Shit are different things. Starve me, but don’t cut off my shit and/or shit-disposal unit. I remember once my landlord left town on a nice two week vacation to Hawaii. Okay.

  The day after he left town, my toilet stopped. I had my own personal plunger, being very frightened of shit, but I plunged and plunged and it didn’t work. You know what that left me.

  So I called up my own personal friends, and I’m the type who doesn’t have too many personal friends, or if I have them, they don’t have toilets let alone telephones ... more often, they don’t have anything.

  So, I called the one or two who had toilets. They were very nice.

  “Sure, Hank, you can shit at my place anytime!”

  I didn’t take up their invitations. Maybe it was the way they said it. So here was my landlord in Hawaii watching the hula girls, and those fucking turds just lay on top of the water and whirled around and looked at me.

  So each night I had to shit and then pluck the turds out of water, place them in wax paper and then into a brown paper bag and get into my car and drive around town looking for some place to toss them.

  So mostly, double-parked with the motor running, I’d just toss the god-damned turds over some wall, any wall. I tried to be non-prejudiced, but this one Home for the Aged seemed a particularly quiet place and I think I gave them my little brown bag of turds at least three times.

  Or sometimes I’d just be driving along and roll up the window and rather flick the turds out as one would, say, cigarette ashes or a couple of dozen burnt-out cigars.

  And speaking of shit, constipation has always been a greater fear to me than cancer. (We’ll get back to Mad Jimmy. Listen, I told you I write this way.) If I miss one day without shitting, I can’t go anywhere, do anything – I get so desperate when that happens that oftentimes I try to suck my own cock to unclog my system, to get things going again. And if you’ve ever tried to suck your own cock then you only know the terrible strain on the backbone, neckbone, every muscle, everything. You stroke the thing up as long as it will get then you really double up like some creature on a torture rack, legs way over your head and locked around the bedrungs, your asshole twitching
like a dying sparrow in the frost, everything bent together around your great beer belly, all your muscle sheathes ripped to shit, and what hurts is that you don’t miss by a foot or two – you miss by an eighth of an inch – the end of your tongue and the tip of your cock that close, but it might as well be an eternity or forty miles. God, or whoever the hell, knew just what He was doing when He put us together.

  But back to the insane.

  Jimmy just dialed the same number over and over from one-thirty p.m. until six p.m. when I gave way. No, it was six-thirty p.m. when I gave way. What does it matter? So, after the 749th phone call, I allowed my robe to flop open, walked over to Mad Jimmy, took the phone out of his hand and said, “No more.”

  I was listening to Hayden’s Symphony #102. I had enough beer to last the rest of the night. And Mad Jimmy was boring me. He was a boor. A sandfly. A crocodile’s tail. Dogshit on the heel.

  He looked at me. “Court? You mean she’s going to take me to court? Oh no, I don’t believe in these games people play ...”

  Platitudes. And wax in his ears.

  So I yawned and phoned Izzy Steiner, his best friend who had dropped him on me. Izzy Steiner claimed to be a writer. I said he couldn’t write. He said I couldn’t write. It was possible that one of us was right, or wrong. You know.

  Izzy was a young huge Jewish lad around 5-5 tipping in at 200 pounds – thick-armed, thick-wristed, bull neck with head-tick; small little eyes and a very unsympathetic mouth – just a small hole in his head that whistled out the glory of Izzy Steiner and ate continually: chickenwings, turkeylegs, loaves of Frenchbread, spider-dung – anything, anything that held still long enough for him to letch upon it.

  “Steiner?”

  “Uh?”

  He was studying to be a Rabbi but he didn’t want to be a Rabbi. All he wanted to do was eat and grow larger and larger. You could go in for a one minute piss and when you came out your refrigerator would be empty, or he’d be standing there with that greedy, ashamed look, chunking the last of it down. The only thing that saved you from complete ambush when Izzy came around is that he wouldn’t eat raw meat – he likes it rare, very, but not raw.