Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
“Jesus Christ,” I said, “what’s going on around here?”
“no one’s eye must fall upon the magic mirror but one’s own,” said my wife Yevonna.
“that’s right,” said the maid, Felica. but Felica had stopped cleaning house. she said it didn’t matter. but I had to keep her because she was almost as good on the springs as Yevonna, and, besides, she was a good cook, though I was never quite sure what she was feeding me.
while Yevonna was pregnant with our first child, it was brought to my attention that she was acting odder than ever. she kept having these crazy dreams and she told me that a demon was trying to take up residence. inside her. she described the mother to me. the cat appeared to her in two forms. one of them was a man very much like myself. the other was a creature with a human face, a cat’s body and eagle’s legs and talons and bat’s wings. the thing never spoke to her but she got strange ideas while looking at it. the strange idea she got was that I was responsible for her misery, and created in her an overwhelming urge to destroy. not roaches or flies or ants or filth gathered in corners — but things that had cost me money. she tore up the furniture, ripped down the shades, burned the curtains and couch, threw toilet paper across the room, let the bathtub overflow and swamp the whole place, ran up huge long distance calls to people she barely knew. when she got like that, all I could do was go to bed with Felica, try to forget, go 3 or 4 rounds using all the tricks in the book.
I finally got Yevonna to go to a psychiatrist. she said, “surely, and very well, but it’s all nonsense. it’s all in your mind: you are both the demon and YOU are insane!”
“all right, baby, but let’s go see the man, huh?”
“sit out in the car. I’ll be right out.”
I waited. when she came out she had on a short skirt, high heels, new nylons, and even makeup. she had combed her hair for the first time since our marriage.
“give me a kiss, baby,” I said, “I got rocks.”
“no. let’s go see the psychiatrist.”
with the psychiatrist she couldn’t have acted any more normal. she didn’t mention the demon. she laughed at stupid jokes and never rambled on, always letting the doctor take the lead. he declared her physically healthy and mentally sound. I knew she was physically healthy. we drove back and then she ran into the house and changed from her short skirt and heels back into her filthy red gown. I went back to bed with Felica.
even after our first child was born (mine and Yevonna’s), Y. continued to believe completely in the demon, and he kept on appearing to her. schizophrenia developed. one moment she was quiet and tender; then in another moment she became a slouch, garrulous, dull, inconsiderate and rather mean.
and he’d just start on, rambling and chattering, none of it tying together.
sometimes she would be standing in the kitchen and I would hear this ugly bellow, very loud, it was like a man’s voice, very hoarse.
I’d go in and ask her, “whatzup, sweets?”
“well, I’ll be a dirty motherfucker,” I’d say. then I’d pour myself a big drink, go into the front room and sit down.
one day I managed to sneak a psychiatrist into the house when she was in an off mood. he agreed that she was in a psychotic state and advised me to have her committed to an institution for the insane. I signed the necessary papers and obtained a hearing. once again, out came the short skirt and heels. only this time she didn’t play the dull and ordinary broad. she turned on the intellectualism. she spoke brilliantly in defense of her sanity. she made me out as a mean husband who was trying to unload a wife. she managed to discredit the testimony of several witnesses. she confused two court physicians. the judge, after consulting the physicians, said: “The Court does not find the evidence sufficient to commit Mrs. Radowski. This hearing is therefore dismissed.”
I drove her on home and waited while she changed back into her filthy red gown. when she came back out I told her, “god damn if you’re not going to drive ME nuts!”
“you ARE insane,” she said. “now why don’t you go to bed with Felica and attempt to rid yourself of your repressions?”
I did just that. this time Y. watched, standing by the bed, smiling, smoking a king-size cigarette out of an ivory holder. maybe she had attained her final cool. I rather enjoyed it.
but the next day, coming home from work, the landlord met me in the driveway: “Mr. Radowski! Mr. Radowski, your wife, your WIFE has been picking quarrels and fights with the neighbors. she’s broken every window in your place. I’ll have to ask you to move!”
well, we packed up and, myself and Yevonna and Felica, and we went to Yevonna’s mother’s place in Glendale. the old gal was pretty well fixed but all the incantations and magic mirrors and incense-burning got her down, so she suggested we go to a farm she owned up near Frisco. we left the baby at her mother’s and off we went, but when we got there the main house was occupied by a sharecropper, some big guy with a black beard stood in the door, one Final Benson, that’s what he said his name was and he said, “I been on this land all my life, and no man moves me off, NO man!” he was six-five and close to 350 pounds and not too old, so we rented a place just off the edge of the land while legal maneuvers began.
it was the very first night, it happened. I was packing it to Felica, trying the new bed, when I heard terrible moans, sobs from the other rooms, and sounds as if the front room couch were breaking. “Yevonna sounds disturbed,” I said. I slipped it out. “be right back.”
she was disturbed, all right. there was Final Benson riding her, packing it home. it was awesome. he had enough for four men. I went back to the bedroom and did my little bit.
in the morning, I couldn’t find Yevonna. “wonder where that dizzy broad’s gone?”
it wasn’t until Felica and I were having breakfast that I looked out the window and saw Yevonna. she was down on her hands and knees in these blue jeans and a man’s olive drab shirt and she was working the land, and Final was right down there with her and they were pulling things up, putting them in baskets. looked like turnips. Final had got himself a woman. “jesus christ,” I said, “let’s go. let’s get out of here, fast!”
Felica and I packed. when we got back to L.A. we took a motel room while we looked for a place. “god damn, sweetie,” I said, “my worries are over! you have no idea what I’ve been through!”
we bought a fifth of whiskey to celebrate, then we made love and stretched out to sleep in peace.
then I was awakened by the sound of Felica’s voice: “Thou foul tormenting fiend!” she was saying. “Is there no rest from thee this side of the tomb? Thou has taken away my Yevonna, and now thou has followed me here! Get thee hence, Demon! Get out! Leave us Forever!”
I sat up in bed. I looked where Felica was looking and I think I saw it — this big face, kind of a red glowing with a bit of orange under it, like a hot coal, and green lips, and two long yellow teeth sticking out, a mass of dull glowing hair, and the thing was grinning. the eyes looked down at us like a dirty joke.
“well, I’ll be a dirty motherfucker,” I said.
“begone!” spoke Felica, “in the Holy Name of Almighty Ja and in the name of Buddha and in the name of a thousand gods I curse and direct and discharge you from our souls forever and ten thousand years hence!”
I switched on the electric light.
“it was just the whiskey, baby. very bad whiskey, plus tiredness from the long drive down here.”
I looked at the clock. it was one thirty p.m. and I needed a drink now, pretty bad. I started to get dressed.
“where you going, Hank?”
“liquor store. just time to make it. gotta drink that big face outa my head. too damn much.”
I was finished dressing.
“Hank?”
“yeah, sweetzums?”
“something I ought to tell you.”
“sure, sweetzums. but snap it up. gotta make the store and get back.”
“I’m Yevonna’s sister.”
“yes.”
I leaned over and kissed her. then I went outside and got in my car and started driving. away. I got the bottle at Hollywood and Normandie and just kept driving west. the motel was back east, almost to Vermont Ave. Well, you don’t find a Final Benson everyday, not with all that string, sometimes you just have to leave those crazy broads and get yourself back together. there’s a certain price on pussy that no man will pay; meanwhile, there’s always another fool who will pick up the one you’ve dropped, so there’s really no sense of guilt or desertion.
I stopped at a kind of hotel down near Vine Street and got myself a room. while I was getting my key I saw this thing sitting in the lobby with her skirt pulled up around her ass. too much. she kept looking at the bottle in the bag. I kept looking up her ass. too much. when I got on the elevator she was on there with me. “you gonna drink that bottle all by yourself, mister?” “I hope I don’t have to.” “you won’t.” “fine,” I said.
the elevator hit the top floor. she swung out and I watched her movements, shimmering and sliding; shaking and jolting me all through.
“the key says room 41,” I said.
“o.k.”
“by the way, you ain’t interested in mysticism, flying saucers, etheric armies, witches, demons, occult teachings, magic mirrors?”
“iner-ested in WHAT? I don’t get it!”
“forget it, baby!”
she moved along in front of me, high heels clicking, her body wobbling all over in the dim hall light. I couldn’t wait. we found room 41 and I opened the door, found the light, found 2 glasses, rinsed them, poured the whiskey, handed her a glass. she sat on the couch, her legs crossed high, smiling at me over the drink.
it was going to be all right.
at last.
for a while.
ALSO AVAILABLE
More Notes of a Dirty Old Man
The Uncollected Columns
Edited by David Calonne
Available in paperback or e-edition
“In these pieces, written for the alternative press from 1967 through the mid-’80s, is a Bukowski you might not know—the father taking his seven-year-old daughter to the beach in Santa Monica, where he rescues a homeless man who’s been beaten up by thugs. Here’s the Bukowski lost in the gender wars, confused and trying to keep his own desire (piggy at times, yes) alive. He wasn’t looking for beauty, but he found it now and then.” — Los Angeles Magazine
“He’s been gone since 1994, but Charles Bukowski continues to fascinate us. His tales of sex, drugs, and booze, and more sex, drugs, and booze, ad infinitum, resonate a lurid energy that grabs our attention and keeps it.” — SF Weekly
“To anyone familiar with Bukowski’s work, they’re more of the good stuff — essays on pure desire that demonstrate his lust for the physical world. And of course, they’re shot through with Bukowski’s admirable denial of a higher meaning to his work — to an earnest interviewer, he writes, ‘When I die they can take my work and wipe a cat’s ass with it. It will be of no earthly use to me.’” — LA Weekly
“Proving that misanthropic and humanitarian are two sides of the same tarnished coin and that stagnation and metamorphosis are equally related, this collection arcs subtly from the banal side of addiction to the most extreme forms of love and hate. Bukowski’s prose is still relevant, still shocking, still transcendent.” — Publishers Weekly
“In another installment of his essays and ramblings, City Lights press have surely come up with a winner. These are essentially Bukowski’s articles for John Bryan’s Open City Press, for Nola Express, for the Los Angeles Free Press. His early reputation, as a cult writer around Los Angeles, is partially built upon these iconoclastic columns where they gave him carte blanche to write whatever came into his head, and he invariably did just that. Even today some of his articles come across as quite shocking after all these years.” — Beat Scene Magazine
Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man
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