The first realtor we stopped at was in Santa Monica. It was called TwentySecond Century Housing. Now, that was modern.
Sarah and I got out of the car and walked in. There was a young fellow at the desk, bow tie, nice striped shirt, red suspenders. He looked hip. He was shuffling papers at his desk. He stopped and looked up.
“Can I help you?”
“We want to buy a house,” I said.
The young fellow just turned his head to one side and kept looking away. A minute went past. Two minutes.
“Let’s go,” I said to Sarah.
We got back into the car and I started the engine.
“What was all that about?” Sarah asked.
“He didn’t want to do business with us. He took a reading and he thought we were indigent, worthless. He thought we would waste his time.”
“But it’s not true.”
“Maybe not, but the whole thing made me feel as if I was covered with slime.”
I drove the car along, hardly knowing where I was going.
Somehow, that had hurt. Of course, I was hungover and I needed a shave and I always wore clothing that somehow didn’t seem to fit me quite right and maybe all the years of poverty had just given me a certain look. But I didn’t think it was wise to judge a man from the outside like that. I would much rather judge a man on the way he acted and spoke.
“Christ,” I laughed, “maybe nobody will sell us a house!”
“The man was a fool,” said Sarah.
“TwentySecond Century Housing is one of the largest real estate chains in the state.”
“The man was a fool,” Sarah repeated.
I still felt diminished. Maybe I was a jerk-off of some kind. All I knew how to do was to type—sometimes.
Then we were in a hilly area driving along.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Topanga Canyon,” Sarah answered.
“This place looks fucked.”
“Its all right except for floods and fires and burned-out-neohippy types.”
Then I saw the sign: APES HAVEN. It was a bar. I pulled up alongside and we got out. There was a cluster of bikes outside. Sometimes called hogs.
We went in. It was damn near full. Fellows in leather jackets. Fellows wearing dirty scarfs. Some of the fellows had scabs on their faces. Others had beards that didn’t grow quite right. Most of the eyes were pale blue and round and listless. They sat very still as if they had been there for weeks.
We found a couple of stools.
“Two beers,” I said, “anything in a bottle.”
The barkeep trotted off.
The beers came back and Sarah and I had a hit.
Then I noticed a face thrust forward along the bar looking at us. It was a very fat round face, a touch imbecilic. It was a young man and his hair and his beard were a dirty red, but his eyebrows were pure white. His lower lip hung down as if an invisible weight were pulling at it, the lip was twisted and you saw the inner lip and it was wet and it shimmered.
“Chinaski,” he said, “son of a bitch, it’s CHINASKI!”
I gave a small wave, then looked straight ahead.
“One of my readers,” I said to Sarah.
“Oh oh,” she said.
“Chinaski,” I heard a voice to my right.
“Chinaski,” I heard another voice.
A whiskey appeared before me. I lifted it, “Thank you, fellows!” and I knocked it off.
“Go easy,” said Sarah, “you know how you are. We’ll never get out of here.”
The bartender brought another whiskey. He was a little guy with dark red blotches all over his face. He looked meaner than anybody in there. He just stood there, staring at me.
“Chinaski,” he said, “the world’s greatest writer.”
“If you insist,” I said and raised the glass of whiskey. Then I passed it to Sarah who knocked it off.
She gave a little cough and set the glass down.
“I only drank that to help save you.”
Then there was a little group gathering slowly behind us.
“Chinaski. Chinaski … Motherfuck … I’ve read all your books, ALL YOUR BOOKS! … I can kick your ass, Chinaski … Hey, Chinaski, can you still get it up? … Chinaski, Chinaski, can I read you one of my poems?”
I paid the barkeep and we backed off our stools and moved toward the door. Again I noticed the leather jackets and the blandness of the faces and the feeling that there wasn’t much joy or daring in any of them. There was something totally missing in the poor fellows and something in me wrenched, for just a moment, and I felt like throwing my arms around them, consoling and embracing them like some Dostoevsky, but I knew that would finally lead nowhere except to ridicule and humiliation, for myself and for them. The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy. It was something we would all have to work for once again.
And they followed us out. “Chinaski, Chinaski … Who’s your beautiful lady? You don’t deserve her, man!… Chinaski, come on, stay and drink with us! Be a good guy! Be like your writing, Chinaski! Don’t be a prick!”
They were right, of course. We got in the car and I started the engine and we drove slowly through them as they crowded around us, slowly giving way, some of them blowing kisses, some of them giving me the finger, a few beating on the windows. We got through.
We made it to the road and drove along.
“So,” said Sarah, “those are your readers?”
“That’s most of them, I think.”
“Don’t any intelligent people read you?”
“I hope so.”
We kept driving along not saying anything. Then Sarah asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“Dennis Body.”
“Dennis Body? Who’s that?”
“He was my only friend in grammar school. I wonder whatever happened to him.”
—HOLLYWOOD
helping the old
I was standing in line at the bank today
when the old fellow in front of me
dropped his glasses (luckily, within the
case)
and as he bent over
I saw how difficult it was for
him
and I said, “wait, let me get
them …”
but as I picked them up
he dropped his cane
a beautiful, black polished
cane
and I got the glasses back to him
then went for the cane
steadying the old boy
as I handed him his cane.
he didn’t speak,
he just smiled at me.
then he turned
forward.
I stood behind him waiting
my turn.
The place I was living in at that time did have some qualities. One of the finest was the bedroom which was painted a dark, dark blue. That dark dark blue had provided a haven for many a hangover, some of them brutal enough to almost kill a man, especially at a time when I was popping pills which people would give me without my bothering to ask what they were. Some nights I knew that if I slept I would die. I would walk around alone all night, from the bedroom to the bathroom and from the bathroom through the front room and into the kitchen. I opened and closed the refrigerator, time and time again. I turned the faucets on and off. Then I went to the bathroom and turned the faucets on and off. I flushed the toilet. I pulled at my ears. I inhaled and exhaled. Then, when the sun came up, I knew I was safe. Then I would sleep with the dark dark blue walls, healing.
Another feature of that place were the knocks of unsavory women at 3 or 4 a.m. They certainly weren’t ladies of great charm, but having a foolish turn of mind, I felt that somehow they brought me adventure. The real fact of the matter was that many of them had no place else to go. And they liked the fact that there was drink and that I didn’t work too hard trying to bed down with them.
Of course, after I met Sarah, this p
art of my lifestyle changed quite a bit.
That neighborhood around Carlton Way near Western Avenue was changing too. It had been almost all lower-class white, but political troubles in Central America and other parts of the world had brought a new type of individual to the neighborhood. The male usually was small, a dark or light brown, usually young. There were wives, children, brothers, cousins, friends. They began filling up the apartments and courts. They lived many to an apartment and I was one of the few whites left in the court complex.
The children ran up and down, up and down the court walkway. They all seemed to be between two and seven years old. They had no bikes or toys. The wives were seldom seen. They remained inside, hidden. Many of the men also remained inside. It was not wise to let the landlord know how many people were living in a single unit. The few men seen outside were the legal renters. At least they paid the rent. How they survived was unknown. The men were small, thin, silent, unsmiling. Most sat on the porch steps in their undershirts, slumped forward a bit, occasionally smoking a cigarette. They sat on the porch steps for hours, motionless. Sometimes they purchased very old junk automobiles and the men drove them slowly about the neighborhood. They had no auto insurance or driver’s licenses and they drove with expired license plates. Most of the cars had defective brakes. The men almost never stopped at the corner stop sign and often failed to heed red lights, but there were few accidents. Something was watching over them.
After a while the cars would break down but my new neighbors wouldn’t leave them on the street. They would drive them up the walkways and park them directly outside their door. First they would work on the engine. They would take off the hood and the engine would rust in the rain. Then they would put the car on blocks and remove the wheels. They took the wheels inside and kept them there so they wouldn’t be stolen at night.
While I was living there, there were two rows of cars lined up in the court, just sitting there on blocks. The men sat motionless on their porches in their undershirts. Sometimes I would nod or wave to them. They never responded. Apparently they couldn’t understand or read the eviction notices and they tore them up, but I did see them studying the daily L.A. papers. They were stoic and durable because compared to where they had come from, things were now easy.
Well, no matter. My tax consultant had suggested I purchase a house, and so for me it wasn’t really a matter of “white flight.” Although, who knows? I had noticed that each time I had moved in Los Angeles over the years, each move had always been to the North and to the West.
Finally, after a few weeks of house hunting, we found the one. After the down payment the monthly payments came to $789.81. There was a huge hedge in front on the street and the yard was also in front so the house sat way back on the lot. It looked like a damned good place to hide. There was even a stairway, an upstairs with a bedroom, bathroom and what was to become my typing room. And there was an old desk left in there, a huge ugly old thing. Now, after decades, I was a writer with a desk. Yes, I felt the fear, the fear of becoming like them. Worse, I had an assignment to write a screenplay. Was I doomed and damned, was I about to be sucked dry? I didn’t feel it would be that way. But does anybody, ever?
Sarah and I moved our few possessions in.
The big moment came. I sat the typewriter down on the desk and I put a piece of paper in there and I hit the keys. The typewriter still worked. And there was plenty of room for an ashtray, the radio and the bottle. Don’t let anybody tell you different. Life begins at 65.
—HOLLYWOOD
air and light and time and space
“—you know, I’ve either had a family, a job, something
has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have a place and the time to
create.”
no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.
baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.
That night without Jon listening downstairs, the screenplay began to move. I was writing about a young man who wanted to write and drink but most of his success was with the bottle. The young man had been me. While the time had not been an unhappy time, it had been mostly a time of void and waiting. As I typed along, the characters in a certain bar returned to me. I saw each face again, the bodies, heard the voices, the conversations. There was one particular bar that had a certain deathly charm. I focused on that, relived the barroom fights with the bartender. I had not been a good fighter. To begin with my hands were too small and I was underfed, grossly underfed. But I had a certain amount of guts and I took a punch very well. My main problem during a fight was that I couldn’t truly get angry, even when it seemed my life was at stake. It was all play-acting with me. It mattered and it didn’t. Fighting the bartender was something to do and it pleased the patrons who were a clubby little group. I was the outsider. There is something to be said for drinking—all those fights would have killed me had I been sober but being drunk it was as if the body turned to rubber and the head to cement. Sprained wrists, puffed lips and battered kneecaps were about all I came up with the next day. Also, knots on the head from falling. How all this could become a screenplay, I didn’t know. I only knew that it was the only part of my life I hadn’t written much about. I believe that I was sane at that time, as sane as anybody. And I knew that there was a whole civilization of lost souls that lived in and off bars, daily, nightly and forever, until they died. I had never read about this civilization so I decided to write about it, the way I remembered it. The good old typer clicked along.
The next day about noon the phone rang. It was Jon.
“I have found a place. François is with me. It’s beautiful, it has two kitchens and the rent is nothing, really nothing …”
“Where are you located?”
“We’re in the ghetto in Venice. Brooks Avenue. All blacks. The streets are war and destruction. It’s beautiful!”
“Oh?”
“You must come see the place!”
“When?”
“Today!”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t want to miss this! There are people living under our house. We can hear them under there, talking and playing their radio! There are gangs everywhere! There’s a large hotel somebody built down here. But nobody paid their rent. They boarded the place up, cut off the electricity, the water, the gas. But people still live there. THIS IS A WAR ZONE! The police do not come in here, it’s like a separate state with its own rules. I love it! You must visit us!”
“How do I get there?”
Jon gave me the instructions, then hung up.
I found Sarah.
“Listen, I’ve got to go see Jon and Francois.”
“Hey, I’m coming too!”
“No, you can’t. It’s in the ghetto in Venice.”
“Oh, the ghetto! I wouldn’t miss that for anything!”
“Look, do me a favor: please don’t come along!”
“What? Do you think I would let you go
down there all by yourself?”
I got my blade, put my money in my shoes. “O.K.,” I said....
We drove slowly into the Venice ghetto. It was not true that it was all black. There were some Latinos on the outskirts. I noted a group of 7 or 8 young Mexican men standing around and leaning against an old car. Most of the men were in their undershirts or had their shirts off. I drove slowly past, not staring, just taking it in. They didn’t seem to be doing much. Just waiting. Ready and waiting. Actually, they were probably just bored. They looked like fine fellows. And they didn’t look worried worth a shit.
Then we got to black turf. Right away, the streets were cluttered: a left shoe, an orange shirt, an old purse … a rotted grapefruit … another left shoe … a pair of bluejeans … a rubber tire …
I had to steer through the stuff. Two young blacks about 11 years old stared at us from bicycles. It was pure, perfect hate. I could feel it. Poor blacks hated. Poor whites hated. It was only when blacks got money and whites got money that they mixed. Some whites loved blacks. Very few, if any, blacks loved whites. They were still getting even. Maybe they never would. In a capitalistic society the losers slaved for the winners and you have to have more losers than winners. What did I think? I knew politics would never solve it and there wasn’t enough time left to get lucky.
We drove on until we found the address, parked the car, got out, knocked.
A little window slid open and there was an eye looking at us.
“Ah, Hank and Sarah!”
The door opened, shut, and we were inside.
I walked to the window and looked out.
“What are you doing?” asked Jon.
“Just want to check the car now and then …”
“Oh, yes, come look, I’ll show you the two kitchens!”
Sure enough there were two kitchens, a stove in each, a refrigerator in each, a sink in each.
“This used to be two places. It’s been turned into one.”
“Nice,” said Sarah, “you can cook in one kitchen and Francois can cook in the other …”