The Colt 45 Chronicle #69

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.

The Colt 45 Chronicle #15

I feel sorry for the friends to whom I wrote these letters. They're beery, vain, bombastic, and -- at times -- acridly sentimental. But these letters performed a function. In addition to facilitating an understanding of and assimilation to the megalopolis, they allowed me to let go of my attachment to the university. So bear with me as I work through this collection of old epistles written when I arrived in New York City in the late 1980's and retrieved from storage during halftime of the Seahawks playoff loss to the Falcons in January. I'm working up to a separation from my wife, spring of 1990, when I made an initial foray to the Emerald City. I returned to the Big Apple the autumn of 1990 to try to salvage the marriage. I chronicle this attempt, and the turbulent times that followed, in a spontaneous prose document entitled Shit Stinks. I hope to post it here eventually.

The missive below is number 15, and it's painful for me to read. The bluster, the braggadocio -- but it's who I was. Arrogance and drunken violence are common to a lot of young men.

The house party that ended up as an orgy that I briefly mention below was grist for the chatter mill for at least a couple weeks afterwards; I was always glad and proud that I ended up going to a show and getting in a fight instead. I muse about how odd it was that there were so many frat boys at the show that night. But it makes sense. Frat boys religiously watched MTV, and Camper Van Beethoven was at this point -- 1987 or 1988, I can't remember which -- an attraction on the music channel.

Autumn 1988

That was a great letter you wrote, and I really appreciate it. And I wrote down on a little pad that I have at work that lists the things that I have to do that I should write you. Well, that was when I was sober, and now I am well on my way to being drunk. I actually haven't been saucing much this past month; this is my first evening of beer drinking and cigar smoking (while Ashley is gone) in a long time. But when I drink all I have is my memory. If I were sober I could tell you about our Thanksgiving trip to Boston where we saw Maura and Phil just back from their travels, and where we stayed with Ashley's cousin Sarah. It was nothing really. So I won't bother. I told a story today in the office, one of the first about my past, about that period in my life when Ashley moved out. I was in the office and a woman said to me that I looked like Andrew McCarthy; subsequently, I shot back to the time when I was virile and the dudes flocked around like lepers, a time when I thought whiskey and a dime bag would make my reading of the philosophers somehow new, like every cloistered milquetoast to tread college ground. I told my coworker that there was a time when whatever party or bar I went to the young ladies would giggle up to me and ask me if I knew who I looked like. I told my coworker that if I thought they were good looking I'd play dumb. (So I guess, in hindsight, I didn't think my coworker was so good looking.) On and on I went, like good old grandpa geezer spitting at the fireside in cold weather. But it felt good. I had a past; I had a life once that wasn't what I was doing now ........ I remember one night, at the Starry Plough in fact, when we saw Bullshit Van Beethoven. Earlier on, we had had a party at Eric's house, a margarita and sweet drinks party; a lot of people were getting fucked up. As I was told the next day, there was even group sex upstairs; a real honest-to-goodness menage au quatre. Collegetown, USA. Yee-hah! Mark was there. Later on, around 11, we cruised down to Shattuck in Mark's VW bug€, a little red bitch with a 1600 cc engine. We met a bunch of other people there; we got more beers, pitchers, and got, kept getting, drunk. At a certain point a girl with blond hair came up and asked me if I knew who I looked like. She must have had a fake ID; an unfortunate Berkeley High frat sacrifice. (Oddly enough, there were quite a few conservative types there that night; in fact, I duked it out with some terminally fucking stupid sweattopped Nazi. Hey, there's a pattern here; remember that night we went to the Starry Plough and there was that asshole who was stoned?) So I threw blond back in, like Pope John Paul 5000. Mark sat on bar stool hooching beer and making fun of me, but more making fun of her. He had heard it many times before. He could soar right into this high-pitched squeal/taunt/parody that made everything you were doing seem like black-and-white TV. She got scared off pretty quick. When she left, Paola, macho speed-freak nice fight-happy cool dude from San Diego, said, "You don't look like Andrew McCarthy. Yeah, okay, maybe when you smile, but only when you smile; that's it. You don't look like Andrew McCarthy." Paola's girlfriend kicked in, "Yes he does. I think you look like Andrew McCarthy. -- No, I can see it." We had a debate on our hands. You see, Paola might have been a little jealous. Paola looked just like Chris Isaac and was used to being showered with the attention due to this distinction. And this was the second time that we had been out together where I'd got the Andrew McCarthy and he hadn't got the Chris Isaac; so, understandably, he was kind of sore. I was a lookalike to a tertiary Hollywood teen-throb, plain and simple. And tonight, Paola would have to play second fiddle, and that rubbed him the wrong way. But the night went on, and we got more beer and more drunk, and Paola picked a poor fight with a fat loser who spent half his time backtracking before Paola threw a shot at his head (which I never saw). By that time, Mark and I were dancing to Camper Van Santa Cruz, drunk, shooting up to the ceiling, and people were getting upset because the place was so overpacked. But we kept going, clearing a humble and conscientious path for ourselves (because, believe me, there was no hope for a pit); and then this short, stocky frat asshole snapped and started choking Mark. Mark, his throat encircled by hands, looked as if all hell was breaking loose; and he tried to calm the guy down. The guy backed off, and we went on dancing. I was saying to myself, "If  I were Mark, I would have killed the guy." So we went on and kept dancing and minding our own business. After a while, a whole bunch of people started pogoing and dancing and moving; and for some totally odd reason this guy snapped again and picked me out for violence. He threw a punch. Hit me in the lower lip. And that was it for me. I had been working construction all summer, and I knew I was better off than any weightroom frat boy. -- I grabbed a tuft of his hair on the left side of his head and proceeded to blast two solid shots to his temple on the opposite side; I was screaming that I was going to kill him, when the bullshit crowd separated us, and he disappeared for what seemed to be an eternity. Finally, he snailed his way out of  nowhere to the lip of the stage. I saw him from the back and did the the most malevolent and macho thing I've ever done. I went up to him from behind, squeezed his pudge roll, and asked him what his fucking problem was. He told me to leave him the fuck alone.