Women - Charles Bukowski [138]
“I have an infection,” said April.
“What?”
“It’s sort of a fungus. Nothing serious.”
“Could I catch it?”
“It’s kind of a milky discharge.”
“Could I catch it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Let’s fuck.”
“I don’t know if I want to fuck.”
“It’ll feel good. Let’s go into the bedroom.”
April walked into the bedroom and started taking off her clothes. I took mine off. We got under the sheets. I began playing with her parts and kissing her. I mounted her. It was very strange. As if her cunt ran from side to side. I knew I was in there, it felt like I was in there, but I kept slipping sideways, to the left. I kept humping. It was exciting like that. I finished and rolled off.
Later I drove her to her apartment and we went up. We talked for a long while and I left only after making note of the apartment number and the address. As I walked through the lobby I recognized the apartment house lock boxes. I had delivered mail there many times as a mailman. I went out to my car and drove off.
11
Lydia had two children; Tonto, a boy of 8, and Lisa, the little girl of 5 who had interrupted our first fuck. We were together at the table one night eating dinner. Things were going well between Lydia and me and I stayed for dinner almost every night, then slept with Lydia and left about 11 AM the next morning to go back to my place to check the mail and write. The children slept in the next room on a waterbed. It was an old, small house which Lydia rented from an ex-Japanese wrestler now into real estate. He was obviously interested in Lydia. That was all right. It was a nice old house.
“Tonto,” I said as we were eating, “you know that when your mother screams at night I’m not beating her. You know who’s really in trouble.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Then why don’t you come in and help me?”
“Uh-uh. I know her.”
“Listen, Hank,” said Lydia, “don’t turn my kids against me.”
“He’s the ugliest man in the world,” said Lisa.
I liked Lisa. She was going to be a sexpot some day, a sexpot with personality.
After dinner Lydia and I went to our bedroom and stretched out. Lydia was into blackheads and pimples. I had a bad complexion. She moved the lamp down near my face and began. I liked it. It made me tingle and sometimes I got a hard-on. Very intimate. Sometimes between squeezes Lydia would give me a kiss. She always worked on my face first and then moved on to my back and chest.
“You love me?”
“Yeh.”
“Oooh, look at this one!”
It was a blackhead with a long yellow tail.
“It’s nice,” I said.
She was laying flat on top of me. She stopped squeezing and looked at me. “I’ll put you in your grave, you fat fuck!”
I laughed. Then Lydia kissed me.
“I’ll put you back in the madhouse,” I told her.
“Turn over. Let me get your back.”
I turned over. She squeezed at the back of my neck. “Oooh, there’s a good one! It shot out! It hit me in the eye!”
“You ought to wear goggles.”
“Let’s have a little Henry!” “Think of it, a little Henry Chinaski!”
“Let’s wait a while.”
“I want a baby now!”
“Let’s wait.”
“All we do is sleep and eat and lay around and make love. We’re like slugs. Slug-love, I call it.”
“I like it.”
“You used to write over here. You were busy. You’d bring ink and make your drawings. Now you go home and do all the interesting things there. You just eat and sleep here and then leave first thing in the morning. It’s dull.”
“I like it.”
“We haven’t been to a party in months! I like to see people! I’m bored! I’m so bored I’m about to go crazy! I want to do things! I want to DANCE! I want to live!”
“Oh, shit.”
“You’re too old. You just want to sit around and criticize everything and everybody. You don’t want to do anything. Nothing’s good enough for you!”
I rolled out of bed and stood up. I began putting my shirt on. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m getting out of here.”
“There you go! The minute things don’t go your way you jump up and run out of the door. You never want to talk about things. You go home and get drunk and then you’re so sick the next day you