Screams From the Balcony (48 page)

[To Carl Weissner]

[August 1, 1969]

los angeles, calif. it’s Friday, I don’t have a clown’s calendar, but I think it’s August First, 1969,
HOT HOT
, and good old cheap Sears Roebuck fan turned on my ass; well, not exactly, I sit in my shorts, aging, drinking beer, the windows open, and the look at me, 6 p.m., coming in from their little jobs…they have been drowned and shitted upon. well, they belong to my club…

hello carl:

good to hear; I’d though maybe the literary thumpers and back-scratchers had gotten to you and told you I was a pile of dog turds. but you are the quiet type; it didn’t fit in my mind. I remember you behind those dark shades, just smiling evenly, that slight smile there all along. I read pretty good and I don’t believe in poking into souls, but I thought, “if Carl has turned, it is very strange. because usually is the
constant
talkers, the
OPEN-HEARTS
, that will leap from boat to boat when the waters seem to change: so good to hear—it keeps my score at 100 percent. [* * *] I am afraid that my time with the female is done, and there isn’t any sadness. I’ve had enough sex experiences to write 400 more stories about sex experiences. like
The New York Review of Sex
sent me a 25 buck check about the time I stuck my head down there and saw the
STRANGEST
panties I ever did see…plus other things. they want to see more. well, I am full of bullshit, and years. and as the little money comes in from the writing, here and there, I simply give myself more leisure time, drink more, lay around, stare at the ceiling, walk over to the typer when it calls. my boss says, “Bukowski, where have you been?” me, sitting there with a hangover and a new idea for a story. “fuck it,” I tell him. “I don’t have any excuses. fire me!” he just shakes his head and walks away. he thinks that I am crazy. am I crazy, Carl?

just uncapped another bottle of beer with my short top. my landlord gives me
TWO
garbage cans while the others get one. the beerbottles. I am the true Hun, Carl. but even if I were mostly Polack, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t know how it works.

on “Absence of the Hero,” good it went, it started as a very long matter but each time I read it I saw another line or another paragraph that didn’t belong. I don’t have a copy of the thing around so no longer know what I wrote. but, as I was writing the thing I had this idea that I was processing something down to where it
BELONGED
. it gets very slippery sometimes, and there you go over the
EDGE
, but I finally chopped it down to where I wanted it, and I knew I had what I wanted but I had to worry about
you
—there was a chance you might think that I was just throwing cold gravy out the window. it was not so. I fought the fucking thing all the way through like an octopus with an embracing pussy. so, I’m happy you picked up on the vibe strings. it’s paranoia-reality; first one is one, the other the other; then they mix; everything become the same. when
Evergreen
#70 comes out—at least the proofs read #70—my job is over at the post office. I exposed all their little interrogations in dark rooms under their human-skin lamps (America, the beautiful!) about how they didn’t care for the type of thing that I wrote while drawing their bloody and sweaty paychecks. of course, other things in there too. it runs quite long and is mostly comedy, like dying. I’ll ship you a copy. you say so.

[* * *] I haven’t eaten in 3 or 4 days, but that’s nothing new with me. I still weigh around 220. was once down to 133. it’s really much better to be light—for fucking, bumming, swimming, almost anything else. I guess the only edge a heavy man has is shitting—man, there’s nothing like a heavy pooping fat stinking beershit your cheeks spread all over the silly bowl; looking down at your toes, cutting it loose! glory! then to get up and
ADMIRE YOUR OWN TURDS! AH, SO MANY OF THEM! WHAT A GREAT MAN I MUST REALLY BE TO BE SO FULL OF SHIT
!?!

strange thing—3 critical studies of me arrived in the mail in about two days. one a long book, another an article in a sex mag, another some burblings about me in a thing called
A Bukowski Sampler
. really, the worst one was the one by the prof, the long book—he just went on winding-out the spool of literary criticism as he had been taught to do. and to make it more cajoling complete—he called the worst poems the best ones, the best ones the worst, and very bothered with the term “surrealism,” I guess something they really jammed into his anus in college. the one in the sex mag was really the best; I got drunk with the guy all night one night so he had something to talk about that I told him instead of something he
imagined
through reading my crap. after getting a ph.d. you know? well, the
Sampler
thing was all mixed-up. they meant well, but, basically, they were too young and not enough had happened to them. I don’t mean that you have to be
OLD
to write, but I do mean that if you
are
OLD
and can still write and have sailed some bloody ships, you’re got a little edge. [* * *]

[To Carl Weissner]

[September 16, 1969]

September 16, 2 a.m. plus listening to some symphonic piss, but even that is better than this day which preceded it, harassed by frightened little red-faced men about attendance, or lack of, thereupon, or arguing because I had not filled out the proper forms…what proper form? What proper form? I’d like to believe that the proper form is some type of existence that precludes being gunned down by idiots with brain cells the size of wasps and eyes that have the stink of the shit of their souls risen to the top iris, or whatever it is called…Sometimes I wish I knew the language better; then other times I know that this is dangerous, not dangerous, but trappish, wasteful, like dipping the fingers into cunt butter, then standing around for a couple of years licking out the droplets. what the hell am I talking about? I don’t know. and that’s good.

hello Carl:

not to insult, but your letter is the best gash of writing, straight on through that I have seen in some time. would like to use, will use in
Laugh Literary
#2 if you don’t mind. #2 will be larger, easier to read with the eye, but emphasis still on
CONTENT
. # uno issue almost sold out, went very fast. I think that it is simply a matter of certain people knowing that your blood and guts are in the thing, instead of some kind of con. Most all of everything is con. But it seems that there
are
500 people in the world who can tell the difference between con and the other. In the next issue, we are going to clown a bit, but the kind of laughter that comes up through the mouth after being hit with a sledgehammer. I believe that some names are going to be named and some assholes torn. But I am very very tired of the standardized type of little mag stuff. and after standing 8 or 10 hours a night talking with the dolts about who won the old ball game, or whether Namath has a right to own a bar full of thugs while quarterbacking for the Jets—well, shit. I am not just going to turn out a little old ladies’ magazine, I hope. the death-toll they count over me in their fucking pigs’ pen is a pain that I have never been able to adjust to—and I am going to spit some shit back into somebody’s eye—not out of vengeance—because some of what has happened to me is my own
FAULT
(or so I am told), but the life-juice spit of a dying man will not, I hope, be without a vernacular of its own.

and as I work less and less in their pig pens, now, at least, for the time being—some luck comes my way—the fucking
Penguin
13—you pushing little buttons in the land of my birth-translating my slimy greasy cunt stories—and please take liberties—I trust your soul all the way through—you know what I mean

I gave your letter to the two or 3 trusted that I know, and even those I do not entirely trust, and they laughed, each of them, reading certain phrases out loud. This is always the test:
THE ULTIMATE TRUTH, NO MATTER HOW TRAGIC, THE ULTIMATE TRUTH ALWAYS MAKES A MAN LAUGH HIS BALLS OFF SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS SO GOOD, SO ON THE MARK
.

Having much luck with Dirty Old Man stories—some mag in Chicago bought reprint rights to 4 stories via Essex House for $250. [* * *] Just for kicks, one night, I didn’t go to work, sat at typer, wrote thing, 7 typewritten pages, 45 minutes, called “The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, Calif.” Some sex mag says it’s worth $150 to me upon publication. But the beautiful thing is that I have not had to
compromise
my style. The post office may yet be told to go kiss its own ass. If it weren’t for the child-support thing, I’d tell them now.

Meanwhile, certain poets drop around, mostly bad ones, complaining that they are misunderstood, blocked-off, black-listed, and some of it is true, but some of the fellows have simply forgotten how to write, or don’t write, or pretend to, or play the Poet-game as a spiritual right to continual handouts from everywhere—$$$$, sex, adulation. and sometimes I get a little cruel, maybe jealous because they are living off the fat while I am hitting a time-clock, I tell them to try the steel mills and get their backbones back, but they pale at this—Christ, their little souls couldn’t stand it. So, I relent, let off, get them some beers and listen to them, and next out come their poems—which most of them read to me out
LOUD
. They think that this improves the work.

And I say, no, I don’t like it.

then they get pissed. after eating up the only 2 or 3 hours I have to do what I wish to do.

Then I tell them, look, man, I have to shit, shave, eat, make the fucking job.

And they leave off for someplace else, saying, “Hey, Marty, let me have a twenty. You know, that Bukowski, he’s a rotten son of a bitch…”

I can stand one poet a week but when they begin to arrive 7 days a week I begin to go a little crazy. listening to them, I can’t even do the simple things—like—go to the laundry—get that one extra hour sleep I need—dump the garbage—get the stink out of the sink, the ring out of the bathtub, all the shit off the floor. and then come the others—the admirers—worse than the poets—with their drinks—and their softness and their ladies—you can’t insult them—everything you say—no matter how vile—is funny. You could whip the whole roomful of them but they sicken you so you drink and drink and drink and drink, while all the time there’s this idea in the center of your brain—the typewriter sits there. you can’t make their women; they are fascinating and fascinated but frightened. What shit.

so I miss two or three days work, they don’t fire me, I make no excuses and old black cunts press their flanks against me hardhard hard, say, “Where ya been, Hank?”

“Drunk,” I say.

all of their faces are dumped and burned in pain, wasted, like mine. I think, go punch out. slam it home. no good.

No good. I always dream of my perfect one. Well, I don’t mean that. just an ordinary little woman with nice knees and nice ankles who likes to put on high heels and nylons and drink and look at me from across the couch. and then, hours later, make love. Not a love to
prove
, just a love that has flowed into an easy evening. but most bitches are hunters, all the time gleaming gleaming, their cunts reaching forward like cages. ah, shit. can’t I get off this sex thing?

Your letter—the camels, the arabs—the everything—easy to see why the Israelites won the last war. I have always thought that man’s greatest inventions went like this:

 

At the end of November 1969 Bukowski resigned his position in the U.S. Postal Service and, encouraged by a promise of regular advance royalties from John Martin, took the risk of living solely by his writing
.

 

[To Carl Weissner]

[Mid-]November 1969

[* * *] anyhow, so yes, I can’t approach L.A. Freep, they hate my guts simply because of this and that and this and that, and various rumors, true and untrue, like I threatened to beat the shit out of a guy in a wheelchair one night…that’s true, but I was joking and when guys 30 years younger began to run out of the house because I said they were next, I wondered, why please these chicken-shits? so, with various other tales I could lay upon you, Carl, I am on the blacklist in this ass-sucking town, coteries town, big bloody cunt of nothing town….

also I am going crazy and can’t stand the post office job any longer. I have one of two choices—stay in the post office and go crazy (I have been there eleven years) or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I’ve decided to starve. so at the end of Nov. I am going to resign my job at the p.o. so I need
YOUR HELP
! [* * *]

my child-support bag is only $45 a month plus this and that, and I hope to find a cheaper place to live. [* * *]

have sold some good stories coming down from
Evergreen
to the sex mags, so there will be various sources of income made mostly off this old machine [* * *]

so, after Dec. one, I will be on my own, and this typewriter will be a machine gun…as it was meant to be. this does not mean that I will be writing for money but for luck. a hell of a decision to make at age 50…. I toss a job away that most men would oh love. but I am not most men. [* * *]