back to L.A.
both of them standing there
on the platform
looking at me and smiling
as I looked back from my
seat by the window.
it was . . .
embarrassing . . .
finally the train started
to slowly roll
and I waved and they
waved
and then as I was
nearly out of sight
the Great Editor
jumped up and down
like a little boy,
still waving . . .
I walked back to the bar
car and decided to stay
my trip
there.
it was some stops and
some hours later
when the porter came
back there:
“HENRY CHINASKI! IS THERE
A HENRY CHINASKI HERE?”
“here my good man,”
I said.
“damn, man,” he said, “I’ve
been looking all over this
train for you!”
I tipped him and opened the
telegram:
“YOU’RE STILL A S.O.B. BUT
WE STILL LOVE YOU . . .
Jon and Louise . . .”
I motioned the porter over
ordered a double scotch
on the rocks
then I had it
and I held it up a moment
toasted them an almost
lyrical blessing
then drank it down
as the train
rolled and swayed
swayed and rolled
working me further and further
away
from those magic
people.
the way it goes
he died one Sunday afternoon
and the funeral was on a Wednesday;
the crowd was small: his wife, his
sons, related family members, a couple
of screenwriters plus 3 or 4 others;
he was discovered by H. L. Mencken
in the 30’s;
he wrote a clear simple line
a passionate line,
fine short stories and novels;
he was stricken late in life,
became blind, had both legs
amputated, and they kept cutting
at him, operating again and
again.
in the hospital
he stayed in that bed for years;
he had to be turned, fed, bed-
panned,
but while there
he dictated a total new novel
to his wife.
he never quit: that novel was
published.
one day when I was visiting
him
he told me, “you know, Hank,
when I was all right, I had all
these friends, then . . . when this
happened, they dropped me, it was
like I had leprosy . . .”
and he smiled.
there was a breeze moving through
the window
and there he was
the sunlight moving
half across him.
those friends didn’t
deserve him.
a great writer
and a greater human.
John, the crowd will never have
the love of the few—
as if I would have to tell
you.
alone in a time of armies
I was 22 in that roominghouse in Philadelphia and I was starving and
mad in a prosperous world at war
and one night sitting at my window I saw in the room across the
way in another Philadelphia roominghouse
a young lady grab a young man and kiss him with great joy and
passion.
it was then that I realized the depraved corner I had worked myself
into:
I wanted to be that young man at that moment
but I didn’t want to do the many things he had probably done to get
where he had arrived.
yet worse, I realized that I could be wrong.
I left my room and began walking the streets.
I kept walking even though I had not eaten that
day.
(the day has eaten you! sang the chorus)
I walked, I walked.
I must have walked 5 miles, then I
returned.
the lights in the room across the way were
out.
mine were too.
I undressed and went to bed.
I didn’t want to be what they wanted me to
be.
and then
like them
I slept.
going modern
I drank more than usual tonight, got some writing out of
it but here I had this IBM electric typewriter and both
tapes ran out at once: the typing tape and the erasing tape
and I can usually replace these
but tonight I was too drunk:
it was a battle of the soul to get the typing tape in but
when it came to the erasing tape I ran out of
soul: the sticky strip stuck against things it
shouldn’t, it twisted pretzel-like and I threw it out and
tried another.
it must have been ten minutes before I got it
right.
meanwhile—I got into another bottle, then I looked down at
the box on the floor: I was down to one typing tape and one
erasing tape so I went to the Instruction Booklet and dialed the
800 number which I think was in Maryland or South Dakota and
was surprised to get an answer: it was 3:30 A.M. in
Los Angeles.
I told the lady what I needed but she didn’t quite understand,
she kept demanding an order #.
I had Richard Wagner on full bombast on the radio and I told her
that I didn’t have a god damned order #.
she
hung up on me and I dialed again and this time I got a nice young
man and he said, “that’s great music you’re listening to . . .” but
the nice young man also demanded an order #.
I drained off a full glass of wine, said, “listen, I didn’t have an
order # the first time I phoned . . .”
“but, sir, the second time you phone the rule is that you must have
an order #.”
“you mean, I can’t get my tapes? I’m a fucking writer, how am I
going to make it? would you cut the horns off a bull?”
“do you have your last bill before you,
sir?”
“yes, yes . . .”
“the order # must be on the bill,
sir . . .”
“I tell you, there’s nothing here to indicate an order
#!”
“well, sir . . .”
“NO, NO, NO!”
I drained another glass of
wine, “listen, let’s pretend that this is the first time I’ve ever phoned
you and let’s begin at the beginning?”
“all right, sir . . . now, can you read me off what you
wish?”
“thank YOU! I want 18 lift off tapes, item # 1136433 and I want 12
cassettes, black, item # 1299508.”
then I read him off my American Express card # which I won’t
include
here.
“you’ll have all your materials within 8 to ten days, sir . . .”
“THANK YOU!”
then, as I hung up, I noticed a line on my past bill, it said ORDER
NUMBER 11101—this and that and dash this and that.
it had been there all th
e
time.
NOW I was READY to type again, help was on the way, my mind was
free, I leaned a bit forward and began to type:
frsyj mrbrt ,syyrtrf sd ,ivj sd yjsy dytuhhlr yo dysy
slibr s,pmh yjr %rp%;r smf om d%oyr pg yjs
%rp%;r.
frsyj eo%% mr yjr rsdody %sty.
it doesn’t always work
I knew a writer once
who always tried to tighten his lines
like he’d write:
an old man in a green felt hat walked down the
street.
change to:
old man in green walked down street.
change to:
old green man walked street.
change to:
green man walked.
change to:
green walked.
finally this writer said,
shit, I can’t fart,
and he blew his brains
out.
blew brains out.
blew brains.
blew.
I have this room
I have this room up here where I sit alone and it’s much
like my rooms of the past—bottles and papers, books,
belts, combs, old newspapers, various trash spread about.
my disorder was never chosen, it just arrived and it
stayed.
in the time of each there’s never enough time to place
all things right—there is always breakdown, loss, the
hard mathematic of
confusion and
weariness.
we are harangued with immense and trivial tasks
and times arrive of stoicism or of horror when it becomes
impossible to pay a gas bill or to even answer the threat
from the IRS or termites or the papal doom of serving
your soul up for self-surveillance.
I have this room up here and it’s much the same as always:
the failure to live grandly with the female or the
universe, it gets so stuffy, all rubbed raw with self-
complaint, attrition, re-
runs.
I have this room up here and I’ve had this same room in
so many cities—the years shot suddenly away, I still
sit feeling no different than in my youth.
the room always was—still is—best at night—
the yellowness of the electric light while sitting and
drinking—all we’ve ever needed was a minor retreat
from all the galling nonsense:
we could always handle the worst if we were sometimes
allowed the tiniest of awakenings from the nightmare,
and the gods, so far, have allowed us
this.
I have this room up here and I sit alone in the floating,
poking, crazy ultimates, I am lazy in these fields of pain
and my friends, the walls, embrace this once-gamble—
my heart can’t laugh but sometimes it smiles
in the yellow electric light: to have come so far to
sit alone
again
in this room up here.
a man for the centuries
all in all, drinking here into the early morning hours and
taking what the radio gives me: many of the composers of
the ages have entered, have left, but all in all, sucking at this
lovely wine and listening, I have come up with Bach: he
tastes the laughter of joy before death, each note like a wild
bean, I am saddened that he braced his life with God,
although I understand that this is sometimes necessary, but
it’s not so much what a man believes as what he does and
Bach did it so well, listening to him in this small room he
makes me feel like a hero just to be alive, to have arms, legs,
a head, all the various parts as I sit listening, ingesting the
sound while sucking at this lovely wine
a dead man has become such a friend
I hope he found God
he deserves God
and God
if He is there
deserves
Bach
and we do too:
we winos
we agnostics:
those notes jumping like wild
beans.
dear old dad
one of the most fortunate things
to have happened to me
was to have a cruel and sadistic
father.
after him
the worst things that the Fates
have thrown upon me
have hardly seemed as
terrible—
things that would cause other
men
anger, despair, disgust,
madness, thoughts of suicide
and
so forth
have only had a minor effect
upon me
due to my
upbringing:
after my father
almost anything else looked
good.
I should really be
thankful to that
old fuck
so long dead
now
he readied me
for all the numerous
hells
by getting me there
early
on time
through the inescapable
years.
peace and love
back in the 60’s
I wrote a column for a hippie
newspaper.
I wasn’t a hippie (I was in
my 40’s) but I thought it was
nice of the paper
to allow me to state my
errant
views
once a
week.
for each of these works of
genius
I was given
$10 (sometimes).
now
there was another hippie
newspaper
bidding for my
services.
they were offering me
$15 for each
column.
not wanting to appear
the deserter
I was asking for
$20.
so
I was over at the other
paper
quite often
haggling with the
editor
about the 5-buck
difference
over a couple of
6-packs.
nice thing about that
hippie paper
when I walked in
hollering my
name:
“Hey, Chinaski!”
“Chinaski!”
I liked that, it
made me feel like a
star.
and they also
hollered,
“PEACE AND LOVE!”
“PEACE AND LOVE!”
lots of young little chicks
hollered this at
me
and I liked
that
although I never
returned the
salutations
except for a slight
smile
and an almost
invisible
wave of the left
hand
to go in to see the
editor and tell
him, “listen, nice place
you’ve got here, we’ve got to
work something
out . . .”
yet
we couldn’t seem
to
but I decided to
keep working at
it . . .
so,
there was
this one week
when I walked down
there
and the whole place was
closed down: nobody, no-
thing
in
there . . .
well, I thought, maybe they
moved, maybe they found
a
cheaper place.
so
I moved away from there
and walked along
and as I did
I looked into this cafe
and the strangest of
longshots
occurred:
there was the editor
sitting at this
table
so
I walked in
and he saw me
coming up
and said, “sit down,
Chinaski.”
I did
and asked
him:
“what happened?”
“it’s sad, we had to
fold just when we were
picking up on circulation
and
ads.”
“yeah? and?”
“well, 4 or 5 of them
had no place to stay so
I told them they could
stay at the office at
night as long as they kept
it quiet and dark . . . so
they brought in their water
beds, their pipes, their acid,
their guitars, their grass, their
Bobby Dylan albums and
it seemed all
right . . .”
“yeah? and?? . . .”
“they used the telephones at
night. long distance to many places,
some of them like
France, India and China
but
most of them
were
U.S. based
but wherever they called
it was always for a long
time, anywhere between 45
minutes and 3 and one-half
hours . . .”
“Christ . . .”
“yeah, we couldn’t pay the bill,
hence no phones, collection agency
after us, we had to
fold . . .”
“sorry, man . . .”
“it’s all
right . . .”
“I’ve got a little bit of
green,” I told him, “let’s
go find a
bar . . .”