The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way. Charles Bukowski
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you.”
The man, somebody named Eddie, had told me on the phone that I was to be considered as a narrator for a stag film. Since I made my living by the typewriter—a literary hustler—I was always in the mood for various considerations—anything but the eight-hour day and good honest labor. I was hungover (a more or less normal state) and I followed the numbers down. It was a long wooden porch, rotting, with offices or studios every 10 or 12 feet. Everything had been painted a chickencoop white—a long time ago. Since it was very hot, the doors were open and I could hear conversations:
“Now, look, Max, we’ve got to cut this thing down. There’s too much overlap. Now take the central part. . . .”
At the next door:
“Well, hell, I don’t know what to do. Do you think we can get away with it?”
Film hustlers, hanging to a shoestring, trying to break through.
I found 172. The door was open. I walked in. There was a desk. On the desk I saw my paperback book of short stories, Notes of A Dirty Old Man. I was known. Fine. But that paperback had had one printing of 26,000 copies for which I had gotten a grand in front and the grand was long ago gone. A man had to keep writing and hustling right to the edge of the grave. It was a dirty game.
I whistled. Then hollered. “HEY, HEY, ANYBODY HERE? HELLO, HELLO!”
“In here,” came the sound.
I walked into the other room. There was a pleasant and calm-looking young man behind a typewriter.
“Bukowski?”
“Yeh.”
“Sit down.”
“Where’s the beer?” I asked.
“Beer?”
“The other guy, Eddie, said there’d be beer.”
“Eddie!”
Eddie walked in. He was young too, dark-haired, the stuff hanging down, and a bit of a beard. He walked very stooped with his hands dangling in front.
“Bukowski,” he said, “remember me?”
“Not from recent times.”
“You were drunk. It was at this party.”
“Okay, where’s the beer?”
Eddie walked out and came back with a six-pack. He put it in front of me. I went to work.
The other guy explained to me what they wanted to do with the stag film. What the idea was, what the narrator was to do. It sounded like hard work. But so did standing around on skid row sound like hard work. I got around to the second beer. The sound would be dubbed in after the shooting of the film.
“We want to audition you. Turn on the tape, Eddie.”
Eddie turned on the tape. Then he handed me an ad from one of the large weekly magazines. About how easy it was to make it by air and do the thing. Skiing on Mt. Zebralla is $337. Watching Elizabeth Taylor dip into the Spanish Castle River is $443. On and on. I had seen the type of ad before. They were written by subnormal boys who had flunked out of Harvard Law School and whose fathers owned ad agencies. I tried to read it, but I couldn’t read it straight. The clever-flip slant was all too dull. I changed prices, names, words, cities as I went along. I cussed and laughed, gagged. They laughed too. But I knew I had flunked their audition.
“You need an actor,” I said, “somebody without imagination, somebody with a healthy stomach.”
“Wait now, the directors will want to hear this. We don’t know.”
“The directors?”
“Yes, we just write the script, shoot the film. We work for them.”
“All right,” I said.
“How about a walk-on part?”
“Wait a minute, let’s go easy. I have a literary reputation.”
Then they both laughed.
Just then two girls walked in with a guy with a beret on. The girls were laughing all the time.
“Come on,” said Eddie, “we’re going to shoot.”
The girls looked good but they kept laughing. The guy with the beret didn’t laugh at all.
We went into the other room, and they turned on the equipment. Eddie, myself, and the guy who wasn’t Eddie sat behind the camera. Eddie worked the camera.
It opened with the guy in the beret wearing a smock and painting on canvas. There seemed to be much film wasted of just him painting. While he painted he sucked from a wine bottle. Then he stopped painting and just sat in a chair drinking from the wine bottle. Soon it was empty and he passed out.
The door opened and two girls ran in laughing. One of them looked at the empty wine bottle and laughed. Then the other reached down and pulled out the guy’s penis and stroked it. The other girl began painting the penis on canvas. It was a large penis, on canvas and off. Then the painter awakened. He ran to the canvas and looked at it and seemed very angry. I couldn’t understand why. Soon the girls were taking their clothes off (still laughing) and the painter was taking his clothes off too.
It’s really silly, I thought.
Then they ran around assuming various positions, holding them for a while, then breaking off and assuming other positions. I was surprised how many positions one man and two women could assume. Some of them were simply ridiculous, and some of them were accidental, and some of them did have a bit of charm. Very much charm. How they went on! It must have gone on for 25 minutes. What a man he was. Suddenly the girls grabbed up their clothing and, still laughing, ran from the room. He leaped up, and as they ran off, gave himself a few last good strokes. Then it was over.
We walked into the other room. The girls came out, still laughing, only now they were dressed in their regular street clothes, minis and tight sweaters.
I got up and walked across to the one in the blue mini. I put my hand on her knee. The nylon was tight and hot. She kept laughing. I ran my hand up her leg. She laughed some more. I began to really heat up. I put my other hand on her other leg. I had both hands up near her ass, breathing heavily. Not my hands, me. She kept laughing. Suddenly she stopped laughing. She pushed me off.
“Hey, what’s wrong with this guy? Is he a cube?”
Perhaps. . . .
The paper was thin. There seemed to be some writing on the back. I turned the paper over.
It said: $150.
I ripped the paper up, threw the bits on the grass, and got into my car, started it and began to drive toward my place.
I stopped at a signal at Melrose and Western.
Then I laughed.
Candid Press, December 13, 1970
More Notes of a Dirty Old Man
I swung three deep out of Vacantsville, like busting out of a herd of cow, and next thing I knew we had set down, the bird burst its stupid stewardesses, and I was the last man out, to meet a teacher-student in a shag of yellow and he said, you, Bukowski, and there was something about his car needing oil all along the way, 200 miles plus, and then I was standing in front of the students, drunk, and they all sat at little round tables, and I thought, shit, this is like any place else, and I hooked from the bottle and began on the poems, and I told them that I had death coming and that they had death coming but they didn’t quite believe me, and I drank some more and I read them poems from way back and poems from recent and then I made one up, and it was dark in there, and I thought, this is lousy, I am reading at a university and I am getting away with everything, not because I am good but because nobody else is and there isn’t anybody to correct me: wish Ezra were here or Confucius or somebody anybody to keep me in line—but there wasn’t, so I