I turned on the T.V. and watched a bag of doctors and nurses spew their love-troubles. They never touched. No wonder they were in trouble. All they did was talk, argue, bitch, search. I went to sleep.
Vicki woke me up. “Oh,” she said, “I had the most wonderful time!”
“Yes?”
“I saw this man in a boat and I said ‘Where are you going?’ and he said, ‘I’m a boat taxi, I take people in and out to their boats,’ and I said, ‘o.k.’ and it was just fifty cents and I rode around with him for hours while he took people to their boats. It was wonderful.”
“I watched some doctors and nurses,” I said, “and I got depressed.”
“We boated for hours,” said Vicki, “I gave him my hat to wear and he waited while I got an abalone sandwich. He skinned his leg when he fell off his motorcycle last night.”
“The bells ring here every fifteen minutes. It’s obnoxious.”
“I got to look in all the boats. All the old drunks were on board. Some of them had young women dressed in boots. Others had young men. Real old drunken lechers.”
If I only had Vicki’s ability to gather information, I thought, I could really write something. Me: I’ve got to sit around and wait for it to come to me. I can manipulate it and squeeze it once it arrives but I can’t go find it. All I can write about is drinking beer, going to the racetrack, and listening to symphony music. That isn’t a crippled life, but it’s hardly all of it either. How did I get so limited? I used to have guts. What happened to my guts? Do men really get old?
“After I got off the boat I saw a bird. I talked to it. Do you mind if I buy the bird?”
“No, I don’t mind. Where is it?”
“Just a block away. Can we go see him?”
“Why not?”
I got into some clothes and we walked down. Here was this shot of green with a little red ink spilled over him. He wasn’t very much, even for a bird. But he didn’t shit every three minutes like the rest of them, so that was pleasant.
“He doesn’t have any neck. He’s just like you. That’s why I want him. He’s a peach-faced love-bird.”
We came back with the peach-faced love-bird in a cage. We put him on the table and she called him “Avalon.” Vicki sat and talked to him.
“Avalon, hello Avalon…Avalon, Avalon, hello Avalon…Avalon, o, Avalon…”
I turned on the T.V.
The bar was all right. I sat with Vicki and told her I was going to break the place up. I used to break up bars in my early days, now I just talked about breaking them up.
There was a band. I got up and danced. It was easy to dance modern. You just kicked your arms and legs in any direction, either held your neck stiff or whipped it like a son of a bitch and they thought you were great. You could fool people. I danced and worried about my typewriter.
I sat down with Vicki and ordered some more drinks. I grabbed Vicki’s head and pointed her toward the bartender. “Look, she’s beautiful, man! Isn’t she beautiful?”
Then Ernie Hemingway walked up with his white rat beard.
“Ernie,” I said, “I thought you did it with a shotgun?”
Hemingway laughed.
“What are you drinking?” I asked.
“I’m buying,” he said.
Ernie bought us our drinks and sat down. He looked a little thinner.
“I reviewed your last book,” I told him. “I gave it a bad review. Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” said Ernie. “How do you like the island?”
“It’s for them,” I said.
“Meaning?”
“The public is fortunate. Everything pleases them: icecream cones, rock concerts, singing, swinging, love, hate, masturbation, hot dogs, country dances, Jesus Christ, roller skating, spiritualism, capitalism, communism, circumcision, comic strips, Bob Hope, skiing, fishing murder bowling debating, anything. They don’t expect much and they don’t get much. They are one grand gang.”
“That’s quite a speech.”
“That’s quite a public.”
“You talk like a character out of early Huxley.”
“I think you’re wrong. I’m desperate.”
“But,” said Hemingway, “men become intellectuals in order not to be desperate.”
“Men become intellectuals because they are afraid, not desperate.”
“And the difference between afraid and desperate is…”
“Bingo!” I answered, “an intellectual!…my drink…”
A little later I told Hemingway about my purple telegram and then Vicki and I left and went back to our bird and our bed.
“It’s no use,” I said, “my stomach is raw and contains nine tenths of my soul.”
“Try this,” said Vicki and handed me the glass of water and Alka Seltzer.
“You go and toddle around,” I said, “I can’t make it today.”
Vicki went out and toddled and came back two or three times to see if I was all right. I was all right. I went out and ate and came back with two six-packs and found an old movie with Henry Fonda, Tyrone Power, and Randolph Scott. 1939. They were all so young. It was incredible. I was seventeen years old then. But, of course, I’d come through better than them. I was still alive.
Jesse James. The acting was bad, very bad. Vicki came back and told me all sorts of amazing things and then she got on the bed with me and watched Jesse James. When Bob Ford was about to shoot Jesse (Ty Power) in the back, Vicki let out a moan and ran in the bathroom and hid. Ford did his thing.
“It’s all over,” I said, “you can come out now.”
That was the highlight of the trip to Catalina. Not much else happened. Before we left Vicki went to the Chamber of Commerce and thanked them for giving her such a good time. She also thanked the woman in Davey Jones’ Locker and bought presents for her friends Lita and Walter and Ava and her son Mike and something for me and something for Annie and something for a Mr. and Mrs. Croty, and there were some others I have forgotten.
We got on the boat with our bird cage and our bird and our ice chest and our suitcase and our electric typewriter. I found a spot at the back of the boat and we sat there and Vicki was sad because it was over. I had met Hemingway in the street and he had given me the hippie handshake and he asked me if I was Jewish and if I was coming back, and I said no on the Jewish and I didn’t know if I was coming back, it was up to the lady, and he said, I don’t want to inquire into your personal business, and I said, Hemingway you sure talk funny, and the whole boat leaned to the left and rocked and leaped and a young man who looked as if he had recently had electro-therapy treatment walked around passing out paper bags for the purpose of vomiting. I thought, maybe the seaplane’s best, it’s only twelve minutes and far less people, and San Pedro slowly worked toward us, civilization, civilization, smog and murder, so much nicer so much nicer, the madmen and the drunks are the last saints left on earth. I have never ridden a horse or bowled, nor have I seen the Swiss Alps, and Vicki looked over at me with this very childish smile, and I thought, she really is an amazing woman, well, it’s time I had a little luck, and I stretched my legs and looked straight ahead. I needed to take another shit and decided to cut down on my drinking.
THE WAY THE DEAD LOVE
1.
It was a hotel near the top of a hill, just enough tilt in that hill to help you run down to the liquor store, and coming back with the bottle, just enough climb to make the effort worthwhile. The hotel had once been painted a peacock green, lots of hot flare, but now after the rains, the peculiar Los Angeles rains that clean and fade everything, the hot green was just hanging on by its teeth—like the people who lived inside.
How I moved in there, or why I’d left the previous place, I hardly remember. It was probably my drinking and not working very much, and the loud mid-morning arguments with the ladies of the street. And by midmorning arguments I do not mean 10:30 a.m., I mean 3:30 a.m. Usually if the police weren’t called it ended up with a little note under the door, always i
n pencil on torn lined paper: “dear Sir, we are going to have to ask you to move quick as possible.” One time it happened in mid-afternoon. The argument was over. We swept up the broken glass, put all the bottles into paper sacks, emptied the ashtrays, slept, woke up, and I was working away on top when I heard a key in the door. I was so surprised that I just kept fanning it in. And there he stood, the little manager, about 45, no hair except maybe around his ears or balls, and he looked at her on the bottom, walked up and pointed, “You—you are OUT OF HERE!” I stopped stroking and laid flat, looking at him sideways. Then he pointed at me. “And YOU’RE out a here too!” He turned around, went to the door, closed it quietly and walked down the hall. I started the machine again and we gave it a farewell good one.
Anyway, there I was, the green hotel, the faded green hotel, and I was there with my suitcase full of rags, alone at the time, but I had the rent money, was sober, and I got a room in the front facing the street, 3rd floor, phone outside my door in the hall, hotplate in the window, large sink, small wall refrigerator, a couple of chairs, a table, bed, and the bathroom down the hall. And although the building was very old, they even had an elevator—it had once been a class joint. Now I was there. The first thing I did was get a bottle and after a drink and killing two roaches I felt like I belonged. Then I went to the phone and tried to call a lady who I felt might help me but she was evidently out helping somebody else.
2.
About 3 a.m. somebody knocked. I put on my torn bathrobe and opened the door. There stood a woman in her bathrobe. “Yeah?” I said. “Yeah?”
“I’m your neighbor. I’m Mitzi. I live down the hall. I saw you at the telephone today.”
“Yeah?” I said.
Then she came around from behind her back and showed it to me. It was a pint of good whiskey.
“Come on in,” I said.
I cleaned out two glasses, opened the pint. “Straight or mixed?”
“About two thirds water.”
There was a litle mirror over the sink and she stood there rolling her hair into curlers. I handed her a glass of stuff and sat down on the bed.
“I saw you in the hall. I could tell by looking at you that you were nice. I can tell them. Some of them here are not so nice.”
“They tell me I am a bastard.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I.”
I finished my drink. She just sipped on hers so I mixed myself another. We talked easy talk. I had a third drink. Then I got up and stood behind her.
“OOOOOOh! Silly boy!”
I jabbed her.
“Ooouch!! You ARE a bastard!”
She had a curler in one hand. I pulled her up and kissed that thin little old lady’s mouth. It was soft and open. She was ready. I put her drink in her hand, took her to the bed, sat her down. “Drink up.” She did. I walked over and fixed her another. I didn’t have anything on under my robe. The robe fell open and the thing stuck out. God, I’m filthy, I thought. I’m a ham. I’m in the movies. The family movies of the future. 2490 A.D. I had difficulty not laughing at myself, walking around hung to that stupid prong. It was really the whiskey I wanted. A castle in the hills I wanted. A steam bath. Anything but this. We both sat with our drinks. I kissed her again, ramming my cigarette-sick tongue down her throat. I came up for air. I opened her robe and there were her breasts. Not much, poor thing. I reached down with my mouth and got one. It stretched and sagged like a balloon half-filled with stale air. I braved on and sucked at the nipple as she took the prong in her hand and arched her back. We fell backwards like that on the cheap bed, and with our robes on, I took her there.
3.
His name was Lou, he was an ex-con and ex-hard rock miner. He lived downstairs in the hotel. His last job had been scrubbing out pots in a place that made candy. He had lost that one—like all the others—drinking. The unemployment insurance runs out and there we are like rats—rats with no place to hide, rats with rent to pay, with bellies that get hungry, cocks that get hard, spirits that get tired, and no education, no trade. Tough shit, like they say, this is America. We didn’t want much and we couldn’t get that. Tough shit.
I met Lou while drinking, people walking in and out. My room was the party room. Everybody came. There was an Indian, Dick, who shoplifted halfpints and stored them in his dresser. Said it gave him a feeling of security. When we couldn’t get a drink anywhere we always used the Indian as our last resort.
I wasn’t very good at shoplifting but I did learn a trick from Alabam, a thin mustached thief who had once worked for the hospital as an orderly. You throw your meats and valuables into a large sack and then cover them with potatoes. The grocer weighs the lot and charges you for potatoes. But I was best at getting Dick for credit. There were a lot of Dicks in that neighborhood and the liquor store man was a Dick too. We’d be sitting around and the last drink would be gone. My first move would be to send somebody out. “My name’s Hank,” I’d tell the guy. “Tell Dick, Hank sent you down for a pint on the cuff, and if there’s any questions to phone me.” “O.k., o.k.,” and the guy would go. We’d wait, already tasting the drink, smoking pacing going crazy. Then the guy would come back. “Dick said ‘no!’ Dick said your credit’s no good anymore!”
“SHIT!” I would scream.
And I would rise in full red-eyed unshaven indignation. “GOD DAMN, SHIT, THAT MOTHER!”
I would really be angry, it was an honest anger, I don’t know where it came from. I’d slam the door, take the elevator down and down that hill I’d go…dirty mother, that dirty mother!…and I’d turn into the liquor store.
“All right, Dick.”
“Hello, Hank.”
“I want TWO FIFTHS!” (and I’d name a very good brand.) “Two packs of smokes, a couple of those cigars, and let’s see…a can of those peanuts, yeah.”
Dick would line the stuff up in front of me and then he’d stand there.
“Well, ya gonna pay me?”
“Dick, I want this on the bill.”
“You already owe me $23.50. You used to pay me, you used to pay a little every week, I remember it was every Friday night. You ain’t paid me anything in three weeks. You aren’t like those other bums. You got class. I trust you. Can’t you just pay me a dollar now and then?”
“Look, Dick, I don’t feel like arguing. You gonna put this stuff in a bag or do you want it BACK?”
Then I’d shove the bottles and stuff toward him and wait, puffing on a cigarette like I owned the world. I didn’t have any more class than a grasshopper. I felt nothing but fear that he’d do the sensible thing and put the bottles back on the shelf and tell me to go to hell. But his face would always sag and he’d put the stuff in the bag, and then I’d wait until he totalled the new bill. He’d give me the count; I’d nod and walk out. The drinks always tasted much better under those circumstances. And when I’d walk in with the stuff for the boys and girls, I was really king.
I was sitting with Lou one night in his room. He was a week behind in his rent and mine was due. We were drinking port wine. We were even rolling our cigarettes. Lou had a machine for that and they came out pretty good. The thing was to keep four walls around you. If you had four walls you had a chance. Once you were out on the street you had no chance, they had you, they really had you. Why steal something if you can’t cook it? How are you going to screw something if you live in an alley? How are you going to sleep when everybody in the Union Rescue Mission snores? And steals your shoes? And stinks? And is insane? You can’t even jack-off. You need four walls. Give a man four walls long enough and it is possible for him to own the world. So we were a little worried. Every step sounded like the landlady’s. And she was a very mysterious landlady. A young blonde nobody could screw. I played her very cold thinking she would come to me. She came and knocked all right, but only for the rent. She had a husband somewhere but we never saw him. They lived there and they didn’t. We were on the plank. We figured if we could fuck the landlady our
troubles would be over. It was one of those buildings where you screwed every woman as a matter of course, almost as a matter of obligation. But I couldn’t get this one and it made me feel insecure. So we sat there smoking our rolled cigarettes, drinking our port wine and the four walls were dissolving, falling away. Talk is best at times like that. You talk wild, drink your wine. We were cowards because we wanted to live. We did not want to live too badly but we still wanted to live.
“Well,” said Lou, “I think I got it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I poured another wine.
“We work together.”
“Sure.”
“Now you’re a good talker, you tell a lot of interesting stories, it doesn’t matter if they’re true or not—”
“They’re true.”
“I mean, that doesn’t matter. You got a good mouth. Now here’s what we do. There’s a class bar down the street, you know it, Molino’s. You go in there. All you need is money for the first drink. We’ll pool for that. You sit down, nurse your drink and look around for a guy flashing a roll. They get some fat ones in there. You spot the guy and go over to him. You sit down next to him and turn it on, you turn on the bullshit. He’ll like it. You’ve even got a vocabulary. O.k. so he’ll buy you drinks all night, he’ll drink all night. Keep him drinking. When closing time comes, you lead him toward Alvarado Street, lead him west past the alley. Tell him you are going to get him some nice young pussy, tell him anything but lead him west. And I’ll be waiting in the alley with this.”
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