Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader

by Charles Bukowski

  there is no escaping her being

  there is no desire to …

  my radio is playing symphonic music

  that she cannot hear

  but her movements coincide exactly

  to the rhythms of the

  symphony …

  she is dark, she is dark

  she is reading about God.

  lam Cod.

  claws of paradise

  wooden butterfly

  baking soda smile

  sawdust fly—

  I love my belly

  and the liquor store man

  calls me,

  “Mr. Schlitz.”

  the cashiers at the race track

  scream,

  ‘THE POET KNOWS!”

  when I cash my tickets.

  the ladies

  in and out of bed

  say they love me

  as I walk by with wet

  white feet.

  albatross with drunken eyes

  Popeye’es dirt-stained shorts

  bedbugs of Paris,

  I have cleared the barricades

  have mastered the

  automobile

  the hangover

  the tears

  but I know

  the final doom

  like any schoolboy viewing

  the cat being crushed

  by passing traffic.

  my skull has an inch and a

  half crack right at the

  dome.

  most of my teeth are

  in front. I get

  dizzy spells in supermarkets

  spit blood when I drink

  whiskey

  and become saddened to

  the point of

  grief

  when I think of all the

  good women I have known

  who have

  dissolved

  vanished

  over trivialities:

  trips to Pasadena,

  children’s picnics,

  toothpaste caps down

  the drain.

  there is nothing to do

  but drink

  play the horse

  bet on the poem

  as the young girls

  become women

  and the machineguns

  point toward me

  crouched

  behind walls thinner

  than eyelids.

  there’s no defense

  except all the errors

  made.

  meanwhile

  I take showers

  answer the phone

  boil eggs

  study motion and waste

  and feel as good

  as the next while

  walking in the sun.

  Fay was all right with the pregnancy. For an old gal, she was all right. We waited around at our place. Finally the time came.

  “It won’t be long,” she said. “I don’t want to get there too early.”

  I went out and checked the car. Came back.

  “Oooh, oh,” she said. “No, wait.”

  Maybe she could save the world. I was proud of her calm. I forgave her for the dirty dishes and The New Yorker and her writers’ workshop. The old gal was only another lonely creature in a world that didn’t care.

  “We better go now,” I said.

  “No,” said Fay, “I don’t want to make you wait too long. I know you haven’t been feeling well.”

  “To hell with me. Let’s make it.”

  “No, please, Hank.”

  She just sat there.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  She sat there ten minutes. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water. When I came out she said, “You ready to drive?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know where the hospital is?”

  “Of course.”

  I helped her into the car. I had made two practice runs the week earlier. But when we got there I had no idea where to park. Fay pointed up a runway.

  “Go in there. Park in there. We’ll go in from there.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said …

  She was in bed in a back room overlooking the street. Her face grimaced. “Hold my hand,” she said.

  I did.

  “Is it really going to happen?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You make it seem so easy,” I said.

  “You’re so very nice. It helps.”

  “I’d like to be nice. It’s that god damned post office …”

  “I know. I know.”

  We were looking out the back window.

  I said, “Look at those people down there. They have no idea what is going on up here. They just walk on the sidewalk. Yet, it’s funny … they were once born themselves, each one of them.”

  “Yes, it is funny.”

  I could feel the movements of her body through her hand.

  “Hold tighter,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll hate it when you go.”

  “Where’s the doctor? Where is everybody? What the hell!”

  “They’ll be here.”

  Just then a nurse walked in. It was a Catholic hospital and she was a very handsome nurse, dark, Spanish or Portuguese.

  “You … must go … now,” she told me.

  I gave Fay crossed fingers and a twisted smile. I don’t think she saw. I took the elevator downstairs.

  My German doctor walked up. The one who had given me the blood tests.

  “Congratulations,” he said, shaking my hand, “it’s a girl. Nine pounds, three ounces.”

  “And the mother?”

  “The mother will be all right. She was no trouble at all.”

  “When can I see them?”

  “They’ll let you know. Just sit there and they’ll call you.” Then he was gone.

  I looked through the glass. The nurse pointed down at my child. The child’s face was very red and it was screaming louder than any of the other children. The room was full of screaming babies. So many births! The nurse seemed very proud of my baby. At least, I hoped it was mine. She picked the girl up so I could see it better. I smiled through the glass, I didn’t know how to act. The girl just screamed at me. Poor thing, I thought, poor little damned thing. I didn’t know then that she would be a beautiful girl someday who would look just like me, hahaha.

  I motioned the nurse to put the child down, then waved goodbye to both of them. She was a nice nurse. Good legs, good hips. Fair breasts.

  Fay had a spot of blood on the left side of her mouth and I took a wet cloth and wiped it off. Women were meant to suffer; no wonder they asked for constant declarations of love.

  “I wish they’d give me my baby,” said Fay, “it’s not right to separate us like this.”

  “I know. But I guess there’s some medical reason.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t seem right.

  “No, it doesn’t. But the child looked fine. I’ll do what I can to make them send up the child as soon as possible. There must have been 40 babies down there. They’re making all the mothers wait. I guess it’s to let them get their strength back. Our baby looked very strong, I assure you. Please don’t worry.”

  “I’d be so happy with my baby.”

  “I know, I know. It won’t be long.”

  “Sir,” a fat Mexican nurse walked up, “I’ll have to ask you to leave now.”

  “But I’m the father.”

  “We know. But your wife must rest.”

  I squeezed Fay’s hand, kissed her on the forehead. She closed her eyes and seemed to sleep then. She was not a young woman. Maybe she hadn’t saved the world but she had made a major improvement. Ring one up for Fay.

  —POST OFFICE

  marina:

  majestic, magic

  infinite

  my little girl is

  sun

  on the carpet—

  out the door

  picking a<
br />
  flower, ha!,

  an old man,

  battle-wrecked,

  emerges from his

  chair

  and she looks at me

  but only sees

  love,

  ha!, and I become

  quick with the world

  and love right back

  just like I was meant

  to do.

  The baby was crawling, discovering the world. Marina slept in bed with us at night. There was Marina, Fay, the cat and myself. The cat slept on the bed too. Look here, I thought, I have three mouths depending on me. How very strange. I sat there and watched them sleeping.

  Then two nights in a row when I came home in the mornings, the early mornings, Fay was sitting up reading the classified sections.

  “All these rooms are so damned expensive,” she said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  The next night I asked her as she read the paper:

  “Are you moving out?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I’ll help you find a place tomorrow. I’ll drive you around.”

  I agreed to pay her a sum each month. She said, “All right.”

  Fay got the girl. I got the cat.

  We found a place eight or ten blocks away. I helped her move in, said goodbye to the girl and drove on back.

  I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right.

  Fay was still wearing black to protest the war. She attended local peace demonstrations, love-ins, went to poetry readings, workshops, communist party meetings, and sat in a hippie coffee house. She took the child with her. If she wasn’t out she was sitting in a chair smoking cigarette after cigarette and reading. She wore protest buttons on her black blouse. But she was usually off somewhere with the girl when I drove over to visit.

  I finally found them in one day. Fay was eating sunflower seeds with yogurt. She baked her own bread but it wasn’t very good.

  “I met Andy, this truckdriver,” she told me. “He paints on the side. That’s one of his paintings.” Fay pointed to the wall.

  I was playing with the girl. I looked at the painting. I didn’t say anything.

  “He has a big cock,” said Fay. “He was over the other night and he asked me, ‘How would you like to be fucked with a big cock?’ and I told him, ‘I would rather be fucked with love!’”

  “He sounds like a man of the world,” I told her.

  I played with the girl a little more, then left. I had a scheme test coming up.

  Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me.

  —POST OFFICE

  notes upon the flaxen aspect:

  a John F. Kennedy flower knocks upon my door and is shot through the

  neck;

  the gladiolas gather by the dozens around the tip of

  India

  dripping into Ceylon;

  dozens of oysters read Germaine Greer.

  meanwhile, I itch from the slush of the Philippines

  to the eye of the minnow

  the minnow being eaten by the cumulative dreams of

  Simon Bolivar. O,

  freedom from the limitation of angular distance would be

  delicious.

  war is perfect,

  the solid way drips and leaks,

  Schopenhauer laughed for 72 years,

  and I was told by a very small man in a New York City

  pawnshop

  one afternoon:

  “Christ got more attention than I did

  but I went further on less …”

  well, the distance between 5 points is the same as the

  distance between 3 points is the same as the distance

  between one point:

  it is all as cordial as a bonbon:

  all this that we are wrapped

  in:

  eunuchs are more exact than sleep

  the postage stamp is mad, Indiana is ridiculous

  the chameleon is the last walking flower.

  No Way to Paradise

  I was sitting in a bar on Western Ave. It was around midnight and I was in my usual confused state. I mean, you know, nothing works right: the women, the jobs, the no jobs, the weather, the dogs. Finally you just sit in a kind of stricken state and wait like you’re on the bus stop bench waiting for death.

  Well, I was sitting there and here comes this one with long dark hair, a good body, sad brown eyes. I didn’t turn on for her. I ignored her even though she had taken the stool next to mine when there were a dozen other empty seats. In fact, we were the only ones in the bar except for the bartender. She ordered a dry wine. Then she asked me what I was drinking.

  “Scotch and water.”

  “Give him a scotch and water,” she told the barkeep.

  Well, that was unusual.

  She opened her purse, removed a small wire cage and took some little people out and sat them on the bar. They were all around three inches tall and they were alive and properly dressed. There were four of them, two men and two women.

  “They make these now,” she said, “they’re very expensive. They cost around $2,000 apiece when I got them. They go for around $2,400 now. I don’t know the manufacturing process but it’s probably against the law.”

  The little people were walking around on the top of the bar. Suddenly one of the little guys slapped one of the little women across the face.

  “You bitch,” he said, “I’ve had it with you!”

  “No, George, you can’t,” she cried, “I love you! I’ll kill myself! I’ve got to have you!”

  “I don’t care,” said the little guy, and he took out a tiny cigarette and lit it. “I’ve got a right to live.”

  “If you don’t want her,” said the other little guy, “I’ll take her. I love her.”

  “But I don’t want you, Marty. I’m in love with George.”

  “But he’s a bastard, Anna, a real bastard!”

  “I know, but I love him anyhow.”

  The little bastard then walked over and kissed the other little woman.

  “I’ve got a triangle going,” said the lady who had bought me the drink. “That’s Marty and George and Anna and Ruthie. George goes down, he goes down good. Marty’s kind of square.”

  “Isn’t it sad to watch all that? Er, what’s your name?”

  “Dawn. It’s a terrible name. But that’s what mothers do to their children sometimes.”

  “I’m Hank. But isn’t it sad …”

  “No, it isn’t sad to watch it. I haven’t had much luck with my own loves, terrible luck really …”

  “We all have terrible luck.”

  “I suppose. Anyhow, I bought these little people and now I watch them, and it’s like having it and not having any of the problems. But I get awfully hot when they start making love. That’s when it gets difficult.”

  “Are they sexy?”

  “Very, very sexy. My god, it makes me hot!”

  “Why don’t you make them do it? I mean, right now. We’ll watch them together.”

  “Oh, you can’t make them do it. They’ve got to do it on their own.”

  “How often do they do it?”

  “Oh, they’re pretty good. They go four or five times a week.”

  They were walking around on the bar. “Listen,” said Marty, “give me a chance. Just give me a chance, Anna.”

  “No,” said Anna, “my love belongs to George. There’s no other way it can be.”

  George was kissing Ruthie, feeling her breasts. Ruthie was getting hot.

  “Ruthie’s getting hot,” I told Dawn.

  “She is. She really is.”

  I was getting hot too. I grabbed Dawn and kissed her.

  “Listen,” she said, “I don’t like them to make love in public. I’l
l take them home and have them do it.”

  “But then I can’t watch.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to come with me.”

  “All right,” I said, “let’s go.”

  I finished my drink and we walked out together. She carried the little people in the small wire cage. We got into her car and put the people in between us on the front seat. I looked at Dawn. She was really young and beautiful. She seemed to have good insides too. How could she have gone wrong with her men? There were so many ways those things could miss. The four little people had cost her $8,000. Just that to get away from relationships and not to get away from relationships.

  Her house was near the hills, a pleasant looking place. We got out and walked up to the door. I held the little people in the cage while Dawn opened the door.

  “I heard Randy Newman last week at The Troubador. Isn’t he great?” she asked.

  “Yes, he is.”

  We walked into the front room and Dawn took the little people out and placed them on the coffeetable. Then she walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and got out a bottle of wine. She brought in two glasses.

  “Pardon me,” she said, “but you seem a little bit crazy. What do you do?”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “Are you going to write about this?”

  “They’ll never believe it, but I’ll write it.”

  “Look,” said Dawn, “George has got Ruthie’s panties off. He’s fingering her. Ice?”

  “Yes, he is. No, no ice. Straight’s fine.”

  “I don’t know,” said Dawn, “it really gets me hot to watch them. Maybe it’s because they’re so small. It really heats me up.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Look, George is going down on her now.”

  “He is, isn’t he?”

  “Look at them!”

  “God o mighty!”

  I grabbed Dawn. We stood there kissing. As we did her eyes went from mine to them and then back to mine again.

  Little Marty and little Anna were watching too.

  “Look,” said Marty, “they’re going to make it. We might as well make it. Even the big folks are going to make it. Look at them!”

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Dawn. “They said we’re going to make it. Is that true?”

  “I hope it’s true,” said Dawn.

  I got her over to the couch and worked her dress up around her hips. I kissed her along the throat. “I love you,” I said.