Absence of the Hero (21 page)

They had mailed the tickets, and I came flying into this little town off the east coast of Florida. I waited for the passengers to climb out, and then I got up and walked down the ramp and saw the two poetry-hound types waiting, so I walked up to them: “I'm Chinaski,” I said, and they grinned and grinned. We walked over and waited for the bags, and then I said, “Shit, let's not wait here; let's make the bar.” So we went into the bar—Clyde and Tommy and me—and there were
more
poetry hounds: “They all want to meet you, daddy.” I looked them over. Lots of women, eyes hot with reading my erotic shit. I glanced at them, shifted from face to face, from body to body. One of the bodies looked really heavy, but she looked ready. I was introduced around. “Oh, Mr. Chinaski,” one of them said, “I really
liked
your story
My X-pert Hock
!”

(I write stories, poems, and novels. I usually write my stuff along the sex trail to keep them awake, and while they're awake I give them the rest of it. I sneak it to them. I give them morphine and then pull out their slim souls.)

It was near midnight, and the airport bar closed at midnight, so we drank up. Tommy got the tab for the drinks, and we left for Clyde's place, after picking up my baggage. At Clyde's, a lot of beer and grass—Colombian—went around while flat, loud music blasted on the stereo. I drifted around and checked out the female bodies. “Oh, Mr. Chinaski, I really
loved
your poem about the man who cut off his balls and flushed them away like apricots!” I kissed that one, and a flashbulb popped somewhere in the room.

I was rotten: I sucked upon their adulation like virgin pussy. We smoked and smoked and drank and drank, and soon people began leaving. The first poetry reading was 9
P.M.
at the Jiz-Wiz Club, the next night. Then I had to stroke it up again the next night. Two readings for $500 plus airfare, lodging, maybe some food, and probably some ass. Ginsberg got a thousand for a reading, but then he sat on a rug and did mantras and hollered out pretty damned good. I just get drunk and fucked up.

Anyhow, people kept leaving and leaving, and
it was about 4
A.M.
, so Clyde left for his
bedroom and said the couch was mine. I was left
with a lady of about 22 with this rag tied
around her head. She had a fairly good body, wild
eyes, and kept talking about retarded children. She taught retarded
children, so she talked a lot about them. I was
next to her on the couch. Every now and then
I would interrupt her conversation about the children with a
long kiss. She knew how to kiss. Or I knew
how to kiss. Anyway, the kisses were furiously warming. Oh,
hell, they were divinely ecstatic. You furnish the words; it's
my genuine bullshit that keeps me going. Well, after each
kiss, she got back to the retarded children as if
the kiss hadn't even happened, and this heated me more.
She had a good trick going, with that rag around
her head and those wild, glowing eyes. Schoolteachers always make
everybody hot; they even make you hotter than nuns do.

Her name was Holly, and when she left, I left. I got into the car with her, and when she started the engine, we embraced.

It was a long drive, and Holly kept talking about the retarded children, their problems, how to help them, how to approach them, and my cock got harder and harder. We stopped at a signal, and I reached up and undid the rag from her head and all this long blonde hair spilled out. “Christ,” I said, “why do you
hide
that? I'm going to yank on it.”

“It gets filled with cigarette ashes at parties,” she said.

She had a fairly private apartment on the bottom floor. She parked, and we went to her place. Holly opened the door, and I followed her in. “My husband's out of town for a week. Business. He introduced me to your writing; he really worships you.”

“Yeah?”

Holly went into the bathroom, and I walked to the bedroom and undressed and then got into bed. “How far away is your husband?” I asked.

“Forty miles.”

“Is he jealous?”

“I don't know. I've never been unfaithful.”

I heard the toilet flush. In the dark, I could see my cock pushing up the covers. Holly was going to have another retarded child to fathom. When she came out of the bathroom, she was naked; so she climbed under the blanket. I thought, well, now I'll have something to write about. I pressed into her, and her teacher's tongue flicked in and out of my mouth. I caught it in the center with my teeth and sucked on it. She gagged, had trouble breathing. I played with her pussy; it gradually opened, getting wetter. I could feel the clit, and I circled it with my finger. Did Céline ever do this? I thought. Or Hemingway? Hemingway probably didn't do it enough to as many. Hemingway lacked humor and vitamin E. That's why he blew his brains away and then fell into the orange juice. Also, he got up too early in the morning. The world always looks worse before noon because too many ambitious people still have energy to burn.

I ducked my head down to eat her
pussy, and she pushed me away, saying “No, no!” Most
like it; some don't. I never forced that part. I
got back up and grabbed her hair and yanked her head back until her
mouth fell open, and then I drove my lips inside
of her lips. It was like entering the guts of
a flower. She was nailed to the sun and I
was the sun. Then I fell from her mouth, sucked
her left breast, then the right. Then I turned her,
my right arm underneath her body and my left arm
coming over the top, and I took both of her
hands and held them from the outside. I just let
my cock poke and slide its way; it knew, and
I waited on it. It found the opening and the
head entered. Then gradually the cunt opened, and the
remainder
of my cock entered. It was tight and wet in there, and
I let my cock lay on in, not moving. She
began wiggling, and I still held my cock motionless. Then
I let it jump without moving my body. It was
one of my tricks. Then I slowly pulled my cock
out and just entered the head and a tiny portion
of the cock back into the cunt, making slow movements.
“Jesus!” she said, “do it!” I kept on teasing the
rim and the inside of her cunt. Hemingway just didn't
know, I thought, and Céline never wrote about it, and Henry Miller never really knew how to fuck.

I finally gave her half of my cock, feeling her grip me. Then I worked it in gradually, barely increasing the speed. Then I lost my technique and just started ripping. I stopped just before climaxing and held it still. I allowed myself to cool and then began again. I repeated the process four or five times, and then I lost control and let her have it. Holly came first, and as she did I followed. We both hollered like juveniles, and as I came I kept looking at all that hair on her head, thinking, Christ, Christ, I've got the luck, the luck and the way. Nobody can beat me now.

Holly got up and went to the bathroom. I reached down and got one of my stockings from under the bed and wiped myself off with it. I didn't want her husband coming home to hard spots on the sheets. A pro always made little clever moves like that. Yeats or Dante would never have known how to do that.

When Holly came back, she fell asleep with her backside to me. She had a gentle little snore, very sexy, and my cock half-hardened and I let it slide into her ass. It was warm and comfortable there, and I thought, well, look, Chinaski, once again you're in bed with a woman 30 years younger than you, and you can't dance, shoot pool, or bowl. They all want to fuck immortality, and as long as they think you're immortal, you can go ahead and fuck them, and when they find out that you're not, well, you've got all that young ass stored up, and you can go back to your one-thumb, four-finger love.

My problem is that I fall in love with every woman I fuck. I fuck good, but I am overemotional. To me, when a woman gives me her body, I feel as if she is giving me her soul; that's part of what makes me hot. And then the whole act has overtones of death and murder and conquest. But mostly I just feel a rush of fondness and love, and I can't overcome it.

I throbbed throughout for the woman I had just fucked. I wasn't worldly that way, and it cost me, but I couldn't correct it. Most people shrug off a fuck like they shrug off a picnic. I don't understand that attitude.

The alarm awakened us, and Holly shut it off. “Look,” I said, “take a day off. Let's sleep. Maybe later we'll do it again.”

“No,” said Holly, “I'm out of sick leave, and besides, the children need me.”

I pulled the covers up and stretched out.

When I awakened, Holly was gone. I got up and walked around her apartment. Hangovers always make me horny. Drinking makes me horny.
Not
drinking makes me horny. But hangovers make me horniest of all. I found two of her shoes in the front room, standing side by side near a chair. There was a strange loneliness and warmth there—like buttered toast or cries from people shoved over cliffs.

The heels and the base of the shoes were made of wood, and the heels (although sadly thick) were high. The shoes heated me. I am a leg and shoe man. Breasts mean little to me, although I suck on them because women like it. But legs and shoes set me off, and I don't fight it.

I had a hard-on, and I picked one of the shoes and ran my cock in and out of it. The bottom of my cock ran along the wood, and the top was held by the soft fabric that ran up from the toe.

Maybe, I thought, someday I'll marry a shoe.

“Do you, Henry, take this shoe as your. . . .”

I ran my cock in and out,
then withheld the impulse. I had to preserve my sperm.
I went back into the bedroom and looked in the
closet. I found a pair of blue panties—no shit stains—and
I rubbed them back and forth over my cock. It
was good. I almost gave way.

Some people, I thought, think
that I am America's greatest poet. Suppose this shit got
out? I'd be doomed. I threw the panties back into
the closet. Then I saw a shoe. Just one shoe,
alone, with a high spiked heel. That shoe was a
hot
shoe. I picked it up and started fucking it.
I walked around the room, giving it to that shoe.
I even made a few swift runs in circles, giving
it to that shoe. Then, at the last moment, I
ripped it away and threw it back into the closet.

Then I had to take
a shit, bad. I went and did it. All that
beer. I'd never die of constipation. There's no doubt that
when a man sees his shit the first thing he
thinks of is, I have a chance to live,
ah!
At least, that is what I think of. And then
if you have hemorrhoids, you get a double break. I
had hemorrhoids. And I looked over at the toilet paper
holder, and there wasn't any paper. I ran into the
kitchen and found a box of tissues, and I took
eight or ten tissues and started getting off wiping my
ass and making sounds. Then I was rubbed bare and
raw, and the turds and the paper stuffed the bowl
as I flushed. Some of it went down, then the
water rose and the tissues and turds started rising. They
came up to the level of the lid and held.
I knew better, but I flushed again, and then it
came: turds, tissues, water, all over the floor in front
of the toilet. I took the back lid off and
started playing with the big ball, the chain, the black rubber stopper.

I flushed again. More
of the same—turds, tissue, water, defeat. I took away the
floor mat and started wiping up the business. I got
most of it. I took newspapers and picked up turd
parts and carried them to a paper bag I found
on the sink in the kitchen, and I put them
into the paper bag. When I came back, I saw
that the floor mat had shit stains on it. I
turned it over. It looked better. Like an Indian weaving.

I had Clyde's phone
number. He was home. “Listen, Clyde, I've fucked up Holly's
plumbing. I've got beer turds floating about like the ultimate
defeat of everything. Oh, my God, these brown sycophants.”

“Doesn't she have a plunger?”

“Neither green nor black nor blue nor red.”

“I'll send help.”

Clyde didn't show. Tommy did. Tommy said that Clyde sent him. He had a red plunger. We sat down and smoked some more of his Colombian.

“I'm honored, Tommy. This, I think, is the first poetry reading sponsored by the dope dealers of America.”