Hot Water Music

  “No.”

  “You know how we spent the afternoon?”

  “No.”

  “Reading your poems!”

  “Oh?”

  “And you know what he said?”

  “No.”

  “He said your poems were great!”

  “That’s O.K.”

  “Listen, he got me so excited. I don’t know how to handle it. Won’t you come over? Now? I want to see you now…”

  “Louise, I’m working…”

  “Listen, you don’t have anything against black men?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve known this boy for ten years. He used to work for me when I was rich.”

  “You mean when you were still with your rich husband.”

  “Will I see you later? Ibsen is on at 8:30.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Why did that bastard come around? I was all right and then he came around. Christ. I’m so excited, I’ve got to see you. I’m about to go crazy. He was so beautiful.”

  “I’m working, Louise. The word around here is ‘Rent.’ Try to understand.”

  Louise hung up. She called again at 8:20 about Ibsen. Henry said he was still working. He was. Then he began to drink and just sat in a chair, he just sat in a chair. At 9:50 there was a knock on the door. It was Booboo Meltzer, the number one rock star of 1970, currently unemployed, still living off royalties. “Hello, kid,” said Henry.

  Meltzer walked in and sat down.

  “Man,” he said, “you’re a beautiful old cat. I can’t get over you.”

  “Lay off, kid, cats are out of style, dogs are in now.”

  “I got a hunch you need help, old man.”

  “Kid, it’s never been different.”

  Henry walked into the kitchen, found two beers, cracked them and walked out.

  “I’m out of cunt, kid, which to me is like being out of love. I can’t separate them. I’m not that clever.”

  “None of us are clever, Pops. We all need help.”

  “Yeh.”

  Meltzer had a small celluloid tube. Carefully he tapped out two little white spots on the coffee table.

  “This is cocaine, Pops, cocaine…”

  “Ah, hah.”

  Meltzer reached into his pocket, pulled out a $50 bill, rolled the 50 tightly, then worked it up one nostril. Pressing a finger on the other nostril he bent over one of the white spots on the coffee table and inhaled it. Then he took the $50 bill, worked it up the other nostril and sniffed the second white spot.

  “Snow,” said Meltzer.

  “It’s Christmas. Appropriate,” said Henry.

  Meltzer tapped out two more white spots and passed the fifty. Henry said, “Hold it, I’ll use my own,” and he found a $1 bill and sniffed up. Once for each nostril

  “What do you think of The White Dog Hunch?” asked Henry.

  “This is ‘The White Dog Hunch,’” said Meltzer, tapping out two more spots.

  “God,” said Henry, “I don’t think I’ll ever be bored again. You’re not bored with me, are you?”

  “No way,” said Meltzer, sniffing it up through the $50 with all his might. “Pops, there’s just no way…”

  LONG DISTANCE DRUNK

  The phone rang at 3 a.m. Francine got up and answered it and brought the phone to Tony in bed. It was Francine’s phone. Tony answered. It was Joanna long distance from Frisco. “Listen,” he said, “I told you never to phone me here.” Joanna had been drinking. “You just shut up and listen to me. You owe me something, Tony.” Tony exhaled slowly, “O.K., go ahead.”

  “How’s Francine?”

  “Nice of you to ask. She’s fine. We’re both fine. We were asleep.”

  “Well, anyhow, I got hungry and went for pizza, I went to a pizza parlor.”

  “Yeh?”

  “You’ve got something against pizza?”

  “Pizza is garbage.”

  “Ah, you don’t know what’s good. Anyhow, I sat down in the pizza parlor and ordered special pizza. ‘Give me the very best,’ I told them. I sat there and they brought it and said $18. I said I couldn’t pay $18. They laughed and went away and I began to eat the pizza.”

  “How are your sisters?”

  “I don’t live with either of them anymore. They both ran me out. It was those long-distance phone calls to you. Some of the phone bills ran over $200.”

  “I’ve told you to stop phoning.”

  “Shut up. It’s my way of letting myself down easy. You owe me something.”

  “All right, go ahead.”

  “Well, anyhow, I got to eating the pizza and wondering how I was going to pay for it. Then I got dry. I needed a beer so I took the pizza to the bar and ordered a beer. I drank that and ate some of the pizza and then I noticed a tall Texan standing next to me. He must have been seven feet tall. He bought me a beer. He was playing music on the juke box and it was country western. It was a country western place. You don’t like country western music, do you?”

  “It’s pizza I dislike.”

  “Anyhow, I gave the tall Texan some of my pizza and he bought me another beer. We kept drinking beer and eating pizza until the pizza was finished. He paid for the pizza and we went to another bar. Country western again. We danced. He was a good dancer. We drank and kept hitting country western bars. Every bar we went to was country western. We drank beer and danced. He was a great dancer.”

  “Yes?”

  “Finally we got hungry again and we went to a drive-in for a hamburger. We ate our hamburgers and then suddenly he leaned over and kissed me. It was a hot kiss. Wow!”

  “Oh?”

  “I told him, ‘Hell, let’s go to a motel.’ And he said, ‘No, let’s go to my place.’ And I said, ‘No, I want to go to a motel.’ But he insisted upon going to his place.”

  “Was there a wife?”

  “No, his wife was in prison. She’d shot and killed one of their daughters, a 17-year-old.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, he had one daughter left. She was 16 and he introduced me to his daughter, and then we went into his bedroom.”

  “Do I have to listen to the details?”

  “Let me talk! I’m paying for this call. I’ve paid for all these calls! You owe me something, you listen to me!”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Well, we got into the bedroom and stripped down. He was really hung but his pecker looked terribly blue.”

  “It’s when the balls are blue, there’s trouble.”

  “Anyhow, we climbed into bed and played around. But there was a problem…”

  “Too drunk?”

  “Yes. But mainly it was that he only got hot when his daughter came into the room or made a noise—like coughing or flushing the toilet. Any glimpse or sign of his daughter would turn him on, he’d really get hot.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyhow, in the morning he told me that I had a home for life if I wanted it. Plus a $300-a-week allowance. He has a very nice place: two-and-one-half bathrooms, three or four tv sets, a bookcase full of books: Pearl S. Buck, Agatha Christie, Shakespeare, Proust, Hemingway, the Harvard Classics, hundreds of cookbooks and the Bible. He has two dogs, a cat, three cars…”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s all I wanted to tell you. Goodbye.”

  Joanna hung up. Tony put the receiver back in the cradle, then set the phone on the floor. Tony stretched out. He hoped Francine was asleep. She wasn’t. “What’d she want?” she asked.

  “She told me a story about a man who fucked his daughters.”

  “Why? Why should she tell you that?”

  “I suppose she thought I’d be interested, plus the fact that she fucked him too.”

  “Are you?”

  “Not really.”

  Francine turned over to him and he slipped his arm around her. Three a.m. drunks, all over America, were staring at the walls, having finally given it up. Y
ou didn’t have to be a drunk to get hurt, to be zeroed out by a woman; but you could get hurt and become a drunk. You might think for a while, especially when you were young, that luck was with you, and sometimes it was. But there were all manner of averages and laws working that you knew nothing about, even as you imagined things were going well. Some night, some hot summer Thursday night, you became the drunk, you were out there alone in a cheap rented room, and no matter how many times you’d been out there before, it was no help, it was even worse because you had got to thinking you wouldn’t have to face it again. All you could do was light another cigarette, pour another drink, check the peeling walls for lips and eyes. What men and women did to each other was beyond comprehension.

  Tony drew Francine closer to him, pressed his body quietly against hers and listened to her breathe. It was horrible to have to be serious about shit like this once again.

  Los Angeles was so strange. He listened. The birds were already up, chirping, yet it was pitch dark. Soon the people would be heading for the freeways. You’d hear the freeways hum, plus cars starting everywhere on the streets. Meanwhile the 3 a.m. drunks of the world would lay in their beds, trying in vain to sleep, and deserving that rest, if they could find it.

  HOW TO GET PUBLISHED

  Having been an underground writer all of my life I have known some strange editors but the strangest of them all was H. R. Mulloch and his wife, Honeysuckle. Mulloch, ex-con and ex-diamond thief, was editor of the magazine, Demise. I began to send him poetry and a correspondence ensued. He claimed my poetry had ruined him for everybody else’s poetry; and I wrote back and said it had ruined me for everybody else’s poetry, too. H.R. began talking about the possibilities of putting out a book of my poems and I said okay, fine, go ahead. He wrote back, I can’t pay royalties, we’re as poor as a church mouse. I wrote back, okay, fine, forget royalties, I’m as poor as a church mouse’s shriveled titty. He replied, wait a minute, most writers, well, I meet them and they are complete assholes and horrible human beings. I wrote back, you’re right, I’m a complete asshole and a horrible human being. O.K., he answered, me and Honeysuckle are coming to L.A. to check you out.

  The phone rang a week and a half later. They were in town, just in from New Orleans, staying in a Third Street hotel filled with prostitutes, winos, pickpockets, second story men, dishwashers, muggers, stranglers and rapists. Mulloch loved the low-life, and I think he even loved poverty. From his letters I got the idea that H.R. believed that poverty bred purity. Of course, that’s what the rich have always wanted us to believe, but that’s another story.

  I got in the car with Marie and we drove on down, first stopping for three six-packs and a fifth of cheap whiskey. There was a little grey-haired man about five feet tall standing outside. He was dressed in workingman’s blues but with a bandanna (white) about his throat. On his head he wore a very tall white sombrero. Marie and I walked up. He was puffing on a cigarette and smiling. “You Chinaski?” “Yeh.” I said, “and this is Marie, my woman.” “No man,” he answered, “can ever call a woman his own. We never own ’em, we only borrow ’em for a little while.” “Yeh,” I said, “I guess that’s best.” We followed H.R. up the stairway down a hall painted blue and red that smelled of murder.

  “Only hotel in town we could find that would take the dogs, a parrot, and the two of us.”

  “Looks like a nice place,” I said.

  He opened his door and we walked in. There were two dogs in there running around, and Honeysuckle was standing in the center of the room with a parrot on her shoulder.

  “Thomas Wolfe,” said the parrot, “is the world’s greatest living writer.”

  “Wolfe’s dead,” I said. “Your parrot is wrong.”

  “It’s an old parrot,” said H.R. “We’ve had him a long time.”

  “How long have you been with Honeysuckle?”

  “Thirty years.”

  “Just borrowed her for a while?”

  “That’s the way it seems.”

  The dogs ran around and Honeysuckle stood in the center of the room with the parrot on her shoulder. She looked dark, Italian or Greek, very skinny, with pouches under her eyes; she looked tragic and kind and dangerous, mostly tragic. I put the whiskey and beer on the table and everybody moved forward toward it. H.R. began ripping off beercaps and I started peeling the whiskey. Dusty drinking glasses appeared along with several ashtrays. Through the wall to the left, a male voice suddenly boomed, “You fuckin’ whore I want you to eat my shit!”

  We sat down and I splashed the whiskey around. H.R. passed me a cigar. I peeled it, bit off the end and lit up.

  “What’cha think of modern literature?” H.R. asked me.

  “Don’t really care for it.”

  H.R. narrowed his eyes and grinned at me. “Ha, I thought so!”

  “Listen,” I said, “why don’t you take off that sombrero so I can see who I’m dealing with. You might be a horse thief.”

  “No,” he said, sweeping the sombrero off with a dramatic gesture, “but I was one of the best diamond thieves in the state of Ohio.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  The girls were drinking away. “I just love my dogs,” said Honeysuckle. “Do you love dogs?” she asked me.

  “I don’t know if I love them or not.”

  “He loves himself,” said Marie.

  “Marie has a very penetrating mind,” I said.

  “I like the way you write,” said H.R. “You can say a lot without getting fancy.”

  “Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.”

  “What’s that?” H.R. asked.

  I repeated the statement and splashed more whiskey around.

  “I gotta write that down,” said H.R. He pulled a pen from his pocket and wrote it down on the edge of one of the brown paper bags laying on the table.

  The parrot climbed off Honeysuckle’s shoulder, walked across the table and climbed up on my left shoulder. “That’s nice,” said Honeysuckle. “James Thurber,” said the bird, “is the world’s greatest living writer.” “Dumb bastard,” I said to the bird. I felt a sharp pain in my left ear. The bird had almost torn it off. We are all such sensitive creatures. H.R. ripped off more beercaps. We drank on.

  Afternoon became evening and evening became night. I awakened in the dark. I had been sleeping on the rug in the center of the floor. H.R. and Honeysuckle were asleep in the bed. Marie was asleep on the couch. All three of them snored, especially Marie. I got up and sat at the table. There was some whiskey left. I poured it and drank a warm beer. I sat there and drank some more warm beer. The parrot sat on the back of a chair across from me. Suddenly he climbed down and walked across the table between the ashtrays and empty bottles and climbed up on my shoulder. “Don’t say that thing,” I told him, “it’s very irritating to me when you say that thing.” “Fuckin’ whore,” said the parrot. I lifted the bird by its feet and placed him back on the chair. Then I got back down on the rug and went to sleep.

  In the morning, H.R. Mulloch made an announcement. “I’ve decided to print a book of your poems. We might as well go home and get to work.”

  “You mean you realized I’m not a horrible human being?”

  “No,” said H.R., “I didn’t realize that at all, but I’ve decided to ignore my better judgment and print you anyhow.”

  “Were you really the best diamond thief in the state of Ohio?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I know you did time. How’d you get caught?”

  “It was so stupid I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I went down and got a couple more six packs and came back and Marie and I helped H.R. and Honeysuckle pack. There were special carrying cases for the dogs and the parrot. We got everything down the stairway and into my car, then we sat and finished the beer. We were all pros: nobody was foolish enough to suggest breakfast.

  “You come out and see us now,” said H.R. “We’re going to be pu
tting the book together. You’re a son of a bitch but a man can talk to you. Those other poets, they’re always flaunting their feathers and putting on a dumb asshole act.”

  “You’re okay,” said Honeysuckle. “The dogs like you.”

  “And the parrot,” said H.R.

  The girls stayed in the car and I went back with H.R. while he turned in his key. An old woman in a green kimono, her hair dyed a bright red, opened the door.

  “This is Mama Stafford,” H.R. said to me. “Mama Stafford, this is the world’s greatest poet.”

  “Really?” asked Mama.

  “The world’s greatest living poet,” I said.

  “Why don’t you boys come in for a drink? You look like you need one.”

  We went in and each of us forced down a glass of warm white wine. We said goodbye and went back to the car…

  At the train station, H.R. got the tickets and checked in the parrot and dogs at the baggage counter. Then he came back and sat down with us. “Hate flying,” he said. “Terrified of flying.” I went and got a half pint and we passed it around waiting. Then they started loading the train. We stood around on the platform and suddenly Honeysuckle leaped on me and gave me a long kiss. Toward the end of the kiss she passed her tongue rapidly in and out of my mouth. I stood and lit a cigar while Marie kissed H.R. Then H.R. and Honeysuckle climbed into the train.

  “He’s a nice man,” said Marie.

  “Sweetie,” I said, “I think you gave him rocks.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “I’m always jealous.”

  “Look, they’re sitting at the window, they’re smiling at us.”

  “It’s embarrassing. I wish the fucking train would pull out.”

  Finally the train did begin to pull out. We waved, of course, and they waved back. H.R. had a pleased and happy grin. Honeysuckle seemed to be crying. She looked quite tragic. Then we couldn’t see them anymore. It was over. I was about to be published. Selected Poems. We turned and walked back through the train station.

  SPIDER