More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns

by Charles Bukowski

  My pants fell off the bush and onto the ground. I leaped up, worried about my wallet. And, of course, it had fallen out of my pants. I staggered about the brush looking for it and managed to step right into my excretia, me who had stolen the land from the Indians.

  I found the wallet, put it back in my pants, hung it all very securely upon a bush and began to wipe myself. I wiped and I wiped. I wiped myself for 5 minutes, put my pants back on and walked back.

  I undressed and got into the sleeping bag with my woman. She was asleep but not for long.

  “Jesus Christ, what’s that?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “That stink!”

  “I shit in the bushes.”

  “Did you wipe yourself?”

  “For 5 minutes.”

  “What happened? You smell god-awful! What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

  Then we slept. At least, I did. And to my few aficionados, don’t worry; I’ll soon be back in Los Angeles.

  Linda was down. We’d left a zipper open in the tent flap and the mosquitoes had been on us all night. She was reading a book on sex. I had given her enough sex, grade-A, oral, spiritual and standard, but she was in an off mood. We were in the middle of 160 acres of mountain, trees, and pasture owned by five sisters. Linda was one of the sisters and Linda was down and I was far away from Hollywood Boulevard and Western. “Come on,” I said, “let’s take a dip in the beaver pond.” “You go ahead,” she said, not looking up, “I’ll be along later.”

  Downs disturb me, especially when I can’t understand why. I took my red notebook and a fountain pen and began walking. I got up to the beaver pond, sat on a rock, opened the notebook, but nothing came. I took off my clothes and stepped into the pond. It was like icewater. My body looked white and ridiculous. I stepped forward into a two-foot hole and I was in up to my arm pits, chilled in swirling muddy water. I stepped out over rocks that cut my feet. I found a spot and bathed with the small bar of soap. Then I gave myself a shampoo. When I stepped out of the water the flies were on me. Mountain flies are not like city flies; mountain flies are energetic and angry, very angry. I got my clothing and shoes on and walked off with my red notebook, the flies following me, while I thought, “I wonder what’s wrong with Linda? I love her, doesn’t she know that? How can she cut her feelings off? Love is not something you flip about like a TV dial.”

  I walked up over a hill of trees and looked back and saw the beaver pond. Then I was over the hill and into a bit of shade. I found a rock and sat down and opened the red notebook. I didn’t have stockings on. As I began to write I felt this stinging pain on my right foot. There was a cut across my feet and a huge fly had landed and was sucking into the cut. I reached down and brushed him off. I got up and the flies followed me.

  Why in the hell can’t a woman love a man even if he makes mistakes? Being together is the miracle, being together and caring. Sleeping together, feet touching, legs touching. Being asleep and together. Only the strong can live alone, the strong and the selfish.

  It’s good to eat with somebody, to listen to the rain with somebody, to get through Christmas and New Year’s and Labor Day with somebody, to see their ring of dirt in the bathtub, to look at a toilet they forgot to flush. And to have the sex get better and better . . . For Christ’s sake, what was wrong with that woman? Didn’t she understand?

  I walked some distance and found another rock under another tree. I opened the notebook and began to write something. I just let the flies have me and I wrote. I wrote something very bitter about humanity and love and the human race. Sometimes such things work, especially if they jell up fundamental truths instead of various self-pities. It didn’t work. I tore the pages out. Even when I wrote about unhappy things I usually had to be happy when I wrote.

  Then I heard a sound of water; it sounded like a waterfall. I got up and moved toward the sound. As I walked I heard Linda’s voice. She was hollering for me: “BUKOWSKI!” I kept walking. I decided not to answer. If she calls once more, I’ll answer. She didn’t call again. I moved toward the water. Then I saw it. The water was coming out of a spring and spilling down over a row of rocks that came down a high cliff. It was a good sight. I sat down and watched it. Then I got down into the stream and had a drink.

  I decided, on going back, not to go up over the hill but to go around the easy way. I took my notebook and began. It would bring me right back to camp. I walked along and the ground was soaked with many little streams. I had to change course to get around them. There seemed to be very much brush. The brush got thicker. I pushed through, often stepping into mudholes up to my ankles.

  Then very quietly a voice entered into my brain:

  You’re lost . . .

  Oh, no, that would be too damned silly.

  Silly or not, you’re lost.

  I looked around and I was lost. It was that simple. A tiny emptiness entered through my bellybutton.

  You’re lost and you’re a coward and a fool and this proves it. You don’t deserve to live. Linda’s right.

  I pushed on through the brush, downhill, stepping into streams . . . I threw my red notebook away. A lost man doesn’t care about a red notebook. I was the man who had once wanted isolation; I was the man who had once fattened on isolation. Now I had it: mountains and trees and brush; nobody around.

  I walked on. I climbed a barbwire fence. I felt it was not the thing to do. I did it. I walked on. I climbed another fence. I was more into nowhere. I was in the center of 160 acres. Mountains, trees.

  At first there is panic, a rather clubbing sickness inside. Then one says, I’m lost. One says it several times. Then one adjusts to being lost. One says, I am lost. Well. I might die. Well. But the conclusion is hardly joyous. I began to think of Linda. If I ever get out of this, I will treat her so good, oh I will treat her so good.

  I climbed another barbwire fence. I kept following a stream down the hill. Looking ahead I could see a large body of water. I left the stream and walked toward it. I found a road. The road had tire tracks on it. There was a small pier built over the water. I got under the pier and took my shoes off and bathed them in the water. I drank the water. Somebody had built that pier, some humans. They might return, those efficient humans, those humans I had once as much resented. They were clever sons of bitches and strong. I wasn’t. That’s why I wrote poems. And, shit, I hadn’t finished my second novel yet. It was laying back in a drawer in Los Angeles. I could see the bit in The Garfield County News:

  The minor poet Charles Bukowski, who had come to Utah to visit the King sisters, was found perished under the reservoir pier by Dale Barney, Bruce Wilson, and Pole Griffith. Mr. Bukowski was 52 years old and wrote a column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, which was published in Communist newspapers. He is survived by an eight-year-old daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski. Mr. Bukowski’s red notebook was found, empty, 175 yards north and east of the campsite. Evidently the state of Utah did not inspire Mr. Bukowski.

  I put my shoes back on and walked out from under the pier and got on top of it and walked out toward the end. There were a couple of box-like contraptions which were locked and made of steel or a high-grade tin. Might be a telephone in there, I thought. I walked on to the road and found a large rock. I brought the rock back and smashed it against the lock. I skinned the knuckles of both hands, but I kept smashing the rock down. I really didn’t expect the lock to open but it was something to do. I was most surprised when the lock snapped open. I opened the compartment and stuck my hand in. I immediately got an electric shock. There was a loose wire sticking up from what appeared to be some type of transformer.

  I stood and looked into the box. The sun beat upon me and my feet were covered with blisters. It was the end of my sanity. Alone and lost in the world, unloved by my love . . . demented, appalled, the shit of my very soul stuck into my ears, I stood there and looked. A needle moved very slowly back and forth across a semi-circle of cardboard. There were four numbers writt
en upon the cardboard:

  One, two, three, four.

  The needle moved very slowly back and forth across the numbers:

  One, two, three, four.

  I decided not to flood the reservoir. I put the lock back on and got down under the pier and bathed my feet again. Having finished that I put my shoes back on and walked down the road a bit. I came to a gate, walked through the curving side entrance and found a picnic ground. But it was a Tuesday. There was nobody there. There were pits for cooking but I had no matches and no food. But civilization had been there, my beloved mankind.

  I found a half loaf of stale French bread in the dirt. It was grey and mouldy. I walked over to a garbage can and dug out the cellophane bag inside and wrapped my bread inside of it . . . Garbage cans . . . meant garbage men . . . Where were they? Sons of bitches were probably on strike. I took my bread and my cellophane bag and began walking back toward the reservoir. It occurred to me that in spite of the general nearness of humanity that it was still possible that I could die up there—exposure, panic, madness . . . The thought disgusted me. I was like any other dreamer—I wanted to die while being sucked-off by the 15-year-old neighbor girl while her parents were at Mass.

  I walked back to the pier, hung my bread from a railing, went out to the road, and piled boulders in the way so that anybody who might drive by would have to stop. I had left camp about 10 a.m. I figured it to be about 1 p.m. The most difficult thing is waiting, especially when waiting is useless. They figured I was hidden in the mountains writing immortal poetry. I decided to walk inward on the road. Perhaps it led to camp, although it hardly seemed the road we had driven in on. We didn’t have a car; we had been driven up and left. They were to return at a later date.

  I began walking down the road. It was very hot. I walked slowly. I walked several miles. Then I screamed out, “Linda!” It was such a sad sound, bouncing and echoing.

  For a moment I had the feeling of running off into the trees, screaming, crashing my head against tree trunks and boulders. But that hardly seemed very manly so I decided against it. A poem began to from in my mind as I walked along:Imperfection breeds Charley

  While other men love

  Crack-wise

  Ride broncos

  Imperfection breeds Charley

  While other men light fires

  On vistas

  Study Shakespeare

  Discover uranium, oil,

  Sex. . . .

  Imperfection breeds Charley

  While other men hit

  600 home runs

  shoot deer and panther

  shoot lion, elephant and

  man. . . . imperfection breeds

  Charley

  Then I decided, to hell with that poem, I’m not that bad. And I kept walking. I don’t know how long I walked, two hours perhaps, but there was nothing but road and road and road. I saw three or four deer. My energy was getting very low and my city shoes were blistering my feet. I had made another bad move. I turned and had a two-hour walk back to help consume me. One does reflect at such times. One thinks of the city, of walking about in a room and listening to the radio, reading the race results. I thought about the poet Jeffers who said there were traps everywhere, that they’d even trapped God when He came to earth.

  But my trap had been so inane, without glory or purpose. The sun was very hot and I should have sat in the shade and rested but I was disgusted with my stupidity and wouldn’t allow myself that. Then I thought, it really isn’t death that matters: it’s dying in some sort of minor comfort that matters . . . where people can sign little papers and keep the flies off your body. I walked on. Then ahead of me in the road stood a small doe. It was just a little larger than a large dog. As I slowly approached, it just stood there and looked at me. I was so tired, so low-keyed, my soul in such a pissed-off state against itself that I gave off no rays at all. The doe just remained in the road looking at me and I moved closer and closer. It isn’t going to move, I thought. What will I do? Then as I was almost upon it, it turned and ran, the rear end bounding up and down. I remembered one time I had been very near suicide when I was sitting on a high cliff over the water near San Diego. As I sat there, four squirrels slowly—well, not slowly but in their swift darts—yet it seemed slow—they approached me and they came right up to my feet as I sat there and I looked into their large brown eyes and they looked into mine. They didn’t fear me and I wondered at them. It seemed to last many minutes; then I moved a bit and they ran back down the rocks.

  Finally I was under my pier again, my feet in the water. My thirst didn’t seem to end. I kept drinking water. I tried to sleep. It wasn’t any good. I put my shoes back on and walked back to the other end of the road, the picnic grounds. There was nobody about. I tried to remember how far it was back to the nearest town. The drive up had been a long one, very long, over a hot narrow mountain road. If I made it, there wouldn’t be much left of me. If I didn’t make it at least it would be a form of action. I decided to stay another night and a day and start out the next night. I walked back and got under the pier again. But the inaction got to me. I hardly felt very clever under that pier. I put my shoes back on and walked back toward the picnic grounds again.

  Then I saw a little girl walking along the road toward me. “HEY!” I yelled at her, “HEY!” She seemed frightened. I walked toward her, then stopped. “I won’t hurt you! I’m lost! I’m lost!” I felt very foolish, for how can one get lost near a picnic grounds with signs around that say NO SMOKING and PLEASE PUT OUT ALL FIRES? “Where’s your mother and father?” “Oh, they’re in a red and white camper on the picnic grounds.” I walked toward the picnic grounds. I saw the camper but I didn’t see the people. “HEY!” I yelled. “HEY!”

  Then I saw Linda standing there with blue curlers in her hair. Then I saw a man and a woman by the camper.

  “Hi,” Linda said to me.

  “My god I’m glad to see you!” I said. “Did these people bring you up?” “No, I just got here.”

  The people at the camper were watching us. “He’s a city boy,” said Linda. “He got lost in the woods. I just found him.”

  I laughed. “I’m a city boy. I’m a city boy.”

  “Well, I’m glad you found your man,” said the woman.

  “Come on,” said Linda. “Follow me.”

  She had her dog with her. She was a good 15 yards ahead of me. “Listen,” I said, “I’ve been lost in the woods for eight hours. Don’t I even get a kiss?” She waited and I walked up. She turned her cheek and I kissed her on the cheek. Then she walked on ahead. “I’m mad at you. I been thinking about a lot of the things you’ve done and said and I got mad at you.”

  I walked along behind her, stumbling into holes, over rocks and fallen tree branches, into mudholes. “I thought I might die,” I said, “and I thought, well, at least I ate her pussy the last two nights we were together. It was the only comforting thought I had.”

  “I think you got lost on purpose. I found your notebook a couple of blocks from camp. You didn’t even leave a note. You always leave a note. I thought, well, he’s really mad. All you had to do was look up and you could have seen the camp. You never look up.”

  “Usually when I look up I don’t like what I see.”

  “You’re always so negative,” she said, “always so negative.”

  I followed along 15 yards behind. “I point things out to you, landmarks, but you don’t listen. You don’t listen to things, you don’t participate, you’re always so far off. Why didn’t you leave a note in your notebook?”

  “I didn’t get lost on purpose.”

  “I believe you did.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Or I thought maybe you went over the mountain to get a drink. I thought maybe you’d gone mad for a drink.

  “Look, you’ve found me now, we’re back together, Jesus Christ . . .”

  We had to climb between and over old barbwire fences. I got stuck in one, three or four barbs stuck into
the back of my shirt. My arm was too tired to reach up and pluck myself free. I just stood there between the strands. Linda waited. I couldn’t move. She walked back and lifted the top strand off my back and I got out and followed her.

  She was always just a little too far ahead and gaining. The dog bounded ahead of her. I followed Linda’s ass. I’d followed that beautiful ass for three years; I figured another mile and one half through the wilderness wouldn’t be entirely impossible. “Now you’ll have something to write about,” she said looking back.

  “Oh shit yes,” I said.

  The mountains and the trees and the mudholes and the rocks and the barbs and the ass and the dog and me were everywhere.

  I took Patricia to the fights at the Olympic, we were eight or nine rows back and began drinking beer. The opening amateur fights were the best, as usual, and it was hot in there and the beer was good. Patricia and I bet 50 cents each fight and let our loyalties be known, better and better known with each new beer.

  By the time the six-rounder came around we were screaming things like, “Kill ’im!” “Send ’im back to Japan! Remember Pearl Harbor!” “He couldn’t beat his grandmother’s wet panties with a fly swatter!”

  We screamed all through the six-rounder and through both 10-round feature matches. When it was over I was 50 cents ahead. I lit two cigars, gave one to Patricia and we walked out to her car.

  On the way in we got into an argument of some sort. What it was about I have since forgotten but I think it was something about which was the greater invention, the elevator or the escalator? She let me out in front of my place and I wandered back through the banana trees and the polluted fishpond and went up the back stairway to Apt. #24 where I found a pint of Grand-Dad in the refrig and lucked onto some Stravinsky on KFAC and sat about drinking and listening.