Absence of the Hero (9 page)

OPEN CITY
, DECEMBER 8–14, 1967

In the Dec. issue of
Evergreen
there is a small poem by one Charles Bukowski far in the back pages, and all through the magazine there is an interview of LeRoi Jones, poems by LeRoi Jones, ads for
LeRoi
Jones' latest book, plus a speech by the departed Malcolm X—“God's Judgment of White America.”
Evergreen
was beginning to look like
Ebony
. I read on through.

Later in the day, the woman came over with my 3-year-old child. We sat down to dinner.

“I think I'll write a poem called ‘
WHO
'
S AFRAID OF LEROI JONES
?'”

“
You're
afraid of LeRoi Jones” the woman shouted. She was a very liberal white liberal liberal liberal.

“
Who's Afraid of Leroi Jones
?” I asked again, looking at my little girl.

She pointed an arm at me over her ground round and french fries. “
YOU ARE
!
YOU ARE
!”

The woman was meanwhile pantering and bantering, her voice neurotically high-pitched, explaining to me the meaning of black America and LeRoi Jones, in the way that only a very liberal white liberal female can do. I was not attacking LeRoi Jones but I had somehow stepped upon sacred ground and he was being defended, almost violently. It was nice—for LeRoi. Hell, I remembered him when we were
both
scratching to get our poetry into the little magazines; now I was
still
scratching. I was still the better poet. His plays had put him over. The fat dull whitey wives no longer getting their sex got it through Jones' black violence in his plays. “Oh Lord, honey, that man
frightens
me, but I'd
like
to see one of his plays. Oooooh, let's go see one of his plays!!!” The old man, after a hard day at the ballpoint pen office, would take her to the play. Anything, rather than try to get his dick hard.

“I don't understand,” I said. “Hitler told me that the whites were the superior race and now Jones turns around and tells me that the blacks are the superior race.”

“Well, who do
you
think is the superior race?”

“It depends upon who you are; if you are white, then the white race is superior; if you are black, then the black; if you are yellow, then the yellow; if you are mixed, then the mongrel. . . .”

She went on some more, sentence running into sentence. She must have spoken ten minutes without pause. A little of it was good stuff. Most of it was just religious sacrifice at the altar. Hot white liberal liberal female air. Even Jones wouldn't want to hear it.

“How many blacks have you known?” I asked.

This is always a good stopper in a religious argument. Being a common laborer all my life at poor and underpaid jobs, I had worked with more black men, known more black men, drank with more black men, fought with more black men than any theoretical liberal with books jammed between the ears. Coming up through the back streets of New Orleans in a light rain with my paper suitcase, a high yellow sitting on her porch showing leg had named me. She laughed and shouted, “
POOR WHITE TRASH
!” I put down my paper suitcase and looked up her legs. “Come on!” she said. “Come on, poor white trash, and get yourself a little!” I saw a curtain move just a little and behind it this black male face, eyes beautiful with murder for my 2 dollars and 20 cents. Then I laughed, feeling good in the early sun, picked up my suitcase full of poems, and moved on down the street.

“Jones got out on 25,000 dollars bail,” I threw at her. Money only represents evil to the white liberal ladies—until you stop giving it to them.

“Well,
you
got out of jail. In ten minutes,
you
had bail!”

“It took 6 or 7 hours. The bail was between 20 and 30 dollars. I had it in my dresser but it took me a long time to find somebody who would trust me for it. Jones got up $2,500 in cash, if you want comparisons, plus 2 houses, friends of his parents. I don't know anybody who owns a house. I don't even have parents. I'm still poor white trash.”

“Jones' house doesn't belong to him. It belongs to the Negro community.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. So there it was, haggling over LeRoi Jones over the french fries. To find out who owns a man's house, find out who is shitting in the crapper and who is fucking in the bed. You can bet he owns part of it. Also, if you have to ring the bell to get in, you don't own any of it.

I decided to let the conversation go but she had hold of it.

“Suppose you kept walking down the street and getting punched in the nose and told you were getting punched in the nose because of the color of your skin, how would you feel? You can't blame them for wanting Black Power. Black Power isn't anything because they don't have any power. . . .”

She went on and on and on. I didn't have any particular argument with her. She only
presumed
that I did. But I knew that if the blacks ever got total power, they would kill her long before they got around to me. So I listened and listened and then kissed the little girl goodbye and drove on down to work.

Down there, 9 out of 10 of them are black but you forget this as the years go on. It's nothing special until the female white liberal liberals make it so. We worked away. Then I said, “
LEROI JONES
!”

The one next to me turned, and here was the finger again. “
YOU BETTER NOT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT LEROI JONES
!”

“My little girl says that I am afraid of him.”

“
YOU ARE
!
YOU ARE
!
YOU BETTER NOT SAY ANYTHING
ABOUT LEROI JONES
!”

“What will happen if I do?”

“You'll be taken care of, that's what will happen.”

“You mean mentally or physically?”

“We don't care about the mental. His boys will handle you the other way.”

“You mean I can't have freedom of speech?”

“You just be careful what you say! LeRoi Jones is an
INTERNATIONALLY-RENOWNED PLAYWRIGHT
! Who are you? You just be careful!”

“Give me a cigarette.”

“Hell no, buy your own. They sell them in the machines.”

His friend walked over. “Hello, brother,” he said.

“Hello, brother,” I answered.

“You gonna invite me over to your house for breakfast?” (We work nights.)

“Sure. We're having grits and beans. Only I don't have a house.”

“You got a front door?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I'm comin' to the front door in broad daylight and ring your bell. I'm not comin' to the back door so's people will think I'm some servant or trashman or delivery boy. I'm comin' to your
front
door!”

“Brother Roy, my front door is your front door as long as the rent is paid.”

“Good, and I'm gonna grow me some of that shit like you got on your chin and I'm gonna get me some young hippie girl and we gonna walk down Sunset Boulevard hand in hand, right down Sunset Boulevard.”

“I'd like to get me one of those nice young blonde hippie girls myself,” I told him.

After some remarks about Gov. Reagan, he walked over and sat down. We worked away, while back at my place the mother of my child got ready to go to a communist party meeting. Of all white members.

A pretty fucked-up scene.

Eh, LeRoi?

Brother?

Having earlier tried to pick up a very young whore whose stockings wrinkled down like stiff skins around her dirty ankles—she didn't want me—I grabbed her ass in the alley, she
farted
, a fart that sank my soul from Singapore to Mt. Ganges, she farted and left with a wonderfully subnormal sailor. I walked out into the street and the green trees stuck their yellow teeth out at me. And their rubber cocks. I was a dead gagging finger in a sexless sky.

Sadness. Sadness becomes so much, then it becomes something else—like a beerglass. Sadness is one thing, madness another. So you go to your place, towel the shit out of your ass, decide to go mad . . . what happens?

THE DOORBELL RINGS
! A woman in a dusty black hat that flops down over her half-face. She wears a green cape and you can smell her underwear . . . probably a very big pussy that always emits this kind of white mulch, I don't mean
come
I mean
mulch
, and she says,
Would you like to donate to the starving children of Bionbiona?
No, mama, no, please. . . .
Oh, you were asleep? I'm sorry.
 . . . Be sorry. But I wasn't asleep, mama.

She goes away.

—the people are better than I

the stones are better than I

the dogturds on somebody's lawn are

better than I.

3:24
A.M.
I had gone someplace, evidently, and had come back. When I opened the door, I had the feeling that there was somebody in the room. I turned on this old lamp and stood there. Then the closet door with my paintings on them, pasted to them with snot and come and gum, that closet door opened and out came a man with a face that was almost yellow; hair that was both yellow and grey; ugly teeth and he smelled like hay and barndung, old chickencoops. He ran out and hit me in the face. As he tried to run out the doorway I got a hammerlock on his left arm, bent the damn thing almost up to his neck. He began to cry and he still stank terribly. “Franky Roosevelt is dead,” he wept. “Listen, ass, who gives a motherfuck?” I asked. “I do, oh, I do!” “You
STINK
!” I screamed at him, “
TAKE A BATH
!” I booted him in the ass and pushed him out the door. I heard him run down the street. I looked into the closet and there was this little pile of turds, fresh turds. I looked at them and vomited. Then I took yesterday's newspaper, some dull shit about men landing on the moon, and I gathered the whole mess together and threw it into the garbage can.

Then
I went to the refrigerator, made a bologna sandwich, drank
two beers, then began on the wine. Then I went
to my blackboard, a large one which hung from the
center of the room by ropes and was weighted with
brick anchors, and I found some chalk and wrote:

THIS ONE HAS A CLUBFOOT

THIS ONE WANTS TO SUCK MY DICK

THE THIRD HAS A HEAD-TICK

THE FOURTH WEARS A WIG

THE FIFTH IS A COMMUNIST

THE SIXTH IS THE GRANDSON OF HITLER

THE SEVENTH READS DICK TRACY

THE EIGHTH CLAIMS I OWE HIM TWO PACKS OF CIGARETTES

THE NINTH IS A WOMAN WHO ONCE DANCED WITH A 9-FOOT COBRA BUT SHE WON'
T FUCK ME. NO, IT WAS A BOA CONSTRICTOR
!
ANYWAY, SHE WON'T FUCK ME.

The doorbell rang. 4
A.M.
DeJohns.

Sit down, DeJohns.

Milk-red eyes, tits enough for both of
us, but, of course, no cunt.

We need the hero, DeJohns. There's nothing. Everything has dried up. What can we hang to?

Hehehehehehehehe hehehe.

He was looking at the rope that held up the blackboard.

Hehehehehehehehe hehe, tough, nothing but shit. Little boys playing games now. Hehe. Pretense. And
no humans anywhere
, hehehe. Birds, cats, ants, all right. Sure. We remain drunk. Jam pills. Hehe. I remember you, Bukowski, hehehe, when you were a man instead of that bag o' sick shit you are now, hehe.

Go suck a water faucet, DeJohns.

He, hehe,
the time you ran round the block one morning,
twice
, 7
A.M.
, completely
naked
—your balls, cock, ass bouncing in
the clear air. No sound. Just your feet, bare feet:
pat pat pat! We clothed, 3 of us, trying to
catch you. Hehehe, the time you hung by your ankles
out the window of that fourth floor of that hotel.
The whores in that room weeping, begging you to come
back inside. Promising to suck your cock, lick the hairs
of your asshole, anything. Hehe, that was good.

Go suck a hot spoon, DeJohns.

That was funny. But funnier was when you tried to lift yourself in and your legs wouldn't pull you up. You had your ankles wrapped around the wooden separator that made two windows out of one. Then you got real funny.

Yeah?

Yeah. Hehehehe. You said, o o, if I don't pull up on the next one, that's it. I'm getting weak. Whores ran up and you screamed,
DON
'
T TOUCH ME
! And how you ever pulled your whole body up by the ankles, I'll never know. You became a snail, a centipede, something inhuman. Hehehe, when you got in the whores ripped your pants down, licked your asshole, balls, cock . . . hehehhe. Then the knock at the door and you opening the door with that hard cock,
YEAH
? and the landlord saying,
WHAT THE HELL YOU DOING HANGING OUT THE WINDOWS BY YOUR FEET
? Hehehe. And you saying,
JUST TRYING TO PUT SOME LIFE INTO THIS GODDAMNED PARTY
! Hehehehe. And the landlord saying,
ALL RIGHT. YOU DO THAT ONE MORE TIME AND I
'
M GOING TO CALL THE POLICE
! Hehehe.

DeJohns looked at me: “What has happened to you, Bukowski?”

I don't know, man. Tired.

I was going to do a book on your life. Now you no longer interest me.

The things I did were things I had to do. I don't need those things anymore.

FUCK YOU, MAN
!
YOU
'
RE FINISHED
!

DeJohns got up and left.

My last chance for immortality.

Maybe he was right. I took a bit of whiskey to get up my nerve. Got on the phone.
Hey, baby, I have a bottle. Come on over. We'll drink. Talk some shit. Then fuck.

She hung up.

I went back to the blackboard:

WHY WASH UNDER THE ARMS WHEN THE ROACH HAS CONQUERED MORE THAN ALEXANDRIA?

WHY RIDE A BICYCLE WHEN HENRY MILLER RIDES A BICYCLE?

WE
'
VE PLAYED AT SOUL
—
NOT HAVING ANY—WE HAVE FUCKED-UP THE SACRED ATROCITY OF BREATHING.

WE HAVE BRUTALIZED THE EARTH MORE THAN ANY ARMIES.

WHEN THE HERO ARRIVES WE WILL FIND THAT HE WAS ALWAYS HERE.

Then I sat down, lit a cigarette, took two reds, and waited.