Read More Notes of a Dirty Old Man Online
Authors: Charles Bukowski,David Stephen Calonne
More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (11 page)
Walden, shit, well I’m writing this in King’s Pasture, Utah, no transport, no racetrack, no beer, no Cal Worthington, no love letters from insane ladies in Michigan, Louisiana, New Jersey . . . no poetry readings, no nudie bars . . . My few aficionados who expect tales of drunken nights, child-rape, woman rape, jail, murder—the general calm madness of Hollywood and Los Angeles, will have to wait.
As I write this I fight off a few mosquitoes but, by comparison to the average person, they don’t contact me too often. The alcoholic content of my blood gives them pause, but the few who get a nip of me whir off singing.
I stare right off into 40,000 trees and not a toteboard in sight. But I gather no mental clarity or insight.
I suppose that I am terribly inbred to my prejudices. I find my prejudices comforting; I find my ignorances comforting. I have no desire to be an intelligent man and I have succeeded. Intelligent men bore me with their understanding, with their deep-set knowledgeable eyes, with their vocabularies, with all and everything they know. I prefer a slower seasoning.
So many people are doomed by their ambition and their gathered intelligence, their bank account and savings and loan intelligence. If there is any secret to life, that secret is not to try. Let it come to you: women, dogs, death, and creation.
In writing, especially, there are many fast starters. All men are born artists but most of them are quickly mutilated. Ambition is bad enough but when an obscene ambition gets connected with a commercial recognition it’s not long before the shit backs up in the sewer. Creation means creation without attachment; too many imagine it means a house in Beverly Hills, a red sports car, talk shows, and going to bed with all offers . . .
One could write such a thing without staring at 40,000 trees. I came up here because my woman said there were wildmen in the forest with Wilt Chamberlain peckers who hadn’t been laid for years. I have no idea how many wildmen she has met . . .
There was a party in Escalante before we got up here. I furnished the beer and the cowboy-ranchers furnished the dancing. Those boys are in good shape. They lift their women (and mine) over their heads and whirl them about. They are pitiful drinkers but they can dance for hours. They can start a fire with wet wood, hitch and shod a horse, kill and skin deer, trap, fish, fight, and fuck. Their conversation isn’t too bad either.
I’m no dancer. I’m a hermit who has spent most of his life in a tiny room with a bottle and a typewriter and an occasional woman. I admit to disliking crowds, crowds anywhere, and parties. I suppose there should be a meeting ground for most people, and a party, a dancing party, could be the place. But I’ve seldom been to a party that didn’t generate bad feelings. Basically the men are in too much of a rush to be on the make instead of allowing it to happen. Things become ugly, a contest, a push, a joust, a sham.
I got up and kicked my arms and my legs but I soon tired. I am in horrible shape. Also, I am a man who appreciates symphony music. When the ear and the mind become accustomed to classical music then the steady and almost invariable beat of the sound of popular music, turned top volume on the stereo, does dehydrate the inner gut. The very limitation and persistency of the sound is an insult to the senses.
So I found myself sitting on a rock in the desert, getting at the cans of beer I had brought out with me. I had been drinking for days and my stomach was raw. My jumping about and the sound of the music had made me ill. I stood up and started vomiting.
Carl, the owner of the ranch, was coming in from his car which was parked out on the road.
“Having trouble, man?” he asked me.
“I’m all right, Carl.”
I let go another load.
“I’m staying right here with you,” he said.
“It’s all right, Carl, I’ve been through this a thousand times before.”
I let go another batch.
“I’m standing over you,” said Carl. “I’m standing over you tall and true until you’re finished.”
Carl stood over me tall and true until I was finished. Then we walked on inside where I opened another beer and I walked back into the front room where the full-blast stereo gutted the walls with the same limited notes. They danced and they leaped and I stood there with my can of beer and I watched, just to let them know that I knew what a good time was . . .
(I have just watched something murder something here on the ground. Ah, nature, beautiful nature, the beautiful animals and bugs, the beautiful people.)
My first night out in nature, down in lower camp, I had to go.
“What’ll I do?” I asked my woman.
“You just shit in the bushes.”
It was a more crowded camp, one of those roadside machinations, tourists abounding, so I had to put on my clothing. I wasn’t entirely sober. I walked along and looked at the bushes.
I selected some. I got out of my bluejeans, hung them on a bush but before I could squat the beershit began; waterfalls began rolling down my legs—wetwash of stinking beer mildewed with improperly chewed and improperly digested food. I grabbed at a bush and squatted, pissed on my feet, and eliminated a few very soft turds.
My pants fell off the bush and onto the ground. I leaped up, worried about my wallet. And, of course, it had fallen out of my pants. I staggered about the brush looking for it and managed to step right into my excretia, me who had stolen the land from the Indians.
I found the wallet, put it back in my pants, hung it all very securely upon a bush and began to wipe myself. I wiped and I wiped. I wiped myself for 5 minutes, put my pants back on and walked back.
I undressed and got into the sleeping bag with my woman. She was asleep but not for long.
“Jesus Christ, what’s that?” she asked.
“What?”
“That stink!”
“I shit in the bushes.”
“Did you wipe yourself?”
“For 5 minutes.”
“What happened? You smell god-awful! What happened?”
“I’ll tell you in the morning.”
Then we slept. At least, I did. And to my few aficionados, don’t worry; I’ll soon be back in Los Angeles.
Linda was down. We’d left a zipper open in the tent flap and the mosquitoes had been on us all night. She was reading a book on sex. I had given her enough sex, grade-A, oral, spiritual and standard, but she was in an off mood. We were in the middle of 160 acres of mountain, trees, and pasture owned by five sisters. Linda was one of the sisters and Linda was down and I was far away from Hollywood Boulevard and Western. “Come on,” I said, “let’s take a dip in the beaver pond.” “You go ahead,” she said, not looking up, “I’ll be along later.”
Downs disturb me, especially when I can’t understand why. I took my red notebook and a fountain pen and began walking. I got up to the beaver pond, sat on a rock, opened the notebook, but nothing came. I took off my clothes and stepped into the pond. It was like icewater. My body looked white and ridiculous. I stepped forward into a two-foot hole and I was in up to my arm pits, chilled in swirling muddy water. I stepped out over rocks that cut my feet. I found a spot and bathed with the small bar of soap. Then I gave myself a shampoo. When I stepped out of the water the flies were on me. Mountain flies are not like city flies; mountain flies are energetic and angry, very angry. I got my clothing and shoes on and walked off with my red notebook, the flies following me, while I thought, “I wonder what’s wrong with Linda? I love her, doesn’t she know that? How can she cut her feelings off? Love is not something you flip about like a TV dial.”
I walked up over a hill of trees and looked back and saw the beaver pond. Then I was over the hill and into a bit of shade. I found a rock and sat down and opened the red notebook. I didn’t have stockings on. As I began to write I felt this stinging pain on my right foot. There was a cut across my feet and a huge fly had landed and was sucking into the cut. I reached down and brushed him off. I got up and the flies followed me.
Why in the hell can’t a woman love a man even if he makes mistakes? Being together is the miracle, being together and caring. Sleeping together, feet touching, legs touching. Being asleep and together. Only the strong can live alone, the strong and the selfish.
It’s good to eat with somebody, to listen to the rain with somebody, to get through Christmas and New Year’s and Labor Day with somebody, to see their ring of dirt in the bathtub, to look at a toilet they forgot to flush. And to have the sex get better and better . . . For Christ’s sake, what was wrong with that woman? Didn’t she understand?
I walked some distance and found another rock under another tree. I opened the notebook and began to write something. I just let the flies have me and I wrote. I wrote something very bitter about humanity and love and the human race. Sometimes such things work, especially if they jell up fundamental truths instead of various self-pities. It didn’t work. I tore the pages out. Even when I wrote about unhappy things I usually had to be happy when I wrote.
Then I heard a sound of water; it sounded like a waterfall. I got up and moved toward the sound. As I walked I heard Linda’s voice. She was hollering for me: “BUKOWSKI!” I kept walking. I decided not to answer. If she calls once more, I’ll answer. She didn’t call again. I moved toward the water. Then I saw it. The water was coming out of a spring and spilling down over a row of rocks that came down a high cliff. It was a good sight. I sat down and watched it. Then I got down into the stream and had a drink.
I decided, on going back, not to go up over the hill but to go around the easy way. I took my notebook and began. It would bring me right back to camp. I walked along and the ground was soaked with many little streams. I had to change course to get around them. There seemed to be very much brush. The brush got thicker. I pushed through, often stepping into mudholes up to my ankles.
Then very quietly a voice entered into my brain:
You’re lost . . .
Oh, no, that would be too damned silly.
Silly or not, you’re lost.
I looked around and I was lost. It was that simple. A tiny emptiness entered through my bellybutton.
You’re lost and you’re a coward and a fool and this proves it. You don’t deserve to live. Linda’s right.
I pushed on through the brush, downhill, stepping into streams . . . I threw my red notebook away. A lost man doesn’t care about a red notebook. I was the man who had once wanted isolation; I was the man who had once fattened on isolation. Now I had it: mountains and trees and brush; nobody around.
I walked on. I climbed a barbwire fence. I felt it was not the thing to do. I did it. I walked on. I climbed another fence. I was more into nowhere. I was in the center of 160 acres. Mountains, trees.
At first there is panic, a rather clubbing sickness inside. Then one says, I’m lost. One says it several times. Then one adjusts to being lost. One says, I am lost. Well. I might die. Well. But the conclusion is hardly joyous. I began to think of Linda. If I ever get out of this, I will treat her so good, oh I will treat her so good.
I climbed another barbwire fence. I kept following a stream down the hill. Looking ahead I could see a large body of water. I left the stream and walked toward it. I found a road. The road had tire tracks on it. There was a small pier built over the water. I got under the pier and took my shoes off and bathed them in the water. I drank the water. Somebody had built that pier, some humans. They might return, those efficient humans, those humans I had once as much resented. They were clever sons of bitches and strong. I wasn’t. That’s why I wrote poems. And, shit, I hadn’t finished my second novel yet. It was laying back in a drawer in Los Angeles. I could see the bit in
The Garfield County News
:
The Garfield County News
:
The minor poet Charles Bukowski, who had come to Utah to visit the King sisters, was found perished under the reservoir pier by Dale Barney, Bruce Wilson, and Pole Griffith. Mr. Bukowski was 52 years old and wrote a column,
Notes of a Dirty Old Man,
which was published in Communist newspapers. He is survived by an eight-year-old daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski. Mr. Bukowski’s red notebook was found, empty, 175 yards north and east of the campsite. Evidently the state of Utah did not inspire Mr. Bukowski.
Notes of a Dirty Old Man,
which was published in Communist newspapers. He is survived by an eight-year-old daughter, Marina Louise Bukowski. Mr. Bukowski’s red notebook was found, empty, 175 yards north and east of the campsite. Evidently the state of Utah did not inspire Mr. Bukowski.
I put my shoes back on and walked out from under the pier and got on top of it and walked out toward the end. There were a couple of box-like contraptions which were locked and made of steel or a high-grade tin. Might be a telephone in there, I thought. I walked on to the road and found a large rock. I brought the rock back and smashed it against the lock. I skinned the knuckles of both hands, but I kept smashing the rock down. I really didn’t expect the lock to open but it was something to do. I was most surprised when the lock snapped open. I opened the compartment and stuck my hand in. I immediately got an electric shock. There was a loose wire sticking up from what appeared to be some type of transformer.
I stood and looked into the box. The sun beat upon me and my feet were covered with blisters. It was the end of my sanity. Alone and lost in the world, unloved by my love . . . demented, appalled, the shit of my very soul stuck into my ears, I stood there and looked. A needle moved very slowly back and forth across a semi-circle of cardboard. There were four numbers written upon the cardboard:
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