Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader

by Charles Bukowski

  I finished the second half of the reading and forgot about Lydia just as I forgot about the women I passed on the sidewalks. I took my money, signed some napkins, some pieces of paper, then left, and drove back home.

  —WOMEN

  a horse with greenblue eyes

  what you see is what you see:

  madhouses are rarely

  on display.

  that we still walk about and

  scratch ourselves and light

  cigarettes

  is more the miracle

  than bathing beauties

  than roses and the moth.

  to sit in a small room

  and drink a can of beer

  and roll a cigarette

  while listening to Brahms

  on a small red radio

  is to have come back

  from a dozen wars

  alive

  listening to the sound

  of the refrigerator

  as bathing beauties rot

  and the oranges and apples

  roll away.

  A day or so later I got a poem in the mail from Lydia. It was a long poem and it began:

  Come out, old troll,

  Come out of your dark hole, old troll,

  Come out into the sunlight with us and

  Let us put daisies in your hair …

  The poem went on to tell me how good it would feel to dance in the fields with female fawn creatures who would bring me joy and true knowledge. I put the letter in a dresser drawer.

  I was awakened the next morning by a knocking on the glass panes of my front door. It was 10:30 AM.

  “Go away,” I said.

  “It’s Lydia.”

  “All right. Wait a minute.”

  I put on a shirt and some pants and opened the door. Then I ran to the bathroom and vomited. I tried to brush my teeth but only vomited again—the sweetness of the toothpaste turned my stomach. I came out.

  “You’re sick,” Lydia said. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Oh no, I’m all right. I always wake up like this.”

  Lydia looked good. The light came through the curtains and shone on her. She had an orange in her hand and was tossing it into the air. The orange spun through the sunlit morning.

  “I can’t stay,” she said, “but I want to ask you something.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m a sculptress. I want to sculpt your head.”

  “All right.”

  “You’ll have to come to my place. I don’t have a studio. We’ll have to do it at my place. That won’t make you nervous, will it?”

  “No.”

  I wrote down her address, and instructions how to get there.

  “Try to show up by eleven in the morning. The kids come home from school in mid-afternoon and it’s distracting.”

  “I’ll be there at eleven,” I told her.

  I sat across from Lydia in her breakfast nook. Between us was a large mound of clay. She began asking questions.

  “Are your parents still alive?”

  “No.”

  “You like L.A.?”

  “It’s my favorite city.”

  “Why do you write about women the way you do?”

  “Like what?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, I think it’s a damned shame that a man who writes as well as you do just doesn’t know anything about women.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Damn it! What did Lisa do with … ?” She began searching the room. “Oh, little girls who run off with their mother’s tools!”

  Lydia found another one. “I’ll make this one do. Hold still now, relax but hold still.”

  I was facing her. She worked at the mound of clay with a wooden tool tipped with a loop of wire. She waved the tool at me over the mound of clay. I watched her. Her eyes looked at me. They were large, dark brown. Even her bad eye, the one that didn’t quite match the other, looked good. I looked back. Lydia worked. Time passed. I was in a trance. Then she said, “How about a break? Care for a beer?”

  “Fine. Yes.”

  When she got up to go to the refrigerator I followed her. She got the bottle out and closed the door. As she turned I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to me. I put my mouth and body against hers. She held the beer bottle out at arm’s length with one hand. I kissed her. I kissed her again. Lydia pushed me away.

  “All right,” she said, “enough. We have work to do.”

  —WOMEN

  my groupie

  I read last Saturday in the

  redwoods outside of Santa Cruz

  and I was about ¾’s finished

  when I heard a long high scream

  and a quite attractive

  young girl came running toward me

  long gown & divine eyes of fire

  and she leaped up on the stage

  and screamed: “I WANT YOU!

  I WANT YOU! TAKE ME! TAKE

  ME!”

  I told her, “look, get the hell

  away from me.”

  but she kept tearing at my

  clothing and throwing herself

  at me.

  “where were you,” I

  asked her, “when I was living

  on one candy bar a day and

  sending short stories to the

  Atlantic Monthly?”

  she grabbed my balls and almost

  twisted them off. her kisses

  tasted like shitsoup.

  2 women jumped up on the stage

  and

  carried her off into the

  woods.

  I could still hear her screams

  as I began the next poem.

  maybe, I thought, I should have

  taken her on the stage in front

  of all those eyes.

  but one can never be sure

  whether it’s good poetry or

  bad acid.

  I didn’t see Lydia for a couple of days, although I did manage to phone her six or seven times during that period. Then the weekend arrived. Her ex-husband, Gerald, always took the children over the weekend.

  I drove up to her court about 11 AM that Saturday morning and knocked. She was in tight bluejeans, boots, orange blouse. Her eyes seemed a darker brown than ever and in the sunlight, as she opened the door, I noticed a natural red in her dark hair. It was startling. She allowed me to kiss her, then she locked the door behind us and we went to my car. We had decided on the beach—not for bathing—it was midwinter—but for something to do.

  We drove along. It felt good having Lydia in the car with me.

  “That was some party,” she said. “You call that a collating party? That was a copulating party, that’s what that was. A copulating party!”

  I drove with one hand and rested the other on her inner thigh. I couldn’t help myself. Lydia didn’t seem to notice. As I drove along the hand slid down between her legs. She went on talking. Suddenly she said, “Take your hand off. That’s my pussy!”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Neither of us said anything until we reached the parking lot at Venice beach. “You want a sandwich and a Coke or something?” I asked.

  “All right,” she said.

  We went into the small Jewish delicatessen to get the things and we took them to a knoll of grass that overlooked the sea. We had sandwiches, pickles, chips and soft drinks. The beach was almost deserted and the food tasted fine. Lydia was not talking. I was amazed at how quickly she ate. She ripped into her sandwich with a savagery, took large swallows of Coke, ate half a pickle in one bite and reached for a handful of potato chips. I am, on the contrary, a very slow eater.

  Passion, I thought, she has passion.

  “How’s that sandwich?” I asked.

  “Pretty good. I was hungry.”

  “They make good sandwiches. Do you want anything else?”

  “Yes, I’d like a candy bar.”

 
; “What land?”

  “Oh, any kind. Something good.”

  I took a bite of my sandwich, a swallow of Coke, put them down and walked over to the store. I bought two candy bars so that she might have a choice. As I walked back a tall black man was moving toward the knoll. It was a chilly day but he had his shirt off and he had a very muscular body. He appeared to be in his early twenties. He walked very slowly and erect. He had a long slim neck and a gold earring hung from the left ear. He passed in front of Lydia, along the sand on the ocean side of the knoll. I came up and sat down beside Lydia.

  “Did you see that guy?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus Christ, here I am with you, you’re 20 years older than I am. I could have something like that. What the hell’s wrong with me?”

  “Look. Here are a couple of candy bars. Take one.”

  She took one, ripped the paper off, took a bite and watched the young black man as he walked away along the shore.

  “I’m tired of the beach,” she said, “let’s go back to my place.”

  We remained apart a week. Then one afternoon I was over at Lydia’s place and we were on her bed, kissing. Lydia pulled away.

  “You don’t know anything about women, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I can tell by reading your poems and stories that you just don’t know anything about women.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Well, I mean for a man to interest me he’s got to eat my pussy. Have you ever eaten pussy?”

  “No.”

  “You’re over 50 years old and you’ve never eaten pussy?”

  “No.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “Why?”

  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “No, it’s too late for you.”

  “I’ve always been a slow starter.”

  Lydia got up and walked into the other room. She came back with a pencil and a piece of paper. “Now, look, I want to show you something.” She began to draw on the paper. “Now, this is a cunt, and here is something you probably don’t know about—the clit. That’s where the feeling is. The clit hides, you see, it comes out now and then, it’s pink and very sensitive. Sometimes it will hide from you and you have to find it, you just touch it with the tip of your tongue....”

  “O.K.,” I said, “I’ve got it.”

  “I don’t think you can do it. I tell you, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  “Let’s take our clothes off and lay down.”

  We undressed and stretched out. I began kissing Lydia. I dropped from the lips to the neck, then down to the breasts. Then I was down at the bellybutton. I moved lower.

  “No you can’t,” she said. “Blood and pee come out of there, think of it, blood and pee....”

  I got down there and began licking. She had drawn an accurate picture for me. Everything was where it was supposed to be. I heard her breathing heavily, then moaning. It excited me. I got a hard-on. The clit came out but it wasn’t exactly pink, it was purplish-pink. I teased the clit. Juices appeared and mixed with the cunt hairs. Lydia moaned and moaned. Then I heard the front door open and close. I heard footsteps. I looked up. A small black boy about five years old stood beside the bed.

  “What the hell do you want?” I asked him.

  “You got any empty bottles?” he asked me.

  “No, I don’t have any empty bottles,” I told him.

  He walked out of the bedroom, into the front room, out the front door and was gone.

  “God,” said Lydia, “I thought the front door was locked. That was Bonnie’s little boy.”

  Lydia got up and locked the front door. She came back and stretched out. It was about 4 PM on a Saturday afternoon.

  I ducked back down.

  —WOMEN

  the shower

  we like to shower afterwards

  (I like the water hotter than she)

  and her face is always soft and peaceful

  and she’ll wash me first

  spread the soap over my balls

  lift the balls

  squeeze them,

  then wash the cock:

  “hey, this thing is still hard!”

  then get all the hair down there,—

  the belly, the back, the neck, the legs,

  I grin grin grin,

  and then I wash her …

  first the cunt, I

  stand behind her, my cock in the cheeks of her ass

  I gently soap up the cunt hairs,

  wash there with a soothing motion,

  I linger perhaps longer than necessary,

  then I get the backs of the legs, the ass,

  the back, the neck, I turn her, kiss her,

  soap up the breasts, get them and the belly, the neck,

  the fronts of the legs, the ankles, the feet,

  and then the cunt, once more, for luck …

  another kiss, and she gets out first,

  toweling, sometimes singing while I stay in

  turn the water on hotter

  feeling the good times of love’s miracle

  I then get out …

  it is usually mid-afternoon and quiet,

  and getting dressed we talk about what else

  there might be to do,

  but being together solves most of it,

  in fact, solves all of it

  for as long as those things stay solved

  in the history of woman and

  man, it’s different for each

  better and worse for each—

  for me, it’s splendid enough to remember

  past the marching of armies

  and the horses that walk the streets outside

  past the memories of pain and defeat and unhappiness:

  Linda, you brought it to me,

  when you take it away

  do it slowly and easily

  make it as if I were dying in my sleep instead of in

  my life, amen.

  Dee Dee had a place in the Hollywood Hills. Dee Dee shared the place with a friend, another lady executive, Bianca. Bianca took the top floor and Dee Dee the bottom. I rang the bell. It was 8:30 PM when Dee Dee opened the door. Dee Dee was about 40, had black, cropped hair, was Jewish, hip, freaky. She was New York City oriented, knew all the names: the right publishers, the best poets, the most talented cartoonists, the right revolutionaries, anybody, everybody. She smoked grass continually and acted like it was the early 1960’s and Love-In Time, when she had been mildly famous and much more beautiful.

  A long series of bad love affairs had finally done her in. Now I was standing at her door. There was a good deal left of her body. She was small but buxom and many a young girl would have loved to have her figure.

  I followed her in. “So Lydia split?” Dee Dee asked.

  “I think she went to Utah. The 4th of July dance in Muleshead is coming up. She never misses it.”

  I sat down in the breakfast nook while Dee Dee uncorked a red wine. “Do you miss her?”

  “Christ, yes. I feel like crying. My whole gut is chewed up. I might not make it.”

  “You’ll make it. We’ll get you over Lydia. We’ll pull you through.”

  “Then you know how I feel?”

  “It has happened to most of us a few times.”

  “That bitch never cared to begin with.”

  “Yes, she did. She still does.”

  I decided it was better to be there in Dee Dee’s large home in the Hollywood Hills than to be sitting all alone back in my apartment and brooding.

  “It must be that I’m just not good with the ladies,” I said.

  “You’re good enough with the ladies,” Dee Dee said. “And you’re a helluva writer.”

  “I’d rather be good with the ladies.”

  Dee Dee was lighting a cigarette. I waited until she was finished, then I leaned across the table and gave her a kis
s. “You make me feel good. Lydia was always on the attack.”

  “That doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

  “But it can get to be unpleasant.”

  “It sure as hell can.”

  “Have you found a boyfriend yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I like this place. But how do you keep it so neat and clean?”

  “We have a maid.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ll like her. She’s big and black and she finishes her work as fast as she can after I leave. Then she goes to bed and eats cookies and watches t.v. I find cookie crumbs in my bed every night. I’ll have her fix you breakfast after I leave tomorrow morning.”

  “All right.”

  “No, wait. Tomorrow’s Sunday. I don’t work Sundays. We’ll eat out. I know a place. You’ll like it.”

  “All right.”

  “You know, I think I’ve always been in love with you.”

  “What?”

  “For years. You know, when I used to come and see you, first with Bernie and later with Jack, I would want you. But you never noticed me. You were always sucking on a can of beer or you were obsessed with something.”

  “Crazy, I guess, near crazy. Postal Service madness. I’m sorry I didn’t notice you.”

  “You can notice me now.”

  Dee Dee poured another glass of wine. It was good wine. I liked her. It was good to have a place to go when things went bad. I remembered the early days when things would go bad and there wasn’t anywhere to go. Maybe that had been good for me. Then. But now I wasn’t interested in what was good for me. I was interested in how I felt and how to stop feeling bad when things went wrong. How to start feeling good again.