Absence of the Hero (25 page)

“O.K., Red.”

We walked out on the street with our beercans. We walked down to
The Gored Matador
around the corner. It was about two-thirty in the afternoon and not very crowded. We sat down.

“Vodka 7,” I told the barkeep.

“Whiskey and soda,” said Red.

The barkeep brought our drinks and Red paid up. He said, “I first read your stuff in the
L.A. Free Press
. Only good thing in there, that column. . . .”

“‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man.'”

“Those stories true?”

“95%.”

“I thought so.”

Just then a fat drunk who was fairly intoxicated came out of the men's room. As he walked close to Red he lurched and fell against Red's back. Then he straightened and lurched on.

Red leaped from his stool. “Hey, fellow!”

The drunk turned. “What is it?”

“Come here.”

“Fuck off!”

“I said, ‘Come here!'”

The drunk walked close to Red, then stopped.

“Now,” said Red, “I want you to apologize.”

“For what?”

“Don't
ask
me for what! I said, ‘Apologize!'”

“No,” said the drunk.

Red's hands flashed toward his pocket and the switchblade was out. One finger ran along the edge of the blade and the tip of his finger and the tip of the blade were at the man's stomach.

“Now,”
said Red, “apologize! Or you're gonna have a gash in
front of you as big and as deep as that
thing in back they call your ass!”

“I apologize,” said the drunk. Then he walked back to his seat. It was very quiet in there. Then Red and I finished our drinks and walked out.

On the way back there was a big guy in boots walking about 45 feet ahead of us.

“See that damned fool?” said Red. “You never wear boots like that. Those big leather heels, they make too much noise! He can't hear anything behind him. He's as good as dead! Watch this!”

Red started running quietly and then he was behind the big guy. He walked directly behind him, making motions as if to strangle him. It went on a good 20 or 30 seconds. Then Red stopped and dropped back.

“You see? I had him. The son of bitch had no chance!”

“You're right, Red.”

We went back to my place and had a few more beers. Red told me more tales of the road. He was a good storyteller. I would later use two or three of his stories.

“Well,” he said, “I've
got to go. I'm living with this Mexican woman and
she's giving me a hard time! She wants to get
fucked all the time and it's a job. She sits
around and says, ‘You don't fuck me anymore, what are
you, a goddamned fag?' I met her coming through the 3
rd Street tunnel one time and she looked very beautiful.
We got together, we started living together. I give her
a good sweaty horsefuck now and then but it's never
enough; she's always bitching. I'm going back on the road
soon, I can't stand it. . . .”

“Come around any time, Red.”

“I wanna give you this,” he said, and pulled out the switchblade.

“It's glorious, Red, thank you very much.”

He left then, walking past the front of my window, west along the sidewalk. You couldn't hear his footsteps. . . .

One night Martin Johnson was back. He had an armful of broadsides with my poem printed on them.

“Is there any place you can sign these?” he asked.

“The kitchen table. . . .”

We walked in.

“It's full of beercans,” he said.

“Just a moment.” I ran
the beercans out to the back garbage cans. Then I
took a wet rag and tried to get up the
ash stains, the beer stains, the puke stains. It took
some time. It was almost impossible.

“Do you have to drink so much?” he asked. “It's bad for your health.”

“It's bad for my mind if I don't. I write when I'm drunk.”

Martin put the broadsides down and I started signing.

“I'd like to look at more of your poems while you do this,” he said.

“Go ahead. . . .”

As I was just about finished he brought in another poem, said he'd like to broadside it, and I said he could. He wrote me out a $50 check. “For this broadside you've just signed.”

“Thanks, Martin.”

“Those 3 paintings out there. Did you do them?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I like them. Do you think you can do some more?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I know an art gallery who can put on a show for you.”

“Painting is not my big hard-on.”

“I'd like to see you try it. Here, get some paints and paper.”

He wrote me out another 50-buck check.

“Sure you don't want a drink?” I asked.

“No, thank you. . . .”

Then he was gone with his broadsides. . . .

One good thing about painting. You can do it anytime. I mean, I can. To write you must feel very good or very bad but to paint you can feel good, bad, or in between. Of course, everything is better for me when I am drunk, and this includes sex, writing, painting, or watching a bullfight. For others it is what it is. But painting, drinking, fucking, writing, they aren't one but almost one. So I painted and drank, the action was there, the dancing girls; the radio banging and the cheap cigars, paint on your fingers, paint on the cigars, smoking the cigars, swallowing the paint on the cigars, too interested in the show to care and awakening sick in the morning from the poison of swallowing drink and paint, you walk first to the bathroom and vomit and then to the kitchen where you've done it and there are 8 or 9 paintings on the floor and 4 or 5 on the table and sink. It's one bad-ass circus.

So I painted. And I remembered my 2 sessions in art class, the lack of fire everywhere; it were as if the whole mass of them, teacher and pupils, were giving way to some unmentionable law that everybody must get along together and really not do anything at all. I mean, they were all very gentle with each other, very chummy; it was more like a picnic, a social gathering than it was a striking out into the madness and the hopelessness.

So I drank and I painted, I painted and I drank. I painted right out of the tube, the brush was too slow for the melody. And since I painted out of the tube, spreading it on thick and rolling, it took the paintings several days to dry. The paintings were everywhere: kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, front room floors.

The party people came by and I ran them off:

“You'll step on my paintings. . . .”

I took the telephone apart and stuffed toilet paper between the bell and the hammer. I stuffed toilet paper into the doorbell trip above the kitchen door.

I got some masking
tape and started taping the paintings to the walls, everywhere,
and then I ran out of wall space and I
started taping paintings to the ceiling. Most of my paintings
were of animals and people and they hung all about
me and over me. There was one night of drinking
where I went out to a bar on Sunset Boulevard
and I picked up a fairly classy number and I
brought her to my place and she said, “God oh
mighty, what is this? You're crazy, aren't you?”

“Sometimes I feel crazy and sometimes I don't,” I told her.

“I'm leaving,” she said, and she did. . . .

Martin and his wife Clara came over. I heard the knocking, recognized him through the door blinds, and let them in. Martin and Clara walked about looking at the paintings.

“You've been working,” said Martin.

“Sure,” I said.

“Can I have this one?” Martin asked me of one of the paintings.

“Sure,” I said.

“Can I have this one?” asked Clara.

“Sure.”

“Can I have this one?” asked Martin.

“No, that one is for me.”

They each had a beer with me. “Keep going,” said Martin, “I'm going to get a show going for you.”

“O.K.,” I said. Martin wrote me out a check for $150 for the paintings and then another check for another $50 worth of supplies. They left. . . .

The next day I sat around looking at the paintings. I began to dislike them. They weren't subtle enough; raw was good but when raw got blaring it got too much like Las Vegas neon. I remembered what the art teacher had said to the class, holding up my work:

“Now here is a man who isn't afraid of color.”

But color alone wasn't enough. I kept looking at the paintings and I disliked them more and more. I began drinking and I began taking down the paintings I didn't like. I went from room to room taking down paintings. Soon there were only 5 or 6 paintings hanging. Then I took those down. I had nothing. It got into evening. I kept drinking.

Then I got an idea. By soaking the paintings in hot water in the bathtub I could diminish the overcoloring. I filled the bathtub and got a large painting. I pushed the painting in. Fine, it was working. I pulled the painting out and carried it to the breakfastnook table. I opened some paint tubes and just gave it a touch of color here and there. Fine.

I began marching
my paintings to the bathtub and dumping them in. I
pulled them out, touching some up with color, leaving the
others as they were. Soon all my paintings had had
a bath. They'd never know my technique. I went to
bed feeling much better. . . .

In the morning I got up and looked at my work and I was sickened. I vomited. Then I began crumbling up the paintings and jamming them into my two garbage cans out back. Soon the garbage cans were full but I crumpled up the remainder of the paintings and jammed them into all the empty garbage cans I could find along the row of courts.

Then I took the telephone apart and took the toilet paper away from the bell and I also re-engaged the front door bell.

I'd never be a Van Gogh, not
even a Dali. It was back to the typewriter by
the window while watching the girls go by. I drove
to the racetrack that day and lost $80. I slept
that night without drinking, and usually any first night without
drinking was a wide-awake night but that night I slept
on through. I was worn with disgust. When I awakened
I just stayed in bed. I stayed there and stared
at the ceiling. About 3
P.M.
the phone rang. It
was Martin Johnson.

“Hey, your phone is working again.”

“Yes.”

“How's the painting coming?”

“It's finished.”

“What do you mean?”

“I gave them all a bath in hot water.”

“Really? Then what did you do with them?”

“I threw them into the garbage.”

“What? You're joking.”

“No, they are in with the beercans and old
Racing Forms
.”

“You've just thrown away $2,000!”

“I didn't like the paintings.”

“Most of them were very good. Listen, when does your trashman come around?”

“Wednesday morning, about 9
A.M.
This is Wednesday afternoon.”

“Listen, will you do me a favor? Go look in those garbage cans. See if they are still full.”

I got up and walked out back. The garbage cans were empty. I came back to the phone.

“The man's been here. Everything is gone.”

“I'm sick,” said Martin, “and I've got to tell you I'm angry with you for doing such a thing.”

“O.K., baby,” I said and hung up. . . .

Martin got over it and came for more poems. Red Hand came back and told me more stories of the road. Others came back, men and women, and we drank.

It was a stark time, and a grand time of gamble, and those who came to that East Hollywood front court were mostly those who were supposed to come, and I was weak and strong and alcoholic, and they wasted many of my hours but they also brought me
material
and light; voices, faces; their fears and their evil stupidities, and sometimes the amazing inventiveness. They brought me more than I could ever have had alone, even though I felt best alone. . . .

I left East Hollywood soon after that. What happened to me was that I simply got gathered in. One loses hold, the senses waver, and one is lost. I was with a handsome woman 20 years younger than I. She was a woman that all men looked at as she walked the streets or sat in caf
é
s or was seen anywhere at all. “Beauty and the Beast,” she described us. She had a few detracting factors: she was insane and had thick ankles which she hid in boots, and she was continually conscious of what the world considered to be her beauty. I hung around; she was trying me and I was trying her. But she was more the hunter. The dear child saw possibilities in me. She thought I had a soul of some sort and that her soul might capture mine, captivate it and slug the shit out of it. Meanwhile, while waiting for that to happen, I could entertain her and hers.