The Truth isn't Important to Me

I regularly download eBooks from the Internet Archive. 

In dictionary speak— IA’s a nonprofit digital library, preserving and providing access to cultural artifacts of all kinds in electronic form. 

I've found writers I love, Cheever, Parker, Carver.

I’ve been reading The Andy Warhol Diaries—nobody could name-drop like Andy.

Andy was as tight as a tick, throughout the book he documents expenses in parentheses—

In the morning I rushed to Dr. Li (cab $4).

Went to a place with pinball machines and played them for a while ($10)

Got up, packed, (cab to the airport $20, tip to package guy, magazines $8)

He valued money.

I’ve written the oddest stories, the worst of the worst, shit— Chelsea Girls, 15 Minutes, and this, The Brewing Junk-Factor, a few paragraphs. 

He scratches himself, paralysed in bed, smoking a Chesterfield King, trying to tune his Grundig radio, scanning the dial for Chicago — scribbling junk-ie poems on a cutting board, writing this,

                         Andy Warhol, the Brewing Junk-Factor. 

Everybody will have fifteen minutes of fame.

The fame inflamed stand for blocks on 231 East 47th Street, it's

snowing, they're lined up like soldiers, hungry, loaded on LSD, and hot saki.

The Gothic crowd's electrified, dancing slowly, close, body to body, leather to leather, grinding it out in the FActory.

On June 1 of this year publishers— Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and Harper Collins sued Internet Archive for copyright violations— they want their money to boot suing Internet Archives for copyright infringement. 

Well-heeled, cry baby authors— Malcolm Gladwell, John Grisham, Elizabeth Gilbert, Douglas Preston, and Neil Gaiman (you see him on Facebook peddling his bogus writing courses), issued a joint statement claiming, 

the wholesale scanning and posting of copyrighted books without the consent of authors, and without paying a dime, is piracy.

Oh goodness, the priggish Internet Archive, Blackbeard of the eBook world— a national emergency library founded so school kids good get books when libraries were closed because of Covid.

As you would expect the ogres of the publishing world and the sniveling authors won. 

I will miss IA. I lost boxes of books, moving from Milwaukee to Hawaii, and finally Asia.

Anyway, pledging,

I will never rent or buy another book or eBook from the publishing companies who gunned downed IA for a few shekels, and ego.

Why is it that people are dicks when it comes to money? 

Jesus's,  R A D I C ALism appeals to me, His view on commerce was,

beware, guard against every kind of greed. 

Two hundred years ago an anonymous Sioux Elder said,

Life isn't measured by how much you own. 

He meant that physic experience is more important than money.

Here's a cute bit written by an anonymous kid, 

if we were less greedy the world would be less needy. 

And the last anonymous Sioux Elder says,

God gave the Ska-man enough, and yet he wants all. Such are the pale faces.

Breathe outwards rhythmically, do the same inwards.

I don’t hate the rich, they own a peculiar genius and work ethic. 

What we see today, rampant hustling for pesos isn't new. 

                                  A Brief History of Hustle

Silk Roads 1st century BC to 5th Century AD

luxury products from China started to appear on the outer edge of the European continent in Rome, 

besides silk, the Ancient Chinese bring firecrackers, Peking Duck, straw thumb cuffs, and chopsticks.

Spice Routes 7th to 15th Centuries AD

Sephardic Jews in flocks traveling west selling carpets, humous, and what was it? Fenugreek.     

Age of Discovery 18th Century

Truly global trade kicked off and somebody discovered America, it’s irrelevant.

Globalization 19th Century to 1914

The Brits invented the steam engine, resulting in the Industrial Revolution, a wretched time for factory workers during the heyday of imperialism— and, a hoot for the Brit aristocracy who was on top for a while.

The World Wars— I and II

massive destruction and millions of deaths drove hustling underground for most.

Second and Third Wave of Globalization

forget it, nothing important here.

The end of World War II 

ushers in a new era of hustle, nylon’s invented and plastic becomes the spurious material of choice. 

Globalization Four 

Where we are now, the computer age, the

 internet, the world wide web, where porn is king.

Life intrudes from time to time, things change. It's a crapshoot hanging on luck, it's everywhere at once and nowhere, it resists you mostly.

Nobody here is indispensable and anyone can be replaced. The earth spins with or without you.

If a famous interviewer, say, a Studs Terkel or a Benjamin Fong-Torres asked Henry about his work he'd say,

I write for art’s sake, truth isn't important to me.

Boohoo, Please Hold Me

 

When you write, I mean really write, when you believe you can write, there is no stopping. 

I never know what I’m going to say or how I’m going to say it when I begin a story. Often I'm half in the bag.

There’s a long list of writers who were lushes, here are a few you likely know—  Hunter S. Thompson, O. Henry, John Cheevers, Tennessee Williams, Dylan Thomas, Dorthy Parker, Edgar Allen Poe, Truman Capote William Faulkner, Raymond Carver. Just to name a few of the hundreds.

The boozing folklore the list of renowned has propagated is more amusing than their work— particularly in the case of Poe and Faulkner.

Sylvia Plath wrote in her book The Bell Jar—

I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.

Sylvia needed booze to write because it energized her.

Her psychosis is well documented by psychologists and literati alike. James Kaufman coined the term The Sylvia Plath Effect referring to the phenomenon that creative writers are more susceptible to mental illness. I myself dabble in mental illness, it's a way of life for me.

Being unhinged is a prerequisite for writers.

Charles Bukowski is known as the patron saint of lowlifes. Reading his early biography you understand why he needed alcohol. 

Buk ran away from home at 16 to escape his abusive father, riding buses cross country. He was a drifter who spent time working menial jobs and hanging out at bars, gracefully earning his alcoholic chops in stride. 

Soon, in the haze of his existence, he began writing, finding his calling— sipping wine and beer through the night as he worked.

Much has been written about gonzo king Hunter S. Thompson, including my story on this blog, Hunter S. Thompson, Weird to Most. Anyway, dribble, dribble, blah, here's a segment of his morning routine published in the Associated Press circa 1974. 

3pm— rise

3:05— Chivas Regal with the mourning papers 

3:45—  cocaine

3:50—  another glass of Chivas

4:05— coffee and a Dunhill

4:15— cocaine

4:16— orange juice, Dunhill

4:30— cocaine

4:54— cocaine

5:05— cocaine

5:11—  coffee, Dunhills

5:30— more ice in the Chivas

5:45— cocaine

6:PM— grass to take the edge off

7:05— off to the Woody Creek Tavern in downtown Aspen.

Enough on the over-hyped and well-oiled. Let's stray to something even more demoralizing. What kind of writer are you? Or, the nothing writers of the world versus the renowned and worshiped. 

At times, while reading certain writers, namely, Bukowski and Hunter Thompson I say out loud—

 you can write as good as these clowns.  

Hunter capitalizes words to underscore their importance when italicizing would do— he does it paragraph after paragraph because he’s Hunter Fucking Thompson King Gonzo. Here’s a bit from his book Hey Rube,

There was an exact moment, in fact, when I knew Al Gore would Never be President of the United States no matter what the TV networks said. 

Here's another, why the fuck cap instance?

But what the hell? That’s why we have Insurance, And the Inevitability of these Nightmares is what makes them so reassuring.

His book, Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang— hinges on the Angel's 1964 Labor Day rally to Monterey, California. After leaving a downtown bar the outlaw gang rides their choppers to an area known as The Dunes to party and camp. In the wee hours, two teenage girls, who shouldn't have been there, were raped by the gang.

Hunter refers to the rape and resulting charges by the Monterey Sheriff's Department every ten pages or so, adding bits of information but pretty much saying the same thing. 

Over amped and seemingly desperate to get his point across he uses caps where they don't belong and superfluously pounds away at his story's themes. Which is childish, like a baby crying to be held, contrary to Hunter's barbarian of modern literature persona. 

How many superstar authors are unheard of? Will their work be unearthed after they've kicked in? Or, will their printed books decay on a shelf somewhere while their electric books, blogs, and such fade away on the world wide web? 

With electronic self-publishing, it's easy to be an author. There are thousands upon thousands of would-be authors on social media. 

The odds of a writer making it are minimal.

Nielsen BookScan reported in 2004 that of 1.2 million books tracked, only 25,000— barely more than 2 percent— sold more than 5,000 copies.

I have 200,000 hits on my blog, Busted on Empty. Two of my stories, Hate, Zits & Spirituality, and, Missiles, Fruit Flies, & Psychosis, have over 8000 hits each. 

Yet, I haven’t made it, no publishers have contacted me, and I’m sure when I croak, Google will redline my blog after a year, pulling the curtain on the one-man show— Busted on Empty.

And, I don’t kick around the thought of being discovered when the curtain falls, like— Kafka, Sylvia Plath, Poe, or Henry David Thoreau. 

Give me a second to wipe the tears streaming down my face.

For different reasons, like Hunter, I’m a baby crying out to be held. Please hold me.

Unscrupulously, Fucking in Neck High Water

 

 

Let’s start from the beginning, the beginning of life.

Between 3700 and 2500 million years ago, you wouldn’t recognize the planet earth, the continents, the oceans, or the atmosphere. 

During this time the atmosphere was bombarded by electric storms and ultraviolet rays of the Sun. 

The thunder collaborates with the sun's ultraviolet rays, giving birth to elements via chemical reactions, and turning them into macromolecules able to feed themselves and reproduce. 

Life is born.

I was born forty-four years ago thanks to the miracle known as reproduction.

Reproduction is the biological process by which new individual organisms are produced from their parents. It’s the fundamental feature of all known life.

Each individual organism exists as the result of reproduction. 

In the heat of the moment, most homo sapiens are so captivated with fornication that they forget it's for reproduction. 

My Cuban wife Lucia and I have spent thousands of dollars on contraceptives of every shape, size, and kind.

We don’t want a kid. Lucia’s afraid, and nervous, to give birth. She's apprehensive about— stretchy vagina, stretch marks, and getting fat. She’s vain. 

We have two Chihuahuas, they’re our kids, they're tuition and diaper-free, and non-stick-like Teflon.

For a mega-second time travels to a different dimension, you’re two inches tall, inside the TV set and on-screen at the Hooterville General Store— where Sue Drucker is behind the counter, nattering with Ralph, Shiela Burns, Mr. Haney, and Alf Monroe.

Lucia's having an erotic flashback in the shower— she’s fucking Dirk the Lifeguard in the sea during high tide, it’s pleasing, the fine granules of sand grade on her body as he rubs against her. 

It’s a flashback, what you desire but isn't— she knows Dirk’s a slut, everyone in town knows.

This town is boring you to tears

Nothing in the world ever happens here

It’s all right hey lawdy mama, it’s all right

Don’t you know you gotta help

Nothing ever happens by itself

Hey lawdy mama

                          Steppenwolf, Live Steppenwolf 

Maxine— How about a rum coco? 

Shannon— No, no, I want some cold water. If I start drinking rum cocos now I won't stop drinking rum cocos. (The bus horn is heard blowing from below)

Maxine— Why doesn’t your busload of women come on up here instead of blowing that bus horn down there? 

Shannon— Let em blow it, blow it (Bus horn blows again, he sways a little) HANK! HANK! GET THEM OUT OF THE BUS AND BRING EM UP HERE, TELL EM THE RATES ARE OK.

Are they getting out of the bus or staying in it, the stingy daughters of bitches, school teachers at a Baptist female college in Blowing  Rock, Texas.

Maxine— here they come, a football squad of old maids.

Shannon—Yeah, and I’m the football.

                 a segment from Act I         

                 of The night of the Iguana            

                 Tennessee Williams

I was going to write a mini-bio on Tennessee but didn't. If you’re interested, read The Tennessee William's Sugar Bowl, here, on this blog.

Last night, in a dream, I met a girl, a grad student in Seattle on the banks of Lake Washington.

The two of us were queuing at an ATM machine—wrapped in a black cape she crouches and a sagging tit tumbles into my hand, then we're groping.  

In no time we’re transported, riding on a mist of air to the entrance of her room on the bank of Elliot Bay, an odd structure, open in the front and covered with strips of thick plastic.

Things feel witchy, I walk a patch of grass to hang my overcoat on a tree branch, and three deadheads show. I disappear into the mist I rode in on, feeling horny.

In bed at my Key West house, half-awake, half-asleep, I roll over and fuck Lucia— one of those fucks you love, a superlunary fuck, neither here nor there. 

The same morning over Jack and coffee in the kitchen she asks, 

did you fuck me this morning Querido?

Yes, I fucked you thinking it was a girl in Seattle.

Was she a good fuck? 

Yes, of course, dream fucks are the best.

Better than me Henry? 

Baby, no one is better than you, you’re my Latino sex-machine.

I’m a machine Querido? With no heart and soul? 

I adore you, darling, don’t think too much, where are we going today? 

Dog Beach, 

OK let’s clean up. 

We shower and change, choosing beachwear, Lucia picks out a lime-colored thong and wears a T on top. I wear cutoffs with a tank top that reads, 

LAZY IS A QUEER WORD 

I PREFER TO CALL IT

SELECTIVE PARTICIPATION

Come on, let’s take the Vespa, I’m too loaded to drive.

Lucia straddles the scooter, I hop on the back, at Dog Beach she parks on Vernon Ave. 

We're greeted by our friend Lazy Carlos. He slips us a joint and we grab a couple of beach chairs and a large umbrella, dragging the goods to an area between two tall coconut trees, parking ourselves there.

Lucia takes off her T, laying on her back— most of her large chest is exposed, she covers her nipples with loose bits of dried coconut husk. 

I light the joint, take a long hit and pass it to her. 

After a few hits we're tripping— the sky turns yellow, raining minnows on the shore. The little-bitty fish sprout tiny legs and crawl back into the sea. I ask Lucia,

did you see that? She answers, 

see what? 

The minnows with little legs crawling into the sea. 

No bebe, your tripping, I’ve been playing with my nipples— my pussy’s dripping wet.

I grab her hand, she pulls her top up— her nipples push thru the material as though they're sprouting.

We swim out into the surf until the seawater is at neck level. I drop my cutoffs and bone her from behind, grabbing both tits with my hands, pushing and rubbing. 

In a few minutes, seemingly longer, I blow a blistering wad inside her. As she screams as Dirk the Lifeguard blows his whistle, signaling us to come ashore. 

Dirk's jealous, he would rather be fucking my wife than playing lifeguard.