I’m a Louse, a Schnuck, & a Loser

 

I feel like a dog with no home, depressed. I thought I had whipped it months ago, but the shit has come back for another round. 

If the black hole is back, I’ll take the goddamn meds, it’s no big deal. 

Psychotropic drugs have vastly improved over the years. 

 

In the nineties when you ate psycho dope it stirred through your body to your head leaving you with a dull ache similar to drinking qauuanties of non d-distilled vanilla. 

Blue or not, I spend 80 percent of my time in bed writing and editing my stories.

Jack Nicholson feels at home in the bedroom of his mansion on Mullholand Drive, lying on one side of the bed all the time, creating what he calls, 

the dent. 

You can measure and cut a piece of plywood and place it under your mattress.  

I'm going to write a story on the party scene at Nicholson’s house on Mulholland Drive, a street that was in Polanski's Chinatown

It was party central in Beverly Hills, there were loads of good times and a few bad.

In defense of what happened to  Roman Polanski at Jack's house in the swimming pool the usual alibi applies,

Judge, she didn't look at day under 22.

At 15 Roman was savaged by the Nazi SS, and used as cannon fodder, holding apples on sticks which the Nazis shoot at for target practice.

One sunny afternoon at Nicholson’s house, Polanski was doing a photo shoot of a model, age wasn't discussed.

Everybody in the world knows what happened next— the spook incapacitated the pretty baby with champagne and a Quaalude, screwing her in the swimming pool.

Polanski shows up for arraignment in the morning then flees to Paris that night knowing France won't extradite him. 

 2011 Mulholland Drive has a hoodoo curse on it.  

Nicholson doesn't live there anymore, he sold it. 

 On X many writers claim to be award-winning. 

There are lots and lots of awards out there, thousands. But in the end, if you are talented and lucky you're be a star. 

A star has to develop a look, act, wrighting music or scripts. 

FIGARO LUCOWSKI, AWARD WIN-ING AUTHOR, 

That's fucked.

Do you think the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will give someone an award who doesn’t know the difference between an African mosquito and a Tsetse fly?  

If there was an award for mad as March, that'd be mine.

I’m a louse, a schnuck, and a loser— living on bones, nervously waiting for payday, eating sardine and bologna sandwiches with mustard on white bread.

Stan Getz is clean-cut like Bing Crosby or Cantinflas. You'd wouldn't guess Getz was a junky.

Twelve years ago I wrote, I Gotta Feed My Man, a story about Art Pepper.  

Laurie Pepper was the only person on the West Coast jazz scene who wasn't put off by Art's complexity and addiction.

They were soulmates, she saved his life, got him off of junk, and organized his life.

Straight Life, Art's amazing book on his life would have never been published without Laurie.

As a rule, people who kick junk love the freedom it gives them. In Art’s case, he said,

hey, I’ve never played better and I don’t have tracks on my arms anymore.  

My junk is Thai beer with ice. That’s how they drink it here. I drink two every evening. 

As for weed, it’s overrated — it makes you stupid.

I usta read loaded, reading the same page over and over.

Ganja is like Sage, a healer, both help folks through things. 

I edit stoned, straight, or drunk, I don't go by the Hemingway rule.

Late the other night, I partially deleted my seventeen-year-old blog— I reckoned my work was stupid, I was shaking all over, ashamed;urgently needed a valium. 

In Thailand, a few pharmacies sell the relaxatives for less than twenty Baht apiece, but they are few and far between so you have to fish them out. 

Anyway, I can score valium or Xanax in Pattaya in a flash from a certain pharmacy near the beach.

Scoring Xanax in Thailand doesn’t compare to William Burroughs's junky lifestyle in Mexico City during the early fifties— day after day hustling to score Dilaudid to cook and shoot up.  Dilaudid is five times more potent than most street heroin.  

Old Bill Lee and his junky pal Bill Gains, worked every imaginable angle— forging scripts, paying Mexican doctors for scripts, or occasionally finding pharmacists who sold Dilaudid under the counter. 

Burroughs tried to kick a number of times, succeeding occasionally, cross addicting to booze. The downside was he drank a 1/5 of gin a day and couldn't handle it— he was a wretched and mean drunk. 

Towards the end of his life, William lived with his secretary James Grauerholz in a typical ranch-style house, isolated in the bush outside of Lawrence, Kansas— drinking scotch and poking syringes of methadone in what fatty tissue he had left on his cadaverous body.    

Old Bill Lee lived in the same house for seventeen years, dying of a heart attack at a Lawrence Hospital in 1997 at eighty-three.  

His death put an end to a lifetime of carrying 300 pounds of remorse around after killing his platonic wife Joan Vollmer during a drunken game of William Tell, missing the cocktail glass on her head, and shooting her in the forehead. 

In 1951 after serving thirteen days in a Mexico City jail, his family bribed the Mexican judges, freeing him from the joint, so he fled the country.

I live in Thailand to make ends meet, and none of my acquaintances here understand or read my work. 

Yesterday a pal, who’s no literato, told me my stories are crazy. 

I suppose they are, but here's an excerpt from Ducks Flying Backwards by Tom Robbins that he'd think is crazy too.

Should readers desire to make their own pilgrimage to the Canyon of the Vaginas—and it is, after all, one of the few holy places left in America—they’ll have to find it by themselves. Were one to inquire of its whereabouts at a bar or gas station (in west-central Nevada they’re often one and the same, complete with slot machines), the best that one could hope for is that a dude would wink and aim one at the pink gates of Bobbie’s Cottontail Ranch, or whatever the nearest brothel might be called.

Anyway, what the fuck? Whatever people think is— A BIG NOTHING at a time when the worldwide balance of power is on thin ice, and we're a heartbeat away from a war somewhere in the world employing light nuclear weapons between the Western alliance, and you name it— China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran.

Not to mention the precarious positions of the global economy, as well as, the mega-mounds of non-degradable plastics in garbage dumps and the ocean seriously plaguing all life forms.

The Martians, planted the seed for life on planet earth millions of years ago, giving us an organic vehicle to call our own — but we need a new car, and there are no planets in the universe for sale. 

If we collectively think positively, evil will evaporate. 

Tony Robbins doesn't like being called a guru, but, I agree with him when he says, thinking positive isn’t enough to change ourselves and the world around us. 

And may I add, at this point, taking action might not be enough, WE NEED A NEW PLANET AND THERE ARE NONE FOR SALE. 

Listening to Pharoh Sander's Journey to One— I realized when the planet is cracking at the seams,

paradise lives in your mind and soul, it's there for you.

Fry Bread, Slurpees & CrAzy PaY

 

I have been writing about Martians for the last few days, and it seems more plausible Martians planted the seed of humanity on Earth than all of the funny business about the hand of God in the Book of Genesis. 

The Martian bit was too technical though, it gave me a headache. 

When writing on scientific work it's difficult to avoid plagiarizing because you're writing about others' theories, not yours. Shit like— Doctor Popov revealed this and that, and he wrote the law of, blah, blah, blah.

I never in my life, not for a moment understood or appreciated science. Sure there's a big need for it, but the only thing I can think of, worse than writing scientifically, is going to church— which is like an hour in jail.

Hail Ceasar, give me the arts, there are seven forms.

Painting— is way too expensive and messy.

Sculpture— too much physical work, like working construction.

Architecture— a nine to five job, and, and if you fuck up your technical drawings, thousands will die when your creation collapses.

Cinema— I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Music— It takes too much eye and hand coordination to read music and finger the keyboard at the same time. 

Theater— If you’re not gay, forget it. 

Literature— The prince of the arts. Cheap, and clean, no worries about punctuation, grammar, and spelling, thanks to word processors.

After my first wife, Lucia, left me, a month later I married  Martha Graham—  the daughter of Bob Graham the Governor of Florida. 

We married the day we met, blinded by booze and sex.

A few days into the marriage we woke in our hotel room, feeling like strangers. It was little more than a brief tryst, which she bankrolled thank God.

For the last six months, Winona Swiftwater and I have been living in my Key West bungalow. She’s a Calusa Indian— we're pals and lovers, laughing our asses off at peculiar shit only the weird appreciate.

Surely we're the only people in the world beating the magic tom-tom to reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show.

Winona quit her job when we shacked up, the system chaps her ass. Skins are psychically different from White people.

Well, I’m a Paleface who doesn’t get it, the system that is. I’ve never punched a clock, I’m self-employed, and the bulk of my income comes from selling kilos of marijuana to a couple of street dealers. 

I don’t make money writing, regardless, I write most the time— when I'm not being hassled.

I connect with the characters in my stories— as far as real people go, initially, the upfront stuff is fine, but after twenty minutes, I find an excuse to escape and make for the door. 

Lucia, my one-time Cuban wife, was an extrovert, I hung out with her friends because I was with her.

She didn’t get it, why I preferred being alone in my study writing— writers are loners. 

Luck saved me from Lucia, I escaped her when she ran away. I never got her drift, sussing her was like looking into the sun. 

Now she lives in my head and nothing short of a lobotomy is going to get her out. 

Christians say if you hate someone pray for them and it will absolve your hate— thus freeing you from the hold that person has on you. 

Rarely, but occasionally, I despise a person enough to pray for them, even though I’m an atheist. 

The prayers go nowhere—  it's a huge effort for me to pray but I try, what the fuck? 

A serious atheist would no more pray than jump into a pit of Copperheads. I'm a half-ass atheist.

Winona cooks brunch at noon— fry bread, corn, beans and squash, fresh salmon, and wild rice. 

It's morning in our house, I make Mexican coffee, freshly brewed with a dash of tequila, some Kailua, and hot milk.

I have an appointment with a social worker at Monroe County Social Clinic in downtown Key West a two. I get SSA payments monthly— I fake being psycho to get the check, the act is half the fun.

Winona and I  shower and braid our hair, double braids, dressing casually. Winona can wear my clothes— we wear white and pink Ts, khaki shorts, and mismatched flip-flops.

Winona drives the Vespa— she goes north on Flagger Ave. to 11th, in Newtown, parking in the lot of the state clinic. We walk the steps to the 3rd floor. The tallest building in the city is La Concha Key West, built by Cubans before the revolution in 1922.

There's a slew of ragged-looking people waiting to see a social worker, some playing with their cell phones, and others staring blankly at the wall. Some are actually ill and others are faking it. The social workers and shrinks are there to weed out the frauds and help those who need it. 

I check in with the receptionist, showing her my Social Security card, she assigns me a number, 003 saying,

Mr. Lucowski you’ll be seeing Miss Betty Bootlick in room 411. Listen for your number. 

Winona and I sit on plastic chairs, bolted to the glossy grey-painted floor. 

You can hear a dime drop, there are two Black security guards ready to pounce on anybody who gets out of line. Everyone in the waiting room except the truly insane is scared shitless of them. 

The room feels like a factory, and it smells like disinfectant. Winona says softly, 

this is awful Henry, and he whispers back, 

the bullshit is worth the extra two grand a month, and I enjoy the show. 

In forty minutes 003 is called and I walk to room 411, the door is open, and I go inside, sitting in front of Miss Bootlick who’s at her desk. She gets right down to business. 

Henry, how are things going on a daily basis? 

Ma’am, up and down, some days I can’t get out of bed. When I'm depressed I can't get my thing up. 

Your thing? 

Yeah, my penis.

Have you been taking your Escitalopram?

Oh yeah, religiously,

Henry's lying, he'd give the pills to the bums who hung around outside the clinic.

How bout your social life Henry? 

I’m different, I don’t fit in with people.

Can you focus on a task? 

If I look at something too closely I get blackouts and migraines,

You'll have to talk to Doctor Dick, he can give you something for that. How's your temperament?

The other day I was in  Wiki Wiki, and I brought a super lime Slurpee to the counter, it was $2.45, I only had $2.25, I asked the witch if she'd let me slide for the rest and she says, 

we don’t give charity to bums pal, take a hike.

So I lobbed the Slurpee at her and ran for it. 

I see Henry, I’m going to recommend another six months of SSA payments, and, and I think you should see Doctor Dick.

Finishing, he signs something without looking at it, trying to maintain a low profile. The Black security guards are eyeballing him, they eyeball everyone to generate the fear vibe in the waiting room.

Henry and Winona, walk downstairs to the parking lot. He drives directly to the finest steak house in town— Viva Argentina,  they order the best of everything, knowing two grand of SSA funny money is on the way.

Big Pine Key, Peyote & Budwieser Bombers

Maybe I shouldn’t drink— last night I drank four Budweiser bombers and I’m hungover this morning.

I make a Mexican breakfast, fried eggs, refried beans, and tortillas. After breakfast, I smoke a joint and the world balances out some. 

My Cuban wife left me for another woman of all things, a Nigerian ballet dancer, they ran off to New York. We didn’t get a divorce, why bother? I'm gonna shack up next time.

We haven’t talked for months, therapists say you should break it off, friendly-like, slow and easy— Lucia and I were finished in a flash and that was it, no contact, nothing, zip.

We were married eight years, all the bullshit we went through and money spent on things— is ashes in the wind.

It’s noon, I gotta get out of the house, I can't get Lucia the louse out of my mind.

I walk to Sonny’s place in an alley near Bohemian Village. A dive, a hole for Key West bums and alcoholics. 

Ducking around the corner, I step into the bar, it's dark and half full. Sonny’s a fat man with a full head of curly red hair, wearing a white apron, I sit at the bar and he says, 

how’s it goin Tony? Whataya have? 

Call me Henry, make it a Boiler Maker, Jack and Bud. 

I drop the shot of Jack into a large mug, taking a pull, feeling thankful and embracing my wee bit of a life. 

A raven-haired angel's sitting alone at a table, drinking beer, looking forlorn with her head down. Her hair is in double-braids, Native Indian style. 

I go to her table and ask, 

may I join you? 

Sure, paleface, 

we laugh, and she tells me a little about herself.

I’m Winona, it means only daughter, I’m a skin, Calusa tribe. I’m from Cypress Reservation, on Big Pine Key. I’m 35, never married, no kids. 

Well, I’m Henry, a freelance writer, I sell ganja to make ends meet. I met my one-time wife, Lucia, in Havana. She was a hooker and I was editing an X-Pat rag, The Gringo Times. She left me, taking off with a Nigerian woman. She's Latino, bi, and devilishly sexual.

As Skins go Winona talks up a storm. 

I want to transcend the hackneyed Indian stereotypes. At the University of Florida, as I learned more paleface history Indian lore became less important.

I’m a social worker at Key West Medical Center. Henry says chuckling, 

So you're in this dive looking for patients. 

Why are you here Henry? 

I think I’m Charles Bukowski.

Winona let's go for lunch at my place, it’s a few blocks away. 

Can I trust you, Henry?

No, 

right answer paleface. 

After a short walk, they reach his bungalow, the front door is unlocked. Winona says, 

Why don’t you lock your door? 

It keeps the evil spirits away.  

You think like a Skin, Paleface. 

Are you hungry? 

I’m starving, 

I got some leftovers, refried beans, and tortillas, I can heat them up, 

fine. 

They go to the living room, Winona sits on the sofa, and Henry turns on his old Grundig radio to 101 Jazz in Miami, Pharaoh Sander's Love Will Find a Way moans spiritually through the radio speaker. 

In the kitchen, eating tortillas and beans, Henry takes a couple  Budweiser bombers from the refrigerator. 

They eat some and finish off the bombers. 

Winona says, 

darling, I see you have a Chevy Wagon, let’s take a drive to my reservation on Big Pine Key. It’s isolated. I want to do peyote with you.

Great idea, let's go.

Carrying Henry’s Coleman cooler to his 68 Chevy wagon, they open the tailgate and place it in. 

He backs out, Winona sits in the back seat behind him, braiding his long hair in double braids. She's wearing short jeans and a flannel shirt cut off at the sleeves. He has on khaki shorts and a ripped white T-shirt. 

Taking White Street to Flagger, parking, going into Lost Weekend Liquor Store, they get five bags of ice, six Bud Bombers, and a few bags of fish jerky. Opening the tailgate filling the Coleman Cooler. 

It’s an hour's drive to Big Pine Key. North on Highway 1, he exits the highway and Winona directs him to the reservation, 

turn left, take Key Deer Road to the end, you'll pass a tiny village with food, liquor, and fishing supply stores, then a mini housing complex. 

They reach the end of Key Deer Road, there are some dirt roads, big enough for one car.

Winona points saying, 

take that one.

They drive through the big pine forest. The pine trees need fresh water to survive. The island is made of limestone, which holds rainwater like a sponge, so the mighty pines can drink.  

At Cyprus reservation, there are twenty two-room houses, made conventionally, with aluminum siding and tiled roofs. 

They’re all the colors of the rainbow, built in the pine forest off the shore to cool them from the sun's rays. 

On the white sand beach, there are a number of small single-engine aluminum fishing boats covered with canvas.

Some of the Calusa tribe tidy cleaned and deboned Butterfish, Bass, and Chub— sun drying them on woven mats. 

Others are net fishing from single-engine aluminum boats out in the gulf. 

The Calusa are busy and productive, no one cares that Henry's a paleface, Winona says, 

let’s go see Elk.

They walk into the pine forest, reaching a lime green house with blue roof tiles. Winona knocks on the door, a younger, thin Skin, with long black hair parted in the middle opens the door. It’s Elk, they go inside and sit on the sofa. Motörhead is blasting from two large speakers in each corner of the living room. 

He rolls a joint of Purple veined bush, saying, 

Winona, heard you got a big job in Key West, I couldn’t do it, gotta be free sister, the Calusa way.  

Elk you holding any buttons? And how bout a quarter ounce of that purple weed?

Sure do, a hundred for the buttons, and the same for the bush.

Henry says, 

No problem. Winona tells Elk, 

we're going to Bow Channel, we want to trip at the Sacred Mound,

that's cool sister. 

Henry hands over the scratch, Elk goes to the refrigerator and comes back with the OZ of buttons and the quarter of purple bush.

They leave Elks, go to the car, pick up the Coleman cooler, carrying it in tandem, one on each side.

Winona knows the way, she grew up on the reservation. They walk a dirt path through the pine forest.

When they reach the Sacred Mound, they are at the edge of the shore facing Bow Channel.

The Sacred Mound is one story high, composed of crustacean shells that are decomposed and bleached from being in the sun for thousands of years. 

Henry and Winona open the cooler taking out a couple of Bud bombers and the OZ of peyote buttons, then roll a joint, knowing they will need it.  

They each take a handful of oily buttons, filling their mouths, chewing the buttons, feeling seasick. They wash them down with cold beer.

Hitting on the joint relieves their queasiness. 

As they come on to the peyote the Sacred Mound of crustaceans ripples then inflates to the size of a dirigible, persistently expanding. Eventually engulfing Henry and Winona, undulating their bodies. They feel ecstatic, like two babies being rocked in a hammock.

Ten minutes later, the paranormal dirigible pops, rupturing and opening, dusting everything with what looks like dry snow or chalk dust

The couple sees material matter in a purely energetic state, they can make out shapes covered in the white dust. 

Testing the alternate environment they walk inside and through chalk-covered trees. Then wading into the white channel fifty meters out. The sea's rough with breaking waves, but they progress to shore as though they are passing through fluff, effortlessly.

The peyote has chemically altered their consciousness— but the materiality is real, it's a higher level of mindfulness.

As they begin to come down, Henry and Winona walk on the dirt trail back to the Calusa reservation with the Coleman cooler in hand, in silence, they load the Chevy Wagon and drive east on Key Deer Road, to Highway 1, then go south to Key West.

An hour later Henry parks the Chevy in the drive of his bungalow, saying, 

let's shower and get in the sauna. They shower together, Winona has a fabulous shape, natural breast with nipples pointing up, a cello-shaped body, with olive-toned skin. 

In the sauna, on the patio, they drink Bud Bombers, as the sun sets at Man of War Harbor. 

They laugh at nothing for some time and then hug one other firmly, with loving intent.

Winona says, 

Henry, I live in a small room in the nurse's quarters behind Key West Medical Center, would you like some company here? Let's shack up. 

He smiles, a genuine smile saying,

I would love it, babe.