“I don’t like to be rushed,” Margie said weakly.
“Ah, that’s fine! That’s what I like: spirit! Chaplin fell in love with Goddard when he saw her biting into an apple! I’ll bet you bite an apple damn good! I’ll bet you can do other things with your mouth, yes, yes!”
Then he kissed her again. When he broke away he asked Margie, “Where’s the bedroom?”
“Why?”
“Why? Because that’s where we’re going to do it!”
“Do what?”
“Fuck, of course!”
“Get out of my house!”
“You don’t mean it?”
“I mean it.”
“You mean you don’t want to fuck?”
“Exactly.”
“Listen, there are ten thousand women who want to go to bed with me!”
“I’m not one of them.”
“O.K., pour me another drink and I’ll go.”
“It’s a bargain.” Margie went to the kitchen, put three jiggers of brandy into a half glass of water, came out and handed it to him.
“Listen, do you know who I am?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Marx Renoffski, the poet.”
“I said I knew who you were.”
“Oh,” said Marx, and he drained the glass. “Well, I gotta go. Karen, she don’t trust me.”
“You tell Karen that I think she’s a fine sculptress.”
“Oh, yeah, sure…” Marx picked up the head, walked through the room and toward the door. Margie followed him. Marx stopped at the door. “Listen, don’t you ever get hot pants?”
“Of course.”
“What do you do?”
“I masturbate.”
Marx drew himself up. “Madam, that’s a crime against nature and, more importantly, against me.” He closed the door. She watched him go carefully down the walk carrying his head. Then he turned and went up the path to Karen Reeves’ house.
Margie went into the music room. She sat down at the piano. The sun was going down. She was right on schedule. She began to play Chopin. She played Chopin better than she ever had before.
TURKEYNECK MORNING
At 6 a.m. Barney awakened and began poking her in the ass with his cock. Shirley pretended to be asleep. Barney poked harder and harder. She got up out of bed and went to the bathroom and urinated. When she came out he had the quilt off and was poking it up in the air under the bedsheet.
“Look, baby!” he said. “Mt. Everest!”
“Should I start breakfast?”
“Breakfast, shit! Come on back in here!”
Shirley got back in and he grabbed her head and kissed her. His breath was bad and his beard was worse. He took her hand and placed it on his cock.
“Think of all the women who’d like to have this thing!”
“Barney, I’m just not in the mood.”
“What do you mean, you’re not in the mood?”
“I mean, I just don’t feel sexy.”
“You will, baby, you will!”
They slept without pajamas in the summer and he climbed on top of her. “Open up, goddamn it! You sick?”
“Barney, please…”
“Please, what? I want some ass and I’m going to get some ass!”
He kept forcing with his cock until he entered her. “You goddamned whore, I’ll rip you wide open!”
Barney fucked like a machine. She had no feelings for him. How could any woman marry a man like that? she wondered. How could any woman live with a man like that for three years? When they had first met he hadn’t seemed so…much like hardwood.
“You like that turkeyneck, kid?”
The full weight of his heavy body was on her. He was sweating. He offered her no relief.
“I’m coming, baby, I’m COMING!”
Barney rolled off and wiped on the sheet. Shirley got up, went to the bathroom and douched. Then she went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. She put on the potatoes, the bacon, the coffee. She broke the eggs into the bowl and scrambled them. She had on her slippers and her bathrobe. The bathrobe said, “HERS.” Barney came out of the bathroom. He had shaving cream on his face.
“Hey, baby, where are those green shorts of mine with the red stripes?”
She didn’t answer.
“Listen, I asked you where those shorts were!”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? I bust my hump out there from eight to twelve hours a day and you don’t know where my shorts are?”
“I don’t know.”
“The coffee’s boiling over! Look!”
Shirley shut the flame off.
“Either you don’t make coffee at all, either you forget the coffee or you boil it all away! Or you forget to buy bacon or you burn the fucking toast or you lose my shorts, or you do some fucking thing. You always do some fucking thing!”
“Barney, I’m not feeling good…”
“And you’re always not feeling good! When the hell you gonna start feeling good? I go out and bust my hump and you lay around reading magazines all day and feeling sorry for your soft ass. You think it’s easy out there? You realize there are ten percent unemployed? You realize I’ve got to fight for my job every day, day after day while you sit in an armchair feeling sorry for yourself? And drinking wine and smoking cigarettes and talking to your friends? Girlfriends, boyfriends, whoever the hell friends. You think it’s easy for me out there?”
“I know it’s not easy, Barney.”
“You don’t even want to give me a piece of ass anymore.”
Shirley poured the scrambled eggs into the pan. “Why don’t you finish shaving? Breakfast will be ready soon.”
“I mean, what’s your reluctance about giving me a piece of ass? That thing rimmed in gold?”
She stirred up the eggs with a fork. Then she picked up the spatula. “It’s because I can’t stand you anymore, Barney. I hate you.”
“You hate me? What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can’t stand the way you walk. I can’t stand the hairs that stick out of your nose. I don’t like your voice, your eyes. I don’t like your mind or the way you talk. I don’t like you.”
“And what about you? What do you have to offer? Look at you! You couldn’t get a job in a third-rate whorehouse!”
“I’ve got one.”
He hit her then, open-handed, on the side of the face. She dropped the spatula, lost her balance, hit the side of the sink and caught herself. She picked up the spatula, washed it in the sink, came back and turned the eggs over.
“I don’t want breakfast,” Barney said.
Shirley turned off all the burners and went back to the bedroom, went to bed. She heard him getting himself ready in the bathroom. She even hated the way he splashed water in the basin while he shaved. And when she heard the electric toothbrush the thought of the bristles in his mouth cleaning his teeth and his gums sickened her. Then there was the sound of hairspray. There was silence. Then the toilet flushed.
He came out. She heard him choosing a shirt from the closet. She heard his keys and his change rattle as he put on his pants. Then she felt the bed give way as he sat on the edge, putting on his stockings and his shoes. Then the bed rose as he stood up. She lay on her stomach, face down, eyes closed. She sensed him looking at her.
“Listen,” he said, “I just want to tell you one thing: if it’s another man, I’m going to kill you. Got it?”
Shirley didn’t answer. Then she felt his fingers around the back of her neck. He bounced her head hard up and down into the pillow. “Answer me! Got it? Got it? You got it?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve got it.”
He let go of her. He walked out of the bedroom and into the front room. She heard the door close, then heard him walk down the steps. The car was in the driveway, and she listened to it start. Then she heard the sound of it driving away. Then there was silence.
IN AND OUT AND OVER
The problem with an 11 a.m. arrival
and an 8 p.m. poetry reading is that it sometimes reduces a man to something they lead on stage only to be looked at, jibed at, knocked down, which is what they want—not enlightenment, but entertainment.
Professor Kragmatz met me at the airport, I met his two dogs in the car, and I met Pulholtz (who had been reading my work for years) and two young students—one a karate expert and the other with a broken leg—back at Howard’s house. (Howard was the professor who had issued the invitation for me to read.)
I sat glum and pious, drinking beer, and then almost everyone but Howard had a class to go to. Doors slammed and the dogs barked and left and the clouds darkened and Howard and I and his wife and a young male student sat around. Jacqueline, Howie’s wife, played chess with the student.
“I got a new supply,” said Howard. He opened his hand on a palm-full of pills. “No. It’s my stomach,” I said. “Bad shape lately.”
At 8 p.m. I got up there. “He’s drunk, he’s drunk,” I could hear the voices from the audience. I had my vodka and orange juice. I gave them an opening swallow to stir up their distaste. I read for an hour.
The applause was fair enough. A young boy came up, trembling. “Mr. Chinaski, I have got to tell you this: you are a beautiful man!” I shook his hand. “It’s all right, kid, just keep buying my books.” A few had some of my books and I made drawings in them. It was over. I had hustled my ass.
The post-reading party was the same as always, professors and students, bland and dim. Professor Kragmatz got me in the breakfast nook, began asking questions as the groupies slithered about. No, I told him, no, well, yes, parts of T. S. Eliot were good. We were too rough on Eliot. Pound, yes, well, we were finding out that Pound was not quite what we thought. No, I couldn’t think of any outstanding contemporary American poets, sorry. Concrete poetry? Well, yes, concrete poetry was just like concrete anything else. What, Céline? An old crank with withered testicles. Only one good book, the first one. What? Yes, of course, it’s enough. I mean, you haven’t written even one have you? Why do I pick on Creeley? I don’t anymore. Creeley’s built a body of work, that’s more than most of his critics have done. Yes, I drink, doesn’t everybody? How the hell you going to make it otherwise? Women? Oh yes, women, oh yes, of course. You can’t write about fireplugs and empty India ink bottles. Yes, I know about the red wheelbarrow in the rain. Look, Kragmatz, I don’t want you to hog me entirely. I better move around…
I stayed and slept in the bottom half of a bunk bed under the boy who was the karate expert. I awakened him about 6 a.m. by scratching my hemorrhoids. A stink arose and the female dog who had slept with me all night began nuzzling. I turned on my back and went to sleep again.
When I awakened everybody was gone but Howie. I got up, took a bath, dressed, walked out to see him. He was very sick.
“My god, you’re resilient,” he said. “You’ve got the body of a 20-year-old.”
“No speed, no bennies, very little hard stuff last night…only beer and grass. I lucked it,” I told him.
I suggested some soft-boiled eggs. Howard put them on. It began to get dark. It seemed like midnight. Jacqueline phoned and said there was a tornado approaching from the north. It began hailing. We ate our eggs.
Then the poet for the next night’s reading arrived with his girl friend and Kragmatz. Howard ran out into the yard and vomited up his eggs. The new poet, Blanding Edwards, began talking. He meant well. He talked about Ginsberg, Corso, Kerouac. Then Blanding Edwards and his girlfriend, Betty (who also wrote poetry), began talking to each other in rapid French.
It got darker, there was lightning, more hail, and the wind, the wind was awful. The beer came out. Kragmatz reminded Edwards to be careful, he had to read that night. Howard got onto his bicycle and pedaled off in the storm to go teach freshman English at the university. Jacqueline arrived. “Where’s Howie?”
“He took his two wheels out into the tornado,” I said.
“Is he all right?”
“He looked like a 17-year-old boy when he left. He took a couple of aspirin.”
The remainder of the afternoon was waiting and trying to avoid literary talk. I got a ride to the airport. I had my $500 check and my satchel of poems. I told them to stay in the car and that someday I would send all of them a picture postcard.
I walked into the waiting room and I heard one guy say to another, “Look at that guy!” The natives all had the same hairstyle, the same buckles on their high-heeled shoes, lightweight overcoats, single-breasted suits with brass buttons, striped shirts, neckties that ran the gamut from gold to green. Even their faces were alike: the noses and ears and mouths and expressions were alike. Shallow lakes coated with thin ice. Our plane was late. I stood behind a coffee machine, drank two dark coffees and ate some crackers. Then I went out and stood in the rain.
We left after an hour and a half. The plane rocked and bucked. There was no New Yorker magazine. I asked the stewardess for a drink. She said there wasn’t any ice. The pilot told us there would be a delay landing in Chicago. They couldn’t get clearance. He was a man of truth. We reached Chicago and there was the airport and we circled and circled and circled and I said, “Well, I guess there’s nothing to do.” I ordered my third drink. The others began to get into the swing of it. Especially after both engines sputtered out at once. They started again and somebody laughed. We drank and we drank and we drank. After we were potted out of our lighttowers they told us they were going to land.
O’Hare again. The thin ice broke. People hustled about, asking obvious questions and getting obvious answers. I saw my flight had no departure time listed. It was 8:30 p.m. I phoned Ann. She said she’d keep calling L.A. International for the arrival time. She asked me how the reading had gone. I told her that it was very hard to fool a college poetry audience. I had only fooled about half of them. “Fine,” she said. “Never trust a man who wears a jump suit,” I told her.
I stood looking at the legs of a Japanese woman for 15 minutes. Then I found a bar. There was a black man in there dressed in a red leather outfit with a fur collar. They were giving it to him, laughing as if he was a bug crawling on the bar. They did it very well. It took centuries of practice. The black man was trying to be cool, but his back was rigid.
When I went to check the flight board again one-third of the airport was drunk. Hairstyles were coming undone. One man was walking backwards, very drunk, trying to fall on the back of his head and get himself a skull fracture. We all lit cigarettes and waited, watching, hoping he would give his head a damned good whack. I wondered which one of us would get his wallet. I watched him fall, then the horde swooped in to strip him. He was too far away to do me any good. I went back to the bar. The black man was gone. Two guys to my left were arguing. One of them turned to me. “What do you think of war?”
“There’s nothing wrong with war,” I said.
“Oh, yeah? Yeah?”
“Yeah. When you get into a taxi, that’s war. When you buy a loaf of bread, that’s war. When you buy a whore, that’s war. Sometimes I need bread, taxis and whores.”
“Hey, you guys,” said the man, “here’s a guy who likes war.”
Another guy came down from the end of the bar. He was dressed like the others. “You like war?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s a natural extension of our society.”
“How many years you been in?”
“None.”
“Where you from?”
“L.A.”
“Well, I lost my best buddy to a land mine. BAM! And he was gone.”
“But for the grace of God it might have been you.”
“Don’t get funny.”
“I’ve been drinking. Got a light?”
He put the lighter to the end of my cigarette with obvious distaste. Then he went back down to the end of the bar.
We left on the 7:15 at 11:15. We flew through the air. The poetry hustle was winding down. I’d hit Santa Anita on Friday and score a hundred, get back to the novel. The
New York Philharmonic was featuring Ives on Sunday. There was a chance. I ordered another drink.
The lights went out. Nobody could sleep, but they all pretended. I didn’t bother. I had a window seat and stared out at the wing and the lights below. Everything was arranged down there in nice straight lines. Ant nests.
We floated into L.A. International. Ann, I love you. I hope my car starts. I hope the sink isn’t plugged up. I’m glad I didn’t fuck a groupie. I’m glad I’m not very good at getting into bed with strange females. I’m glad I’m an idiot. I’m glad I don’t know anything. I’m glad I haven’t been murdered. When I look at my hands and they are still on my wrists, I think to myself, I am lucky.
I climbed out of the plane dragging my father’s overcoat and my stash of poems. Ann came up to me. I saw her face and I thought, shit, I love her. What am I going to do? The best I could do was to act indifferent, then proceed with her to the parking lot. You must never let them know that you care or they will kill you. I leaned over, pecked her on the cheek. “Damned nice of you to come.” “It’s all right,” she said.
We drove out of L.A. International. I’d done my dirty gig. The poetry hustle. I never solicited. They wanted their whore: they had him. “Kid,” I told her, “I sure missed your ass.” “I’m hungry,” said Ann.
We got to the Chicano place at Alvarado and Sunset. We had green chili burritos. It was over. I still had a woman, a woman I cared for. Such magic is not to be taken casually. I looked at her hair and her face as we drove back home. I stole glances at her when I felt she was not looking.
“How’d the reading go?” she asked.
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