Absence of the Hero (18 page)

NOLA EXPRESS,
APRIL 14–27, 1972

Sitting with a bottle at the typewriter is not the easiest way to cut through terror. I dreamed a lifetime of being a writer and now the demons are upon me. Writing heightens the feelings to such an extent that we are at the mercy of all happenings. A blade of grass becomes a sword; an affair of love claws the guts out. With the few people I know, I pretend to be the tough guy but I don't fool anybody. One of the saving graces (there's a platitude) is the ability to laugh now and then. Without that, going on might be impossible. The average man puts in his 8 hours, comes home beaten and satisfied. With the writer there is never satisfaction; there is always the next piece of work to be done. We are honed by our words. My gal friend says to me, “My god, you're touchy. You remind me of one of those fish down at Marineland. They've got these points sticking out all over them. Touch one and that fish goes crazy. I'm going to take you down there and show you one of those fish.”

“O.K., take me down there. I want to see one of those fish.”

We have our own little show going on. Once I stood in front of the bathroom mirror with a razor to my throat. I looked at myself—dim little serious eyes—and I had to laugh. Another time I tried gas. It didn't work. I was awakened by a most terrible headache. John Berryman, the poet, did it recently by jumping off a bridge into a river. Now that's style. I have a friend who writes. He has razor scars on both wrists.

Writing means creating and waiting. The mail is slow and the pay is low. I manage to give readings at some of the universities. It is an odd feeling to be flown off somewhere and to be paid for reading your poetry. And to have some of the ladies want to go to bed with you, and there are also the free drinks. I don't go to bed with the ladies because I'm in love with my gal friend, but I have accepted some drinks.

I don't like to read but it is survival and most audiences are surprisingly live and understanding. And amusing things do happen. Once in Michigan I laid my poems down and arm-wrestled with some student. Now, that's something—I got paid $400 to arm-wrestle. I won but the kid said I cheated. Hell, when you get as old as I am, you've got to cheat.

Another time in Kansas City, my ride arrived drunk at the airport. And it was
snowing
, in late March.

“Welcome to Kansas Shitty, Bukowski,” my ride shoved a bottle of tequila at me. I accepted and we got into the car. The expressway was icy and slippery. There were ditches on the side and every now and then you'd see a car in one of the ditches.

“Those people can't drive on these roads,” said my ride.

“Listen, Andre,” I said, “let me read you this poem.”

My gal friend had written it and I mean it was
SEXY
. I reached a certain line and Andre said, “Jesus Christ!” and he lost control of the car. We spun around and around in these circles and I lifted the bottle and said, “Andre, we're not going to make it. . . .”

We spun off into a ditch but remained right side up. It was cold and there wasn't any car heater. Being the sensitive poet I stayed in the car and drank while Andre stuck out the thumb.

And who stopped for us? Another drunk. He had bottles of beer all over the floor and a fifth of whiskey. We made the reading.

Another time I was given a room in the
women's
dorm. Now if you don't think that's a situation to test your love. . . .

At a Patchen benefit in the Hollywood Hills I was pouring a couple of drinks behind the bar after the reading when this young girl walked up to me. She was a handsome creature—body, face, eyes, hair, all that was needed.

“Bukowski,” she said, “your poems are the only ones. You really make the other poets look bad.”

“Well, thanks. I may not be immortal but at least I'm understandable.”

“I want to fuck you.”

“What?”

“I want to fuck you.”

“Pardon me, I'm taking this drink to my girl.”

Fringe benefits? It killed Dylan Thomas and it has sucked many other poets into a grand imbecility. The poetry audiences must be respected, and, denied. . . .

Céline, after
Journey
, went into a rant about how publishers were taking him. A writer is made to be taken. All a writer can ask for is a bare survival (another platitude) so that he can go on writing until he dies. Céline lost his humor after
Journey
. Of course, he got roughed up by the war, ran out of town, and his patients didn't pay their bills. But at least he was a doctor, he had something to go on beside a typewriter ribbon. Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line. Freelancing is slow; God is the mailman and God often doesn't seem to care.

Luckily for most of us we don't have the habits of the masses. New cars bore us; television is inane; clothes don't matter. Our biggest worry is that drunken phone call to East Kansas City. And we often have a good woman about to hold us together. We are faithful to our women because we give over our total feelings, but in other areas we treat them badly. We are not good listeners. Her friends appear to be stupid. Dull. We can't understand how anybody else could be interesting at all. . . . Writers are a bad breed. The ladies have been good to us. . . . I'd say that almost always, behind each good writer stood a damned good woman. Take away love and half an artist's work fails. . . .

All right, it's better than the punch press. No layoffs. Of course, a man can go to bed at night being a writer and wake up in the morning and be nothing. Talent can vanish in one tick of the clock. Yet it's a good fight. It's good to die on your own battleground. How many men and women are actually doing what they can do best? That 7:30
A.M.
freeway on weekdays is the sight of horror of the century. One of them, anyhow. We've each given the hours of our lives in dull rote jobs for other men's profit, and have been asked to be grateful for doing that. Surely, for all the weeping we do about writing, we are the blessed. The price is almost beyond reason but the fight is good.

There are moments and moments of glowing: you are wary of it but you allow yourself to be happy at times & stupid. Why not? Most of the others are. What cause is so holy that a man can't be happy at moments? Why not? We've gone through the other . . . the gas jets hissing, or standing in front of that mirror with the rusty razor blade. Child stuff. Shit, you can feel like a Hemingway sometimes. Say going to a bullfight, cigarette dangling (I'm one-half Hem, one-half Bogart), pint of good whiskey in coat, and on your arm, a woman 20 years younger and spirited, a woman who knows you are making the good fight, the words running around inside of you and waiting to form, you walk in with her and the flame is good, the fire is good, the coals are glowing, sure, walk like you have it, this hour this moment this time, she loves you, Bukowski, and you've got a Royal Standard and enough ribbon to strangle in, she walks beside you, proud and good, and the first bull is already out, they are sticking it, weakening it, all those summers gone by, all those other women, the jails, the suicide mirrors, the funerals, the nights in the bedroom alone, torn by the wolves of rotten salami: Jane, Gertrude, Barbara, Frances, even Frances, and Linda, Linda, Linda. I can't hold all my insides together. I am stuck underneath the bottom of the sky.

You're writing these columns now, Bukowski. How long are you going to be able to go on writing these columns?

I don't know. Dostoyevsky did it. I guess I can do it.

What's the best thing you've done lately?

Well, I picked up a girl with the clap on Hollywood Boulevard.

You mean you caught it?

I mean, I didn't catch it.

Meanwhile, I'll see you guys and gals at the Olympic some Thursday night, my Bogart cigarette dangling, beer in hand, and if I'm lucky, my love near me. If I'm unlucky I'll be alone. Wish me luck. The Jap and Mexican fighters have the guts. The black man and the white man are the sulkers. They go on inbred talent but they are no longer angry enough. I am still angry and amused. It is only by looking at other things that I can tell you who I am. If I buy you a beer, you ought to buy me a beer. Not that you have to. The bulls and the fighters and the word. Suddenly I feel good. It's not going to last but I'll accept it. You tell me something now.

L.A. FREE PRESS
, JUNE 1, 1973

He phones from a bar; I can hear the juke music. He's in town from San Francisco, been hustling the Ferlinghetti strand, gave a reading for Bob Kaufman. Duke's in town, wants to know if he can come on up. “Come on up,” I say. I tell Karen that Duke Santeen's in town and on the way over.

Duke's a street poet. Duke's been hustling the Muse since the early '50s. He can write good poetry
when
he writes it. But Duke carries his own energy, he's no dead hustle. I get into the '62 Comet and go get the beer. Then I get back and get a few down and wait for Duke's arrival.

He arrives. His hair is getting a little more silver, the shoulders are slumped, but he's still the boxer, he can duke it, and he can laugh and he's been burned and he's been north and he's been south, and he knows the way—
All American Poets Are in Prison
is the title of one of his books.

Duke can write, there's no doubt about it, he can write the ass out of nine out of ten, no 95 out of 100. He should be published more than he is; I know that and he knows that. Meanwhile, I introduce him to Karen. Karen sculpts, is working on a play soon to be produced in a little theatre in Hollywood, has a book of poems out via underground press, and has a novel knocking on doors. I am surrounded by talent.

Duke sees the heads all about. “Beautiful, beautiful! You got a real talent,” he tells Karen.

“That head there,” I tell Duke, “that's Jeffers.”

“Jeffers, eh? How about the other head? That Jeffers too?”

“No, that's her father.”

“I knew I was back in Los Angeles. First thing I see when I hit the streets is this woman walking by, her skirt's so short so I can see her pussy.”

“It's a great town, Duke.”

“I saw the Foot up in Frisco. Great cat, beautiful cat.”

“The Foot?”

“Allen Ginsberg. He broke his foot.”

We suck at our beers. Duke takes out a square record from his valise. “This guy's good. I'm gonna be his agent. Listen to this. He's great.”

We listen. Cowboy songs. Most of them are derivative and not too unique. One of them is pretty damned good, though, so his man stands a chance. We suck at our beers.

“I was crossing Sunset, we'd just come from Barney's, this babe and me, and this cop stops us. We're drunk, I reach out to touch him, I reach out to touch him and tell him he needs a friend and the mother draws a
gun
on me!”

I get Duke for some cigarettes. I always forget to buy cigarettes.

“Once I was back east, I hadda shit
real bad, you know, no place to go. I really
had the runs so I just squatted in the street
and this cop came by and said, ‘What're you doin'
there?' I said, ‘Officer, what does it look like I'm
doin'? You wouldn't want me to shit my pants, would
you?' And the cop says, ‘Yes, I want you to shit your pants!'”

We laugh and then Duke says, “I just made that one up.”

“Come on, Duke,” I say. “You're burning my dream.”

Duke gets up. He has a way of carrying a beer bottle on his hip. Elan. He stands looking out the window. It's dark out there, and cold. We're up over the reservoir.

“I suppose they'll print me when I'm dead. They'll discover me after I'm dead.”

It's difficult to respond to a statement like that. We don't say anything. Duke keeps looking out the window. The beer bottle is still on his hip.

“I got a whole trunk full of stuff buried under a tree.”

“Where's it at, Duke?”

He names some Midwestern state. Then he comes back and sits in a chair, lifts his bottle. “Death,” he says. “Then there's death.” He laughs. “Why don't they kill us all at once and get it over with?”

Duke's silver hair hangs down on both sides of his head. He has the handsomeness of a man who still has all the burners going, all the burners going all the time. I bring out more beer. Duke has his line of shit but much of it isn't shit; he's indulged himself but you don't pass a better human being on the street once a month, or maybe once a year. Or maybe. . . . Anyhow.

“I came down to get my typer out of hock,” he says.

“Listen, Duke,” I say, “why don't you get a part-time job, anything, get into a small room and get the writing down? Stop hanging around the bars and the poetry holes, forget the ladies and get it down?”

“I've written my last poem. I'm through with that. I'm writing songs now. I'm into songs.”

There are holes in the bottom of his shoes yet I get him for another cigarette.

“Ginny, you met her last time I was here?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Ginny, she dropped me over at this other gal's place and she was gone a half and hour and she had to come back for something and I'm already under the sheets with this other gal, but Ginny's cool, she understands.”

The beer seems to go very fast, three six-packs is nothing, nothing at all for the Duke and the Buk. We go out for more. In the car he tells me about Karen. “She's all right, man. She looks like she can ride a horse. She's a real woman.”

“Yeah, she's all right.”

Duke and I go in and converse with the liquor man. He hasn't seen two nuts like us in 20 or 30 years. I remember to get cigarettes. Back at the place we talk some more.

Duke states once more that they will print him after he is dead. He puts on the cowboy record again. I tell him I like the one song real well.

“Yeah, man, he's raw,” says Duke. “He's got up there on the stage and in between songs he yells out, ‘
I wanna suck some pussy
!'”

Karen talks a bit about her sculpting and then I tell Duke I'm not doing too bad at the track; after 30 years' play I am only $10,000 in the hole. Duke drops some names: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Lamantia, Ferlinghetti, and others. He has known or knows them all. Neal Cassady and all.

“I hear names dropping all over the room, Duke,” I tell him.

“So what? They're beautiful people, all beautiful people.”

“Sure, Duke.”

I bring out more beer. Things are reaching the sad, quiet stage. A few more strong swallows and we're all feeling better. “It's some game,” says Duke. “It's some hell of a game.”

I say, “Leo Durocher said it. ‘I'd rather be lucky than good.'”

Duke doesn't answer. He looks down into his bottle.

“I'd rather be lucky and good,” I say.

I guess we're not feeling better. I'm trying to make conversation when Duke is the conversation man. We speak small bits and then guide Duke to the extra bedroom. It's nice to have an extra bedroom even if the house isn't mine.

In the morning Karen fries us up some scrambled eggs and weenies. The Duke has been up for hours, prowling. His face is scrubbed and there's no sign of a hangover. He's eager to move on, to get back on the hustle. Soon we're in the car.

“I gotta get back to Frisco.”

“Sure, kid.”

“Drop me at Hollywood and Vine.”

“O.K.”

Duke has his valise of songs and poems with him plus one of his rolled-up paintings. We drive down Hollywood Bl. and it's my time to feel down. The beer and talk is done. The sun is up and the sun is hard and Hollywood Boulevard on a Sunday morning is hard. Hard? It's impossible. But Duke wants Hollywood and Vine. Duke is a romanticist. We drive on down and we pull over. I look into my wallet, and there's a dollar bill and a ten. “Duke,” I say, “I can either give you a dollar or a ten and I won't give you a ten.”

Duke takes the dollar. A dollar from a writer with a place to sleep to a writer without a place to sleep. I let him out there and he stood there facing me with his valise and his silver hair. “Well,” he says, “if they find me at the bottom of the drink, remember me.”

“Sure, kid.”

I drive off leaving him there in the hard Hollywood sun. The ghosts of Garbo and Grable and Harlow and W.C. Fields wander about. I U-turn back and driving back I'm thinking, well, he's gone, he's gone, he's gone, he's gone, and I'm glad he's gone and I miss him at the same time. When I get back to the place I tell Karen, “I dropped him at Hollywood and Vine.”

“I don't think he had any money,” she said.

“Oh hell, he's an old-time hustler. You ought to see his little black book, all the names. He'll make it.”

“It must be hard, doing that.”

“He loves it. He wouldn't want it any other way.”

I go into the kitchen and find a 7-Up. I drink half of it in one swallow. It tastes good. I have a very bad hangover.