“Hank,” he told me, “when I was doing time, I was always in trouble. The warden kept throwing me in the hole. But I liked the hole. The warden would come around and lift the lid and look in, and he asked me one time, ‘HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH? ARE YOU READY TO COME OUT OF THERE?’ I took a piece of my shit and threw it up and hit him in the face. He closed the lid and left me down there. I just stayed in there. When the warden came back he didn’t lift the lid all the way. ‘WELL, HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH YET?’ ‘NOT AT ALL,’ I yelled back. Finally the warden had me pulled out of there. ‘HE ENJOYS IT TOO MUCH,’ he told the guards. ‘GET HIS ASS OUT OF THERE!’ “
Sam was a great guy, then he got to gambling. He couldn’t pay his rent, he was always in Gardena, he slept in the crappers there and began gambling again as soon as he woke up. Finally Sam got tossed out of his apartment. I traced him to a tiny room down in the Korean district. He was sitting in a corner.
“Hank, all I can do is drink milk but it comes right up. But the doctors say there is nothing wrong with me.”
Two weeks later he was dead. This man who shared my philosophy about people.
“Listen,” I said to Sarah, “there’s nothing happening here. This is death. Let’s leave.”
“We have all the free drinks we want...”
“It’s not worth it.”
“But the night is young, maybe something will happen.”
“Not unless I make it happen and I’m not in the mood.”
“Let’s wait just a little while...”
I knew what she meant. For us it was the end of Hollywood. All in all, she cared more for that world than I did. Not much, but some. She had begun studying to be an actor.
Still it was just people standing, that’s all. The women weren’t beautiful and the men weren’t interesting. It was duller than dull. The dullness actually hurt.
“I’m going to crack unless we get out of here,” I told Sarah.
“All right,” she said, “let’s leave.”
Good old Frank was downstairs with the limo. “You’re leaving early,” he said. “Uh huh,” I said.
Frank placed us in the back and we found a new bottle of wine in the limo. We uncorked it as our trusty man found the Harbor Freeway south.
“Hey, Frank, want a drink?”
“Sure as shit, man!”
He hit a button and the little glass partition dropped. I slipped the bottle through.
As Frank drove the limo along he took a hit from the wine bottle. I don’t know but somehow it all looked very strange and funny and Sarah and I started laughing.
At last, the night was alive.
46
After that, not much. The movie opened in 3 or 4 theatres in town. People began bothering me at the racetrack.
“Did you write that movie?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were a horseplayer.”
“I am. Now, if you will excuse me...”
Some people had a nice way of approaching. Others were terrors. They saw you and their eyes widened and then came the rush toward you. I learned to recognize that look and when I saw it I would duck down some side aisle, make a quick turn. I’m sure that I ran away from a lot of people who had no intention of bothering me. I knew in time that things would get back to normal and that once again I’d just be another old guy at the track like all the other old guys.
The reviews of The Dance of Jim Beam were both good and bad. The New York Times gave it a wondrous review but Jim Beam upset the lady at The New Yorker. Rick Talbot said it was one of the ten best movies of the year.
Then there were odd moments. One night I was upstairs and Sarah hollered up, “They are reviewing The Dance of Jim Beam”
It was Wexler and Selby on a cable station. When I arrived they were showing the shot where Jack Bledsoe is throwing Francine Bowers’s clothing out of their 6th floor window. Then the shot ended.
Selby shook his head and limp-wristed the movie away: “AWFUL! TERRIBLE! This has to be the worst movie of the year! Here we have this...bum...with his pants down around his ankles! He’s filthy, uncaring...obnoxious! All he wants to do is beat up the bartender! From time to time he writes poems on torn pieces of paper! But mostly we see this scum-bag...sucking on bottles of wine or begging for drinks at the bar! In one bar scene we see two ladies fighting to their very death over him. Impossible! NOBODY, NOBODY would ever care for this man! Who could care for him? We rate movies from one to ten here. Is there any way I can give this a minus one?”
Sure enough, up on the screen appeared a minus one.
Then Wexler started. “I agree with your view but I give it a two. I think there was one funny scene, where he takes a bath in the tub with the dog.”
“Oh no,” said Selby, “that was stupid...”
After a month the movie was still playing at 3 or 4 theatres. Then it opened in a theatre near San Pedro and we decided to go see it. After all, we had never seen it on a large screen except the time of the premiere and the huge elongated heads.
We drove to a small mall and parked where we could see the theatre. And on the marquee were the words, The Dance of Jim Beam. That was a thrill, seeing that.
I had seen most of my movies as a kid, all very horrible movies. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy. Bob Hope. Tyrone Power. The Three Stooges. Cary Grant. Those movies shook and rattled your brains, left you without hope or energy. I sat in those movie houses, sickened in the gut and soul.
We sat in the parking lot and waited for the end of the afternoon showing.
“Maybe nobody is in there,” I said. “Maybe nobody will come out.”
“They’re in there, Hank...”
We waited. Then the movie was over and they started coming out.
“There’s 3,” said Sarah.
“5,” I said.
“8.”
“Eleven...”
I felt better. They kept coming. I gave up counting.
Then they were all out of there. It would soon be time for the early evening show.
“Do you think anybody else does this, Sarah?”
“What?”
“This sitting and watching to see how many people are going in and out of your movie?”
“I’m sure we’re not the first.”
More time went by.
“Where are the people?” I asked. “Maybe nobody’s coming!”
“They’ll be here.”
Just then, sure enough, old model cars began pulling in, circling, looking for places to park. One guy got out with a wine bottle in a paper sack.
“The drunks are coming to check for accuracy,” I laughed.
“They’ll find it,” said my dear wife.
“As a historian of drink I don’t have a peer.”
“That’s because none of them have lived as long as you. What’s your’secret?”
“Never get out of bed before noon.”
It looked like a fair crowd going in. We walked on over to the theatre. I stood at the ticket booth. “Two,” I told the girl, “one senior.”
Then the fellow took our tickets, ripped them and we walked in. Coming attractions were playing full volume. We got two seats to the side but far back, and waited. There seemed to be at least 100 people in there.
Then, at the last moment, two young people, male and female, mid-twenties, tall and slender, took the seats in front of us.
The coming attractions were over and then there was The Dance of Jim Beam. The credits appeared. And the movie began. I had seen it on video 3 or 4 times and had it fairly well memorized. Ah, it was the story of my life. Who else could jam it down their throats like that? But actually, it wasn’t meant to be that self-concerned. I only wanted to show what strange and desperate lives some drunks live and I was the one drunk I knew best.
I had been preceded by some good drinkers. Eugene O’Neill, Faulkner, Hemingway, Jack London. The booze loosened those typewriter keys, gave them some spark and gamble.
“Do you think anybody knows that you’re here?” Sarah asked.
“No, I look pretty much like anybody else.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Yes, I don’t like to look like anybody else.”
The tall slender male in front of us turned and said, “Please, I’d like to watch the movie.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
The movie continued. Then there was a sudden indecency and the girl in front of us winced and said, “Oh no.”
“It’s all right, Darlene,” said her tall companion.
Darlene got over that and then there was a simple scene where a lady in the bar is bragging about how she gives the best head in town. The lady says, “Nobody in this town can swallow paste like I can!”
Darlene covered her face and said, “I can’t believe it...”
“It’s all right, honey,” said her male cohort.
Darlene continued her face-covering act throughout the movie but neither Darlene or her boyfriend left.
Then the movie was over and the people slowly left their seats. We waited. Well, I had seen a lot worse movies, especially in the thirties.
Sarah and I got up and moved up the aisle toward the exit. We walked to the car, sat there watching them pull out. I rolled down the windows and we had a smoke.
Then an old car drove slowly past in front of us. In it was a single man. He saw us and began waving. He had a crazy smile upon his face. I waved back, then he was gone.
“He spotted you,” said Sarah.
“Yes, that was funny.”
“Yeah.”
We drove back home just like from any other movie.
We got back to the place and I opened a bottle of good red wine. The blood of the gods.
The news was on TV. The news was bad.
We sat and drank and watched TV until Johnny Carson came on. There he was, perfectly clothed. His hand kept darting to the knot of his necktie, he was subconsciously worried about his appearance. Johnny went into his monologue and Ed’s booming false laughter could be heard from the sidelines. It paid well.
“What are you going to do now?” Sarah asked.
“About what?”
“I mean, the movie is really over.”
“Oh, yes.”
“What will you do?”
“There are the horses.”
“Besides the horses.”
“Oh, hell, I’ll write a novel about writing the screenplay and making the movie.”
“Sure, I guess you can do that.”
“I can, I think.”
“What are you going to call it?”
“Hollywood.”
“Hollywood!”
“Yes...”
And this is it.
Photo: Michael Montfort
CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).
During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). His most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967 (2001), and The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001).
All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come, Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.
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