The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way. Charles Bukowski

to live?”

      “Some think you don’t.”

      “I can’t help getting scared sometimes. I can’t help drinking myself sick. It’s a very brutal and cruel situation. I thought maybe the Watts thing would open up doors for all of us but they only gave them a little sweettalk and wrote new manuals on how to break up riots.”

      “Are there any other jobs open to those at the end of the rope?”

      “Yeah, there’s a place you stand downtown and a truck comes and picks you up. They take you to a restaurant for a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Then they take you in this big room and everybody fights over the paper-carriers, those things you throw over your back. Then they take you back in the truck and dump you off at a corner with a little map. It’s indicated where your papers are stacked. You walk around throwing these newspapers onto porches, newspapers filled with ads. When you’re done you wait until the truck comes and picks you up. They take you back. The whole process takes about 12 hours. Then you wait until they call your name and then walk up and pick up the money. It’s not very much. I think it was three dollars last time. I asked the guy, ‘Don’t you know the wage laws?’ and he said, ‘You’re only paid on an estimate of your average actual working time. Also we deduct for transportation and food.’ By food, he meant the coffee and doughnut. Most of them are glad to get the three dollars. You get four dollars for giving blood. Any other city in the country you get six dollars. Only in Los Angeles do you get four dollars. This is the coldest city in the world.”

      “I’m going to leave you with a couple of bucks for wine. And thanks for the talk. Have you ever heard of the Los Angeles Free Press?”

      “No, I haven’t.”

      “Well, our little talk might be in there.”

      “Will it do me any good?”

      “No.”

      I put the money down and walked to the door.

      “Are you a communist?”

      “No.”

      “I don’t want to appear in any communist newspaper! I still believe in America, this is my country. Things may get a little hard now and then but this is still my country!”

      “Very noble,” I told him, “although some people might consider you an asshole for a statement like that.”

      He lifted his wine glass and drained it.

      “Ronald Reagan would love you,” I said.

      “OUT! GET OUT!”

      I left him in there. My beloved patriot. I turned into the first bar for a scotch and water. “Hi, sweetie!” an old woman sitting at the bar smiled at me. I drank the scotch and got out.

      L.A. Free Press, March 17, 1967

Notes of a Dirty Old Man

      “Can’t you keep those motherfuckers quiet?” he screams.

      He gets up and knocks one of his kids for a loop.

      Then she hits one of her kids.

      They wear sweaters with each other’s names on them. She had 4 kids. He has 3. He has just traded in his ’67 Caddy for a ’68.

      “Read this,” he says, “my new novel.”

      I sit there and begin reading.

      He tells me, “We’re going to knock out a back rear wall and make a large writing studio for me. It’ll cost two thousand dollars to soundproof. I made 25 grand writing last year. How ya like the novel?”

      “I’ve just begun.”

      “How do you like my new wife?”

      “She looks good all right. You were always good with the ladies.”

      “But I still worry about Jeri.”

      “Why? You divorced her.”

      “Well, she’s fucking this 22-year-old. I don’t like it. I’m paying alimony, child support and every time I take the kids back there’s this 22-year-old punk sitting on the couch.”

      “She’s got to live too, Herm.”

      “But that 22-year-old kid’s got no class. That’s why I got the white Caddy, she sees me in the white Caddy, and she flips. She knows what she’s missing.”

      “Maybe the kid’s got a lot of string.”

      “Hey, that ain’t funny! . . . How do ya like the novel?”

      “Hard to read with all the noise.”

      “Hey, Toni, I TOLD you to keep those motherfuckers QUIET!”

      “No,” I said, “the noise: I mean us talking. . . .”

      “Oh, yeah, well, anyhow, how are you doing?”

      “Well, it’s my hands, mostly.”

      “Yeah, hey, what ya doing with those gardener’s gloves on?”

      “Sores all over my hands. Can’t type. Some kind of malady and madness. Then there’s dizzy spells, insomnia, excessive fear, lack of sexual intercourse.”

      “Man, you’re really fucked up! Hard to believe you were the one who wrote the foreword to my first book of poems!”

      “Yes, isn’t it?”

      “How much did you make writing last year?”

      “About the cost of stamps.”

      “How do you live?”

      “In somebody’s cellar.”

      “You’re kidding. . . .”

      “No, I’m not kidding. And I figure I’m very lucky.”

      “Well, O.K., but how do you like the novel?”

      “Christ, what does it matter what I like as long as it sells?”

      “Oh, it’ll sell, all right, it’ll sell! Hey, remember the old days when we used to drink together and you’d cuss me and I’d give you those karate shots over the eyes and across the neck? I could have killed you but I didn’t.”

      “Thanks.”

      “Now I know all the big boys. I was on the Joe Pyne show a while back. I had coffee with Pyne before the show—I said, ‘Listen, man, you mess with me and I’ll rip you wide open!’ He went easy on the show, did you see the show?”

      “I don’t have a TV.”

      “Oh, you’re one of those Arty guys, eh? TV’s too good for you?”

      “I told you, I live in somebody’s cellar.”

      “Man, I thought you were kidding!”

      “No.”

      “Hell, you can stay here! You can help build my new studio! You can walk the dogs, drive the kids to school . . . no damn need to live in a cellar! I’ll even pay you a bit! Why suffer?”

      “I don’t want to suffer.”

      “Then come live with us.”

      “I appreciate it, but let me think it over.”

      “Sure, sure, and I know I can trust you with Toni. I know you don’t have a lot of string, and then too, you wrote the foreword to my first book of poems. And to think, I was just out of a madhouse then!”

      “The poems were very good.”

      “And how about the novel? You been reading as we been talking. How do you like the novel?”

      “I don’t like it.”

      “It figures.”

      “Why?”