More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns Read online

  “Care for a beer?” I asked.

  “All right,” she said.

  I got up and I could hardly walk. I had enough hose to put out a forest fire of napalm.

  I came back with the beer, didn’t give her a glass, watched her drink it from the bottle, that stuff going into her, into her red hair into her body into her everywhere and I peered up her legs not getting enough and I drank out of the bottle.

  She put down her bottle. “You are a great writer,” she said.

  “That’s no reason for coming to see me.”

  “Yes it is, yes it is. You see you fascinate me, you write this way and you look like, you look like—”

  “The trashman?”

  “Yes, or a diseased gorilla, an undergrown aged gorilla dying of cancer. And those goddamn eyes, slits of eyes but when you finally OPEN them for just that second—shit, I never saw eyes LIKE THAT, that COLOR, that VICIOUS FIRE—”

  “And you came here to see what I was, see what I am, oh?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t. I only know that I’m here. I can’t help it. You’re a gorilla. You’re some kind of snake. You’re anything filthy. You stink. I don’t know you. I know that you’re not the guy at Bryan’s staff meetings, threatening cripples, staggering about the room, cursing everybody and looking for more to drink more to drink more to drink. Such a swine you are!”

  “A woman always wants to find the core, tame it, mold it; a wise man never shows the core to a woman. He just gives her a shot of light, shuts it off, becomes himself again. A woman practices rearing the child by taming the man first. I’ve got no use for women except to fuck them. I won’t be trapped in. Love is a form of selfishness. Love is an excuse for cowards to quit.”

  “Nicely spoken. Sounds all right, bastard, but what does it mean?”

  She lifted her beerbottle again, recrossed her legs, the skirt going HIGHER, jesus have mercy, the skirt going HIGHER, all that leg, all that thigh, all that red HAIR, god.

  I got up and pulled the beerbottle from her mouth and put my dirty bearded face to hers, my lips sucking and twisting at hers, hard full crazy, she did not push me away, I grabbed her under the back, I had her back arched, I had her head rolling on the back of the chair, our lips splashed together spliced together crazy, my hand under the back of that BIG body, god, the beerbottle knocked over and spewing on the floor, and I reached down with the other hand and ripped her skirt all the way UP, lord lord lord then I had her standing, I was walking, pushing her all over the room, feeling that red hair around my ears across my face, feeling miracle and madness, and then I worked the pants down and then I HAD HER, I HAD HER, I HAD HER, and I worked, I grabbed that long red hair and I yanked down on it. I had her back arched arched hurting her and I HAD HER I worked and holding the hair still in my hands in back I got the cheeks and spread them, I had her nailed in the center of the rug, I had her on the cross, it was too late for her, she was on the spike, ripped ripped and the yellow light from the lamps bathed us and all that could be heard was our breathing and our grappling. Who would have guessed? Who? And then BANG the walls shook, a man on the street stepped on a grease spot, fell and broke his ankle and we slid apart like worms going in different directions, and she stood there and said, “ooooh ooooh ooooh I liked it, I liked it I liked it, you filthy greasy pig,” and then she turned and walked into the bathroom and closed the door. I went into the kitchen, took a dishtowel, wiped off. Got out 2 more beers. Lit a smoke.

  She came on out, looking better than ever, she glowed all over burning, she was really beautiful, I could say it easy, she was really beautiful. I drank my beer and looked at her, neither of us saying anything. I lit her a cigarette. Then I had to piss. I went to the bathroom, closed the door, pissed, flushed, washed my hands, came out, and she was . . . gone. Fast like that. No goodbye. Nothing. I looked at the chair she had sat in. At the beerbottle on the floor. No, it had happened. Yes, I found one of her earrings. A green earring. Just one. It’s always ONE earring. What the hell? But never an earring like this.

  I drank my beer straight down, walked outside. It was cold. All up and down DeLongpre it was the same. People locked in tight. Behind doors, behind windows. Everybody with their possessions, their people, their madness, their bank accounts, their car keys, their walnut faces, their constipation.

  I looked north where I figured she lived with some fine intellectual chap who spoke the big words and the big meaning; some guys got these dolls automatically, I was lucky to see a photo in a newspaper. I took the earring the green earring and threw it north, hard, high in the dark sky, it flew out of sight in the neon mash of light from Sunset Boulevard a block north and I said, “Here, baby, your earring back and your life and all the rest, baby baby. But thanks for the splendid grade-AAA fuck.”

  Then I went back inside, found her still untouched beer, picked it up, drank drank drank. Found the Racing Form, sat down in HER chair and began checking out my plays for the Santa Anita meet, and then I found one long red hair, one very long red hair along the arm of my chair and I picked it up and touched the end of it to my cigarette; it sizzled and shriveled and smoked ever so slightly. I moved the cigarette right up along the hair until it was all burned except to the smallest bit in my fingers and then I put that in the ashtray and burned that.

  Charles Bukowski. Immortal writer. Immortal lover. You can’t go home again. It’s all too late.

  I worked at the beer.

  I’m not feeling good. Jesus, man, throw those beercans in the trashbag. Fuck, I got no old lady to pick up the shit, and thank god for that. Maybe that’s why I’m a peepfreak and a jackoff artist. I can’t stand pussy around all the time. I mean sitting around terrorizing me with her up and down emotions and crazy head. Another beer? Right at your foot there, half a six-pack. More in the box. Here in America a man ain’t a man unless he’s got three or four whores and a late model car. All right, I’m a little drunk. Maybe that’s why I mock myself. But put a new car and 3 women on my back and I’m fucked. I don’t have a t.v. I don’t even have a radio. A big Brazilian cunt who wants to put that thing on me, calls me the last of the monsters. A monster-angel, whatever that means. But I’m running from her too, tho she’d be a beautiful fuck, a tremendous fuck. There’s something inside of me grown a little wiser. After that walk back from the bathroom you start sharing a little two person hell. Yes, I’ve got a story, but wait, let me get another beer. Sure, I’m a degenerate peepfreak. I’d rather look at it. I don’t want to get on top of it. Understand? So, I got this funny story. For peepfreaks. All right, Frank, I know you ain’t a peepfreak. But pretend you’re one. No, I ain’t a homo, goddamn, why does that always come up?

  I said I wasn’t feeling good, so don’t give me any shit. Sometimes I feel so bad I think I’m going nuts. You ever felt that way, Frank? No? Well, you’re just a nice American beerdrunk with standard American feelings. You like to feel like a MAN. Doesn’t that make you feel good to feel like a MAN, Franky boy? No, I don’t want to fight. Suppose I won the fight? Your whole life would be ruined. Why do you interrupt me? I’m trying to get over and tell this funny peepfreak story, and I’ll bet you’ve done some peeping too—on buses or with the ladies climbing out of cars or bending over garbage cans. No, I don’t have a dirty mind; I just enjoy myself the way I am. Fuck off. I told you I’m not feeling good. Throw me another beer. Shit. I can’t even go get my laundry. I’m going nuts. I even forgot where I TOOK my laundry! And when I find that, there’ll be another chickenshit thing I’ll have to do that is driving me crazy. What’s that? I have to get a HAIRCUT! Look, dentists are nothing, but barbers TERRORIZE me! They are such ASSHOLES, that’s why, Frank. That’s why! You know the most TERRIBLE thing?? Eh? Frank, when they finish, they’ve just got to SPIN me in that chair, right BLAM in front of that MIRROR and I’ve got to look at my FACE, pretend to look at my HAIR, as if I gave a damn whether there was a piece of hair sticking up here or there! Who cares? Shit, man,
I just want to get OUT of there! And there’s that asshole barber standing behind me, I see him in the mirror, he’s yawning and I’m on fire, and then I’m supposed to say “fine” or “o.k.” I don’t know where hell is, but it’s gotta be in a barbershop. It’s such smucky vain finky shit, jesus, who built men this way? Give me a dentist putting his elbow on my chest, sweating, with liquor on his breath. He gets the thing—“narrrrr, that didn’t hurt, did it?” and then you spit out the blood and half of your jaw: “narrrrrb, narrrrrb, o.k., blooooooop . . .” You’re not indebted—spiritually—and he begins whistling. Dentists always have this wonderful lack of faith in their ability that barbers don’t have, no matter how lousy barbers are. And most of them are, not that it matters. So then the son of a bitch of a barber unfrocks you and you are supposed to get up real calm, like the whole thing was so lovely and sweet and you are now a new man, and then you have to pay and TIP the son of a bitch! “Good-bye, now,” he says, “see you later.” “Goodbye,” you say. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

  I’m trying to tell this peepfreak story. What? Yeah. I know, I KNOW! I know that many men like barbers. Many men sit in barbershops for hours and they don’t even need haircuts. They don’t need anything. They just play cribbage and talk about sports. They can look upon that dirty linoleum floor with dead sad hair upon it and they don’t feel anything. They are the sane men of the universe. They have nothing to do with their time except watch it die. They are goldfish. I’m not sane. They are always fucking with me. By they, I mean the must-do people. Shit, just thinking about getting a new driver’s license almost made me cut my throat. All those people in there taking their shitty little tests. Questions so simple that they are terrifying. People rubbing their heads—“psst, hey buddy, what’d de ansaw to the question number 3? Hey, I don’t unnerstan that one a tall . . .” Lines, lines, lines, lines, lines—lonely ladies in their late forties talking to the clerks, asking them question after silly question just to have somebody to TALK to . . . holding up the line for 15 minutes and the clerk, also lonely and lazy and with a hard dick, smiling, answering question after silly question. Dick hard, hot in there, everybody sweating and on the cross. FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, EVERYTHING’S SO HARD AND STUPID! Dicks, barbers, cops, landlords, income tax; fried eggs for breakfast . . . it’s looney. Give me another beer, shit, almighty, man. I’ll never tell this funny peepfreak story. I can’t pay my gas and light bills, my phone bill. It’s like trying to lift 4,000 pounds. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s just this chickenshit GNAWING, all these little snotty bills, again and again and again, no sense. You take a breather, say fuck it, look at the clouds for a couple of weeks. You come to your rented hole one night—the gas is off, the lights are out, the phone yanked out—what for? You owe them all a total, combined, of $39; they couldn’t wait. Shit, you’ve got $80 in your wallet. You just couldn’t go to the post-office and ask for 3 stupid money orders—the lines are long, the girls are suffering or stupid, and there’s always some idiot stepping on the backs of your shoes or trying to squeeze around in front of you. Madmen, dolts! A PISS UNIVERSE, I tell you! THERE ARE SO MANY STUPID THINGS TO DO THAT THERE ISN’T ANY TIME LEFT TO DO ANYTHING THAT ISN’T STUPID. And then you’re driving along and a cop gives you a ticket because you haven’t had TIME to get the motherfucking taillight fixed that somebody bashed while you were parked. And while he stops you he finds eight or ten things wrong—there’s never enough brake, the headlights are out of line, the brake light doesn’t work, the windshield wipers are worn and you only have one windshield wiper, on and on. Man, you’re trying to kill yourself, here, good thing I came along. Here, take this ticket. Sign. Thank you, sir. Oh, thank you, officer. I don’t have brains enough to know whether I can drive this car safely or not—I really want to kill myself, you know.

  Throw me another beer, Frank. Everything drags me down. That’s why I can’t have any cunt around here chopping me down with her yak and demands. The whole thing is a war, Frank, can’t you see? And I’m weakening. I’ve got a week’s worth of newspapers on the floor. I can’t pick them up. I can’t even put a roll of toilet paper on a roller. That’s work. Springs and twisting. More work. I just sit the roll on the floor. My guts are shot, my soul is shot. You must believe me, friend—just to set my soul halfway straight is a monstrous and impossible task.

  You say I need LOVE? Horseshit! All right, I’m a loner and a loner usually hangs himself; a lover needs help and usually gets it; it all ends up in hanging. Sure I’m sick. Dizzy spells, and these white blisters on the hands; boils on the ass; inflamed throat, heart flutter, glass in the feet, neuritis and bursitis, toothache, headache, ulcers, ingrown hair and toenails, broken fingers, insomnia, anxiety—what the fuck. Name it, I’ll trot it out. And a peepfreak. Hell, yeah. Which brings us to that. Goddamn it, I been trying to get to this peepfreak thing!

  So I’m in the doctor’s office. What was it for? I hate to tell you, but there’s this thin line along my ass, very thin, indented, like I been sitting in a slab chair and it won’t go away, this thin indented line. It’s stupid, sure. I once saw a pigeon lying on the sidewalk. It was sick or something. Its wings wouldn’t work. I could see it breathing. And on its still alive body the ants were already crawling. The top eye was open and looking at me. There were ants crawling across that eye. I didn’t know what to do. I stepped over the bird and walked on down the street. 2 hours later I had forgotten about it. Now I had this line on my ass.

  There were 3 of us waiting. Guy with crutch next to me. Girl with impossibly short skirt and fine nyloned legs all stilted up with very high heels. Holy, ummm, ummm. So I get a hard-on. I can’t help looking. I want to look. Wow, it’s all free. It’s like walking into a closet full of gold. Such crazy things happen. And those broads are so off-hand about it. Real cinchy cool, which only makes it worse, and hotter. Oh my god. I am a peeper since the age of 6, 8, 10, 12, 48. When I was a kid we used to go under the slatted grandstands, crawl under there and peek up the women’s legs, me and my buddy Harry. We used to go to the air races and do it. There was a lot of wind there and it was summertime. We saw some things. “Think of it,” Harry said, “THOUSANDS OF PUSSIES!” “Jesus,” I said, “you’re making me a little sick.” Harry is now a municipal court judge.

  Well, anyhow, there I am in the doc’s office with the line on my ass and there aren’t thousands of pussies or millions, which is terrifying, but just one, and I can’t quite see it and it’s best that way. Of course, you imagine there might be something else there, some crazy kind of miracle.

  Like a dick? There you go, Frank. I’m trying to tell this funny peepfreak story and you’ve got to come on like some dumb American lonely hero on the barstool of the good old neighborhood bar. Fuck you. This is the funny story. Listen. I told you I was a peepfreak. O.K. Listen, will you?

  Right in the MIDDLE of my beautiful hard-on, I have to think, you KNOW what I HAVE to think? After all, she IS in a doctor’s office. Christ, she might have the gon or the siff, right? AND THE THING DROPS RIGHT ON DOWN AND I ALMOST BEGIN HATING HER.

  You think I’m nuts? The guy with the crutch must be thinking the same thing for he has been staring straight ahead for ten minutes at one of the paintings of a castle on the Rhine that the good German doctor has hung all about the waiting room. He must have 5 or 6 paintings of castles on the Rhine in that waiting room.

  Me, I reach out and get a magazine, a dull one. News-week or such.

  I had to read all about the Russian tanks in Prague so long after it happened. More mad shit like getting a driver’s license. Hardly ever occurred with reason. Just more waste and waiting and bullshit. So I read it all again to keep from looking at those siff legs. The magazine account seemed no different than the newspaper version. God drab yawn insanity. More barbershop. That’s what’s so terrible about doctors’ waiting rooms. All the warmed-over con. You had to read it and wait wait wait, or else it was sit and look at each other’s FACES and that couldn’t be done, obviously. So, everybody
turning pages, everybody reading these dull magazines and sitting there THINKING: I wonder why I feel so bad?—“Some of the Hungarians riding tanks were asked by the Czechs why they had helped do this thing when Hungary was the same victim of the same Russian tanks not so long ago. The Hungarians turned away.”—I wonder why I feel so bad the people in the waiting room think, reading magazines. Do I have the clap, cancer, acidosis, hepatitis, catalepsy, pyemia, seborrhea or scarlet fever? Flip, flip, the pages go, thinking, thinking.

  So, you find another magazine, and wait.

  So, there I was, and then an old woman walked out, chirping chirping to the GIRL in the short short skirt: “Ooooh, he put a stitch in my eye! Ooooh, I feel so much better now! Ooooh, honey, I feel so much better now! The stitch will have to come out later but I feel so much better now!”