Pussy and Shots of Tequila

 

 

In 1983, I drove to California in a Dodge Polera.   

Newport Beach is known to many as the most conservative city in America, not even good conservative, more extreme right-wing bordering on fascism conservative. 

At the Booty Club, on beach bar row, I dance the night away to Steely Dan, the Eagles, and the Beach Boys, the Southern Cal bands of the day.  

Out of nowhere, someone from security, a woman, comes up behind me, screaming as she 86es me,

you're 86ed freak, 

I didn't do nothin, I was dancing, you see. 

The she-bull throws me out the door and onto the pavement. 

When the police show they handcuff me, laughing and saying,

zip it and get in the car asshole. 

On the way to Newport County jail, a cop reads me my rights. 

you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me? 

it ain't me, you got the wrong guy, I'm innocent,

you indecently waved your cock at people, pointing the thing at them, we have a witness.  

At Newport County Jail after being searched I'm thrown in a cell with 6 Mexicans. 

For dinner, the finks hand out metal plates of salami sandwiches and grape kool-aid, ungraciously, and heavy-handed without love, someone asks the jailer,

hey, Gringo, where's the tortilla? 

Close to midnight, I'm laying face up on a hard metal bench trying to sleep, when a voice says, 

I'm your public defender, are you Henry Lucowski? 

yes sir I am, I didn't catch your name,

Jack Hansen, 

tomorrow's court, see ya there, Henry. 

By noon we're standing before the judge, Alfa Freeman,

eyeballing his bushy eyebrows and the scar on his chin. 

There is no substantial evidence that you have commented a crime, no pictures or videos Mr. Lucwoski, so I'm dismissing your case. You're articulate and bright son, I wish you luck in life. 

Praise he, I'm a freeman, Jack Hansen chauffers me to my car at Balboa Pier.

As recommendations go, getting the fuck outta dodge is a good one. 

Speeding, I take Highway 5 south to Tijuana, way fucking stoked to be out of California.

At the border, I hand over my driver's license to Mexican Customs, making it through. 

Turning my Polara right at Revolution Boulevard, I drive directly to La Azteca Bar, finding a booth in the shadows.   

A woman with a blond wig and short skirt on hands me a roll of toilet paper saying, 

your gonna need this hijo, 

why thank you chica, 

do you enjoy eating pussy handsome? 

Yes, washed down with a shot of tequila.

Drinking shots they reminisce about life,

shit from the 60s, innocent times, and times of total chaos. 

What's your name pumpkin? 

Ganja, and you are?

Henry, Henry Lucowski. 

Ganja's from a good family, farmers from Michoacán. 

Take me to Michoacán, she says over and over, 

I'm attracted to her so I give in. 

They drive towards Michoacán, eventually getting a room at the  Peckerwood Motel where they sleep through the night.

That morning on Mexican Highway 2 stopping in Pedro's Cantina, they eat Buñuelos out of paper bags and drink hot Mexican coffee.

After breakfast, they begin the long journey to Michoacán that's a 29-hour drive, Henry says, 

I'm pulling over now, I need a deep kiss, right now babe. 

But What the Fuck do I Know?

 

I’m staring at a blank page wondering what to write. Can a writer feel at some point he has nothing left to say? Like, Hemingway or Hunter S. Thompson towards the end of their lives, feeling like things are all over?

The other day I watched The End of the Tour, a film about a month-long interview of author Henry David Wallace by Rolling Stone columnist David Lipsky. And frankly, the film left me flat because there was little talk about the art of writing. Instead coming off as a bullshit session and party. 

Lipsky would ask questions like, 

why do you wear the headband, David? And the author would answer, 

why did you have to ask that? 

Wallace answered in a deeply wounded manner often.

To see what the interview was like I listened to an excerpt from it on YouTube, and indeed it was a bullshit session.  

Anyway, I wanted to see what Wallace’s work was like, so I downloaded his only available book on PDFdrive, the other was in Turkish, Girl with Curious Hair, and after reading a few pages, I found I loved his work, here’s an excerpt for you,

It’s 1976. The sky is low and full of clouds. The gray clouds are bulbous and wrinkled and shiny. The sky looks cerebral. Under the sky is a field, in the wind. A pale highway runs beside the field. Lots of cars go by. One of the cars stops by the side of the highway. Two small children are brought out of the car

by a young woman with a loose face. A man at the wheel of the car stares straight ahead. The children are silent and have very white skin. The woman carries a grocery bag full of something heavy. Her face hangs loose over the bag.

She brings the bag and the white children to a wooden fencepost, by the field, by the highway. The children's hands, which are small, are placed on the wooden post. The woman tells the children to touch the post until the car returns. She gets in the car and the car leaves. There is a cow in the field near

the fence. The children touch the post. The wind blows. Lots of cars go by. They stay that way all day.

What came to mind reading the extended paragraph was a Norman Rockwell painting, or the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression.

Wallace’s characters in the bit are as nondescript as shadows, and now I see what all the fuss is about.

Henry Foster Wallace committed suicide at 46 in 2008, and the act had nothing in common with Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson, authors who offed themselves because of extended writer's block, and poor health. Foster had suffered from depression throughout his life and was a powerful writer to the end. 

Watching The End of the Tour left me with a foul taste in my mouth, then I read some of Girl with Curious Hair, and was gassed. 

 

Let’s stay the course here, moving on to Thomas Pynchon. 

Some years ago I wrote a story, Hey Babe, it’s the High Hat Club which included a bit on Pynchon.

Thomas  Pynchon earned a B.A. in English from Cornell University in 1958, then spent a year in Greenwich Village living  Bohemian life and writing short stories. 

In 1960 he moved to Seattle and was hired as a technical writer for Boeing where he worked for 2 years, eventually leaving the company to write full-time. 

In 1963 his first novel V was published, a cynical tale about a Zelig-like character who time travels and shows up at crucial times in European history. 

The novel won the Faulkner Foundation Award which would be the first of many awards for Pynchon. When Pynchon's 3rd novel Gravity’s Rainbow was published in 1973 it won critical acclaim from American literati.  

Pynchon’s heavy use of metaphor is meant to seduce his readers to use imagination rather than reason. Basic themes such as— system vs freedom, reality vs illusion, and life vs death are paired opposites that interact and work as engines that power his work.

Years later in 2014, his book Inherent Vice became a Hollywood film, winning an Oscar for Best Screenplay, another accolade for Pynchon. 

Thomas Pynchon is a world-famous recluse, who makes JD Salinger look like Mohamed Ali or Jack Sparrow. Pynchon hasn’t appeared before the media since 1963, reigning supreme among reclusive novelists. 

When Gravity’s Rainbow won the National Book Award, another trophy, Pynchon, as you would guess sent someone else to accept the award on his behalf. 

After reading 20 pages of Pynchon’s book V, I threw the book into a metal trash can and poured lighter fluid on it, then lit it,  and watched it burn and diminish into a small grey mound of organic ash matter. 

Burning V was more fun than reading it. 

Most likely, Thomas the-escape-artist Pynchon is hiding away in upstate New York, in Steuben County maybe, sitting on a lone stool in front of his basement bar drinking and staring at his collection of awards, carefully hung on the wall,  

but what the fuck do I know? 

You Gotta Roll with it, Baby

 

Roughly at 2 AM, I’m woken by a phone call, it's my parent's  lawyer, Sid Grossman, who says, 

Henry, I’ve got awful news for you, late last night your parents were mowed down in their Cadillac by a semi-truck. It was ugly son, the first responders had to scrape their remains from the wreckage, and, as of now, the pieces have been moved to the morgue in a box, can you meet me there at 2? 

I’ll be there Sid.

I take a bus to the Harlem Morgue where Sid introduces me to the undertaker who says, 

I've placed your parent's remains in a  stainless steel casket, 

he opens the door and pulls the casket out, I look inside seeing caked blood, bits of sinus, and crushed bone, all of which smells gasly. I ask the undertaker, 

what now? 

He closes the metal casket and pushes it back in place, saying, 

sign at the X, 

Sid Grossman jumps in, 

Henry your signature verifies that you identified the remains, 

it's blood soup, what's to identify? 

just sign so we can get outta here Henry.

Outside they sit in Sid’s car, and finish the legal work,

Henry after my fee, and burial expenses, there's not much left, a couple of hundred dollars maybe,

okay, thanks for everything, 

Sid writes him a check. 

At Harlem Payomatic, Henry hands over the check and shows his ID. The clerk gives him 269 dollars and some change.

Hungry he walks a few blocks to Melba’s Soul Kitchen where he sitting at the counter a Black girl takes his order, 

I’ll have Crown Royal and 7 to kick things off, then, cornbread, collard greens, chicken fried pork chops, and 3 sweet potato pies, one to eat here, and the others to take away, his waitress  laughs saying, 

are you hungry?

Sure am, what’s your name? 

Thelma Dee, 

what’s the Dee for? 

Delicious, 

as they laugh the owner Melba walks to them and says,

are you  2 having a good time? Thelma Dee says, 

sorry, ma’am. 

Melba walks back into the kitchen and Henry says,

by the way, I'm Henry, 

Henry, that's Melba’s my aunty, she’s a sweetheart.

I leave Thelma Dee a 20 dollar bill and get her phone number. 

I’ve got a couple hundred dollars left, so I get a room at the Radio Inn in the Bowery, then call room service, ordering a bottle of Crown Royal, a 6 pack of 7 up, and ice. 

In bed, I eat a sweet potato pie uncut, holding it in both hands.

There’s a knock on my door, it’s room service, who rolls the booze in on a tray and asks,  

do you need anything else broh? 

How bout some weed, 

no problem, I got 1/4 ounces 2o per, 

He pulls a baggy out of his coat pocket, and I hand him the beans, 

As the dude walks out I roll a joint, lighting it, then tuning the radio to Harlem jazz. Alice Coltrane’s album Africa is playing.

Thankfully, my day's in the books. I did my bit identifying the bucket of guts that was once my parents, Victor and Bunny Lucowski. 

Loaded to the bone, moved by the Coltrane standard, I realize in life,

you gotta roll with it, baby.

Superman y Yo

 

I write every afternoon, high on ganja, mostly edibles. 

I have never earned a penny writing, but a shitload of people read my work, thousands. 

 

Page 2

Lucia and I are in bed around midnight watching the Dick Cavett show. 

John Cassavetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara are on.

The three were making late-night talk show rounds promoting Cassavete’s new film, Husbands. 

While shooting the film Cassavetes encouraged actors to say whatever came into their heads, and improvise.

While on the Cavett show the drunk and obnoxious actors pulled juvenile pranks and were rude to Cavett and his audience. 

Lucia feels sorry for Cavett because he seems effeminate and afraid to  stand up for himself, Henry chuckles, 

Don’t fret over Cavett, he's gayish, a superstar!

Anyway, we’ve been to the beach every day this week, so I’m working at home today. Wes Far called, he’ll pay a grand per for a story on the Native American writer, Sherman Alexie.

So anyways, 

Sherman Alexie is a Spokane Indian who was born on a reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He writes about his early life in the short story Superman and Me. 

His mother had a minimum-wage job which was middle-class by Indian standards. But, like most Indians on the reservation, they were poor. His father was an avid reader and the family house was cluttered with piles of books that would often cave in and collapse. It was a task walking around the place without tripping on a book. 

In his book, Superman and Me, Sherman talks about learning to read when he was 3, reading a comic book, and associating the panels with the written narrative.  

One day he picks up a book, examining it hard, the words were clear as mud, and as if the gods were blowing in his ear, he sees that the words on the pages are corralled into paragraphs. Sherman says it like this,

I didn't have the vocabulary to say, paragraph, but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence.  

Still 3, the prodigy sees the world in paragraphs, in his own words,

This knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family's house was a paragraph, distinct from the other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the north, the Fords to our south, and the Tribal School to the west. Inside our house, each family member existed as a separate paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, the deceased sister, my younger twin sisters, and our adopted little brother.

By the age of 5 he's in kindergarten reading The Grapes of Wrath while the other kids are busting their balls reading, Dick, Spot, and Jane.

Sherman the wunderkind was seen as an oddball on the reservation, Indian kids weren't supposed to be geniuses. 

In 1985 Sherman Alexie applies and is accepted to Jesuit Gonzaga University in Spokane, one of a few Indian kids to make it to college from his reservation.   

Initially, his work focused on the troubles of Indian life on the reservation, alcoholism, poverty, and despair. Later as he matures as a writer his work is less focussed on Indianness, and Sherman begins weighing what it is to be human, as demonstrated in the following poem,

Grief calls us to Things of This World 

The eyes open to a blue telephone

In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,

Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is blessed among us and most deserves

The first call? I choose my father because

Poppa's astounded by bathroom telephones.

so, I dial home, 

hey, Ma,

I say, 

Can I talk to Poppa? 

And then I remember that my father has been dead for nearly a year and I say,

shit, Mom, I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry— she says,

it’s okay, I made him a cup of instant coffee

this morning and left it on the table—

like I have for, what, twenty-seven years, and I didn’t realize my mistake until this afternoon. 

My mother laughs at the angels who wait for us to pause during the most ordinary of days and sing our praise to forgetfulness before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Da angels burden and unbalance us and da fucking angels ride us piggyback. 

 

A Filthy Slash Rotten Wonderful Day at the Beach

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t tell you I love you, Lucia, 

that's what you say but I know you're turned on by other women, not just me Henry.

looking at themselves in the bathroom mirror, they brush their teeth, then braid each other’s hair, native style. 

They walk the short distance to Dog Beach pushing a cart with a couple of folding beach chairs and a loaded cooler in it.

A friend Carlos mentions nude beaches. 

At Nude Beach they drink bottled beer, Lucia squints, putting on her Ray-Bans, looking seaward, looking for Cuba

when gravity fails Angels take flight.

Someone's kid yells,  

fin, 

people run ashore, not panicked, but wanting to get ashore. 

At T-Bones, the boss makes trippy cocktails blending fresh mint leaves, ice, and coca paste. 

Are you familiar with our menu?

Yes we are, we'll have the lobster chowder on homemade bird nests, Greek salad, and a pitcher of Rum Cocas

what kind of dressing on that salad? 

Garlic sour cream, 

the food takes forever, the kitchen’s backed up, it’s Sunday. 

They're 3 pitchers of medicated goo to the wind, too loaded to eat. They take a doggy bag home for their neighbor's Golden Retriever, Billy. 

Finally home, they sit at the kitchen table and talk about  Raymond Carver, his film Short Cuts, and the failed and wasted lives of blue-collar workers from the Pacific Northwest. 

I’m reading Raymond Carver, he’s depressing, I’d rather read Marquez, his stories transcend everyday life to a place where there's hope for all humanity.  

Yes, I get it, 

what’s on HBO, Henry? 

I’ll check the TV Guide, 830 PM,

oh, here's a freaky bit,

Doctor Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

I’ll pop some corn, quierdo. 

Sitting with their legs up on the coffee table the couple munches popcorn as the plot unfolds, 

... an unhinged United States Air Force general orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It separately follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force exchange officer as they attempt to prevent the crew of a B-52, who were following orders from the general, from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war.

It’s impossible, isn’t it? 

God, I hope so. 

The Cinema

 

in a hush eating mars bars and 

popcorn @ the Oriental theater

where celluloid dreams ooze off 

the screen as Queen Cleopatra  

shows off her chest and dreams of a

roller coaster ride looking to the sea

, wondering why starfish are falling 

from the sk@i 

Tomorrow's the Pow Wow!

 

I posted my first story, Hell Out West on Twitter 0n November 23, 2007, and I've been writing ever since.  

I’ve written hundreds of stories and everyone has been a step forward. 

Nothing makes me happier than reading the lions of literary history— the greats from Plato to Sherman Alexie. 

Writers and born not made, and every one of them has his or her own style. 

I was a big talker in College and spent a lot of time in the downtown taverns. 

By junior year I realized there was something, somewhere, I needed and the university scene wasn’t it, so I packed my Polara wagon for a trip out west.

Somewhere between Topeka and Junction City on I-70, I pull my over and pick up a hitchhiker, an Indian gal headed out west who says, 

O-Si-Yo friend, I'm Magnolia,

I'm Henry,

there's a Pow Wow at Pineridge Reservation this weekend, let's go handsome,

show me the way, Pocahontas.  

She pulls a map from her beaded leather bag,

drive to North Plate, turn right, and head north on Old Highway 83, 

I know Old 83, are you hungry Geronimo? 

You bet,  

20 clicks up 83 they pull off and park in front of Hannah's Corners. Inside, a waitress wearing a gold sweatshirt that reads, 

Viva Las Vegas,

takes their order, 

have you looked over the menu, sweetie? Magnolia giggles saying, 

 

My lover and I will share, we'll have dollar cakes, scrambled eggs, chicken fried steak with gravy, hash browns, and a pot of coffee, 

you bet, let me go place your order, Henry smiles saying, 

lovers? 

 you must feel the vibes, Henry, 

I do, I do.

Eat hearty because the skins on Pindridge just eat fry bread. 

You mean donuts? 

not quite but close, dog,

dog? 

You're  Sweeting Dog. 

Henry pays the bill and they walk outside, then gases up the Polara. Magnolia sits in the driver's seat and asks.

can you teach me to drive?

Sure, how old are you? 

28, 

he gets in and tells her, 

pull out of the station onto the road, start off slowly, just use your right foot on the pedals, now put the car in drive. 

As they drive on Old 83, Henry laughs, 

you've driven before, haven't you? 

How'd you guess? I don't have a license, do you think the cops will stop us? 

Just keep one eye on the speedometer and the other on the road.

By sundown they reach the South Dakota border where Magnolia continues west on 18, turning right on a gravel road.

At the end of the road a Buck on horseback signals for her to stop, she looks up and asks, 

where's Crow Dog?

Drive a few clicks passed Pinky’s Grill, and look for a shiny Airstream trailer.

She drives a bit and then parks the wagon under a Mesquite tree.

Magnolia and Henry walk to Pinky’s for supplies, bologna, fry bread, donuts, and beer which they place in a styrofoam cooler on ice. She reminds him,  

silence is golden my Indian Buck, 

oh, it's "my" now? 

Yeah, just behave. 

They set up camp near Crow Dogs' trailer, then for luck field strip an American Spirit cigarette, tossing the tobacco into the wind.

Leonard’s wife steps out of the trailer and walks to Magnolia,  putting her arm around her, 

we've converted an old school bus into a camper, you and the white boy can stay there if you like.

Crow Dog walks outside wrapped in a blanket, approaches Magnolia, and says,

you’re a Cree from Wisconsin, you’re Painted Red Horse’s daughter, tomorrows the Paw Wow, get some rest. 

They walk through a field of discarded beer cans, and doused campfires to the school bus, inside, there’s a loft bedroom made of pallets. 

Ready for bed they shower in a plastic shower stall outside.

Dripping wet they wrap up in Indian blankets and go to their new home, the school bus.

After getting comfortable in the loft they light Sage incense and candles. Then Magnolia lights a joint, and they sit cross-legged on the mattress, puffing, passing the joint back and forth, Henry says softly,  

Tomorrow’s the Pow Wow.