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Table of Contents
Title Page
MORE NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN
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AFTERWORD
NOTES
Acknowledgments
Copyright Page
MORE NOTES OF A DIRTY
OLD MAN

God knows I am not too hippy. Perhaps

because I am too much around the hip and I
fear fads for, like anybody else, I like
something that tends to last. Then, too, the
hippy foundation or diving board or resting
place or whatever you want to call it does
suck in its fair share of fakes, promoters and
generally vicious people trying to overcom-
pensate for some heinous psychological de-
fect. But you have these everywhere—hippy
and non-hippy. But, like I say, the few people
that I know are either a bit on the side of the
artistic, the pro-hip or the understanding-
hip, so I have been generally getting more of
this slice of cake and it has seemed a bit
SWEET.
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But, lo, the other day I got the OTHER bit

and I think I’d rather eat sweet than shit. Be-
ing locked into a large building where 4,000
people work at dull and menial tasks has its
compensations but it has disadvantages
too—for instance, you can never be sure who
is going to assigned to work next to you. A
bad soul makes for a worse night. Enough
bad souls can kill you.
He was balding, square-jawed, man-
nish???, with this look of hate-frustration
upon his face. For months I had sensed that
he had wanted to talk to me. Now I was
hooked—he was assigned to the place to my
left. He complained about the air-condition-
ing and a few other things, then worked in a
question about my age. I told him that I
would be 47 in August. He said he was 49.
“Age is only relative,” he said. “It doesn’t
matter if you are 47 or 49, it doesn’t make
any difference.”
“Umm,” I said.
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Then the speaker screamed out some an-

nouncement: ALL THOSE QUALIFIED ON
THE L.S.M. MACHINES REPORT TO . . .
“I thought they were going to say LSD,” he
said.
“Umm,” I said.
“You know,” he said, “that LSD has put a
lot of people in madhouses—brain damage.”
“Everything puts people in madhouses.”
“Whatcha mean?”
“I mean the LSD brain damage scare is
probably an exaggeration percentage-wise.”
“Oh no, leading doctors and laboratories
and hospitals say so.”
“O.K.”
We worked away without conversation for
awhile and I thought I had escaped him. He
had one of those easy mellow voices that
drowned and warbled in its own conviction.
But he began again:
“Are you for LSD?”
“I don’t use it.”
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“Don’t you think it’s a passing fad?”

“Nothing that is against the law ever
ceases to exist.”
“Whatcha mean?”
“Forget it.”
“Whatcha think of the hippies?”
“They don’t harm me.”
“Their hair stinks,” he said. “They don’t
take baths. They don’t work.”
“I don’t like to work either.”
“Anything that is unproductive is not good
for society.”
“Umm.”
“Some college profs say that these kids are
our new leaders, that we should listen to
them. HOW THE HELL CAN THEY KNOW
ANYTHING? THEY DON’T HAVE ANY
EXPERIENCE.”
“Experience can dull. With most men ex-
perience is a series of mistakes; the more ex-
perience you have the less you know.”
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“You mean to say you are going to listen to

what some 13-year-old kid tells you?”
“I listen to everything.”
“But they aren’t mature, they aren’t
MATURE, don’t you see? That’s why they’re
hippies.”
“Suppose they got jobs? Suppose they
went into industry, went to work turning
bolts for General Motors? Wouldn’t they still
be immature?”
“No, because they’d be working,” he said.
“Umm.”
“Furthermore, I think a lot of these kids
are going to be SORRY that they didn’t go to
the war. It’s going to be an experience they’ll
wish they hadn’t missed. They’re going to re-
gret it later on.”
“Umm.”
There fell again the peaceful silence. Then
he said, “you’re not a hippy, are you?”
“I’m working, damn it. And I told you I
was 47.”
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“The beard doesn’t mean anything then,

does it?”
“Sure it does. It means, at the moment, I
feel better wearing a beard than I do the oth-
er way. Maybe next week it will be different.”
Silence, silence. Then he switched his
stool, turned his back to me as much as pos-
sible and continued working. I got up and
walked to the men’s crapper and stuck my
head out the window for fresh air. The guy
was my father all over again:
RESPONSIBILITY, SOCIETY, COUNTRY,
DUTY, MATURITY, all the dull-sounding
hard words. But why were they in such
agony? Why did they hate so much? It
seemed simply that they were very much
afraid that somebody else was having a
damn good time or was not unhappy most of
the time. It seemed that they wanted every-
body to carry the same damn heavy rock they
were carrying. It wasn’t ENOUGH that I was
working beside him like an idiot; it wasn’t
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enough for him that I was wasting the few

good hours left in my life—no, he also
wanted me to share his own mind-soul, to
sniff his dirty stockings, to chew on his an-
gers and hates with him. I was not PAID for
that, the fucker. And that’s what killed you
on the job—not the actual physical work but
being closed in with the dead.
I got on back to my stool. He had his back
turned to me. Poor, poor fellow. I had let him
down. He’d have to look elsewhere. And I
was white and he was white and most of
them were black. Where ya gonna find a de-
cent white man in a place like this? I could
sense him thinking.
I suppose he would have gotten around to
the Negro question if I had sent out the
proper rays. I had been spared that.
His back was to me. His back was broad,
American and hard. But I couldn’t see his
face and he didn’t speak any more. What had
hurt him worst was that I had neither agreed
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with or argued with him. His back was to me.

The remainder of the night was peaceful and
almost kind.

Tucson, Arizona, 6-29-67

Sitting in a country store that went broke,

sitting at last after getting out Henry Miller’s
Order and Chaos Chez Hans Reichel, one
year’s work, putting the thing together piece
by piece, magic by magic, held up by lack of
funds and a praying, quivering, shaking 8x12
Chandler & Price, 50 or 60 years old, that fell
apart on the last page; sitting there a mo-
ment, moulding their next move, hoping
there is enough money for a next move are
Jon and Louise (Gypsy Lou) Webb, who
wrought the miracle of this third book out of
LOUJON PRESS—which already has won
awards in Typography, Type Direction &
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Design in TDC’s 13th annual awards show in

New York City.
Sitting here now behind an abandoned
store front of crumbling adobe—they call it
their “desert workshop printery”—they are
almost broke.
It is Tucson and I am down here interview-
ing Jon Webb in 105 heat, and you know that
Art can come from anywhere: the center of
hot hell and the ghosts of old bean cans. I be-
gin the interview:
“Both of you are great editors and book-
makers. Loujon Press is up there with the
gods with your books and the Outsider
Magazine. Your Miller book is perhaps the
most revolutionary piece of bookmaking in
the past several hundred years. My question
is, do you think that you will be able to sur-
vive or will the walls fall in and eliminate
you?”
Jon: We’ll survive, but the walls suddenly
will fall in, they always do, same as they did
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on Alan Swallow—tho we don’t put ourselves

up in his area of greatness, we’re far from it.”
Buk: “O.K., so, well where did the idea
ever begin to become editors of this sort?”
Jon: “I gave up writing after two or three
million published words because I felt that
I’d never make it creatively, that I’d never get
published without making compromises of
some sort. Of course, that could have been
an excuse for laziness or inadequacy—but
I’m convinced I made a good move, from
writing into publishing. I think I’m a better
editor than I was a writer. If I keep going,
tho, I’ll only get into a morass of
rationalizations.”
Buk: “Fair enough. Let’s leap into
something else: the inflation spiral on paper,
ink, type, everything from hamburgers to pa-
perclips has, in a sense, become ridiculous.
Don’t you feel that after finishing one project
that the next one has become almost priced
out of reach?”
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Jon: “I was pretty ignorant at this business

when I started but I learned to become an
honest con-man, meaning I’ve given in to de-
veloping cordial relationships with business-
men—the ones who sell me these things at
such high prices. I simply con them into
thinking my small order is only a sampler,
the first part of a huge order, and in so doing
lay the groundwork for a deal, which in busi-
ness parlance means getting a cut in price. In
other words, I talk in carloads until they
quote me carload prices. It’s a dirty ap-
proach, but the fact I have to wear a starched
collar and conservative necktie to put the ap-
proach over sort of cancels in my mind the
dirtiness out of it.”
Buk: “I agree. Now, all of your work is
done by the two of you. Breaking down your
total profit and dividing the hours worked,
what do you judge your hourly wage, per
person, to be?”
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Jon: “If it turns out there is a profit—we

call anything above cost profit—our net in-
come for hours worked so far has never ex-
ceeded 8 cents an hour.”
Buk: “Is it worth it? Wouldn’t you rather
be picking beets or selling Fuller brushes
door to door? And how about those editing
and design offers from New York publishers?
Don’t you ever get tired of the hard road?”
Jon: “No, we work out of a compulsion,
same as I always did when writing. It’s a love
that’s transferred, that’s all. Just like when a
loved one dies, the idea of writing died too. I
simply transferred the love for writing to the
love for publishing. I could go on but I would
only get increasingly flip. Because the reason
any of us are in a work that is economic sui-
cide can’t logically be articulated upon
without getting into a bragging—like calling
oneself an artist. I think we’re artists, but it
could be everything we’re doing that’s good
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is just accidental. We’ve still a long way to

go.”
Buk: “All right, fair enough. But now let’s
talk about ‘angels’. Where are the angels? I
know that they DO exist. For instance, there
is a poet in Europe, an American exile, not
overly exceptional who is supported by some
rich folk who rarely ask questions or slug
him with demands and he is simply not that
good. Frankly, I think you deserve an angel
or 2 or 3. Do you think that yours will ever
appear?
Jon: “Everybody who buys our books are
angels. But getting back into the meat of it,
you have to go after angels and we haven’t
had the time. We will eventually put on a big
promotion for an angel. A good angel. We’ve
had lots of offers from bad angels, the ones
with strings attached. Like the rich widow in
Louisiana who owns 4,000 acres of bottom
land that’s zooming in value because the
Northern manufacturers are coming in. She
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offered us 40 acres plus a plantation house if

we published her True Story Magazine style
book under our Loujon Press imprint. Book
was about her discovery after her husband’s
death that he once had a mistress. This book
she wrote was an unending lambasting of
him, hoping to turn him over in his grave.
Broke our hearts, but we had to turn her
down.”
Buk: “Is the Miller book moving?”
Jon: “How could a Miller book not move?”
Buk: “I mean fast. How can we let people
know that if they see these books with their
eyes they will buy them? How can we let
people know that these books you do will be
collector’s items selling for 5 or 10 times
their publication price in 4 or 5 years, or
less?”
Jon: “We’re not much interested in selling
to those people, the ones we have to let know
these books we do are eventual collectors’
pieces. But a lot of those people buy our
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books, and without knowing it are angels of a

sort. So we love them, they help us keep
going.”
Buk: “Very true. But these formats you use
that scream collectors’ item at one look,
what’s behind them?
Jon: “Behind them is the fact that all rules
of book publishing have come to a deadend,
especially in design. All we’re doing with our
mixed-up formats is fumbling for a way out
of that deadend, or past it. If we don’t get
past it we’ll get out of this work, same as I
got out of writing—and into something else.
Like maybe underground filmmaking.
“But getting back to design, I believe with
McLuhan that the medium is the message.
And it has been our good luck, so far, to pub-
lish writers who will let us dress them up in
our particular types of format, our pack-
aging. So far, in the books we’ve done it
hasn’t hurt either of us.”
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Buk: “Have basic type styles changed?

How do you select your types?”
Jon: “By eye. The more you pore over
books of typefaces, type samples, so forth,
the more type you might tend to like, and
after weeks of studying you end up picking a
certain typeface, cable some far-away coun-
try and you get a reply that that particular
typeface has not been cast for 20 or 30 years,
so you begin all over again. This happens
mostly because, in our opinion, type design
has also come to a deadend. So you start go-
ing back into time to find something good.
You can’t do that with book design, because
you can’t create new book design by copying
the old masters at it. But type is okay to copy.
It’s merely one of the tools you work with to
create.”
Buk: “How do you decide on publishing a
book?”
Jon: “It’s rough, but mostly it’s a case of
love, of the work to be published, and the
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writer too. Because around that work, also

the writer, you have to work months creating
a format which fits that writer. Not one that
fits us, that’s silly. The whole format has to
be an extension of both the writer’s personal-
ity and the work of his we’re publishing. And
you’d get nowhere there without a love in-
volved for the writer embodied in his talent.
People say we must love our work. We don’t.
Work always is pretty drab, if it isn’t just
plain hell. But we love what comes out of the
work. And when it’s done, there’s another
hell in which we have to transfer the love for
a book just done to the next one in line. To
the next writer in line. Queer, eh?”
Buk: “Hell, no. But go on, what is the ulti-
mate you would like to do in book design?”
Jon: “Well, if I’m constantly mulling over
an elusive idea, Gypsy is too. It’s to put out a
book of great beauty and original design with
which the buyer immediately falls in love
and which is certain to become a top value
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collector’s item, but which on opening and

reading to the last page suddenly falls apart
in the reader’s hands, virtually disintegrates,
and can in no way be put back together
again.”
Buk: “I get you. The buyer will buy another
book at once to see if the same thing happens
with the second copy.”
Jon: “That isn’t the reason for it, no. But
you’ve given me an idea—thanks.”
Buk: “Whatever the reason, seems like a
dirty trick on the writer. All his work and
yours too shot to hell forever.”
Jon: “Oh, I’d first find a writer who didn’t
mind, be sure of that. Like you maybe.”
Buk: “Come to think of it, I probably
wouldn’t mind. Might be fun writing for a
posterity that disintegrated in the reader’s
hands instead of his brain. But space is run-
ning out. Any final good word to the reader
of this column or any readers anywhere?”
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Jon: “Well, even the broadside announce-

ment on the Miller book, printed on Parch-
ment paper, 19 by 25 inches, is now a collect-
or’s item. But we’ll mail one to anybody who
sends us a postcard, and we’ll go the postage.
Our address is 1009 East Elm, Tucson, Ari-
zona 85719. LOUJON PRESS.”
Buk: “How come it’s so damned hot down
here in June and July?”
Jon: “I don’t know, but it’s the next best
thing to hell. That’s probably why we’re
here.”
Buk: “I think this interview is over.”
Jon: “Me, too.”
Buk: “You got anymore beer?”
Jon: “We knew you were coming by.”
Bukowski goes out into the kitchen of the
Desert Workshop Printery and gets one. The
interview is over. The great poet Bukowski
and the great editor Webb sit across from
each other, looking in and out and over with
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glazed and perhaps? immortal spirits. Life

goes on anyhow.

I was going over my old Racing Forms,

having a beer and a smoke, really hungover,
shaky, depressed; gently thinking suicide but
still hoping for a lucky angel when there was
a knock on the door, a very light knock, I
barely heard it. I listened and there it was
again. I hid my bag of Chesterfields under
the fireplace and opened the door just a slit.
“Bukowski?” said the voice. “Charles
Bukowski?” and there was this woman
standing out in a light rain, in the 9 p.m. rain
between 2 dying plants on the front porch of
the front court in which I lived, badly, among
beer, and mouse-shadows, and old copies of
Upton Sinclair and Thomas Wolfe and Sin-
clair Lewis, and I looked out looked out
looked out and IT WAS A WOMAN and
WHAT a woman in that 9 p.m. rain—long
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red hair all down the back, jesus: tons of red

miracle. And the face, open with passion, like
a flower ripped open with the fingers from
the bud, a kind of fire-cheating, and the
body, the body was nothing but SEX, sex
standing still jumping singing looking flow-
ing humming in the 9 p.m. rain saying,
“Bukowski, Charles Bukowski?” and I said,
“Come on in,” and she did, she came in and
sat on the chair in front of the fireplace and
the walls of the room began to weave in and
out like on a trip, and the rug said, what the
hell oh my god oooh oooooooooooh, and she
CROSSED HER LEGS and the skirt was high
and I looked up the thighs, boldly, jesus, I
was out of my skull, thighs knees high heels
long tight stockings flow and flesh oh lord
and she kicked her foot, turned on ankle, ow
ow ow, mercy! And the red hair the red hair
flocked all along the back of the chair, the
red hair on fire in the lamplight, I could
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barely hold on I could barely understand, I

did not deserve to even LOOK, and I knew it.
“Care for a beer?” I asked.
“All right,” she said.
I got up and I could hardly walk. I had
enough hose to put out a forest fire of
napalm.
I came back with the beer, didn’t give her a
glass, watched her drink it from the bottle,
that stuff going into her, into her red hair in-
to her body into her everywhere and I peered
up her legs not getting enough and I drank
out of the bottle.
She put down her bottle. “You are a great
writer,” she said.
“That’s no reason for coming to see me.”
“Yes it is, yes it is. You see you fascinate
me, you write this way and you look like, you
look like—”
“The trashman?”
“Yes, or a diseased gorilla, an undergrown
aged gorilla dying of cancer. And those
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goddamn eyes, slits of eyes but when you fi-

nally OPEN them for just that second—shit, I
never saw eyes LIKE THAT, that COLOR,
that VICIOUS FIRE—”
“And you came here to see what I was, see
what I am, oh?”
“I guess so. I don’t know. I don’t know why
I’m here. I don’t. I only know that I’m here. I
can’t help it. You’re a gorilla. You’re some
kind of snake. You’re anything filthy. You
stink. I don’t know you. I know that you’re
not the guy at Bryan’s staff meetings, threat-
ening cripples, staggering about the room,
cursing everybody and looking for more to
drink more to drink more to drink. Such a
swine you are!”
“A woman always wants to find the core,
tame it, mold it; a wise man never shows the
core to a woman. He just gives her a shot of
light, shuts it off, becomes himself again. A
woman practices rearing the child by taming
the man first. I’ve got no use for women
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except to fuck them. I won’t be trapped in.

Love is a form of selfishness. Love is an ex-
cuse for cowards to quit.”
“Nicely spoken. Sounds all right, bastard,
but what does it mean?”
She lifted her beerbottle again, recrossed
her legs, the skirt going HIGHER, jesus have
mercy, the skirt going HIGHER, all that leg,
all that thigh, all that red HAIR, god.
I got up and pulled the beerbottle from her
mouth and put my dirty bearded face to hers,
my lips sucking and twisting at hers, hard
full crazy, she did not push me away, I
grabbed her under the back, I had her back
arched, I had her head rolling on the back of
the chair, our lips splashed together spliced
together crazy, my hand under the back of
that BIG body, god, the beerbottle knocked
over and spewing on the floor, and I reached
down with the other hand and ripped her
skirt all the way UP, lord lord lord then I had
her standing, I was walking, pushing her all
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over the room, feeling that red hair around

my ears across my face, feeling miracle and
madness, and then I worked the pants down
and then I HAD HER, I HAD HER, I HAD
HER, and I worked, I grabbed that long red
hair and I yanked down on it. I had her back
arched arched hurting her and I HAD HER I
worked and holding the hair still in my
hands in back I got the cheeks and spread
them, I had her nailed in the center of the
rug, I had her on the cross, it was too late for
her, she was on the spike, ripped ripped and
the yellow light from the lamps bathed us
and all that could be heard was our breathing
and our grappling. Who would have
guessed? Who? And then BANG the walls
shook, a man on the street stepped on a
grease spot, fell and broke his ankle and we
slid apart like worms going in different direc-
tions, and she stood there and said, “ooooh
ooooh ooooh I liked it, I liked it I liked it, you
filthy greasy pig,” and then she turned and
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walked into the bathroom and closed the

door. I went into the kitchen, took a dishtow-
el, wiped off. Got out 2 more beers. Lit a
smoke.
She came on out, looking better than ever,
she glowed all over burning, she was really
beautiful, I could say it easy, she was really
beautiful. I drank my beer and looked at her,
neither of us saying anything. I lit her a ci-
garette. Then I had to piss. I went to the
bathroom, closed the door, pissed, flushed,
washed my hands, came out, and she was . . .
gone. Fast like that. No goodbye. Nothing. I
looked at the chair she had sat in. At the
beerbottle on the floor. No, it had happened.
Yes, I found one of her earrings. A green ear-
ring. Just one. It’s always ONE earring. What
the hell? But never an earring like this.
I drank my beer straight down, walked
outside. It was cold. All up and down
DeLongpre it was the same. People locked in
tight. Behind doors, behind windows.
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Everybody with their possessions, their

people, their madness, their bank accounts,
their car keys, their walnut faces, their
constipation.
I looked north where I figured she lived
with some fine intellectual chap who spoke
the big words and the big meaning; some
guys got these dolls automatically, I was
lucky to see a photo in a newspaper. I took
the earring the green earring and threw it
north, hard, high in the dark sky, it flew out
of sight in the neon mash of light from Sun-
set Boulevard a block north and I said,
“Here, baby, your earring back and your life
and all the rest, baby baby. But thanks for
the splendid grade-AAA fuck.”
Then I went back inside, found her still
untouched beer, picked it up, drank drank
drank. Found the Racing Form, sat down in
HER chair and began checking out my plays
for the Santa Anita meet, and then I found
one long red hair, one very long red hair
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along the arm of my chair and I picked it up

and touched the end of it to my cigarette; it
sizzled and shriveled and smoked ever so
slightly. I moved the cigarette right up along
the hair until it was all burned except to the
smallest bit in my fingers and then I put that
in the ashtray and burned that.
Charles Bukowski. Immortal writer. Im-
mortal lover. You can’t go home again. It’s all
too late.
I worked at the beer.

I’m not feeling good. Jesus, man, throw

those beercans in the trashbag. Fuck, I got
no old lady to pick up the shit, and thank god
for that. Maybe that’s why I’m a peepfreak
and a jackoff artist. I can’t stand pussy
around all the time. I mean sitting around
terrorizing me with her up and down emo-
tions and crazy head. Another beer? Right at
your foot there, half a six-pack. More in the
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box. Here in America a man ain’t a man un-

less he’s got three or four whores and a late
model car. All right, I’m a little drunk. Maybe
that’s why I mock myself. But put a new car
and 3 women on my back and I’m fucked. I
don’t have a t.v. I don’t even have a radio. A
big Brazilian cunt who wants to put that
thing on me, calls me the last of the mon-
sters. A monster-angel, whatever that means.
But I’m running from her too, tho she’d be a
beautiful fuck, a tremendous fuck. There’s
something inside of me grown a little wiser.
After that walk back from the bathroom you
start sharing a little two person hell. Yes, I’ve
got a story, but wait, let me get another beer.
Sure, I’m a degenerate peepfreak. I’d rather
look at it. I don’t want to get on top of it.
Understand? So, I got this funny story. For
peepfreaks. All right, Frank, I know you ain’t
a peepfreak. But pretend you’re one. No, I
ain’t a homo, goddamn, why does that al-
ways come up?
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I said I wasn’t feeling good, so don’t give

me any shit. Sometimes I feel so bad I think
I’m going nuts. You ever felt that way,
Frank? No? Well, you’re just a nice American
beerdrunk with standard American feelings.
You like to feel like a MAN. Doesn’t that
make you feel good to feel like a MAN,
Franky boy? No, I don’t want to fight. Sup-
pose I won the fight? Your whole life would
be ruined. Why do you interrupt me? I’m try-
ing to get over and tell this funny peepfreak
story, and I’ll bet you’ve done some peeping
too—on buses or with the ladies climbing out
of cars or bending over garbage cans. No, I
don’t have a dirty mind; I just enjoy myself
the way I am. Fuck off. I told you I’m not
feeling good. Throw me another beer. Shit. I
can’t even go get my laundry. I’m going nuts.
I even forgot where I TOOK my laundry! And
when I find that, there’ll be another chicken-
shit thing I’ll have to do that is driving me
crazy. What’s that? I have to get a HAIRCUT!
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Look, dentists are nothing, but barbers

TERRORIZE me! They are such ASSHOLES,
that’s why, Frank. That’s why! You know the
most TERRIBLE thing?? Eh? Frank, when
they finish, they’ve just got to SPIN me in
that chair, right BLAM in front of that
MIRROR and I’ve got to look at my FACE,
pretend to look at my HAIR, as if I gave a
damn whether there was a piece of hair
sticking up here or there! Who cares? Shit,
man, I just want to get OUT of there! And
there’s that asshole barber standing behind
me, I see him in the mirror, he’s yawning
and I’m on fire, and then I’m supposed to say
“fine” or “o.k.” I don’t know where hell is, but
it’s gotta be in a barbershop. It’s such
smucky vain finky shit, jesus, who built men
this way? Give me a dentist putting his elbow
on my chest, sweating, with liquor on his
breath. He gets the thing—“narrrrr, that
didn’t hurt, did it?” and then you spit out the
blood and half of your jaw: “narrrrrb,
 38/499

narrrrrb, o.k., blooooooop . . .” You’re not in-

debted—spiritually—and he begins whistling.
Dentists always have this wonderful lack of
faith in their ability that barbers don’t have,
no matter how lousy barbers are. And most
of them are, not that it matters. So then the
son of a bitch of a barber unfrocks you and
you are supposed to get up real calm, like the
whole thing was so lovely and sweet and you
are now a new man, and then you have to
pay and TIP the son of a bitch! “Good-bye,
now,” he says, “see you later.” “Goodbye,”
you say. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
I’m trying to tell this peepfreak story.
What? Yeah. I know, I KNOW! I know that
many men like barbers. Many men sit in
barbershops for hours and they don’t even
need haircuts. They don’t need anything.
They just play cribbage and talk about
sports. They can look upon that dirty lino-
leum floor with dead sad hair upon it and
they don’t feel anything. They are the sane
 39/499

men of the universe. They have nothing to do

with their time except watch it die. They are
goldfish. I’m not sane. They are always fuck-
ing with me. By they, I mean the must-do
people. Shit, just thinking about getting a
new driver’s license almost made me cut my
throat. All those people in there taking their
shitty little tests. Questions so simple that
they are terrifying. People rubbing their
heads—“psst, hey buddy, what’d de ansaw to
the question number 3? Hey, I don’t unner-
stan that one a tall . . .” Lines, lines, lines,
lines, lines—lonely ladies in their late forties
talking to the clerks, asking them question
after silly question just to have somebody to
TALK to . . . holding up the line for 15
minutes and the clerk, also lonely and lazy
and with a hard dick, smiling, answering
question after silly question. Dick hard, hot
in there, everybody sweating and on the
cross. FOR CHRIST’S SAKE,
EVERYTHING’S SO HARD AND STUPID!
 40/499

Dicks, barbers, cops, landlords, income tax;

fried eggs for breakfast . . . it’s looney. Give
me another beer, shit, almighty, man. I’ll
never tell this funny peepfreak story. I can’t
pay my gas and light bills, my phone bill. It’s
like trying to lift 4,000 pounds. It just
doesn’t make sense. It’s just this chickenshit
GNAWING, all these little snotty bills, again
and again and again, no sense. You take a
breather, say fuck it, look at the clouds for a
couple of weeks. You come to your rented
hole one night—the gas is off, the lights are
out, the phone yanked out—what for? You
owe them all a total, combined, of $39; they
couldn’t wait. Shit, you’ve got $80 in your
wallet. You just couldn’t go to the post-office
and ask for 3 stupid money orders—the lines
are long, the girls are suffering or stupid, and
there’s always some idiot stepping on the
backs of your shoes or trying to squeeze
around in front of you. Madmen, dolts! A
PISS UNIVERSE, I tell you! THERE ARE SO
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MANY STUPID THINGS TO DO THAT

THERE ISN’T ANY TIME LEFT TO DO
ANYTHING THAT ISN’T STUPID. And then
you’re driving along and a cop gives you a
ticket because you haven’t had TIME to get
the motherfucking taillight fixed that some-
body bashed while you were parked. And
while he stops you he finds eight or ten
things wrong—there’s never enough brake,
the headlights are out of line, the brake light
doesn’t work, the windshield wipers are
worn and you only have one windshield
wiper, on and on. Man, you’re trying to kill
yourself, here, good thing I came along.
Here, take this ticket. Sign. Thank you, sir.
Oh, thank you, officer. I don’t have brains
enough to know whether I can drive this car
safely or not—I really want to kill myself, you
know.
Throw me another beer, Frank. Everything
drags me down. That’s why I can’t have any
cunt around here chopping me down with
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her yak and demands. The whole thing is a

war, Frank, can’t you see? And I’m weaken-
ing. I’ve got a week’s worth of newspapers on
the floor. I can’t pick them up. I can’t even
put a roll of toilet paper on a roller. That’s
work. Springs and twisting. More work. I just
sit the roll on the floor. My guts are shot, my
soul is shot. You must believe me,
friend—just to set my soul halfway straight
is a monstrous and impossible task.
You say I need LOVE? Horseshit! All right,
I’m a loner and a loner usually hangs him-
self; a lover needs help and usually gets it; it
all ends up in hanging. Sure I’m sick. Dizzy
spells, and these white blisters on the hands;
boils on the ass; inflamed throat, heart flut-
ter, glass in the feet, neuritis and bursitis,
toothache, headache, ulcers, ingrown hair
and toenails, broken fingers, insomnia, anxi-
ety—what the fuck. Name it, I’ll trot it out.
And a peepfreak. Hell, yeah. Which brings us
 43/499

to that. Goddamn it, I been trying to get to

this peepfreak thing!
So I’m in the doctor’s office. What was it
for? I hate to tell you, but there’s this thin
line along my ass, very thin, indented, like I
been sitting in a slab chair and it won’t go
away, this thin indented line. It’s stupid,
sure. I once saw a pigeon lying on the side-
walk. It was sick or something. Its wings
wouldn’t work. I could see it breathing. And
on its still alive body the ants were already
crawling. The top eye was open and looking
at me. There were ants crawling across that
eye. I didn’t know what to do. I stepped over
the bird and walked on down the street. 2
hours later I had forgotten about it. Now I
had this line on my ass.
There were 3 of us waiting. Guy with
crutch next to me. Girl with impossibly short
skirt and fine nyloned legs all stilted up with
very high heels. Holy, ummm, ummm. So I
get a hard-on. I can’t help looking. I want to
 44/499

look. Wow, it’s all free. It’s like walking into a

closet full of gold. Such crazy things happen.
And those broads are so off-hand about it.
Real cinchy cool, which only makes it worse,
and hotter. Oh my god. I am a peeper since
the age of 6, 8, 10, 12, 48. When I was a kid
we used to go under the slatted grandstands,
crawl under there and peek up the women’s
legs, me and my buddy Harry. We used to go
to the air races and do it. There was a lot of
wind there and it was summertime. We saw
some things. “Think of it,” Harry said,
“THOUSANDS OF PUSSIES!” “Jesus,” I
said, “you’re making me a little sick.” Harry
is now a municipal court judge.
Well, anyhow, there I am in the doc’s of-
fice with the line on my ass and there aren’t
thousands of pussies or millions, which is
terrifying, but just one, and I can’t quite see
it and it’s best that way. Of course, you ima-
gine there might be something else there,
some crazy kind of miracle.
 45/499

Like a dick? There you go, Frank. I’m try-

ing to tell this funny peepfreak story and
you’ve got to come on like some dumb Amer-
ican lonely hero on the barstool of the good
old neighborhood bar. Fuck you. This is the
funny story. Listen. I told you I was a peep-
freak. O.K. Listen, will you?
Right in the MIDDLE of my beautiful
hard-on, I have to think, you KNOW what I
HAVE to think? After all, she IS in a doctor’s
office. Christ, she might have the gon or the
siff, right? AND THE THING DROPS RIGHT
ON DOWN AND I ALMOST BEGIN
HATING HER.
You think I’m nuts? The guy with the
crutch must be thinking the same thing for
he has been staring straight ahead for ten
minutes at one of the paintings of a castle on
the Rhine that the good German doctor has
hung all about the waiting room. He must
have 5 or 6 paintings of castles on the Rhine
in that waiting room.
 46/499

Me, I reach out and get a magazine, a dull

one. News-week or such.
I had to read all about the Russian tanks in
Prague so long after it happened. More mad
shit like getting a driver’s license. Hardly
ever occurred with reason. Just more waste
and waiting and bullshit. So I read it all
again to keep from looking at those siff legs.
The magazine account seemed no different
than the newspaper version. God drab yawn
insanity. More barbershop. That’s what’s so
terrible about doctors’ waiting rooms. All the
warmed-over con. You had to read it and
wait wait wait, or else it was sit and look at
each other’s FACES and that couldn’t be
done, obviously. So, everybody turning
pages, everybody reading these dull
magazines and sitting there THINKING: I
wonder why I feel so bad?—“Some of the
Hungarians riding tanks were asked by the
Czechs why they had helped do this thing
when Hungary was the same victim of the
 47/499

same Russian tanks not so long ago. The

Hungarians turned away.”—I wonder why I
feel so bad the people in the waiting room
think, reading magazines. Do I have the clap,
cancer, acidosis, hepatitis, catalepsy, pyemia,
seborrhea or scarlet fever? Flip, flip, the
pages go, thinking, thinking.
So, you find another magazine, and wait.
So, there I was, and then an old woman
walked out, chirping chirping to the GIRL in
the short short skirt: “Ooooh, he put a stitch
in my eye! Ooooh, I feel so much better now!
Ooooh, honey, I feel so much better now!
The stitch will have to come out later but I
feel so much better now!”
“Well, sit down a moment, mama, and
then we’ll go home,” says the girl in the short
short short skirt with the nyloned legs of ma-
gic on the high high black tight heels. God.
My mind got at me good: Idiot idiot peep-
freak lost lost. Fool, you WASTED all this
time! She’s the DAUGHTER! No CLAP! No
 48/499

nothing! Just the miracle of all those legs

looking at you FREE, oh god have mercy,
those clean miracle legs. WUNDERBAR!!!!
I began to leer over the top of a 4-week-old
copy of LOOK.
I just got something GOING when mama
and daughter rise and LEAVE. The daughter
has on this short black slip, red dress, green
panties, and after mama leaves out the door-
way, she rather pulls the red dress down,
stretches, bringing up the breasts, out the
ass, then she is gone after mama and I am
left with a shaft of pale sunlight in the
doorway.
Then what happened? What could hap-
pen? The doc called in the guy with the
crutch and I took down one of the paintings
of a castle on the Rhine, took it down the el-
evator. Hit floor one, carried the castle on
the Rhine to my car, threw it in the back seat
and drove off.
 49/499

What did I do that for? I don’t know.

Maybe it was all I had left of the nylon legs,
the green panties, I don’t know. Rather like
taking one ant out of the eye of a living pi-
geon. Not much. Throw me a beer. I told you
it was a funny peepfreak story. Why aren’t
you laughing?
What? The line in my ass. It went away. I’d
like to phone the doc and find out when the
old lady is going to have the stitch out of her
eye. But if I can’t hang up a simple roll of toi-
let paper then you know that I can’t do that
either. Listen, Frank, I said THROW ME A
BEER. I’m not feeling well, I told you so . . .

Going east. In the barcar. They had sent

me money for the barcar. Of course, I’d had a
pint getting on, and had stopped for a pint at
El Paso. I was the world’s greatest poet and
he was the world’s greatest editor and book-
maker (and I’m not talking about horses).
 50/499

2,000 people in America read poetry and

900 of them bought books of poetry if they
could be conned into it by word or format.
The old boy took care of the format and I
took care of the word. I spoke the language
of the people through the mind of something
else. “Charles Bukowski and the Savage Sur-
faces”: Northwest Review. I wasn’t supposed
to have a mind. What I believed in was the
clarity of the word. If I wanted to scream I
screamed. Fuck them.
The old man bought paper that would last
for 2,000 years. Put my words on the paper,
but I wasn’t going to last any 2,000 years. I
knew I didn’t have that much; I began late
and would have spit it out 5 years back, but
the others, the famed and the fancied, wrote
so badly they made it difficult for me to quit.
So balls, the first book had sold out, all 750
copies—now the things went for 25 bucks
and up at rare book dealers and I had one
pair of old shoes and a long haul to Valhalla.
 51/499

The old man had a backer, a New York pub-

lisher. They were going for 3,000 copies and
I wrote the stuff straight into the press,
didn’t even send it off to the mags. The old
man had sent back 5 for every one I wrote
but he’d finally got enough, and I threw the
others away.
I looked out that barcar window and re-
membered all my days on the bum, seeing
that same dry dull frightening endless brown
yellow yawning zero of land—travelling with
track gangs, back and forth on hot stupid
buses—all that senseless land—they told me
the world was overpopulated? Nothing,
nothing, nothing. And here, at last, I was in a
barcar, playing poet. How odd it is, really, I
thought, what a bunch of horseshit. I am no
different than I ever was. I might have even
been a better man then, though I doubt it.
The older I got the better I got. What a crazy
elixir! Elixir? What was that? It sounded
good, but not a savage word.
 52/499

“Bukowski is a beast,” said the woman at

the party. “He’s horrible!”
“Oh come now,” said the professor, “do
you really think that?”
(Dear old Dr. Corrington, he always said I
was a “savage,” not a “beast.”)
But I couldn’t get a drink in the barcar. All
those picture windows, and no drink. All that
dry desert, wanting my bones and my ass;
snakes to crawl through my eye-sockets, and
no drink.
2 porters or waiters or whatever they were,
they were standing in the vestibule (how’s
that for a word?) talking to each other about
the stockmarket and pussy and the stupidity
of the white man. It had gone on for about 10
minutes and I had sat at the table, waiting. I
always felt inferior around those neatly
white-jacketed black men, as if they knew
something that I didn’t. But they really didn’t
know anything that I didn’t know, so I finally
got up and weaved toward them, stood there
 53/499

a foot from them and listened to them talk.

They ignored me. Finally their talk bored me
so much that I broke into it:
“Pardon me, please. Pardon me.”
“Yes?” one of them asked.
He would have said “yes sir” but I was
already a bit drunk.
“Can one of you gentlemen tell me where I
can find the bartender or just who is the
bartender?”
“Oh,” said the other one, “I am the
bartender.”
“Would it be possible to get a scotch and
water fairly soon or is the bar closed?”
“Oh no, the bar is open.”
“Then, please, I’d like a scotch and water.
Beer chaser.”
“Beer chaser, sir?”
“Yes, please, if you will.”
“Any kinda beer?”
“No and yes. The best.”
 54/499

The savage went over and sat down. The s

& w and beer arrived. The bill was atrocious,
of course, and I also tipped atrociously. The
other people in the barcar were well-dressed;
I was the only poorly-dressed one, my shoes,
in particular, being badly scuffed and worn.
But now that I had found the bartender,
everybody wanted him. I had spoiled his day.
But the day of the train was over. The rich
rode the jets and crashed to their deaths in
planeloads totaling 186, or ended in Cuba,
hijacked, pissed and scared. Only the poor
rode the trains. The Mexicans, the Indians,
the Negroes, the poets. The porters sniffed
and lifted their noses at us. They re-
membered the better days. When everybody
was laughing and throwing money. Now it
was over.
I ordered again. The same. I liked the pic-
ture window. It was a horror show. I kept
imagining myself out there with the snakes
and toads and cacti, and it was horrible. And
 55/499

then I imagined myself back on the train

with the white-jacketed aristocratic blacks
and the poor blacks and the starving Mexic-
ans and Indians and it was still horrible, in
or out, up or down; I drank it down. There
wasn’t a woman on the train under 40. It was
a shitty trip. Even on the first trip traveling
toward that first book I had picked up a look-
er; all right, she had 2 small children, but
what a body and legs, and we’d sat ass to ass,
one of the kids in her lap, one in mine, both
asleep, and she’d run that tongue down my
throat while our flanks were together, and I’d
felt her all over. Hardly a fuck, but it helped
time go. And during the day I’d felt like a
married man, but I allowed myself to drink
all I wished and it was rather funny. Then
helping her off at the New Orleans station
and then skipping off to the great editor and
his wife. “Bye bye, dear.” I’d bet she’d
thought she’d hooked a damn fool. Well, she
would have, I suppose. Thank god for the
 56/499

great editor and his pages that last 2,000

years.
Now there was nobody. Not a cunt under
40 within 400 miles. Life could be bitter.
Even for a mindless savage.
I stayed on in the barcar, through the af-
ternoon and into the night. Everything
looked better at night because you couldn’t
see it as well. That’s why it’s best to screw in
the dark if you can’t go grade A. The less you
can see of a human being, for screwing or
even for looking, the more you can forgive.
Anyway, by the time I made New Orleans
this second time I was further drunk and fur-
ther flung apart than ever before. Poet?
What the hell was that? I didn’t play freak
games.
The great editor and his wife were there to
meet me.
“Hello, Buke,” the great editor said with a
tiny smile. He was the kool one.
 57/499

“What do they call you?” people would ask

me.
“Buke to rhyme with Puke,” I always told
the people. This satisfied them.
We got into a cab and they took me to my
chosen room. Their own place was stacked
high with pages of Bukowski poems, page
one, 3500 high, standing there. Page two,
3500 high standing there. Pages in the
bathtub, in trunks, pages everywhere. You
couldn’t shit for pages. They even put the
bed on stilts high up in the air. Bukowski un-
der the bed. Bukowski in the shitter.
Bukowski in the kitchen.
“Bukowski, Bukowski, Bukowski,
Bukowski EVER-WHERE! Sometimes I
think I’ll go mad! I can’t stand it!”
He was the kool one. She was Itali-
ano—the fire. I loved her. Everybody did. No
bullshit about her.
“But we love you, Bukowski.”
“Thank you, Louise.”
 58/499

“Even though you are a bastard most of

the time.”
“I know. But sincerely, I don’t try to be.”
“You don’t have to try, Buke,” said the old
man.
I made them stop for a pint somewhere. I
hadn’t eaten in a couple of days but I wasn’t
hungry. We got to the room, Louise paid the
cabbie and we went on in.
Now, me, I’m crazy. I like solitude. I’ve
never been lonely. There is something wrong
with me. I have never been lonely. So when I
saw this place, I saw it wasn’t for me, be-
cause look, the whole place ran long, front to
back. I mean you came in through the
shuttered doors, and here was the front
room and you just walked straight on down
through to the rooms. It was like one long
hall, kitchen in the back, get it, only the shit-
ter was a little off to the side but everything
was lined-up like a long snake and you had
to pass through one room to get to another,
 59/499

no doors. Shit, for a monk of solitude it

shook me—I mean, I’ll take a whore for a
one-night stand but who wants the whole
world forever?
So, we all went in back, to the kitchen, and
here was my landlady. They had arranged it.
Nice clean place. Sure, and she was fat, very
fat, my landlady was very fat in a big pink
and white housegown and we all sat at the
table and I opened the pint and the landlady
got out some beers.
“This is Charles Bukowski, the great poet,”
said the great editor.
“This is Shirley.”
“Poor and savage,” I said, “pleased ta.”
“Pleased ta,” said big sad fat Shirley.
Lonely.
(Oh, god have mercy upon my spare and
worn parts.)
Well, the beer got around and I didn’t let
anybody touch my pint. I was worried about
my solitude. I guess Shirley had gotten up
 60/499

early. Maybe worried about meeting Charles

Bukowski. They had probably given her a bit
of a line, not a line to them. The old man had
once told me, “you’ve ruined me for all other
poets. You lay it down so hard, like a railroad
track straight through hell.”
Well, I wasn’t that good, but he got the
message.
So, Shirley was drooping with me. Shirley
in her big fat housegown, and me, a bum,
playing the role of Charles Bukowski. The
world is full of literary-hustlers and the less
talent they have the more they hustle; me, I
didn’t have to hustle very much. I didn’t have
to hustle very hard. But there was Shirley.
And when people figure they are around a
writer, especially a poet, they just have to
open their soul-pores. Shirley opened up.
Well, really, tho, it’s nice talking in kit-
chens, esp. if you have a lot to drink.
Kitchens are where you can really talk. It’s
harder to lie in a kitchen or while you are
 61/499

taking a shit, than in a fancy front room.

However, it can still get itchy, sticky. I was
only an emotional man when it concerned
my own problems. I was still growing, but
very slowly, and I knew it. I knew I’d have to
hit 50 before I got a bit of sense, got a bit ob-
jective, and then I’d be too tired to make it
interesting. In short, I was fucked.
So Shirley started dropping these tears
down her fat, materialistic face, human still,
real still, she was an old gal who’d been
there, the mill. I’d met dozens of them, but
they could be as cruel as the rest. It was a
hard slam. She was talking about a good
Jewish boxer she’d known, married. I wasn’t
Jewish, but I knew my boxing. When a Jew
laced on those gloves he’d show you a battle-
ship full of guts. In those days, there were
quite a few good Jewish fighters.
“Jackie,” she said, “he beat everybody. But
the champs wouldn’t get into the ring with
him. He was too good. And he never trained.
 62/499

All he did was drink. That was his training.

But they locked him out. The championship
went from one man to another. He blew all
his purses. Bought drinks all up and down
the bar, all up and down the street. He
loaned money and they never paid him back.
He died one night fast, just died in bed. He
just let out this loud moan and died. Every-
body was at his funeral, everybody. He was
such a great man.”
The tears were rolling.
I was finally quite drunk. “What the hell,” I
said, “he can’t do you any good in the grave!
He can’t fuck you from the grave. I can lay it
to you. I’m right here! I can shove you ten
inches!”
Then she really started to cry.
I lifted my drink: “Ten inches. Solid.”
Everybody started acting rather peculiar,
so I took my bottle and went to the place
they said was going to be my bedroom,
 63/499

stripped down to my shorts, and sat there

drinking from my pint.
“Hey,” I screamed, “you sons of bitches
rolled me! Which one of you rolled me?”
I kept screaming for my money until I
found I had hidden it under the pillow. Then
I had another drink, crawled into bed and
went to sleep. Shirley was frightened of me
and didn’t want to let me stay but the great
editor said I was all right—long train ride,
too much to drink. When they told me the
scene the next day I didn’t remember any of
it. Shirley owned an eating place in the
French Quarter. When she went to work I
went out and bought two dozen red roses
and put them on the kitchen table. She kept
those roses until they fell to pieces. And she
kept the card. And pressed one rose in a
book.
Meanwhile, the old man had me signing
pages. 3500 pages to make sure that we got
3000 good ones. I had to sign them with a
 64/499

silver pen, mostly, and various different

colored pens, a kind of thick ink paint. It was
slow. It took each page 8 minutes to dry. I
had pages spread all over the bed and on
chairs and dressers. When Shirley got in
from work, there I’d be, all covered with
pages and drunk on beer. I got tired of
straight signings. I’d sign my name, then say
something, and then draw a picture, any
kind of picture. This slowed up the process
but it took the dullness out of it. Shirley
wasn’t frightened of me anymore. On the
beer, I was just mellow. She’d cook me a
good dinner and then tell me about the store,
the café.
“Jesus, I burned two pots of strawberries
today, two whole pots! It was awful.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah. I was in the other room talking to a
friend a mine and she said, ‘I smell
something burning!’ and I ran into the
 65/499

kitchen and there were burned strawberries

boiled over everywhere! God!”
“You oughta keep your mind on your
business.”
“I like you Buke. You remind me of
Jackie.”
“I can’t fight a lick.”
“No, I mean you don’t come on with a lot
of phony talk the way most people do.”
After dinner I go back to the bedroom and
sign more pages. Then around ten I’d take
my beer into the kitchen and Shirley and I
would watch television together until mid-
night, sometimes one or two a.m. All the
time she was making these little dolls which
she sold at her place. She was very good at it.
And she made hats. The hats were good too.
Very unusual.
“Business ain’t what it used to be. People
don’t even carry money anymore. Everything
is credit and travelers checks. I can barely
make it. Want a little nip of whiskey?”
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“O.K. Shirley, thanks.”

It was the same every night. I could lay
around and play poet. I’d never have to
leave. All I had to do was lay it into her. But
she was so fat. So fat. I didn’t have the
desire.
“Have another little nip.”
“O.K., Shirley, thanks.”
“Do you ever hear them people next door?”
“No.”
“Oh, that’s right, they’re on vacation. Wait
until they get back. The minute he gets home
he starts hollering at her, calling her a
whore, all sorts of things. Then he beats her.
Then he fucks the shit outa her. You can hear
the whole walls shake.”
“Jesus.”
“Every night, the same thing.”
“Ummm, ummm. Well, Shirley, I have to
go to bed now. See you tomorrow.”
“Sure, baby.”
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Then I’d go to bed. Alone. About noon I’d

go over and take the editor the pages I’d
signed. When I finally got finished the stack
of pages was 7 feet high. But I didn’t finish
until my last night in town. Sometimes I’d
drink over at the editors and tell them some
bullshit stories. They liked them. The
roaches ran up and down the walls and
Bukowski was everywhere.
I met their fiction editor in a bar one night
in the Quarter. They introduced me. He was
deaf and dumb. We wrote messages on paper
napkins all night. He came on good. We
wrote messages on those napkins until I
drank him under, then I made my way back
to Shirley’s place. Another night, I am sitting
in a bar with a guy at the piano playing and
clowning, then he grabbed the mike and
said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us
tonight, the poet, Charles Bukowski.”
I waved and the bastards applauded. I’m
sure they never heard of me. Later, back in
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the crapper while taking a leak, some guy

walked up to me.
“Are you the Charles Bukowski they an-
nounced up front?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, would you mind telling me where
you have been published and when?”
“Fuck you, buddy!” I zipped up, washed
my hands and walked out.
I never stuck it into Shirley. Night after
night, I never. It looked like back to Los
Angeles for me. At least in the Quarter I was
a half-celebrity. Back in L.A. I was just an-
other guy without money. Louise stood on a
corner trying to sell paintings while the great
editor rolled Bukowski off the press. And the
roaches lazed in the sun. It was a quiet and
easy time. I signed the last of the pages while
drinking at their place and when I was done,
we had a stack seven feet tall. 3500
Bukowski signatures and drawings. I had
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done it. The book was going to go for $7.50.

CRUCIFIX IN A DEATHHAND. And how.
I said goodbye to Shirley the next day in
her shop. She looked genuinely sad. The long
t.v. nights of drinking while she made the
dolls and hats in the kitchen were over. The
good dinners were over. The easy New Or-
leans life was shot for me. I couldn’t stick it
in. “I’ll never forget the roses and you,” she
said. “I’ll write about you some day, Shirley,”
I threatened her. I squeezed her hand and
left her there with her boiling strawberries
and some rich bitch trying on one of her 25
dollar hats that cost her a dollar to make.
The rich bitch looked good, but she was for
somebody else.
The great editor and his wife took me
down to the train station. In the baggage
room they had this long wooden partition. It
looked like a bar. I hit the wood and
hollered, “I wanna buy drinks for everybody
in the house!”
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Two young girls there started laughing.

“That was really funny,” one of them said.
Balls.
I packed into the train and the great editor
and his wife waved to me through the win-
dow. I blew a kiss and the train pulled out. I
broke the cellophane on the pint and had the
first one. I’d find the barcar later. So here we
were. Louisiana. And thinking of the long
ride through Texas that broke your back. I
found the barcar anyhow. I didn’t like trains,
trapped in there with the people. It was
sometime next day, sitting in the barcar, I
seemed to hear a porter hollering “Charles
Bukowski! Charles Bukowski!” Maybe I was
going mad at last. He walked up to my table.
“You must be Charles Bukowski,” he said.
“Yes. Poet, and lover,” I answered.
“Telegram, Mr. Bukowski.”
I gave him a quarter, opened the telegram.
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“Dear Buke. We miss you terribly. Our

world is not the same without you. Please be
careful and take care of yourself.

love,
Jon and Lou Webb.”

I ordered a drink and looked out the pic-

ture window. “California here I come, right
back where I started from . . .” The trainride
was just one long drunk. Days later, dead
and torn, I opened the cab door and got out.
There was the old front court, my little girl
saw me. “Hank! Hank!” I was hooked. I car-
ried her inside. There was the woman.
“Well, how was it?”
“Hard to describe. I’m tired.”
“You go to bed, Hank,” said the little girl,
“you go to bed.”
“First I gotta peepee.”
“O.K., you peepee, then you go to bed.
When you wake up, we’ll play.”
“O.K.”
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The woman made a bacon and egg sand-

wich. I laid in bed and read the L.A. Times
and then I knew I was back. There were ten
or fifteen letters. I read them. Everybody was
lonely. Everybody was in agony. I threw the
letters on the floor and in ten minutes I was
asleep at 2 in the afternoon. Outside the cats
played, the butterflies flew, the sun kept
working. The party was over. Charles
Bukowski was Hank again. Rent was needed.
Food. Gasoline. Luck. CRUCIFIX IN A
DEATHHAND. Finished.

It’s a world, it’s a world of potential sui-

cides, well, I speak mostly of the United
States, I don’t know the rest, but it’s a place
of potential and actual suicides and hun-
dreds and thousands of lonely women, wo-
men just aching for companionship, and
then there are the men, going mad, masturb-
ating, dreaming, hundreds and thousands of
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men going mad for sex or love or anything,

and meanwhile, all these people, the love-
lost, the sex-lost, the suicide-driven, they’re
all working these dull soul-sucking jobs that
twist their faces like rotten lemons and pinch
their spirits, out, out, out . . . Somewhere in
the structure of our society it is impossible
for these people to contact each other.
Churches, dances, parties only seem to push
them further apart, and the dating clubs, the
Computer Love Machines only destroy more
and more a naturalness that should have
been; a naturalness that has somehow been
crushed and seems to remain crushed
forever in our present method of living (dy-
ing). See them put on their bright clothes
and get into their new cars and roar off to
NOWHERE. It’s all an outside maneuver and
the contact is missed.
The other night—at somebody else’s sug-
gestion—we drove down Hollywood
Boulevard. I have lived in Los Angeles, off
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and on, since 1922 and I don’t believe I have

driven down Hollywood Boulevard more
than half a dozen times (I am eaten by my
own kind of madness). It was a Friday night
and here they drove slowly, the street was
jammed. The people in the cars were watch-
ing the people on the sidewalks and the
people on the sidewalks were walking along
looking in the closed store windows. Here
and there was a movie house showing movies
of people supposedly living. Further on were
a few clubs and bars but nobody went in.
Nobody was spending any money. Nobody
was doing anything. They just watched and
drove and walked. I suppose there was action
enough somewhere, but hardly there and
hardly for the masses. Here they worked all
week on jobs they hated, and now given the
slightest bit of leisure time they wasted it,
they murdered it. It was more than I cared to
have a lengthy view of. I turned off the
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boulevard, found Fountain Ave. and drove

back toward Los Angeles.
I sit here playing writer each day and my
typer faces the street. I live in a front court,
and I don’t consciously work. Wait, that’s a
mistake—I do consciously work—but I don’t
consciously watch, but toward evening I see
them coming in—walking and driving—most
of them are young ladies who live alone in all
these high rise apartments which surround
me. Some of them are fairly attractive and
most of them are well-dressed, but
something has been beaten out of them. That
8-hour job of doing an obnoxious thing for
their own survival and for somebody else’s
profit had worked them over well.
These ladies immediately disappear into
the high-rise walls, close the apartment door
and vanish forever. From the cubicle of the
job to the cubicle of resting and waiting to
return to the job. The job is the center. The
job is the sun. The job is the mother’s breast.
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To be jobless is the sin; to be lifeless doesn’t

matter. Of course, one must consider their
side—a job is money and to be moneyless is
not comfortable. I know enough about this.
And every person can’t be an artist; that is, a
painter, a musician, a composer, a writer,
whatever. Many lack the talent, many lack
the courage; most lack both. Even artists
can’t remain artists forever, especially good
artists who can earn enough to survive with-
in their craft. The talent goes, the courage
goes, something goes. What’s left for the av-
erage person but an occupation that must, fi-
nally, kill the spirit? I am very sorry, for in-
stance, for my own doctor. Now certainly
here is a person who could afford a training
that might put him into a profession more
enlightening than a punch press operator.
But I sit in his packed waiting room and see
that he too is caught. He hustles his patients
in and out, barely asking them what is wrong
with them. He weighs them, gives them a pill
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and now and then sticks a snake up their ass.

If something further goes wrong he might
suggest a hospital, an operation. He must
pay office rent, receptionist rent, and have a
wife in his home, an acceptable doctor’s wife
in an acceptable doctor’s home. His life is
simply a durable hell. His children, too,
might become doctors if he can educate
them.
Very well, I watch my ladies vanish into
their high-rise walls to shower and eat and
watch tv, read the paper, phone Joyce, then
smear themselves with cream, set the alarm
and sleep. I am not a woman but I must ima-
gine that some of them have sexual drives
and a wish for male companionship and love.
It must be so. But there’s the job. And there’s
nobody down there, my god. There’s the
weekend. What to do with the weekend?
Those sons of bitches just want to get in my
panties, that’s all. Hit and run, goodbye.
Who wants to be part of a cunt pile?
 78/499

Everybody’s blocked off from each other.

Finally, out of desperation and advancing
age, a man is chosen, first, perhaps for sexual
pleasure and then later for marriage, a mar-
riage that never works, a marriage that be-
comes dull and desperate, another durable
hell or maybe an unendurable one. Marriage
is a contract to live in dullness until death do
us part. What else then? Prostitution?
Ugggg.
Hundreds of thousands of lonely and frus-
trated men and women living mostly without
sex and certainly without love, working at
jobs they hate, running red lights, crashing
into fire plugs and store windows, gambling,
drinking, taking dope, smoking 2 packs a
day, masturbating, going crazy, going crazier
and crazier, getting religious, buying goldfish
and cats and monkeys . . .
Hundreds of thousands of lonely and frus-
trated men and women who settle for Dis-
neyland instead of love, who settle for a
 79/499

baseball game instead of sex . . . Hundreds of

thousands of lonely and frustrated men and
women who’ll pass each other on the side-
walk and be afraid to look at each other’s
faces, at each other’s eyes for fear they’ll be
accused of being on the make. Blocks and
walls of horror-movie magazines, girly
magazines, nudey magazines, nude movies,
vibrators, dirty jokes—everything but contact
and real action. I must guess that the United
States must be the loneliest place in the
world with England not far behind. Too often
I’d heard the guys talk on the job about the
wild times they had in the army, the drunks,
the whores . . . When I asked them, “What
are you doing now? Why did you stop?” I got
these strange looks. It’s simple. They are
afraid here now in civilian life. Have to keep
the job. Have to pay off the car. Have to—No
army to take care of them now. No 3 square
meals. No bunk. No sure payday. No Uncle
 80/499

Sam to cure their clap . . . Their wildness,

their courage was regulated and safe enough.
I tell you, we must be the most backward
nation on earth. In our prisons we do not be-
lieve in allowing the men even limited sexual
relationships with the opposite sex, yet we
wonder why the men molest and ravage each
other in desperation. You say they made a
mistake? Crime is in the definition of it. Sup-
pose you made a mistake? Would you like to
be beaten by a dozen men and made into a
sexual idiot? What judge passed that sen-
tence? It’s strange that in one of the most
backward states, Mississippi, certain inmates
are allowed to have limited sexual relation-
ships with women—even though most of
them are or pose as wives—from the outside.
We murder ourselves with sex and occupa-
tion; the madhouses crawl with sexually mal-
adjusted and occupationally-destroyed
people.
 81/499

Answers? Who knows? We’re structured

in. The bars are heavy.
The other day I stopped for gas. I don’t
know how it got around to the subject, I
think a woman walked by and that started it,
but the attendant said, “I haven’t had a piece
of ass in 5 years.” I laughed. “You’re kidding,
man.” “No, I’m serious. 5 years now.” He was
in his 20’s. I drove away thinking about what
a friend of mine had said, “Where are the
women? Tell me, where are they? Where’s
the action?” There’s none. It’s a desert.
My friend drives from Los Angeles to Mex-
ico each weekend to fulfill his sexual desires
in a whorehouse.
I don’t know, my friends. Look at these
walls, look at these people, look at these
faces, these streets . . . We’ve all locked
ourselves up. The rapists come out at night
and the murderers, and the ladies lock them-
selves in and wait for the big one, the dream
man, the money and soul man, the man of
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brilliant conversation, the man that mama

might like. Set the alarm. He may walk in on
the job . . . tomorrow, next week, next
month, next year . . . surely he’s out there . . .
These sons of bitches just want to get into
my panties . . . I wonder what Bukowski’s
like?

Monday afternoon was my day to see the

girl. She was 7.
The hangover wasn’t too bad and I drove
down to Santa Monica via Pico Boulevard.
When I got there the door was open. I
pushed in. She was writing a note. The moth-
er of my child. Her name was Vicki.
“I was just going to leave you this note.
Louise is at Cindy’s.”
“O.K.”
“Look. Could I have some money?”
“How much?”
“Well, I could use $45 now.”
 83/499

“I can only let you have 20.”

“All right.”
She lived in an unfurnished one-bedroom
Synanon apt., $130 a month. Vicki was one
of those who had to always belong to some
organization . . . she had gone from poetry
reading workshops to the communist party
to Synanon. Whenever she became insulated
she went to a new organization. Well, that
was as sensible as anything else.
We walked over to Cindy’s. Cindy was
black. The 2 girls played with their paper
dolls on the floor. Her mother was white, fat
and in bed.
“She’s got asthma,” Vicki said to me.
“Hello,” I said to Cindy’s mother.
Cindy’s father wasn’t about. He was on the
cure and working a gas station.
“Will you drive me to Synanon?” Vicki
asked. “Or I can take the bus.”
(Synanon had a bus line too.)
“All right,” I said, “I’ll drive you down.”
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“Come on, Louise,” she said, “pick up your

stuff and let’s go.”
“But, Mommy, I just want to get this last
dress on the doll.”
“All right, but hurry up” . . .

I left Vicki off in front of the building.

Then we drove east.
“Where we going, Hank?”
“To the beach, I guess.”
“But I wanted to go to the Synanon beach .
. .”
“The beaches are all alike . . . there’s dirty
water and dirty sand.”
Louise began sobbing. “But I wanted the
Synanon beach! They don’t like war! They
don’t kill people!”
“Look, little one, we’re almost at the other
beach. Let’s try it anyhow.”
“But people don’t carry guns at Synanon!”
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“You’re probably right, but I’m afraid that

sometimes we still need guns just like we
need knives and forks.”
“Silly,” she said, “you can’t eat with a gun!”
“A lot of people do,” I said.

It was winter and cold and there weren’t

many cars about or people either. Louise had
had lunch at noon but I hadn’t eaten yet. We
walked into the little Jewish grocery store
next to the candleshop. I got a hotdog, some
chips and a 7-UP. Louise got some kind of
candy cracker and a 7-UP. We walked to the
last cement table near the water.
“It’s cold,” I said. “Let’s turn our backs to
the sea.”
So we sat there facing the boardwalk.
There were 14 or 15 people about but they
had the strange tranquility of the seagulls,
the winter seagulls. No, it wasn’t a tranquil-
ity but a deadness. They were like bugs. They
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simply stood or sat together, motionless, not

talking.
“It’s too bad I have to look at those
people,” I said, biting into my hotdog.
“Why don’t you want to look at them?”
“They have no desire.”
“What’s ‘Desire’?”
“Well, let’s see. ‘Desire’ is wanting
something you usually can’t get right when
you want it, but if you have enough ‘Desire’
you can sometimes get it anyhow . . . Oh,
hell—that sounds like ‘Ambition’ which is
something you’re trained to do instead of
something you want to do . . . Let’s just say
that those people don’t want anything.”
“Those people don’t want anything?”
“Right. In a sense, nothing affects them so
they don’t want anything, they aren’t any-
thing. Especially in Western Civilization.”
“But that’s the way they are. Maybe that’s
a good way to be.”
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“Some wise men say so. I guess all of

everything is how you work at it. A direction.
I still don’t like to look at those people while
I’m eating.”
“Hank! You’re not nice! There’s nothing
wrong with those people! I ought to slap you
across the face with this cracker!”
She picked up the cracker as if to hit me
with it. I thought that was very funny. I
laughed. She laughed too. We both felt good
together, at last.
We finished eating and walked down to-
ward the water. I sat down on a little cliff
above the water and wet shore, and Louise
built a sand castle . . .

It was then that I noticed the two men

walking along the waterfront from the east.
And the one man walking along the water-
front from the west. They all appeared to be
in their mid-twenties. The man walking from
the west had a large bag and seemed to be
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stopping and picking things up and dropping

them into this bag. He didn’t seem to sense
the two men approaching him from the east,
but there was still quite a football field
between them. 2 football fields.
The two walking from the east had on
heavy boots and kicked at things along the
shore. The one from the west almost swayed
in the wind, bending over, picking up things
for his paper sack. And I thought, it’s too
bad, but the poor guy with the paper sack
doesn’t realize that the other two guys are
going to jump on him and beat him up. Can’t
he realize that? It was a surety. And since I
sensed it, I couldn’t understand how the guy
with the bag couldn’t sense it. And the life-
guard in his little white shack on stilts . . .
couldn’t he see?
It almost happened in front of me. All the
men had beards but the 2 from the east had
shorter beards; their beards almost looked
angry . . . The guy with the paper sack just
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had hair all over his face and neck and back
and front and everywhere. Then he looked
up and saw the other two . . . He tried to walk
around them, on the side toward the sea.
Just then a wave rolled in and the guy
nearest him pushed him into the water. His
paper sack went out with the tide.
As he got up, the other guy hit him and he
went down again and then they were kicking
at his body and his face with their boots. At
first he held his hands over his face, then his
hands fell away, but they kept kicking at his
face.
Then they rolled him over and took
something out of his pocket. A wallet. They
took something out of the wallet and then
threw the wallet far out into the sea.
Then they looked around and saw me sit-
ting there. They looked at me. It was a kind
of zoo thing—the way monkeys looked at
you. They could see that I was old but they
could see that I was big too, and I looked
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bigger in that black lumberjack my landlord

had given me.
I looked at their faces and noticed that
they were not particularly brave faces. I
turned to the kid and told her, “You stay up
here on the sand . . .”
Then I leaped from the cliff and hit the wet
sand and walked toward them. I pulled the
switchblade, hit the button and the blade
jumped out.
They didn’t move. Their game. I moved
forward.
Then one guy started running and the oth-
er guy moved after him. They ran down the
shore, around the pile of searocks and were
gone. The lifeguard still stared out at sea . . .

I walked over to the guy and turned him

over. Sand was mixed in with blood and hair.
I took the sea water as it came in and
splashed it over his face. Hair grew upon his
face where it wasn’t supposed to grow. It
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grew right in near the nose. I don’t mean un-

der it, I mean right around the edges of the
nose. Up by the eyes. There was a bird-like
thing about him, an inhuman thing about
him. I disliked him. I helped him up.
“You o.k.?”
“Yeah. Yeah. But they took my money. 3
dollars. My money’s gone.”
I picked him up and walked him over to a
small cliff, away from Louise and sat him
down.
“I live under the pier,” he said.
“Are you serious?”
“5 years now. I think it’s been 5 years.”
“I can only give you a dollar.”
“Will you?”
“Here.”
The dollar seemed to bring him out of it.
“Do you live around here?” he asked.
“No. Los Angeles.”
“How do you make it?”
“Luck, I guess.”
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Then Louise waved from her sand castle. I

waved back. My friend and I looked out at
sea. A small ugly boat of some sort was
slowly passing by out there, doing
something.
Then my friend said, “Yesterday 2 guys
were sucking each other off under the pier
and some plain-clothes cops caught them
and locked them up. Do you think that’s
right?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said.
“I mean,” he said, “if 2 guys want to suck
each other off, that’s their business, isn’t it?”
“Well, looking at it from that angle, I sup-
pose you’re right . . . But look, I’ve got to
check on my little girl right now.”
I walked over and sat down by Louise.
My friend walked up the sand toward the
boardwalk.
She smiled at me:
“You like my castle?” she asked.
I looked.
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“It’s beautiful,” I said, “but better than

that, it’s very nice.”
“What’s the difference between ‘Beautiful’
and ‘Very nice’?”
“Well, ‘Beautiful’ is usually what people
say when they don’t mean it and ‘it’s very
nice’ is usually what they way when they
really mean it.”
“Oh.”
It was a very nice sand castle. We both
hated to leave it there like that, so we
smashed it down with our feet. Then she
held my hand as we walked across the sand
toward the parking lot. There were quite
some hours left in our Monday together and
we needed something different to do.

I have lost some of the letters or I am too

lazy to look for them but the first one was
something about him being in a motel, in
Sunland maybe, no, that doesn’t sound right,
 94/499

maybe it was the Sunland Motel, no, that

isn’t it either, anyhow, I let the letter lay
around three or four days and then I phoned,
and the phone number given was one digit
short, so I looked up the motel, whatever it
was, and I phoned in and asked for a Jack
M—, and Jack M—was out, and I left the
message, and then I got lost, either at the
track or in some other way and one day I was
home (home?) and the phone rang and it
was Jack M—and he said he had been trying
to reach me and would Friday night be all
right? I said yes. And he said, about 8, I gotta
catch a plane at the International at 10:30,
it’s a shame I couldn’t a gotten you earlier.
So that Friday Neeli and Liza happened to
be around and we were drinking beer in the
breakfastnook and I warned them that this
professor from this eastern university was
coming around and that they’d better brace
up, you know, for anything.
 95/499

We weren’t to be denied. The doorbell

rang and Neeli and Liza began laughing. “It’s
the professor,” I said.
I went to the door.
“ARE YOU CHARLES BUKOWSKI?” he
asked with great pompous and sonorous
force.
“Yeh,” I said, “Come on in.”
He followed me to the breakfastnook. He
had a briefcase and a six-pack of beer. He
had heard the legend: you go see Bukowski,
you better bring a six-pack. I made the intro-
ductions and opened the beers. The prof sat
down. He looked more like 1940 than any-
thing else. Very straight back. Tie. Tweed
jacket.
He began to interview. But he didn’t have
a tape recorder. And he didn’t take short-
hand. It was evident he couldn’t interview
me. The questions were harmless and I sug-
gested that we go into the other room. I still
attempted to answer Jack M—’s questions
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the best I could. We finished his beer and

then I brought out my own. But he was
nervous. Neeli and Liza were goading him a
bit and I don’t think they realized that he
knew it, so I tried to treat him with a bit
more civility. But then he had to leap up to
use the phone.
It was the time of the protests of Nixon’s
move to blockade the harbors in N. Vietnam.
Jack M—had heard that protestors were
down at the airport, and they were, but he
found out over the phone that flights were
still leaving, but it was obvious that he was
very nervous about it, and we agreed with
him that it was best that he left soon.
A week or so later I received a letter from
the professor explaining that here were some
questions he had really meant to ask (but in
all the confusion . . .) and would I mind? The
questions sat about a week or so and then I
sat down and answered them. It went like
this:
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1) Why is your phone unlisted?

Simple. Two years ago, that is before I quit
my job, I didn’t have as much laying around
time as I do now. The little free time I had
then was needed toward creation. A ringing
phone is a hazard. People have a way of in-
viting themselves over. At one time I didn’t
answer the door, the phone or the mail. I feel
that I was justified. I feel that what I created
during that time proves it. Now I murder my
own time. But I feel that what I create now
also justifies that.
2) Have you ever written, or thought
about writing, a film scenario?
Excuse me, what is a film scenario? Does it
have anything to do with movies? Then the
answer is no. I have never seen a movie that
didn’t make me a bit sick. I don’t want to
make anybody sick.
3) Do you have anything like an aes-
thetic theory?
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What does “aesthetic” mean? I don’t have

any theories. I simply DO. Or is that a the-
ory, uh? Uh.
4) How about a philosophy of
history?
I don’t like history. History is a terrible
weight which proves nothing except the
treachery of man and I am aware of that by
walking down the street NOW. History is
dull and doubtful and I don’t know how
much of it is true. History is the memory of
victory and defeat, and I’ve got enough on
my mind now.
5) How about the common belief
that all poems are political?
No, I think that most poems are cows with
big sagging empty tits. I presume that by
“political” you mean poems that move
something toward the ultimate betterment of
Man and the Government of Man. That’s all
too perfect and coy. A poem is often
something that is only necessary toward one
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man—the writer. It’s often a perfect form of

selfishness. Let’s not credit ourselves with
too much. Garage mechanics are more hu-
man than we are.
6) Have you written music?
Uhuh. I never liked those notes and lines
and things they tried to teach me in school, I
hated the teacher, so I deliberately didn’t
learn the notes. Now it seems too late and
too silly. Music affects me much more than
writing or painting, though, and I seem to be
listening to it continually—classical, rock,
jazz, anything. It’s awfully good shit.
7) Other writers you admire (besides
Jeffers and Aiken—I’m thinking of
Anthony Burgess, for example, whose
Enderby is somewhat Bukowskian . . .
& as a matter of fact, Burgess used to
be a composer)?
Never heard of Burgess, which doesn’t
mean he isn’t any good. I don’t read much
anymore. I like Artaud, Céline, Dostoyevsky,
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Kafka and the STYLE of the early Saroyan

without the content. Then maybe Eugene
O’Neill or somebody like that. Most writers
simply don’t have it and never will. There’s
hardly any looking around, up, down, before
and before that. A pack of shameful fakes. If
I ever go to hell there will be all writers down
there. There could be nothing worse.
8) Several times during our “inter-
view” you said, sardonically, “I’m im-
mortal”; now I’m no depth psycholo-
gist or mystic-of-the-word . . . but the
thought occurs to me that maybe you
sometimes brood on what sort of trace
you’ll leave as an artist, a writer . . .
and also on human perishability.
(There’s a question somewhere in that
preceding sentence.)
There is? Well, about the “immortal,” I
hope I said it “sardonically.” The only good
thing about writing is the writing itself—that
is, to bring me closer to what is necessary
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NOW and to keep me from becoming any-

thing like the first face I pass on a sidewalk
on any given day. When I die they can take
my work and wipe a cat’s ass with it. It will
be of no earthly use to me. The only trace I
want to leave, after death, is upon myself,
and that isn’t important to you. Incidentally,
one of the best things I like about humans is
that they do perish.
9) Anything in astrology or Zen or
any of the popular cults you believe in?
I don’t have time for cults. That business is
for the large gang of people who need toe-
tickling. For them, it’s all right. It might even
be helpful. But I build the IDEA of myself
from myself and my experience. I will have
my blind sides, true. And I might have much
to learn from other men. But, basically, I am
not a learner from other men. I am head-
strong and prejudiced but it’s good to live
without too much instruction from other
men. I’ve found the most learned men to be
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bores and the dumbest seem to be the most

profound and uncluttered. Who wants to be
many voices when there is only one voice try-
ing to get out?
10) You told me you stopped writing
when you were 24 (incidentally, have
you written an account of this episode
with your father? If you haven’t we’d
like to see it for THE
____REVIEW—we pay something like
$50.00 for stories and essays) . . . but
you didn’t tell me when you started
writing before that, and why you star-
ted writing.
I’d much rather you paid me $50 for an-
swering these questions. I’m not sure that
thing I told you about my father is quite true,
although there is a partial truth. Sometimes
when I’m talking I improve on things to
make them better. Some people might call it
lying; I call it an art-form, and, uh uh, no, I
didn’t tell you when I started writing or why,
 103/499

but I was drinking, wasn’t I? And also, you

didn’t ask. And also, I’m glad you didn’t ask.
11) Is there anything, other than
booze and women (I presume), that
stimulates you creative lust? (Smell of
horses, faces in the crowd at the
track?) (You sort of answered this, but
I’d like to hear more if you’d like to say
it.)
Everything, of course, stimulates my creat-
ive lust. Faces in the crowd do it plenty. I can
look at faces and become disgusted and ter-
rorized and sickened. Others can find beauty
in them like large fields of flowers. I guess I
ain’t much of a man for that. I am narrow. I
can’t see the horizons or the reasons or the
excuses or the glories. The average face to
me is a total nightmare.
Well, shit, I guess I don’t look so good to
others either. I’ve been told I’m a very ugly
man by more than one. So there’s your joke.
Let’s get off these faces. I know that I haven’t
 104/499

answered your question properly, but I got

into a passion and started yelling. Sorry.
12) What do you think of “confes-
sional” poetry? How do you see your
own work fitting and resisting that
label?
Confessional poetry, of course, depends
upon who does it. I think that most brag too
much on themselves or don’t know how to
laugh properly. Does that sound bitchy?
Well, I mean, examine it and see. Even
Whitman.
I really do think that most of my confes-
sional stuff relieves itself as a form of enter-
tainment. Meaning, look, I lost my balls or
my love, ha ha ha. So forth. But the ha ha ha
must be fairly relevant and real, I mean no
Bob Hope stuff, so forth.
I find that when the pain gets bad enough
there are only three things to do—get drunk,
kill yourself or laugh. I usually get drunk and
laugh.
 105/499

Yeh. I don’t always do the confessional

stuff but I suppose I am hooked on it, it
comes easy because much has happened, I
almost MAKE much happen—as if to create a
life to create an art. I don’t think this is the
true way to do things, it is probably a weak-
ness, but I am a dreamer and maybe a dram-
atist and I like more things to happen than
happen—so I push them a bit. I suppose it’s
not right. I don’t claim to be.
13) What do you think of college kids
reading poetry? Why do they do it? Do
they read you? Do they read poetry for
what you consider valid reasons?
(That last verges on being an asinine
question, but you might be able to re-
deem it with a clever answer.)
Now you know I don’t think of college kids
reading poetry. I don’t know if they do or if
they read me. There’s no clever way to an-
swer this without making up something I
 106/499

don’t know and which I can’t get away with,

so I’m being more clever this way.
14) What’s so great about living in
L.A.?
I’m here to begin with and then you build
around that. Or I build around it. I’ve lived
most of my life here and I’ve simply gotten
used to the place. I can’t even get lost, sober.
And just the other day I found out where the
L.A. Zoo was. And the women here seem to
love old men. I’ve never seen women like
that. At the same time, I’m suicidal and
there’s the smog to help me out. So, what do
you got in *****Ohio?
15) What are you reading now? What
are your reading habits?
I’m not reading anything. Well, I write my
own things and I read them. I suppose that’s
a habit.
16) If you were suddenly to become
wealthy, how would your life change?
 107/499

I would become wiser, more profound and

more lovely.
17) Do you have any children?
I have a girl aged 7. She’s all right.

I mailed the questions and answers in and

I didn’t expect much but I got, in the return
mail, a letter from Jack M—
Dear Buk:
All right! That was good medicine (your
response to my questions). I don’t think it’ll
be right for the REVIEW, though. That isn’t
what I had in mind, and my questions didn’t
lead into the sort of literary (prosodic & tech-
nical) matters that we like for our Interviews
with Poets series. (These would have been
questions about your sense of the line, your
opinion of other poets—specifically, and oth-
er matters that I suspect you might consider
pure crap.)
Anyway, I’ve forwarded the interview
thing to the editors, and they’ll of course give
 108/499

it the eye. (One other thing: we’re filled up

with interviews already, through next year.)
My reason was, as I explained, to get in-
formation for my own article on you and
your work—something that I can peddle else-
where. I’ve already written this article, and I
think it’s a dandy. When it comes out,
wherever that is, it’ll help you somewhat,
surely . . . but of course, my motive isn’t al-
truistic—I simply like your poems a great
deal, and think they should be better known
than they are.
Enough of that. Now I WOULD like to ask
you, specifically and formally, to send us
some poems for the ****REVIEW. We pay
something like $10.00 to $15.00 a poem.
I’ve ordered HUMMINGBIRD and have
read the broadsheet sent out by Black Spar-
row Press.
Did I tell you that I enjoyed my brief visit
there? I did, and indeed, as you’ll guess when
you read the essay that came of it.
 109/499

Cheers,
Jack M—

Dear Jack M—;

Well, & ( ) (therefore) &
(do you understand)?
(your visit was hardly wasted)
(at this end) (either) &

Cheers to you,
Charlie B.

Pete was 13, a difficult age they say, but

any age is, and Pete had parents of German
extraction, strict, very. “A child should be
seen and not heard,” was one of their
dictums, and that was all right with Pete. He
disliked his parents immensely. His father
beat him regularly with a razor strop for
 110/499

minor infractions of rules while his mother

stood by and said, “The father is always
right.”
At times, at night, sometimes when his
parents were fucking, Pete would be think-
ing, alone in his bedroom, “These can’t be
my parents. I must have been adopted. I
must have been kidnapped.”
Actually Pete had been the reason for the
marriage. His father had gotten his mother
pregnant and the old man had always held
the marriage against him, but Pete thought,
with some repugnance, that he hadn’t stuck
that thing in there. And he thought, with fur-
ther repugnance, can it be that I was once
partly jissom in that man’s cock? The
thought sickened him.
Pete had to mow the lawn twice a week,
front and back, once in one direction and
once in another each time. In other words he
mowed the lawn over four times a week,
trimmed the edges and watered. The
 111/499

neighbors remarked what a nice lawn his

parents had.
It was after his lawn-mowing sessions that
his father would get down on the grass and
“inspect for hairs.” His father would put his
eye level to the grass and if he found one
grassblade standing taller than the others
that was the reason for a razor stropping in
the bathroom. And his father would always
find a hair. “Ah, I see it! A hair!” And his
mother would come to the back window and
say, “Your father found a hair, you bad boy!”
And Pete would walk to the bathroom where
his father would be waiting, sitting on the
edge of the tub, strop ready, his face working
into a red fury.
After the age of 12 Pete no longer
screamed when he was whipped; it was an
admission of pain and he didn’t want to ad-
mit pain to his father, he refused. The beat-
ings became so brutal that he was unable to
sit on an ordinary chair for dinner, he had to
 112/499

sit on two pillows and listen to his father re-

count the day at work, which was always very
similar:
“I told that son of a bitch Cranston off
today. He let his station go unnoticed while
he talked to this blonde. It must have gone
on for 20 minutes. I walked over and told
him, ‘Listen, Cranston, your job isn’t to talk
to blondes, it’s to guard the museum facilit-
ies. You straighten out or I’ll report you to
Mr. Henderson!’ Then I walked off. That
blonde got out of there.
“Cranston kept giving me dirty looks all
day. You know, they robbed his area two
weeks ago, got right under a glass case while
he was there and lifted out all the coins. They
dated way back, must have been worth three
or four thousand dollars. Why they dug those
coins out of there while his ass was turned.
He’s asleep on his feet.
“Also I put a suggestion in the suggestion
box—that those World War I planes be taken
 113/499

out of the cellar and put on a higher floor.

There’s a dampness down there and the
dampness causes a mildew that is beginning
to eat into the fabric of the planes. They need
a drier area . . .”
His father talked for hours about the job,
he only talked about his job. He went to bed
at 8 p.m. every night so that he would be
“fresh and ready for the job.” That meant
lights out for everybody else and bed. But his
father always talked on about the job and his
mother would answer, “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I
think you’re right. Oh, I’m glad you told him!
He said that? And what did you say?”
The only thing that interrupted them was
their once-a-week fuck and Pete would have
to listen to the bed squeaking, the walls be-
ing thin. Pete would envision his father
mounted, going through the motions, and it
would sicken him, that he belonged to these
people, that there wasn’t any escape . . .
wouldn’t be, for years.
 114/499

It was after this particular night, after a

stropping for missing a “hair,” and after
listening to their automatic lovemaking that
he had a dream. His mother and his father
were sitting in the breakfast nook eating
their dinner when a huge spider, blackish-
brown, with most powerful fangs and two
large yellow-green eyes walked into the
breakfast nook. The spider was a good three
feet in circumference, very hairy and gave off
the odor of distant blood. While his father
was talking about the job the spider got up
on the ceiling, then dropped down on a
single thread of its web and began to spin a
net about his mother. His father failed to no-
tice. When the spider had his mother com-
pletely in his web he moved down and sunk
his fangs into her breasts, then lifted her
high into his web and left her dangling above
the table. Then the spider simply leaped
from his web, grabbed his father with his
spider legs and sunk his fangs home. The
 115/499

spider then lifted his father from the chair to

the table and sat there above him, sucking
the blood from his body.
Pete awakened then. He walked down the
hall and looked into his parents’ bedroom.
They were each asleep in their twin beds. He
went back to bed and slept and had no fur-
ther dreams that he could remember.
The next day was Monday and a day, fi-
nally, of no duties. Pete stayed after school
and got into a baseball game. He didn’t get
much practice but he was a good athlete. He
got a homer and a triple and made three
great catches in the outfield. Then he went
home. When he got there his mother was
angry. “Go to your bedroom. Your father will
talk to you when he gets home.”
An hour later he heard his mother talking
to his father. Then his father entered the
bedroom and closed the door.
His father had a different look on his face
than he had ever seen before, more furious,
 116/499

more brutal, less understanding. Pete sat on

the bed and waited. His father sat on a chair,
facing him.
“Peter.”
“Yes?”
“What have you been doing?”
“Playing baseball.”
“What have you really been doing, Peter?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You understand.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You son of a bitch, I’ll kill you! You ever
do that again and I’ll kill you!”
“What? Do what?”
“Here! Your mother showed me these!
Look! Look!”
His father showed him a pair of pajama
pants, the ones Pete had slept in last night.
Pete still didn’t understand.
“Look! Look!” His father pointed to a place
on the pajamas on the upper front. There
was a small and faded spot of blood.
 117/499

“What have you been doing, Peter?”

“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you ever do that again, I’ll kill
you!”
His father got up from his chair, walked to
the door, slammed it violently and then Pete
was alone. He looked down at the blood spot
on the pajamas. Then he realized that the pa-
jama pants were an old pair of his father’s.
And that the blood spot was an old one that
had failed to wash out properly. He sat there
slightly amazed. They had conceived the
blood spot to be something evil when actu-
ally it had been put there by his father or his
mother. But what had they thought it had
meant? Did they think that one bled during
masturbation? It must have been their
thought. For the first time he began to be-
lieve that his parents were crazy, or if not
crazy, then ignorant beyond belief.
He was made to go without dinner that
night and the next morning over breakfast
 118/499

they neither spoke to him or looked at him.

After his father had gone to work his mother
did mention that God might forgive him if he
were good and repented for the rest of his
life . . .
That night, after dinner, Pete was made to
go immediately to his room and to bed. He
turned out the lights and listened to his fath-
er talking about the job. God. His mother
and God. His father and God. They believed
in God. Is that what happened to people who
believed in God? His mind flattened and
turned, drifted. He slept and awakened. He
still heard the voices of his parents.
Then Pete spoke: “God, you have given me
such parents! How can You give me such
parents? What type of God are you? God, I
hate you! If You come down here in this
room, God, I’ll punch you right in the nose!”
It seemed to Pete that he slept again then.
When he awakened there appeared to be a
figure looking at him over his knees. Pete’s
 119/499

legs were bent, the knees and blankets form-

ing a small hill over which the figure peered
back at him. The figure appeared dressed in
black, all black, hooded, with a peaked cap
similar to those worn by the Ku Klux Klan.
Pete was frightened, he looked back in dis-
belief. Could that be God? That hooded fig-
ure? Was God evil? The figure remained and
remained and remained, looking at him. It
must have stayed ten minutes, fifteen
minutes, then it vanished.
Pete gathered himself and turned on the
light. He kept wondering about the figure.
He walked over to his dresser, opened the
top drawer and took out the small box his
grandmother had given him. She called it
The Answer Box. Whenever you wanted to
know anything you asked a question to God
and He answered through The Answer Box.
The box contained little scrolls of paper
rolled up and set next to each other. There
were many tiny rolls.
 120/499

Pete asked the question. What happened

then... ? He reached in and pulled out one of
the rolls, unrolled it and read: “God has for-
saken you.” He rolled up the paper, placed in
back in the box, put the box back in the
drawer and then went to bed.
He could still hear his parents talking in
the breakfast nook. Then Pete got up and
opened the dresser drawer again. He took
The Answer Box out again and unrolled the
little slips one by one. He couldn’t find the
slip that had said “God has forsaken you.” He
put all the slips back, closed the box and re-
turned it to the drawer. He could no longer
hear his parents talking. It was unusual.
Pete slowly opened his bedroom door and
listened. The light was on in the breakfast
nook but there was no sound. He walked
down the hall in his pajamas and his bare
feet. He walked into the kitchen. Still there
was no sound. Then he walked into the
breakfast nook.
 121/499

The spider was there, that huge blackish-

brown spider, huge fangs and two large
yellow-green eyes . . . the blood sack was
hairy and pulsating and full with blood and
the spider was upon his father on the tab-
letop. His mother was in a large web above
the table, dead.
Pete walked back to his bedroom, closed
the door and got dressed in his day clothes.
Then he climbed through the back bedroom
window and dropped into the yard. The grass
was neatly-mowed and well-kept. He walked
into the garage and found a gallon can of tur-
pentine. His father used it to clean his paint
brushes in. Pete took the can in through the
back porch. Then he opened it and let the li-
quid run in under the door and into the kit-
chen. He emptied a remainder of the can
about the back porch. Then he took a loose
piece of newspaper, slightly rolled, and lit it
with a match. He threw it into the center of
the back porch. He saw the flames rise up, he
 122/499

saw the flames run under the door and light

up the kitchen.
Then he walked up the driveway and out
onto the street. He walked north along the
street and up the long hill to the boulevard.
Then he turned and looked back. He could
see the flames, the flames were very high
down there. Then he walked east. He walked
three blocks east until he got to the movie.
He looked in his pockets. He had enough for
a movie. It was a Western. A real good
shoot-’em-up. Pete loved Westerns. He paid
the girl and walked in. He had enough for a
bag of popcorn. He bought a bag of popcorn
and walked down the dark aisle. He found a
seat about three-fourths of the way in the
back, near the center, sat down and began to
eat the popcorn. Two guys were about to
shoot it out, right in front of a saloon. They
were good actors. Pete liked popcorn, pop-
corn with plenty of salt. At last, he was
happy.
 123/499

Robert had 29 cans of food in the closet

and a five gallon jug of Sparkletts. Also,
candles and a .32 with plenty of shells. The
water had been cut off the second day but the
power was still on.
What had started as a series of spontan-
eous riots had evolved into something that
nobody quite understood. All stores, gas sta-
tions—supplies of every sort had been looted
in the first days.
In a sense, it was a nationwide revolution
but exactly who was revolting and who
wasn’t—the matter wasn’t clear. The fire de-
partment, after numerous casualties, had
ceased to put out fires. Half of Los Angeles
was on fire—people were homeless—men,
women, children—hiding where they could.
They were not roaming, but hiding, trying to
hide, trying to exist.
 124/499

The police, the National Guard and the

U.S. Army attempted to control the
streets—and control meant killing all others
who were upon them. Basically it had be-
come a war between the uniformed and the
non-uniformed; and worse, through fear,
had evolved into a war between black and
white and a war between white and white
and black and black and all the colors in
between. Each man seemed a unit divided
until something happened. The revolution
had no central leadership, and so its de-
mands and ambitions were hazy. There
seemed no way it could surrender; there also
seemed no way it could win.
Robert could understand neither the re-
volutionaries or the government; both left
him with more than a bad taste. But he had
always been an odd guy, not fitting any-
where. Now it had broken down into Man
against Man, which it had always been, but
now it was clear—they were back to the
 125/499

caves, and every man, beast, every weather

was the enemy. The centuries had burned
back down.
Luckily, Robert had three fifths of Scotch
and three-fourths of a lid of grass and ten
packs of Bull Durham and plenty of Zig Zag,
all of which helped the spirit. Also, he was a
natural loner and, all in all, the situation
which existed was not far from the one he
had existed in before the revolution. His
greatest joy had always been solitude, albeit
cut with an occasional piece of ass, a bit of
Mahler or Stravinsky, a joint or two and a
good night’s drunk.
The gas and water were shut off and he
had all the windows nailed closed and kept
the night latch on the door. Late at night he
would open the door and throw out his ex-
cretia and urine, all the garbage. It was more
dangerous to go out and attempt to bury it.
Constant firing was heard in the streets.
Bodies were left where they fell. Rats, dogs,
 126/499

cats prowled the streets, ripping pieces of

flesh off dead bodies. Maggots and flies were
everywhere.
Robert knew it wouldn’t be long before the
electricity went. He turned on the radio. (He
had never purchased a t.v. set.) Some of the
radio stations were replaying the President’s
message over and over. For all he knew the
President was dead, but he still heard the
message over and over:
“My fellow Americans: Never has this
great nation been in such agony and fear and
chaos, but we will come through, and after
this is over we will cleanse our ranks of the
cowards and back-stabbers who have
weakened us. We will be a greater nation
than ever before.
“Growth is oftentimes accompanied by
pain. At this moment we are feeling this
pain, we are feeling it very much. But, listen,
we will grow to an even greater Manhood.
We will rid our land of this pestilence and of
 127/499

these pests. We will rid our land of the in-

sects that have sucked our blood.
“Have faith: God and Country will prevail.
Have faith, I beg of you, and this hour will
not be our death but our rebirth into greater
freedom, a greater freedom than any ever
known to Man in the history of the world.
“Meanwhile, it is my duty to inform you
that two nations, Russian and China, have
banded together and given us an ultimatum.
This ultimatum being that we will have until
Oct. 25 to surrender all our governmental
powers over to them. The United States of
America has never surrendered and we do
not intend to do so now. Should Russia or
China, either or both, attempt any invasion
or any move at all which we shall consider
hostile we will release immediately upon
them our nuclear force, which at this time is
four times greater than all the combined
nuclear power of all the nations on earth.
 128/499

“The United States of America, troubled

from within and without, will persevere.
Don’t doubt Her unless you doubt your very
own soul. God, Might and Freedom will
shine throughout the World tonight, tomor-
row and forever.”
Robert turned the dial.
“. . . and this station is still in control of the
rebels! Brothers, this hour is ours! This is
Truth, at last, come face to face with the im-
prisonment of Man, with the materialistic
and spiritual degradation of Man. This Re-
volution, this effort of ours, cannot be com-
pared to any revolution in the history of the
world. For, at last, Man has awakened to
what he wants, and what he really wants is
the freedom to form and live his life in any
damned way he pleases—to wear the clothes
he wishes to, to fuck in the streets, to smoke
pot, to paint, to do nothing or something or
everything. We demand materialistic needs if
we need them and we demand spiritualistic
 129/499

needs, which are forever needed. The eight-

hour job be damned! Our job, and it isn’t a
job at all—is to enjoy life as we wish it. But
some of us must die first, many of us must,
so those of us who are left will be able to live
as humans instead of as driven beasts. The
spirit of Man has risen at last to swallow his
subnormal keeper! Damn the President of
the United States, and damn and break this
torture chamber which has enslaved us all
too long! Right on!”
Robert turned off the radio. He walked in-
to the bedroom, stretched out on the bed and
jacked-off. He wiped off on the sheet, got up,
decided that he was hungry, but he was
strictly rationing himself. He decided upon a
can of cold beans. He walked to the refriger-
ator and opened the door. The inside light
didn’t go on. He walked over to a lightswitch
and flipped it to on. No overhead light. Back
in the front room the radio didn’t work. The
power was off. He had four boxes containing
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12 candles each. But darkness was better and

it was night. He forgot the beans and sat
down, rolled a smoke. He listened to the
shooting. He sat there perhaps an hour when
he heard a knock on the door.
“Brother,” Robert heard a voice, “brother,
help me!”
He sat still.
“Brother, brother help me! Mercy! God o’
mighty, isn’t there any mercy in your soul?
Oh, Jesus!”
It sounded like an old man. Robert took
the latch off the .32 and walked up behind
the door.
“Yeah?”
“Brother, please! God o’ mighty!”
Robert opened a small side panel near the
door. It was an old white-haired guy, maybe
in his late 60’s or early 70’s. He was in rags,
flat upon his belly on the porch.
“Brother! I’m dying! A cup of water! I beg
you! Only a cup of water and I’ll go!”
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“Will you go then?”

“Yes, yes! Believe me!”
Robert opened the door. The old guy
began to crawl forward. The door was only
open a notch. The old guy tried to push the
door open wide with his arm. Robert looked
up in time to see three young guys rush from
around a hedge. He fired. The leading guy
screamed, grabbed his belly and fell forward.
Then Robert kicked the old guy in the
mouth, pushed his head out the door and got
the latch on just before the other two guys,
who had paused a moment, hit the door.
Robert’s door had been glass, but he had
braced it partially with boards. The shade
was down. Robert pulled the shade up,
dropped to his belly, saw a piece of one of the
guys through the boards and glass, fired. He
got him in the chest. The other guy leaped off
the porch. Robert couldn’t see the old man.
The phone rang. Robert walked over and
picked it up.
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“Robert Grissom?” somebody asked.

“Grissom isn’t here,” Robert said.
“Come on, Bobby, we’ve got you by the
balls.”
“What?”
“CIA, Bobby, your game is up.”
“I don’t understand. I thought the power
was off. How can you phone me?”
“Don’t worry your ass, Bobby. We’ve got
you by the balls.”
“I’ve always been apolitical.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘apolitical,’
Bobby baby, there’s only such a thing as fa-
cing it or not facing it.”
“You’re wrong,” Robert said. “I don’t think
a man has to be a registered Democrat in or-
der to go to hell.”
“We’ve found some things in your writ-
ings, Bobby.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of that, too. You didn’t
think we were watching you, eh Bobby? You
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thought you could feed us that ‘apolitical’

bullshit, huh? Well, we happen to know who
you’re pulling for, kid.”
“’Kid’? I’m 55. In fact, today is my . . . ”
“We know, Bobby, we’re coming right over
with your birthday cake.”
Robert hung up.
He pulled down all the shades except for a
small peek-through area at the bottom of
each, got down flat on his belly with the .32
and with all his shells around him. Then he
got up and got the can of urine out of the
bathroom and put several rags next to it.
He’d learned an old trick—urinate on a
handkerchief, hold it over the nose and you
strain out a great deal of poisonous gas.
“GRISSOM, COME ON OUT! YOU HAVE
60 SECONDS!”
Robert lifted the .32 and shot out of the
side window. He heard a scream. The im-
possible had happened. He had hit
somebody.
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The first canister of gas came lobbing into

the room. Robert picked up his shells and
the rags and the can of urine, ran into the
bedroom, closed the door and climbed under
his bed. He dipped the rag into the can of ur-
ine and put it over his nose and mouth. The
ultraviolet ray glasses were already taped
around his skull. It was an attempt to seal
the eyes from any possible tear gas.
And there under the bed he grinned just a
bit and watched the bedroom door for who-
ever wanted to be an immediate part of
chapter one in the History of the Second
American Revolution.
Down there under the bed he noticed that
he wasn’t a very good housekeeper: several
missing stockings, an undershirt, various
gatherings of dust. It was one hell of a way to
end a literary career: not one pair of panties,
a love letter or a box of Tampax about. And
the Pulitzer Prize looked more impossible
than ever . . .
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We were both in handcuffs. The cops led

us down the stairway between them and sat
us in back. My hands were bleeding onto the
upholstery, but they didn’t seem to care
about the upholstery.
The kid’s name was Albert and Albert sat
there and said, “Jesus, you guys mean you’re
going to take me and lock me up where I
can’t get candy and cigarettes and beer,
where I can’t listen to my record player?”
“Stop your sniveling, will you?” I asked the
kid.
I hadn’t made the drunk tank for six or
eight years. I was due, I was overdue. It was
just like driving that long without a traffic
ticket—they were just going to get you finally
if you drove and they were going to get you
finally if you drank. On drunk tank trips vs.
traffic tickets the drunk tank led by 18 to
 136/499

seven. Which shows I’m a better driver than

I am a drinker.
It was the city jail and Albert and I got sep-
arated in the booking. The routine hadn’t
changed except the doctor asked how my
hands got cut.
“A lady locked me out,” I said, “so I
smashed the door in, a glass door.”
The doctor put one band-aid on the worst
cut and I was led to the tank.
It was the same. No bunks. Thirty-five
men laying on the floor. There were a couple
of urinals and a couple of toilets. Ta, ta, ta.
Most of the men were Mexican and most
of the Mexicans were between 40 and 68.
There were two blacks. No Chinese. I have
never seen a Chinese in a drunk tank. Albert
was over in the corner talking but nobody
was listening, or maybe they were because
once in a while somebody would say, “Jesus
Christ, shut up, man!”
 137/499

I was the only one standing up. I walked

over to one of the urinals. A guy was asleep
with his head against the urinal. The guys
were all around the urinals and crappers, not
using them but sitting crowded around them.
I didn’t want to step over them so I
awakened the guy by the urinal.
“Listen, man, I want to piss and your head
is right up against the urinal.”
You can never tell when that will mean a
fight so I watched him closely. He slid over
and I pissed. Then I walked to within three
feet of Albert.
“Got a cigarette, kid?”
The kid had a cigarette. He took it out of
the pack and threw it at me. It rolled along
the floor and I picked it up.
“Anybody got a match?” I asked.
“Here.” It was a skid row white. I took the
matchbook, struck up a smoke and handed it
back.
 138/499

“What’s the matter with your friend?” he

asked.
“He’s just a kid. Everything’s new to him.”
“You better keep him quiet or I’m going to
punch him out, so help me, I can’t stand his
babble.”
I walked over to the kid and kneeled down
beside him.
“Albert, give it a rest. I don’t know what
kind of shit you were on before you met me
tonight but all your sentences are fragmen-
ted, you’re making bad sense. Give it a rest.”
I walked back to the center of the tank and
looked around. A big guy in grey pants was
laying on his side. His pants were ripped up
the crotch and the shorts were showing
through. They’d taken our belts so we
couldn’t hang ourselves.
The cell door of the tank opened and a
Mexican in his mid-forties staggered in. He
was, as the saying goes, built like a bull. And
gored like one. He walked into the tank and
 139/499

did some shadow boxing. He threw some

good ones.
Both of his cheeks, up high, near the bone
had raw red gashes. His mouth was just a
blot of blood. When he opened it all you
could see was red. It was a mouth to
remember.
He threw a couple more, seemed to miss a
hard one, lost balance and fell over back-
wards. As he fell he arched his back so when
he hit the cement the ball of his back took
the blow, but he couldn’t hold his head back
up, it snapped back from the neck, the neck
almost acted as a lever and the rear of his
head was hurled against the cement. There
was the sound, then the head bounced back
up, then fell down again. He was still.
I walked over to the tank door. The cops
were walking around with papers, doing
things. They were all very nice-looking fel-
lows, young, their uniforms very clean.
 140/499

“Hey, you guys!” I yelled. “There’s a guy in

here needs medical attention, bad!”
They just kept walking around doing their
duties.
“Listen, do you guys hear me? There’s a
man in here needs medical attention, bad,
real bad!”
They just kept walking around and sitting,
writing on pieces of paper or talking to each
other. I walked back into the cell. A guy
called to me from the floor.
“Hey, man!”
I walked over. He handed me his property
slip. It was pink. They were all pink.
“How much I got in property?”
“I hate to tell you this friend, but it says
‘nothing.’”
I handed his slip back.
“Hey, man, how much I got?” another guy
asked me.
I read his and handed it back.
“You’re the same; you’ve got nothing.”
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“What do you mean, nothing? They took

my belt. Isn’t my belt something?”
“Not unless you can get a drink for it.”
“You’re right.”
“Doesn’t anybody have a cigarette?” I
asked.
“Can you roll one?”
“Yeah.”
“I got the makings.”
I walked over and he handed me the pa-
pers and some Bugler. His papers were all
stuck together.
“Friend, you’ve spilled wine all over your
papers.”
“Good, roll us a couple. Maybe we can get
drunk.”
I rolled two, we lit up and then I walked
over and stood against the tank door and
smoked. I looked at them all laying there
motionless upon the cement floor.
“Listen, gentlemen, let’s talk,” I said.
“There’s no use just laying there. Anybody
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can lay there. Tell me about it. Let’s find

something out. Let me hear from you.”
There wasn’t a sound. I began to walk
around.
“Look, we’re all waiting for the next drink.
We can taste the first one now. To hell with
the wine. We want a cold beer, one cold beer
to start it out with, to wash the dust out of
the throat.”
“Yeah,” said somebody.
I kept walking around.
“Everybody’s talking about liberation now,
that’s the thing, you know. Do you know
that?”
No response. They didn’t know that.
“All right, I say let’s liberate the roaches
and the alcoholics. What’s wrong with a
roach? Can anybody tell me what’s wrong
with a roach?”
“Well, they stink and they’re ugly,” said
some guy.
 143/499

“So’s an alcoholic. They sell us the stuff to

drink, don’t they? Then we drink it and they
throw us in jail. I don’t understand. Does
anybody understand this?”
No response. They didn’t understand.
The tank door opened up and a cop
stepped in.
“Everybody up. We’re moving to another
cell.”
They got to their feet and walked toward
the door. All except the bull. Me and another
guy walked over and picked the bull up. We
walked him out the door and down the aisle.
The cops just watched us. When we got to
the next tank we laid the bull down in the
center of the floor. The cell door shut.
“As I was saying . . . well, what was I say-
ing? O.K., those of us who have money, we
bail out, we get fined. The money we pay is
used to pay those who arrested us and kept
us confined, and the money is used to enable
them to arrest us again. Now, I mean, if you
 144/499

want to call that justice you can call it justice.

I call it shit down the throat.”
“Alcoholism is a disease,” said some guy
from flat on his back.
“That’s a cliché,” I said.
“What’s a cliché?”
“Almost everything. O.K., it’s a disease but
we know they don’t know it. They don’t
throw people with cancer in jail and make
them lay on the floor. They don’t fine them
and beat them. We’re the roaches. We need
liberation. We should go on parades: ‘FREE
THE ALCOHOLIC.’”
“Alcoholism is a disease,” said the same
guy from flat on his back.
“Everything’s a disease,” I said. “Eating’s a
disease, sleeping’s a disease, fucking’s a dis-
ease, scratching your ass is a disease, don’t
you get it?”
“You don’t know what a disease is,” said
somebody.
 145/499

“A disease is something that’s usually in-

fectious, something that’s hard to get rid of,
something that can kill you. Money is a dis-
ease. Bathing is a disease, catching fish is a
disease, calendars are a disease, the city of
Santa Monica is a disease, bubblegum is a
disease.”
“How about thumbtacks?”
“Yeah, thumbtacks too.”
“What isn’t a disease?”
“Now,” I said, “now we got something to
think about. Now we got something to help
us pass the night.”
The cell door opened and three cops came
in. Two of them walked over and picked up
the bull. They walked him out. That broke
our conversation somehow. The guys just
laid there.
“Come on, come on,” I said, “let’s keep it
going. We’ll all have that drink in our hand
soon. Some sooner than others. Can’t you
 146/499

taste it now? This isn’t the end. Think of that

first drink.”
Some of them laid there thinking about
that first drink and some of them laid there
thinking about nothing. They were resigned
to whatever happened. In about five minutes
they brought the bull back in. If he had got-
ten medical attention it wasn’t noticeable.
He fell again but this time on his side. Then
he was quiet.
“Look, gentlemen, cheer up, for Christ’s
sake, or for my sake. I know they treat a
murderer better than a drunk. A murderer
gets a nice cell, a bunk, he gets attention.
He’s treated like a first-class citizen. He’s
really done something. All we’ve done is
empty a few bottles. But cheer up, we’ll
empty some more . . .”
Somebody cheered. I laughed.
“That’s better. Look up, look up! God’s up
there with a couple of six packs of Tuborg.
Cold and chilled they are with tiny icy
 147/499

bubbles glistening on the side . . . think of it .

. .”
“You’re killing me, man . . .”
“You’ll be out, we’ll be out, some sooner
than others. And we won’t rush out to an AA
meeting and take the 12 great steps back to
infancy! Your mother will get you out! Some-
body loves you! Now which mother’s boy of
us will get out of here first? That’s something
to think about . . .”
“Hey, man . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Come here.”
I walked over.
“How much I got?” he asked. He handed
me his property slip. I handed it back.
“Brother,” I said, “I hate to tell you . . .”
“Yes?”
“It says ‘nothing,’ a very neatly typed
‘nothing.’”
I walked back to the center of the tank.
 148/499

“Now look, fellows, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.

Everybody take out your property slips and
throw them in a pile in the center of the
floor. I’ll pay a quarter for each pink slip . . .
I’ll own your souls . . .”
The door opened. It was a cop.
“Bukowski,” he announced, “Henry C.
Bukowski.”
“Be seeing you fellows. It’s my mother.”
I followed the cop on out. The checkout
was fairly efficient. They simply extracted
$50 for bail (I’d had a good day at the track)
and gave me the rest, plus my belt. I thanked
the doctor for his band-aid and followed the
cop into the waiting room. I’d made two calls
out while being booked. I was told I had a
ride. I sat for ten minutes and then a door
opened and I was told I could go. My mother
was sitting on a bench outside. It was Karen,
the 32-year-old woman I lived with. She was
trying her damnedest not to be angry but she
was. I followed her on out. We got to the car
 149/499

and got in and started off. I looked in the

glove compartment for a cigarette.
Even the city hall looks good when you get
out of the tank. Everything looks good. The
billboards, the stoplights, the parking lots,
the bus stop benches.
“Well,” said Karen, “now I suppose you’ll
have something to write about.”
“Oh, yeah. And I gave the fellows a good
show. The fellows are going to miss me. I’ll
bet it’s like a tomb in there . . .”
Karen didn’t appear to be impressed. The
sun was about to come up and the lady on
the billboard, one strap down on her bathing
suit, smiled at me as she advertised a sun tan
lotion.

Walden, shit, well I’m writing this in

King’s Pasture, Utah, no transport, no
racetrack, no beer, no Cal Worthington, no
love letters from insane ladies in Michigan,
 150/499

Louisiana, New Jersey . . . no poetry read-

ings, no nudie bars . . . My few aficionados
who expect tales of drunken nights, child-
rape, woman rape, jail, murder—the general
calm madness of Hollywood and Los
Angeles, will have to wait.
As I write this I fight off a few mosquitoes
but, by comparison to the average person,
they don’t contact me too often. The alcohol-
ic content of my blood gives them pause, but
the few who get a nip of me whir off singing.
I stare right off into 40,000 trees and not a
toteboard in sight. But I gather no mental
clarity or insight.
I suppose that I am terribly inbred to my
prejudices. I find my prejudices comforting;
I find my ignorances comforting. I have no
desire to be an intelligent man and I have
succeeded. Intelligent men bore me with
their understanding, with their deep-set
knowledgeable eyes, with their vocabularies,
 151/499

with all and everything they know. I prefer a

slower seasoning.
So many people are doomed by their am-
bition and their gathered intelligence, their
bank account and savings and loan intelli-
gence. If there is any secret to life, that secret
is not to try. Let it come to you: women,
dogs, death, and creation.
In writing, especially, there are many fast
starters. All men are born artists but most of
them are quickly mutilated. Ambition is bad
enough but when an obscene ambition gets
connected with a commercial recognition it’s
not long before the shit backs up in the sew-
er. Creation means creation without attach-
ment; too many imagine it means a house in
Beverly Hills, a red sports car, talk shows,
and going to bed with all offers . . .
One could write such a thing without star-
ing at 40,000 trees. I came up here because
my woman said there were wildmen in the
forest with Wilt Chamberlain peckers who
 152/499

hadn’t been laid for years. I have no idea how

many wildmen she has met . . .
There was a party in Escalante before we
got up here. I furnished the beer and the
cowboy-ranchers furnished the dancing.
Those boys are in good shape. They lift their
women (and mine) over their heads and
whirl them about. They are pitiful drinkers
but they can dance for hours. They can start
a fire with wet wood, hitch and shod a horse,
kill and skin deer, trap, fish, fight, and fuck.
Their conversation isn’t too bad either.
I’m no dancer. I’m a hermit who has spent
most of his life in a tiny room with a bottle
and a typewriter and an occasional woman. I
admit to disliking crowds, crowds anywhere,
and parties. I suppose there should be a
meeting ground for most people, and a party,
a dancing party, could be the place. But I’ve
seldom been to a party that didn’t generate
bad feelings. Basically the men are in too
much of a rush to be on the make instead of
 153/499

allowing it to happen. Things become ugly, a

contest, a push, a joust, a sham.
I got up and kicked my arms and my legs
but I soon tired. I am in horrible shape. Also,
I am a man who appreciates symphony mu-
sic. When the ear and the mind become ac-
customed to classical music then the steady
and almost invariable beat of the sound of
popular music, turned top volume on the ste-
reo, does dehydrate the inner gut. The very
limitation and persistency of the sound is an
insult to the senses.
So I found myself sitting on a rock in the
desert, getting at the cans of beer I had
brought out with me. I had been drinking for
days and my stomach was raw. My jumping
about and the sound of the music had made
me ill. I stood up and started vomiting.
Carl, the owner of the ranch, was coming
in from his car which was parked out on the
road.
“Having trouble, man?” he asked me.
 154/499

“I’m all right, Carl.”

I let go another load.
“I’m staying right here with you,” he said.
“It’s all right, Carl, I’ve been through this a
thousand times before.”
I let go another batch.
“I’m standing over you,” said Carl. “I’m
standing over you tall and true until you’re
finished.”
Carl stood over me tall and true until I was
finished. Then we walked on inside where I
opened another beer and I walked back into
the front room where the full-blast stereo
gutted the walls with the same limited notes.
They danced and they leaped and I stood
there with my can of beer and I watched, just
to let them know that I knew what a good
time was . . .
(I have just watched something murder
something here on the ground. Ah, nature,
beautiful nature, the beautiful animals and
bugs, the beautiful people.)
 155/499

My first night out in nature, down in lower

camp, I had to go.
“What’ll I do?” I asked my woman.
“You just shit in the bushes.”
It was a more crowded camp, one of those
roadside machinations, tourists abounding,
so I had to put on my clothing. I wasn’t en-
tirely sober. I walked along and looked at the
bushes.
I selected some. I got out of my bluejeans,
hung them on a bush but before I could
squat the beershit began; waterfalls began
rolling down my legs—wetwash of stinking
beer mildewed with improperly chewed and
improperly digested food. I grabbed at a
bush and squatted, pissed on my feet, and
eliminated a few very soft turds.
My pants fell off the bush and onto the
ground. I leaped up, worried about my wal-
let. And, of course, it had fallen out of my
pants. I staggered about the brush looking
for it and managed to step right into my
 156/499

excretia, me who had stolen the land from

the Indians.
I found the wallet, put it back in my pants,
hung it all very securely upon a bush and
began to wipe myself. I wiped and I wiped. I
wiped myself for 5 minutes, put my pants
back on and walked back.
I undressed and got into the sleeping bag
with my woman. She was asleep but not for
long.
“Jesus Christ, what’s that?” she asked.
“What?”
“That stink!”
“I shit in the bushes.”
“Did you wipe yourself?”
“For 5 minutes.”
“What happened? You smell god-awful!
What happened?”
“I’ll tell you in the morning.”
Then we slept. At least, I did. And to my
few aficionados, don’t worry; I’ll soon be
back in Los Angeles.
 157/499

Linda was down. We’d left a zipper open in

the tent flap and the mosquitoes had been on
us all night. She was reading a book on sex. I
had given her enough sex, grade-A, oral,
spiritual and standard, but she was in an off
mood. We were in the middle of 160 acres of
mountain, trees, and pasture owned by five
sisters. Linda was one of the sisters and
Linda was down and I was far away from
Hollywood Boulevard and Western. “Come
on,” I said, “let’s take a dip in the beaver
pond.” “You go ahead,” she said, not looking
up, “I’ll be along later.”
Downs disturb me, especially when I can’t
understand why. I took my red notebook and
a fountain pen and began walking. I got up to
the beaver pond, sat on a rock, opened the
notebook, but nothing came. I took off my
clothes and stepped into the pond. It was like
icewater. My body looked white and ridicu-
lous. I stepped forward into a two-foot hole
 158/499

and I was in up to my arm pits, chilled in

swirling muddy water. I stepped out over
rocks that cut my feet. I found a spot and
bathed with the small bar of soap. Then I
gave myself a shampoo. When I stepped out
of the water the flies were on me. Mountain
flies are not like city flies; mountain flies are
energetic and angry, very angry. I got my
clothing and shoes on and walked off with
my red notebook, the flies following me,
while I thought, “I wonder what’s wrong with
Linda? I love her, doesn’t she know that?
How can she cut her feelings off? Love is not
something you flip about like a TV dial.”
I walked up over a hill of trees and looked
back and saw the beaver pond. Then I was
over the hill and into a bit of shade. I found a
rock and sat down and opened the red note-
book. I didn’t have stockings on. As I began
to write I felt this stinging pain on my right
foot. There was a cut across my feet and a
huge fly had landed and was sucking into the
 159/499

cut. I reached down and brushed him off. I

got up and the flies followed me.
Why in the hell can’t a woman love a man
even if he makes mistakes? Being together is
the miracle, being together and caring.
Sleeping together, feet touching, legs touch-
ing. Being asleep and together. Only the
strong can live alone, the strong and the
selfish.
It’s good to eat with somebody, to listen to
the rain with somebody, to get through
Christmas and New Year’s and Labor Day
with somebody, to see their ring of dirt in the
bathtub, to look at a toilet they forgot to
flush. And to have the sex get better and bet-
ter . . . For Christ’s sake, what was wrong
with that woman? Didn’t she understand?
I walked some distance and found another
rock under another tree. I opened the note-
book and began to write something. I just let
the flies have me and I wrote. I wrote
something very bitter about humanity and
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love and the human race. Sometimes such

things work, especially if they jell up funda-
mental truths instead of various self-pities. It
didn’t work. I tore the pages out. Even when
I wrote about unhappy things I usually had
to be happy when I wrote.
Then I heard a sound of water; it sounded
like a waterfall. I got up and moved toward
the sound. As I walked I heard Linda’s voice.
She was hollering for me: “BUKOWSKI!” I
kept walking. I decided not to answer. If she
calls once more, I’ll answer. She didn’t call
again. I moved toward the water. Then I saw
it. The water was coming out of a spring and
spilling down over a row of rocks that came
down a high cliff. It was a good sight. I sat
down and watched it. Then I got down into
the stream and had a drink.
I decided, on going back, not to go up over
the hill but to go around the easy way. I took
my notebook and began. It would bring me
right back to camp. I walked along and the
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ground was soaked with many little streams.

I had to change course to get around them.
There seemed to be very much brush. The
brush got thicker. I pushed through, often
stepping into mudholes up to my ankles.
Then very quietly a voice entered into my
brain:
You’re lost . . .
Oh, no, that would be too damned silly.
Silly or not, you’re lost.
I looked around and I was lost. It was that
simple. A tiny emptiness entered through my
bellybutton.
You’re lost and you’re a coward and a fool
and this proves it. You don’t deserve to live.
Linda’s right.
I pushed on through the brush, downhill,
stepping into streams . . . I threw my red
notebook away. A lost man doesn’t care
about a red notebook. I was the man who
had once wanted isolation; I was the man
who had once fattened on isolation. Now I
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had it: mountains and trees and brush;

nobody around.
I walked on. I climbed a barbwire fence. I
felt it was not the thing to do. I did it. I
walked on. I climbed another fence. I was
more into nowhere. I was in the center of 160
acres. Mountains, trees.
At first there is panic, a rather clubbing
sickness inside. Then one says, I’m lost. One
says it several times. Then one adjusts to be-
ing lost. One says, I am lost. Well. I might
die. Well. But the conclusion is hardly joy-
ous. I began to think of Linda. If I ever get
out of this, I will treat her so good, oh I will
treat her so good.
I climbed another barbwire fence. I kept
following a stream down the hill. Looking
ahead I could see a large body of water. I left
the stream and walked toward it. I found a
road. The road had tire tracks on it. There
was a small pier built over the water. I got
under the pier and took my shoes off and
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bathed them in the water. I drank the water.

Somebody had built that pier, some humans.
They might return, those efficient humans,
those humans I had once as much resented.
They were clever sons of bitches and strong.
I wasn’t. That’s why I wrote poems. And,
shit, I hadn’t finished my second novel yet. It
was laying back in a drawer in Los Angeles. I
could see the bit in The Garfield County
News:

The minor poet Charles Bukowski, who

had come to Utah to visit the King sisters,
was found perished under the reservoir pier
by Dale Barney, Bruce Wilson, and Pole
Griffith. Mr. Bukowski was 52 years old and
wrote a column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man,
which was published in Communist news-
papers. He is survived by an eight-year-old
daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski. Mr.
Bukowski’s red notebook was found, empty,
175 yards north and east of the campsite.
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Evidently the state of Utah did not inspire

Mr. Bukowski.

I put my shoes back on and walked out

from under the pier and got on top of it and
walked out toward the end. There were a
couple of box-like contraptions which were
locked and made of steel or a high-grade tin.
Might be a telephone in there, I thought. I
walked on to the road and found a large rock.
I brought the rock back and smashed it
against the lock. I skinned the knuckles of
both hands, but I kept smashing the rock
down. I really didn’t expect the lock to open
but it was something to do. I was most sur-
prised when the lock snapped open. I opened
the compartment and stuck my hand in. I
immediately got an electric shock. There was
a loose wire sticking up from what appeared
to be some type of transformer.
I stood and looked into the box. The sun
beat upon me and my feet were covered with
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blisters. It was the end of my sanity. Alone

and lost in the world, unloved by my love . . .
demented, appalled, the shit of my very soul
stuck into my ears, I stood there and looked.
A needle moved very slowly back and forth
across a semi-circle of cardboard. There were
four numbers written upon the cardboard:
One, two, three, four.
The needle moved very slowly back and
forth across the numbers:
One, two, three, four.
I decided not to flood the reservoir. I put
the lock back on and got down under the pier
and bathed my feet again. Having finished
that I put my shoes back on and walked
down the road a bit. I came to a gate, walked
through the curving side entrance and found
a picnic ground. But it was a Tuesday. There
was nobody there. There were pits for cook-
ing but I had no matches and no food. But
civilization had been there, my beloved
mankind.
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I found a half loaf of stale French bread in

the dirt. It was grey and mouldy. I walked
over to a garbage can and dug out the cello-
phane bag inside and wrapped my bread in-
side of it . . . Garbage cans . . . meant garbage
men . . . Where were they? Sons of bitches
were probably on strike. I took my bread and
my cellophane bag and began walking back
toward the reservoir. It occurred to me that
in spite of the general nearness of humanity
that it was still possible that I could die up
there—exposure, panic, madness . . . The
thought disgusted me. I was like any other
dreamer—I wanted to die while being
sucked-off by the 15-year-old neighbor girl
while her parents were at Mass.
I walked back to the pier, hung my bread
from a railing, went out to the road, and
piled boulders in the way so that anybody
who might drive by would have to stop. I had
left camp about 10 a.m. I figured it to be
about 1 p.m. The most difficult thing is
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waiting, especially when waiting is useless.

They figured I was hidden in the mountains
writing immortal poetry. I decided to walk
inward on the road. Perhaps it led to camp,
although it hardly seemed the road we had
driven in on. We didn’t have a car; we had
been driven up and left. They were to return
at a later date.
I began walking down the road. It was very
hot. I walked slowly. I walked several miles.
Then I screamed out, “Linda!” It was such a
sad sound, bouncing and echoing.
For a moment I had the feeling of running
off into the trees, screaming, crashing my
head against tree trunks and boulders. But
that hardly seemed very manly so I decided
against it. A poem began to from in my mind
as I walked along:

Imperfection breeds Charley

While other men love
Crack-wise
Ride broncos
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Imperfection breeds Charley

While other men light fires
On vistas
Study Shakespeare
Discover uranium, oil,
Sex. . . .
Imperfection breeds Charley
While other men hit
600 home runs
shoot deer and panther
shoot lion, elephant and
man. . . . imperfection breeds
Charley

Then I decided, to hell with that poem, I’m

not that bad. And I kept walking. I don’t
know how long I walked, two hours perhaps,
but there was nothing but road and road and
road. I saw three or four deer. My energy was
getting very low and my city shoes were blis-
tering my feet. I had made another bad
move. I turned and had a two-hour walk
back to help consume me. One does reflect at
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such times. One thinks of the city, of walking

about in a room and listening to the radio,
reading the race results. I thought about the
poet Jeffers who said there were traps every-
where, that they’d even trapped God when
He came to earth.
But my trap had been so inane, without
glory or purpose. The sun was very hot and I
should have sat in the shade and rested but I
was disgusted with my stupidity and
wouldn’t allow myself that. Then I thought, it
really isn’t death that matters: it’s dying in
some sort of minor comfort that matters . . .
where people can sign little papers and keep
the flies off your body. I walked on. Then
ahead of me in the road stood a small doe. It
was just a little larger than a large dog. As I
slowly approached, it just stood there and
looked at me. I was so tired, so low-keyed,
my soul in such a pissed-off state against it-
self that I gave off no rays at all. The doe just
remained in the road looking at me and I
 170/499

moved closer and closer. It isn’t going to

move, I thought. What will I do? Then as I
was almost upon it, it turned and ran, the
rear end bounding up and down. I re-
membered one time I had been very near
suicide when I was sitting on a high cliff over
the water near San Diego. As I sat there, four
squirrels slowly—well, not slowly but in their
swift darts—yet it seemed slow—they ap-
proached me and they came right up to my
feet as I sat there and I looked into their
large brown eyes and they looked into mine.
They didn’t fear me and I wondered at them.
It seemed to last many minutes; then I
moved a bit and they ran back down the
rocks.
Finally I was under my pier again, my feet
in the water. My thirst didn’t seem to end. I
kept drinking water. I tried to sleep. It wasn’t
any good. I put my shoes back on and walked
back to the other end of the road, the picnic
grounds. There was nobody about. I tried to
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remember how far it was back to the nearest

town. The drive up had been a long one, very
long, over a hot narrow mountain road. If I
made it, there wouldn’t be much left of me. If
I didn’t make it at least it would be a form of
action. I decided to stay another night and a
day and start out the next night. I walked
back and got under the pier again. But the
inaction got to me. I hardly felt very clever
under that pier. I put my shoes back on and
walked back toward the picnic grounds
again.
Then I saw a little girl walking along the
road toward me. “HEY!” I yelled at her,
“HEY!” She seemed frightened. I walked to-
ward her, then stopped. “I won’t hurt you!
I’m lost! I’m lost!” I felt very foolish, for how
can one get lost near a picnic grounds with
signs around that say NO SMOKING and
PLEASE PUT OUT ALL FIRES? “Where’s
your mother and father?” “Oh, they’re in a
red and white camper on the picnic
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grounds.” I walked toward the picnic

grounds. I saw the camper but I didn’t see
the people. “HEY!” I yelled. “HEY!”
Then I saw Linda standing there with blue
curlers in her hair. Then I saw a man and a
woman by the camper.
“Hi,” Linda said to me.
“My god I’m glad to see you!” I said. “Did
these people bring you up?” “No, I just got
here.”
The people at the camper were watching
us. “He’s a city boy,” said Linda. “He got lost
in the woods. I just found him.”
I laughed. “I’m a city boy. I’m a city boy.”
“Well, I’m glad you found your man,” said
the woman.
“Come on,” said Linda. “Follow me.”
She had her dog with her. She was a good
15 yards ahead of me. “Listen,” I said, “I’ve
been lost in the woods for eight hours. Don’t
I even get a kiss?” She waited and I walked
up. She turned her cheek and I kissed her on
 173/499

the cheek. Then she walked on ahead. “I’m

mad at you. I been thinking about a lot of the
things you’ve done and said and I got mad at
you.”
I walked along behind her, stumbling into
holes, over rocks and fallen tree branches,
into mudholes. “I thought I might die,” I
said, “and I thought, well, at least I ate her
pussy the last two nights we were together. It
was the only comforting thought I had.”
“I think you got lost on purpose. I found
your notebook a couple of blocks from camp.
You didn’t even leave a note. You always
leave a note. I thought, well, he’s really mad.
All you had to do was look up and you could
have seen the camp. You never look up.”
“Usually when I look up I don’t like what I
see.”
“You’re always so negative,” she said, “al-
ways so negative.”
I followed along 15 yards behind. “I point
things out to you, landmarks, but you don’t
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listen. You don’t listen to things, you don’t

participate, you’re always so far off. Why
didn’t you leave a note in your notebook?”
“I didn’t get lost on purpose.”
“I believe you did.”
“No, not at all.”
“Or I thought maybe you went over the
mountain to get a drink. I thought maybe
you’d gone mad for a drink.
“Look, you’ve found me now, we’re back
together, Jesus Christ . . .”
We had to climb between and over old
barbwire fences. I got stuck in one, three or
four barbs stuck into the back of my shirt.
My arm was too tired to reach up and pluck
myself free. I just stood there between the
strands. Linda waited. I couldn’t move. She
walked back and lifted the top strand off my
back and I got out and followed her.
She was always just a little too far ahead
and gaining. The dog bounded ahead of her.
I followed Linda’s ass. I’d followed that
 175/499

beautiful ass for three years; I figured anoth-

er mile and one half through the wilderness
wouldn’t be entirely impossible. “Now you’ll
have something to write about,” she said
looking back.
“Oh shit yes,” I said.
The mountains and the trees and the mud-
holes and the rocks and the barbs and the ass
and the dog and me were everywhere.

I took Patricia to the fights at the Olympic,

we were eight or nine rows back and began
drinking beer. The opening amateur fights
were the best, as usual, and it was hot in
there and the beer was good. Patricia and I
bet 50 cents each fight and let our loyalties
be known, better and better known with each
new beer.
By the time the six-rounder came around
we were screaming things like, “Kill ’im!”
“Send ’im back to Japan! Remember Pearl
 176/499

Harbor!” “He couldn’t beat his grandmoth-

er’s wet panties with a fly swatter!”
We screamed all through the six-rounder
and through both 10-round feature matches.
When it was over I was 50 cents ahead. I lit
two cigars, gave one to Patricia and we
walked out to her car.
On the way in we got into an argument of
some sort. What it was about I have since
forgotten but I think it was something about
which was the greater invention, the elevator
or the escalator? She let me out in front of
my place and I wandered back through the
banana trees and the polluted fishpond and
went up the back stairway to Apt. #24 where
I found a pint of Grand-Dad in the refrig and
lucked onto some Stravinsky on KFAC and
sat about drinking and listening.
Halfway through the bottle I remembered
a lady in town who was reading the life story
of Virginia Woolf. Now not everybody in Los
Angeles sits around reading the life story of
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Virginia Woolf, especially an attractive lady

with an eight-room apartment, good French
wine and $400 a month alimony. I finished
the Grand-Dad and decided to find out more
about Virginia Woolf.
The lady was in and we sat and talked for
10 minutes and she didn’t bring out any
French wine so I suggested that I might go to
the liquor store. She said that might be fine,
so I went. The small liquor store to the north
was closed but the lady lived on a large
boulevard so I went on down to the super-
market. The lady’s name was Nina. I mean
the one who read the life of Virginia Woolf.
Nina had told me that Virginia Woolf had led
a very tragic life and she also told me of her
suicide. I think that she told me that Virginia
Woolf had walked into a river naked and
drowned herself.
Anyhow, I came back with two six-packs in
the bottle and a pint of Grand-Dad. I walked
back up the boulevard and as I got near
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Nina’s place I noticed Patricia’s car parked

outside. I thought, fine, I’ll take Patricia up
and introduce her to Nina. Patricia might
like to hear about Virginia Woolf. As I got
near Patricia’s car, the door opened and she
leaped out. She began swinging her purse at
me. Her purse was a large furry contraption
with very long straps. She whirled it around
and around, banging it against my head and
shoulders and sides screaming, “You S.O.B.!
You S.O.B.! You S.O.B.!”
“So help me now,” I said, “you just keep it
up and I’ll have to give you one! Men’s lib,
you know.”
Patricia kept it up and I set the bag down.
Just as I did she gave me a good one along
the side of the head. It spun me off to one
side and she made for the bag. She got hold
of a beer bottle and crashed it down against
the sidewalk. It exploded! A good cold beer.
She got another one. POW! Another one.
POW! In the bar across the street they were
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lined up against the blinds, peering out.

POW!
I was too drunk to grab her.
“You bitch! I’ll have to put you back in the
madhouse!”
I couldn’t catch her. She kept circling back
to the bag. POW! POW! The moon was high.
There wasn’t a cruise car within two miles
and nobody was phoning in. I rushed the pa-
per sack, picked it up, hugged it to my chest
and she gave me one against the back of the
head. I dropped the bag and Patricia was
upon it. She found the Grand-Dad and held
it up in the air.
“Ah ha! You were going to drink this with
her and then . . .”
She didn’t let me answer. POW! There
went Grand-Dad. Nina’s door was open and
she was standing halfway up the stairway
and began swinging her purse at Nina, say-
ing over and over, “He’s my man! He’s my
man! He’s my man!”
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Then she came running out. She found an-

other beer in the sack. “POW!” Then she
leaped into her car and drove off.
I walked up the stairway. Nina was at the
top of it. “That was Patricia,” I said.
“My god, what’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a broom?”
I took the broom outside and began
sweeping up the glass. Well, Patricia had
been in the madhouse but Nina had been in
the madhouse, too. Almost every woman I
knew had been in the madhouse. It didn’t
prove anything. I seemed to hear a sound
near me. I looked around. Patricia had got-
ten her car up on the sidewalk and it was
coming down upon me. I leaped up against
the wall and the right fender scraped across
my leg. Then she bounced off the sidewalk,
into the street, made a left turn against a red
light up on Los Feliz Boulevard and was
gone.
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I began sweeping up more glass. I

gathered little piles of glass into my hands
and carried them up the stairway to Nina
who took them off somewhere. Then I went
back down and swept up more glass.
Then as I was sweeping I heard breathing
sounds. I looked up and Patricia was stand-
ing before me. She grabbed the broom out of
my hand and broke it into three pieces. Then
she ran inside the door and found two
bottles of beer on the bottom step.
“Ha! You saved these to drink them, didn’t
you, ha?”
She took both bottles and ran outside.
“POW!” There went one. I walked over and
closed Nina’s door. Patricia took the other
bottle and threw it at the door. It went right
through the glass window. It made a neat,
round hole. I opened the door, walked in,
closed it. I found the bottle one-third of the
way up the stairway. It was unbroken. I un-
screwed the cap and took a good drain. Nina
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was at the top of the stairway. “For god’s

sake, Bukowski, go with her! Go with her be-
fore she kills us all!”
“Ah, she’s gone. I wanna hear about Vir-
ginia Woolf.”
“Don’t worry, she’s out there.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
I finished the beer and walked down the
stairway. I opened the door, closed it. Patri-
cia was out there. She was sitting in her or-
ange car. I opened the door and got in. She
turned the key and the car started.
“You know,” I said, “she’s really a nice wo-
man. She didn’t deserve all that. She didn’t
deserve me and she didn’t deserve you.”
She pressed the pedal to the floor.
“Bukowski . . . ,” she said.
“O.K.,” I said, “let’s die together.”
She had it to the floor and even a Volks
will gather speed after a while.
“Bukowski . . . ,” she said.
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“Yes?”
“You should never take me to the fights.
All those guys fighting . . . it gets me too
much in the mood.”
We did, somehow, arrive at her place. We
were too drunk for anything. We slept in
each other’s arms.

Ralph awakened to the sound of his wife’s

voice. It was two a.m. and dark, and quiet ex-
cept for the sound of Judy’s voice.
“Tommy,” she said, “oh, Tommy, slam that
big thing to me! Oh my god, Tommy, slam
that thing to me!”
Ralph propped himself up on one elbow
and looked at her. She had on a thin pink
negligee and had kicked all the covers off.
“Oh! It’s so big! And purple! Oh, Tommy!”
Tommy Carstairs was Ralph’s best friend.
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“Oh, Tommy! It’s in, it’s in! Move that

goddamned thing! Put that snake to me,
Tommy!”
Ralph put a hand on his wife’s arm.
“Listen, Judy, for Christ’s sake . . .”
“Oh, Tommy! Oh, my god, I LOVE YOU!”
Her legs were pulled back and up and then
she began to have spasms.
“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh . . .” Then she was
still and stretched out her legs. She turned
her head toward Ralph and with a little smile
on her face she began to snore ever so gently.
“Judy,” he said.
“Hey, listen, Judy . . .”
He reached over and shook his wife. Then
he took her by the shoulder and twisted it.
“Ouch,” she said. “For Christ’s sake, what’s
the matter with you, you going crazy?”
Judy got out of bed and went to the bath-
room. She flushed the toilet, lingered a mo-
ment and came out. Her hair was almost as
pink as her nightgown and one long strand
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came down over the left eye, crossed the

nose and hung there. She brushed it up and
away and it fell back to the same location.
She climbed back into bed, put the pillow up
against her back and lit a cigarette.
“Judy,” he said, “you were dreaming.”
“So shit,” she said, “that don’t give you no
right to break my shoulder.”
“Do you remember your dream?”
“No, no frankly I don’t.”
“You were taking cock.”
“Taking cock?” she laughed.
“From Tommy Carstairs.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I didn’t know he had a big purple cock.”
“Does he? Who told you?”
“You did. In the dream.”
“Look, Ralph, it’s 2:30. Let’s get some
sleep.”
“Some sleep, hell. I want to know what’s
going on.”
“Nothing’s going on.”
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“Nothing’s going on, eh? ‘Oh, Tommy! Oh,

oh, Tommy, slam that big purple thing to
me! It’s in! It’s in! Move it! Move it! Oh my
God, I’m coming . . . ooooh, ooooooh,
oooooh!’”
“Look, Ralph, I don’t want to hear that
shit. Have you been drinking?”
“Have I been drinking? You know I haven’t
been.”
“You talk like a sick man.”
“I’m telling you what I heard.”
“All right, I don’t know what you heard. A
dream isn’t reality.”
“It can be a tipoff on reality.”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m go-
ing to sleep.”
Judy put out her cigarette, rebunched her
pillow, turned her back to Ralph. It was a
doublebed and the bedlight was still on.
“Listen, Judy . . .”
“Ralph, for Christ’s sake . . .”
“I want to tell you something . . .”
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“All right. Go ahead.”

“If you want this Carstairs guy, go ahead.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’ll get out of the marriage.”
“Listen, I’m not even fond of Carstairs . . .
in fact, I hate him . . .”
“Hate and love are very close.”
Judy sat up in bed quickly, both arms
pressed down at her sides, the palms of her
hands flat on the sheets.
“Listen, Ralph, what do you WANT? Are
you trying to drive me crazy too? Just what
do you WANT? I WANT TO KNOW WHAT
YOU WANT!”
“Listening to that dream was very ugly to
me, Judy, I love you . . . I did love you. I just
wonder how you’d feel if I dreamt something
like that and you heard it.”
“You make too much of everything, you al-
ways did. You’re the most jealous man I ever
did meet! By god, now you’re even jealous of
my dreams! Can I help it what I dream?”
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“Then you did dream it?”

“I said I didn’t remember.”
“How do I know it’s something that didn’t
happen? How do I know it’s something that
you might want to happen?”
“Oh Ralph, I’m so sick of all of this! I’m
your wife, I’m living with you!”
“If this Carstairs had anything at all I’d un-
derstand. Course, I don’t know about his
cock.”
“I don’t know about his cock either.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Goddamn his cock.”
Ralph reached up and turned the light off.
He stretched out. Then he heard Judy stretch
out. It was summer and one could hear the
crickets. Usually the crickets brought a sense
of peace. The police helicopter circled above
looking for muggers and rapists. Minutes
went by. Ten. Fifteen. Ralph was on his back.
He felt Judy’s hand. It crawled up over his
leg like some small animal, then her fingers
 189/499

closed about his cock. He reached down and

took her hand and moved it off. The hand
crawled back and grabbed his cock again.
“Ralph,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, “what the hell is it?”
“I love you.”
“Oh shit,” he said.
“I mean it. I love you.”
“Women can really throw that word.”
She began to massage his cock.
“Don’t,” he said. “Christ, I need a drink.”
“There’s a pint in the cupboard.”
“There is?”
“Yes, I’ll get it.”
He heard Judy moving in the dark and
reached up and turned on the light. While
she was in the kitchen he remembered he
had had some dreams too. And it hadn’t al-
ways been Judy. Sex feelings were something
that didn’t always stay confined. It was fairly
normal to like others. Judy came back with
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the drinks. They sat up in bed and sipped at

them.
“Judy,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Forget it. Forget everything I said. I got
nervous. That goddamned job is killing me.
My eyes hurt, my back hurts, my brain hurts.
It’s a drain. I get jumpy.”
“All right,” she said, “forget it. I
understand.”
They sat there and finished their drinks.
Then Ralph got up and mixed two more. He
came back with the drinks and got in bed
with her.
“You know,” he said, “I had a horrible
dream once. I dreamt I had a sexual relation-
ship with my mother. I kept trying to draw
back in the dream but I finally went ahead. It
was one of the hottest dreams I ever had.”
“The shrinks probably have something
quite unnerving to say about that dream.”
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“Yes, but the shrinks are almost always

wrong.”
“I know.”
“Give me a cigarette, Judy.”
“Sure.”
She put the ashtray between them and
they both smoked.
“Here we are, talking at 3 a.m. in the
morning,” he said.
“It’s good,” she answered, “it breaks things
up.”
“Sure. Hear the crickets?”
“Yes, I like them.”
“I like them too”
“Ralph, if that job is killing you, give it up.
We’ll make it.”
“No, it’s all right. It was just a real rough
day today. There aren’t any good jobs. Every-
body is fucked.”
They finished their smokes and their
drinks and Ralph turned the light out again.
This time when Judy’s hand arrived like a
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small animal he didn’t push it away. His

penis began to grow. He turned and kissed
her, lifted her nightgown and gently ran a
middle finger across the hairs down there.
Something opened and he felt the wetness.
Jesus, he thought, we are all so mixed up. It’s
all so sad and so wonderful.
Then they could still hear the crickets.
Then they heard the siren of an ambulance.
Then they heard the police helicopter again.
Then they heard three dogs barking. Then
they heard each other.

belles-lettres?

Dear Mr. B: How come they save all the ty-

pos for YOUR column?

Hello Martha K: It is done by a bunch of

rancorous old drunks in smelly stockings
who hit me over the head with empty wine
 193/499

bottles of white California wine at the con-

clusion of their staff meetings. The reason is
pure old American jealousy because I write
so well, plus the fact that I ball everything fe-
male (or anything that looks female) which
wanders within arm’s (?) reach.

Dear Mr. B: I don’t believe that a great poet

like you works in a post office.

Hello Tilla A: A great poet works at a type-

writer. I have more trouble with supervisors
than with editors.

Dear Mr. B: I read your article about

horseracing. If you know so much about the
horses, why ain’t you rich?

Hello Karl L: I can’t read your handwriting. I

had trouble that way once. (I mean a shaky
hand.) I was born left-handed and my par-
ents bent my slop spoon so if I put it to my
 194/499

jaw with my left hand all I got was this frus-

tration thing and a slap across the mouth for
failing. Besides, riches ain’t everything—es-
pecially after you’ve gotten away from par-
ents like that.

Dear Mr. B: How cum they give a column to

a prick like you and leave a talented guy like
me holding a bag of shit?

Hello Marty E: I keep thinking the same

thing. X-factor vs. Y-factor. You take Beeth-
oven. In his time he was not even the most
highly-regarded musician. You just can’t tell.
So keep holding that bag of shit. I have more
fan letters to answer.

Dear Mr. B: I am worried about the Hippy

invasion of Los Angeles this summer. I am a
widow of 39. Suppose 6 young men arrive at
my door, covered with hair and spouting
Dylan Thomas?
 195/499

Dear Mrs. Clark J: If you’re worried about

crabs, always keep a little blue ointment on
hand.

Dear Mr. B: I read your column on suicide.

That photo of the man hanging from the
home-made noose in the attic: is he dead or
is it you posing? And why are the creases in
his pants so neat?

Hello Mary W: The man is dead. I don’t look

that good. And he doesn’t know why the
creases in his pants are so neat.

End of letters . . .

Getting more serious, it is wondrous how

much a man can suffer and endure, and I
guess there will never be an end to that
Bitch, Pain. The simple problem of staying
alive in a society of no sense or heart—the
 196/499

totality of hardness everywhere. Most of us

live on the edge of starvation and insecurity
all of our lives. The mind and the spirit
should go mad with sorrow—they sometimes
do. They’ve built a house filled with half-men
and the half-men control us. If the devil ran
for mayor of Los Angeles, he’d win by a
landslide.
To be casual in the midst of shitfire, that’s
cool but unreal. We need something to go by.
What do we have? Hardly a damn thing. The
waste of days and lives is the automatic atro-
city. One thing that is needed is leadership
but it simply hasn’t arrived. We live on luck
and guts and that can grow tiring.
Perhaps it is this dark day as I write this, a
Sunday, and all around me I can hear the
babble of their TV sets. It is a kind of sound
vibration that intermixes in the air, a jibber-
ish. The average man stuffs himself with
junk and garbage during his leisure. He
doesn’t have a chance to recover from his
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job. He is slugged with ready-made commer-

cial contrivances until he becomes another
faceless and unfeeling creature—just another
of those many you pass on the streets
continually.
I’ll be glad when the sun comes up, won’t
you? What a dark stinking day. Like being
locked inside a sardine tin. I wish I could
make you laugh. Nothing to go by. The police
patrolling the dead street. The dirty old man
drops a pale blue tear. They ought to make a
button for me to wear: AGONY. Then maybe
I could laugh.
 1.

I missed last week’s column because I am

a lush, and I looked around and bottles were
everywhere and the deadline was past. I live
in a rather modern apartment on Oxford Av-
enue, it’s all very quiet, and I sneak my
bottles down the stairway, play my radio at
low key, and I bathe, modestly, under the
arms. The problem with being a drunk is that
one usually knows other drunks. One group
will arrive one night, another the next. The
conversation at these gatherings is hardly
noteworthy—it hinges mostly upon gossip,
bitching, lying and exaggeration. And when I
run these people out on the street after being
sickened by their petty musings, they then
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consider me anti-social (which I am), fat-

headed (which I am) and over the hill (which
I am not).
Any person into living and creativity must
discourage a certain number of visitors, if
not most of them. It can be done as Jeffers
did by building a fortress of rocks and send-
ing an old aunt to the door to gather mes-
sages. I simply tell people why. For instance,
yesterday I got a phone call: “Are you
Charles Bukowski?” “Yes?” “Charles
Bukowski, the poet?” “I am sometimes
Charles Bukowski, the poet.” “Well, I’m a
young man from New York just got into
town, and I’ve always loved your work. I’d
like to come by and talk to you.” “Kid, just
what does talk have to do with poetry?”
“I don’t understand.” “I’m not your corner
priest. We have nothing to talk about, don’t
you understand?” I said good-bye and hung
up. He’ll find another poet, the phone book
is full of them.
 2.

I’ve been informed by the Department of

Water and Power that I’ve been allowed 184
units per billing. That’s not very much. I
have a friend who is allowed 1600 units and
we both think alike and eat about alike and
live about alike. I don’t know why the DWP
didn’t shut me off entirely. What am I going
to do with 184 units? I’ll have to boil my
weenies and then take them out and used the
soiled water for my coffee. Maybe this is the
way to do it. If they want a 10 percent reduc-
tion, just cut off one person in 10 and let the
others go on living. Greece and Rome knew
how to do this. There are really only two
 201/499

types of people in this world: the noble and

the fucked.
I notice the DWP reasoning upon allot-
ments is that they are based upon a percent-
age reduction of past usage at the same res-
idence over a given period. So a blind woman
with a parrot lived here before me and her
hobby was braille. Now I’m supposed to wear
her pantaloons.
Actually, the way it works is that people
who have been wasting energy are given lar-
ger allotments to waste than those who have
not. They are rewarding the wasters with
more waste.
I think a more stable measurement should
be used, to wit so many units for one person
living in a one-bedroom apartment, so many
units for so and so many people living in a
house of a certain size. In a sense, this would
still be giving some tolerance to the wealthy,
but it would actually come closer to a general
fairness.
 202/499

Let’s break it down more rationally. The

way they have it now it’s like two men each
owning a horse and one is allowed to feed his
horse five bales of hay a month while the
other is allowed 10. If Mayor Bradley wants
to come and live at my place under 184 units
to test the validity of things, fine, and I’ll
come to his place and test the validity of his
allotment. And he needn’t throw in his wife .
. . I’ve got enough troubles already.
I suppose that when they get into gas ra-
tioning it will be another distortion of actual-
ity. Americans have cheated and lied for so
long, have become so decayed under this
great moral Bob Hope front that I wonder
why justice hasn’t arrived and all our streets
and boulevards do not have Chinese names.
We, babies you and I, have been saved by our
atomic stockpiles, not our ingeniousness, our
guts, our souls, or our courage.
Gas rationing people will make exorbitant
claims upon entirely unnecessary travel
 203/499

needs. Some people will become two people

with two cars, some people will become three
people with three cars. Some people will find
need (seemingly) to travel from San Diego to
Washington, D.C. three times a week.
Everything will happen. More fucking fuel
will become consumed, joggled and wasted
and resold than if they just left the damn
thing alone. The black market for gas and oil
will be there for those who can afford it.
Who could have believed that the Arabs
and their near-monopoly on oil could have
caused massive layoffs here: 55 m.p.h. speed
limits, perpetual daylight saving time, grins
upon the faces of rapists, muggers and mur-
derers, fear of running the TV too long . . .
and over a 50 percent profit-rise for Americ-
an oil companies . . . while in the long hot
summer ahead a man or a woman will have
to think five or six times whether to turn on
the air conditioner or whether to sweat and
stink.
 204/499

It seems as if there are no shortages of cer-

tain commodities: cigarettes, alcohol, speed,
cops, smog, bars, McDonald’s hamburger
stands, bums on skid row, cancer, hydrogen
bombs, Lucille Ball, football games, basket-
ball games, poets, politicians, dishes in the
sink, infidelity, clap, sparrows, shit, vomit,
bad breath, urine, stopped sinks, traffic
lights, lines, garbage, roaches, rats, unreas-
on, opera, hangnails, screaming women, rap-
ists, lost laundry tickets and Bukowski.

It was Saturday, July 20, 1974, hot. I’d put

ice cubes into the air cooler. I was on the bed
sweating out the beer. It got to be 1 p.m.,
1:30. I got up, scratched my hemorrhoids,
took a bath and got dressed. It was no use. I
was trying to stay away, but it was the last
Saturday of the Hollypark meet and week-
days were bad enough but Saturdays at the
 205/499

track were nightmares to the vision and the

feelings. I decided to go anyhow.
The sixth race was a match race between
the two greatest 3-year-old fillies in America,
Miss Musket from the west and Chris Evert
from the east. It was billed as The Match
Race of the Century, $350,000, winner take
all. Each stable was putting up $150,000.
Match races are very rare. I had only seen
one other: Convenience vs. Typecast in 1972.
I drove down to Carl Jr’s and had a ham-
burger, fries and a large coke.
There was another reason for going out
there. She was there each Saturday, showing
leg. She wore very high-heeled shoes, and
when she sat down she pulled her dress back
and showed all this leg. She wore long hose,
no pantyhose for her, and although she
didn’t go the garter belt route, she wore
garters and was continually standing up, lift-
ing her dress and pulling the hose tight. 1937
all over again and I was hardly the only man
 206/499

affected. Still, it was mainly the match race. I

had no column in mind and I could report
the affair for the L.A. Free Press. It would
feel good to be a journalist; one didn’t need a
mind to be a journalist.
I drove out slowly. After you’ve seen as
many races as I have you can miss a few.
Match races come about as often as minor
and major wars: Man O’ War vs. Sir Barton,
1920. Zev vs. Papyrus, 1923. Seabiscuit vs.
Ligaroti, 1938. Aisab vs. Whirlaway, 1942.
Armed vs. Assault, 1947. Swaps vs. Nashua,
1955. Convenience vs. Typecast, 1972.
I arrived in time for the fourth race. The
crowd was large, hot, and by that time—surly
and depressed, walking into each other
blindly, pushing dazed and dulled. When you
see humanity like that, you know there’s not
much chance. If you want to find what a per-
son is like inside, take them to a racetrack
and watch how they react to defeat.
 207/499

I walked over to the bench where she al-

ways sat, my lady with the long glorious legs.
There she was—she had on thick, flat, low-
heeled shoes. I turned away in disgust. Well,
I still had the Match Race of the Century.
I went the No. 3 horse, Grape Juice, in the
fourth, and lost in a three-horse photo. The
photos weren’t coming my way this meet.
Some meets they give you all the photos;
others they take them all away. It’s usually
decided for you in the opening days of any
meet. Take your cue from there. Also, when
you’re going hot you bet heavy and go more
often; when you’re cold you go less and bet
less. Never fight the tide.
In the fifth my preference was Afirmado
with Tom Landry a close second. The last-
minute action on the tote swung to Tom
Landry and I got down on him at 8/5 but
Afirmado breezed by him in the stretch at
7/2. It wasn’t my meet.
 208/499

The sixth race was the match race. I really

wanted Chris Evert to win because Miss
Musket was the western horse and I am a
rebel by nature. I like to see the crowd
murdered, they deserve it. But I also wanted
to bet on the winner. I would have to watch
the toteboard and do some thinking. All the
boys in the local newspapers were picking
Miss Musket—inside post, the great Laffit
Pincay as jock, and the higher speed ratings.
They each carried 121 pounds. Miss Musket
was 3/5 on the morning line and Chris Evert
4/5. The betting began. They both opened at
3/5. Then Miss Musket hit 1/2, then 2/5. At
1/2 or 2/5 I knew Musket had it wrapped but
I did want to bet Evert. Musket was Florida-
bred and Evert was Kentucky-bred, and the
Kentucky-breds are usually horses of greater
heart.
The betting windows were empty. The
crowd didn’t know what to do. A guy leaning
up against a girder looked at me and gave me
 209/499

a silly grin: “I wouldn’t bet this kind of race,

it’s stupid.” “You’re not forced to bet,” I
answered him. An old woman walked up to
me: “How can you bet a race like this?” she
asked me. “Lady,” I said, “this race is the
same as any other race. The track extracts 16
per cent and gives the remainder of the
money back to the winning ticket holders.
This way it’s more obvious to you. In a
12-horse field you don’t notice the bite, but
it’s still there.”
With two minutes to go, Musket rose from
1/2 to 3/5. As they were putting them in the
gate, Evert dropped from 4/5 to 3/5. Under-
lays win 75 per cent of the races at any track.
I only had one bet: Evert, 20 win. Before the
race some children had come by carrying a
long banner on poles: “MISS MUSKET
CAN’T MISS!” Although Miss Musket was
the favorite in money bet to win, Evert had
gotten the late action and was the underlay.
 210/499

Musket on the inside broke out of the gate

with a slight lead, but Evert with a lunge
quickly had a length and a half. That move
right there showed the power. Musket was
supposed to have the lick but Evert had out-
broken her clearly. Right there, the race was
over. Pincay knew that Jorge Velasquez had
a hell of a lot of horse under him. Evert took
the rail and had two lengths around the first
turn, and right there you noticed that Evert’s
legs were longer, her stride longer, easier.
Miss Musket seemed to diminish in size, her
strides seemed sloppy and confused.
On the backstretch, halfway down, Miss
Musket made her last effort, she pulled out
and came almost alongside Evert, only you
noticed that Velasquez had the hold and that
Pincay was praying, his horse was laboring,
giving away its stretch run on the back-
stretch. Then Velasquez let go his hold and
Evert began to draw clear: one and one-half
 211/499

lengths, two lengths, four lengths, eight

lengths on the turn
. . . it was pure murder. At the top of the
stretch Chris Evert had 30 lengths. One-half
way down the stretch Evert had 40 lengths
and had never seen the whip.
I had never seen such a defeating defeat.
No war, no assassination, no treachery of
love could match it. Pincay eased his horse.
Evert breezed across the finish line 50
lengths in front and had so much run left in
her Jorge had trouble keeping her from go-
ing down to the curve and going the distance
once more. The Californians booed their
Miss Musket and their Laffit Pincay as they
finally crossed the finish line in a gentle
canter. Shit, Pincay wanted to win, he’d just
been on the wrong horse. The rider’s share of
the purse was 10 per cent, or $35,000. Pin-
cay felt much worse than the $2 bettors.
Evert paid $3.50, which means $34 for
$20, or $14 profit. As I came from the
 212/499

collection window, she was waiting. I had

seen her at the track for several meets but we
had never spoken. She looked frightened, her
eyes were a pale blue, a very pale blue. She
put her body right in front of me. I had to
stop. “You won, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Yeh,” I said and then stepped around her.
Her and her flat white shoes. With high heels
I might have taken her over to the bar for a
drink, and then all things flowing, I would
have taken her home and eaten her pussy.
Her and her flat heels.
I didn’t watch the other races. I had to go
home and write about the match race for the
Free Press. There was never anything about
horse racing in the Free Press. I found my
car in the parking lot and drove slowly back.
I knew that that race would go down in his-
tory, something to be talked about for a long
time—like the Tunney-Dempsey fights, the
Dempsey-Firpo fight, the Zale-Graziano
fights, the Dempsey-Willard, the battle of
 213/499

Stalingrad, Burton vs. Taylor, but I was glad

I had seen it with my own eyes because
things have a way of getting turned some-
times, they are not gotten down like they
should be gotten down, something enters af-
terwards that destroys or distorts.
I got home, sat down to the typer and
began my journalistic account of the two
3-year-old fillies. The phone rang.
“Hello,” I answered.
“Hello,” she said. “I was just thinking
about you.”
“Oh, yes, how you doing?” I asked.
Women have this trick of not saying who
they are and they disguise their voices. I got
trapped the other night. This one voice soun-
ded like the other and I said, “Oh, did you get
your car out of the garage?” And she
answered, “Yes, but my oil pan is still drip-
ping all over my pussy.” Then I recognized
the voice and I said “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought
you were . . .” “Who?” she asked. “Oh . . . a
 214/499

friend.” So this time I was careful. “I’m doing

fine,” she said. “I was thinking of you too,” I
said. The conversation went on and then I
said something and she laughed and I recog-
nized the laugh. “Say, that was one hell of an
afternoon,” I said, “you’ve got a great piano.”
“And I didn’t know you could play the
drums,” she said. “Yeh,” I said. “And you
dance, you dance like you’re wearing a
hoola-hoop.” “Yeh,” I said. “Well, I’m just sit-
ting here,” she said, “and I’m alone and I just
wrote a poem and I look out the window and
I see all the lovers walking arm in arm and I
thought of you and I thought, well, he’s prob-
ably alone and writing a poem too.” “No, I’m
writing about a match race.” “What’s that?”
“Two matches race.” “Oh?” “Marion, phone
me when you’re in town. I’ve got to get this
thing down.” “All right,” she said and hung
up. She’ll phone again.
Now, you see, this is the way you write
about a match race, future students of
 215/499

journalism take note. And when you answer

a telephone, feel your way along. Don’t just
presume that the last female you were with is
the one who is phoning you now. Learn to
eat pussy, take your vitamins, especially E,
and when in doubt go for the long-legged
filly, Kentucky-bred, wearing the tallest
cleats possible.

If you think being a matchmaker is easy

you’re wrong. I average 14 hours a day in
that office on a straight salary. It’s mostly
telephone calls and checking all the fight res-
ults, trying to get a couple of good boys in to-
gether at the lowest cost possible.
And the heavyweights are the biggest ache
of them all. And they make the worst fights.
They can’t move and they don’t have any
guts. Just give them a fair tag and they quit.
Heavyweight fights are almost always dull
and most of them leave a pretty good stink
 216/499

after it’s over, but the fans still demand

them. And that’s what makes it hard. There
aren’t eight good heavies in the U.S. In fact,
there aren’t 30 heavies fighting in the U.S.
And those that are only get a fight every year
or two.
Here I was trying to find an opponent for
Young Sharkey. 12-1-1, 12 k.o.’s. I finally go
to Manilla and get Big Baby Herodima.
Herodima is 4-6-2 but he weighs 276 pounds
and I figure it will be a lot of fun to hear him
fall. I phone the papers and tell them it’s a
match, write it up. Sharkey and Herodima,
coming up in two weeks. I’m finally caught
up on my matches. I lean back and feel
peaceful for the first time in some days. The
phone rings. It’s Gerda. She’s drunk.
“Listen, Gerda, I’ve asked you not to call
me at work.”
“Listen, Shithead, you owe me
something.”
 217/499

“I don’t owe you a damned thing. I’ve told

you it’s over between you and me. I’ve had
it.”
“Who is it? Suzy? Are you back with
Suzy?”
“No, I’ve dumped her too.”
“Listen, Doug, you just can’t go around
dumping women like that at your age. Pretty
soon there won’t be any left.”
“When that happens it will be the happiest
day of my life.” I hung up. The phone rang
again.
“Listen, Shithead, I’m not through talking
to you. You’re the biggest fraud of the ages.
It’s Suzy, isn’t it? You’re back with her again,
you always go back to her.”
“Not this time. She’s been screwing
everything that walks. It’s like sticking your
cock in a garbage disposal unit.”
“Listen, Shithead, I want to tell you about
my goldfish . . .” I hung up. The phone
 218/499

started to ring. I put on my coat, locked the

door and got out of there . . .
When I got home I had a beer and a sand-
wich, showered and went to bed. I was just
about asleep when the phone rang.
“Listen, Shithead—”
“Gerda, please. I’ve told you it’s over, don’t
you understand? For Christ’s sake, leave me
alone!”
“I can hear her breathing!”
“What?”
“I can hear her breathing! You’ve got some
woman in bed with you eating cheese crack-
ers and olives! She’s got her hand around
your balls! I can hear her breathing!”
“You’re crazy, that’s what’s wrong with
you, you’re completely crazy.”
“Put her on the phone. I want to talk to
her.”
I hung up. The phone rang again. I picked
it up, hung up, then lifted the receiver and let
it hang from the wire. I went to sleep . . .
 219/499

At the office the next day I got a call from

the Commission saying that Herodima
wouldn’t be allowed to fight Young Sharkey,
because he couldn’t see out of one eye. I sug-
gested that maybe a guy who weighed 276
pounds only deserved one eye, but they still
said no. So there I was. I had to make the top
card over again. I got on the phone. I tried to
get Hymie Stringer out of Philly but his man-
ager told me Hymie broke his leg when he
fell out of a tree trying to untangle a kite for
some neighborhood kid. I tried Mexicali. I
tried Canada. Nothing. The phone rang.
“Listen, Shithead, I want to tell you about
my goldfish. I got up early this morning and
went out to the garden. It was about 6:30
and there was this light fog. And there they
were floating near the top, mystified by this
shroud of leaves that had fallen over them. I
thought you’d like to hear.”
“Yes, that’s a nice story. Thanks.”
 220/499

“Listen, Shithead, was it good, was it good

last night?”
“Gerda, I’m trying to line up a card.
Herodima can only see out of one eye.
Stringer fell out of a tree and broke his leg.”
“Did you eat her box? Did you give her the
treatment? Did she like it?”
I hung up and went outside and walked
around the block twice. When I got back I
had some luck. I got Frankie Tanada out of
New York. Frankie’s 2-14-3 but he’s been
knocked out by the best, been kayoed by 4
former champions. A little class there. I had
some trouble with his manager but we finally
settled on $1,250.00. I phoned the papers
and told them the bout was on. Young Shar-
key and Frankie Tanada. The phone rang.
“Listen, Shithead, I’ve got too many gold-
fish, there’s not enough oxygen. Can I bring
you some of my goldfish?”
“No, I’d rather you didn’t.”
 221/499

“Do you still have that woman at your

place?”
“What woman?”
“The one I heard breathing. I hope she
cleans the ring out of your bathtub like I did.
I hope she gets the shit stains out of your
crapper like I did. I hope she bites off the end
of your cock!” . . .
Tanada got out the next day and began
working out right away. I went down and
watched him. He didn’t look too bad. I
figured he could last 3 or 4 rounds with
Young Sharkey. That’s all I could hope for.
On Wednesday I got a call from the gym.
Frankie Tanada had broken his hand trying
to get a coke bottle out of the vending ma-
chine. I got on the phone again. Nothing out
of Trenton. Nothing from Texas. The phone
rang.
“Listen, Shithead, are you fucking my
sister?”
“No.”
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“Listen, I’m funny, you can fuck anybody

you want but I don’t want you fucking my
sister. I won’t tolerate that!”
“All right, Gerda.”
“I’ve got this thing about sisters. I don’t
even want you phoning her. Have you been
phoning her?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t,” she said, and hung up.
I finally got Gorilla Gibson out of Detroit.
Same price: $1, 250.00. Gorilla was 3-11-2
and had been kayoed by 2 former champi-
ons. I phoned the papers and told them
about the new match . . .
The fight really went off. I was there.
When the bell rang Gibson turned and
crossed himself in his corner, then scowled
and came toward the center of the ring. He
looked good. Young Sharky met him in ring
center and hit him with a medium left cross
to the body. Gibson dropped, stretched on
his back and took the ten count. When he got
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up and walked back to his corner he still

looked good. The fans booed and started
throwing things into the ring, everything but
money. I got up and walked out looking
down at my shoes.
The Commission held up Gibson’s purse.
There would be a hearing. Two things ap-
peared wrong, they told me. Gibson had
done a tank job and also he was 37 years old.
You couldn’t fight in the state after 36 unless
you got special permission. That was the
next day when I heard. Also Carol came to
see me. Carol owned the club, she’d run it for
30 years and kept it going when all the other
clubs had their bad years. I’d been with her
18 years.
“Doug,” she said, sitting down across from
my desk, “another stinker like that and I’ve
got to let you go, I’ve got to get another boy.”
“Listen, it’s those heavies, those heavies al-
ways stink. We can get one good heavy in the
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ring but we can’t get two, you just don’t have

that kind of money.”
“You get out of the gate.”
“Impossible.”
“Jenners does it across town.”
“Jenners got the Palace. He can scale the
prices. This place is 100 years old, Carol.
Why, there are only two restrooms in the
whole auditorium. You ought to see the
men’s room. Urine seeps one inch across the
floor. 14 guys in line behind each urinal. I
don’t know what goes on in the ladies’ room.
They’ve got to squat. It must be hell. There’s
no way we can scale 100-75 and 50 and get
away with it and you know that as well as I
do.”
The phone rang.
“Listen, Shithead, you’ve got a woman in
your office. I can hear her breathing.”
“I’ll call you back, Harry, I’m in
conference.”
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“I can hear her breathing! Are you going to

eat her box?”
“No, Harry, that’s impossible. I’ll call you
back. We might give you $500 for a semi.
That’s tops.”
“Shithead, you’re so tight, you’ve never
ever given me anything! And what’s a semi?
Who wants half a fuck? I’m going to bring
you my goldfish.”
“You do and I’ll run your ass out of the
state!”
I hung up then took the phone off the re-
ceiver. Carol looked at me. “That was a wo-
man on the phone, wasn’t it?”
“What?”
“I could hear her voice, Doug. I want you
to keep your sex life out of the office. And no
more stinkers like that last one. The market
just dropped below 700. Each month some
new country discovers an atom bomb. It’s a
new world. Nobody is allowed any more
mistakes.”
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With that she walked out.

Next week I’ve got a kid from Japan. They
never make a bad fight; most of them can’t
hit but they make it up with guts. And I’ve
got this 17 year old Mexican kid, he’s run off
6 straight and the girls haven’t gotten to him
yet. And neither of these guys weighs over
128 pounds. I feel fairly safe. I should have
married Carol, though, ten years ago when
we were making it.

Sally and I argued almost every time we

got drunk, and the arguments were vile and
violent, and we drank almost all the time,
and the arguments were LOUD and destruct-
ive, and we were evicted from place after
place. We’d walk down the street and say,
“We lived there. And we lived in that place
too. Remember when we lived in that place?”
Most of the evictions were via a notice under
the door; they didn’t care to contact us
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personally. Sometimes though, we were con-

fronted personally but usually a day or two
after our argument. Once I had mounted
Sally and as we were working away I heard a
key in the door. It opened and there was the
manager. He pointed a finger down at Sally:
“YOU’RE OUT!” he said. Then he paused and
looked at me: “AND YOU’RE OUT TOO!”
Then he walked out, closed the door, and we
continued.
We began in most new places with a bit of
dignity. Sally would tell the manager about
me: “He is a fireman.” Or, “He’s a surgeon’s
assistant.” Or, “He’s on vacation.” That was
the one Sally used the most. In one place a
young couple seemed to take a liking to us.
They promised us all new rugs. And while we
were at the bar one day they had put them in.
New rugs. All red, bright red. Quite appro-
priate, I thought. Two days later while we
were asleep there was a POUNDING on the
door. “YOU PEOPLE GET OUT OF HERE
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AND GET OUT OF HERE NOW! YOU’RE

DRIVING AL THE TENANTS IN THIS
BUILDING CRAZY! I’M GOING TO LOSE
MY JOB!” I got up in my shorts and opened
the door. “Listen, man, we’ve got almost a
month left on the rent. No chance of us clear-
ing out now.” “I’LL PAY YOUR BACK RENT!
JUST GET OUT! CHRIST, WHAT HAVE
YOU DONE TO THE RUGS? LOOK AT
THAT LAMP! YOU PEOPLE NEED A
BOXING RING, NOT AN APARTMENT!”
We moved out.
The place we lasted longest was the
HALCYON ARMS on Union Avenue, a few
places up from the TEAMSTER’S UNION
headquarters. They had a desk in front and
you had to get your key and leave your key
when you went in and out. The guy at the
desk we named Sleepless because he seemed
to be at that desk 24 hours. When he slept
was the mystery, and it might have helped
the situation. He was too sleepy to care.
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The time I’m thinking about here as I write

this was this certain time that Sally left. Sally
was always leaving me but this time, some-
how, it seemed more definite. It was confus-
ing to me because I didn’t know whether to
be sad or happy. One likes to pinpoint the
emotions or else all seems wasted.
I sat there with my fifth of Scotch and my
beer and looked out the window. Sally was
out there somewhere. The note had been
very definite: BASTARD I CAN’T STAND
YOU ANY MORE BUT I WANT YOU TO
KNOW THAT I LOVE YOU AND THAT I’LL
NEVER FORGET YOU EVER . . . SALLY
She hadn’t done the dishes or made the
bed, had taken all the cigarettes. I walked to
the closet. Most of her clothes were still
there. I sat down and had another drink.
Under the bed I could see one of her pink
slippers and next to the slipper was a pair of
shit-stained panties. I got up and walked
around. There were hairpins everywhere, in
 230/499

the ashtrays, on the dresser, on the floor, in

the bathroom. Her magazines were on the
floor, by the bed, magazines with exotic cov-
ers: MAN RAPES GIRL, THEN THROWS
HER BODY FROM 400 FOOT CLIFF . . .
12-YEAR-OLD BOY RAPES WOMAN AT
THE ZOO . . . LOVE BANDIT DRINKS THE
BLOOD OF HIS VICTIMS. Inside were pic-
tures of beheaded women, of people baked in
ovens, of cops digging into murderers’ graves
outside Bakersfield.
In the dresser next to the Kleenex were all
the notes and letters I had ever written her,
all neatly bound with 3 or 4 sets of rubber
bands. And then there were the photos, all
the photos. There was one of both of us
crouched on the hood of our ’58 Plymouth,
Sally showing a lot of leg and grinning like a
Kansas City gun moll from out of the twen-
ties and me showing the bottoms of my
shoes with the circular waving holes in them.
And there were photos of dogs, all of them
 231/499

ours, and photos of children, most of them

hers.
Then the phone rang. It was Sally in some
bar. I could hear the juke box. “I just want
you to know, you son of a bitch, that I’m not
coming back.” Then I heard a man’s voice:
“Sally, Sally, forget the fuckin’ phone and
come back and sit down with us!” “You see,”
she said, “there are other men in the world
beside you.” “Your opinion only,” I said. “I
could have loved you forever,” she said. “Get
fucked,” I said and hung up.
I poured another drink and while looking
for a scissors in the bathroom to trim the
hair around my ears and in my nose I found
a brassiere in one of the drawers and held it
to the light. The brassiere looked all right
from the outside but inside was this stain of
sweat and dirt and the stain was darkened,
melded in there as if no washing would ever
take it out. I drank my drink and then began
to trim the hair around my ears. I decided
 232/499

that I was quite a handsome man and I’d lift

weights, go on a diet and get a tan. I de-
served better than Sally.
The phone rang again. I lifted the receiver,
hung up, lifted the receiver again and let the
phone dangle by the cord. I trimmed my
ears, nose, eyebrows, drank another hour or
two and then went to bed and slept.
I was awakened by a sound I had never
quite heard before. It was loud, deep and
persistent. It was like a thousand wasps
burning to death. It came from the dangling
telephone, still off the hook. I picked it up.
“Hello.”
“Sir, this is the desk clerk. Your phone is
off the hook.”
“All right. Sorry, I’ll hang it up.”
“Don’t hang up, sir. Your wife is on the
elevator.”
“Who?”
“She says she’s Mrs. Borowsky.”
“All right. It’s possible.”
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“Sir, can you get her off the elevator? She

doesn’t understand the controls . . . her lan-
guage is abusive toward us but she says that
you’ll help her . . . and sir . . .”
“Yes?”
“We didn’t want to call the police.”
“Good.”
“She’s laying down on the floor of the elev-
ator, sir, and, and . . . she has . . . urinated
upon herself.”
“O.K.” I said and hung up.
I walked down the hall in my shorts, drink
in hand, cigar in mouth, and pressed the el-
evator button. Up it came from the bottom
floor, one, two, three, four. The doors opened
and there was Sally . . . and little delicate
trickles and ripples of water lines drifting
about the elevator floor and some blotchy
pools.
I finished my drink, picked her up and car-
ried her out of the elevator, threw her on the
bed and pulled off her wetted panties, skirt
 234/499

and stockings. Then I put a drink on the cof-

feetable near her, sat on the couch and had a
drink for myself. Suddenly she sat straight
up and looked around. “Borowsky”? she
asked. “Over here,” I waved my hand. “Oh,
thank God.”
Then she saw the drink and drank it right
down. I got up, refilled Sally’s glass, put ci-
garettes, ashtray and matches nearby.
“Who took my panties off?”
“Me.”
“Don’t you go playing with my panties. I’m
mad at you.”
“You pissed yourself.”
“Who?”
“You.”
She sat straight upright. “Borowsky, you
queer, you dance like a queer, you dance like
a woman.”
“I’ll break your goddamned nose!”
“You broke my arm, Borowsky, don’t you
go breaking my nose . . .”
 235/499

She put her head back on the pillow. “I

love you, Borowsky, I really do . . .”
Then she started snoring. I drank another
hour or two, then I got into bed with her. I
didn’t want to touch her at first. She needed
a bath, at least. I got one leg up against hers;
it didn’t seem too bad. I tried the other legs. I
remembered all the good days and good
nights and I slipped one arm under her neck,
then I had the other around her belly and my
drunken penis gently up against her crotch.
Her hair came back and climbed into my
nostrils. I felt her inhale heavily, then exhale.
We would sleep like that most of the night
and into the next afternoon. Then I would
get up and go to the bathroom and vomit and
then she would have her turn.

I figured 500-plus air might make this

community college outside Detroit worth my
soul so I got on American and worked the
 236/499

stewardesses for extra drinks. I was to land a

day early, and I made it down the ramp wait-
ing for some professor to grab me and one
did and I told him, “I’m yours now. How can
you tell what you’ve got until it gets off the
plane?”
“We can’t. My job’s more or less on the
line each time but it’s worth it.” Each year he
went out and got one. It had been Ginsberg,
Stephen Spender and James Dickey in the
last three years and he still had his job. I
warned him that I had been thrown out of
the women’s dorm at the University of Kan-
sas after a reading and we walked toward his
car. He drove me to a hotel in Detroit and
left me with a mass of phone numbers and
instructions. The university was getting the
room and board, he assured me. After he left
I took a shower and phoned down for drinks.
I had been drinking an hour or so—picking
out my poems—when the phone rang. It was
my buddy Slim de Bouffe who came in at 5
 237/499

feet and 265 pounds and played with poems

and booze and women. He liked my shit.
When he knocked on the door the room
knocked back. He wrote poems with a ham-
mer. I told him to come on in.
There wasn’t much to the night, mostly
drinking, and stories about bad luck with
women and good luck with women; about
the poetry hustle and the poetry grind and
about some of the good people in it and some
of the other kind. Slim had a way of dropping
little wisdoms out of his mouth as if they
didn’t count, as if he were asking for a match
or giving directions to the nearest whore-
house. You had to listen carefully to Slim but
it was worth it. It was worth some hours of
listening. He left late that night and I went to
bed and slept in that 100-year-old hotel in
the middle of Murder City and I slept well.
Awakening was another matter. I was on
the fourth floor and the windows looked out
on a building with a flagpole on top of it. I
 238/499

gagged, went to the bathroom, had a minor

vomit, opened a warm beer and got the
switchboard woman.
“Yes sir?”
“I have a complaint.”
“Yes sir?”
“Look, I’m going to be here 2 or 3 nights
which means that I’m going to wake up with
2 or 3 hangovers.”
“You’d better send your complaint to God,
sir.”
“All right, connect me.”
“He’s unlisted.”
“Don’t I know. Look, as I was saying, I’m
going to wake up here every morning and
you know the first sight that will meet my
eyes?”
“No, I don’t, sir.”
“The American flag.”
“The American flag?”
“Absolutely.”
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“You mean you don’t like the American

flag, sir?”
“Of course not. It has these red and white
stripes, they wave in the wind, and then
there are the stars, there are all these stars
up in the corner, you know, on top of the
blue . . . I wake up sick. I’ve got to read po-
etry at the university, they’re going to put me
on video tape.”
“Sir, I like the American flag!”
“Fine, I’ll take your room and you take
mine.”
“Have you fought in any wars, sir?”
“Yes, first I fought for Franco in Spain and
then . . .”
She hung up on me.

It was hot under the video lights but I

worked from a bottle of 100 proof vodka and,
when that emptied out, Slim de Bouffe went
out into the night and came back with a six-
pack. I finished it up under that and the
 240/499

applause seemed fair enough. I fielded some

easy questions, got the 500 dollar check and
got out. They told me they’d mail the air
within ten days. I had to work a bookstore-
signing for 50 bucks. Then a night’s sleep
and back to L.A. where I had figured this
new system on the harness races. The soph-
isticates always sneered when I talked about
the races. The sophisticates always thought
soul could be found in the obvious places;
that’s why they were sophisticates instead of
artists.
There were 600 people in the bookstore.
The owner had advertised in the main
Detroit newspaper. We couldn’t move.
Drinks and food had to be passed hand-to-
hand overhead. I drank everything they
handed me except wine. I signed books and
screamed back insult for insult. I was high
up in the sky. I beat their meanness with a
more clever meanness. Civilization. They
wanted to suck me dry and trash me. I’d
 241/499

come up through the alleys like Jersey Joe

and old Jimmy Braddock. They couldn’t trap
me with love. Adulation, maybe. I read a
couple of poems from Burning that some-
body shoved at me. Then I fought my way
out, cursing that whole gang of bloodsuckers.
I got to the curbing and a car pulled up. “In
here, Bukowski!” I jumped in and we drove
off.
“You’re just like a rock star, baby,” said the
kid at the wheel. I looked around: a car full
of female groupies.
“Like hell. Either these women get out or I
get out. All I want is a ride to the hotel.”
The kid at the wheel pulled over to the
curbing. “All right, girls, get it out. Now!”
They got out and we got some dock-hand,
back-room cussing from those lovelies and
then the kid put it to the floor and we went
down the street.
“Eddie Mahler,” he said.
“I’m Charles Bukowski,” I answered.
 242/499

The kid, Eddie, he was good. The street

was very dark as all Detroit streets seemed to
be. Eddie had a little game. He’d see a car up
ahead and come alongside. Then he’d smash
his car into the side of the other car. He’d
bounce it good. Then he’d come back and hit
it again and again. He’d keep hitting that car
until it climbed up over the curbing and
stopped. Then Eddie would stop the car and
glare at them and I’d sit there and glare at
them right along with Eddie. Then we’d drive
off and find another car and do the same
thing. We got 4 or 5 cars that way.
“You’re a vicious son of a bitch, Eddie. I
like you.”
“You and Rod McKuen are my favorite
poets.”
“What?”
“Yes, you two guys are the only poets I can
stand.”
I let that go. Soon we seemed to be driving
along in the country. There were trees and
 243/499

space everywhere. Eddie stopped the car.

“Get out,” he said.
I got out.
“O.K,” he said, “I want that 500 dollar
check. You’re going to sign it over to me, Ed-
ward Mahler.”
“And you’re going to suck your mother’s
left tit.”
The first punch came so fast I couldn’t see
it. I swung from the heels and missed his
head by two feet. He sunk one into my gut
and I dropped to my knees and vomited up
ten dollars worth of booze. I got back up.
“What did you say that name was?”
“Eddie Mahler.”
“Got a pen, Eddie? I lost mine giving out
all those autographs.”
“Sure.”
I walked over to his car and put the check
on top of the car roof. It was very wet in the
moonlight. I signed the check over to Eddie,
handed him the check and the pen and we
 244/499

got back into the car. “The least you can do,
punk, is to drive me back to the hotel.”
“Don’t call me a punk.”
“Drive me back to the hotel, punk.”
He started the car, and we drove off. “I
want you to meet my mother first. She’s al-
ways admired your stuff.”
“All right.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Compared to what’s happened, that’s
easy.”
“Sure.”
“Eddie, if this ever gets out, I’m finished.
I’m supposed to be the tough guy, the man of
the streets. Hell, if this gets out nobody will
ever buy my books.”
“I don’t want to compound anything. I’ll
keep quiet.”
“I’m not speaking of morals or ethics or
anything, Eddie, but that money’s really
mine. And . . . hey, shit, what happened to
my wristwatch?”
 245/499

I looked over and Eddie had on two wrist-

watches. “Give me my wristwatch, punk.”
Eddie slipped my watch off. I put it back
on. “One time I’m on the floor drunk,
passed-out and I feel somebody lift my wrist-
watch, then I feel somebody pulling at my
finger, he’s trying to get my ring off. I look up
and he’s got out this knife, he’s going to peel
down my finger to get my ring and it’s not
worth $3. You ought to have heard me
holler. He scattered.”
“I’ll pay you back $100 a month from this
check I took from you,” said Eddie.
“No good,” I said, “you’re driving me back
to the hotel. Then we’re going to sleep it off
and I’m going to duke it out with you again
when I’m sober.”
“O.K, but first I want you to meet my
mother.”
Eddie’s mother was very nice. A young
blonde. I mean young compared to me.
Neither Eddie or I mentioned anything about
 246/499

the check. His mother mixed us all some

drinks and we drank an hour or two, then
left. Before we left Eddie went to the closet
and gave me one of his shirts, a nice purple
and white striped job. I put it on, mine had
somehow gotten bloodied and ripped during
the fight. Before we left, Eddie’s mother got
out these photos of her ex-husband, a rather
famous gangster who’d been gunned down
by the cops. We all did a bit of mourning and
weeping for him, me mostly. Then we had
another drink and left.
In the hotel in the morning I awakened
first, shit and showered. Eddie was out. My
first thought was to sneak downstairs and
holler cops. But somehow that was out. I got
back into bed and opened a warm beer. No
refrigeration in the fucking place. Eddie
rolled over. “Hey,” he said.
“Yeah?”
Eddie got up, went to his pants and took
out his wallet. He walked over and handed
 247/499

me the check. “I knew I could never take this.

I knew I’d give it back when I woke up in the
morning.”
“Eddie, I’ll take it.”
The kid started getting dressed. “Care for a
warm beer?”
“O.K.”
I broke one open for him. Eddie finished
dressing, then finished the beer. I found a
pen and wrote my address down. “Write me,
Eddie.”
He took the slip of paper, put it in his
pocket and walked out the door. That’s about
all there was to that reading except I met
Slim de Bouffe and his girlfriend in this bar
later, they were going to get me to the airport
and I told them the story as we drank green
beer in a place they were mopping up with a
very strong disinfectant and we almost
vomited together. “You mean you couldn’t
take him?” asked de Bouffe.
“I couldn’t take him,” I answered.
 248/499

Then we all got up and walked over to a

sweeter-smelling place.

They were both 7 years old and they found

the hole in the fence and crawled through.
“He usually sits out in the yard in this
chair. He just sits there looking kind of
mad.”
“He might kill us, Billy.”
“Look, Red, he’s in enough trouble, he
won’t kill us.”
“You say he looks mad.”
“He’s just pissed. He don’t go to the mar-
ket or eat out or anything. He sends people
out for his things. We got to look out for his
people.”
“I’ll bet he has guards everywhere.”
“Not too many, Red, just two or three. I
come here every day. I never been caught
yet.”
“You like to look at him, Billy?”
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“Yeah. Only today I think I want to talk to

him.”
“Talk to him?”
“Yeah. Now keep down low against those
bushes. Now lay down here.”
“O.K.”
“See him, Red? He’s sitting in that big
chair with his cane, he’s just looking off into
space, looking mad.”
“I see him.”
“Let’s crawl closer.”
“How about the guards?”
“Oh, they just walk around. They get care-
less. If we had a gun we could kill him right
from here.”
Billy pointed his finger, moving his thumb
down: “Pow!”
“I’m scared, Billy!”
“Me, too. That’s the fun of it. Keep crawl-
ing closer.”
“It’s him, Billy, it’s him! I’ve seen him on
TV, I’ve seen his picture in the papers!”
 250/499

“Sure it’s him, Red. Who do you think he

is?”
“He does look mad! It’s just like seeing
God!”
“It’s better, we can talk to him.”
“You—still going to talk to him?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve made up my mind. Keep
crawling toward him.”
“I’ve pissed my pants, Billy.”
“It doesn’t matter. Keep moving up.”
“I pissed my pants, Billy, I’m so scared I
pissed my pants.”
“I could hit him with a rock now. Red. He’s
just looking off into space. Soon we’ll be able
to reach out and touch him.”
They crawled closer. Soon they were out of
the brush and they crawled along the lawn,
closer and closer. They were 12 feet away,
then six. Then they stopped. They just re-
mained quiet, breathing.
Finally Billy said, “Hey!”
 251/499

The man in the chair was jolted upright,

dropping his cane. “Christ! . . . what is it?”
“We came to talk to you,” said Billy, stand-
ing up. Red stood up too, looking down at
the spot on the front of his pants.
“Red pissed his pants, we’re sorry about
that.”
The man picked up his cane and pointed it
at the boys.
“You goddamned kids get out of here!”
“We want to talk to you.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. Now get
your asses out of here!”
“My father didn’t vote for you,” said Billy.
“He tells people that.”
“Well, the way it worked out, somebody
must have.”
“Why did you do it?” asked Billy.
“Do what?”
“Do what you did.”
“You kids live around here?”
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“Sure. What do you think?” asked Billy.

“You think we flew down from Mars?”
“It wouldn’t surprise my ass in the least.”
“Why do you use dirty language?”
“Sorry.”
“All your men were sentenced to jail.
Aren’t you sorry for your men?”
“All men are guilty of something.”
“Do you mean all men should be in jail?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Does your wife still go to bed with you
after what you did?”
The man lifted his cane and pointed it at
Billy. “You stay out of my sex life!”
“I’ll bet she doesn’t anymore.”
“What do you know about sex?”
“Plenty.”
“O.K., what is it?”
“It’s something to do to make yourself feel
good so you can go on and do all the things
that don’t make you feel so good.”
“That’s not Webster but it’s not bad.”
 253/499

Then there was silence. The man turned

and looked off into space again. Some
minutes passed. Then Red said, “I kind of
like you, anyhow.”
Billy turned to Red: “What the hell’s wrong
with you? He’s no good. He ought to be in
jail with the rest of those guys!”
“I guess you’re right.”
“I guess, Red,” said the man, “the least you
can do for me is vote Republican when you
grow up.”
“Herbert Hoover was a Republican and he
let the people starve to death!” said Billy.
“How do you know that?” asked the man.
“My uncle told me.”
“O.K., that’s good enough.”
“Both those Kennedys were good guys and
look what happened to them.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Somebody ought to kill you!”
“So my wife can go to bed with another
man?”
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“No. Just because you STINK!”

“Boys, I think this interview is over.”
Billy and Red stood there looking at him. A
solitary bird flew past between them,
quickly, looping up and down like a fantasy
and then it was gone. The man leaned up-
ward in his chair. Then he screamed out:
“HARRY! DOUG! OVER HERE!” quickly but
heavily. They were young and well dressed
and had revolvers drawn. They were each ad-
orned with the latest hairdo and the latest
clothing style.
“WHERE THE HELL’S MY SECURITY?
WHAT YOU GUYS BEEN DOING, PLAYING
SCRABBLE IN THE ROSE BOWER OR
WORSE?”
“How’d these fucking kids get in here?”
asked the taller of the security guards.
“Ask them,” said the man.
“How’d you kids get in here?”
“A hole in the fence.”
“But everything’s wired!”
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“What’s wired?”
“Oh, shit, we got to check the wiring,” said
the taller of the security men to the shorter,
“get your ass on Mr. Bell now and get Del
Monico over here, and FAST!”
“Listen,” said Billy, “I think we’ll be going
home now.”
“Hold it now!” said the remaining security
man, “don’t move!”
“Let them go.”
“Don’t you want me to process them?”
“What the hell you going to find? You’ll
find that one of the kids has pissed his pants
and the other has a father who is a plumber
and gets drunk every Saturday night.”
“All right, kids,” said the security guard,
“you can go now.”
Billy turned and began to run and then
Red ran after him. Red was a better runner
than Billy and he passed him and got
through the hole in the fence first.
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“Anything I can do for you?” the security

guard asked the man.
“Yeah. Get the hell out of my sight, Now!”
It was done and the man in the chair
leaned back again. You could hear the ocean
if you really listened. He really listened. He
still held the cane in his right hand. The
veins of that hand were not relaxed.

Harry walked into the bar and sat down.

“Scotch and water,” he told the bar-keep.
Harry had some thoughts on bars. They were
infested with the second-lowest breed of hu-
manity. The race-track’s got the first lowest
breed of humanity. Having just gotten in
from the track he was completing a meaning-
less day. At least the jukebox wasn’t on and
nobody was shooting pool. He remembered
the days you used to be able to come into a
bar and stare into the mirror until you got
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drunk. Or you beat the shit out of somebody

or got the shit beat out of you. And you used
to be able to win at the racetrack and occa-
sionally meet a woman of high quality. But
why cry? Everyone lived in the same world as
you did. Or so they said. He got the first
drink down and ordered another.
When he looked up there was a lady in her
mid-40s, large purple blouse, sagging
breasts, overtight skirt showing pot belly,
two heart-shaped blue earrings on long silver
chains, and in the center of her face—a blaze
of orange lipstick, glistening wet. The ear-
rings fascinated Harry. The lady managed to
move her head just enough to keep the ear-
rings bouncing inanely—the blue hearts
leaped and jumped and whirled on either
side of her head. “Hi! I’m Janice!”
“Harry.”
“You new in town?”
“In the world.”
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“Ta! Ain’t that somethin’? Can I ask you

somethin’?”
“Shoot.”
“Shoot”?
“Speak.”
“Are you a slave or a master?”
“I remain humble among the multitudes:
I’m a slave.”
“What’s a slave?”
“A man who can’t reach his own asshole
with his dick.”
“You’re bitter.”
“No, I just can’t reach.”
“Do you believe in love?”
“Yes, but only for other people.”
Janice got up and brought her drink down,
blue heart earrings jumping like jazz discov-
ering Bach. She had on false eyelashes two
and one-half inches long. “I wanna buy you a
drink.”
“O.K.”
“You like money?”
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“Better than youth, fame or virgins.”

Janice ordered the drinks and said, “You
come home with me and you’ve made your-
self 50 bucks.”
“Fine. I’ll do anything but drink
buttermilk.”
“Oh, good, then we’ll make it 75 bucks.”
They drank up and he followed her out. It
was a pink Mercedes. She angled off from the
curbing, breaking traffic in half, horns going,
the blue hearts jumped . . . She swirled up a
half-moon driveway and pulled in front of a
large three-story house. The garage door
opened like a large, terrifying and mindless
mouth but she jumped out of the car, opened
Harry’s door and pulled him out.
“Come, my darling, I just can’t wait!”
“I wonder,” he said, “what the third-lowest
breed of humanity does?”
He followed her up the stairway and into
the house.
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Nice, he thought, a guy like Sugar Ray

Robinson could use something like this.
He found himself in a large leather chair
overhung with a lamp on one side and a par-
rot on the other. Janice ran into the other
room. Then the parrot looked at him and
said, “Now eat your spinach, darling.”
“Oh,” said Harry to the parrot, “why don’t
you go flog yourself off?”
“After you eat your spinach, darling!”
“What?”
“Now eat your spinach, darling . . . ”
Janice came in with two large drinks, gave
him one, then sat on the couch across from
him. Harry drained half his drink; his
temples damn near gagged and a photograph
of Man of War coerced before his eyes, then
vanished. He drained the other half.
“Keep them coming,” he said.
Janice walked into the other room. Harry
stared at the parrot. The parrot stared back.
Then the parrot looked away, bored.
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She handed him the drink. “What I want

you to do, you may not like.”
“For $75 I believe that any man could
stand a minor diminishment.”
“Maybe. Drink your second drink first.”
Harry did that. Janice got up and walked
out. He waited. Janice walked back in.
She threw the material on his lap. “You put
that stuff on.”
Harry picked it up and looked at it. “Great
Grandmother of Christ, don’t you know I’m
half-crazy already? This could carry me into
the shit-stained land of absentia.”
“Seventy-five bucks. Put it on.”
“Yes.”
“The bedroom,” she said, “is one sharp
corner to the left.”
Harry carried the stuff into the bedroom: a
little boy’s short pants—black—and a blouse,
ruffled, silky and white; underwear with
designs of rockinghorses, moons and candy
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canes upon it; two ankle-length stockings,

white.
He worked his way into the stuff and
walked out. Janice put another drink into his
hand as he sat down. He drank it halfway
down—no vision of Man of War this time.
No vision at all.
“You’re a nice boy,” she said.
“Now,” said the parrot, “eat your spinach,
darling!”
“What have I got myself into?” asked
Harry.
“Seventy-five bucks.”
“Did Job have to suffer like this to stay on
the payroll?”
“You keep saying clever things! You are
my bright little boy!”
“Look, why don’t we just fuck and get it
over with?”
“If you keep saying things like that,
Harold, I’m going to have to wash your
mouth out with soap!”
 263/499

Janice got up and walked to the telephone,

dialed, waited.
“Harriet? Harriet, my boy is back home!
Won’t you come over and see my boy? You
will? I’m so happy! We’ll be waiting!”
Janice hung up.
“Another drink,” said Harry. Janice went
to the kitchen and stoked up another,
brought it out, handed it to him. “Now
Harold, I got a note from your teacher today
and she said that you had been bad in
school, that you had pulled a little girl’s pig-
tail and stuck it in the inkwell! Why did you
do that, Harold, bad boy!”
“Because she’d been finger-fucking her sis-
ter while the other girls were playing
volleyball!”
“Harold! I told you about dirty words! One
more time and you get the soap!”
“Now,” said the parrot, “eat your spinach,
darling!”
 264/499

The doorbell rang about 10 minutes later

and Janice got up and answered it. “Harriet!
And I’m so glad you’ve got Timmy with you!”
They walked in and Harriet was an almost
carbon copy of Janice. She had some guy
with her. He had on little boy’s
pants—black—and a blouse, ruffled, silky
and white; underwear with reindeer and
stars interspersed with rockinghorses, and
two ankle-length stockings, white.
“Harold,” said Janice, “I want you to meet
Timmy.”
They shook hands. “How you doing, man?”
Harry asked.
“All right, I guess. How you doing?”
“Fair to middling.”
“Me too.”
Timmy sat down in a chair across the way
and Janice went in to mix new drinks. “I
want you boys to get along now,” said
Harriet.
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“Now,” said the parrot, “eat your spinach,

darling!”
“This recession is a living hell,” said
Timmy to Harry.
Janice brought the drinks back in and
handed them out, then sat down. “Harold
has been a very bad boy! Just this morning
we had hard-boiled eggs and he said he
didn’t like the yolk and he didn’t like the
white. Then he dropped the jam right onto
the front of his shirt!”
“You think the Dodgers will repeat this
year?” Timmy asked Harry.
“It’s a cinch,” said Harry, “they’re going to
learn how to use Ferguson, and Lopes will
get off faster at the bat.”
“Timmy has been very bad too,” said Har-
riet. “He left his tricycle out in the rain and
all the spokes got rusted. He needs a spank-
ing very badly!”
 266/499

“Harold needs a spanking very badly too.

He pulled a little girl’s pigtail and then stuck
it in the inkwell!”
“I told you . . . she was . . .”
“Harold.”
“These boys are acting very badly! I think
I’d better take mine home!”
“Mine needs some chastising too.”
“All right, Janice, I’ll phone you tomorrow.
We’re leaving. Timmy!”
“Christ, at least let me finish my drink!”
“No, no, we’re leaving. Timmy!”
And she took Timmy and led him out the
door by one ear, the clear night wind blew in,
and then they were gone.
“Now,” said Harriet, “you go to the
bedroom!”
Harry walked into the bedroom. It was
dark in there. But he did have his drink with
him. He finished his drink and rolled the
glass across the rug. He unlaced his shoes
and stretched out on the bed. It was one of
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those neighborhoods where you could hear

the crickets rubbing their legs together. He
listened to the rubbing of the legs. It made
things seem fairly all right.
Then he wondered, should I take this stuff
off and wait for her or should I let her un-
dress me?
It was the first bit of uncalculated, math-
ematical wisdom he had come upon in some
days of weeks, but he still hoped she’d bring
one last good drink.

Harry bought a newspaper and walked in-

to the travel agency. A woman in a yellow
skirt, white blouse and high heels was bent
over placing something in the bottom drawer
of a filing cabinet. Her skirt hiked up and
Harry stared at the back of her legs. The legs
were good. When the woman turned around
Harry elevated his glance. The woman was in
her mid-40s but she still radiated sex. She
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was almost plump and the skirt fit tightly, so

tightly that Harry could see the garter belt
that held up the stockings.
“Hello,” said Harry, “I need a ticket.”
“Please sit down,” the woman said. All her
clothing pulled at her as if she wanted to get
out of it. When she sat down she crossed her
legs and Harry found himself staring up her
legs. She noticed and smiled slightly.
“Where to,” she asked.
“Detroit,” said Harry, “regular coach fare.”
“Round trip?”
“Yes, round trip.”
“When do you want to leave?”
“Oh, sometime Thursday afternoon. It
doesn’t matter much when I arrive. I read
Friday night.”
“Read?”
“Oh, pardon me, I’m a poet.”
“Oh, a poet . . . how strange. Do they pay
you to read?”
“$500 plus air this trip.”
 269/499

“What kind of poetry do you write?”

“Sex.”
“Sex?”
“Yes, sex.”
The woman checked her schedules.
“I can get you on a flight out of L.A. Inter-
national at 2:48 p.m. American.”
“Fine.”
“Return trip open?”
“Yes.”
“You must lead an interesting life.”
“It’s all right.”
“I’m Mrs. LeMon.”
“I’m Harry Benson.”
While Mrs. LeMon dialed the telephone
Harry looked up her legs again. She had re-
crossed her legs and the skirt had climbed
higher. It was hell to be a leg man and come
across the rarity of high heels, long stockings
and garter belt. All the modern women had
gone to pantyhose, which de-sexified
everything, or pants. Well, if women didn’t
 270/499

want to be sex symbols that was their right,

and if they wanted to be that was their right
too. Harry forced his eyes from her legs and
read the paper.
“Look,” said Harry, “here’s a Superior
Court judge who has authorized castration
for two men who pleaded guilty to child
molestation.”
Mrs. LeMon hung up. “I’ve got you on
flight 248, American , 2:48 p.m. What did
you say?”
“These two guys have been molesting little
girls and they might get their balls cut off.”
“I think that’s terrible,” said Mrs. LeMon.
“Me too,” said Harry. “Some girls are ter-
rible little teases and a man gets hot.”
“I’d like to read some of your books.”
“You wouldn’t like them.”
“What are they about?”
“Just stories and poems.”
“About what?”
 271/499

“Rape, child molestation, oral sex, garter

belt freaks, high-heeled shoe fetishes, whips,
leather, all that crap.”
“And they pay you to read that?”
“Oh, I mix in a little spring and love and
death and laughter. It confuses them. Look
here, it says that the exiled Russian author
Alexander Solzhenitsyn is visiting Canada.
He’s got it made. They toady to those kinds
of freaks. He’ll probably lay five or six
Eskimo virgins. He can’t write worth a
damn.”
“Do you like virgins?”
“I like mature women, slightly overweight
sex symbols.”
“I like your sense of humor.”
“I’m serious.”
“Cash or credit?”
“Cash. How much is it?”
Mrs. LeMon told Harry how much it was
and he put the money down in front of her.
 272/499

“Mrs. LeMon, I know this making out of

the tickets takes some time. I think I’ll go out
and get a beer and a sandwich.”
“Why don’t you go out and get your beer
and drink it upstairs? My apartment’s right
up that stairway. There’s meat in the refri-
gerator and some Russian rye. You can make
a sandwich, drink your beer and rest while
I’m making out the tickets.”
“O.K. I’ll be right back.”
Harry found a liquor store two blocks
west. He got a six of Bud in the bottle and
put a dime in the parking meter in front of
his car as he walked past. When he got back
to the travel agency Mrs. LeMon was making
out the tickets. Her skirt was hiked higher.
He didn’t look at her face, he looked at her
legs and said, “Hi!”
“Hi!” she answered.
Harry went up the stairway. It’s like a
movie, he thought. Someday I’ll write about
this. He opened the door. It was a nice
 273/499

apartment. Female. Real female, old-fash-

ioned female. Harry had once dreamt he had
fucked his mother; it had been the wettest
wet dream he had ever had. Sex was doing
what you weren’t supposed to do. That’s one
reason marriage didn’t work; it became a job
instead of a raid into the unknown. He was
really a puritan and the breaking down of the
mores made him horny forever; that along
with vitamin E and a late start in the game.
He broke out one bottle of Bud and put the
rest in the refrigerator. He had to be the best
poet in the game today. Everybody agreed
that Bukowski was slipping, Ginsberg was a
nice old bore and Creeley was drinking a
quart of whiskey a day. Duncan was too pre-
cious, Lowell was too careful and Fer-
linghetti was hampered by an alcoholic wife.
Harry sucked on the beer and walked over
to her dresser. He opened the second drawer
down and he was right—there were eight or
10 pairs of panties. He went through them
 274/499

and found a pair he liked: black, netted and

laced. He unzipped and pulled it out. He
took the panties and folded them over his
cock and began rubbing them over his cock.
Harry watched himself in the mirror, grin-
ning, and he kept rubbing. His cock began to
swell and the head puffed up and out of the
panties. He watched himself in the mirror,
then his mind said, Jesus I got stop or I’m
going to lose it. He zipped up, poking it in
and put the panties in one of his rear pock-
ets. He finished the beer, went to the refri-
gerator and opened another one. He looked
in there. Why was it that almost all women
ate cottage cheese and yogurt and cheese?
Soft stinking cheese. And doughnuts and
See’s candies?
He took the beer and walked over to the
couch and sat down. He’d thrown the news-
paper down there. He picked it up:

55 FELLED BY FOOD
 275/499

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico (AP)—More than

55 persons who attended a Knights of
Columbus luncheon at the Lion’s Club
convention hall were hospitalized with
food poisoning, officials reported.

Bastards, thought Harry, serves them

right. Anybody who goes to Mexico deserves
to be reamed and creamed.
The door opened. It was Mrs. LeMon.
“Hi!” she said.
“Hi!” said Harry, “who’s running the
store?”
“My son, Gary,” said Mrs. LeMon, sitting
down.
“Is he competent?”
“Oh my, yes.”
“Will he come up here?”
“I told you he’s competent. I told him not
to come up here no matter what happened.”
“Suppose I’m some kind of kook.”
“You’re not. Your face is too kind.”
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“Really?”
“Really.”
“Pull your dress higher. I love your legs.”
Mrs. LeMon pulled her dress higher.
Harry bent down and kissed one of her
knees. Then he spread her legs and bit her
hard four or five inches above the knee.
“Oooh, that hurt, don’t do that!”
“Go in and piss.”
“What?”
“I told you to go in and piss. Women piss-
ing make me hot.”
“But I don’t want to pee.”
Harry put the bottle down and slapped
Mrs. LeMon across the face, hard.
“Oh, don’t do that . . .”
“I told you what to do! Now go ahead and
do it!”
Mrs. LeMon went to the bathroom. Harry
finished his beer and brought out two more,
opened them, put them on the coffee table.
 277/499

He heard the toilet flush. Mrs. LeMon came

out and sat down.
“Drink up and relax,” said Harry. “That Vi-
etnam evacuation was really a mess. The
whole goddamned army and their wives and
their whores trying to scale the walls of the
U.S. Embassy. Old people caught in barbwire
and bleeding to death and Marines bayonet-
ing anybody the TV cameras weren’t on. All
to come to America and replace the Puerto
Rican as the most despised racial group in
America. Suck my dick!”
“I don’t do that.”
“70,000 collaborators swimming in the
ocean and begging for mercy! Suck my dick!”
“I told you . . .”
“Well, then, drink your beer and show me
more leg!”
Harry drained the remainder of his bottle
without stopping. “I saw some wine in there.
Can I drink your wine?”
“Sure.”
 278/499

The wine was three-quarters full. Harry

stood in the center of the room and took a
good hit.
“Stand up!” he told Mrs. LeMon. “You got
me hot. You got that ass and those legs. A
woman your age doesn’t deserve to have
that. You got me hot. STAND UP!” I said.
Harry put down the wine bottle and took
off his belt. He folded it double and then lif-
ted Mrs. LeMon’s dress. He lifted it above
her waist, exposing the thighs, the panties,
the garter belt, the white skin between the
stockings and the panties.
Harry began to beat her alongside the legs,
starting low around the ankles and working
up, gradually increasing the tempo and the
force, then he got to the upper thighs and
thrashed, saying, “You whore, you god-
damned whore . . .”
Mrs. LeMon tried to hold in her screams
so her son, Gary, downstairs, wouldn’t hear
her. Then he spun her and beat upon her ass
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viciously. She fell to the floor, weeping.

Harry disrobed. He walked over, took a good
hit of the wine, then walked up to Mrs.
LeMon. She appeared to be shivering. Harry
grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up-
ward. She screamed as he did so, loudly.
“Goddamn you, shut up! If your son comes
up here I’ll kill both of you!” He kissed Mrs.
LeMon, spreading the lips of her mouth
open. Her face was wet and she was con-
vulsing. He worked her panties off and got it
in, taking both hands and spreading the
cheeks of her ass wide, extremely wide. He
saw her ass in the mirror and himself bent
over her like leprosy. They worked across the
room knocking over the coffee table, banging
into a wall. Her cunt was too large for him.
Too many babies. He had to get her in front
of the mirror and watch. He finally came. He
threw her on the bed. She seemed to be con-
vulsing. He saw a high-heeled shoe on her
rug. He dressed, watching her. Fully dressed
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he opened his shirt a few buttons and

dropped the high-heeled shoe in. Then he
heard her voice: “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m going to Detroit, American, flight
248.”
“I love you, Harry.”
“What? That wasn’t love. That was raw sex
shit, dementia. I’m not proud of it.”
“I know I’ll never see you again. Kiss me
goodbye, that’s all I ask.”
“God, this is grade-B movie.”
“Harry . . .”
“All right!”
He got into bed next to her with his shoes
on. Her mouth opened. He closed on it. And
held. She was crying, rushes of water coming
out from under her eyelids. The high-heel
shoe was between them in his shirt and the
heel was stabbing into his chest. Harry
pulled away. He got up and then noticed the
nightstand on the other side of the bed.
There was half a pack of cigarettes and a
 281/499

pack of matches. The matches said: “Save-on

a GREAT place to shop! The quality drug
stores . . .” He took out a cigarette and lit it.
Lighted it, as the intellectual writers said.
Then he noticed a book on the nightstand.
He picked it up: Jong’s Fear of Flying. Mrs.
LeMon seemed still at last. The wine bottle
was on the floor on its side. He picked it up
and found one last hit. Then he walked out
the door and went down the stairway. Gary
was down there. He looked bright but intro-
vert, no challenge. “Is Mom all right?” he
asked.
“She’s pleased,” Harry told the kid. The kid
caught it. He liked the kid’s kool. One thing
about the new generation, they either under-
stood very much instinctively or they became
murderers without feeling. There was very
little middle ground, and maybe they were
right because it was the middle ground, that
vast jelly-like totality of billions and billions
following all central signals, that had kept
 282/499

the world crawling over and over itself again

and again, bored, fatted, starving, inane,
feeding on nothing, giving nothing, being
nothing.
Harry walked toward the door of the travel
agency. He got his hand on the knob when
Gary spoke:
“Mr. Benson?”
“Yes?”
“You forgot your tickets.”
“Oh?”
Harry walked back. The kid handed him
the tickets enclosed in a neat blue leather
folder. “Thanks for coming to see our agency.
I hope you’ll use us again on your next
flight.”
Harry took the tickets and walked back out
the door. He walked back to his car. There
were 12 minutes left on the parking meter.
He got back in the car, it started; he took a
left on 6th street and a right on Vermont.
Traffic was bad and Paul Williams was on
 283/499

the radio. He didn’t like either one of them.

It was, perhaps, a matter of utter obvious-
ness. He took out the high-heeled shoe and
stuck it up on the dash. Yes, much better.
He’d kill them in Detroit.

I turned the car into The Bug Builders in

Santa Monica and began walking. I’d blown
an engine down there some months past,
had gotten a rebuilt and was in for the 3,000
mile check-up. I lived in L.A. and knew I had
hours to wait. It was 10:15 a.m. I found a res-
taurant open and walked in. There was only
one man in there, at a back table. I took a
table at about the center and the waitress
brought me a menu. Breakfast. I ordered
ham and eggs, scrambled. I was hungover
but thought I might hold it down. I had a pa-
per and opened it. “Dodgers lose.” That
cheered me a tick. When the waitress
brought my breakfast she refilled my coffee
 284/499

cup. Fine girl with an ordinary ass. I began

eating and then two people entered—a boy of
about 23 and a woman of 50. They took the
table directly across from mine. “That Helen
keeps coming in when I’m looking at televi-
sion and she insists on talking. And she talks
in this LOUD voice!” said the boy. “I tell you,
next time she does that I’m going to turn my
television on so LOUD she won’t be able to
be heard! I’m going to do it, so help me!”
When I finished eating I stood up and
belched as I left the table.
I walked down to the mall. A cop was giv-
ing two kids with bicycles citations. LEPKE
was playing at the movie but it didn’t open
until noon. A girl with very good legs and a
miniskirt walked by. She saw me looking at
her and turned her head and stared at me as
she waited for the signal.
What’s she thinking? I thought. If one only
knew what they were thinking.
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She crossed the street and I watched her

haunches revolve. Then I noticed that she
had a wrinkle in her skirt where she had sat
down and I lost interest.
I walked down Santa Monica to Ocean,
then crossed the street and walked through
the park. I turned onto the pier and walked
along it. The people on the pier were uncon-
cerned; they were neither happy nor sad.
They rattled about in the Penny Arcade and
bounced against each other in the electric
cars. The fishermen weren’t catching much. I
walked down one side, came up the other.
Coming up the other I came upon two young
girls, each about 16. One was sunbathing on
top of a cement bench, head down. The other
was underneath the bench with her head
sticking out toward the ocean. She had the
sexiest lips I had ever seen on a woman, a
girl. The appeal of those lips was jolting. One
doesn’t expect lips like that from under a
stone bench at 11:25 a.m. And between those
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lips, on the side toward me, stuck out a tiny

tip of a tongue.
Never had I seen anything more astonish-
ingly sexual and lush. And her eyes were on
mine. The effect was so strong that I had to
turn away. When I looked again it was as be-
fore. I walked on. What does one do? What is
the password, or what hope, when a man is
54 and still feels all those designs and pat-
terns and traps and wonderments? Why
didn’t they hurry up and fix my fucking car?
I crossed and walked down the stairway to
the boardwalk that led to Venice. I was still
badly hungover. Breakfast hadn’t helped
much. It was hardly down. It hung about
halfway up and halfway down. “Drunkenness
and suicide are the bedmates of the writer,”
somebody had almost said once. It was true;
I’d never known a good writer who was not
either an alcoholic or a doper or both.
“Charles!”
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I walked over. It was a man about 28,

dark-haired, big. He had on glasses and
needed a shave. “You don’t know me,” he
said. “I’ve read your books.”
“I’m sick,” I said, “and walking around
while they fix my car.”
“My car’s at Sears. I’m getting a new bat-
tery. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Too sick. I never drink before noon.”
“I’m sick, too.”
“Come on. Let’s sit down. I’m wobbly.”
We walked over to a bench facing the
ocean. “Venice depresses me,” I said, “espe-
cially when you get down to that Jewish
sandwich shop and these hard cases, these
Tim Leary dropouts demand 20 cents.”
“Yeah, it’s bad. And the liberals down here,
the anarchists, the Communists—nothing’s
happening, Mrs. Jones—so they turned into
transvestites. They’re really only half into it
but they’re into it.”
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“What do you do, kid?,” I asked, “just sit

on these benches and rot and wait?”
“I write scripts for television.” He named
one of the shows he wrote. I didn’t know it.
All I watched on television was the boxing
matches. He went on: “I just wrote two
scripts, got $6,000 for each of them. Each
took about eight hours. I hardly remember
writing them. The money’s so easy I can’t
resist, I can’t stop.”
“You’ve got a right. It beats working for
McDonald’s.”
Just then a large tractor affair making
much noise and painted yellow came by be-
hind us. My friend held his ears. “Jesus, I
can’t stand it! What are they doing with that
thing? What does it mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. The city buys
those things and then sends them out to be-
labor a couple of guys sitting on a bench with
a hangover. That’s their function. It’s that
simple.”
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“It’s disgusting.”
“You shouldn’t be out here. You ought to
be home in a chair with a vodka-7 in your
hand.”
“I have come out here to get away from my
wife.”
“Sorry.”
“I came in drunk last night and she says I
hit her. I don’t remember. It was something
about two ashtrays, one was on top of the
other. I couldn’t stand it.”
“A lot of things preceded those two
ashtrays.”
“Yes.”
“I have trouble with women, too.”
“Yeah, I’ve read your shit.”
“They read your writing, they know what
you are. Then they come in and try to change
you. Don’t drink, if you love me. Learn the
fox-trot. Attend the family picnic. See your
local pastor.”
“Why do they do that?”
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“I don’t know why, totally. But I think I

have part of it. The woman is the child-bear-
er and the child-trainer, whether she knows
it or not, whether she wants it or not she has
this inherent streak. Raising a child to most
women means raising it as per the woman’s
knowledges and prejudices. It’s hard work.
So she begins by trying to be the man-train-
er. If they are able to train the man, they feel
that surely they’ll be able to train the child.
We are the great testing ground for some-
body else’s future.”
“Maybe that’s why I hit her.”
“No, it was the ashtrays.”
“I’ve got a secretary. She’s not much but I
fuck her.”
“That’s what secretaries are for, especially
if they are women’s libbers.”
“Do the women hate you?”
“No, they hate the men who agree with
them.”
“My secretary helps me write.”
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“That’s good. What do you do, tape it and

let her type it?”
“No. I lay down on top of her and I play
with her tits. I keep laying down on top of
her and playing with her tits and she writes.
Soon it’s over and we’ve got something.”
“It comes harder for me. I use two sheets
of paper and a carbon.”
“That whole TV scene is too bizarre, it
really is. After lunch the producers will send
out a chauffeur in a limousine and they’ll
come back with some 13-year-old girls.”
“Marvelous. Think of a 13-year-old girl. It
must be goodness beyond goodness.”
“That’s not for us, my friend.”
“No, you’ll just keep writing your scripts
and sitting here on this bench for 40 more
years. Not much will change.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. See those bars holding up those
swings? Well, they’ll be a little thicker, that’s
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all. And rounder. And they’ll be of some sil-

ver substance that will glow in the sun.”
“Yeah. And the women will just wear little
dots over their cunts and tits, the littlest of
dots.”
“Yes, only the cunt will have moved up
from between the legs and be placed under
the left arm pit.”
“Oh no. And guys will walk about on two
cocks like legs.”
“That’s it. Well, I have to go see if my car is
fixed.”
“I have to go see if my car is fixed, too.”
“Your name is?”
“Joe.”
“I’ll see you again sometime, Joe.”
“Yeah, sometime when my car is getting
fixed and your car is getting fixed.”
I left him there and began the long walk
back to 6th street. Everything was all right
for some blocks, and then when I was four or
five blocks away from the Bug Builders I
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heard footsteps behind me, female footsteps.

I was walking slowly and she was walking
just as slowly about a yard behind me and a
little to the left toward the street side. It went
on for a full block. On the next block she still
followed me.
This can’t be true, I thought. I’m addled,
goofy, inept. It’s the hangover, the sea air.
I slowed to let her by. As I slowed, she
slowed. I slowed more; she slowed. I gave up
and walked my normal pace. She followed
along, a yard behind and a little to the left on
the street side. Then we came to a signal. We
both waited, her just the same distance be-
hind me. When the signal changed I bent
over as if to tie a shoelace. She walked past
me and across.
On the next block I followed her, just a
yard behind. She was bowlegged, just a bit,
about 32, but she had a most marvelous be-
hind. Well, not quite. It seemed a bit square,
somehow. But after a while I got to like that
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squareness. It revolved with the power of the

mare who knew she was there, still danger-
ous and damned able; not just able to catch
the cock but the soul, too. It was under a tan
dress and it moved. Her hair was very black
and knotted into a tight, stern bun, and you
knew if it were let loose it would flow down
to her hips. And the hips were much there.
My eyes went from the buttocks to the hips
to the neck, down to the hips again and then
settled upon the buttocks: the power to save
a man or kill a man or ignore a man. I fol-
lowed her for two blocks. Then at the next
signal she crossed the street away from me. I
stood and watched her. She walked across
the parking lot and toward a small semi-gro-
cery and liquor store. Just as she got to the
doorway she turned and looked back at me.
Her face flushed a deep red. Then she walked
into the store. I was on 6th street. Bug Build-
er’s was three-quarters of a block the other
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way. I walked on down and into the office. I

was lucky: my car was ready.

I met the Crottys quite by accident. That

is, I was looking for a new place to live and
they both came to the door and looked at me
through the screen.
“I saw your ‘vacancy’ sign. And this wo-
man’s pregnant. We need a place to live.”
The woman’s name was Darlene and I had
gotten her pregnant after taking her to the
racetrack. Mrs. Crotty got the key and took
us to an apartment in the upper back. I took
the place and Mr. and Mrs. Crotty simply be-
came people I paid the rent to. He was 58,
she was 55. The only time I saw them was
when they drove their Volks to the market.
They had no visitors except a son and a
daughter who came by separately and
sporadically.
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Darlene and I lived together without much

velocity or hope. The child was born, we
lived together three more months, then the
split came. Darlene and the child moved a
few blocks away and I moved down to the
front court.
It was a good place to drink beer, there by
the front window facing the street. The type-
writer was there, and outside large green
brush covered everything, along with the
vines and small trees.
The Crottys, who hadn’t liked Darlene, be-
came noticeable. I’d come home and find
large paper bags against the door. The bags
contained various items: green onions, or-
anges, apples, tomatoes and sometimes a
shirt. Mrs. Crotty would knock in the mid-af-
ternoons. “Don’t eat anything, I’m going to
bring you a plate.” The plate was most often
fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy,
green peas, tomatoes and green onions, plus
biscuits. She also made a good boiled beef
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plate. And every other night Mrs. Crotty

would come down about 8:30 p.m. slightly
intoxicated, and say, “Come on down and
drink with us.”
When I came down, Mr. Crotty would be
passed out across the table, head in arms; he
would be in his undershirt and tan army
pants. Full and near-full bottles would be
here and there about the table. The break-
fastnook was always very clean and the red
radio would be on to a popular music station.
“Paddy,” she’d say, “wake up. We’ve got a
guest.” Up the head would come and he’d
look at me. “Hi! How ya doin’? Have a
drink.”
Mrs. Crotty would set a full quart of East-
side in front of me. We’d drink from early
evening until 3 or 4 in the morning. Most of
the nights were the same. We’d sing the old
songs, songs of the twenties and thirties.
We’d talk about the crazy people in the
neighborhood or about crazy people we had
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known. Mr. Crotty was a good storyteller, but

he’d soon pass out again.
“Well, Mrs. Crotty, I’ve got to go.”
“Oh, shit, stay. That old fart-sack , just be-
cause he passes out it don’t mean nothing.”
I’d stay or Mrs. Crotty would get angry. So-
metimes, although not too often, I’d kiss her,
a long hard kiss, spreading her lips back.
Finally, after many more cigarettes and a few
more bottles of beer, I’d leave.
The conversations, each time I went down
there, were about the same. Mrs. Crotty and
I would discuss our hemorrhoid operations.
We’d talk all about the depression days of
the thirties. We’d talk about the days we used
to sit around in bars. And like all drunks,
we’d get around to God, finally. But the
Crottys got very upset when God came
around, or the Pope; I wasn’t very much in-
terested in either of them and it made them
furious, almost to the point of murder. I tried
to stay away from that area.
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The drinking was every other night and

sometimes I got out of stride or I’d be at the
typewriter. Mrs. Crotty would come down.
“We’re drinking. We’ll be looking for you.”
“I can’t make it.”
“Can’t make it? Why?”
“I’m at the typewriter.”
“Ah, piss on that typewriter! Come on
down, we’re drinking!”
“I’ve got to finish this thing.”
“Come on to the door. I want to tell you
something.”
“O.K.”
“Listen, you rotten son of a bitch, I told
you we’re drinking. Now you son of a bitch,
come on down!” Mrs. Crotty never swore
when she was sober.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Crotty. I can’t.”
Then she would unleash her total drunken
vocabulary. She was pretty good. She would
reappear in 30 minutes and make another
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pitch. If I didn’t respond, I’d get the note un-

der the door next:
“Bastard, you never paid me back that 50
dollars I lent you and if you don’t pay it back
I’m going to the police.”
One night I didn’t make it down and some-
body bumped into their court with their
automobile while trying to park in the apart-
ment house lot across the way. I heard his
voice:
“HEY, WHERE IN THE HELL DID YOU
LEARN TO DRIVE?”
“WHO ARE YOU?” the guy in the car
hollered back.
“I’M PATRICK CROTTY AND I OWN
THIS GODDAMNED DUMP, THAT’S WHO
I AM! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?”
There was no answer.
Meanwhile the Crottys and my days went
on. Then I met a madwoman, her name was
Gerda.
“I don’t like the Karates,” she said.
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“It’s the Crottys,” I said.

Gerda would stand in one of my windows
and scream into the street. She screamed as
if I were mutilating her.
“What the fuck you doing?” I’d ask.
“I’m enhancing your reputation.”
“Let’s leave it the way it is.”
Gerda was mad. The front door to my
place was made of glass. If she came over
and I wasn’t home, she’d break all the glass
panels out of the door. Sometimes she’d do it
when I was there.
“She’s crazy,” Mr. Crotty would say repla-
cing the glass panels, “what do you see in
her?”
“I guess it’s her body.”
There were pieces of glass all over the rug.
I always drank barefoot in my place and I
gathered all these pieces of glass in both feet.
I had to go to a doctor and have them sliced
out.
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“How did this happen?” my doctor would

ask.
“A woman.”
After a month or so I left the Crottys. I
moved out and went to live in Gerda’s house.
She charged me rent, too. Then I broke the
glass out her front door. Gerda and I had dif-
ficult days and nights. One night she ran me
out and I went to a motel on Western Avenue
and drank a quart of Cutty Sark. In the
morning I went over and got my shit, packed
it into my car and drove around looking for a
place to live. I passed the Crottys. There was
a sign on the front lawn: VACANCY. I went
back and knocked.
“What happened?”
“She ran my ass off.”
“I told you she was crazy.”
“I know. I saw your VACANCY sign. What
you got open?”
“It’s your old place. We fixed it up nice.”
“Can I move back in?”
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“Sure, but it’s 10 bucks more, we fixed it

up.”
“All right.”
I gave them a month’s rent and moved
back in. It had been fixed up all right. They’d
even taken the glass door out and replaced it
with a wooden one. Brown bags full of good-
ies appeared at the door again, plus the free
dinners. We had our Eastside drunk, sang
songs. Mr Crotty passed out and I kissed
Mrs. Crotty.
Then two or three nights later I vanished. I
was gone overnight. The next day I came
back about evening. Mr. and Mrs. Crotty
were standing in the driveway.
“Where have you been?”
“Gerda’s.”
“I thought so,” said Mrs. Crotty.
“I’m moving back to her place.”
“But she’s insane, don’t you know?”
“I know.”
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“There’s no hope for you,” said Mr. Crotty.

Then they marched up the driveway and van-
ished into their court. I went inside and
packed.
A week later I was packing again to leave
Gerda’s place. I didn’t even drive past the
Crottys. I found a place on Oxford Avenue
with roaches behind the refrigerator.
I forgot the Crottys for some months, then
one evening I was driving in their neighbor-
hood. They had rented my front court, there
were lights on in there. I drove on up the
driveway, parked and got out. I knocked.
Mrs. Crotty answered the door. Mr. Crotty
stood behind her.
“I thought I might bring some beer by,” I
said.
“We’re watching TV,” said Mr. Crotty.
“Wrong night, eh?”
“Yes.”
“O.K. Maybe I can catch you again on the
right night.”
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“O.K.”
I got in my car and drove off. I never went
back. I moved from the roach place to a court
at Carlton Way and Western. About a year
went by. One afternoon I went into the liquor
store at The Market Basket. As I was stand-
ing waiting to get my beer bagged, I noticed
somebody staring at me. He had changed.
He had seemed to have melted. But it was
Mr. Crotty standing by the water fountain
just outside the grocery department. I
walked up. “Christ,” I said, “not you.”
“Yes, we shop around, you know.”
“Where’s Grace?”
“She’s outside. She’ll be in in a minute.”
I waited. It was a hot summer day in the
low 90s. The glass doors opened and there
was Mrs. Crotty.
“Hi!” I said.
“Hank!” she said.
He had melted and she had grown; her
face was much fatter, she seemed taller and
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in all the heat she had on a thick black coat,

thick heavy collar, long; her face was redder,
she was pale. I hardly remember what was
said. Some niceties. We were all sober. Then
I left. The glass doors opened and I carried
my bagged beer to the car, got in, started up
and drove off. I don’t think I’ll ever see them
again.
 1.

Well, so Mailer and his cohorts got him

out, he was a writer, there was a book, I
haven’t read it—all I know is what I read in
the papers while I’m crapping. So, as you
know, the writer put the knife to a waiter,
“wasting him” as the boys in my time used to
say. Which was not good for Mailer either.
All right, here we have two writers and a
waiter. No we have two writers. Which
brings something to this ribbon which is
spinning now before me: a man can be a
good writer without being good at anything
else; in fact, he can be pretty bad at
everything else and usually is. Of course,
there are people who are pretty bad at
 308/499

everything else and they can’t write either. I

might get to reading In the Belly of the Beast
one of these days. I never could get through
The Naked and the Dead, feeling it was too
close a feed-off on Hemingway. But N. Mail-
er is an excellent journalist, and while not fit
to sit on a parole board, he did what he felt
he had to do. So did the other writer.
 2.

I have a saying, “You will find the lowest of

the breed at the racetracks.” I am there al-
most every day working out my various sys-
tems, waiting the long 30 minutes between
races. I don’t know how many of those 30
minutes I have given away over the years sit-
ting there waiting for a race that is generally
over in a minute and nine seconds. And at
the quarter horse races most of them are fin-
ished in 17 seconds plus a tick. A racetrack
never has a losing day. For each dollar bet
they give back about 85 cents. In Mexico
they give back 75 cents. In some of the tracks
in Europe they give back 50 cents. It doesn’t
matter, the people continue to play. Check
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the faces at any track going into the last race.

You will see the story.
When I came out of the Charity Ward of
the L.A. County General Hospital in 1955
after drinking ten years without missing a
night or day (except while in jail) they told
me that if I ever took another drink I would
be dead. I went back to my shack job and I
asked her, “What the hell am I going to do
now?”
“We’ll play the horses,” she said.
“Horses?”
“Yeah, they run and you bet on them.”
She had found some money on the
boulevard so we went out. I had 3 winners,
one of them paid over 50 bucks. It seemed
very easy.
We went out a second time and I won
again.
That night I decided that if I mixed some
wine with milk it might not hurt me. I tried a
glass, half wine, half milk. I didn’t die. The
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next glass I tried a little less milk and a little

more wine. By the time the night was over I
had been drinking straight wine. In the
morning I got up without hemorrhaging.
After that I drank and played the horses. 27
years later I am still doing both. Time is
made to be wasted . . .

I was out there again today. There are

some creatures out there, shirttails hanging
out, shoes run down, eyes dulled. Many are
there day after day. How they manage to
keep going out there is the mystery. They are
losers. But somehow they manage to find en-
trance fee, somehow they manage to place
some feeble bets. But today I saw the worst. I
had seen him the day before also. He looked
worse than any skid row bum, he had a
scabby beard, part of the leather had lifted
from his shoes showing parts of his feet—he
was barefoot. He wore a greasy brown over-
coat but he had a bit of money. I saw him
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placing some bets. He didn’t sit in the stands

but on some steps outside the stands and he
played a harmonica very badly. I looked at
him: he had on some glasses but one of the
eyeglasses had fallen out and the one that re-
mained was a dark black. As I walked slowly
by he started talking to me. He spoke very
rapidly: “Hey, ge out ree hoo nar bah!” Sen-
tences followed that were of similar order. I
couldn’t imagine this fellow placing a bet or
driving an automobile. But he had a right to.
Who said he couldn’t? And who said he had
to look a certain way? Or talk a certain way?
Society dictated our modes and ways. Maybe
he was helpless. I remembered starving in
New York City, trying to be a writer. One
night I had gone out and bought a bag of
popcorn, it was my first food in several days.
The popcorn was hot and greasy and salty,
each kernel was a miracle. I walked along in
a beautiful trance, feeling the kernels enter
my body, feeling them in my mouth. My
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trance was not entirely complete. Two large

men walked toward me. They were talking to
each other. As they got closer to me, one of
them looked up and just as they passed me
he said loudly to his buddy: “Jesus Christ,
did you see that.” I was the freak to them,
the idiot, the one who didn’t fit the mould. I
walked along then, the kernels not tasting
quite so well.
As I passed the man at the racetrack sit-
ting on his steps I knew that any of us could
get lost away from the crowd, some of us
even wanted to. I walked down and found a
seat. The horses broke from the gate. It was 6
furlongs. I had the one horse in a maiden
race. Orange silks. The one horse is usually
bad at 6 furlongs but I had a reason for the
bet. My horse broke poorly, rushed up, fell
back, I lost sight of him, then as they took
the curve for home I saw my orange silks
again, he was coming from the outside. He
seemed to hang in mid-stretch, then he came
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on again to win drawing out. They put up the

price: $14.60. I had it ten win. $73. I got up
to go cash my ticket. When I did I no longer
saw the man sitting on his steps. I didn’t see
him for the rest of the day. I’ll be looking for
him tomorrow. There’s a good card going.
Three maiden races. I love those maiden
races.
 3.

What about Fame? they ask me. Will Fame

destroy you? Well, now, if I am famous and
if it destroys me (meaning my talent) then
sixty one years of my life will have gone by
without my having sensed any of the traps. I
think it’s easier for a writer to be destroyed
by Fame when he is in his twenties. The
ladies, the lights, the admiration will do him
in. The young have no background to ward
Fame off with. Besides, many of the famous
are famous not because their work is excel-
lent and original but because the masses
identify with the output. And they don’t
identify with it because it’s real but because
it is false as most of them are false in their
 316/499

ideals, their actions, their lives. I am think-

ing now of the richest comedian in the land
(they call him a comedian, although he has
never made me laugh). This fellow has been
dropping one line jokes on the people for
decades, beginning long ago on the radio.
His jokes are inoffensive and trivial, he has
what I think of as an All-American Mickey
Mouse Soul. He has burned-out thousands of
writers with his flippant little one-liners, and
he goes on and on gathering in millions of
dollars. His material is thin, inane, useless;
he is rich and famous; he is a carbon copy of
the masses.
There are writers like this fellow. Their
books line the stands of the bookstores in the
shopping malls. THE HEARTBEAT’S WAIL.
THUNDERBLOSSOM. BLOOD SWORD.
These writers are more rich than famous.
Then, there are the literary writers of
poem, of story, of novel. Their idea is that if
something is written tediously enough, if it is
 317/499

involuted enough, if it is hardly understood,

then, that’s art. Because, you see, this is the
way it has been for centuries, they are only
carrying on the tradition. These writers are
more famous than rich. They are famous be-
cause they promote, publish and teach each
other, mostly at the universities. They are
not rich because they are the only ones who
buy each other’s books. They complain con-
stantly of the success of such writers as those
who put out books entitled THE
HEARTBEAT’S WAIL;
THUNDERBLOSSOM and so forth. But they
write just as badly, only in another way.
So, you see, if you have FAME you can
never be sure that you deserve it. You may
have your FAME for all the wrong reasons.
This might be my case. So, you see, if I have
FAME for all the wrong reasons I am already
destroyed, and if I have it for the right reas-
ons, I can never be sure of that, so there’s
 318/499

only one thing to do: go on typing, as I have

been doing here.
 4.

In my old starvation days, prowling the

libraries, I did a great deal of reading, mostly
in the libraries. The old L.A. Public Library
was my favorite. After sitting in Pershing
Square and listening to the boys argue about
whether there was a God or not I would walk
over to the library. After eating up several
rooms of books (not really) I found myself in
the Philosophy Room. Those boys had some
style. They talked about what mattered. Or
seemed to. Or should. One of the things they
talked about was the need for Solitude. That
made sense to me. That need. I mean, when I
was sitting at a table reading a book and
somebody came to my table and sat down it
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disturbed me. Why sit near me? And when I

looked about and saw other empty tables, I
felt really repulsed. I know that I am sup-
posed to love my fellow man but I don’t. I
don’t hate him; I often dislike him; I just
don’t want him about. I feel better alone.
I loved Solitude. Still do. I grow when I am
alone. People diminish me. Especially men,
they seem quite unoriginal. Women, at
times, are useful. Also they are funny and
tragic. But too many continued hours and
days with them leads to madness.
There must be others like me. I always
seem to be living with a woman and one acts
differently then out of courtesy. But in my in
between times of living alone, I had my little
delicacies. Like, I’d simply take the phone off
the hook, disconnect the doorbell, pull down
all the shades and go to bed for 3 or 4 days
and nights, just arising now and then to do
my toilet, drink water, nibble on a bit of
food. These times were precious to me, holy.
 321/499

I was like a battery getting a recharge—off of

myself and the absence of Humanity. I have
never been lonely. I have been confused, de-
pressed, insane, suicidal, but never lonely in
the sense that some person or persons might
solve something for me. I never had a televi-
sion set until I was 52 years old. And I only
saw one movie in 20 years—The Lost Week-
end. I went to check it out for authenticity.
Being alone has always been very neces-
sary to me. At one time I was on one of my
hot winning streaks at the racetracks. The
money just came to me. A certain basic
simple system was working for me. The
horses moved south and I walked off my job
and followed them down to Del Mar.
It was a good life. I’d win each day at the
track. I had a routine. After the track I’d stop
off at the liquor store for my fifth of whiskey
and my six-pack of beer and the cigars. Then
I’d get back into the car and cruise the coast
for a new motel room. I liked a different one
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each night. I’d find a motel, park my stuff,

shower, change clothes and then get my ass
back into the car and cruise the coast
again—this time for an eating place. And
what I would look for was an eating place
without many people in it. (The worst, I
know.) But I didn’t like crowds. So, I always
found one. Went in and ordered.
So, this particular night, I found a place,
went in, sat at the counter, ordered: porter-
house steak with French fries, beer.
Everything was fine. The waitress didn’t
bother me. I sucked at my beer, ordered an-
other. Then the meal came. Goddamn, it
looked good. I began. I had a few fine bites,
then the door opened and this fellow came
in. There were 14 empty stools at the
counter. This fellow sat down next to me.
“Hi, Doris, how’s it going?”
“O.K, Eddie. How ya doing?”
“Fine.”
“What’ll ya have, Eddie?”
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“Oh, just a cup of coffee, I guess . . .”

Doris brought Eddie his coffee.
“I think the fuel pump on my car is going
out . . .”
“Always some damn thing, huh Eddie?”
“Yeah, now my wife needs new plates,
Doris.”
“You mean houseware?”
“I mean mouthware!”
“Oh, Eddie, ha, ha, ha!”
“Well,” Eddie said, “when it rains it
pours!”
I picked up my plate and my beer, my fork,
my knife, my spoon, my napkin, my ass and
moved it all the way over to a far booth. I sat
down and began again. As I did I watched
Eddie and Doris. They were whispering.
Then Doris looked at me:
“Is everything all right, sir?”
“Now,” I told her, “it is . . .”
Nothing diminishes me like the crowd.
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Say like on New Year’s night at midnight,

everybody screaming, joyous, celebrating; I
feel completely denuded, foolish, unhappy. If
I am in a room full of them. If I am alone it’s
better. New Year’s Eve is like any other eve
to me: I drink.
Or standing with a group, being sworn in
to a government job, I feel like I am eating
shit stew, facing the flag, pledging allegiance.
I always get out of that: I move my lips but in
the sound of all the voices I don’t have to say
any words and nobody knows.
There are certain privacies that are joyous
and necessary. I maintain that I have certain
inherent rights to oneness and that I am my
own keeper. I am not cranky about this bit,
just a touch fucking rigid: it creates a comedy
of my own that I can laugh at, though
soundlessly.
Some refuse to believe that I have these
certain beliefs. There was this lady I had
lived with for a year or so, a live one, a bit
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offed by shock therapy but better than most,

she said in her cups, one night:
“Ah shit . . . I’ve read your stuff, I’ve heard
you talk . . . you’re such a LONER! You’re
such a fuckin’ RECLUSE! How come then
you WRITE your stuff and then you send it
OUT?”
“It helps pay for all that swill you jam
down your throat.”
“You mean drink?”
“Yes.”
“That’s no answer! You’re copping out!”
She was right, of course.
I remember reading in the papers about
this guy they found in the park. He’d been
living in a cave there and coming out at night
and living off the picnic scraps. They caught
him. And took him off. And when I read that
I thought, there but for the grace of the type-
writer goes me. The keys are my solitude, my
luck, my picnic scraps. Hate me but buy my
books. And read the old philosophers on
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Solitude. And don’t write me, phone me, or

write like me. And if you ever see me any-
where it isn’t me. Forget it.
 1

People who call other people assholes gen-

erally are.
 2

When you’ve considered everything,

you’ve considered too much.
 3

Human relationships do not work.

 4

Brilliant men are created out of desperate

circumstances; fools are also.
 5

When you marry the woman you also

marry her entire family.
 6

Most men who sleep late in the morning

are a superior breed.
 7

Women are braver in situations they have

to face alone; men tend to get braver in and
before crowds.
 8

I have never met a nonimmaculate cat.

 9

The poets do the least to become known.

 10

Fame is too often the result of bad public

taste; Immortality too often a matter of poor
critical judgment.
 11

I’m often delighted when something ter-

rible happens to me. It’s not so much a mat-
ter of masochism, it’s more a feeling of a bal-
ance come due; it has to happen, and since it
does happen, one greets it with an oblique
delight—feeling that after that better things
are sure to follow???
 12

Keep your sunny-side up. Nobody wants to

hear about the night your mother kicked
your ass in the deli takeout parlor . . .
 13

All the women in my life have become the

Reoccuring Woman: their complaints have
been just as similar and just as realistic. So I
judge them, in comparison, only upon the
artistry of their head-jobs and their kitchen
work, faithfulness and so forth. And when I
line them up in this fashion I can’t come up
with a winner. Just a loser: me.
 14

Whenever one of my women goes to an-

other man in preference to me, I am thor-
oughly astonished, especially when I meet
him in person. But all things are illusionary,
including those dull, drab sons of bitches, so
it’s all right, I suppose.
 15

Dostoevski was precisely passionate, but

when he ended up with Christ in his lap I
wrote him off as going the long way around
to find what most idiots accepted in the be-
ginning. Not that I didn’t find his journey vi-
brant. For this, I almost forgave him his final
Error. Tolstoy, who ended up the same way,
was simply dull throughout. Which I can’t
forgive.
 16

Religion is not the Opium of the People.

It’s a peanut-butter sandwich. On white
bread.
 17

A whore is a woman who takes more than

she gives. A man who takes more than he
gives is called a businessman.
 18

When the agony of all the people is heard,

nothing will be done.
 19

I am only a realist in certain areas. For in-

stance, it discourages me that people have
upper and lower intestines. As I watch
people, I am conscious of these (and other)
parts. I’m hexed. For instance, when a man
says to me, “She’s really a beautiful woman,”
I feel like answering, “I won’t know until I
examine the healthiness of her excreta.”
 20

The best people are the ones you never

meet.
 21

I much prefer it when a woman discards

me. Then I am sure that the error is hers.
 22

I have met both the rich and the poor and

have found them to be equally unnatural in
their positions.
 23

There is a certain actress who must be

nearing 70, at least, for I saw her in movies
when I was a boy and I’m now 62. But she is
photographed again and again as looking 32.
It has gone on for decades. Marvelous, I
think, young forever! And she is often photo-
graphed with her sisters, and they’ve all held
on well. They are all photographed smiling
together, heads always held upward to hide
the neck lines. Marvelous, I think, we all
need the dream.
 24

One of the most depressing places to be

upon the earth is to be sitting in some Los
Angeles café at 9:35 A.M. and having the
waitress hand you the menu of various egg
delicacies as her ankles are thin and her but-
tocks resigned, she has been used and aban-
doned by her men and she just wants the
rent and a way to go, and then you look up
and in a mellifluous voice full of victory and
hope and understanding you order item #3,
the cut-rate special.
 25

A criminal might be defined as one out-

numbered by those who generally don’t do
what he does except in secret or different
ways.
 26

Check your ass for the shining candle.

 27

Of all the women who have claimed they

have hated me I have believed all of them.
 28

It’s exactly as good as it’s ever going to get.

 29

Will Rogers once said, “I never met a man

I didn’t like.” I never liked Will Rogers. But I
liked his statement. I liked some men, tem-
porarily. But somehow I didn’t like him. But
he was probably luckier than I was and most
probably a better man to be around. If you
liked pussycats.
 30

One night Babe Ruth, who was one hell of

a drinker, held Rabbit Maranville, the
shortstop, out of the window of their 12th-
floor hotel room by his heels.
“Go on, you fucker, drop me!” the Rabbit
screamed in this story I read.
I like that story. It would have been a
much better one if he had dropped him.
 31

One of the great things is when a Suicide

meets a Suicide (it helps more when one is a
man and the other a woman) over drinks and
they talk about all the times they’ve botched
their tries and they begin to laugh about that,
and it’s really very funny because you really
meant to do it. Now the radio is on, there’s a
pack of cigarettes on the coffee table and the
rug is upon the floor, and life is almost de-
lightful, for a moment . . .
 32

That’s enough. See you in Dresden.

I was past midnight. The drinks had come,

I never knew quite from where, and some ci-
garettes too. And the juke just blazed away.
Hours of stale cigarette smoke had turned
the air blue gray, and the flies and roaches
were dulled and sickened and drunk, and the
patrons too. It was a place no sensible being
would ever want to be in, but not being a
sensible being, there I was.
The urinal was impossible, walking in
there you were hit by a deadly waft of a
 359/499

century of piss and puke. And nobody ever

used the toilet, it was dark and caked and dry
and there wasn’t any water in the tank. And
the lid had long been gone, the tank lid, the
toilet lid, and the whiskey and beer spiders
had taken over, threading their webs in
there, waiting for something.
I refocused on myself and found myself
sitting next to this guy I had never seen be-
fore. He was in his mid-30s, wore this leath-
er jacket. Maybe he had been buying me
drinks. I didn’t know. Nobody else sat near
us.
He had a pack of cigarettes near his drink.
Pall Malls. I reached for his pack, got it,
pulled a smoke out and lit up.
“Did I tell you you could have a cigarette?”
he asked me.
“No.”
“Don’t go touching my cigarettes again!”
He pulled the Pall Malls back in front of
him.
 360/499

Everything was so weary. There was al-

ways somebody flexing up against you. They
couldn’t bear up with the slightest joke, the
tiniest confrontation. Everything was a chal-
lenge to them. They awakened angry every
morning and they stayed that way. They
didn’t want to lose and they didn’t know how
to win. Constipated lives full of shit.
I reached over, pulled the Pall Malls back,
took a cigarette out, broke it in half, threw it
back into the ashtray.
He just sat there.
He sat there a long time.
He looked straight forward.
Then he spoke.
“Listen, I just got out of jail for aggravated
assault! I don’t want to go back there again!”
“Don’t fuck with me then.” I told him.
We both sat there. It was a hot stupid
night. We breathed in the gray blue smoke as
the rich were out on their sailing ships or
drugged to sleep. The trouble with life was
 361/499

that there were only tiny periods of action

between all the vast spaces and the people
just waited as Death sat on his red hot laugh-
ing ass.
“Just don’t fuck with me!” he repeated.
“Get yourself a hobbyhorse with a wooden
asshole and you’ll feel better,” I said.
I could feel the anger ripping through him.
I wasn’t lucky enough to have anger. With
anger you could react, wrong or right. I just
had a pale and tired disgust. He was drinking
whiskey. I was at the bottom of a stale bottle
of beer.
“Buy me a drink,” I said, “a whiskey.”
He motioned Tommy down.
“Two whiskeys.”
They arrived and I drained mine down. He
drained his.
“Two more whiskeys,” he said to Tommy.
“It’s all right,” I told the guy, “I don’t want
to overbum.”
 362/499

“Drink up,” he said. “I’m getting ready to

kick your ass.”
The whiskeys were before us.
“You mean if I drink this, you’re going to
kick my ass?”
“Right.”
“You know I can’t turn down a drink?”
“I know.”
“It’s not fair,” I said. then reached down
and got the whiskey, drained it.
He drained his.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Wait,” I said.
“What is it?”
“One more,” I said, “to dull the pain.”
“Two whiskeys,” he said to Tommy.
The whiskeys arrived. They sat there
golden and powerful among the dead flies
and the half-dead patrons. My father had al-
ways warned me that I would come to this.
He had wanted me to be an engineer. Jesus
Christ, that would have been worse than this.
 363/499

I drained my whiskey. The guy got his.

Then I stood up and walked toward the front
bar door, opened it and walked out. It was
dark out there. He was lit up a moment in
the doorway, my mind noted a neon sign and
I didn’t even see it coming.
I was flat on my ass. Sprawled like a fuck-
ing land crab. No pain. Just a slight tinkle of
wonder. The guy was good. I was too. At ab-
sorbing punches, punches and drinks. I
could take all they could offer. Sometimes I
just wore them down; other times, I didn’t.
I got up, swung and missed, but as he
sidestepped he slipped into some fresh puke
somebody had recently deposited and I hit
him in the throat, heard him give a little
gulp, his eyes rolled a bit in surprise—he was
used to winning—then I dug a left hook to-
ward his gut, he blocked it with his elbow,
countered with a hard right to my chin and I
was down on my ass again, feeling strange,
as if I were in too deep with no place to go.
 364/499

He kicked at my head. I saw it coming,

grabbed his shoe, was surprised to have it,
lifted it up as I stood up—and he was on his
ass.
I stood back then, thinking maybe we
could call it like that. Let it be, you know.
I knew I had been lucky. He knew it too.
He got up and came on in. I shot a jab. It
was useless, I didn’t have my shoulder be-
hind it. I took his next shot fairly well, was
almost proud, then he blasted me with his
next and I was down on my ass again as the
prowl car pulled up. I saw it. I was happy to
see it. I sat there smiling at the prowl car.
Then I felt him lifting me up. I heard him
saying, “I’m just taking him home, officers,
he’s going to be all right.”
They sat and watched as he walked me to-
ward his car, unlocked it. Then he put me in
the front seat. Then he got around the other
side and got in, started the car. The cops
watched us drive off.
 365/499

He kept driving through the city streets,

then we were in a dark area, open country,
much space, many trees. He just drove along.
Maybe he’s taking me out here to try to
finish me off, I thought.
But that wasn’t bothering me.
“Hey,” I said, “I need a goddamned drink.”
“There’s a pint in the glove compartment.
What’s your name?”
“Hank,” I said, reaching in and getting the
bottle.
“I’m Robert,” he said.
I peeled the pint, opened it, took a hit. I
passed the bottle to Robert, he took a hit,
passed it back.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
We drove along and then Robert said,
“Watch this . . .”
There was a small car in front of us.
Robert pulled up alongside and stared at the
two guys in the other car. They were a couple
 366/499

of kids, maybe 19. Robert kept driving along

and staring at the guys. They looked scared.
They pulled ahead and Robert went after
them. He caught up with them and then
banged the side of his car into them. They al-
most went off the road. They both started
screaming.
“Hey, what the fuck are you trying to do?”
“Are you crazy?”
Robert just drove alongside of them and
stared. Then he banged his car into theirs
again.
“Hey! Jesus Christ, you asshole!”
Robert banged them again, and this time
the driver lost control, he spun off the road,
piled into some brush. Robert drove off the
road blocking their exit.
“Which one do you want?” he asked me.
“I’ll take the guy who gets out second.”
We climbed out and waited. The car door
opened and a kid in a gray sweatshirt got
out. A nice blond boy.
 367/499

“You fucking guys crazy?” he asked.

Robert walked up and cracked him with a
right. The kid dropped to his knees and held
his head.
“Jesus, what did you do that for?” he
asked.
Robert grabbed him by the hair and
banged his head against the side of the car.
My guy got out of the other side of the car.
I walked toward him. Before I could get to
him he reached into his back pocket, got his
wallet and threw it toward me.
“Please take it,” he said, “just don’t hurt
me.”
I picked up the wallet, took the bills out,
stuck them in my pocket, threw the wallet
back.
“You should never turn down a fight,” I
told the kid. “It weakens the will.”
I turned and looked over at Robert. His
guy was out cold and he was stripping him of
his wristwatch and a ring.
 368/499

“Come on, Robert, let’s get out of here.”

Then the guy had me from behind, he had
me in a good choke hold, I couldn’t breathe,
shots of bright red flashed; I kicked back-
wards, landed on one of his shins. His grip
slipped slightly and I was able to turn side-
ways but he got the grip on me again, but I
reached for his balls, yanked, and he let go.
He doubled over, holding his parts. I walked
around and kicked him in the ass. He
flopped over on the ground, moaning. I
stood there looking at him. Just a kid who
wanted to fuck the chicks. Just a kid who
wanted to go to college.
Robert walked up beside me. He kicked
the kid in the head, hard. The kid
straightened fast, like he had been electro-
cuted, then he went limp.
“You don’t have to do that, Robert. Show
some mercy.”
“Mercy is for suckers.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
 369/499

“Yeah, I did. Now forget it.”

“I didn’t like that.”
“What you don’t like doesn’t matter.”
We walked back toward the car, got in.
Robert kicked it over and we were back on
the road. I took a hit of the scotch, passed it
toward Robert. He waved it off: “Naw, I don’t
drink with weaklings.”
“Good. All the more for me.”
We just drove along through the night and
I sucked at the scotch.
“Just like a baby with his bottle. You alkies
are weak,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
“You can’t cut it without the booze, can
you?” Robert asked.
“No.”
I took another hit as we drove along. I
wasn’t interested in being weak or strong. I
just wanted to get by the hours. I wasn’t even
interested in impressing myself.
“My father was a drunk,” Robert said.
 370/499

“Did it kill him?” I asked.

“The cops killed him.”
“Oh.”
This guy evidently came from a long crim-
inal line. I could feel it sitting inside of him,
locked there. I sensed something else in him,
something that wanted to be kind and easy
but the other part was too overpowering. He
was just naturally and automatically danger-
ous. I liked some of that but not all of it. His
fury had no humor. It was like a job.
“I’ll take that drink,” he said.
I passed the bottle over. He took a hit,
handed it back.
“Mom just got out. She did five years.
Homicide.”
“Great. Sounds like a great woman. “She
is. You done time?”
“Nothing,” I said, “just the drunktanks.”
“Stick with me. I’ll put you through
college.”
“Yeah.”
 371/499

We drove along. It was a nice warm night.

I felt relaxed. It was nice to get out of that
bar for a moment. Those people sitting on
those stools were just lonely. It was a lonely
world. With everybody pretending it wasn’t,
pretending that they were handling it. They
couldn’t even wipe their bungholes. Nothing
was drabber than the masses and that’s all
there was.
“If you want,” said Robert, “we can work
together every night. You’ve got a certain
cool that most guys don’t have.”
“I’m not cool,” I said, “I’m just tired.”
“That don’t matter. We can work
together.”
“I’ll think about it.”
What was worrying me was that the pint
was almost empty. And I knew that Robert’s
criminal insanity would not be so enthralling
without drink. Nothing was without it. Drink
 372/499

elevated me. Without it I was common. I

didn’t want to be common. It was too hard.
I sucked at the bottle.
“Drink is a form of escape,” I told Robert.
“I like to escape.”
He just kept driving. I liked the sound of
the motor and the darkness going by. It was
like sailing through Time untouched. Move-
ment was unchallenged action.
“Hey,” he said, “I think we got one!”
There was a car ahead. I could sense him
elevating into his life-meaning. He was like a
tiger closing in on the wildebeest.
It was a small model car, a guy and his girl
driving along, a young couple. Robert pulled
up next to them and stared. They just looked
straight ahead pretending we weren’t there.
But we were there.
“Robert,” I said, “let’s let them go. They
just want to live.”
“That’s their problem.”
 373/499

The guy in the other car reduced speed,

thinking maybe we would go on. It was his
mistake. Robert braked and slowed next to
them. Then he just leaned his car against
theirs and pushed them off the road.
We got out of our car. And the kid got out
of his. Ow, he was big. A little drunk, hair
down in his eyes. But he was large, big, he
was going to protect his girl. Probably a
highschool football star, somebody used to
winning.
He stood there in the moonlight and
puffed out his chest. He was magnificent and
he knew it.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll take either one of you
guys. Who wants it first?”
“Listen, sir,” I said, “we were just kind of
clowning around. Let’s call it off.”
Robert looked at me.
“What are you, some kind of homo?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, I’ll handle this hot dog.”
 374/499

Robert moved toward the big kid. His girl

got out of the car. She was magnificent too.
Long hair, great body. They were the magni-
ficent pair. The kid would someday be a cor-
porate lawyer. She would be a fashion model.
They were winners geared to get it all. I felt
as if we were trespassing some holy land of
the future.
“Kick his ass, Lance!” screamed the girl.
“No problem, Darlene.”
The big kid and Robert moved toward each
other. Then they circled. It was very quiet.
You could hear their feet moving in the dirt.
The moon seemed to be watching.
Everything inhaled. The weeds inhaled, the
trees inhaled, the clouds; then there was a
movement, fiercely a fist landed upon a head
and Robert dropped.
He got right up.
What am I going to do? I thought, if this
guy kicks Robert’s ass?
 375/499

All I wanted to do was to be back in my

dirty room, in that bed, covers pulled up,
staring at the ceiling, waiting. I did that a lot.
There was another sound. And the big kid
was down on the ground. You couldn’t even
see those shots coming. It wasn’t a fight of
men, it was a fight of rattlesnakes.
The big kid got up and Robert landed
again, not as solid this time but enough to
stagger the kid. And as Robert moved for-
ward the girl hit him with something from
behind. It stopped him a moment and then
he looked at me:
“Take care of the broad while I finish this
guy!”
I ran over to the girl and grabbed both of
her hands. Christ, she was beautiful! Her
eyes blazed in anger and fright, her body
whirled, convoluted. I actually got a hard-on
just holding her like that. Even in the confu-
sion she seemed to notice that.
She spit in my face. “You ugly beggar!”
 376/499

Then she brought her knee up and tried to

de-ball me. She just missed and I slapped her
hard, saw her stagger in the moonlight, her
long blond hair jumping deliciously into
space. I grabbed her and kissed her, she bit
my lip, I screamed, landed one in her gut and
she dropped, her skirt falling back, showing
long sheathed legs glistening magically.
Then Robert was standing next to me.
“I finished him off,” he said. He looked
down at the girl. “Let’s fuck her.”
“No.”
I reached down and helped her up. She
was a bit crazed. She was very close to me.
She looked at me.
“Don’t kill him, please don’t kill him. I love
him!”
“It’s going to be all right,” I told her.
“Please don’t worry.”
“Hey! What’s with you?” asked Robert.
“I’m going to fuck this bitch!”
“No,” I said, “it’s not right.”
 377/499

“Do you think anything we’re doing is

right? Why do you keep drawing lines?”
He gave me a hard push and then grabbed
the girl, pushing her toward some brush.
“No, no, no! Please!” she said.
“Shut up,” said Robert.
Then she must have attacked him, done
something against him. He retaliated. She
screamed and he dragged her to the brush. I
walked back to the car, got the pint and had
the last hit. Then I walked over and looked at
the guy. I bent over him. He looked asleep. I
could see him breathing. He wasn’t dead.
Fine. He could still be a corporate lawyer.
Then I walked over to their car, opened the
door, got in. There was a bag on the floor. I
looked in there. It was a bottle of expensive
wine, only a bit of it gone. My life was re-
newed. I went back to Robert’s car, leaned
against it and sucked at the wine.
After a while Robert came along. He stood
there looking at me.
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“It was great,” he said, “she loved it. I

fucked her, then I made her suck me off,
then I sodomized her. She loved it.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Yeah, she did.”
“Let’s get out of here—”
“She’s waiting for you, Hank. She wants
more.”
“Cut the crap. You haven’t killed her, have
you?”
“No, she’s just laying out there waiting for
more, her legs spread.”
“Let’s go.”
The big kid was still stretched out. We got
into Robert’s car and started back toward
town. Everything was still quiet and dark, ex-
cept for the gentle hum of the motor. It
might have been as if nothing had happened.
The trees acted as if everything were the
same, and the asphalt road acted as if noth-
ing had ever happened—only the moon
seemed to know—and there was a covering
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over Robert now, like a slime, it climbed all

over him, into his eyes, his ears, his mouth; it
was under his armpits, it was between his
toes, it seeped and crawled him and it had
nothing to do with morals, with right or
wrong; it was something else, something
very ugly and unexplainable covered him.
“See you found a bottle,” he said.
“Yeah. I got lucky.”
“Even if you didn’t have the guts to fuck
that bitch you shoulda jacked-off over her
body.”
“Yeah, I guess I missed my chance.”
We were getting back into town, into the
poor section. Robert reached somewhere and
then tossed a stack of bills into my lap.
“Your half. That kid was loaded.”
“Thanks, you’re very honest.”
“Got to be. We got a good thing going.”
I gave him my address. Like a good thug,
he knew the city, he got me right there. We
pulled in front of the room-inghouse. The
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whole neighborhood had been asleep for at

least five hours.
“Listen,” he said, “the night’s not over. I’d
like you to meet my mom.”
“I’m sure she’s great, Robert, but I just
want to go in and get some rest.”
I got on out. Then Robert was off in his
car.
I got the key out, opened the front door,
then walked up the stairway and at the first
turn I saw the framed painting of Jesus. He
looked pained, like a young guy whose girl
had just left him to run off with the dope
dealer.
I got into my room, pissed in the sink, got
out of my clothes except for the undershirt,
got into the unmade bed with all that money
and my wine bottle. I had never seen that
much money. I bunched the pillow up and
sat there in the dark sucking on the wine
bottle.
 381/499

Things went by, things went by fast, things

went by so fast that they never took form.
A mouse came out, it clambered up the hot
plate, then ran up the handle of my coffee-
pot, hung there halfway on the handle and
looked at me. I could see it in the lightening
dark, the lightning dark. It looked at me and
I looked at the mouse and it didn’t like me
there in its room. Then, in a tick, it was gone.
I was alone again, I always felt better being
alone. When you’re alone, the only problem
is yourself. It’s nicer that way. You stay out of
trouble. I was really a nice guy. I knew that.
I finished off the wine bottle, threw it to
the floor, un-bunched the pillow, rolled on
my belly and, ass-up to the demented ceiling,
I slept.

Let’s begin by saying this is a work of fic-

tion and then let’s go on from there. I first
met Steve Cosmos in Paris, at least that’s the
 382/499

name he was going under then and the name

I remember best. Cristina and I were in Paris
because the editors had dragged my ass over
there to do interviews for the press. Also, I
was writing a screenplay for Jean Sasoon,
the French director, and we were staying at
his Paris apartment along with his wife, the
actress of some fame, who simply went un-
der the name of Barbette. All the whole thing
meant was much eating and drinking, drink-
ing and eating, and drinking and drinking. I
didn’t understand it but I didn’t care.
Anyhow, Jean Sasoon loved to talk about
Steve Cosmos. Sasoon loved freaks and Cos-
mos was a freak, and I was a freak, that’s
why I was around.
So, this night who walks in but Cosmos
himself, one of the ten most wanted men on
the Continent. Mostly he did things to banks
and gambling casinos, but he had many little
sidelines.
We shook hands.
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“Aha!” he said. “I saw you on TV and you

got drunk and gave those shits what they had
coming.”
“I understand you take from the shits what
you got coming,” I said.
Cosmos laughed. “Oh, yes, it’s an almost
continuous thing.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Cristina.
Cosmos looked. “Ah, what a charming
girl! Are you with Chinaski?”
“No, he’s with me.”
Sasoon had gone to the kitchen where he
was preparing something.
“Ah!” said Sasoon, a quite culinary “Ah,”
as if he had devised some magic and delicate
blending of cookery. Cosmos, being French,
ran into the kitchen to view and taste the
moment, perhaps add something to it?
Cristina and I glanced at each other. We
had met the great man. I refilled our
wineglasses.
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Cosmos had a gentle style and grace, you

could see that right off. Strange white-blond
hair, very straight back, a pink boy’s face, a
face full of pranks and laughter. His eyes
were very large and round.
Then Barbette came in from somewhere.
She saw Cosmos and started right in on him
vocally. She kept on and on. A concerned
tirade. Cosmos gave small answers, acted as-
tonished, smiled, laughed. My French is
worse than my German and I have almost no
German, but what it was, she was telling
him:
“You were seen in a bank today. I have a
source. What were you doing in the bank?”
“Walking around.”
“Don’t you know your posters are out
everywhere? They are looking for you!”
“But I was there and they couldn’t see me.”
“Why don’t you hide low? Why do you
stick your butt in their faces? You’re a fool!
What are you trying to do? Do you think
 385/499

you’re God? For a man who has been around

as much as you, you have the brain of a
grasshopper, of a snail! Do you think I would
enjoy you in jail?”
“No, neither of us.”
“Then why are you such a fool? Why—”
Barbette went on and on.
Cosmos bent his head to the right, stuck
his left thumb into his left ear and let his
tongue loll out. The message was clear: All
existence was stupid and it really didn’t mat-
ter what any of us did.
Barbette got it, laughed. The lecture was
over. Everybody was back to speaking
English.
Sasoon turned from his steaming and deli-
cious pots.
“The guy, the other night, he lost all his
money at roulette because he played honest
and he came out onto the grounds drunk and
fell full-length into the lake in his tuxedo,
came up dripping mud and slime!”
 386/499

“Ah!” said Cosmos, “what an ending, yet

I’m still here.”
After eating we really got into the wine,
fine French wine, it really rolled on down
and in, you can drink it forever. Corks were
pulled and pulled, cigars lit.
Cosmos kept repeating, quite seriously,
through a smile:
“I have no interest in the police. They only
have an interest in me.”
I heard from Cristina later that I was the
fool: putting my arms about the shoulders of
Cosmos and Sasoon, saying over and over
and over:
“You guys are my buddies! I really like you
guys! You guys are my buddies! We all got
class!”
What Cristina meant about the fool part
was the repetition: they had to keep hearing
it. But it’s difficult in this life to ever meet ex-
ceptional men, and along with the good
French wine this put me out of balance.
 387/499

I do remember other portions. Cosmos

had a trick to pull elsewhere. We all man-
aged to get into Sasoon’s car and we drove
small dark streets under Cosmos’ direction.
Finally, along a tall row of hedges Cosmos
said, “Stop here.”
He stepped out.
“Now leave.”
As we drove off, some of us looked back.
Cosmos had pulled the neck of his trenchcoat
upwards, and as he walked off he looked over
his shoulder as if there was something there
following him. He was right: it always was.

It was about a year later when we saw Cos-

mos again. I had finished the screenplay and
Sasoon came to America to try to hustle up a
backer. A producer. He rented a house on the
beachfront down at Venice. Don’t get lost.
I’m speaking about Sasoon: he rents the
house. Rented the house. (I hate fucking with
tenses, it makes me tense.)
 388/499

All right. Sasoon had Cosmos with him.

They had purchased two expensive motor-
cycles and two old, long, cheap, gas-eating
cars which they considered “class,” or as they
put it: “great buys.” Here in L.A., we might
refer to them as “Mexican Specials,” which is
not racist, only accurate. I’ve driven any
number of Mexican Specials but never by
choice, and I don’t believe the American-
Mexicans do either.
The house was next to a house next to an
oil well. The house had 12 separate rooms,
each with its own bed, and next to each room
was another room with a shower and toilet.
This was good for Sasoon, a ladies’ man, and
he often stocked up with four or five women
in each room but he never did fill all 12, al-
though one night he got up to 11. His excel-
lence with the ladies backfired when he was
looking for producers because he usually
ended up in bed with the producers’ wives
and this pissed them to no good end.
 389/499

I met many famous people in that house:

producers, actors, directors. The problem
with the famous when you meet them is that
they don’t seem to be very much. They just
stand around and sit around with their shoes
on and usually don’t do or say much. In fact,
they appear to be dull. (I usually take my
shoes off.)
I wasn’t much luckier with the producers
than Sasoon was. He had pointed one out to
me who was interested in producing my
screenplay. I was with Cristina one night and
I was leaning against the bar at Musso’s and
this producer, let’s call him Medicino, well,
Medicino saw me at the bar and left his table
and walked up and said, “Hello, Chinaski.”
“Oh, Mr. Medicino.”
He got into it. He was going to produce a
movie. It was about a writer from the ’60s,
now dead. I couldn’t read this writer. No
knock against this writer: I can’t read any of
the writers. This is all right, it’s the way it is
 390/499

with me. Then the bad part came: he told me

what he was going to title the movie.
“Wait,” I said, “you’re not joking: you’re
really going to call this thing The Heart’s
Boomerang?”
“Yes, I like that title.”
“Listen, you use that title and I’ve got to
equate you with some guy in a circle-jerk
singing ‘God Bless America.’”
I was stunned: Mr. Medicino whirled and
walked back to his table without a word. No
fuckin’ sense o’ humor.
“Well,” said Cristina, “there goes your
screenplay.”
“Let’s ask the orchestra to stand,” I said,
and nodded the barkeep over for refills.

Cosmos, down at Venice, was more cheer-

ful. We shook hands and grinned upon meet-
ing again.
“I hear you go to the racetrack,” he said.
 391/499

“Every day. Sometimes at night, too. On a

good day I’ll listen to some Mahler and play
eighteen races.”
“You going tomorrow?”
“If I’m alive, of course” . . .
The next day he was there.
“You play the daily double?” he asked.
“No.”
“The pick-six?”
“No.”
“Exactas?”
“No.”
“What do you bet?”
“Straight win.”
“No place, no show?”
“Straight win only.”
“You can’t win any money that way,” Cos-
mos said.
I didn’t answer.

Cosmos didn’t win the double. He showed

me his losing tickets after the race, almost
 392/499

proudly. He had studied the racing form in-

tently but there was no pattern to his betting:
6-2, 4-7, 7-3, 8-9, 10-4, 8-3. Each was a $10
ticket. He was $60 out.
“You see what happened?” he asked.
“What?”
“The eight horse broke down in the first
race and the nine broke down in the second,
I had a broken-leg daily double.”
“The eight and the nine probably would
have lost even if they hadn’t broken down.”
“I had a broken-leg daily double,” he re-
peated as if he hadn’t heard me.
After each race it was the same. He
showed me a handful of losing tickets but he
always had some excuse. Well, at least he
had money to shit away from somewhere.
In the eighth race I had two-win on a long
shot. It was a little long-shot play I had de-
vised after studying volumes of race results
from tracks in Canada, Mexico and the Un-
ited States.
 393/499

“I have no respect for you for betting a

horse like that,” Cosmos said.
“What the hell, it paid seventy-six dollars.”
“It was a stupid bet,” he said.

That night Sasoon phoned me.

“Steve said he had a broken-leg daily
double.”
“He had that,” I said.
“Cosmos wants to talk to you.”
“Put him on.”
“Ank,” he said, “I feel the pain . . . Life is
for nothing.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“When I win, I feel nothing, when I lose, I
feel the pain. What good is winning? Win-
ning is no good.”
He was right, of course, and he was wrong,
too.

Cosmos was at the track everyday. He was

the worst horseplayer I ever saw.
 394/499

Instinctively he landed upon the shortest-

priced stiff, race after race. One day I pulled
in close to $600. Steve asked for a $200
loan. I laid it on him.
I didn’t see him the next day or the next.
That Friday I couldn’t make the races, had to
have a wisdom-tooth extracted. The dentist
gave me a bottle of painkilling pills.
“Only take these if you are in agony,” he
said.
The agony didn’t arrive. I took a handful of
the pills, drank a six-pack of beer and drove
out to the night harness races.
I was standing in line and I looked over in
the next line and there was a fellow who re-
sembled Steve Cosmos, only he had a
ragged-looking beard, really scraggly, and he
was dressed in floppy, greasy clothing. Cos-
mos always dressed neatly and cleanly. I
looked at the eyes of the fellow. The eyes
looked faded. Not the right eyes. This guy
 395/499

was just a second-rate Cosmos. I looked

away and forgot about it.
A couple of races later I was checking my
program and the line of asses of the hookers
along the bar when I felt a hand upon my
wallet and I whirled and there was the
second-rate Cosmos only it was the real one
under all that, and he said, “Ank, I saw you
looking at me . . .”
He pulled out two hundred-dollar bills and
handed them to me.
“Now that I’ve reestablished my credit, you
ought to be good for $400 next time.”
“How’d you get lucky?” I asked.
“The woman I’m in love with—”
“Who’s that?”
“The lady with the spinning head.”
He meant the roulette wheel. (See: Las
Vegas).

Things got bad down on Venice Beach. The

screenplay kept crawling back kicked in the
 396/499

ass. The standard comment was, “Nobody is

interested in the life of a barfly.” They were
right, of course. Even the barfly hardly cared.
People wanted a loser who became a winner.
Or a winner who became a loser. But a loser
who stayed a loser? That was too much like
themselves. They weren’t interested in
themselves.
The fine motorcycles went first. Then
Sasoon started renting out the rooms. But
Sasoon was into leather and all that and he
was often absentminded and sometimes he
left one of the girls all bound up and gagged
upon the fireplace (his sacrificial Altar of
Doom) and with an icepick or pliers or a tong
lying nearby, and this shocked some of the
roomers who wandered about the place and
they moved out. Worse, the hardy ones who
remained stopped paying their rent. Next,
the Mexican Specials went, and next, I heard
Sasoon and Cosmos were gone, they were
 397/499

back in Paris. I got the postcard from

Sasoon:
“. . . going to try the screenplay on the
French . . . Barbette has landed a leading role
in major stage production . . . will send more
news soon . . .”
And a line from Cosmos:
“Life is for nothing.”

Three or four weeks later I got a letter

from Sasoon who was in Paris:
“Hank,
They got Steve. He’s in this ancient prison
in Paris, one of the oldest around, a former
torture chamber, full of rats. He’s very de-
pressed, very. He’s gambled away much of
his wine rations for the future. You should
write him. What he did to get in there was
so stupid he won’t even tell me about it.
I’m still going around with your screen-
play. There has been some interest but noth-
ing definite. But this screenplay is going to
 398/499

make it someday, one way or another, I’ll

see to that.
Barbette sends her love to you and to
Cristina, too.

Jean Sasoon”

Then I heard from Cosmos:

“Well, Ank, the police got me and it was so
dumb the way I got caught that I’m
ashamed to tell, and won’t. My life is over. I
will never get out of here. I think of you out
there going to the track everyday and I only
wish I were standing next to you tearing up
my tickets. I will never see you again. Life is
ridiculous, it’s all a waste. There are a few
fine fellows in here but there’s nothing we
can do, or very little. Well, this is it for me. I
never believed it would end like this. There
are so many charges against me. I can’t be-
lieve I did all those things. My lawyer said
for me to expect at least ten years, and if I
 399/499

do get ten, I’m lucky. You call that luck? My

life is over. Even a butterfly is better off
than I . . .
Write if possible.

Steve”

I wrote Cosmos right away. I wrote a long

letter, and feeling that it might be read be-
fore it got to him, I wrote about how a man
of his quality and character should never be
in jail. I wrote that he should be honored,
that what the world called justice was really a
pathetic thing.
I went on and on in the letter, exclaiming
what a noble man Cosmos was. I put it on so
good that I almost wept.
It took me a bottle and a half of wine to
write the letter, and when I reread it and
sealed it up I felt that after reading all that
they would let him out immediately . . .
Cosmos responded quickly:
 400/499

“Say, Ank, that was a great letter and I

read it over many times. You are right: I
don’t belong in prison. However, it appears
that only you and I believe this. I will never
get out of here. This is it. Finis. I might as
well be buried alive. My life was good until
now. Now I must pay. Well, all the women
are yours, and all the horses, and all that
good stuff you drink. Think of me sometimes
living in this hole with the rats. Even the
walls stink. This is my home now, forever,
until . . . and then even when I’m dead they’ll
throw me into some special prison for the
dead, with dead rats and dead stinking
walls . . . Even death will be for nothing.

Steve”

I was having some trouble with the IRS,

which I cleared up, then a chunk of
something ripped open my gas tank as I got
into a speed duel with some fool on the
 401/499

freeway, and then the freeway jammed and I

had to go over the side, and it took three or
four days to get that straightened out. Then I
wrote Cosmos again, trying to lend cheer. I
even enclosed some francs I had left over
from the trip over there. And then other
standard little pitiable troubles followed, as
they will, and I rather woke up one day to the
fact that there had been no response to my
last letter to Cosmos. Maybe I had said the
wrong thing. Or having done a spot of time
myself, I realized that some inmates thought
those on the outside were out of touch with
reality.
It wasn’t so. My letter came back with an
official stamp upon it in a dark smeared
green. Again, forgive my French, but the
stamp said something rather like:
MOVED. ADDRESS UNKNOWN.
Great Christ, I thought, Cosmos has dug a
hole through the side of one of those stinking
 402/499

walls. What a clever fellow. I was proud of

him.
Then I got the facts from Sasoon:
“. . . I don’t know how, but somehow Steve
made bail . . . it was quite some sum . . . Then
he jumped bail . . . I don’t know where he is.
But, after this, if they ever catch him in
France again he’s got life for sure.”

I rewrote the screenplay, this time calling

it the “jazz-soup version.” I mailed a copy to
Sasoon. Now he could knock on the same
doors all over again. Then I started getting
obscene phone calls from teeny-boppers and
had to get a new unlisted number. Unlisted
numbers last as long as the average mar-
riage: one and one-half years.
I got back into the poem. Tried some oil
paintings but just ended up painting various
versions of the human face, which is limited
subject matter indeed. The horses ran all
right but the horseplayers were a dreary
 403/499

group to take. They never admitted failure

and kept right on failing. What was really
bothering them was loneliness, and absence
of brain cells. Sometimes out there I felt as if
I were in a giant mental ward, I mean for the
insane, you know, with all the doors open
and nobody able to walk out. Including . . .
Anyhow, one day the phone rang and it
was Sasoon.
“Allo, Hank, it’s Sasoon.”
“Where you at, Jean?”
“Venice.”
“You mean the beach?”
“Well, not exactly. We’re in the ghetto, we
live in the black ghetto, nice place, big
yard—”
“What are you doing there?”
“Well, we want to shoot a documentary of
you, all right?”
“All right,” I said, feeling sorry for Jean be-
cause he had been unable to unload the
screenplay.
 404/499

“Guess who’s with me?”

“Barbette?”
“No, she’s working, they’re shooting
something in Algier.”
“Who, then?”
There was another voice on the phone:
“I have no interest in the police, they only
have an interest in me.”
“Cosmos—”
“Thanks for your letters, my friend. I will
always value them.”
“When you guys coming to see me?”
“Oh, no, you come see us! In the black
ghetto!”
“Must I?”
“You must.”
I got the instructions . . .
Although it was high noon I parked my car
in a supermarket parking lot outside the
ghetto and phoned in.
 405/499

Sasoon tooled up in another Mexican Spe-

cial. After exchanges I got in and we moved
toward the ghetto.
“How do you like it?” Sasoon mentioned
the car. “It’s fifteen years old and only got
20,000 miles on it. This housewife used to
just drive it around for shopping, then her
husband died and she had to sell it. I really
got lucky! You like it?”
“Great, Jean, great.”
The exhaust left a gray-blue haze half a
block behind us and the tired crankshaft
pushed at the weary piston arms that were
just aching to slice off and rocket through the
hood.
“I got a deal,” said Jean Sasoon, sitting
very straight and peering proudly over the
long frontal hunk of that moving piece of
shit. I inhaled a complete large can of Bud in
three swallows so as not to have to answer to
that.
 406/499

We entered the ghetto. The streets were

littered with bits of clothing and crap. Stock-
ings. And shoes. But always one shoe. And
never its mate. Which gave one the strange
feeling that somebody had been amputated.
“Ah, look,” said Jean, “see that high rise?”
I saw it.
“The people got in there and then refused
to pay rent. It took two years and the state
troops to finally get them out of there. And
before they did, those people ripped out all
the toilets, all the wiring, all the pipes,
everything, they kicked holes in the walls, set
rooms on fire . . . Now it’s all boarded up.
And people still live there. We got people liv-
ing under our house, we can hear them talk-
ing at night . . . They even have radios down
there. Sometimes they have fights, we can
hear them cursing . . .”
“Very interesting,” I said.
“This is our place,” said Jean, and he
began to pull into the driveway into a
 407/499

parking area behind his building. Two young

boys, black, about eight or nine years old, sat
upon their bicycles and refused to budge.
Jean slowly inched his car between them.
With an artistic dexterity he pushed the large
car between them. Suddenly one of the black
boys turned his head and said:
“Hey, man, watch it!”
Well, I thought, this is really living, and
when the large troops come along our balls
will be fried, sliced, diced and skewered. We
parked, climbed out, went in.
There was Cosmos, sitting on the couch,
large cheap jug of wine before him, he was
trying to light a beer-soaked cigar. He looked
up and saw me: “Ank, son of a bitch, what’re
you doing in black hell?” He was very drunk.
Sasoon showed me the place. It had two
kitchens. And not much else. Except for a
tremendous backyard full of weeds. We came
back out and sat with Cosmos.
 408/499

“Look, Ank,” he said, “my life is finished. I

end here.”
“He’s going to write me his life story,” said
Sasoon, “and I’m going to make a film out of
it.”
“Jean try to make me a writer. I’m no
writer. Jean fuck me up good—”
“How’s that, Steve?”
“Well, I am ten thousand ahead and then
Jean says, ‘Let’s take a break.’ And I say,
‘How?’ and he says, ‘We’ll go see Tom Jones.’
So we go see Tom Jones. And he’s got this
big silver cross on and his shirt is open and
the silver cross is mixed in with his stinking
chest hair and he’s dressed in tight-fitting
leather and wearing a dildo and he sings his
love songs and the women scream. We watch
the whole Tom Jones show and then go back
to the wheel and I can’t go shit. Tom Jones
has broken my rhythm. It’s Jean’s fault: that
fuckin’ Tom Jones!”
 409/499

Cosmos lifts the entire jug of cheap wine

and takes a tremendous hit.
Sasoon shows me his burglar alarm. It’s a
large cardboard box with little holes punched
in the side. And in pencil, written in
longhand: BURGLAR ALARM and also:
TARANTULA! DO NOT OPEN!
Just think of that. And I had spend so
much money on Westec Security.
We sat and drank awhile. Cosmos just
went on and on about Tom Jones.
“What for, I need Tom Jones?”
“He cost me ten thousand!”
“Who is this Tom Jones? He looks like a
fuckin’ fool!”
Sasoon mentioned some of his ideas for
the documentary and then I got out of there .
..

I saw Cosmos at the track the next day. He

too had a Mexican Special.
 410/499

“Jean has me on an allowance. This is my

two-weeks allowance. I’ve got to win. He
makes me write. He stands over me in this
black shirt while I write. I’m like a slave. I
must win!”
Then he put his head into the racing form.
I told him I was going to get a coffee. I didn’t
want to spoil his concentration. I knew that
he was going to buy a mass of daily-double
tickets.
I met my friend the shrink who ran a
nightclub and pushed drugs. He needed
three jobs to support his horse habit.
“You need anything?” he asked. “I’ve got
good stuff. Whatever you want, name it.”
“Nothing right now, thanks.”
I got down 20 win on a four-to-one short
and the race was off. I came in a distant
second and went over to where Cosmos was
sitting. He showed me all his losing daily-
double tickets. It was like seeing an old
movie all over again.
 411/499

Cosmos lost all day long.

“Well, there went my allowance,” he said.
“Maybe I can get a two-weeks advance.”
It was very sad. I got him a drink at the
bar.
He lifted his drink.
“Life is for nothing,” he said.
I phoned Cosmos that night. Sasoon was
off somewhere. There was an answering ma-
chine. Cosmos’ voice was on it:
“I AM NOT IN AND I WILL NEVER BE
IN. YOU CAN LEAVE A MESSAGE BUT IT
WON’T DO ANY GOOD. WHOEVER YOU
ARE, I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU OR
HEAR WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY. IF YOU
WANT TO TALK TO SOMEBODY, TALK TO
THIS MACHINE. I DON’T WANT TO
TALK.”
I waited for the beep.
“All right, machine, go suck yourself off—”
A voice broke in, “Oh, it’s you, Ank—”
“You all right, Steve?”
 412/499

“I drink the wine and feel the pain . . .

When I come home there are two black guys
in this house. They have a knife. ‘Give us the
money,’ they say. ‘What money?’ I ask.
“There’s no money. I need your money!’ I
have this long stick, I hit them over the head
with this stick. They run out of the house and
I chase them with the stick! Jean is out
somewhere fucking. He thinks that burglar
alarm works. It’s no good.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, I drink the wine and feel the pain . .
.”

I didn’t see Steve at the track for a week or

so. Good, I thought, he’s busy writing his
life’s story.
Then I got a call from Jean.
“You should see this place now! Steve has
planted a vegetable garden, built a barbecue
and put a fireplace in the house!”
“A fireplace?”
 413/499

“Yeah, we went out one night and stole

some bricks.”
“I’m sorry you can’t get rid of my screen-
play, Jean.”
“Don’t worry. We will. Why don’t you
come out? Steve is barbecuing some
chicken—”
“Stolen?”
“Oh, no, we got a good buy. Come on out . .
.”
It was a Sunday. A terrible day at the track,
anyhow. Cristina and I drove out. When we
got there everybody was on the red wine and
Steve was quite drunk. There were eight or
10 people there. I didn’t know who they
were. There were no introductions. But they
were all into film and they were all
Europeans. Which, of course, beats people
being into film and being Americans.
Steve had burnt the chicken. It was black
and hard on the outside and the insides were
raw. And the salad was demented. Stacks of
 414/499

paper plates were everywhere but nobody

had eaten, although some had tried. Cosmos
just sat and smiled. He had on a chef’s hat
but there was a smear of dirt halfway up. The
eight or 10 people were broken up into
groups and didn’t seem to like each other.
“Look what Steve did!” Jean waved his
arm.
And it was quite a sight. It was obvious
that things had been planted. There were
paths and designs. It was marvelously done.
Poor Steve had busted his ass. And there
were chickens and ducks running about the
yard.
“We will have our own heggs,” said Cos-
mos. Then he gulped off his paper cup of
wine.
“Come and see the fireplace,” said Jean.
Cristina and I went in with Jean and there
it was. Quite professionally done. Cosmos
could do all these things. Spoke many lan-
guages. And the garden too had been very
 415/499

professional, very artistic. Steve had taken

husbandry or whatever the hell you call it at
the university.
We went back in the yard and began on
the red wine. Over the fence little black faces
watched. Steve threw them pieces of black
chicken. Cosmos and Sasoon had settled into
the ghetto . . .
The next time I saw Cosmos I was at the
night harness races. He had a big handful of
money, fifties and hundreds, and he was
with a couple of women and a guy. The guy
seemed very intelligent, well balanced. Jean
was to tell me later that he was from the
French Mafia. They gave Steve money
whenever he asked for it. One time Steve had
done time rather than reveal something he
knew about them, which would have gotten
him off.
Steve rushed off to bet and the Mafia guy
said to me, “He’s crazy.”
 416/499

“I never thought about it that way,” I told

him.
Steve did hit one exacta that night so he
only dropped a couple hundred. I saw the
Mafia guy hand him some money for the last
race.
I made $68 and drove back on in.

The documentary didn’t interest me too

much. Jean had picked up a soundman and a
cameraman and I got drunk and answered
his questions. It was strange when I saw the
playbacks, though—I said many odd things, I
had no idea that all these things were crawl-
ing in my brain. Well, all right.
But Jean said it would take some weeks.
But when you’re drinking, it’s not really
work. That’s the way I write. But this is sup-
posedly about my friend the gambler, so let
me say he had to go to Vegas with a buddy
and they were going to rip off the wheel up
there. One of Steve’s main problems was that
 417/499

he won it crooked and then he’d lose it back

honest.
So Cosmos was gone, and then Sasoon had
to make a run to Paris and so the house in
the ghetto was empty, and an arrangement
had been made with a neighbor to feed the
chickens and the ducks.
It was strange to me that I had gotten so
involved with these two Frenchmen, and me
being of German extraction, even having
been born there. But they didn’t feel like the
enemy to me. I could never have dealt with
Americans the same way, I just didn’t like
them. The only good American guys are in
the madhouses and jails, and the women are
very hostile and obvious. Well, so, anyhow....

I was at the track and I looked up and

there’s Cosmos.
“Ank,” he said, “I got back, went to the
place, and it’s locked tight. I don’t have a key,
 418/499

I don’t know what I did with my key. I got to

wait for Jean to get back. What’ll I do?”
“There’s my place. I have an extra
bedroom.”
“I’ll pay you,” he said, “look . . .”
He showed me his wallet. It was so full of
hundreds that he could hardly fold it to get it
into his pocket.
“No money,” I said.
“All right,” he said, “we’ll do it this way.
Whoever wins at the track each day buys the
meals and drinks.”
“Suppose we both lose?” I asked.
“Are we that bad?”
“Some of us are.”
So I drove out to the track each day with a
companion. He was still the worst horseplay-
er I had ever met. He managed to fall upon
the worst short-priced horse race after race.
And his horses didn’t even run. They just
wearily trailed the field each race at prices
like 5/2, 6/5, 3 to one, 7 to 2. How he could
 419/499

keep doing this so consistently I had no idea.

But he did.
I took him to various places for dinner.
Once he complained, “This place is not as
nice as some of those other places we’ve
been.”
“Maybe not,” I answered, “but just this
once, force the food and drink down
somehow . . .”
Cosmos liked a couple of drinks before and
a couple after dinner.
Afterwards we’d go back to my place and
I’d open the wine and we’d sit there and then
he’d want to watch the TV. So we drank and
watched TV. Since he was the guest I let him
select the programs. He liked the situation
comedies with laugh tracks, the family,
middle-class bits. Total nightmares of stu-
pidity. You could guess each new line before
it arrived. Steve laughed often: “Oh, this is
very funny!”
I put it down as a difference in cultures.
 420/499

Meanwhile, Cosmos could easily fold his

wallet. The hundreds had gotten down to
where he could glance at them in a moment.
“You ought to stick to roulette,” I told him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cosmos had said,
“money is for nothing.”
“Yeah,” I had said, laying out my American
Express card to the waiter.
Yes, I know I’m taking too long to tell this,
but I want you to get the full flavor, whether
it matters or not. It really means something
but what it means I’m not sure. What are you
doing now, anyhow? Just resting or hiding.
Rest and hide within this crap . . .

Sasoon came back and rescued me, I got

the call about noon, it was a Monday and
nothing was running.
“They stole all the ducks and chickens,
they broke in here and got all the food and
the wine and all our clothes. They took
 421/499

everything but the typewriter. I don’t think

they knew what it was.”
“Jeez, that’s rough . . . Steve’s been staying
with me. He lost the key to your place.”
“Hell, they didn’t need a key! Has Steve
been working on his life story?”
“Mostly, I guess, he’s been living it.”
“Could you put him on the phone?”
They spoke in rapid French. Cosmos
waved his free arm. His pink face became
red. They yelled at each other for five or six
minutes. Then Steve hung up.
“He’s like a father! He wants me to write!
I’m no writer! He’s going to stand behind
me! Can you write with somebody standing
behind you?”
“Not unless it’s death.”
“It’s terrible with him! Each day he asks
me, ‘How many pages did you write?’”
“Writing’s like fucking,” I told him, “you
have to want to do it and then sometimes
you fail.”
 422/499

“I don’t even want to fuck. Afterwards you

have a woman around. What do you do with
her? I jack-off! I jack-off to the walls!”
“Well, anyhow, Steve, father wants you
back.”
“You got any more beer?”
“Sure.”
Cosmos drank four bottles of beer, got into
his Mexican Special, backed out the drive
and was gone. A lucky day for me: two
writers in one house were one too many.
Now I could get something done. I took
out a coin. Heads I jacked-off, tails I wrote.
I flipped the coin. I landed tails.
I walked in toward the typewriter.
Well, you couldn’t have all your luck in
one day.

Somehow Jean got Steve to writing. I

didn’t see him at the track anymore. Jean
came over with the cameras and the sound
equipment one day and we wrapped up the
 423/499

documentary. We drank beer and wine and

sat outside and I said things. Responded
mainly to questions. My 12 years in the post
office, jive-assing with the blacks had taught
me how to bullshit my way through. The
neighborhood children tossed rocks at us.
Some of their parents had informed them
that I was an evil man. I drank and wrote
dirty stories and lived with women half my
age. Why should that bother them?

Afterwards, as the rocks got larger, we

went inside. Sasoon showed me some of the
pages Cosmos had written. They were quite
good. Not the writing but the content. Lively
and full of madness. And it was written in
English. I had no idea why and didn’t ask.
“You’ve got some good crap here,” I told
Cosmos.
He really liked that. He showed it.
“Thank you, my friend.”
 424/499

“Good writers watch other people live,” I

told him. “Great writers live and watch other
people live.”
“What do bad writers do?”
“Make money.”
We drank a bit more and then everybody
left. Well, not everybody. I was still there. I
was a good writer, a great writer and a bad
writer. And pretty fair with the horses.

Let’s get rolling: some months went by.

Sometimes I saw Cosmos at the track. Some-
times not. He was going through a series of
girlfriends. I met some of them. Seemed
nice. They all had good jobs, it seemed. But
he borrowed money from them, lost it at the
track, couldn’t pay it back. The girls dropped
away. Cosmos put an ad in the paper stating
that he wanted to marry a woman with at
least five children. He got many reponses
and interviewed a great many women. He
couldn’t find the right one.
 425/499

“They were all too fat,” he told me.

“Why do you want a woman with so many
children?”
“It’s when you lose after gambling. You’ve
got something to come home to.”
“When I lose, all I want to see is a bottle, I
don’t want anybody around,” I told him.
“No, it’s nice to have somebody to come
home to who doesn’t treat you like a loser.”
“They will after canned beans and peanut-
butter sandwiches.”

Cosmos finished his life story. They

brought it over to me. I read it. It was very
interesting. But a total maze. It needed
work. They asked me if I might. I told them I
couldn’t. I was in my own maze.
It was all right. They got some guy. A
scriptwriter, temporarily down. Leland
LaCrosse. LaCrosse came over and we got
totally drunk. LaCrosse claimed Copalla had
fucked him over. Copalla owed him money.
 426/499

He was going to sue Copalla. LaCrosse was a

very depressed person. He talked about
Schopenhauer, he loved Schopenhauer.
LaCrosse talked about suicide. He discussed
suicide at some length. He talked sense, he
was intelligent, but he was bogged down in
self-pity. Depressed men seldom crashed
through. Sometimes disgusted men did be-
cause when you’re disgusted it elevates the
frame of battle to some logical confrontation.
Anyhow, LaCrosse agreed to straighten out
the Cosmos script. I liked that: reworking
Steve’s script would have depressed me.

LaCrosse phoned me one night.

“I’m going to kill myself,” he said. “I’m go-
ing to cut my wrists.”
“That’s very painful,” I said. “As the blood
runs out there will be spasms and contrac-
tions. To avoid this get into a tub of very
warm water first and after you slice your
wrists, hold them under water and stay that
 427/499

way with your body immersed. You’ll find it

almost painless.”
LaCrosse hung up on me.
Evidently he didn’t do it. The script got
reworked.
Sasoon phoned.
“I’m going to Paris. I’m going to set this
thing up. We’re going to shoot on a very lim-
ited budget. As soon as I’m ready I’m going
to send Steve an airline ticket. Meanwhile,
he’s on his allowance. Keep an eye on him.”
“Sure, Jean . . .”
Things got lined up and Sasoon sent Cos-
mos the money for an airline ticket. Cosmos
took the money and went down and pur-
chased the ticket. He was to get a bit part in
his own movie. It was to be shot in a famous
casino where Steve was not yet in trouble.
And best, it wasn’t in France. Just near
France.
Steve phoned. “You know,” he said, “you
always said I could stay for a week or two—”
 428/499

“Yes,” I said, thinking, but you already

have.
“I’ve got to close this place down and then
wait to fly over. I don’t want to go now. Jean
will put me to work doing some asshole
thing. I don’t want to go until they’re ready
to shoot. So—”
“All right,” I sighed, “it’s all right, Steve.”
So again I had a companion with me at the
track everyday.
“I have my allowance,” he told me.
“Good,” I said.
“Whoever wins,” he said, “buys the
dinner.”
“Right.”
First time out, he finally won. I got a
dinner.
The next time, it wasn’t so. Or the time
after that. Or the time after that. Or the time
...
“I don’t care if I win or lose,” he told me, “I
just want to gamble.”
 429/499

“Yeah,” I said.
“I can only talk to a gambler,” he told me.
“Nobody else knows anything.”
“Yeah,” I said.

Seven or eight days went by.

“If Jean calls tell him I’m not here. Tell
him you think I took the plane.”
“Aren’t you going to?”
“The other day when I told you I was going
to visit LaCrosse, I didn’t. I went to the air-
port and cashed in the plane ticket.”
“I wondered where you got the new
money.”
“Tomorrow I will hit it big,” he said.
Then he told me that some day he was go-
ing to live in a castle with a woman with
many children. He would grow his own food.
He would have hunting dogs and stock fine
wines.
“Do you have any of the plane-ticket
money left?”
 430/499

“Very little. But I feel I’m due for a big hit

tomorrow.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Each tomorrow was the same. Finally, he
tapped out. He was standing next to me and
he said, “My horse got left at the gate. That’s
it. I’m broke.”
We walked over to the bar and I bought
him a drink. You hated to lend a sum of
money to a bad gambler; horses just weren’t
his horsemeat. It was the last race and I
handed him a 20 and suggested he consider
Night Fire, who was reading five to one.
After I spoke, I knew I had said the wrong
thing: I had talked him off of a possible win-
ner. He went for a $20 exacta, Slim Bim to
Night Fire. Of course they came in in reverse.
As we drove toward his favorite eating
place, I thought, son of a bitch, this fellow
may be living with me for the rest of my life.
He’s a fine sort. Inventive. Original in his
way. Quite aware of death. Well-lived. He got
 431/499

a little loud and stupid when drunk but we

all did. But to live a lifetime? With this
buddy? I was used to solitude. Even when I
had been a bum I had avoided the missions,
preferred the park bench, the alley, any-
where but being with the mob. Being alone
was all I had going for me when things got
very ugly, it was the only thing which healed
me.
Frankly, I was terrified.
“Life is for nothing,” he said as we drove
along . . .
We had our two opening rounds of drinks
at the table and Steve loosened his charm
upon the waitress. I was downcast and
ordered as if I were the loser. Then I ordered
another round of drinks.
Steve looked at me.
“Gamblers understand,” he said.
“What do they understand?”
“Everything . . .”
 432/499

That night at the place, I poured the wine

heavily. Steve took out an expensive cigar
and lit up.
“I’m all right,” he said, “as long as I don’t
run out of these I’m all right. As long as I
have my cigar I will make it.”
“How they holding out?”
“Ho! I have many yet!”
Steve Cosmos was a class act.
The next day, after breakfast, he asked,
“You going to the track today?”
“Yes,” I said. “Listen, Steve, how’d you like
to earn some money?”
“Earn?”
I took him out to the parkway in front of
the house.
“Look at those weeds.”
“I see them, ugly things.”
“Yes, you’re a landscape artist. Do you
have some method of getting them of there?”
“Well—”
“Fifteen dollars an hour—”
 433/499

“Eighteen—”
“You’re on . . .”
I really felt terrible as I pulled out the
drive that morning about Steve. I felt like a
hunk of shit. I felt like a man acting in bad
style. I probably was.
I waved to him and drove off to the track.
As I looked in the rearview mirror he was
leaning upon the hoe, contemplating . . .
I had gotten a cable from Sasoon:
“Where’s Steve? Phoned the place, no an-
swer. Phoned your place, you do not an-
swer. Ready to begin shooting film. Sent
money for air ticket to Steve. Urgent he get
here. Reply.

Jean”

It looked like a good card out there. Small

fields. I liked small fields. But it wasn’t any
good: I lost.
 434/499

When I got back in, Cosmos was well into

a beer-drunk. I had a closet full of
Budweiser.
He looked up from his cigar.
“I got the weeds. Come, I show you.”
We walked out front. He had done quite
well.
“There will be no weeds for a year now.
You will see.”
But he had left one little square of weeds,
neatly blocked off, a square of about two feet
by four.
“This still needs to be done.”
Steve knew as I did, that if we didn’t get
those out of there all the other work was
wasted.
I gave him $140.
Then we went out to dinner.

Need I tell you? We lost it out there the

next day. We stopped for a new case of wine
on the way in and popped it open upon
 435/499

arrival at the place. We shared a bottle, went

out to eat. We tried a new place. The waiter
went off for our drinks. The place had piped-
in music. When the waiter came back with
our libations, Cosmos spoke to him.
“I insist you either get better music in here
or shut it off!”
Steve had upbringing. I had come from a
lower-middle-class family.
“Steve, do you want to get that plot of
weeds tomorrow?”
“If you insist.”
“It’s up to you.”
“It might take some time. The roots are
deeply imbedded.”
“I’m sure they are.”
“Eighteen an hour?”
“Raise you two,” I said.
“I’ll call . . .”
As the days went on Steve switched to the
inner garden. I played the horses in the day
and he played them at night. We had some
 436/499

drinks when he came in. Our new pattern

was established. When he finished the
garden I’d have him paint the house.
I cabled Sasoon to go ahead and shoot the
parts without Cosmos.
Then one night Cosmos didn’t return from
the harness races. I drank a couple of bottles
of wine, wrote four bad poems and two good
ones. It was just like old times. I figured
Steve was laying up with some new girl. I
was glad for him.
About 10 A.M. I came down the stairway
for something for my hangover and noticed
that the guest bedroom door was open. Cos-
mos had neatly made the bed and upon it
was a note:
“Ank,
I hit a big exacta last night. Know a guy
who wants to buy my car. Am flying over to
movie location. I have money for the ticket. I
will now be a great movie star. Thanks for
 437/499

letting me stay at your place and for all the

good wine.

Steve.”

The note made me feel ashamed. I had

been so cheap. Steve had pulled it out. I was
not very much. I had some way to go. Grow-
ing was difficult, I did it so slowly and the
years were running out.

How do you say it? Some weeks went by.

Then there was a letter from Sasoon:
“Dear Hank:
Steve arrived. His part in the movie is to
be the director of the casino. We shoot in the
daytime. Then at night when the casino
opens Steve still thinks he’s the director at
the casino. He cheats openly at the tables
and demands his money. Since we use the
casino employees in the movie during the
day there is some confusion. Also, since he is
not a writer and an actor he has met some
 438/499

of the people and borrowed money from

them. You know what that means. He gave
one man a very large check in exchange for
funds. The check bounced, came back. The
man showed it to Steve and Steve insisted
that there must be some mistake, he’s going
to check with his bank, it’s impossible that
the check is no good . . .
Everything else is a mess, too. We are
running out of funds. At first we hired the
regular people who played the casino at
night to act in our movie during the day.
Now we must pick up the bums from the
street and dress them in proper clothing,
which we rent, but it’s cheaper that
way—and they look just the same as the reg-
ular people.
Also, the wife of the biggest producer
backing this movie has fallen in love with
Steve. She threatens to leave the producer
for Steve, and since the producer doesn’t
want to lose her, they all rather live
 439/499

together, eat together, all that. She is a

beautiful and intelligent woman. They go to
the gaming tables together and Steve is
totally insane, grabbing chips, spilling
drinks over himself, shouting passages from
Schopenhauer, vomiting upon ladies’
dresses, exclaiming that Death is Every-
where, that it is crawling through his intest-
ines like shit, that everything is shit. He is
now the brilliant writer-actor. He has been
interviewed for several journals but insists
that they don’t take his photograph, says a
camera would destroy his soul, most likely
means his ass . . .
Will let you know as more unfolds.

Best,
Jean”

All right, skip two months. Like that. Did

you do it? Fine.
 440/499

There’s another letter from Sasoon. He’s in

Paris.
“Dear Hank:
We finished the movie. Much trouble with
shooting Steve. I’d tell him to talk there, say
this, then he’d do something else. It kept on
and on. It was terrible. But we finished. And
since Barbette played the female lead we
were all right there. Now editing the film.
Steve stayed to be with the producer’s wife.
Good luck with your documentary. A ma-
jor TV station bought it. They are going to
show it on prime time. Every night. But they
want it broken up into segments of six
minutes or less. Much work to be done there
but we have fourteen hours of you and
ought to get some good segments out of it.
With Steve things are not going as well
with the producer’s wife as before. She stays
with the producer at night in the villa and
meets Steve secretly during the day. Steve
has borrowed too much money from her
 441/499

which he can’t repay. And he has been

barred from the casino. I send him bits of
money when I can.
He writes me, ‘Since I have become a
writer and an actor I am more broke than I
have ever been. I have holes in the bottoms
of my shoes and I sleep with the bums at
night on the park benches. I know each of
them by name. When it rains we try to hang
out in the train station but the police run us
off. I am at the absolute bottom, completely
dissolute and destitute, and as full of des-
pair, I guess, as a man can get. I am too
spiritually weak and inept to even kill my-
self. If I killed myself where would they put
me? Just on another park bench in hell . . .
There is no escape from anything. I don’t
even have the ability to go mad.’”

Poor Steve. I had never gotten the story

quite straight because I had heard it from
both Steve and Jean, and both times during
 442/499

heavy drinking, but it translates something

like this:
As a young man Steve Cosmos had entered
a casino with a small sum of money and he
had no idea how the game worked. He had
walked up to the wheel and placed a wager.
He won. He just left the money there. And
won again and again. I mean, he left the
chips there, you know. He still left them
there when he went to the men’s room, and
when he came back he had won an enormous
sum: $19,000. Does this seem possible? Or
maybe I don’t have it quite right. I remember
the sum, though: $19,000. Cosmos went to
the cage to collect and they asked him if he
wanted a check or cash. He took the cash.
There was a very handsome woman about
that night and Steve mentioned to somebody
that he wanted that woman. That somebody
told him that that was impossible, that that
simply was not that kind of woman. He told
this somebody that he would give this
 443/499

woman $2,000 for her favors. They went up

to a room in the casino and that was that.
Steve was hooked. He hung around casinos.
He met some con artists. They went from
casino to casino doing their tricks. Cosmos
told me many of them which I don’t have the
freedom to divulge here. Except one. They
had an electronically controlled roulette ball
which they could make drop into any num-
ber. The button was operated from a fake
package of cigarettes. All they had to do was
switch balls, which was easy enough to do
with a screen of distraction and fast hands.
The ball was very delicate, however, and one
night during a good run it exploded. They
left their winnings there for a quick exit.
The gang went from city to city around the
world. They became known and had to wear
disguises. At times they got enough money,
wearied of it, split, only to meet and start up
again.
 444/499

In between times, my friend Steve learned

other tricks. Besides passing bad checks with
fake I.D.’s, he had a little camera, and with
this little camera he walked up to expensive
cars, put the little camera against the door
lock and snapped the shutter. When the film
was developed it showed the inside grooves
of the lock. A key was made from this. Then
Cosmos would go back to the car, open the
door, jump-start the car and drive it off. He
stole a great many cars this way. A steering-
wheel lock meant nothing: he could break
one down on an average of one minute and
15 seconds.
And he lived for free in the finest of hotels.
He ran up huge sums and merely walked out,
leaving an empty suitcase in the room with a
note:
“Thank you so much for everything.”
A man like that could never consider an
eight-hour job.
 445/499

And there I had had him pulling weeds out

of my garden . . .
And there was no way I could ever write
about him because then the law would have
me for harboring a criminal and the French
Mafia would be after my ass, but I sat around
thinking about the whole thing. I could
present it as a work of fiction and then in the
fiction I could say it was real. It was too long
for a short story and not long enough for a
novel. Well, shit.

I had just finished my fourth novel and my

favorite cat had died, a real tough son of a
bitch, and Cristina and I were having our
problems, but the racetrack was still there. I
really loved that place, all those places, An-
ita, Hollywood Park, Los Alamitos. Del Mar
and Pomona you could have. But the track
was the best shrink I could ever have. It
taught me about myself, the others,
everything. It was the open lesson of balance
 446/499

and chance, it was a flash of lighting and it

was the durability of the gods. It was the
place for me.
I drove into valet and the guy who handed
me the yellow stub said, “You been sick,
champ?”
And I said, “No, what makes you ask?”
“Didn’t see you yesterday,” he said.
“How’s your wife and family?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said.
“That’s great,” I said.
I walked on in and checked the program.
Lots of maiden races. Good. My favorite play.
Very little public information. But I had a
method of detecting where my solid money
was going.
By the fourth race I was $225 ahead, sit-
ting there, checking my program against the
racing form and the board action when I
sensed somebody sitting behind me. I could
feel him there, looking over my shoulder. I
didn’t like anybody near me. I moved on
 447/499

down. I felt this same figure following me,

sitting down behind me again. I am one who
is not too fond of humanity, even those who
we are told are great, even those sicken me,
so, you see, I didn’t like anybody around, so I
turned and I said, “Hey, look, you son of a
bitch—”
And, you guessed it, it was Steve Cosmos.
“Ank—” he said.
“Well, baby,” I said, “all I can let you have
is a twenty—”
“Don’t worry, my friend,” he said. He
pulled out a huge roll of money, very green,
very fat, very legal.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I could ask you the same. How about a
drink?”
“Fine.”
We walked up to the bar. Steve had a
double whiskey and water. I ordered a vodka
tonic.
“Who do you like in this race?” he asked.
 448/499

“Well, if the board doesn’t change too

much I like Blue Fire.”
“Far Dream will win,” he said.
“You ought to lay off those big closers,” I
said. “I keep telling you that over and over
but you won’t listen.”
“Far Dream will win. There will be a fast
pace.”
“The old textbook approach. The game is
different now. Nowadays the speed of the
speed usually wins.”
“Winner buys dinner?” Cosmos asked.
“Winner buys dinner,” I said.
We raised our drinks, clicked them,
drained them off.
 SOURCES

Open City, June 23–29, 1967

Open City, July 7–13, 1967
Open City, December 29, 1967–January 4,
1968
Open City, October 25–31, 1968
Open City, January 24–30, 1969
NOLA Express, December 31, 1971–January
13, 1972
NOLA Express, February 25, 1972
Los Angeles Free Press, July 7, 1972
Los Angeles Free Press, February 9, 1973
Los Angeles Free Press, February 23, 1973
Los Angeles Free Press, June 15, 1973
“Bukowski Takes a Trip: No Nudie Bars,” Los
Angeles Free
Press, August 3 and August 10, 1973
Los Angeles Free Press, September 28, 1973
NOLA Express, November 2–15, 1973
Open City, June 16–22, 1967
 450/499

Los Angeles Free Press, January 18, 1974

Los Angeles Free Press, August 2, 1974
Los Angeles Free Press, September 6, 1974
Los Angeles Free Press, October 4, 1974
Los Angeles Free Press, December 13, 1974
Los Angeles Free Press, March 7, 1975
Los Angeles Free Press, April 4, 1975
Los Angeles Free Press, May 16 and May 23,
1975
Los Angeles Free Press, July 11, 1975
Los Angeles Free Press, July 18, 1975
Smoke Signals, Vol 2. No. 4, 1982
“Ecce Hetero: Bukowski’s Thoughts to Live
By,” High Times,
February 1983
“Night on the Town,” High Times, December
1983
“My Friend, The Gambler,” High Times,
October 1984
 AFTERWORD

by David Stephen Calonne

Nineteen sixty-nine was Charles

Bukowski’s annus mirabilis: Penguin
Modern Poets 13 (Bukowski, Lamantia,
Norse), a volume in the distinguished British
series devoted to contemporary poets edited
by Nikos Stangos in London, A Bukowski
Sampler, and The Days Run Away Like Wild
Horses Over the Hills were published. And,
perhaps most significantly for his transform-
ation from a largely unknown “underground”
writer to a literary figure with an interna-
tional reputation, Notes of a Dirty Old Man
appeared on January 24, 1969, from Essex
 452/499

House, a small North Hollywood publisher

specializing in erotica, in an edition of ap-
proximately 28,000 copies.1 The genesis of
the book was aided by the efforts of an in-
defatigable editor named John Bryan.
Bukowski had appeared previously in several
Bryan publications: as early as July 1961 in
Renaissance, with his poem “The Way to
Review a Play”; in 1962, again in Renais-
sance, with his essay “Peace, Baby, Is Hard
Sell”; and in 1964, in the magazine Notes
from Underground, with his story “A
Murder.” In San Francisco in November
1964, Bryan started Open City, then known
as San Francisco Open City Press, which
continued for fifteen issues. Bukowski’s brief
story “If I Could Only Be Asleep” appeared in
the January 1966 issue.2 Bryan had been in
San Francisco when the owner of the Los
Angeles Free Press asked him to move to Los
Angeles to help with the newly inaugurated
newspaper: he became managing editor and
 453/499

was responsible for significantly increasing

its circulation.
Then in 1967, Bryan decided to start his
own newspaper in Los Angeles—Open
City—and asked Bukowski to contribute,
agreeing to pay him $10 a week. Bukowski
claims in his autobiographical essay “Dirty
Old Man Confesses” that it was he who in-
vented the title (echoing one of his favorite
books, Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Under-
ground): “one day John Bryan decided to
start an Underground newspaper called
Open City. I was asked to contribute a
column a week. I called the column ‘Notes of
A Dirty Old Man.’”3 The debut installment
appeared in the May 12–18, 1967, issue.4
Bryan would publish 93 issues, ending in
March 1969, with Bukowski appearing in 89
of them.5 In his Foreword to Notes of A
Dirty Old Man, Bukowski described the ease
and pleasure of his new assignment:
 454/499

Then one day after the races, I sat down

and wrote the heading, NOTES OF A
DIRTY OLD MAN, opened a beer, and
the writing got done by itself. There was
not the tenseness or the careful carving
with a bit of a dull blade, that was
needed to write something for the At-
lantic Monthly.... There seemed to be no
pressures. Just sit by the window, lift
the beer and let it come. Anything that
wanted to arrive, arrived.6

Bukowski went on to describe the Sturm

und Drang involved with writing and pub-
lishing poetry—sometimes he would wait two
to five years to see a poem in print after it
was accepted—but “with NOTES, sit down
with a beer and hit the typer on a Friday or a
Saturday or a Sunday and by Wednesday the
thing is all over the city.”7
 455/499

Bukowski was thrilled by the birth of his

first volume of prose and dashed off a happy
self-review for Open City:

How many times can a man go through

the thresher and still keep his blood, the
Summer sun inside his head? How
many bad jails, how many bad women,
how many sundry cancers, how many
flat tires, how many this or that or what
or what or what? . . .
Frankly I read my own stories in easy
wonderment, forgetting who I was, al-
most almost, and I thought: Ummm,
ummm, this son of a bitch can really
write.8

The offer from Bryan actually came just at

the right time, because Bukowski had
already been composing prose for the past
few years. In 1965, Douglas Blazek published
Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live
with Beasts—a story in nine sections dealing
 456/499

with Bukowski’s life from childhood through

his marriage to and divorce from Barbara
Frye—and in the following year All the
Assholes in the World and Mine, a hilarious
account of his hemorrhoid operation. Now
he had contracted to produce a weekly
column: the discipline of the deadline
opened the creative floodgates. Open City,
and subsequently NOLA Express and the Los
Angeles Free Press, gave Bukowski the op-
portunity to mine his past experiences and to
try out various treatments of material which
he would later transform in his novels Post
Office, Factotum, Women, and Ham on Rye.
Notes of A Dirty Old Man was reprinted in
1973 by City Lights and since then has been
continuously in print. The series became a
forum where Bukowski presented stories, es-
says, poems, interviews, even several car-
toons (now more elegantly christened
“graphic fiction”). However, the original
book contained only forty of the hundreds of
 457/499

works he submitted under the “Dirty Old

Man” rubric: other columns would later be
collected in Erections, Ejaculations and Oth-
er Tales of Ordinary Madness (1972), South
of No North (1974), and Hot Water Music
(1983), as well as in the posthumous
volumes Portions from a Wine-Stained
Notebook (2008) and Absence of the Hero
(2010). Notes of a Dirty Old Man met with
international success: Bukowski had broken
through into new territory in American liter-
ature. He was a strange, compelling creature:
a “drop out” from the mainstream, a
“working-class” artist in love with “high cul-
ture”—Beethoven, Mahler, Sibelius, Stravin-
sky, Catullus, Li Po, Céline, and
Dostoyevsky—and composing a hip, direct,
swiftly moving prose, a new American argot:
“vulgarity” punctuated by sudden, exquisite
flights of lyrical sensitivity.9
Bukowski first read Dostoyevsky in the
early forties in the El Paso Public Library.10
 458/499

And on the opening page of Notes of a Dirty

Old Man, the narrator tells us that he was “a
student of Dostoevski and listened to Mahler
in the dark.”11 Like Dostoyevsky’s character
in Notes from Underground, many of
Bukowski’s Dionysian poets, dreamers, and
misfits are half-mad, angry, impetuous, in-
spired, ecstatic. The title precisely describes
Bukowski’s aim: he combines Dostoyevskian
“notes” with the American slang expression
“dirty old man,” thus mixing the Eastern
European tradition of dark psyches at war
with themselves and others with a cool, sub-
versive American style informed by all the
counter-cultural themes and obsessions of
the sixties and seventies.
For example, in the story depicting his trip
to New Orleans, his wit and verve can be
seen in the abrupt, telegraphic opening: “Go-
ing east. In the barcar. They had sent me
money for the barcar. Of course, I had a pint
getting on and had stopped for a pint at El
 459/499

Paso. I was the world’s greatest poet and he

was the world’s greatest editor and book-
maker (and I’m not talking about horses).”
The repetition of the primarily mono- and
disyllabic words—“barcar,” “pint,” “greatest
poet,” “greatest editor”—and stop-and-go
syntax mirror the sound of the chugging and
clattering train as it sets out on its journey.
The narrative then grows organically, one
element of plot added to another in a natur-
al, effortless way. This skill was the product
of years of labor, although what was new in
Bukowski’s style of the sixties was this rapid
movement of a shrewd, tough intelligence
under the influence of the new, heady, casual
openness of the Age of Aquarius.
The compulsive eroticism of the series was
at once a clever way to attract attention to
his writing (as well as to sell newspapers)
and an exploration of sex and love as the ul-
timate arena in which the frequently comic
struggle for selfhood takes place. Bukowski
 460/499

often sees the sexual drama as an insane

farce:

So, to some writers, including the glori-

ously impertinent Bukowski, sex is obvi-
ously the tragicomedy. I don’t write
about it as an instrument of obsession. I
write about it as a stage play laugh
where you have to cry about it, a bit,
between acts. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote
it much better. He had the distance and
the style. I am still too near the target to
effect total grace. People simply think
I’m dirty. If you haven’t read Boccaccio,
do. You might begin with The Decamer-
on.12

Interestingly, Pasolini’s film version of The

Decameron (1970) appeared the year follow-
ing the publication of Notes of a Dirty Old
Man, and Boccaccio (1313–1375) served as
Bukowski’s thematic and structural model
for his novel Women: The Decameron has
 461/499

101 chapters, Women, 104. The other great

Italian (Roman) writer to whom Bukowski
was most devoted was Gaius Valerius Catul-
lus (ca. 84–54 B.C.), to whom he wrote sev-
eral homages, including the humorous poem
“what have I seen” in which he imagines see-
ing Catullus at the race track bar in the com-
pany of a lady of questionable virtue: “I like
your way, Catullus, talking plainly about the
/ whore who claims you owe her money, or
about / that guy who smiled too much—who
cleaned / his teeth with horse piss, / or about
how the young poets / come with their
blameless tame verse, or about / how this or
that guy married a slut.”13 Although he
played brilliantly the role of an anti-intellec-
tual primitive, Bukowski would bring his
considerable knowledge of world literature
to bear in his portrayal of the human sexual
comedy.
Bukowski explores a good deal of taboo
territory, every form of sexual expression,
 462/499

“perversion,” or “deviancy.” We are intro-

duced to a gallery of characters worthy of
Wilhelm Stekel, or Krafft-Ebing’s Psycho-
pathia Sexualis. Although he surely did not
intend in a conscious way to present such an
encyclopedic summary of paraphiliae, “Notes
of a Dirty Old Man,” over the course of the
column’s lengthy run, would provide por-
trayals of child rape, castration, anal inter-
course, three females picking up and ravish-
ing a man, intercourse with a high-heeled
shoe, voyeurism, bestiality, sexual role play-
ing (in which a man is treated as a child by a
middle-aged woman), fetishism, onanism,
necrophilia, and violent sadism. Surely part
of the success of the series was due to the
fact that Bukowski said things that many
people would have liked to say but lacked the
courage to express. He took the lid off the id;
he is “unrepressed” in his insistent uncover-
ing of the submerged activity of the libido in
the unconscious.
 463/499

As Michel Foucault asserts in The History

of Sexuality:

The legitimate couple, with its regular

sexuality, had a right to more discretion.
It tended to function as a norm, one that
was stricter, but quieter. On the other
hand, what came under scrutiny was the
sexuality of children, mad men and wo-
men, and criminals; the sensuality of
those who did not like the opposite sex;
reveries, obsessions, petty manias, of
great transports of rage. It was time for
all these figures, scarcely noticed in the
past, to step forward and speak, to make
the difficult confession of what they
were. No doubt they were condemned
all the same; but they were listened to;
and if regular sexuality happened to be
questioned once again, it was through a
reflux movement, originating in these
peripheral sexualities.14
 464/499

Bukowski provides an often humorous op-

portunity—as if to lessen the pain of the rev-
elation—for these various characters to make
a “confession of what they were.” And even
“the legitimate couple”—in, for example, the
story of the couple in bed in which the wife is
dreaming of intercourse with another man
and the husband confesses to incestuous
longings—is exposed in Bukowski as harbor-
ing dark secrets lurking beneath the surface
of conscious awareness.
Yet Bukowski, like D.H. Lawrence, sought
a more natural expression of sexuality which
was constantly frustrated by our alienating,
cold, technocratic society. He writes in his
NOLA essay of December 31, 1971–January
13, 1972 about

all these people, the love-lost, the sex-

lost, the suicide-driven . . . somewhere
in the structure of our society it is im-
possible for these people to contact each
 465/499

other. Churches, dances, parties only

seem to push them further apart, and
the dating clubs, the Computer Love
Machines only destroy more and more a
naturalness that should have been: a
naturalness that has somehow been
crushed and seems to remain crushed
forever in our present method of living
(dying). See them put on their bright
clothes and get into their new cars and
roar off to NOWHERE. It’s all an out-
side maneuver and the contact is
missed.

It is possible to read Bukowski’s elabora-

tion of all the varieties of sexual behavior as
a kind of diagnosis of the ills of our culture,
of the ways this “naturalness” has been sub-
verted. The inhibition of this need to make
“contact” with one another is precisely what
has led to the frequently frenetic efforts of
the caged human animal to break out of its
traps in whatever ways it can devise—even if
 466/499

this means amputating parts of itself as it at-

tempts to break free from the manacles.
Bukowski’s column would also appear in
NOLA Express edited by Darlene Fife and
her husband Robert Head. Fife explains in
her memoir Portraits from Memory: New
Orleans in the Sixties that her husband

had read Bukowski in one of the mimeo

mags and wrote asking him for submis-
sions. We published him from late ’68
[the first “Dirty Old Man” column was
actually August 15–28, 1969] to the end
of Nola Express in January, 1974. He
sent us poems or, most often short stor-
ies every two weeks; always clean copy,
always on time. He took his responsibil-
ities to his editors seriously. His writings
elicited more letters to the editor both
for and against than any other.
Bukowski occasionally responded to the
letters with his own letter to the editor.
We paid him $25 for each published
 467/499

piece. As little as this is, Bukowski told

us it was this money that gave him the
courage to quit his job in the post of-
fice.15

Bukowski never met the couple and they

spoke only once by phone, but he sent a let-
ter of support when NOLA encountered cen-
sorship difficulties: it appeared in issue #53
of April, 1970 in the typical, mainly lower-
case style he favored during this period:

you are the liveliest thing happening in

the U.S. right now. you’ve always layed
your guts right on the line without lay-
ing on this juvenile hippy Romanticism
which destroys papers like the Berkeley
Tribe. don’t put me down as anti-hip or
yip or whatever, but somehow building
those paper heroes has destroyed the
force of what really needs to be said.
each issue of NOLA is a thing I read over
and over. it’s magic . . . Wrote
 468/499

Evergreen about you people, hoping

they can break the back of whatever is
trying to break you. your courage is the
quietest poem of all. you make me feel
good when very few things do.16

By this time, Bukowski had experienced

difficulties of his own with the “authorities”:
in 1968 the FBI began to investigate him. He
would eventually leave the Post Office—not
only because John Martin offered him a
monthly stipend to quit and write full time,
but most likely because he was about to be
dismissed, not for supposed “absenteeism”
but due to his work for Open City, a clear vi-
olation of his right to free speech. Bukowski’s
FBI file also indicates that they began to in-
vestigate his “common law wife”—this was
clearly Frances Smith, although her name
has been redacted from the file—who “has
been reported to have attended a number of
Communist Party meetings in the Los
 469/499

Angeles area.” The file indicates “that one

Charles Bukowski, poet, was the author of an
article appearing on page 43 of the June,
1963, issue of ‘Mainstream.’” This essay,
which Bukowski had submitted about the
“little magazines,” contained some X-ed out
language which the editor, Felix Singer, saw
fit to censor. The report continues:

The March, (1968) edition of the

“Underground Digest, The Best of the
Underground Press,” Volume I, pub-
lished by the Underground Communica-
tions, Inc., P.O. Box 211, Village Station,
New York, New York 10014, telephone
WI 7-6900, contains an article by
Charles Bukowski on pages 76-79 en-
titled “Notes of a Dirty Old Man.” Page
79 indicates that the writer’s name may
be Henry Charles Bukowski. The public-
ation indicates at the end of the article
on page 79 that the article may have ori-
ginally appeared in “Open City” 5420
 470/499

Carlton Way, Los Angeles, California

90027; $5 per year. Single copies of the
article “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” to-
gether with a copy of the masthead of
the Underground Digest are enclosed
for New York and Los Angeles under ob-
scene cover.
New York and Los Angeles should
make discreet efforts to resolve whether
this article and the item appearing in the
June, 1963, issue of “Mainstream” were
written by the employee. If employee’s
authorship is indicated copies of the art-
icles should be designated as exhibits.17

It is clear that the FBI was conducting sur-

veillance in the attempt to fathom
Bukowski’s political commitments during
this time as well as to build a dossier against
him in which his “obscene” writings for the
underground press would be cited as evid-
ence. Four “exhibits” were included at the
 471/499

end of the FBI report: (A) an essay about

Leroi Jones from Open City, Dec. 8–14,
1967;18 (B) a column about a sexual en-
counter with a woman with red hair from
Open City, Dec. 29–Jan. 4 1969, which is in-
cluded in this volume; (C) a column from
Open City, January 12–17 1968 collected in
Erections as “Great Poets Die in Steaming
Pots of Shit”;19 and (D) a March, 1968
column beginning “when Henry’s mother
died it wasn’t bad” from Underground Di-
gest, which appeared originally in Open City,
October 18–24, 1967, and was included in
Notes of A Dirty Old Man.20
The final newspaper carrying the series
(and the place where it had the longest
run—February 1972–September 1976) was
the Los Angeles Free Press. This incarnation
was more artistically oriented, with a special
“Dirty Old Man” logo appearing at the begin-
ning of each installment depicting a comic-
ally mustachioed man with a bemused
 472/499

visage, a stubble beard, floppy hat, very large

shoes, cigar in mouth, pen in hand making
notes in a spiral notebook. “The Dirty Old
Man” was now a recognizable brand. In addi-
tion, many of the installments were accom-
panied by Bukowski’s entertaining, Thurber-
esque drawings, placed at strategic points in
the narrative. He even submitted a series of
cartoons, “The Adventures of Clarence H.
Sweetmeat,” which appeared in the Septem-
ber 19–25, 1975, and October 24–30, 1975,
issues. The editor, Art Kunkin, continued the
policy of Open City and NOLA Express of al-
lowing Bukowski virtual carte blanche in
terms of language, style, and subject matter.
The late sixties and early seventies were a
volatile time in the gender wars. Kate Mil-
lett’s Sexual Politics (1970), Norman Mailer’s
The Prisoner of Sex (1971), Germaine Greer’s
The Female Eunuch (1971), and Erica Jong’s
Fear of Flying (1973) (the novel on the
nightstand of the travel agent ravished in
 473/499

one of Bukowski’s columns) were all sum-

mary statements of the sexual revolution.
The racial, political, social, and military con-
vulsions of the times are also represented in
Bukowski’s prescient commentary on cur-
rent events such as gas rationing, as in the
January 18, 1974, column: “Americans have
cheated and lied for so long, have become so
decayed under the great moral Bob Hope
front that I wonder why justice hasn’t arrived
and all our streets and boulevards do not
have Chinese names. We babies, you and I,
have been saved by our atomic stockpiles,
not our ingeniousness, our guts, our souls,
our courage.” And in another column he con-
sidered the oil crisis: “Who could have be-
lieved that the Arabs and their near–mono-
poly on oil could have caused massive layoffs
here?” The story about the survivor Robert
Grissom—a holdout in between the two
forces of Revolutionaries and Government in
a post-apocalyptic America—presages the
 474/499

plot of a famous recent novel, Cormac

McCarthy’s The Road. Grissom has many
characteristics in common with his creator:
he listens to Mahler and Stravinsky, he is
solitary, and he has gotten in trouble for his
writings. This is clearly a reference to the
period in 1968 when Bukowski began to be
investigated by the FBI. And, in a later, 1982
incarnation of the column in Smoke Signals,
Norman Mailer’s involvement in the Jack
Abbot case is wittily observed.21
Bukowski chronicled the sixties and seven-
ties counterculture in his own inimitable
fashion, and in some ways considered him-
self to have been the first “hippie” back in the
thirties and forties. Bukowski had defended
the hippies from the attacks of his publisher,
Jon Webb: “Why not let your hair grow and
smoke a bit of grass? Relax. Take each mo-
ment as a miracle gift. I was that way before
the invention of the Bomb. I was hip on the
premise born before the hips—if a man is
 475/499

going to die, why stockpile useless human

possessions?”22 And during World War II,
Bukowski was a pacifist:

I was anti-war in a time of pro-war. I

couldn’t tell a good war from a bad
one—I still can’t. I was a hippie when
there weren’t any hippies; I was a beat
before the beats.
I was a protest march, alone.
I was in some Underground like a
blind mole and no other moles even
existed.
This is why I couldn’t adjust my
sights, make sense of it. I had already
done it all. And when Tim Leary advised
“drop out” twenty-five years after I had
already dropped out, I couldn’t get ex-
cited. Leary’s big “drop out” was a loss
of a professorship somewhere
(Harvard?)
 476/499

I was the Underground when there

wasn’t any Underground.23

This attitude is reflected in the story re-

counting his irritation with his co-worker’s
attitude toward the counterculture, which he
contrasts with his own more accepting
stance. However, as we saw above, this did
not mean that Bukowski was uncritical of the
youth movement. As he wrote to Darlene
Fife, he objected to “this juvenile hippie Ro-
manticism which destroys papers like the
Berkeley Tribe.” Bukowski wanted perhaps a
bit of Realitätsprinzip—a bit of German
toughness and backbone to accompany all
the peace and love. Like Robert Grissom,
Bukowski ultimately identified with neither
side of the cultural conflict, rejecting con-
formity with mainstream American society
even as he remained skeptical of the counter-
culture’s attempts to revolutionize it.
 477/499

Notes of A Dirty Old Man also allowed

Bukowski the opportunity to explore his ex-
periences from childhood to the present and
to transform them into thinly veiled autobio-
graphical fiction. The series became a kind of
extended roman à clef in which the events of
Bukowski’s life were treated in a variety of
imaginative ways. For example, his traumat-
ic childhood is portrayed in the tale concern-
ing Petey, a 13-year-old boy with “strict par-
ents.” At the close the narrative veers into
the fantastic as his abusive parents meet
their deserved terrible fate. In one column,
Bukowski interviews his publisher Jon Webb
and discusses the art of book-making: Webb
and his wife Gypsy Lou published The Out-
sider magazine as well as Bukowski’s It
Catches My Heart in Its Hands (1963); in
another narrative, he describes a rollicking
journey by train to New Orleans to visit the
Webbs in order to work on the second, lav-
ishly produced book of his poetry, Crucifix in
 478/499

a Deathhand (1965). Yet another story, de-

scribing a trip with his daughter to the beach
at Venice, packs a good deal of Bukowski’s
life aetatis 52 into a brief space: his separa-
tion from Frances Smith, the tension
between the estranged couple, his love for
their daughter Marina, and his struggle to
preserve a balance in his own life between
destruction and creativity, between hate and
love. The swift narrative movement, deft dia-
logue, and terse descriptive style poignantly
reveal the tender connection between father
and daughter as adult ugliness and violence
threaten the sand castle she has constructed,
symbolic of the fragile innocent world of
childhood.
A love triangle involving Bukowski’s then-
girlfriend Linda King becomes a tale of an
evening watching the fights with “Patricia” at
the Olympic Auditorium. And in July 1973,
Bukowski went with King on a trip to Utah
and got lost in the woods, which is reflected
 479/499

in an extended comic sequence which was

later partially used in his novel Women, yet
with significant passages omitted: for ex-
ample, the lovely scene of his encounter with
the brown eyes of the squirrel, which so
moved him that he refrained from commit-
ting suicide. His burgeoning fame as a reader
of his poetry is humorously sketched in a tale
of his trip to Detroit. And we are given a por-
trait of the artist as an older man in “My
Friend, the Gambler,” which describes the
preliminary stages of the creation of the film
Barfly. Now Bukowski is sixty-five, suddenly
immersed in the Hollywood whirl (which he
would satirize in his 1987 novel Hollywood)
along with the film director Barbet
Schroeder (“Jean Sasoon”) and Bukowski’s
wife Linda Lee Beighle (“Cristina”).
From January 1983 to December 1984,
Bukowski contributed “Notes of a Dirty Old
Man” to High Times magazine. In addition
to the long story “My Friend, the Gambler,”
 480/499

he also composed a lively set of aphorisms

entitled “Ecce Hetero.” Like La Rochefou-
cauld, Nietzsche (the title is a play on Nietz-
sche’s book Ecce Homo), and E.M. Cioran,
he was especially fond of the form, examples
of which are scattered throughout his work.
In Notes of A Dirty Old Man, some of the
finest are: “The difference between Art and
Life is that Art is more bearable” (a variation
on Nietzsche’s “We have Art so we will not
perish from Truth”); “I’d rather hear about a
live American bum than a dead Greek God”;
“There is nothing more boring than the
truth”; “The well balanced individual is in-
sane”; “Sexual intercourse is kicking death in
the ass while singing”; “An intellectual is a
man who says a simple thing in a difficult
way; an artist is a man who says a difficult
thing in a simple way.” Other Bukowskian
wisdoms include: “The problem with women
is that they are problems” and “I like dogs
better than men and cats better than dogs
 481/499

and myself best of all, drunk in my under-

wear looking out the window.” Thus we see
in his High Times column his continued af-
fection for the form.
Notes of A Dirty Old Man—the book as
well as uncollected columns—would have an
impact on other artists. They would be read
attentively by a young musician named Tom
Waits: “I just thought this was remarkable . .
. This guy’s the writer of the century and he’s
being published in this kind of street rag,
which seemed kind of poetic and perfect . . .
and of course you felt much more like you
had discovered him as well—that he wasn’t
being brought to you but you had to dig and
find him.”24 And Raymond Carver’s bio-
grapher notes that “Open City, the city’s al-
ternative paper, ran a weekly screed of stor-
ies and opinion called ‘Notes of A Dirty Old
Man,’ by Charles Bukowski, then a middle-
aged postal worker and little-known poet.
Ray liked Southern California so well for a
 482/499

couple of weeks that he thought of settling

there.”25 Carver said that Bukowski had been
“a kind of hero” to him.26 Bukowski’s “new
journalism” was a creative and imaginative
use of all his genius as a writer to inspire and
shock his readers into a new engagement
with the truths of intractable reality. And
more than forty years after the Dirty Old
Man was born, he will surely find new fans
among those hungering for alternatives to
the trivia offered by what still passes for
American culture today.
 NOTES

1 Aaron Krumhansl, A Descriptive Biblio-

graphy of the Primary Publications of
Charles Bukowski. Santa Rosa: Black Spar-
row Press, 1999, p. 41.
2 “If I Only Could Be Asleep,” in Absence of
the Hero: Uncollected Stories and Essays
Vol. 2, 1946—1992, ed. David Stephen
Calonne. San Francisco: City Lights, 2010,
pp. 42–43.
3 Bukowski, “Dirty Old Man Confesses,” in
Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook, ed.
David Stephen Calonne. San Francisco: City
Lights, 2008, p. 102. On the LA Free Press,
see John McMillian, Smoking Typewriters:
The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise
of Alternative Media in America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 37–46.
According to McMillian: “In 1967, one irate
staffer, John Bryan, left the Freep to start a
 484/499

rival paper (Open City) after Kunkin refused

to print a photograph of a disfigured napalm
victim (apparently for fear of offending ad-
vertisers),” p. 239, no. 84.
4 Bukowski had published a review of the
Artaud Anthology in the Los Angeles Free
Press on April 22, 1966. See Portions, pp.
49–53. A week before the debut of the first
“Notes of a Dirty Old Man” column,
Bukowski’s review of A.E. Hotchner’s bio-
graphy of Ernest Hemingway, “An Old
Drunk Who Ran Out of Luck,” appeared in
the May 5–11 issue of Open City. See Por-
tions, pp. 54–56.
5 Scott Harrison, former proprietor of the
Abandoned Planet bookstore in San Fran-
cisco, kindly supplied me with information
about John Bryan and Open City.
6 Bukowski, “Foreword,” Notes of A Dirty
Old Man. San Francisco: City Lights, 1973, p.
6.
7 Ibid. p. 6.
 485/499

8 “Bukowski on Bukowski,” Absence of the

Hero, p. 57.
9 On the “working class” and literature, see
The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-
Century American Short Story, ed. Blanche
H. Gelfant (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2000); Larry Smith, “The American
Working-Class Short Story,” pp. 81–93.
10 See Howard Sounes, Charles Bukowski:
Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life (Edin-
burgh: Canongate, 2010), p. 21; Dostoevsky
was also a major influence on the Beats as
well as on Henry Miller. See Maria
Bloshteyn, The Making of a Counterculture
Icon: Henry Miller’s Dostoevsky (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2007). On
Bukowski and Dostoevsky, see Charles
Bukowski: Sunlight Here I Am/Interviews &
Encounters 1963–1993, ed. David Stephen
Calonne (Northville: Sundog Press, 2003),
pp. 41, 74, 139, 180–81, 198, 243, 267, 269,
275.
 486/499

11 Bukowski, Notes of A Dirty Old Man, p. 9.

12 Ibid., p. 132.
13 Bukowski, “what have I seen,” in The
Continual Condition: Poems, ed. John
Martin (New York: Ecco, 2009), p. 110.
14 Michel Foucault, “The Repressive Hypo-
thesis” from The History of Sexuality,
Volume I, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul
Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984),
pp. 318–19. Bukowski’s work has been in-
cluded in several anthologies of erotic literat-
ure. See Fetish: An Anthology of Fetish Fic-
tion, ed. John Yau (New York: Four Walls
Eight Windows, 1998), “Love for $17.50,” pp.
23–28; Love Is Strange, ed. Richard Glyn
Jones (London: Indigo, 1998), “The Copulat-
ing Mermaid of Venice, California,” pp.
143–153; The Best American Erotic Poems:
From 1800 to the Present, ed. David Lehman
(New York: Scribner Poetry, 2008), “Hunk of
Rock,” pp. 67–74.
 487/499

15 Darlene Fife, Portraits from Memory:

New Orleans in the Sixties (New Orleans:
Surregional Press, 2000), p. 4. On Bukowski,
NOLA, and an account of the “persistent har-
assment” the paper experienced, see
Laurence Leamer, The Paper Revolutionar-
ies: The Rise of the Underground Press
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), pp.
146–52.
16 Ibid., p. 15. On Francisco McBride’s art-
work, which illustrated Bukowski’s column,
see p. 26. On Bukowski and New Orleans,
see Jeff Weddle, Bohemian New Orleans:
The Story of The Outsider and Loujon Press
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press,
2007); “Writing New Orleans” by Andrei
Codrescu in Greil Marcus and Werner Sol-
lors, A New Literary History of America
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2009), p. 405.
 488/499

17 Federal Bureau of Investigation File

#140-35907, 1957–1970. Henry Charles
Bukowski, Jr. (a.k.a. “Charles Bukowski”).
18 Absence of the Hero, pp. 59–63.
19 Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness
(San Francisco: City Lights, 1983), pp.
77–82. The original Erections, Ejaculations
and Other Tales of Ordinary Madness has
been subsequently divided into two titles and
republished as The Most Beautiful Woman
in Town (San Francisco: City Lights, 1983),
and Tales of Ordinary Madness (San Fran-
cisco: City Lights, 1983).
20 Notes of A Dirty Old Man, “When
Henry’s mother died it wasn’t bad,” pp.
112–115.
21 Mailer admired Bukowski’s poetry, writ-
ing in a letter to Al Fogel that “he spits his
words out like nails” (personal communica-
tion from Al Fogel, July 19, 2010). Hank Ch-
inaski comments on “Victor Norman” (Mail-
er) in Hollywood: “What I liked best about
 489/499

him was that he had no fear of the Feminists.

He was one of the last defenders of maleness
and balls in the U.S. I wasn’t always pleased
with his literary output but I wasn’t always
pleased with mine either.” See Bukowski,
Hollywood (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow,
1989), p. 107. For Bukowski on Mailer, also
see Sunlight Here I Am, pp. 54, 121, 150, 162,
224. The two men met at the Chateau Mar-
mont in Hollywood during the making of
Barfly. See Sounes, pp. 210–212.
22 “Dirty Old Man Confesses,” p. 101.
23 Ibid., p. 92.
24 Barry Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A
Life of Tom Waits (New York: Broadway
Books, 2009), p. 73. Waits’s poem beginning
“diamonds on my windshield, tears from
heaven” appeared together with drawings by
Bukowski in the magazine The Sunset Palms
Hotel, vol. 2, Spring 1974, no. 4.
 490/499

25 Carol Sklenicka, Raymond Carver: A

Writer’s Life (New York: Scribner, 2009),
pp. 168. Also see pp. 207–9, 210, 448.
26 Conversations with Raymond Carver,
eds. Marshall Bruce Gentry and William L.
Stull (Jackson: University of Mississippi
Press, 1990), pp. 36. Also see pp. 192, 226.
For Carver’s poem on Bukowski, “You Don’t
Know What Love Is (an evening with Charles
Bukowski),” see Fires: Essays, Poems, Stor-
ies (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), pp.
57–61.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

More Notes of a Dirty Old Man—like my

earlier book of Bukowski interviews, Sun-
light Here I Am: Interviews & Encounters
1963–1993, and the two previous volumes I
have edited for City Lights, Portions from a
Wine-Stained Notebook and Absence of the
Hero—has had a long genesis. Back in the
nineties, Jamie Boran sent me an anthology
of Bukowski’s work that he had compiled
from the Los Angeles Free Press. This was
one of the catalysts that set in motion my
fifteen-year quest for unpublished and un-
collected Bukowski writings. I included a se-
lection of the Notes of a Dirty Old Man
columns in Portions and Absence, but it be-
came clear to me that there remained a still
unknown cornucopia of wonderful stories,
essays, interviews, cartoons, poems, and
aphorisms. At City Lights, Garrett
 492/499

Caples—who like T.S. Eliot is both poet and

editor—shared my enthusiasm. He imagined
this book as a sequel to the first and famous
Notes of a Dirty Old Man, and I would like
to thank him for his dedication to this pro-
ject during a time when he has been working
hard on his own groundbreaking edition of
Philip Lamantia. I would also like to thank
Julie Herrada, Head of the Labadie Collec-
tion, Special Collections at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. This is a treasure trove
of anarchist literature, and I spent many
happy hours in that seventh-floor room with
a view. Thanks to Roger Myers of the
University of Arizona Library, Special Collec-
tions and to Ed Fields, University of Califor-
nia at Santa Barbara, Department of Special
Collections, Davidson Library. Thanks Scott
Harrison, former proprietor of the Aban-
doned Planet bookstore in San Francisco for
information about John Bryan as well as to
Al Fogel for his exchange of letters with
 493/499

Norman Mailer. I am grateful to Roni, head

of the Charles Bukowski Gesellschaft in Ger-
many and editor of a splendid series of Jahr-
bücher devoted to Bukowski scholarship
published by the Society. Roni, at the very
last moment of the book’s production, aler-
ted me to the existence of the extremely cool
photograph by Michael Montfort that graces
the cover. My thanks to Daisy Montfort for
granting permission. Gratitude as always for
everything to Maria Beye. Muchas gracias to
Abel Debritto—il maestro di che sanno—who
helped with his encyclopaedic knowledge of
all things Bukowski. To my 90-year-old fath-
er, Pierre Calonne, who during this past year
showed me the meaning of the word courage.
To the memory of my mother Mariam. To
my brother Ariel, his wife Pat, my nephews
Alexander, Nicholas, and Michael. Deepest
thanks to E.M. Cioran, for keeping me up,
bright, and sublime. And finally, my gratit-
ude to Linda Lee Bukowski whom I had the
 494/499

pleasure of meeting for the first time in

October 2010 at the Huntington Library’s
Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge celebra-
tion in San Marino, California, and whose
unflagging energy and passion continue to
inspire me: thank you, Linda.
Charles Bukowaki was born in Ander-
nach, Germany, in 1920 and brought to Cali-
fornia at age three. Although Bukowski spent
two years at Los Angeles City College, he was
largely self-educated as a writer. He spent
much time in his youth in the Los Angeles
Public Library, where he encountered some
of the writers whose work would influence
his own: Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Nietzsche,
D. H. Lawrence, Céline, e. e. cummings,
Pound, Fante, and Saroyan. He was a prolific
poet and prose writer, publishing more than
fifty volumes. City Lights has published sev-
eral Bukowski titles including Tales of
Ordinary Madness, Notes of a Dirty Old
Man, The Most Beautiful Woman in Town,
Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook:
Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944–1990,
and Absence of the Hero: Uncollected Stor-
ies and Essays Vol. 2. 1946–1992 (2010).
Charles Bukowski died in San Pedro, Califor-
nia, on March 9, 1994.
 496/499

David Stephen Calonne is the author of

William Saroyan: My Real Work Is Being,
The Colossus of Armenia: G.I. Gurdjieff and
Henry Miller, and most recently Bebop
Buddhist Ecstasy: Saroyan’s Influence on
Kerouac and the Beats with an Introduction
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (San Francisco:
Sore Dove Press, 2010). He has edited
Charles Bukowski: Sunlight Here I Am/In-
terviews & Encounters 1963–1993. For City
Lights, he has previously edited Portions
from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected
Stories and Essays, 1944–1990 (2008), and
Absence of the Hero. He has lectured in Paris
and at many universities including UCLA,
the University of Chicago, the University of
Pennsylvania, Columbia University, UC
Berkeley, the European University Institute
in Florence, the University of London, Har-
vard, and Oxford. He has taught at the
University of Texas at Austin and the
 497/499

University of Michigan. During Spring Term

2009, he taught a seminar on William Saroy-
an at the University of Chicago. Presently he
teaches at Eastern Michigan University.
 Copyright © 2011 by the Estate of Charles Bukowski.

Afterword copyright © 2011 by David Stephen Calonne.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bukowski, Charles.
More notes of a dirty old man : the uncollected columns /
Charles Bukowski; edited, with an afterword by David
Stephen Calonne.
p. cm.
This collection gathers previously uncollected entries from
the author’s autobiographical column.
eISBN : 978-0-872-86550-1
1. Bukowski, Charles. I. Calonne, David Stephen, 1953–II.
Title.
 499/499

PS3552.U4M65 2011
818’.54—dc22

2011017877

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261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133

Visit our website: www.citylights.com