insults
living through skirmishes
with those not cool enough to
abide
we left
still fresh
we climbed into our old
automobiles to
go to our places
to drink half the night
to fight with our women
to return the next morning
to punch in
…
those filthy peeling walls
the sound of drills and
cutting blades
the sparks
we were some gang
in that death ballet
we were magnificent
we gave them
better than they asked
yet
we gave them
nothing.
When there was money, he didn’t work at all but hit the bars with Jane. Many of his best stories and poems are based on the adventures they had, including the richly comic poem, ‘fire station’, which he dedicated to her. It describes a day when the narrator and his girl wander into a fire station. She starts flirting with the firemen, and he settles down to play blackjack. The firemen slip upstairs to take turns having sex with the girl, and the boyfriend takes $5 from each man when they come back down. Then the alarm goes off.
she stood there waving goodbye to the
firemen but they didn’t seem
much interested
any more.
‘let’s go back to the
bar,’ I told
her.
‘ooh, you got
money?’
‘I found some I didn’t know I
had …’
The inference in this poem, and other pieces he wrote, is that Jane was a woman of such loose morality she was virtually a prostitute. Whether this was the case or not, the relationship left Bukowski with a very poor opinion of women. He often called his girlfriends ‘whores’ or ‘bitches’ and described sex in brutal language, frequently using ‘rape’ as a synonym for intercourse. Linda King believes he expected all his girlfriends to behave as Jane had. ‘It sounded like she was an absolute sleep-around what-ever,’ she says. ‘She was an alcoholic and she went out and fucked whoever would give her some booze. If he didn’t get home, his woman would be gone. He talked about her a lot.’
Bukowski first worked for the post office as a temporary mail carrier for two weeks over Christmas, 1950. As he would later write in his novel, Post Office , it began as a mistake when the drunk up the hill told him they would take just about anybody.Fifteen months later he was taken on as a full-time carrier at $1.61 an hour and he held this job for the next three years.
When he got back to the court on South Coronado Street, where he and Jane were living, she was often gone, the bed unmade and dirty dishes in the sink. Sometimes he found her in one of the bars on Alvarado Street, sitting with a man who had been buying her drinks. Maybe she went out back with him, too. When he couldn’t find her, he drank on his own, imagining her in bed with some sailor or salesman she was calling ‘daddy’.
Sometimes he invited the barflies back to his room to drink and keep him company, and one night he awoke to find a body in bed with him. He decided to take the opportunity to fulfill a long-held fantasy of having anal sex. ‘You know, I thought I screwed a woman in the ass one night, and I screwed a man in the ass,’ he said years later. ‘It was a friend of mine staying there, and I thought it was a girl called Mystery and, uh, you know, I was kinda drunk, laying there, and I tried a few motions, and I thought, “Well, she doesn’t seem to mind,” you know. I gave her a little more (I don’t have too much, you know), and pretty soon I gave her it all, and I heard … uh … I looked at the back of the head, and this was my friend, B––! I said, “God Almighty!” I drew that thing out.’
He had been drinking hard for more than ten years, cheap wine, green beer, whiskey when he could get it, not always eating well and smoking heavily. He was still a young man, but he had never been particularly healthy and in the spring of 1955 he paid the price for this dissolute life. He was at work at the post office when he began to feel ill, and
living through skirmishes
with those not cool enough to
abide
we left
still fresh
we climbed into our old
automobiles to
go to our places
to drink half the night
to fight with our women
to return the next morning
to punch in
…
those filthy peeling walls
the sound of drills and
cutting blades
the sparks
we were some gang
in that death ballet
we were magnificent
we gave them
better than they asked
yet
we gave them
nothing.
When there was money, he didn’t work at all but hit the bars with Jane. Many of his best stories and poems are based on the adventures they had, including the richly comic poem, ‘fire station’, which he dedicated to her. It describes a day when the narrator and his girl wander into a fire station. She starts flirting with the firemen, and he settles down to play blackjack. The firemen slip upstairs to take turns having sex with the girl, and the boyfriend takes $5 from each man when they come back down. Then the alarm goes off.
she stood there waving goodbye to the
firemen but they didn’t seem
much interested
any more.
‘let’s go back to the
bar,’ I told
her.
‘ooh, you got
money?’
‘I found some I didn’t know I
had …’
The inference in this poem, and other pieces he wrote, is that Jane was a woman of such loose morality she was virtually a prostitute. Whether this was the case or not, the relationship left Bukowski with a very poor opinion of women. He often called his girlfriends ‘whores’ or ‘bitches’ and described sex in brutal language, frequently using ‘rape’ as a synonym for intercourse. Linda King believes he expected all his girlfriends to behave as Jane had. ‘It sounded like she was an absolute sleep-around what-ever,’ she says. ‘She was an alcoholic and she went out and fucked whoever would give her some booze. If he didn’t get home, his woman would be gone. He talked about her a lot.’
Bukowski first worked for the post office as a temporary mail carrier for two weeks over Christmas, 1950. As he would later write in his novel, Post Office , it began as a mistake when the drunk up the hill told him they would take just about anybody.Fifteen months later he was taken on as a full-time carrier at $1.61 an hour and he held this job for the next three years.
When he got back to the court on South Coronado Street, where he and Jane were living, she was often gone, the bed unmade and dirty dishes in the sink. Sometimes he found her in one of the bars on Alvarado Street, sitting with a man who had been buying her drinks. Maybe she went out back with him, too. When he couldn’t find her, he drank on his own, imagining her in bed with some sailor or salesman she was calling ‘daddy’.
Sometimes he invited the barflies back to his room to drink and keep him company, and one night he awoke to find a body in bed with him. He decided to take the opportunity to fulfill a long-held fantasy of having anal sex. ‘You know, I thought I screwed a woman in the ass one night, and I screwed a man in the ass,’ he said years later. ‘It was a friend of mine staying there, and I thought it was a girl called Mystery and, uh, you know, I was kinda drunk, laying there, and I tried a few motions, and I thought, “Well, she doesn’t seem to mind,” you know. I gave her a little more (I don’t have too much, you know), and pretty soon I gave her it all, and I heard … uh … I looked at the back of the head, and this was my friend, B––! I said, “God Almighty!” I drew that thing out.’
He had been drinking hard for more than ten years, cheap wine, green beer, whiskey when he could get it, not always eating well and smoking heavily. He was still a young man, but he had never been particularly healthy and in the spring of 1955 he paid the price for this dissolute life. He was at work at the post office when he began to feel ill, and
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