Notes of a Dirty Old Man

by Charles Bukowski

  that’s all the dispatch said. perfect. I was alive again. then one morning I went out to the mailbox. a letter. along with the gas bills, threats from the dentist. a letter from an ex-wife I could hardly remember, and an ad for a poetry reading of talentless poets.

  dear bongo:

  this is the LAST letter. god damn you to hell. you are not the ONLY one who has abandoned me. I’ll see all of you who have abandoned me — I’LL SEE ALL OF YOU IN THE GRAVE FIRST!

  meggy

  my grandmother used to talk that way to me and she never gave me any pussy either.

  well a couple of days later, shaking of the hangover of joy. I went to the mailbox. some letters. I opened them. the first

  dear mr. b:

  your application for an individual grant from the National Endowment for the Arts has been considered by the National Council on the Arts. with the advice of an independent panel of literary experts, we regret to inform you …

  another letter:

  hello bongo:

  crouched in the corner of this evil smelling hotel room the only thing that breaks the silence is the click of wine bottles on teeth … I’m rheumy, legs covered w/sores; 51 aces turned up blank, 52nd. in the mail … I covered all corners y’know? and it turned out to be a bloody dog damn circle … fired from lemon groves for being gone too long. (hog farm wedding: 4 days) and pickin’ too little. came back to s.f. & missed sure xmas job at post office by one day … sit in the corner of this room lites out waitin’ for peace and gladness baptist church to turn in its red neon sign so I can start crying … dog in the street gets runned over by a runaway bus … wish I was that dog, cause I don’t know how to do it myself … even that requires decisions … where’s them cigarettes … walked out of the mission this morning. unnameable food attacking my hog-maw guts. looked around on market street at all them pretty girls hair like clear winter san frisco sunshine … well. what the hell.

  M.

  and another:

  dear bongo:

  forgive me. I get this way. try to love me a little. I got a new sprinkle today. the other was rusty. I enclose a poem from “Poetry Chicago.” I thought … of myself … as I read it. must go now. the children are on the way home.

  love me,

  meggy

  the enclosed poem is carefully typed. not an error. doublespaced the words she typed are engraved into the paper with the same pressure the same measured … love. — it’s a horrible poem.

  it speaks of the wind and some undersized comfortable tragedy. it is 18th century. bad 18th century.

  but still I do not answer. I go to my garbage job. they know me down there. they are my superiors. I like it. they allow me to flow. they don’t know T. S. Eliot from Lawrence of Arabia. I am drunk for two or three days. still make the job.

  I have a special ring-system that must work before I will pick up my phone. I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do — mostly with my time. but one night, steadying myself to make it on in to the garbage job, the phone rang. since I was leaving in a couple of minutes I figured there wasn’t much they could do with me. it wasn’t the signal but I picked up the phone anyway.

  “bongo?”

  “eh? yeh?”

  “this is … meggy.”

  “oh, hello, meggy.”

  “listen I don’t mean to impose myself. I just get haywire.”

  “oh yeh. we all do.”

  “just don’t HATE my letters.”

  “well, meggy, it’s like this. I really don’t hate your letters. they are really so comfortable that — ”

  “oh I’m SO glad!”

  she hadn’t let me finish. I had meant to say that her letters were so comfortable that they terrified me with their vacuum cleaner yawns. but she never let me finish.

  “I’m really glad.”

  “yeh,” I said.

  “but you haven’t sent any poems for our class at the institution.”

  “I am trying to find some that will fit.”

  “I’m sure that any of yours will do.”

  “the torturer is sometimes good at the innuendo.”

  “what do you mean?”

  “forget it.”

  “bongo, aren’t you writing anymore? I remember when you used to make every issue of Blue Stardust. Lilly writes that you haven’t submitted in years. have you forgotten the ‘littles?’ ”

  “I’ll never forget those motherfuckers.”

  “you’re funny. but I mean, don’t you SUBMIT your WORK anymore?”

  “well, there’s Evergreen.”

  “you mean, they’ve ACCEPTED YOU?”

  “once or twice. but, Evergreen isn’t a little magazine, please remember that. write Lilly. tell her I have deserted from the barricades.”

  “oh bongo, I knew from the first moment I read your lines that you were destined. I still have your first collection, ‘Christ Creeps Backwards.’ Oh, bongo, bongo.”

  I got rid of her telling her I had to go collect some garbage. meanwhile I was thinking, now who would WANT to unwrinkle a prune? they surely don’t taste good: perhaps a little like dried chilled turds. their only charm is the WRINKLES THEMSELVES, the cold wrinkles and that slippery iced seed that slips from your tongue onto the plate like a living thing itself.

  I went over and opened a beer. decided that I couldn’t make work that day. it was good to sit in a chair. tilt the bottle up and let everything go to hell. I knew one who claimed she slept with Pound at St. Liz. I got well rid of her after a lengthy correspondence by foolishly insisting that I also knew how to write and that I found the “Cantos” dull.

  I had meggy’s letters everywhere. there was an old one on the floor near the typewriter. I got up walked over and picked it up:

  dear bongo,

  all my poems are coming back. well, if they don’t know good poetry, that’s their fault. sometimes I still read your first volume CHRIST CREEPS BACKWARDS. and all your other volumes. so long as I know that I can bear up under ALL their terrible stupidity. the children will be home soon.

  love me

  meggy

  p.s. — my husband jokes with me — “bongo hasn’t written in a long time. what has happened to bongo?”

  I empty the beer bottle. throw it into the wastebasket.

  I could see it now, her husband mounting her thrice a week. her hair like a fan on the pillow. like the sex writers like to say. she really imagines that he is bongo. he imagines that he is bongo.

  “oh bongo! bongo!” she says.

  “coming, mother.” he says.

  I open another beer and walk to the window. it is the usual dark sterile senseless Los Angeles day. I am still alive, in a sense. it has been a long time since the first volume of poems; it has been a long time since the Watts riots. we have wasted ourselves. John Bryan wants a column. I could tell him about meggy. but the meggy story is unfinished. she will be in my mailbox tomorrow morning. if I were in the movies I could handle it:

  “look little john, there’s this broad see? she’s bugging me, see? you know what to do. don’t mess it up. give her that fourteen inch dick and get her off my back, see? you’ll find her. she’s in this room with a vacuum cleaner lookin’ sad eyed, see? room full of poetry magazines, she’s unhappy. she thinks she’s been crucified by life but she really don’t know what life is, see? put her straight: give her the fourteen.”

  “aw right.”

  “and little john …”

  “yeh.”

  “don’t make any stops on the way.”

  “aw right.”

  I go back and sit down, suck up my beer. I ought to get drunk, fly up there, appear at her door in rags, drunk, beating on the wood, buttons all across my torn shirt: “IMPEACH JOHNSON.” “STOP THE WAR.” “UN-BURY TOM MIX.” anything.

  but nothing will work. I just have to sit and wait. the “Humanities” are out. I have stopped writing poems for Evergreen. there will be only
one thing in that box:

  dear bongo

  blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I have watered the pots. the children are coming home soon. blah blah blah.

  love me

  meggy

  did this ever happen to Balzac or Shakespeare or Cervantes? I hope not. man’s worse invention has three heads: the mailbox the mailman, and the letter-writer. I have a blue coffee can on the shelf full of unanswered letters. I have a large paper box in the closet full of unanswered letters. when do these people get drunk, fuck, earn money, sleep, bathe, crap, eat, cut their toenails? and meggy leads the pack: love me, love me, love me.

  a fourteen inch dick might get me out, or in, or make it worse. with what I have, there has been trouble enough already.

  ________

  in those days there was usually somebody in my room whether I was there or not. you usually didn’t know who was going to be there or who wasn’t. it was just somebody. a big human and not too holy. there was always a party. party meaning: an extension of luck and the ways: two dollars and some change bought a roomful of talk and electric light sound for six or seven.

  all right, one night, lights all out, I awakened in bed drunk, but clear, you know, suddenly clear the unclean walls. the no purpose at all, the sadness the everything. and I got up on one elbow and looked around and everybody seemed gone. just those empty wine bottles on their moonlit sides. gross tough morning waiting, and I looked around me in the bed and there’s this human form. some cunt had decided to stay with me — that was love, that was bravery. shit, who could really stand me? anyone who could stand me had a lot of forgiveness of soul. I just had to REWARD this sweet, little dear deer for having the guts and insight and courage to stay with me.

  what better reward than to fuck her in the ass?

  I had run into a strange breed of woman, a strange line of women and none of them had wanted it in the tail and so I had never done it that way and it was working on my mind. it used to be all I could talk about when I got drunk. I’d say to some woman,

  “I’m gonna get you in the ass, and I’m gonna get your mama in the ass, and I’m gonna get your daughter in the ass.” and the answer would always be, “oh no you don’t!” they’d do anything and everything but that. maybe it was just the time and the weather, or just mathematical, because much later after that there was nothing but women sitting around and saying, “Bukowski, why don’t you screw me up the stovepipe? I’ve got a big round soft butt.” and I’d answer, “you sure have, dearie, but I’d rather not.”

  but then in those days, I’d just never given it that way, and I was feeling a little crazy, as usual, and I had this strange idea that a good fuck in THEIR ass would solve a lot of MY spiritual and mental problems.

  I found the last glass of wine mixed with cigar ashes and sadness. then I got back into bed, winked at the moon and slipped my little weenie into that bulging snoring immaculate backside. a sneak thief does not precious the prize so much as the stealing. I loved both. my little stick raised to the top of its insanity. my god, ugly and perfect. vengeance, somehow, upon all manner of things, upon old icecream men with mad pigeon eyes, upon my dead mother living and smearing cream across her impartial and tasteless iron face.

  she’s still asleep, I thought. which made it better. it’s probably Mitzi. maybe Betty. what’s the difference? my victory — sad, unemployed and starving cock slipping into doorways of things forever forbidden! GLORIOUS! I felt very dramatic really — the top side of DRAMA, like Jesse James catching the slug, like Christ at the cross under klieg lights and rockets, I worked away.

  she moaned and went AARRG UG, HO AH, HA … I knew then she was only pretending to be asleep. trying to save her wine-head honor which was just as terrible and just as real as all the honored. I was just jamming the guts out of her with my demented and falsified glory.

  she is just PRETENDING to be asleep and I am a MAN AND NOTHING, 0, NOTHING CAN WHIP ME!

  I seemed to have a lot of string for a change and the glory of it and the magic-horse violence of me, of it, of everything obsessed me. I poked and rammed and jammed and everything was pure.

  then in the excitement the blanket fell back. I saw more clearly the head. the back of the head and the shoulders — it was one Baldy M. American MALE! all went limp. I fell back in indecent horror. I fell back sick, staring at the ceiling, and not a drink in the place. Baldy M. did not move or speak I finally decided to sleep and wait for morning.

  in the morning we awakened and nothing was mentioned. somebody came in and we got up a little money for wine.

  and the days went on and I kept waiting for him to leave. the girls began looking at me strangely. he stayed two weeks, three weeks. and he didn’t run a tight ship, as they say. one evening after unloading crates of frozen fish from boxcars, my hand cut and bleeding, one foot numbed and almost broken from a falling crate, I limped on into a party in my room. the party was all right, I never bitch on wine drinking. but the sink in my place had been getting bad. they had eaten all my canned food, used up all the glasses and dishes and silverware, and it was all in the sink in the water, the stinking water, and the sink was clogged and that was all right, that was almost normal, but when I looked into the sink and found they had also found my paper plates and used them and threw them into the sink, floating there, that was bad, but then on top of that, somebody had VOMITED into the sink, and when I saw that, I poured a water glass full of wine, drank it down, and crashed the glass against the wall and screamed, “THAT’S IT! EVERYBODY OUT! NOW!”

  they filed on out, the whores and the men, and the scrubwoman Helen, I had once screwed her too, white hair and all, and out they went solemnly, sadly. everybody left but Baldy M.

  he just sat on the edge of the bed saying, “Hank, Hank, whatza matta? whatza matta, Hank?”

  “shut up or I’ll k.o. you, so help me christ!”

  I went out to the hall phone. I found the number of his mother. he was one of those pure and brilliant, stupid, high eye-Q bastards who lives with his mother forever.

  “listen, Mrs. M., please come and get your son. this is Hank.”

  “oh, that’s where he has BEEN! I thought so, but I didn’t know where you lived. we turned in a missing person report on him. you’re bad for him, Hank. Listen Henry, why don’t you leave my boy alone?” (her “boy” was 32 years old.)

  “I’ll try, Mrs. M. now why don’t you come get him?”

  “I just can’t understand why he stayed so LONG this time. he usually likes to come home after a day or two out.”

  “just come and get him.”

  I gave her the address, then went back to the room.

  “your mother is coming to get you,” I told him.

  “no, I don’t want to go. no! listen, Hank, is there any more wine? I need a drink, Hank.”

  I poured him a wine and poured myself one.

  he drank some of the wine. “I don’t want to go,” he said.

  “listen, I kept asking you to leave. you wouldn’t leave. I had one of two choices. either to beat hell out of you and throw you out into the street or phone your mother. I’ve phoned your mother.”

  “but I’m a MAN! I’M A MAN, DON’T YOU SEE? I WAS IN THE CHINA THEATRE! I LED THE CHINESE TROOPS THROUGH THE FIELDS! I WAS A FIRST LT. IN THE AMERICAN ARMY IN MOMENTS OF DANGER!”

  and it was true. he had done that. and had been honorably discharged. I refilled our glasses.

  “to the China theatre,” I toasted.

  “to the China theatre,” he said.

  we drank them down.

  then he began again: “I’m a MAN! god damn it. can’t you see that I am a MAN? jesus christ, can’t you see THAT I AM A MAN?”

  she arrived about 15 minutes later, only said one word: “WILLIAM!” then she reached over on the bed and took him by the ear. she was a bent old lady, surely nearing 60. she tools him by the EAR and lifted him from the bed and still holding his ear she took him down the hall and stood and pushed the elevator butt
on, him bent almost double and crying, him crying all the time. those big REAL tears running dripping sliding down his face. and she took him into the elevator by his ear and as they went down I could hear him crying, “I AM A MAN, I AM A MAN, I AM A MAN!” and then I went to the window and watched as they walked down the sidewalk. she was still holding him by the EAR, this old woman of 60. and then and there she threw him into the car and got into the other side while he was lying on the car seat. and then and there she drove off with my only piece of round-eye crying, “I AM A MAN! I AM A MAN!”

  I never saw him again nor did I ever make any particular effort to look for him.

  ________

  the night the 300 pound whore came in I was ready. nobody else was ready but I was ready. she was god awful fat all around and not very clean either. where the hell she had come from and what she wanted and how she had survived up to now was a question you could ask about any human being, and so we drank drank and laughed and I sat next to her, pressed next to her, sniffing and laughing and goading.

  “baby, baby, I could reach you with something that could make you cry instead of laugh!”

  “ah hahahahaha, ha” she laughed.

  “when I put it in, my head will reach your head, all the way through the stomach, esophagus, up through the trachea, yeah!”

  “ah hahahahaha, ha!”

  “god damn, I bet when you shit that the cheeks of your ass hang down to the floor, eh? and when you shit, baby, you clog the plumbing for a month. eh?”

  “ah hahahahaha, ha!”

  at closing time we left together — me 6 feet tall and 165 pounds and she 5 feet and 300 pounds. the lonely and ridiculous world was walking down the sidewalk together. I finally got me a piece of ass better than a knothole.

  we made it to the outside of my rooming house. I reached for my key.

  “jesus christ.” I heard her say, “what’s that?”

  I looked around us. behind us was a very simple and small building with a very simple sign: STOMACH HOSPITAL.

  “oh, that? laugh now baby, I like your laugh, let me hear you laugh now, baby!”

  “it’s a dead body, they’re bringing out a dead body!”