Jesse

During the summer of 78, it was so hot in Chicago, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk.

I was making 3.25 an hour working at the downtown Montgomery Wards as a stock boy. 

I worked with a Mexican guy, Jesse Valdez; he was 5ft 3 with a black pompadour, wearing pointy-toed shoes and tight pants. 

He was funny wise, saying shit like, 

if you're talkin to a chica and ur polla's hard, it means you can fuck her.

I lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the Loyola University neighbourhood near the el, riding it to Monkey Wards every morning.

After work one evening, I buy dinner and beer at El Pollo Loco for him. After we eat, he says, 

ah, Henry, let's go to my place, 

okay.

We walked six blocks to his three-story walk-up, then walking up three flights to his room 

His room was closet size, seven feet from the elevated train tracks. We squeeze in, him on the radiator and me on the tiny mattress; he has some pot, so we smoke. 

The sounds are deafening; train wheels give off a high-pitched squeaking sound; the air smells like burning rubber and rust.

Jessie had ripped off a Barbie Doll from Wards, he says, 

watch dis Henry.

He tosses the doll out the window, and it straddles 

the highly charged and lethal third rail, burning to a crisp in seconds.

After a few months at Wards, we were bored shitless; there was the time Jesse smashed an Easy Bake Oven to bits with a baseball bat or when he'd strip down a Ken and Barbey Doll and bend them into sexual positions like puppets.

One day we had lunch in the cafeteria; Jesse was in love with a server named Butterfly, he wanted to titty-fuck her, saying,

I'm gonna come down on that chica's titas, fat girls. Thank you to fuck 'em, Henry.

Butterfly lived in the Evergreen Trailer Camp, somewhere in Cicero. 

During the bus trip to her place, he says, 

dude we should bring Big Caesar with us to be sure we satisfy Butterfly, I tell him,

I see so you're planning a love-in.

At Butterfly's trailer, we knock on the door, and she opens it. 

She's working on a wade of bubble gum passionately saying, 

I hope you boys are up to the task.

Inside the three of us are talking at the kitchen table.

Jesse pulls out a pint of mescal, passing it around when Butterfly says, 

did you all boys bring the Spanish fly? 

Sure we did it's in your drink.

After a few drinks, Butterfly falls out of her chair onto the trailer floor, Jesse says, 

she's ready man, 

and we jump her, and Jesse says, 

back off Henry, 

I thought this was goin to be a love-in.

I need some downtime with Butterly, Do you get it, amigo?

That morning, we show up for work, we run into the store manager, John Blow, and he says, 

We gotta video of you boys bustin' up merchandise in the warehouse; security will escort you out of the store. 

Uma Kline Meets Henry Bukowski

I remember the summer of 78, bits and pieces of it anyway.

I lived in the basement of the Sparkling Angels Condominium. I was the janitor. 

I loved the basement place; friends called it the bunker.

I had an electric plate and oven; I could cook anything. 

In the morning, I'd make Swedish pancakes with Loganberry sauce and wash them down with hot green tea. 

By 11 am, I'm lying in bed smoking devil weed, fiendishly reading Alan Ginsburg's poem Howl.  

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz

At midnight, I go to  The Skank Bar. Sitting at the bar, I order a Bud Light and a bowl of clam chowder. 

A Germanic woman sitting alone in a booth walks to the bar asking, 

are you Henry Lucowski the writer? I've read your work in The Village Voice and The Bronx News, 

thanks, I don't get many positive reviews, tell me about yourself.

Okay, I’m Uma Kline; I’m an actress currently performing in the off-off-Broadway play Velvet Kinks at The Steppenwolf Theater.

Henry, let's go to my place and have a drink. It's not far, we can walk there, 

great, The Skank Bar bores the hell outta me.

As we walk, Uma grabs my hand; her hand is warm, her warmth is appealing. 

Reaching The Chelsea Hotel, home to an A-list of literati who've lived there over the years: Mark Twain, Herbert Huncke, Quentin Christ, Leonard Cohen, and so on. 

We ride a cage elevator to the 11th floor and walk to Uma's room; it's a rectangular room with a painted concrete floor, purple wallpaper, red velvet curtains, a black leather sofa and an antique bed.

Uma's on the bed, and I'm on the sofa; after a few drinks, she lies back on the bed  

She lies on her back and opens her legs, takes off her panties, stroking her large blue clitoris. 

In a New York minute, I jump on the bed, landing with my head in her muff.

She knows every position in the book, after balling we fall asleep in each other's arms

I wake the next morning, noticing a note written in lipstick on the mirror reading,

See you tonight at The Steppenwolf Theater; the tickets are  under your pillow; love you, Ulma.

That night, I was paralytically drunk in The Skank Bar, falling off the bar stool and landing on the floor. I never saw Umla again.