Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [105]
Sitting there drinking, I considered suicide, but I felt a strange fondness for my body, my life. Scarred as they were, they were mine. I would look into the dresser mirror and grin: if you’re going to go, you might as well take eight, or ten or twenty of them with you…
It was a Saturday night in December. I was in my room and I drank much more than usual, lighting cigarette after cigarette, thinking of girls and the city and jobs, and of the years ahead. Looking ahead I liked very little of what I saw. I wasn’t a misanthrope and I wasn’t a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.
Then I heard the radio in the next room. The guy had it on too loud. It was a sickening love song.
“Hey, buddy!” I hollered, “turn that thing down!”
There was no response.
I walked to the wall and pounded on it.
“I SAID, ‘TURN THAT FUCKING THING DOWN!’”
The volume remained the same.
I walked outside to his door. I was in my shorts. I raised my leg and jammed my foot into the door. It burst open. There were two people on the cot, an old fat guy and an old fat woman. They were fucking. There was a small candle burning. The old guy was on top. He stopped and turned his head and looked. She looked up from underneath him. The place was very nicely fixed-up with curtains and a little rug.
“Oh, I’m sorry…”
I closed their door and went back to my place. I felt terrible. The poor had a right to fuck their way through their bad dreams. Sex and drink, and maybe love, was all they had.
I sat back down and poured a glass of wine. I left my door open. The moonlight came in with the sounds of the city: juke boxes, automobiles, curses, dogs barking, radios…We were all in it together. We were all in one big shit pot together. There was no escape. We were all going to be flushed away.
A small cat walked by, stopped at my door and looked in. The eyes were lit by the moon: pure red like fire. Such wonderful eyes.
“Come on, kitty…” I held my hand out as if there were food in it. “Kitty, kitty…”
The cat walked on by.
I heard the radio in the next room shut off.
I finished my wine and went outside. I was in my shorts as before. I pulled them up and tucked in my parts. I stood before the other door. I had broken the lock. I could see the light from the candle inside. They had the door wedged closed with something, probably a chair.
I knocked quietly.
There was no answer.
I knocked again.
I heard something. Then the door opened.
The old fat guy stood there. His face was hung with great folds of sorrow. He was all eyebrows and mustache and two sad eyes.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m very sorry for what I did. Won’t you and your girl come over to my place for a drink?”
“No.”
“Or maybe I can bring you both something to drink?”
“No,” he said, “please leave us alone.”
He closed the door.
I awakened with one of my worst hangovers. I usually slept until noon. This day I couldn’t. I dressed and went to the bathroom in the main house and made my toilet. I came back out, went up the alley and then down the stairway, down the cliff and into the street below.
Sunday, the worst god-damned day of them all.
I walked over to Main Street, past the bars. The B-girls sat near the doorways, their skirts pulled high, swinging their legs, wearing high heels.
“Hey, honey, come on in!”
Main Street, East 5th, Bunker Hill. Shitholes of America.
There was no place to go. I walked into a Penny Arcade. I walked around looking at the games but had no desire to play any of them. Then I saw a Marine at a pinball machine. Both his hands gripped the sides of the machine, as he tried to guide the ball with body-English. I walked up and grabbed him by the back of his collar and his belt.
“Becker,