More Notes of a Dirty Old Man

by Bukowski, Charles

  “Listen, Shithead, I’ve got too many goldfish, there’s not enough oxygen. Can I bring you some of my goldfish?”

  “No, I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “Do you still have that woman at your place?”

  “What woman?”

  “The one I heard breathing. I hope she cleans the ring out of your bathtub like I did. I hope she gets the shit stains out of your crapper like I did. I hope she bites off the end of your cock!” . . .

  Tanada got out the next day and began working out right away. I went down and watched him. He didn’t look too bad. I figured he could last 3 or 4 rounds with Young Sharkey. That’s all I could hope for.

  On Wednesday I got a call from the gym. Frankie Tanada had broken his hand trying to get a coke bottle out of the vending machine. I got on the phone again. Nothing out of Trenton. Nothing from Texas. The phone rang.

  “Listen, Shithead, are you fucking my sister?”

  “No.”

  “Listen, I’m funny, you can fuck anybody you want but I don’t want you fucking my sister. I won’t tolerate that!”

  “All right, Gerda.”

  “I’ve got this thing about sisters. I don’t even want you phoning her. Have you been phoning her?”

  “No.”

  “Well, don’t,” she said, and hung up.

  I finally got Gorilla Gibson out of Detroit. Same price: $1, 250.00. Gorilla was 3-11-2 and had been kayoed by 2 former champions. I phoned the papers and told them about the new match . . .

  The fight really went off. I was there. When the bell rang Gibson turned and crossed himself in his corner, then scowled and came toward the center of the ring. He looked good. Young Sharky met him in ring center and hit him with a medium left cross to the body. Gibson dropped, stretched on his back and took the ten count. When he got up and walked back to his corner he still looked good. The fans booed and started throwing things into the ring, everything but money. I got up and walked out looking down at my shoes.

  The Commission held up Gibson’s purse. There would be a hearing. Two things appeared wrong, they told me. Gibson had done a tank job and also he was 37 years old. You couldn’t fight in the state after 36 unless you got special permission. That was the next day when I heard. Also Carol came to see me. Carol owned the club, she’d run it for 30 years and kept it going when all the other clubs had their bad years. I’d been with her 18 years.

  “Doug,” she said, sitting down across from my desk, “another stinker like that and I’ve got to let you go, I’ve got to get another boy.”

  “Listen, it’s those heavies, those heavies always stink. We can get one good heavy in the ring but we can’t get two, you just don’t have that kind of money.”

  “You get out of the gate.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Jenners does it across town.”

  “Jenners got the Palace. He can scale the prices. This place is 100 years old, Carol. Why, there are only two restrooms in the whole auditorium. You ought to see the men’s room. Urine seeps one inch across the floor. 14 guys in line behind each urinal. I don’t know what goes on in the ladies’ room. They’ve got to squat. It must be hell. There’s no way we can scale 100-75 and 50 and get away with it and you know that as well as I do.”

  The phone rang.

  “Listen, Shithead, you’ve got a woman in your office. I can hear her breathing.”

  “I’ll call you back, Harry, I’m in conference.”

  “I can hear her breathing! Are you going to eat her box?”

  “No, Harry, that’s impossible. I’ll call you back. We might give you $500 for a semi. That’s tops.”

  “Shithead, you’re so tight, you’ve never ever given me anything! And what’s a semi? Who wants half a fuck? I’m going to bring you my goldfish.”

  “You do and I’ll run your ass out of the state!”

  I hung up then took the phone off the receiver. Carol looked at me. “That was a woman on the phone, wasn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “I could hear her voice, Doug. I want you to keep your sex life out of the office. And no more stinkers like that last one. The market just dropped below 700. Each month some new country discovers an atom bomb. It’s a new world. Nobody is allowed any more mistakes.”

  With that she walked out.

  Next week I’ve got a kid from Japan. They never make a bad fight; most of them can’t hit but they make it up with guts. And I’ve got this 17 year old Mexican kid, he’s run off 6 straight and the girls haven’t gotten to him yet. And neither of these guys weighs over 128 pounds. I feel fairly safe. I should have married Carol, though, ten years ago when we were making it.

  Sally and I argued almost every time we got drunk, and the arguments were vile and violent, and we drank almost all the time, and the arguments were LOUD and destructive, and we were evicted from place after place. We’d walk down the street and say, “We lived there. And we lived in that place too. Remember when we lived in that place?” Most of the evictions were via a notice under the door; they didn’t care to contact us personally. Sometimes though, we were confronted personally but usually a day or two after our argument. Once I had mounted Sally and as we were working away I heard a key in the door. It opened and there was the manager. He pointed a finger down at Sally: “YOU’RE OUT!” he said. Then he paused and looked at me: “AND YOU’RE OUT TOO!” Then he walked out, closed the door, and we continued.

  We began in most new places with a bit of dignity. Sally would tell the manager about me: “He is a fireman.” Or, “He’s a surgeon’s assistant.” Or, “He’s on vacation.” That was the one Sally used the most. In one place a young couple seemed to take a liking to us. They promised us all new rugs. And while we were at the bar one day they had put them in. New rugs. All red, bright red. Quite appropriate, I thought. Two days later while we were asleep there was a POUNDING on the door. “YOU PEOPLE GET OUT OF HERE AND GET OUT OF HERE NOW! YOU’RE DRIVING AL THE TENANTS IN THIS BUILDING CRAZY! I’M GOING TO LOSE MY JOB!” I got up in my shorts and opened the door. “Listen, man, we’ve got almost a month left on the rent. No chance of us clearing out now.” “I’LL PAY YOUR BACK RENT! JUST GET OUT! CHRIST, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THE RUGS? LOOK AT THAT LAMP! YOU PEOPLE NEED A BOXING RING, NOT AN APARTMENT!” We moved out.

  The place we lasted longest was the HALCYON ARMS on Union Avenue, a few places up from the TEAMSTER’S UNION headquarters. They had a desk in front and you had to get your key and leave your key when you went in and out. The guy at the desk we named Sleepless because he seemed to be at that desk 24 hours. When he slept was the mystery, and it might have helped the situation. He was too sleepy to care.

  The time I’m thinking about here as I write this was this certain time that Sally left. Sally was always leaving me but this time, somehow, it seemed more definite. It was confusing to me because I didn’t know whether to be sad or happy. One likes to pinpoint the emotions or else all seems wasted.

  I sat there with my fifth of Scotch and my beer and looked out the window. Sally was out there somewhere. The note had been very definite: BASTARD I CAN’T STAND YOU ANY MORE BUT I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I LOVE YOU AND THAT I’LL NEVER FORGET YOU EVER . . . SALLY

  She hadn’t done the dishes or made the bed, had taken all the cigarettes. I walked to the closet. Most of her clothes were still there. I sat down and had another drink. Under the bed I could see one of her pink slippers and next to the slipper was a pair of shit-stained panties. I got up and walked around. There were hairpins everywhere, in the ashtrays, on the dresser, on the floor, in the bathroom. Her magazines were on the floor, by the bed, magazines with exotic covers: MAN RAPES GIRL, THEN THROWS HER BODY FROM 400 FOOT CLIFF . . . 12-YEAR-OLD BOY RAPES WOMAN AT THE ZOO . . . LOVE BANDIT DRINKS THE BLOOD OF HIS VICTIMS. Inside were pictures of beheaded women, of people baked in ovens, of cops digging into murderers’ graves outside Bakersfield.

  In the dresser next to the Kleenex were all the notes and letters I had ever writ
ten her, all neatly bound with 3 or 4 sets of rubber bands. And then there were the photos, all the photos. There was one of both of us crouched on the hood of our ’58 Plymouth, Sally showing a lot of leg and grinning like a Kansas City gun moll from out of the twenties and me showing the bottoms of my shoes with the circular waving holes in them. And there were photos of dogs, all of them ours, and photos of children, most of them hers.

  Then the phone rang. It was Sally in some bar. I could hear the juke box. “I just want you to know, you son of a bitch, that I’m not coming back.” Then I heard a man’s voice: “Sally, Sally, forget the fuckin’ phone and come back and sit down with us!” “You see,” she said, “there are other men in the world beside you.” “Your opinion only,” I said. “I could have loved you forever,” she said. “Get fucked,” I said and hung up.

  I poured another drink and while looking for a scissors in the bathroom to trim the hair around my ears and in my nose I found a brassiere in one of the drawers and held it to the light. The brassiere looked all right from the outside but inside was this stain of sweat and dirt and the stain was darkened, melded in there as if no washing would ever take it out. I drank my drink and then began to trim the hair around my ears. I decided that I was quite a handsome man and I’d lift weights, go on a diet and get a tan. I deserved better than Sally.

  The phone rang again. I lifted the receiver, hung up, lifted the receiver again and let the phone dangle by the cord. I trimmed my ears, nose, eyebrows, drank another hour or two and then went to bed and slept.

  I was awakened by a sound I had never quite heard before. It was loud, deep and persistent. It was like a thousand wasps burning to death. It came from the dangling telephone, still off the hook. I picked it up. “Hello.”

  “Sir, this is the desk clerk. Your phone is off the hook.”

  “All right. Sorry, I’ll hang it up.”

  “Don’t hang up, sir. Your wife is on the elevator.”

  “Who?”

  “She says she’s Mrs. Borowsky.”

  “All right. It’s possible.”

  “Sir, can you get her off the elevator? She doesn’t understand the controls . . . her language is abusive toward us but she says that you’ll help her . . . and sir . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “We didn’t want to call the police.”

  “Good.”

  “She’s laying down on the floor of the elevator, sir, and, and . . . she has . . . urinated upon herself.”

  “O.K.” I said and hung up.

  I walked down the hall in my shorts, drink in hand, cigar in mouth, and pressed the elevator button. Up it came from the bottom floor, one, two, three, four. The doors opened and there was Sally . . . and little delicate trickles and ripples of water lines drifting about the elevator floor and some blotchy pools.

  I finished my drink, picked her up and carried her out of the elevator, threw her on the bed and pulled off her wetted panties, skirt and stockings. Then I put a drink on the coffeetable near her, sat on the couch and had a drink for myself. Suddenly she sat straight up and looked around. “Borowsky”? she asked. “Over here,” I waved my hand. “Oh, thank God.”

  Then she saw the drink and drank it right down. I got up, refilled Sally’s glass, put cigarettes, ashtray and matches nearby.

  “Who took my panties off?”

  “Me.”

  “Don’t you go playing with my panties. I’m mad at you.”

  “You pissed yourself.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  She sat straight upright. “Borowsky, you queer, you dance like a queer, you dance like a woman.”

  “I’ll break your goddamned nose!”

  “You broke my arm, Borowsky, don’t you go breaking my nose . . .”

  She put her head back on the pillow. “I love you, Borowsky, I really do . . .”

  Then she started snoring. I drank another hour or two, then I got into bed with her. I didn’t want to touch her at first. She needed a bath, at least. I got one leg up against hers; it didn’t seem too bad. I tried the other legs. I remembered all the good days and good nights and I slipped one arm under her neck, then I had the other around her belly and my drunken penis gently up against her crotch. Her hair came back and climbed into my nostrils. I felt her inhale heavily, then exhale. We would sleep like that most of the night and into the next afternoon. Then I would get up and go to the bathroom and vomit and then she would have her turn.

  I figured 500-plus air might make this community college outside Detroit worth my soul so I got on American and worked the stewardesses for extra drinks. I was to land a day early, and I made it down the ramp waiting for some professor to grab me and one did and I told him, “I’m yours now. How can you tell what you’ve got until it gets off the plane?”

  “We can’t. My job’s more or less on the line each time but it’s worth it.” Each year he went out and got one. It had been Ginsberg, Stephen Spender and James Dickey in the last three years and he still had his job. I warned him that I had been thrown out of the women’s dorm at the University of Kansas after a reading and we walked toward his car. He drove me to a hotel in Detroit and left me with a mass of phone numbers and instructions. The university was getting the room and board, he assured me. After he left I took a shower and phoned down for drinks.

  I had been drinking an hour or so—picking out my poems—when the phone rang. It was my buddy Slim de Bouffe who came in at 5 feet and 265 pounds and played with poems and booze and women. He liked my shit. When he knocked on the door the room knocked back. He wrote poems with a hammer. I told him to come on in.

  There wasn’t much to the night, mostly drinking, and stories about bad luck with women and good luck with women; about the poetry hustle and the poetry grind and about some of the good people in it and some of the other kind. Slim had a way of dropping little wisdoms out of his mouth as if they didn’t count, as if he were asking for a match or giving directions to the nearest whorehouse. You had to listen carefully to Slim but it was worth it. It was worth some hours of listening. He left late that night and I went to bed and slept in that 100-year-old hotel in the middle of Murder City and I slept well.

  Awakening was another matter. I was on the fourth floor and the windows looked out on a building with a flagpole on top of it. I gagged, went to the bathroom, had a minor vomit, opened a warm beer and got the switchboard woman.

  “Yes sir?”

  “I have a complaint.”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Look, I’m going to be here 2 or 3 nights which means that I’m going to wake up with 2 or 3 hangovers.”

  “You’d better send your complaint to God, sir.”

  “All right, connect me.”

  “He’s unlisted.”

  “Don’t I know. Look, as I was saying, I’m going to wake up here every morning and you know the first sight that will meet my eyes?”

  “No, I don’t, sir.”

  “The American flag.”

  “The American flag?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You mean you don’t like the American flag, sir?”

  “Of course not. It has these red and white stripes, they wave in the wind, and then there are the stars, there are all these stars up in the corner, you know, on top of the blue . . . I wake up sick. I’ve got to read poetry at the university, they’re going to put me on video tape.”

  “Sir, I like the American flag!”

  “Fine, I’ll take your room and you take mine.”

  “Have you fought in any wars, sir?”

  “Yes, first I fought for Franco in Spain and then . . .”

  She hung up on me.

  It was hot under the video lights but I worked from a bottle of 100 proof vodka and, when that emptied out, Slim de Bouffe went out into the night and came back with a six-pack. I finished it up under that and the applause seemed fair enough. I fielded some easy questions, got the 500 dollar check and got out. They told me they’d mail the
air within ten days. I had to work a bookstore-signing for 50 bucks. Then a night’s sleep and back to L.A. where I had figured this new system on the harness races. The sophisticates always sneered when I talked about the races. The sophisticates always thought soul could be found in the obvious places; that’s why they were sophisticates instead of artists.

  There were 600 people in the bookstore. The owner had advertised in the main Detroit newspaper. We couldn’t move. Drinks and food had to be passed hand-to-hand overhead. I drank everything they handed me except wine. I signed books and screamed back insult for insult. I was high up in the sky. I beat their meanness with a more clever meanness. Civilization. They wanted to suck me dry and trash me. I’d come up through the alleys like Jersey Joe and old Jimmy Braddock. They couldn’t trap me with love. Adulation, maybe. I read a couple of poems from Burning that somebody shoved at me. Then I fought my way out, cursing that whole gang of bloodsuckers. I got to the curbing and a car pulled up. “In here, Bukowski!” I jumped in and we drove off.

  “You’re just like a rock star, baby,” said the kid at the wheel. I looked around: a car full of female groupies.

  “Like hell. Either these women get out or I get out. All I want is a ride to the hotel.”

  The kid at the wheel pulled over to the curbing. “All right, girls, get it out. Now!”

  They got out and we got some dock-hand, back-room cussing from those lovelies and then the kid put it to the floor and we went down the street.

  “Eddie Mahler,” he said.

  “I’m Charles Bukowski,” I answered.

  The kid, Eddie, he was good. The street was very dark as all Detroit streets seemed to be. Eddie had a little game. He’d see a car up ahead and come alongside. Then he’d smash his car into the side of the other car. He’d bounce it good. Then he’d come back and hit it again and again. He’d keep hitting that car until it climbed up over the curbing and stopped. Then Eddie would stop the car and glare at them and I’d sit there and glare at them right along with Eddie. Then we’d drive off and find another car and do the same thing. We got 4 or 5 cars that way.