“oh.”
they were racing at night and I was hoping to make the first post, 7:30 p.m., I needed the money and was going good, but it also took me about an hour before the races to set up my plays, that meant I had to have 6:30. rain, dark rain, failure. on the 13th, rent. on the 14th, child support, on the 15th. car payment. I had to have the horses; without them, I might as well toss in. I don’t know how the hell anybody ever made it. well, shit. while waiting I walked over to the store and bought 4 pairs of shorts for $5. got back, threw them in the trunk, locked the trunk, jesus christ, found out I only had ONE key to the trunk! no good for a neurotic. I walked toward the keyman’s shack. almost got run over by a woman backing out. I stuck my head in the window and stared at her legs, she had purple garters and very white flesh: “watch out where you are going,” I said to her legs, “you damn near killed me!” I never saw her face. I pulled my head out and walked to the keyman’s shack. got another key made. while I was paying, an old woman ran up. “hey, I’m blocked in by a truck! I can’t get out!”
“well, that’s no hair of mine,” said the keyman.
she was just too old. flat shoes. insane look in eye. big flat false teeth. skirt halfway to ankles. love, love, love your grandmother’s warts.
she looked at me, “what’ll I do, Mr.?”
“try Kool-ade,” I said and walked off. maybe 20 years ago. well, I had my little key. it was still raining. I was standing trying to fit the key on the keyring when this one came out in miniskirt with umbrella. now with a miniskirt you’re supposed to wear these special sexless stockings, netted thick shit, or stocking panties with panty petticoat crap dangling sickly; but this one was dressed old-style – high heels, long nylon stockings, the mini way up around her butt, and she was built. christ, everybody looked, it was walking mad sex on the loose, my hand trembled on the keyring and I stared in the rain and she walked slowly toward me, smiling. I ran around the corner with the keyring. I wanna see that ass go by, I thought. but the ass turned the corner and walked past me, slowly, voluting, voluting, young, asking for it. a well-dressed guy ran up behind her. called her by name. “oh, I’m so glad to see you!” he said. he talked and talked and she smiled. “well, I hope you have a good time tonight!” she said. he was dropping her? the guy was sick. I got the key on the keyring and followed her into the grocery store. I watched her wobbling and wobbling right there in the market and men turned their heads and said, “Jesus, look at that!”
I walked up to the butcher counter and took a number. I needed meat. while I was waiting I saw her come back. then she leaned against the wall and stood there, 15 feet off, looking at me and smiling. I looked down in my hand. I was #92. there she was. she was looking at me. man of the world. something went out of me. maybe she’s got a big pussy, I thought. she kept looking and smiling. she had a nice face, almost beautiful. but I’ve got to make the first post, 7:30 p.m. rent the 13th, child support the 14th, car payment the 15th, 4 pairs of shorts $5, wheel alignment, first post first post, #92, YOU’RE AFRAID OF HER, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO, HOW TO ACT, MAN OF THE WORLD, YOU ARE AFRAID, YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS, BUT WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE IN A BUTCHERSHOP? and it’ll be trouble. she’ll be insane, you know that. she’ll want to move in. she’ll snore at night, throw newspapers in the toilet, want to be fucked 8 times a week. god, it’s too much, no no no no no, I’ve got to make that first post.
she read me. she read that I was chickenshit. suddenly she walked on past. 68 men stared and had dreams of glory. I passed. old. I was. on the dumpheap. she had wanted me. go play your horses, old man. go buy your meat, #92.
“#92,” the butcher said and I got a pound of groundround, a small t-bone and a cube steak. wrap that around your dick, old man.
I walked out in the rain and back to my car, opened the trunk, threw the meat in and stood back against the wall, looking worldly, smoking a cigarette, waiting for them to run it up the rack, waiting for the first post, but I knew that I had failed, failed an easy one, failed a good one, a gift from the heavens on a shit rainy day, Los Angeles, a Friday going into evening, the cars still going by with wipers going going going, no faces behind the glass, and me, Bogart, me, the one who has lived, crouched up against that wall, asshole, rounded shoulders, the Benedictine monks laughing wildly as they drank their wine, all the monkeys scratching, the rabbis blessing pickles and weenies; the man of action – Bogart, leaning on a Biers-Sobuck wall, no fuck, no guts, it rained it rained it rained, I’ll take Lumber King in the first and parlay it to Wee Herb; and a mechanic came and got it and ran it up the rack and I looked at the clock – 5:30, it was going to be close, but somehow it didn’t matter so much anymore. I threw the cigarette out in front of me and stared at it. the red glow stared back. then the rain put it out and I walked around the corner looking for a bar.
NIGHT STREETS OF MADNESS
the kid and I were the last of a drunken party at my place, and we were sitting there when somebody outside began blowing a car horn, loud LOUD LOUD it was, oh sing loude, but then everything is axed through the head anyway. the world is done, so I just sat there with my drink, smoking a cigar, thinking of nothing – the poets were gone, the poets with their ladies were gone, it was fairly pleasant even with the horn going. a comparison. the poets had each accused each other of various treacheries, of bad writing, of having slipped; meanwhile, each of them claiming they deserved better recognition, that they wrote better than so and so and so forth. I told them all that they needed 2 years in the coal mines or the steel mills, but on they chattered, finky, precious, barbaric, and most of them rotten writers. now they were gone. the cigar was good. the kid sat there. I had just written a foreword to his second book of poems. or his first? well.
“listen,” said the kid, “let’s go out there and tell them to fuck-off. tell him to jam that horn up his ass.”
the kid wasn’t a bad writer, and he had the ability to laugh at himself, which is sometimes a sign of greatness, or at least a sign that you have a chance to end up being something else besides a stuffed literary turd. the world was full of stuffed literary turds talking about the time they met Pound at Spoleto or Edmund Wilson in Boston or Dali in his underwear or Lowell in his garden; sitting there in their tiny bathrobes, letting you have it, and NOW you were talking to THEM, ah, you see. “... the last time I saw Burroughs ...” “Jimmy Baldwin, jesus, he was drunk, we had to trot him out on the stage and lean him on the mike ...”
“let’s go out there and tell them to jam that horn up their ass,” said the kid, influenced by the Bukowski myth (I am really a coward), and the Hemingway thing and Humphrey B. and Eliot with his panties rolled. well. I puffed on my cigar. the horn went on. LOUDE SING KUKOOO.
“the horn’s all right. never go out on the street after you’ve been drinking 5 or 6 or 8 or ten hours. they have cages ready for the likes of us. I don’t think I could take another cage, not one more god damned cage of theirs. I build enough of my own.”
“I’m going out to tell them to shove it,” said the kid.
the kid was under the superman influence, Man and Superman. he liked huge men, tough and murderous, 6-4, 300 pounds, who wrote immortal poetry. the trouble was the big boys were all subnormal and it was the dainty little queers with the fingernail polish on who write the tough-boy poems. the only guy who fit the kid’s hero-mold was big John Thomas and big John Thomas always acted as if the kid weren’t there. the kid was Jewish and big John Thomas had the mainline to Adolph. I liked them both and I don’t like very many people.
“listen,” said the kid, “I am going to tell them to jam it.”
oh my god, the kid was big but a little on the fat side, he hadn’t missed too many meals, but he was easy inside, kind inside, scared and worried and a little crazy like the rest of us, none of us made it, finally, and I said, “kid, forget the horn. it doesn’t sound like a man blowing anyhow. it sounds like a woman. a man will stop and start with a horn, make musical threats out of it. a woman just le
ans on it. the total sound, one big female neurosis.”
“fuck it!” said the kid. he ran out the door.
what does this have to do with anything? I thought. what does it matter? people keep making moves that don’t count. when you make a move, everything must be mathematically set. that’s what Hem learned at the bullfights and put to work in his work. that’s what I learn at the track and put to work in my life. good old Hem and Buk.
“hello, Hem? Buk calling.”
“oh, Buk, so glad you called.”
“thought I’d drop over for a drink.”
“oh, I’d love it, kid, but you see, my god, you might say I’m kinda out of town right now.”
“but why’d you do it, Ernie?”
“you’ve read the books. they claim I was crazy, imagining things. in and out of the bughouse. they say I imagined the phone was tapped, that I imagined the C.I.A. was on my ass, that I was being tailed and watched. you know, I wasn’t really political but I always fucked with the left. the Spanish war, all that crap.”
“yeah, most of you literary guys lean left. it seems Romantic, but it can turn into a hell of a trap.”
“I know. but really, I had this hell of a hangover, and I knew I had slipped, and when they believed in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, I knew that the world was rotten.”
“I know. you went back to your early style. but it wasn’t real.”
“I know it wasn’t real. and I got the PRIZE. and the tail on me. old age on me. sitting around drinking like an old fuck, telling stale stories to anybody who would listen. I had to blow my brains out.”
“o.k., Ernie, see you later.”
“all right, I know you will, Buk.”
he hung up. and how.
I went outside to check on the kid.
it was an old woman in a new ’69 car. she kept leaning on the horn. she didn’t have any legs. any breasts. any brain. just a ’69 car and indignation, great and total indignation. a car was blocking her driveway. she had her own home. I lived in one of the last slum courts on DeLongpre. someday the landlord would sell it for a tremendous sum and I would be bulldozed out. too bad. I threw parties that lasted until the sun came up, ran the typer day and night. a madman lived in the next court. everything was sweet. one block North and ten blocks West I could walk along a sidewalk that had footprints of STARS upon it. I don’t know what the names mean. I don’t hit the movies. don’t have a t.v. when my radio stopped playing I threw it out the window. drunk. me, not the radio. there is a big hole in one of my windows. I forgot the screen was there. I had to open the screen and drop the radio out. later, whilst I was drunken barefoot my foot (left) picked up all the glass, and the doctor while slitting my foot open without benefit of a shot, probing for ballsy glass, asked me, “listen, do you ever walk around not quite knowing what you are doing?”
“most of the time, baby.”
then he gave me a big cut that wasn’t needed.
I gripped the sides of the table and said, “yes, Doctor.”
then he became more kindly. why should doctors be better than I am? I don’t understand it. the old medicine man gimmick.
so there I was out on the street, Charles Bukowski, friend of Hemingway, Ernie, I have never read DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON. where do I get a copy?
the kid said to the crazy woman in the car, who was only demanding respectful and stupid property rights, “we’ll move the car, we’ll push it out of the way.”
the kid was talking for me too. now that I had written his foreword, he owned me.
“look, kid, there’s no place to push the car. and I really don’t care. I’m going in for a drink.” it was just beginning to rain. I have a most delicate skin, like an alligator, and soul to match. I walked off. shit, I’d had enough wars.
I walked off and then just as I about got to my front court hole, I heard screaming voices. I turned.
then we had this. a thin kid, insane, in white t-shirt screaming at the fat Jewish poet I had just written a foreword to poems for. what had the white t-shirt to do with it? the white t-shirt pushed against my semi-immortal poet. he pushed hard. the crazy old woman kept leaning against the car horn.
Bukowski, should you test your left hook again? you swing like the old barn door and only win one fight out of ten. when was the last fight you won, Bukowski? you should be wearing women’s panties.
well, hell, with a record like yours, one more loss won’t be any big shame.
I started to move forward to help the Jewish kid poet but I saw he had white t-shirt backing up. then out of the 20 million dollar highrise next to my slum hole, here came a young woman running. I watched the cheeks of her ass wobble in the fake Hollywood moonlight.
girl, I could show you something you will, would never forget – a solid 3 and one quarter inches of hobbling throbbing cock, oh my, but she never gave me a chance, she asshole-wobbling ran to her little 68 Fiaria or however you spell it, and got in, pussy dying for my poetic soul, and she got in, started the thing, got it out of the driveway, almost ran me over, me Bukowski, BUKOWSKI, ummm, and ran the thing into the underground parking lot of the 20 million buck highrise. why hadn’t she parked there to begin with? well.
the guy in the white t-shirt is still wobbling around insane, my Jewish poet has moved back to my side there in the Hollywood moonlight, which was like stinking dishwater spilling over us all, suicide is so difficult, maybe our luck will change, there’s PENGUIN coming up, Norse-Bukowski-Lamantia ... what?
now, now, the woman has her clearance for her driveway but she can’t make it in. she doesn’t even angle her car properly. she keeps backing up and ramming a white delivery truck in front of her. there go the taillights on first shot. she backs up. hits the gas. there goes half a back door. she backs up. hits the gas. there goes all the fender and half the left side, no the right side, that’s it the right side. nothing adds. the driveway is clear.
Bukowski-Norse-Lamantia. Penguin books. it’s a damn good thing for those other two guys that I am in there.
again chickenshit steel mashing against steel. and in between she’s leaning on the horn. white t-shirt dangling in the moonlight, raving.
“what’s going on?” I asked the kid.
“I dunno,” he finally admitted.
“you’ll make a good rabbi some day but you should understand all this.”
the kid is studying to be a rabbi.
“I don’t understand it,” he said.
“I need a drink” I said. “if John Thomas were here he’d murder them all. but I ain’t John Thomas.”
I was just about to leave, the woman just kept on ramming the white pickup truck to pieces, I was just about to leave when an old man in a floppy brown overcoat and glasses, a real old guy, he was older than I, and that’s old, he came out and confronted the kid in the white t-shirt. confronted? that’s the right word ain’t it?
anyhow, as they say, the old guy with glasses and floppy brown overcoat runs out with this big can of green paint, it must have been at least a gallon or 5 gallons, I don’t know what it means, I have completely lost the plot or the meaning, if there ever was any in the first place, and the old man throws the paint on the insane kid in the white t-shirt circling around on DeLongpre ave. in the chickenshit Hollywood moonlight, and most of it misses him and some of it gets him, mostly where his heart used to be, a smash of green along the white, and it happens fast, like things happen fast, almost quicker than the eye or the pulse can add up, and that’s why you get such divergent accounts of any action, riot or fist fight or anything, the eye and the soul can’t keep up with the frustrating animal ACTION, but I saw the old man go down, fall, I think the first was a push, but I know that the second wasn’t. the woman in the car stopped ramming and honking and just sat there screaming, screaming, one total pitch of scream that meant the same thing as her leaning on the honker, she was dead and finished forever in a ’69 car and she couldn’t fathom it, she was hooked and broken, thrown away, and some small touc
h inside of her still realized this – nobody ever finally loses their soul – they only piss away 99/100ths of it.
white t-shirt landed good on the old man on the second shot. broke his glasses. left him flopping and floundering in his old brown overcoat. the old man got up and the kid gave him another shot, knocked him down, hit him again as he got halfass up, the kid in the white t was having a good time of it.
the young poet said to me, “JESUS! LOOK WHAT HE’S DOING TO THE OLD MAN!”
“umm, very interesting,” I said, wishing I had a drink or a smoke at least.
I walked off back toward my place. then I saw the squad car and moved a bit faster. the kid followed me in.
“why don’t we go back out there and tell them what happened?”
“because nothing happened except that everybody has been driven insane and stupid by life. in this society there are only two things that count: don’t be caught without money and don’t get caught high on any kind of high.”
“but he shouldn’t have done that to the old man.”
“that’s what old men are for.”
“but what about justice?”
“but that is justice: the young whipping the old, the living whipping the dead. don’t you see?”
“but you say these things and you’re old.”
“I know, let’s step inside.”
I brought out some more beer and we sat there. through the walls you could hear the radio of the stupid squad car. 2 twentytwo year old kids with guns and clubs were going to be the immediate decision-makers upon 2,000 years of idiotic, homosexual, sadistic Christianity.
no wonder they felt good in their smooth and well-fed stretched black, most policemen being lower-middle class servants given a steak in the frying pan and a wife with halfway decent ass and legs, and a little quiet home in Shitland – they’d kill you to prove Los Angeles was right, we’re taking you in, sir, so sorry, sir, but we’ve got to do this, sir.
Tales of Ordinary Madness Page 17
