Notes of a Dirty Old Man

by Charles Bukowski

  I felt it wasn’t going to last, but meanwhile I was feeling better, looking better, talking better, walking better, sitting better, sleeping better, fucking better than ever before. it was nice, truly nice.

  then it came about that I got to know the woman in the front, the one who lived in the big front house. I’d be sitting on the steps drinking my beer and throwing the ball for the dog and she’d come out and spread this blanket on the lawn and take a sunbath. she had on a bikini, just a couple of strips of stuff. “hi,” I’d say. “hi,” she’d say. it went on like that for some mornings. not much conversation. me, I had to be careful. there were neighbors everywhere and Miriam knew them all. but this woman had a BODY, gentlemen, every now and then nature or god or something decides to put together ONE BODY, just ONE for a change. you look at most bodies, you will find that the legs are too short or too long, or the arms; or the neck is too thick or too skinny, or the hips are too high or too low, and most important — the ass. the ass is almost always out of order, a disappointment: too big, too flat, too round, not round, or it hangs like a separate part, something stuck there when it was almost too late.

  the ass is the face of the soul of sex.

  this woman had an ass to go with all the rest. gradually I found out that her name was Renie and that she was a stripper in one of the small clubs on Western Ave. but her face was Los Angeles hard, world-hard. you got the feeling that she had been taken a few times, lied to and used by the rich boys when she was a bit younger, and now she had the guard up and screw you brother, I’m going to get mine.

  one morning she told me, “I’ve got to sunbathe in back now. that old son of a bitch next door came by one day when I was out front and he pinched me, he copped a feel!”

  “he did?”

  “yeah, that old freak, he must be seventy years old and he pinched me. he’s got money, he can keep his money. there’s a guy brings his wife over there every day. he lets the old guy have her every day, they lay around and drink and screw, and then the husband comes and gets his wife in the evening. they think he’s going to die and leave her the money. people make me sick. now down where I work, the guy who owns the place, big fat wop, Gregario, he says, ‘baby, you work for me, you gotta go all the way, on stage, off stage.’ I tell him, “look George, I’m an Artist, you don’t like my act the way it is, I quit!’ and I called a friend of mine and we packed all that gear out of there and I no sooner got home than the phone started ringing. it was Gregario. he tells me, ‘look, honey, I gotta have you back! the place ain’t the same, the place is dead. everybody’s asking for you tonight. please come back, baby, I respect you as an Artist and a lady, you are a great lady!”

  “care for a beer?” I asked her.

  “sure.”

  I went inside and got a couple of beers and Renie got up on the porch steps and we drank.

  “what do you do?” she asked.

  “nothing right now.”

  “you’ve got a nice girl friend.”

  “she’s o.k.”

  “what’d you do before you did nothing?”

  “all bad jobs. nothing to talk about.”

  “I talked to Miriam. she says you paint and write, you’re an artist.”

  “at rare times I’m an artist; at most other times I’m nothing.”

  “I’d like you to see my act.”

  “I don’t like the clubs.”

  “I’ve got a stage in my bedroom.”

  “what?”

  “come on, I’ll show you.”

  we went in the back door and she sat me down in the bedroom. sure enough, here was this rather circular upraised stage. it took up most of the bedroom. there was a curtained area just off stage. she brought me a whiskey and water and then mounted the stage. she got in behind the curtains. I sat and sipped at my drink. then I heard music. “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.” the curtains parted. out she slank, gliding, gliding.

  I finished my drink and decided I wouldn’t make the racetrack that day.

  the clothing began to detach. she began to bump and grind. she’d left the whiskey by my side. I reached over and poured a bit of a shot, and she got on down to the little string with the beads on it. when she flipped the beads you saw the magic box. she ground it out, down to the last note. she was good.

  “bravo! bravo!” I applauded.

  she climbed on down and lit a cigarette.

  “you really liked it?”

  “sure. I know what Gregario means when he says you’ve got class.”

  “all right, what’s he mean?”

  “lemme have another drink.”

  “sure. I’ll join you.”

  “well, class is something you see, feel, rather than define, you can see it in men too, animals. you see it in some trapeze artists as they walk onto the arena. something in the walk, something in the manner. they have something inside AND outside, but it’s mostly inside and it makes the outside work. you do that when you dance; the inside makes the outside work.”

  “yes, I feel that way too. it’s not just a sex-grind with me, it’s a feeling. I sing, I talk when I dance.”

  “you sure as hell do. 1 caught all that.”

  “but listen, I want you to criticize me, I want you to make suggestions, I want to improve. that’s why I have this stage, that’s why I practice. talk to me as I dance, don’t be afraid to say things.”

  “o.k., a few more drinks and I’ll loosen up.”

  “help yourself.”

  she got back on stage, but behind the curtains. she came out with a different outfit on.

  “when a New York baby says goodnight

  it’s early in the morning

  good night sweetheart.”

  I had to talk loud over the music. I felt like a big-shot director with a sub-normal Hollywood brain.

  “DON’T SMILE WHEN YOU COME OUT. THAT’S VULGAR. YOU’RE A LADY. YOU’RE GIVING THEM A BREAK BY BEING HERE. IF GOD HAD A CUNT YOU’D BE GOD, WITH A LITTLE MORE GENEROSITY. YOU’RE HOLY, YOU’VE GOT CLASS, LET THEM KNOW IT!”

  I worked on the whiskey, found some cigarettes on the bed, started chain-smoking.

  “THAT’S IT, THAT’S IT. YOU’RE ALONE IN A ROOM! NO AUDIENCE. YOU WANT LOVE THROUGH SEX, LOVE THROUGH AGONY!”

  the parts of her costume began to fall away.

  “NOW, NOW, SUDDENLY SAY SOMETHING! SAY IT AS YOU ARE WALKING AWAY FROM STAGE FRONT, HISS IT, HURL IT OVER YOUR SHOULDER, SAY ANYTHING THAT COMES TO YOUR HEAD, LIKE ‘POTATOS HURL MIDNIGHT ONIONS!’ ”

  “potatoes hurl midnight onions!” she hissed.

  “NO, NO! YOU SAY SOMETHING, MAKE IT YOURS!”

  “chippy chippy suck nuts!” she hissed.

  I almost made my rocks. more whiskey.

  “NOW HIT IT, HIT IT! RIP OFF THAT GOD DAMNED STRING! LET ME SEE THE FACE OF ETERNITY!”

  she did. the whole bedroom was on fire.

  “NOW GET IT GOING FAST, FAST, LIKE YOU’VE LOST YOUR MIND, ABANDONED EVERYTHING!”

  she did. for some moments I was speechless. the cigarette burned my fingers.

  “BLUSH!” I screamed.

  she blushed.

  “NOW SLOW, SLOW, SLOW, MOVE IT TOWARD AND TO ME! SLOW, SLOW SLOW, YOU’VE GOT THE WHOLE TURKISH ARMY HARD! TOWARD ME, SLOW, OH JESUS!”

  I was just about to leap on stage when she hissed, “chippy chippy suck nuts.”

  then it was too late.

  I had another drink, said goodbye to her, went to my place, bathed, shaved, washed the dishes, got the dog and just made it down to the bus stop.

  Miriam was tired.

  “what a day,” she said. “one of those damn fool girls went around and oiled all the typewriters. they all stopped working. they had to call in the repair man. ‘who the hell oiled these things?’ he screamed at us. then Conners was on us to make up lost time, go get out those bills. my fingers are numb from hitting those silly ass keys.”

  “you’re still looking good, baby. you get yourself a nice hot bath, a few drink
s, you’ll be straight. I’ve got frenchfries in the oven, plus we’ll have cubesteaks and tomatoes, hot french bread with garlic.”

  “I’m so damned tired!”

  she sat in a chair kicked off her shoes and I brought her a drink. she sighed and said, looking out front, “those sweetpea vines are beautiful with the sun coming through like that.”

  she was just a nice girl from New Mexico.

  well, I saw Renie a few times after that but none of the times was like the first time, and we never made it together. first, I was trying to be careful on account of Miriam, and second I had built up such a thing about Renie being an Artist and a Lady that we both almost believed it ourselves. any sexual activity would have impaired the strictly impartial artist-critic relationship, and would have evolved into a possess-or-don’t-possess hassle. actually it was a hell of a lot more fun and abnormal the other way. but it wasn’t Renie who did me in. it was the little fat housewife of the garage mechanic in the back house. she came over to borrow some coffee or sugar or something about 10 a.m. one morning. she had on this loose dressing gown or whatever it was and she bent over to get the coffee or whatever from a low cupboard and the breasts fell out.

  it was gross. she blushed, then stood up. I could feel heat everywhere. it was like being locked in with tons of energy that worked you at their will. the next thing I knew we were embracing as her husband rolled under some car on his little coaster and cursed and turned a greasy wrench. she was a fat little butterdoll. we made the bedroom and it was good. it seemed strange to see her going into the bathroom that Miriam always used. then she left. neither of us had said anything since her opening words, when she had asked to borrow whatever it was she wanted to borrow. me, probably.

  it was about three nights later over drinks, Miriam said, “I heard about you screwing fatty out back.”

  “she’s not really fat,” I said.

  “well, all right, but I can’t have that, not when I’m working, anyhow. we’re through.”

  “can I stay tonight?”

  “no.”

  “but where will I go?”

  “you can go to hell!”

  “after all our times together?”

  “after all our times together.”

  I tried working on her. it wasn’t any good. she just got worse.

  it was easy for me to pack. what I owned was rags that fit into half a paper suitcase. luckily I had a little money and I found a nice apartment on Kingsley Drive for a very reasonable rate. but I couldn’t understand how Miriam had found out about Butterfat without being suspicious of Renie. then I put it together. they were all friends. they communicated, either directly or spiritually or in some way that women communicate to each other that men can’t understand. add a little outside information to this and the poor man is finished.

  sometimes driving down Western I would check the club billboard. there it was, Renie Fox. only she wasn’t headlined. there was the name of the main stripper in bold neon and then below, Renie and one or two others. I never went in.

  I saw Miriam one more time, outside a Thrifty Drugstore. she had the dog with her. he jumped all over me and I petted him and roughed him up.

  “well, anyhow,” I told her, “the dog misses me.”

  “I know he does. I brought him over to see you one night but before I could ring the bell I heard some bitch giggling in there. I didn’t want to interrupt anything, so we left.”

  “you must have imagined the whole thing. there hasn’t been anybody around.”

  “I didn’t imagine anything.”

  “listen, I ought to drop around some night.”

  “no, don’t. I have a nice boyfriend. he has a good job. he works! he’s not afraid of WORK!”

  and with that, they turned, woman and dog, and walked away from me and my life and my fears, wiggling their asses at me. then I stood and watched the people walking by. there was nobody there. I was at the corner. the signal was red. I watched. when it turned green I crossed the hard street.

  ________

  one of my best friends — at least I consider him a friend — one of the finest poets of our Age is afflicted, right now, in London, with it, and the Greeks were aware of it and the Ancients, and it can fall upon a man at any age but the best age for it is the late forties working toward fifty, and I think of it as Immobility — a weakness of movement, an increasing lack of care and wonder; I think of it as The Frozen Man Stance, although it hardly is a STANCE at all, but it might allow us to view the corpse with SOME humor; otherwise the blackness would be too much. all men are afflicted, at times, with the Frozen Man Stance, and it is indicated best by such flat phrases as: “I just can’t make it.” or: “to hell with it all.” or: “give my regards to Broadway.” but usually they quickly recover and continue to beat their wives and hit the timeclocks.

  but for my friend, The Frozen Man Stance is not to be thrown under the couch like a child’s toy. if it only could be! he has tried the doctors of Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain and England and they could do nothing. one of them treated him for worms. another stuck tiny needles in his hands and neck and back, thousands of tiny needles. “this might be it,” he wrote me, “the needles might damn well do the trick.” in the next letter I heard that he was trying some Voodoo freak. in the next I heard that he wasn’t trying anything. the Final Frozen Man. one of the finest poets of our time, stuck there on top of his bed in a small and dirty London room, starving, barely kept alive by handouts; staring at his ceiling unable to write or utter a word, and not caring, finally, whether he does or not. his name is known throughout the world.

  I could and can well understand this great poet’s flop in a barrel of shit, for, strangely, as long as I can remember, I was BORN into the Frozen Man Stance. one of the instances that I can recall is once when my father, a cowardly vicious brute of a man, was beating me in the bathroom with this long leather razor strap, or stop, as some call it. he beat me quite regularly; I was born out of wedlock and I believe he blamed me for all his troubles. he used to walk around singing, “oh when I was single, my pockets did jingle!” but he didn’t sing often. he was too busy beating me. for some time say before I reached the age of seven or eight, he almost imposed this sense of guilt upon me. for I could not understand why he beat me. he would search very hard for a reason. I had to cut his grass once a week, once lengthwise, then crosswise, then trim the edges with shears, and if I missed ONE blade of grass anywhere on the front or back lawns he beat the living shit-hell out of me. after the beating I would have to go out and water the lawns. meanwhile the other kids were playing baseball or football and growing up to be normal humans. the big moment would always come when the old man would stretch out on the lawn and put his eye level with the grassblades. he’d always manage to find one. “there, I SEE IT! YOU MISSED ONE! YOU MISSED ONE!” then he’d yell toward the bathroom window where my mother, a fine German lady, always stood about this time of the proceedings. “HE MISSED ONE! I SEE IT! I SEE IT!” then I’d hear my mother’s voice: “ah, he MISSED one? ah, shame, SHAME!” I do believe that she blamed me for her troubles too. “INTO THE BATHROOM!” he’d scream. “INTO THE BATHROOM!” so I’d walk into the bathroom and the strap would come out and the beating would begin. but even though the pain was terrible, I, myself, felt quite out of it. I mean, that really, I was disinterested; it didn’t mean anything to me. I had no attachment to my parents so I didn’t feel any violation of love or trust or warmth. the hardest part was the crying. I didn’t want to cry. it was dirty work, like mowing the lawn. like when they gave me the pillow to sit on afterwards, after the beating, after the watering of the lawn, I didn’t want the pillow either, so, not wanting to cry, one day I decided not to. all that could be heard was the slashing of the leather strap against my naked ass. it had a curious and meaty and gruesome sound in the silence and I stared at the bathroom tiles. the tears came but I made no sound. he stopped beating. he usually gave me fifteen or twenty lashes. he stopp
ed at a mere seven or eight. he ran out of the bathroom, “Mama, Mama, I think our boy is CRAZY, he don’t cry when I whip him!” “you think he’s crazy, Henry?” “yes, mama.” “ah, too bad!”

  it was only the first RECOGNIZABLE appearance of The Frozen Boy. I knew that there was something wrong with me but I did not consider myself insane. it was just that I could not understand how other people could become so easily angry, then just as easily forget their anger and become joyful, and how they could be so interested in EVERYTHING when everything was so dull.

  I was not much good at sports or playing with my companions because I had very little practice at it. I was not the true sissy — I had no fear or physical delicacy, and, at times, I did anything and everything better than any of them — but just in spurts — it didn’t somehow matter to me. when I got into a fist fight with one of my friends I could never get angry. I only fought as a matter of course. no other out. I was Frozen. I could not understand the ANGER and the FURY of my opponent. I would find myself studying his face and his manner, puzzled with it, rather than trying to beat him. every now and then I would land a good one to see if I could do it, then I would fall back into lethargy.