You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense - Charles Bukowski [22]
tailed
maki and the
sand
flea.
huh?
in
Germany France Italy
I can walk down the streets and be
followed by
young men laughing
young ladies
giggling and
old
ladies turning their noses
up…
while
in America
I am just another
tired
old man
doing whatever
tired old men
do.
oh, this has its
compensations:
I can take my pants
to the cleaners or
stand in a
supermarket line
without any
hubbub at
all:
the gods have allowed me
a gentle
anonymity.
yet
at times
I do consider my
overseas fame
and
the only thing
I can come up with is
that
I must have some
great motherfucking
translators.
I must
owe them
the hair on my
balls
or
possibly
my balls
themselves.
it’s funny, isn’t it? #1
we were standing around
at this birthday party
at this fancy
restaurant
and
many
special people were
about
preening their
fame.
I wanted to run
out
when a man
standing near by
said something
exactly appropriate
to the
occasion.
“hey,” I said to
my wife, “this
guy’s got
something. when we are
seated
let’s try to
sit next to
him.”
we did and as
the drinks were
poured
the man began
talking
he began on a
long story
which was
building toward a
punch
line.
my problem was that
I could guess
what the
punch line
was
going to
be.
and
he talked
on and
on
then
dropped the
line.
“shit,” I
told him, “that
was
awful, you’ve
really
disappointed
me…”
he
only began
on another
story.
I walked over to
another table
and stood behind
the now
great
movie star.
“listen,
when I first met
you
you were just a nice
German boy.
now
you’ve turned into
a
conceited
prick. you’ve
really
disappointed
me.”
the great movie
star (who was a
man
mighty of
muscle) growled
and
shook his
shoulders.
then I walked over to
the table
where the birthday lady
sat
surrounded by
all these
media
folk.
“looking at you
people,” I said, “makes
me feel like
vomiting
all over
your
inept
plausibilities!”
“oh,” said the lady
to her
guests, “he
always talks
that
way!”
and she gave a
laugh, poor
dear.
so
I said, “Happy
birthday,
but
I warned you
never to
invite me to these
things.”
then
I walked back to
my table
motioned the waiter
for
another
drink.
the man
was telling
another
story
but
it was not
nearly
as good
as
this
one.
it’s funny, isn’t it? #2
when we were kids
laying around the lawn
on our
bellies
we often talked
about
how
we’d like to
die
and
we all
agreed on the
same
thing:
we’d all
like to die
fucking
(although
none of us
had
done any
fucking)
and now
that
we are hardly
kids
any longer
we think more
about
how
not to
die
and
although
we’re
ready
most of
us
would
prefer to
do it
alone
under the
sheets
now
that
most of
us
have fucked
our lives
away.
the beautiful lady editor
she was a beautiful woman, I used to see photographs of
her in the literary magazines of that
day.
I was young but always alone—I felt that I needed the
time to get something done and the only way I could buy time
was with
poverty.
I worked not so much with craft but more with getting down
what was edging me toward madness—and I had
flashes of luck, but it was hardly a pleasurable
existence.
I think I showed a fine endurance but slowly then
health and courage began to leak away.
and the night arrived when everything fell apart—and
fear, doubt, humiliation entered…
and I wrote a number of letters using my last stamps
telling a few select people that I had made a
mistake, that I was starving and trapped in a small
freezing shack of darkness in a strange city in
a strange
state.
I mailed the letters and then I waited long wild days and
nights, hoping, yearning at last for a decent
response.
only two letters ever arrived—on the same day—
and I opened the pages and shook the pages looking for
money but there was
none.
one letter was from my father, a six-pager telling me that
I deserved what was happening, that I should have become
an engineer