The Pleasures of the Damned

  no answer from me.

  “isn’t he?”

  “yes.”

  but in my mind I changed it to, yes,

  he can poop.

  he looked like a poop.

  the whole world pooped while I

  was knotted up inside like a pretzel.

  then we would walk out on the street

  and I would look at the people passing

  and all the people had behinds.

  “that’s all I ever noticed,” he told me,

  “it was horrible.”

  “we must have had similar

  childhoods,” I said.

  “somehow, that doesn’t help at all,”

  he said.

  “we’ve both got to get over this

  thing,” I said.

  “I’m trying,” he

  answered.

  Phillipe’s 1950

  Phillipe’s is an old time

  cafe off Alameda street

  just a little north and east of

  the main post office.

  Phillipe’s opens at 5 a.m.

  and serves a cup of coffee

  with cream and sugar

  for a nickel.

  in the early mornings

  the bums come down off Bunker Hill,

  as they say,

  “with our butts wrapped

  around our ears.”

  Los Angeles nights have a way

  of getting very

  cold.

  “Phillipe’s,” they say,

  “is the only place that doesn’t

  hassle us.”

  the waitresses are old

  and most of the bums are

  too.

  come down there some

  early morning.

  for a nickel

  you can see the most beautiful faces

  in town.

  downtown

  nobody goes downtown anymore

  the plants and trees have been cut away around

  Pershing Square

  the grass is brown

  and the street preachers are not as good

  as they used to be

  and down on Broadway

  the Latinos stand in long colorful lines

  waiting to see Latino action movies.

  I walk down to Clifton’s cafeteria

  it’s still there

  the waterfall is still there

  the few white faces are old and poor

  dignified

  dressed in 1950s clothing

  sitting at small tables on the first

  floor.

  I take my food upstairs to the

  third floor—

  all Latinos at the tables there

  faces more tired than hostile

  the men at rest from their factory jobs

  their once beautiful wives now

  heavy and satisfied

  the men wanting badly to go out and raise hell

  but now the money is needed for

  clothing, tires, toys, TV sets

  children’s shoes, the rent.

  I finish eating

  walk down to the first floor and out,

  and nearby is a penny arcade.

  I remember it from the 1940s.

  I walk in.

  it is full of young Latinos and Blacks

  between the ages of six and

  fifteen

  and they shoot machine guns

  play mechanical soccer

  and the piped-in salsa music is very

  loud.

  they fly spacecraft

  test their strength

  fight in the ring

  have horse races

  auto races

  but none of them want their fortunes told.

  I lean against a wall and

  watch them.

  I go outside again.

  I walk down and across from the Herald-

  Examiner building

  where my car is parked.

  I get in. then I drive away.

  it’s Sunday. and it’s true

  like they say: the old gang never

  goes downtown anymore.

  elephants in the zoo

  in the afternoon

  they lean against

  one another

  and you can see how much

  they like the sun.

  (uncollected)

  girl on the escalator

  as I go to the escalator

  a young fellow and a lovely young girl

  are ahead of me.

  her pants, her blouse are skintight.

  as we ascend

  she rests one foot on the

  step above and her behind

  assumes a fascinating shape.

  the young man looks all

  around.

  he appears worried.

  he looks at me.

  I look

  away.

  no, young man, I am not looking,

  I am not looking at your girl’s behind.

  don’t worry, I respect her and I respect you.

  in fact, I respect everything: the flowers that grow, young women,

  children, all the animals, our precious complicated

  universe, everyone and everything.

  I sense that the young man now feels

  better and I am glad for

  him. I know his problem: the girl has

  a mother, a father, maybe a sister or

  brother, and undoubtedly a bunch of

  unfriendly relatives and she likes to

  dance and flirt and she likes to

  go to the movies and sometimes she talks

  and chews gum at the same time and

  she enjoys really dumb TV shows and

  she thinks she’s a budding actress and she

  doesn’t always look so good and she has a

  terrible temper and sometimes she almost goes

  crazy and she can talk for hours on the

  telephone and she wants to go to

  Europe some summer soon and she wants you to

  buy her a near-new Mercedes and she’s in love with

  Mel Gibson and her mother is a

  drunk and her father is a racist

  and sometimes when she drinks too much she

  snores and she’s often cold in bed and

  she has a guru, a guy who met Christ

  in the desert in 1978, and she wants to

  be a dancer and she’s unemployed and she

  gets migraine headaches every time she

  eats sugar or cheese.

  I watch him take her

  up

  the escalator, his arm

  protectively about her

  waist, thinking he’s

  lucky,

  thinking he’s a real special

  guy, thinking that

  nobody in the world has

  what he has.

  and he’s right, terribly

  terribly right, his arm around

  that warm bucket of

  intestine,

  bladder,

  kidneys,

  lungs,

  salt,

  sulphur,

  carbon dioxide

  and

  phlegm.

  lotsa

  luck.

  the shit shits

  yes, it’s dark in here.

  can’t open the door.

  can’t open the jam lid.

  can’t find a pair of socks that match.

  I was born in Andernach in 1920 and never thought it

  would be like this.

  at the races today I was standing in the 5-win line.

  this big fat guy with body odor

  kept jamming his binoculars into my ass and I turned and

  said,

  “pardon me, sir. could you please stop jamming those goddamned

  binocs into my ass?”

  he just looked at me with little pig eyes—

&nbs
p; rather pink with olive pits for pupils—

  and the eyes just kept looking at me until I stepped away and then

  got sick, vomited into a

  trash can.

  I keep getting letters from an uncle in Andernach who must be

  95 years old and he keeps asking,

  “my boy, why don’t you WRITE?”

  what can I write him? unfortunately

  there is nothing that I can write.

  I pull on my shorts and they rip.

  sleep is impossible, I mean good sleep. I just get

  small spurts of it, and then back to the job where the foreman

  comes by:

  “Chinaski, for a pieceworker you crawl like a snail!”

  I’m sick and I’m tired and I don’t know where to go or what to do.

  well, at lunchtime we all ride down the elevator together

  making jokes and laughing

  and then we sit in the employees’ cafeteria making jokes and

  laughing and eating the recooked food;

  first they buy it then they fry it

  then they reheat it then they sell it, can’t be a germ left in there

  or a vitamin either.

  but we joke and laugh

  otherwise we would start

  screaming.

  on Saturday and Sunday when I don’t have money to go to the track

  I just lay in bed.

  I never get out of bed.

  I don’t want to go to a movie;

  it is shameful for a full-grown man to go to a movie alone.

  and women are less than nothing. they terrify

  me.

  I wonder what Andernach is like?

  I think that if they would let me just stay in bed I could

  get well or strong or at least feel better;

  but it’s always up and back to the machine,

  searching for stockings that match,

  shorts that won’t tear,

  looking at my face in the mirror, disgusted with

  my face.

  my uncle, what is he thinking with his crazy

  letters?

  we are all little forgotten pieces of shit

  only we walk and talk

  laugh

  make jokes

  and

  the shit shits.

  some day I will tell that foreman off.

  I will tell everybody off.

  and walk down to the end of the road and

  make swans out of the blackbirds and

  lions out of berry leaves.

  (uncollected)

  big time loser

  I was on the train to Del Mar and I left my seat

  to go to the bar car. I had a beer and came

  back and sat down.

  “pardon me,” said the lady next to me, “but you’re

  sitting in my husband’s seat.”

  “oh yeah?” I said. I picked up my Racing Form

  and began studying it. the first race looked tough. then a man was standing there. “hey, buddy,

  you’re in my seat!”

  “I already told him,” said the lady, “but he didn’t pay

  any attention.”

  “This is my seat!” I told the man.

  “it’s bad enough he takes my seat,” said the man looking

  around, “but now he’s reading my Racing Form!”

  I looked up at him, he was puffing his chest out.

  “look at you,” I said, “puffing your goddamned

  chest out!”

  “you’re in my seat, buddy!” he told me.

  “look,” I said, “I’ve been in this seat since the

  train left the station. ask anybody!”

  “no, that’s not right,” said a man behind me,

  “he had that seat when the train left the

  station!” “are you sure?”

  “sure I’m sure!”

  I got up and walked to the next train car.

  there was my empty seat by the window and there was

  my Racing Form.

  I went back to the other car. the

  man was reading his Racing Form.

  “hey,” I started to say…

  “forget it,” said the man.

  “just leave us alone,” said his wife.

  I walked back to my car, sat down and

  looked out the window

  pretending to be interested in the land-

  scape,

  happy that the people in my car didn’t know what

  the people in the other car knew.

  commerce

  I used to drive those trucks so hard

  and for so long that

  my right foot would

  go dead from pushing down on the

  accelerator.

  delivery after delivery,

  14 hours at a time

  for $1.10 per hour

  under the table,

  up one-way alleys in the worst parts of

  town.

  at midnight or at high noon,

  racing between tall buildings

  always with the stink of something

  dying or about to die

  in the freight elevator

  at your destination,

  a self-operated elevator,

  opening into a large bright room,

  uncomfortably so

  under unshielded lights

  over the heads of many women

  each bent mute over a machine,

  crucified alive

  on piecework,

  to hand the package then

  to a fat son of a bitch in red

  suspenders.

  he signs, ripping through the cheap

  paper

  with his ballpoint pen,

  that’s power,

  that’s America at work.

  you think of killing him

  on the spot

  but discard that thought and

  leave,

  down into the urine-stinking

  elevator,

  they have you crucified too,

  America at work,

  where they rip out your intestines

  and your brain and your

  will and your spirit.

  they suck you dry, then throw

  you away.

  the capitalist system.

  the work ethic.

  the profit motive.

  the memory of your father’s words,

  “work hard and you’ll be

  appreciated.”

  of course, only if you make

  much more for them than they pay

  you.

  out of the alley and into the

  sunlight again,

  into heavy traffic,

  planning the route to your next stop,

  the best way, the time-

  saver,

  you knowing none of the tricks

  and to actually think about

  all the deliveries that still lie ahead

  would lead to

  madness.

  it’s one at a time,

  easing in and out of traffic

  between other work-driven drivers

  also with no concept of danger,

  reality, flow or

  compassion.

  you can feel the despair

  escaping from their

  machines,

  their lives as hopeless and

  as numbed as

  yours.

  you break through the cluster

  of them

  on your way to the next

  stop,

  driving through teeming downtown

  Los Angeles in 1952,

  stinking and hungover,

  no time for lunch,

  no time for coffee,

  you’re on route #10,

  a new man,

  give the new man the

  ball-busting route,

  see if he can swallow the

&nb
sp; whale.

  you look down and the

  needle is on

  red.

  almost no gas left.

  too fucking bad.

  you gun it,

  lighting a crushed cigarette with

  one hand from a soiled pack of

  matches.

  shit on the world.

  come on in!

  welcome to my wormy hell.

  the music grinds off-key.

  fish eyes watch from the wall.

  this is where the last happy shot was

  fired.

  the mind snaps closed

  like a mind snapping

  closed.

  we need to discover a new will and a new

  way.

  we’re stuck here now

  listening to the laughter of the

  gods.

  my temples ache with the fact of

  the facts.

  I get up, move about, scratch

  myself.

  I’m a pawn.

  I am a hungry prayer.

  my wormy hell welcomes you.

  hello. hello there. come in, come on in!

  plenty of room here for us all,

  sucker.

  we can only blame ourselves so

  come sit with me in the dark.

  it’s half-past

  nowhere

  everywhere.

  the bakers of 1935

  my mother, father and I