it was my second night in town and very hard to take, so I went inside the bar there and sat down and the guy next to me turned and asked, “are you a Frenchman or an Italian?” and I said, “actually I was born in China. my father was a missionary and was killed by a tiger when I was a very little boy.”
just then somebody behind me began to play on a violin and that saved me from further questions. I worked at my beer. when the violin stopped somebody came up on the other side of me and sat down. “my name’s Sunderson. you look like you need a job.”
“I need money. work I’m not crazy about.”
“all you have to do is sit in this chair a few more hours a night.”
“what’s the catch?”
“eighteen bucks a week and keep your hands out of the cash register.”
“how you gonna keep me from doing that?”
“I’m paying another guy eighteen bucks a week to watch you.”
“are you a Frenchman?”
“Sunderson. Scotch — English. distant relative of Winston Churchill.”
“I thought there was something wrong with you.”
________
it was a place where the cabbies from this cab co. would come in for gas. I would pump the gas, take the money and throw it into the register. most of the night I sat in a chair. the job went all right the first 2 or 3 nights. a little argument with the cabbies who wanted me to change flats for them. some Italian boy got on the phone and raised shit with the boss because I wouldn’t do anything but I knew why I was there — to protect the money, the old man had shown me where the gun was, how to use it and be sure to make the cabbies pay for all the gas and oil they used. but I had no desire to protect the $$$$$$ for eighteen bucks a week and that was where Sunderson’s thinking was wrong. I would have taken the money myself, but the morals were all fucked up: somebody had jobbed me with the crazy idea one time that stealing was wrong, and I was having a hard time overcoming my preconceptions. meanwhile I worked on them, against them, with them, you know.
about the fourth night a little negress stood in the doorway. she just stood there smiling at me. we must have been looking at each other for about 3 minutes. “how you doing?” she asked. “my name’s Elsie.”
“I’m not doing very good. my name’s Hank.”
she came in and leaned against a little old desk in there. she seemed to have on a little girl’s dress, she had little girl movements and the fun in her eyes, but she was a woman, throbbing and miraculous electric woman in a brown and clean little girl’s dress. “can I buy a soft drink?”
“sure.”
she gave me the money and I watched her open the cover of the soft drink box and, with much serious deliberation, she selected a drink. then she sat on the little stool and I watched her drink it down. the little bubbles of air floating through electric light, through the bottle. I looked at her body, I looked at her legs, I was filled with the warm brown kindness of her. it was lonely in that place just sitting in that chair night after night for eighteen bucks a week.
she handed me the empty bottle.
“thanks.”
“yeh.”
“mind if I bring some of my girl friends over tomorrow night?”
“if they’re anything like you sweetie, bring them all.”
“they’re all like me.”
“bring them all.”
the next night there were three or four of them, talking and laughing and buying and drinking soft drinks. jesus, I mean they were sweet, young, full of the thing, all young colored little girls, everything was funny and beautiful, and I mean it was, they made me feel that way. the next night there were eight or ten of them, the next night thirteen or fourteen. they began bringing in gin or whiskey and mixing it with the soft drinks. I brought my own. but Elsie, the first one was the finest of them all. she’d sit on my lap and then leap up and scream, “hey, Jesus Christ, you gonna shove my TESTINES out of the top of my head with that there FISHPOLE!” she’d act angry, real angry, and the other girls would laugh. and I’d just sit there confused, smiling, but in a sense I was happy. they had too much for me but it was a good show. I began to loosen up a bit myself. when a driver would honk, I’d stand up a bit leery, finish my drink, go find the gun, hand it to Elsie and say, “now look Elsie baby, you guard that god damned register for me, and if any of them girls makes a move toward it, you go on and shoot a hole in her pussy for me, eh?”
and I’d leave Elsie in there staring down at that big luger. it was a strange combo, the both of them, they could kill a man, or save him, depending upon which way it went. the history of man, woman and the world. and I’d walk out to pump the gas.
then the Italian cabbie, Pinelli, came in one night for a soft drink. I liked his name, but I didn’t like him. he was the guy that bitched most about me not changing flats. I was not anti-Italian at all but it was strange that since I had landed in town that the Italian Faction was at the forefront of my misery. but I knew it was a mathematical, rather than a racial thing. in Frisco an old Italian woman had probably saved my life. but that was another story. Pinelli stalked in. and I mean STALKED. the girls were all around the place, talking and laughing. he walked over and lifted the lid of the soft drink container.
“GOD DAMN IT, ALL THE SOFT DRINKS ARE GONE AND I’M THIRSTY! WHO DRANK ALL THE SOFT DRINKS?”
“I did,” I told him.
it was very quiet. all the girls were watching. Elsie was standing right by me watching him. Pinelli was handsome if you didn’t look too long or too deep. the hawk nose, the black hair, the Prussian officer swagger, the tight pants, the little boy fury.
“THESE GIRLS DRANK ALL THOSE SOFT DRINKS, AND THESE GIRLS AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE IN HERE, THESE DRINKS ARE FOR TAXI DRIVERS ONLY!”
then he came close to me, stood there, spreading his legs like a chicken does, a bit, before it craps:
“YOU KNOW WHAT THESE GIRLS ARE, WISE GUY?”
“sure, these girls are my friends.”
“NO, THESE GIRLS ARE WHORES! THEY WORK IN THREE WHOREHOUSES ACROSS THE STREET! THAT’S WHAT THEY ARE — WHORES!”
nothing was said. we just all sat there looking at the Italian. it seemed like a long look. then he turned and walked out. the rest of the night was hardly the same, I was worried about Elsie. she had the gun. I walked over to her and took the gun.
“I almost gave that son of a bitch a new belly button,” she said, “his mother was a whore!”
the next thing I knew the place was empty. I sat and had a long drink. then I got up and looked at the cash register. it was all there.
about 5 a.m. the old man came in.
“Bukowski.”
“yes, Mr. Sunderson?”
“I gotta let you go.” (familiar words)
“what’s wrong?”
“the boys say you ain’t been runnin’ this place right, place full of whores and you here playin’ around. them with their breasts out and snatches out and you suckin’ and lickin’ and tonguin’. is THAT what goes on around here early in the morning?”
“well, not exactly.”
“well I’m gonna take your spot until I can find a more dependable man. got to find out what’s going on around here.”
“all right it’s your circus, Sunderson.”
I think it was two nights later that I was coming out of the bar and decided to walk past the old gas station. there were two or three police cars around.
I saw Marty, one of the cab drivers I got along with. I went up to him:
“what’s up Marty?”
“they knifed Sunderson, and shot one of the cabbies with Sunderson’s gun.”
“jesus, just like a movie. the cabbie they shot, was it Pinelli?”
“yeah, how’d you know?”
“get it in the belly?”
“yeah, yeah, how’d you know?”
I was drunk. I walked away back towards my room. It was high New Orleans moon. I kept walking towards my room and soon the tears came, a
great wash of tears in the moonlight. and then they stopped and I could feel the tear-water drying on my face, stretching the skin. when I got to my room I didn’t bother with the light, got my shoes off, my socks off, and fell back on the bed without Elsie, my beautiful black whore, and then I slept, I slept through the sadness of everything and when I awakened I wondered what the next town would be, the next job. I got up, put on my shoes and socks, and went out for a bottle of wine. the streets didn’t look very good, they seldom did. it was a structure planned by rats and men and you had to live within it and die within it. but like a friend of mine once said “nothing was ever promised you, you signed no contract.” I walked into the store for my wine.
the son of a bitch leaned forward just a little, waiting for his dirty coins.
________
scribbling on shirt cardboards during two day drunks:
When Love becomes a command, Hatred can become a pleasure.
* * *
if you don’t gamble, you’ll never win
* * *
Beautiful thoughts, and beautiful women never last
* * *
you can cage a tiger but you’re never sure he’s broken. Men are easier.
* * *
if you want to know where God is, ask a drunk.
* * *
there aren’t any angels in the foxholes.
* * *
no pain means the end of feeling; each of our joys is a bargain with the devil.
* * *
the difference between Art and Life is that Art is more bearable
* * *
I’d rather hear about a live American bum than a dead Greek God.
* * *
there is nothing as boring as the truth
* * *
The well balanced individual is insane
* * *
Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot
* * *
a brave man lacks imagination. Cowardice is usually caused by lack of proper diet.
* * *
sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while singing
* * *
when men rule governments, men won’t need governments; until then we are screwed
* * *
an intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.
* * *
everytime I go to a funeral I feel as if I had eaten puffed wheat germ
* * *
dripping faucets, farts of passion, flat tires — are all sadder than death.
* * *
if you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence
* * *
hospitals are where they attempt to kill you without explaining why. The cold and measured cruelty of the American Hospital is not caused by doctors who are overworked or who have gotten used to, and bored with death. it is caused by doctors WHO ARE PAID TOO MUCH FOR DOING TOO LITTLE and who are admired by the ignorant, as witchmen with cure, when most of the time they don’t know their own arse-hairs from celery shreds.
* * *
Before a metropolitan daily exposes an evil, it takes its own pulse.
* * *
end of shirt cardboards.
________
well here’s your Christmas story, little children — gather round.
“ah,” said my friend Lou, “I think I got it.”
“yeah?”
“yeah.”
I poured another wine.
“we work together,” he continued.
“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, now listen, here’s what we do. there’s a class bar down the street, you know it — Molino’s. now you go in there and all you need is money for the first drink. we’ll pool for that. now you sit down and nurse your drink and look around for a guy flashing a roll. they got some fat ones in there. you spot the guy and go over to him. use some pretext. 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 when high. one night you even claimed to me that you were a surgeon. you explained the complete operation on the mesocolon to me. o.k. so he’ll buy you drinks all night, he’ll drink all night. keep him drinking.
“now when closing time comes, you lead him west near Alvarado Street, lead him west past the alley. tell him you’re going to get him some nice young pussy, tell him anything but lead him west. I’ll be waiting in the alley with this.”
Lou reached behind the door and came out with a baseball bat. it was a very large bat. I think at least forty-two oz.
“jesus christ Lou, you’ll kill him!”
“naw, NAW, you can’t kill a drunk, you know that! maybe if he were sober I’d kill him but drunk it’ll only knock him out. we take the wallet and split it two ways.”
“and the last thing he’s gonna remember,” I said, “is walking with me.”
“that’s right.”
“I mean, he’s gonna REMEMBER me, maybe swinging the bat is the better end of the deal.”
“I gotta swing the bat, it’s the only way we can work it because I don’t have your line of bullshit.”
“it’s not bullshit.”
“then you WERE a surgeon, I mean — ”
“forget it, but let’s put it this way — I can’t do that sort of thing, set up a pigeon, because essentially 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. you wanna fight now? I wanna fight you. you get first punch. when I was in the mines I once fought a guy with pick handles. he broke my arm with first swing they thought he had me. I beat him with one arm. he was never the same after that fight. he went goofy talked out the side of his mouth continually, about nothing. you get first punch.”
and he pushed that battered crocodile head out at me.
“no, you get first punch.” I told him, “SWING, MOTHER!”
he did. he knocked me over backwards in my chair. I got up and put one into his belly. the next one put me up against his sink. a dish fell to the floor and broke. I grabbed an empty wine bottle and threw it at his head. he ducked and it smashed against the door. then the door opened. it was our young blond landlady figure, looks, youth. it was so confusing. we both stood there looking at her.
“that’ll be all of that.” she said.
then she turned to me, “I saw you last night.”
“you didn’t see me last night.”
“I saw you in the vacant lot next door.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“you were there, you just don’t remember. you were there drunk, I saw you in the moonlight.”
“all right, what!”
“you were pissing. I saw you pissing in the moonlight in the center of that vacant lot.”
“that doesn’t sound like me.”
“it was you. You do that once more and you’re out. we can’t have that here.”
“baby,” said Lou, “I love you, oh I love you so much just let me go to bed with you one time and I’ll cut off both of my arms, I swear it!”
“shut up, you silly wino.”
she closed the door and we sat down and had a wine.
I found one. a big fat one. I had been fired by fat stupidities like that all my life. from worthless underpaid, dull jobs. it was going to be nice. I got to talking. I didn’t quite know what I was talking about. I mean I only sensed that my mouth was moving but he was listening and laughing and nodding his head and buying drinks. he had a wristwatch, a handful of rings, a full stupid wallet. it was hard work yet the drinks made it easy. I told him some stories about prisons, about railroad track gangs, about the whorehouse. he liked the whorehouse stuff. I told him about the guy who got in the bathtub naked, waited aro
und for an hour while the whore took ex-lax, and then the whore came in and drizzled shit all over him and he came on the ceiling.
“oh no, REALLY!”
“oh yeah, really.”
then I told him about the guy who came in every two weeks and he paid well. all he wanted was a whore in the room with him. they both took off their clothes and played cards and talked. just sat there. then after two hours he’d 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 to hit a homer on that skull. what a fat whammy. what a useless hunk of shit who sucked the life out of his fellow man and out of himself. he sat there ponderously majestic with nothing but a way to make it easy in an insane society.
“you like young girls?” I asked him.
“oh yeah, yeah, yeah!”
“say around 15½?”
“oh jesus, yes.”
“there’s one coming in on the one thirty a.m. from Chicago. she’ll be at my place around 2:10 a.m. she’s clean, hot, intelligent. now I’m taking a big chance, so you got to trust me. I’m asking ten bucks in advance, and ten after you finish. that too high?”