Justa Sweet Black Angel

Henry at home in his Queens digs, writing all afternoon, thinking mostly about a road trip somewhere, anywhere, he needed to break out of his pattern, onward, outward and beyond.  

He would take a bus to Florida— a sacred paean in honor of Ratso Rizzo's and Joe Buck's great escape from the frigidity of New York City soul in the winter. 

In Henry’s north land, it was somewhere between 1970 and 1980, in the winter.

He packed an old Boy-scout bag. He didn’t need much, a few pairs of chinos, some t-shirts, a pair of Converse All Stars, hiking boots, and a Mexican poncho. 

Henry goes straight to the Queen’s bus station from his apartment in the evening, buying a ticket on the night bus to Miami. 

It would be a 4 day ride through the Mason-Dixon Line to a place where a coconut and pineapple could grow. 

The bus was half full, he sits in the rear by the toilet— just a few steps away if he needed to puke. 

As the bus begins to roll he could hear the sounds of the diesel engine as the driver shifted through the gears. It felt good to escape the city, soon the bus was at the Pennsylvania and New York State line. 

Henry sitting alone pulls a 8 ball of brown junk out of his pocket and snorts a few lines, the lights in the bus are dimmed so people could sleep. He washes the heroin down with some Jack Daniels from a flask. 

The junk knocks him out and he sleeps for half a day, when he wakes the bus is pulling into Hampton, Virginia. Henry gets off to grab a bite and to buy a bottle of whiskey.

When he gets back on the bus there is a alluring black women sitting in the window seat next to his seat. He introduces himself saying, 

Hi babe, my name is Henry what’s your name? 

She says, 

why I'm Willisa Johnson doll and I’m going to visit my family in Magnolia Springs, Alabama, they grow hemp and cotton. 

He looks Willisa over, she is in her 40s and built from the head down, built like crazy, 

Henry could smell that sweet smell a Black girl has when she was wet between her legs. 

It was night-time and the lights in the bus were dim, Henry asked Willisa if she wanted to get high?

She says, 

You know a Niggas gotta get high baby,  Henry I’m juicy, you know what I'm sayin? 

Henry pulls some cocaine out and lays it on a small mirror, Willisa snorts the lines up and he hands her a bottle of Jack Daniels to swig on. 

It goes like that awhile, back and forth and then Willisa covers both of them with Henry's poncho from the waist down, unbuckling his chinos, pulling them down to his knees— she licks his cock from top to bottom, up and down with her pink silken tongue, taking all of him, tea bag style, deep throat, he enjoys every minute and finishes quietly in her mouth,  not wanting to alert the others on the bus.  

The pair fall asleep, black on white, white on black in each others arms after snorting brown junk. 

They sleep for what seems like days and the bus driver wakes them in the evening at Magnolia Springs, Alabama— it was warm out and you could smell Cahaba Lilies in the air.

Willisa walks arm in arm with Henry, when they get off the bus there is a larger than life Black man standing at the station wearing overalls and a baseball cap. Willisa gives him a big hug and he says, 

Who in the name of Jefferson Davis is that with you? He looks pale sista! 

She says laughing, 

Big Walter don’t you mind, he be my little white boy. 

They get into a rusted old Chevy pick-up and head out to the farm— Henry feeling safe, Willisa’s strong arms holding him tight like she would never let go. 

After a short ride on an unlit dirt road the pick-up pulls into the family farm at 8PM. There is a two story wood house in need of a coat of paint and a wooden tobacco barn. Henry can smell ganja in the barn.

Big Walter and Willisa introduce him to their mama— a sweet as sweet can be old black women, her white hair wrapped tight in corn-rows, she says,

Lord help that little old white boy because none of the colored folks here abouts will take to him.

Mama Cane as folks call her proceeds to cook a southern style feast of Buffalo Head fish, black-eyed peas, okra and corn- bread. Henry places a bottle of Jack Daniels on the table and pours his new family drinks. Wallisa rolls a big size joint of ganja. 

Everybody high by now, Mama Cane turns the radio in the kitchen on to a southern station WRZT out of Mobile. The DJ playing the music of Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Pride and Elvis, it was all color radio, anything that rocked.

By 2AM the family and their newly adopted white boy are way out there. Henry and Willisa say goodnight and go to her bedroom. Her room is draped with purple cloth covering the walls and hung from the ceiling. Her bed was covered with a hand made quilt.  She throws Henry on the bed, talking off his clothes and then hers, standing over him naked she looks at him and says, 

Baby, we are gonna rock n roll like we aint got no bone.

The bed springs playing a symphony of sound interrupted later by the roosters crowing at dawn.

Big Walter knocks on Willisa’s bedroom door at 8AM and says, 

Get up you all we got work to do!

Henry doesn’t shave or shower, Willisa wraps her hair in a red doo rag, they go downstairs to the kitchen where Mama Cane has made breakfast, biscuits with gravy, pancakes with molasses, coffee and fried eggs, Henry says,

wow, you sure know how to eat, I haven't ate this good in awhile, Big Walter says, 

Don’t fret boy you gonna work it off today.

After breakfast Willisa, Henry and Big Walter walk a short way to an open field on a pathway cut through bush to an acre of mature marijuana plants that are hidden by deep forest on all sides.

In the center of the ganja field is a small wooden hut with no windows, inside there is a card table surrounded by chairs with cushions. 

Big Walter says,

Today you all are going to be trimmin,  Willisa you show him what I'm talkin about. 

They cut the buds from stalks of ganja that Big Walter brings in from the field.

Willisa rolls a joint and turns a small radio on to a gospel station. 

Then a seriously loud and deep voice says, 

get your hands up, you all is busted!

A black policeman carrying a shot gun ducks his head into the door, and says,

what you Niggas doin? 

It was Willisa's brother Pinetop, who was a cop in Magnolia Springs, he was out looking for some trustees who had escaped from the city jail.

Pinetop says, 

Willisa roll me a joint for the road baby! 

He pulls some moonshine in a mason jar from a sack and hands it to them saying as he laughs, 

hair off the dog that bit you all! Don’t forget my share now.

Officer Pinetop helped to keep the lid on the ganja farm, keeping the wrong people out. 

Big Walter comes in the wooden shack and says, 

come on you all lets go get some supper. 

Willisa and Henry trimmed till dusk, they had filled a basket with ganja buds.

They all walk home, in the kitchen Mama Cane had prepared supper—Catfish, frog legs, hush puppies, beans, rice and ice tea. 

Things went on like this— the same day by day till the end of the month, the family unit happy and productive together, 

Henry and Willisa in a major groove.  

Henry had to go get back to Queens for an appointment with the welfare shrink. It felt as  though the trip was over before it began. 

He knew Willisa didn’t want him to leave but he told her she could come to Queens when she wanted, in the spring maybe. 

He was going to miss life on the ganja farm, the big meals, great dope and moonshine, the hot sex with Willisa—

but,

New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.        Lao Tzu

The Magic Elixir

It is between 1970 and1980, perpetually late fall. 

Henry sleeping all day, up at 530PM. He wasn't working, he felt weak and uninspired,  chronic drug and alcohol use was taking a toll on him. 

The previous day he had gone for a check-up at the welfare office and the news wasn’t good, the doctor says to him, 

Mr. Lucowski— your ALT test shows that your liver is functioning at a low level, you are in the early stages of Cirrhosis and  you have Hepatitis C. If you want to live you need to seriously consider giving up drinking, AA might help, we would like you to come back next week for further testing.

Henry saying,

Sure Doc, you’re the man baby, whatever you say!

He had no intentions to give up drinking and doping or to go Alcoholics Anonymous. AA meetings— the wankers all fired up, siting on their hands saying, hi I’m Happy Frank, or I’m Stanley suffering alcoholic. Henry would rather become a Bowery bum than go to AA, there was a bargain-basement feeling to it and he felt that AA people were celebrating sobriety when they should be mourning their own weakness and inability to use and enjoy it.

In Chaim’s Deli at 6PM, sitting in his favorite booth, Ruby his regular waitress comes over, He says, 

Ruby a spring broke through the fabric of this booth seat, it punctured my tuchas and I'm bleeding. I already have Cirrhosis and Hep C, so lock-jaw will be no big deal.

Ruby goes to the kitchen and brings back a large piece of cheese cloth that is soaked in alcohol and says,

Henry put this cheese cloth on your wound, in your underpants, on your tuchas and sit on it.

He says, 

Ruby in that I’m not long for the world, I want to order a Last Supper type meal, it will be a dry run. I’ll have some Manischewitz wine, matzoh ball soup, gefilte fish and some noodle kugel with plenty of whip cream and canned Bing Cherries on top.

After eating he was full— ready to come down to street level from the Upper Room and take a night-time walk in the city. 

Reaching the Bowery, he sees a gang of bums hugging a fire in a garbage can and walks over.  

A bum called Stinky Fingers says to him,

Henry you know you always got a place here, livin in da Bowery is rent free, no bosses tell-in you what to do, ya just gotta panhandle enough for a few cheap bottles, thats it guy.

Then a bum called Free Bird says, 

Henry stay away from the Salvation Army and AA, nothin good excepting for free meals ever comes from dem places. 

Henry not much for bum’s wisdom, bows out quickly without saying good-bye, he didn’t know what they were burning in the garbage can, but it was toxic. 

Henry ducks into a doorway and does a few lines of cocaine, it gives him a lift, hanging with the bums was a downer, they smelled awful, everything about them stank from head to toe, their breath was highly flammable. 

In Manhattan he goes to 57 Cafe— there were two drag queens at the door selling tickets, one is  Bette Midler and the other is Cher, Cher says, 

Tonight is a special night Marina Abramovic is performing, 50 dollars cover and the ticket is good for a free drink. 

Henry flashes his welfare ID card quickly and says, 

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene official business, we don’t drink on the job Cher. 

Henry standing with his arms crossed in the back of the room, looking sanctioned— a lovely European women in her 30s walks onto a small slightly elevated stage, she is naked. It is Marina Abramovic, the pooh-bah preeminent of the world performance art scene. 

Henry notices that her armpits were unshaven, very European. Abarmovic then begins to lecture the crowd saying,

You have to be ready for your death. There are three ways I want to do it: not to die angry, not to die in fear, and to die consciously. That's something I learned from grandmother who regularly laid out different outfits for her own burial, changing them over the years as styles changed. She lived to age 103.

And so on and so forth, Jesus what the fuck Henry thought?

She begins to comb her hair, pressing the metal comb acutely into her scalp, after 10 minutes you can see blood on the comb and in her hair. 

Henry could feel tension in the audience and felt tense himself. 

A stage hand brings out a meter by meter red Communist Star, pouring lighter fluid on it and setting it on fire. 

Marina  kneels in front of the burning red star and puts her head into the flames until they burn down, burning her face and hair.  

The crowd gasping aloud looked shocked.  

I don’t get it and what is the point? He leaves 57 Cafe.

He goes to Billy West’s Place for a drink, it was close. At the bar he orders a shot of tequila and a Bud Draft and says to Billy,

Jesus Billy I was at 57 Cafe watching a beautiful women hurting herself, it just doesn’t seem like art to me. 

Billy says, 

Yeah Henry, dem liberal art freaks are fucking up everything dat’s decent about da city, we need to keep dem shit-hole wackos outta-here! 

Henry finishes his drink and hits the bricks.

On the way home he stops in Siam Massage, he sees May, a young Thai women with long black hair. She is sitting on a cheap red sofa wearing a see-through nighty, she waves to Henry.

He goes to May and says,

Hi doll I’m really tense how about an oil massage? 

The two walk through a dimly lit hall that is painted black to room number 9 and go inside, it is draped with Indian prints and lit by a blue light. 

There is a massage table there, Henry strips and lays belly down on the table. May opens a lap top which is set to play Indian music from YouTube. She lights some musk incense and walks to him, laying down 4 lines of cocaine on his back, which she snorts.

She massages him lomi-lomi style, he can feel May's skin, it is silky and warm. She gets on the massage table and sits on him with her legs open, gyrating her crotch on his ass as she rubs his back. 

She tells Henry to turn on his back, rubbing his legs and lightly brushing over his cock with the sides of her hands occasionally. He gets a hard-on and May wets it down with drip-lets of warm saliva, then going down on him tea-bag style as she fingers his rose-bud. 

After the massage May and Henry talk for awhile, May says,  

I  send money to my family in Thailand every month, my X husband the no good Thai man ran away. My kids live with my parents in Isaan. 

They snorted cocaine, smoked hash and drank Japanese whiskey for a while, Henry kisses May deeply and then puts 2 hundred dollar bills on the massage table, going out through door into the dark hall.  

Henry leaving Siam Massage and walking back to Queens, he looks up at a crescent moon and thinks, 

Getting off is the magic elixir, the stairway to Heaven. 

The Hip Scholar

It was a cool and moonless night at some point between 1970 and 1980.

Henry  sitting in a busted up patio chair on the small balcony of his 10th floor apartment looking at the ant size people walking below at street level. He removes his old leather belt and coils it around his arm, then he pulls his shirt over his head. Facing in the direction of the Western Wall he begins rocking backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet, the left foot in-front of the right foot, davening, chanting Sanskrit, speaking in tongues, mumbling shit out loud, anything that came to mind—  

The impromptu observance was sloppy but Henry felt absolved. 

730PM in Queens—he was hungry, leaving his apartment and walking a few blocks to Chaim’s Deli. 

Inside the deli sitting in a booth his regular waitress Ruby comes to him and sits on his lap, he says to her,

Jesus Christ Ruby are you trying to turn me on, what will Chaim say?

Ruby laughs and says, 

Is my hot ass too much for you Henry? Chaim wants you to come to his son’s Bar Mitzvah party at the Holiday Inn this weekend, and I want you to be my date?

He says,

Sure thing doll, you can count on me, but I’m short of cash, it's the end of the month, I won’t be able to buy the kid much.

Ruby says,

You can give the kid a symbolic gift baby, a gross of condoms or a years subscription to Penthouse.

Ruby blew Henry away,  she was bi-polar work in progress, her soul was a study in the colors of the rainbow.   

He says, 

Ruby you can count on me, we will nail things down over the next couple of days. How about some corn beef hash, a big bowl of coleslaw and a Jack and soda to wash it down baby? 

After eating he leaves the deli and takes a taxi to Greenwich Village, Gregory Corso was reading at Bookends Cafe. Corso was one of the fathers of Beat, he had spent most of his early youth in juvenile dentition for petty crimes, later shipping out as a merchant seaman.  He was a self-taught intellectual. While in Boston in the mid Fifties he spent most of his time in the Harvard Library reading classic poetry. He was a scholarly and street wise poet. 

Henry sitting at the bar in the Bookends Cafe banging down Jack Daniels and Coke, the place was packed, full of bookish NYU students.

Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso walk in and sit at the bar. Henry had met Ginsberg more than once at readings in the city, Ginsberg smiling says,

Henry we are having an after reading party at the Whitehorse Tavern— full of Beat literati, abstract painters and punk rockers, the bastion of the 2nd American Revolution.

He nods his head and smiles as he says to Allen,  

After the revolution will I still get my SSI check at the beginning of the month?

Allen saying quizzically,

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit! Who needs a check? 

Henry knew Alan Ginsburg was a nice guy who  help up and coming writers. Maybe Henry would fit into the revolution somewhere between Beat and abstract painter, but wasn't a punk.   

Henry had never met Gregory Corso, but he had read his work.   

Corso was sitting hang-dog with his elbows on the bar, his head was down, he wasn't sad, he was deep in thought. 

He walks to a chair at center stage and sits down, looking towards the audience and squinting his eyes, they applaud politely and he says,

Hello, I’m Gregory Corso. 

He opens a notebook and begins reading a poem entitled— 1959.

Uncompromising year—I see no meaning to life.

Though this abled self is here nonetheless,

either in trade gold or grammaticness,

I drop the wheelwright’s simple principle—

Why weave the garland? Why ring the bell?

Penurious butchery these notoriously human years,

these confident births these lucid deaths these years.

Dream’s flesh blood reals down life’s mystery—

there is no mystery.

Cold history knows no dynastic Atlantis.

The habitual myth has an eagerness to quit.

No meaning to life can be found in this holy language

nor beyond the lyrical fabricator’s inescapable theme

be found the loathed find—there is nothing to find.

Corso’s work was cynical and archeologic, he was excavating and making public his truth about church, government and corporate despotism — telling the world they could do something to change things if they acted now. 

Allen Ginsberg looking at Henry on and off during the reading, smiling the smile of, isn’t he exceptional. 

Corso’s poetry was exceptional and Henry wondered if the hipster NYU crowd in the audience was getting it. Corso would finish up with a poem —Writ on the Steps of Puerto Rican Harlem.

Life has meaning

And I do not know the meaning   

Even when I felt it was meaningless

I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning

It wasn’t all frolic poesy

There were dues to pay   

Summoning Death and God   

I’d a wild dare to tackle Them

Death proved meaningless without Life

Yes the world is changing   

But Death remains the same   

It takes man away from Life   

The only meaning he knows   

And usually it is a sad business   

This Death

Corso thanks the audience for coming and quickly exits with Ginsberg— Mephisto and Faust heavan and hell bound. 

Henry would sit at the bar until closing and drink alone, he wouldn’t go to the after reading party at the Whitehorse Tavern, preferring to debauch in private. 

Deaf Helen and ReMax Liz

Once Henry had typed-out a line of thinking on a naked page he would edit but never delete— he wrote on the edge mentally and there was no turning back, the brightness of a naked page terrified him as if he was being chased by ghosts. 

When he spoke it was the same, he didn’t blue pencil it, he spoke quickly putting it all out there regardless. 

As a kid he was left alone with a deaf baby-sitter who couldn’t speak. His mother would get boozed-up and disappear for months with drifters she met at Bowery bars. 

Henry lived in silence when his mother was away. His deaf baby-sitter Helen, communicated by scribbling notes using pencil on notepads, things like—

I’m going to the store

Go to bed now

I smell something burning

Did you flush the toilet? 

Your mother is a drunk

The silent times— living in the lonely dark house with deaf Helen gave rise to Henry the blabbermouth and flow of consciousness short story writer who was scared of ghost. 

He didn’t like living in the past, preferring to block it out.

Henry abruptly wakes from a bad dream at about 1035PM startled, remembering a portion of the dream— he was sitting in the kitchen with deaf Helen and she served him a plate with a fried chicken-head and neck, 3 chicken-feet and a curled-up rat’s tail on it. 

He didn't know what the symbolism was.  

By 1100PM he is sitting in Chaim’s Deli feeling black inside, chatting with his regular waitress Ruby saying,

How’s tricks kiddy-cat? 

Ruby fluttering her eyebrows as she puts her head close to his saying, 

Henry you’re so full of shit, Valentine's Day is just a week away who's going to be your Valentine? 

He says,

Nobody but you baby-doll, you know you’re the only girl for me! 

She then says,

Henry you must have poured a cup of sugar on your Cheerios this morning!

Henry saying, 

Can I have the special and a double Jack and soda?

Leaving Chaim’s Deli he walks towards Manhattan, feeling like he had been walking for days. 

He could see the orange-red Roosevelt Bridge ahead, there was a blue mist steaming up from the water that swallowed-up the bridge. 

He crosses the Roosevelt bridge reaching 29th, Street ducking into Billy Mark’s Place, sitting at the bar ordering a shot of tequila which he drops into a mug of beer, a Tex-Mex Boilermaker.  

The place unchanged in 50 years— a wooden bar, red upholstered booths, chrome stools with red cushion tops. There was a long mirror covering the wall behind the bar that oddly was covered with cheap framed pictures of the Beatles and the Kinks— there was an old NCR cash register on a long liquor cabinet as well. 

Henry bored shit-less walks to the back of the bar into the men's room, going into a booth. He takes an 8-ball of cocaine out of his jacket pocket and snorts it up in seconds, magnificently jacked up, feeling like he could do anything in the world. 

Back at the bar he pays the tab and leaves. 

Outside and walking again he sees the famous Plaza Hotel up ahead, as he walks in the doorman eye-balls him, Henry nods, walking in the hotel like he owns the place, going directly to the bar. 

The Plaza bar was covered in dark stained Walnut siding from ceiling to the floor, it had the feel of a 19th Century executive club or smoking room.

 He sits in a green upholstered chair at the bar, the drinks were expensive so he orders a Bud Draft, sipping it slow, cheap Charlie like. An older women, a MILF, shapely and wearing a business suit walks in and sits next to him and says,

I’m here for the ReMax convention at Midtown Center my name is Liz, I was a Platinum agent last year, can I buy you a drink? What’s your name?  

He smiles knowing he was getting hit on and says,

Henry Lucowski,  I’m a writer and life long Queens resident. 

She says, 

I’m from Wisconsin, New York City is such a lovely place, nice to meet you Henry!

You don’t know the half of it baby, he thinks to himself.

Liz orders 2 Gin Fizzes, Henry feeling like the sweet drink was going to make him puke, but he wanted to paint a good face on things— they tip and clink tumblers and toast New York City. 

Then  Liz says,

I’m really tired lets go up to my room and have a drink.

They take the elevator to Liz’s room on the 10th floor, she is in a standard room that cost 900 dollars a night, they empty the wet bar and begin drinking everything alcoholic in it, it is 4AM. 

Henry sitting on a love seat looking at Liz who is standing in front of him talking away with a drink in her hand, she quickly turns walking a few steps and flops down on the made up bed, lifting her skirt up over her head saying, 

Fuck me Henry!

Henry gets up off the love seat and goes to the bed, laying next to Liz, they strip and suck face with deep tongue action. 

In the morning they wake up at noon, Liz says, 

Henry I missed the ReMax meeting at the Midtown Center.

They go for lunch in the hotel bar, ordering steak sandwiches, onion soup and Budweiser Draft which they mix with tomato juice. 

Liz says, 

Henry, I’m married you know, I blacked-out last night and really can’t remember what happened but I know we woke up in bed together. 

He says, 

Well, we all do crazy things loaded, things we wouldn’t do sober. Look at it this way Liz, if you don’t remember it, then it doesn’t exist. 

If a tree falls in the forest and It doesn’t make a sound, how do you know it is there? 

Cool and Good Weird

Henry bone headed and thick, doing the same as he had done every year at this time, hiding and running away from the dreaded holidays.  

From Thanksgiving until a few days after New Years he hunkered down in his Queen’s apartment—like Hitler in his Berlin bunker in 1945, stocking up on tortilla, beans and rice, oranges, water, Coca-cola, Jack Daniels and plenty of dope.

He would spend the month writing short stories and watching The Night of the Iguana over and over, letting it run on repeat.

Tennessee Williams was Henry’s favorite playwright, he had watched The Night of the Iguana 1000s of times and he saw something new in it every time, it was time-less. 

The Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon in utter mental exhaustion, cutting through the layers of the onion, on the run from the Episcopal Church and God in Mexico. Shannon having an extended nervous breakdown in Mexico, wrapped up in a straw hammock used as a straight-jacket, cured by cocaine tea and the love of a beatnik gal.

Henry feeling safe after New Years, secure that the ghost of Christmas had gone back to Finland or the North Pole for another year. He was ready to go out. 

Tired of beans and rice, in need of real food, he leaves his Queens digs and goes to Chaim’s Deli.

Walking a few blocks to the deli, going inside and sitting at his favorite booth. His regular waitress Ruby comes to his table and says—

Jesus Henry where the fuck have you been? We have been worried sick about you here, Chaim was ready to call the cops but I told him I thought you were hiding from the holiday spooks. 

Henry says to Ruby—

Ruby as usual you are spot on. I’m really hungry doll, I want a pastrami on pumpernickel, a bowl of matzo ball soup, coleslaw and some Jack and soda to wash it down.

After eating too much, Henry says bye to the folks at Chaim’s and walks out the double glass door at the entrance, lighting a joint, taking a deep drag and looking up at the moon, thinking—

How sweet it is!

In the Bowery he goes to a dump called the Vomit House for a drink. The place full of bums, men and women sitting at tables and in booths, screaming at one another back and forth, babbling incoherently, their conversations disjointed, banging down bottles of cheap wine, Mad Dog 20 20. 

Henry at the bar sitting next to a bum in a dirty and ripped business suit who turns to him and says—

I’m Dr. Stephen Grundy I’m the creator and marketer of the Palm Springs Diet, nice to meet you. 

Henry saying— 

I’m Henry, what the fuck are you doing here? 

Dr. Grundy says—

Well, Henry I had a slip and am on a new liquid diet called — The Fall Down, then Grab and Gulp Down Anything with Alcohol in it Diet.

Henry thinking the guy was absolutely uncool, finishing his beer and leaving the Vomit House. 

In Manhattan on 53rd Street he walks into MoMa to see what is going on and eyeballs a security guard standing in front of a Jackson Pollack painting wearing a blazer made of fake Holstein cow-skin. The fake cow-skin blazer against the Pollack painting was too much for Henry's eyes, blurry, causing his eyes to tear. 

Henry asking—

Why are you wearing that cornball blazer? It's a disgrace to cows everywhere, so what's going on at MaMA today?

The guard says—

Sir, if you don't like my blazer you can write a message to the MoMA blog. Joseph Beuys is staging a happening in the basement, I'm sorry you don't like my blazer.  

Henry takes the elevator to the basement of MoMA, one floor down, there is nobody around except a thin man wearing a 40s-style Fedora sitting in a pile of hay at the very end of the concrete room. There are thick and large strips of grayish-green felt on the floor spread everywhere. 

Joseph Beuys, WW2  Stuka pilot and 20th Century artist extraordinaire is holding a cane and petting a Coyote.

Henry approaches Beuys and pets his Coyote, the artist stands and then picks up a strip of green felt from the floor, wrapping it around Henry and saying—

You're an artist, everyone is an artist.

Henry wondered what the fuck was going on? 

Feeling hot wrapped in the strip of felt he takes it off in-turn wrapping it around Joseph Beuys, saying— 

You’re weird, cool, and good weird.

Henry leaves MoMa needing a drink badly to shake off whatever the scene in MoMa basement was about.

He takes a taxi to Chinatown and goes to Mr. Lee’s Laundry. At the entrance he walks through a red double door, drudgingly ascending 6 flights of stairs to the roof top. There is a party going on, red lit up lanterns strung on wire, swaying in the wind. There were a hundred people or more there, all sitting on plastic stools at plastic tables. 

Most snorting cocaine and drinking Japanese whiskey. Henry sits down at a table of Chinese ladyboys, one of them who is wearing a red silk Hanfu hands him a drink and then lays a few lines of cocaine on a pink Hello Kitty mirror she pulls out from a large purse that is full of make up and junk of all sorts . 

Henry feeling right as the ladyboy says to him,

hi darling my name is Butterfly, do you want some company? 

He says—

Sex you mean? I’m straight you know.

Butterfly says—

I will suck you really good and then lube my ass with coconut oil, when you are inside me it will be divine, I’m tight, almost a virgin. 

Henry tempted, it was 2AM, he was a man and he was horny, maybe next time, 

he says to Butterfly—

Almost a virgin? You are lovely Butterfly but I have to go home and feed my pet iguana cockroach and scorpion fillets or he will be very angry with me.

Henry tired and wasted, walking down 6 flights of stairs to street level, he gets a taxi to Queens. 

Laying his head back on a plastic pillow in the back seat of the taxi and thinking—

I’m a genius but nobody knows it.

Bukowski

Bukowski claimed the majority of what he wrote happened in his life.

To make himself more picturesque for the reader he did little to elaborate on himself.

Heinrich Karl Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany in August 1920.

In 1924 the family of three left Germany and moved to LA. Young Charle's father bought a two bedroom bungalow on Jefferson Park Road not far from Hollywood. In 1924 LA was paradise, there was plenty of work in agriculture and building, but the palm trees and clean orderly ways of America 1924 passed the freaky immigrant family by.

A TWISTED CHILDHOOD FUCKED ME UP.

Bukowski’s mother dressed young Charles in velvet trousers, he was a mark from the start, getting shit canned from both ends. His old man, “The Nazi sergeant Hymie” would strap him endlessly if he missed a blade of grass after mowing the lawn. Buk would have to fight for his life at Virginia Road Elementary School as well. 

Bukowski hated the world already as a young man, he would brew his juice while lying in bed looking at light patterns on the ceiling, listening to Brahms or Mahler. Like other outlaw literary geniuses, the struggle to get through daily life forced him to go into his inner mind. 

Bukowski began writing as a boy, he sensed life wasn’t going to be a picnic. He was attracted to the solitary nature of writing, it helped him to gain perspective, writing became his foil, but his hammer was booze. 

By the age of 15 he was a full-time alcoholic, he could buy booze anywhere, he looked 33, his face long and drawn like a deathly horse head, full of deeply rooted acme, people found him hard to look at. 

One night he came home to the family house drunk, he broke a lock to get in unnoticed and was greeted by his old man. Hymie immediately began strapping Charles with a leather belt, the metal end. Bukowski puked on a new white carpet in the entryway (Perhaps the most famous puke scene in modern 20th Century American Literature). Somehow 15 year old Charles gathered the strength to get up, punching Hymie in the gut, ending the confrontation.  

During the ruckus his mom packed a small cardboard suitcase, pushing young Charles out the door before Hymie could get up. This cheap cardboard suitcase would become a right of passage metaphor in Bukowski’s stories. He used the suitcase for years, too poor to buy another. At one point it became so worn he painted it with liquid shoeblack.

After graduating from LA High (he didn’t bother to pick up his diploma feeling the ceremony was superficial and inane) Buk enrolled in LA City College, now living free from his old man, the sadistic Hymie, free to drink whenever he pleased. He began his barfly life in a small dumpy room over the “Starlight Lounge”while studying  journalism and literature. He liked true grit author’s like Upton Sinclair and Ernest Hemingway, supporting himself by working part-time as a janitor at Sears. 

Buk was apolitical throughout his life. His twisted fucked up early life made him anti-social and he rooted for the bad guys out of spite. During World War II he wrote a short story in support of Hitler which got him in trouble at LA City College. Of course, Henry didn’t give a shit about Hitler, but he discovered the joy of tweaking and outraging the mainstream, it was easy for him and would bring him joy throughout his life.

After a year at LA City College in 1942 this butt ugly, outrageous and anti-social genius hit the road. He was writing full time now sending stories to the rags of the day, “Popular Mechanics” and “Thriller Detective.” He was in search of the glue of experience that would help sharpen his writing chops. Henry caught a bus from LA to New Orleans, he only had thirteen dollars in his pocket.

While traveling in the forties he would often run out of money and live on candy bars. Later in life at a reading, he was asked what the secret to his success was? Buk saying,” One candy bar a day.” 

When he got to New Orleans he lived in a tar paper shack lit by a single light bulb. Buk couldn’t hold down a job, preferring to booze it up with bums and whores. Eventually taking a job on a railroad gang and leaving New Orleans. On the way to Texas, he found a paperback copy of “Notes from the Underground” by Dostoevsky. It related to the struggle of the Russian poor with the Czarist elite, reminding Charles of his days at LA City College. 

BUKOWSKI WROTE BECAUSE HE WAS HURT AND PISSED OFF. WRITING, BOOZE, AND MAHLER WERE THE ONLY WAYS HE COULD DEAL WITH HIS CHILDHOOD.

The following is a bit from a Bukowski poem illustrating his rage against the machine as well as his frustration from being on the shit end of the capitalist system most of his life. It is from “Factotum,” written in the sixties. 

“….the days of 

the bosses, yellow men

with bad breath and big feet, men

who look like frogs, hyenas, men who 

walk as melody has never been invented,

men who think it is intelligent to hire and

fire and profit, men with expensive wife's

they possess like 60 acres of ground to be 

drilled and shown-off—“

By the early fifties, Buk had returned to his beloved LA. He had been writing since the forties, sending manuscripts to editors all over America. None were accepted, his work contained unheard of radicalism sex and realty, rarified stuff in the fifties.

On off hours Buk would write and listen to Mahler late at night in his room above “Sunlight Inn” He didn’t go to the beach once during all his years in California, he was light years away from “Muscle Beach” mentality. His toxic and mercurial voice was alive in the alley and on the bar stools of the “Sunlight Inn.”

One day Bukowski got a letter from Barbara Frye, editor of the “Harlequin Review” out of Wheeler, Texas. She told him that she thought he was the greatest poet since William Blake.  They corresponded for two days and she asked him to marry her. Barbara was missing two vertebrae from her neck and couldn’t move her neck from side to side, she looked neckless. She came to LA and Charles married her, the next edition of “Harlequin Review" had eight of Henry’s poems in it. 

In seven years the marriage was toast, the years of marriage were like scenes out of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” Frye would constantly talk shit to him barking,” Why don’t you get off your ass and stop drinking? Go get a job.” Bukowski was published in the “Paris Review” by this time, next to Sartre. 

John Webb spent three years in jail for a dope charge and robbing a bank. Inside jail, he developed a love for literature and poetry and became the editor of the prison paper, which was used mostly for ass wipe and rolling joints. 

When Webb was paroled he contacted William Burroughs, Henry Miller, and Lorenzo Ferlinghetti as well as other underground writers of the time, urging them to contribute to his new avant-garde rag “The Outsider.” His wife who called herself Gypsy Lou worked with John on the rag.

In the early sixties, John and Gypsy Lou contacted Bukowski saying, “ We love the realness of your work, it’s not phony at all, you seem honest and down to earth.” In short time the couple published Buk's first book of poetry, “Factotum,” a crafted and artfully bounded edition made with handmade paper.

FUCK SCREAMING I DON’T WANT TO GO THERE.

Bukowski took to the flower power scene of the sixties like a dog takes to a cat. He was hired to write short stories for a rag called the "LA Free Press" published by John Byran. He loved to ass whip the other writers calling them, "Scummy, commy, hippy shit. Buk's thinking was more in line with the Hell's Angels than the hippies. 

Bukowski met Neal Cassidy of Beat fame through John Bryan. Cassidy was on his way to Mexico in a Plymouth V8 wagon. The three of them went for a ride, Cassidy the X parking lot attendant could back a semi truck into a donut hole. Cassidy took the wheel, Buk sat in the back seat and Bryan rode shotgun. Buk offered Cassidy some whiskey from a pint and Neal slugged it like a pro, Buk then saying, “ Have another taste?” Charles felt OK with Cassidy because he drank.

By the early seventies “ Notes of a Dirty Old Man” was published by Ferlinghetti’s “Black Sparrow Press.” This wasn’t Charles best book but it was a big seller and brought him world fame and moderate wealth. He continued to live the barfly life, drinking 24/7. He bought a track house in San Pedro, a mansion compared to the rooming house shit holes of the last thirty years. He also bought his first car, a BMW which he kept till he died.

He would drive the BMW to the Santa Anita Race Track and drink beer covered in a paper sack as he watched the working stiffs driving in the opposite direction to work on the freeway. The crotch of his chinos would often get wet with beer by the time he got to the track. He would walk to the betting window looking like he pissed his pants, he liked the look.

BOOZEHOUND POET CHARLES BUKOWSKI WRITES A HYMN TO HIMSELF IN HOLLYWOOD AND STARTS SINGING.

So ran the profile in “People Magazine” on Charles Bukowski when the publicist of the film “Barfly" sent out the media blitz. A film which would have never been canned with out the help of Dennis Hopper’s Venice Beach friend Barbet Shroeder. The stories surrounding the production of the film are legendary, Shroeder was part Mossad hit man and part insane. He pushed the film through, showing up at Golan and Globus’s suite in the Beverly Hill’s Hotel with a chain saw threatening to saw the room up if they didn’t give him the money for the film.

When “Barfly” began screening in theaters around the country it changed Buk, he would strut around his house loaded, feeling the part of the sheik of Sunset Blvd. But his constant inner companion was a sad man that pussy and booze couldn’t kill. The part in “Barfly” where Henry Chinowski (hilariously played by Mickey Rourke) is up late at night musing, listening to Mahler, feeling his heart and life around him, was spot on Bukowski, there was a sensitive and hurt soul inside the wild man. 

Bukowski respected Hollywood Stars as much as he respected hippies. The only films he liked were,”All Quiet on the Western Front” and “ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” He once met Arnold Schwarzenegger at an industry party and called him a “Piece of shit” in German.  And there was the time Sean Penn, who was in awe of Bukowski and a regular visitor, brought his wife Madonna to Buk’s Sand Pedro place. His neighbors knew him only as a weird drunk, a little girl who lived next door later asked,” Mr B was that Madonna at your house?”

By 1987 Bukowskis’s health was getting bad, years of boozing was catching up with him. He was writing his last novel “Hollywood” about the making of “Barfly,”  amazed still that he made it in Hollywood.

Writing kept his pain at bay for a while but his body finally gave in to booze in March of 1994. Considering the voracity of abuse he directed at himself it was amazing he lived as long as he did. 

He wrote to find a way to cope with everyday life, he reveled with losers, he was a 1000 to one punch drunk champ driving in the opposite direction who beat the odds.