Charles Bukowski

“The greatest men are the most alone.”

“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 think you’re going to die. Then you phone me!”
“I’m getting the hell out of here!”
“But why?”
“I don’t want to stay where I’m not wanted. I don’t want to stay where I’m disliked.”

The phone rang. It was Lydia. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just sitting around.”
“You’re sitting around and drinking and listening to symphony music and playing with that goddamned Coleman lantern!”
“Yes.”
“Are you coming back?”
“No.”
“All right, drink! Drink and get sick!

I didn’t care. I didn’t like New York. I didn’t like Hollywood. I didn’t like rock music. I didn’t like anything.

“Why can’t you be decent to people?” she asked.
“Fear,” I said.

“Here we are,” she said and drove her car into the Hollywood cemetery.
“Nice,” I said, “real nice. I had forgotten all about death.”
We drove around. Most of the tombs were above ground. They were like little houses, with pillars and front steps. And each had a locked iron door. Dee Dee parked and we got out. She tried one of the doors. I watched her behind wiggle as she worked at the door. I thought about Nietzsche. There we were: a German stallion and a Jewish mare.

We walked out on the veranda with our drinks and watched the afternoon traffic. She was talking about Huxley and Lawrence in Italy. What shit. I told her that Knut Hamsun had been the world’s greatest writer. She looked at me, astonished that I’d heard of him, then agreed.

on my shirt:

there’s a law for you

and a law for me

and a law that hangs

from the foot of a tree.

Well, pretty poetry always did

make my eyes water

and can you believe it

all the women was cryin’

and though they was moanin’

other men’s names

I just know they was cryin’

for me (poor critters

and a voice says

why are all your poems

personal

Or the time they found the Jap nurse in the shell-hole

who had been hit in the breast and wanted some sulfa

and one of the boys said, “Hey, you think we can fuck

her before she dies?”