Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [62]
“Oh, oh,” said Jim.
“What is it?”
“There are some girls down there looking at us.”
“So what?”
“They’re talking and laughing. They might come down here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And if they start coming over I’ll warn you. When I do, turn on your back.”
My chest had only a few boils and scars.
“Don’t forget,” said Jim, “when I warn you, turn over on your back.”
“I heard you.”
I had my head down in my arms. I knew that Jim was looking at the girls and smiling. He had a way with them.
“Simple cunts,” he said, “they’re really stupid.”
Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?
“Oh, oh, Hank, here they come!”
I looked up. There were five of them. I rolled over on my back. They walked up giggling and stood there. One of them said, “Hey, these guys are cute!”
“You girls live around here?” Jim asked.
“Oh yeah,” one of them said, “we nest with the seagulls!”
They giggled.
“Well,” said Jim, “we’re eagles. I’m not sure we’d know what to do with five seagulls.”
“How do birds do it anyhow?” one of them asked.
“Damned if I know,” Jim said, “maybe we can find out.”
“Why don’t you guys come over to our blanket?” one of them asked.
“Sure,” Jim said.
Three of the girls had spoken. The other two had just stood there pulling their bathing suits down over what they didn’t want seen.
“Count me out,” I said.
“What’s wrong with your friend?” asked one of the girls who had been covering her ass.
Jim said, “He’s strange.”
“What’s wrong with him?” asked the last girl.
“He’s just strange,” said Jim.
He got up and walked off with the girls. I closed my eyes and listened to the waves. Thousands of fish out there, eating each other. Endless mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting. The whole earth was nothing but mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting, and fucking.
I rolled over and watched Jim with the five girls. He was standing up, sticking his chest out and showing off his balls. He didn’t have my barrel chest and big legs. He was slim and neat, with that black hair and that little nasty mouth with perfect teeth, and his little round ears and his long neck. I didn’t have a neck. Not much of one, anyway. My head seemed to sit on my shoulders. But I was strong, and mean. Not good enough, the ladies liked dandies. If it wasn’t for the boils and scars, though, I’d be down there now showing them a thing or two. I’d flash my balls for them, bringing their dead air-headed minds to attention. Me, with my 50-cents-a-week life.
Then I saw the girls leap up and follow Jim into the water. I heard them giggling and screaming like mindless…what? No, they were nice. They weren’t like grown-ups and parents. They laughed. Things were funny. They weren’t afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D. H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D. H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G. B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless.
Jim was splashing water on the girls. He was the Water God and they loved him. He was the possibility and the promise. He was great. He knew how to do it. I had read many books but he had read a book that I had never read. He was an artist with his little pair of bathing trunks and his balls and his wicked little look and his round ears. He was the best. I couldn’t challenge him any more than I could have challenged that big son-of-a-bitch