Notes of a Dirty Old Man. Charles Bukowski

hell and ultimate brutality every time he hits the streets. they will kill him because he has not died at all. I have died nine-tenths but keep the other one-tenth like a gun. I can walk down the street and they can’t tell me from the news vendor, even tho the news vendors have more beautiful faces than any president of the united states, but then, that’s no task either.

      “Bird, I need 20,” says Jack.

      Bird peels off a g.d. twenty. his movement is smooth, without worry.

      “thanks, baby.”

      “sure, can you come on in?”

      “all right.”

      we move in. sit down, there’s the bookcase. I lay my eyes across it. there doesn’t seem to be a dull book in there. I catch all the books I’ve admired in there. what the hell? is it a dream? the kid’s face is so beautiful that everytime I look I feel good, like you know, chili and beans, hot, after coming off a bad one, the first food in weeks, well, fuck, I am always on guard.

      the Bird. and the ocean down there. and bad battery. a lemon. the cops patrolling their stupid dry streets. what a bad war it is. and what an idiot nightmare, only this momentary cool space between us, we are all going to be smashed, very quickly into broken children’s toys, into those highheels that ran so gaily down the stairway to be fucked out of it forever, forever, dunces and fools, dunces and tools, god damn our weak bravery.

      we sit down. a quart of scotch appears. I pour a quarter of a pint down without pause, ah, I gag, blink, idiot, working toward 50, still trying to play Hero. asshole hero in a fusillade of puke.

      the Bird’s wife comes in. we are introduced. she is a liquid woman in a brown dress, she just flows flows her eyes laughing, she flows, I tell you, she flows,

      “WOW WOW WOW!” I say.

      she looks so good I’ve got to pick her up, hug her, I carry her on my left hip, spin her, laugh. nobody thinks that I am crazy. we all laugh. we all understand. I put her down. we sit down.

      Jack likes me coming on. he’s been carrying my soul and he’s tired. he grins the grin. he’s o.k. once in a rare lifetime have you ever been in a roomful of people who only helped you when you looked at them, listened to them. this was one of those magic times. I knew it. I glowed like a fucking hot tamale. it didn’t matter. o.k.

      I smacked down another quarter pint out of embarrassment. I realized that I was the weaker of 4 people and I did not want to harm, I only wanted to realize their easy holiness. I loved like a crazy jackoff dog turned into a pen of heated female bitches, only they had miracles to show me beyond sperm.

      the Bird looked at me.

      “see my collage?”

      he held up a very shitty-looking thing with a woman’s earring and some other dab of shit hanging upon it.

      (by the way … I realize I switch from present to past tense, and if you don’t like it … ram a nipple up your scrotum. — printer: leave this in.)

      I go into a long boring hartang harrangue about how I don’t like this or that, and about my sufferance in Art Classes …

      the Bird pulls the stop out of me.

      by yanking the thing apart it’s only a popneedle and then he grins at me, but then I too know the inside: that perhaps, as I am told, from inside, the only junky who can make it is Wm. Burroughs, who owns the Burroughs Co., almost, and who can play it tough while all along being a sissy fat wart-sucking hog inside. this is what I hear, and it’s kept very quiet. is it true? for it all, true or not, Burroughs is a very dull writer and without the insistence of knowledgeable pop in his literary background, he would be almost nothing, as Faulkner is nothing except to very dry Southern extremists like Mr. Corrington, and Mr. Nod, and Mr. Suck-Dry-Shit.

      “Baby,” they start saying to me, “you are drunk.”

      and I am. and I am. and I am.

      there’s nothing now but be turned into the heat or sleep.

      they make a place for me.

      I drink too fast. they talk on. I hear them, gently.

      I sleep. I sleep in comradeship. the sea will not drown me and neither will they. they love my sleeping body. I am an asshole. they love my sleeping body. may all God’s children come to this.

      jesus jesus jesus

      who cares about a dead

      battery?

      ________

      jesus, mother, it was terrible — here they came pounding out of the vast cuntholes in the earth spinning me about with my paper suitcase up near Times Square.

      I finally managed to ask one of them where the Village was and when I got to the Village I found a room and when I opened my wine bottle and took off my shoes I found that the room had an easel, but I wasn’t a painter, just a kid looking for luck, and I sat behind the easel and drank my wine and looked out the dirty window.

      when I went out to get another bottle of wine I saw this young guy standing in a silk bathrobe. he wore a beret and sandals, had a half-diseased beard and spoke into the hall phone:

      “oh, yes yes, darling, I must see you, oh yes, I must! I shall slash my wrists otherwise … ! yes!”

      I’ve got to get out of here, I thought. he wouldn’t slash his shoelaces. what a sickening little snip. and outside, they sat in the cafes, very comfortable, in berets, in the get-up, pretending to be Artists.

      I stayed there a week drinking, finishing out the rent, and then I found a room outside the Village. for the looks and size of the room it was very cheap and I couldn’t understand why. I found a bar around the corner and sipped at beers all day. my money was going but, as usual, I hated to look for a job. each drunken and starvation moment contained some type of easy meaning for me. that night I bought two bottles of port wine and went up to my room. I took off my clothes, got into bed in the dark, found a glass and poured the first wine. then I found why the room was so cheap. the “L” ran right past my window. and that’s where the stop was. right outside my window. the whole room would be lit by the train. and I’d look at a whole trainload of faces. horrible faces: whores, orangutans, bastards, madmen, killers — all my masters. then, swiftly the train would start up and the room would be dark again — until the next trainload of faces, which was always too soon. I needed the wine.

      a Jewish couple owned the building and also ran a tailor and cleaning shop across the street. I decided that my few rags needed cleaning. job-hunting time was belching and farting across my mad horizon. I went in drunk with my rags.

      “… need these cleaned or washed or something …”

      “poor boy! why you are living in THREADS! I couldn’t wash the windows with this stuff. tell you what … oh, Sam!”

      “yeh?”

      “show this nice boy that suit the man left!”

      “oh yes, it’s such a nice suit, mama! I don’t understand how that man left it!”

      I won’t go through all the dialogue. mainly I insisted that the suit was too small. they said it wasn’t. I said if it wasn’t too small it was too high. they said seven. I said, broke. they said six. I said, I’m broke. when they got down to four I insisted that they get me inside the suit. they did. I gave them the four. went back to my room, took the suit off and slept. when I awakened it was dark (except when the “L” came by) and I decided to put on my new suit and go out and find a woman, a beautiful one, of course, to support a man of my still-hidden talents.

      as I got into the pants the entire crotch split up the back. well, I was game. it was a little cool but I figured the coat would cover. when I got into the coat the left arm ripped out at the shoulder spilling out a sickening gummy padding.

      taken again.

      I got out of what remained of the suit and decided that I’d have