Women - Charles Bukowski [221]
I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, “I’m going to pee…”; hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking, talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes, the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3 AM; being told you snore, hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce, but always carrying on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she’s now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends, your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side, and her doing the same; sleeping together….
There were no judgments to be made, yet out of necessity one had to select. Beyond good and evil was all right in theory, but to go on living one had to select: some were kinder than others, some were simply more interested in you, and sometimes the outwardly beautiful and inwardly cold were necessary, just for bloody, shitty kicks, like a bloody, shitty movie. The kinder ones fucked better, really, and after you were around them a while they seemed beautiful because they were. I thought of Sara, she had that something extra. If only there was no Drayer Baba holding up that damned STOP sign.
Then it was Sara’s birthday, November 11th, Veterans’ Day. We had met twice again, once at her place, once at mine. There had been a high sense of fun and expectancy. She was strange but individual and inventive; there had been happiness…except in bed…it was flaming…but Drayer Baba kept us apart. I was losing the battle to God.
“Fucking is not that important,” she told me.
I went to an exotic food place at Hollywood Boulevard and Fountain Avenue, Aunt Bessie’s. The clerks were hateful people—young black boys and young white boys of high intelligence that had turned into high snobbery. They pranced about and ignored and insulted the customers. The women who worked there were heavy, dreamy, they wore large loose blouses and hung their heads as if in some sleepy state of shame. And the customers were grey wisps who endured the insults and came back for more. The clerks didn’t lay any shit on me, so they were allowed to live another day….
I bought Sara her birthday present, the main bit being bee secretion, which is the brains of many bees drained out of their collective domes by a needle. I had a wicker basket and in it, along with the bee secretion, were some chop sticks, sea salt, two pomegranates (organic), two apples (organic), and some sunflower seeds. The bee secretion was the main thing, and it cost plenty. Sara had talked about it quite a bit, about wanting it. But she said she couldn’t afford it.
I drove to Sara’s. I also had several bottles of wine with me. In fact, I had polished off one of them while shaving. I seldom shaved but I shaved for Sara’s birthday, and Veterans’ night. She was a good woman. Her mind was charming and, strangely, her celibacy was understandable. I mean, the way she looked at it, it should be saved for a good man. Not that I was a good man, exactly, but her obvious class would look good sitting next to my obvious class at a cafe table in Paris after I finally became famous. She was endearing, calmly intellectual, and best of all, there was that crazy admixture of red in the gold of her hair. It was almost as if I had been looking for that color hair for decades…maybe longer.
I stopped off at a bar on Pacific Coast Highway and had a double vodka-7. I was worried about Sara. She said sex meant marriage. And I believed she meant it. There was