Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [63]
I watched them come out of the water, glistening, smooth-skinned and young, undefeated. I wanted them to want me. But never out of pity. Yet, despite their smooth untouched bodies and minds they still were missing something because they were as yet basically untested. When adversity finally arrived in their lives it might come too late or too hard. I was ready. Maybe.
I watched Jim toweling off, using one of their towels. As I watched, somebody’s child, a boy of about four came along, picked up a handful of sand and threw it in my face. Then he just stood there, glowering, his sandy stupid little mouth puckered in some kind of victory. He was a daring darling little shit. I wiggled my finger for him to come closer, come, come. He stood there.
“Little boy,” I said, “come here. I have a bag of candy-covered shit for you to eat.”
The fucker looked, turned and ran off. He had a stupid ass. Two little pear-shaped buttocks wobbling, almost disjointed. But, another enemy gone.
Then Jim, the lady killer, was back. He stood there over me. Glowering also.
“They’re gone,” he said.
I looked down to where the five girls had been and sure enough they were gone.
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“Who gives a fuck? I’ve got the phone numbers of the two best ones.”
“Best ones for what?”
“For fucking, you jerk!”
I stood up.
“I think I’ll deck you, jerk!”
His face looked good in the sea wind. I could already see him, knocked down, squirming on the sand, kicking up his white-bottomed feet.
Jim backed off.
“Take it easy, Hank. Look, you can have their phone numbers!”
“Keep them. I don’t have your god-damned dumb ears!”
“O.K., O.K., we’re friends, remember?”
We walked up the beach to the strand where we had our bicycles locked behind someone’s beach house. And as we walked along we both knew whose day it had been, and knocking somebody on their ass could not have changed that, although it might have helped, but not enough. All the way home, on our bikes, I didn’t try to show him up as I had earlier. I needed something more. Maybe I needed that blonde in the green coupe with her long hair blowing in the wind.
40
R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officer Training Corps) was for the misfits. Like I said, it was either that or gym. I would have taken gym but I didn’t want people to see the boils on my back. There was something wrong with everybody enrolled in R.O.T.C. It almost entirely consisted of guys who didn’t like sports or guys whose parents forced them to take R.O.T.C. because they thought it was patriotic. The parents of rich kids tended to be more patriotic because they had more to lose if the country went under. The poor parents were far less patriotic, and then often professed their patriotism only because it was expected or because it was the way they had been raised. Subconsciously they knew it wouldn’t be any better or worse for them if the Russians or the Germans or the Chinese or the Japanese ran the country, especially if they had dark skin. Things might even improve. Anyhow, since many of the parents of Chelsey High were rich, we had one of the biggest R.O.T.C.’s in the city.
So we marched around in the sun and learned to dig latrines, cure snake-bite, tend the wounded, tie tourniquets, bayonet the enemy; we learned about hand grenades, infiltration, deployment of troops, maneuvers, retreats, advances, mental and physical discipline; we got on the firing range, bang bang, and we got our marksmen’s medals. We had actual field maneuvers, we went out into the woods and waged a mock war. We crawled on our bellies toward each other with our rifles. We were very serious. Even I was serious. There was something about it that got your blood going. It was stupid and we all knew it was stupid, most of us, but something clicked in our brains and we really wanted to get involved in it. We had an old retired Army man, Col. Sussex. He was getting senile and drooled,