South of No North

by Charles Bukowski

  Lou reached around behind the door and came out with a baseball bat, it was a very large baseball bat, I think at least 42 oz.

  “Jesus Christ, Lou, you’ll kill him!”

  “No, no, you can’t kill a drunk, you know that. Maybe if he was sober it’d kill him, but drunk it’ll only knock him out. We take the wallet, split it two ways.”

  “Listen, Lou, I’m a nice guy, I’m not like that.”

  “You’re no nice guy; you’re the meanest son of a bitch I ever met. That’s why I like you.”

  4.

  I found one. A big fat one. I had been fired by fat stupidities like him all my life. From worthless, underpaid, dull hard jobs. It was going to be nice. I got to talking. I didn’t know what I was talking about. He was listening and laughing and nodding his head and buying drinks. He had a wrist watch, a handful of rings, a full stupid wallet. It was hard work. I told him stories about prisons, about railroad track gangs, about whorehouses. He liked the whorehouse stuff.

  I told him about the guy who came in every two weeks and paid well. All he wanted was a whore in a room with him. They both took off their clothes and played cards and talked. Just sat there. Then after about two hours he’d get up, get dressed, say goodbye and walk out. Never touch the whore.

  “God damn,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  I decided that I wouldn’t mind Lou’s slugger bat hitting a homer on that fat skull. What a whammy. What a useless hunk of shit.

  “You like young girls?” I asked him.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  “Around fourteen and a half?”

  “Oh jesus, yes.”

  “There’s one coming in on the 1:30 a.m. train from Chicago. She’ll be at my place around 2:10 a.m. She’s clean, hot, intelligent. Now I’m takin’ a big chance, so I’m asking ten bucks. That too high?”

  “No, that’s all right.”

  “O.k., when this place closes up you come with me.”

  2 a.m. finally made it, and I walked him out of there, toward the alley. Maybe Lou wouldn’t be there. Maybe the wine would get to him or he’d just back out. A blow like that could kill a man. Or make him addled for life. We staggered along in the moonlight. There was nobody else around, nobody in the streets. It was going to be easy.

  We crossed into the alley. Lou was there. But Fatso saw him. He threw up an arm and ducked as Lou swung. The bat got me right behind the ear.

  5.

  Lou got his old job back, the one he had lost drinking, and he swore he was only going to drink on weekends.

  “O.k., friend,” I told him, “stay away from me, I am drunk and drinking all the time.”

  “I know, Hank, and I like you, I like you better than any man I ever met, only I gotta hold the drinking down to weekends, just Friday and Saturday nights and nothing on Sunday. I kept missing Monday mornings in the old days and it cost me my job. I’ll stay away but I want you to know that it has nothing to do with you.”

  “Only that I’m a wino.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s that.”

  “O.k., Lou, just don’t come knocking on my door until Friday and Saturday night. You may hear singing and the laughter of beautiful seventeen year old girls but don’t come knocking on my door.”

  “Man, you screw nothing but bags.”

  “They look seventeen through the eye of the grape.”

  He went on to explain the nature of his job, something to do with cleaning out the inside of candy machines. It was a sticky dirty job. The boss only hired ex-cons and worked their asses to death. He cussed the ex-cons brutally all day long and there was nothing they could do about it. He shorted them on their checks and there was nothing they could do about it. If they bitched they were fired. A lot of them were on parole. The boss had them by the balls.

  “Sounds like a guy who needs to be killed,” I told Lou.

  “Well, he likes me, he says I am the best worker he ever had, but I hadda get off the booze, he needed somebody he could depend on. He even had me over to his place one time to do some painting for him, I painted his bathroom, did a good job too. He’s got a place in the hills, a big place, and you oughta see his wife. I never knew they made women that way, so beautiful—her eyes, her legs, her body, the way she walked, talked, jesus.”

  6.

  Well, Lou was true to his word. I didn’t see him for some time, not even on weekends, and meanwhile I was going through a kind of personal hell. I was very jumpy, nerves gone—a little noise and I’d jump out of my skin. I was afraid to go to sleep: nightmare after nightmare, each more terrible than the one which preceded it. You were all right if you went to sleep totally drunk, that was all right, but if you went to sleep half-drunk or, worse, sober, then the dreams began, only you were never sure whether you were sleeping or whether the action was taking place in the room, for when you slept you dreamed the entire room, the dirty dishes, the mice, the folding walls, the pair of shit-in pants some whore had left on the floor, the dripping faucet, the moon like a bullet out there, cars full of the sober and well-fed, shining headlights through your window, everything, everything, you were in some sort of dark corner, dark dark, no help, no reason, no no reason at all, dark sweating corner, darkness and filth, the stench of reality, the stink of everything: spiders, eyes, landladies, sidewalks, bars, buildings, grass, no grass, light, no light, nothing belonging to you. The pink elephants never showed up but plenty of little men with savage tricks or a looming big man to strangle you or sink his teeth into the back of your neck, lay on your back and you sweating, unable to move, this black stinking hairy thing laying there on you on you on you.

  If it wasn’t that it was sitting during the days, hours of unspeakable fear, fear opening in the center of you like a giant blossom, you couldn’t analyze it, figure why it was there, and that made it worse. Hours of sitting in a chair in the middle of a room, run through and stricken. Shitting or pissing a major effort, nonsense, and combing your hair or brushing your teeth—ridiculous and insane acts. Walking through a sea of fire. Or pouring water into a drinking glass—it seemed you had no right to pour water into a drinking glass. I decided I was crazy, unfit, and this made me feel dirty. I went to the library and tried to find books about what made people feel the way I was feeling, but the books weren’t there or if they were I couldn’t understand them. Going into the library was hardly easy—everybody seemed so comfortable, the librarians, the readers, everybody but me. I even had trouble using the library crapper—the bums in there, the queers watching me piss, they all seemed stronger than I—unworried and sure. I kept going out and walking across the street, up a winding stairway in a cement building where they stored thousands of crates of oranges. A sign on the roof of another building said JESUS SAVES but neither Jesus or oranges were worth a damn to me walking up that winding stairway and into that cement building. I always thought, this is where I belong, inside of this cement tomb.

  The thought of suicide was always there, strong, like ants running along the underside of the wrists. Suicide was the only positive thing. Everything else was negative. And there was Lou, glad to clean out the inside of candy machines to stay alive. He was wiser than I.

  7.

  At this time I met a lady in a bar, a little older than me, very sensible. Her legs were still good, she had an odd sense of humor, and had very expensive clothes. She had come down the ladder from some rich man. We went to my place and lived together. She was a very good piece of ass but had to drink all the time. Her name was Vicki. We screwed and drank wine, drank wine and screwed. I had a library card and went to the library every day. I hadn’t told her about the suicide thing. It was always a big joke, my coming home from the library. I would open the door and she would look at me.

  “What no books?”

  “Vicki, they don’t have any books in the library.”

  I’d come in and take the wine bottle (or bottles) out of the bag and we’d begin.

  One time after a week’s drinking I deci
ded to kill myself. I didn’t tell her. I figured I’d do it when she was in a bar looking for a “live one.” I didn’t like those fat clowns screwing her but she brought me money and whiskey and cigars. She gave me the bit about me being the only one she loved. She called me “Mr. Van Bilderass” for some reason I couldn’t figure. She’d get drunk and keep saying, “You think you’re hot stuff, you think you’re Mr. Van Bilderass!” All the time I was working on the idea of how to kill myself. One day I was sure I would do it. It was after a week’s drinking, port wine, we had bought huge jugs and lined them up on the floor and behind the huge jugs we had lined up ordinary-sized winebottles, 8 or 9 of them, and behind the ordinary-size bottles we had lined up 4 or 5 little bottles. Night and day got lost. It was just screwing and talking and drinking, talking and drinking and screwing. Violent arguments that ended in love-making. She was a sweet little pig of a screw, tight and squirming. One woman in 200. With most of the rest it is kind of an act, a joke. Anyhow, maybe because of it all, the drinking and the fact of the fat dull bulls screwing Vicki, I got very sick and depressed, and yet what the hell could I do? run a turret-lathe?

  When the wine ran out the depression, the fear, the uselessness of going on became too much and I knew I was going to do it. The first time she left the room it was over for me. How, I was not quite sure but there were hundreds of ways. We had a little gas jet stove. Gas is charming. Gas is a kind of a kiss. It leaves the body whole. The wine was gone. I could hardly walk. Armies of fear and sweat ran up and down my body. It becomes quite simple. The greatest relief is never to have to pass another human being on the sidewalk, see them walking in their fat, see their little rat eyes, their cruel 2-bit faces, their animal flowering. What a sweet dream: to never have to look into another human face.

  “I’m going out to look at a newspaper, to see what day it is, o.k.?”

  “Sure,” she said, “sure.”

  I walked out the door. Nobody in the hall. No humans. It was about 10 p.m. I went down in the urine-smelling elevator. It took a lot of strength to be swallowed by that elevator. I walked down the hill. When I got back she would be gone. She moved quickly when the drinks ran out. Then I could do it. But first I wanted to know what day it was. I walked down the hill and there by the drugstore was the newspaper rack. I looked at the date on the newspaper. It was a Friday. Very well, Friday. As good a day as any. That meant something. Then I read the headline:

  MILTON BERLE’S COUSIN HIT ON HEAD BY FALLING ROCK

  I didn’t quite get it. I leaned closer and read it again. It was the same:

  MILTON BERLE’S COUSIN HIT ON HEAD BY FALLING ROCK

  This was in black type, large type, the banner headline. Of all the important things that had happened in the world, this was their headline.

  MILTON BERLE’S COUSIN HIT ON HEAD BY FALLING ROCK

  I crossed the street, feeling much better, and walked into the liquor store. I got two bottles of port and a pack of cigarettes on credit. When I got back to the place Vicki was still there.

  “What day is it?” she asked.

  “Friday.”

  “O.k.,” she said.

  I poured two glasses full of wine. There was a little ice left in the small wall refrigerator. The cubes of ice floated smoothly.

  “I don’t want to make you unhappy,” Vicki said.

  “I know you don’t.”

  “Have a sip first.”

  “Sure.”

  “A note came under the door while you were gone.”

  “Yeah.”

  I took a sip, gagged, lit a cigarette, took another sip, then she handed me the note. It was a warm Los Angeles night. A Friday. I read the note:

  Dear Mr. Chinaski: You have until next Wednesday to get up the rent. If you don’t, you are out. I know about those women in your room. And you make too much noise. And you broke your window. You are paying for your privileges. Or supposed to be. I have been very kind with you. I now say next Wednesday or you are out. The tenants are tired of all the noise and cussing and singing night and day, day and night, and so am I. You can’t live here without rent. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  I drank the rest of the wine down, almost lost it. It was a warm night in Los Angeles.

  “I’m tired of fucking those fools,” she said.

  “I’ll get the money,” I told her.

  “How? You don’t know how to do anything.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then how are we going to make it?”

  “Somehow.”

  “That last guy fucked me three times. My pussy was raw.”

  “Don’t worry, baby, I’m a genius. The only trouble is, nobody knows it.”

  “A genius at what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mr. Van Bilderass!”

  “That’s me. By the way, do you know that Milton Berle’s cousin was hit on the head by a falling rock?”

  “When?”

  “Today or yesterday.”

  “What kind of rock?”

  “I don’t know. I imagine some kind of big buttery yellow stone.”

  “Who gives a damn?”

  “Not I. Certainly not I. Except—”

  “Except what?”

  “Except I guess that rock kept me alive.”

  “You talk like an asshole.”

  “I am an asshole.”

  I grinned and poured wine all around.

  ALL THE ASSHOLES IN THE WORLD AND MINE

  “no man’s suffering is ever larger than nature intended.”

  —conversation overheard at a crapgame

  1.

  It was the ninth race and the horse’s name was Green Cheese. He won by 6 and I got back 52 for 5 and since I was far ahead anyhow, it called for another drink. “Gimme a shota green cheese,” I told the barkeep. It didn’t confuse him. He knew what I was drinking. I had been leaning there all afternoon. I had been drunk all the night before and when I got home, of course, I had to have some more. I was set. I had scotch, vodka, wine and beer. A mortician or somebody called about 8 p.m. and said he’d like to see me. “Fine,” I said, “bring drinks.” “Do you mind if I bring friends?” “I don’t have any friends.” “I mean my friends.” “I do not give a damn,” I told him. I went into the kitchen and poured a water glass ¾’s full of scotch. I drank it down straight just like the old days. I used to drink a fifth in an hour and a half, two hours. “Green cheese,” I said to the kitchen walls. I opened a tall can of frozen beer.

  2.

  The mortician arrived and got on the phone and pretty soon many strange people were walking in, all of them bringing drinks with them. There were a lot of women and I felt like raping all of them. I sat on the rug, feeling the electric light, feeling the drinks going through me like a parade, like an attack on the blues, like an attack on madness.

  “I will never have to work again!” I told them. “The horses will take care of me like no whore EVER did!”

  “Oh, we know that Mr. Chinaski! We know that you are a GREAT man!”

  It was a little greyhaired fucker on the couch, rubbing his hands, leering at me with wet lips. He meant it. He made me sick. I finished the drink in my hand and found another somewhere and drank that too. I began talking to the women. I promised them all the endearments of my mighty cock. They laughed. I meant it. Right then. There. I moved toward the women. The men pulled me off. For a worldly man I was very much the highschool boy. If I hadn’t been the great Mr. Chinaski, somebody would have killed me. As it was, I ripped off my shirt and offered to go out on the lawn with anybody. I was lucky. Nobody felt like pushing me over my shoelaces.

  When my mind cleared it was 4 a.m. All the lights were on and everybody was gone. I was still sitting there. I found a warm beer and drank it. Then I went to bed with the feeling that all drunks know: that I had been a fool but to hell with it.

  3.

  I had been bothered with hemorrhoids for 15 or 20 years; also perforated ulcers, bad liver, boils, an
xiety-neurosis, various types of insanity, but you go on with things and just hope that everything doesn’t fall apart at once.

  It seemed that drunk almost did it. I felt dizzy and weak, but that was ordinary. It was the hemorrhoids. They would not respond to anything—hot baths, salves, nothing helped. My intestines hung almost out of my ass like a dog’s tail. I went to a doctor. He simply glanced. “Operation,” he said. “All right,” I said, “only thing is that I am a coward.”

  “Vel, ya, dot vill make it more difficult.”

  You lousy Nazi bastard, I thought.

  “I vant you to take dis laxative der Tuesday night, den at 7 a.m. you get up, ya? and you gif yourself de enema, you keep giffing dis enema until der wasser is clear, ya? den I take unudder look into you at 10 a.m. Vensday morning.”

  “Ya whol, mine herring,” I said.

  4.

  The enema tube kept slipping out and the whole bathroom got wet and it was cold and my belly hurt and I was drowning in slime and shit. This is the way the world ended, not with an atom bomb, but with shit shit shit. With the set I had bought there was nothing to pinch the flow of water and my fingers would not work so the water ran in full blast and out full blast. It took me an hour and a half and by then my hemorrhoids were in command of the world. Several times I thought of just quitting and dying. I found a can of pure spirits of gum turpentine in my closet. It was a beautiful red and green can. “DANGER!” it said, “harmful or fatal if swallowed.” I was a coward: I put the can back.