The Pleasures of the Damned

  a lie.

  the truth was just

  too awful and

  embarrassing to

  tell.

  then the bell rang

  and recess was

  over.

  “thank you,” said Mrs.

  Sorenson, “that was very

  nice.

  and tomorrow the grounds

  will be dry

  and we will put them

  to use

  again.”

  most of the boys

  cheered

  and the little girls

  sat very straight and

  still,

  looking so pretty and

  clean and

  alert,

  their hair beautiful

  in a sunshine that

  the world might

  never see

  again.

  marina:

  majestic, magic

  infinite

  my little girl is

  sun

  on the carpet—

  out the door

  picking a

  flower, ha!,

  an old man,

  battle-wrecked,

  emerges from his

  chair

  and she looks at me

  but only sees

  love,

  ha!, and I become

  quick with the world

  and love right back

  just like I was meant

  to do.

  Trollius and trellises

  of course, I may die in the next ten minutes

  and I’m ready for that

  but what I’m really worried about is

  that my editor-publisher might retire

  even though he is ten years younger than

  I.

  it was just 25 years ago (I was at that ripe

  old age of 45)

  when we began our unholy alliance to

  test the literary waters,

  neither of us being much

  known.

  I think we had some luck and still have some

  of same

  yet

  the odds are pretty fair

  that he will opt for warm and pleasant

  afternoons

  in the garden

  long before I.

  writing is its own intoxication

  while publishing and editing,

  attempting to collect bills

  carries its own

  attrition

  which also includes dealing with the

  petty bitchings and demands

  of many

  so-called genius darlings who are

  not.

  I won’t blame him for getting

  out

  and hope he sends me photos of his

  Rose Lane, his

  Gardenia Avenue.

  will I have to seek other

  promulgators?

  that fellow in the Russian

  fur hat?

  or that beast in the East

  with all that hair

  in his ears, with those wet and

  greasy lips?

  or will my editor-publisher

  upon exiting for that world of Trollius and

  trellis

  hand over the

  machinery

  of his former trade to a

  cousin, a

  daughter or

  some Poundian from Big

  Sur?

  or will he just pass the legacy on

  to the

  Shipping Clerk

  who will rise like

  Lazarus,

  fingering newfound

  importance?

  one can imagine terrible

  things:

  “Mr. Chinaski, all your work

  must now be submitted in

  Rondo form

  and

  typed

  triple-spaced on rice

  paper.”

  power corrupts,

  life aborts

  and all you

  have left

  is a

  bunch of

  warts.

  “no, no, Mr. Chinaski:

  Rondo form!”

  “hey, man,” I’ll ask,

  “haven’t you heard of

  the thirties?”

  “the thirties? what’s

  that?”

  my present editor-publisher

  and I

  at times

  did discuss the thirties,

  the Depression

  and

  some of the little tricks it

  taught us—

  like how to endure on almost

  nothing

  and move forward

  anyhow.

  well, John, if it happens enjoy your

  divertissement to

  plant husbandry,

  cultivate and aerate

  between

  bushes, water only in the

  early morning, spread

  shredding to discourage

  weed growth

  and

  as I do in my writing:

  use plenty of

  manure.

  and thank you

  for locating me there at

  5124 DeLongpre Avenue

  somewhere between

  alcoholism and

  madness.

  together we

  laid down the gauntlet

  and there are takers

  even at this late date

  still to be

  found

  as the fire sings

  through the

  trees.

  beagle

  do not bother the beagle lying there

  away from grass and flowers and paths,

  dreaming dogdreams, or perhaps dreaming

  nothing, as men do awake;

  yes, leave him be, in that simple juxtaposition,

  out of the maelstrom, lucifugous as a bat,

  searching bat-inward

  for a state of grace.

  it’s good. we’ll not ransom our fate

  or his for doorknobs or rasps.

  the east wind whirls the blinds,

  our beagle snuffles in his sleep as

  outside, outside,

  hedges break, the night torn mad

  with footsteps.

  our beagle spreads a paw,

  the lamp burns warm

  bathed in the life of his

  size.

  coffee and babies

  I sleep at Lila’s and in the morning

  we get the breakfast special at the local cafe,

  then it’s up to her friend Buffy’s.

  Buffy has boy twins, father in doubt, and lives on relief

  in a $150-a-month apt.

  the twins wail, crawl about, I pick one up, he pulls at

  my goatee.

  “how nice,” I say, “to be sitting with 2 lovely ladies

  at ten in the morning in the city of Burbank while

  other men work.”

  every time the twins get changed I note they have hard-ons

  (their troubles begin at the age of one)

  and their asses are red with rash and sadness.

  “I used to open and close the bars,” I say,

  “I used to whip men 20 years younger than myself. now I sit

  with women and babies.”

  we have our coffees. I borrow a cigarette. (Buffy knows I

  am good for it. I’ll buy her a pack

  later.) the girls joke about my ugly face.

  I smoke. after this I need some profundities but

  Buddha doesn’t help much.

  Buffy gets up and shakes her behind at me:

  “you can’t have me, Chinaski, you’re too old, you’re too

  ugly.”

  well, you see, it’s difficult for me. Lila and I finish

  our coffees and climb down the green steps to the

  blue-gre
en

  swimming pool. it is 11 a.m. India and Pakistan are at

  war. we get into my smashed ’62 Comet. it

  starts. well, we can go to the races, we can screw again,

  we can sleep, we can have a Mexican marriage, we can argue

  and split or she can read to me about fresh murders in the

  Herald-Examiner.

  it ends up

  we argue and split and I forget to go get

  Buffy her pack of

  cigarettes.

  (uncollected)

  magical mystery tour

  I am in this low-slung sports car

  painted a deep, rich yellow

  driving under an Italian sun.

  I have a British accent.

  I’m wearing dark shades

  an expensive silk shirt.

  there’s no dirt under my

  fingernails.

  the radio plays Vivaldi

  and there are two women with

  me

  one with raven hair

  the other a blonde.

  they have small breasts and

  beautiful legs

  and they laugh at everything I

  say.

  as we drive up a steep road

  the blonde squeezes my leg

  and nestles closer

  while raven hair

  leans across and nibbles my

  ear.

  we stop for lunch at a quaint

  rustic inn.

  there is more laughter

  before lunch

  during lunch and after

  lunch.

  after lunch we will have a

  flat tire on the other side of

  the mountain

  and the blonde will change the

  tire

  while

  raven hair

  photographs me

  lighting my pipe

  leaning against a tree

  the perfect background

  perfectly at peace

  with

  sunlight

  flowers

  clouds

  birds

  everywhere.

  (uncollected)

  the last generation

  it was much easier to be a genius in the twenties, there were

  only 3 or 4 literary magazines and if you got into them

  4 or 5 times you could end up in Gertie’s parlor

  you could possibly meet Picasso for a glass of wine, or

  maybe only Miró.

  and yes, if you sent your stuff postmarked from Paris

  chances of publication became much better.

  most writers bottomed their manuscripts with the

  word “Paris” and the date.

  and with a patron there was time to

  write, eat, drink and take drives to Italy and sometimes

  Greece.

  it was good to be photo’d with others of your kind

  it was good to look tidy, enigmatic and thin.

  photos taken on the beach were great.

  and yes, you could write letters to the 15 or 20

  others

  bitching about this and that.

  you might get a letter from Ezra or from Hem; Ezra liked

  to give directions and Hem liked to practice his writing

  in his letters when he couldn’t do the other.

  it was a romantic grand game then, full of the fury of

  discovery.

  now

  now there are so many of us, hundreds of literary magazines,

  hundreds of presses, thousands of titles.

  who is to survive out of all this mulch?

  it’s almost improper to ask.

  I go back, I read the books about the lives of the boys

  and girls of the twenties.

  if they were the Lost Generation, what would you call us?

  sitting here among the warheads with our electric-touch

  typewriters?

  the Last Generation?

  I’d rather be Lost than Last but as I read these books about

  them

  I feel a gentleness and a generosity

  as I read of the suicide of Harry Crosby in his hotel room

  with his whore

  that seems as real to me as the faucet dripping now

  in my bathroom sink.

  I like to read about them: Joyce blind and prowling the

  bookstores like a tarantula, they said.

  Dos Passos with his clipped newscasts using a pink typewriter

  ribbon.

  D.H. horny and pissed off, H.D. being smart enough to use

  her initials which seemed much more literary than Hilda

  Doolittle.

  G. B. Shaw, long established, as noble and

  dumb as royalty, flesh and brain turning to marble. a

  bore.

  Huxley promenading his brain with great glee, arguing

  with Lawrence that it wasn’t in the belly and the balls,

  that the glory was in the skull.

  and that hick Sinclair Lewis coming to light.

  meanwhile

  the revolution being over, the Russians were liberated and

  dying.

  Gorky with nothing to fight for, sitting in a room trying

  to find phrases praising the government.

  many others broken in victory.

  now

  now there are so many of us

  but we should be grateful, for in a hundred years

  if the world is not destroyed, think, how much

  there will be left of all of this:

  nobody really able to fail or to succeed—just

  relative merit, diminished further by

  our numerical superiority.

  we will all be cata logued and filed.

  all right…

  if you still have doubts of those other golden

  times

  there were other curious creatures: Richard

  Aldington, Teddy Dreiser, F. Scott, Hart Crane, Wyndham Lewis, the

  Black Sun Press.

  but to me, the twenties centered mostly on Hemingway

  coming out of the war and beginning to type.

  it was all so simple, all so deliciously clear

  now

  there are so many of us.

  Ernie, you had no idea how good it had been

  four de cades later when you blew your brains into

  the orange juice

  although

  I grant you

  that was not your best work.

  about competition

  the higher you climb

  the greater the pressure.

  those who manage to

  endure

  learn

  that the distance

  between the

  top and the

  bottom

  is

  obscenely

  great.

  and those who

  succeed

  know

  this secret:

  there isn’t

  one.

  a radio with guts

  it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street

  I used to get drunk

  and throw the radio through the window

  while it was playing, and, of course,

  it would break the glass in the window

  and the radio would sit out there on the roof

  still playing

  and I’d tell my woman,

  “Ah, what a marvelous radio!”

  the next morning I’d take the window

  off the hinges

  and carry it down the street

  to the glass man

  who would put in another pane.

  I kept throwing that radio through the window

  each time I got drunk

  and it would sit out there on the roof

  still playing—

  a magic radio

  a radio with gut
s,

  and each morning I’d take the window

  back to the glass man.

  I don’t remember how it ended exactly

  though I do remember

  we finally moved out.

  there was a woman downstairs who worked in

  the garden in her bathing suit

  and her husband complained he couldn’t sleep nights

  because of me

  so we moved out

  and in the next place

  I either forgot to throw the radio out the window

  or I didn’t feel like it

  anymore.

  I do remember missing the woman who worked in the

  garden in her bathing suit,

  she really dug with that trowel

  and she put her behind up in the air

  and I used to sit in the window

  and watch the sun shine all over that thing

  while the music played.

  the egg

  he’s 17.

  mother, he said, how do I crack an