“I’m glad you’re Chinaski.”
“Do you have to wait for your baggage?”
“Yes, I brought enough for a long stay!”
“Let’s wait in the bar.”
We walked in and found a table. Mindy ordered a vodka and tonic. I ordered a vodka-7. Ah, almost in tune. I lit her cigarette. She looked fine. Almost virginal. It was difficult to believe. She was small, blond and perfectly put together. She was more natural than sophisticated. I found it easy to look at her eyes—blue-green. She wore two tiny earrings. And she wore high heels. I had told Mindy that high heels excited me.
“Well,” she said, “are you frightened?”
“Not so much anymore. I like you.”
“You look much better than your photos,” she said. “I don’t think you’re ugly at all.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, I don’t mean you’re handsome, not the way people think of handsome. Your face seems kind. But your eyes—they’re beautiful. They’re wild, crazy, like some animal peering out of a forest on fire. God, something like that. I’m not very good with words.”
“I think that you’re beautiful,” I said. “And very nice. I feel good around you. I think it’s good that we’re together. Drink up. We need another. You’re like your letters.”
We had the second drink and went down for the luggage. I was proud to be with Mindy. She walked with style. So many women with good bodies just slouched along like overloaded creatures. Mindy flowed.
I kept thinking, this is too good. This is simply not possible.
—WOMEN
who in the hell is Tom Jones?
I was shacked with a
24 year old girl from
New York City for
two weeks—about
the time of the garbage
strike out there, and
one night my 34 year
old woman arrived and
she said, “I want to see
my rival.” she did
and then she said, “o,
you’re a cute little thing!”
next I knew there was a
screech of wildcats—
such screaming and scratching, wounded animal moans,
blood and piss …
I was drunk and in my
shorts. I tried to
separate them and fell,
wrenched my knee. then
they were through the screen
door and down the walk
and out in the street.
squadcars full of cops
arrived. a police helicopter
circled overhead.
I stood in the bathroom
and grinned in the mirror.
it’s not often at the age
of 55 that such splendid
things occur.
better than the Watts
riots.
the 34 year old
came back in. she had
pissed all over herself
and her clothing
was torn and she was
followed by 2 cops who
wanted to know why.
pulling up my shorts
I tried to explain.
You Can’t Write a Love Story
Margie was going to go out with this guy but on the way over this guy met another guy in a leather coat and the guy in the leather coat opened the leather coat and showed the other guy his tits and the other guy went over to Margie’s and said he couldn’t keep his date because this guy in the leather coat had showed him his tits and he was going to fuck this guy. So Margie went to see Carl. Carl was in, and she sat down and said to Carl, “This guy was going to take me to a café with tables outside and we were going to drink wine and talk, just drink wine and talk, that’s all, nothing else, but on the way over this guy met another guy in a leather coat and the guy in the leather coat showed the other guy his tits and now this guy is going to fuck the guy in the leather coat, so I don’t get my table and my wine and my talk.”
“I can’t write,” said Carl. “It’s gone.”
Then he got up and went to the bathroom, closed the door, and took a shit. Carl took four or five shits a day. There was nothing else to do. He took five or six baths a day. There was nothing else to do. He got drunk for the same reason.
Margie heard the toilet flush. Then Carl came out.
“A man simply can’t write eight hours a day. He can’t even write every day or every week. It’s a wicked fix. There’s nothing to do but wait.”
Carl went to the refrigerator and came out with a six-pack of Michelob. He opened a bottle.
“I’m the world’s greatest writer,” he said. “Do you know how difficult that is?”
Margie didn’t answer.
“I can feel pain crawling all over me. It’s like a second skin. I wish I could shed that skin like a snake.”
“Well, why don’t you get down on the rug and give it a try?”
“Listen,” he asked, “where did I meet you?”
“Barney’s Beanery.”
“Well, that explains some of it. Have a beer.”
Carl opened a bottle and passed it over.
“Yeah,” said Margie, “I know. You need your solitude. You need to be alone. Except when you want some, or except when we split, then you’re on the phone. You say you need me. You say you’re dying of a hangover. You get weak fast.”
“I get weak fast.”
“And you’re so dull around me, you never turn on. You writers are so … precious … you can’t stand people. Humanity stinks, right?”
“Right.”
“But every time we split you start throwing giant four-day parties. And suddenly you get witty, you start to TALK! Suddenly you’re full of life, talking, dancing, singing. You dance on the coffeetable, you throw bottles through the window, you act parts from Shakespeare. Suddenly you’re alive—when I’m gone. Oh, I hear about it!”
“I don’t like parties. I especially dislike people at parties.”
“For a guy who doesn’t like parties you certainly throw enough of them.”
“Listen, Margie, you don’t understand. I can’t write anymore. I’m finished. Somewhere I made a wrong turn. Somewhere I died in the night.”
“The only way you’re going to die is from one of your giant hangovers.”
“Jeffers said that even the strongest men get trapped.”
“Who was Jeffers?”
“He was the guy who turned Big Sur into a tourist trap.”
“What were you going to do tonight?”
“I was going to listen to the songs of Rachmaninoff.”
“Who’s that?”
“A dead Russian.”
“Look at you. You just sit there.”
“I’m waiting. Some guys wait for two years. Sometimes it never comes back.”
“Suppose it never comes back?”
“I’ll just put on my shoes and walk down to Main Street.”
“Why don’t you get a decent job?”
“There aren’t any decent jobs. If a writer doesn’t make it through creation, he’s dead.”
“Oh, come on, Carl! There are billions of people in the world who don’t make it through creation. Do you mean to tell me they’re dead?”
“Yes.”
“And you have soul? You are one of the few with a soul?”
“It would appear so.”
“It would appear so! You and your little typewriter! You and your tiny checks! My grandmother makes more money than you do!”
Carl opened another bottle of beer.
“Beer! Beer! You and your goddamned beer! It’s in your stories too. ‘Marty lifted his beer. As he looked up, this big blonde walked into the bar and sat down beside him …’ You’re right. You’re finished. Your material is limited, very limited. You can’t write a love story, you can’t write a decent love story.”
“You’re right, Margie.”
“If a man can’t write a love story, he’s u
seless.”
“How many have you written?”
“I don’t claim to be a writer.”
“But,” said Carl, “you appear to pose as one hell of a literary critic.”
Margie left soon after that. Carl sat and drank the remaining beers. It was true, the writing had left him. It would make his few underground enemies happy. They could step one notch up. Death pleased them, underground or overground. He remembered Endicott, Endicott sitting there saying, “Well, Hemingway’s gone, Dos Passos is gone, Patchen is gone, Pound is gone, Berryman jumped off the bridge … things are looking better and better and better.”
The phone rang. Carl picked it up. “Mr. Gantling?”
“Yes?” he answered.
“We wondered if you’d like to read at Fairmount College?”
“Well, yes, what date?”
“The thirtieth of next month.”
“I don’t think I’m doing anything then.”
“Our usual payment is one hundred dollars.”
“I usually get a hundred and a half. Ginsberg gets a thousand.”
“But that’s Ginsberg. We can only offer a hundred.”
“All right.”
“Fine, Mr. Gantling. We’ll send you the details.”
“How about travel? That’s a hell of a drive.”
“O.k., twenty-five dollars for travel.”
“O.k.”
“Would you like to talk to some of the students in their classes?”
“No.”
“There’s a free lunch.”
“I’ll take that.”
“Fine, Mr. Gantling, we’ll be looking forward to seeing you on campus.”
“Goodbye.”
Carl walked about the room. He looked at the typewriter. He put a sheet of paper in there, then watched a girl in an amazingly short mini skirt walk past the window. Then he started to type:
“Margie was going to go out with this guy but on the way over this guy met another guy in a leather coat and the guy in the leather coat opened the leather coat and showed the other guy his tits and the other guy went over to Margie’s and said he couldn’t keep his date because this guy in the leather coat had showed him his tits …”
Carl lifted his beer. It felt good to be writing again.
—SOUTH OF NO NORTH
Friendly Advice to a Lot of Young Men
Go to Tibet.
Ride a camel.
Read the bible.
Dye your shoes blue.
Grow a beard.
Circle the world in a paper canoe.
Subscribe to The Saturday Evening Post.
Chew on the left side of your mouth only.
Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a straight razor.
And carve your name in her arm.
Brush your teeth with gasoline.
Sleep all day and climb trees at night.
Be a monk and drink buckshot and beer.
Hold your head under water and play the violin.
Do a belly dance before pink candles.
Kill your dog.
Run for Mayor.
Live in a barrel.
Break your head with a hatchet.
Plant tulips in the rain.
But don’t write poetry.
To pacify Lydia I agreed to go to Muleshead, Utah. Her sister was camping in the mountains. The sisters actually owned much of the land. It had been inherited from their father. Glendoline, one of the sisters, had a tent pitched in the woods. She was writing a novel, The Wild Woman of the Mountains. The other sisters were to arrive any day. Lydia and I arrived first. We had a pup tent. We squeezed in there the first night and the mosquitoes squeezed in with us. It was terrible.
The next morning we sat around the campfire. Glendoline and Lydia cooked breakfast. I had purchased $40 worth of groceries which included several six packs of beer. I had them cooling in a mountain spring. We finished breakfast. I helped with the dishes and then Glendoline brought out her novel and read to us. It wasn’t really bad, but it was very unprofessional and needed a lot of polishing. Glendoline presumed that the reader was as fascinated by her life as she was—which was a deadly mistake. The other deadly mistakes she had made were too numerous to mention.
I walked to the spring and came back with three bottles of beer. The girls said no, they didn’t want any. They were very anti-beer. We discussed Glendoline’s novel. I figured that anybody who would read their novel aloud to others had to be suspect. If that wasn’t the old kiss of death, nothing was.
The conversation shifted and the girls started chatting about men, parties, dancing, and sex. Glendoline had a high, excited voice, and laughed nervously, laughed constantly. She was in her mid-forties, quite fat and very sloppy. Besides that, just like me, she was simply ugly.
Glendoline must have talked non-stop for over an hour, entirely about sex. I began to get dizzy. She waved her arms over her head, “I’M THE WILD WOMAN OF THE MOUNTAINS! O WHERE O WHERE IS THE MAN, THE REAL MAN WITH THE COURAGE TO TAKE ME?”
Well, he’s certainly not here, I thought.
I looked at Lydia. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“No,” she said, “I want to read this book.” It was called Love and Orgasm: A Revolutionary Guide to Sexual Fulfillment.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll take a walk then.”
I walked up to the mountain spring. I reached in for another beer, opened it and sat there drinking. I was trapped in the mountains and woods with two crazy women. They took all the joy out of fucking by talking about it all the time. I liked to fuck too, but it wasn’t my religion. There were too many ridiculous and tragic things about it. People didn’t seem to know how to handle it. So they made a toy out of it. A toy that destroyed people.
The main thing, I decided, was to find the right woman. But how? I had a red notebook and a pen with me. I scribbled a meditative poem into it. Then I walked up to the lake. Vance Pastures, the place was called. The sisters owned most of it. I had to take a shit. I took off my pants and squatted in the brush with the flies and the mosquitoes. I’d take the conveniences of the city any time. I had to wipe with leaves. I walked over to the lake and stuck one foot in the water. It was ice cold.
Be a man, old man. Enter.
My skin was ivory white. I felt very old, very soft. I moved out into the ice water. I went in up to my waist, then I took a deep breath and leaped forward. I was all the way in! The mud swirled up from the bottom and got into my ears, my mouth, my hair. I stood there in the muddy water, my teeth chattering.
I waited a long time for the water to settle and clear. Then I walked back out. I got dressed and made my way along the edge of the lake. When I got to the end of the lake I heard a sound like that of a waterfall. I went into a forest, moving toward the sound. I had to climb around some rocks across a gully. The sound came closer and closer. The flies and mosquitoes swarmed all over me. The flies were large and angry and hungry, much larger than city flies, and they knew a meal when they saw one.
I pushed my way through some thick brush and there it was: my first real honest-to-Christ waterfall. The water just poured down the mountain and over a rocky ledge. It was beautiful. It kept coming and coming. The water was coming from somewhere. And it was running off somewhere. There were three or four streams that probably led to the lake.
Finally I got tired of watching it and decided to go back. I also decided to take a different route back, a shortcut. I worked my way down to the opposite side of the lake and cut off toward camp. I knew about where it was. I still had my red notebook. I stopped and wrote another poem, less meditative, then I went on. I kept walking. The camp didn’t appear. I walked some more. I looked around for the lake. I couldn’t find the lake, I didn’t know where it was. Suddenly it hit me: I was LOST. Those horny sex bitches had driven me out of my mind and now I was LOST. I looked around. There was the backdrop of mountains and all around me were trees and brush. There was no center, no starting point, no connection betwe
en anything. I felt fear, real fear. Why had I let them take me out of my city, my Los Angeles? A man could call a cab there, he could telephone. There were reasonable solutions to reasonable problems.
Vance Pastures stretched out around me for miles and miles. I threw away my red notebook. What a way for a writer to die! I could see it in the newspaper:
HENRY CHINASKI, MINOR POET,
FOUND DEAD IN UTAH WOODS
Henry Chinaski, former post office clerk turned writer, was found in a decomposed state yesterday afternoon by forest ranger W.K. Brooks Jr. Also found near the remains was a small red notebook which evidently contained Mr. Chinaski’s last written work.
I walked on. Soon I was in a soggy area full of water. Every now and then one of my legs would sink to the knee in the bog and I’d have to haul myself out.
I came to a barbed wire fence. I knew immediately that I shouldn’t climb the fence. I knew that it was the wrong thing to do, but there seemed no alternative. I climbed over the fence and stood there, cupped both hands around my mouth and screamed: “LYDIA!”
There was no answer.
I tried it again: “LYDIA!”
My voice sounded very mournful. The voice of a coward.
I moved on. It would be nice, I thought, to be back with the sisters, hearing them laugh about sex and men and dancing and parties. It would be so nice to hear Glendoline’s voice. It would be nice to run my hand through Lydia’s long hair. I’d faithfully take her to every party in town. I’d even dance with all the women and make brilliant jokes about everything. I’d endure all that subnormal driveling shit with a smile. I could almost hear myself. “Hey, that’s a great dance tune! Who wants to really go? Who wants to boogie on out?”
I kept walking through the bog. Finally I reached dry land. I got to a road. It was just an old dirt road, but it looked good. I could see tire marks, hoof prints. There were even wires overhead that carried electricity somewhere. All I had to do was follow those wires. I walked along the road. The sun was high in the sky, it must have been noon. I walked along feeling foolish.
I came to a locked gate across the road. What did that mean? There was a small entry at one side of the gate. Evidently the gate was a cattle guard. But where were the cattle? Where was the owner of the cattle? Maybe he only came around every six months.