Bukowski in a Sundress

by Kim Addonizio

  I thought about cleave, a word that means to cling to, but also to separate. It’s a perfect word for ambivalence. I was alone and hated it, but I hadn’t taken any concrete steps toward finding someone. I was a Kim Puzzle Cube. Not one of me was smiling. It occurred to me that I could choose to go on being in pieces over my last relationship, or I could choose to go out and look for another one. I could even sleep with a woman, if I really wanted to. Freedom was mine.

  I sat up and put on my boots. “I need to go,” I said. I got off the bed, feeling a little dizzy. I’d barely touched the chardonnay, so it must have been the Appletinis. “Thank you for the presents. I’m getting a cab back to BART.”

  “Are you sure?” Margot said.

  I looked at her, a lovely young woman lying back on a hotel bed. But she wasn’t what I wanted. I left her there, glittery and ready, a beautiful vision that remains in my head.

  Bukowski in a Sundress

  THE NATIONAL BOOK Critics Circle Award committee was meeting to discuss noteworthy books and had winnowed them down to a longlist of ten. One of my poetry collections was on the list. According to the minutes of the meeting, which I found online, one judge characterized me as “Charles Bukowski in a sundress.” Given the level of regard Bukowski enjoys in prestigious literary circles, it’s hard to believe this was meant as a compliment. In any case, in the next round of voting, my book was winnowed right out.

  Frankly, I’d have preferred a different, though equally nuanced, characterization of my work—say, “Gerard Manley Hopkins in a bomber jacket,” or “Walt Whitman in a sparkly tutu,” or possibly “Emily Dickinson with a strap-on.” But this is what happens when you put your work out into the world—if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, no one says anything at all, because no one knows that your slim little volume of poetry or your novel ten years in the making even exists.

  I used to google myself and read what people said about me on their blogs. This is a bad idea if you want to maintain the illusion that people are seriously reading your poems and understanding more than 17 percent of what you are trying to be up to. Undergraduate student papers attempting to assay your oeuvre are especially scary. At least the students have the excuse of youth and ignorance. Who can be expected to get poetry at that tender age? Only those who are already little existentialists, aware of the innate meaninglessness of life, staring into the void in fascination, lonely and stoned out of their heads—that is, future poets.

  Once you are a published writer, open season has been declared on you, all year long, for the rest of your life. Of course, writers aren’t celebrities; we’re not the kind of big game that adventurers go on safari to shoot, or even the deer that ordinary hunters are so fond of picking off. Maybe we’re more like the scimitar-horned oryx—exotic, endangered, but still occasionally caught in the crosshairs of pumped-up sportsmen high on whiskey and the rush of killing an innocent wild animal.

  If you are at all successful, there are people who will automatically envy, hate, and belittle you. Usually these people will be other writers who are less successful. The other day, I saw an enormous poster on a bus stop advertising a best-selling author’s novel. I happen to know that this author is a very nice person, but at that moment the shriveled, jealous creature in me wanted her to die, immediately and violently.

  If you are a female poet, a lot of male wannabe poets will pen lines of crappy verse making it sound as though they spent a blissful night of love with you, and there is nothing you can do about it. They are like those boys in high school who told everyone you were a slut and then, when they caught you on the hall stairs alone after class, tried to stick their hands down your pants. They are retromingent Visigoths, which means self-pissing barbarians. I stole the phrase from a long-ago New Yorker article having something to do with sports, and I’ve found it useful to have in the lexicon.

  Most male critics, the ones who will write about your work as if it were the source of the Vagina dentata myth, are also retromingent Visigoths. Many of them may also be victims of a serious brain disorder. What happens is this: the text, which for a normal person is processed through thoughtful reading, instead enters a series of wormholes deep in the temporal lobes. These wormholes destroy the amygdalae, which are essential for the processing of memory and emotion. It’s as though your writing becomes trapped in a fun house of warped, distorting mirrors, where it stumbles around, barely recognizable, bumping into ventricles. The ventricles, which ordinarily carry spinal fluid, in this case are filled with bile. Here is one thing you can do, if your work is reviewed by one of these critics: tape a photocopied picture of his face above a paper dress, cut up the doll with manicure scissors, and set it on fire, preferably in a public forum such as a writers’ conference. I personally found this cathartic.

  I keep meaning to really read Bukowski one of these days. I’ve seen a poem here and there, and my main reaction was meh. Though I read a good one once in Poetry magazine. I know he wrote about sex and drinking and fighting and whores, and that he said that most poetry was overly precious trash. He said a number of other things I agree with, like this: “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” And this: “We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” Those statements made me like him, in that way you can like someone you’ll never have to meet. More than forty of his sixty-odd books are still in print. That’s an enviable statistic, but there’s no point wishing him dead, since he already is.

  Recently I thought it might be a good idea to get to know Bukowski better. There wasn’t a bookstore within miles, and I wanted to get started right away, so I clicked over to Netflix to watch a movie based on some of his stories. I opened a beer, to better identify with my research subject, and settled down to watch Tales of Ordinary Madness starring Ben Gazzara.

  There are a couple of standout lines in the film that I’m pretty sure Bukowski actually wrote. “Touch my soul with your cock” is one that made me spit Heineken all over myself. But even better was the description of a woman whom the main character—one of the versions of Bukowski who stumble through his stories—follows home: “She had an ass like a wild animal.” I wish he’d been a little more specific there, though, since the asses of animals can differ significantly; was her ass more like that of a naked mole rat, or a feral dog, or possibly a vagrant shrew? I’m not sure which wild animal a man would be more likely to follow off a bus, but maybe I’m being unfairly literal here.

  The seeker of the soul-touching cock is a gorgeously vapid girl with no discernible personality, so when she kills herself, late in the film, it’s tough to feel the loss. It’s kind of like a potted plant has died. And the aforementioned ass belongs to a pretty unlikely character. It’s not that women don’t flirt with strangers they let follow them home, and then enact all manner of sex games, including bondage, fake rape, and lying spread-legged on the floor pretending to be dead in the hope of being fucked senseless, followed by actual fucking and then calling the cops to press charges while the hapless lover enjoys a cigar and a bubble bath, thinking she’s out there rustling up a romantic dinner. Of course women occasionally do those things, and probably Bukowski encountered a stellar representative of this branch of female desire. But nothing about her rings true, either because the actress overdoes it, or—my suspicion—there’s not much to base her character on, only actions and reactions, as though some freak sexual chemical experiment has produced her. That is, she seems a poorly written creature. And, bludgeon me over the head after fake-raping me, but I have a problem with men who can’t write female characters. Don’t tell me I should actually read Bukowski instead of watching a movie and then spouting some simplistic, politically correct, ovary-inflected criticism; like I said, published writers are fair game.

  I cracked another beer and
settled back to watch a documentary about Bukowski. There was some footage of him giving readings, getting wasted on beers from an onstage refrigerator or guzzling wine from a bottle on a table. There were big audiences, laughing and hooting at the spectacle of an addict showcasing his intimate relationship with his drug of choice. It was a little like bear baiting. Then again, he seemed like someone who practiced self-acceptance rather than the guilt and self-loathing that drive so many lesser alcoholics into AA. He never quit. He went on drinking and wrote book after book.

  So even though I suspect that critic was being a dick about my work, I’ve decided I’m going to be proud of my new nickname. If I am truly honest with myself, I have to admit that I have always wanted someone to touch my soul with his cock. Since childhood, I have wondered where my soul was, and I’m glad to discover it’s up there somewhere in my lady parts.

  And who knows. Maybe one day, when Bukowski’s up for a posthumous literary award, some critic will say, “Oh, him? Kim Addonizio in pee-stained pants,” and then I hope whoever said it pukes on his shoes.

  Cocktail Time

  EVERYONE THINKS THAT being a writer disposes one toward heavy drinking. Like all ideas about writers, this statement contains some truth, adulterated with gossip and the romantic fantasies of young aspiring writers. The truth is that we spend an inordinate amount of time at our work, which means we spend our time alone, in a room of our own if we’re lucky, and in the worlds in our heads. Depending on your feelings about solitude, and your own inner life, you may understand why some of us enjoy the company of spirits.

  If you think it’s amazing that humans have up to thirty feet of intestines coiled in our bodies, think about the galaxies and planets, the supernovas and black holes that exist in writers’ heads. If we want an occasional cocktail to help us cope with the vastness of space, don’t give us a hard time. Go get a wheatgrass enema and drink your herbal tea. Be healthy and happy, and do not dwell on the past, the future, imaginary people in parallel universes, or what might have been. See how much work you get done.

  My friend Elizabeth invented a drink she called the E-tini. Once, when I was asked to contribute a recipe to a food and drink anthology, I included her drink and invented my own, the K-tini. Here they both are:

  Two Quick-and-Dirty Drink Recipes to Get You Quickly Dirty

  THE E-TINI

  Into a glass, flask, juice jar, paper cup, hollowed coconut shell, or other suitable container such as cupped hands (having a partner for this last will prove useful), pour:

  ⅓ Absolut vanilla vodka, fresh from the freezer

  ⅓ cold orange juice

  ⅓ cold pineapple juice

  Top with a floater of the Absolut. Do not stir. Drink immediately.

  The E-tini tastes like a Dreamsicle. It’s simple, refreshing, and full of sugar, but you can feel good that you are drinking two kinds of juice. If you wish to bypass feeling good and go straight to feeling fucked up, try the K-tini.

  THE K-TINI

  1. Open freezer and remove any hard alcoholic beverage.

  2. Unscrew cap.

  3. Open mouth and apply to bottle.

  4. Swallow as many times as possible before stopping to inhale.

  Wine from the refrigerator or cupboard may be substituted for 1; in that case, however, the characteristic and oft-mentioned “kick” of the K-tini can’t be experienced. Wine is for wannabes. The K-tini is the drink for those in the know, those who are sick with thirst, whose demons are swarming. Your demons snicker at wine, at lite beer, at bitters and soda. Give them what they clamor for: give them K-tinis. Feel so fucked up you fall to the floor, hitting your head on your marble counter. When you wake up, put on your sexiest online Victoria’s Secret purchase and dance wildly before your full-length mirror, then collapse sobbing into a pile of soiled underwear, weeping because there is no one to see how hot you look. Decide to go to the bar; have another K-tini before you leave, then get behind the wheel. Don’t stop for the car you sideswipe or the kitten you mow down. Drive! Drive! Your true love is waiting for you. You’ll be together forever, as soon as you hit that tree.

  Penis by Penis

  “OH, MOM, GET ONLINE,” my daughter said. “That’s how everybody meets these days.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” Aya met her own boyfriend at a New York restaurant where she was waitressing between acting jobs.

  “Really,” I said again. And here I thought you just went into a bar, had several drinks, and emerged a few hours later with a new boyfriend. But my previous MO had stopped working at some point. I spent my days alone, writing, answering e-mail, reading student poems. I went to the gym and clamped on my headphones and spoke to no one; and to yoga class, where the teacher said, “Lift head, lift heart,” dropping articles and possessive pronouns. There was no one appealing lifting head and heart on the next yoga mat. And no sexy, sensitive man was jogging on the treadmill or bench-pressing his chest into a rock-hard slab where I could lay my head.

  I tried going out alone at night to restaurants where I could sit at the bar with a book and eat dinner and maybe strike up an acquaintance with the love of my life. Around me swirled the meaningless, mindless conversations of the happily connected, couples and groups of friends merrily raising neon cocktails while I took out my reading glasses and hunched over Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a novel about trying to survive in a bleak, ash-covered world where most of the humans are dead, and the ones who are left may attack and eat you. Also, I noticed, the clientele had gotten a lot younger than in the days I used to frequent bars regularly and meet men willing to follow me home and begin a serious relationship.

  So I finally cast my net into the waters of online dating. But it turned out I was casting it in some distant part of the ocean, where few men my age were to be found. They were all nibbling at the profiles of younger women. If they were my age, fifty-three, they were looking for someone thirty-three to forty-five. In my part of the ocean, there were a lot of women sitting around on their boats with nothing to do but chain-smoke cigarettes or drink wine or teach their cat a few simple tricks.

  Still, it turned out there were a handful of men who wanted to date me. I am very photogenic. This is not always a good thing. Once, in Berkeley Rep before a theater performance, I saw that the guy behind the counter in the gift store was reading one of my books, so I sidled over. He looked up at me blankly; when I told him I was the author, he looked from the author photo to me like someone at the morgue, trying to match the living person he remembered to the thing he was confronted with: a bloated corpse pulled from a refrigerated drawer.

  I narrowed the several responses I’d received down to two. Maybe I had too many criteria. Maybe I truly wasn’t ready. It had been over two years since a long-term relationship had ended—two lonely, penis-deprived years. I missed the penis. But I couldn’t seem to bite the bullet, so to speak, and blithely go out and meet a bunch of strangers. Anne Lamott suggested that writers proceed “bird by bird,” describing a research paper on birds her little brother was overwhelmed by the prospect of starting. Okay, I thought. I’ll just take it penis by penis.

  The first one, Evan, was thirty-nine. Fourteen years younger, and he was interested in me! This meant (a) he thought I’d be easy to bag, or (b) he didn’t care about my age, or (c) both. He sent his phone number and invited me to call.

  “Uh, hi,” I said one night when I’d had a little wine for courage. I felt like a telemarketer, trying not to get hung up on before I could pitch theater tickets or alumni contributions.

  “Who’s this?” he said.

  “Kim. From. . . . the Yahoo! Personals.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  I knew I should have prepared a script, so I would know what to say and could anticipate his responses. It would go something like this:

  ME: Hey, Evan! It’s Kim from the Personals! Like, how’s it goi
ng? Wow, I’m at this party right now and a girl just puked on herself—I am so outta here. I’m going clubbing. What are you up to?

  EVAN: Ah, just chillin’, you know.

  ME: Cool! Let’s hook up! I’m right in the city. Man, these Appletinis have me blasted out of my mind. I’m, like, ready to fuck in a graveyard or something. Also, I just took some X, and I’ve got an extra hit in my bra. Unless I swallow it in the meantime.

  EVAN: Cool. I’ll be there in half an hour.

  ME: I’ll text you the address. I’ll be the one in the really short dress, laughing my ass off at the bar. Woo-hoo!

  “So . . . ,” I said, in real life. “Just thought I’d call and say hi.”

  “I’m in Florida,” Evan said.

  “Oh, really!” I wondered if I could hang up now and end the evening with just a small spoonful of humiliation, rather than the heaping portion I sensed was coming. “How come you’re in Florida?”

  “Visiting family,” he said.

  Evan seemed to be a man of few words. Why had he asked me to call him, if he wasn’t going to talk to me? And what did I have to say to him? Apparently, nothing. “Oh,” I said. “When will you be back?”

  “I’m not sure.”