Love is a Dog from Hell (19 page)

 

my daughter is most

glorious.

we are eating a takeout

snack in my car

in Santa Monica.

I say, “hey, kid,

my life has been

good, so good.”

she looks at me.

I put my head down

on the steering wheel,

shudder, then I

kick the door open,

put on a

mock-puke.

I straighten up.

she laughs

biting into her

sandwich.

I pick up four

french fries

put them into my mouth,

chew them.

it’s 5:30 p.m.

and the cars run up

and down past us.

I sneak a look:

we’ve got all the

luck we need:

her eyes are brilliant with the

remainder of the

day, and she’s

grinning.

 

my friend is worried about dying

 

he lives in Frisco

I live in L.A.

 

he goes to the gym and

works with the iron and hits

the big bag.

 

old age diminishes him.

 

he can’t drink because of

his liver.

 

he can do

50 pushups.

 

he writes me

letters

telling me

that I’m the only one

who listens to him.

 

sure, Hal, I answer him

on a postcard.

 

but I don’t want to pay

all those gym fees.

 

I go to bed

with a liverwurst and

onion sandwich at

one p.m.

 

after I eat I

nap

with the helicopters

and vultures

circling over my

sagging mattress.

 

drunk and writing poems

at 3 a.m.

 

what counts now

is one more

tight

pussy

 

before the light

tilts out

 

drunk and writing poems

at 3:15 a.m.

 

some people tell me that I’m

famous.

 

what am I doing alone

drunk and writing poems at

3:18 a.m.?

 

I’m as crazy as I ever was

they don’t understand

that I haven’t stopped hanging out of 4th floor

windows by my heels—

I still do

right now

sitting here

 

writing this down

I am hanging by my heels

floors up:

68, 72, 101,

the feeling is the

same:

relentless

unheroic and

necessary

 

sitting here

drunk and writing poems

at 3:24 a.m.

 

I am driving down Wilton Avenue

when this girl of about 15

dressed in tight blue jeans

that grip her behind like two hands

steps out in front of my car

I stop to let her cross the street

and as I watch her contours waving

she looks directly through my windshield

at me

with purple eyes

and then blows

out of her mouth

the largest pink globe of

bubble gum

I have ever seen

while I am listening to Beethoven

on the car radio.

she enters a small grocery store

and is gone

and I am left with

Ludwig.

 

I always wanted to ball

Henry Miller, she said,

but by the time I got there

it was too late.

 

damn it, I said, you girls

always arrive too late.

I’ve already masturbated

twice today.

 

that wasn’t his problem,

she said. by the way,

how come you flog-off

so much?

 

it’s the space, I said,

all that space between

poems and stories, it’s

intolerable.

 

you should wait, she said,

you’re impatient.

 

what do you think of Celine?

I asked.

 

I wanted to ball him too.

 

dead now, I said.

 

dead now, she said.

 

care to hear a little

music? I asked.

might as well, she said.

 

I gave her Ives.

 

that’s all I had left

that night.

 

hey, said my friend, I want you to meet

Hangdog Harry, he reminds me of you,

and I said, all right, and we went to

this cheap hotel.

old men sitting around watching

some program on the tv in the lobby

as we went up the stairway

to 209 and there was Hangdog

sitting in a straight strawback chair

bottle of wine at his feet

last year’s calendar on the wall,

“you guys sit down,” he said,

“that’s the problem:

man’s inhumanity to man.”

we watched him slowly roll a

Bull Durham cigarette.

“I’ve got a 17 inch neck and I’ll kill

anybody who fucks with me.”

he licked his cigarette

then spit on the rug.

“just like home here. feel free.”

 

“how you feeling, Hangdog?” asked

my friend.

 

“terrible. I’m in love with a whore,

haven’t seen her in 3 or 4 weeks.”

 

“what you think she’s doing, Hang?”

 

“well, right now about now I’d say

she’s sucking some turkeyneck.”

 

he picked up his wine bottle

took a tremendous drain.

“look,” my friend said to Hangdog,

“we’ve got to get going.”

 

“o.k., time and tide, they don’t

wait…”

 

he looked at me:

“whatcha say your name was?”

 

“Salomski.”

 

“pleased to meet cha, kid.”

 

“likewise.”

 

we went down the stairway

they were still in the lobby

looking at t.v.

 

“what did you think of him?”

my friend asked.

 

“shit,” I said, “he was really

all right. yes.”

 

she had huge thighs

and a very good laugh

she laughed at everything

and the curtains were yellow

and I finished

rolled off

and before she went to the bathroom

she reached under the bed and

threw me a rag.

it was hard

it was stiff with other men’s

sperm.

I wiped off on the sheet.

 

when she came out

she bent over

and I saw all that behind

as she put Mozart

on.

 

up in northern California

he stood in the pulpit

and had been reading for some time

he had been reading poems about

nature and the goodness

of man.

 

he knew that everything was all

right and you couldn’t blame him:

he was a professor and had never

been in jail or in a whorehouse

had never had a used car die

in a traffic jam;

had never needed more than

3 drinks during his wildest

evening;

had never been rolled, flogged,

mugged,

had never been bitten by a dog

he got nice letters from Gary

Snyder, and his face was

kindly, unmarked and

tender.

his wife had never betrayed him,

nor had his luck.

 

he said, “I’m just going to read

3 more poems and then I’m going

to step down and let

Bukowski read.”

 

“oh no, William,” said all the

little girls in their pink and blue

and white and orange and lavender

dresses, “oh no, William,

read some more, read some

more!”

 

he read one more poem and then he said,

“this will be the last poem that

I will read.”

 

“oh no, William,” said all the little

girls in their red and green see-through

dresses, “oh no, William,” said

all the little girls in their tight blue

jeans with little hearts sewn on them,

“oh no, William,” said all the little girls,

“read more poems, read more poems!”

 

but he was good to his word.

he got the poem out and he climbed down and

vanished. as I got up to read

the little girls wiggled in

their seats and some of them hissed and

some of them made remarks to me

which I will use at some later date.

 

two or three weeks later

I got a letter from William

saying that he
did
enjoy my reading.

a true gentleman.

I was in bed in my underwear with a

3 day hangover. I lost the envelope

but I took the letter and folded it

into a paper airplane such as

I had learned to make in grammar

school. it sailed about the room

before landing between an old Racing Form

and a pair of shit-stained shorts.

 

we have not corresponded since.