“He did that?”
“Rodin was sitting next to me. He kept telling me, ‘Make him keep quiet! Make him keep quiet!’ He just doesn’t know you. Anyhow, you finally ripped your translation earphone off, took a last hit of wine and walked off the program.”
“Just a drunken slob.”
“Then when you reached security you grabbed one of the guards by his collar. Then you pulled your knife and threatened all of them. They weren’t quite sure whether you were kidding or not. But they finally got to you and threw you out.”
* * *
The trip down [to Nice] took ten hours. We arrived at 11 P.M. that night. There was nobody to greet us. Linda made a phone call. Evidently they were in. I could see Linda talking and gesturing. It went on some time. Then she hung up and came out.
“They don’t want to see us. Mother is crying and Uncle Bernard is raging in the background—‘I won’t have that type of man in my house! Never!’ They watched the tv program. The moderator was one of Uncle Bernard’s heroes. Uncle got on the phone and I asked him where they had been that day and he said they had deliberately gone out so they wouldn’t have to answer the phone. He let us come all this way for nothing, he deliberately let us come all this way to get some fucking type of revenge. He told mother you were thrown off the station! It’s not true, you walked off!”
“Come on,” I said, “let’s get a hotel room.”
We found one across from the train station, got a second floor room, got out of there and found a sidewalk cafe that served fairly good red wine.
“He’s brain-washed mother,” said Linda, “I’m sure she won’t sleep one bit tonight.”
“I don’t mind not seeing your uncle, Linda.”
“It’s mother I’m thinking of.”
“Drink up.”
“To think he deliberately let us take that long train ride for nothing.”
“Reminds me of my father. He used to do little things like that continually.”
Just then the waiter came up with a piece of paper.
“Your autograph, sir.”
I signed my name and made a little drawing.
There was another drinking place next door. I looked to my right and there were 5 French waiters laughing and waving their arms. I laughed back, raised my drink to them. All 5 French waiters bowed. They stood a while at that distance, talking to each other. Then they walked off.
the drunk with the little legs
he fell down a stairway as a child
and they had to operate on his legs
and when they were done
his legs were about half the length
they were meant to be
and that’s the way he grew into
manhood
with those very short legs
he hung around the Paris cafes
and sketched the dancing girls
and drank very much.
(it’s strange that most of those
who create well seem to have some
malady.)
he was subsisting on his paintings
many of them used by the cafe
as advertising posters
when along came the beautiful
and terrible whore
and he painted her
and became involved
short legs and all.
she, of course, was hardly faithful,
and one night, defending her
faithlessness
she told him about his legs.
that ended the affair.
he turned on the gas jets
then shut them off
to finish a painting.
he was a little gentleman.
at least he was in this movie
I saw.
he liked to wear a top hat
and he sketched his things
while drinking;
doing it like that,
cutting through the odds,
he had it down tight and
clean,
he sketched all the dancing
girls
that would never be his,
and one night
he got it all down and
done,
tumbling drunk down a
stairway
little legs whirling
he became involved with that
other
terrible and beautiful
whore.
Hemingway
she said, it was in Havana in 1953
and I was visiting him
and one day I saw him
and it was in the afternoon
and he was drunk
he was stretched out on these pillows
drunk
and I took a photo of him
and he looked up and said,
“don’t you dare give that photo
to anybody.”
when she came from Italy this summer
to visit me
she told me about it,
and I said, “that must be some
photo.”
she told me that my house was very
much like his house.
we drank, had dinner somewhere,
then she had to take a plane
out.
the photo is framed at the bottom
of my stairway now
looking north.
he was fat and he was drunk
and he’s in the right
place.
Mozart wrote his first opera before the age of fourteen
I was all right when I moved in here: on the 3rd
day the neighbor to the east saw me
trimming the hedge and offered me his
electric hedge-trimmer.
I thanked him but told him I needed the exercise.
then I leaned down and petted his tiny quivering
dog.
then he told me that he was 83 years old
but still checked in at work every day.
it was his company and they did a million dollars
worth of business every day.
I couldn’t match that so I didn’t say anything.
then he told me that if I ever needed anything
to let him and/or his wife know.
I thanked him, then went back to the hedge.
each night I could see his wife watching television,
she looked at about the same things I did.
then one night I went mad on drink and ran up and
down the stairway screaming things at the woman I
live with. (some nights I drink 5 or 6 bottles of
wine and my mind becomes a freighter loaded with less
than evangelists; I usually scream loudly and dramat-
ically, running about naked; it lasts an hour or
two, then I go to bed and sleep.)
I did this type of thing twice during the second week
of living around here.
now I no longer see his wife watching television:
the venetian blinds are drawn closed,
and I no longer see the old man and his tiny
quivering dog
and I no longer see my neighbor to the west
(although on the 4th day I gave him many tangerines
from my tangerine tree.)
everybody has vanished.
come to think of it
my woman isn’t even here tonight.
on the hustle
I suppose
one of the worst times was
when
after a drunken reading and
an all-night party
I promised to appear at
an eleven o’clock English
class
and there they sat
nicely dressed
terribly young
awfully comfortable.
I only wanted to sleep
and I kept the wastebasket
close
in case I
pu
ked.
I think I was in the state of
Nebraska or Illinois or
Ohio.
no more of this,
I thought,
I’ll go back to the factories
if they’ll have me.
“why do you write?”
a young man asked.
“next question,”
I responded.
a sweet birdie with blue eyes
asked, “who are your 3
favorite contemporary
writers?”
I answered, “Henry Chinaski,
Henry Chinaski and Henry . . .”
somebody asked,
“what do you think about Norman
Mailer?”
I told them that I didn’t think
about Norman Mailer and then I
asked, “doesn’t anybody have a
beer?”
there was this silence, this
continuing silence and the class
and the prof looked at me and I
looked at them.
then the sweet birdie with
the blue eyes
asked,
“won’t you read us
one of your poems?”
and then that’s when I
got up and walked
out
I left them in there
with their prof
and I walked down
through the campus
looking at the
young girls
their hair
their legs
their eyes
their behinds . . .
they all look so good,
I thought, but
they’re going to grow up
into nothing but
trouble . . .
suddenly I braced myself
against a tree and began
puking . . .
“look at that old
man,” a sweet birdie with
brown eyes said to a sweet
birdie with pale green eyes,
“he’s really
fucked-up . . .”
the truth, at
last.
night school
at the drinking driver improvement school
assigned there by Division 63
we are given yellow pencils
and take the test
to see if we have been listening
to the instructor.
like the minimum incarceration for a
2nd drunk driving conviction is:
a) 48 days
b) 6 months
c) 90 days
there are 9 other questions.
after the instructor leaves the room
the students begin asking each other
questions:
“hey, how about question 5? that’s a
hard one!”
“did he talk about that one?”
“I think it’s 48 days.”
“are you sure?”
“no, but that’s what I’m putting
down.”
one woman circles all 3 answers
on most questions
although we’ve been told to
select only one.
on our break I go down and
drink a can of beer
outside a liquor store.
I watch a black hooker
on her evening stroll.
a car pulls up.
she walks over and they
talk.
the door opens.
she gets in and
they drive off.
back in class
the students have gotten
to know each other.
they are a not-very-interesting
bunch of drunks and
x-drunks.
I visualize them sitting in
bars
and I remember why
I started drinking
alone.
the course begins again.
it is found that I am
the only one to have gotten
100 percent on the test.
with my dark shades on.
I am the class
intellectual.
fooling Marie
he met her at the quarter horse races, a strawberry
blonde with thin hips, yet well-bosomed; long legs,
pointed nose, flower mouth, dressed in a pink dress,
wearing white high-heeled shoes.
she began asking him various questions about the
horses while looking at him with her pale blue
eyes . . . as if he were a god.
he suggested the bar and they had a drink, then
watched the next race together.
he hit twenty win on a six-to-one shot and she
jumped up and down gleefully.
then she stopped jumping and whispered in his ear:
“you’re magic, I want to fuck you!”
he grinned and said, “I’d like to, but when?
Marie . . . my wife . . . has me timed down to the
minute.”
she laughed: “we’ll go to a motel, you fool!”
so they cashed the ticket, went out to parking,
got into her car . . . “I’ll drive you back when
we’re finished,” she smiled.
they found a motel about a mile and one half
west, she parked, they got out, went in, signed in
for room 302.
they had stopped for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s
on the way and he took the glasses out of the
cellophane as she undressed, poured two.
she had a marvelous body and sat on the edge of
the bed sipping at the Jack Daniel’s as he
undressed feeling awkward and fat and old
but also feeling lucky: his best day at the
track.
he too sat on the edge of the bed with his
Jack Daniel’s and then she reached over
and grabbed him between the legs, got it, bent over
and kissed it.
he pulled her under the covers and they played.
finally, he mounted her and it was great, it was the
miracle of the universe but it ended, and when she
went to the bathroom he poured two more Jack Daniel’s,
thinking, I’ll shower real good, Marie will never
know.
I’ll finish the day off at the track, just like
normal.
she came out and they sat in bed drinking the Jack
Daniel’s and making small talk.
“I’m going to shower now,” he told her, getting up.
“I’ll be out soon.”
“o.k., cutie,” she told him.
he soaped up good in the shower washing all the perfume-
smell, the woman-smell, the sperm-smell away.
“hurry up, daddy!” he heard her say.
“I won’t be long, baby!” he yelled from under the
shower.
he got out, toweled off good, then opened the bathroom
door and stepped out.
the motel room was empty.
she was gone.
on some impulse he ran to the closet, pulled the door
open: nothing but coat hangers.
then he noticed that his clothes were gone: his underwear,
his shirt, his pants with car keys and wallet, his
shoes, his stockings, everything.
on another impulse he looked under the bed:
nothing.
then he noticed the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, half full,
on the dresser.
he walked over and poured a drink.
as he did he noticed a word scrawled on the dresser
mirror in pink lipstick: SUCKER!
he drank the drink, put the glass down and saw himself
in the mirror, very fat, very old.
he had no idea of what to do.
he carried the Jack Daniel’s back to the bed, sat down,
lifted the bottle and sucked at it as the light from
the boulevard came in through the blinds.
he looked out and watched the cars, passing back and
forth.
[To Jack Stevenson]
March 1, 1982
[ . . . ] I did a lot of time in bars, mostly back east, mostly in Philly where the people were fairly natural and fairly inventive and fairly unpretentious. I don’t mean they were any great wow, but even the fistfights were clean. I just got so I couldn’t find too much on a barstool anymore, I gave it a long try. Finally, I just started taking the bottle or bottles up to my room and I found that I didn’t mind that at all, I liked it, alone. Me and the drink, and the shades pulled down. Not thinking too much about anything. Just smoking and drinking, flipping through the newspaper, getting into bed and checking the cracks in the ceiling, maybe listening to the radio. When you realize that there isn’t very much on the streets, somehow an old beat-up rug or say a chair with the paint peeling can have a certain native charm. Also, it’s always nice to think about not being in jail or not trying to talk some ugly woman into your bed or trying to get rid of her the next day (when they start washing the dishes you know it’s time to start putting on your crazy act). I guess with me it’s really having more a taste for the drink than a taste for Humanity. Mix them together and you can waste a night easily, and that’s not so bad unless the day has been exceptionally bad (like usual). Those Hollywood and Western bars, strictly dogshit havens—no heart, no line, no chance. I had a girlfriend who went to work in one of those places as a barmaid. Joint used to be called The Big Ten. I didn’t say anything to her. I didn’t complain. I just knew she knew less than I ever thought she did—I mean, no instincts, you know. I knew we were finished. I just let her drop into the bog and a new one knocked on my door, even worse. Well . . .
* * *
[To Gerald Locklin]
May 9, 1982
[ . . . ] Let an old man give you some advice. You know, man, that beer can kill you quicker than anything. You know what it does to the bladder, that amount of liquid just ain’t supposed to pass on through the body, not even water. I know it makes for better conversation and keeps you out of alley fights behind the bar (most of the time) but the beer headache and the beer heaves are deathly. Of course, there’s nothing like a good old beer shit. But a good wine will add ten years to your life as compared to drinking that green stuff out of the bargain pitchers. I know you prefer the bars and that when you ask for a glass of wine in a bar the tender reaches for this large dusty jug with a splash of dark coagulation hanging to the bottom, which is pure poison. I guess you just gotta go with the beer in the bars. The trouble with bars is that they’re just like racetracks: the dullest and the most obnoxious go there. Well, hell, forget it. I’m drinking this here wine and rambling . . .