Hot Water Music

  “The way I look at it is that you’re an accessory to a murder.”

  “But what I got to thinking, Carl, is that those people really didn’t seem to be bad people. I’ve seen people I disliked a lot more who never killed anything. I don’t know, it’s really confusing. I even think of that guy in the freezer as some kind of big frozen rabbit…”

  The barkeep pulled the Luger out from under the bar and pointed it at Mel.

  “Okay,” he said, “you just freeze while I call the police.”

  “Look, Carl—this thing isn’t for you to decide.”

  “The hell it isn’t! I’m a citizen! You assholes just can’t go around popping people into freezers. I may be next!”

  “Look, Carl, look at me! I want to tell you something…”

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “It was just bullshit.”

  “You mean what you told me?”

  “Yeah, it was just bullshit. One big joke. I sucked you in. Now put your gun away and pour us both a scotch and water.”

  “That story wasn’t bullshit.”

  “I just told you it was.”

  “That was no bullshit story—there was too much detail. Nobody tells a story like that. That’s no joke. Nobody jokes that way.”

  “I tell you it was bullshit, Carl.”

  “There’s no way I can believe that.”

  Carl reached over to his left to slide the phone down toward him. The phone had been sitting on the bar. When Carl reached to his left Mel grabbed the beer bottle and got Carl across the face with it. Carl dropped the gun and held his face and Mel jumped over the bar, hit him again—this time behind the ear—and Carl dropped. Mel picked up the Luger, aimed carefully, squeezed the trigger once, then put the gun in a brown paper bag, jumped back over the bar, walked out the entrance and he was on the boulevard. The parking meter read “expired” in front of his car, but there was no ticket. He got in and drove off.

  HAVE YOU READ PIRANDELLO?

  My girlfriend had suggested that I move out of her house, a very large house, nice and comfortable, with a backyard a block long, leaking pipes, and frogs and crickets and cats. Anyway, I was out, as one gets out of such situations—with honor, courage, and expectation. I placed an ad in one of the underground papers:

  Writer: needs place where the sound of a typewriter is more welcome than the laugh track on “I Love Lucy.” $100 a month o.k. Privacy a must.

  I had a month to move while my girlfriend was in Colorado for her yearly family reunion. I lay around in bed and waited for the phone to ring. Finally it rang. It was a guy who wanted me to babysit his three children whenever the “creative urge” overcame either him or his wife. Free room and board, and I could write whenever the creative urge was not on them. I told him I would think about it. The phone rang again two hours later. “Well?” he asked. “No,” I said. “Well,” he said, “do you know a pregnant woman in trouble?” I told him I would try to find him one and hung up.

  The next day the phone rang again. “I read your ad,” she said. “I teach yoga.” “Oh?” “Yes, I teach exercise and meditation.” “Oh?” “You’re a writer?” “Yes.” “What do you write about?” “Oh, god, I don’t know. Bad as it sounds: Life…I guess.” “That doesn’t sound bad. Does it include sex?” “Doesn’t life?” “Sometimes. Sometimes not.” “I see.” “What’s your name?” “Henry Chinaski.” “Have you ever been published?” “Yes.” “Well, I have a master bedroom you can have for $100. With a private entrance.” “Sounds good.” “Have you read Pirandello?” “Yes.” “Have you read Swinburne?” “Everybody has.” “Have you read Herman Hesse?” “Yes, but I’m not homosexual.” “Do you hate homosexuals?” “No, but I don’t love them.” “What about blacks?” “What about blacks?” “What do you think of them?” “They’re fine.” “Are you prejudiced?” “Everybody is.” “What do you think God is?” “White hair, a stringy beard and no pecker.” “What do you think about love?” “I don’t think about it.” “You’re a smart-ass. Here, I’ll give you my address. Come out and see me.”

  I took down the address and lay around a couple more days watching the soaps in the morning and the spy thrillers at night, plus the boxing matches. The phone rang again. It was the lady.

  “You didn’t come.” “I’ve been engrossed.” “Are you in love?” “Yes, I’m writing my new novel.” “Lots of sex?” “Some of the time.” “Are you a good lover?” “Most men like to think they are. I’m probably good but not great.” “Do you eat pussy?” “Yes.” “Good.” “Your room still available?” “Yes, the master bedroom. Do you really go down on a woman?” “Hell yes. But everybody does now. This is 1982 and I am 62 years old. You can get a man 30 years younger and he can do the same thing. Probably better.” “You’d be surprised.”

  I walked over to the refrigerator and got a beer and a smoke. When I picked up the receiver she was still there. “What’s your name?” I asked. She told me some fancy name which I promptly forgot.

  “I’ve been reading your stuff,” she said. “You’re really a powerful writer. You have a lot of shit in you but you’ve got a way of working on people’s emotions.”

  “You’re right. I’m not great but I’m different.”

  “How do you go down on a woman?”

  “Now wait…”

  “No, tell me.”

  “Well, it’s an art.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “How do you begin?” “With a brush stroke, lightly.” “Of course, of course. Then, after you begin?” “Yes, well, there are techniques…” “What techniques?” “The first touch usually dulls the sensitivity in that area so that you can’t return to it with the same effectiveness.” “What the hell do you mean?” “You know what I mean.” “You’re making me hot.” “This is clinical.” “This is sexual. You’re making me hot.” “I don’t know what else to say.” “What does a man do then?” “You let your own enjoyment guide your exploration. It’s different each time.” “What do you mean?” “I mean sometimes it’s a bit gross, sometimes it’s tender, whichever way you feel.” “Tell me.” “Well, everything ends up at the clit.” “Say that word again.” “What?” “Clit.” “Clit, clit, clit…” “Do you suck it? Nibble it?” “Of course.” “You’re making me hot.” “Sorry.” “You can have the master bedroom. You like privacy?” “Like I told you.” “Tell me about my clit.” “All clits are different.” “It’s not private here right now. They’re building a retaining wall. But they’ll be through in a couple of days. You’ll like it here.”

  I took her address down again, hung up and went to bed. The phone rang. I walked over and picked it up and took it back to bed with me. “What do you mean, all clits are different?” “I mean different in size and response to stimuli.” “Did you ever find one you couldn’t stimulate?” “Not yet.” “Listen, why don’t you just come see me now?” “I’ve got an old car. It won’t make it up the canyon.” “Take the freeway and park in the lot at the Hidden Hills turnoff. I’ll meet you there.” “O.K.”

  I hung up, got dressed and got into my car. I took the freeway to the Hidden Hills turnoff, found the parking lot and sat there and waited. Twenty minutes went by and then a fat lady in a green dress drove up. She was in a white 1982 Caddy. All her front teeth were capped. “Are you the one?” she asked.

  “I’m the one.”

  “Jesus Christ. You don’t look so hot.”

  “You don’t look so hot either.”

  “All right. Come on.”

  I got out of my car and into hers. Her dress was very short. On the fat thigh nearest me was a small tattoo that looked like a messenger boy standing on top of a dog.

  “I’m not paying you anything,” she said.

  “That’s all right.”

  “You don’t look like a writer.”

  “For that I’m thankful.”

  “In fact, you don’t look like a guy who can do anything…”

  “Many things I can’t do.?
??

  “But you sure talk some shit on the phone. I was playing with myself. Were you playing with yourself?”

  “No.”

  We drove in silence after that. I had two cigarettes left and smoked both of them. Then I turned on her radio and listened to the music. Her place had a long curving driveway and the garage doors opened automatically as we drove in. She unhitched her seatbelt and then suddenly flung her arms around me. Her mouth looked like an open bottle of red india ink. The tongue came out. We rolled back against the seat, trapped like that. Then it ended and we got out. “Come on,” she said. I followed her up a path lined with rosebushes. “I’m not going to pay you anything,” she said, “not a fucking thing.” “That’s all right,” I said. She got her key out of her purse, unlocked the door and I followed her in.

  STROKES TO NOWHERE

  Meg and Tony got his wife to the airport. After Dolly was airborne they stopped in the airport bar for a drink. Meg had a whiskey and soda. Tony had a scotch and water.

  “Your wife trusts you,” said Meg.

  “Yeh,” said Tony.

  “I wonder if I can trust you?”

  “Don’t you like to be fucked?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “The point is that Dolly and I are friends.”

  “We can be friends.”

  “Not that way.”

  “Be modern. It’s the modern age. People swing. They’re uninhibited. They fuck from the ceiling. They screw dogs, babies, chickens, fish…”

  “I like to choose. I have to care.”

  “That’s so damned corny. The caring is already built-in. Then if you cultivate the caring long enough the next thing you know you think it’s love.”

  “O.K., what’s wrong with love, Tony?”

  “Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you’ll never meet them.”

  “All right, so we do the best we can.”

  “Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter. Most people make too much of it. On these grounds a good fuck is not to be entirely scorned.”

  “But that’s the result of a chance meeting too.”

  “You’re damned right. Drink up. We’ll have another.”

  “You’ve got a good line, Tony, but it’s not going to work.”

  “Well,” said Tony, nodding the bartender over, “I’m not going to grieve about that either…”

  It was a Saturday evening and they went back to Tony’s place and turned on the tv. There wasn’t a hell of a lot on. They drank some Tuborg and talked over the sound of the set.

  “You ever heard the one,” asked Tony, “about horses being too smart to bet on people?”

  “No.”

  “Well, anyhow, it’s a saying. You’re not going to believe this but I had a dream the other night. I was down in the stables and a horse came to get me and give me a workout. There was a monkey with his arms and legs around my neck and he smelled of cheap wine. It was 6 a.m. and the cold wind blew in from the San Gabriel mountains. What’s more it was foggy. They worked me three furlongs in 52, handily. Then they hot-walked me for 30 minutes and walked me back to the barn. A horse came in and gave me two hardboiled eggs, grapefruit, toast and milk. Then I was in a race. The stands were packed with horses. It looked like a Saturday. I was in the fifth race. I came in first and paid $32.40. That was some dream, wasn’t it?”

  “I’ll say,” said Meg. She crossed her legs. She had on a miniskirt but no pantyhose. Her boots covered the calves of her legs. Her thighs were bare, and full. “That was some dream.” She was 30. Lipstick ever so faintly glistened on her lips. Brunette, very dark, long hair. No powder, no perfume. Never fingerprinted. Born in the northern part of Maine. One hundred twenty pounds.

  Tony got up and got two more bottles of beer. When he came back Meg said: “A strange dream, but many of them are. It’s when strange things happen in life, it makes you wonder…”

  “Like?”

  “Like my brother Damion. He was always poking into books…mysticism, yoga, all that shit. Come into a room he’d be as apt to be standing on his head in his jockey shorts as anything else. He even managed a couple of trips east…India, somewhere else. Came back hollow-cheeked and half-crazy, weighing about 76 pounds. But he kept at it. He meets this guy Ram Da Beetle, or some similar name. Ram Da Beetle’s got a big tent down near San Diego and he’s charging these suckers $175 for a five-day seminar. The tent is pitched on a cliff overlooking the sea. This old girl the Beetle is sleeping with, she owns the land, she lets him use it. Damion claims Ram Da Beetle gave him the final revelation he needed. And it was a shocker. I’m living in this small apartment in Detroit and he shows up and works the shocker on me…”

  Tony looked higher up Meg’s legs and said, “Damion’s shocker? What shocker?”

  “O.K., you know, he just appears…” Meg picked up her Tuborg.

  “He came to visit you?”

  “You might say that. Let me put it to you simply: Damion can dematerialize his body.”

  “He can? Then what happens?”

  “He appears someplace else.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Long distances?”

  “He came all the way from India to Detroit, to my apartment in Detroit.”

  “How long did it take?”

  “I don’t know. Ten seconds, maybe.”

  “Ten seconds…ummm.”

  They sat there looking at each other. Meg sat on the couch and Tony sat across from her.

  “Listen, Meg, you really give me the hots. My wife would never know.”

  “No, Tony.”

  “Where’s your brother now?”

  “He took my apartment in Detroit. He works in a shoe factory.”

  “Listen, why can’t he get into a bank vault, take the money and get on out of there? He can use his talents. Why work in a shoe factory?”

  “He says such a talent can’t be used to further the purposes of evil.”

  “I see. Listen, Meg, let’s forget your brother.”

  Tony walked over and sat on the couch next to Meg.

  “You know, Meg, what is evil, and what we are taught is evil, can be two very different things. Society teaches us that certain things are evil in order to keep us subservient.”

  “Like robbing banks?”

  “Like fucking without going through all the proper channels.”

  Tony grabbed Meg and kissed her. She didn’t resist. He kissed her again. Her tongue slid into his mouth.

  “I still don’t think we should do it, Tony.”

  “You kiss like you want to.”

  “I haven’t had a man for months, Tony. It’s hard to resist but Dolly and I are friends. I hate to do it to her.”

  “You won’t be doing it to her, you’ll be doing it to me.”

  “You know what I mean.” Tony kissed her again, this time a long full kiss. Their bodies pressed together.

  “Let’s go to the bedroom, Meg.”

  She followed him in. Tony began undressing, throwing his clothes over a chair. Meg went into the bathroom, which was just off the bedroom. She sat down and pissed with the door open.

  “I don’t want to get pregnant and I don’t take the pill.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry why?”

  “I got my strings cut.”

  “All you guys say that.”

  “It’s true, I’m cut.”

  Meg got up and flushed.

  “Suppose you want a baby sometime?”

  “I don’t want a baby sometime.”

  “I think it’s awful for a man to get his strings cut.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Meg, stop the moralizing a
nd come to bed.”

  Meg walked into the room naked. “I mean, Tony, I kind of think of it as a crime against nature.”

  “How about abortion? Is that a crime against nature too?”

  “Of course. It’s murder.”

  “How about a rubber? How about masturbation?”

  “Oh, Tony, it’s not the same thing.”

  “Get into bed before we die of old age.”

  Meg got on in and Tony grabbed her. “Ah, you feel good. Kind of like rubber filled with air…”

  “Where’d you get that thing, Tony? Dolly never told me about that thing…it’s huge!”

  “Why should she tell you?”

  “You’re right. Just put that damned thing into me!”

  “Just wait now, just wait!”

  “Come on, I want it!”

  “How about Dolly? Do you think it will be the right thing to do?”

  “She’s grieving over her dying mother! She can’t use it! I can use it!”

  “All right! All right!”

  Tony mounted her and put it in.

  “That’s it, Tony! Now move it, move it!”

  Tony moved it. He moved it slowly and steadily like the arm of an oil pump. Flub, flub, flub, flub.

  “Oh, you son of a bitch! Oh my god, you son of a bitch!”

  “All right now, Meg! Get out of that bed! You are committing a crime against native decency and trust!”

  Tony felt a hand on his shoulder and then he felt himself being pulled off. He rolled over and looked up. There was a man standing there in a green t-shirt and bluejeans.

  “Listen, you,” said Tony, “what the hell are you doing in my house?”

  “It’s Damion!” said Meg.

  “Clothe thyself, little sister! The shame still radiates from thy body!”

  “Look here, motherfucker,” said Tony from where he lay on the bed.

  Meg was in the bathroom dressing, “I’m sorry, Damion, I am sorry!”

  “I see I arrived from Detroit just in time,” said Damion. “Another few minutes and I would have been too late.”