Read More Notes of a Dirty Old Man Online
Authors: Charles Bukowski,David Stephen Calonne
More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (14 page)
belles-lettres?
Dear Mr. B: How come they save all the typos for YOUR column?
Hello Martha K: It is done by a bunch of rancorous old drunks in smelly stockings who hit me over the head with empty wine bottles of white California wine at the conclusion of their staff meetings. The reason is pure old American jealousy because I write so well, plus the fact that I ball everything female (or anything that looks female) which wanders within arm’s (?) reach.
Dear Mr. B: I don’t believe that a great poet like you works in a post office.
Hello Tilla A: A great poet works at a typewriter. I have more trouble with supervisors than with editors.
Dear Mr. B: I read your article about horseracing. If you know so much about the horses, why ain’t you rich?
Hello Karl L: I can’t read your handwriting. I had trouble that way once. (I mean a shaky hand.) I was born left-handed and my parents bent my slop spoon so if I put it to my jaw with my left hand all I got was this frustration thing and a slap across the mouth for failing. Besides, riches ain’t everything—especially after you’ve gotten away from parents like that.
Dear Mr. B: How cum they give a column to a prick like you and leave a talented guy like me holding a bag of shit?
Hello Marty E: I keep thinking the same thing. X-factor vs. Y-factor. You take Beethoven. In his time he was not even the most highly-regarded musician. You just can’t tell. So keep holding that bag of shit. I have more fan letters to answer.
Dear Mr. B: I am worried about the Hippy invasion of Los Angeles this summer. I am a widow of 39. Suppose 6 young men arrive at my door, covered with hair and spouting Dylan Thomas?
Dear Mrs. Clark J: If you’re worried about crabs, always keep a little blue ointment on hand.
Dear Mr. B: I read your column on suicide. That photo of the man hanging from the home-made noose in the attic: is he dead or is it you posing? And why are the creases in his pants so neat?
Hello Mary W: The man is dead. I don’t look that good. And he doesn’t know why the creases in his pants are so neat.
End of letters . . .
Getting more serious, it is wondrous how much a man can suffer and endure, and I guess there will never be an end to that Bitch, Pain. The simple problem of staying alive in a society of no sense or heart—the totality of hardness everywhere. Most of us live on the edge of starvation and insecurity all of our lives. The mind and the spirit should go mad with sorrow—they sometimes do. They’ve built a house filled with half-men and the half-men control us. If the devil ran for mayor of Los Angeles, he’d win by a landslide.
To be casual in the midst of shitfire, that’s cool but unreal. We need something to go by. What do we have? Hardly a damn thing. The waste of days and lives is the automatic atrocity. One thing that is needed is leadership but it simply hasn’t arrived. We live on luck and guts and that can grow tiring.
Perhaps it is this dark day as I write this, a Sunday, and all around me I can hear the babble of their TV sets. It is a kind of sound vibration that intermixes in the air, a jibber-ish. The average man stuffs himself with junk and garbage during his leisure. He doesn’t have a chance to recover from his job. He is slugged with ready-made commercial contrivances until he becomes another faceless and unfeeling creature—just another of those many you pass on the streets continually.
I’ll be glad when the sun comes up, won’t you? What a dark stinking day. Like being locked inside a sardine tin. I wish I could make you laugh. Nothing to go by. The police patrolling the dead street. The dirty old man drops a pale blue tear. They ought to make a button for me to wear: AGONY. Then maybe I could laugh.
I missed last week’s column because I am a lush, and I looked around and bottles were everywhere and the deadline was past. I live in a rather modern apartment on Oxford Avenue, it’s all very quiet, and I sneak my bottles down the stairway, play my radio at low key, and I bathe, modestly, under the arms. The problem with being a drunk is that one usually knows other drunks. One group will arrive one night, another the next. The conversation at these gatherings is hardly noteworthy—it hinges mostly upon gossip, bitching, lying and exaggeration. And when I run these people out on the street after being sickened by their petty musings, they then consider me anti-social (which I am), fat-headed (which I am) and over the hill (which I am not).
Any person into living and creativity must discourage a certain number of visitors, if not most of them. It can be done as Jeffers did by building a fortress of rocks and sending an old aunt to the door to gather messages. I simply tell people
why
. For instance, yesterday I got a phone call: “Are you Charles Bukowski?” “Yes?” “Charles Bukowski, the poet?” “I am
sometimes
Charles Bukowski, the poet.” “Well, I’m a young man from New York just got into town, and I’ve always
loved
your work. I’d like to come by and talk to you.” “Kid, just what does
talk
have to do with
poetry
?”
why
. For instance, yesterday I got a phone call: “Are you Charles Bukowski?” “Yes?” “Charles Bukowski, the poet?” “I am
sometimes
Charles Bukowski, the poet.” “Well, I’m a young man from New York just got into town, and I’ve always
loved
your work. I’d like to come by and talk to you.” “Kid, just what does
talk
have to do with
poetry
?”
“I don’t understand.” “I’m not your corner priest. We have nothing to talk about, don’t you understand?” I said good-bye and hung up. He’ll find another poet, the phone book is full of them.
2.I’ve been informed by the Department of Water and Power that I’ve been allowed 184 units per billing. That’s not very much. I have a friend who is allowed 1600 units and we both think alike and eat about alike and live about alike. I don’t know why the DWP didn’t shut me off entirely. What am I going to do with 184 units? I’ll have to boil my weenies and then take them out and used the soiled water for my coffee. Maybe this
is
the way to do it. If they want a 10 percent reduction, just cut off one person in 10 and let the others go on living. Greece and Rome knew how to do this. There are really only two types of people in this world: the noble and the fucked.
is
the way to do it. If they want a 10 percent reduction, just cut off one person in 10 and let the others go on living. Greece and Rome knew how to do this. There are really only two types of people in this world: the noble and the fucked.
I notice the DWP reasoning upon allotments is that they are based upon a percentage reduction of past usage at the same residence over a given period. So a blind woman with a parrot lived here before me and her hobby was braille. Now I’m supposed to wear her pantaloons.
Actually, the way it works is that people who
have
been wasting energy are given larger allotments to waste than those who have not. They are rewarding the wasters with more waste.
have
been wasting energy are given larger allotments to waste than those who have not. They are rewarding the wasters with more waste.
I think a more stable measurement should be used, to wit so many units for one person living in a one-bedroom apartment, so many units for so and so many people living in a house of a certain size. In a sense, this would still be giving some tolerance to the wealthy, but it would actually come closer to a general fairness.
Let’s break it down more rationally. The way they have it now it’s like two men each owning a horse and one is allowed to feed his horse five bales of hay a month while the other is allowed 10. If Mayor Bradley wants to come and live at my place under 184 units to test the validity of things, fine, and I’ll come to his place and test the validity of his allotment. And he needn’t throw in his wife . . . I’ve got enough troubles already.
I suppose that when they get into gas rationing it will be another distortion of actuality. Americans have cheated and lied for so long, have become so decayed under this great moral Bob Hope front that I wonder why justice hasn’t arrived and all our streets and boulevards do not have Chinese names. We, babies you and I, have been saved by our atomic stockpiles, not our ingeniousness, our guts, our souls, or our courage.
Gas rationing people will make exorbitant claims upon entirely unnecessary travel needs. Some people will become two people with two cars, some people will become three people with three cars. Some people will find need (seemingly) to travel from San Diego to Washington, D.C. three times a week. Everything will happen. More fucking fuel will become consumed, joggled and wasted and resold than if they just left the damn thing alone. The black market for gas and oil will be there for those who can afford it.
Who could have believed that the Arabs and their near-monopoly on oil could have caused massive layoffs here: 55 m.p.h. speed limits, perpetual daylight saving time, grins upon the faces of rapists, muggers and murderers, fear of running the TV too long . . . and over a 50 percent profit-rise for American oil companies . . . while in the long hot summer ahead a man or a woman will have to think five or six times whether to turn on the air conditioner or whether to sweat and stink.
It seems as if there are no shortages of certain commodities: cigarettes, alcohol, speed, cops, smog, bars, McDonald’s hamburger stands, bums on skid row, cancer, hydrogen bombs, Lucille Ball, football games, basketball games, poets, politicians, dishes in the sink, infidelity, clap, sparrows, shit, vomit, bad breath, urine, stopped sinks, traffic lights, lines, garbage, roaches, rats, unreason, opera, hangnails, screaming women, rapists, lost laundry tickets and Bukowski.
It was Saturday, July 20, 1974, hot. I’d put ice cubes into the air cooler. I was on the bed sweating out the beer. It got to be 1 p.m., 1:30. I got up, scratched my hemorrhoids, took a bath and got dressed. It was no use. I was trying to stay away, but it was the last Saturday of the Hollypark meet and weekdays were bad enough but Saturdays at the track were nightmares to the vision and the feelings. I decided to go anyhow.
The sixth race was a match race between the two greatest 3-year-old fillies in America, Miss Musket from the west and Chris Evert from the east. It was billed as The Match Race of the Century, $350,000, winner take all. Each stable was putting up $150,000. Match races are very rare. I had only seen one other: Convenience vs. Typecast in 1972. I drove down to Carl Jr’s and had a hamburger, fries and a large coke.
There was another reason for going out there. She was there each Saturday, showing leg. She wore very high-heeled shoes, and when she sat down she pulled her dress back and showed all this leg. She wore long hose, no pantyhose for her, and although she didn’t go the garter belt route, she wore garters and was continually standing up, lifting her dress and pulling the hose tight. 1937 all over again and I was hardly the only man affected. Still, it was mainly the match race. I had no column in mind and I could report the affair for the
L.A. Free Press
. It would feel good to be a journalist; one didn’t need a mind to be a journalist.
L.A. Free Press
. It would feel good to be a journalist; one didn’t need a mind to be a journalist.
I drove out slowly. After you’ve seen as many races as I have you can miss a few. Match races come about as often as minor and major wars: Man O’ War vs. Sir Barton, 1920. Zev vs. Papyrus, 1923. Seabiscuit vs. Ligaroti, 1938. Aisab vs. Whirlaway, 1942. Armed vs. Assault, 1947. Swaps vs. Nashua, 1955. Convenience vs. Typecast, 1972.
I arrived in time for the fourth race. The crowd was large, hot, and by that time—surly and depressed, walking into each other blindly, pushing dazed and dulled. When you see humanity like that, you know there’s not much chance. If you want to find what a person is like inside, take them to a racetrack and watch how they react to defeat.
I walked over to the bench where she always sat, my lady with the long glorious legs. There she was—she had on thick, flat, low-heeled shoes. I turned away in disgust. Well, I still had the Match Race of the Century.
Other books
July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin
Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn by Ace Atkins
Now, Please by Willow Summers
Texas by Sarah Hay
Make Me by Charlotte Stein
Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions by Rosemarie A D'Amico
Sunrise(Pact Arcanum 2) by Arshad Ahsanuddin
Glyph by Percival Everett
Thimblewinter by MIles, Dominic
Partisans by Alistair MacLean