Screams From the Balcony

by Charles Bukowski

  I only have one copy of Notes, but would LOVE to see it in German—it would wobble my BRAINS!!! I will airmail you a copy soon as I can get another one. hard to find them. and some typos to correct. just read 4 of the stories for Columbia on record—yes, did 12 reels of poetry for APPLE, signed contract, got advance. guy coming over tomorrow with Columbia contract and advance. shit happening so fast I don’t know where I am. also some experimental film co. wants to do Notes of a Dirty Old Man on file. coming over with contract next week. must be careful not sign away full movie rights. jesus christ, for a lousy post office clerk, things are sure happening. PENGUIN. and also two books coming up by BLACK SPARROW, plus a bibliography some poor shit’s doing—a librarian—for which I will get automatic dollars. I might just have to finally quit the post office before they fire me. there is simply too much to do.—check for “Fünfzehn Dollar”—Germany—for contribution Acid—“At the End of Feet” and “Lilies in my Brain”…what’s going on, Carl? am I going crazy? I even win money on the horses! it would be the fairest DREAM OF DREAMS to be able to survive directly from the typer and continue to write anything and anyway I wanted to—which is the ONLY way I will do it…[***]

  also editing a literary magazine—Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns—which should be out in 2 or 3 weeks. I was stuck with this when a rich backer turned out not rich but a runner from creditors…but liked the poems so much…had to go ahead and put mag out. hope to run it a while, tho leisurely, and not come out until the material is excellent enough to fill needed pages. which takes TIME. and how. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Carl Weissner]

  May 27, 1969

  good you liked the dirty stories—they were easy to write—mostly after the races, tired, hitting on can after can of beer and smoking cheap cigars, sitting here under this lamp—there was this sense of ACTION—I knew that whatever I wrote it would be on the streets in a couple of days—no waste, no time-lag—hit the bull’s eyes, BANG! and on to the next. once a week, week after week…it was a good piece of ass thing. now compare it—I have written two long stories, one—“The Life, Birth, and Death of an Underground Newspaper”—send it to Evergreen—it has been two months—no answer. another story, “The Night Nobody Believed I Was Allen Ginsberg,” has been resting with Playboy for 6 weeks. there’s just no movement. even if the stories go, it is not the same fast-paced type of vibration. yes, Open City folded, and there was lot of shit involved for it all, and I wrote it in the Evergreen submission. Bryan phoned the other night, high, from Frisco, saying he wants to start another newspaper, this time sex, no politics, and so I might be back on the weekly column kick if he wasn’t dreaming high. so, we’ll see.

  but, actually, the fact you want to translate the stories into the German is a high honor to me, no shit, it gives me the creeping chills to think of crawling back to the Fatherland like that—my own tongue, cut out—but you’ve got a good tongue, Carl, you speak for me, and gracious thanks for the miracle. The ESSEX HOUSE boys say, however you want to work it, Buk. so all’s all right, only should it come off, they want a contract to sign, whatever it says. so I don’t think that’s too much bother. [* * *]

  just heard from Martin on the phone—Blazek got 3 grand for his mag from the Coordinating Council of Little Mags…. about ten of them got grants. he says. says Martin. how much did you get, Carl? Martin says none of the good mags got anything. which means you got nothing. what is it, Carl? just one big ass-suck. all this poet-in-residence. all these grants. I suppose if I got one, though, I’d say it was all right. then there’s Levertov who gets a yearly grant from the National Foundation of the Arts, has used up a year’s grant, demands her next year’s grant in advance. it wouldn’t be so sickening, but these people just aren’t that good, Carl. I mean with the word, putting it down, and maybe in a lot of other ways. me, they’re still trying to fire me from the post office, trying to knock me all the way down to skid row. I may just quit. [* * *]

  [To Carl Weissner]

  [July 1969]

  [* * *] don’t make work much more. just stay up all night and drink and listen to the radio—switching around trying to get the little Schubert songs like I have now—only the other German who went mad and wrote nothing but songs—better, can’t think of his name. drunk now yes. but I know with you that is all right. anyhow, sick early this morning. first the female mailman. postage due. a rotten magazine. I stand in the doorway in robe, my balls hanging out. but the word is out. he is nuts. you know. I go back to bed. telegram. Hoffman. Evergreen. can hardly read with eyes. wants to know if names, newspaper used in story true or not. reply collect. I try Western Union. there is only a fucking machine on the phone. how can I tell the machine that I want to send the fucking thing collect? no instructions about that given by machine. I drink two beers. keep dialing for live human. one hour later get one. I tell Hoffman, don’t worry. no libel. I mean I tell the telegram woman. now Bach. thank Christ. o.k., I try to sleep again. big Hemingway. sleeping alone. 50 pound beergut. bad heart. and really a coward. a fine coward. and proud of it. I think too much. doorbell again. special delivery. the PROOFS. jesus christ. what’s the rush? I drink another beer. PLEASE CORRECT THE PROOFS AND PHONE IN CORRECTIONS COLLECT. boy, am I Hemingway? uh. BEST, she signs. jesus, somebody knows that I am alive. I read the proofs. the 25 typewritten pages come to 9 or 10 long galley proofs. it is hot. 90 degrees. I am naked and sick in the center of the room. my knees hurt. I lean on a red pillow. uh uh uh, I read, uh uh uh uh I read, and I think, what the fuck? this stuff is not so good. what are they so excited about? well, I find some errors. dial collect. GROVE PRESS. no, Evergreen. everybody is mixed up. my balls are sweating on top of the red pillow. now I know that it is not so good being Hemingway. the telephone operator garbles my name: “A Mr. Bublinskar calling collect.” I’m told that nobody is there. I wait 5 minutes, spell my name to the operator: B like in Bastard, U like in unguentine, K like in Kafka, O like on Ow, W like in Whore, S like in Siff, K like in Kafka’s brother if he had one, and I like in the second letter of the city Winston-Salem. I got through. Susan Bloch. I got her. what a young and knowledgeable and sexy voice. she made me feel like an old pig. I’m not an old pig, am I? no, she made me laugh. kneeling on that red pillow fighting galley proofs. there are some wonderful women in the world, Carl, but I never meet them. anyway, I finally went to bed and slept like, if not a dead Hem, at least better than a dead O. Henry. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Carl Weissner]

  [August 1, 1969]

  los angeles, calif. it’s Friday, I don’t have a clown’s calendar, but I think it’s August First, 1969, HOT HOT, and good old cheap Sears Roebuck fan turned on my ass; well, not exactly, I sit in my shorts, aging, drinking beer, the windows open, and the look at me, 6 p.m., coming in from their little jobs…they have been drowned and shitted upon. well, they belong to my club…

  hello carl:

  good to hear; I’d though maybe the literary thumpers and back-scratchers had gotten to you and told you I was a pile of dog turds. but you are the quiet type; it didn’t fit in my mind. I remember you behind those dark shades, just smiling evenly, that slight smile there all along. I read pretty good and I don’t believe in poking into souls, but I thought, “if Carl has turned, it is very strange. because usually is the constant talkers, the OPEN-HEARTS, that will leap from boat to boat when the waters seem to change: so good to hear—it keeps my score at 100 percent. [* * *] I am afraid that my time with the female is done, and there isn’t any sadness. I’ve had enough sex experiences to write 400 more stories about sex experiences. like The New York Review of Sex sent me a 25 buck check about the time I stuck my head down there and saw the STRANGEST panties I ever did see…plus other things. they want to see more. well, I am full of bullshit, and years. and as the little money comes in from the writing, here and there, I simply give myself more leisure time, drink more, lay around, stare at the ceiling, walk over to the typer when it calls. my boss
says, “Bukowski, where have you been?” me, sitting there with a hangover and a new idea for a story. “fuck it,” I tell him. “I don’t have any excuses. fire me!” he just shakes his head and walks away. he thinks that I am crazy. am I crazy, Carl?

  just uncapped another bottle of beer with my short top. my landlord gives me TWO garbage cans while the others get one. the beerbottles. I am the true Hun, Carl. but even if I were mostly Polack, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t know how it works.

  on “Absence of the Hero,” good it went, it started as a very long matter but each time I read it I saw another line or another paragraph that didn’t belong. I don’t have a copy of the thing around so no longer know what I wrote. but, as I was writing the thing I had this idea that I was processing something down to where it BELONGED. it gets very slippery sometimes, and there you go over the EDGE, but I finally chopped it down to where I wanted it, and I knew I had what I wanted but I had to worry about you—there was a chance you might think that I was just throwing cold gravy out the window. it was not so. I fought the fucking thing all the way through like an octopus with an embracing pussy. so, I’m happy you picked up on the vibe strings. it’s paranoia-reality; first one is one, the other the other; then they mix; everything become the same. when Evergreen #70 comes out—at least the proofs read #70—my job is over at the post office. I exposed all their little interrogations in dark rooms under their human-skin lamps (America, the beautiful!) about how they didn’t care for the type of thing that I wrote while drawing their bloody and sweaty paychecks. of course, other things in there too. it runs quite long and is mostly comedy, like dying. I’ll ship you a copy. you say so.

  [* * *] I haven’t eaten in 3 or 4 days, but that’s nothing new with me. I still weigh around 220. was once down to 133. it’s really much better to be light—for fucking, bumming, swimming, almost anything else. I guess the only edge a heavy man has is shitting—man, there’s nothing like a heavy pooping fat stinking beershit your cheeks spread all over the silly bowl; looking down at your toes, cutting it loose! glory! then to get up and ADMIRE YOUR OWN TURDS! AH, SO MANY OF THEM! WHAT A GREAT MAN I MUST REALLY BE TO BE SO FULL OF SHIT!?!

  strange thing—3 critical studies of me arrived in the mail in about two days. one a long book, another an article in a sex mag, another some burblings about me in a thing called A Bukowski Sampler. really, the worst one was the one by the prof, the long book—he just went on winding-out the spool of literary criticism as he had been taught to do. and to make it more cajoling complete—he called the worst poems the best ones, the best ones the worst, and very bothered with the term “surrealism,” I guess something they really jammed into his anus in college. the one in the sex mag was really the best; I got drunk with the guy all night one night so he had something to talk about that I told him instead of something he imagined through reading my crap. after getting a ph.d. you know? well, the Sampler thing was all mixed-up. they meant well, but, basically, they were too young and not enough had happened to them. I don’t mean that you have to be OLD to write, but I do mean that if you are OLD and can still write and have sailed some bloody ships, you’re got a little edge. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Carl Weissner]

  [September 16, 1969]

  September 16, 2 a.m. plus listening to some symphonic piss, but even that is better than this day which preceded it, harassed by frightened little red-faced men about attendance, or lack of, thereupon, or arguing because I had not filled out the proper forms…what proper form? What proper form? I’d like to believe that the proper form is some type of existence that precludes being gunned down by idiots with brain cells the size of wasps and eyes that have the stink of the shit of their souls risen to the top iris, or whatever it is called…Sometimes I wish I knew the language better; then other times I know that this is dangerous, not dangerous, but trappish, wasteful, like dipping the fingers into cunt butter, then standing around for a couple of years licking out the droplets. what the hell am I talking about? I don’t know. and that’s good.

  hello Carl:

  not to insult, but your letter is the best gash of writing, straight on through that I have seen in some time. would like to use, will use in Laugh Literary #2 if you don’t mind. #2 will be larger, easier to read with the eye, but emphasis still on CONTENT. # uno issue almost sold out, went very fast. I think that it is simply a matter of certain people knowing that your blood and guts are in the thing, instead of some kind of con. Most all of everything is con. But it seems that there are 500 people in the world who can tell the difference between con and the other. In the next issue, we are going to clown a bit, but the kind of laughter that comes up through the mouth after being hit with a sledgehammer. I believe that some names are going to be named and some assholes torn. But I am very very tired of the standardized type of little mag stuff. and after standing 8 or 10 hours a night talking with the dolts about who won the old ball game, or whether Namath has a right to own a bar full of thugs while quarterbacking for the Jets—well, shit. I am not just going to turn out a little old ladies’ magazine, I hope. the death-toll they count over me in their fucking pigs’ pen is a pain that I have never been able to adjust to—and I am going to spit some shit back into somebody’s eye—not out of vengeance—because some of what has happened to me is my own FAULT (or so I am told), but the life-juice spit of a dying man will not, I hope, be without a vernacular of its own.

  and as I work less and less in their pig pens, now, at least, for the time being—some luck comes my way—the fucking Penguin 13—you pushing little buttons in the land of my birth-translating my slimy greasy cunt stories—and please take liberties—I trust your soul all the way through—you know what I mean

  I gave your letter to the two or 3 trusted that I know, and even those I do not entirely trust, and they laughed, each of them, reading certain phrases out loud. This is always the test: THE ULTIMATE TRUTH, NO MATTER HOW TRAGIC, THE ULTIMATE TRUTH ALWAYS MAKES A MAN LAUGH HIS BALLS OFF SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS SO GOOD, SO ON THE MARK.

  Having much luck with Dirty Old Man stories—some mag in Chicago bought reprint rights to 4 stories via Essex House for $250. [* * *] Just for kicks, one night, I didn’t go to work, sat at typer, wrote thing, 7 typewritten pages, 45 minutes, called “The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, Calif.” Some sex mag says it’s worth $150 to me upon publication. But the beautiful thing is that I have not had to compromise my style. The post office may yet be told to go kiss its own ass. If it weren’t for the child-support thing, I’d tell them now.

  Meanwhile, certain poets drop around, mostly bad ones, complaining that they are misunderstood, blocked-off, black-listed, and some of it is true, but some of the fellows have simply forgotten how to write, or don’t write, or pretend to, or play the Poet-game as a spiritual right to continual handouts from everywhere—$$$$, sex, adulation. and sometimes I get a little cruel, maybe jealous because they are living off the fat while I am hitting a time-clock, I tell them to try the steel mills and get their backbones back, but they pale at this—Christ, their little souls couldn’t stand it. So, I relent, let off, get them some beers and listen to them, and next out come their poems—which most of them read to me out LOUD. They think that this improves the work.

  And I say, no, I don’t like it.

  then they get pissed. after eating up the only 2 or 3 hours I have to do what I wish to do.

  Then I tell them, look, man, I have to shit, shave, eat, make the fucking job.

  And they leave off for someplace else, saying, “Hey, Marty, let me have a twenty. You know, that Bukowski, he’s a rotten son of a bitch…”

  I can stand one poet a week but when they begin to arrive 7 days a week I begin to go a little crazy. listening to them, I can’t even do the simple things—like—go to the laundry—get that one extra hour sleep I need—dump the garbage—get the stink out of the sink, the ring out of the bathtub, all the shit off the floor. and then come the others—the admirers—worse than the poets—wi
th their drinks—and their softness and their ladies—you can’t insult them—everything you say—no matter how vile—is funny. You could whip the whole roomful of them but they sicken you so you drink and drink and drink and drink, while all the time there’s this idea in the center of your brain—the typewriter sits there. you can’t make their women; they are fascinating and fascinated but frightened. What shit.

  so I miss two or three days work, they don’t fire me, I make no excuses and old black cunts press their flanks against me hardhard hard, say, “Where ya been, Hank?”

  “Drunk,” I say.

  all of their faces are dumped and burned in pain, wasted, like mine. I think, go punch out. slam it home. no good.

  No good. I always dream of my perfect one. Well, I don’t mean that. just an ordinary little woman with nice knees and nice ankles who likes to put on high heels and nylons and drink and look at me from across the couch. and then, hours later, make love. Not a love to prove, just a love that has flowed into an easy evening. but most bitches are hunters, all the time gleaming gleaming, their cunts reaching forward like cages. ah, shit. can’t I get off this sex thing?

  Your letter—the camels, the arabs—the everything—easy to see why the Israelites won the last war. I have always thought that man’s greatest inventions went like this:

  1. The Bed.

  2. The Shit and Piss disposal system (which, I understand, is beginning to back up, and fail).

  3. The Atom Bomb.

  4. The Hydrogen Bomb. and

  5. the rubber. [* * *]

  * * *