Charles Bukowski: Women

I moved toward her in the bathroom. "Lydia, I love you."

"Get the hell away from me!"

She pushed me out, closed the door, and I stood out in the hall, listening to the bath water run.

I didn't see Lydia for a couple of days, although I did manage to phone her 6 or 7 times during that period. Then the weekend arrived. Her ex-husband, Gerald, always took the children over the weekend.

I drove up to her court about 11 am that Saturday morning and knocked. She was in tight bluejeans, boots, orange blouse. Her eyes seemed a darker brown than ever and in the sunlight, as she opened the door, I noticed a natural red in her dark hair. It was startling. She allowed me to kiss her, then she locked the door behind us and we went to my car. We had decided on the beach-not for bathing-it was mid-winter-but for something to do.

We drove along. It felt good having Lydia in the car with me.

"That was some party," she said. "You call that a collating party? That was a copulating party, that's what that was. A copulating party!"

I drove with one hand and rested the other on her inner thigh. I couldn't help myself. Lydia didn't seem to notice. As I drove along the hand slid down between her legs. She went on talking. Suddenly she said, "Take you hand off. That's my pussy!"

"Sorry," I said.

Neither of us said anything until we reached the parking lot at Venice beach. "You want a sandwich and a Coke or something?" I asked. "All right," she said.

We went into the small Jewish delicatessen to get the things and we took them to a knoll of grass that overlooked the sea. We had sandwiches, pickles, chips and soft drinks. The beach was almost deserted and the food tasted fine. Lydia was not talking. I was amazed at how quickly she ate. She ripped into her sandwich with a savagery, took large swallows of Coke, ate half a pickle in one bite and reached for a handful of potato chips. I am, on the contrary, a very slow eater.

Passion, I thought, she has passion.

"How's that sandwich?" I asked.

"Pretty good. I was hungry."

"They make good sandwiches. Do you want anything else?"

"Yes, I'd like a candy bar."

"What kind?"

"Oh, any kind. Something good."

I took a bite of my sandwich, a swallow of Coke, putthem down and walked over to the store. I bought two candy bars so that she might have a choice. As I walked back a tall black man was moving toward the knoll. It was a chilly day but he had his shirt off and he had a very muscular body. He appeared to be in his early twenties. He walked very slowly and erect. He had a long slim neck and a gold earring hung from the left ear. He passed in front of Lydia, along the sand on the ocean side of the knoll. I came up and sat down beside Lydia.

"Did you see that guy?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Jesus Christ, here I am with you, you're twenty years older than I am. I could have something like that. What the hell's wrong with me?"

"Look. Here are a couple of candy bars. Take one."

She took one, ripped the paper off, took a bite and watched the young black man as he walked away along the shore.

"I'm tired of the beach," she said, "let's go back to my place."

We remained apart a week. Then one afternoon I was over at Lydia's place and we were on her bed, kissing. Lydia pulled away.

"You don't know anything about women, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I can tell by reading your poems and stories that you just don't know anything about women."

"Tell me more."

"Well, I mean for a man to interest me he's got to eat my pussy. Have you ever eaten pussy?"

"No."

"You're over 50 years old and you've never eaten pussy?"

"No."

"It's too late."

"Why?"

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

"Sure you can."

"No, it's too late for you."

"I've always been a slow starter."

Lydia got up and walked into the other room. She came back with a pencil and a piece of paper. "Now, look, I want to show you something." She began to draw on the paper. "Now, this is a cunt, and here is something you probably don't know about-the clit. That's where the feeling is. The clit hides, you see, it comes out now and then, it's pink and very sensitive. Sometimes it will hide from you and you have to find it, you just touch it with the tip of your tongue…"

"O.K.," I said, "I've got it."

"I don't think you can do it. I tell you, you can't teach an old dog new tricks."

"Let's take our clothes off and lay down."

We undressed and stretched out. I began kissing Lydia. I dropped from the lips to the neck, then down to the breasts. Then I was down at the bellybutton. I moved lower.

"No you can't," she said. "Blood and pee come out of there, think of it, blood and pee…"

I got down there and began licking. She had drawn an accurate picture for me. Everything was where it was supposed to be. I heard her breathing heavily, then moaning. It excited me. I got a hard-on. The clit came out but it wasn't exactly pink, it was purplish-pink. I teased the clit. Juices appeared and mixed with the cunt hairs. Lydia moaned and moaned. Then I heard the front door open and close. I heard footsteps. I looked up. A small black boy about 5 years old stood beside the bed.

"What the hell do you want?" I asked him.

"You got any empty bottles?" he asked me.

"No, I don't have any empty bottles," I told him.

He walked out of the bedroom, into the front room, out the front door and was gone.

"God," said Lydia, "I thought the front door was locked. That was Bonnie's little boy."

Lydia got up and locked the front door. She came back and stretched out. It was about 4 pm on a Saturday afternoon.

I ducked back down.

Lydia liked parties. And Harry was a party-giver. So we were on our way to Harry Ascot's. Harry was the editor of Retort, a little magazine. His wife wore long see-through dresses, showed her panties to the men, and went barefoot.

"The first thing I liked about you," said Lydia, "was that you didn't have a t.v. in your place. My ex-husband looked at t.v. every night and all through the weekend. We even had to arrange our lovemaking to fit the t.v. schedule."

"Umm…"

"Another thing I liked about your place was that it was filthy. Beer bottles all over the floor. Lots of trash everywhere. Dirty dishes, and a shit-ring in your toilet, and the crud in your bathtub. All those rusty razorblades laying around the bathroom sink. I knew that you would eat pussy."

"You judge a man according to his surroundings, right?"

"Right. When I see a man with a tidy place I know there's something wrong with him. And if it's too tidy, he's a fag."

We drove up and got out. The apartment was upstairs. The music was loud. I rang the bell. Harry Ascot answered the door. He had a gentle and generous smile. "Come in," he said.

The literary crowd was in there drinking wine and beer, talking, gathered in clusters. Lydia was excited. I looked around and sat down. Dinner was about to be served. Harry was a good fisherman, he was a better fisherman than he was a writer, and a much better fisherman than he was an editor. The Ascots lived on fish while waiting for Harry's talents to start bringing in some money.

Diana, his wife, came out with the plates of fish and passed them around. Lydia sat next to me.

"Now," she said, "this is how you eat a fish. I'm a country girl. Watch me."

She opened that fish, she did something with her knife to the backbone. The fish was in two neat pieces.

"Oh, I really liked that," said Diana. "Where did you say you were from?"

"Utah. Muleshead, Utah. Population ioo. I grew up on a ranch. My father was a drunk. He's dead now. Maybe that's why I'm with him…" She jerked a thumb at me.