listening. there is something wrong with him,
isn’t there?
he came to hear the
music.
a radio with guts
it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio through the window
while it was playing, and, of course,
it would break the glass in the window
and the radio would sit out there on the roof
still playing
and I’d tell my woman,
“Ah, what a marvelous radio!”
the next morning I’d take the window
off the hinges
and carry it down the street
to the glass man
who would put in another pane.
I kept throwing that radio through the window
each time I got drunk
and it would sit out there on the roof
still playing—
a magic radio
a radio with guts,
and each morning I’d take the window
back to the glass man.
I don’t remember how it ended exactly
though I do remember
we finally moved out.
there was a woman downstairs who worked in
the garden in her bathing suit
and her husband complained he couldn’t sleep nights
because of me
so we moved out
and in the next place
I either forgot to throw the radio out the window
or I didn’t feel like it
anymore.
I do remember missing the woman who worked in the
garden in her bathing suit,
she really dug with that trowel
and she put her behind up in the air
and I used to sit in the window
and watch the sun shine all over that tiling
while the music played.
Layover
Making love in the sun, in the morning sun
in a hotel room
above the alley
where poor men poke for bottles;
making love in the sun
making love by a carpet redder than our blood,
making love while the boys sell headlines
and Cadillacs,
making love by a photograph of Paris
and an open pack of Chesterfields,
making love while other men—poor fools—
work.
That moment—to this …
may be years in the way they measure,
but it’s only one sentence back in my mind—
there are so many days
when living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits like a train on the rails.
and at 5; there are cats in the alleys
and bottles and bums,
and I look up at the window and think,
I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
the living goes
when it stops.
3
get your name in lights
get it up there in
8½ × 11 mimeo
22,000 Dollars in 3 Months
night has come like something crawling
up the bannister, sticking out its tongue
of fire, and I remember the
missionaries up to their knees in muck
retreating across the beautiful blue river
and the machine gun slugs flicking spots of
fountain and Jones drunk on the shore
saying shit shit these Indians
where’d they get the fire power?
and I went in to see Maria
and she said, do you think they’ll attack,
do you think they’ll come across the river?
afraid to die? I asked her, and she said
who isn’t?
and I went to the medicine cabinet
and poured a tall glassful, and I said
we’ve made 22,000 dollars in 3 months building roads
for Jones and you have to die a little
to make it that fast … Do you think the communists
started this? she asked, do you think it’s the communists?
and I said, will you stop being a neurotic bitch.
these small countries rise because they are getting
their pockets filled from both sides … and she
looked at me with that beautiful schoolgirl idiocy
and she walked out, it was getting dark but I let her go,
you’ve got to know when to let a woman go if you want to keep her,
and if you don’t want to keep her you let her go anyhow,
so it’s always a process of letting go, one way or the other,
so I sat there and put the drink down and made another
and I thought, whoever thought an engineering course at Old Miss
would bring you where the lamps swing slowly
in the green of some far night?
and Jones came in with his arm around her blue waist
and she had been drinking too, and I walked up and said,
man and wife? and that made her angry for if a woman can’t
get you by the nuts and squeeze, she’s done,
and I poured another tall one, and
I said, you 2 may not realize it
but we’re not going to get out of here alive.
we drank the rest of the night.
you could hear, if you were real still,
the water coming down between the god trees,
and the roads we had built
you could hear animals crossing them
and the Indians, savage fools with some savage cross to bear.
and finally there was the last look in the mirror
as the drunken lovers hugged
and I walked out and lifted a piece of straw
from the roof of the hut
then snapped the lighter, and I
watched the flames crawl, like hungry mice
up the thin brown stalks, it was slow but it was
and then I walked down toward the machine gun sounds,
the same river, and the moon looked across at me
and in the path I saw a small snake, just a small one,
looked like a rattler, but it couldn’t be a rattler,
and it was scared seeing me, and I grabbed it behind the neck
before it could coil and I held it then
its little body curled around my wrist
like a finger of love and all the trees looked with eyes
and I put my mouth to its mouth
and love was lightning and remembrance,
dead communists, dead fascists, dead democrats, dead gods and
back in what was left of the hut Jones
had his dead black arm around her dead blue waist.
Maja Thurup
It had gotten extensive press coverage and T.V. coverage and the lady was to write a book about it. The lady’s name was Hester Adams, twice divorced, two children. She was 35 and one guessed that it was her last fling. The wrinkles were appearing, the breasts had been sagging for some time, the ankles and calves were thickening, there were signs of a belly. America had been taught that beauty only resided in youth, especially in the female. But Hester Adams had the dark beauty of frustration and upcoming loss; it crawled all over her, the upcoming loss, and it gave her a sexual something, like a desperate and fading woman sitting in a bar full of men. Hester had looked around, seen few signs of help from the American male, and had gotten onto a plane for South America. She had entered the jungle with her camera, her portable typewriter, her thickening ankles and her white skin and had gotten herself a cannibal, a black cannibal: Maja Thurup. Maja Thurup had a good look to his face. His f
ace appeared to be written over with one thousand hangovers and one thousand tragedies. And it was true—he had had one thousand hangovers, but the tragedies all came from the same root: Maja Thurup was overhung, vastly overhung. No girl in the village would accept him. He had torn two girls to death with his instrument. One had been entered from the front, the other from the rear. No matter.
Maja was a lonely man and he drank and brooded over his loneliness until Hester Adams had come with guide and white skin and camera. After formal introductions and a few drinks by the fire, Hester had entered Maja’s hut and taken all Maja Thurup could muster and had asked for more. It was a miracle for both of them and they were married in a three-day tribal ceremony, during which captured enemy tribesmen were roasted and consumed amid dancing, incantation, and drunkenness. It was after the ceremony, after the hangovers had cleared away that trouble began. The medicine man, having noted that Hester did not partake of the flesh of the roasted enemy tribesmen (garnished with pineapple, olives, and nuts) announced to one and all that this was not a white goddess, but one of the daughters of the evil god Ritikan. (Centuries ago Ritikan had been expelled from the tribal heaven for his refusal to eat anything but vegetables, fruits, and nuts.) This announcement caused dissension in the tribe and two friends of Maja Thurup were promptly murdered for suggesting that Hester’s handling of Maja’s overhang was a miracle in itself and the fact that she didn’t ingest other forms of human meat could be forgiven—temporarily, at least.
Hester and Maja fled to America, to North Hollywood to be precise, where Hester began proceedings to have Maja Thurup become an American citizen. A former schoolteacher, Hester began instructing Maja in the use of clothing, the English language, California beer and wines, television, and foods purchased at the nearby Safeway market. Maja not only looked at television, he appeared on it along with Hester and they declared their love publicly. Then they went back to their North Hollywood apartment and made love. Afterwards Maja sat in the middle of the rug with his English grammar books, drinking beer and wine, and singing native chants and playing the bongo. Hester worked on her book about Maja and Hester. A major publisher was waiting. All Hester had to do was get it down.
One morning I was in bed about 8:00 a.m. The day before I had lost $40 at Santa Anita, my savings account at California Federal was getting dangerously low, and I hadn’t written a decent story in a month. The phone rang. I woke up, gagged, coughed, picked it up.
“Chinaski?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Dan Hudson.”
Dan ran the magazine Flare out of Chicago. He paid well. He was the editor and publisher.
“Hello, Dan, mother.”
“Look, I’ve got just the thing for you.”
“Sure, Dan. What is it?”
“I want you to interview this bitch who married the cannibal. Make the sex BIG. Mix love with horror, you know?”
“I know. I’ve been doing it all my life.”
“There’s $500 in it for you if you beat the March 27 deadline.”
“Dan, for $500, I can make Burt Reynolds into a lesbian.”
Dan gave me the address and phone number. I got up, threw water on my face, had two Alka-Seltzers, opened a bottle of beer and phoned Hester Adams. I told her that I wanted to publicize her relationship with Maja Thurup as one of the great love stories of the 20th century. For the readers of Flare magazine. I assured her that it would help Maja obtain his American citizenship. She agreed to an interview at 1:00 p.m.
It was a walk-up apartment on the third floor. She opened the door. Maja was sitting on the floor with his bongo drinking a fifth of medium priced port from the bottle. He was barefooted, dressed in tight jeans, and in a white t-shirt with black zebra-stripes. Hester was dressed in an identical outfit. She brought me a bottle of beer, I picked up a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and began the interview.
“You first met Maja when?”
Hester gave me a date. She also gave me the exact time and place.
“When did you first begin to have love feelings for Maja? What exactly were the circumstances which tripped them off?”
“Well,” said Hester, “it was …”
“She love me when I give her the thing,” said Maja from the rug.
“He has learned English quite quickly, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s brilliant.”
Maja picked up his bottle and drained off a good slug.
“I put this thing in her, she say, ‘Oh my god oh my god oh my god!’ Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
“Maja is marvelously built,” she said.
“She eat too,” said Maja, “she eat good. Deep throat, ha, ha, ha!”
“I loved Maja from the beginning,” said Hester, “it was his eyes, his face … so tragic. And the way he walked. He walks, well, he walks something like a tiger.”
“Fuck,” said Maja, “we fuck we fucky fuck fuck fuck. I am getting tired.”
Maja took another drink. He looked at me.
“You fuck her. I am tired. She big hungry tunnel.”
“Maja has a genuine sense of humor,” said Hester, “that’s another thing that has endeared him to me.”
“Only thing dear you to me,” said Maja, “is my telephone pole piss-shooter.”
“Maja has been drinking since this morning,” said Hester, “you’ll have to excuse him.”
“Perhaps I’d better come back when he’s feeling better.”
“I think you should.”
Hester gave me an appointment at 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon the next day.
It was just as well. I needed photographs. I knew a down-and-out photographer, one Sam Jacoby, who was good and would do the work cheap. I took him back there with me. It was a sunny afternoon with only a thin layer of smog. We walked up and I rang. There was no answer. I rang again. Maja answered the door.
“Hester not in,” he said, “she gone to grocery store.”
“We had an appointment for two o’clock. I’d like to come in and wait.”
We walked in and sat down.
“I play drums for you,” said Maja.
He played the drums and sang some jungle chants. He was quite good. He was working on another bottle of port wine. He was still in his zebra-striped t-shirt and jeans.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” he said, “that’s all she want. She make me mad.”
“You miss the jungle, Maja?”
“You just ain’t just shittin’ upstream, daddy.”
“But she loves you, Maja.”
“Ha, ha, ha!”
Maja played us another drum solo. Even drunk he was good.
When Maja finished Sam said to me, “You think she might have a beer in the refrigerator?”
“She might.”
“My nerves are bad. I need a beer.”
“Go ahead. Get two. I’ll buy her some more. I should have brought some.”
Sam got up and walked into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door open.
“I’m writing an article about you and Hester,” I said to Maja.
“Big-hole woman. Never fill. Like volcano.”
I heard Sam vomiting in the kitchen. He was a heavy drinker. I knew he was hungover. But he was still one of the best photographers around. Then it was quiet. Sam came walking out. He sat down. He didn’t have a beer with him.
“I play drums again,” said Maja. He played the drums again. He was still good. Though not as good as the preceding time. The wine was getting to him.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sam said to me.
“I have to wait for Hester,” I said.
“Man, let’s go,” said Sam.
“You guys want some wine?” asked Maja.
I got up and walked into the kitchen for a beer. Sam followed me. I moved toward the refrigerator.
“Please don’t open that door!” he said.
Sam walked over to the sink and vomited again. I looked at the refrigerator door. I didn’t open it. When Sam finished, I
said, “O.k., let’s go.”
We walked into the front room where Maja still sat by his bongo.
“I play drum once more,” he said.
“No, thanks, Maja.”
We walked out and down the stairway and out to the street. We got into my car. I drove off. I didn’t know what to say. Sam didn’t say anything. We were in the business district. I drove into a gas station and told the attendant to fill it up with regular. Sam got out of the car and walked to the telephone booth to call the police. I saw Sam come out of the phone booth. I paid for the gas. I hadn’t gotten my interview. I was out $500. I waited as Sam walked toward the car.
—SOUTH OF NO NORTH
the trash men
here they come
these guys
grey truck
radio playing
they are in a hurry
it’s quite exciting:
shirt open
bellies hanging out
they run out the trash bins
roll them out to the fork lift
and then the truck grinds it upward
with far too much sound …
they had to fill out application forms
to get these jobs
they are paying for homes and
drive late model cars
they get drunk on Saturday night
now in the Los Angeles sunshine
they run back and forth with their trash bins
all that trash goes somewhere
and they shout to each other
then they are all up in the truck
driving west toward the sea
none of them know
that I am alive
REX DISPOSAL CO.
the strangest sight you ever did see—
I had this room in front on DeLongpre
and I used to sit for hours
in the daytime
looking out the front
window.
there were any number of girls who would
walk by
swaying;
it helped my afternoons,
added something to the beer and the
cigarettes.
one day I saw something
extra.
I heard the sound of it first.