“Nothing.”
There were some more questions of the same order. The boys were only good for one beer apiece. Joe took care of the other four. They left in 45 minutes. But the one without the beard said, just as they left, “We’ll be back.”
Joe sat down to the machine again with a new drink. He couldn’t type. He got up and walked to the phone. He dialed. And waited. She was there. She answered.
“Listen,” said Joe, “let me get out of here. Let me come down there and lay up.”
“You mean you want to stay tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again.”
“All right.”
Joe walked around the corner of the porch and right down the driveway. She lived three or four courts down. He knocked. Lu let him in. The lights were out. She just had on panties and led him to the bed.
“God,” he moaned.
“What is it?”
“Well, it’s all unexplainable in a way or almost unexplainable.”
“Just take off your clothes and come to bed.”
Joe did. He crawled in. He didn’t know at first if it would work again. So many nights in a row. But her body was there and it was a young body. And the lips were open and real. Joe floated in. It was good being in the dark. He worked her over good. He even got down there again and tongued that cunt. Then as he mounted, after four or five strokes he heard a voice …
“Mayer … I’m looking for a Joe Mayer …”
He heard his landlord’s voice. His landlord was drunk.
“Well, if he ain’t in that front apartment, you check this one back here. He’s either in one or the other.”
Joe got in four or five more strokes before the knocking began at the door. Joe slid out and, naked, went to the door. He opened a side window.
“Yeah?”
“Hey, Joe! Hi, Joe, what you doin’, Joe?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, how about some beer, Joe?”
“No,” said Joe. He slammed the side window and walked back to the bed, got in.
“Who was it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize the face.”
“Kiss me, Joe. Just don’t lay there.”
He kissed her as the Southern California moon came through the Southern California curtains. He was Joe Mayer. Freelance writer.
He had it made.
—HOT WATER MUSIC
the happy life of the tired
neatly in tune with
the song of a fish
I stand in the kitchen
halfway to madness
dreaming of Hemingway’s
Spain.
it’s muggy, like they say,
I can’t breathe,
have crapped and
read the sports pages,
opened the refrigerator
looked at a piece of purple
meat,
tossed it back
in.
the place to find the center
is at the edge
that pounding in the sky
is just a water pipe
vibrating.
terrible things inch in the
walls; cancer flowers grow
on the porch; my white cat has
one eye torn
away and there are only 7 days
of racing left in the
summer meet.
the dancer never arrived from the
Club Normandy
and Jimmy didn’t bring the
hooker,
but there’s a postcard from
Arkansas
and a throwaway from Food King:
10 free vacations to Hawaii,
all I got to do is
fill out the form.
but I don’t want to go to
Hawaii.
I want the hooker with the pelican eyes
brass belly-button
and
ivory heart.
I take out the piece of purple
meat
drop it into the
pan.
then the phone rings.
I fall to one knee and roll under the
table. I remain there
until it
stops.
then I get up and
turn on the
radio.
no wonder Hemingway was a
drunk, Spain be damned,
I can’t stand it
either.
it’s so
muggy.
the poetry reading
at high noon
at a small college near the beach
sober
the sweat running down my arms
a spot of sweat on the table
I flatten it with my finger
blood money blood money
my god they must think I love this like the others
but it’s for bread and beer and rent
blood money
I’m tense lousy feel bad
poor people I’m failing I’m failing
a woman gets up
walks out
slams the door
a dirty poem
somebody told me not to read dirty poems
here
it’s too late.
my eyes can’t see some lines
I read it
out—
desperate trembling
lousy
they can’t hear my voice
and I say,
I quit, that’s it, I’m
finished.
and later in my room
there’s scotch and beer:
the blood of a coward.
this then
will be my destiny:
scrabbling for pennies in dark tiny halls
reading poems I have long since become tired
of.
and I used to think
that men who drove buses
or cleaned out latrines
or murdered men in alleys were
fools.
short order
I took my girlfriend to your last poetry reading,
she said.
yes, yes? I asked.
she’s young and pretty, she said.
and? I asked.
she hated your
guts.
then she stretched out on the couch
and pulled off her
boots.
I don’t have very good legs,
she said.
all right, I thought, I don’t have very good
poetry; she doesn’t have very good
legs.
scramble two.
A Man
George was lying in his trailer, flat on his back, watching a small portable T.V. His dinner dishes were undone, his breakfast dishes were undone, he needed a shave, and ash from his rolled cigarette dropped onto his undershirt. Some of the ash was still burning. Sometimes the burning ash missed the undershirt and hit his skin, then he cursed, brushing it away.
There was a knock on the trailer door. He got slowly to his feet and answered the door. It was Constance. She had a fifth of unopened whiskey in a bag.
“George, I left that son of a bitch, I couldn’t stand that son of a bitch anymore.”
“Sit down.”
George opened the fifth, got two glasses, filled each a third with whiskey, two thirds with water. He sat down on the bed with Constance. She took a cigarette out of her purse and lit it. She was drunk and her hands trembled.
“I took his damn money too. I took his damn money and split while he was at work. You don’t know how I’ve suffered with that son of a bitch.”
“Lemme have a smoke,” said George.
She handed it to him and as she leaned near, George put his arm around her, pulled her over and kissed her.
“You son of a bitch,” she said, “I missed you.”
“I missed those good legs of yours, Connie. I�
��ve really missed those good legs.”
“You still like ’em?”
“I get hot just looking.”
“I never could make it with a college guy,” said Connie. “They’re too soft, they’re milktoast. And he kept his house clean. George, it was like having a maid. He did it all. The place was spotless. You could eat beef stew right out of the crapper. He was antiseptic, that’s what he was.”
“Drink up. You’ll feel better.”
“And he couldn’t make love.”
“You mean he couldn’t get it up?”
“Oh, he got it up. He got it up all the time. But he didn’t know how to make a woman happy, you know. He didn’t know what to do. All that money, all that education—he was useless.”
“I wish I had a college education.”
“You don’t need one. You’ve got everything you need, George.”
“I’m just a flunky. All the shit jobs.”
“I said you’ve got everything you need, George. You know how to make a woman happy.”
“Yeh?”
“Yes. And you know what else? His mother came around! His mother! Two or three times a week. And she’d sit there looking at me, pretending to like me but all the time treating me like I was a whore. Like I was a big bad whore stealing her son away from her! Her precious Walter! Christ! What a mess!”
“Drink up, Connie.”
George was finished. He waited for Connie to empty her glass, then took it, refilled both glasses.
“He claimed he loved me. And I’d say, ‘Look at my pussy, Walter!’ And he wouldn’t look at my pussy. He said, ‘I don’t want to look at that thing.’ That thing! That’s what he called it! You’re not afraid of my pussy, are you, George?”
“It’s never bit me yet.”
“But you’ve bit it, you’ve nibbled on it, haven’t you, George?”
“I suppose I have.”
“And you’ve licked it, sucked it?”
“I suppose so.”
“You know damn well, George, what you’ve done.”
“How much money did you get?”
“Six hundred dollars.”
“I don’t like people who rob other people, Connie.”
“That’s why you’re a fucking dishwasher. You’re honest. But he’s such an ass, George. And he can afford the money, and I’ve earned it … him and his mother and his love, his mother-love, his clean little washbowls and toilets and disposal bags and new cars and breath chasers and after-shave lotions and his little hard-ons and his precious love-making. All for himself, you understand, all for himself! You know what a woman wants, George …”
“Thanks for the whiskey, Connie. Lemme have another cigarette.”
George filled them up again. “I’ve missed your legs, Connie. I’ve really missed those legs. I like the way you wear those high heels. They drive me crazy. These modern women don’t know what they’re missing. The high heel shapes the calf, the thigh, the ass; it puts rhythm into the walk. It really turns me on!”
“You talk like a poet, George. Sometimes you do talk like that. You are one hell of a dishwasher.”
“You know what I’d really like to do?”
“What?”
“I’d like to whip you with my belt on the legs, the ass, the thighs. I’d like to make you quiver and cry and then when you’re quivering and crying I’d slam it into you in pure love.”
“I don’t want that, George. You’ve never talked that way before. You’ve always done right with me.”
“Pull your dress up higher.”
“What?”
“Pull your dress up higher, I want to see more of your legs.”
“You do like my legs, don’t you, George?”
“Let the light shine on them!”
Constance hiked her dress.
“God Christ shit,” said George.
“You like my legs?”
“I love your legs!”
Then George reached across the bed and slapped Constance hard across the face. Her cigarette flipped out of her mouth.
“What’d you do that for?”
“You fucked Walter! You fucked Walter!”
“So what the hell?”
“So pull your dress higher!”
“No!”
“Do what I say!”
George slapped her again, harder. Constance hiked her skirt.
“Just up to the panties!” shouted George. “I don’t quite want to see the panties!”
“Christ, George, what’s gone wrong with you?”
“You fucked Walter!”
“George, I swear, you’ve gone crazy. I want to leave. Let me out of here, George!”
“Don’t move or I’ll kill you!”
“You’d kill me?”
“I swear it!”
George got up and poured himself a full glass of straight whiskey, drank it, and sat down next to Constance. He took his cigarette and held it against her wrist. She screamed. He held it there, firmly, then pulled it away.
“I’m a man, baby, understand that?”
“I know you’re a man, George.”
“Here, look at my muscles!” George stood up and flexed both of his arms. “Beautiful, eh, baby? Look at that muscle! Feel it! Feel it!”
Constance felt one of his arms. Then the other.
“Yes, you have a beautiful body, George.”
“I’m a man. I’m a dishwasher but I’m a man, a real man.”
“I know it, George.”
“I’m not like that milkshit you left.”
“I know it.”
“And I can sing too. You ought to hear my voice.”
Constance sat there. George began to sing. He sang “Old Man River.” Then he sang “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” He sang “The St. Louis Blues.” He sang “God Bless America,” stopping several times and laughing. Then he sat down next to Constance. He said, “Connie, you have beautiful legs.” He asked for another cigarette. He smoked it, drank two more drinks, then put his head down on Connie’s legs, against the stockings, in her lap, and he said, “Connie, I guess I’m no good, I guess I’m crazy, I’m sorry I hit you, I’m sorry I burned you with that cigarette.”
Constance sat there. She ran her fingers through George’s hair, stroking him, soothing him. Soon he was asleep. She waited a while longer. Then she lifted his head and placed it on the pillow, lifted his legs and straightened them out on the bed. She stood up, walked to the fifth, poured a good jolt of whiskey into her glass, added a touch of water and drank it down. She walked to the trailer door, pulled it open, stepped out, closed it. She walked through the backyard, opened the fence gate, walked up the alley under the one o’clock moon. The sky was clear of clouds. The same skyful of stars was up there. She got on the boulevard, and walked east and reached the entrance of The Blue Mirror. She walked in, looked around and there was Walter sitting alone and drunk at the end of the bar. She walked up and sat down next to him.
“Missed me, baby?” she asked.
Walter looked up. He recognized her. He didn’t answer. He looked at the bartender and the bartender walked toward them. They all knew each other.
—SOUTH OF NO NORTH
on going out to get the mail
the droll noon
where squadrons of worms creep up like
stripteasers
to be raped by blackbirds.
I go outside
and all up and down the street
the green armies shoot color
like an everlasting 4th of July,
and I too seem to swell inside,
a kind of unknown bursting, a
feeling, perhaps, that there isn’t any
enemy
anywhere.
and I reach down into the box
and there is
nothing—not even a
letter from the gas co. saying they will
shut it off
again.
not even a short note from my
x-wife
bragging about her present
happiness.
my hand searches the mailbox in a kind of
disbelief long after the mind has
given up.
there’s not even a dead fly
down in there.
I am a fool, I think, I should have known it
works like this.
I go inside as all the flowers leap to
please me.
anything? the woman
asks.
nothing, I answer, what’s for
breakfast?
somebody
god I got the sad blue blues,
this woman sat there and she
said
are you really Charles
Bukowski?
and I said
forget that
I do not feel good
I’ve got the sad sads
all I want to do is
fuck you
and she laughed
she thought I was being
clever
and O I just looked up her long slim legs of heaven
I saw her liver and her quivering intestine
I saw Christ in there
jumping to a folk-rock
all the long lines of starvation within me
rose
and I walked over
and grabbed her on the couch
ripped her dress up around her face
and I didn’t care
rape or the end of the earth
one more time
to be there
anywhere
real
yes
her panties were on the
floor
and my cock went in
my cock my god my cock went in
I was Charles
Somebody.
Scream When You Burn
Henry poured a drink and looked out the window at the hot and bare Hollywood street. Jesus Christ, it had been a long haul and he was still up against the wall. Death was next, death was always there. He’d made a dumb mistake and bought an underground newspaper and they were still idolizing Lenny Bruce. There was a photo of him, dead, right after the bad fix. All right, Lenny had been funny at times: “I can’t come!”—that bit had been a masterpiece but Lenny really hadn’t been all that good. Persecuted, all right, sure, physically and spiritually. Well, we all ended up dead, that was just mathematics. Nothing new. It was waiting around that was the problem. The phone rang. It was his girlfriend.
Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader Page 25