The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way

by Charles Bukowski

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “It costs 50 cents to go in there,” he tells me.

  “But I don’t want to buy a magazine,” I say.

  “That’s just it. You gentlemen just come in here and look at the pictures. We have to protect ourselves. The 50 cents can be applied to the purchase of any magazine. We give you this returnable token.”

  I give him the 50 cents and he gives me the token. I am allowed to walk in.

  The place is quite filled with men. The owner is the grand priest and the place does have the feeling of a temple. The men hardly move. They stand very quietly, turning pages. Some of the magazines feature men on the covers. On one, a photo of a penis, a diseased-looking and curved thing, pokes through some torn shorts. What the hell is this? I think. I walk around and don’t know what to do. There is a glass case full of rubber penises. I look at them and walk on. Then, to give a façade of one belonging, I pick up a girly mag and finger through. The first photo I see puts me headlong into a gaping vagina. Has this been the object of so many of my pleasures? May the gods have mercy!

  To resurrect myself, I pick up a more standard sex mag. Here she was on the cover—some lass with an I.Q. of 69 trying to leer back while seeming passionate. The faces of these cover dollies! Pancakes. A layer of skin with proper nose-size, proper lip-size, proper eye-size, proper earsize, proper chin-size. That many men go to hell for these darlings is not my fault. I do suppose the photographers must realize that they are wasting flashbulbs upon female morons. But the editors, who write the copy under these photos, always attempt to invest these things with both intelligence and understanding. Soul, if you’ll buy it.

  Now, here’s a shot of Lila. This time, just her head. She’s pensive. She’s so damned pensive that she’s thrown her delicious head down into some green brush. That’s getting there, think of it. But the eyebrows are plucked and the mascara is still there, even down in the green brush. All right, Lila, get up. That one’s over. Now you see her leaning on a fence. She talks to animals. Mother Nature is her mother. Look at her in that Indian headdress! Jesus Christ. O, Lila, I’d like to have you in that Indian headdress! But what’s that blotch on her back? How’d they let that get in there?

  Now, here’s Tanya. She loves water. First photo you see, there’s water spilling all over her big tits. Wow. The next photo doesn’t make much sense at all. Her butt is spread over a frog pond. She seems to be screaming. Constipated? Now she’s standing behind a highly polished table. There are candles everywhere. Her tits hang down. She looks at you. What the hell? You think. What am I supposed to do? I’m told that she cries a lot for no seeming reason. Then one day she walks along under this raining sky and the sky opens a big hole right to the heavens and she gets the answer. She comes to California with her big tits and tail. She studies the dance. She’s learned the discipline of Hatha Yoga. She’s read Ayn Rand, the novelist. Tanya states: “The earth is in trouble.” Profound.

  And here’s Clara. She hides behind rocks. Swims with the fishes. More of the water thing. Water’s the thing, I guess. Keeps the body from stinking. Anyhow, she’s a rivermaid. She’s an enchantress. She has large breasts also. The deeps of the river flash in her eyes, I’m told. Also, she gives her love to the lonely men who swim up the river at night. Too bad. Lonely men don’t swim up rivers at night. They get drunk or kill themselves or go to a movie.

  Here’s Deedee. Deedee somehow came across a volume of and/or on Buddhism and came to Hollywood. Deedee wants to go back to nature. She’s an expert on wild plants and herbs. She also has big tits. She likes the “Jefferson Airplane” but she also enjoys chewing birch bark. Her buttocks look fairly nice.

  I have done my duty. I place the mag back in the rack. I am the last to arrive and now I am the first to leave. I walk toward the Hollywood night and the dark smoggy air. I am almost to the entrance.

  “Hey, buddy!”

  “Yes?”

  “Aren’t you gonna cash in on your token?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Immediately I see the fear and respect in his eyes. He thinks I am the heat.

  I take out a pack of smokes, light one.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

  He stiffens and doesn’t answer.

  I walk to the parking lot, get into my car, and start the engine. As I do, I imagine one of the photo cover girls telling her shackjob:

  “Ladybug Magazine was by today. They wanted to snap my snatch. I told them it would be a hundred bucks extra.”

  “Atta baby!” says the shackjob. They lean back and watch TV.

  I drive on out, and as I take a left down Hollywood Blvd., I toss the 50-cent token out the window. The night takes it, and I am free.

  Candid Press, November 29, 1970

  More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

  I was put in touch with them by somebody who had heard me at a poetry reading and so there I was driving around that part of Hollywood looking for a parking place, and it was hot. I was sweating, and I finally gave up and just drove four or five blocks off, parked and walked back. The walk wasn’t bad because I was following this girl in the mini and she wiggled it at me, and I could have passed her but I didn’t have the strength. She was good for three blocks, then turned into an apartment house. I walked the other block or so, uninspired. I walked up to the guard’s gate. The old woman who ran the switchboard doubled as guard.

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  “My name’s Bukowski. I have an appointment with Graf Productions at 3:30.”

  “Go on back to 172. Follow the numbers.”

  “Thank you.”

  The man, somebody named Eddie, had told me on the phone that I was to be considered as a narrator for a stag film. Since I made my living by the typewriter—a literary hustler—I was always in the mood for various considerations—anything but the eight-hour day and good honest labor. I was hungover (a more or less normal state) and I followed the numbers down. It was a long wooden porch, rotting, with offices or studios every 10 or 12 feet. Everything had been painted a chickencoop white—a long time ago. Since it was very hot, the doors were open and I could hear conversations:

  “Now, look, Max, we’ve got to cut this thing down. There’s too much overlap. Now take the central part. . . .”

  At the next door:

  “Well, hell, I don’t know what to do. Do you think we can get away with it?”

  Film hustlers, hanging to a shoestring, trying to break through.

  I found 172. The door was open. I walked in. There was a desk. On the desk I saw my paperback book of short stories, Notes of A Dirty Old Man. I was known. Fine. But that paperback had had one printing of 26,000 copies for which I had gotten a grand in front and the grand was long ago gone. A man had to keep writing and hustling right to the edge of the grave. It was a dirty game.

  I whistled. Then hollered. “HEY, HEY, ANYBODY HERE? HELLO, HELLO!”

  “In here,” came the sound.

  I walked into the other room. There was a pleasant and calm-looking young man behind a typewriter.

  “Bukowski?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Sit down.”

  “Where’s the beer?” I asked.

  “Beer?”

  “The other guy, Eddie, said there’d be beer.”

  “Eddie!”

  Eddie walked in. He was young too, dark-haired, the stuff hanging down, and a bit of a beard. He walked very stooped with his hands dangling in front.

  “Bukowski,” he said, “remember me?”

  “Not from recent times.”

  “You were drunk. It was at this party.”

  “Okay, where’s the beer?”

  Eddie walked out and came back with a six-pack. He put it in front of me. I went to work.

  The other guy explained to me what they wanted to do with the stag film. What the idea was, what the narrator was to do. It sounded like hard work. But so did stand
ing around on skid row sound like hard work. I got around to the second beer. The sound would be dubbed in after the shooting of the film.

  “We want to audition you. Turn on the tape, Eddie.”

  Eddie turned on the tape. Then he handed me an ad from one of the large weekly magazines. About how easy it was to make it by air and do the thing. Skiing on Mt. Zebralla is $337. Watching Elizabeth Taylor dip into the Spanish Castle River is $443. On and on. I had seen the type of ad before. They were written by subnormal boys who had flunked out of Harvard Law School and whose fathers owned ad agencies. I tried to read it, but I couldn’t read it straight. The clever-flip slant was all too dull. I changed prices, names, words, cities as I went along. I cussed and laughed, gagged. They laughed too. But I knew I had flunked their audition.

  “You need an actor,” I said, “somebody without imagination, somebody with a healthy stomach.”

  “Wait now, the directors will want to hear this. We don’t know.”

  “The directors?”

  “Yes, we just write the script, shoot the film. We work for them.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “How about a walk-on part?”

  “Wait a minute, let’s go easy. I have a literary reputation.”

  Then they both laughed.

  Just then two girls walked in with a guy with a beret on. The girls were laughing all the time.

  “Come on,” said Eddie, “we’re going to shoot.”

  The girls looked good but they kept laughing. The guy with the beret didn’t laugh at all.

  We went into the other room, and they turned on the equipment. Eddie, myself, and the guy who wasn’t Eddie sat behind the camera. Eddie worked the camera.

  It opened with the guy in the beret wearing a smock and painting on canvas. There seemed to be much film wasted of just him painting. While he painted he sucked from a wine bottle. Then he stopped painting and just sat in a chair drinking from the wine bottle. Soon it was empty and he passed out.

  The door opened and two girls ran in laughing. One of them looked at the empty wine bottle and laughed. Then the other reached down and pulled out the guy’s penis and stroked it. The other girl began painting the penis on canvas. It was a large penis, on canvas and off. Then the painter awakened. He ran to the canvas and looked at it and seemed very angry. I couldn’t understand why. Soon the girls were taking their clothes off (still laughing) and the painter was taking his clothes off too.

  It’s really silly, I thought.

  Then they ran around assuming various positions, holding them for a while, then breaking off and assuming other positions. I was surprised how many positions one man and two women could assume. Some of them were simply ridiculous, and some of them were accidental, and some of them did have a bit of charm. Very much charm. How they went on! It must have gone on for 25 minutes. What a man he was. Suddenly the girls grabbed up their clothing and, still laughing, ran from the room. He leaped up, and as they ran off, gave himself a few last good strokes. Then it was over.

  We walked into the other room. The girls came out, still laughing, only now they were dressed in their regular street clothes, minis and tight sweaters.

  I got up and walked across to the one in the blue mini. I put my hand on her knee. The nylon was tight and hot. She kept laughing. I ran my hand up her leg. She laughed some more. I began to really heat up. I put my other hand on her other leg. I had both hands up near her ass, breathing heavily. Not my hands, me. She kept laughing. Suddenly she stopped laughing. She pushed me off.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with this guy? Is he a cube?”

  Perhaps. . . .

  The paper was thin. There seemed to be some writing on the back. I turned the paper over.

  It said: $150.

  I ripped the paper up, threw the bits on the grass, and got into my car, started it and began to drive toward my place.

  I stopped at a signal at Melrose and Western.

  Then I laughed.

  Candid Press, December 13, 1970

  More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

  I swung three deep out of Vacantsville, like busting out of a herd of cow, and next thing I knew we had set down, the bird burst its stupid stewardesses, and I was the last man out, to meet a teacher-student in a shag of yellow and he said, you, Bukowski, and there was something about his car needing oil all along the way, 200 miles plus, and then I was standing in front of the students, drunk, and they all sat at little round tables, and I thought, shit, this is like any place else, and I hooked from the bottle and began on the poems, and I told them that I had death coming and that they had death coming but they didn’t quite believe me, and I drank some more and I read them poems from way back and poems from recent and then I made one up, and it was dark in there, and I thought, this is lousy, I am reading at a university and I am getting away with everything, not because I am good but because nobody else is and there isn’t anybody to correct me: wish Ezra were here or Confucius or somebody anybody to keep me in line—but there wasn’t, so I read them my swill and they swallowed it, and then I grew weary and I said, let’s take five.

  Then I got down from the stage and walked over to one of the tables with my bottle. Some crazy-looking guy picked up my bottle and drank from it. I told him, take it easy, mother, I have 30 more minutes to go.

  He picked up the bottle to hit it again. I ripped it out of his hand.

  I told you, mother, the rest is mine.

  They told me later that he was crazy, everybody was afraid of him, he was always on acid but hung around the university even though they had kicked him out.

  That showed his weakness.

  I took the bottle from him and climbed back on stage.

  The second half was better than the first. They gave me good applause, even the crazy one.

  Then I got on out. Almost. The teacher who’d brought me in knew a prof and the prof was at the reading, and the next thing I was at a party at the prof’s house. Sell-out Bukowski. The guy who hated profs drinking with them.

  I’d signed a contract to read at another college 150 or 200 miles away. Anyhow, I was a literary hustler and I was stuck with it. I stood around at the party because my ride was there, the young guy with the shag of yellow hair, the nice guy, and to help myself along I drank myself into a standing stupidity. I had a reading at this other place at 11:30 a.m. in the morning but you wouldn’t have known it looking at me, peeling off tens and twenties: “Hey, man, go down to the liquor store and stock up for these good people. Looks like we’re running short.”

  My host was an English teacher who looked just like Ernest Hemingway. Of course, he wasn’t. But I was drunk.

  “Ernie,” I staggered up to him, “I’ll be a son of a bitch in hell! I thought you blew your head off!”

  My Hemingway was a staid and rather dull member of the English department.

  He just stood there talking about poets and poetry. He was insane. I walked over to the couch and started necking with his wife. She didn’t resist. He just stood there over us, talking about poets and poetry. I stuck my tongue deep into her mouth, mauled her breasts.

  “T.S. Eliot,” he said, “was entirely too safe.”

  I ran my hand up under her dress.

  “Auden had no lasting power.”

  She stuck her tongue deep into my mouth.

  The party went on and on, but for it all, I awakened in bed alone. I was in an upper bedroom, hungover and sick. I turned over to go back to sleep.

  “Bukowski! Wake up!” somebody said.

  “Go away,” I said.

  “We’ve got to make that 11:30 a.m. reading. It’ll take us 2 or 3 hours.”

  “What time is it now?”

  “8:30.”

  “God o mighty!”

  I turned over and climbed out of bed. It was my nice guy with the flax of yellow. I dressed as best I could and followed him down the steps. The prof and his wife were down there.

  “Want breakfast, Bukowski?”

&n
bsp; “Please, no.”

  The prof started in on literature again. He was really crazy.

  “Look,” his wife said to him, “why don’t you shut up a while?”

  “Look, we’ve got to go,” I said, “thanks for putting me up.”

  The prof and flax walked out the front door. The prof’s wife walked up to me. We embraced. She really gave herself over. That kiss was better than many lays I had had. I walked out, got into the car. And then we were moving, out in the country again, the green trees, the lakes. The kid had a pint of scotch. And a thermos bottle to drink it out of. The next place, he told me was a little more conservative.

  It was a goodly crowd and these hot lights were on. I was told I was to be put on videotape. I was too sick to care. I started reading. I read a while, then decided I’d better dare the scotch again. I tried it. It stayed down. The reading improved.

  I tried some more. The reading improved some more. I took the five, came back, and finished them.

  The kid and I walked back across campus.

  “They’ll mail you your check,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” I said. It was all over. Two readings. I’d picked up $375 in a night and a day.

  We got back into the car. There were three or four hours before plane time, so we drove to his place out under the trees. His buddy followed us in his car. No women. Well.

  We got there and drank beer all afternoon. Luckily they were easy fellows to like. They stayed away from literature and we talked about women and about survival. It was an easy afternoon and then we made the airport. I checked into the next flight and we sat at a table in the bar, and I bought the drinks. I’d made the money and felt obligated, besides, Flax had driven me all over the state, arranged the readings, propped me in front of the TV.

  I kept imagining I heard my name over the intercom:

  “C. Bukowski, C. Bukowski, please report . . .”

  “Man,” I said, “I must be going crazy. I keep hearing my name.”

  They laughed. Then we got up to go to the plane. It was just rolling down the runway.

  I walked back to the ticket office, told them what had happened, and they put me on the next flight. We went back into the bar.