I walked up to her.
“You all right?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes, drive me down to Van Ness. Van Ness and Franklin.”
“All right.”
She got into the Volks and we drove off into Hollywood. I took a right, then a left and we were on Franklin. “You got a lot of wine, haven’t you?” she asked. “Yeah.”
“I think I need a drink.”
“Almost everybody does only they don’t know it.”
“I know it.”
“We can go to my place.”
“O.K.”
I swung the Volks around, headed back. “I’ve got some money,” I told her. “$20,” she said. “You give head?”
“The best.”
When we got home I poured her a glass of wine. It was warm. She didn’t mind. I drank a warm one too. Then I pulled my pants off and stretched out on the bed. She followed me into the bedroom. I pulled my limp string out of my shorts. She got right down to it. She was terrible, no imagination at all.
This is pure shit, I thought.
I lifted my head up from the pillow. “Come on, baby, get with it! What the fuck are you doing?”
I was having trouble getting hard. She sucked at it and looked into my eyes. It was the worst head I had ever had. She worked about two minutes, then pulled away. She took her hankerchief out of her purse and spit into it as if she were expectorating come.
“Hey,” I said, “What the hell are you trying to sell me? I didn’t come.”
“Yes, you did, you did!”
“Hey, I ought to know!”
“You shot into my mouth.”
“Knock off the bullshit! Get on down there!”
She began again but she was just as bad. I let her work away, hoping for the best. Some whore. She bobbed and sucked. It was as if she were only pretending to do it, as if we were both just pretending. My cock got soft. She kept on.
“All right, all right,” I said, “leave off. Forget it.”
I got back into my pants and took out my wallet.
“Here’s your twenty. You can leave now.”
“How about a ride?”
“You just gave me one.”
“I want to go to Franklin and Van Ness.”
“All right.”
We went out to the car and I took her to Van Ness. As I drove off I saw her stick out her thumb. She was hitchhiking.
When I got back I phoned Sara again.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“It’s slow today.”
“Are you still coming by tonight?”
“I told you I would.”
“I’ve got some good white wine. It’ll be like old times.”
“Are you going to see Tanya again?”
“No.”
“Don’t drink anything until I get there.”
“All right.”
“I’ve got to go…. A customer just walked in.”
“Good. See you tonight.”
Sara was a good woman. I had to get myself straightened out. The only time a man needed a lot of women was when none of them were any good. A man could lose his identity fucking around too much. Sara deserved much better than I was giving her. It was up to me now. I stretched out on the bed and was soon asleep.
I was awakened by the telephone. “Yes?” I asked.
“Are you Henry Chinaski?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve always adored your work. I don’t think anybody writes any better than you do!”
Her voice was young and sexy. “I have written some good stuff.”
“I know. I know. Have you really had all those affairs with women?”
“Yes.”
“Listen, I write too. I live in L.A. and I’d like to come see you. I’d like to show you some of my poems.”
“I’m not an editor or a publisher.”
“I know. Look, I’m 19. I just want to come over and visit you.”
“I’m tied up tonight.”
“Oh, any night would do!”
“No, I can’t see you.”
“Are you really Henry Chinaski, the writer?”
“I’m sure I am.”
“I’m a cute chick.”
“You probably are.”
“My name’s Rochelle.”
“Goodbye, Rochelle.”
I hung up. There I had done it—that time.
I walked into the kitchen, opened a bottle of vitamin E, 400 I.U. each, and downed several with half a glass of Perrier water. It was going to be a good night for Chinaski. The sun was slanting down through the Venetian blinds, making a familiar pattern on the carpet, and the white wine was chilling in the refrigerator.
I opened the door and walked out on the porch. There was a strange cat out there. He was a huge creature, a tom, with a shining black coat and luminous yellow eyes. He wasn’t frightened of me. He walked up purring and rubbed against one of my legs. I was a good guy and he knew it. Animals knew things like that. They had an instinct. I walked back inside and he followed me.
I opened him up a can of Star-Kist solid white tuna. Packed in spring water. Net wt. 7 oz.
About The Author
CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).
During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli, 1960-1967 (2001), and Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001).
All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
This novel is a work of
fiction and no character
is intended to portray
any person or combination
of persons living or dead.
BY CHARLES BUKOWSKI AVAILABLE FROM ECCO
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)
Post Office (1971)
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)
South of No North (1973)
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955–1973 (1974)
Factotum (1975)
Love Is a Dog from Hell (1977)
Women (1978)
play the piano drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed a bit (1979)
Shakespeare Never Did This (1979)
Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)
Ham on Rye (1982)
Bring Me Your Love (1983)
Hot Water Music (1983)
There’s No Business (1984)
War All the Time: Poems 1981–1984 (1984)
You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)
The Movie: “Barfly” (1987)
The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946–1966 (1988) Hollywood (1989)
Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems (1990)
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960–1970
(1993)
Pulp (1994)
Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s-1970s (Volume 2) (1995)
Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)
Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997)
The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)
Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978–1994 (Volume 3) (1999)
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999)
Open All Night: New Poems (2000)
Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001)
Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski & Sheri Martinelli 1960–1967 (2001)
Copyright
WOMEN. Copyright © 1978 by Charles Bukowski.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-061-86376-9
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Acknowledgement is made to the editors of City Lights Anthology #4, First Person Intense, Hustler and Rogner’s Magazin where some of these chapters originally appeared.
The cover drawing is by the author. First Ecco edition published in 2002.
The Library of Congress has catalogued a previous edition as follows:
Bukowski, Charles.
Women.
I. Title.
PZ4.B9315Wo [PS3552.U4] 813’.5’4 78-21998
ISBN 0-87685-390-4 (paper edition)
ISBN 0-87685-391-2 (trade cloth edition)
05 06 RRD 10 9
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Charles Bukowski, Women: A Novel
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