Tales of Ordinary Madness

by Charles Bukowski

  he asked the bartender what day it was and the bartender said, “Thursday,” so he had a couple of days. they didn’t run until Saturday. Aleseo had to wait for the American crowds to suck over the border for their two days of madness after 5 days of hell. Tijuana took care of them. Tijuana took care of their money for them. but the Americans never knew how much the Mexicans hated them; the American money stupified them to fact, and they ran through TJ like they owned it, and every woman was a fuck and every cop was just some kind of character in a comic strip. but the Americans had forgotten that they’d won a few wars from Mexico, as Americans and Texans or whatever the hell else. to the Americans, that was just history in a book; to the Mexicans it was very real. it didn’t feel well to be an American in a Mexican bar on a Thursday night. the Americans even ruined the bullfights; the Americans ruined everything.

  Dan ordered another tequila.

  the bartender said, “you want a nice girl, senor?”

  “thanks, friend,” he answered, “but I am a writer. I am more interested in humanity in general than I am in pussy in the exact.”

  it was a self-conscious remark and he felt lousy after saying it, and the bartender moved off.

  but it was peaceful there. he drank and listened to the Mexican music. it was good to be removed from U.S. soil for a while. to sit there and feel and listen to the backside of another culture. what kind of word was that? culture. anyhow, it felt good.

  he drank 4 or 5 hours and nobody bothered him and he didn’t bother anybody and he left a bit loaded and went up to his room, pulled up the shade, stared out at the Mexican moon, stretched, felt fairly damn well decent about everything, and slept ...

  Dan found a cafe the next morning where he could get ham and eggs, refried beans. the ham was tough, the eggs – straight-up – burned around the edges, and the coffee was bad. but he liked it. the place was empty. and the waitress was fat and stupid as a roach, unthinking – she’d never had a toothache, she’d never been constipated even, she never thought about death and only a little about life. he had another coffee and smoked a sugar-sweet Mexican cigarette. Mexican cigarettes burned differently – they burned hot as if they were alive.

  it was only around noon and really too early to start at the bar but they didn’t run until Saturday and he didn’t have a typer. he had to write straight off the typer. he couldn’t write with a pencil or pen. he liked the machinegun sound of the typer. it helped the writing.

  Skorski walked back to the same bar. the Mexican music was playing. the same four or 5 guys seemed to be sitting there. the bartender came up with the tequila. he seemed kinder than the day before. maybe these 4 or 5 guys had a story to tell. Dan remembered sitting around the black bars on Central Ave., alone, long before being pro-black became the intellectual thing to do, became the con-game. and talking to them and coming away short because they talked and thought just like white men – materialistic, very. and he’d fallen drunk across their tables and they hadn’t murdered him when he really wanted to be murdered, when death was the only place to go.

  now there was this. Mexico.

  he got drunk early and began loading his coins into the juke, playing Mexican music. he didn’t understand most of it. it seemed to have the same sing-song Romantic jive-shit sleep-toll imbedded within it.

  getting bored, he asked for a woman. she came and sat next to him. a little older than he had expected. she had a gold tooth in the center of her mouth and he had absolutely no desire, no desire, to fuck her. he gave her $5 and told her, he thought, in a very kind way to go away. she want away.

  more tequila. the five guys and the bartender sat and watched him. he must get at their souls! they must have souls. how could they lay back like that? like inside of cocoons? or flies on a window-ledge circling in a 4 p.m. lazy sun?

  Skorski got up and placed some more coins within the juke.

  then he left his seat and began to dance. they laughed and shouted. it was encouraging. some life in this place at last!

  Dan kept loading the juke and dancing. soon they stopped shouting and laughing and only watched him, silently. he ordered tequila after tequila, he bought drinks for the 5 silent ones, he bought drinks for the bartender as the sun went down, as night began to crawl like a wet dirty cat across the soul of Tijuana, Dan danced. on and on he danced. out of his wig, sure. but it was perfect. the breakthru. at last. it was Central Ave. all over again in 1955. he was perfect. he was always there first before the crowds and the opportunists came along to fuck it up.

  he even fought a bull with a chair and the bartender’s bar rag ...

  Dan Skorski awakened in the public park, the plaza, sitting on a bench. he noticed the sun first. that was good. then he noticed the glasses on his head. they were hanging by one ear. and one of the circles of glass had been punched out of the holder, it just hung to a rim by a small thread. as he reached out to touch it, the touch of his hand caused the thread to break and the glass fell, the glass fell, after hanging on all night, it fell to the cement and broke.

  Dan took the remainder of the glasses off, put them in his front shirt pocket. then came the next move which he KNEW would be useless, useless, useless ... but he HAD to make it, to find out, finally ...

  he reached for his wallet.

  there was nothing there. his whole bankroll had been in there.

  a pigeon walked so idly past his feet. he always hated the way the neck worked on those fuckers. stupidity. like stupid wives and stupid bosses and stupid presidents and stupid Christs.

  and there was a stupid story he’d never be able to tell them. the night he was drunk and lived in this neighborhood where they had THE PURPLE LIGHT. they had this little glass cubicle and in the middle of this garden of flowers stood this life-sized Christ, looking a bit sad and a bit seedy, looking downward upon his toes ... THE PURPLE LIGHT SHINED UPON HIM.

  it bugged Dan. finally, one night quite a bit drunk, the old ladies sitting around in the garden, looking at their purple Christ, Skorski had entered drunk. and began working, trying to get Christ out of his plastic cage. but it was difficult. then a man ran out.

  “sir! what are you trying to do?”

  “...jus’ tryin’ ta free this muthafucka from his cage! ya mind?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we have called the police ...”

  “the police?”

  Skorski had dropped Christ and run off.

  all the way down to the Mexican plaza of nowhere.

  there was a young boy tapping his knee. a young boy all dressed in white. beautiful eyes. he’d never seen such beautiful eyes.

  “you wanna fuck my seester?” asked the boy. “12 years old.”

  “no, no, not really, not today.”

  the little boy walked off genuinely sad, head hanging. he’d failed. Dan felt the sadness for him.

  then he got up and walked out of the plaza. but not North toward the land of Freedom. but South. deeper into Mexico.

  some small boys, when he passed through a back muddy alley to somewhere, threw stones at him.

  but it didn’t matter. at least, this time, he had shoes on.

  and what he wanted was what they would give him.

  and what they would give him was what he wanted.

  it was all in the hands of the idiots.

  passing through one small town, walking, halfway to Mexico City, they say he looked almost like a purple Christ, well, he was BLUE anyhow, which is getting close.

  then they never saw him again.

  which means, maybe he should have never drank those cocktails so fast in New York City.

  or maybe he should have.

  TOO SENSITIVE

  “show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually dirty kitchen, and 5 times out of 9 I’ll show you an exceptional man.”

  –Charles Bukowski, 6-27-67, over 19th bottle of beer.

  “show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I’ll show you a man with detesta
ble spiritual qualities.”

  –Charles Bukowski, 6-27-67, over 20th bottle of beer.

  often, the state of the kitchen is the state of the mind, confused and unsure men, pliable men are the thinkers. their kitchens are like their minds, cluttered with garbage, dirty ware, impurity, but they are aware of their mind-state and find some humor in it. at times, with a violent burst of fire they defy the eternal deities and come up with a lot of shining that we sometimes call creation; just as at times they will get half drunk and clean up their kitchens. but soon again all falls into disorder and they are in the darkness again, in need of BABO, pills, prayer, sex, luck and salvation. the man with the ever-orderly kitchen is the freak, however. beware of him. his kitchen-state is his mind-state: all in order, settled, he has let life condition him quickly to a basened and hardened complex of defensive and soothing thought-order. if you listen to him for ten minutes you will know that anything he says in a lifetime will be essentially meaningless and always dull. he is a cement man. there are more cement men than other kinds of men. so if you are looking for a living man, first check his kitchen and save yourself time.

  now, the female with the dirty kitchen is another matter – from the male viewpoint. if she is not employed elsewhere and is childless, the cleanliness or dirtyness of her kitchen is almost always (exceptions be granted) in direct ratio to how much she cares for you. some women have theories on how to save the world but can’t wash out a coffee cup. if you mention this to them, they will tell you: “washing out coffee cups is not important.” unfortunately, it is. especially to a man who has put in 8 hours straight plus 2 overtime on a turret lathe. you begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

  there are good women in the world, I’ve even met one or 2. then, there’s the other kind, at one time the god damned job was killing me so much that at the end of 8 hours or 12 hours, my whole body would be stiffened into one board of pain. I say “board” because that is the only way that I can think of it. I mean, that at the end of the night I couldn’t even put on my coat. it was impossible to lift my arms and place them into the sleeves. the pain was too great and the arm could not be lifted that much. any movement at all would cause these red light horror yak explosions of running pain, like insanity. at this time I had run into a series of traffic tickets, most of them at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. in the morning. on the way home from work, this particular night, trying to protect myself from small technicalities, I attempted to stick out my left arm to indicate a left turn. my blinkers no longer worked, since I had once ripped the whole blinker stick off the wheel while drunk, so I tried to stick out my left arm. I just managed to get my wrist to the window and stick out one little finger. my arm would not lift any more and the pain was ridiculous, so ridiculous that I began to laugh, it seemed funny as hell, that little finger sticking out in obedience to Los Angeles’ finest, the night black and empty, nobody around, and me making that chickenshit failing signal to a halfwind. the laughter came and I almost crashed into a parked car while steering, laughing, trying to make it with the other lousy arm. I made it on in. parked, somehow, got key in door and entered my place. ah. home!

  there she was in bed, eating chocolates (really!) and going through the New Yorker and the Saturday Review of Literature. it was around Wednesday or Thursday and the Sunday papers were still on the front room floor. I was too tired to eat and I filled the tub only half full so I would not drown. (it is better to choose your time than to have it chosen for you.)

  after clambering out of the damned tub inch by inch like a misplaced centipede I made my way to the kitchen in order to attempt to drink a glass of water, the sink was stopped up. grey and stinking water came to the edge; I gagged. undumped garbage was everywhere. and this woman had some type of hobby of saving empty jars and jar lids. and floating in the water, among the dishes and etc. were these half-filled jars and lids in a kind of gentle and unreasoning mockery of everything.

  I washed out a glass and drank some water. then I made my way to the bedroom. you will never know what agony it was to get my body from standing position to the flat position upon the bed. the only way out was not to move, and so there I stayed still like a frozen dumb stupid fucking fish. I heard her pages turning, and wanting to make some human contact, I essayed forth a question:

  “well, how did it go at the poetry workshop tonight?”

  “oh, I’m worried about Benny Adimson,” she answered.

  “Benny Adimson?”

  “yes, he’s the one who writes these funny stories about the Catholic church. he makes everybody laugh. he’s never been published except once in a Canadian magazine, and he doesn’t send his stuff out anymore. I don’t think the magazines are ready for him. but he’s really funny, he makes us all laugh.”

  “what’s his problem?”

  “well, he lost his job on the delivery truck. I spoke to him outside the church before the reading began. he says he just can’t write when he doesn’t have a job. he needs to have a job in order to write.”

  “that’s funny,” I said, “I did some of my best writing when I wasn’t working. when I was starving to death.”

  “but Benny Adimson,” she answered, “Benny Adimson just doesn’t write about HIMSELF! he writes about OTHER people.”

  “oh.”

  I decided to forget it. I knew that it would be at least 3 hours before I could go to sleep. by then, some of the pains would run out of the bottom of the mattress. and soon it would be time to get up and go back to the same place. I heard her turn some pages of the New Yorker. I felt badly but decided that there WERE other ways of thinking. maybe the poetry workshop did have some writers in it; it was unlikely but it COULD happen.

  I waited for my body to untie. I heard another page turn, a chocolate being taken from its wrapper. then she spoke again:

  “yes, Benny Adimson needs a job, he needs some base to work from. we are all trying to encourage him to submit to magazines. I do wish you could read his anti-Catholic stories. he used to be a Catholic once, you know.”

  “no, I didn’t know.”

  “but he needs a job. we are all trying to find him a job so he can be able to write.”

  there was a space of silence. frankly, I wasn’t even thinking of Benny Adimson and his problem. then I tried to think of Benny Adimson and his problem.

  “listen,” I said, “I can solve Benny Adimson’s problem.”

  “YOU can?”

  “yeh.”

  “what is it?”

  “they’re hiring down at the postofflce. they’re hiring right and left. he can probably get on tomorrow morning. then he will be able to write.”

  “the postoffice?”

  “yeh.”

  another page turned. then she spoke:

  “Benny Adimson is too SENSITIVE to work at the post-office!”

  “oh.”

  I listened but didn’t hear either pages or chocolates. she was very interested at the time in some short story writer called Choates or Coates or Chaos or something, who wrote deliberately dull prose that filled the long columns between the liquor and steamship ads with yawns and then always ended up like with say this guy with a complete collection of Verdi and a bacardi hangover murdering a little 3 year old girl in blue jumpers in some dirty New York alley at 4:13 in the afternoon. this was the New Yorker’s editors balling and subnormal idea of avant-garde sophistication – meaning death always wins and that there’s dirt under our fingernails. this was all done once and better 50 years ago by somebody called Ivan Bunin in something called The Gentleman from San Francisco. since the death of Thurber the New Yorker has been wandering like a dead bat among the ice-cave hangovers of the Chinese red guard. meaning, they’ve had it.

  “good night,” I said to her.

  there was a long pause. then she decided to give me the difference.

  “good night,” she finally said.

  with the blue screams strumming their banjos, but wi
thout a sound, I turned, (a good five minutes work) from back to belly, and waited for morning and another day.

  perhaps I have been unkind to this lady, perhaps I have wandered from kitchens to vindictiveness. there is a lot of snot in each of our souls, and plenty in mine. and I become mixed-up on kitchens, mixed-up on most. the lady I have mentioned has very much courage in many ways. it was just not a very good night for her or for me either.

  and I hope that that mother with his anti-Catholic stories and his worries has found a job to suit his sensitivities and that we will all be rewarded with his un-submitted (except for Canada) genius.

  meanwhile, I write about myself and drink too much.

  but you know that.

  RAPE! RAPE!

  The doctor was giving me some kind of test. It consisted of a triple blood withdrawal – the 2nd ten minutes after the first, the 3rd 15 minutes later. The doctor had made the first two withdrawals and I was out walking around the street waiting for the 15 minutes to go back. As I stood on the street, I noticed a woman sitting on the bus stop across the street. Out of all the millions of women, now and then you see one that brings it all out of you. There is something about the shape of them, the way they are hung together, a special dress that they are wearing, something about them that you cannot overcome. She had her legs crossed high and was wearing a bright yellow dress. The legs tapered into thin delicate ankles, but she had plenty of good calf and fine upper haunches and thighs. Her face had this playful look about it, as if she were laughing at me but trying to conceal it.

  I went down to the signal, then crossed the street. I walked toward her on that bus-stop bench. I was in a trance. I had no control. As I got near she stood up and walked down the street. Those buttocks charmed me out of my senses. I walked along behind her listening to her heels click, my eyes eating her body.