Absence of the Hero (17 page)

“Bukowski, Bukowski, Bukowski
EVERYWHERE
!” screamed
Louise
, “I hate the son of a bitch! And now he's here in our place drinking beer with his big belly and looking wise!”

Lou was
Italiano
. Fiery
Italiano
. She said what was on her mind. Jon was more introvert. He said clever little delicate and subtle things, rather rolling the last word off the lips, giving the clever smile and checking your eye for reaction. They were the perfect pair; they may have lived in hell but they were married in heaven. It was the mating of the sun and the moon, the sea and the land, the horse and the bird. What one didn't have, the other gave.

Anyhow, I felt I owed them something so I drank and I drank and I told these stories, one after the other, about women and life, and the death-jobs and the crazy things that happen to a man who moves from woman to woman, from place to place while being half crazy in the head; the miracles and the luck and the horror. I could see that they were enjoying the stories so I told some more. It was a fine night, the roaches crawling the walls, so many roaches that they seemed to be a wall, wavering of black hard backs and feelers and unfeelingness. Here were a people trying to improve the literature and poetry of the world and living with bugs and drunks and madness, and hardly a chance at all.

Well, they went to sleep and I went to sleep somewhere and the days went on. We made the bars at night and I met Jon's fiction editor, a mute, and we wrote on paper napkins all night and got drunker than what? We got drunker than James Joyce.

Anyhow, it was that. Paintings on the corner. The press. The bars. The drunken stories.
The Outsider
. All the people. And there is a streetcar named
Desire
. I left town. The book came out. . . .

I don't know. Jon and Lou lived in many cities. I remember another book—
Crucifix
. But there were cities in between and after. It was simply a love affair without saying it. They enjoyed me; I enjoyed them. I met Corso. Corso and I raged around a bit, but for all our flair and wordage, there was always a gentleness underneath it all. Corso was one of the most gentle, and Jon and Louise. I played the hard guy because somebody has to or you don't have a backdrop.

All right, with
Crucifix
it was strange. I'd come by (they had me living with a fat and nice lady around the corner) with a hangover every morning and Jon would let me in and he'd say, “Bukowski! More Poems!” And I'd sit down to the typer and write one and he'd immediately set it up for printing. Well, the book came out. I left town. . . .

They were always on the move, dragging that press behind them, and 2 dogs, and manuscripts and books and and . . . “Come see us, Bukowski. . . .” And out I'd go. This time Santa Fe in the rain. A rich psychiatrist's place. 2 or 3 wives. I'm drunk. I'm in bed with one of the wives. 6 bathrooms within 10 feet. Across the way, a tower of a house. You've got to climb 100 feet to get into a doorway. The psychiatrist rents these places. I meet the psychiatrist. He is like any other p. I ever met—emptier than any insanity.

“Bukowski,” Jon asked me, “should we stay here?”

“Stay here for what?”

“
The Outsider
.”

“What's he want?”

“We gotta break down one wall to get the press in. Then he cements the wall back up. We'll be locked in here, you know. It's difficult. But he says rent free. I can stay here forever. But he rather hints that I should print a book of his poems. . . .”

So, Jon and Lou moved from there to elsewhere and from elsewhere to someplace else. . . . Once again, back in N.O., I'd walk up to Lou on the corner where she was selling paintings. She'd have a large map on her lap. The map of the U.S. She'd crossed out, with pencil, all the places that it is impossible to live in. The whole map was blacked out.

“Look at me,” she'd say, laughing, “it took me 5 goddamned hours to go over this map and I find out what?—there's no place to live.”

“I meant to tell you,” I'd say. . . .

Jon always meant to get at a man. He was under one of the false misconceptions that is so popular nowadays—get a man angry and he'll really tell you what he is and what he has to say. Jon was always trying me but it led to nowhere. Jon was as lonely and mixed up and crazy as the rest of us, yet he was one of the 2 or 3 great editors of the 20th century. Along with Whit Burnett of
Story
and Mencken of the old
Mercury.
 . . .

I tell you that those people lived in so many places that I can't keep them in order. Right now, I remember 3 different storefronts in Arizona, or maybe one of them was in New Mexico. Jon was a good carpenter and he'd fix up these storefronts and really make them livable. Although all the livability circled around the printing press. They never found their place, though; they always had to move again, and again. They became disgusted with the people. Once in New Orleans, they hired a crew to move their printing press and undo the electric hook-up (the press needed a special power line). Then they changed their minds, had the crew move the press back, hook it up, then they changed their minds again and the press was unhooked and pulled through the window. Their funds were fucked by this constant moving, looking for the place. Paying freight for that press and paper stock, belongings, 2 dogs. I tried to tell them, I tried to tell them that the people all over America were rotten and decayed and false and unreal.

Jon died in the State of Tennessee. It was a simple and routine operation that failed.

Jon's son was with me at my place while his father was in the hospital. We phoned Louise first. “What you guys doing? Drinking while Jon is in the hospital?”

Jon's son was in contact with the doctors. He was a med student about to graduate. I heard him discuss the entire operation with them. It was not be a dangerous one. They hadn't operated yet. His son talked to Jon. “You heard anything from Bukowski?” he asked him. “No, Bukowski doesn't write anymore. Henry Miller still writes me though, Henry Miller just wrote me the other day. . . .”

“Have you given up on Bukowski?”

“Oh, no, I haven't given up on Buke. . . .”

The operation didn't work. It was a matter of correcting something along the neck, one side of the neck. The part on the other side of the neck was gone. One part left to fix up. They operated. Jon went into a coma afterwards. Lou was there. She was religious. I'm not too religious but her business is hers. She stayed at the bed and prayed. The doctor came in and asked her what she was doing. “I'm praying that my man lives,” she told him. “Well, I'm praying that he dies,” said the doctor.

Lou leaped up: “You're praying that he
dies
? What the hell kind of doctor are you? What the hell kind of a human being are you?”

“If he lives he'll be like an idiot. He'll be like a child, he'll be useless. . . .”

“What do I care? What do I care if he's like an idiot? I'll take care of him. He's my man!”

Women like Louise Webb come along about one in two million. Jon died.

“Everything seemed all right with the operation. He seemed to come through it and then . . .
BINGO
! . . . something wrong. . . .”

That's the way the doctor described it. One of the best surgeons in the state.

The Outsider
of the decade was through. The greatest editor since Mencken and Burnett was finished. Our great nights of beer and talk were finished. Visits from Corso and Ginsberg were finished. Pulling that press all about the country looking for Nirvana, that was finished. I doubt that
The Outsider
will continue. There has been some talk by Louise and Jon's son of continuing the magazine, the press, but I feel that it is over. I wish now that I had told some of the funnier stories about Jon and Louise and myself, but I've written too long now.

The miracle of Jon Edgar Webb, ex-con, ex-writer, ex-editor. . . . It would seem that now the skies would come down a bit or that the streets would crack and open up, or the mountains waver. But they don't. It's history, history, and the game goes on. A new deck. Another drink. And the sadness. That they built us not to last, and that we waste so much, make so many mistakes. Look, Jon, I see you grinning. . . . You knew Buke would write it for you. It's cold now and a white Corvette pulls up outside and a beautiful girl gets out. I don't understand it.

—Charles Bukowski 11/25/71

Vern was a photographer and he had this young wife, Claudia. They had just moved to Florida and then discovered that Claudia was pregnant. They didn't want the baby and knew that abortion was illegal in Florida, so he wrote me, Vern did, saying they were broke and could I lend them the money to come to California and have the thing taken care of?

Having just had one
of those unusual good weeks at the track, I sent
the money out and there I was at the airport
to pick up Claudia.

Now Claudia was one of the finest looking women I had ever seen. Her hair was long, red blonde, and the face and body exuded sex—plenty of sex. The blue eyes were large, and had a way of looking into you, looking quite into you. And her lips seemed the hottest part of her; so suggestive, ripe, always a little bit open.

She had on one of the shortest mini-skirts I had ever seen and every male eye was on her as she walked up to me with her little suitcase. She looked anything but the pregnant woman. I kissed her on the cheek and took her out to my car.

Claudia and I were not complete strangers. We had done some necking at times when her husband wasn't about, when they first got married here in Los Angeles.

“Am I going to stay at your place?” she asked.

“I guess you'll have to,” I said. “It's the tight money situation. I've got stories on the stands and I haven't been paid for them yet. To top that, I've been drinking too much and not writing enough.”

“Well, O.K. then.”

When we got to my place, I put on some hamburger and Claudia went in the other room and took a bath. I could hear her singing in there.

When dinner was ready, she came out in this red silk gown, nothing underneath. Dinner was quiet. Then she said she was tired and wanted to go to bed. I said I was tired too.

She got into bed and I stood there undressing. Her red gown was at the foot of the bed.

“Look at that thing sticking out there!” she whispered. “Listen, we can't do anything. Vern trusts us.”

“How can you make a
pregnant
woman pregnant?”

“I don't know. But let's not try.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Vern trusts us.”

I got on in. Her lips were still open. I got mine against them, pushing the insides of mine against the insides of hers. It was a hot kiss. I could feel my prong jamming against her. She broke off.

“Let's not,” she said, suddenly looking very small, very hurt.

I pulled the cover back and got my head down there. I just touched it with the tip of my tongue, ever so lightly. Moved it off and on, ever so lightly. She began to slowly move her legs and body. I heard her breathing and groaning up there. I didn't relent.

“Oh, you son of a bitch! You son of a bitch!”

I continued for a few minutes more.

Then she screamed:

“
STICK THAT GODDAMNED THING IN ME
!”

As I rose to
mount her, she grabbed my head and kissed me wildly.
I put it in. She was wet. I went slow
and easy. Her eyes rolled to the back of her
head. I gave it a long slow ride then near
the end I rammed and roared and thumped, my lips
smashing down on hers. It was a good climax. I
stayed there a minute, then rolled off.

“Vern trusts us,” I said.

“He's a damn fool,” Claudia replied.

A couple of hours later, I gave it to her in the anus. Then near midnight she gave me a bit of oral copulation.

“Vern's one helluva nice guy,” I said.

We slept good. When I awakened she had breakfast on. I grabbed her from behind. The thing was up.

“God, you're the horniest old man I've ever seen,” she said.

“It's all those dirty stories I write. They excite me.”

“Can I read some of those stories?”

“Sure.” I gave her one of my books. She took it with her in my car when she went out to make the abortion arrangements. When she got back she waved the book at me.

“You're right. These are horny stories. I'm hotter than hell.”

Claudia took off her clothes and went to bed. I did likewise. I got down there and teased her a bit. She heated right up. Then I put her on top of me and let her do all the work. I just laid back. It was like being raped.

“I love you, son of a bitch,” she snarled at me.

“You're losing your mind, Claudia,” I told her.

We climaxed together and I almost lost mine. Then we got up and ate lunch.

“You guys who lay
around all the time have all this energy,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “but a writer's life is difficult. Once you get used to writing, you're no good for anything else. Everything has to hang to that and if you don't make it, you're dead.”

Claudia didn't seem very sympathetic.

I got on the phone and got May, who had a screening desk at the local chain of sex mags in town.

“May, baby,” I said.

“Oh, Bukowski,” she said.

“Listen, May, things are tough. I've got to get the rent up. How about some action on purchase order #1600? The thing's been on the stands for a month.”

“I'll see what I can do, Charley. You know the old man's hooked on the market and the market's been bad.”

“Hell, it went up 18 points the other day.”

“Yeah, everything went up but his holdings. He even took minus five on one issue. I don't know if it's his broker or if it's the old man. They keep making wrong moves. . . .”

“Alright, May, get that 1600 in front of him anyhow. I don't write good on an empty stomach. . . .”

“Charley, you know you're my favorite writer. . . .”

“Really? What's the old man think of me?”

“The old man? Hell, he never reads his magazines. . . .”

I drove Claudia down for her abortion the next day. I sat around reading
Life
and
Time
. When Claudia came out an hour or so later, she acted as if nothing had happened.

“It's like a vacuum cleaner,” she said. “They suck everything out. . . .”

I drove her back. She undressed and went to bed.

“I lost my baby,” she said, “I'm kind of sad.”

“Cheer up,” I said. “We can start another one.”

“Doctor says no intercourse for six weeks.”

“Six weeks?”

“That's what he said.”

“God. . . .”

The next afternoon I took her down to the airport. All the male eyes were on her. She had on a shorter mini than the one she arrived in the first day.

“Well, thanks for everything,” she said, “and good luck with your writing.”

“Maybe I'll write about us. We had some good sex there.”

“How can you make a story out of it?”

“Maybe. That's my problem.”

I put her on the plane and as I got to my car, I saw the bird rise into the air. Vern's wife was on her way back to Florida.

I got on the freeway and drove back to my typewriter. I was in love with Claudia and needed a new ribbon.