Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski Page B

down at me. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “in the audience tonight we have the poet Henry Chinaski.”
    Little hisses were heard. They knew me. “Sexist pig!” “Drunk!” “Motherfucker!” I took another drink. “Please continue, Victor,” I said. He did.
     
    “…conditioned under the hump of valor
    the ersatz imminent piddling rectangle is
    no more than a gene in Genoa
    a quadruplet Quetzalcoatal
    and the Chink cries bittersweet and barbaric
    into her muff!”
     
    “It’s beautiful,” said Vicki, “but what’s he talking about?”
    “He’s talking about eating pussy.”
    “I thought so. He’s a beautiful man.”
    “I hope he eats pussy better than he writes.”
     
    “grief, christ, my grief,
    that scum grief,
    stars and stripes of grief,
    waterfalls of grief
    tides of grief,
    grief at discount
    everywhere…”
     
    “‘That scum grief,’” I said, “I like that.”
    “He’s stopped talking about eating pussy?”
    “Yes, now he says he doesn’t feel good.”
     
    “…a Baker’s dozen, a cousin’s cousin,
    let in the streptomycin
    and, propitious, gorge my
    gonfalon.
    I dream the carnival plasma
    across frantic leather…”
     
    “Now what’s he saying?” asked Vicki.
    “He’s saying he’s getting ready to eat pussy again.”
    “Again?”
    Victor read some more and I drank some more. Then he called a ten minute intermission and the audience went up and gathered around the podium. Vicki went up too. It was hot in there and I walked out into the street to cool off. There was a bar a half block away. I got a beer. It wasn’t too crowded. There was a basketball game on tv. I watched the game. Of course, I didn’t care who won. My only thought was, my god, how they run up and down, up and down. I’ll bet their jockstraps are soaking wet, I’ll bet their assholes smell something awful. I had another beer and then walked back to the poetry hole. Valoff was already back on. I could hear him half a block down the street:
     
    “Choke, Columbia, and the dead horses of
    my soul
    greet me at the gates
    greet me sleeping, Historians
    see this tenderest Past
    leapt over with
    geisha dreams, drilled dead with
    importunity!”
     
    I found my seat next to Vicki. “What’s he saying now?” she asked me.
    “He’s really not saying very much. Basically what he’s saying is that he can’t sleep nights. He ought to find a job.”
    “He’s saying he ought to find a job?”
    “No, I’m saying that.”
     
    “…the lemming and the falling star are
    brothers, the contest of the lake
    is the El Dorado of my
    heart. come take my head, come take my
    eyes, larrup me with larkspur…”
     
    “Now what’s he saying?”
    “He’s saying he needs a big fat woman to kick the shit out of him.”
    “Don’t be funny. Does he really say that?”
    “We both say that.”
     
    “…I could eat the emptiness,
    I could fire cartridges of love into the dark
    I could beg India for your recessive
    mulch…”
     
    Well, Victor went on and on, and on. One sane person got up and walked out. The remainder of us stayed.
     
    “…I say, drag the dead gods through the
    crabgrass!
    I say the palm is lucrative
    I say, look, look, look
    around us:
    all love is ours
    all life is ours
    the sun is our dog at the end of a leash
    there is nothing that can defeat us!
    fuck the salmon!
    we need only reach,
    we need only drag ourselves out of
    obvious graves,
    the earth, the dirt,
    the plaid hope of looming grafts to our very
    senses. We have nothing to take and nothing to
    give, we need only to
    begin, begin, begin…!”
     
    “Thank you very much,” said Victor Valoff, “for being here.”
    The applause was very loud. They always applauded. Victor was immense in his glory. He lifted his same bottle of beer. He even managed to blush. Then he grinned, a very human grin. The ladies loved it. I took a last hit on my bottle of whiskey.
    They were up around Victor. He was giving his autograph and answering