meanwhile, the letters. I answered them. after telling me how great my poems were she would enclose a few of her own (not too bad) and then came the same thing: “no man will every marry me. it’s my neck. I can’t turn it.” I kept hearing this: “no man will ever marry me, no man will ever marry me, no man will ever marry me.” so I did it while drunk one night: “for Christ’s sake I’ll marry you! relax.” I mailed the letter and forgot about it, but she didn’t. she had been sending photos that looked very good, then after I told her the thing, came some horrible looking photos. I looked at these photos and I REALLY got drunk on them. I’d get down on my knees in the center of the rug, I was terrified, I’d say, “I hereby sacrifice myself. if a man can make just one person happy in a lifetime, then his life has been justified.” hell, I had to come up with some type of balm. I’d look at one of those photographs and my whole soul would shake and scream and down would go a whole beer can worth.
or maybe it wasn’t those Chinese snails with the little round assholes, maybe it was the Art class. where am I?
well, she came out on a bus, mama didn’t know, papa didn’t know, grandpa didn’t know, they were on vacation somewhere and she only had a little change. I met her at the bus station, that is, I sat there drunk waiting for a woman I had never seen to get off a bus, waiting for a woman I had never spoken to, to marry. I was insane. I didn’t belong on the streets. the call came. it was her bus. I watched the people swing through the door. and here comes this cute sexy blonde on high heels, all ass and bounce and young, young, 23, and the neck wasn’t bad at all. could that be the one? maybe she’d missed her bus? I walked up.
“are you Barbara?” I asked.
“yes,” she said, “I guess you’re Bukowski?”
“I guess I am. should we go?”
“alright. “
we got into the old car and drove to my place.
“I almost got off the bus and went back.”
“I don’t blame you.”
we got on in and I drank some more but she said she wouldn’t go to bed with me until we got married. so we got some sleep and I drove all the way to Vegas and back, we were married. I drove all the way to Vegas and back without rest, and then we got into bed and it was worth it … the FIRST time. she had told me she was a nymph but I hadn’t believed it. after the third or fourth round I began to believe it. I knew that I was in trouble. every man believes that he can tame a nymph but it only leads to the grave — for the man.
I quit my job as shipping clerk and we took the bus to Texas. it was then that I found out that she was a millionairess, but the fact didn’t particularly elate me. I was always a little crazy. it was a very small town, voted the last town in America by the experts that anyone would care to atom bomb and the experts were right. when I took my little walks between my trips to the bedroom, feeble pale, blase, the people would all stare, of course. I was the city slicker who had hooked the rich girl. I MUST have something, surely. and I did: a very tired cock and a suitcase full of poems. she had an easy job at city hall, a desk and nothing to do, and I would sit by the window in the sun and brush off the flies. papa hated my guts but grandpa seemed to like me but papa had most of the money. I sat and brushed flies. a big cowboy walked in. boots. tall cowboy hat. the works. “Hell Barbara.” he said then he looked at me …
“tell me” he asked, “what do you do?”
“DO?”
“yes, JUST WHAT DO YOU DO?”
I let a long time go by. I looked out the window. I brushed a fly away. then I turned to him. he was leaning across the counter, all 6’ 5" of him, red-faced Texas American hero. man.
“Me? oh I just kinda … well, kinda DRIFT around and luck it.”
he ripped his head back around the counter, was around the corner and gone.
“you know who that was?” she asked.
“naw.”
“that was the town bully. he beats people up. he’s my cousin.”
“well he didn’t DO anything, DID he?” I drawled.
she looked at me strangely for the first time. she saw the soiled beast creature. the sensitive-poet thing was just a rose in my mouth at Christmastime. on blue jean day I put on my only suit and walked up and down the town all day. it was like a Hollywood movie. anybody not wearing blue jeans was supposed to be thrown in the lake, but it wasn’t as easy as I make it. I had a few drinks in me as I walked around, but I never saw the lake. the town was mine. the town doctor wanted to go hunting and fishing with me. her relatives came around and stared at me as I flipped beer cans into the wastebasket and told jokes. they mistook my suicide carelessness for bravery. the joke was mine.
but she wanted to go to Los Angeles. she never lived in a big city. I tried to talk her out of it. I liked loafing around the town, but no, she had to go, so gramps wrote us a nice check, and we got back on the bus and rode right on back to L.A. potential millionaires slumming on a greyhound. worse, she insisted that we support ourselves. so I got another job as a shipping clerk, and she sat around wishing SHE could get a job. I’d get drunk every night after work. “good lord,” I would say, “look what I’ve done. I’ve married a real country hick.” this would piss her tremendously. I couldn’t kiss ass to that million bucks, it wasn’t in me. we lived in a house on top of a hill, a small house, rented, and there was long grass in the back yard and the flies hid in the long grass and then came out and they were all over the yard, 40,000 flies, they’d drive me crazy. I’d go out with a big can of spray and kill a thousand a day but they fucked too fast, and so did we. the crazy people up front who had once lived there had put these shelves all around the bed and on these shelves were pots and pots of geraniums. big pots, little pots. all geraniums. when we fucked the bed would shake the walls and the walls would shake the shelves, and then I’d hear it: the slow volcano sound of the shelves giving away and then I’d stop. “no NO, DON’T STOP, OH JESUS, DON’T STOP!” and I’d catch the stroke again and down those shelves would come, down on my back and ass and head and legs and arms, and she’d laugh and scream and MAKE IT. she loved those pots. I’m gonna rip those shelves off the wall,” I would tell her. “oh, no,” she’d say. “OH, PLEASE PLEASE DON’T!” she said it so nicely that I couldn’t. so I’d hammer the shelves back, put the pots back on and we’d wait for next time.
she bought a little black subnormal dog and named him Bruegel. Peter Bruegel was a painter, used to be or something. but after a few days she was no longer interested. she kicked the dog when he got in the way, hard, with that pointed toe, hissing “outa the way, you bastard!” so Bruegel and I would roll on the floor and fight when I drank my beer. that’s all he could do — fight, and his teeth were better than mine. somehow I sensed the million going, and I didn’t care.
she bought us a new car, a ’57 Plymouth which I am still driving, and I told her she could get on with the county. she took an exam and went to work for the Sheriff’s Dept. I told her I had been fired from my job as shipping clerk and I used to wash the car everyday and then go down and pick her up after work. one day as we were driving off, all these kids in flowered shirts, t-shirts, pasty-faced, slump-shouldered, with silly grins and high-school strides came out of her building.
“who are those punks?” I asked her.
“those are police officers,” she said in her haughty little bitch tone.
“ah, come on! they look like subnormals! those aren’t cops! what? come on, THOSE aren’t cops!”
“those are police officers and they are all VERY nice fellows.”
“AH SHIT!” I said.
she was very angry. we only fucked once that night. the next day it was something else.
“there goes José,” she said, “he’s a Spaniard.”
“a Spaniard?”
“yes, he was born in Spain.”
“half the Mexicans I have worked with in factories have claimed they were born in Spain. it’s an act; Spain is the father, the ace-bullfighter, the Big Dream of old.”
“José was born in Spain, I know he was.”
“how do you know?”
“he told me.”
“AH, SHIT!”
then at night she decided to go to Art Class. she painted all the time. she was the genius of her town. maybe her state. maybe not.
“I’ll go to class with you,” I told her.
“YOU? what FOR?”
“so you’ll have somebody to drink coffee with on your coffee breaks, and I can drive you back and forth to class.”
“well, all right.”
we got in the same class and after three or four sessions she began to get very angry, ripping up paper and throwing it on the floor. I just sat there and tried not to watch her. they were all very busy, immersed, yet tittering as if it were a big joke or as if they were ashamed to paint.
the Art instructor came back. “listen, Bukowski, you are supposed to paint something. why are you just sitting here looking at the paper?”
“I forgot to buy brushes.”
“very well. I will lend you a brush, Mr. Bukowski, but please return it at the end of class.”
“yeah.”
“now, you paint that bowl with the flowers sticking out of it.”
I decided to get it done with. I worked fast and finished, but everybody else was still at it, holding their fingers in the air, testing for shadow or distance or some damn thing. I walked out and got a coffee, smoked a cigarette. when I walked back in there was a big crowd around my desk. a blonde with nothing but breasts (well, you know) turned to me and put those breasts up against me and said, “ah, you’ve painted BEFORE, haven’t you?” “no, this is my first thing.” she wiggled the breasts and drilled them into me, “ah, you’re KIDDING!” “ummmmmmm,” was all I could say.
the prof took the painting and hung it up front. “now THIS is what I WANT!” he said, “see the FEELING, THE FLOW, THE NATURALNESS!”
oh lord, I thought.
she got up angry and took her stuff into the tiny room where they cut paper and went in there and tore up paper and threw paint around. she even tore down a collage some poor idiot had created.
“mr. Bukowski,” the prof came up to me, “is that woman your … wife?”
“ah yes.”
“well, we don’t tolerate these prima donnas around here. you might as well tell her. and could we use your work in the Art Show?”
“sure.”
“ah, thank you, thank you, thank you!”
the prof was crazy. everything I did he wanted for the Art Show. I didn’t even know how to mix paints. I’d failed to make a color wheel. I’d mixed purple with orange, brown with black, white with black, anywhere the brush fell. most of the stuff looked like a huge splotch of smeared dogshit but the prof thought I was … the cockprint of God. well. she quit class. so I quit class and left the paintings there.
then she started coming home from work and telling me what a gentleman the Turk was. “a purple stickpin, he wears a purple stickpin, and today he kissed me on the forehead, ever so lightly and said I was BEAUTIFUL.”
“listen, sweetheart, you’ve got to learn, these things go on all the time in the offices of America. sometimes something happens. but most of the time nothing happens. most of these guys jack off in the closet and see too many Charles Boyer movies. the guys who are really getting it are very quiet about it, not out front. I’ll give you a hundred-to-one your boy has seen too many movies. squeeze his balls and he’ll run.”
“at LEAST, he’s a GENTLEMAN! and he’s SO tired! I’m sorry for him.”
“tired from WHAT? working for the L.A. County?”
“he owns a drive-in movie and operates it at night. he doesn’t get his rest.”
“well, I’m a pig’s ass!” I said.
“you sure are,” she said sweetly. but that night the pots fell twice more.
then came the night of the Chinese snail dinner. or they might have been Japanese snails. anyhow, I went to the market and for the first time I saw this special rack. I bought the whole rack: tiny octopi, snails, snakes, lizards, slugs, bugs, grasshoppers … I cooked the snails first. put them on the table.
“I cooked them in butter,” I told her. “jam ’em in your craw. this is what the poor shits eat, by the way,” I asked, jamming two or three snails into my mouth, “how was old Purple Stickpin today?”
“they taste like rubber …”
“rubber, slubber … EAT ’em!”
“they have those tiny assholes … I see their tiny assholes … oh …”
“everything you eat has an asshole. you have an asshole, I have an asshole, we all have assholes. Purple Stickpin has an asshole …”
“oooooh …”
she got up from the table and ran to the bathroom and started heaving.
“those tiny assholes … ooooh …”
I laughed, blubber slubber and jammed the tiny assholes into my mouth and drained them down with beer and laughed.
I wasn’t too surprised when one morning a couple of days later somebody knocked on my door, her door, and served me with a divorce summons.
“baby, what’s this?” I showed her the paper. “don’t you love me, baby?”
she began to cry. she cried and cried and cried.
“there, there, don’t you worry, maybe Purple Stickpin will be the guy. I don’t think he jacks off in the closet. he might well be the one.”
“ooooooh, ooooooh, ooooooh.”
“he probably jacks off in the bathtub.”
“oh, you rotten shit!”
she stopped crying. then we brought the flowerpots down for one last good time. she went to the bathroom and started humming and singing, getting ready for work. that night I helped her find a new place and pack, and moved her out. she said she didn’t want to stay in the old place, it would break her heart. rotten cunt. I got a paper on the way back and opened it to the classified ads looking for: shipping clerk, stockboy, janitor, warehouse man, aide to the crippled, telephone book deliveryman. then I threw the paper down, went out and got a fifth and drank my million goodbye. I saw her once or twice — casually, no flowerpots — and she said she only made it once with Purple Stickpin and then quit her job. she said she was going to begin painting and writing “seriously.”
later she went to Alaska and married an Eskimo, a Japanese fisherman, and my joke is when drunk, to now and then tell somebody, “I once lost a million dollars to a Japanese fisherman.”
“oh, come on now, you never HAD a million dollars.”
and I guess they were right: I never did have it.
I get a letter once or twice a year, a long letter, one usually before Christmas. “write,” she says. there are now two or three children with Eskimo names. and she says she has written a book, it is on the shelves up there, it is a children’s book but she is “proud” and she is now going to write a “serious” novel about “character disintegration!” she is going to write TWO NOVELS ABOUT CHARACTER DISINTEGRATION. ah, I think, one is about me. and the other is about the Eskimo, who is, by now, fucking up. or fucking out. or maybe the other is about Purple Stickpin?
maybe I should have followed up that girl with tits in Art Class. but it’s hard to please a woman. and she might not have liked the tiny assholes either. but you ought to try the octopi. like baby fingers in melted butter. the spiders of the sea, dirty rats. and while you are sucking at those fingers you get revenge, kiss off a million, knock off a beer, and to hell with the light co., Fuller Brush, tape machines and the underbelly of Texas and her crazy women with nicks that won’t turn who cry and fuck you, leave you, write homey letters every Christmas, even tho you are now a stranger, won’t let you forget, Bruegel, the flies, the ’57 Plymouth outside your window, the waste and the terror, the sadness and the failure, the stage play the horseplay, all our lives, falling down, getting up, pretending it’s ok, grinning, sobbing, we wipe our tiny assholes, and the other kind.
________
To Funky Bukowski
I c
all you funky Bukowski, because
I think you’re nasty
don’t get mad, cause, I like your
nasty — it makes me hot to read
about; you looking up ladies dresses
or jacking-off in elevators or sniffing drawers — to get high;
now I know you’re wondering who
this is writing you. Well I’ll tell
you who I am, nice and clear
so there’ll be no mistake
in pointing me out. I’m the clean
smooth cunt you think about
when you fuck those discharging wrinkled
pussies, I’m the lady who sits
down the row from you in the all night
movies, and watches you cum and cum
in your jacket pocket, and I slowly hike
my skirt up, hoping you’ll look at my thighs
as you — get up to go wipe your hands, I call
it long dis-stance sex. but I love it
I love the feel of your heavy breathing on the
back of my neck as you try to poke your
fingers in my asshole through the crack
in the seat; now you’re thinking, (it sounds
nice, but I don’t remember you.) but from
now on you will/think of me/and after all —
that’s what I wanted any way. my nasty man —
unsigned
the public takes from a writer, or a writing, what it needs and lets the remainder go. but what they take is usually what they need least and what they let go is what they need most. however, all this allows me to execute my little holy turns unmolested if they understood these, then there wouldn’t be any more creators, we’d all be in the same pot of shit. as it is now, I am in my pot of shit and they are in theirs, and I think mine stinks better.