More Notes of a Dirty Old Man Read Online Free PDF

afternoon and into the night. Everything looked better at night because you couldn’t see it as well. That’s why it’s best to screw in the dark if you can’t go grade A. The less you can see of a human being, for screwing or even for looking, the more you can forgive.
    Anyway, by the time I made New Orleans this second time I was further drunk and further flung apart than ever before. Poet? What the hell was that? I didn’t play freak games.
    The great editor and his wife were there to meet me.
    “Hello, Buke,” the great editor said with a tiny smile. He was the kool one.
    “What do they call you?” people would ask me.
    “Buke to rhyme with Puke,” I always told the people. This satisfied them.
    We got into a cab and they took me to my chosen room. Their own place was stacked high with pages of Bukowski poems, page one, 3500 high, standing there. Page two, 3500 high standing there. Pages in the bathtub, in trunks, pages everywhere. You couldn’t shit for pages. They even put the bed on stilts high up in the air. Bukowski under the bed. Bukowski in the shitter. Bukowski in the kitchen.
    “Bukowski, Bukowski, Bukowski, Bukowski EVER-WHERE! Sometimes I think I’ll go mad! I can’t stand it!”
    He was the kool one. She was Italiano —the fire. I loved her. Everybody did. No bullshit about her.
    “But we love you, Bukowski.”
    “Thank you, Louise.”
    “Even though you are a bastard most of the time.”
    “I know. But sincerely, I don’t try to be.”
    “You don’t have to try, Buke,” said the old man.
    I made them stop for a pint somewhere. I hadn’t eaten in a couple of days but I wasn’t hungry. We got to the room, Louise paid the cabbie and we went on in.
    Now, me, I’m crazy. I like solitude. I’ve never been lonely. There is something wrong with me. I have never been lonely. So when I saw this place, I saw it wasn’t for me, because look, the whole place ran long, front to back. I mean you came in through the shuttered doors, and here was the front room and you just walked straight on down through to the rooms. It was like one long hall, kitchen in the back, get it, only the shitter was a little off to the side but everything was lined-up like a long snake and you had to pass through one room to get to another, no doors. Shit, for a monk of solitude it shook me—I mean, I’ll take a whore for a one-night stand but who wants the whole world forever?
    So, we all went in back, to the kitchen, and here was my landlady. They had arranged it. Nice clean place. Sure, and she was fat, very fat, my landlady was very fat in a big pink and white housegown and we all sat at the table and I opened the pint and the landlady got out some beers.
    “This is Charles Bukowski, the great poet,” said the great editor.
    “This is Shirley.”
    “Poor and savage,” I said, “pleased ta.”
    “Pleased ta,” said big sad fat Shirley. Lonely.
    (Oh, god have mercy upon my spare and worn parts.)
    Well, the beer got around and I didn’t let anybody touch my pint. I was worried about my solitude. I guess Shirley had gotten up early. Maybe worried about meeting Charles Bukowski. They had probably given her a bit of a line, not a line to them. The old man had once told me, “you’ve ruined me for all other poets. You lay it down so hard, like a railroad track straight through hell.”
    Well, I wasn’t that good, but he got the message.
    So, Shirley was drooping with me. Shirley in her big fat housegown, and me, a bum, playing the role of Charles Bukowski. The world is full of literary-hustlers and the less talent they have the more they hustle; me, I didn’t have to hustle very much. I didn’t have to hustle very hard. But there was Shirley. And when people figure they are around a writer, especially a poet, they just have to open their soul-pores. Shirley opened up.
    Well, really, tho, it’s nice talking in kitchens, esp. if you have a lot to drink. Kitchens are where you can really talk. It’s harder