Authors: Charles Bukowski
you’re a screwed-up Romantic, she said,
you read all the old philosophers and you
listen to Wagner and Mahler and you think
the ancient Chinese poets were hot shit, yet
you’re depraved, you’re at the racetrack
every day and you know that’s sick, and
all that wine you drink, it’s eating
your brain away, and when you get drunk
you talk about what a great fighter you
used to be, even though you admit you
took more beatings than you gave.
you dislike people and love animals.
I really don’t know what the hell you’re
all about—you just
grab
at things, you rely
solely on instinct and your prejudices
and sometimes I think you’re
retarded.
it was your childhood, you didn’t get any
love so it’s hard for you to give any,
you just get drunk and call every woman a
whore.
listen, I said, isn’t there any more
beer?
and where the hell are the cigarettes?
there were 3 on this table a moment ago and
now they’re all
gone!
I know this fellow, he is
amazing, so terribly
dull
but get him in a room full of
women
and he will find the easy
one
and they will begin
talking
and eventually they will
vanish
and they will
fuck.
his conversation is quite
banal:
“oh, did your mother
come from Michigan? I had a
brother who went to the
University of Detroit!”
what all this means is
that he will talk and talk
about anything and listen and
listen forever to
everything.
the ladies really
ate
it
up.
most of us are
unable to accomplish
this kind of thing
but this fellow
can talk
dumb crap for hours
and much later
after completing his
coitus
he will walk in
with the smiling lady
like a Lion King
as if the
whole thing
was
an endearing adventure
and somehow
fulfilling
for us
all.
you had gotten out of
jail earlier that morning.
you got home about 4:30 a.m.
and started drinking with those
two dykes.
when I got there around 9 a.m.
you were lying on the couch with them
in your shorts and
undershirt
smoking an old cigar
and holding a beer can in your
hand,
you were a mess,
you had pennies and beer caps
stuck to your back
and the floor was covered with
bottles.
“hi, kid,” you said,
“I just got out … we’re celebrating.”
you were totally gone.
I’d heard some terrible things about you
and finally
I believed them.
she told me that I was insensitive
that I didn’t revere God or love
animals. even flies have souls,
she told me.
we were in a motel room at Laguna
Beach. she was overweight and
so was I and maybe in the
great all-encompassing nature of things
we both had souls
like flies.
I lifted my drink
and emptied it.
“shit,” she said, “William drank too much
too. don’t you know that life can be
beautiful?”
“yes, that’s why I drink.”
“don’t you love the beauty of nature?” she
asked. “don’t you ever think of the miracle
of birth?”
“I think of the miracle of death.”
“I used to think you were a great poet,”
she said, “but now that I’ve met you and
know you better, I don’t think that anymore.
you can’t fuck
me.”
“I don’t have the desire to fuck
you,” I answered, “and you know it.”
it was 3 a.m. and I walked out of the
motel room with a new drink in my hand.
I was dressed in my shorts and I
finished the drink and dropped myself
into the swimming pool. all the lights
were out. the manager stepped out as
I dog-paddled about in the dark.
“what the hell are you doing?” he
screamed.
“turn on the pool lights,” I screamed back.
the lights came on and I paddled around for
5 minutes more, then climbed out and walked
back into the motel room.
she had her back turned to me in the bed.
I got in with a new drink and looked at
my feet sticking out from under the covers.
I decided that I had the most beautiful feet
of any man on earth.
then the pool lights went out and all I
could see was the glowing end of my cigarette.
I decided that in the great all-encompassing
nature of things it must certainly have
a soul too.
we were having lunch
at Hal’s Diner.
“you know,” he told me, “after we made love
the last time
she lay in my arms and cried. she said,
‘oh my god, I miss him so!’
she was talking about you, Hank.”
“that’s just the way it is, Jack, with all
my women: while I’m with them they hate
me but after I leave them they love
me.
I’m never tempted to go back to them, however, I don’t even
consider it.”
“you don’t mind that I slept with her,
Hank?”
“did she cook you a good breakfast afterwards,
Jack?”
“I don’t remember.”
“well, I’ll tell you: she didn’t.”
“is that the reason you left her:
because she couldn’t cook
a good breakfast?”
“I never eat breakfast, Jack.”
“then what happened?”
“too often, after we made love, she
began crying in my arms about how she
missed some other guy.”
“well,” he said, “I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch.”
“don’t be,” I said, “just pass the salt and
pepper.”
I’ve seen old married couples
sitting in their rockers
across from one another
being congratulated
for staying together 60 or 70
years,
either of whom
would
long ago have
settled for something
else, anything else,
but fate
fear and
circumstances have
bound them
eternally together;
and as we tell them
how wonderful
their great and enduring love
is
only they
really know
the truth
but they don’t tell us
that from the first day they
met
somehow
it didn’t mean
all that much:
like
waiting for death
now
it was just an endless determination to
endure.
she lived in Venice
on some 2nd floor
and I’d knock and she’d
let me in
and there was no bed
just a mat on the floor
and candles
everywhere
there was even a
piano
and there was also a
guitar
and while we sipped
white wine
she’d sit on the
floor
and play the
guitar
and sing songs
her own lyrics
godawful stuff
about the
soul
and I’d go to the
window
and look out and
say
“nice view but let’s
work out.”
“work out?”
she’d ask. “what
do you mean?”
“I mean
I’ll suck your tits
and stuff.”
“I want you to hear
this new
song.”
she’d start right
in.
she had an awful
voice but
nice long
hair.
I’d get playful
and hammer on the
piano
just so I wouldn’t
have to listen
to
her.
I was in a bad
way: in between
real women
and just
doing time
with
her.
one night I
asked her,
“listen, how do you
make it?”
“make it?”
“I mean
how do you pay the
rent, all
that?”
“oh, I’m a marriage
counselor.”
“really?”
“yes.”
“you been married?”
“3 times.”
I finally stopped going
to her
place
but somehow
she found out where
I lived
and then came
to see
me.
she said we couldn’t have
sex
because she was going to
be married again
and didn’t want to be
untrue
to him.
she described
her boyfriend
in detail
to me
then took out her
guitar
and started
singing.
later that night
I sodomized her
and told her
not to
come
around any
more.
I got lucky:
she
didn’t.
soon after that
I met a plump
Jewish girl
who promised
she’d
save me from
myself.
I thought
that would be
a very good
idea.
there were 4 of them between the ages of 30 and 45 and
all they talked about was men and sex, I mean,
it was all-consuming, to them there wasn’t anything
else.
I was living with the youngest sister and she had me
performing sexual acts I had never even heard of
before.
“now, let’s try this.”
“all right.”
at first it was lively, adventurous, even
humorous
but
as the months passed and the nights added up I
began to resent it, like—oh, here we go with SEX
again!
(she also liked to do it in strange places like public
parks or in automobiles while I was driving.)
I began to feel that all the sisters were crazy; in fact,
one of them had been in a madhouse (the one I was with).
the sisters had boisterous, screeching laughs, really
rather ugly laughs
and I began drinking more so I could tolerate
them and their laughter.
the drinking made the sister I was with quite angry
because sometimes I would just go to sleep
instead of performing.
I finally told my lady that I couldn’t take it anymore
and that it was over and she seemed to accept that at first
but finally it was not to be so:
she began to phone me continually, mostly at night,
around 3 or 4 a.m.: “YOU’VE GOT SOMEBODY THERE,
HAVEN’T YOU?”
she followed me everywhere. once I took some clothes in
to the cleaners and when I came out my car was nearly
destroyed—ripped upholstery, shattered windows, torn
dashboard, all within 3 or 4 minutes.
it looked as if a tiger had been in the car.
another time I was making love to another lady when my
bedroom window was
smashed open and there was the sister’s face, twisted, spitting
at me, “YOU FUCKING BASTARD!” then she was
gone.
the lady in bed was terrified, trembling. “what was
that?”
“nothing, baby, nothing.”
the sex sister also tried to murder me a couple of times in a couple
of different ways and just missed both
times.
let me tell you that the police weren’t much
help, they picked her up but she somehow convinced
them that I was at fault.
“there’s nothing wrong with that lady,” they told me,
both times.
two squads of officers.
maybe she had sex with the whole gang of
them?
fortunately, as the months went on she gradually abandoned her
terrorist attacks until finally it was just a weepy
phone call or two and then a letter or two, then
silence.
she probably found somebody who could perform all the tricks that
she had taught me and could probably perform them
better. I hope
so.
and I just hope he likes sex
62 times a
month.