Absence of the Hero

  The 63-cent lover of the Suicide Hotel. Deedee walked on by going back to bed. I decided that it had been a fair night. I drank a half a bottle of wine, 3 cans of beer, and walked over to the couch and climbed in with May. I was ready to sleep it off.

  May reached out and grabbed me. She had a good hold of me, and I mean me.

  “Unhand me, woman,” I said.

  “I’m burning up,” she said,” “I’ve just got to have it.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Why? Why?”

  “I’m tired. I don’t know, I’m just very tired.”

  “But it’s getting bigger.”

  “Believe me, it doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “But it must. Why does it do that?”

  “No brains, I guess.”

  “I’ve got to have it! I’m burning up, I tell you!”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Damn it, I’m not a machine! Don’t you understand?”

  “No!”

  May bent down and put her mouth upon me. I couldn’t resist. It must have lasted 20 minutes, then she smoked it out of me. I was really finished.

  I awakened the next morning, alone on the couch. The girls were in the kitchen, talking and laughing. I listened.

  “Oh, Jerri, I just love that new hat! Doesn’t she look sweet in that new hat? Put it on again, Jerri! Don’t you like it, Deedee?”

  “Yes, it brings everything out in her. It’s darling, a darling little hat!”

  I got into some clothes and walked into the kitchen.

  “There he is!”

  “Hi, Hank!”

  “Hello, girls.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A bit weary, I guess.”

  “Care for some coffee?”

  “O.K.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “How do you like Jerri’s new hat? Put it on again, Jerri.”

  “It really makes her look sexy,” I said.

  “Oh, you men! I think it brings out the features of her face.”

  “I think it brings out the features of her ass.”

  “Hank, do you have to be nasty?”

  “Sorry. Bad head. Yes, she looks nice in the hat. Green’s her color. Her eyes are green, and with all that red hair, it works. O.K.?”

  “That’s more like my nice daddy,” said May.

  I got down a can of beer and then May made breakfast for us all. The girls just chatted back and forth. They each had on different dresses than the night before, and they looked scrubbed and untouched; they glowed.

  “Why don’t you girls stay another night?” I asked.

  “What do you think, May?” asked Jerri.

  “I’d love it. Why don’t you?”

  “O.K., then, we will.”

  I smiled and lit a cigarette. Then I leaned back and blew out a large and perfect smoke ring. It floated toward the ceiling.

  The girls applauded and the world was good.

  Sound and Passion

  When you’re starving, or drinking and starving, there’s hardly anything to do but make love, if you have anybody to make love to. I had Claudia and Claudia never said no and we didn’t have anything else to do. Besides, she was one of the best lays I’d ever had. We were on the wine, heavy. Up in a fourth floor apartment. My unemployment insurance had run out some time back and the rent was up; everything was ended. We took long walks at night, and stole cigarettes from cars with open windows. We read old newspapers we found in the trash (we were always particularly delighted to find the Sunday funnies) and also picked up empty bottles for deposit money. Every­thing had been hocked but somehow sometimes money showed. But we knew it would finally end and it was sad because our love was good and our sex was good.

  Of course, somebody would take care of Claudia. I knew that. I was the one who was finished.

  “Why don’t you get the hell out now?” I asked her. “I’m a bum. I can’t face life. I don’t fit. Life scares me. I’m a coward, a misfit. Jesus Christ, look at me. Who would ever hire a guy who looks like me?”

  “I can’t leave you, Hank. I’ve been closer to you than any man I’ve ever known. You’ll make it as a writer someday, you’ll see.”

  “A writer? What’ll I write on? Toilet paper? And we’re almost out of that.”

  The hock ticket on the typewriter had long expired. We’d hocked it while I was on unemployment and couldn’t even get it out then.

  “Look, Hank, those people out there are just a bunch of damn fools, subnormals, and madmen. Don’t get so down on yourself.”

  “But, baby, those damn fools and madmen control us.”

  “Yeah, I know. How about some more hotcakes?”

  “Well, since that’s all there is on the menu.”

  We were down to that. Flour and water. We didn’t have any grease. And no grass. The flour and water burned a bit and it was like a tasteless cracker, but when you get hungry enough, even that filled some kind of hole. It made you think that you weren’t right up against the wall, even if you were.

  We ate and then had a couple of stolen cigarettes and started in on the wine. We heard footsteps and we were very still. We were afraid it was Mrs. Dennis, the manager. I’d told her that I was expecting my income tax refund any day. But the days had gone on and on, and of course I’d already gotten my check some time back.

  I was getting good at stealing wine. I stole it from the bargain basket near the register when Dick turned his back. I just stood around in there conversing with him and waiting, until a customer came in.

  “Somebody’s stealing my wine,” he’d tell me the next time he saw me.

  “How?” I asked.

  “That basket there.”

  “Why don’t you wire the bottles in?”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  Dick wired the bottles in. When he turned his back I unwired the bottles and stole them anyhow.

  So, that day, we started on the wine. We had nothing but time. Claudia had fine legs and a great ass; a bit of flab on the belly—in spite of our starvation diet—but when we got to working on the bed, it was hardly noticeable.

  I got up and walked over to her chair, kissed her hard. She had to hold one hand out, the one with the wine glass in it, holding it out there so the wine wouldn’t spill. It felt like rape. I worked her over good, mauling her breasts. Then I backed off, with something in front.

  “You bastard, you almost made me spill my wine!”

  “What?” I laughed.

  “That’s not funny,” she said.

  I got up and pulled her out of the chair, felt up her legs, pulled her skirt up around her waist, spun her so her back was facing the mirror, then I pawed her butt as I bent her backwards, kissing her.

  I watched it in the mirror.

  “Stop it!” she said.

  “Why?”

  “You’re watching me in the mirror, that’s why!”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “I just don’t think it’s right.”

  “How you going to think? We’re not married; is that supposed to be right? Right’s no good. Right means doing dull things.”

  “I just don’t like that mirror!”

  I threw her on the bed, crawled on top of her.

  “Damn bitch! I’ll show you a salami like you never saw before!”

  Then Claudia laughed. “I know all about your salami.”

  “Damn bitch!” I pulled her dress up, ripped her pants off. Her tongue entered my mouth and I sucked at it as I entered.

  Each time was a new time; that’s the way it was with a good woman. While we were eating and as much as we were drinking and as much as we were making love, we usually lasted quite some time. And when we made it, together, there was never anything quite like it.

  We made it again. All the walls in that cheap apartment house shook with sound and passion. There had been some complaints from the other tenants.
A guy I knew pretty good, down the hall, Lou, asked me one day, “What the hell’s going on down there three or four times a day and night?”

  “We’re making love.”

  “Love? It sounds more like somebody getting murdered.”

  “I know. There have been complaints from the tenants. All the way down to the first floor.”

  (We were on the fourth, as I told you.)

  “You guys must really get some positions.”

  “No, not really. Seven or eight different ways which we worked out, mostly by accident and luck.”

  “All right. It still sounds like two or three people getting murdered.”

  Those damned tenants were jealous, that’s all.

  It’s difficult to explain, and love’s a bad word but I do suppose that in the sense of the word, we were in love. There’s little doubt in my mind that you can never really know a woman until you have sex with her, or she with you. And the more you have, the better you know each other. And if it keeps working, that’s love. And if it stops working, then it’s what most other people have. I’m not saying sex is love; it can possibly be hate. But when the sex is good, other things enter—the color of a dress, the freckle on an arm, various attachments and detachments; memories, the laughter of it, and the pain.

  One can get fond of many things besides the sex but it’s best if the sex is there somehow, and with Claudia and me, it damn well was.

  And we knew damned well it would end and it did.

  Mrs. Dennis knocked. I opened the door.

  “Mr. Bukowski?”

  “Yes.”

  “The owners have asked me to tell you and your—wife to move. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sure the check will arrive any day now.”

  “The owners say they’d rather not wait for the check. They’d rather you move.”

  “When?”

  “Six o’clock. Tonight.”

  “Six o’clock?”

  “Yes.”

  I closed the door.

  “You heard?”

  “Yes,” said Claudia.

  It was 4:30.

  “It’s over,” I said. “We’re finished.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Damn it, why can’t I be a tractor operator or a typesetter or an insurance salesman or a bus driver like other men? What’s wrong with me? I’m crazy. Now it’s over; the fools, the fools will own you, sticking their stupid cocks in you. I hate it! O, Jesus Jesus Jesus. . . .”

  I threw myself on the bed.

  “Hank?” I heard her.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t want to sound corny or cold, but I guess we won’t be seeing each other for a while, and—”

  “Yes?”

  “We don’t have much time.” She laughed. “Well, I mean, how about one more time?”

  I laughed too, and she got down on the bed with me. It was really funny—we were both crying like babies as we went at it. Call it love. Who knows?

  When we made that last one, everybody in the apartment knew it and maybe some of the people in some of the other apartments too.

  Claudia had a suitcase and I sat and watched her pack. I gave her my alarm clock. That’s all I had left. I suppose I was in shock. Her body, her body and her mind and all of her were going someplace else, to somebody else. She wasn’t crying but her face told it all. She was on the cross. I looked away.

  Then we had to walk all the way because we didn’t have bus fare.

  “He’s not too bad,” Claudia said. “I don’t like him but he’s not too bad.”

  “At least he’ll be able to feed you and buy you some clothes.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Try to get straight. If I can just get a dishwasher’s job, I’ll be happy.”

  “I’m going to be worried about you, plenty,” she said.

  “And I’m going to be worried about you,” I said.

  “We’d make a great comedy team.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “the laughs are killing me.”

  “He’s a salesman,” she said, “a big fat guy but not much up in front, thank god.”

  “How do you know he’ll let you in? Maybe he has a woman.”

  “He’ll let me in. He can’t get a woman.”

  “And I can’t keep one.”

  “Hank?”

  “Yes?”

  “When you get straight, let me know. I’ll come running.”

  “Sure. Thank you.”

  “You won’t forget me, will you Hank?”

  I dropped the suitcase and grabbed her by both arms. “Goddamn you, you talk that way once more and I’ll kill you right here on the street, you understand?”

  “I understand, Hank.”

  We were on Hoover right at the corner of Olympic as we kissed. Two hundred people on their way to work saw us.

  We found the apartment house.

  “He’s on the first floor front. Been there for years.”

  “I’ll wait to see if he lets you in.”

  “He’ll let me in.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  I opened the apartment house door and put the suitcase in her hand. She sat it down outside the apartment door. I couldn’t take another farewell kiss. I stood back by the edge of the closed entrance door.

  She looked at me. “Hank,” she said.

  “No,” I said, “I can’t take any more. Ring the bell, please ring the bell.”

  She was going to say I love you, but I saw her tremble all over and then reach toward the bell. I was glad she didn’t say I love you. Then she looked at me and gave me one of those little female smiles. She was crying.

  “Get straight,” she said. “Hurry, hurry, get straight!”

  Then she turned and punched the bell. He opened the door.

  “Claudia! Great to see you!”

  His arms were around her and he was kissing her along the throat. I opened the door, walked out, heard it close. I walked up Hoover and the east along Olympic Boulevard. Skid row was a long walk. Everything was a long walk. I saw the people going by in their cars, headlights on, owning each other, owning what they owned. On that walk east, I don’t think I ever hated the world so much. And I don’t think I’ll ever hate the world that much again, though it’s possible.

  I Just Write Poetry So I Can Go To Bed With Girls

  I had forgotten the suitcase.

  “Let’s go get the suitcase,” I told Jon.

  “All right.”

  We walked back through the sun, which was still plenty warm. When we got to the train station it was closed. It was 5:45 P.M.

  “What the hell kind of a town is this?” I asked Jon.

  We walked around in back. There was an old Chicano walking around there behind a green wooden gate. Suitcases were everywhere.

  “Sir,” said Jon, “this man wants to get his suitcase.”

  The old guy walked up.

  “Got your ticket?”

  I handed him my baggage ticket with a dollar tucked underneath.

  “What’s this?” the old Chicano asked.

  “For your trouble,” I said.

  He handed the dollar back.

  “We don’t take tips.”

  Then he came back with the suitcase and unlocked the gate and passed it through.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  We walked back to the street. The suitcase was very heavy because it was filled mostly with my books, and, like a fool, I had brought the hardcover editions. I switched the suitcase from one hand to the other. It was a 7-block walk but I didn’t like waiting on buses and if I got a taxi it was too much money for the short haul.

  Well, after about 4 blocks, I was wishing I had a drink. Jon said there was a bar a block further down.

  When we walked in the entrance way, a Chicano hit a little bell twice. Everybody in the bar stopped talking and looked around. We walked up to the end of the bar, the end away from the door, and I told Jon to
order up, it was on me. I left a 5 for the drinks and walked back to the crapper.

  I was pissing in the toilet when 2 Mexican-Americans came in and started pissing in the urinal. They were young guys, a little drunk, no, quite drunk. Yes. But I was tired. I looked ahead and pissed.

  “HALLOE!”

  (Pause.)

  “I SAID, ‘HALLOE!’ WHATSTHEMATTA WITH YOU, YOU DON’T ANSWER!”

  I turned.

  “Shit, sorry man, I thought you were talking to your friend. Hello, there.”

  “BULLSHIT!”

  “Peace, brothers,” I said.

  “SHIT!” screamed the little one in the t-shirt, “SHIT!”

  They walked out, slamming the door.

  I walked out, sat next to Jon, picked up my drink.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m paying for the sins of my glorious forefathers in American history.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing yet. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “A white guy was knifed on the steps last Friday night. But that was late at night. It’s only evening now.”

  “Let’s make it,” I said. “It’s getting dark.”

  When we got back to the place, I started on the beer. They were used to my ways and knew that before I went to sleep, I would drink 10 beers, 12 beers, 14 beers. Half of their refrigerator was stacked with beer bottles. They even had cigars for me. I took off my shoes, lit up and relaxed for the first time in hours.

  Jon looked at me. “You know, Buk, Gene Rumpkin—”

  “That guy. Yeah. He put out a bad mag. Just Lines. A real atrocity. I wonder what ever happened to him?”

  “He’s in the English department at UNM.”

  “Well, that figures.”

  “What I mean is, I took some of his poems, kind of trying to be nice because he’s in the same town, and the poems didn’t look too bad at first, but now I know they’re very bad and it bothers me.”