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TALES

A Dollar for Carl Larsen

dedicated to Carl Larsen

owed to Carl Larsen

paid to Carl Larsen

. . . it was a lazy day and a lousy day to work, and it seemed that even spiders hadn’t thrown out their webs. And when I got to the railroad yards I found out that Henderson was the new foreman.

The old Mexican, Al or Abe or somebody had retired or died or gone insane. The boys were matching pennies down by the barn when Henderson called me over.

“Gaines,” he said, “Gaines, I understand you’re somewhat of a playboy. Well, that’s all right. I don’t mind a little horseplay now and then, but we’ll get our work done first and then we’ll play.”

“Just like recess at school, eh, coach?”

Henderson put his face real close to mine. I put mine real close to his.

“Or haven’t you been to school, Hendy?”

I could look right down into his red mouth and his frog jaws as he spoke: “I can tie the can to you, boy.”

“Proving what?” I asked.

“Proving you are out of position.”

Which was a pretty good answer, and a pretty good criticism: I was always out of position.

I took a nickel out of my pocket and flipped it to the cement where the boys were lagging to the line. They stood back stunned, looking from the nickel to me. I turned and walked the hell out of there.

II

I lay up in my room and studied the Racing Form for a couple of hours and knocked off half a bottle of leftover wine. Then I got into my ’38 Ford and headed for the track. . . .

I wrote the morning line down on my program and walked over to the bar where I noticed a big blonde about 35, and alone—well, about as alone as a big babe like that can get in amongst 8,000 men. She was trying her damnedest to burst and pop out of her clothes, and you stood there watching her, wondering which part would pop out first. It was sheer madness, and every time she moved you could feel the electricity running up the steel girders. And perched on top of all this madness was a face that really had some type of royalty in it. I mean, there was a kind of stateliness, like she’d lived beyond it all. I mean, there were some women who could simply make damned fools out of men without making any type of statement, or movement, or demand—they could simply stand there and the men would simply feel like damned fools and that was all there was to it. This was one of those women.

I looked up from my drink as if it didn’t matter and as if she were anybody else, and as if I were a pretty jaded type (which, to tell the truth, I was) and said, “How you been doin’ . . . with the ponies, I mean?”

“All right,” she said.

I’d expected something else. I don’t know what. But the “all right” sounded good, though.

I was about half-gone on the wine and felt I owned the world, including the blonde.

“I used to be a jockey,” I told her.

“You’re pretty big for a jock.”

“210, solid muscle,” I said.

“And belly,” she said, looking right above my belt.

We both kinda laughed and I moved closer.

“You want the winner of the first race? To kinda start you off right?”

“Sure,” she said, “sure,” and I just felt that big hip-flank touch the upper side of my leg a moment and I felt on fire.

I smelled perfume, and imagined waterfalls and forests and throwing scraps to fine dogs, and furniture soft as clouds and never awakening to an alarm clock.

I drained my drink. “Try six,” I said. “Number six: Cat’shead.”

“Cat’shead?”

Just then somebody tapped me. I should say—rapped me on the back of one of my shoulder blades.

“Boy,” this voice said, “get lost!”

I stared down into my drink waiting for her to send this stranger away.

“I said,” the voice got a little louder, “run along and play with your marbles!”

As I stared down into my drink I realized it was empty.

“I don’t like to play marbles,” I told the voice.

I motioned to the bartender. “Two more—for the lady and myself.”

I felt it in my back then: the sure, superior nudge of a peerless and no doubt highly efficient automatic.

“Learn,” said the voice, “learn to like to play marbles!”

“I’m going right away,” I said. “I brought my agate. I hear there’s a big game under the grandstand.”

I turned and caught a look at him as he slid into my seat, and I’d always thought I was the meanest-looking son of a bitch in the world.

“Tommy,” I heard her tell him, “I want you to play a hundred on the nose for me.”

“Sure. On who?”

“Number six.”

“Number SIX??”

“Yes: six.”

“But that stiff is 10 to 1!”

“Play it.”

“O.K., baby, O.K., but . . .”

“Play it.”

“Can I finish my drink?”

“Sure.”

I walked over to the two-dollar win window.

“Number six,” I said, “once.”

It was my last two dollars. . . .

Six paid $23.40.

I watched my horse go down into the Winner’s Circle like I do all my winners, and I felt as proud of him as if I had ridden him or raised him. I felt like cheering and telling everybody he was the greatest horse that had ever lived, and I felt like reaching out and grabbing him around the neck, even though I was two or three hundred feet away.

But I lit a cigarette and pretended I was bored. . . .

Then I headed back to the bar, kind of to see how she took it, intending to stay pretty far away. But they weren’t there.

I ordered a double backed by a beer, drank both, ordered up again and drank at leisure, studying the next race. When the five-minute warning blew, they still hadn’t shown and I went off to place my bet.

I blew it. I blew them all. They never showed. At the end of the last race I had 35 cents, a 1938 Ford, about two gallons of gas, and one night’s rent left.

I went into the men’s room and stared at my face in disgust. I looked like I knew something, but it was a lie, I was a fake and there’s nothing worse in the world than when a man suddenly realizes and admits to himself that he’s a phony, after spending all that time up to then trying to convince himself that he wasn’t. I noticed all the sinks and pipes and bowls and I felt like them, worse than them: I’d rather be them.

I swung out the door feeling like a hare or a tortoise or something, or somebody needing a good bath, and then I felt her swinging against me like the good part of myself suddenly coming back with a rush. I noticed how green her dress was, and I didn’t care what happened: seeing her again had made it O.K.

“Where’ve you been?” she said hurriedly. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

“What the hell is this?” I started to say, “I’ve been looking—”

“Here comes Tommy!” she halted me, and then I felt something in my hand and then she walked out, carefully, slowly to meet him. I jammed whatever it was into my pocket and walked out toward the parking lot. I got into my car, lit my next-to-last cigarette, leaned back and dropped my hand into my pocket.

I unfolded five one hundred dollar bills, one fifty, two tens, and a five. “Your half,” the note said, “with thanks.” “Nicki.” And then I saw the phone number.

I sat there and watched all the cars leave, I sat there and watched the sun completely disappear; I sat there and watched a man change a flat tire, and then I drove out of there slowly, like an old man, letting it hit me, inch by inch, and scared to death I’d run somebody over or be unable to stop for a red light. Then I thought about the nickel I’d thrown away and I started to laugh like crazy. I laughed so hard I had to park the car. And when the guy who’d changed his flat came by I saw his white blob of a face staring and I had to begin all over again. I even honked my horn and hollered at him.

Poor devil: he had no soul.

Like me and one or two others. I thought about Carl Larsen down at the beach rubbing the sand from between his toes and drinking stale beer with Curtis Zahn and J.B. May. I thought about the dollar I owed Larsen. I thought maybe I’d better pay it. He might tell J.B.

Unpublished

Hell Yes, the Hydrogen Bomb

He felt tremendously bored and disgusted; his back ached from being in bed all morning. He folded the paper and threw it into the cubbyhole behind his desk. He tried the second best thing: he got up and opened all the drawers, took the papers out, and spread them on the bed. Sometimes on things you started and couldn’t finish, sometimes you took two or three things like that, put them together, and by knocking off the edges you could get an unusual story—they’d never know, they’d think it was the same thing straight through. As long as the lines had blood in them. . . . Sometimes you could take all the lines that had blood in them . . . or you could get away from subjectiveness by making the musician a barber, and your lines of bemoaning would be forgiven because they’d think it was he instead of you.

He lit a cigarette and began to read the various sheets. There were dozens of them—wild scrawlings, neat printing, pencil, ink—and he’d forgotten most of them, and reading them again, there was something hellishly funny in them—one grows, you know, gets over extravagances. The drawers were always full because he was afraid to throw the stuff into the wastebaskets, and when he did, he tore the papers into very small sections and then swirled them all around with his hands:

. . . there’s no telling when something will break. You can’t believe the voices, or the faces of the voices . . .

. . . I said, automatic profusion

. . . I lit a cigarette but found it was an ember bud and threw it away.

. . . I cower before the look of eyes . . . this fat whore says, I’ve had nine glasses of port since this morning . . . the whore turns away, a little frozen . . . I shake my beer and look down into the glass . . . I phone my father from the Culver City Courthouse. I understand I am in the judge’s chambers. The operator gives me the wrong number. A well-dressed woman stares at me. My hands tremble. I have a three-day beard and a hole in my pants . . .

. . . sickened, in a rage . . . rattle of glass . . . water pouring . . . her cough . . . footsteps . . . winding clock . . . washing dishes . . . eating . . . frying things . . . opening, closing drawers . . . vacuuming . . . strange sound, like a spray . . . night . . . snoring . . . her goddamned room, her pot lids, her spoons . . . that doesn’t matter. She’ll be dead by the time they get there. I don’t want to wait till she’s asleep . . . this is a thing to be done now . . . Rain. It rains. You’ll see them hurrying in the rain . . .

. . . too often a brilliant mind makes a brilliant face, alas, alas. (These lines were underlined.)

. . . the guitar has been played too violently . . . lost another job drinking . . . 55 cents left . . . it’s snowing and the want ads look terrible . . . Christ!—to be a fat, rich bastard with bullfrog eyes! . . . end product of American industry: the dead end: fear. 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937 . . . fear, fear, fear! . . . everything (march, boys!) to the job: the body, the voice, the soul . . . this type and nothing else . . . a suggestion of weariness . . . Hell yes, the hydrogen bomb! Break the tables, as N. said . . .

. . . Saroyan . . . didn’t speak the truth . . . reason he didn’t burn his 500 books in a tub when he was freezing in San Francisco was not because he saw value in the cheapest, most false book, but because he was afraid the fire would make the room too damned smoky and the landlady would raise hell . . . if he had 500 books and did think of burning them . . .

. . . Christ, what time is it? My feet are asleep!

. . . Iron Curtain, politics in Art . . . I, and them, and all, at last with pinch-bud faces, lost count, seeking electric altogether . . . brain suspends spirit like a hoyden insect . . . when waitress drops a plate I cry . . .

. . . he’d evidently had an education of some sort, and when I saw him there eating, I walked over and sat down across from him, “What are you doing in a dump like this?” . . . frightened, wild, unsteady eyes . . .

. . . Say words. Volcano. Interim. Daze.

. . . Battle plans

Sat. Sun.—$1.33 peanut butter 4.50 rent

bread

knife

newspaper leave—3

Thurs.—Dishwashing, anything. Gloves—75 cents.

Suit $8.00—Food—carfare—if money comes, keep suit.

Nxt. Wk. Fri.—1.00 (save 12 cents)

Sat.—Try Harry’s credit

Sun.—Skip rent

Mon.—(Social sec.) get $20.00?

If not—finis

. . . drink goes well in novels . . . or in magazine advertisements . . . wrote home and asked his mother for money . . . stood before the mirror . . . posing wise and profligate— not quite bringing it off.

. . . too much electric altogether . . . hoyden insect . . . politics in Art . . . politics in Science . . . politics in breast-plate . . . asphalt, people, tracks . . . Eve’s infinite copulation . . . say that Birdie told you so.

. . . easy does it, Charles. I am bored, a little dull and rather dissatisfied altogether.

what the hell’s that noise?

a pipe

She always dreamed of lilies and loved Strauss (Blue Danube Strauss) quite so much

door slamming

feet, feet

how horrible, how mockingly

purposely horrible

I think

they enjoy it.

. . . Dear J—

I hate to be ridiculous—but could you loan me five bucks? I know this stuns you beyond measure—this encroachment, or what—but I’ve lost my job through drink, it’s the night before Thanksgiving, everything’s hocked and my landlady a pragmatic bitch.

I swear, sincerely, I’ll repay you when I get over the hump. Take a chance—the odds are good—and I’m really quite alone . . .

. . . he heard the voices downstairs, he heard the downstairs voices, he heard voices . . .

. . . Bar scene: a series of comments on . . . unfortunately . . . writers are mostly people with upper-strata jobs . . . English teachers . . . newspaper reporters . . . book reviewers . . . these people . . . attached to rather arched little physiognomies . . . brimstone eyes . . . or something . . . have a certain thing about them . . . sometimes claim they have washed dishes or boxed in the ring . . . generally it is a goddamned lie . . . and when they write their bar scenes . . . oh Jesus Christ! . . . few real men write . . . the living kills that . . .

. . . could try to escape by jumping from Russian trains . . . cold blood, areas of cold blood—rivers of dead, rivers . . . Karel Capek, Benedicite coeli Domino . . . today is a holiday of some sort. The people are singing and eating huge dinners.

. . . I got drunked-up and noticed a man next to me reading a sheet of music.

“Are you a music writer?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said . . .

. . . I’m done . . . through . . . botched it all up . . . Oh, if you could only know how terrible I feel . . . there are all these good people I hurt . . . good chances I’ve missed . . . chances, chances . . . little things, like Don putting the packages on my wrapping table—“Happy Birthday!”—and a little cake in there . . . and three cigars . . . Oh, I know this is wild, but it’s the way I feel inside . . . let me speak a while, Father, there is nobody outside, there is no line . . .

. . . I could hear my mother in the kitchen, but the bedroom door was closed and I got up on the chair and peeked through the hole in the shade. The excitement flushed through me fiercely. What a break, what a lucky break! Miss Philippe-Cret, the new roomer, was in the garden swing. Her dress was high over her knees and as she rocked back and forth in the swing, the crossed legs changed their pose and I could see flashes of upper leg, where the stocking ended and the flesh began. I stood peering, my body tense, aching with excitement . . .

. . . You tell me to go out and get a job . . . why goddamn you man . . . where have you been living . . . don’t you know when you’ve been drinking as long as I have you are just too goddamned nervous and frightened . . .

. . . he saw the sailors coming, five or six of them, wandering across the sidewalk, shouting, laughing over some ever-perpetual joke, mob-happy. He crossed to the other side of the street, but it was too late: there were whistles, shouts, as if to a passing girl, only with mocking intonations . . .

. . . Dear J—

Glad I’m not in L.A. now. Don’t think I could swallow the “New Man.” But I haven’t given up on you yet: you’re too inconsistent to maintain any attitudes for length . . . Political fervor is the blight of the young. History is too long— the tail swings the dog.

Well, bud, should you ever blow your top and throw in the towel as I have done, you are always welcome to join my troupe: voices out of air, worm’s-eye of death, stockings of steel, wax bullets, creosote dawns, eternal confusion.

So your old man goes to the opera? Well, there are a few good ones. Do you think he’s playing dilettante? I doubt if he amuses you as much as he irritates you. You laughter seems forced.

I’m still making plans to gorge myself on ancient literature, a study of the Harvard Classics—and so far, all I’ve read is a book on duck hunting. This, added to my former study on the operation of the mesocolon gives me a solid literary background . . .

There were more papers on the bed, but he didn’t read them. It wasn’t any good. Too disjointed. He went back to the desk, sat down, dipped his pen and wrote:

“A fit of terrible gloom came over him. It was Sunday, a cold, dark December Sunday and there wasn’t any heat in the room. One shade was down, the other up; the electric lights were on but the room was full of shadow. Newspapers were all over the floor, covered with shoeprints, dirt; an empty cracker box, an unmade bed, the immense tick of clock. It was too cold to go out, he was broke, two bottles (empty of whisky) stood on the dresser. All his clothing was hocked, and open on the table was the ‘Help Wanted’ section of the newspaper, three or four ads circled. His back ached, he was sick: the rent was due, and it was cold, very cold.

“If I ever get over this, he thought, I’ll save money. I’ll get a nice apartment with a refrigerator. I’ll cook, I’ll drink fruit juices, I’ll smoke a pipe, I’ll wear clean, bright sweaters and buy rare and unusual books . . .”

He wrote on and on, and on.

Quixote 19, Autumn 1958

Dialogue: Dead Man on the Fence

Scene: cheap room, South Hollywood, 3rd floor, half-empty wine bottle, 3 or 4 books: The Lives of the Composers, Jeno Barcsay’s Anatomy for the Artist, a watercolor painting “female figure” by Eric Heckel and another watercolor by Lee J. Wexler, 1952, a telephone, newspapers, correspondence, dirty stockings freckle the floor. The scene opens (and closes) in this room, between 2 writers, the first writer the owner (as long as the rent is paid) of the room and the second writer a visitor. . . .

Second writer (let’s call him Karl Thornton): I sold this movie script to a producer. He thinks it’s great. Can you imagine a surrealist Western? Can you imagine an abstract Western?

First writer (let’s call him Henry Knapp): I can’t imagine any kind of Western.

Karl: Now I’ve got this next one. It is about a bank holdup. I’ve got 4 boys from Oxford, suave, who pull the job. I need some wild dialogue, way out. They told me you were the boy to do it. I’ve seen your poetry. It’s the maddest thing since—since Rabelais shit on them and made them like it.

Henry: I know it sounds corny, but I cannot compromise.

Karl: That’s just the beauty of it. You don’t have to compromise! They don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I have a negro running through the fields with his pants down, screaming, “Kiss my black ass!” You see what I mean?

Henry: No.

Karl: By the way, how did you come out on, well, how did it work out?

Henry: You mean the love affair with the 20-year-old negress?

Karl: Yeah.

Henry: I guess I told you about her when I was under the influence of a few beers.

Karl: You were drunk, man, plenty drunk.

Henry: (Pouring wine all around, draining his glass) Well, she was only 20, and she was black, and she was the one who was frightened, not the whites but the blacks who would condone her for her act. Actually, and without being conceited, I think she cared, but not enough. None of them care enough—black or white.

Karl: You’ve had more damned affairs than a man of your age deserves.

Henry: Hold it, daddy, I’m 40, but I’m dying. You want some laughs?

Karl: I’d rather have a Hollywood script.

Henry: Well, this isn’t Hollywood, it’s life: for a short period, I was married to a semi-millionaire’s daughter and I dabbled in her so-called magazine literary. And here came these sexy poems: YOU HAVE RUINED MY VAGINA; TAKE ME, LOVER; YOU, SEDUCER. As poetry it was less than fair.

Karl: But as an opportunity, it held all sorts of overtones.

Henry: And undertones.

Karl: You arranged a meeting, a literary meeting.

Henry: And found a 32-year-old virgin, well-read in the classics, ready to die, admirer of my mind and body, beautiful legs and hungry as a goldfish unfed 3 days.

Karl: What a spot.

Henry: I asked her to marry me.

Karl: You?

Henry: Hell yes—I’ve been married before. And I was married then.

Karl: And?

Henry: She had some type of incurable disease, and although she carried a Blue Cross card or something, it ended up to nearly $100 a month to the medics. Was my love that strong? Shit yes: for horses.

Karl: Tell me some more, baby. I’ll work it into the script.

Henry: So women can go to hell, I’m going to get me a lamb like the old English sailors, or, yes, it was a sheep, or a nice young boy. Let me read you a letter I’m going to mail to this bitch today. Here goes, quote: “I don’t want to hurt your feelings. My meetings with you down here were both physical and spiritual revelation that came at a time when I was very close to a foreboding finality. I’ve had another affair since then—she was only 20, much too young—”

Karl: That was the colored girl.

Henry: Shut up. “—that was less rewarding. I suppose it’s thinking on this last affair, and Jane, and my X-wife, and some others, that shows me I’m simply a ladies’ man. I don’t know what’s wrong and I much less give a damn. I’ve still got music and the horse, a drive down the coast and rotten alcohol for my shredded-wheat stomach. I’ve still got words to do and I’ve still got my pride, I still have my pride, and as Shakey said, ‘I still have my death to do.’”

Karl: You’re killing me, kid, but go on, round it off.

Henry: “And I can do without petticoats whether they be 20 or 40 or 60, rich or poor, sexy or cold, whether they live in Denver or Bermuda, East Kansas City or London, whether in the fog or the rain or the 9am sunlight—”

Karl: You’re rolling daddy, hit it!

Henry: “Whether with cats on their laps or black boyfriends, whether letter-writers or screamers of arias, whether tall or short or pregnant, whether nun or nude or whether with breasts or without, whether resplendent with jewels and the image of love or whether wrinkled and grey and forgotten, whether riding places on oceanic steamers or shucking in a cow through the gate, whether ugly or beautiful, whether living or dead, rich or poor, the hags, the whores, the mirrors of my heart, may they all be damned and without

yours,

Henry Knapp.”

Karl: Don’t you think that’s rather cruel? To a dying person? For $100 a month.

Henry: It certainly is, and that’s just what happens when the words carry you and you forget the human side. Writers are all bastards, trying to knock off each other or some editor, or they, like I, throw dirt on the dying. I hate my guts.

Karl: Some others do too. They tell me that J. Karlton Thrumbro thinks your stuff stinks. What have you got to say to this, Mr. Knapp?

Henry: I don’t know. Why this eltchl, this conservative from the halls of the ikons and holy rollers, the pluckers of rondeaus and smellers of the lily, why this spalpeen should set himself up as a special critic of literary know-how is more than I can dispense with a quodlibet.

Karl: Let me fill in the rest?

Henry: The stage is yours. I’ve quite hogged it with my sloughed-off loves.

Karl: The field boils with literary journals, a great slough and pot wash of them for those who wish to continue on the descensive, whether they be gnostics, pansies, or grandmothers who keep canaries and goldfish. Why these reactionaries cannot be content with their lot, why they must lacerate us with their yellow-knuckled souls, the looming kraken of their god-head, is beyond me. I certainly do not give a magniloquent damn what they print in their journals. I beg no alms for modern verse. Yet they come bickering to us. Why? Because they smell life and cannot stand it, they want to plunge us into the same spume and sputum that has held them daft with the deism of stale 1890 verse.

Henry: Amen.

Karl: But what I’m getting at, are you going to help me with this script?

Henry: Buy me another bottle of wine and I’ll think it over.

Karl: Your talent comes cheap.

Henry: What doesn’t nowadays? (Looking around) Ring down the curtain! Ring down the goddamned curtain! I want to get drunk! Audience, go home! YOU’VE HAD YOUR INTELLECTUAL CHIT-CHAT, now clear the hell out: I’ve still got, I still have, plans for the 20-year-old negress!

end . . .

Simbolica 21, 1961

Autographical Statement

. . . Born 8-16-20, Andernach, Germany. Brought to America at age of 2. And for amateur psychiatrists who wonder what makes me scream in my poems: when I was a kid the old man bought me an Indian suit and headfeathers when he noticed all the other kids in the neighborhood were playing cowboy. I owe the old boy a lot but since he’s dead I won’t bother to square accounts.

. . . Los Angeles City College, journalism and art, but the closest I ever got to being a reporter was as an errand boy in the composing room of the New Orleans Item. Used to have nickel beers in a place out back and the nights passed quickly.

. . . Started out writing short stories in such places as Atlanta over the bridge, paper shack, no light, no water, no heat, peanut butter sandwiches or candy bars . . . or New Orleans or the stale rotten Village, or Philly, Miami Beach, hell, North Carolina, Frisco, Houston, you name it . . .

. . . Air mailing short stories to the Atlantic Monthly and if they didn’t take them, tear them up. Finally heard of Story and Whit Burnett published my first. Appeared in international review, a ten buck rag, with Sartre, Lorca, everybody, then said to hell with it and got drunk for ten years.

. . . Ran errands for sandwiches and let the bartender beat me up—when I felt like it. I did work at times: dog biscuit factory, coconut man in a cake factory, shipping clerk, truck driver, stock boy for Sears-Roebuck, mailman, janitor, night watchman, dock hand, integral system player at your nearest track; hung posters in New York subways, god, I can’t remember them all; don’t want to. At the age of 35, sat down in front of a typewriter again and it all came out in poem form. To me, that is.

. . . But I found out that editors wanted everything in a cage. It was the same as punching the time clock or kidding the bartender out of a free drink. Boil it down, they said. You’re all over the placenta. But I found out that all they wanted was dullness and the poetic pose.

. . . I sat through a poetry class once that I’ll never forget, no matter how much dirt they throw on me. I mean burial, friend, not critical squirts across a verbal horizon.

. . . Well, I’ve just about said it, and there’s really nothing to say, either the poem says it or it doesn’t say it. I hold nothing against the boys who lucked it into the ivory and teach poetry classes. It’s a way of eating and a way of talking but I don’t think I could do it.

. . . If I have a god it is Robinson Jeffers, although I realize that I don’t write as he does.

. . . Married once to Barbara Fry, editor of Harlequin. She could not stand me. Divorce.

. . . What else do you want to know . . . ?

Long Shot Pomes for Broke Players, New York: 7 Poets Press, 1962

Bukowski Meets a Merry Drunk

“Getting drunk,” he told me, “is something like committing suicide, only here, most of the time the suicide lasts but one night and you have a chance to return to life.”

“How about grass?” I asked him.

“I’m not an expert on grass. I’d hate to get busted for grass; it seems so silly to get busted for so little. Grass is hardly that great. We all know that it is easier on the body and more often leads to a free and easy mellowness rather than violence. Drink tends to make asses of men more easily. Yet one’s lawful and easy to buy and use; the other is not. Of course, the oddity is that they arrest you for being drunk. In a sense it’s lawful to buy it but not to drink it. I’ve been in jail too much. And they make it rougher and rougher on the common drunk in Los Angeles. They used to just hold you overnight, then kick you out. Now there’s jail. You arrive in court a couple of days later, sweating, wondering. You’ve got to face a judge. Everybody gets fined, at least. Sometimes you can get over 30 days or 60 days. You never know. I try to stay off the streets. It seems like every time you go out on the streets nowadays either the police get you or the citizens do. I mean the citizens roll you or beat you up. I stay in now. Lock all the doors. The bars are the worst places. The bartenders shortchange you. The whores look to roll you. The muggers look to mug you. Being drunk is a state wherein inferior men have a chance at you that they’d seldom otherwise get.”

“Why do you continue to drink, then?”

“I don’t know. They say alcoholism is a disease. I often feel like telling the judge when he sentences me, ‘Your honor, medical authorities say that alcoholism is a disease. Would you fine or jail a man for having cancer?’ Of course, if I did ask him this he’d throw the book at me. You and I know that courts have very little to do with justice.”

“Are there any good sides at all to drinking?”

“Well, it breaks down the barriers to sexual intercourse on both sides. I’ve gotten a lot of sex through drinking that I would not have otherwise gotten. Of course, the price is pretty high: you usually get rolled, especially here in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles ladies are the hardest in the world, a real iron-hearted and dollar-mad bunch.”

“Anything else worthy in being an alcoholic?”

“Well, you usually don’t have to live so long. Almost all my drinking buddies and my ladies are dead. The stuff is fairly destructive to the body. I have been in and out of hospitals all my life. But drink has allowed me to survive under conditions that are almost intolerable: rat-infested rooms, months of no income, no jobs. The pressure becomes almost unbearable. One could go mad thinking about his state of affairs. Yet if you are able to get hold of a bottle of wine, your worries decrease for a couple of hours.”

“Was it because of drinking that you couldn’t hold jobs or did being unemployed lead to drinking?”

“It works both ways. Who wants to work anyway? It’s just a mutilation of your good hours.”

“This wine is very strong.”

“It’s better chilled or with ice. Sorry, I don’t have ice.”

“That’s all right.”

“I guess the hangovers are the worst. You can get in a very depressive state lying in some bedbug bed two days behind in the rent and listening to the landlord’s footsteps outside. There’s hardly a chance in this land unless you have a definite trade. Being over 45 and not having a trade, you might as well be dead. A dishwasher’s job is hardest to get. I used to show up at one of the big hotels downtown. About 50 of us showed up and they only took three or four. It was almost useless. Now they have dishwashing machines. All you need is the initial outlay and a little oil. I don’t know what the rest of us are supposed to do. A lot of us can’t do that bracero stuff. They ran the braceros off and what happened? They ran a lot of machinery in. Do I have a right to live or don’t I have a right to live?”

“Some think you don’t.”

“I can’t help getting scared sometimes. I can’t help drinking myself sick. It’s a very brutal and cruel situation. I thought maybe the Watts thing would open up doors for all of us but they only gave them a little sweettalk and wrote new manuals on how to break up riots.”

“Are there any other jobs open to those at the end of the rope?”

“Yeah, there’s a place you stand downtown and a truck comes and picks you up. They take you to a restaurant for a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Then they take you in this big room and everybody fights over the paper-carriers, those things you throw over your back. Then they take you back in the truck and dump you off at a corner with a little map. It’s indicated where your papers are stacked. You walk around throwing these newspapers onto porches, newspapers filled with ads. When you’re done you wait until the truck comes and picks you up. They take you back. The whole process takes about 12 hours. Then you wait until they call your name and then walk up and pick up the money. It’s not very much. I think it was three dollars last time. I asked the guy, ‘Don’t you know the wage laws?’ and he said, ‘You’re only paid on an estimate of your average actual working time. Also we deduct for transportation and food.’ By food, he meant the coffee and doughnut. Most of them are glad to get the three dollars. You get four dollars for giving blood. Any other city in the country you get six dollars. Only in Los Angeles do you get four dollars. This is the coldest city in the world.”

“I’m going to leave you with a couple of bucks for wine. And thanks for the talk. Have you ever heard of the Los Angeles Free Press?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, our little talk might be in there.”

“Will it do me any good?”

“No.”

I put the money down and walked to the door.

“Are you a communist?”

“No.”

“I don’t want to appear in any communist newspaper! I still believe in America, this is my country. Things may get a little hard now and then but this is still my country!”

“Very noble,” I told him, “although some people might consider you an asshole for a statement like that.”

He lifted his wine glass and drained it.

“Ronald Reagan would love you,” I said.

“OUT! GET OUT!”

I left him in there. My beloved patriot. I turned into the first bar for a scotch and water. “Hi, sweetie!” an old woman sitting at the bar smiled at me. I drank the scotch and got out.

L.A. Free Press, March 17, 1967

Notes of a Dirty Old Man

“Can’t you keep those motherfuckers quiet?” he screams.

He gets up and knocks one of his kids for a loop.

Then she hits one of her kids.

They wear sweaters with each other’s names on them. She had 4 kids. He has 3. He has just traded in his ’67 Caddy for a ’68.

“Read this,” he says, “my new novel.”

I sit there and begin reading.

He tells me, “We’re going to knock out a back rear wall and make a large writing studio for me. It’ll cost two thousand dollars to soundproof. I made 25 grand writing last year. How ya like the novel?”

“I’ve just begun.”

“How do you like my new wife?”

“She looks good all right. You were always good with the ladies.”

“But I still worry about Jeri.”

“Why? You divorced her.”

“Well, she’s fucking this 22-year-old. I don’t like it. I’m paying alimony, child support and every time I take the kids back there’s this 22-year-old punk sitting on the couch.”

“She’s got to live too, Herm.”

“But that 22-year-old kid’s got no class. That’s why I got the white Caddy, she sees me in the white Caddy, and she flips. She knows what she’s missing.”

“Maybe the kid’s got a lot of string.”

“Hey, that ain’t funny! . . . How do ya like the novel?”

“Hard to read with all the noise.”

“Hey, Toni, I TOLD you to keep those motherfuckers QUIET!”

“No,” I said, “the noise: I mean us talking. . . .”

“Oh, yeah, well, anyhow, how are you doing?”

“Well, it’s my hands, mostly.”

“Yeah, hey, what ya doing with those gardener’s gloves on?”

“Sores all over my hands. Can’t type. Some kind of malady and madness. Then there’s dizzy spells, insomnia, excessive fear, lack of sexual intercourse.”

“Man, you’re really fucked up! Hard to believe you were the one who wrote the foreword to my first book of poems!”

“Yes, isn’t it?”

“How much did you make writing last year?”

“About the cost of stamps.”

“How do you live?”

“In somebody’s cellar.”

“You’re kidding. . . .”

“No, I’m not kidding. And I figure I’m very lucky.”

“Well, O.K., but how do you like the novel?”

“Christ, what does it matter what I like as long as it sells?”

“Oh, it’ll sell, all right, it’ll sell! Hey, remember the old days when we used to drink together and you’d cuss me and I’d give you those karate shots over the eyes and across the neck? I could have killed you but I didn’t.”

“Thanks.”

“Now I know all the big boys. I was on the Joe Pyne show a while back. I had coffee with Pyne before the show—I said, ‘Listen, man, you mess with me and I’ll rip you wide open!’ He went easy on the show, did you see the show?”

“I don’t have a TV.”

“Oh, you’re one of those Arty guys, eh? TV’s too good for you?”

“I told you, I live in somebody’s cellar.”

“Man, I thought you were kidding!”

“No.”

“Hell, you can stay here! You can help build my new studio! You can walk the dogs, drive the kids to school . . . no damn need to live in a cellar! I’ll even pay you a bit! Why suffer?”

“I don’t want to suffer.”

“Then come live with us.”

“I appreciate it, but let me think it over.”

“Sure, sure, and I know I can trust you with Toni. I know you don’t have a lot of string, and then too, you wrote the foreword to my first book of poems. And to think, I was just out of a madhouse then!”

“The poems were very good.”

“And how about the novel? You been reading as we been talking. How do you like the novel?”

“I don’t like it.”

“It figures.”

“Why?”

“Professional jealousy. Your eyes won’t let your head see the greatness in the work. Professional jealousy.”

“You might be right.”

“I know damn well I’m right! You really don’t like it?”

“Why do you keep asking me? I can’t change my mind.”

“Just like a cunt, eh? That’s what you are, just like a cunt—can’t change your mind!”

“I’ve got to go, Herm.”

“You think a man’s a bad writer because he makes money at it?”

“No, it works many ways. Tolstoy got bad when he gave up on money. Gorky stopped being an Artist when the revolution was won. A guy like Mailer just goes on and on in a kind of drizzling intermediate stream.”

“And you live in a cellar and call my novels bad.”

“Right.”

“Get the hell out!”

“Going. Save the karate.”

“Someday you’ll know what it all means. Someday you’ll know which of us was the writer!”

“I doubt it.”

“Back to your damned basement!”

“Cellar.”

“Back to your damned cellar!”

He slams the door behind me. Passion. The great ones always had passion. I always felt dead. Therefore, maybe I was. Too bad.

I pass his white Caddy and don’t even spit upon it. I didn’t even want it. I am 48 years old. He is 32. I walk away from his huge home. I walk toward my basement. I walk toward my cellar. Psychotic as my gardener’s gloves.

National Underground Review, August 2–8, 1968

Bukowski’s Gossip Column

Wonder if I could write a nice little gossip human column like the boys do?

Finally got my phone number today: BUKOWSKI. I had BUKOWSKI when I lived in Detroit and when I lived in Iowa. Dial BUKOWSKI and see what happens? Do you know what the Iowa State Flag is? See this column next week. . . .

My collection of UNKNOWN WRITERS OVER 45 will be out next week. You’ve never read anything like it . . . to officer Hanjob: Hanjob, you can take that traffic ticket and jam it up your cookie jar. Ticket #67834. Got it in your book there? Every time you guys see this beard on my face you go ape . . . lots of talk because Zigzag of the STOOPS finked on ape. What’s wrong with a beard on the face/you guys don’t seem to mind it someplace else. And skin pigment. Every time you guys see my wrinkled white skin, you go ape. Lots of talk because Zigzag of the STOOPS finked on his buddies on a Mary charge. The cops put him under the white light and he sang like he never sang before. He copped-out on Trenor, Asp, and Delirium Harry in that order. What’s wrong with a guy copping out on his buddies? I think we are too hard on Zigzag. What’s finking got to do with his music, his artistry? . . . At a Black Belt Karate tournament last Saturday I am sure I saw one of the Beatles mixing in with the crowd. He had on a boyscout uniform with green piping . . . Miracle Man Botello hung it out the window the other night and 8 full-grown women fainted. He lives on S. New Hampshire Street with an unlisted phone number. Weird cat. You go see him, he just sits in this broken overstuffed chair and leers out at you with slit-eyes and smiling . . . Woman saw me in the supermarket with my beard the other day. She spit on the floor and snarled, “oh you dirty, shit, why don’t you wash your stockings?” Poor thing. I didn’t have any stockings on . . . whatever happened to Tim Leary? I asked my girlfriend the other night, “whatever happened to Tim Leary?” and she started spitting hair and eggshells, “Oh SHUT UP! He’s a great man, a wonderful man, a real man, a gorgeous man! All you little shits are always knocking his wondrous talents! What’s wrong with him?” “Well,” I said, “to begin with . . .” “Now, don’t you say a goddamn word! If you didn’t have that beard I’d leave you in a minute!” “All right, pass me that razor and a pack of Gillettes.” . . . Russian horserace fix scandal. A former burglar nicknamed Intelligent and a furniture craftsman known as The Souse hanging around in a seedy café called The Contemporaries, fixing the races. They paid off and beat up the jocks, depending upon which way they went. One jock named Grechkin was so scared he guided his horse right off the track to make sure he didn’t win. Intelligent and The Souse. For Christ’s sake, can’t they come up with better names than that? Hardly Hip at all, you know. And it’s not just Russia. They tell me that in Europe that the best-known American writers are E.A. Poe and Jack London. I almost believe it . . . Dial Bukowski . . . “Listen,” I ask my girlfriend, “why do these guys like Leary . . .” “There you GO again!” She starts throwing things. A real spitfire. Remember Lupe Velez? No, you’re too young. “I mean,” I said, “they wear these white bathrobes, with sashes, bathrobes that look like beachtowels . . .” “That’s to center the SOUL, to let the SOUL breathe! Don’t you understand, you ox? If you ever shave your beard, I’m leaving!” “You shave yours . . .” Pershing Square has not changed . . . I saw Tiny Tim buying bologna at the Invisible Market. God bless Tiny Tim . . . Saw an old Charlie Chaplin film the other night. As usual, it bored me. Made me seasick. It’s like they weren’t even trying. Very sloppy stuff. When we walked out of the theatre, my girlfriend said, “A great man. A wonderful man, a real man, a man, a gorgeous man, an artist!” “I’d like to see him in one of those beachtowel bathrobes.” “There you GO again!” “Sorry dear, a bit jumpy, haven’t had my 11 today.” . . . I expect to be machinegunned, stepping out the front door by early July of this year. My column will be taken over by Matt Weinstock . . . Saw Tiny Tim at Barney’s Beanery, eating sausage and eggs. God bless Tiny Tim . . . God might as well bless Maharishi and John Thomas too . . . Steve Richmond—Earth Rose, Fuck-Hate Fame, and one Charles Bukowski have cut a record, Richmond reading his poetry on one side, Bukowski his poetry? On the other . . . will be released this week. See Earth Rose bookshop, Venice, one dollar. This beats buying an ad from Bryan . . . Jack Hirschman helping Bill Margolis edit new lit. mag. Send manus to Jack H 21 Quarter Deck, Venice . . . To the guy who wrote me about his brother dying and then finding all the Bukowski books and stuff at his place—this is straight—I lost your address somewhere, meant to respond to your letter but just can’t find the thing. If you’ve been thinking me inhuman, I’m not. Entirely . . . To Milly Pavlick of N.Y.: I spent the dollar you sent me for soup on beer. Send more soup money . . . To King Arthur of N. Vine Street: no, I don’t need any help writing this column, but will admit you sound more like a Dirty Old Man than I do. In fact, your whole wine-scrawled missile was nicely depraved. I admire you, but don’t come around . . . To the doctor who showed up at my door a couple of times and offered to help me write my column, and wore those yellow-striped pants, and sent me all the little literary bits on slips of paper which fell to the floor from my hangover bed, you are also nicely depraved but not a very good writer, but keep subscribing to OPEN CITY. We need you. And I think that my hemorrhoids are coming back. God Bless Baron Manfred Von Richtofen. He did a good job . . . AT TERROR STREET AND AGONY WAY, poems, $4, Black Sparrow Press, p.o. box 25603, Los Angeles Calif. 90025. POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE LEAPING FROM AN 8 STORY WINDOW, $1, c/o Darrell and Litmus Press, 422 East Harvard, Glendale, Calif. Both books will be released early May, never mind the author. They released him last week . . . The Willie has hit the road again in a 1955 Cad. 2 jugs of stomach-murdering dago red 8 miles to the gallon. He left Rachel behind but I’m sure Rachel will not be lonely very long . . . People are always more clever than I am in conversation yet I always have this vague idea that they are not clever at all . . . God Bless Baron Manfred Von Richtofen’s daughter who married D.H. Lawrence. That took a lot of guts . . . Extremism is a mind with but one eye but it often gets things done . . . I swear, I think the mini-skirts are getting shorter and I don’t know what the next step can be, but whatever it is, I’m for it . . . Listen officer Hanjob, take that ticket and . . . Which reminds me, a friend of mine said he was stopped by a cop and given a ticket and the cop was so nice about it that my friend thanked him for the ticket. It’s true. Some of those boys can really grease it in. But actually, I prefer the mid-thirties (you’re too young) when a cop would stop you for speeding and come up ready to fight, strolling up, really angry saying, “Hey fucker! Where’s the fire!” At least you knew who your enemy was still do but you know what I mean. Maybe I do need help writing this thing. SIT DOWN, King Arthur . . .

I once cleaned crappers for Chandler’s TIMES at night. NOW look at me. Tomorrow the WORLD! Got fired for sleeping in the ladies’ crapper. The L.A. TIMES simply doesn’t appreciate talent . . .

Do you get uptight when you ask for cigarette papers? Tell them they are paper bandaids for the asshole of a cardboard bee you’ve designed for the state fair . . . There is something very discouraging about Bobby Kennedy but we don’t want to admit it, not yet, right after old dull whip-boy Johnson; but lord, lord, when’s a man going to come along??? . . . This country, right now, on the point of revolution, can go any way, can go fascist, can go communist, socialist, can remain within the democratic mold with changes. But the whole thing reminds me of a headless horse running down a midnight street. And it’s sad. For I live here and I want to see it go well . . . And let that be the end of this type of column for I have winded up with the deep deep blues. It’s best to create the mold directly from life and let the others talk about it. Amen, men . . .

Open City, April 19–30, 1968

More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

You may not believe it but there’s nothing as dull as tits and haunches and buttocks when you’ve seen enough of them and have seen them continually. Furthermore, there’s nothing as sexless as a bathing suit: sand spread across the crotch, wrinkles under the butt, wrinkles above and below the hips, and also, here and there—warts, moles, and all the twitchy little infirmities the human body gathers. Look at that single long hair growing under her chin. Doesn’t she see that? What’s that blotch? And worse than a bathing beauty is a nude. If man has any imagination, he can forget it now. Look at her—whipped cream and pork rinds, soft balloons, and the sexual machinery in the center, almost a threat.

Sometimes, since I often write for the sex mags, I enter a mag store which deals exclusively with periodicals of that content. Since I create quite a realistic story I have to check the mags for their editorial courage. Here in Hollywood there are quite a few of these sex mag dungeons. So when was it? Saturday? Anyhow, I walk into one of these stores and I am stopped by a man who stands high in a pulpit-like structure.

“Psst!” he says, “Sir! Sir! Stop!”

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

“It costs 50 cents to go in there,” he tells me.

“But I don’t want to buy a magazine,” I say.

“That’s just it. You gentlemen just come in here and look at the pictures. We have to protect ourselves. The 50 cents can be applied to the purchase of any magazine. We give you this returnable token.”

I give him the 50 cents and he gives me the token. I am allowed to walk in.

The place is quite filled with men. The owner is the grand priest and the place does have the feeling of a temple. The men hardly move. They stand very quietly, turning pages. Some of the magazines feature men on the covers. On one, a photo of a penis, a diseased-looking and curved thing, pokes through some torn shorts. What the hell is this? I think. I walk around and don’t know what to do. There is a glass case full of rubber penises. I look at them and walk on. Then, to give a façade of one belonging, I pick up a girly mag and finger through. The first photo I see puts me headlong into a gaping vagina. Has this been the object of so many of my pleasures? May the gods have mercy!

To resurrect myself, I pick up a more standard sex mag. Here she was on the cover—some lass with an I.Q. of 69 trying to leer back while seeming passionate. The faces of these cover dollies! Pancakes. A layer of skin with proper nose-size, proper lip-size, proper eye-size, proper ear-size, proper chin-size. That many men go to hell for these darlings is not my fault. I do suppose the photographers must realize that they are wasting flashbulbs upon female morons. But the editors, who write the copy under these photos, always attempt to invest these things with both intelligence and understanding. Soul, if you’ll buy it.

Now, here’s a shot of Lila. This time, just her head. She’s pensive. She’s so damned pensive that she’s thrown her delicious head down into some green brush. That’s getting there, think of it. But the eyebrows are plucked and the mascara is still there, even down in the green brush. All right, Lila, get up. That one’s over. Now you see her leaning on a fence. She talks to animals. Mother Nature is her mother. Look at her in that Indian headdress! Jesus Christ. O, Lila, I’d like to have you in that Indian head-dress! But what’s that blotch on her back? How’d they let that get in there?

Now, here’s Tanya. She loves water. First photo you see, there’s water spilling all over her big tits. Wow. The next photo doesn’t make much sense at all. Her butt is spread over a frog pond. She seems to be screaming. Constipated? Now she’s standing behind a highly polished table. There are candles everywhere. Her tits hang down. She looks at you. What the hell? You think. What am I supposed to do? I’m told that she cries a lot for no seeming reason. Then one day she walks along under this raining sky and the sky opens a big hole right to the heavens and she gets the answer. She comes to California with her big tits and tail. She studies the dance. She’s learned the discipline of Hatha Yoga. She’s read Ayn Rand, the novelist. Tanya states: “The earth is in trouble.” Profound.

And here’s Clara. She hides behind rocks. Swims with the fishes. More of the water thing. Water’s the thing, I guess. Keeps the body from stinking. Anyhow, she’s a rivermaid. She’s an enchantress. She has large breasts also. The deeps of the river flash in her eyes, I’m told. Also, she gives her love to the lonely men who swim up the river at night. Too bad. Lonely men don’t swim up rivers at night. They get drunk or kill themselves or go to a movie.

Here’s Deedee. Deedee somehow came across a volume of and/or on Buddhism and came to Hollywood. Deedee wants to go back to nature. She’s an expert on wild plants and herbs. She also has big tits. She likes the “Jefferson Airplane” but she also enjoys chewing birch bark. Her buttocks look fairly nice.

I have done my duty. I place the mag back in the rack. I am the last to arrive and now I am the first to leave. I walk toward the Hollywood night and the dark smoggy air. I am almost to the entrance.

“Hey, buddy!”

“Yes?”

“Aren’t you gonna cash in on your token?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Immediately I see the fear and respect in his eyes. He thinks I am the heat.

I take out a pack of smokes, light one.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

He stiffens and doesn’t answer.

I walk to the parking lot, get into my car, and start the engine. As I do, I imagine one of the photo cover girls telling her shackjob:

“Ladybug Magazine was by today. They wanted to snap my snatch. I told them it would be a hundred bucks extra.”

“Atta baby!” says the shackjob. They lean back and watch TV.

I drive on out, and as I take a left down Hollywood Blvd., I toss the 50-cent token out the window. The night takes it, and I am free.

Candid Press, November 29, 1970

More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

I was put in touch with them by somebody who had heard me at a poetry reading and so there I was driving around that part of Hollywood looking for a parking place, and it was hot. I was sweating, and I finally gave up and just drove four or five blocks off, parked and walked back. The walk wasn’t bad because I was following this girl in the mini and she wiggled it at me, and I could have passed her but I didn’t have the strength. She was good for three blocks, then turned into an apartment house. I walked the other block or so, uninspired. I walked up to the guard’s gate. The old woman who ran the switchboard doubled as guard.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“My name’s Bukowski. I have an appointment with Graf Productions at 3:30.”

“Go on back to 172. Follow the numbers.”

“Thank you.”

The man, somebody named Eddie, had told me on the phone that I was to be considered as a narrator for a stag film. Since I made my living by the typewriter—a literary hustler—I was always in the mood for various considerations—anything but the eight-hour day and good honest labor. I was hungover (a more or less normal state) and I followed the numbers down. It was a long wooden porch, rotting, with offices or studios every 10 or 12 feet. Everything had been painted a chickencoop white—a long time ago. Since it was very hot, the doors were open and I could hear conversations:

“Now, look, Max, we’ve got to cut this thing down. There’s too much overlap. Now take the central part. . . .”

At the next door:

“Well, hell, I don’t know what to do. Do you think we can get away with it?”

Film hustlers, hanging to a shoestring, trying to break through.

I found 172. The door was open. I walked in. There was a desk. On the desk I saw my paperback book of short stories, Notes of A Dirty Old Man. I was known. Fine. But that paperback had had one printing of 26,000 copies for which I had gotten a grand in front and the grand was long ago gone. A man had to keep writing and hustling right to the edge of the grave. It was a dirty game.

I whistled. Then hollered. “HEY, HEY, ANYBODY HERE? HELLO, HELLO!”

“In here,” came the sound.

I walked into the other room. There was a pleasant and calm-looking young man behind a typewriter.

“Bukowski?”

“Yeh.”

“Sit down.”

“Where’s the beer?” I asked.

“Beer?”

“The other guy, Eddie, said there’d be beer.”

“Eddie!”

Eddie walked in. He was young too, dark-haired, the stuff hanging down, and a bit of a beard. He walked very stooped with his hands dangling in front.

“Bukowski,” he said, “remember me?”

“Not from recent times.”

“You were drunk. It was at this party.”

“Okay, where’s the beer?”

Eddie walked out and came back with a six-pack. He put it in front of me. I went to work.

The other guy explained to me what they wanted to do with the stag film. What the idea was, what the narrator was to do. It sounded like hard work. But so did standing around on skid row sound like hard work. I got around to the second beer. The sound would be dubbed in after the shooting of the film.

“We want to audition you. Turn on the tape, Eddie.”

Eddie turned on the tape. Then he handed me an ad from one of the large weekly magazines. About how easy it was to make it by air and do the thing. Skiing on Mt. Zebralla is $337. Watching Elizabeth Taylor dip into the Spanish Castle River is $443. On and on. I had seen the type of ad before. They were written by subnormal boys who had flunked out of Harvard Law School and whose fathers owned ad agencies. I tried to read it, but I couldn’t read it straight. The clever-flip slant was all too dull. I changed prices, names, words, cities as I went along. I cussed and laughed, gagged. They laughed too. But I knew I had flunked their audition.

“You need an actor,” I said, “somebody without imagination, somebody with a healthy stomach.”

“Wait now, the directors will want to hear this. We don’t know.”

“The directors?”

“Yes, we just write the script, shoot the film. We work for them.”

“All right,” I said.

“How about a walk-on part?”

“Wait a minute, let’s go easy. I have a literary reputation.”

Then they both laughed.

Just then two girls walked in with a guy with a beret on. The girls were laughing all the time.

“Come on,” said Eddie, “we’re going to shoot.”

The girls looked good but they kept laughing. The guy with the beret didn’t laugh at all.

We went into the other room, and they turned on the equipment. Eddie, myself, and the guy who wasn’t Eddie sat behind the camera. Eddie worked the camera.

It opened with the guy in the beret wearing a smock and painting on canvas. There seemed to be much film wasted of just him painting. While he painted he sucked from a wine bottle. Then he stopped painting and just sat in a chair drinking from the wine bottle. Soon it was empty and he passed out.

The door opened and two girls ran in laughing. One of them looked at the empty wine bottle and laughed. Then the other reached down and pulled out the guy’s penis and stroked it. The other girl began painting the penis on canvas. It was a large penis, on canvas and off. Then the painter awakened. He ran to the canvas and looked at it and seemed very angry. I couldn’t understand why. Soon the girls were taking their clothes off (still laughing) and the painter was taking his clothes off too.

It’s really silly, I thought.

Then they ran around assuming various positions, holding them for a while, then breaking off and assuming other positions. I was surprised how many positions one man and two women could assume. Some of them were simply ridiculous, and some of them were accidental, and some of them did have a bit of charm. Very much charm. How they went on! It must have gone on for 25 minutes. What a man he was. Suddenly the girls grabbed up their clothing and, still laughing, ran from the room. He leaped up, and as they ran off, gave himself a few last good strokes. Then it was over.

We walked into the other room. The girls came out, still laughing, only now they were dressed in their regular street clothes, minis and tight sweaters.

I got up and walked across to the one in the blue mini. I put my hand on her knee. The nylon was tight and hot. She kept laughing. I ran my hand up her leg. She laughed some more. I began to really heat up. I put my other hand on her other leg. I had both hands up near her ass, breathing heavily. Not my hands, me. She kept laughing. Suddenly she stopped laughing. She pushed me off.

“Hey, what’s wrong with this guy? Is he a cube?”

Perhaps. . . .

The paper was thin. There seemed to be some writing on the back. I turned the paper over.

It said: $150.

I ripped the paper up, threw the bits on the grass, and got into my car, started it and began to drive toward my place.

I stopped at a signal at Melrose and Western.

Then I laughed.

Candid Press, December 13, 1970

More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

I swung three deep out of Vacantsville, like busting out of a herd of cow, and next thing I knew we had set down, the bird burst its stupid stewardesses, and I was the last man out, to meet a teacher-student in a shag of yellow and he said, you, Bukowski, and there was something about his car needing oil all along the way, 200 miles plus, and then I was standing in front of the students, drunk, and they all sat at little round tables, and I thought, shit, this is like any place else, and I hooked from the bottle and began on the poems, and I told them that I had death coming and that they had death coming but they didn’t quite believe me, and I drank some more and I read them poems from way back and poems from recent and then I made one up, and it was dark in there, and I thought, this is lousy, I am reading at a university and I am getting away with everything, not because I am good but because nobody else is and there isn’t anybody to correct me: wish Ezra were here or Confucius or somebody anybody to keep me in line—but there wasn’t, so I read them my swill and they swallowed it, and then I grew weary and I said, let’s take five.

Then I got down from the stage and walked over to one of the tables with my bottle. Some crazy-looking guy picked up my bottle and drank from it. I told him, take it easy, mother, I have 30 more minutes to go.

He picked up the bottle to hit it again. I ripped it out of his hand.

I told you, mother, the rest is mine.

They told me later that he was crazy, everybody was afraid of him, he was always on acid but hung around the university even though they had kicked him out.

That showed his weakness.

I took the bottle from him and climbed back on stage.

The second half was better than the first. They gave me good applause, even the crazy one.

Then I got on out. Almost. The teacher who’d brought me in knew a prof and the prof was at the reading, and the next thing I was at a party at the prof’s house. Sell-out Bukowski. The guy who hated profs drinking with them.

I’d signed a contract to read at another college 150 or 200 miles away. Anyhow, I was a literary hustler and I was stuck with it. I stood around at the party because my ride was there, the young guy with the shag of yellow hair, the nice guy, and to help myself along I drank myself into a standing stupidity. I had a reading at this other place at 11:30 a.m. in the morning but you wouldn’t have known it looking at me, peeling off tens and twenties: “Hey, man, go down to the liquor store and stock up for these good people. Looks like we’re running short.”

My host was an English teacher who looked just like Ernest Hemingway. Of course, he wasn’t. But I was drunk.

“Ernie,” I staggered up to him, “I’ll be a son of a bitch in hell! I thought you blew your head off!”

My Hemingway was a staid and rather dull member of the English department.

He just stood there talking about poets and poetry. He was insane. I walked over to the couch and started necking with his wife. She didn’t resist. He just stood there over us, talking about poets and poetry. I stuck my tongue deep into her mouth, mauled her breasts.

“T.S. Eliot,” he said, “was entirely too safe.”

I ran my hand up under her dress.

“Auden had no lasting power.”

She stuck her tongue deep into my mouth.

The party went on and on, but for it all, I awakened in bed alone. I was in an upper bedroom, hungover and sick. I turned over to go back to sleep.

“Bukowski! Wake up!” somebody said.

“Go away,” I said.

“We’ve got to make that 11:30 a.m. reading. It’ll take us 2 or 3 hours.”