The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories

  “I’m afraid I’m cracking,” I tell him, “eleven years on the same job, the hours dragging over me like wet shit, wow, and all the faces melted down to zeros, yapping, laughing at nothing. I’m no snob, Sanchez, but sometimes it gets to be a real horror show and the only end is death or madness.”

  “sanity is an imperfection,” he says, dropping a couple of pills into his mouth.

  “jesus, I mean, I’m taught at several universities, some prof is writing a book on me … I’ve been translated into several languages .. .”

  “we all have. you’re getting old, Bukowski, you’re weakening. keep your moxie. Victory or Death.”

  “Adolph.”

  “Adolph.”

  “large gamble, large loss.”

  “right, or invert it for the common man.”

  “well, fuck.”

  “yeah.”

  it gets quiet for a while. then he says, “you can come live with us.”

  “thanks, sure, man. but I think I’ll try a little more moxie first.”

  “your game.”

  Over his head is a black sign upon which he has pasted in white type:

  “A BOY HAS NEVER WEPT, NOR DASHED A THOUSAND KIM.”

  –Dutch Schultz, on his deathbed.

  WITH ME, GRAND OPERA IS THE BERRIES.”

  –Al Capone

  “NE CRAIGNEZ POINT, MONSIEUR, LE TORTUE.”

  –Leibnetz.

  “THERE IS NO MORE.”

  –Motto of Sitting Bull

  “THE POLICEMAN’S CLIENT IS THE ELECTRIC CHAIR.”

  –George Jessel.

  “FAST AND LOOSE IN ONE THING,

  FAST AND LOOSE IN EVERYTHING.

  I NEVER KNEW IT FAIR. NO MORE

  WILL YOU. NOR NO ONE.

  –Detective Bucket.

  “AMEN IS THE INFLUENCE OF NUMBERS.”

  –Pico Della Mirandola,

  in his kabbalistic conclusions

  “SUCCESS AS THE RESULT OF INDUSTRY IS A PEASANT IDEAL.”

  – Wallace Stevens

  “TO ME, MY SHIT STINKS BETTER EXCEPT THAN A DOG’S.”

  – Charles Bukowski.

  “NOW THE PORNOGRAPHERS WERE ASSEMBLED WITHIN THE CREMATORIUM.”

  – Anthony Bloomfield.

  “ADAGE OF SPONTANEITY – THE BACHELOR GRINDS HIS CHOCOLA TE HIMSELF.”

  – Marcel Duchamp.

  “KISS THE HAND YOU CANNOT SEVER.”

  – Taureg saying.

  “WE ALL, IN OUR DAY, WERE SMART FELLOWS.”

  – Admiral St. Vincent.

  “MY DREAM IS TO SAVE THEM FROM NATURE.’

  – Christian Dior.

  “OPEN SESAME –I WANT OUT.”

  – Stanislas Jerzy Lec.

  “A YARDSTICK DOES NOT SAY THAT

  THE OBJECT TO BE MEASURED

  IS ONE YARD LONG.”

  – Ludwig Wittgenstein.

  I am a bit gone on beer. “Say, I like that last one: ‘the object to be murdered does not have to be a yard long.’ ”

  “I think that’s even better but it’s not what is said.”

  “all right. how’s Kaakaa? that’s baby-language for shit. and a more sexy woman I’ve never seen.”

  “I know. and it started with Kafka. she used to like Kafka and I called her that. then she changed it herself.” he gets up and walks to a photo. “come ’ere, Bukowski.” I flip my beercan into the trashcan and walk on over. “what’s this?” asks Sanchez.

  I look at the photo. it is a very good photo.

  “well, it looks like a cock.”

  “what kinda cock?”

  “a stiff cock. a big one.”

  “it’s mine.”

  “so?”

  “don’t you notice?”

  “what?”

  “the sperm.”

  “yes, I see it. I didn’t want to say .. .”

  “why not? what the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean, do you see the sperm or don’t you?”

  “what do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’m JACKING OFF, can’t you understand how hard that is to do?”

  “it’s not hard, Sanchez, I do it all the time ..

  “oh, you ox! I mean I had the camera rigged-up with a string. Do you realize what an enactment it was to remain quietly in focus, ejaculate and trigger the camera at the same time?”

  “I don’t use a camera.”

  “how many men do? you miss the point, as usual. who the hell you are translated into the German, the Spanish, the French and so forth, I’ll never know! look, do you realize that it took me THREE DAYS to make this SIMPLE photograph? do you know how many times I had to JACKOFF?”

  “4 times?”

  “TEN TIMES!”

  “oh, Lord! how about Kaakaa?”

  “she liked the photo.”

  “I mean . ..”

  “good god, boy, I don’t have the tongue to answer your simplicity.”

  He goes on around back there and plops himself in his chair again among his wires and pliers and translations and his huge BITTER-LEAP notebook, Adolph’s nose glued to the black front with edgeworks of the Berlin bunker in the background.

  “I’m working on something now,” I tell him, “story about me walking in to interview the great composer. he’s drunk. I get drunk, there’s a maid. we’re on the wine. he leans forward and tells me, ‘The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth,’ — ”

  “yeah?”

  “and then he says, ‘translated that means that the stupid have the greatest persistency.’ ”

  “kind of lousy,” he says, “but it’s all right for you.”

  “but I don’t know what to do with the story. I’ve got this maid walking around in a very short thing and I don’t know what to do with her. the composer gets drunk, I get drunk and she walks around flashing her ass, hot as hell, and I don’t know what to do with it. I thought I might save the story by whiplashing the maid with my belt buckle and then sucking the composer’s dick. but I’ve never sucked dick, never felt like it, I’m square, so I left the story in the center and never finished it.”

  “every man is a homo, a dick-sucker; every woman is a dyke. why do you worry so much?”

  “because if I’m not happy I’m no good and I don’t want to be no good.”

  We sit there a while and then she comes from upstairs, this flaxen straight string hair.

  it’s the first woman I could eat, I think.

  but she walks past Sanchez and his tongue licks his lips just a bit, she walks past me like separate ball-bearings of magic wavering crazy flesh, may the heavens kiss my balls if it is not so, and she waves through it all glorious as avalanche smashed by sun …

  “hello, Hank,” she says.

  “Kaakaa,” I laugh.

  she goes behind her table and begins her bits of painting and he sits there, Sanchez, beard blacker than black power, but calm calm, no claims. I begin to get drunk, say nasty things, say anything. then I begin to get dull. I mumble, I murmur. “Oh, sorry … ta spoil yr evening … so sorry, fuckers .. . ya … I’m a killer but I won’t kill anybody. I got class. I’m Bukowski! translated into SEVEN LANGUAGES! I AM the ONE! BUKOWSKI!”

  I fall forward trying to look at the jack off picture again, pitch over something. it is one of my own shoes. I have this god damn bad habit of taking off my own shoes.

  “Hank,” she says, “be careful.”

  “Bukowski?” he asks, “you all right?”

  he lifts me up. “man, I think you better stay here tonight.”

  “NO GOD DAMN IT, I’M GOING TO THE WOOD-CHOPPERS BALL!”

  next thing I know he’s got me over his shoulder, Sanchez has and he’s carrying me to his upstairs pad, you know, where he and his woman do the thing, and then I’m down on the bed, he’s gone, door closed, and then I hear some kind of music downstairs, and laughter, the both of them, but kind laughter, no malice, and I did not know what to do, one did not e
xpect the best, luck or people, everybody failed you finally, well, and then the door opened, a pop of light, and there was Sanchez —

  “hey, Bubu, a bottle of good French wine … sip it slowly, do you most good. you’ll sleep. be happy. I won’t say we love you, that’s too easy. and if you want to come downstairs, dance and sing, talk, o.k. do what you want. here’s the wine.”

  he hands me the bottle. I lift it like some crazy cornet, again and again. through a ripped curtain a part of the worn moon leaps. it is a perfectly good night; it is not jail; it is far from that. ..

  in the morning when I awaken, go down to piss, come out from pissing, I find them both asleep on that narrow couch hardly enough for one body, but they are not one body and their faces together and asleep their bodies together and asleep, why be corny??? I only feel the tiny clutch at the throat, the automatic transmission blues of loveliness, that somebody has it, that they don’t even hate me … that they even wish me what? …

  I walk out staunching and griefing and feeling and sick and blue and bukowski, old, starlit sun, my god, reaching into the final corner, the last midnight blast, cold Mr. C., big H, Mary Mary, clean as a bug on the wall, the heat of December a brainweb across my everlasting spine, Mercy like Kerouac’s dead baby sprawled across Mexican railroad tracks in the everlasting July of suck-off tombs, I leave them in their there thar, the genius and his love, both better than I, but Meaning, itself, shitting, shifting, sanding down, until, I maybe writing this down by myself, leaving a few things out (I have been threatened by various powerful forces for doing things that are only normal and gaga gladful to do)

  and I get into my eleven year old car

  and now I have driven away

  find myself here

  and write you here a little illegal story of

  love

  beyond myself

  but, perhaps, understandable to

  you.

  yours truly,

  Sanchez and Bukowski

  p.s. — this time the Heat missed. don’t keep more than you can swallow: love, heat or hate.

  TWELVE FLYING MONKEYS WHO WON’T COPULATE PROPERLY

  The bell rings and I open the side window by the door. It is night. “Who is it?” I ask.

  Somebody walks up to the window but I can’t see the face. I have two lights over the typewriter. I slam the window but there is talking out there. I sit down to the typewriter but there is still talking out there. I leap up and rip open the door and scream:

  “I TOLD YOU COCKSUCKERS NOT TO BOTHER ME!”

  I look around and there is one guy standing on the bottom of the steps and another guy standing on the porch, pissing. He is pissing into a bush to the left of the porch, standing on the edge of the porch, his piss arcing in a heavy swath, upward and then down into the bush.

  “Hey, this guy is pissing into my bush,” I say.

  The guy laughs and keeps pissing. I grab him by the pants, pick him up and throw him, still pissing, over the top of the bush and into the night. He doesn’t return. The other guy says, “What did you do that for?”

  “I felt like it.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Drunk?” I ask.

  He walks around the corner and is gone. I close the door and sit down to the typer again. All right, I have this mad scientist, he’s taught monkeys to fly, he’s got eleven monkeys with these wings. The monkeys are very good. The scientist has even taught them to race. Race around these pylons, yes. Now let’s see. Gotta make it good. To get rid of a story you gotta have fucking, lots of it, if possible. Better make it twelve monkeys, six male and six of the other kind. All right now. Here they go. The race is on. There they go around the first pylon. How am I going to get them to fucking? I haven’t sold a story in two months. I should have stayed in the goddamned post office. All right. There they go. Around the first pylon. Maybe they just fly off. Suddenly. How about that? They fly to Washington, D.C. and hang around the Capitol dropping turds on the public, pissing on them, smearing their turds across the White House. Can I have one drop a turd on the President? No, that’s asking too much. Okay, make it a turd on the Secretary of State. Orders are given to shoot them out of the sky. That’s tragic, isn’t it? But what about the fucking? All right. All right. Work it in. Let’s see. Okay, ten of them are shot out of the sky, poor little things. There are only two others. A male and one other kind. They can’t seem to be found. Then a cop is walking though the park one night, and there they are, the last two of them, wings strapped on, fucking like the devil. The cop walks up. The male hears, turns his head, looks up, gives a silly little monkey-grin, never missing a stroke, then turns his head and goes back to banging. The cop blows his head off. The monkey’s head, that is. The female flips the male off in disgust and stands up. For a monkey, she is a pretty little thing. For a moment the cop thinks of, thinks of — But no, it would be too tight, maybe, and she might bite, maybe. While he’s thinking this, she turns and begins to fly off. The cop aims as she rises, hits her with a bullet, she falls. He runs up. She is wounded but not dead. The cop looks around, lifts her up, takes it out, tries to work it in. No good. Just room for the head. Shit. He drops her to the ground, puts the gun to her brain and B A M! it’s over.

  The bell rings again.

  I open the door.

  Three guys walk in. Always these guys. A woman never pisses on my porch, a woman hardly ever comes by. How am I going to get any sex ideas? I have almost forgotten how to do it. But they say it’s like riding a bicycle, you never forget. It’s better than riding a bicycle.

  It’s Crazy Jack and two guys I don’t know.

  “Look, Jack,” I say, “I thought I was rid of you.”

  Jack just sits down. The other two guys sit down. Jack has promised me never to come by again but he is on the wine most of the time, so promises don’t mean much. He lives with his mother and pretends to be a painter. I know four or five guys living with or supported by their mother, and the guys pretend to genius. And all the mothers are alike: “Oh, Nelson has never had any work accepted. He’s too far ahead of his time.” But say Nelson is a painter and gets something hung: “Oh, Nelson has a painting hanging at the Warner-Finch Galleries this week. His genius is being recognized at last! He’s asking $4,000 for the work. Do you think that’s too much?” Nelson, Jack, Biddy, Norman, Jimmy and Ketya. Fuck.

  Jack has on blue jeans, is barefooted, no shirt, undershirt, just a brown shawl thrown over him. One guy has a beard and grins and blushes continually. The other guy is just fat. Some kind of leech.

  “Have you seen Borst lately?” Jack asks.

  “No.”

  “Let me have one of your beers.”

  “No. You guys come around, drink all my shit, split and leave me on a dry shore.”

  “All right.”

  He leaps up, runs out and gets his wine bottle which he has hidden under the cushion on the porch chair. He comes back, takes off the lid, takes a suck.

  “I was down at Venice with this chick and one hundred rainbows. I thought I spotted the heat and I ran up to Borst’s place with this chick and the hundred rainbows. I knocked on the door and told him, ‘Quick, let me in! I’ve got one hundred rainbows and the heat is right behind me!’ Borst closed the door. I kicked it in and ran in with the chick. Borst was on the floor, jacking off some guy. I ran into the bathroom with the chick and locked the door. Borst knocked. I said, ‘Don’t you dare come in here!’ I stayed in there with the chick for about an hour. We knocked off two pieces of ass to amuse ourselves. Then we came out.”

  “Did you dump the rainbows?”

  “Hell no, it was a false alarm. But Borst was very angry.”

  “Shit,” I say, “Borst hasn’t written a decent poem since 1955. His mother supports him. Pardon me. But I mean, all he does is look at TV, eat these delicate little celeries and greens and jog along the beach in his dirty underwear. He used to be a fine poet when he was living with those young boys in Arabia. But I can’t sympathiz
e. A winner goes wire to wire. It’s like Huxley said, Aldous, that is, ‘Any man can be a …’ ”

  “How you doing?” Jack asks.

  “Nothing but rejects,” I say.

  The one guy begins playing his flute. The leech just sits there. Jack lifts his wine bottle. It is a beautiful night in Hollywood, California. Then the guy who lives in the court behind me falls out of bed, drunk. It makes quite a sound. I’m used to it. I’m used to the whole court. All of them sit in their places, shades drawn. They get up at noon. Their cars sit out front dust-covered, tires going down, batteries weakening. They mix drink with dope and have no visible means of support. I like them. They don’t bother me.

  The guy gets into bed again, falls out.

  “You silly damn fool,” you hear him say, “get back into that bed.”

  “What’s all that noise?” Jack asks.

  “Guy behind me. He’s very lonely. Drinks a beer now and then. His mother died last year and left him twenty grand. He sits around and masturbates and looks at baseball games and cowboy shootums on TV. Used to be a gas station attendant.”

  “We’ve got to split.” says Jack, “want to come with us?”

  “No,” I say.

  They explain that it is something to do with the House of Seven Gables. They are going to see somebody who had something to do with the House of Seven Gables. It isn’t the writer, the producer, the actors, it is somebody else.

  “Well, no,” I say, and they all run out. It is a beautiful sight.

  Then I sit down to the monkeys again. Maybe I can juggle those monkeys up. If I can get all twelve of them fucking at once! That’s it! But how? And why? Check the Royal Ballet of London. But why? I’m going crazy. Okay, the Royal Ballet of London has this idea. Twelve monkeys flying while they ballet. Only before the performance somebody gives them all the Spanish Fly. Not the ballet. The monkeys. But the Spanish Fly is a myth, isn’t it? Okay, enter another mad scientist with a real Spanish Fly! No, no, oh my God, I just can’t get it right!

  The phone rings. I pick it up. It’s Borst: