Tales of Ordinary Madness Read online

  I mean – JOHN BUKOWSKI!

  oh, he’s dead.

  shit, no WONDER we can’t find him!

  they took me down to an orange-yellow cell. it was a Saturday afternoon. from my cell window I could see the people walking along. how lucky they were! across the street there was a record shop. a microphone played music toward me. every thing seemed so free and easy out there. I stood there trying to figure what I had done. I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.

  Moyamensing Prison reminded me of an old castle. 2 large wooden gates swung open to let me in. I am surprised we didn’t walk across a moat.

  they stuck me in with a fat man who looked like a public accountant.

  I’m Courtney Taylor, public enemy No. 1. he told me.

  what are you in for? he asked.

  (I knew then because I’d asked on the way in.)

  draft dodging.

  there’s 2 things we can’t stand here: draft dodgers and indecent exposure cases.

  honor among thieves, eh? keep the country strong so you can rob it.

  we still don’t like draft dodgers.

  I’m really innocent. I moved and forgot to leave a forwarding address with the draft board. I notified the post office. got a letter from St. Louis while I was in this town to report for a draft examination. I told them I couldn’t make it to St. Louis, to have them examine me here. they put the make on me and hauled me in here. I don’t understand it: if I were trying to dodge the draft I wouldn’t have given them my address.

  all you guys are innocent. sounds like bullshit to me.

  I stretched out on the bunk.

  a screw came by.

  GET UP OFF YOUR DEAD ASS! he screamed at me.

  I got off my dead draft dodging ass.

  do you want to kill yourself? Taylor asked me.

  yes, I said.

  just pull down that overhead pipe that holds the cell light. fill that bucket with water and stick your foot in it. take out the light-bulb and stick your finger in the socket. then you’re out of here.

  I looked at the light a long time.

  thank you, Taylor, you’re very helpful.

  at lights out I laid down and they started in. bedbugs.

  what the shit’s this? I screamed.

  bedbugs said Taylor. we got bedbugs.

  I’ll bet I got more bedbugs than you’ve got, I said.

  bet.

  ten cents?

  ten cents.

  I began to catch and kill mine. I laid them on the little wooden table.

  finally we called time. we took our bedbugs over to the cell door where there was light and we counted them. I had 13. he had 18. I gave him the dime. it wasn’t until later that I found out he was breaking his in half and stretching them. he had been a swindler. a real pro. the son of a bitch.

  I got hot with the dice in the exercise yard. I won day after day and was getting rich. jail-rich. I was picking up 15 or 20 bucks a day. dice were against the rules and they pointed their submachine guns at us from the towers and hollered BREAK IT UP! but we always managed to get a game going again. an indecent exposure case had sneaked the dice in. he was one indecent exposure case I didn’t like. in fact, I didn’t like any of them. they all had weak chins, watery eyes, small rumps, slimy ways. 1/10th men. not their fault, I suppose but I didn’t like to gaze upon them. this one kept coming around after each game. you’re hot, you’re making it big, let me have a little. I’d drop some coins into that lily hand and he’d slink off, the snake swine prick, dreaming of showing his cock to 3 year old girls. it was all I could do to keep from belting him but they gave you solitary for belting anybody, and the hole was depressing but the bread and water were worse. I’d see them come out of there and it was a month before they looked the same again. but we were all freaks. I was a freak. I was a freak. I was too hard on him. when I wasn’t looking at him I could rationalize.

  I was rich. the cook came down after lights out with plates of food, good food and plenty of it, ice-cream, cake, pie, good coffee. Taylor said never to give him over 15 cents, that was tops. the cook would whisper his thanks and ask if he should come back the next night.

  by all means, I’d tell him.

  this was the food the warden ate and the warden evidently ate well. the prisoners were all starving and Taylor and I were walking around looking like 2 women 9 months pregnant.

  he’s a good cook, Taylor said. he’s murdered 2 men. he killed one guy and then he got out and right away he killed another guy. he’s here to stay now unless he can break out. he got hold of a sailor the other night and screwed him in the ass. he ripped that sailor wide open. that sailor couldn’t walk for a week.

  I like the cook, I said, I think he’s a nice guy.

  he is a nice guy, Taylor agreed.

  we kept complaining about the bedbugs to the screw and the screw would holler at us:

  WHATCHA THINK THIS IS? A HOTEL? YOU GUYS BROUGHT THEM THINGS IN WITH YOU!

  which, of course, we considered an insult.

  the screws were mean the screws were stupid and the screws were scared. I was sorry for them.

  they finally put Taylor and I into different cells and fumigated the cell.

  I met Taylor in the exercise yard.

  I drew some kid, Taylor said, some raw kid, he’s dumb, he don’t know nothin’. it’s awful.

  I drew an old man who couldn’t speak English and he sat on the pot all day and said, TARA BUBBA EAT, TARA BUBBA SHEET! over and over he’d say this. he had life figured: eat and shit. I think he was talking about some mythological figure of his homeland. ah, maybe Tarus Bulba? I don’t know. the old man ripped up my bedsheet the first time I went to the exercise yard and made a clothesline out of it; he hung his socks and shorts on the thing and I came in and everything dripped on me. the old man never left the cell, even to shower. he had committed no crime, they said, just wanted to stay there and they let him. an act of kindness? I got mad at him because I don’t like wool blankets rubbing on my skin. I’ve got a very tender skin.

  You old fuck, I’d scream at him, I’ve killed one man already, and unless you straighten up I’ll make it 2!

  but he’d just sit on his pot and laugh at me and say TARA BUBBA EAT, BUBBA SHEET!

  I had to give up. but anyhow, I never had to scrub the floor, his damn home was always wet and scrubbed. we had the cleanest cell in America. in the world. and he loved that extra meal at night. sure did.

  the F.B.I. decided that I was innocent of deliberate draft dodging and they ran me down to the induction center, they ran a lot of us down there, and I passed the physical and then I went into see the psychiatrist.

  do you believe in the war? he asked me.

  no.

  are you willing to go to war?

  yes.

  (I had some crazy idea of getting up out of a trench and walking forward into gunfire until I was killed.)

  he didn’t say anything for a long time and kept writing on a piece of paper. then he looked up.

  by the way, next Wednesday night we’re having a party of doctors and artists and writers. I want to invite you. will you come?

  no.

  all right, he said, you don’t have to go.

  go where?

  to the war.

  I just looked at him.

  you didn’t think we’d understand, did you?

  no.

  give this piece of paper to the man at the next desk.

  it was a long walk. the paper was folded and stuck to my card with a paper clip. I lifted an edge and peeked: “... hides an extreme sensitivity under a poker face ...” what a laugh, I thought, for Christ’s sake!: me: sensitive!!

  and there went Moyamensing. and that was how I won the war.

  SCENES FROM THE BIG TIME

  They always put the new men
to cleaning up the pigeon shit and while you were cleaning up the pigeon shit, the pigeons would come around and shit a little bit more in your hair and face and on your clothes. They didn’t give you any soap – just water and a brush and the shit came off hard. Later they’d move you to the machine shop for your 3 cents an hour but as a new man you had to do the pigeon shit bit first.

  I was with Blaine when Blaine got the idea. He saw one pigeon over in the corner and the bird couldn’t fly. “Listen,” said Blaine, “I know that these birds can talk to each other. Let’s give this bird something to say to the others. We’ll fix him and toss him on the roof up there and he’ll tell those other birds what’s happening.”

  “O.K.,” I said.

  Blaine walked over and picked up the bird. He had a small brown Gillette. He looked around. It was in the shady corner of the exercise yard. It was a hot day and quite a few of the prisoners were down there.

  “Any of you gentlemen care to assist me with this operation?” Blaine asked.

  There was no answer.

  Blaine started cutting one leg off. Strong men turned away. I saw one or two rather touch their temples with the hand nearest the bird, blocking the sight.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you guys?” I screamed at them. “We’re tired of pigeon shit in our hair and eyes! We’re fixing this bird so when we throw him back on the roof, he’s gonna tell those other birds, ‘Those are some mean motherfuckers down there! Don’t get near them!’ That pigeon is going to tell those other pigeons to stop shitting on us!”

  Blaine threw the bird up on the roof. I don’t remember anymore if the thing worked or not. But I remember while scrubbing, my brush came across these two pigeon legs. They looked very strange without a bird attached to them. I brushed them into the shit.

  II

  Most of the cells were overcrowded and there had been several race riots. But the guards were sadistic. They moved Blaine from my cell over to a cell full of blacks. When he walked in Blaine heard one black say: “There’s my punk! Yes sir, I’m gonna make that man my punk! In fact, we all might as well have a piece! You gonna strip down, baby, or are we gonna hafta help ya?”

  Blaine took off his clothes and stretched down flat on the floor.

  He heard them moving around him.

  “God! That’s one UGLY-lookin’ round-eye if I ever saw one!”

  “I can’t get a hard, Boyer, so help me I can’t!”

  “Jesus, it looks like a sick doughnut!”

  They all walked away and Blaine got up and put his clothes back on. He told me in the exercise yard, “I was lucky. They would have torn me to pieces!”

  “Thank your ugly asshole,” I said.

  III

  Then there was Sears. They put Sears in a cell with a pack of blacks and Sears looked around and fought the biggest one. He was laying down. Sears leaped into the air and landed on the biggest one’s chest with both knees. They fought. Sears whipped him. The others just watched.

  Sears just didn’t seem to care. Out in the exercise yard he crouched on his haunches doing a slow roll, smoking a butt. He looked at a black. Smiled. Exhaled.

  “You know where I’m from?” he asked a black.

  The black didn’t answer.

  “I’m from Two Rivers Mississippi,” he inhaled, held it in, exhaled, smiled, rolling on his haunches, “You’d like it there.”

  Then he flipped his butt, rose, turned and walked across the yard ...

  IV

  Sears was on the white guys too. Sears had this funny hair, it looked like it had been glued to his head and it stood straight up, a dirty red. He had a knife scar along one cheek and his eyes were round, very very round.

  Ned Lincoln looked about 19 but he was 22 – open-mouthed, humped-backed with a white film half-covering his left eye. Sears sighted him in the yard on the kid’s first day in.

  “HEY, YOU!” he hollered at the kid.

  The kid turned.

  Sears pointed at him. “YOU! I’M GONNA WASTE YOU, MAN! BETTER GET READY, I’M GONNA GET YOU TOMORROW! I’M GONNA WASTE YOU, MAN!”

  Ned Lincoln just stood there, not quite understanding. Sears got into a conversation with another inmate as if he had forgotten the whole thing. But we knew he hadn’t. It was just his way. He had made his declaration, and that was it.

  One of the kid’s cellmates talked to him that night.

  “You better get ready, kid, he means it. You better get yourself something.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you can make yourself a little shiv by taking the handle off the waterfaucet and shaping it to a point by rubbing it along the cement. Or I can sell you a real good shiv for two bucks.”

  The kid bought the shiv but the next day he stayed in his cell, he didn’t come out to the yard.

  “The little shit’s scared,” said Sears.

  “I’d be scared too,” I said.

  “You’d come out,” he said.

  “I’d stay in,” I said.

  “You’d come out,” said Sears.

  “O.k., I’d come out.”

  Sears cut the life out of him in the shower the next day. Nobody saw anything, just the raw red blood running down the drain with the soap and water.

  V

  Some men just can’t be broken. Even the hole won’t cure them. Joe Statz was one. He’d been down in the hole forever, it seemed. He was the warden’s pet bad actor. If he could break Joe, then he’d have better control of the rest of the men.

  One day the warden took 2 of his men and they pulled the lid off and the warden got down on his knees and hollered down to Joe:

  “JOE! JOE, YOU HAD ENOUGH? YOU WANNA COME OUT, JOE? IF YOU DON’T WANNA COME OUT NOW JOE, I WON’T BE BACK FOR A LONG TIME!”

  There wasn’t any answer.

  “JOE! JOE! YOU HEAR ME?”

  “Yeah, I hear you.”

  “THEN WHAT’S YOUR ANSWER, JOE?”

  Joe picked up his bucket of piss and shit and threw it in the warden’s face. The warden’s men put the lid back on. As far as I know, Joe’s still down there, dead or alive. The word got out on what he did to the warden. We used to think about Joe, mostly after lights out.

  VI

  When I get out, I thought, I am going to wait a while and then I am going to come back to this place, I am going to look at it from the outside and know exactly what’s going on in there, and I’m going to stare at those walls and I’m going to make up my mind never to get on the inside of them again.

  But after I got out, I never came back again. I never looked at it from the outside. It’s just like a bad woman. There’s no use going back. You don’t even want to look at her. But you can talk about her. That’s easy. And that’s what I did for a bit today. Luck to you, friend, in or out.

  NUT WARD JUST EAST OF HOLLYWOOD

  I thought I heard a knocking, looked at the clock – it was only one-thirty p.m., jesus christ, and I got into the old bathrobe (I always slept naked; pajamas seemed ridiculous to me) and opened one of the broken side-windows near the door.

  “Yeah?” I asked. It was Mad Jimmy. “Were you asleep?” “Yes, were you?” “No, I was knocking.” “Come on in.” He’d ridden up on a bicycle. And had on a new Panama. “You like my new Panama? Don’t you think I look handsome?” “No.”

  He sat down on my couch and looked up into the full-length mirror behind my chair, tugging at his hat, this way and that. He had two brown paper bags. One contained the usual bottle of port wine. The other he emptied out on the coffee table – knives, forks, spoons; little dolls – followed by a metal bird (light blue with broken beak and chipped paint job) and other various forms of junk. He peddled the shit – all of it stolen – at the various hippie shops and head shops along Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards – that is, the poor man’s area of these boulevards where I lived, where we all lived. I mean we lived near there – in broken-down courts, attics, garages or slept on the floors of temporary friends.

  Meanwhile Ma
d Jimmy thought he was a painter but I thought his paintings were very bad and I told him so. He also said that my paintings were very bad. It was possible that we both were right.

  But I mean Mad Jimmy was really fucked-up. His eyes, ears and nose were essentially negative. Some wax in canals of left and right ears; mucous membrane of nose slightly inflamed. Mad Jimmy knew exactly what to steal to sell to these shops. He was an excellent and also a petty thief. But his respiratory system: upper borders of left and right lungs – some rales and congestion. When he wasn’t smoking a cigarette he was rolling a joint or sucking at his wine bottle. He had a Systolic 112 and Diastolic 78 giving pulse pressure of 34. He was good with the women but his hemoglobin was very low; being 73, no, 72 percent. Like the rest of us when he drank he didn’t eat and he liked to drink.

  Mad Jimmy just kept playing with the Panama in front of the mirror and making little awesome sounds. He smiled at himself. His teeth were essentially negative and the mucous membrane of his mouth and throat were inflamed.

  Then he took a drink of wine from under that stupid Panama and that made me go get two beers for myself.

  When I came back he said, “You changed my name from ‘Crazy Jimmy’ to ‘Mad Jimmy.’ I think you’re right – ‘Mad Jimmy’ is much better.”

  “But you’re really crazy, you know,” I told him.

  “How’d you get those two big holes in your right arm?” Mad Jimmy asked. “Looks like all the meat is burned away. I can almost see the bone.”

  “I was high and trying to read Kangaroo by D. H. Lawrence while I was in bed. My arm got tangled in the cord and brought the bed lamp down on my arm. Before I could rip the fucking thing off the light globe almost did me in. It was a hundred watt General Electric.”

  “Did you see your doctor?”

  “My doctor’s pissed at me. I just always sit there, diagnose myself, recommend treatment and then walk out and pay his nurse. He bugs me. He likes to stand there and tell me about his days in the Nazi army. The French captured him, you know, and they put the captured Nazis in a boxcar on the way to the prison camp and the civilians of the towns threw gasoline and stinkbombs and used rubbers full of ant poison at the poor innocent fellows and I get so damned tired of his stories....”