Love is a Dog from Hell (21 page)

 

I get too many

phone calls.

they seek the

creature out.

they shouldn’t.

 

I never phoned

Knut Hamsun or

Ernie or

Celine.

 

I never phoned

Salinger

I never phoned

Neruda.

 

tonight I got

a call:

 

“hello. you

Charles Bukowski?”

 

“yes.”

 

“well, I got a

house.”

 

“yes?”

 

“a bordello.”

 

“I understand.”

 

“I’ve read your

books. I’ve got a

houseboat in

Sausalito.”

 

“all right.”

“I want to give you

my phone number. you

ever come to San Francisco

I’ll buy you a drink.”

 

“o.k. give me the

number.”

 

I took it down.

 

“we run a class joint. we’re

after lawyers and state senators,

upper class citizens, muggers,

pimps, the like.”

 

“I’ll phone you when I

get up there.”

 

“lots of the girls

read your books. they

love you.”

 

“yeah?”

“yeah.”

 

we said goodbye.

 

I liked that

phone call.

 

half drunk

I left her place

her warm blankets

and I was hungover

didn’t even know what town

it was.

I walked along and

I couldn’t find my car.

but I knew it was somewhere.

and then I was lost

too.

I walked around. it was a

Wednesday morning and I could

see the ocean to the south.

but all that drinking:

the shit was about to pour

out of me.

I walked towards the

sea.

I saw a brown brick

structure at the edge

of the sea.

I walked in. there was an

old guy groaning on one of

the pots.

“hi, buddy,” he said.

“hi,” I said.

“it’s hell out there,

isn’t it?” the old guy

asked.

“it is,” I answered.

“need a drink?”

“never before noon.”

“what time you got?”

“11:58.”

“we got two minutes.”

I wiped, flushed, pulled up my

pants and walked over.

the old man was still on his pot,

groaning.

he pointed to a bottle of wine

at his feet

it was almost done

and I picked it up and took about

half what remained.

I handed him a very old and wrinkled

dollar

then walked outside on the lawn

and puked it up.

I looked at the ocean and the

ocean looked good, full of blues and

greens and sharks.

I walked back out of there

and down the street

determined to find my automobile.

it took me one hour and 15 minutes

and when I found it

I got in and drove off

pretending that I knew just as much

as the next

man.

 

I don’t beat the walls with my fists

I just sit

but it rushes in

a tide of it.

 

the woman in the court behind me howls,

weeps every night.

sometimes the county comes

and takes her away for a day or two.

 

I believed she was suffering the loss

of a great love

until one day she came over and told me about

it—

she had lost 8 apartment houses

to a gigolo who had swindled her out

of them.

she was howling and weeping over loss of property.

she began weeping as she told me

then with a mouth lined with stale lipstick

and smelling of garlic and onions

she kissed me and told me:

“Hank, nobody loves you if you don’t have money.”

 

she’s old, almost as old as I am.

 

she left, still weeping…

 

the other morning at 7:30 a.m. two black

attendants came with their stretcher,

only they knocked on my door.

 

“come on, man,” said the tallest

one.

“wait,” I said, “there’s a mistake.”

 

I was terribly hungover

standing in my torn bathrobe

hair hanging down over my eyes.

 

“this is the address they gave us, man,

this is 5437 and 2/5’s isn’t it?”

 

“yes.”

 

“come on, man, don’t give us no shit.”

 

“the lady you want is in the back there.”

 

they both walked around back.

 

“this door here?”

 

“no, no, that’s my back door. look go up those steps behind

you there. it’s the door to the east, the one with the mailbox

hanging loose.”

 

they went up and banged on the door. I watched them take her

away. they didn’t use the stretcher. she walked between them.

and the thought occurred to me that they were taking the wrong

one but I wasn’t sure.

 

I went with two ladies

down to Venice

to look for antique furniture.

I parked in back of the store

and went in with them.

$125 for a clock, $700 for 6 chairs.

I stopped looking.

 

the ladies moved around

looking at everything.

the ladies had class.

I waved goodbye to one of the ladies

and walked out.

 

it was Sunday and the bar

wasn’t much better,

everybody was nervous and young

and blonde and pale.

I finished my drink, got 4 beers

at the liquor store

and sat in my car drinking them.

 

finishing the 4th beer

the ladies came out.

they asked me if I was all right.

I told them that every experience

meant something

and that they had pulled me out of

my usual murky

current.

 

the one I knew best had bought a table

with a marble top for $100.

she owned her own business and was a

civilized person.

she was civilized enough to know a neighbor

who had a van

and while I sat in her apartment drinking

1974
Zeller Schwarze Katz

they went down and got the table.

 

later she wanted to know what I thought about

the table and I said I thought it was all right,

sometimes I lost one hundred dollars at the

racetrack. we watched tv in bed and later

that night I couldn’t come. I think it was

because I was thinking about that marble table.

I’m sure it was. I don’t have any antique marble

tables at my place, I almost never have any sex trouble at

my place. sometimes but

very seldom.

I don’t understand the whole antique

business

 

I’m sure it’s a giant

con.

 

I stop my car at the signal

I see her walking past the graveyard—

 

as she walks past the iron fence

I can see through the iron fence

and I see the headstones

and the green lawn.

 

her body moves in front of the iron fence

the headstones do not move.

 

I think,

doesn’t anybody else see this?

 

I think,

does she see those headstones?

 

if she does

she has wisdom that I don’t have

for she appears to ignore them.

 

her body moving in its

magic fluid

and her long hair is lighted

by the 3 p.m. sun.

 

the signal changes

she crosses the street to the west

I drive west.

 

I drive my car down to the ocean

get out

and run up and down

in front of the sea for 35 minutes

seeing people here and there

with eyes and ears and toes

and various other parts.

 

nobody seems to care.

 

I don’t know how many bottles of beer

I have consumed while waiting for things

to get better.

I don’t know how much wine and whiskey

and beer

mostly beer

I have consumed after

splits with women—

waiting for the phone to ring

waiting for the sound of footsteps,

and the phone never rings

until much later

and the footsteps never arrive

until much later.

when my stomach is coming up

out of my mouth

they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:

“what the hell have you done to yourself?

it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!”

 

the female is durable

she lives seven and one half years longer

than the male, and she drinks very little beer

because she knows it’s bad for the

figure.

 

while we are going mad

they are out

dancing and laughing

with horny cowboys.

 

well, there’s beer

sacks and sacks of empty beer bottles

and when you pick one up

the bottles fall through the wet bottom

of the paper sack

rolling

clanking

spilling grey wet ash

and stale beer,

or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.

in the morning

making the only sound in your life.

beer

 

rivers and seas of beer

beer beer beer

the radio singing love songs

as the phone remains silent

and the walls stand

straight up and down

and beer is all there is.