of them were accidental, and some of them did have a bit of charm. Very much charm. How they went on! It must have gone on for 25 minutes. What a man he was. Suddenly the girls grabbed up their clothing and, still laughing, ran from the room. He leaped up, and as they ran off, gave himself a few last good strokes. Then it was over.
We walked into the other room. The girls came out, still laughing, only now they were dressed in their regular street clothes, minis and tight sweaters.
I got up and walked across to the one in the blue mini. I put my hand on her knee. The nylon was tight and hot. She kept laughing. I ran my hand up her leg. She laughed some more. I began to really heat up. I put my other hand on her other leg. I had both hands up near her ass, breathing heavily. Not my hands, me. She kept laughing. Suddenly she stopped laughing. She pushed me off.
“Hey, what’s wrong with this guy? Is he a cube?”
Perhaps. . . .
The paper was thin. There seemed to be some writing on the back. I turned the paper over.
It said: $150.
I ripped the paper up, threw the bits on the grass, and got into my car, started it and began to drive toward my place.
I stopped at a signal at Melrose and Western.
Then I laughed.
Candid Press, December 13, 1970
More Notes of a Dirty Old Man
I swung three deep out of Vacantsville, like busting out of a herd of cow, and next thing I knew we had set down, the bird burst its stupid stewardesses, and I was the last man out, to meet a teacher-student in a shag of yellow and he said, you, Bukowski, and there was something about his car needing oil all along the way, 200 miles plus, and then I was standing in front of the students, drunk, and they all sat at little round tables, and I thought, shit, this is like any place else, and I hooked from the bottle and began on the poems, and I told them that I had death coming and that they had death coming but they didn’t quite believe me, and I drank some more and I read them poems from way back and poems from recent and then I made one up, and it was dark in there, and I thought, this is lousy, I am reading at a university and I am getting away with everything, not because I am good but because nobody else is and there isn’t anybody to correct me: wish Ezra were here or Confucius or somebody anybody to keep me in line—but there wasn’t, so I read them my swill and they swallowed it, and then I grew weary and I said, let’s take five.
Then I got down from the stage and walked over to one of the tables with my bottle. Some crazy-looking guy picked up my bottle and drank from it. I told him, take it easy, mother, I have 30 more minutes to go.
He picked up the bottle to hit it again. I ripped it out of his hand.
I told you, mother, the rest is mine.
They told me later that he was crazy, everybody was afraid of him, he was always on acid but hung around the university even though they had kicked him out.
That showed his weakness.
I took the bottle from him and climbed back on stage.
The second half was better than the first. They gave me good applause, even the crazy one.
Then I got on out. Almost. The teacher who’d brought me in knew a prof and the prof was at the reading, and the next thing I was at a party at the prof’s house. Sell-out Bukowski. The guy who hated profs drinking with them.
I’d signed a contract to read at another college 150 or 200 miles away. Anyhow, I was a literary hustler and I was stuck with it. I stood around at the party because my ride was there, the young guy with the shag of yellow hair, the nice guy, and to help myself along I drank myself into a standing stupidity. I had a reading at this other place at 11:30 a.m. in the morning but you wouldn’t have known it looking at me, peeling off tens and twenties: “Hey, man, go down to the liquor store and stock up for these good people. Looks like we’re running short.”
My host was an English teacher who looked just like Ernest Hemingway. Of course, he wasn’t. But I was drunk.
“Ernie,” I staggered up to him, “I’ll be a son of a bitch in hell! I thought you blew your head off!”
My Hemingway was a staid and rather dull member of the English department.
He just stood there talking about poets and poetry. He was insane. I walked over to the couch and started necking with his wife. She didn’t resist. He just stood there over us, talking about poets and poetry. I stuck my tongue deep into her mouth, mauled her breasts.
“T.S. Eliot,” he said, “was entirely too safe.”
I ran my hand up under her dress.
“Auden had no lasting power.”
She stuck her tongue deep into my mouth.
The party went on and on, but for it all, I awakened in bed alone. I was in an upper bedroom, hungover and sick. I turned over to go back to sleep.
“Bukowski! Wake up!” somebody said.
“Go away,” I said.
“We’ve got to make that 11:30 a.m. reading. It’ll take us 2 or 3 hours.”
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