Women - Charles Bukowski [206]
“Liza, shit, let’s go. There isn’t anybody around.”
Then she would go. That was the way it was with people. The longer you knew them the more their eccentricities showed. Sometimes their eccentricities were humorous—in the beginning.
We walked along the wharf, then went and sat on the sand. It wasn’t much of a beach.
She told me she hadn’t had a boyfriend in some time. What the men she had known talked about, what was important to them, she found unbelievable.
“Women are much the same,” I told her. “When they asked Richard Burton what was the first thing he looked for in a woman, he said, ‘She must be at least 30 years old.’”
It got dark and we went back to her apartment. Liza brought out the wine and we sat on pillows. She opened the shutters and we looked out on the night. We began kissing. Then we drank. And kissed some more.
“When are you going back to work?” I asked her.
“Do you want me to?”
“No, but you have to live.”
“But you’re not working.”
“In a way, I am.”
“You mean you live in order to write?”
“No, I just exist. Then later I try to remember and write some of it down.”
“I only run my dance studio three nights a week.”
“You make ends meet that way?”
“So far I have.”
We became more involved with kissing. She didn’t drink as much as I did. We moved to the waterbed, undressed and got to it. I’d heard about waterbed fucks. They were supposed to be great. I found it difficult. The water shuddered and shook beneath us, and as I was moving down, the water seemed to be rocking from side to side. Instead of bringing her to me, it seemed to take her away from me. Maybe I needed practice. I went into my savagery routine, grabbing her by the hair, thrusting as if it was a rape. She liked it, or seemed to, making little delightful sounds. I savaged her some more, then suddenly she appeared to climax, making all the right sounds. That excited me and I came just at the end of hers.
We cleaned up and went back to the pillows and the wine. Liza fell asleep with her head in my lap. I sat there an hour or so. Then I stretched out on my back and we slept that night on all those pillows.
The next day Liza took me to her dance studio. We got sandwiches from a place across the street and we took them up with our drinks to her studio and ate them. It was a very large room on a second floor. There was nothing but empty floor, some stereo equipment, a few chairs, and there were ropes strung high above, across the ceiling. I didn’t know what any of it meant.
“Shall I teach you to dance?” she asked.
“Somehow I’m not in the mood,” I said.
The following days and nights were similar. Not bad but not great. I learned to manage on the waterbed a bit better but I still preferred a normal bed for fucking.
I stayed 3 or 4 more days, then flew back to L.A.
We continued to write letters back and forth.
A month later she was back in L.A. This time when she walked up to my door she wore slacks. She looked different, I couldn’t explain it to myself but she looked different. I didn’t enjoy sitting around with her so I took her to the racetrack, to the movies, to the boxing matches, all the things I did with women I enjoyed, but something was missing. We still had sex, but it was no longer as exciting. I felt as if we were married.
After five days Liza was sitting on the couch and I was reading the newspaper when she said, “Hank, it’s not working, is it?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll leave. I don’t want to stay here.”
“Relax, it’s not that bad.”
“I just don’t understand it.”
I didn’t answer.
“Hank, drive me to the Women’s Liberation Building. Do you know where it’s at?”
“Yes, it’s in the Westlake district where the art school used to be.”
“How did you know?”
“I drove another woman there once.”
“You bastard.”
“O.K., now….”
“I have a girlfriend who works there. I don’t know where her apartment is and I can’t find her in the phonebook. But I know she works at the Women’s Lib Building. I’ll stay with her for a couple of days.