Run With the Hunted (54 page)

and somebody asks me, “Bukowski, what time is it?”

and I say, “3:16 and a half.”

I feel very guilty, I feel obnoxious, useless,

demented, I feel

sleepy in the afternoon,

they are bombing churches, o.k., that's o.k.,

the children ride ponies in the park, o.k., that's o.k.,

the libraries are filled with thousands of books of knowledge,

great music sits inside the nearby radio

and I am sleepy in the afternoon,

I have this tomb within myself that says,

ah, let the others do it, let them win,

let me sleep,

wisdom is in the dark

sweeping through the dark like brooms,

I'm going where the summer flies have gone,

try to catch me.

 

So, there I was over 65 years old, looking for my first house. I remembered how my father had virtually mortgaged his whole life to buy a house. He had told me, “Look, I'll pay for one house in my lifetime and when I die you'll get that house and then in your lifetime you'll pay for a house and when you the you'll leave those houses to your son. That'll make two houses. Then your son will …”

The whole process seemed terribly slow to me: house by house, death by death. Ten generations, ten houses. Then it would take just one person to gamble all those houses away, or burn them down with a match and then run down the street with his balls in a fruit-picker's pail.

Now I was looking for a house I really didn't want and I was going to write a screenplay I really didn't want to write. I was beginning to lose control and I realized it but I seemed unable to reverse the process.

The first realtor we stopped at was in Santa Monica. It was called TwentySecond Century Housing. Now, that was modern.

Sarah and I got out of the car and walked in. There was a young fellow at the desk, bow tie, nice striped shirt, red suspenders. He looked hip. He was shuffling papers at his desk. He stopped and looked up.

“Can I help you?”

“We want to buy a house,” I said.

The young fellow just turned his head to one side and kept looking away. A minute went past. Two minutes.

“Let's go,” I said to Sarah.

We got back into the car and I started the engine.

“What was all that about?” Sarah asked.

“He didn't want to do business with us. He took a reading and he thought we were indigent, worthless. He thought we would waste his time.”

“But it's not true.”

“Maybe not, but the whole thing made me feel as if I was covered with slime.”

I drove the car along, hardly knowing where I was going.

Somehow, that had hurt. Of course, I was hungover and I needed a shave and I always wore clothing that somehow didn't seem to fit me quite right and maybe all the years of poverty had just given me a certain look. But I didn't think it was wise to judge a man from the outside like that. I would much rather judge a man on the way he acted and spoke.

“Christ,” I laughed, “maybe nobody will sell us a house!”

“The man was a fool,” said Sarah.

“TwentySecond Century Housing is one of the largest real estate chains in the state.”

“The man was a fool,” Sarah repeated.

I still felt diminished. Maybe I
was
a jerk-off of some kind. All I knew how to do was to type—sometimes.

Then we were in a hilly area driving along.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Topanga Canyon,” Sarah answered.

“This place looks fucked.”

“Its all right except for floods and fires and burned-out-neohippy types.”

Then I saw the sign: APES HAVEN. It was a bar. I pulled up alongside and we got out. There was a cluster of bikes outside. Sometimes called hogs.

We went in. It was damn near full. Fellows in leather jackets. Fellows wearing dirty scarfs. Some of the fellows had scabs on their faces. Others had beards that didn't grow quite right. Most of the eyes were pale blue and round and listless. They sat very still as if they had been there for weeks.

We found a couple of stools.

“Two beers,” I said, “anything in a bottle.”

The barkeep trotted off.

The beers came back and Sarah and I had a hit.

Then I noticed a face thrust forward along the bar looking at us. It was a very fat round face, a touch imbecilic. It was a young man and his hair and his beard were a dirty red, but his eyebrows were pure white. His lower lip hung down as if an invisible weight were pulling at it, the lip was twisted and you saw the inner lip and it was wet and it shimmered.

“Chinaski,” he said, “son of a bitch, it's CHINASKI!”

I gave a small wave, then looked straight ahead.

“One of my readers,” I said to Sarah.

“Oh oh,” she said.

“Chinaski,” I heard a voice to my right.

“Chinaski,” I heard another voice.

A whiskey appeared before me. I lifted it, “Thank you, fellows!” and I knocked it off.

“Go easy,” said Sarah, “you know how you are. We'll never get out of here.”

The bartender brought another whiskey. He was a little guy with dark red blotches all over his face. He looked meaner than anybody in there. He just stood there, staring at me.

“Chinaski,” he said, “the world's greatest writer.”

“If you insist,” I said and raised the glass of whiskey. Then I passed it to Sarah who knocked it off.

She gave a little cough and set the glass down.

“I only drank that to help save you.”

Then there was a little group gathering slowly behind us.

“Chinaski. Chinaski … Motherfuck … I've read all your books, ALL YOUR BOOKS! … I can kick your ass, Chinaski … Hey, Chinaski, can you still get it up? … Chinaski, Chinaski, can I read you one of my poems?”

I paid the barkeep and we backed off our stools and moved toward the door. Again I noticed the leather jackets and the
blandness
of the faces and the feeling that there wasn't much joy or daring in any of them. There was something totally missing in the poor fellows and something in me wrenched, for just a moment, and I felt like throwing my arms around them, consoling and embracing them like some Dostoevsky, but I knew that would finally lead nowhere except to ridicule and humiliation, for myself and for them. The world had somehow gone too far, and spontaneous kindness could never be so easy. It was something we would all have to work for once again.

And they followed us out. “Chinaski, Chinaski … Who's your beautiful lady? You don't deserve her, man!… Chinaski, come on, stay and drink with us! Be a good guy! Be like your writing, Chinaski! Don't be a prick!”

They were right, of course. We got in the car and I started the engine and we drove slowly through them as they crowded around us, slowly giving way, some of them blowing kisses, some of them giving me the finger, a few beating on the windows. We got through.

We made it to the road and drove along.

“So,” said Sarah, “those are your readers?”

“That's most of them, I think.”

“Don't any intelligent people read you?”

“I hope so.”

We kept driving along not saying anything. Then Sarah asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“Dennis Body.”

“Dennis Body? Who's that?”

“He was my only friend in grammar school. I wonder whatever happened to him.”

—
H
OLLYWOOD

I was standing in line at the bank today

when the old fellow in front of me

dropped his glasses (luckily, within the

case)

and as he bent over

I saw how difficult it was for

him

and I said, “wait, let me get

them …”

but as I picked them up

he dropped his cane

a beautiful, black polished

cane

and I got the glasses back to him

then went for the cane

steadying the old boy

as I handed him his cane.

he didn't speak,

he just smiled at me.

then he turned

forward.

I stood behind him waiting

my turn.

 

The place I was living in at that time did have some qualities. One of the finest was the bedroom which was painted a dark, dark blue. That dark dark blue had provided a haven for many a hangover, some of them brutal enough to almost kill a man, especially at a time when I was popping pills which people would give me without my bothering to ask what they were. Some nights I knew that if I slept I would die. I would walk around alone all night, from the bedroom to the bathroom and from the bathroom through the front room and into the kitchen. I opened and closed the refrigerator, time and time again. I turned the faucets on and off. Then I went to the bathroom and turned the faucets on and off. I flushed the toilet. I pulled at my ears. I inhaled and exhaled. Then, when the sun came up, I knew I was safe. Then I would sleep with the dark dark blue walls, healing.

Another feature of that place were the knocks of unsavory women at 3 or 4 a.m. They certainly weren't ladies of great charm, but having a foolish turn of mind, I felt that somehow they brought me adventure. The real fact of the matter was that many of them had no place else to go. And they liked the fact that there was drink and that I didn't work too hard trying to bed down with them.

Of course, after I met Sarah, this part of my lifestyle changed quite a bit.

That neighborhood around Carlton Way near Western Avenue was changing too. It had been almost all lower-class white, but political troubles in Central America and other parts of the world had brought a new type of individual to the neighborhood. The male usually was small, a dark or light brown, usually young. There were wives, children, brothers, cousins, friends. They began filling up the apartments and courts. They lived many to an apartment and I was one of the few whites left in the court complex.

The children ran up and down, up and down the court walkway. They all seemed to be between two and seven years old. They had no bikes or toys. The wives were seldom seen. They remained inside, hidden. Many of the men also remained inside. It was not wise to let the landlord know how many people were living in a single unit. The few men seen outside were the legal renters. At least they paid the rent. How they survived was unknown. The men were small, thin, silent, unsmiling. Most sat on the porch steps in their undershirts, slumped forward a bit, occasionally smoking a cigarette. They sat on the porch steps for hours, motionless. Sometimes they purchased very old junk automobiles and the men drove them
slowly
about the neighborhood. They had no auto insurance or driver's licenses and they drove with expired license plates. Most of the cars had defective brakes. The men almost never stopped at the corner stop sign and often failed to heed red lights, but there were few accidents. Something was watching over them.

After a while the cars would break down but my new neighbors wouldn't leave them on the street. They would drive them up the walkways and park them directly outside their door. First they would work on the engine. They would take off the hood and the engine would rust in the rain. Then they would put the car on blocks and remove the wheels. They took the wheels inside and kept them there so they wouldn't be stolen at night.

While I was living there, there were two rows of cars lined up in the court, just sitting there on blocks. The men sat motionless on their porches in their undershirts. Sometimes I would nod or wave to them. They never responded. Apparently they couldn't understand or read the eviction notices and they tore them up, but I did see them studying the daily L.A. papers. They were stoic and durable because compared to where they had come from, things were now easy.

Well, no matter. My tax consultant had suggested I purchase a house, and so for me it wasn't really a matter of “white flight.” Although, who knows? I had noticed that each time I had moved in Los Angeles over the years, each move had always been to the North and to the West.

Finally, after a few weeks of house hunting, we found the one. After the down payment the monthly payments came to $789.81. There was a huge hedge in front on the street and the yard was also in front so the house sat way back on the lot. It looked like a damned good place to hide. There was even a stairway, an
upstairs
with a bedroom, bathroom and what was to become my typing room. And there was an old desk left in there, a huge ugly old thing. Now, after decades, I was a writer with a desk. Yes, I felt the fear, the fear of becoming like
them
. Worse, I had an assignment to write a screenplay. Was I doomed and damned, was I about to be sucked dry? I didn't feel it would be that way. But does anybody, ever?