That’s about it, Mom. I’m maintaining a straight B average. The weather’s so gloomy around here. We never see the sun. When I won this scholarship out here I never thought it would be quite like this. We’ve got a new cook and he’s a little better but he’s hairy-ass on garlic. He even garlics the scrambled eggs. He’s one of these ultra-taste freaks. He’ll walk up to you with this little bottle of imported nonpareil capers and he’ll say, “Try some! Try some!” They look like little snotballs soaked in vinegar. You reach in and try some. They taste just like that. “There,” he’ll say, “now doesn’t that make your soul tweet?” “Yeah, Dandy,” you say, “thanks ever so much.” And he wanders off, dipping his fingers in the little bottle. That’s about all, Mom. I’ll write again.
Love, your son,
Henry
L.A. Free Press, April 11, 1975
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
Lydia got out of bed and said, “I’m getting up, I’m tired of being in bed. I’m going to take a shower.” Harry stayed in bed, thinking, well shit, five more minutes. He heard her in the shower, he let himself listen to the water without trying to think of intonations. What are you going to do when it goes but ride with it? She took a long time in there. Then she was before the mirror combing her hair. Then he heard the hairspray. Then she was getting dressed. She’d brought plenty of clothing. He waited. When she walked out he got up and went into the bathroom and took a shit. When he wiped himself the paper kept bringing back the same heavy smears of brown. He finally got it out, flushed, then walked over to the mirror and looked at his face. Well, he couldn’t blame anybody. He grinned and spit in the sink. He found his clothes on the floor in the corner and began to dress. When he finished he walked down the hall to the kitchen. Lydia was doing the dishes: “Thought I might to help pay our way.”
Harry walked out on the veranda and gathered up a few saucers and coffee cups and ashtrays. He brought them in to Lydia. Her face was wearing the dark cloud, and he thought, O.K., well, I’d sure like to pass this one on down to the next.
Harry went back out and got the beer bottles. He almost puked looking at the beer bottles. Why didn’t people who drank beer ever finish their bottles? There was San Francisco across the way. He looked at it and was glad he wasn’t bottled in with them. What was wrong with San Francisco was that it pressed people too close together, so close together that they thought love was the only way out. Whatever way was out you had to be very good at and most people weren’t very good at love. Not very many people. Hardly any people.
He thought of the party. It hadn’t been a bad party. Not the first party where Lydia had been the storied and excellent protagonist: “ . . . when I hear MUSIC I like to DANCE! I LIKE to be SEXY! I want men to WANT me! I LIKE DANCING! I want men to think, why can’t I have that, how come he’s getting it? I come from the COUNTRY, we dance all the TIME! Ya gotta get them into MOTION, ya gotta get people OFF THEIR FEET! I give LIFE to your parties! I’ve ENHANCED your reputation!”
Perhaps she was right. Most of his life he’d been wrong, out of motion, driving the wrong way up one-way streets, confused, fucked, demented. That’s why he’d gone to the poem; without love or understanding you could hide inside of a poem, maybe even score a minor victory, fool a few. He’d always told Lydia after a reading, “Well, we fooled them again.”
The second party hadn’t been bad. It had been in the daylight and nobody had been trying to score off of anybody else. The guy in the captain’s cap had been particularly good: “. . . they say when they hang a man he gets an instant erection, ejaculates, and where the sperm drops down on the ground, up springs a magic flower. . . .” Harry had listened to the stories and laughed, asked for more. Lydia had hung her head, bored. Until she found some overhanging fruits from a tree and she kept ripping them off and eating them, saying, “Ooo, these are good!” Then she had seemed happier.
There were many dishes and Harry left her alone and went back to the bedroom and stretched out. Then he heard a gagging and spitting sound from the closet. Great Christ, now what? He got up, walked over and opened the closet door. There was a small brown and white kitten in there. The kitten had swallowed a balloon and was puking, only the neck of the balloon was stuck up inside of the throat and the vomit just emptied into the balloon, filling it up with varicolored and mushy objects. Then Harry puked small driblets upon his shoes, reached down and pulled the balloon out. He took the balloon over, pushed the glass windows open and dropped the thing into the garden. The kitten leaped up, showed Harry a tiny dry bunghole and leaped down into the garden after the balloon. They were two floors up. Harry closed the glass windows.
Then he walked into the bathroom and washed his face with soap and cold water. He dried on the same red towel Lydia had used for her shower, then he walked back out to the kitchen. “How about going out for breakfast?” he asked. She didn’t answer. “We’re on the 1:15 to Burbank.” She still didn’t answer. He walked around until he found a photo album, sat down and looked at it. He laughed a couple of times, then she was over his shoulder, looking down.
“See, there’s Ferlinghetti,” he said.
“Oh, yeah.”
“There’s Ginsberg, and Norse. . . .”
“Who’s that? The black guy? Didn’t we see him at the party?”
“No.”
“He spoke to you.”
“No.”
“Who’s that?”
“McClure.”
Harry handed her the photo album and went over and got a beer. He opened the beer. “This is a nice place. Must run her $400 a month.”
“Maybe she’s fucking the guy upstairs.”
“Who’s that?”
“You met him yesterday. He’s prettier than Joe.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“All right,” she said, folding the album, “let’s go eat.” Lydia went in and combed her hair again. “Is it cold outside?”
“For you, yes.”
“Should I wear my coat?”
“Yes.”
They walked through the garden and then left and down toward the bay, down the long series of cement steps. As they went down the steps each of her heels hit each surface with a hard flat noise. “I can always tell when she’s coming to see you in the court,” a friend had told him, “it sounds like a Nazi storm trooper.” But Harry still liked to be near her, he remembered all the good things she had taught him, little secrets she had helped him with, when she had met him he was almost dead of acute alcoholism, and she had loved him then, but as his luck had changed her love had changed, and the better his luck the worse her love, until it had vanished. Now they walked down the steps together. They climbed on down in silence. Harry thought about Arthur Schopenhauer; she thought, I’ve given him four years of my life.
It was almost noon. She wanted breakfast. Most of the places were sandwich shops. They kept walking. People with cameras walked by. Only the rich lived on such a day as Monday, or the talented, and the rich were the true lucky talented.
They finally found a place and walked in. It was empty and stank of defeat. We’ve found the proper place to eat in, thought Harry. Harry chose the corned beef on rye plus a side order of cole slaw. Lydia looked at the board a long time; she was competitive. She chose a plate special. Harry knew she would not be able to eat it all. But that didn’t matter. He paid for the food and walked it over to the table. Harry hadn’t noticed whether she had come on to the clerk or not; it had gotten wearing, those notations.
They sat down to eat. “Why don’t you watch me when I dance with a guy? You say I rub against his cock. Why don’t you really watch? You get drunk and you overreact. I don’t give them my pussy. I give you the pussy. If you don’t want the pussy, that’s up to you.”
But it wasn’t true. She’d given the pussy to plenty. What in the hell am I doing with a woman 20 years younger than I am anyhow? I’m going to get one 30 years younger and have her Vaseline my asshole and jam a week’s worth of my dirty s
tockings up there. “I found a kitten in the closet choking on a balloon,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Harry finished his sandwich and slaw and coffee and waited. She couldn’t finish her plate and passed the food over. Having been raised in poverty he finished her plate.
Plate, pussy, platitude, Plato, the words went through his mind.
They walked out and back down the runway. Same tourists, same death, same cameras, same lack of chance, of breath. For a moment he romanticized Marat in the tub with his boils, and being knifed by the high-class whore in ass-high nylons.
They walked along and Lydia said, “Wait a minute.” She stopped and looked into a window. There were four or five pairs of boots twisted and drying in the sun and heat of the window and some web-like strings of ladies underthings long ago rotted with an indifference to themselves. She kept looking at them as if they contained juice and meaning and music. Harry waited, attempting to hide an irritation, then he let the irritation hit him, then he tasted it and relaxed, thinking, what the fuck, she knows the game, she expects me to be irritated. And having known that, he waited. She pulled from the window and they walked down the street together. Soon enough, she found something else. Some Dalí imitations. She sucked on them and he waited. She expects me, thought Harry, to scream at her, ”For Christ’s sake, stop being such a fool. I love you anyhow!” Just like when she’s dancing with a Dalí imitation.
Harry waited anyhow until she got more tired with looking than he did with waiting. He’d often told her that anybody who was interested in everything could never know anything. But he’d wearied in trying to awaken her and she’d wearied in trying to awaken him in what she thought was true.
They walked along and got back up to the steps. It was a long climb. They got on up. And undressed. And got back into the bedroom. She kept kissing him and getting hot. He got down and lifted her legs, got his hands under her ass, and then she said, “Look, don’t you think we better get a towel since it’s their bed?” And Harry said, “Yes, let’s get a towel.” And she got the same red one she had showered with and spread it under herself and Harry lifted her ass again, one hand upon each mound, ducked his head in and looked, decided to do it well one more time, flicked his tongue through the hairs at first, all the time realizing that it was useless, that there was no chance, no hope, almost no feeling, he flicked his tongue down through the hairs, touched the lips, ran the tongue on up to the clit, hit it, withdrew, hit it. She farted a small fart and he went ahead.
They got the ride to the plane and on the plane, PSA, the dark cloud dropped over her face again, she felt dismal and irritated. “Well, you ought to be happy, you outdrew Ginsberg, you outdrew Ferlinghetti. Only Yevtushenko has outdrawn you in Frisco. You ought to be happy.”
“Care for a drink?”
“No.”
Harry ordered a vodka and 7.
“I’m going to the ladies room,” she said.
When she left Harry took out the letter from Jean. “You know I’ve lived in this town for two months, and have carried on an inner dialogue with you most of that time. Determined not to call or write, it feels as if my own plumbing is backing up on me. Time does not work quickly enough for me, and that inevitable indifference to you stays elusive. These lines then are a therapy. Perhaps if I put them down I will give myself some peaceful time. Already I run out of things to say. Ambivalence is the problem. Each time I feel he is a destructive son of a bitch, grinning evil, a thin small voice clearly says but he can’t help it, he too is programmed—I do believe you act upon people and things as you must. You are a victim, too. There is no winning for anyone except I somehow want to ‘win’ something. The freedom to read Orson Bean and you with the same interest is as close as I can get. To be in the same room with you and simply be affectionately interested in what you do or say is another win too. Perhaps none of the above is possible but that’s the goal—I am dried out. The last year has been revealing and draining, and there never was much left to be spendthrift with. . . . I have re-learned caution and suspicion runs high. You my ex-friend can take much of the credit. So scratch your belly and have a laugh on me. . . .”
The poor girl’s been drinking again, thought Harry, putting the letter back in his coat. Lydia walked back and strapped herself in. “You just don’t know how to party! I can’t teach you how to party! You get mad when I dance with the men, you’re so jealous!”
“Most parties are a contest of minor wills . . . it’s wearing.”
“We never have a good time. All we do is go to the racetrack and to poetry readings. We never go anywhere.”
“Christ, haven’t you ever realized that I’m a recluse?”
“All you do is get drunk! You don’t want to face people!”
“Exactly.”
Harry got the stewardess and got himself another vodka and 7. Lydia declined. The captain announced that the craft was descending and that PSA was pleased that the passengers had boarded the craft. “We hope that you’ll try us again,” he said. Harry got the drink down in two tries. The Hollywood-Burbank airport leaped up to meet them. There was no chance at all. The wheels were gone, the belly was gone and the heart pumped piss.
L.A. Free Press, June 13–19, 1975
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
I left L.A. International with a tremendous hangover to give a reading in Arkansas. I was lucky enough to get a seat by myself and waited on the first drink. The flight captain announced himself as Captain Winehead, which I thought fit the situation. When the stewardess came by, she asked me if I wished two drinks and I said, “Yes.” She had noticed my red nose, I supposed. Airliners were more boring than riding metropolitan buses—all the men with their perfect hairdos and their Business Administration educations, glad to get away from their wives, glad to get fucked out of town, glad to see The Game of the Week at 35,000 feet. But they drank, too. We all drank. America was the land of the hustle, and if you didn’t hustle, you were soon flushed away. I was going to hustle two universities for $500 plus air, food, lodging, and whatever else I could get. I was going to read them some poetry and bleed a little for them. I knew one of the stewardesses. She lived in Long Beach and I used to phone her drunk and tell her that I would eat her pussy better than it had ever been eaten by man, beast, or space creature. I had never gotten down to do it, however, and one drunken night we had both screamed at each other over the phone, and it had been over, was over. She stood up front, trying not to notice me, and I stared at her behind and her calves and thighs and her breasts like a real macho pig so that she’d have very vile things to tell her girlfriends about me—which would arouse them to buy my books. In my trade, you need talent plus an act. Talent alone won’t do it. Talent alone sometimes takes a century to surface, and nobody likes to get that far behind in their rent.
We had lunch, saw The Game of the Week, somebody won, somebody lost, the after-dinner wine burned my throat, my belly, and I ordered two Bloody Marys. I drank them and went to sleep, keeping both of my feet on my portfolio of poems. . . .
I awakened as we landed and when I got off, my Long Beach stewardess told me to have a nice day and I stuck the tip of my tongue out at her just like a carwash boy. . . .
I got onto this small two-engine job and when the propellers started to whirl, all the tin layers on the wings began to curl and slap against each other. There were no instructions. We rose and the stewardess asked if anybody wanted a drink. It seemed as if we all needed one. She bumped and weaved up and down the aisle exchanging escapism for money. Then she said (loudly): “DRINK UP FAST! WE’RE GOING TO LAND!” We drank up fast and landed. In seven minutes we were up again. The stewardess asked again if anybody wanted a drink. It seemed as if we all needed more. Then she said (loudly): “DRINK UP FAST! WE’RE GOING TO LAND!” In seven minutes—after landing—we were up again. (Repeat scene.)
When I landed in this small town in Arkansas, Professor Peter James and his wife, Selma, were the
re to meet me. Selma looked like a movie starlet but with much more inner class. I decided for Peter’s sake (and Selma’s too) not to seduce her.
“You’re looking great,” said Pete.
“Your wife’s looking great.”
“You’ve got two hours before the reading.”
“I need some vodka and orange. I can’t face those bloodsuckers straight.”
“We’ll fix you up.”
We went to their car and Pete drove to their place. It was a nice place with rather an underground below the first floor. I was shown my bedroom, downstairs. “You wanna eat?” Pete asked. “Shit no, I feel like I’m going to vomit.” We went upstairs and I worked on some beer. Pete, besides being a professor, was a pretty good poet. He’d gotten a Guggenheim when those same people had stiffed me. Many people got Guggenheims, but I felt Pete deserved one even though I thought I was a better writer. But then, I think I am better than Tolstoy, Chekhov, Auden, and T.S. Eliot. . . .
At the reading backstage, Pete got the water pitcher and emptied it and refilled it with the vodka and orange. “An 80-year-old woman runs this joint. She’d cream in her panties if she saw you drinking outright. She’s a nice old girl, but she still thinks poetry is about sunsets and doves-in-flight.”
“O.K., I don’t want to make her cream.”
“Nobody does.”
“Heee, heee, heee . . . aw, Pete, you old cat’s tit.”
I went out and read. Same as any other place: SRO. The luck was holding. And they were like any other audience—they didn’t know what to do with the good poems, and in others they laughed at the wrong lines for the wrong reason, but I kept reading and pouring from the water pitcher.
The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way Page 13