Absence of the Hero

by Charles Bukowski

  “Maybe you are. I’m not.”

  “Come on. Get out of that bed. We’ll be over in half an hour.”

  I got up, weaved to the bathroom, and looked at my face in the mirror. I gagged, went into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. Not a beer in there. My hand trembled as I closed the refrigerator door. I hadn’t eaten in 3 days.

  I got into some clothes, sat in a chair, and waited.

  An hour went by. Good, I thought, they’ve changed their minds.

  I took off my clothes and got back into bed, pulled the covers to my chin.

  I must have slept. The doorbell rang. I got into a robe.

  It was Barbie and Dutch.

  “Come on, come on! Get some clothes on!”

  “Listen, I’m sick, really sick . . . I can hardly walk.”

  “Come on, get dressed. It’ll do you good.”

  “Yeah.”

  Then we stopped off to pick up the guy with the motor. We drove down to the pier. While they were making arrangements I walked along the pier looking for a place to get a beer. I didn’t see any signs for beer. Fresh fish. A merry-go-round. Hamburgers. But no beer.

  I walked back.

  I walked down the swinging gangplank that hung over the floating dock. I almost broke my leg leaping to the dock. There we were. three white guys with a beautiful black woman. We climbed into the rowboat. Again I barely made it.

  I sat on a plank and said, “Shit! Oh, shit!”

  “You’ll get a good sunburn,” said Dutch. “You’re pale. You never go out in the daylight. This way you get off the booze and you get healthy.”

  I shook all over. “But I’m dying.”

  They looked at me and laughed.

  “Can you swim?”

  “Not today. Too weak. I’ll go right down.”

  Clyde was trying to start the motor. It wouldn’t start. He kept pulling the cord.

  I might luck it yet, I thought.

  Five minutes later the motor started. Dutch sat there bailing out the water from the bottom of the boat with an empty can. There were dead fish in the boat, a week old.

  I staggered over and sat next to Barbie. She held my hand.

  “Isn’t this nice?”

  The water was rough. Dutch sat in the prow and leaped up and down as the boat bucked.

  “I can swim!” he yelled at me. “I can swim 5 miles!”

  We passed a suckerfish floating close to the top of the water.

  “Did you see the suckerfish?” Dutch asked me.

  “I saw it.”

  We got out beyond the breakwater and headed out to sea. We had the smallest boat out there. There were mostly sailboats and one or two large engine-driven yachts.

  I began to heave.

  “Stick your head over the side!”

  There wasn’t much. I hadn’t eaten in days. It was just green slime.

  “What is it, Hank? Are you seasick or is it the hangover?”

  “Hangover . . . yurrrp! ahhh! yoorrrrk!”

  “Want us to turn back?”

  “No . . . yooorrrrrk! . . . go . . . ahead.”

  I was finished.

  Clyde kept going out to sea. We were out beyond the sailboats. I kept thinking how nice it would be sitting in a chair in my beat-up place, drinking a stout malt liquor, and listening to Stravinsky or Mahler.

  “Head back!” I yelled to Clyde.

  “What? I can’t hear! I’m over the engine!”

  “I said, ‘Head back to shore!’”

  “What? I can’t hear!”

  “He says, ‘Head back to shore!’”

  “Oh, we’ll sail along the coast for a while. As long as you can see those hotels you know we’re not too far out.”

  The hotels were 40 floors high.

  “Shit!” I said.

  “What?”

  Finally Dutch and Barbie took turns steering and Clyde came and sat by me.

  “Isn’t this great?”

  “It’s stupid. Drop me off and you guys go on with it. I’ll wait.”

  “But I thought you were the great Bukowski, the guy who bummed across the nation a dozen times?”

  “A man gets tired of sticking his head into windmills. . . . ”

  Harry’s was more like it. “. . . damn fools pulled me out of bed with a week’s worth of hangover and put me in a leaky rowboat and drove 7 miles out to sea with a ¼-horsepower engine. . . . ”

  “But why did you say I was 5 feet tall in that story Evergreen printed? I’m not 5 feet tall. . . .”

  “. . . they are the kind of people who get on roller coasters. Essentially they are jaded and need an extreme shock to stimulate. . . .”

  “. . . you know what 5 feet tall is?”

  “No.”

  He stood up.

  “Five feet comes right here, bastard.”

  Harry put his hand right below his hairline.

  “I’m 5 feet 2.”

  Harry sat back down. “And I wish all the things went on around here that you say go on around here—all the huge reamings and suckings.”

  “They do.”

  “And I wear a wig that slips, you said. People are staring at my hair.”

  Harry was writing critical articles for the Free Press. He explained to me the meaning of “Panic” in literature and how “Panic” created Art. He explained the root of the word “Panic.” The old boy was onto something.

  The Panic of Hemingway: the boxing gloves, the bullfights, the hunting trips, the rushing out to save a man while under extreme fire. And Camus’ The Stranger. Nothing but reverse Panic.

  Then Harry got onto Maxwell Bodenheim in New York City. Max was always drunk. He’d be walking along the streets of New York at 3 A.M. in the morning, nobody around, and then he would turn with his sneer on his lips and he would half spit out, half scream the words: “FASCIST SWINE!” How he bummed beers in bars and sold his autographed poems—“beautiful poems!”—for a dollar. And the man who had murdered Max had gotten his photo in the papers with this big grin on, and the caption, “Well, anyway, I murdered a communist!” Only Max hadn’t been a communist.

  Then Harry got into the story about the 6-foot-2 sailor who had taken so much dick he was jaded on dick and he used to go into the bars looking for guys with large hands and forearms and he’d get these guys to jam the forearm into his ass up to the elbow. Harry talked some heavy shit. How all you had to do in Arabia when you were in a jam was drop your pants and grin. They thought you were a holy man.

  Then I heard Dutch’s car door open 4 floors down. He never got a lube job. He used his doors as a horn.

  “Oh oh. There are the sailors. I’ll go down and meet them so they won’t bother you.”

  “I don’t want to be a complete shit. I’ll go outside and wave,” said Harry.

  Harry waved to Dutch. Dutch waved to Harry.

  I took the elevator down.

  Then I was in the car and we were driving along.

  “Well, how did it go?” I asked.

  “Oh, god, it was wonderful,” said Barbie.

  “We went way out,” said Clyde. “The waves were 7 feet tall. We turned the motor on full blast and smashed into each wave. It was great.”

  “Like going through brick walls,” said Dutch. “We really had a time. We got in an hour late and the guy hollered at us.”

  “Fuck him,” said Barbie. “I told him off.”

  “What we gonna eat?” asked Clyde. “I gotta see Hair at 8:30 P.M.”

  “Did you see Hair, Hank?”

  “Did I ever tell you about the 6-foot-2 sailor who got so jaded with dick he took guys’ arms up his ass, right up to the elbow?”

  “That’s pretty hard to believe,” said Barbie.

  “Well, you know, Catherine the Great died after being fucked by a horse.”

  “They say Catherine the Great had the palace guards killed after they fucked her,” said Barbie.

  “I wonder if they knew they were going to get killed?” asked Clyde
. “Seems to me it would be pretty hard to get a hard-on under those conditions.”

  We drove along thinking about how hard it would be to get a hard-on under those conditions.

  We stopped at a supermarket and Dutch and Barbie got out.

  “Get some beer,” I told them.

  They finally made it back and I asked Dutch if he had gotten beer and he said, “Yes, yes,” and then we were up in Clyde’s $110-a-month apartment full of all the books, stereo, record player—glass doors on the shower—and I sat at a table and watched Barbie cook while drinking my beer.

  “I’m pretending you are in my kitchen, baby.”

  She grinned.

  The dinner was all right. My first food in 3 days.

  Then Clyde had to make Hair. But first Dutch bought the boat motor from Clyde for $90.

  “I’m buying this for you, Bukowski. Now we can go boating every weekend.”

  “Thanks, Dutch.”

  We left with the motor, said goodnight to Clyde, and then drove over to check out Dutch’s bookstore. Nobody ever bought books there. But there was a place in back, large, where people read poetry to each other. Friday nights. And on Saturday nights, the folk singers.

  So we opened the place and Dutch ran around.

  “Shit! Somebody’s been in here!”

  I sat down with my beer and watched.

  “Catfood! Somebody fed the cat! And the coffee’s still hot! Shit! Who’s been in here?”

  I just drank my beer.

  Dutch walked to the back.

  “Hey! The back door’s open! I know I locked the back door!”

  Then Barbie found a sleeping bag on the floor.

  “Shit, this ain’t our sleeping bag.”

  Then Dutch walked to the toilet. The window was open. Somebody had crawled through the window. Sure, a chair outside there. And a City Lights Journal. Goddamn, somebody had been in there. But he couldn’t be a bad guy because he fed the cat.

  “You mean only good guys feed cats?” I asked.

  “Now, Bukowski, if I place a bar across this toilet window, nobody can get in, right?”

  “Wrong.”

  A 13-year-old kid walked in through the open back door.

  “Hey, man,” he said, “everybody’s spaced! Where am I?”

  “You’re at the Golden Spider Bookshop,” said Barbie.

  “Man!” said the kid.

  He walked in, sat on a chair.

  “Jesus,” he said, “where’s all the people? Robert said this was a live joint, almost as live as Bukowski’s. Where’s all the people?”

  “It’s just on Friday and Saturday nights,” said Dutch. “On Sundays we rest.”

  “Oh,” said the kid, “well, shit, I’m on acid. Just half a tablet though.”

  Then I heard a cat. It was scratching and meowing.

  “Dutch, what’s that?”

  “It’s the cat, coming through the bathroom window.”

  “But you just locked the window. Look in that closet. It sounds like it’s coming from that closet.”

  Dutch walked over, pulled a bench from the front of the closet and their cat walked out, just a bit pissed and indignant.

  “Now, just who would put a cat in there?”

  “The same guy who fed it,” I said.

  “Robert said this was a swinging place,” said the kid.

  The cat walked around with its tail straight up in the air.

  Then two people walked in the back door. The girl was about 19, very hard, bulky. The guy was about 15, one of those tall thin ones.

  “Come on,” he said to the girl, “let’s crash.”

  He started to walk up the stairway leading to the sleeping quarters upstairs.

  “Hey, man,” screamed Dutch, “if I let you go up there we’ll have every teeny-bopper in town crashing here and we just won’t last. I can’t let you go up there. Where’d you hear of this place?”

  “Robert.”

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “O.K., where’s Sunset and Normandy?”

  “Hey, hold it,” I said, “that’s my place.”

  “Look,” said Barbie to the 19-year-old girl, “I think you’ve got a place to stay. Why don’t you take him there?”

  “Because I’ve got a guy staying with me.”

  “O.K.,” said Dutch, “you guys have got to go.”

  They walked out, both of them very angry.

  “Look, Dutch,” I said, “I’ve got to go.”

  “O.K.,” said Dutch.

  “Look,” said the kid, “you going near Santa Monica and Western?”

  “We’ll drive you there,” said Dutch.

  Dutch locked the place up again and we walked out to the car, Barbie and the kid in back, Dutch and I in front.

  “Bukowski, if I bar that back window it will keep them out, won’t it?”

  “No,” I said.

  I got out in front of my place. I took the beers, kissed Barbie goodnight, and waved them off. I got to the front door, managed to get it open, checked into the sack—3 beers left—went to the phone book, found the underlined number, dialed it:

  “Hello. Bukowski. Yeah. You remember? O.K. Two six-packs tall, yes. A pint of scotch, you know the kind I drink. And you know I tip well. So get your boy out here and get him here fast!”

  I put two beers in the refrigerator and opened the other. I turned on the radio. Berlioz Symphonie fantastique. Not bad. I was back in my kingdom. I sat back and waited for the delivery boy.

  Notes of A Dirty Old Man

  CANDID PRESS, DECEMBER 6, 1970

  Sexual conquests generally happen, they are not chased down. I lived in the Suicide Hotel across from MacArthur Park in L.A. It was an old rotting place full of losers. I was sitting by the window one day holding my glass of wine when something dropped by in front of me, soundlessly. We were on the fourth floor, and this body came on by in the air, fully clothed, head down, legs following. The courtyard was cement and I heard him hit but I didn’t look. That’s when I named it the “Suicide Hotel.” But let’s get on to sexual conquests, a more pleasant subject.

  I was living with a girl named May who was very good on the bed but who, like me, didn’t quite fit into society. Neither of us could hold a job or wanted a job but we were continually worried about money. We lived on our luck. Money seemed to come along one way or the other. May was good at rolling drunks, and once when it was just about over for us, I found a wallet with $197 laying in the bathroom. May had been using our john that day so I walked on down to the communal john and there was the wallet. We had to be lucky or we were dead.

  I was sitting in the park this day thinking about it. We were down to our last 63 cents and I was watching the ducks swim about, thinking they had it made. No rent, no food problems, no job problems. The poor dumb things had all the luck. No wonder men killed themselves and went mad. I sat there thinking about how nice it would be to be a duck. I rather dozed in the sun. Hours went by. It was almost evening when I roused myself and went back to the Suicide Hotel.

  I got in the old elevator, and it rocked me up to the 4th floor. As I neared my door, I heard all the noise and laughter. What was going on? I opened the door and here was May and two of her girlfriends, Jerri and Deedee. They were well on the way.

  “Hank!” May said, “Jerri just got her first unemployment check and we’re celebrating. Have a drink.”

  I had a drink. I had a number of drinks. I had to hurry to catch up with them. Here I had 63 cents and was drinking with 3 very well-built women. Their faces could use a little help but there wasn’t much more you could add to those bodies. And they dressed to advantage. They showed what they had.

  A little later Jerri went out and bought 2 pounds of ground sirloin, coleslaw, and a large pack of fries and May cooked it up and we ate and drank several bottles of wine. Everybody was feeling all right. It was one night at a time for folks like us. Tomorrow would have to wait.

  After dinner the girls sat around and ta
lked about their funny experiences with men. I heard plenty. For instance, they all knew that bellboy at the Biltmore who had a thing like a horse, and he would get all excited when parties were going on and after everybody was gone he would swing the door open and with the horse-thing extended, run into the room.

  “Oh no! You’re not going to stick that thing in me!”

  The poor guy simply had too much. He’d put 3 women in the hospital.

  They went on talking and laughing about men, and I had to go to the john. I took a good one and when I came out it was over. May had passed out on the couch and Jerri was in one bed and Deedee was in the other. The lights were out.

  I took off my clothes and sat in a chair. Now isn’t this a shame? I thought. Three women with bodies like that, all passed out. What a hell of a party. Well, they’d been drinking all day.

  I just sat there and kept drinking. I was mixing beer and wine. I smoked several cigarettes, and then I thought, what the hell?

  I checked my woman May first to be sure she was out, then I walked over to Jerri’s bed and got in. She was a tall woman, almost 6 feet, and with very fine breasts. I picked up one of her breasts and put the nipple in my mouth.

  “Hey, Hank, what are you doing?”

  I couldn’t answer. I got to the other breast. Then I said, “I’m going to make love to you.”

  “Oh no, Hank, if May finds out she’ll kill me!”

  “May will never know, my darling!”

  I was the greatest lover from Kiev to Pomona. I mounted. I knew that bed; the springs squeaked. May had a terrible temper and was perfectly capable of murder. I had never had such a strange copulation. In order to keep the springs from making a sound, I moved in the slowest slowest of all motions. Nature had never meant it to be that way. Nature didn’t know what it was doing. I will never forget that bit of lovemaking. Moving so slowly, slowly, in order to keep the springs from tattling, I heated up beyond all comprehension. It was working on Jerri too.

  “Oh, my god, I love you!” she said.

  “Shhhhhhh, shhhhhhh,” I whispered, “she’ll kill us!”

  Then I was doing it. “O, o, o, my god. . . .”

  “Shhhhhh,” whispered Jerri.

  Then I made it, we made it.

  I used the sheet and then got out of bed. I sat in the chair as Jerri went to the bathroom and came back. I sat in the chair for some time, drinking beer and wine and smoking. I was the 63-cent lover of the Suicide Hotel. Maybe it was better not being a duck. I thought again about that poor guy floating down past my window, then I had a drink to him and walked over to Deedee’s bed. The springs on Deedee’s bed were soundless. Deedee was short, but juicy, you might say. She was energetic, always walking about, laughing, cussing; she wasn’t too brainy but she was honest and funny, and like I said, juicy. That’s what you thought when you looked at Deedee: juicy, ripe, ripe, overripe. I simply got into bed with Deedee and plunged straight in. She didn’t protest at all. She lifted her legs and reached up and kissed me, her tongue working in and out. She didn’t let go. Her tongue worked in rhythm with my penis. It was a good one. I rolled off, used the sheet, then sat in the chair as Deedee went to the bathroom.