Women - Charles Bukowski [95]
Sara’s tub held more water than mine and the water was hotter. I was five feet, eleven and ¾ inches and yet I could stretch out in the tub. In the old days they made bathtubs for emperors, not for 5 foot bank clerks.
I got into the tub and stretched. It was great. Then I stood up and looked at my poor raw cunt-hair-rubbed cock. Rough time, old boy, but close, I guess is better than nothing? I sat back down in the tub and stretched out again. The phone rang. There was a pause.
Then Sara knocked.
“Come in!”
“Hank, it’s Debra.”
“Debra? How’d she know I was here?”
“She’s been calling everywhere. Should I tell her to phone back?”
“No, tell her to wait.”
I found a large towel and wrapped it about my waist. I walked into the other room. Sara was talking to Debra on the phone.
“Oh, here he is….”
Sara handed me the phone. “Hello, Debra?”
“Hank, where have you been?”
“In the bathtub.”
“The bathtub?”
“Yes.”
“You just got out?”
“Yes.”
“What are you wearing?”
“I have a towel around my middle.”
“How can you keep the towel around your middle and talk on the phone?”
“I’m doing it.”
“Did anything happen?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“I mean, why didn’t you fuck her?”
“Look, do you think I go around doing things like that? Do you think that’s all there is to me?”
“Then nothing happened?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Yes, nothing.”
“Where are you going after you leave there?”
“My place.”
“Come here.”
“What about your legal business?”
“We’re almost caught up. Tessie can handle it.”
“All right.”
I hung up.
“What are you going to do?” Sara asked.
“I’m going to Debra’s. I said I’d be there in 45 minutes.”
“But I thought we’d have lunch together. I know this Mexican place.”
“Look, she’s concerned. How can we sit around and chat over lunch?”
“I have my mind set on lunch with you.”
“Hell, when do you feed your people?”
“I open at eleven. It’s only ten now.”
“All right, let’s go eat….”
It was a Mexican place in a snide hippie district of Hermosa Beach. Bland, indifferent types. Death on the shore. Just phase out, breathe in, wear sandals and pretend it’s a fine world.
While we were waiting for our order Sara reached out and dipped her finger into a bowl of hot sauce, and then sucked her finger. Then she dipped again. She bent her head over the bowl. Strands of her straight hair poked at me. She kept sticking her finger into the bowl and sucking.
“Look,” I told her, “other people want to use that sauce. You’re making me sick! Stop it.”
“No, they refill it each time.”
I hoped they did refill it each time. Then the food arrived and Sara bent and attacked it like an animal, just as Lydia used to do. We finished eating and then we went out and she got into her van and drove to her health food place, and I got in my Volks and started out toward Playa del Rey. I had been given careful directions. The directions were confusing, but I followed them and had no trouble. It was almost disappointing because it seemed when stress and madness were eliminated from my daily life there wasn’t much left you could depend on.
I drove into Debra’s yard. I saw a movement behind the blinds. She’d been watching for me. I got out of the Volks and made sure that both doors were locked since my auto insurance had expired.
I walked up and bing-bonged Debra’s bell. She opened the door and seemed glad to see me. That was all right, but it was things like that which kept a writer from getting his work done.
92
I didn’t do much the rest of the week. The Oaktree meet was on. I went to the track 2 or 3 times, broke even. I wrote a dirty story for a sex mag, wrote 10 or 12 poems, masturbated, and phoned Sara and Debra each night. One night I phoned Cassie and a man answered. Goodbye, Cassie.
I thought about breakups, how difficult they were, but then usually it was only after you broke up with one woman that you met another. I had to taste women in order to really know them, to get inside of them. I could invent men in my mind because I was one, but women, for me, were almost impossible to fictionalize