More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (12 page)

Read More Notes of a Dirty Old Man Online

Authors: Charles Bukowski,David Stephen Calonne

BOOK: More Notes of a Dirty Old Man
9.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
One, two, three, four.
The needle moved very slowly back and forth across the numbers:
One, two, three, four.
I decided not to flood the reservoir. I put the lock back on and got down under the pier and bathed my feet again. Having finished that I put my shoes back on and walked down the road a bit. I came to a gate, walked through the curving side entrance and found a picnic ground. But it was a Tuesday. There was nobody there. There were pits for cooking but I had no matches and no food. But civilization had been there, my beloved mankind.
I found a half loaf of stale French bread in the dirt. It was grey and mouldy. I walked over to a garbage can and dug out the cellophane bag inside and wrapped my bread inside of it . . . Garbage cans . . . meant garbage men . . . Where were they? Sons of bitches were probably on strike. I took my bread and my cellophane bag and began walking back toward the reservoir. It occurred to me that in spite of the general nearness of humanity that it was still possible that I
could
die up there—exposure, panic, madness . . . The thought disgusted me. I was like any other dreamer—I wanted to die while being sucked-off by the 15-year-old neighbor girl while her parents were at Mass.
I walked back to the pier, hung my bread from a railing, went out to the road, and piled boulders in the way so that anybody who might drive by would have to stop. I had left camp about 10 a.m. I figured it to be about 1 p.m. The most difficult thing is waiting, especially when waiting is useless. They figured I was hidden in the mountains writing immortal poetry. I decided to walk inward on the road. Perhaps it led to camp, although it hardly seemed the road we had driven in on. We didn’t have a car; we had been driven up and left. They were to return at a later date.
I began walking down the road. It was very hot. I walked slowly. I walked several miles. Then I screamed out, “Linda!” It was such a sad sound, bouncing and echoing.
For a moment I had the feeling of running off into the trees, screaming, crashing my head against tree trunks and boulders. But that hardly seemed very manly so I decided against it. A poem began to from in my mind as I walked along:
Imperfection breeds Charley
While other men love
Crack-wise
Ride broncos
Imperfection breeds Charley
While other men light fires
On vistas
Study Shakespeare
Discover uranium, oil,
Sex. . . .
Imperfection breeds Charley
While other men hit
600 home runs
shoot deer and panther
shoot lion, elephant and
man. . . . imperfection breeds
Charley
 
Then I decided, to hell with that poem, I’m not that bad. And I kept walking. I don’t know how long I walked, two hours perhaps, but there was nothing but road and road and road. I saw three or four deer. My energy was getting very low and my city shoes were blistering my feet. I had made another bad move. I turned and had a two-hour walk back to help consume me. One does reflect at such times. One thinks of the city, of walking about in a room and listening to the radio, reading the race results. I thought about the poet Jeffers who said there were traps everywhere, that they’d even trapped God when He came to earth.
But my trap had been so inane, without glory or purpose. The sun was very hot and I should have sat in the shade and rested but I was disgusted with my stupidity and wouldn’t allow myself that. Then I thought, it really isn’t death that matters: it’s dying in some sort of minor comfort that matters . . . where people can sign little papers and keep the flies off your body. I walked on. Then ahead of me in the road stood a small doe. It was just a little larger than a large dog. As I slowly approached, it just stood there and looked at me. I was so tired, so low-keyed, my soul in such a pissed-off state against itself that I gave off no rays at all. The doe just remained in the road looking at me and I moved closer and closer. It isn’t going to move, I thought. What will I do? Then as I was almost upon it, it turned and ran, the rear end bounding up and down. I remembered one time I had been very near suicide when I was sitting on a high cliff over the water near San Diego. As I sat there, four squirrels slowly—well, not slowly but in their swift darts—yet it seemed slow—they approached me and they came right up to my feet as I sat there and I looked into their large brown eyes and they looked into mine. They didn’t fear me and I wondered at them. It seemed to last many minutes; then I moved a bit and they ran back down the rocks.
Finally I was under my pier again, my feet in the water. My thirst didn’t seem to end. I kept drinking water. I tried to sleep. It wasn’t any good. I put my shoes back on and walked back to the other end of the road, the picnic grounds. There was nobody about. I tried to remember how far it was back to the nearest town. The drive up had been a long one, very long, over a hot narrow mountain road. If I made it, there wouldn’t be much left of me. If I didn’t make it at least it would be a form of action. I decided to stay another night and a day and start out the next night. I walked back and got under the pier again. But the inaction got to me. I hardly felt very clever under that pier. I put my shoes back on and walked back toward the picnic grounds again.
Then I saw a little girl walking along the road toward me. “HEY!” I yelled at her, “HEY!” She seemed frightened. I walked toward her, then stopped. “I won’t hurt you! I’m lost! I’m lost!” I felt very foolish, for how can one get lost near a picnic grounds with signs around that say NO SMOKING and PLEASE PUT OUT ALL FIRES? “Where’s your mother and father?” “Oh, they’re in a red and white camper on the picnic grounds.” I walked toward the picnic grounds. I saw the camper but I didn’t see the people. “HEY!” I yelled. “HEY!”
Then I saw Linda standing there with blue curlers in her hair. Then I saw a man and a woman by the camper.
“Hi,” Linda said to me.
“My god I’m glad to see you!” I said. “Did these people bring you up?” “No, I just got here.”
The people at the camper were watching us. “He’s a city boy,” said Linda. “He got lost in the woods. I just found him.”
I laughed. “I’m a city boy. I’m a city boy.”
“Well, I’m glad you found your man,” said the woman.
“Come on,” said Linda. “Follow me.”
She had her dog with her. She was a good 15 yards ahead of me. “Listen,” I said, “I’ve been lost in the woods for eight hours. Don’t I even get a kiss?” She waited and I walked up. She turned her cheek and I kissed her on the cheek. Then she walked on ahead. “I’m mad at you. I been thinking about a lot of the things you’ve done and said and I got mad at you.”
I walked along behind her, stumbling into holes, over rocks and fallen tree branches, into mudholes. “I thought I might die,” I said, “and I thought, well, at least I ate her pussy the last two nights we were together. It was the only comforting thought I had.”
“I think you got lost on purpose. I found your notebook a couple of blocks from camp. You didn’t even leave a note. You always leave a note. I thought, well, he’s really mad. All you had to do was look up and you could have seen the camp. You never look up.”
“Usually when I look up I don’t like what I see.”
“You’re always so negative,” she said, “always so negative.”
I followed along 15 yards behind. “I point things out to you, landmarks, but you don’t listen. You don’t listen to things, you don’t participate, you’re always so far off. Why didn’t you leave a note in your notebook?”
“I didn’t get lost on purpose.”
“I believe you did.”
“No, not at all.”
“Or I thought maybe you went over the mountain to get a drink. I thought maybe you’d gone mad for a drink.
“Look, you’ve found me now, we’re back together, Jesus Christ . . .”
We had to climb between and over old barbwire fences. I got stuck in one, three or four barbs stuck into the back of my shirt. My arm was too tired to reach up and pluck myself free. I just stood there between the strands. Linda waited. I couldn’t move. She walked back and lifted the top strand off my back and I got out and followed her.
She was always just a little too far ahead and gaining. The dog bounded ahead of her. I followed Linda’s ass. I’d followed that beautiful ass for three years; I figured another mile and one half through the wilderness wouldn’t be entirely impossible. “Now you’ll have something to write about,” she said looking back.
“Oh shit yes,” I said.
The mountains and the trees and the mudholes and the rocks and the barbs and the ass and the dog and me were everywhere.
I took Patricia to the fights at the Olympic, we were eight or nine rows back and began drinking beer. The opening amateur fights were the best, as usual, and it was hot in there and the beer was good. Patricia and I bet 50 cents each fight and let our loyalties be known, better and better known with each new beer.
By the time the six-rounder came around we were screaming things like,
“Kill ’im!” “Send ’im back to Japan! Remember Pearl Harbor!” “He couldn’t beat his grandmother’s wet panties with a fly swatter!”
We screamed all through the six-rounder and through both 10-round feature matches. When it was over I was 50 cents ahead. I lit two cigars, gave one to Patricia and we walked out to her car.
On the way in we got into an argument of some sort. What it was about I have since forgotten but I think it was something about which was the greater invention, the elevator or the escalator? She let me out in front of my place and I wandered back through the banana trees and the polluted fishpond and went up the back stairway to Apt. #24 where I found a pint of Grand-Dad in the refrig and lucked onto some Stravinsky on KFAC and sat about drinking and listening.
Halfway through the bottle I remembered a lady in town who was reading the life story of Virginia Woolf. Now not everybody in Los Angeles sits around reading the life story of Virginia Woolf, especially an attractive lady with an eight-room apartment, good French wine and $400 a month alimony. I finished the Grand-Dad and decided to find out more about Virginia Woolf.
The lady was in and we sat and talked for 10 minutes and she didn’t bring out any French wine so I suggested that I might go to the liquor store. She said that might be fine, so I went. The small liquor store to the north was closed but the lady lived on a large boulevard so I went on down to the supermarket. The lady’s name was Nina. I mean the one who read the life of Virginia Woolf. Nina had told me that Virginia Woolf had led a very tragic life and she also told me of her suicide. I think that she told me that Virginia Woolf had walked into a river naked and drowned herself.
Anyhow, I came back with two six-packs in the bottle and a pint of Grand-Dad. I walked back up the boulevard and as I got near Nina’s place I noticed Patricia’s car parked outside. I thought, fine, I’ll take Patricia up and introduce her to Nina. Patricia might like to hear about Virginia Woolf. As I got near Patricia’s car, the door opened and she leaped out. She began swinging her purse at me. Her purse was a large furry contraption with very long straps. She whirled it around and around, banging it against my head and shoulders and sides screaming, “You S.O.B.! You S.O.B.! You S.O.B.!”
“So help me now,” I said, “you just keep it up and I’ll have to give you one! Men’s lib, you know.”
Patricia kept it up and I set the bag down. Just as I did she gave me a good one along the side of the head. It spun me off to one side and she made for the bag. She got hold of a beer bottle and crashed it down against the sidewalk. It exploded! A good cold beer. She got another one. POW! Another one. POW! In the bar across the street they were lined up against the blinds, peering out. POW!
I was too drunk to grab her.
“You bitch! I’ll have to put you back in the madhouse!”
I couldn’t catch her. She kept circling back to the bag. POW! POW! The moon was high. There wasn’t a cruise car within two miles and nobody was phoning in. I rushed the paper sack, picked it up, hugged it to my chest and she gave me one against the back of the head. I dropped the bag and Patricia was upon it. She found the Grand-Dad and held it up in the air.
“Ah ha! You were going to drink this with her and then . . .”

Other books

Chance Encounter by Alesso, Chris
Things and A Man Asleep by Georges Perec
Blitzfreeze by Sven Hassel
Off the Hook by Laura Drewry
Red Country by Kelso, Sylvia
The Nymph King by Gena Showalter