Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [94]
“Well, all right…”
I took the ten, put it in my pocket.
“Thanks, that’s a lot of money.”
“It’s all right, Henry. I love you, Henry, but you must go.”
She ran ahead of me as I walked toward the house. Then I saw it: everything was strewn across the lawn, all my dirty and clean clothes, the suitcase flung there open, socks, shirts, pajamas, an old robe, everything flung everywhere, on the lawn and into the street. And I saw my manuscripts being blown in the wind, they were in the gutter, everywhere.
My mother ran up the driveway to the house and I screamed after her so he could hear me, “TELL HIM TO COME OUT HERE AND I’LL KNOCK HIS GOD-DAMNED HEAD OFF!”
I went after my manuscripts first. That was the lowest of the blows, doing that to me. They were the one thing he had no right to touch. As I picked up each page from the gutter, from the lawn and from the street, I began to feel better. I found every page I could, placed them in the suitcase under the weight of a shoe, then rescued the typewriter. It had broken out of its case but it looked all right. I looked at my rags scattered about. I left the dirty laundry, I left the pajamas, which were only a handed-down pair of his discards. There wasn’t much else to pack. I closed the suitcase, picked it up with the typewriter and started to walk away. I could see two faces peering after me from behind the drapes. But I quickly forgot that, walked up Longwood, across 21st and up old Westview hill. I didn’t feel much different than I had always felt. I was neither elated nor dejected; it all seemed to be just a continuation. I was going to take the “W” streetcar, get a transfer, and go somewhere downtown.
54
I found a room on Temple Street in the Filipino district. It was $3.50 a week, upstairs on the second floor. I paid the landlady—a middle-aged blond—a week’s rent. The toilet and tub were down the hall but there was a wash basin to piss in.
My first night there I discovered a bar downstairs just to the right of the entrance. I liked that. All I had to do was climb the stairway and I was home. The bar was full of little dark men but they didn’t bother me. I’d heard all the stories about Filipinos—that they liked white girls, blonds in particular, that they carried stilettoes, that since they were all the same size, seven of them would chip in and buy one expensive suit, with all the accessories, and they would take turns wearing the suit one night a week. George Raft had said somewhere that Filipinos set the style trends. They stood on street corners and swung golden chains around and around, thin golden chains, seven or eight inches long, each man’s chain-length indicating the length of his penis.
The bartender was Filipino.
“You’re new, huh?” he asked.
“I live upstairs. I’m a student.”
“No credit.”
I put some coins down.
“Give me an Eastside.”
He came back with the bottle.
“Where can a fellow get a girl?” I asked.
He picked up some of the coins.
“I don’t know anything,” he said and walked to the register.
That first night I closed the bar. Nobody bothered me. A few blond women left with the Filipinos. The men were quiet drinkers. They sat in little groups with their heads close together, talking, now and then laughing in a very quiet manner. I liked them. When the bar closed and I got up to leave the bartender said, “Thank you.” That was never done in American bars, not to me anyhow.
I liked my new situation. All I needed was money.
I decided to keep going to college. It would give me some place to be during the daytime. My friend Becker had dropped out. There wasn’t anybody that I much cared for there except maybe the instructor in Anthropology, a known Communist. He didn’t teach much Anthropology. He was a large man, casual and likeable.
“Now the way you fry a porterhouse steak,” he told the class, “you get the pan red hot, you drink a shot of whiskey and then you pour a thin layer of salt in the pan. You drop the steak in and sear it but not for too long. Then you flip it, sear the other side,