The holiday weekend draws to a close. It was a good one: quiet, relaxing and modestly productive in that I was able to clean out a closet for the landlord so that he can enter the studio tomorrow or the next day and access a connection to the kitchen drain in the apartment next door. I have enjoyed listening to Stereolab all day. If you have never taken the time to listen to the group, their music is superb. A number of full-length recordings are available on YouTube. Such as Dots and Loops (1997). All Stereolab records are high quality, and Dots and Loops is no exception.
The letter below, written to my college buddies Mark and Niall, who lived across the street from the Panhandle in Haight-Ashbury, is an homage to buddy love. I had spent the end of December and most of January with them while I worked a construction job in the East Bay in order to get the money together for a plane ticket back to New York City and the wife.
The letter covers two topics. The first paragraph describes a moment of voyeurism when I briefly see Mark's gorgeous blond girlfriend, disrobed but towel-covered, scooting into the bathroom for a morning shower. I accurately predict a future for myself where I am "much more alone" (though I hasten to add that I am never lonely, because of the exigencies of employment, and I rarely, thank goodness, occupy myself with carnal fantasies).
In the second and final paragraph I impart the secret wisdom of the martial artist. To quote Bukowski's motto, "Don't try." In my twenties I was a street fighter. During my stay in San Francisco that January, Niall and I got into a brawl with two Latino guys on Haight Street. It was late. They were driving in their car. They said something; we said something back. And the next thing we knew the fists were flying. We ended up running them off, not because of any superior prowess, but because we were bigger. What I remember about that fight is that the guy I was locked in combat with, realizing that he was getting beat, sort of snapped and started clawing at my eyes with his fingers. I recall my eyeball being scooped and then thankfully sliding free of one of his claws. The next day I had scratches all around my eyes. Anyhow, this is the incident that I have in mind when I say, "I want to talk about the stupidity of it all . . . ."
Winter 1989
Just a short note of deep thanks to the BOYS ON OAK STREET. Man, I miss you two. Like blood brothers we are: I can sleep with one and swipe the underwear of the other, and that's as damn near close to a spiritual paradise as I think I've ever been. Whether it was $2 burrito, Coors, a shit dropped in your green crapper, I was there, I was home, hand in glove and all the rest . . . catching a glint of Gail wrapped in a white towel, Saturday morning, skimming down the hall and into the bathroom, over home plate and into the catcher's mitt; bit I knew she was no spitter; no way, too clean, straight fastball, no funny rotation. She looked a lot like the Virgin Mother, but of the U.S.A. 80s; you know, Michelob, television on TV, beautiful, perfect, sex organs never ever belching Joseph's fish sauce. And I stood there, protected by some angle of some doorway (I think the kitchen's), soaking it in for the millisecond that it lasted, imaging myself older and much more alone, licking greasy fingers and slicing bloated lips on long sharp nails. It was silent and oh so good.
But I want to say something about fighting and all that shit. I want to talk about the stupidity of it all, and this in face of the fact that it does seem to be valorized when I'm around, and this largely due to my efforts. It's what Bukowski himself calls the "Bukowski myth." It's bullshit, and it's a comedy, a big fucking macho idiot belly laugh. I remember when I first cracked the shell on the big mystery. I was down on the street in the East Village, a fist of some big fucker pummeling the back of my head and neck. And then all of sudden everything got real quiet, in my brain that is, and the wet concrete, from which I was trying to push myself up, became as soft as a set of freshly washed flannel sheets. I had a big smile on my face. Shit, I thought, what a joke. I might as well be making a cup of coffee, cleaning the cat box, writing a letter, etc. And that was the key, very mundane, to victory.
