More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

by Bukowski, Charles

  They didn’t move. Their game. I moved forward.

  Then one guy started running and the other guy moved after him. They ran down the shore, around the pile of searocks and were gone. The lifeguard still stared out at sea . . .

  I walked over to the guy and turned him over. Sand was mixed in with blood and hair. I took the sea water as it came in and splashed it over his face. Hair grew upon his face where it wasn’t supposed to grow. It grew right in near the nose. I don’t mean under it, I mean right around the edges of the nose. Up by the eyes. There was a bird-like thing about him, an inhuman thing about him. I disliked him. I helped him up.

  “You o.k.?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. But they took my money. 3 dollars. My money’s gone.”

  I picked him up and walked him over to a small cliff, away from Louise and sat him down.

  “I live under the pier,” he said.

  “Are you serious?”

  “5 years now. I think it’s been 5 years.”

  “I can only give you a dollar.”

  “Will you?”

  “Here.”

  The dollar seemed to bring him out of it.

  “Do you live around here?” he asked.

  “No. Los Angeles.”

  “How do you make it?”

  “Luck, I guess.”

  Then Louise waved from her sand castle. I waved back. My friend and I looked out at sea. A small ugly boat of some sort was slowly passing by out there, doing something.

  Then my friend said, “Yesterday 2 guys were sucking each other off under the pier and some plain-clothes cops caught them and locked them up. Do you think that’s right?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said.

  “I mean,” he said, “if 2 guys want to suck each other off, that’s their business, isn’t it?”

  “Well, looking at it from that angle, I suppose you’re right . . . But look, I’ve got to check on my little girl right now.”

  I walked over and sat down by Louise.

  My friend walked up the sand toward the boardwalk.

  She smiled at me:

  “You like my castle?” she asked.

  I looked.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, “but better than that, it’s very nice.”

  “What’s the difference between ‘Beautiful’ and ‘Very nice’?”

  “Well, ‘Beautiful’ is usually what people say when they don’t mean it and ‘it’s very nice’ is usually what they way when they really mean it.”

  “Oh.”

  It was a very nice sand castle. We both hated to leave it there like that, so we smashed it down with our feet. Then she held my hand as we walked across the sand toward the parking lot. There were quite some hours left in our Monday together and we needed something different to do.

  I have lost some of the letters or I am too lazy to look for them but the first one was something about him being in a motel, in Sunland maybe, no, that doesn’t sound right, maybe it was the Sunland Motel, no, that isn’t it either, anyhow, I let the letter lay around three or four days and then I phoned, and the phone number given was one digit short, so I looked up the motel, whatever it was, and I phoned in and asked for a Jack M—, and Jack M—was out, and I left the message, and then I got lost, either at the track or in some other way and one day I was home (home?) and the phone rang and it was Jack M—and he said he had been trying to reach me and would Friday night be all right? I said yes. And he said, about 8, I gotta catch a plane at the International at 10:30, it’s a shame I couldn’t a gotten you earlier.

  So that Friday Neeli and Liza happened to be around and we were drinking beer in the breakfastnook and I warned them that this professor from this eastern university was coming around and that they’d better brace up, you know, for anything.

  We weren’t to be denied. The doorbell rang and Neeli and Liza began laughing. “It’s the professor,” I said.

  I went to the door.

  “ARE YOU CHARLES BUKOWSKI?” he asked with great pompous and sonorous force.

  “Yeh,” I said, “Come on in.”

  He followed me to the breakfastnook. He had a briefcase and a six-pack of beer. He had heard the legend: you go see Bukowski, you better bring a six-pack. I made the introductions and opened the beers. The prof sat down. He looked more like 1940 than anything else. Very straight back. Tie. Tweed jacket.

  He began to interview. But he didn’t have a tape recorder. And he didn’t take shorthand. It was evident he couldn’t interview me. The questions were harmless and I suggested that we go into the other room. I still attempted to answer Jack M—’s questions the best I could. We finished his beer and then I brought out my own. But he was nervous. Neeli and Liza were goading him a bit and I don’t think they realized that he knew it, so I tried to treat him with a bit more civility. But then he had to leap up to use the phone.

  It was the time of the protests of Nixon’s move to blockade the harbors in N. Vietnam. Jack M—had heard that protestors were down at the airport, and they were, but he found out over the phone that flights were still leaving, but it was obvious that he was very nervous about it, and we agreed with him that it was best that he left soon.

  A week or so later I received a letter from the professor explaining that here were some questions he had really meant to ask (but in all the confusion . . .) and would I mind? The questions sat about a week or so and then I sat down and answered them. It went like this:

  1) Why is your phone unlisted?

  Simple. Two years ago, that is before I quit my job, I didn’t have as much laying around time as I do now. The little free time I had then was needed toward creation. A ringing phone is a hazard. People have a way of inviting themselves over. At one time I didn’t answer the door, the phone or the mail. I feel that I was justified. I feel that what I created during that time proves it. Now I murder my own time. But I feel that what I create now also justifies that.

  2) Have you ever written, or thought about writing, a film scenario?

  Excuse me, what is a film scenario? Does it have anything to do with movies? Then the answer is no. I have never seen a movie that didn’t make me a bit sick. I don’t want to make anybody sick.

  3) Do you have anything like an aesthetic theory?

  What does “aesthetic” mean? I don’t have any theories. I simply DO. Or is that a theory, uh? Uh.

  4) How about a philosophy of history?

  I don’t like history. History is a terrible weight which proves nothing except the treachery of man and I am aware of that by walking down the street NOW. History is dull and doubtful and I don’t know how much of it is true. History is the memory of victory and defeat, and I’ve got enough on my mind now.

  5) How about the common belief that all poems are political?

  No, I think that most poems are cows with big sagging empty tits. I presume that by “political” you mean poems that move something toward the ultimate betterment of Man and the Government of Man. That’s all too perfect and coy. A poem is often something that is only necessary toward one man—the writer. It’s often a perfect form of selfishness. Let’s not credit ourselves with too much. Garage mechanics are more human than we are.

  6) Have you written music?

  Uhuh. I never liked those notes and lines and things they tried to teach me in school, I hated the teacher, so I deliberately didn’t learn the notes. Now it seems too late and too silly. Music affects me much more than writing or painting, though, and I seem to be listening to it continually—classical, rock, jazz, anything. It’s awfully good shit.

  7) Other writers you admire (besides Jeffers and Aiken—I’m thinking of Anthony Burgess, for example, whose Enderby is somewhat Bukowskian . . . & as a matter of fact, Burgess used to be a composer)?

  Never heard of Burgess, which doesn’t mean he isn’t any good. I don’t read much anymore. I like Artaud, Céline, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and the STYLE of the early Saroyan without the content. Then maybe Eugene O’Neill or somebody like tha
t. Most writers simply don’t have it and never will. There’s hardly any looking around, up, down, before and before that. A pack of shameful fakes. If I ever go to hell there will be all writers down there. There could be nothing worse.

  8) Several times during our “interview” you said, sardonically, “I’m immortal”; now I’m no depth psychologist or mystic-of-the-word . . . but the thought occurs to me that maybe you sometimes brood on what sort of trace you’ll leave as an artist, a writer . . . and also on human perishability. (There’s a question somewhere in that preceding sentence.)

  There is? Well, about the “immortal,” I hope I said it “sardonically.” The only good thing about writing is the writing itself—that is, to bring me closer to what is necessary NOW and to keep me from becoming anything like the first face I pass on a sidewalk on any given day. When I die they can take my work and wipe a cat’s ass with it. It will be of no earthly use to me. The only trace I want to leave, after death, is upon myself, and that isn’t important to you. Incidentally, one of the best things I like about humans is that they do perish.

  9) Anything in astrology or Zen or any of the popular cults you believe in?

  I don’t have time for cults. That business is for the large gang of people who need toe-tickling. For them, it’s all right. It might even be helpful. But I build the IDEA of myself from myself and my experience. I will have my blind sides, true. And I might have much to learn from other men. But, basically, I am not a learner from other men. I am headstrong and prejudiced but it’s good to live without too much instruction from other men. I’ve found the most learned men to be bores and the dumbest seem to be the most profound and uncluttered. Who wants to be many voices when there is only one voice trying to get out?

  10) You told me you stopped writing when you were 24 (incidentally, have you written an account of this episode with your father? If you haven’t we’d like to see it for THE ____REVIEW—we pay something like $50.00 for stories and essays) . . . but you didn’t tell me when you started writing before that, and why you started writing.

  I’d much rather you paid me $50 for answering these questions. I’m not sure that thing I told you about my father is quite true, although there is a partial truth. Sometimes when I’m talking I improve on things to make them better. Some people might call it lying; I call it an art-form, and, uh uh, no, I didn’t tell you when I started writing or why, but I was drinking, wasn’t I? And also, you didn’t ask. And also, I’m glad you didn’t ask.

  11) Is there anything, other than booze and women (I presume), that stimulates you creative lust? (Smell of horses, faces in the crowd at the track?) (You sort of answered this, but I’d like to hear more if you’d like to say it.)

  Everything, of course, stimulates my creative lust. Faces in the crowd do it plenty. I can look at faces and become disgusted and terrorized and sickened. Others can find beauty in them like large fields of flowers. I guess I ain’t much of a man for that. I am narrow. I can’t see the horizons or the reasons or the excuses or the glories. The average face to me is a total nightmare.

  Well, shit, I guess I don’t look so good to others either. I’ve been told I’m a very ugly man by more than one. So there’s your joke. Let’s get off these faces. I know that I haven’t answered your question properly, but I got into a passion and started yelling. Sorry.

  12) What do you think of “confessional” poetry? How do you see your own work fitting and resisting that label?

  Confessional poetry, of course, depends upon who does it. I think that most brag too much on themselves or don’t know how to laugh properly. Does that sound bitchy? Well, I mean, examine it and see. Even Whitman.

  I really do think that most of my confessional stuff relieves itself as a form of entertainment. Meaning, look, I lost my balls or my love, ha ha ha. So forth. But the ha ha ha must be fairly relevant and real, I mean no Bob Hope stuff, so forth.

  I find that when the pain gets bad enough there are only three things to do—get drunk, kill yourself or laugh. I usually get drunk and laugh.

  Yeh. I don’t always do the confessional stuff but I suppose I am hooked on it, it comes easy because much has happened, I almost MAKE much happen—as if to create a life to create an art. I don’t think this is the true way to do things, it is probably a weakness, but I am a dreamer and maybe a dramatist and I like more things to happen than happen—so I push them a bit. I suppose it’s not right. I don’t claim to be.

  13) What do you think of college kids reading poetry? Why do they do it? Do they read you? Do they read poetry for what you consider valid reasons? (That last verges on being an asinine question, but you might be able to redeem it with a clever answer.)

  Now you know I don’t think of college kids reading poetry. I don’t know if they do or if they read me. There’s no clever way to answer this without making up something I don’t know and which I can’t get away with, so I’m being more clever this way.

  14) What’s so great about living in L.A.?

  I’m here to begin with and then you build around that. Or I build around it. I’ve lived most of my life here and I’ve simply gotten used to the place. I can’t even get lost, sober. And just the other day I found out where the L.A. Zoo was. And the women here seem to love old men. I’ve never seen women like that. At the same time, I’m suicidal and there’s the smog to help me out. So, what do you got in *****Ohio?

  15) What are you reading now? What are your reading habits?

  I’m not reading anything. Well, I write my own things and I read them. I suppose that’s a habit.

  16) If you were suddenly to become wealthy, how would your life change?

  I would become wiser, more profound and more lovely.

  17) Do you have any children?

  I have a girl aged 7. She’s all right.

  I mailed the questions and answers in and I didn’t expect much but I got, in the return mail, a letter from Jack M—

  Dear Buk:

  All right! That was good medicine (your response to my questions). I don’t think it’ll be right for the REVIEW, though. That isn’t what I had in mind, and my questions didn’t lead into the sort of literary (prosodic & technical) matters that we like for our Interviews with Poets series. (These would have been questions about your sense of the line, your opinion of other poets—specifically, and other matters that I suspect you might consider pure crap.)

  Anyway, I’ve forwarded the interview thing to the editors, and they’ll of course give it the eye. (One other thing: we’re filled up with interviews already, through next year.)

  My reason was, as I explained, to get information for my own article on you and your work—something that I can peddle elsewhere. I’ve already written this article, and I think it’s a dandy. When it comes out, wherever that is, it’ll help you somewhat, surely . . . but of course, my motive isn’t altruistic—I simply like your poems a great deal, and think they should be better known than they are.

  Enough of that. Now I WOULD like to ask you, specifically and formally, to send us some poems for the ****REVIEW. We pay something like $10.00 to $15.00 a poem.

  I’ve ordered HUMMINGBIRD and have read the broadsheet sent out by Black Sparrow Press.

  Did I tell you that I enjoyed my brief visit there? I did, and indeed, as you’ll guess when you read the essay that came of it.

  Cheers,

  Jack M—

  Dear Jack M—;

  Well, & ( ) (therefore) &

  (do you understand)?

  (your visit was hardly wasted)

  (at this end) (either) &

  Cheers to you,

  Charlie B.

  Pete was 13, a difficult age they say, but any age is, and Pete had parents of German extraction, strict, very. “A child should be seen and not heard,” was one of their dictums, and that was all right with Pete. He disliked his parents immensely. His father beat him regularly with a razor strop for minor infractions of rules while his mother stood by and said, “The father i
s always right.”

  At times, at night, sometimes when his parents were fucking, Pete would be thinking, alone in his bedroom, “These can’t be my parents. I must have been adopted. I must have been kidnapped.”

  Actually Pete had been the reason for the marriage. His father had gotten his mother pregnant and the old man had always held the marriage against him, but Pete thought, with some repugnance, that he hadn’t stuck that thing in there. And he thought, with further repugnance, can it be that I was once partly jissom in that man’s cock? The thought sickened him.

  Pete had to mow the lawn twice a week, front and back, once in one direction and once in another each time. In other words he mowed the lawn over four times a week, trimmed the edges and watered. The neighbors remarked what a nice lawn his parents had.

  It was after his lawn-mowing sessions that his father would get down on the grass and “inspect for hairs.” His father would put his eye level to the grass and if he found one grassblade standing taller than the others that was the reason for a razor stropping in the bathroom. And his father would always find a hair. “Ah, I see it! A hair!” And his mother would come to the back window and say, “Your father found a hair, you bad boy!” And Pete would walk to the bathroom where his father would be waiting, sitting on the edge of the tub, strop ready, his face working into a red fury.

  After the age of 12 Pete no longer screamed when he was whipped; it was an admission of pain and he didn’t want to admit pain to his father, he refused. The beatings became so brutal that he was unable to sit on an ordinary chair for dinner, he had to sit on two pillows and listen to his father recount the day at work, which was always very similar:

  “I told that son of a bitch Cranston off today. He let his station go unnoticed while he talked to this blonde. It must have gone on for 20 minutes. I walked over and told him, ‘Listen, Cranston, your job isn’t to talk to blondes, it’s to guard the museum facilities. You straighten out or I’ll report you to Mr. Henderson!’ Then I walked off. That blonde got out of there.