Absence of the Hero (20 page)

L.A. FREE PRESS
, AUGUST 22, 1975

Down around Sunset, about Sunset and Wilton, near the freeway exit and by the gas station, you'll see them sometimes in their uniforms with swastika. They wear pleasant looks on very white faces and hand out literature. They also wear helmets and some of the boys are big enough to play for the L.A. Rams. They are ready: members of the American Nazi Party. Well, it's Hollywood and one thinks of it more like part of a grade B movie, but then there are those who will tell you that it began that way over there, too—just a few guys standing around who should have been fingering girls in the back seat of the movie house. Next thing you knew they were sitting at the sidewalk caf
é
s of Paris, getting it off. But then if you're going to allow the Communist Party and the Socialist Party and the Gay Party and the Demos and Repubs, you can't very well say, well, the Nazi Party has no right to exist. So there they are but they intend to get the average person more wrought up—memories of ovens and
Pathé
Newsreels of Hitler screaming, and then they
are
wearing uniforms that don't exactly remind some of Jack Oakie in bell-bottoms.

Sometimes the police arrive in three or four squad
cars. I was gassing up at the station one day
when it got very goosey around there. There were seven
or eight cops looking very nervous, unsure, grim. The Nazis
were gathered in squad formation, standing at attention except for
the leader who was speaking to one of the cops.
Then back toward Wilton was gathered a group of New
York Marxist intellectual types, thin, some Jewish, black-bearded; most were
around 5
′
6
″
, wore old black coats—even in the heat of
day—with white wrinkled shirts open at the collar, and they
were screaming: “Hey, go back to Glendale, you bastards! Go back to Munich!”

One could sense conflagration, moil, and murder just a tick away. One curious wrong word and they would all be together, upon each other: cops, Marxists, and Nazis.

Sitting there in my car the old thought came back to me: How was it possible for people to believe in such opposite things with such rigor, such energy, such righteousness? How could some people be so sure there was a God and others so sure there was not? How were people unlucky enough to believe in anything? And then if you didn't believe in anything wasn't that a belief? Tra lala.

I got out of my car and walked toward the Nazi leader and the cop he was talking to. The cop saw me approaching first and stopped talking to the Nazi. He watched me. He had red eyebrows and looked as if he were wearing suntan lotion. I stopped three feet away.

“What do you want, buddy?” the cop asked me.

“I want a pamphlet. I want to know what this man's ideology is.”

“You can't have one.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have given an order to disperse and anybody within this area in five minutes will be under arrest.”

“But I'm getting gas.”

“That your car at the pump?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Fill up and get out.”

Cops can kill you and I've been jailed often enough but I can't help getting a sense of the comical out of them. I do suppose that the very fact of their ultimate and unmolested power is what makes them ludicrous. One realizes that power when given even to one man is a very dangerous thing and that man must be of very good soul and mind not to misuse it, and to use it judiciously. Yet in a city like Los Angeles thousands of men are given this power and sent among us with guns, clubs, handcuffs, two-way radios, and high-powered cars; and helicopters, disguises, green-beret training, plus gas, dogs, and even more dangerous: women.

Yet the sense of the comic remains. Once I gave a party at my place and drank too much. I passed out on the rug and the party went on. Then somebody pulled at me and I regained consciousness. “Bukowski, somebody's at the door and wants to talk to you.” Still stretched on the rug I looked up. It was a policeman with cap tilted rakishly and smoking a cigar. “You own this place, pal?”

“No, officer, but I pay the rent.”

“Well, look, pal, I know this place. I've been here before.” He inhaled on his cigar and took it out of his mouth and looked at the red and glowing end of it. Then he put it back in his mouth. “I've been here before, pal, and I've got to tell you this: one more call and I'm throwing you in the slammer!”

“All right, officer, I understand. . . .”

Back to the Nazis. I sat in my car and got gassed-up. As I did I saw the leader of the Nazis leave the cop and then stand in front of his troops. Then he gave some commands and they marched off down the street. The New York Marxists followed somewhat behind, still cursing but feeling some minor victory. The whole moil of them turned north up Wilton and I paid for my gas and followed slowly in my car. I couldn't understand what attracted me. I suppose it was only the action, like horses breaking out of the starting gate.

One block up Wilton the troops crossed the street and marched toward a large van. The doors opened in back and the Nazis entered in orderly fashion, sitting down and facing each other, very straight, on long ledges on each side of the van. The doors closed and the leader and one other Nazi got into the front seat. One of the Marxists threw a rock which hit against the rear of the van and fell into the street.

The van full of Nazis moved off. I followed them and behind me were two carloads of Marxists and a police car. I looked back and one of the Marxists hollered at me: “Let's get those sons of bitches!” I nodded and looked forward again. When we reached Franklin I made a sudden right. The disparate fellows continued north. Like fights with women, history never ended. The history of politics, that is. Maybe the balance of everything was the secret: all lawn and no weeds or all weeds and no lawn, and we're really doomed: all spiders, no flies; all lambs, no lions; all me and no you and we were doomed.

I turned south down Western and drove into the liquor store. Two six-packs. All you and no me.

Notes of a dirty old driver of a light blue 1967 Volkswagen TRV 491

L.A. FREE PRESS
, NOVEMBER 11, 1975

Many of the irritable things about life and in people come about when I am driving the boulevards and streets of Los Angeles. Allow me to begin right away: one of the most obnoxious things that many drivers do is to turn out part of their left front wheel (and often a portion of their car) just a shade into your lane as you approach them. They are getting ready to make a left turn and they block part of your lane either out of greed or stupidity or anxiety or bluster. I do suppose they want you to stop so they can make their left turn in front of you. I've never seen it done. All drivers take a quick scan of their rearview and side mirrors and float out into the lane to their right, just a bit.

Another obnoxious type is the one who has such a great difficulty in simply making a right turn. They slow and grip the wheel; they slow to 5 mph and then drift way out left in order to make the right turn, twisting the wheel as if they were steering a great ship through a storm. And you make your right turn, following them, and you have too much time to study their ears and their necks and their bumper stickers which usually say something like: “Christians aren't perfect. They are only forgiven.”

Obnoxious type K-5b is the one in the left lane ahead of you. He is going at a good speed toward the corner while the right lane is cluttered with sun-dreamers. You follow him along figuring that you will finally cut to the right lane and get clearance so you won't have to look at his bumper sticker which usually says something like: “Honk if you're horny.” My bumper sticker would like to say: “Honk if you can't come.” Anyway, type K-5b will apply his brakes and his brake lights won't work and either his left blinker won't work or he doesn't use it and he walls you in there as the sun-dreamers in the right lane pass by. Then he makes his left turn and leaves you at the red light.

Type K-5c will be sitting in the left lane and the sun-dreamers again will have the right lane blocked for one-half the distance to the goal line, and you will pull up behind type K-5c, believing that you will pull out behind him as the signal changes. But
no.
As
the signal changes he'll hit his left-turn blinker and you'll sit there behind him, locked, and his bumper sticker will say: “God is Love.”

Types 45 KLx will not even know each other but their psyches will hang from the same stem. They will each possess one lane apiece in a two-lane street (I mean going in the same direction) (which ought to get us into Driver Examination Tests soon). And they will each be driving at 18 mph in a 35 mph zone. And behind each of them will be rows of automobiles. It
would
seem a conspiracy, and one wonders. I find myself usually directly behind one of the two leading cars. Finally after much patience and some luck, I am able to break through and pass one of the cars. What happens then? One of the slow cars that has been blocking traffic
suddenly accelerates
with me trying to keep even.

The total ugliness and indifference of the worst features of the human race come out in their driving habits. To those who believe that the assassination of world leaders might move us forward into some direction—perhaps the removal of small non-world leaders and asshole drivers, golfers and Safeway bag-boys might bring better results, although I am for neither method. But if we have to have one or the other I'd suggest the latter, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and
Crime and P
. and the Christ-structure of morals and non-movement be frigged.

Oh, yes. And well. Then there is type 62 4fa. He or she will take the one lane going in the same direction at 18 mph. They deserve to read the collected works of Edgar Guest and probably have, but you can't honk—that makes them happy. I use various in-tricks like falling back and then roaring up to their bumper. Another device is to put it in neutral and glide along behind them and rev your engine up to top roar. Of course, you're reacting and that's what they want. Type 62 4fa is clever. Their quite flaunting and vicious move—after holding you back for five miles—is to run a red light at the last moment, leaving you there staring at their vanishing bumper sticker which says something like: “If Nixon makes a comeback I'll let you clean the rings out of my grandmother's bathtub.”

I did mention (earlier?) the Driver's Examinations. I mean the ones on paper. They are easy enough. One simply uses the old common sense. One is asked a question and is told to mark one of three choices. But on each examination I have ever taken, there is always one question where two answers are
correct
and one is false. Not that it matters. But it is an irritant, and if you believe it is a deliberate foil, of course, there's something wrong with you. But there
is
always one. Example:

If you are approaching the crest of a hill, you must not change lanes in a divided highway with a lane going in each direction
:

a)If you've just had a fight with your girlfriend

b)If your dog has just shit on the backseat

c)If you've just picked up a Communist hitchhiker

Now it's obvious that either a) or b) is the correct answer, either or both, but no matter which one you mark, the other will be correct. . . .

One can talk (or write) almost as long about the oddities of driving as one can talk about the oddities of sex and all the braggadocio that goes along with it. It's bad enough just driving along the streets of anywhere with other people, but along with that cars do develop characters and characteristics of their own. Strange things happen among all that tin. That tin ingests things. Car junkyards are much sadder and more real to me than human graveyards. The human graveyard lacks definition—it doesn't hum and clash, throw back the sun; it quits. Old cars, old junkyards fight on like punch-drunk fighters. I'm not a car freak but one finally falls in love with what one lives with. I doubt that any man can walk into Pep Boys without at least getting a spiritual hard-on. I can't speak for the ladies.

I had one car that would refuse to start again if I parked it on the parking lot of this liquor store at Hollywood and Normandie. The car would be running quite well, but each time I came out with my liquor and got in the car to drive off, it would not start. I would have to push it off of the parking area outside the liquor store and then onto the street and then it would start. After three or four repeats of this, I would just leave the car in the street. I suppose it was a technical matter, something about an unworkable carburetor level or some such but, then, you really didn't know.

Or maybe the car just didn't like certain things I did. I remember once I had a fight with my girlfriend, and I ran out of her house to leap into my car and drive off and the forward gears wouldn't work. I'd never had that trouble before. The car would only run in reverse. It refused to run forward. I checked the transmission level. It was all right. For a moment I considered driving the car backwards all the way to my room. But convenience can sometimes overtake madness. So I swallowed my bile and went back: “Look, baby, hahaha,” I said, “I want to tell you something funny. My car only runs backwards.” “Only runs backwards?” “Yeah, I can't leave. I don't know what the hell.” “Come on, show me.”

I walked her out to my car and got in. “Now look,” I said, “it will only drive backwards. I'll put it in forward and it won't move.”

I put it in forward and she yelled after me, “Hey! Where the hell you going?”

I did my U-turn and parked on the other side of the street. Then I got out. “I don't understand it.”

So that's how we got back together—that time. . . .

And there are the car geniuses, too. I bought this car off this man one time and he told me all about it. “Now this car is going to give you trouble now and then. Now when it does, there are two buttons over on the left side of your dashboard. Now if the car runs rough or won't start, just push this No. 1 button. That will cure your trouble. If it doesn't, still try to keep using it. If that doesn't cure it, then finally go to your No. 2 button. That will automatically get it going.” I sometimes did have to go to button No. 2, but it never failed and when I resold the car, I passed the message on. . . .

Automobile mechanics, body-shop men, brake-shop men, transmission repairmen have a
special swagger and aplomb that far out-hotdogs our M.D.s and
lawyers. And don't forget that red light in your rearview
mirror. As he walks toward you, it is almost like
the approach of a god. You've done something with your
car that
shouldn't
be done, you know. But it's almost
worth it—he'll seem kindly, judicious, won't fart or tell a
bad joke. He'll just hand you a piece of paper
and then tool his bike off and you can do
it all over again. Like sex.

Endurance is important in our society, and some luck,
but show me a man with a good car and
a good woman and most surely a special light will
fall upon him: the love of dependency and the dependency
of love. You will be moved if you chose what
moves wisely. And next week we'll get back to dirty
stories. I haven't lost my mind. And as I drove
this copy down to the
Free Press
, a small
metal Maltese cross leaped about as it hung from a
shoestring from the rearview mirror. And my automobile insurance is
paid up for a year in advance.