Tales of Ordinary Madness (7 page)

“My son, my son ...”

We were in close. I swung. Caught a good part of him. I heard him hiss. He stepped one step back. I swung again. Missed. Went way wide left. Fell into some imported plants from hell. I got up. Moved toward him again. And in the moonlight, I saw the front of my own pants – splattered with blood, candle-drippings and puke.

“You've met your master, bastard!” I notified him as I moved toward him. He waited. The years of working as a factotum had not left muscles entirely lax. I gave him one deeply into the gut, all 230 pounds of my body behind it.

Zen let out a short gasp, once again supplicated the sky, said something in the Oriental, gave me a short karate chop, kindly, and left me wrapped within a series of senseless Mexican cacti and what appeared to be, from my eye, man-eating plants from the inner Brazilian jungles. I relaxed in the moonlight until this purple flower seemed to gather toward my nose and began to delicately pinch out my breathing.

Shit, it took at least 150 years to break into the Harvard Classics. There wasn't any choice: I broke loose from the thing and started crawling up the stairway again. Near the top, I mounted to my feet, opened the door and entered. Nobody noticed me. They were still talking shit. I flopped into my corner. The karate shot had opened a cut over my left eyebrow. I found my handkerchief.

“Shit! I need a drink!” I hollered.

Harvey came up with one. All scotch. I drained it. Why was it that the buzz of human beings talking could be so senseless? I noticed the woman who had been introduced to me as the bride's mother was now showing plenty of leg, and it didn't look bad, all that long nylon with the expensive stiletto heels, plus the little jewel tips down near the toes. It could give an idiot the hots, and I was only half-idiot.

I got up, walked over to the bride's mother, ripped her skirt back to her thighs, kissed her quickly upon her pretty knees and began to kiss my way upward.

The candlelight helped. Everything.

“Hey!” she awakened suddenly, “whatcha think you're
doing
?”

“I'm going to fuck the shit out of you, I am going to fuck you until the shit falls outa your ass! Whatcha thinka that?”

She pushed and I fell backwards upon the rug. Then I was flat upon my back, thrashing, trying to get up.

“Damned Amazon!” I screamed at her.

Finally, three or four minutes later I managed to get to my feet. Somebody laughed. Then, finding my feet flat upon the floor again, I made for the kitchen. Poured a drink, drained it. Then poured a refill and walked out.

There they were: all the goddamned relatives.

“Roy or Hollis?” I asked. “Why don't you open your wedding gift?”

“Sure,” said Roy, “why not?”

The gift was wrapped in 45 yards of tinfoil. Roy just kept unrolling the foil. Finally, he got it all undone.

“Happy marriage!” I shouted.

They all saw it. The room was very quiet.

It was a little handcrafted coffin done by the best artisans in Spain. It even had this pinkish-red felt bottom. It was the exact replica of a larger coffin, except perhaps it was done with more love.

Roy gave me his killer's look, ripped off the tag of instructions on how to keep the wood polished, threw it inside the coffin and closed the lid.

It was very quiet. The only gift hadn't gone over. But they soon gathered themselves and began talking shit again.

I became silent. I had really been proud of my little casket. I had looked for hours for a gift. I had almost gone crazy. Then I had seen it on the shelf, all alone. Touched the outsides, turned it upside-down, then looked inside. The price was high but I was paying for the perfect craftsmanship. The wood. The little hinges. All. At the same time, I needed some ant-killer spray. I found some Black Flag in the back of the store. The ants had built a nest under my front door. I took the stuff to the counter. There was a young girl there, I set the stuff in front of her. I pointed to the casket.

“You know what that is?”

“What?”

“That's a casket!”

I opened it up and showed it to her.

“These ants are driving me crazy. Ya know what I'm going to do?”

“What?”

“I'm going to kill
all
those ants and put them in this casket and bury them!”

She laughed. “You've saved my whole day!”

You can't put it past the young ones anymore; they are an entirely superior breed. I paid and got out of there ....

But now, at the wedding, nobody laughed. A pressure cooker done up with a red ribbon would have left them happy. Or would it have?

Harvey, the rich one, finally, was kindest of all. Maybe because he could afford to be kind? Then I remembered something out of my readings, something from the ancient Chinese:

“Would you rather be rich or an artist?”

“I'd rather be rich, for it seems that the artist is always sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.”

I sucked at the fifth and didn't care anymore. Somehow, the next thing I knew, it was over. I was in the back seat of my own car, Hollis driving again, the beard of Roy flowing into my face again. I sucked at my fifth.

“Look, did you guys throw my little casket away? I love you both, you know that! Why did you throw my little casket away?”

“Look, Bukowski! Here's your casket!”

Roy held it up to me, showed it to me.

“Ah, fine!”

“You want it back?”

“No! No! My gift to you! Your
only
gift! Keep it! Please!”

“All right.”

The remainder of the drive was fairly quiet. I lived in a front court near Hollywood (of course). Parking was mean. Then they found a space about a half a block from where I lived. They parked my car, handed me the keys. Then I saw them walk across the street toward their own car. I watched them, turned to walk toward my place, and while still watching them and holding to the remainder of Harvey's fifth, I tripped one shoe into a pantscuff and went down. As I fell backwards, my first instinct was to protect the remainder of that good fifth from smashing against the cement (mother with baby), and as I fell backwards I tried to hit with my shoulders, holding both head and bottle up. I saved the bottle but the head flipped back into the sidewalk, BASH!

They both stood and watched me fall. I was stunned almost into insensibility but managed to scream across the street at them: “Roy! Hollis! Help me to my front door, please I'm hurt!”

They stood a moment, looking at me. Then they got into their car, started the engine, leaned back and neatly drove off.

I was being repaid for something. The casket? Whatever it had been – the use of my car, or me as clown and/or best man ... my use had been outworn. The human race had always disgusted me. Essentially, what made them disgusting was the family-relationship illness, which included marriage, exchange of power and aid, which like a sore, a leprosy, became then: your next door neighbor, your neighborhood, your district, your city, your county, your state, your nation ... everybody grabbing each other's assholes in the honeycomb of survival out of a fear-animalistic stupidity.

I got it all there, I understood it as they left me there, pleading.

Five more minutes, I thought. If I can lay here five more minutes without being bothered I'll get up and make it toward my place, get inside. I was the last of the outlaws. Billy the Kid had nothing on me. Five more minutes. Just let me get to my cave. I'll mend. Next time I'm asked to one of
their
functions, I'll tell them where to put it. Five minutes. That's all I need.

Two women walked by. They turned and looked at me.

“Oh, look at him. What's wrong?”

“He's drunk.”

“He's not sick, is he?”

“No, look how he holds to that bottle. Like a little baby.”

Oh shit. I screamed up at them:

“I'LL SUCK BOTH YOUR SNATCHES! I'LL SUCK BOTH YOUR SNATCHES DRY, YOU CUNTS!”

“Ooooooh!”

They both ran into the high-rise glass apartment. Through the glass door. And I was outside unable to get up, best man to something. All I had to do was make it to my place – 30 yards away, as close as three million light years. Thirty yards from a rented front door. Two more minutes and I could get up. Each time I tried it, I got stronger. An old drunk would always make it, given enough time. One minute. One minute more. I could have made it.

Then there they were. Part of the insane family structure of the World. Madmen, really, hardly questioning what made them do what they did. They left their double-red light burning as they parked. Then got out. One had a flashlight.

“Bukowski,” said the one with the flashlight, “you just can't seem to keep out of trouble, can you?”

He knew my name from somewhere, other times.

“Look,” I said, “I just stumbled. Hit my head. I never lose my sense or my coherence. I'm not dangerous. Why don't you guys help me to my doorway? It's 30 yards away. Just let me fall upon my bed and sleep it off. Don't you think, really, that would be the really decent thing to do?”

“Sir, two ladies reported you as trying to rape them.”

“Gentlemen, I would
never
attempt to rape two ladies at the same time.”

The one cop kept flashing his stupid flashlight into my face. It gave him a great feeling of superiority.

“Just 30 yards to Freedom! Can't you guys understand that?”

“You're the funniest show in town, Bukowski. Give us a better alibi than that.”

“Well, let's see – this thing you see sprawled here on the pavement is the end-product of a wedding, a Zen wedding.”

“You mean some woman really tried to
marry
you?”

“Not
me,
you asshole ...”

The cop with the flashlight brought it down across my nose.

“We ask respect toward officers of the law.”

“Sorry. For a moment I forgot.”

The blood ran down along my throat and then toward and upon my shirt. I was very tired – of everything.

“Bukowski,” asked the one who had just used the flashlight, “why can't you stay out of trouble?”

“Just forget the horseshit,” I said, “let's go off to jail.”

They put on the cuffs and threw me into the back seat. Same sad old scene.

They drove along slowly, speaking of various possible and insane things – like, about having the front porch widened, or a pool, or an extra room in the back for Granny. And when it came to sports – these were
real
men – the Dodgers still had a chance, even with the two or three other teams right in there with them. Back to the family – if the Dodgers won, they won. If a man landed on the moon,
they
landed on the moon. But let a starving man ask them for a dime – no identification, fuck you, shithead. I mean, when they were in civvies. There hasn't been a starving man yet who ever asked a
cop
for a dime. Our record is clear.

Then I was pushed through the gristmill. After being 30 yards from my door. After being the only human in a house full of 59 people.

There I was, once again, in this type of long line of the somehow guilty. The young guys didn't know what was coming. They were mixed up with this thing called THE CONSTITUTION and their RIGHTS. The young cops, both in the city tank and the county tank, got their training on the drunks. They had to show they had it. While I was watching they took one guy in an elevator and rode him up and down, up and down, and when he got out, you hardly knew who he was, or what he had been – a black screaming about Human Rights. Then they got a white guy, screaming something about CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS; four or five of them got him, and they rushed him off his feet so fast he couldn't walk, and when they brought him back they leaned him against a wall, and he just stood there trembling, these red welts all over his body, he stood there trembling and shivering.

I got my photo taken all over again. Fingerprinted all over again.

They took me down to the drunk tank, opened that door. After that, it was just a matter of looking for floorspace among the 150 men in the room. One shitpot. Vomit and piss everywhere. I found a spot among my fellow men. I was Charles Bukowski, featured in the literary archives of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Somebody there thought I was a genius. I stretched out on the boards. Heard a young voice. A boy's voice.

“Mista, I'll suck your dick for a quarter!”

They were supposed to take all your change, bills, ident, keys, knives, so forth, plus cigarettes, and then you had the property slip. Which you either lost or sold or had stolen from you. But there was always still money and cigarettes about.

“Sorry, lad,” I told him, “they took my last penny.”

Four hours later I managed to sleep.

There.

Best man at a Zen wedding, and I'd bet they, the bride and groom, hadn't even fucked that night. But somebody had been.

REUNION

I got off the bus at Rampart, then walked one block back to Coronado, went up the little hill, went up the steps to the walk, walked along the walk to the doorway of my upper court. I stood in front of that door quite a while, feeling the sun on my arms. Then I found the key, opened the door and began climbing the stairway.

“Hello?” I heard Madge.

I didn't answer. I walked slowly up. I was very white and somewhat weak.

“Hello? Who is it?”

“Don't get jumpy, Madge, it's just me.”

I stood at the top of the stairway. She was sitting on the couch in an old green silk dress. She had a glass of port in her hand, port with ice cubes, the way she liked it.

“Baby!” she jumped up. She seemed glad, kissing me.

“Oh Harry, are you really back?”

“Maybe. If I last. Anybody in the bedroom?”

“Don't be silly! Want a drink?”

“They say I can't. Have to eat boiled chicken, soft boiled eggs. They gave me a list.”

“Oh, the bastards. Sit down. You want a bath? Something to eat?”

“No, just let me sit down.”

I walked over and sat in the rocker.

“How much money is left?” I asked her.

“Fifteen dollars.”

“You spent it fast.”

“Well –”

“How much time we got on the rent?”

“Two weeks. I couldn't find a job.”

“I know. Look, where's the car? I didn't see it out there.”

“Oh God, bad news. I loaned it to somebody. They crashed in the front. I was hoping to get it fixed for you before you got back. It's down at the corner garage.”

“Does the car still run?”

“Yeah but I wanted to get the front fixed for you.”

“You drive a car like that with a banged-up front. It doesn't matter as long as the radiator is okay, and you have headlights.”

“Well, Jesus! I was just trying to do the right thing!”

“I'll be right back,” I told her.

“Harry, where ya going?”

“To check on the car.”

“Why don't you wait until tomorrow, Harry? You don't look good. Stay with me. Let's talk.”

“I'll be back. You know me. I don't like unfinished business.”

“Oh shit, Harry!”

I began to walk down the stairway. Then I walked back up.

“Give me the fifteen dollars.”

“Oh shit, Harry!”

“Look, somebody's got to keep this boat from sinking. You're not going to do it, we know that.”

“Honesta Christ, Harry, I got off my can. I got out of the sack every morning while you were gone. I couldn't find a damn thing.”

“Give me the fifteen dollars.”

Madge picked up her purse, looked into it.

“Look, Harry, leave me enough money for a bottle of wine tonight, this one's about gone. I wanta celebrate your being back.”

“I know you do, Madge.”

She reached into the purse and gave me a ten and four ones. I grabbed the purse and turned it upside-down on the couch. All her shit came out. Plus change, a small bottle of port, a dollar bill and a five dollar bill. She reached for the five but I got there first, straightened up and slapped her across the face.

“You bastard! You're still a mean son of a bitch, aren't you?”

“Yeah, that's why I didn't die.”

“You hit me again and I'm pulling out!”

“You know I don't like to hit you, baby.”

“Yeah, you'd hit me but you wouldn't hit a man, would you?”

“What the hell's that got to do with it?”

I took the five, walked down the stairway again.

The garage was around the corner. As I walked onto the lot this Japanese guy was putting silver paint on a newly installed grille. I stood there.

“Jesus, you're making a Rembrandt out of it,” I told him.

“This your car, mister?”

“Yeah. What do I owe you?”

“Seventy-five dollars.”

“What?”

“Seventy-five dollars. A lady brought it in here.”

“A whore brought it in here. Now look, that whole car wasn't worth seventy-five dollars. It still isn't. You bought that grille for five bucks at the junkyard.”

“Look, mister, the lady said –”

“Who?”

“Well, that woman said –”

“I'm not responsible for her, man. I just got out of the hospital. Now I'll pay you what I can when I can, but I don't have a job and I need that car to get a job. I'm going to need it now. If I get a job I can pay you. If I don't, I can't. Now, if you don't trust me you'll just have to keep the car. I'll give you the pink slip. You know where I live. I'll walk up there and get it if you say so.”

“How much money can you give me now?”

“Five bucks.”

“That's not much.”

“I told you, I just got out of the hospital. After I get a job I can pay you off. Either that, or you keep the car.”

“All right,” he said, “I trust you. Give me the five.”

“You don't know how hard I worked for that five.”

“What do you mean?”

“Forget it.”

He took the five and I took the car. It started. The tank was even half-full. I didn't worry about the oil and water. I drove it around the block a couple of times just to see how it felt to drive a car again. It felt good. Then I drove it up outside the liquor store.

“Harry!” said the old guy in the dirty white apron.

“Oh, Harry!” said his wife.

“Where you been?” asked the old guy in the dirty white apron.

“Arizona. Working on a land deal.”

“See, Sol,” said the old gal, “I always told you he was a smart man. He looks like brains.”

“All right,” I said, “I want two six-packs of Miller's in the bottle, on the tab.”

“Now wait a minute,” said the old guy.

“What's wrong? Haven't I always paid my tab? What's this shit?”

“Oh, you've been fine, Harry. It's her. She's run up a tab for ... let me see here ... it's thirteen-seventy-five.”

“Thirteen-seventy-five, that's nothing. I've had that thing up to twenty-eight bucks and cleaned it up, haven't I?”

“Yes, Harry but –”

“But what? You want me to take it somewhere else? You want me to leave the tab? You won't trust me for two lousy six-packs after all these years?”

“All right, Harry,” said the old guy.

“Okay, throw it in the bag. And a pack of Pall Malls and two Dutch Masters.”

“Okay, Harry, okay ...”

Then I was going up the steps again. I reached the top.

“Oh, Harry, you got beer! Don't drink it, Harry. I don't want you to die, baby!”

“I know you don't, Madge. But the medics never know shit. Now open me a beer. I'm tired. I've been doing too much. I've only been out of that place two hours.”

Madge came out with the beer and a glass of wine for herself. She'd put on her high heels and she crossed her legs high. She still had it. As far as body went.

“Did you get the car?”

“Yeah.”

“That little Jap is a nice guy, isn't he?”

“He had to be.”

“What do you mean? Didn't he fix the car?”

“Yeah. He's a nice guy. He been up here?”

“Harry, don't start shit now! I don't fuck them Japs!”

She stood up. Her belly was still flat. Her haunches, hips, ass, just right. What a whore. I drained a half a bottle of beer, walked up to her.

“You know I'm crazy about you, Madge, babe, I'd kill for you, you know that don't you?”

I was up real close to her. She gave me a little smile. I tossed my beer bottle off, then took the wine glass out of her hand and drained it. I was feeling like a decent human being for the first time in weeks. We got real close. She pursed those red wild lips. Then I pushed against her, hard, with both hands. She fell back on the couch.

“You whore! You ran up a tab at Goldbarth's for thirteen-seventy-five, didn't you?”

“I dunno.”

Her dress was pulled back high over her legs.

“You whore!”

“Don't call me a whore!”

“Thirteen-seventy-five!”

“I dunno whatcher talkin' about!”

I climbed up on her, got her head back and started kissing her, feeling her breasts, her legs, her hips. She was crying.

“Don't ... call me ... a ... whore ... don't, don't ... You know I love you, Harry!”

Then I leaped back and stood in the center of the rug.

“I'm going to lay the works into you, baby!”

Madge just laughed.

Then I walked up and picked her up and carried her into the bedroom and dumped her on the bed.

“Harry, you just got outa the hospital!”

“Which means you got a couple weeks' worth of sperm coming!”

“Don't talk filthy!”

“Fuck you!”

I leaped into bed, my clothing already ripped off.

I worked her dress up, kissing and fondling her. She was a lot of meat-woman.

I got the pants down. Then, like old times, I was in.

I sliced it eight or ten good slow ones, easy. Then she said, “You don't think I'd fuck a dirty Jap, do you?”

“I think you'd fuck a dirty anything.”

She pulled her box back and dropped me out.

“What the shit?” I screamed.

“I love you, Harry, you know I love you; it hurts me when you talk like that!”

“Okay, baby, I know you wouldn't fuck a dirty Jap. I was just kidding.”

Madge's legs opened up and I dropped back in.

“Oh, daddy, it's been a long time!”

“Has it?”

“Whatcha mean? You're starting some shit again!”

“No I'm not, baby! I love you, baby!”

I pulled my head up and kissed her, riding.

“Harry,” she said.

“Madge,” I said.

She was right.

It had been a long time.

I owed the liquor store thirteen-seventy-five plus two six-packs plus cigars and cigarettes and I owed the L.A. County General Hospital $225, and I owed the dirty Jap $70 and there were some minor utility bills, and we clutched each other and the walls closed in.

We made it.