“I can’t make it, Jim. I can’t go another blind.”
“Wait a minute.”
When Jim came out of the crapper he went to the bar and brought his beer back. He began cleaning the blinds.
“That’s all right, Jim, forget it.”
Jim didn’t answer. I went to the bar and got another whiskey. When I came back again I noticed one of the old girls taking the blinds down from the other window.
“Careful you don’t cut yourself,” I said as I sat down.
A few minutes later there were four or five people back there, men and women, and they were all working at the blinds, talking, and laughing. Pretty soon everybody at the bar was back there, even Helen. It didn’t seem to take very long. I worked in two more whiskeys. Then it was finished. Billy Boy came back.
“I don’t have to pay you,” he said.
“Hell, the job’s finished.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“Don’t be a cheapass, Billy,” somebody said.
“All right. But he had twenty drinks of whiskey.”
Billy reached for the five, I had it and we all walked back to the bar.
“All right,” I announced, “a drink for everybody! Me too.”
I laid down the five.
Tommy went around pouring the drinks. Some nodded to me, some said thanks.
I said, “Thank you, too.”
I drank my drink and Tommy picked up the five.
“You owe the bar $3.15,” he said.
“Put it on the tab.”
“O.k. Name?”
“Chinaski.”
“Chinaski. You heard the one about the Polack who . . .”
“I heard it.”
The drinks came my way until closing time. On the last drink I looked around. 2 A.M. closing. Helen was gone. Helen had slipped out. Helen had lied. Just like those bitches, I thought, afraid of the long hard ride . . .
I got up and walked back toward my roominghouse. It was a short walk and the moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed; it almost sounded as if somebody was following me. I looked around. It wasn’t true. I was quite alone.
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
This is what killed Dylan Thomas.
I board the plane with my girlfriend, the sound man, the camera man and the producer. The camera is working. The sound man has attached little microphones to my girlfriend and myself. I am on my way to San Francisco to give a poetry reading. I am Henry Chinaski, poet. I am profound, I am magnificent. Balls. Well, yes, I do have magnificent balls.
Channel 15 is thinking of doing a documentary on me. I have on a clean new shirt, and my girlfriend is vibrant, magnificent, in her early thirties. She sculpts, writes, and makes marvelous love. The camera pokes into my face. I pretend it isn’t there. The passengers watch, the stewardesses beam, the land is stolen from the Indians, Tom Mix is dead, and I’ve had a fine breakfast.
But I can’t help thinking of the years in lonely rooms when the only people who knocked were the landladies asking for the back rent, or the F.B.I. I lived with rats and mice and wine and my blood crawled the walls in a world I couldn’t understand and still can’t. Rather than live their life, I starved; I ran inside my own mind and hid. I pulled down all the shades and stared at the ceiling. When I went out it was to a bar where I begged drinks, ran errands, was beaten in alleys by well-fed and secure men, by dull and comfortable men. Well, I won a few fights but only because I was crazy. I went for years without women, I lived on peanut butter and stale bread and boiled potatoes. I was the fool, the dolt, the idiot. I wanted to write but the typer was always in hock. I gave it up and drank . . .
The plane rose and the camera went on. The girlfriend and I talked. The drinks arrived. I had poetry, and a fine woman. Life was picking up. But the traps, Chinaski, watch the traps. You fought a long fight to put the word down the way you wanted. Don’t let a little adulation and a movie camera pull you out of position. Remember what Jeffers said—even the strongest men can be trapped, like God when he once walked on earth.
Well, you ain’t God, Chinaski, relax and have another drink. Maybe you ought to say something profound for the sound man? No, let him sweat. Let them all sweat. It’s their film burning. Check the clouds for size. You’re riding with executives from I.B.M., from Texaco, from . . .
You’re riding with the enemy.
On the escalator out of the airport a man asks me, “What’s all the cameras? What’s going on?”
“I’m a poet,” I tell him.
“A poet?” he asks, “what’s your name?”
“García Lorca,” I say . . .
Well, North Beach is different. They’re young and they wear jeans and they wait around. I’m old. Where’s the young ones of 20 years ago? Where’s Joltin’ Joe? All that. Well, I was in S.F. 30 years ago and I avoided North Beach. Now I’m walking through it. I see my face on posters all about. Be careful, old man, the suck is on. They want your blood.
My girlfriend and I walk along with Marionetti. Well, here we are walking along with Marionetti. It’s nice being with Marionetti, he has very gentle eyes and the young girls stop him on the street and talk to him. Now, I think, I could stay in San Francisco . . . but I know better; it’s back to L.A. for me with that machinegun mounted in the front court window. They might have caught God, but Chinaski gets advice from the devil.
Marionetti leaves and there’s a beatnick coffeeshop. I have never been in a beatnick coffeeshop. I am in a beatnick coffeeshop. My girl and I get the best—60 cents a cup. Big time. It isn’t worth it. The kids sit about sipping at their coffees and waiting for it to happen. It isn’t going to happen.
We walk across the street to an Italian cafe. Marionetti is back with the guy from the S. F. Chronicle who wrote in his column that I was the best short story writer to come along since Hemingway. I tell him he is wrong; I don’t know who is the best since Hemingway but it isn’t H.C. I’m too careless. I don’t put out enough effort. I’m tired.
The wine comes on. Bad wine. The lady brings in soup, salad, a bowl of raviolis. Another bottle of bad wine. We are too full to eat the main course. The talk is loose. We don’t strain to be brilliant. Maybe we can’t be. We get out.
I walk behind them up the hill. I walk with my beautiful girlfriend. I begin to vomit. Bad red wine. Salad. Soup. Raviolis. I always vomit before a reading. It’s a good sign. The edge is on. The knife is in my gut while I walk up the hill.
They put us in a room, leave us a few bottles of beer. I glance over my poems. I am terrified. I heave in the sink, I heave in the toilet, I heave on the floor. I am ready.
The biggest crowd since Yevtushenko . . . I walk on stage. Hot shit. Hot shit Chinaski. There is a refrigerator full of beer behind me. I reach in and take one. I sit down and begin to read. They’ve paid $2 a head. Fine people, those. Some are quite hostile from the outset. 1/3 of them hate me, 1/3 of them love me, the other 3rd don’t know what the hell. I have some poems that I know will increase the hate. It’s good to have hostility, it keeps the head loose.
“Will Laura Day please stand up? Will my love please stand up?”
She does, waving her arms.
I begin to get more interested in the beer than the poetry. I talk between the poems, dry and banal stuff, drab. I am H. Bogart. I am Hemingway. I am hot shit.
“Read the poems, Chinaski!” they scream.
They are right, you know. I try to stay with the poems. But I’m at the refrigerator door much of the time too. It makes the work easier, and they’ve already paid. I’m told once John Cage came out on stage, ate an apple, walked off, got one thousand dollars. I figured I had a few beers coming.
Well, it was over. They came around. Autographs. They’d come from Oregon, L.A., Washington. Nice pretty little girls too. This is what killed Dylan Thomas.
Back upstairs at the place, drinking beer and talking to Laura and Joe Krysiak. They are beating on the door downstairs. “Chinaski! Chinaski!” Joe goes down to
hold them off. I’m a rock star. Finally I go down and let some of them in. I know some of them. Starving poets. Editors of little magazines. Some get through that I don’t know. All right, all right—lock the door!
We drink. We drink. We drink. Al Masantic falls down in the bathroom and crashes the top of his head open. A very fine poet, that Al. Well, everybody is talking. It’s just another sloppy beerdrunk. Then the editor of a little magazine starts beating on a fag. I don’t like it. I try to separate them. A window is broken. I push them down the steps. I push everybody down the steps, except Laura. The party is over. Well, not quite. Laura and I are into it. My love and I are into it. She’s got a temper, I’ve got one to match. It’s over nothing, as usual. I tell her to get the hell out. She does.
I wake up hours later and she’s standing in the center of the room. I leap out of bed and cuss her. She’s on me.
“I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!”
I’m drunk. She’s on top of me on the kitchen floor. My face is bleeding. She bites a hole in my arm. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die! Passion be damned! I run into the kitchen and pour half a bottle of iodine over my arm. She’s throwing my shorts and shirts out of her suitcase, taking her airplane ticket. She’s on her way again. We’re finished forever again. I go back to bed and listen to her heels going down the hill.
On the plane back the camera is going. Those guys from Channel 15 are going to find out about life. The camera zooms in on the hole in my arm. There is a double shot in my hand.
“Gentlemen,” I say, “there is no way to make it with the female. There is absolutely no way.”
They all nod in agreement. The sound man nods, the camera man nods, the producer nods. Some of the passengers nod. I drink heavily all the way in, savoring my sorrow, as they say. What can a poet do without pain? He needs it as much as his typewriter.
Of course, I make the airport bar. I would have made it anyhow. The camera follows me into the bar. The guys in the bar look around, lift their drinks and talk about how impossible it is to make it with the female.
My take for the reading is $400.
“What’s the camera for?” asks the guy next to me.
“I’m a poet,” I tell him.
“A poet?” he asks. “What’s your name?”
“Dylan Thomas,” I say.
I lift my drink, empty it with one gulp, stare straight ahead. I’m on my way.
another poem about a drunk and then I’ll let you go
“man,” he said, sitting on the steps,
“your car sure needs a wash and wax job
I can do it for you for 5 bucks.
I got the wax, I got the rags, I got everything
I need.”
I gave him the 5 and went upstairs,
when I came down 4 hours later
he was sitting on the steps drunk
and offered me a can of beer.
he said he was going to get the car
the next day.
the next day he got drunk again and
I loaned him a dollar for a bottle of
wine, his name was Mike
a world war II veteran.
his wife worked as a nurse.
the next day I came down and he was sitting
on the steps and he said,
“you know, I been sitting here looking at your car
wondering how I was gonna do it.
I wanna do it real good.”
the next day Mike said it looked like rain
and it sure as hell wouldn’t make any sense
to wash and wax a car when it was gonna rain.
the next day it looked like rain again.
and the next.
then I didn’t see him anymore.
a week later I saw his wife and she said,
“they took Mike to the hospital,
he’s all swelled-up, they say it’s from
drinking.”
“listen,” I told her, “he said he was going to wax my
car, I gave him 5 dollars to wax my
car . . .”
I was sitting in their kitchen
drinking with his wife
when the phone rang.
she handed the phone to me.
it was Mike, “listen,” he said, “come on down and
get me. I can’t stand this
place.”
when I got there
they wouldn’t give him his clothes
so Mike walked to the elevator in his
gown.
we got on and there was a kid driving the
elevator and eating a popsicle.
“nobody’s allowed to leave here in a gown,”
he said.
“you drive this thing, kid,” I said,
“we’ll worry about the gowns.”
I stopped at the liquor store for 2 six packs
then went on in. I drank with Mike and his wife until
11 P.M.
then went upstairs . . .
“where’s Mike?” I asked his wife 3 days
later.
“Mike died,” she said, “he’s gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m very sorry.”
it rained for a week after that and I
figured the only way I’d get that 5 back
was to go to bed with his wife
but you know
she moved out a couple of days
later
and an old guy with white hair
moved in there.
he was blind in one eye and
played the French horn.
there was no way I could make it
with him.
I had to wash and wax my own car.
in the name of love and art
I am sitting in front of my typewriter
waiting to get drunk.
my girlfriend who sculpts
wants to do one of me
nude and drunk
bottle in hand
beergut hanging balls hanging cock
dropping along the rug
and rolling
up.
you know,
I am honored.
someday I’ll probably be dead
and they’ll look at this thing in clay
(she says she’s going to do it about
5/8ths the size)
and there I’ll sit
holding my beerbottle:
THE DRUNK
Rodin did The Thinker,
now we’ll have The DRUNK.
she’s coming over with the Polaroid
to take some shots
as soon as I get drunk enough.
I keep telling her,
you know, I live my life just for you,
I oughta write a song about it.
but she doesn’t believe me.
but she ought to believe me.
here I sit
drinking this whiskey and beer.
I don’t know how many times I’ll have to
get drunk in order to perpetuate
her Art. it may take a long time
to finish this sculpture and I very much want it
to be authentic.
I hope this sacrifice of mine will be
long remembered.
I lift another drink and force it
down my throat.
god, how I love that woman!
she’d better get that cock right.
the drunk tank judge
the drunk tank judge is
late like any other
judge and he is
young
well-fed
educated
spoiled and
from a good
family.
we drunks put out our cigarettes and await his
mercy.
those who couldn’t make bail are
first. “guilty,” they say, they all say,
“guilty.”
“7 days.” “14
days.” “14 days and then you will be
released to the Honor Farm.” “4 days.” “7 days.”
“14 days.”
“judge, these guys beat hell out of a man
in there.”
“next case, please.”
“7 days.” “14 days and then you will be released to the
Honor Farm.”
the drunk tank judge is
young and
overfed. he has
eaten too many meals. he is
fat.
the bail-out drunks are
next. they put us in long lines and
he takes us
quickly. “2 days or 40 dollars.” “2 days or 40
dollars.” “2 days or 40 dollars.” “2 days or
40 dollars.”
there are 35 or
40 of us.
the courthouse is on San Fernando Road among the
junkyards.
when we go to the bailiff he
tells us,
“your bail will apply.”
“what?”
“your bail will apply.”
the bail is $50. the court keeps the
ten.
we walk outside and get into our
old automobiles.
most of our automobiles look worse than
the ones in the
junkyards. some of us
don’t have any
automobiles. most of us are
Mexicans and poor whites.
the trainyards are across the
street. the sun is up
good.
the judge has very
smooth
delicate
skin. the judge has
fat
jowls.
we walk and we drive away from the
courthouse.
justice.
some people never go crazy
some people never go crazy.
me, sometimes I’ll lie down behind the couch
for 3 or 4 days.
they’ll find me there.
it’s Cherub, they’ll say, and
pour wine down my throat
rub my chest
sprinkle me with oils.
then I’ll rise with a roar,
rant, rage—curse
them and the universe
as I send them scattering over the
lawn.
I’ll feel much better,
sit down to toast and eggs,
On Drinking Page 6