I had been feeling beat, unable to write, wondering if it was the end— thinking there was nothin left.
So, I downloaded a few Ebooks from PDF Drive for inspiration— Thompson’s, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Collected Stories of Raymond Carver, and Factotum by Bukowski.
I began with Factotum, noticing Bukowski's detailed character descriptions, thinking, maybe I need to work on that.
I got the feeling Factotum was an early book and Buk left the Mark Twain shit behind later. Buk, overdoing it like Twain—
I worked with a little fat man with an unhealthy paunch. He had an old-fashioned pocket watch on a cold chain and wore a vest, a green sunshade, had thick lips, and a meaty dark look to his face. The lines in his face had no interest of character, his face looked like it had been folded a few times and then smoothed, like a piece of cardboard. He wore square shoes and chewed tobacco, squirting the juice into a spittoon at his feet.
Bukowski’s mumbo jumbo about the guy left me blank, all I got from it was the guy was fat.
I look at Carver’s book. He doesn’t mention his character's appearances— the color of their hair, what they’re wearing, if they're fat, thin, pretty, or rat ugly.
At one point he says of his wife—
I noticed white lint clinging to the back of her sweater.
This gave me the feeling she was a mannequin.
Carver displays his characters through their, actions, interactions, and dialogue. His characters are domestic, drink a lot, and rarely leave their neighborhood except to go to work.
Hunter S. Thompson is the unsullied opposite of Raymond Carver. When you read Hunter you get the feeling he’s writing flow of consciousness on LSD, traveling through the cosmos. But, he’s a master of his craft who has— in the words of Pablo Picasso,
Learned the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.
I was ten at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, puzzled and clueless.
In our den, we had a Sears Toshiba console TV. In the sixties people thought things made in Japan were cheap— they all had RCAs and Motorolas, but our Toshiba was the best TV on the block.
I think my parents were as dumbfucked about the Cuban Missile Crisis as I was. Of course, they were more aware of the ins and outs, but watching TV for hours dulled their senses— filling their heads with cotton candy, causing world events to look surreal.
The origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis lies in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, during which US-supported Cuban exiles hoping to ferment an uprising against Castro were overpowered by the Cuban armed forces. Who were tipped off about the invasion beforehand and were waiting for the hapless exile invaders.
After the invasion, Fidel persuaded Khrushchev to give him nuclear missiles to safeguard the Cuban Revolution against US aggression.
Once the nukes were in place on Cuban soil, the shit hit the fan. And, Che Guevara attempted to coax Castro to fire the rockets on major US cities. Guevara, the cold-blooded prick.
What could have been a tragic nuclear holocaust— leaving behind a post-apocalyptic world, was settled in thirteen days of negotiations. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles if JFK and America would accept the existence of Cuba.
A bogus agreement by the US, considering the CIA tried to assassinate Fidel over 600 times during his reign using such tricks as exploding cigars and pens.
I have never tried to write like anyone but myself. I don’t think you can and do bonafide and heartfelt work.
Surely, there are people out there trying to write like others— Bukowski, Kerouac, Steven King, or even Shakespeare, laugh, the idea of trying to write like The Bard seems silly.
In yonder cornfield, my true love frolics with a comer, off with their heads.
Shakespeare's work is timeless, great and all that, but, when was the last time you sat down and read Richard III or The Tempest for more than a few minutes?
What are you gonna do this evening Fred?
Oh, I’m so excited, gonna make popcorn and sit in the den and read Hamlet.
In high school, we were thrilled to finish the seminars on Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, and Beowulf, progressing to— Henry Miller, DH Lawrence, Phillip Roth, and JD Salinger.
It was springtime and the books were exuberant— Tropic of Cancer, Portnoy’s Complaint, and Lady Chatterley's Lover.
The sexed-up books and spring air made us horny— more than a few lost their virginity. What would The Bard say?
When daffodils sprout, a maiden's flower opens, and rigidity pangs of hunger.
I didn’t have a clue about sex back then, I knew what it was but had no idea how to do it.
I discovered masturbation by mistake in the bathtub, soaping my penis overzealously, flowing with the sensation.
Still a virgin my Senior year, I made it with an older friend of my mother's, a nurse. Nurses were considered to be loose back then.
She and my mother were drinking in the living room and my mother went to her bedroom and passed out.
The nurse and I flirted some, walked outside to the backyard, fell on the grass. I had a hard-on instantly, she pulls up her white dress, drops her panties, puts my cock inside her, saying,
push harder, harder, fuck me, oh God, fuck me.
The language of screwing was new to me, It sure wasn't Shakespeare.
We made it again a few more times at her apartment, but she moved to Minnesota.
Sex with the nurse gave me an itch for older women. After high school, while working at Shultz’s Kielbasa Factory, living at home, I spent most of my income on Times Square whores. Going out for drinks with and getting to know a few.
None of them enjoyed sex, one, a gal who called herself Brandy, a fake name, told me.
Nobody, no hookers, enjoys being pawed and fucked by men we wouldn’t give the time of day to if we met them somewhere else.
The Time’s Square hooker episode was a phase, eventually, I realized buying sex made me feel empty.
Today I have wicked sex with my Cuban wife Lucia. What would The Bard say—
She has a simian's spunk which maketh her hoot like a hyena.
No comments:
Post a Comment