The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way. Charles Bukowski

      “I know damn well I’m right! You really don’t like it?”

      “Why do you keep asking me? I can’t change my mind.”

      “Just like a cunt, eh? That’s what you are, just like a cunt—can’t change your mind!”

      “I’ve got to go, Herm.”

      “You think a man’s a bad writer because he makes money at it?”

      “No, it works many ways. Tolstoy got bad when he gave up on money. Gorky stopped being an Artist when the revolution was won. A guy like Mailer just goes on and on in a kind of drizzling intermediate stream.”

      “And you live in a cellar and call my novels bad.”

      “Right.”

      “Get the hell out!”

      “Going. Save the karate.”

      “Someday you’ll know what it all means. Someday you’ll know which of us was the writer!”

      “I doubt it.”

      “Back to your damned basement!”

      “Cellar.”

      “Back to your damned cellar!”

      He slams the door behind me. Passion. The great ones always had passion. I always felt dead. Therefore, maybe I was. Too bad.

      I pass his white Caddy and don’t even spit upon it. I didn’t even want it. I am 48 years old. He is 32. I walk away from his huge home. I walk toward my basement. I walk toward my cellar. Psychotic as my gardener’s gloves.

      National Underground Review, August 2–8, 1968

Bukowski’s Gossip Column

      Wonder if I could write a nice little gossip human column like the boys do?

      Finally got my phone number today: BUKOWSKI. I had BUKOWSKI when I lived in Detroit and when I lived in Iowa. Dial BUKOWSKI and see what happens? Do you know what the Iowa State Flag is? See this column next week. . . .

      My collection of UNKNOWN WRITERS OVER 45 will be out next week. You’ve never read anything like it . . . to officer Hanjob: Hanjob, you can take that traffic ticket and jam it up your cookie jar. Ticket #67834. Got it in your book there? Every time you guys see this beard on my face you go ape . . . lots of talk because Zigzag of the STOOPS finked on ape. What’s wrong with a beard on the face/you guys don’t seem to mind it someplace else. And skin pigment. Every time you guys see my wrinkled white skin, you go ape. Lots of talk because Zigzag of the STOOPS finked on his buddies on a Mary charge. The cops put him under the white light and he sang like he never sang before. He copped-out on Trenor, Asp, and Delirium Harry in that order. What’s wrong with a guy copping out on his buddies? I think we are too hard on Zigzag. What’s finking got to do with his music, his artistry? . . . At a Black Belt Karate tournament last Saturday I am sure I saw one of the Beatles mixing in with the crowd. He had on a boyscout uniform with green piping . . . Miracle Man Botello hung it out the window the other night and 8 full-grown women fainted. He lives on S. New Hampshire Street with an unlisted phone number. Weird cat. You go see him, he just sits in this broken overstuffed chair and leers out at you with slit-eyes and smiling . . . Woman saw me in the supermarket with my beard the other day. She spit on the floor and snarled, “oh you dirty, shit, why don’t you wash your stockings?” Poor thing. I didn’t have any stockings on . . . whatever happened to Tim Leary? I asked my girlfriend the other night, “whatever happened to Tim Leary?” and she started spitting hair and eggshells, “Oh SHUT UP! He’s a great man, a wonderful man, a real man, a gorgeous man! All you little shits are always knocking his wondrous talents! What’s wrong with him?” “Well,” I said, “to begin with . . .” “Now, don’t you say a goddamn word! If you didn’t have that beard I’d leave you in a minute!” “All right, pass me that razor and a pack of Gillettes.” . . . Russian horserace fix scandal. A former burglar nicknamed Intelligent and a furniture craftsman known as The Souse hanging around in a seedy café called The Contemporaries, fixing the races. They paid off and beat up the jocks, depending upon which way they went. One jock named Grechkin was so scared he guided his horse right off the track to make sure he didn’t win. Intelligent and The Souse. For Christ’s sake, can’t they come up with better names than that? Hardly Hip at all, you know. And it’s not just Russia. They tell me that in Europe that the best-known American writers are E.A. Poe and Jack London. I almost believe it . . . Dial Bukowski . . . “Listen,” I ask my girlfriend, “why do these guys like Leary . . .” “There you GO again!” She starts throwing things. A real spitfire. Remember Lupe Velez? No, you’re too young. “I mean,” I said, “they wear these white bathrobes, with sashes, bathrobes that look like beachtowels . . .” “That’s to center the SOUL, to let the SOUL breathe! Don’t you understand, you ox? If you ever shave your beard, I’m leaving!” “You shave yours . . .” Pershing Square has not changed . . . I saw Tiny Tim buying bologna at the Invisible Market. God bless Tiny Tim . . . Saw an old Charlie Chaplin film the other night. As usual, it bored me. Made me seasick. It’s like they weren’t even trying. Very sloppy stuff. When we walked out of the theatre, my girlfriend said, “A great man. A wonderful man, a real man, a man, a gorgeous man, an artist!” “I’d like to see him in one of those beachtowel bathrobes.” “There you GO again!” “Sorry dear, a bit jumpy, haven’t had my 11 today.” . . . I expect to be machinegunned, stepping out the front door by early July of this year. My column will be taken over by Matt Weinstock . . . Saw Tiny Tim at Barney’s Beanery, eating sausage and eggs. God bless Tiny Tim . . . God might as well bless Maharishi and John Thomas too . . . Steve Richmond—Earth Rose, Fuck-Hate Fame, and one Charles Bukowski have cut a record, Richmond reading his poetry on one side, Bukowski his poetry? On the other . . . will be released this week. See Earth Rose bookshop, Venice, one dollar. This beats buying an ad from Bryan . . . Jack Hirschman helping Bill Margolis edit new lit. mag. Send manus to Jack H 21 Quarter Deck, Venice . . . To the guy who wrote me about his brother dying and then finding all the Bukowski books and stuff at his place—this is straight—I lost your address somewhere, meant to respond to your letter but just can’t find the thing. If you’ve been thinking me inhuman, I’m not. Entirely . . . To Milly Pavlick of N.Y.: I spent the dollar you sent me for soup on beer. Send more soup money . . . To King Arthur of N. Vine Street: no, I don’t need any help writing this column, but will admit you sound more like a Dirty Old Man than I do. In fact, your whole wine-scrawled missile was nicely depraved. I admire you, but don’t come around . . . To the doctor who showed up at my door a couple of times and offered to help me write my column, and wore those yellow-striped pants, and sent me all the little literary bits on slips of paper which fell to the floor from my hangover bed, you are also nicely depraved but not a very good writer, but keep subscribing to OPEN CITY. We need you. And I think that my hemorrhoids are coming back. God Bless Baron Manfred Von Richtofen. He did a good job . . . AT TERROR STREET AND AGONY WAY, poems, $4, Black Sparrow Press, p.o. box 25603, Los Angeles Calif. 90025. POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE LEAPING FROM AN 8 STORY WINDOW, $1, c/o Darrell and Litmus Press, 422 East Harvard, Glendale, Calif. Both books will be released early May, never mind the author. They released him last week . . . The Willie has hit the road again in a 1955 Cad. 2 jugs of stomach-murdering dago red 8 miles to the gallon. He left Rachel behind but I’m sure Rachel will not be lonely very long . . . People are always more clever than I am in conversation yet I always have this vague idea that they are not clever at all . . . God Bless Baron Manfred Von Richtofen’s daughter who married D.H. Lawrence. That took a lot of guts . . . Extremism is a mind with but one eye but it often gets things done . . . I swear, I think the mini-skirts are getting shorter and I don’t know what the next step can be, but whatever it is, I’m for it . . . Listen officer Hanjob, take that ticket and . . . Which reminds me, a friend of mine said he was stopped by a cop and given a ticket and the cop was so nice about it that my friend thanked him for the ticket. It’s true. Some of those boys can really grease it in. But actually, I prefer the mid-thirties (you’re too young) when a cop would stop you for speeding and come up ready to fight, strolling up, really angry saying, “Hey fucker! Where’s the fire!” At least you knew who your enemy was still do but you