The Most Beautiful Woman in Town by Charles Bukowski Page A

elevator was right by the landlady’s door and she was always fucking with the elevator, shining the brass, or just plain-ass snooping.
    it was 6 floors up and when I got there I heard laughing from my room. that bitch Linda hadn’t waited too long to get started. well, I’d whip her ass and his too. I opened the door.
    it was Linda and Jeanie and Eve. “Sweetie!” said Linda. she came up to me. she was all dressed in highheels. she gave me a lot of tongue when she kissed. “Jeanie just got her first unemployment check and Eve is on the dole! we’re celebrating!”
    there was plenty of port wine. I went in and took a bath and them came out in my shorts. I always like to show off my legs. I had the biggest most powerful legs I had ever seen on any man. the rest of me wasn’t too much. I sat in my torn shorts and put my legs up on the coffee table.
    â€œshit! look at those legs!” said Jeanie.
    â€œyeah, yeah,” said Eve.
    Linda smiled. I was poured a wine.
    you know how such things go. we drank and talked, talked and drank. the girls went out for more bottles. more talk. the clock went round and round. soon it was dark. I was drinking alone, still in my torn shorts. Jeanie had gone to the bedroom and passed out in the bed. Eve had passed out on the couch and Linda had passed out on a smaller leather couch in the hall that led to the bathroom. I still couldn’t understand that Mexican closing those tailgates on me. I was unhappy.
    I went into the bedroom and got into bed with Jeanie. she was a large woman, and naked. I began kissing on her breasts, sucking at them. “hey, what you doing?”
    â€œdoin? I’m going to fuck you!”
    I put my finger into her cunt and moved it back and forth. “I’m going to fuck you!”
    â€œno! Linda would kill me!”
    â€œshe’ll never know!”
    I mounted and then very SLOWLY SLOWLY QUIETLY so the springs would not rattle, so there would not be a sound, I slid it in and out in and out EVER SO SLOWLY and when I came I thought I would never stop. it was one of the best fucks of my life, as I wiped off on the sheets the thought occurred to me — it could be that Man has been fucking improperly for centuries.
    then I went, sat down in the dark, drank some more. I don’t remember how long I sat there. I drank quite a bit. then I went over to Eve. Eve of the dole. she was a fat thing, a little wrinkled, but had very sexy lips, obscene sexy ugly lips. I began kissing that terrible and beautiful mouth. she didn’t protest at all. she opened her legs and I entered. she was a little female pig, farting and grunting and sniffling, wiggling. when I came it wasn’t like with Jeanie — long and trembling — it was just splot splot and then over. I got off. and before I could get back to my chair I could hear her snoring again. amazing — she fucked like she breathed — nothing to it. each woman fucked just a bit differently, and that’s what kept a man going, that’s what kept a man trapped.
    I sat and drank some more thinking of what that dirty son of a bitch in control of the tailgate had done to me. it didn’t pay to be polite. then I began to think about the dole. could an unmarried man and woman get on the dole? of course not. they were supposed to starve to death. and love was a kind of dirty word. but that was something of what it was between Linda and I — love. that’s why we starved together, drank together, lived together. what did marriage mean? marriage meant a sanctified FUCK and a sanctified FUCK always and finally, without fail, got BORING, got to be a JOB. but that’s what the world wanted: some poor son of a bitch, trapped and unhappy, with a job to do. well, shit, I’d move down to skidrow and move Linda in with Big Eddie. Big Eddie was an idiot but at least he’d buy her some clothes and put some steaks in her belly which was more than I