d, "what's that thing sticking out in font of you?"
I didn't answer.
"Look, Maxson," said Harry, "your wife gave my man a hard-on! How the
hell are we supposed to get any work done around here? We came for cash and
jewelry."
"You wise-ass punks make me sick. You're no better than maggots."
"And what have you got? The six o'clock news. What's so big about
that? Political pull and an asshole public. Anybody can read the news. I
make the news."
"You make the news? Like what? What can you do?"
"Any amount of numbers. Ah, let me think. How about, TV newscaster
drinks burglar's piss? How's that sound to you?"
"I'd die first."
"You won't. Eddie, go get me a glass. There's one there on the
nightstand. Bring me that."
"Look," said the blond, "please take our money. Take our jewels. just
go away. What's the need for all this?"
"It's your loudmouthed, spoiled husband, lady. He's getting on my
fucking nerves."
I brought Harry the glass, and he unzipped his pants and began to piss
into it. It was a tall glass, but he filled it to the brim. Then he zipped
up and moved toward Maxson.
"Now you're gonna drink my piss, Mr. Maxson."
"No way, bastard. I'd die first."
"You won't die. You'll drink my piss, all of it!"
"Never, punk!"
"Eddie," Harry nodded to me, "see that cigar on the dresser mantle?"
"Yeah."
"Get it. Light it. There's a lighter there."
I got the lighter and lit the cigar. It was a good one. I puffed on
it. My best cigar. Never had anything like it.
"You like the cigar, Eddie?" Harry asked me.
"It's great, Harry."
"OK. Now you walk over to the whore and get that breast out from under
the broken shoulder strap. Pull it out. I'm gonna hand this jerk-off this
glass full of my piss. You hold that cigar next to the nipple of the lady's
breast. And if this jerk-off doesn't drink all of this piss down to the very
last drop, I want you to burn that nipple off with that cigar. Understand?"
I got it. I walked around and pulled out Mrs. Maxson's breast. I felt
dizzy looking at it- never had I seen anything like that.
Harry handed Tom Maxson the glass of piss. Maxson looked over at his
wife and tilted the glass and began to drink.
The blond was trembling all over. It felt so good to hold her breast.
The yellow piss was going down the newscaster's throat. He stopped a
moment at the Halfway mark. He looked sick.
"All of it," said Harry. "Go ahead; it's good to the last drop."
Maxson put the glass to his lips and drained the remainder. The glass
fell from his hand.
"I still think you're a couple of cheap punks," gasped Maxson.
I was still standing there holding the blond's breast. She yanked it
away.
"Tom," said the blond, "will you stop antagonizing these men? You're
doing the most foolish thing possible!"
"Oh, playing the winners, eh? Is that why you married me? Because I
was a winner?"
"Of course that's why she married you, asshole," said Harry. "Look at
that fat gut on you. Did you think it was for your body?"
"I've got something," said Maxson. "That's why I'm Number One in
newscasting. You don't do that on luck."
"But if she hadn't married Number One," said Harry, "she would have
married Number Two."
"Don't listen to him, Tom," said the blond.
"It's all right," said Maxson, "I know you love me."
"Thank you, Daddy," said the blond.
"It's all right, Nana,"
"'Nana,'" said Harry, "I like that name, 'Nana.' That's class, Class
an ass. That's what the rich get while we get the scrubwomen."
"Why don't you join the Communist Party?" asked Maxson.
"Man, I don't care to Wait Centuries for something that might not
finally work. I want it now."
"Look, Harry," I said, "all we're doing is standing around and holding
conversations with these people. That doesn't get us anything. I don't care
what they think. Let's get the loot and split. The longer we stay, the
sooner we draw the heat."
"Now, Eddie," he answered, "that's the first good bit of sense I've
heard you speak in five or six years."
"I don't care," said Maxson. "You're just the weak feeding off of the
strong. If I weren't here, you'd hardly exist. You remind me of people who
go around assassinating political and spiritual leaders. It's the worst kind
of cowardice; it's the easiest thing to do with the least talent available.
It comes from hatred and envy; it comes from rancor and bitterness and
ultimate stupidity; it comes from the lowest scale of the human ladder; it
stinks and it reeks and it makes me ashamed to belong to the same tribe."
"Boy," said Harry, "that was some speech. Even piss can't stop your
flow of bullshit. You're one spoiled turd. You realize how many people there
are on this earth without a chance? Because of where and how they were born?
Because they had no education? Because they never had anything and never
will have and nobody gives a fuck, and you marry the best body you can find,
your age be damned?"
"Take your loot and go," said Maxson. "All you bastards who never make
it have some alibi."
"Oh, wait," said Harry, "everything counts. We're making now. You
don't quite understand."
"Tom," said the blond, "just give them the money, the jewelry ... let
them go ... please get off Channel 7."
"It's not Channel 7, Nana. It's letting them know. I've got to let
them know."
"Eddie," said Harry, "check the bathroom. Bring back some adhesive
tape."
I walked down the hall and found the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet
was a wide roll of adhesive. Harry made me nervous. I never knew what he was
going to do. I brought the tape back into the bedroom. Harry was yanking the
phone cord out of the wall. "OK," he told me, "shut off Channel 7."
I got it. I taped his mouth good.
"Now the hands, the hands in back," said Harry.
He walked over to Nana, pulled out both of her breasts and looked at
them.
Then he spit in her face. She wiped it off with the bedsheet.
"OK," he said, "now this one. Get the mouth, but leave the hands
loose. I like a little fight."
I fixed her up.
Harry got Tom Maxson turned on his side in his bed; he had him facing
Nana. He walked over and got one of Maxson's cigars and lit it. "I guess
Maxson's right," said Harry. "We are the suckerfish. We are the maggots. We
are the slime, and maybe the cowards."
He took a good pull on the cigar.
"It's yours, Eddie."
"Harry, I can't."
"You can. You don't know how. You've never been taught how. No
education. I'm your teacher. She's yours. It's simple."
"You do it, Harry."
"No. She'll mean more to you."
"Why?"
"Because you're such a simple asshole."
I walked over to her bed. She was so beautiful and I was so ugly I
fell as if my whole body was smeared with a layer of shit.
"Go on," said Harry, "get it on, asshole."
"Harry, I'm scared. It's not right; she's not mine."
"She's yours."
"Why?"
"Look at it like a war. We won this war. We've killed all their
machos, all their big-timers, all their heroes. There's nothing left but
women and children. We kill the children and send the old women up the road.
We are the conquering army. All that's left is their women. And the most
beautiful woman of all is ours . . . is yours. She's helpless. Take her."
I walked up and pulled back the covers. It was as if I had died and
was suddenly in heaven, and there was this magical creature in front of me.
I took her negligee and ripped it completely off.
"Fuck her, Eddie!"
All the curves were absolutely where they were supposed to be. They
were there and beyond. It was like beautiful skies; it was like beautiful
rivers flowing. I just wanted to look. I was afraid. I stood there, this
horn of a thing in front of me. I had no rights.
"Go ahead," said Harry. "Fuck her! She's the same as any other woman.
She plays games, tells lies. She'll be an old woman someday, and other young
girls will replace her. She'll even die. Fuck her while she's still there!"
I pulled at her shoulders, trying to gather her to me. She had gotten
strength from somewhere. She pushed against me, pulling her head back. She
was completely repulsed.
"Listen, Nana, I really don't want to do this ... but I do. I'm sorry.
I don't know what to do. I want you and I'm ashamed."
She made a sound through the adhesive on her mouth and pushed against
me. She was so beautiful. I didn't deserve that. Her eyes looked into mine.
They said what I was thinking: I had no human right.
"Go ahead," said Harry, "slam it to her! She'll love it."
"I can't do it, Harry."
"All right," he said, "you watch Channel 7 then."
I walked over and sat next to Tom Maxson. We sat side-by-side on his
bed. He was making small sounds through the adhesive. Harry walked over to
the other bed. "All right, whore, I guess I'll have to impregnate you."
Nana leaped out of bed and ran toward the door. Harry caught her by
the hair, spun her and slapped her hard across the face. She fell against
the wall and slid down. Harry pulled her up by the hair and hit her again.
Maxson made a louder sound through his adhesive and leaped up. He ran over
and butted Harry with his head. Harry gave him a chop along the back of the
neck, and Maxson dropped.
"Tape the hero's ankles," he told me.
I bound Maxson's feet and shoved him onto his bed.
"Sit him up," said Harry. "I want him to watch."
"Look, Harry," I said, "let's get out of here. The longer we stay-"
"Shut up!"
Harry dragged the blond back to the bed. She still had on a pair of
panties. He ripped them off and threw them at Maxson. The panties fell at
his feet. Maxson moaned and began to struggle. I punched him a hard one,
deep into the belly.
Harry took off his pants and undershorts.
"Whore," he said to the blond, "I'm gonna sink this thing deep into
you and you're going to feel it and there's nothing you can do. You'll take
all of it! And I'm going to cream deep inside of you!"
He had her on her back; she was still struggling. He hit her again,
hard. Her head fell back. He spread her legs. He tried to work his cock in.
He was having trouble.
"Loosen up, bitch; I know you want it! Lift your legs!"
He hit her hard, twice. The legs rose.
"That's better, whore!"
Harry poked and poked. Finally, he penetrated. He moved it in and out,
slowly.
Maxson began moaning and moving again. I sank another one into his
belly.
Harry began to get up a rhythm. The blond groaned as if in pain.
"You like it, don't you, whore? It's better turkeyneck than your old
man ever gave you, ain't it? Feel it growing?"
I couldn't stand it. I stood up, took out my cock and began
masturbating. Harry was ramming the blond so hard that her head was
bouncing. Then he slapped her and pulled out.
"Not yet, whore. I'm taking my time."
He walked over to where Tom Maxson was sitting.
"Look at the SIZE of that thing! And I'm going to put it back into her
now and come right inside her, Tommy boy! You'll never be able to make love
to your Nana without thinking of me! Without thinking of THIS!"
Harry put his cock right into Maxson's face, "And I may have her suck
me off after I'm finished!"
Then he turned, went back to the other bed and mounted the blond. He
slapped her again and began pumping wildly.
"You cheap, stinking whore, I'm going to come!"
Then: "Oh, shit! OH, MY GOD! Oh, oh, oh!"
He fell down against Nana and lay there. After a moment he pulled out.
Then he looked over at me. "Sure you don't want some?"
"No thanks, Harry."
Harry began to laugh. "Look at you, fool, you've whacked off!" Harry
got back into his pants, laughing. "All right," he said, "tape up her hands
and ankles. We're gettin' out of here."
I walked over and taped her up.
"But, Harry, how about the money and jewels?"
"We'll take his wallet. I want to get out of here. I'm nervous."
"But, Harry, let's take it all."
"No," he said, "just the wallet. Check his trousers. just take the
money."
I found the wallet.
"There's only $83 here, Harry."
"We take it and we leave. I'm nervous. I feel something in the air. We
have to go."
"Shit, Harry, that's no haul! We can really clean them out!"
"I told you: I'm nervous. I feel trouble coming. You can stay. I'm
leaving."
I followed him down the stairway.
"That son of a bitch will think twice before he insults anybody
again," said Harry.
We found the window we had jimmied open and left the same way. We
walked through the garden and out the iron gate.
"All right," said Harry, "we walk at a casual gait. Light a cigarette.
Try to look normal."
"Why are you so nervous, Harry?"
"Shut up!"
We walked four blocks. The car was still there. Harry took the wheel
and we drove off.
"Where we going?" I asked.
"The Guild Theater."
"What's playing?"
"Black Silk Stockings, with Annette Haven."
The place was down on Lankershim.
We parked and got out. Harry bought the tickets. We walked in.
"Popcorn?" I asked Harry.
"No."
"I want some."
"Get it."
Harry waited until I got the popcorn, large. We found some seats near
the back. We were in luck. The feature was just beginning.
originally appeared in Hustler magazine, March 1979
GUTS
Like anybody can tell you, I am not a very nice man. I don't know the
word. I have always admired the villain, the outlaw, the son of a bitch. I
don't like the clean-shaven boy with the necktie and the good job. I like
desperate men, men with broken teeth and broken minds and broken ways. They
interest me. They are full of surprises and explosions. I also like vile
women, drunk cursing bitches with loose stockings and sloppy mascara faces.
I'm more interested in perverts than saints. I can relax with bums because I
am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don't like to be
shaped by society.
I was drinking with Marty, the ex-con, up in my room one night. I
didn't have a job. I didn't want a job. I just wanted to sit around with my
shoes off and drink wine and talk, and laugh if possible. Marty was a little
dull, but he had workingman's hands, a broken nose, mole's eyes, nothing
much to him but he'd been through it.
"I like you, Hank," said Marty, "you're a real man, you're one of the
few real men I've known."
"Yeh," I said.
"You got guts."
"Yeh."
"I was a hard-rock miner once . . ."
"Yeh?"
"I got in a fight with this guy. We used ax handles. He broke my left
arm with his first swing. I went on to fight him. I beat his goddamned head
in. When he came around from that beating, he was out of his head. I'd
mashed his brains in. They put him in a madhouse."
"That's all right," I said.
"Listen," said Marty, "I want to fight you."
"You get first punch. Go ahead, hit me."
Marty was sitting in a straight-backed green chair. I was walking to
the sink to pour another glass of wine from the bottle. I turned around and
smashed him a right to the face. He flipped over backwards in the chair, got
up and came toward me. I wasn't looking for the left. It got me high on the
forehead and knocked me down. I reached into a paper sack full of vomit and
empties, came out with a bottle, rose to my knees and hurled it. Marty
ducked and I came up with the chair behind me. I had it over my head when
the door opened. It was our landlady, a good-looking young blonde in her
twenties. What she was doing running a place like that I could never figure
out. I put the chair down.
"Go to your room, Marty."
Marty looked ashamed, like a little boy. He walked down the hall to his
room, walked in and closed the door.
"Mr. Chinaski," she said, "I want you to know ..."
"I want you to know," I said, "that it's no use."
"What's no use?"
"You're not my type. I don't want to fuck you."
"Listen," she said, "I want to tell you something. I saw you pissing in
the lot next door last night and if you do that again I'm going to throw you
out of here. Somebody's been pissing in the elevator too. Has that been
you?"
"I don't piss in elevators."
"Well, I saw you in the lot last night. I was watching. It was you."
"The hell it was me."
"You were too drunk to know. Don't do it again."
She closed the door and was gone.
I was sitting there quietly drinking wine a few minutes later and
trying to remember if I had pissed in the lot, when there was a knock
on the door.
"Come in," I said.
It was Marty. "I gotta tell you something."
"Sure. Sit down."
I poured Marty a glass of port and he sat down.
"I'm in love," he said.
I didn't answer. I rolled a cigarette.
"You believe in love?" he asked.
"I have to. It happened to me once."
"Where is she?"
"She's gone. Dead."
"Dead? How?"
"Drink."
"This one drinks too. It worries me. She's always drunk. She can't
stop."
"None of us can."
"I go to A.A. meetings with her. She's drunk when she goes. Half of
them down there at the A.A. are drunk. You can smell the fumes."
I didn't answer.
"God, she's young. And what a body! I love her, man, really love her!"
"Oh hell, Marty, that's just sex."
"No, I love her. Hank, I really feel it."
"I guess it's possible."
"Christ, they've got her down in a cellar room. She can't pay her
rent."
"The cellar?"
"Yeah, they got a room down there with all the boilers and shit."
"Hard to believe."
"Yeah, she's down there. And I love her, man, and I don't have any
money to help her with."
"That's sad. I been in the same situation. It hurts."
"If I can get straight, if I can get on the wagon for ten days and get
my health back -- I can get a job somewhere, I can help her."
"Well," I said, "you're drinking now. If you love her, you'll stop
drinking. Right now."
"By god," he said, "I will! I'll pour this drink into the sink!"
"Don't be melodramatic. Just pass that glass over here."
I took the elevator down to the first floor with the fifth of cheap
whiskey I had stolen at Sam's liquor store a week earlier. Then I took the
stairway to the cellar. There was a small light burning down there. I walked
along looking for a door. I finally found one. It must have been 1:00 or
2:00 in the morning. I knocked. The door opened a notch and here stood a
really fine-looking woman in a negligee. I hadn't expected that. Young, and
a strawberry blonde.
I stuck my foot in the door, then I pushed my way in, closed the door
and looked around. Not a bad place at all.
"Who are you?" she asked. "Get out of here."
"This is a nice place you got here. I like it better than my own."
"Get out of here! Get out! Get out!"
I pulled the fifth of whiskey out of the paper bag. She looked at it.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Jeanie."
"Look, Jeanie, where do you keep your drinking glasses?"
She pointed to a wall shelf and I walked over and got two tall water
glasses. There was a sink. I put a little water in each, then walked over,
set them down, opened the whiskey and mixed it in. We sat on the edge of her
bed and drank. She was young, attractive. I couldn't believe it. I waited
for a neurotic explosion, for something psychotic. Jeanie looked normal,
even healthy. But she did like her whiskey. She drank right along with me.
Having come down there in a rush of eagerness, I no longer felt that
eagerness. I mean, if she had had a little pig in her or something indecent
or foul (a harelip, anything), I would have felt more like moving in. I
remembered a story I had read in the Racing Form once about a high-
bred stallion they couldn't get to mate with the mares. They got the most
beautiful mares they could find, but the stallion only shied away. Then
somebody, who knew something, got an idea. He smeared mud all over a
beautiful mare and the stallion immediately mounted her. The theory was that
the stallion felt inferior to all the beauty and when it was muddied-up,
fouled, he at least felt equal or maybe even superior. Horses' minds and
men's minds could be a great deal alike.
Anyhow, Jeanie poured the next drink and asked me my name and where I
roomed. I told her that I was upstairs somewhere and I just wanted to drink
with somebody.
"I saw you at the Clamber-In one night about a week ago," she said,
"you were very funny, you had everybody laughing, you bought everybody
drinks."
"I don't remember."
"I remember. You like my negligee?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you take off your pants and get more comfortable?"
I did and sat back on the bed with her. It moved very slowly. I
remember telling her that she had nice breasts and then I was sucking on one
of them. Next I knew we were at it. I was on top. But something didn't work.
I rolled off. "I'm sorry," I said.
"It's all right," she said, "I still like you." We sat there talking
vaguely and finishing the whiskey.
Then she got up and turned off the lights. I felt very sad and climbed
into bed and lay against her back. Jeanie was warm, full, and I could feel
her breathing, and I could feel her hair against my face. My penis begain to
rise and I poked it against her. I felt her reach down and guide it in.
"Now," she said, "now, that's it. . ."
It was good that way, long and good, and then we were finished and then
we slept.
When I woke up she was still asleep and I got up to get dressed. I was
fully clothed when she turned and looked at me: "One more time before you
go."
"All right."
I undressed again and got in with her. She turned her back to me and we
did it again, the same way. After I climaxed she lay with her back to me.
"Will you come see me again?" she asked.
"Of course."
"You live upstairs?"
"Yes. 309.1 can come see you or you can come see me."
"I'd rather you came to see me," she said.
"All right," I said. I got dressed, opened the door, closed the door,
walked up the stairway, got in the elevator, and hit the 3 button.
It was about a week later, one night, I was drinking wine with Marty.
We talked about various things of no importance and then he said, "Christ, I
feel awful."
"What again?"
"Yeah. My girl, Jeanie. I told you about her."
"Yes. The one who lives in the cellar. You're in love with her."
"Yeh. They kicked her out of the cellar. She couldn't even make the
cellar rent."
"Where'd she go?"
"I don't know. She's gone. I heard they kicked her out. Nobody knows
what she did, where she went. I went to the A.A. meeting. She wasn't there.
I'm sick. Hank, I'm really sick. I loved her. I'm about out of my head."
I didn't answer.
"What can I do, man? I'm really torn apart.. ."
"Let's drink to her luck, Marty, to her good luck."
We had a good long one to her.
"She was all right. Hank, you gotta believe me, she was all right."
"I believe you Marty."
A week later Marty got kicked out for not paying his rent and I got a
job in a meat packing plant and there were a couple of Mexican bars across
the street. I liked those Mexican bars. After work, I smelled of blood, but
nobody seemed to mind. It wasn't until I got on the bus to go back to my
room that those noses started raising and I got the dirty looks, and I began
feeling mean again. That helped.
HIT MAN
Ronnie was to meet the two men at the German bar in the Silver-lake
district. It was 7:15 p.m. He sat there drinking the dark beer at the table
by himself. The barmaid was blond, fine ass, and her breasts looked as if
they were going to fall out of her blouse.
Ronnie liked blondes. It was like iceskating and rollerskating. The
blondes were iceskating, the rest were rollerskating. The blondes even
smelled different. But women meant trouble, and for him the trouble often
outweighed the joy. In other words, the price was too high.
Yet a man needed a woman now and then, if for no other reason than to
prove he could get one. The sex was secondary. It wasn't a lover's world, it
never would be.
7:20. He waved her over for another beer. She came smiling, carrying
the beer out in front of her breasts. You couldn't help liking her like
that.
"You like working here?" he asked her.
"Oh yes, I meet a lot of men."
"Nice men?"
"Nice men and the other kind."
"How can you tell them apart?"
"I can tell by looking."
"What kind of man am I?"
"Oh," she laughed, "nice, of course."
"You've earned your tip," said Ronnie.
7:25. They'd said 7. Then he looked up. It was Curt. Curt had the guy
with him. They came over and sat down. Curt waved for a pitcher.
"The Rams ain't worth shit," said Curt, "I've lost an even $500 on them
this season."
"You think Prothro's finished?"
"Yeah, it's over for him," said Curt. "Oh, this is Bill. Bill, this is
Ronnie."
They shook hands. The barmaid arrived with the pitcher.
"Gentlemen," said Ronnie, "this is Kathy."
"Oh," said Bill.
"Oh, yes," said Curt.
The barmaid laughed and wiggled on.
"It's good beer," said Ronnie. "I've been here since 7:00, waiting. I
ought to know."
"You don't want to get drunk," said Curt.
"Is he reliable?" asked Bill.
"He's got the best references," said Curt.
"Look," said Bill, "I don't want comedy. It's my money."
"How do I know you're not a pig?" asked Ronnie.
"How do I know you won't cut with the $2500?"
"Three grand."
"Curt said two and one half."
"I just upped it. I don't like you."
"I don't care too much for your ass either. I've got a good mind to
call it off."
"You won't. You guys never do."
"Do you do this regular?"
"Yes. Do you?"
"All right, gentlemen," said Curt, "I don't care what you settle for. I
get my grand for the contract."
"You're the lucky one, Curt," said Bill.
"Yeah," said Ronnie.
"Each man is an expert in his own line," said Curt, lighting a
cigarette.
"Curt, how do I know this guy won't cut with the three grand?"
"He won't or he's out of business. It's the only kind of work he can
do."
"That's horrible," said Bill.
"What's horrible about it? You need him don't you?"
"Well, yes."
"Other people need him too. They say each man is good at something.
He's good at that."
Somebody put some money in the juke and they sat listening to the music
and drinking the beer.
"I'd really like to give it to that blonde," said Ronnie. "I'd like to
give her about six hours of turkeyneck."
"I would too," said Curt, "if I had it."
"Let's get another pitcher," said Bill. "I'm nervous.
"There's nothing to worry about," said Curt. He waved for another
pitcher of beer. "That $500 I dropped on the Rams, I'll get it back at
Anita. They open December 26th. I'll be there."
"Is the Shoe going to ride in the meet?" asked Bill.
"I haven't read the papers. I'd imagine he will. He can't quit. It's in
his blood."
"Longden quit," said Ronnie.
"Well, he had to; they had to strap the old man in the saddle."
"He won his last race."
"Campus pulled the other horse."
"I don't think you can beat the horses," said Bill.
"A smart man can beat anything he puts his mind to," said Curt. "I've
never worked in my life."
"Yeah," said Ronnie, "but I gotta work tonight."
"Be sure you do a good job, baby," said Curt.
"I always do a good job."
They were quiet and sat drinking their beer. Then Ronnie said, "All
right, where's the god damned money?"
"You'll get it, you'll get it," said Bill. "It's lucky I brought an
extra $500."
"I want it now. All of it."
"Give him the money. Bill. And while you're at it, give me mine."
It was all in hundreds. Bill counted it under the table. Ronnie got his
first, then Curt got his. They checked it. O.k.
"Where's it at?" asked Ronnie.
"Here," said Bill, handing him an envelope. "The address and key are
inside."
"How far away is it?"
"Thirty minutes. You take the Ventura freeway."
"Can I ask you one thing?"
"Sure."
"Why?"
"Why?"
"Yes, why?"
"Do you care?"
"No."
"Then why ask?"
"Too much beer, I guess."
"Maybe you better get going," said Curt.
"Just one more pitcher of beer," said Ronnie.
"No," said Curt, "get going."
"Well, shit, all right."
Ronnie moved around the table, got out, walked to the exit. Curt and
Bill sat there looking at him. He'walked outside. Night. Stars. Moon.
Traffic. His car. He unlocked it, got in, drove off.
Ronnie checked the street carefully and the address more carefully. He
parked a block and a half away and walked back. The key fit the door. He
opened it and walked in. There was a T.V. set going in the front room. He
walked across the rug.
"Bill?" somebody asked. He listened for the voice. She was in the
bathroom. "Bill?" she said again. He pushed the door open and there she sat
in the tub, very blond, very white, young. She screamed.
He got his hands around her throat and pushed her under the water. His
sleeves were soaked. She kicked and struggled violently. It got so bad that
he had to get in the tub with her, clothes and all. He had to hold her down.
Finally she was still and he let her go.
Bill's clothes didn't quite fit him but at least they were dry. The
wallet was wet but he kept the wallet. Then he got out of there, walked the
block and one half to his car and drove off.
THIS IS WHAT KILLED DYLAN THOMAS
This is what killed Dylan Thomas.
I board the plane with my girlfriend, the sound man, the camera man and
the producer. The camera is working. The sound man has attached little
microphones to my girlfriend and myself. I am on my way to San Francisco to
give a poetry reading. I am Henry Chinaski, poet. I am profound, I am
magnificent. Balls. Well, yes, I do have magnificent balls.
Channel 15 is thinking of doing a documentary on me. I have on a clean
new shirt, and my girlfriend is vibrant, magnificent, in her early thirties.
She sculpts, writes, and makes marvelous love. The camera pokes into my
face. I pretend it isn't there. The passengers watch, the stewardesses beam,
the land is stolen from the Indians, Tom Mix is dead, and I've had a fine
breakfast.
But I can't help thinking of the years in lonely rooms when the only
people who knocked were the landladies asking for the back rent, or the
F.B.I. I lived with rats and mice and wine and my blood crawled the walls in
a world I couldn't understand and still can't. Rather than live their life,
I starved; I ran inside my own mind and hid. I pulled down all the shades
and stared at the ceiling. When I went out it was to a bar where I begged
drinks, ran errands, was beaten in alleys by well-fed and secure men, by
dull and comfortable men. Well, I won a few fights but only because I was
crazy. I went for years without women, I lived on peanut butter and stale
bread and boiled potatoes. I was the fool, the dolt, the idiot. I wanted to
write but the typer was always in hock. I gave it up and drank...
The plane rose and the camera went on. The girlfriend and I talked. The
drinks arrived. I had poetry, and a fine woman. Life was picking up. But the
traps, Chinaski, watch the traps. You fought a long fight to put the word
down the way you wanted. Don't let a little adulation and a movie camera
pull you out of position. Remember what Jeffers said -- even the strongest
men can be trapped, like God when he once walked on earth.
Well, you ain't God, Chinaski, relax and have another drink. Maybe you
ought to say something profound for the sound man? No, let him sweat. Let
them all sweat. It's their film burning. Check the clouds for size. You're
riding with executives from I.B.M., from Texaco, from . . .
You're riding with the enemy.
On the escalator out of the airport a man asks me, "What's all the
cameras? What's going on?"
"I'm a poet," I tell him.
"A poet?" he asks, "what's your name?"
"Garcia Lorca," I say. . . .
Well, North Beach is different. They're young and they wear jeans and
they wait around. I'm old. Where's the young ones of 20 years ago? Where's
Joltin' Joe? All that. Well, I was in S.F. 30 years ago and I avoided North
Beach. Now I'm walking through it. I see my face on posters all about. Be
careful, old man, the suck is on. They want your blood.
My girlfriend and I walk along with Marionetti. Well, here we are
walking along with Marionetti. It's nice being with Marionetti, he has very
gentle eyes and the young girls stop him on the street and talk to him. Now,
I think, I could stay in San Francisco . . . but I know better; it's back to
L.A. for me with that machinegun mounted in the front court window. They
might have caught God, but Chinaski gets advice from the devil.
Marionetti leaves and there's a beatnick coffeeshop. I have never been
in a beatnick coffeeshop. I am in a beatnick coffeeshop. My girl and I get
the best -- 60 cents a cup. Big time. It isn't worth it. The kids sit about
sipping at their coffees and waiting for it to happen. It isn't going to
happen.
We walk across the street to an Italian cafe. Marionetti is back with
the guy from the S. F. Chronicle who wrote in his column that I was
the best short story writer to come along since Hemingway. I tell him he is
wrong; I don't know who is the best since Heming- way but it isn't H.C. I'm
too careless. I don't put out enough effort. I'm tired.
The wine comes on. Bad wine. The lady brings in soup, salad, a bowl of
raviolis. Another bottle of bad wine. We are too full to eat the main
course. The talk is loose. We don't strain to be brilliant. Maybe we can't
be. We get out.
I walk behind them up the hill. I walk with my beautiful girlfriend. I
begin to vomit. Bad red wine. Salad. Soup. Raviolis. I always vomit before a
reading. It's a good sign. The edge is on. The knife is in my gut while I
walk up the hill.
They put us in a room, leave us a few bottles of beer. I glance over my
poems. I am terrified. I heave in the sink, I heave in the toilet, I heave
on the floor. I am ready.
The biggest crowd since Yevtushenko ... I walk on stage. Hot shit. Hot
shit Chinaski. There is a refrigerator full of beer behind me. I reach in
and take one. I sit down and begin to read. They've paid $2 a head. Fine
people, those. Some are quite hostile from the outset. 1/3 of them hate me,
1/3 of them love me, the other 3rd don't know what the hell. I have some
poems that I know will increase the hate. It's good to have hostility, it
keeps the head loose.
"Will Laura Day please stand up? Will my love please stand up?"
She does, waving her arms.
I begin to get more interested in the beer than the poetry. I talk
between the poems, dry and banal stuff, drab. I am H. Bogart. I am
Hemingway. I am hot shit.
"Read the poems, Chinaski!" they scream.
They are right, you know. I try to stay with the poems. But I'm at the
refrigerator door much of the time too. It makes the work easier, and
they've already paid. I'm told once John Cage came out on stage, ate an
apple, walked off, got one thousand dollars. I figured I had a few beers
coming.
Well, it was over. They came around. Autographs. They'd come from
Oregon, L.A., Washington. Nice pretty little girls too. This is what killed
Dylan Thomas.
Back upstairs at the place, drinking beer and talking to Laura and Joe
Krysiak. They are beating on the door downstairs. "Chinaski! Chinaski!" Joe
goes down to hold them off. I'm a rock star. Finally I go down and let some
of them in. I know some of them. Starving poets. Editors of little
magazines. Some get through that I don't know. All right, all right -- lock
the door!
We drink. We drink. We drink. Al Masantic falls down in the bathroom
and crashes the top of his head open. A very fine poet, that Al.
Well, everybody is talking. It's just another sloppy beerdrunk. Then
the editor of a little magazine starts beating on a fag. I don't like it. I
try to separate them. A window is broken. I push them down the steps. I push
everybody down the steps, except Laura. The party is over. Well, not quite.
Laura and I are into it. My love and I are into it. She's got a temper, I've
got one to match. It's over nothing, as usual. I tell her to get the hell
out. She does.
I wake up hours later and she's standing in the center of the room. I
leap out of bed and cuss her. She's on me.
"I'll kill you, you son of a bitch!"
I'm drunk. She's on top of me on the kitchen floor. My face is
bleeding. She bites a hole in my arm. I don't want to die. I don't want to
die! Passion be damned! I run into the kitchen and pour half a bottle of
iodine over my arm. She's throwing my shorts and shirts out of her suitcase,
taking her airplane ticket. She's on her way again. We're finished forever
again. I go back to bed and listen to her heels going down the hill.
On the plane back the camera is going. Those guys from Channel 15 are
going to find out about life. The camera zooms in on the hole in my arm.
There is a double shot in my hand.
"Gentlemen," I say, "there is no way to make it with the female. There
is absolutely no way."
They all nod in agreement. The sound man nods, the camera man nods, the
producer nods. Some of the passengers nod. I drink heavily all the way in,
savoring my sorrow, as they say. What can a poet do without pain? He needs
it as much as his typewriter.
Of course, I make the airport bar. I would have made it anyhow. The
camera follows me into the bar. The guys in the bar look around, lift their
drinks and talk about how impossible it is to make it with the female.
My take for the reading is $400.
"What's the camera for?" asks the guy next to me.
"I'm a poet," I tell him.
"A poet?" he asks. "What's your name?"
"Dylan Thomas," I say.
I lift my drink, empty it with one gulp, stare straight ahead. I'm on
my way.
NO NECK AND BAD AS HELL
I had a jumpy stomach and she took pictures of me sweating and dying in
the waiting area as I watched a plump girl in a short purple dress and high
heels shoot down a row of plastic ducks with a gun. I told Vicki I'd be back
and I asked the girl at the counter for a paper cup and some water and I
dropped my Alka Seltzers in. I sat back down and sweated.
Vicki was happy. We were getting out of town. I liked Vicki to be
happy. She deserved her happiness. I got up and went to the men's room and
had a good crap. When I got out they were calling the passengers. It wasn't
a very large seaplane. Two propellers. We were on last. It only held six or
seven.
Vicki sat in the co-pilot's seat and they made me a seat out of the
thing that folded over the door. There we went! FREEDOM. My seatbelt didn't
work.
There was a Japanese guy looking at me. "My seatbelt doesn't work," I
told him. He grinned back at me, happily. "Suck shit, baby," I told him.
Vicki kept looking back and smiling. She was happy, a kid with candy -- a 35
year old seaplane.
It took twelve minutes and we hit the water. I hadn't heaved. I got
out. Vicki told me all about it. "The plane was built in 1940. It had holes
in the floor. He worked the rudder with a handle from the roof. 'I'm
scared,' I told him, and he said, 'I'm scared too.' "
I depended on Vicki for all my information. I wasn't much good at
talking to people. Well, then we packed onto a bus, sweating and giggling
and looking at each other. From the end of the bus line to the hotel was
about two blocks and Vicki kept me informed:
"There's a place to eat, and there's a liquor store for you, there's a
bar, and there's a place to eat, and there's another liquor store ..."
The room was all right, in front, right over the water. The T.V. worked
in a vague and hesitant way and I flopped on the bed and watched while Vicki
unpacked. "Oh, I just love this place!" she said, "don't you?"
"Yes."
I got up and went downstairs and across the street and got beer and
ice. I packed the ice in the sink and sunk the beer in. I drank 12 bottles
of beer, had a minor argument of some sort with Vicki after the tenth beer,
drank the other two and went to sleep.
When I woke up, Vicki had bought an ice chest and was drawing on the
cover. Vicki was a child, a Romantic, but I loved her for it. I liad so many
gloomy devils in me that I welcomed it.
"July 1972. Avalon Catalena" she printed on the chest. She didn't know
how to spell. Well, none of us did.
Then she drew me, and underneath: "No neck and bad as hell."
Then she drew a lady, and underneath: "Henry knows a good ass when he
sees one."
And in a circle: "Only God knows what he does with his nose."
And: "Chinaski has gorgeous legs."
She also drew a variety of birds and suns and stars and palm trees and
the ocean.
"Are you able to eat breakfast?" she asked. I'd never been spoiled by
any of my past women. I liked being spoiled; I felt that I deserved to be
spoiled. We went and found a fairly reasonable place where you could eat at
a table outside. Over breakfast she asked me, "Did you really win the
Pulitzer Prize?"
"What Pulitzer Prize?"
"You told me last night you'd won the Pulitzer Prize. $500,000. You
said you got a purple telegram about it."
"A purple telegram?"
"Yes, you said you'd beat out Norman Mailer, Kenneth Koch, Diane
Wakoski, and Robert Creeley."
We finished breakfast and walked around. The whole place didn't add up
to more than five or six blocks. Everybody was seventeen years old. They sat
listlessly waiting. Not everybody. There were a few tourists, old,
determined to have a good time. They peered angrily into shop windows and
walked, stamping the pavements, giving off their rays: I have money, we have
money, we have more money than you have, we are better than you are, nothing
worries us; everything is shit but we are not shit and we know everything,
look at us.
With their pink shirts and green shirts and blue shirts, and square
white rotting bodies, and striped shorts, eyeless eyes and mouthless mouths,
they walked along, very colorful, as if color might wake up death and turn
it into life. They were a carnival of American decay on parade and they had
no idea of the atrocity that they had inflicted upon themselves.
I left Vicki, went upstairs, crouched over the typewriter, and looked
out the window. It was hopeless. All my life I had wanted to be a writer and
now I had my chance and it wouldn't come. There were no bullrings and boxing
matches or young senoritas. There weren't even any insights. I was fucked. I
couldn't get the word down and they'd backed me into a corner. Well, all you
had to do was die. But I'd always imagined it differently. I mean, the
writing. Maybe it was the Leslie Howard movie. Or reading about the life of
Hemingway or D. H. Lawrence. Or Jeffers. You could get started writing in
all sorts of different ways. And then you wrote a while. And met some of the
writers. The good ones and the bad ones. And they all had tinkertoy souls.
You knew it when you got into a room with them. There was only one great
writer every 500 years, and you weren't the one, and they most certainly
weren't the ones. We were fucked.
I turned on the T.V. and watched a bag of doctors and nurses spew their
love-troubles. They never touched. No wonder they were in trouble. All they
did was talk, argue, bitch, search. I went to sleep.
Vicki woke me up. "Oh," she said, "I had the most wonderful time!"
"Yes?"
"I saw this man in a boat and I said 'Where are you going?' and he
said, 'I'm a boat taxi, I take people in and out to their boats,' and I
said, 'o.k.' and it was just fifty cents and I rode around with him for
hours while he took people to their boats. It was wonderful."
"I watched some doctors and nurses," I said, "and I got depressed."
"We boated for hours," said Vicki, "I gave him my hat to wear and he
waited while I got an abalone sandwich. He skinned his leg when he fell off
his motorcycle last night."
"The bells ring here every fifteen minutes. It's obnoxious."
"I got to look in all the boats. All the old drunks were on board. Some
of them had young women dressed in boots. Others had young men. Real old
drunken lechers."
If I only had Vicki's ability to gather information, I thought, I could
really write something. Me: I've got to sit around and wait for it to come
to me. I can manipulate it and squeeze it once it arrives but I can't go
find it. All I can write about is drinking beer, going to the racetrack, and
listening to symphony music. That isn't a crippled life, but it's hardly all
of it either. How did I get so limited? I used to have guts. What happened
to my guts? Do men really get old?
"After I got off the boat I saw a bird. I talked to it. Do you mind if
I buy the bird?"
"No, I don't mind. Where is it?"
"Just a block away. Can we go see him?"
"Why not?"
I got into some clothes and we walked down. Here was this shot of green
with a little red ink spilled over him. He wasn't very much, even for a
bird. But he didn't shit every three minutes like the rest of them, so that
was pleasant.
"He doesn't have any neck. He's just like you. That's why I want him.
He's a peach-faced love-bird."
We came back with the peach-faced love-bird in a cage. We put him on
the table and she called him "Avalon." Vicki sat and talked to him.
"Avalon, hello Avalon . . . Avalon, Avalon, hello Avalon . . . Avalon,
o, Avalon . . ."
I turned on the T.V.
The bar was all right. I sat with Vicki and told her I was going to
break the place up. I used to break up bars in my early days, now I just
talked about breaking them up.
There was a band. I got up and danced. It was easy to dance modern. You
just kicked your arms and legs in any direction, either held your neck stiff
or whipped it like a son of a bitch and they thought you were great. You
could fool people. I danced and worried about my typewriter.
I sat down with Vicki and ordered some more drinks. I grabbed Vicki's
head and pointed her toward the bartender. "Look, she's beautiful, man!
Isn't she beautiful?"
Then Ernie Hemingway walked up with his white rat beard.
"Ernie," I said, "I thought you did it with a shotgun?"
Hemingway laughed.
"What are you drinking?" I asked.
"I'm buying," he said.
Ernie bought us our drinks and sat down. He looked a little thinner.
"I reviewed your last book," I told him. "I gave it a bad review.
Sorry."
"It's all right," said Ernie. "How do you like the island?"
"It's for them," I said.
"Meaning?"
"The public is fortunate. Everything pleases them: icecream cones, rock
concerts, singing, swinging, love, hate, masturbation, hot dogs, country
dances, Jesus Christ, roller skating, spiritualism, capitalism, communism,
circumcision, comic strips, Bob Hope, skiing, fishing murder bowling
debating, anything. They don't expect much and they don't get much. They are
one grand gang."
"That's quite a speech."
"That's quite a public."
"You talk like a character out of early Huxley."
"I think you're wrong. I'm desperate."
"But," said Hemingway, "men become intellectuals in order not to be
desperate."
"Men become intellectuals because they are afraid, not desperate."
"And the difference between afraid and desperate is ..."
"Bingo!" I answered, "an intellectual! . . . my drink . . ."
A little later I told Hemingway about my purple telegram and then Vicki
and I left and went back to our bird and our bed.
"It's no use," I said, "my stomach is raw and contains nine tenths of
my soul."
"Try this," said Vicki and handed me the glass of water and Alka
Seltzer.
"You go and toddle around," I said, "I can't make it today."
Vicki went out and toddled and came back two or three times to see if I
was all right. I was all right. I went out and ate and came back with two
six-packs and found an old movie with Henry Fonda, Tyrone Power, and
Randolph Scott. 1939. They were all so young. It was incredible. I was
seventeen years old then. But, of course, I'd come through better than them.
I was still alive.
Jesse James. The acting was bad, very bad. Vicki came
back and told me all sorts of amazing things and then she got on the bed
with me and watched Jesse James. When Bob Ford was about to shoot
Jesse (Ty Power) in the back, Vicki let out a moan and ran in the bathroom
and hid. Ford did his thing.
"It's all over," I said, "you can come out now."
That was the highlight of the trip to Catalina. Not much else happened.
Before we left Vicki went to the Chamber of Commerce and thanked them for
giving her such a good time. She also thanked the woman in Davey Jones'
Locker and bought presents for her friends Lita and Walter and Ava and her
son Mike and something for me and something for Annie and something for a
Mr. and Mrs. Croty, and there were some others I have forgotten.
We got on the boat with our bird cage and our bird and our ice chest
and our suitcase and our electric typewriter. I found a spot at the back of
the boat and we sat there and Vicki was sad because it was over. I had met
Hemingway in the street and he had given me the hippie handshake and he
asked me if I was Jewish and if I was coming back, and I said no on the
Jewish and I didn't know if I was coming back, it was up to the lady, and he
said, I don't want to inquire into your personal business, and I said,
Hemingway you sure talk funny, and the whole boat leaned to the left and
rocked and leaped and a young man who looked as if he had recently had
electro-therapy treatment walked around passing out paper bags for the
purpose of vomiting. I thought, maybe the seaplane's best, it's only twelve
minutes and far less people, and San Pedro slowly worked toward us,
civilization, civilization, smog and murder, so much nicer so much nicer,
the madmen and the drunks are the last saints left on earth. I have never
ridden a horse or bowled, nor have I seen the Swiss Alps, and Vicki looked
over at me with this very childish smile, and I thought, she really is an
amazing woman, well, it's time I had a little luck, and I stretched my legs
and looked straight ahead. I needed to take another shit and decided to cut
down on my drinking.
THE WAY THE DEAD LOVE
1.
It was a hotel near the top of a hill, just enough tilt in that hill to
help you run down to the liquor store, and coming back with the bottle, just
enough climb to make the effort worthwhile. The hotel had once been painted
a peacock green, lots of hot flare, but now after the rains, the peculiar
Los Angeles rains that clean and fade everything, the hot green was just
hanging on by its teeth -- like the people who lived inside.
How I moved in there, or why I'd left the previous place, I hardly
remember. It was probably my drinking and not working very much, and the
loud mid-morning arguments with the ladies of the street. And by midmorning
arguments I do not mean 10:30 a.m., I mean 3:30 a.m. Usually if the police
weren't called it ended up with a little note under the door, always in
pencil on torn lined paper: "dear Sir, we are going to have to ask you to
move quick as poscible." One time it happened in mid-afternoon. The
argument was over. We swept up the broken glass, put all the bottles into
paper sacks, emptied the ashtrays, slept, woke up, and I was working away on
top when I heard a key in the door. I was so surprised that I just kept
fanning it in. And there he stood, the little manager, about 45, no hair
except maybe around his ears or balls, and he looked at her on the bottom,
walked up and pointed, "You -- you are OUT OF HERE!" I stopped stroking and
laid flat, looking at him sideways. Then he pointed at me. "And YOU'RE outa
here too!" He turned around, went to the door, closed it quietly and walked
down the hall. I started the machine again and we gave it a farewell good
one.
Anyway, there I was, the green hotel, the faded green hotel, and I was
there with my suitcase full of rags, alone at the time, but I had the rent
money, was sober, and I got a room in the front facing the street, 3rd
floor, phone outside my door in the hall, hotplate in the window, large
sink, small wall refrigerator, a couple of chairs, a table, bed, and the
bathroom down the hall. And although the building was very old, they even
had an elevator -- it had once been a class joint. Now I was there. The
first thing I did was get a bottle and after a drink and killing two roaches
I felt like I belonged. Then I went to the phone and tried to call a lady
who I felt might help me but she was evidently out helping somebody else.
2.
About 3 a.m. somebody knocked. I put on my torn bathrobe and opened the
door. There stood a woman in her bathrobe. "Yeah?" I said. "Yeah?"
"I'm your neighbor. I'm Mitzi. I live down the hall. I saw you at the
telephone today."
"Yeah?" I said.
Then she came around from behind her back and showed it to me. It was a
pint of good whiskey.
"Come on in," I said.
I cleaned out two glasses, opened the pint. "Straight or mixed?"
"About two thirds water."
There was a litle mirror over the sink and she stood there rolling her
hair into curlers. I handed her a glass of stuff and sat down on the bed.
"I saw you in the hall. I could tell by looking at you that you were
nice. I can tell them. Some of them here are not so nice."
"They tell me I am a bastard."
"I don't believe it."
"Neither do I."
I finished my drink. She just sipped on hers so I mixed myself another.
We talked easy talk. I had a third drink. Then I got up and stood behind
her.
"OOOOOOh! Silly boy!"
I jabbed her.
"Ooouch!! You ARE a bastard!"
She had a curler in one hand. I pulled her up and kissed that thin
little old lady's mouth. It was soft and open. She was ready. I put her
drink in her hand, took her to the bed, sat her down. "Drink up." She did. I
walked over and fixed her another. I didn't have anything on under my robe.
The robe fell open and the thing stuck out. God, I'm filthy, I thought. I'm
a ham. I'm in the movies. The family movies of the future. 2490 A.D. I had
difficulty not laughing at myself, walking around hung to that stupid prong.
It was really the whiskey I wanted. A castle in the hills I wanted. A steam
bath. Anything but this. We both sat with our drinks. I kissed her again,
ramming my cigarette-sick tongue down her throat. I came up for air. I
opened her robe and there were her breasts. Not much, poor thing. I reached
down with my mouth and got one. It stretched and sagged like a balloon half-
filled with stale air. I braved on and sucked at the nipple as she took the
prong in her hand and arched her back. We fell backwards like that on the
cheap bed, and with our robes on, I took her there.
3.
His name was Lou, he was an ex-con and ex-hard rock miner. He lived
downstairs in the hotel. His last job had been scrubbing out pots in a place
that made candy. He had lost that one -- like all the others -- drinking.
The unemployment insurance runs out and there we are like rats -- rats with
no place to hide, rats with rent to pay, with bellies that get hungry, cocks
that get hard, spirits that get tired, and no education, no trade. Tough
shit, like they say, this is America. We didn't want much and we couldn't
get that. Tough shit.
I met Lou while drinking, people walking in and out. My room was the
party room. Everybody came. There was an Indian, Dick, who shoplifted
halfpints and stored them in his dresser. Said it gave him a feeling of
security. When we couldn't get a drink anywhere we always used the Indian as
our last resort.
I wasn't very good at shoplifting but I did learn a trick from Alabam,
a thin mustached thief who had once worked for the hospital as an orderly.
You throw your meats and valuables into a large sack and then cover them
with potatoes. The grocer weighs the lot and charges you for potatoes. But I
was best at getting Dick for credit. There were a lot of Dicks in that
neighborhood and the liquor store man was a Dick too. We'd be sitting around
and the last drink would be gone. My first move would be to send somebody
out. "My name's Hank," I'd tell the guy. "Tell Dick, Hank sent you down for
a pint on the cuff, and if there's any questions to phone me." "O.k., o.k.,"
and the guy would go. We'd wait, already tasting the drink, smoking pacing
going crazy. Then the guy would come back. "Dick said 'no!' Dick said your
credit's no good anymore!"
"SHIT!" I would scream.
And I would rise in full red-eyed unshaven indignation. "GOD DAMN,
SHIT, THAT MOTHER!"
I would really be angry, it was an honest anger, I don't know where it
came from. I'd slam the door, take the elevator down and down that hill I'd
go ... dirty mother, that dirty mother! . . . and I'd turn into the liquor
store.
"All right, Dick."
"Hello, Hank."
"I want TWO FIFTHS!" (and I'd name a very good brand.) "Two packs of
smokes, a couple of those cigars, and let's see . . . a can of those
peanuts, yeah."
Dick would line the stuff up in front of me and then he'd stand there.
"Well, ya gonna pay me?"
"Dick, I want this on the bill."
"You already owe me $23.50. You used to pay me, you used to pay a
little every week, I remember it was every Friday night. You ain't paid me
anything in three weeks. You aren't like those other bums. You got class. I
trust you. Can't you just pay me a dollar now and then?"
"Look, Dick, I don't feel like arguing. You gonna put this stuff in a
bag or do you want it BACK?"
Then I'd shove the bottles and stuff toward him and wait, puffing on a
cigarette like I owned the world. I didn't have any more class than a
grasshopper. I felt nothing but fear that he'd do the sensible thing and put
the bottles back on the shelf and tell me to go to hell. But his face would
always sag and he'd put the stuff in the bag, and then I'd wait until he
totalled the new bill. He'd give me the count; I'd nod and walk out. The
drinks always tasted much better under those circumstances. And when I'd
walk in with the stuff for the boys and girls, I was really king.
I was sitting with Lou one night in his room. He was a week be- hind in
his rent and mine was due. We were drinking port wine. We were even rolling
our cigarettes. Lou had a machine for that and they came out pretty good.
The thing was to keep four walls around you. If you had four walls you had a
chance. Once you were out on the street you had no chance, they had you,
they really had you. Why steal something if you can't cook it? How are you
going to screw something if you live in an alley? How are you going to sleep
when everybody in the Union Rescue Mission snores? And steals your shoes?
And stinks? And is insane? You can't even jack-off. You need four walls.
Give a man four walls long enough and it is possible for him to own the
world. So we were a little worried. Every step sounded like the landlady's.
And she was a very mysterious landlady. A young blonde nobody could screw. I
played her very cold thinking she would come to me. She came and knocked all
right, but only for the rent. She had a husband somewhere but we never saw
him. They lived there and they didn't. We were on the plank. We figured if
we could fuck the landlady our troubles would be over. It was one of those
buildings where you screwed every woman as a matter of course, almost as a
matter of obligation. But I couldn't get this one and it made me feel
insecure. So we sat there smoking our rolled cigarettes, drinking our port
wine and the four walls were dissolving, falling away. Talk is best at times
like that. You talk wild, drink your wine. We were cowards because we wanted
to live. We did not want to live too badly but we still wanted to live.
"Well," said Lou, "I think I got it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
I poured another wine.
"We work together."
"Sure."
"Now you're a good talker, you tell a lot of interesting stories, it
doesn't matter if they're true or not -- "
"They're true."
"I mean, that doesn't matter. You got a good mouth. Now here's what we
do. There's a class bar down the street, you know it, Molino's. You go in
there. All you need is money for the first drink. We'll pool for that. You
sit down, nurse your drink and look around for a guy flashing a roll. They
get some fat ones in there. You spot the guy and go over to him. You sit
down next to him and turn it on, you turn on the bullshit. He'll like it.
You've even got a vocabulary. O.k. so he'll buy you drinks all night, he'll
drink all night. Keep him drinking. When closing time comes, you lead him
toward Alvarado Street, lead him west past the alley. Tell him you are going
to get him some nice young pussy, tell him anything but lead him west. And
I'll be waiting in the alley with this."
Lou reached around behind the door and came out with a baseball bat, it
was a very large baseball bat, I think at least 42 oz.
"Jesus Christ, Lou, you'll kill him!"
"No, no, you can't kill a drunk, you know that. Maybe if he was sober
it'd kill him, but drunk it'll only knock him out. We take the wallet, split
it two ways."
"Listen, Lou, I'm a nice guy, I'm not like that."
"You're no nice guy; you're the meanest son of a bitch I ever met.
That's why I like you."
4.
I found one. A big fat one. I had been fired by fat stupidities like
him all my life. From worthless, underpaid, dull hard jobs. It was going to
be nice. I got to talking. I didn't know what I was talking about. He was
listening and laughing and nodding his head and buying drinks. He had a
wrist watch, a handful of rings, a full stupid wallet. It was hard work. I
told him stories about prisons, about railroad track gangs, about
whorehouses. He liked the whorehouse stuff.
I told him about the guy who came in every two weeks and paid well. All
he wanted was a whore in a room with him. They both took off their clothes
and played cards and talked. Just sat there. Then after about two hours he'd
get up, get dressed, say goodbye and walk out. Never touch the whore.
"God damn," he said.
"Yeah."
I decided that I wouldn't mind Lou's slugger bat hitting a homer on
that fat skull. What a whammy. What a useless hunk of shit.
"You like young girls?" I asked him.
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah."
"Around fourteen and a half?"
"Oh jesus, yes."
"There's one coming in on the 1:30 a.m. train from Chicago. She'll be
at my place around 2:10 a.m. She's clean, hot, intelligent. Now I'm takin' a
big chance, so I'm asking ten bucks. That too high?"
"No, that's all right."
"O.k., when this place closes up you come with me."
2 a.m. finally made it, and I walked him out of there, toward the
alley. Maybe Lou wouldn't be there. Maybe the wine would get to him or he'd
just back out. A blow like that could kill a man. Or make him addled for
life. We staggered along in the moonlight. There was nobody else around,
nobody in the streets. It was going to be easy.
We crossed into the alley. Lou was there. But Fatso saw him. He threw
up an arm and ducked as Lou swung. The bat got me right behind the ear.
5.
Lou got his old job back, the one he had lost drinking, and he swore he
was only going to drink on weekends.
"O.k., friend," I told him, "stay away from me, I am drunk and drinking
all the time."
"I know. Hank, and I like you, I like you better than any man I ever
met, only I gotta hold the drinking down to weekends, just Friday and
Saturday nights and nothing on Sunday. I kept missing Monday mornings in the
old days and it cost me my job. I'll stay away but I want you to know that
it has nothing to do with you."
"Only that I'm a wino."
"Yeah, well, there's that."
"O.k., Lou, just don't come knocking on my door until Friday and
Saturday night. You may hear singing and the laughter of beautiful seventeen
year old girls but don't come knocking on my door."
"Man, you screw nothing but bags."
"They look seventeen through the eye of the grape."
He went on to explain the nature of his job, something to do with
cleaning out the inside of candy machines. It was a sticky dirty job. The
boss only hired ex-cons and worked their asses to death. He cussed the ex-
cons brutally all day long and there was nothing they could do about it. He
shorted them on their checks and there was nothing they could do about it.
If they hitched they were fired. A lot of them were on parole. The boss had
them by the balls. "Sounds like a guy who needs to be killed," I told Lou.
"Well, he likes me, he says I am the best worker he ever had, but I hadda
get off the booze, he needed somebody he could depend on. He even had me
over to his place one time to do some painting for him, I painted his
bathroom, did a good job too. He's got a place in the hills, a big place,
and you oughta see his wife. I never knew they made women that way, so
beautiful -- her eyes, her legs, her body, the way she walked, talked,
jesus."
6.
Well, Lou was true to his word. I didn't see him for some time, not
even on weekends, and meanwhile I was going through a kind of personal hell.
I was very jumpy, nerves gone -- a little noise and I'd jump out of my skin.
I was afraid to go to sleep: nightmare after nightmare, each more terrible
than the one which preceded it. You were all right if you went to sleep
totally drunk, that was all right, but if you went to sleep half-drunk or,
worse, sober, then the dreams began, only you were never sure whether you
were sleeping or whether the action was taking place in the room, for when
you slept you dreamed the entire room, the dirty dishes, the mice, the
folding walls, the pair of shit-in pants some whore had left on the floor,
the dripping faucet, the moon like a bullet out there, cars full of the
sober and well-fed, shining headlights through your window, everything,
everything, you were in some sort of dark corner, dark dark, no help, no
reason, no no reason at all, dark sweating corner, darkness and filth, the
stench of reality, the stink of everything: spiders, eyes, landladies,
sidewalks, bars, buildings, grass, no grass, light, no light, nothing
belonging to you. The pink elephants never showed up but plenty of little
men with savage tricks or a looming big man to strangle you or sink his
teeth into the back of your neck, lay on your back and you sweating, unable
to move, this black stinking hairy thing laying there on you on you on you.
If it wasn't that it was sitting during the days, hours of unspeakable
fear, fear opening in the center of you like a giant blossom, you couldn't
analyze it, figure why it was there, and that made it worse. Hours of
sitting in a chair in the middle of a room, run through and stricken.
Shifting or pissing a major effort, nonsense, and combing your hair or
brushing your teeth -- ridiculous and insane acts. Walking through a sea of
fire. Or pouring water into a drinking glass -- it seemed you had no right
to pour water into a drinking glass. I decided I was crazy, unfit, and this
made me feel dirty. I went to the library and tried to find books about what
made people feel the way I was feeling, but the books weren't there or if
they were I couldn't understand them. Going into the library was hardly easy
-- everybody seemed so comfortable, the librarians, the readers, everybody
but me. I even had trouble using the library crapper -- the bums in there,
the queers watching me piss, they all seemed stronger than I -- unworried
and sure. I kept going out and walking across the street, up a winding
stairway in a cement building where they stored thousands of crates of
oranges. A sign on the roof of another building said JESUS SAVES but neither
Jesus or oranges were worth a damn to me walking up that winding stairway
and into that cement building. I always thought, this is where I belong,
inside of this cement tomb.
The thought of suicide was always there, strong, like ants running
along the underside of the wrists. Suicide was the only positive thing.
Everything else was negative. And there was Lou, glad to clean out the
inside of candy machines to stay alive. He was wiser than I.
7.
At this time I met a lady in a bar, a little older than me, very
sensible. Her legs were still good, she had an odd sense of humor, and had
very expensive clothes. She had come down the ladder from some rich man. We
went to my place and lived together. She was a very good piece of ass but
had to drink all the time. Her name was Vicki. We screwed and drank wine,
drank wine and screwed. I had a library card and went to the library every
day. I hadn't told her about the suicide thing. It was always a big joke, my
coming home from the library. I would open the door and she would look at
me.
"What no books?"
"Vicki, they don't have any books in the library."
I'd come in and take the wine bottle (or bottles) out of the bag and
we'd begin.
One time after a week's drinking I decided to kill myself. I didn't
tell her. I figured I'd do it when she was in a bar looking for a "live
one." I didn't like those fat clowns screwing her but she brought me money
and whiskey and cigars. She gave me the bit about me being the only one she
loved. She called me "Mr. Van Bilderass" for some reason I couldn't figure.
She'd get drunk and keep saying, "You think you're hot stuff, you think
you're Mr. Van Bilderass!" All the time I was working on the idea of how to
kill myself. One day I was sure I would do it. It was after a week's
drinking, port wine, we had bought huge jugs and lined them up on the floor
and behind the huge jugs we had lined up ordinary-sized winebottles, 8 or 9
of them, and behind the ordinary-size bottles we had lined up 4 or 5 little
bottles. Night and day got lost. It was just screwing and talking and
drinking, talking and drinking and screwing. Violent arguments that ended in
love-making. She was a sweet little pig of a screw, tight and squirming. One
woman in 200. With most of the rest it is kind of an act, a joke. Anyhow,
maybe because of it all, the drinking and the fact of the fat dull bulls
screwing Vicki, I got very sick and depressed, and yet what the hell could I
do? run a turret-lathe?
When the wine ran out the depression, the fear, the uselessness of
going on became too much and I knew I was going to do it. The first time she
left the room it was over for me. How, I was not quite sure but there were
hundreds of ways. We had a little gas jet stove. Gas is charming. Gas is a
kind of a kiss. It leaves the body whole. The wine was gone. I could hardly
walk. Armies of fear and sweat ran up and down my body. It becomes quite
simple. The greatest relief is never to have to pass another human being on
the sidewalk, see them walking in their fat, see their little rat eyes,
their cruel 2-bit faces, their animal flowering. What a sweet dream: to
never have to look into another human face.
"I'm going out to look at a newspaper, to see what day it is, o.k.?"
"Sure," she said, "sure."
I walked out the door. Nobody in the hall. No humans. It was about 10
p.m. I went down in the urine-smelling elevator. It took a lot of strength
to be swallowed by that elevator. I walked down the hill. When I got back
she would be gone. She moved quickly when the drinks ran out. Then I could
do it. But first I wanted to know what day it was. I walked down the hill
and there by the drugstore was the newspaper rack. I looked at the date on
the newspaper. It was a Friday. Very well, Friday. As good a day as any.
That meant something. Then I read the headline:
MILTON BERLE'S COUSIN HIT ON HEAD BY FALLING ROCK
I didn't quite get it. I leaned closer and read it again. It was the
same:
MILTON BERLE'S COUSIN HIT ON HEAD BY FALLING ROCK
This was in black type, large type, the banner headline. Of all the
important things that had happened in the world, this was their headline.
MILTON BERLE'S COUSIN HIT ON HEAD BY FALLING ROCK
I crossed the street, feeling much better, and walked into the liquor
store. I got two bottles of port and a pack of cigarettes on credit. When I
got back to the place Vicki was still there.
"What day is it?" she asked.
"Friday."
"O.k.," she said.
I poured two glasses full of wine. There was a little ice left in the
small wall refrigerator. The cubes of ice floated smoothly.
"I don't want to make you unhappy," Vicki said.
"I know you don't."
"Have a sip first."
"Sure."
"A note came under the door while you were gone."
"Yeah."
I took a sip, gagged, lit a cigarette, took another sip, then she
handed me the note. It was a warm Los Angeles night. A Friday. I read the
note:
Dear Mr. Chinaski: You have until next Wednesday to get up the rent. If
you don't, you are out. I know about those women in your room. And you make
too much noise. And you broke your window. You are paying for your
privileges. Or supposed to be. I have been very kind with you. I now say
next Wednesday or you are out. The tenants are tired of all the noise and
cussing and singing night and day, day and night, and so am I. You can't
live here without rent. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I drank the rest of the wine down, almost lost it. It was a warm night
in Los Angeles.
"I'm tired of fucking those fools," she said.
"I'll get the money," I told her.
"How? You don't know how to do anything."
"I know that."
"Then how are we going to make it?"
"Somehow."
'That last guy fucked me three times. My pussy was raw."
"Don't worry, baby, I'm a genius. The only trouble is, nobody knows
it."
"A genius at what?"
"I don't know."
"Mr. Van Bilderass!"
"That's me. By the way, do you know that Milton Berle's cousin was hit
on the head by a falling rock?"
"When?"
"Today or yesterday."
"What kind of rock?"
"I don't know. I imagine some kind of big buttery yellow stone."
"Who gives a damn?"
"Not I. Certainly not I. Except -- "
"Except what?"
"Except I guess that rock kept me alive."
"You talk like an asshole."
"I am an asshole."
I grinned and poured wine all around.
ALL THE ASSHOLES IN THE WORLD AND MINE
"no man's suffering is ever larger than nature intended." --
conversation overheard at a crapgame
1.
It was the ninth race and the horse's name was Green Cheese. He won by
6 and I got back 52 for 5 and since I was far ahead anyhow, it called for
another drink. "Gimme a shota green cheese," I told the barkeep. It didn't
confuse him. He knew what I was drinking. I had been leaning there all
afternoon. I had been drunk all the night before and when I got home, of
course, I had to have some more. I was set. I had scotch, vodka, wine and
beer. A mortician or somebody called about 8 p.m. and said he'd like to see
me. "Fine," I said, "bring drinks." "Do you mind if I bring friends?" "I
don't have any friends." "I mean my friends." "I do not give a damn," I told
him. I went into the kitchen and poured a water glass %'s full of scotch. I
drank it down straight just like the old days. I used to drink a fifth in an
hour and a half, two hours. "Green cheese," I said to the kitchen walls. I
opened a tall can of frozen beer.
2.
The mortician arrived and got on the phone and pretty soon many strange
people were walking in, all of them bringing drinks with them. There were a
lot of women and I felt like raping all of them. I sat on the rug, feeling
the electric light, feeling the drinks going through me like a parade, like
an attack on the blues, like an attack on madness.
"I will never have to work again!" I told them. "The horses will take
care of me like no whore EVER did!"
"Oh, we know that Mr. Chinaski! We know that you are a GREAT
man!"
It was a little greyhaired fucker on the couch, rubbing his hands,
leering at me with wet lips. He meant it. He made me sick. I finished the
drink in my hand and found another somewhere and drank that too. I began
talking to the women. I promised them all the endearments of my mighty cock.
They laughed. I meant it. Right then. There. I moved toward the women. The
men pulled me off. For a worldly man I was very much the highschool boy. If
I hadn't been the great Mr. Chinaski, somebody would have killed me. As it
was, I ripped off my shirt and offered to go out on the lawn with anybody. I
was lucky. Nobody felt like pushing me over my shoelaces.
When my mind cleared it was 4 a.m. All the lights were on and everybody
was gone. I was still sitting there. I found a warm beer and drank it. Then
I went to bed with the feeling that all drunks know: that I had been a fool
but to hell with it.
3.
I had been bothered with hemorrhoids for 15 or 20 years; also
perforated ulcers, bad liver, boils, anxiety-neurosis, various types of
insanity, but you go on with things and just hope that everything doesn't
fall apart at once.
It seemed that drunk almost did it. I felt dizzy and weak, but that was
ordinary. It was the hemorrhoids. They would not respond to anything -- hot
baths, salves, nothing helped. My intestines hung almost out of my ass like
a dog's tail. I went to a doctor. He simply glanced. "Operation," he said.
"All right," I said, "only thing is that I am a coward."
"Vel, ya, dot vill make it more difficult."
You lousy Nazi bastard, I thought.
"I vant you to take dis laxative der Tuesday night, den at 7 a.m. you
get up, ya? and you gif yourself de enema, you keep gifiing dis enema until
der wasser is clear, ya? den I take unudder look into you at 10 a.m. Vensday
morning."
"Ya whol, mine herring," I said.
4.
The enema tube kept slipping out and the whole bathroom got wet and it
was cold and my belly hurt and I was drowning in slime and shit. This is the
way the world ended, not with an atom bomb, but with shit shit shit. With
the set I had bought there was nothing to pinch the flow of water and my
fingers would not work so the water ran in full blast and out full blast. It
took me an hour and a half and by then my hemorrhoids were in command of the
world. Several times I thought of just quitting and dying. I found a can of
pure spirits of gum turpentine in my closet. It was a beautiful red and
green can. "DANGER!" it said, "harmful or fatal if swallowed." I was
a coward: I put the can back.
5.
The doctor put me up on a table. "Now, chust relox der bock, ya? relox,
relox . . ."
Suddenly he jammed a wedge-shaped box into my ass and began unwinding
his snake which began to crawl up into my intestine looking for blockage,
looking for cancer.
"Ha! Now if it hurts a bit, nien? den pant like a dog, go, hahaha-
hahaaaa!"
"You dirty motherfucker!"
"Vot?"
"Shit, shit, shit! You dog-burner! You swine, sadist . . . You burned
Joan at the stake, you put nails in the hands of Christ, you voted for war,
you voted for Goldwater, you voted for "Nixon ... Mother-ass! What are you
DOING to me?"
"It vill soon be over. You take it veil. You will be good patient."
He rolled the snake back in and then I saw him peering into something
that looked like a periscope. He slammed some gauze up my bloody ass and I
got up and put on my clothes. "And the operation will be for what?"
He knew what I meant. "Chust der hemorrhoids."
I peeked up his nurse's legs as I walked out. She smiled sweetly.
6.
In the waiting room of the hospital a little girl looked at our grey
faces, our white faces, our yellow faces . . . "Everybody is dying!" she
proclaimed. Nobody answered her. I turned the page of an old Time
magazine.
After routine filling out of papers . . . urine specimens . . . blood,
I was taken to a four bed ward on the eighth floor. When the question of
religion came up I said "Catholic," largely to save myself from the stares
and questions that usually followed a proclamation of no religion. I was
tired of all the arguments and red tape. It was a Catholic hospital -- maybe
I'd get better service or blessings from the Pope.
Well, I was locked in with three others. Me, the monk, the loner,
gambler, playboy, idiot. It was all over. The beloved solitude, the
refrigerator full of beer, the cigars on the dresser, the phone numbers of
the big-legged, big-assed women.
There was one with a yellow face. He looked somehow like a big fat bird
dipped in urine and sun-dried. He kept hitting his button. He had a whining,
crying, mewing voice. "Nurse, nurse, where's Dr. Thomas? Dr. Thomas gave me
some codeine yesterday. Where's Dr. Thomas?"
"I don't know where Dr. Thomas is."
"Can I have a coughdrop?"
"They are right on your table."
"They ain't stoppin' my cough, and that cough medicine ain't any good
either."
"Nurse!" a whitehaired guy yelled from the northeast bed, "can I have
some more coffee? I'd like some more coffee."
"I'll see," she said and left.
My window showed hills, a slope of hills rising. I looked at the slopes
of hills. It was getting dark. Nothing but houses on the hills. Old houses.
I had the strange feeling that they were unoccupied that everybody had died,
that everybody had given up. I listened to the three men complain about the
food, about the price of the ward, about the doctors and nurses. When one
spoke the other two did not seem to be listening, they did not answer. Then
another would begin. They took turns. There was nothing else to do. They
spoke vaguely, switching subjects. I was in with an Oakie, a movie
cameraman, and the yellow piss-bird. Outside of my window a cross turned in
the sky -- first it was blue, then it was red. It was night and they pulled
our curtains around our beds a bit and I felt better, but realized, oddly,
that pain or possible death did not bring me closer to humanity. Visitors
began arriving. I didn't have any visitors. I felt like a saint. I looked
out of my window and saw a sign near the turning red and blue cross in the
sky. MOTEL, it said. Bodies in there in more gentle attunement. Fucking.
7.
A poor devil dressed in green came in and shaved my ass. Such terrible
jobs in the world! There was one job I had missed.
They slipped a showercap over my head and pushed me onto a roller. This
was it. Surgery. The coward gliding down the halls past the dying. There was
a man and a woman. They pushed me and smiled, they seemed very relaxed. They
rolled me onto an elevator. There were four women on the elevator.
"I'm going to surgery. Any of you ladies care to change places with
me?"
They drew up against the wall and refused to answer.
In the operating room we awaited for the arrival of God. God finally
entered: "Veil, veil, veil, dere isss mine friend!"
I didn't even bother to answer such a lie.
"Turn on der stomach, please."
"Well," I said, "I guess it's too late to change my mind now."
"Ya," said God, "you are now in our power!"
I felt the strap go across my back. They spread my legs. The first
spinal went in. It felt like he was spreading towels all around my asshole
and across my back. Another spinal. A third. I kept giving them lip. The
coward, the showman, whistling in the dark.
"Put him to sleep, ya," he said. I felt a shot in the elbow, a stinger.
No good. Too many drunks behind me.
"Anybody got a cigar?" I asked.
Somebody laughed. I was getting corny. Bad form. I decided to be quiet.
I could feel the knife tugging at my ass. There wasn't any pain.
"Now dis," I heard him say, "dis iss the main obstruction, see? und
here . . ."
8.
The recovery room was dull. There were some fine-looking women walking
around but they ignored me. I got up on my elbow and looked around. Bodies
everywhere. Very very white and still. Real operations. Lungers. Heart
cases. Everything. I felt somewhat the amateur and somewhat ashamed. I was
glad when they wheeled me out of there. My three roomies really stared when
they rolled me in. Bad form. I rolled off the thing onto the bed. I found
that my legs were still numb and that I had no control over them. I decided
to go to sleep. The whole place was depressing. When I woke up my ass was
really hurting. But legs still dull. I reached down for my cock and it felt
as if it wasn't there. I mean, there wasn't any feeling. Except I wanted to
piss and I couldn't piss. It was horrible and I tried to forget it.
One of my ex-loves came by and sat there looking at me. I had told her
I was going in. Quite what for, I don't know.
"Hi! How you doin'?"
"Fine, only I can't piss."
She smiled.
We talked a little about something and then she left.
9.
It was like in the movies: all the male nurses seemed to be homosexual.
One seemed more manly than the others.
"Hey, buddy!"
He came over. "I can't piss. I want to piss but I can't."
"I'll be right back. I'll fix you up."
I waited quite a while. Then he came back, pulled the curtain around my
bed and sat down.
Jesus, I thought, what's he gonna do? Gimme a head-job?
But I looked and he seemed to have some kind of machine with him. I
watched as he took a hollow needle and ran it down the piss-hole of my cock.
The feeling that I thought was gone from my cock was suddenly back.
"Shit o baby!" I hissed.
"Not the most pleasant thing in the world, is it?"
"Indeed, indeed. I tend to agree. Weeowee! Shit and jesus!"
"Soon be over."
He pressed against my bladder. I could see the little square fish-bowl
filling with piss. This was one of the parts they left out of the movies.
"God o mighty, pal, mercy! Let's call it a good night's work."
"Just a moment. Now."
He drew the needle out. Out the window my blue and red cross turned,
turned. Christ hung on the wall with a piece of dried palm stuck at his
feet. No wonder men turned to gods. It was pretty hard to take it straight.
"Thanks," I told the nurse.
"Any time, any time." He pulled the curtain back and left with his
machine.
My yellow piss-bird punched his button.
"Where's that nurse? 0 why o why doesn't that nurse come?"
He pushed it again.
"Is my button working? Is something wrong with my button?"
The nurse came in.
"My back hurts! 0, my back hurts terrible! Nobody has come to
visit me! I guess you fellows noticed that! Nobody has come to see me! Not
even my wife! Where's my wife? Nurse, raise my bed, my back hurts!
THERE! Higher! No, no, my god, you've got it too high! Lower, lower! There.
Stop! Where's my dinner? I haven't had dinner! Look . . ."
The nurse walked out.
I keep wondering about the little pissmachine. I'll probably have to
buy one, carry it around all my life. Duck into alleys, behind trees, in the
back seat of my car.
The Oakie in bed one hadn't said much. "It's my foot," he suddenly said
to the walls, "I can't understand it, my foot just got all swelled-up
overnight and it won't go down. It hurts, it hurts."
The whitehaired guy in the corner pushed his button.
"Nurse," he said, "nurse, how about hustling me up a pot of coffee?"
Really, I though, my main problem is to keep from going insane.
10.
The next day old whitehair (the movie cameraman) brought his coffee
down and sat in a chair by my bed. "I can't stand that son of a bitch." He
was speaking of the yellow piss-bird. Well, there was nothing to do with
whitehair but talk to him. I told him that drink had brought me pretty much
to my present station in life. For kicks I told him some of my wilder drunks
and some of the crazy things that had happened. He had some good ones
himself.
"In the old days," he told me, "they used to have the big red cars that
ran between Glendale and Long Beach, I believe it was. They ran all day and
most of the night except for an interval of an hour and a half, I think
between 3:30 and 5:30 a.m.. Well, I went drinking one night and met a buddy
at the bar and after the bar closed we went to his place and finished
something he had left there. I left his place and kinda got lost. I turned
up a deadend street but I didn't know it was deadend. I kept driving and I
was driving pretty fast. I kept going until I hit the railroad tracks. When
I hit the tracks my steering wheel came up and hit me on the chin and
knocked me out. There I was across those tracks in my car K.O.'d. Only I was
lucky because it was in the hour and a half that no trains were running. I
don't know how long I sat there. But the train horn woke me up. I woke up
and saw this train coming down the tracks at me. I just had time to start
the car and back off. The train tore on by. I drove the car home, the front
wheels all bent under and wobbling."
"That's tight."
"Another time I am sitting in the bar. Right across the way is a place
where the railroadmen ate. The train stopped and the men got out to eat. I
am sitting next to some guy in this bar. He turns to me and he says, 'I used
to drive one of those things and I can drive one again. Come on and watch me
start it.' I walked out with him and we climbed into the engine. Sure
enough, he started the thing. We got up good speed. Then I started thinking,
what the hell am I doing? I told the guy, 'I don't know about you but I'm
getting off!' I knew enough about trains to know where the brake was.
I yanked the brake and before the train even stopped I went out the side. He
went out the other side and I never saw him again. Pretty soon there is a
big crowd around the train, policemen, train investigators, yard dicks,
reporters, onlookers. I am standing off to one side with the rest of the
crowd, watching. 'Come on, let's go up and find out what's going on!"
somebody next to me said. 'Nah, hell,' I said, 'it's just a train.' I was
scared that maybe somebody had seen me. The next day there was a story in
the papers. The headline said, TRAIN GOES TO PACOIMA BY ITSELF. I cut out
the story and saved it. I saved that clipping for ten years. My wife used to
see it. 'What the hell you saving this story for? -- TRAIN GOES TO PACOIMA
BY ITSELF.' I never told her. I was still scared. You're the first one I
ever told the story to."
"Don't worry," I told him, "not a single soul will ever hear that story
again."
Then my ass really began to kick up and whitehair suggested I ask for a
shot. I did. The nurse gave me one in the hip. She left the curtain pulled
when she left but whitehair continued to sit there. In fact, he had a
visitor. A visitor with a voice that carried clear down through my fucked-up
bowels. He really sent it out.
"I'm going to move all the ships around the neck of the bay. We'll
shoot it right there. We're paying a captain of one of those boats $890 a
month and he has two boys under him. We've got this fleet right there. Let's
put it to use, I think. The public's ready for a good sea story. They
haven't had a good sea story since Errol Flynn."
"Yeah," said whitehair, "those things run in cycles. The public's ready
now. They need a good sea story."
"Sure, there are lots of kids who have never seen a sea story. And
speaking of kids, that's all I'm gonna use. I'll run 'em all over the boats.
The only old people we'll use will be for the leads. We just move these
ships around the bay and shoot right there. Two of the ships need masts,
that's all that's wrong with them. We hand them masts and then we begin."
"The public is sure ready for a sea story. It's a cycle and the cycle
is due."
"They are worried about the budget. Hell, it won't cost a thing. Why --
"
I pulled the curtain back and spoke to whitehair. "Look, you might
think me a bastard, but you guys are right against my bed. Can't you take
your friend over to your bed?"
"Sure, sure!"
The producer stood up. "Hell, I'm sorry. I didn't know . . ."
He was fat and sordid; content, happy, sickening.
"O.k.," I said.
They moved up to whitehair's bed and continued to talk about the sea
story. All the dying on the eighth floor of the Queen of Angels Hospital
could hear the sea story. The producer finally left.
Whitehair looked over at me. "That's the world's greatest producer.
He's produced more great pictures than any man alive. That was John F."
"John F.," said the piss-bird, "yeah, he's made some great pictures,
great pictures!"
I tried to go to sleep. It was hard to sleep at night because they all
snored. At once. Whitehair was the loudest. In the morning he always woke me
up to complain that he hadn't slept. That night the yellow piss-bird
hollered all night. First because he couldn't shit. Unplug me, my god, I
gotta crap! Or he hurt. Or where was his doctor? He kept having different
doctors. One couldn't stand him and another would take over. They couldn't
find anything wrong with him. There wasn't: he wanted his mother but his
mother was dead.
11.
I finally got them to move me to a semi-private ward. But it was a
worse move. His name was Herb and like the male nurse told me, "He's not
sick. There isn't anything wrong with him at all." He had on a silk robe,
shaved twice a day, had a T.V. set which he never turned off, and visitors
all the time. He was head of a fairly large business and had gone the
formula of having his grey hair short-cropped to indicate youth, efficiency,
intelligence, and brutality.
The T.V. turned out to be far worse than I could have imagined. I had
never owned a T.V. and so was unaccustomed to its fare. The auto races were
all right, I could stand the auto races, although they were very dull. But
there was some type of Marathon on for some Cause or another and they were
collecting money. They started early in the morning and went right on
through. Little numbers were posted indicating how much money had been
collected. There was somebody in a cook's hat. I don't know what the hell he
meant. And there was a terrible old woman with a face like a frog. She was
terribly ugly. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe these people didn't
know how ugly and naked and meaty and disgusting their faces looked -- like
rapes of everything decent. And yet they just walked up and calmly put their
faces on the screen and spoke to each other and laughed about something. The
jokes were very hard to laugh at but they didn't seem to have any trouble.
Those faces, those faces! Herb didn't say anything about it. He just kept
looking as if he were interested. I didn't know the names of the people but
they were all stars of some sort. They'd announce a name and then everybody
would get excited -- except me. I couldn't understand it. I got a little
sick. I wished I were back in the other room. Meanwhile, I was trying to
have my first bowel movement. Nothing happened. A swath of blood. It was
Saturday night. The priest came by. "Would you care for Communion tomorrow?"
he asked. "No, thank you, Father, I'm not a very good Catholic. I haven't
been to church in 20 years." "Were you baptized a Catholic?" "Yes." "Then
you're still a Catholic. You're just a bum Catholic." Just like in the
movies -- he talks turkey, just like Cagney, or was it Pat O'Brien who
sported the white collar? All my movies were dated: the last movie I had
seen was The Lost Weekend. He gave me a little booklet. "Read this."
He left.
PRAYER BOOK, it said. Compiled for use in hospitals and
institutions.
I read.
O Eternal and ever-blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with
all the angels and saints, I adore you.
My Queen and my Mother, I give myself entirely to you; and to show my
devotion to you, I consecrate to you this day my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my
heart, my whole being without reserve.
Agonizing Heart of Jesus, have mercy on the dying. O my Cod, prostrate
on my knees, I adore you...
Join me, you blessed Spirits, in thanking the God of Mercies, who is so
bountiful to so unworthy a creature.
It was my sins, dear Jesus, that caused your bitter anguish . . . my
sins that scourged you, and crowned you with thorns, and nailed you to the
cross. I confess that I deserve only punishment.
I got up and tried to shit. It had been three days. Nothing. Only a
swath of blood again and the cuts in my rectum ripping open. Herb had on a
comedy show.
"The Batman is coming onto the program tonight. I wanna see the
Batman!"
"Yeah?" I crawled back into bed.
I am especially sorry for my sins of impatience and anger, my sins of
discouragement and rebellion.
The Batman showed up. Everybody on the program seemed excited. "It's
the Batman!" said Herb.
"Good," I said, "the Batman." Sweet Heart of Mary, be my savior.
"He can sing! Look, he can sing!"
The Batman had removed his Batsuit and was dressed in a street-suit. He
was a very ordinary looking young man with a somewhat blank face. He sang.
The song lasted and lasted and the Batman seemed very proud of his singing,
for some reason.
"He can sing!" said Herb.
My good Cod, what am I and who are you, that I should dare approach
you?
I am only a poor, wretched, sinful creature, totally unworthy to appear
before you.
I turned my back on the T.V. set and tried to sleep. Herb had it on
very loud. I had some cotton which I stuck into my ears but it helped very
little. I'll never shit, I thought, I'll never shit again, not with that
thing on. It's got my guts tightened, tightened . . . I'm gonna go nuts for
sure this time!
O Lord, my Cod, from this day I accept from your hand willingly and
with submission, the kind of death that it may please you to send me, with
all its sorrows, pains, and anguish. (Plenary indulgence once daily, under
the usual conditions.)
Finally, at 1:30 a.m. I could submit no longer. I had been listening
since 7 a.m. My shit was blocked for Eternity. I felt that I had paid for
the Cross in those eighteen and one-half hours. I managed to turn around.
"Herb! For Christ's sake, man! I'm about to have it! I'm about to go
off my screw! Herb! MERCY! I CAN'T STAND T.V.! I CAN'T STAND THE HUMAN RACE!
Herb! Herb!"
He was asleep, sitting up.
"You dirty cunt-lapper," I said.
"Whatza? whatz??"
"WHY DON'T YOU TURN THAT THING OFF?"
"Turn .. . off? ah, sure, sure ... whyn't ya say so, kid?"
12.
Herb snored too. He also talked in his sleep. I went to sleep about