Charles Bukowski - Post Office

I threw 100 percent in 5 minutes.

And got a form letter of congratulation from the City Postmaster.

Soon after that I made regular and that gave me an 8 hour night, which beat 12, and pay for holidays. Of the 150 or 200 that had come in, there were only two of us left.

Then I met David Janko on the station. He was a young white in his early twenties. I made the mistake of talking to him, something about classical music. I happened to be up on my classical music because it was the only thing I could listen to while drinking beer in bed in the early morning. If you listen morning after morning you are bound to remember things. And when Joyce had divorced me I had mistakenly packed 2 volumes of The Lives of the Classical and Modern Composers into one of my suitcases. Most of these men’s lives were so tortured that I enjoyed reading about them, thinking, well, I am in hell too and I can’t even write music.

But I had opened my mouth. Janko and some other guy were arguing and I settled it by giving them Beethoven’s birthdate, when he had penned the 3rd Symphony, and a generalized (if confused) idea of what the critics said about the 3rd.

It was too much for Janko. He immediately mistook me for a learned man. Sitting on the stool next to me he began to complain and rant, night after long night, about the misery buried deep in his twisted and pissed soul. He had a terribly loud voice and he wanted everybody to hear. I flipped the letters in, I listened and listened and listened, thinking what will I do now? How will I get this poor mad bastard to shut up?

I went home each night dizzy and sick. He was murdering me with the sound of his voice.

I began at 6:18 p.m. and Dave Janko did not begin until 10:36 p.m., so it could have been worse. Having a 10:06 thirty minute lunch, I was usually back by the time he got in. In he’d come, looking for a stool next to mine. Janko, besides playing at the great mind also played at the great lover. According to him, he was trapped in hallways by beautiful young women, followed down the streets by them. They wouldn’t let him rest, poor fellow. But I never saw him speak to a women down at work, nor did they to him.

In he’d come: “HEY, HANK! MAN, I REALLY CAUGHT A HEAD JOB TODAY!”

He didn’t speak, he screamed. He screamed all night.

“JESUS CHRIST, SHE REALLY ATE ME UP! AND YOUNG TOO! BUT SHE WAS REALLY A PRO!” I lit a cigarette. Then I had to hear all about how he met her— “I HAD TO GO OUT FOR A LOAF OF BREAD, SEE?” Then—down to the last detail—what she said, what he said, what they did, etc.

At that time, a law was passed requiring the post office to pay substitute clerks time and one half. So the post office shifted the overtime to the regular clerks.

Eight or ten minutes before my regular quitting time of 2:48 a.m. the intercom would come on: “Your attention, please! All regular clerks who reported at 6:18 p.m., are required to work one hour overtime!”

Janko would smile, lean forward and pour more of his poison into me. Then, 8 minutes before my 9th hour was up, the intercom would come on again. “Your attention, please! All regular clerks who reported at 6:18 p.m., are required to work two hours overtime!” Then 8 minutes before my 10th hour: “Your attention, please! All regular clerks who reported at 6:18 p.m., are required to work 3 hours overtime!” Meanwhile Janko never stopped.

“I WAS SITTING IN THIS DRUGSTORE, YOU SEE. TWO CLASS BROADS CAME IN. ONE OF THEM SAT ON EACH SIDE OF ME…”

The boy was murdering me but I couldn’t find any way out. I remembered all the other jobs I had worked at. I had drawn the nut each time. They liked me.

Then Janko put his novel on me. He couldn’t type and had the thing typed up by a professional. It was enclosed in a fancy black leather notebook. The title was very romantic. “LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT IT,” he said.

“Yeh,” I said.

I took it home, opened the beer, got into bed and began.

It started well. It was about how Janko had lived in small rooms and starved while trying to find a job. He had trouble with the employment agencies. And there was a guy he met in a bar—he seemed like a very learned type—but his friend kept borrowing money from him which he never paid back.

It was honest writing.

Maybe I have misjudged this man, I thought.

I was hoping for him as I read. Then the novel fell apart. For some reason the moment he started writing about the post office, the thing lost reality.

The novel got worse and worse. It ended up with him being at the opera. It was intermission. He had left his seat in order to get away from the coarse and stupid crowd. Well, I was with him there. Then, rounding a pillar, it happened. It happened very quickly. He crashed into this cultured, dainty, beautiful thing. Almost knocked her down.

The dialogue went like this:

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

“It’s quite all right…”

“I didn’t mean to… you know… I’m sorry…!”

“Oh, I assure you, it’s all right!”

“But I mean, I didn’t see you… I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s all right. It’s quite all right…”

The dialogue about the bumping went on for a page and a half.

The poor boy was truly mad.

It turned out this broad, although she’s wandering around among the pillars alone, well, she’s really married to this doctor, but the doc didn’t comprehend opera, or for that matter, didn’t even care for such simple things as Ravel’s Bolero . Or even he Three-Cornered Hat Dance by de Falla. I was with the doc there.

From the bumping of these two true sensitive souls, something developed. They met at concerts and had a quickie afterwards. (This was inferred rather than stated, for both of them were too delicate to simply fuck.)

Well, it ended. The poor beautiful creature loved her husband and she loved the hero (Janko). She didn’t know what to do, so, of course, she committed suicide. She left both the doc and Janko standing in their bathrooms alone.

I told the kid, “It starts well. But you’ll have to take out that bumping-around-the-pillar dialogue. It’s very bad…”

“NO I” he said. “EVERYTHING STAYS!”

The months went by and the novel kept coming back. “JESUS CHRIST!” he said, “I CAN’T GO TO NEW YORK AND SHAKE THE HANDS OF THE PUBLISHERS!”

“Look, kid, why don’t you quit this job? Go to a small room and write. Work it out.”

“A GUY LIKE YOU CAN DO THAT,” he said, “BECAUSE YOU LOOK LIKE A WINO. PEOPLE WILL HIRE YOU BECAUSE THEY FIGURE YOU CAN’T GET A JOB ANYWHERE ELSE AND YOU’LL STAY. THEY WON’T HIRE ME BECAUSE THEY LOOK AT ME AND THEY SEE HOW INTELLIGENT I AM AND THEY THINK, WELL, AN INTELLIGENT MAN LIKE HIM WON’T STAY WITH US, SO THERE’S NO USE HIRING HIM.”

“I still say, go to a small room and write.”

“BUT I NEED ASSURANCE.”

“It’s a good thing a few others didn’t think that way. It’s a good thing Van Gogh didn’t think that way.”

“VAN GOGH’S BROTHER GAVE HIM FREE PAINTS!” the kid said to me.

Then I developed a new system at the racetrack. I pulled in $3,000 in a month and a half while only going to the track two or three times a week. I began to dream. I saw a little house down by the sea. I saw myself in fine clothing, calm, getting up mornings, getting into my imported car, making the slow easy drive to the track. I saw leisurely steak dinners, preceded and followed by good chilled drinks in colored glasses. The big tip. The cigar. And women as you wanted them. It’s easy to fall into this kind of thinking when men handed you large bills at the cashier’s window. When in one six furlong race, say in a minute and 9 seconds, you make a month’s pay.