Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
sex is interesting but not totally important. I mean, it’s not even as important (physically) as excretion. a man can go 70 years without a piece of ass but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.
here in the United States, especially, sex is inflated far beyond its simplest importance. a woman with a sexy body immediately turns it into a weapon for MATERIAL advancement. and I am not speaking of the whorehouse whore, I am speaking of your mother and your sister and your wife and your daughter. and the American male is the sucker (bad term, yes) who perpetuates the extremism of the hoax. but the American male has had his brains beaten out by the American formal education and the American prenumbed parent and the American monster Advertising long before he was twelve years old. he is ready and the female is ready to make him beg and get up the $$$. this is why a professional whore with a towel under the springs is so hated by her counterfemale professional whore (the near remainder of womanhood; there are a FEW good women, thank the Lord!) and the law. the openly professional whore poses a breakdown threat to the whole American society of Strive and Hustle all the way to the grave. she devaluates the pussy.
yes, sex has gone completely beyond its value. notice sometime, in your newspaper (you ain’t gonna find it here in “Open City” except off laughs), a group of entrants in bathing suits posing for a photo for some beauty contest or other, for the queen of this or that. see those legs, those long flanks, the breasts — some magic there, indeed. and these girlies know this, plus the bargaining price attached. THEN look at the eight or ten faces, smiling. the smiles are not smiling, they are carved onto paper faces, onto carbons of death. the noses and ears and mouths and chins are properly shaped within our concepts, but the faces are ugly beyond all essence of brutality. there is no thought there, no force, no density. no kindness … nothing, nothing. flat murdered flares of skin. eyeless. but show these faces of horror to the average American male and he will say, “yeah, real CLASS broads. I can’t rate those.”
you see these same beauty contest winners years later, grown old, in supermarkets; they are fussy, insane, bitter, demeaned — they put their stock in something unlasting, they were tricked; beware the sharp knives of their shopping carts — they are the madwomen of the Universe.
so, to some writers, including the gloriously impertinent Bukowski, sex is obviously the tragicomedy. I don’t write about it as an instrument of obsession. I write about it as a stage play laugh where you have to cry about it, a bit, between acts. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote it much better. he had the distance and the style. I am still too near the target to effect total grace. people simply think I’m dirty. if you haven’t read Boccaccio, do. you might begin with “The Decameron.”
yet, I still have a little distance and after 2,000 pieces of ass, most of them not very good, I am still able to laugh at myself and my trap.
I remember once in the cellar of a lady’s dress shop, I was a flunky shipping clerk, and my boss (the foreman, that is) was a fairly young but little balding snip and this little snip was being drafted into World War II. was he worried about being killed? the meaning of war? the non-meaning of war? what it meant to be split into pieces by a lob of mortar?
he confided in me. he thought I was a nice guy. we were both alone in this big basement room — the other packers were sweating a floor above — were down in the sub-basement, dank and dusty there, and we were scrambling along over the tops of cardboard packing cases that stood six feet high oblong. we were looking for a number, a certain type of cloth or dress to be shipped out, and there were only three or four small electric light bulbs to light the whole basement area, and there we were leaping along like spider-monkeys on our fours, leaping from case to case, peering for some magic number, a special type of cloth to be cut into a lady’s dress.
oh god, mercy, I thought, what a hell of a way to make a living, what a hell of a way to survive and die just for pennies. surely suicide was the kindest out?
and the little snip would holler at me, “SEEN THE NUMBER YET?”
and I’d say, “naw.” barely getting the word out.
shit, I wasn’t even looking. what interest did I have in finding the number? every now and then when he would look back, I would leap from the top of one cardboard carton to another. finally he came leaping back toward me, sat on the carton next to mine and lit a cigarette.
“Bukowski, you’re a nice guy.”
I didn’t answer.
“I’m being drafted. this is my last week here.”
all during my short employee-tenure there I had done everything I could to keep from slugging the guy and now he was giving me some wearisome confessional.
“you know what worries me about the Army?” he asked.
“no.”
“I won’t be able to fuck my wife. now most of these guys don’t get any. but I can tell by looking at you that you’re getting some …”
(I wasn’t getting any.)
“… so I tell my wife this say, ‘honey, what I am going to do, I won’t be able to fuck you.’ and you know what she says?”
“she says, ‘for Christ’s sake, go into the army and be a man. I’ll be here when you get back,’ but damn, I’m going to miss it; I’m going to miss it; most of these guys don’t know what it is but you and I know what it is, yeah.”
(I didn’t tell him that somebody would fuck his wife for him while he was gone. and that if he didn’t come back, she would adjust to the next position of Body for Sale with whatever she had left.)
he was a little mole of a man who would suffer a two-bit job or the suicide charge of the BANZAI! Jap, or even worse, the deter mined checkboard advance of the beaten, Snow-Hun, coming through the falling whiteness looking for HIS number. the Snow-Hun, bitter and trained and brave, a last shot of madness in the Bulge, looking for his number. ah, the mole! he would SUFFER these, almost like an itch or a yawn or a bit of the flu, just to remain on in, on the right side of the social structure, hoping to luck it through so he might come back to fuck his wife.
there’s your sex: it concerns assholes and the entire movements of armies. men are decorated for Valor who only have pussies for brains. but bravery? the bravery of an imbecile hardly counts; it’s the thinking man’s bravery that counts — it takes a bit of work and a lucky stomach.
and you mix sex in with the rest of us and you’ve got something very difficult, and the more you study it the less you know. one theory replaces another, and in almost every case, the insult is to the human being. maybe it should be. with all our potential, the fiercest growth is downward.
the sex thing even confuses the great Bukowski. I remember one night sitting in a bar just west of one of those downtown tunnels. at the time, I lived in a room just around the corner in a place halfway up the hill. anyhow, I am sitting there, well on the way, and I g.d. figure I am young and tough and can take anybody who wants trouble. I even want people who want trouble, but still life is just new enough to me, say at 22, 23, that I am some kind of asshole Romantic; I find life vaguely interesting instead of actually terrifying. so the night wears on a little and then I look around — I am mixing drinks — I mean buying straight shots, wine, beer — I am trying to knock myself out but nothing works and God has not arrived.
then I kind of look around and here is a very sad beautiful type of little girl (around seventeen) sitting next to me. she has this long blonde hair (I’ve always been soft on these longhair types, I mean where the hair goes down to the asshole and you keep grabbing hair, the strands of it as you work, and it makes it rather symphonic instead of the same old drag) and she’s quiet, very quiet, almost holy, ah, but she’s a WHORE, and next to her is the protector, the madam-lesbian, and they’d rather NOT, you know, but they need the money. I engaged them in conversation rather out of my left brain lobe. I’m sure it was senseless to them but that didn’t matter, you know: they needed the $$$. I ordered the drinks.
the bartender set them down in front of the seventeen year old like she was thirty
for each drink they drank I drank three. this encouraged them. I was the “mark.” I had the chalkmarked “X” on my back. what they damn sure didn’t know was that I had won drinking contests all through the city with some of the toughest drinkers of the time, free booze and pick up the chips. I don’t know why it took so much to knock me out. it might have been my extreme anger or sorrow, or it might have been a part of the brain-soul missing. probably both are true.
anyhow, not to bore you with these damn side remarks, forgive me; we finally went up the hill toward my room, together.
I have forgotten to tell you that the madam-lesbian was a fat hunk of human shit with cardboard eyes and senseless hunks of haunch, plus one of her hands was missing and instead of a hand there was this very very SHINY and thick interesting steel CLAW.
so we went up the hill.
then we got into my room and I looked at them both. my pure and beautiful slim and magic little girl glorious fuck with the hair dangling down to the asshole, and next to her the tragedy of the ages: slime and horror, the machine gone wrong, frogs tortured by little boys and head-on car collisions and the spider taking in the ball-less buzzing fly and the landscape brain of Primo Carnera going down under the dull playboy guns of cocksure Maxie Baer — new heavyweight champ of America — I, I rushed at the Tragedy of the Ages — that fat slob of accumulated shit.
I grabbed her and tried to throw her onto my dirty bed but she was too strong and too sober for me. with one arm she worked me free. she shoved me off with her pure lesbian hatred, and then getting me off, she began SWINGING THAT ARM WITH THAT BIG INTERESTING SHINY STEEL CLAW.
I could not as one man, change the course of sexual history, I just didn’t have it.
she swung that CLAW in wide and wonderful swift arcs and by the time I had ducked and raised my head to see where the CLAW was at, here it came again. but, during iron claw’s whole attempt to murder me, I, being note taker by instinct, had taken very quick and timed glance at the beautiful and holy and young whore and I do think that of the three of us that she did suffer the most. I could see it in her face. truly, she could not fathom why I wanted that ugly accumulation of all things zero and dead as compared to what she had. but I guess mama lesbian knew the answer, for each time she swung that thing at me, she’d turn to her little one and say “this guy’s crazy, this guy’s crazy, this guy’s crazy.” — and under one of her “this guy’s crazy” iron claw swings I swung out and free and under to the other side of the room near the door. I pointed at the dresser and shouted, “THE MONEY’S IN THE TOP DRAWER!” and mama L., being a true shit, was taken in and turned. by the time she turned around I was nearly up to the top of the hill, up at Bunker Hill heaven, looking around and breathing heavy, checking for my parts, then wondering where the nearest liquor store was.
when I came back with my bottle, the door was still open, but they were gone. I bolted the door, sat down and poured a quiet drink. to sex and madness. then I had another, went to bed alone and let the world go by.
to my nasty man
I’ve wrote you once
before
or was it three
times
I breathe in your ear
licking my tongue out
so you’d feel what I meant
and you felt,
yeh, baby, you felt good.
you’d say, “Hey! what are you doing,
who are you???”
I could hear you getting a glass
pouring a big one I bet.
“you sound good to me, tell me your name.”
you said, then … I would breathe deep
and hard, and you began to speak softer
to me, you’d whisper to me, then breathe
with me
I heard your zipper
slowly being pulled down
I caught my breath
then, “Flip … Flap, Plook,”
“I love you.” you said, “Slip, Slap.”
as you put down the glass, to
use both hands, “Flop, Flap, Blipp”
Faster and Faster, and I knew you had your
hands on it, it’s dry now but not for
long.
AHHHHH-oh-AHHHHH, I hissed
“Slip, Flap.”
he’s doing it — I thought, I closed my eyes
ugh — AHHHHHH-OHOO!!!
“Flip-Flip” getting wet, “Slap, Bloop, Flap.”
very very slippery; “AHHH-OHO-YEAAA!”
“that’s it baby.” you said. “Flip, Flap.”
“say something!” you screamed.
OOOOOOH — GOOD GOD I cried, then
my knees felt something — stroke of love juice —
shot up my slender thighs — I slammed my legs
shut, I hung up.
unsigned
Dear Unsigned:
oh my god, baby, I can hardly wait!
yours truly,
Charles Bukowski
________
it all begins and ends with the mailbox, and when they find a way to remove mailboxes, much of our suffering will end. right now our only hope is in the hydrogen bomb, and dispirited as I may seem, this does not quite seem the proper remedy.
well, the mailbox: after a sleepless night I walked out onto my rented porch, and looked at that great gut-gray mindless thing with a subnormal spider hung there below it sucking the last love chance out of a butterfly. well, so I stand, thinking, ah, maybe the Pulitzer Prize or a grant from the humanities or my copy of “Turf Digest” so I reach in and there it is, one letter in the mailbox, I know the writing, I know the address, I know the mood, the form of each hand written letter, the female insane slanting crossfire of bungled image two-bit soul: dear bongo:
I watered the plants today. my plants are dying. how are you? it will soon be christmas. my friend Lana teaches poetry at the in insane asylum. they have a magazine. could you submit something of yours. must go now. I’m sure they would be happy to print something of yours. the children will be home soon. saw your last poem in Oct. issue of the BLUE STARDUST JACKOFF. it was lovely. you are the world’s greatest living writer. the children are coming home soon must go. must go.
Love,
meggy
________
meggy keeps on writing these letters. I have never met meggy, as I told you, but she does send photos, and she looks like a big healthy fuck, and she has also sent poems, her poems, and they are a bit on the comfortable side, tho they speak of agony and death and eternity and the sea, it’s a great big yawning comfortable thing — almost as if one stuck in a pin in order to scream and then could not scream, just another female disappointment in the aging process and in her lessening husband; just another female dulled by her OWN easy sellout from the beginning and now piddling with the vacuum cleaner days and little troubles with junior who is also rapidly working towards zero times nothing.
it is their own minds that women ingest into a man’s work — either willfully misreading the intent or either sensing tired prey upon the bloody cross. either way they screw it up good. whether they want to or have to, it doesn’t matter to the victim. which is the man, of course.
if meggy had lived close enough I could have ended the whole torture easily enough, herself at my place breathing in the fine lilting flare of my poets eyes, the pantherpiss stride, pants torn at the knees with 2:30 a.m. falls — comparing me with, say, Stephen Spender — I would turn and say in not very articulate English:
“baby, in a couple of minutes I’m going to rip off your goddamned panties and show you some turkey neck you’ll remember all the way to the graveside. I have a vast and curved penis, like a sickle, and many a gutted pussy has gasped come upon my callous and roach-smeared rug. first let me finish this drink.”
then you drink down a tall water glass of straight whiskey, smash the glass against the wall, muttering “Villon ate fri
but meggy lives in a state quite far north of here and so that was out. but I answered the letters for several years thinking that she might get close enough to fuck or scare off some day.
finally the seemingly endless hard-on wore off. the letters kept coming but I simply didn’t answer them. her letters were as usual, excellently dull and pointedly depressing, but the fact that I had decided not to answer them DID take some of the poison out of them. it was a great plan, a plan that a simple mind like mine would need all that time to plot out — don’t answer the letters and you are free.
there was a pause in the mail. I felt that it was over; I had used the last trick of the kind: be cruel to the cruel, be stupid to the stupid. the cruel and the stupid were the same: there was nothing you could do to them; there were only things they could, and would do to you. I had defeated a problem of the centuries; the elimination of the unwanted. it doesn’t take a number of men and women to smother and dismember the life of any individual, it only takes one. and it usually is one. even when armies face armies, ants face ants, any way you want to work it.
I began to see things again with my EYES. I noticed a sign over a cleaning shop, some joker had placed; TIME WOUNDS ALL HEELS. I never would have seen the sign before. I began, at last, to be freer. I saw almost everything. I saw the strange and crazy things I used to notice, upside down, romantic, explosive things that seemed to give chance to no chance. that seemed to show magic forces where before there was nothing.
KILLS INVENTOR
Monterey, Nov. 18 (UPI)
A Carmel Valley man has been killed by a device he invented to unwrinkle prunes.