"I used to be. You put down *no religion", people always ask a lot of questions."
"We have you down as Catholic, Mr. Bukowski."
"Listen, it"s hard for me to talk. I"m dying. All right, all right, I"m a Catholic, have it your way."
"We can"t let you have any blood, Mr. Bukowski."
"Listen, my father works for the county. I think they have a blood program. L.A. County Museum. A Mr. Henry Bukowski. He hates me."
"We"ll check it out."
There was something about my papers going down while I was upstairs. I didn"t see a doctor until the fourth day and by then they found that my father who hated me was a good guy who had a job and who had a drunken dying son without a job and the good guy had given blood to the blood program and so they hooked up a bottle and poured it to me. 13 pints of blood and 13 pints of glucose without stop. The nurse ran out of places to stick the needle-I awakened once and the priest was standing over me.
"Father," I said, "please go away. I can die without this."
"You want me to leave, my son?"
"Yes, Father."
"Have you lost the faith?"
"Once a Catholic always a Catholic, my son."
"Bulls.h.i.t, Father."
An old man in the next bed said, "Father, Father, I"ll talk to you. You talk to me, Father."
The priest went over there. I waited to die. You know G.o.d d.a.m.ned well I didn"t die then or I wouldn"t be telling you this nowa"
They moved me into a room with a black guy and a white guy. The white guy kept getting fresh roses every day. He raised roses which he sold to florists. He wasn"t raising any roses right then. The black guy had busted open like me. The white guy had a bad heart, a very bad heart. We lay around and the white guy talked about breed-ing roses and raising roses and how he could sure use a cigarette, my G.o.d, how he needed a cigarette. I had stopped vomiting blood. Now I was just s.h.i.tting blood. I felt like I had it made. I had just emptied a pint of blood and they had taken the needle out.
"I"ll get you some smokes, Harry."
"G.o.d, thanks, Hank."
I got out of bed. "Give me some money."
Harry gave me some change.
"If he smokes he"ll die," said Charley. Charley was the black guy.
"Bulls.h.i.t, Charley, a couple of little smokes never hurt anybody."
I walked out of the room and down the hall. There was a cigarette machine in the waiting lobby. I got a pack and walked back. Then Charley and Harry and I lay there smoking cigarettes. That was morning. About noon the doctor came by and put a machine on Harry. The machine spit and farted and roared.
"You"ve been smoking, haven"t you?" the doctor asked Harry.
"No doctor, honest, I haven"t been smoking."
"Which one of you guys bought him these smokes?"
Charley looked at the ceiling. I looked at the ceiling.
"You smoke another cigarette and you"re dead," said the doc-tor.
Then he took his machine and walked out. As soon as he left I took the pack out from under the pillow.
"Lemme have one," said Harry.
"You heard what the doctor said," said Charley.
"Yeah," I said, exhaling a sheath of beautiful blue smoke, "you heard what the doctor said: *You smoke another cigarette and you"re dead.""
"I"d rather die happy than live in misery," said Harry.
"I can"t be responsible for your death, Harry," I said, "I"m going to pa.s.s these cigarettes to Charley and if he wants to give you one he can."
I pa.s.sed them over to Charley who had the center bed.
"All right, Charley," said Harry, "let"s have *em."
"I can"t do it, Harry, I can"t kill you Harry."
Charley pa.s.sed the cigarettes back to me.
"Come on, Hank, lemme have a smoke."
"No, Harry."
"Please, I beg you, man, just one smoke just one!"
"Oh, for Christ"s sake!"
I threw him the whole pack. His had trembled as he took one out.
"I don"t have any matches. Who"s got matches?"
"Oh, for Christ"s sake," I said.
I threw him the matches- They came in and hooked me to another bottle. About ten minutes my father arrived. Vicky was with him, so drunk she could hardly stand up.
"Lover!" she said, "Lover boy!"
She staggered up against the edge of the bed.
I looked at the old man. "You son of a b.i.t.c.h," I said, "you didn"t have to bring her up here drunk."
"I warned you not to get involved with a woman like that." "She"s broke. You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you bought her whiskey, got her drunk and brought her up here."
"I told you she was no good, Henry. I told you she was a bad woman."
"Don"t you love me anymore, lover boy?"
"Get her out of here-NOW!" I told the old man.
"No, no, I want you to see what kind of a woman you have."
"I know what kind of woman I have. Now get her out of here now, or so help me Christ I"m going to pull this needle out of my arm and whip your a.s.s!"
The old man moved her out. I fell back on my pillow.
"She"s a looker," said Harry.
"I know," I said, "I know."
I stopped s.h.i.tting blood and I was given a list of what to eat and I was told that the first drink would kill me. They had also told me that I would die without an operation. I had had a terrible argument with a female j.a.panese doctor about operation and death. I had said "No operation" and she had walked out, shaking her a.s.s at me in anger. Harry was still alive when I left, nursing his cigarettes. I walked along in the sunlight to see how it felt. It felt all right. The traffic went by. The sidewalk was as sidewalks had always been. I was wondering whether to take a bus in or try to phone somebody to come and get me. I walked into this place to phone. I sat down first and had a smoke.
The bartender walked up and I ordered a bottle of beer.
"What"s new?" he asked.
"Nothing much," I said. He walked off. I poured the beer into a gla.s.s, then I looked at the gla.s.s a while and then I emptied half of it. Somebody put a coin in the juke box and we had some music. life looked a little better. I finished that gla.s.s, poured another and wondered if my p.e.c.k.e.r would ever stand up again. I looked around the bar: no women. I did the next best thing: I picked up the gla.s.s and drained it -charles bukowski - from the books: The Most Beautiful Woman in Town and Erections, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness ===.
**BEER AND POETS AND TALK**
it was a h.e.l.l of a night. Willie had slept in the weeds outside Bakersfield the night before. Dutch was there, and a buddy, the beer was on me. I made sandwiches. Dutch kept talking about literature, poetry; I tried to get him off it but he laid right in there. Dutch runs a bookshop around Pasadena or Glendale or somewhere. then talk about the riots came up. they asked me what I thought about the riots and I told them that I was waiting, that the thoughts would have to come by themselves. it was nice to be able to wait. Willie picked up one of my cigars, took the paper off, lit it.
Somebody said, "how come you"re writing a column? you used to laugh at Lipton for writing a column, now you"re doing the same thing."
"Lipton writes a kind of left-wind Walter Winch.e.l.l thing. I create Art. There"s a difference."
"hey, man, you got any ore of these green onions?" asked Willie.
I went into the kitchen for more green onions and beer. Willie was one right out of the booka"a book that hadn"t been written yet. he was a ma.s.s of hair, head and beard. bluejeans with patches. one week he was in Frisco. 2 weeks later he was in Albuquerque. then, somewhere else. He carried with him, everywhere, this batch of poems he had accepted for his magazine. whether the crazy maga zine ever evolved or not was anybody"s guess. Willie the Wire, slim, bouncy, immortal. he wrote very well. even when he put the knock on somebody it was a kind of without hatred knock. he just laid the statement down, then it was yours. a graceful carelessness.
I cracked some new beers. Dutch was still on literature. he had just published "18th Dynasty Egyptian Automobile Turnon" by D. R. Wagner. and a nice job too. Dutch"s young buddy just listened a" he was the new breed: quiet but very much there.
Willie worked on an onion. "I talked to Neal Ca.s.sady. he"s gone completely crazy."
"yeah, he"s begging for busts. it"s stupid. building a forced myth. being in Kerouac"s book screwed up his mind."
"man," I said, "there"s nothing like a bit of dirty literary gossip, is there?"
"sure," said Dutch, "let"s talk shop. everybody talks shop."
"listen, Bukowski, do you think that there"s any poetry being written now? by anybody? Lowell made time, you know."
"almost all the great names have died recently a" Frost, c.u.m-mings, Jeffers, W.C. Williams, T.S. Eliot, the rest. a couple of nights ago, Sandburg. in a very short period, they all seemed to die together, throw in Vietnam and the ever-riots and it has been a very strange and quick and festering and new age. look at those skirts now, almost up around the a.s.s. we are moving quickly and I like it, it is not bad. but the Establishment is worried about its culture. culture is a steadier. there"s nothing as good as a museum, a Verdi opera or a stiff-neck poet to hold back progress. Lowell was rushed into the breach, after a careful check of credentials. Lowell is interesting enough not to put you to sleep but diffuse enough so as not to be dangerous. the first thoughts you have after reading his work is, this baby has never missed a meal or even had a flat tire or toothache. Creeley is a near similarity, and I imagine the Establishment balanced Creely and Lowell for some time but had to finally come up with Lowell because Creeley just didn"t seem like such a very good dull guy, and you couldn"t trust him as much a" he might even show up at the president"s lawn party and tickle the guests with his beard, so, it had to be Lowell, and so it"s Lowell we"ve got."
"so who"s writing it? where are they?"
"not in America. and there are only 2 that I can think of. Harold Norse who is nursing his melancholia-hypochondria in Switz-erland, taking handouts from rich backers, and having the running s.h.i.ts, fainting spells, the fear of ants, so forth. and writing very little now, kind of going crazy like the rest of us. but then WHEN he writes, it"s all there. the other guy is Al Purdy. not Al Purdy the novelist, I mean Al Purdy the poet. they are not the same people. Al Purdy lives in Canada and grows his own grapes which he squeezes Into his own wine. he is a drunk, an old hulk of a man who must now be somewhere in his mid-forties. his wife supports him so he can write his poetry, which, you"ve got to admit, is some wonderful kind of wife. I"ve never met one like that or have you. but, anyhow, the Canadian government is always laying some kind of grant on him, $4,000 here and there, and they send him up to the Pole to write about life there, and he does it, crazy clear poems about birds and people and dogs. G.o.d d.a.m.n, he wrote a book of poems once called "Songs for All the Annettes" and I almost cried all the qay through the book reading it. it"s nice to look up sometimes, it"s nice to have heroes, it"s nice to have somebody else carrying some of the load."
"don"t you think you write as well as they?"
"only at times. most of the time, no."
the beer ran out and I had to take a s.h.i.t. I gave Willie a five and told him it"d be good if he got 2 six packs, tall, Schlitz (this is an advertis.e.m.e.nt), and all 3 of them left and I went in and sat down. it wasn"t bad to be more or less asked questions of the age. it was better yet to be doing what I was doing. I thought about the hospitals, the racetracks, some of the women I used to know, some of the women I had buried, outdrunk, outf.u.c.ked but not outargued. the lcoholic madwomen who had brought love to me especially and in their own way. then I heard it though the wall: "listen, Johnny, you ain"t even kissed me in a week. what"s wrong, Johnny? listen, talk to me, I want you to talk to me."
"G.o.d d.a.m.n you, get away from me. I don"t want to talk to you. LEAVE ME ALONE, WILL YOU? G.o.d d.a.m.n YOU, LEAVE ME ALONE!"
"listen, Johnny, I just want you to talk to me, I can"t stand it. you don"t have to touch me, just talk to me, jesus christ Johnny I can"t stand it, I CAN"T STAND IT, JESUS!"
"G.o.d d.a.m.n IT, I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE ME ALONE, G.o.d d.a.m.n YOU, LEAVE ME ALONE, LEAVE ME ALONE, LEAVE ME ALONE, WILL YOU?"
"Johnny-"
he hit her a good one, a real good one. open hand. I almost fell off the stool. I heard her choking the c.r.a.p and walking off.
then Dutch and Willie and crew were back. they ripped open the cans. I finished my business and walked back in.
"I"m gonna get up an anthology," said Dutch, "an anthology of the best living poets, I mean the real best."
"sure," said Willie, "why not?" then he saw me: "enjoy your c.r.a.p?"
"not too much."
"no?"
"no."
"you need more roughage. you ought to eat more green onions."
"you think so?"
"yeah."
I reached over and got 2 of them, jammed them down. maybe next time would be better. meanwhile there were riots, beer, talk, literature, and the lovely young ladies were making the fat millionaires happy. I reached over, got one of my own cigars, took off the paper, took off the cigar band, jammed the thing into my screwed-up and complex face, then lit it, the cigar. bad writing"s like bad women: there"s just not much you can do about it.
**THE GREAT ZEN WEDDING**
I was in the rear, stuck in with the Rumanian bread, liverwurst, beer, soft drink; wearing a green necktie, first necktie since the death of my father a decade ago. Now I was to be best man at a Zen wedding, Hollis driving 85 m.p.h., Roy"s four-foot beard flowing into my face. It was my *62 Comet, only I couldn"t drivea" no insurance, two drunk-driving raps, and already getting drunk. Hollis and Roy had lived unmarried for three years, Hollis supporting Roy. I sat in the back and sucked at my beer. Roy was explain-ing Hollis" family to me one by one. Roy was better with the intel-lectual s.h.i.t. Or the tongue. The walls of their place were covered with these many photos of guys bending into the m.u.f.f and chewing.
Also a snap of Roy reaching climax while jacking off. Roy had done it alone. I mean, tripped the camera. Himself. String. Wire. Some arrangement. Roy claimed he had to j.a.c.k.o.f.f six times in order to get the perfect snap. A whole day"s work: there it was: this milky glob: a work of art. Hollis turned off the freeway. It wasn"t too far. Some of the rich have driveways a mile long. This one wasn"t too bad: a quarter of a mile. We got out. Tropical gardens. Four or five dogs. Big black woolly stupid s...o...b..ring-at- the-mouth beasts. We never reached the doora"there he was, the rich one, standing on the veranda, looking down, drink in hand. And Roy yelled, "Oh, Har-vey, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, so good to see you!"
Harvey smiled the little smile: "Good to see you too, Roy."