Living on Luck

by Charles Bukowski

  [To Lafayette Young]

  October 25, 1970

  [***] I have to drink and gamble to get away from this typewriter. Not that I don’t love this old machine when it’s working right. But knowing when to go to it and knowing to stay away from it, that’s the trick. I really don’t want to be a professional writer, I wanna write what I wanna write. else, it’s all been wasted. I don’t want to sound holy about it; it’s not holy—it’s more like Popeye the Sailor Man. But Popeye knew when to move. So did Hemingway, until he started talking about “discipline”; Pound also talked about doing one’s “work.” that’s shit, but I’ve been luckier than both of them because I’ve worked the factories and slaughterhouses and park benches and I know that WORK and DISCIPLINE are dirty words. I know what they meant, but for me, it has to be a different game. [***]

  [To Lafayette Young]

  October 28, 1970

  [***] frankly, most editors look at the writer as some kind of idiot, and in many ways he is. I’ve met quite a few of them and I’ve been taken on some deals myself. the writer, the real writer is only concerned with writing, writing that NEXT thing. you know, it’s quite like that good fuck you (or I) had 3 months ago. who cares? it’s tonight’s or tomorrow’s or the last one that counts. it’s NOW. NOW IS THE ONLY LIVING BREATHING REALITY. when somebody tells me, “Bukowski, I really liked that poem ‘The Priest and the Matador,’” I say, “yeh.” who cares? I’d just as soon piss on it. that’s why at poetry readings I read only the stuff—with one or two exceptions—that I’ve written in the last month or two. everything else leaves me dead and I read it dead. [***]

  jesus christ, I’ve even been printed in the Dutch. DRONKEN MIRAKELS & ANDERE OFFERS. just got book in mail today. nicely done offset. Title means something like DRUNKEN MIRACLES AND OTHER IMMOLATIONS. combo of two poems “Rain and Transport” plus “Kaka and other Immolations.” I was only sent one copy so can’t send any to you or Jimmy [Pitts] or Katz, who have all been very good to me in my times of hell shit fire gloom. but don’t think issued in many copies (really don’t know) but if I may sound like a prick, it will prob. be a collector’s item worth maybe 25 or 50 bucks in a couple of years. see, there we go talking money again? see how they suck us in? let’s be careful. it’s just a funny odd book and you can probably get it for a buck as a curio piece for the crapper. let’s take it that way. no price listed. if you get one, mail to me, I’ll sign it. [***]

  Linda King, whom Bukowski met in late 1970 and who was “destined to become Hank’s longtime girlfriend,” had four sisters who shared her literary bent. See the letters of January 12, 17, and 18, 1972 and Hank, pp. 211 and 216.

  [To the sisters King]

  October 30, 1970

  My dear sisters King (or however it has been changed):

  you have put much energy and time into writing me; I have no way of knowing, but I would judge that you are both living together, off of child support, something went wrong with the men, but the courts are fair, aren’t they? hmmm? very well, diddle with Bukowski. wouldn’t it be nice to put him in our female cage and poke him with sticks?

  kill a coward and be

  brave. that’s

  unity.

  look, girls, it’s nice to have you visit. I like girls about. an old dog like me should. and I do. just to look at. but even sex, that’s no big go to me. after 2,000 pieces of ass, what’s one more to me? one more strip of tinsel on a tired xmas tree. I pay child support, voluntarily, and gladly, I love my daughter. but sex to me is almost so much bog. I mean, you do it, that’s nice, and then it’s over and then what have you got? 2 chunks of flesh looking at each other and waiting and resting for the next trip. I write about sex like I write about anything else—mainly because I think it’s tragic and funny. if you want to know more about the game, do try reading The Decameron by Boccaccio. Notes of a Dirty Old Man or all my poetry are nothing compared to his explicit laughing understanding of the thing. he’s in your public library. me, I’d rather just talk to women or rather listen to them than fuck them. if I must fuck them, they must do most of the work, most of the coaxing. maybe I am queer? call me queer if that makes you feel better. they always call strong men queers. I’ve heard Hemingway mouthed as a queer. this is society’s way—they won’t leave a man alone. I’m a loner. I want to do my work, drink my beer and die. It’s nice when the ladies knock on my door and are pretty, as both of you are, and giggle. but actually there’s only one thing less predictable than a horse and that’s a woman. don’t bet on either one unless you want to take odds-on when you should be getting one hundred to one on your chances.

  about dumbness (stupidity), ya got me all wrong—how can I have anything against it, when I don’t know anything about it?

  now, girls, let me get back to my business. you must realize that I am just an old guy with no visible means of support? now let me turn on that red light out there and spread my cheeks with vaseline…ok?

  your in deepest penetration

  and understand and love

  and looove and broken

  ladders

  Robert Head and Darlene Fife were the editors of NOLA Express, an underground paper published in New Orleans.

  [To Robert Head and Darlene Fife]

  [? October 1970]

  have been drunk for some weeks…this is no brag shit thing…don’t like it…mind very heavy, fog-shit, you know. but grass and various other shit…speed, so forth, not worth a cat’s ass. death of Hendrix did not bother me. Janis Joplin death particularly saddening, terrible to me because to put it shittily, I related to her. she had the courage of a mountain, understand? don’t worry about vocal chords…wrote an 8 or ten page tribute to the guts of Joplin but so filled with love, I had to destroy. [***]

  Listen, you know I am high here or I wouldn’t go on like this with this shit…yes, got 2 copies of…what was it…the issue…I asked for. many thanks. the archive shit pays off. I’m lucy, not lucy, lucky. or maybe I’m Lucy? eh? all right. they used to have a thing called Lucy and Desi Arnez, perfectly sickening…barely remember it, but knew right away, 2 people sucking at anything they could get at any price and fooling everybody, almost every body. That Desi Arnez, he had such a bad band (that’s what they used to call them in those days: “bands”), how’d he ever get hold of Lucy? And, so what the hell, Lucy just began to look sillier and sillier, playing stupid parts, eyelashes getting longer, and more lipstick on and more slapstick on, and I don’t know, this isn’t hatred, it’s just high, and I knew the cocksuckers of the world would bring them down, so fake them, so fake all, the final gods are very hard to fool. all right, how did I get into this garbage except to explain what it is? [***]

  If you guys can line me a couple of readings in N.O. to cover plane fare and room and booze, would be nice…would like to meet you both just for chicken-ass kicks…no hatred. have long gotten over hatred drunks when I used to clean out houses full of people. now quite gentle even when totally loaded. took me a long time to learn. [***]

  [To John Martin]

  November 1, 1970

  [***] they tell me your Wakoski is reading at Pomona College Dec. 7, flying in from N.Y. She has a nice loose and human style which I think she learned from me, but that’s all right. if she has a weakness, it is the inability to write a good short poem. but few people can. Jeffers couldn’t. Pound could. In fact, the shorter he got the better he got. I always liked him for that. But when he got long—The Cantos—he shit himself. the test of a good poet is one who can write any number of short good poems. W. C. Williams did it once, as we know. I haven’t done it, prob. won’t. I’m not a great and yet the greats bore me terribly. there really haven’t been any strong people on earth yet and maybe that’s the way the game is built. an ant is an ant and what can you do with an ant? there’s an occasional flash of something now and then, but the guy who flashed hardly comes up with any more. it’s hardly right, is it? when the fucking soul is trying so hard? and then you end up looking at a face l
ike Nixon’s and he’s the same guy who flunked you in English I and with as little reason.

  but there have been strong men—the same ones I have mentioned—Fyodor Dos, Celine, Artaud, Kafka…arising out of the billions and billions and zeroes produced and reproduced, almost for nothing—I do suppose that there have been stronger men, but circumstances simply drowned them away from future communication with the centuries. or, you take a man really strong enough, he can look around at the age of four, take some instrument and kill himself. swimming pool, anything else. [***]

  [To John Martin]

  November 6, 1970

  [***] just think, someday after I’m dead and they start going for my poems and stories, you will have a hundred stories and a thousand poems on hand. you just don’t know how lucky you are, babe. remember Marina. shouldn’t be so serious, I know, but she is to be my literary executor, or whatever you call it. all royalties should go into a trust for her until she reaches the age where she is entitled to it. That name is Marina Louise Bukowski. [***]

  all very serious, I know, and all the poems and stories may well rot, but it is a dark afternoon, and one thinks certain things…

  [To Neeli Cherry]

  November 20, 1970

  [***] Guggenheim, all those prizes and grants—you know how they go—more money is given to people who already have money. Shit, I know a prof, friend of Corrington’s, can’t write a cat’s ass…he wins a prize every year…usually the same one…and he goes off to some island and works on some project, meanwhile still getting paid half salary for doing nothing at the Univ. he’s supposed to be teaching at. on one of his island trips he put together an anthology, even put me in it, but didn’t even have the decency to send me a copy. “Old Man, Dead in a Room,” he used. now, that took a lot of imagination, didn’t it? I’ll be an old man dead in a room soon enough as long as they keep baby-spooning these literary idiots. [***] I don’t even know where to get the papers he fills out to win his shitty prizes. and if I did, they’d only write back, “Sorry, but…”

  well, it all helps keep me pure, yeah. [***]

  [To Lafayette Young]

  December 1, 1970

  [***] it was good meeting you, you know that, and thanks for all…that fine motel bit, the transport, you…all that. you are a gentle and easy man…I hate to see them laying it into you down there…hope you’ve come out of it by now and are eating a little…but your family lays it into you because they love you, man; nobody understands an alcoholic…I started drinking young…at 16 and 17, and the next morning I’d always get it—those looks, that hatred. of course, my parents hated me anyhow. But I remember saying to them one morning: “Christ, so I got drunk…You people treat me like a murderer…” “That’s it! That’s it!” they said, “what you’ve done is worse than murder!” they meant it. well, what they meant was that I was socially disgracing them in front of the neighbors, and there might be an excuse for murder, but for drinking…never, by god, no! They must have meant it, because when the war came on, they urged me to join the murder…it was socially acceptable. [***]

  [To John Martin]

  December 15, 1970

  [***] Celine’s Castle to Castle a horrible book. Of course, they really kicked his ass…threw him in a stinking pit…cancer ward afterwards…stole all his books and manuscripts, kicked the shit out of his motorcycle…what a grand chance he had to lay it into them by being objective…but he had to bitch and rail right down to the last stitch. he had all the tools to crucify the sons of bitches, but he couldn’t do so: too close to his bellybutton. well, it’s too late.

  all right, everything here is a mess too. papers all over the floor. gloom like spiderwebs. I seem caught in my own corner. It’s round ten. and they’re pushing me off the stool. I’m behind on points. Face of a madman. lace on left glove undone. can’t see out of eyes. who started all this shit anyhow?

  p.s.—next day—yesterday’s phone call was nice but now that we’re off the free $100 per month, life will get grimmer. christomighty yeah. so we’ve got to start scratching. [***]

  [To Lafayette Young]

  December 21, 1970

  well, the amateur drunks have taken over and will hold this town until Jan. 2…driving on the wrong side of the street, running red lights, bellowing the same songs. figs of people, twigs of people, shits of people…MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY NEW YEAR. Christomighty, yeah.

  I drove down to get Marina today—Santa Monica—we’re still in tune. The few people who knew always laughed at me because I talked to her like an adult. I still do. she’s 6 now but it’s the same as when she was two or three. this had nothing to do with trying to elevate her mental hygiene—I’d be the worst for that. the worst one, I mean. but she’s gotten used to talking to me and I’ve gotten used to talking to her and we listen to each other; we’re serious about it but we laugh a lot too. like today, we decided to get some wrapping paper [***] and I said, “Now, look, Marina, see all those people trying to get into the Thrifty drugstore parking lot? The lot is already full and they are just going to sit there for hours, or maybe ten or twenty minutes waiting for somebody to pull out so they can park. So, we’re not going to do that. We’ll just park across the street a half a block away and walk in.” Which we did. [***]

  Marina was so beautiful and happy at her grammar school xmas program…Christ, all she wants is love, to be noticed…she glows and I glow back; it’s almost unbearable…not to bring out the crying towel, but both my parents hated me. But that has nothing to do with it: she brings the miracle to me, and I respond.

  O.k. man, to hell with kids and Christmas talk. [***]

  [To John Martin]

  December 23, 1970

  [***] There have been some pretties coming around in their minis, flashing me all that leg, smiling from the couch. I just sit there and glower, thinking of the trap. “I’m through with women,” I tell them. “My pecker still gets hard now and then but a little cold water takes care of the problem.” They just laugh. They think I’m joking. “Oh, hehehe, you’re so funny!”

  One of them wants to sculpt my head at her place. I told her, “O.k., give me a ring sometime in Jan. or Feb. and I’ll trot on over. Where we gonna sculpt? In the bedroom?”

  “Oh no, we have a nice secluded place in the backyard…”

  Thanks for not sending me the Creeley xmas card. Not to be a bitch, but after I’ve read one of his poems I really don’t know what he’s said, and then my next reaction is, “O, what the fuck. Forget it.”

  Hello to my dear telephone-relay message girl, my Barbara; don’t ruffle the Sparrow’s feathers, he’s been bitten and smitten by the poet lice…

  hang in.

  [To John Martin]

  December 27, 1970

  have been crawling through one of those depressive fits that seem to fall upon me. please believe me, I am not trying to play the sensitive Artist bit—that’s sickening. I only wish it wouldn’t happen. It’s just like all the walls fall down upon me. I’ve almost analyzed it—it happens mostly after I have been on a drunk with 2 or more people. I don’t understand it—I can drink more, all by myself, and don’t even awaken with a hangover.

  [***] 1970 was my most magic year. the horrors increased and the joys, and the typewriter became more real, instead of an afterthought. I don’t know how much longer I can g.d. sluff off those most real ghosts with sharp teeth…age and booze dull the soul…But the post office would have killed me within 2 more years. my thanks to both you and Barbara for understanding a lot of it. [***]

  · 1971 ·

  Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns, published by Hatchetman Press, was the literary magazine that Bukowksi edited and published in collaboration with Neeli Cherry from February 1969. It ran for three issues until February 1971.

  [To John Martin]

  January 6, 1971

  only one poem enclosed. those crayon drawings have drained my ass. went down today to cash a check for one dollar from Univ. of Calif. at Berk. girl loo
ked at deposit book—it said: Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns; also, Hatchetman Press. she started blushing and giggling…“pardon me, sir, can I ask you what this is?” “it’s a magazine. as you can see, we are going broke.” “o, I think that title’s terribly funny, sir.” “that’s nice. I only wish somebody would buy the magazine….” the girls always react to those titles; they really get heated as if they wanted to be raped.

  last time I went one of the girls told me, “O, I think this is so cool!” then she walked over and showed it to another girl and then they both heated up.

  what the hell. after centuries of magazines being named Circle and Ante and Blast and all that dry grease, we finally break the mould. what happens? First a letter from Blazek, inflamed, claiming that we were corny, exaggerated our purpose, on and on and on and so forth and so forth. what the hell. so what happens? now all the new mags coming out are named like this: When John Rode His Bicycle West to Fight the Indians, and so forth and so forth….

  anyhow, I took my dollar and walked out of there and came back here, walked into bedroom and here are two women’s legs sticking out from under the covers. a dead body! that drunken bitch from…I threw the covers back. just 2 legs. my landlord is a very funny man. he’s so god damned funny that some day he’s going to give somebody a heart attack.