Notes of a Dirty Old Man. Charles Bukowski

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СКАЧАТЬ Neal C.

      “have a beer?” I asked him.

      Neal plucked a bottle out, tossed it in the air, caught it, ripped the cap off and emptied the half-quart in two long swallows.

      “have another.”

      “sure.”

      “I thought I was good on the beer.”

      “I’m the tough young jail kid. I’ve read your stuff.”

      “read your stuff too. that bit about climbing out the bathroom window and hiding in the bushes naked. good stuff.”

      “oh yeah.” he worked at the beer, he never sat down. he kept moving around the floor. he was a little punchy with the action, the eternal light, but there wasn’t any hatred in him. you liked him even though you didn’t want to because Kerouac had set him up for the sucker punch and Neal had bit, kept biting. but you know Neal was o.k. and another way of looking at it, Jack had only written the book, he wasn’t Neal’s mother. just his destructor, deliberate or otherwise.

      Neal was dancing around the room on the Eternal High. his face looked old, pained, all that, but his body was the body of a boy of eighteen.

      “you want to try him, Bukowski?” asked Bryan.

      “yeah, ya wanta go, baby?” he asked me.

      again, no hatred. just going with the game.

      “no, thanks. I’ll be forty-eight in August. I’ve taken my last beating.”

      I couldn’t have handled him.

      “when was the last time you saw Kerouac?” I asked.

      I think he said 1962, 1963. anyhow, a long time back.

      I just about stayed with Neal on the beer and had to go out and get some more. the work at the office was about done and Neal was staying at Bryan’s and B. invited me over for dinner. I said, “all right,” and being a bit high I didn’t realize what was going to happen.

      when we got outside a very light rain was just beginning to fall. the kind that really fucks up the streets. I still didn’t know. I thought Bryan was going to drive. but Neal got in and took the wheel. I had the back seat anyhow. B. got up in front with Neal. and the ride began. straight along those slippery streets and it would seem we were past the corner and then Neal would decide to take a right or a left. past parked cars, the dividing line just a hair away. it can only be described as hairline. a tick the other way and we were all finished.

      after we cleared I would always say something ridiculous like, “well, suck my dick!” and Bryan would laugh and Neal would just go on driving, neither grim or happy or sardonic, just there — doing the movements. I understood. it was necessary. it was his bull ring, his racetrack. it was holy and necessary.

      the best one was just off Sunset, going north toward Carlton. the drizzle was good now, ruining both the vision and the streets. turning off of Sunset, Neal picked up his next move, full-speed chess, it had to be calculated in an instant’s glance. a left on Carlton would bring us to Bryan’s. we were a block off. there was one car ahead of us and two approaching. now, he could have slowed down and followed the traffic in but he would have lost his movement. not Neal. he swung out around the car ahead of us and I thought, this is it, well, it doesn’t matter, really it doesn’t matter at all. that’s the way it goes through your brain, that’s the way it went through my brain. the two cars plunged at each other, head-on, the other so close that the headlights flooded my back seat. I do think that at the last second the other driver touched his brake. that gave us the hairline. it must have been figured in by Neal. that movement. but it wasn’t over. we were going very high speed now and the other car, approaching slowly from Hollywood Blvd. was just about blocking a left on Carlton. I’ll always remember the color of that car. we got that close. a kind of gray-blue, an old car, coupe, humped and hard like a rolling steel brick thing. Neal cut left. to me it looked as if we were going to ram right through the center of the car. it was obvious. but somehow, the motion of the other car’s forward and our movement left coincided perfectly. the hairline was there. once again. Neal parked the thing and we went on in. Joan brought the dinner in.

      Neal ate all of his plate and most of mine too. we had a bit of wine. John had a highly intelligent young homosexual baby-sitter, who I now think has gone on with some rock band or killed himself or something. anyhow, I pinched his buttocks as he walked by. he loved it.

      I think I stayed long past my time, drinking and talking with Neal. the baby-sitter kept talking about Hemingway, somehow equating me with Hemingway until I told him to shove it and he went upstairs to check Jason. it was a few days later that Bryan phoned me:

      “Neal’s dead, Neal died.”

      “oh shit, no.”

      then Bryan told me something about it. hung up.

      that was it.

      all those rides, all those pages of Kerouac, all that jail, to die alone under a frozen Mexican moon, alone, you understand? can’t you see the miserable puny cactii? Mexico is not a bad place because it is simply oppressed; Mexico is simply a bad place. can’t you see the desert animals watching? the frogs, horned and simple, the snakes like slits of men’s minds crawling, stopping, waiting, dumb under a dumb Mexican moon. reptiles, flicks of things, looking across this guy in the sand in a white t-shirt.

      Neal, he’d found his movement, hurt nobody. the tough young jail kid laying it down alongside a Mexican railroad track.

      the only night I met him I said, “Kerouac has written all your other chapters. I’ve already written your last one.”

      “go ahead,” he said, “write it.”

      end copy.

      ________

      the summers are longer where the suicides hang and the flies eat mudpie. he’s a famous street poet of the ’50’s and still alive. I throw my bottle into the canal, it’s Venice, and Jack is holing up at the place for a week or so, giving a reading somewhere in a few days. the canal looks strange, very strange.

      “hardly deep enough for self-destruction.”

      “yeah,” he says in the Bronx movie voice, “you’re right.”

      he’s gray at 37. hook-nose. slumped. energetic. pissed. male. very male. a little Jewish smile. maybe he’s not Jewish. I don’t ask him.

      he’s known them all. pissed on Barney Rosset’s shoe at a party because he didn’t like something Barney said. Jack knows Ginsberg, Creeley, Lamantia, on and on, and now he knew Bukowski.

      “yeah, Bukowski came to Venice to see me. scars all over his face. shoulders slumped. very tired-looking man. doesn’t say much and when he does it’s kind of dull, kind of commonplace. you’d never think he’d written all those books of poems. but he’s been in the post office too long. he’s slipped. they’ve eaten his spirit out. damn shame, but you know how it works. but he’s still boss, real boss, you know.”

      Jack knows the inside, and it’s funny but real to know that people aren’t much, it’s all a motherfucking jive, and you’ve known it but it’s funny to hear it said while sitting by a Venice canal trying to cure an extra-size hangover.

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