Charles Bukowski - Factotum

Yet I also knew with another part of me, that if I ever let go and dropped into the flow of those shiny new bicycles, I was done, finished, that I'd never be able to make it. So I just lay back and let the wheels and the spokes and the colors soothe me.

A man with a hangover should never lay flat on his back looking up at the roof of a warehouse. The wooden girders finally get to you; and the skylights-you can see the chicken wire in the glass skylights-that wire somehow reminds a man of jail. Then there's the heaviness of the eyes, the longing for just one drink, and then the sound of people moving about, you hear them, you know your hour is up, somehow you have to get on your feet and walk around and fill and pack orders…

She was the manager's secretary. Her name was Carmen-but despite the Spanish name she was a blonde and she wore tight knitted dresses, high spiked heels, nylons, garter belt, her mouth was thick with lipstick, but, oh, she could shimmy, she could shake, she wobbled while bringing the orders up to the desk, she wobbled back to the office, all the boys watching every move, every twitch of her buttocks; wobbling, wiggling, wagging. I am not a lady's man. I never have been. To be a lady's man you have to make with the sweet talk. I've never been good at sweet talk. But, finally, with Carmen pressing me, I led her into one of the boxcars we were unloading at the rear of the warehouse and I took her standing up in the back of one of those boxcars. It was good, it was warm; I thought of blue sky and wide clean beaches, yet it was sad-there was definitely a lack of human feeling that I couldn't understand or deal with. I had that knit dress up around her hips and I stood there pumping it to her, finally pressing my mouth to her heavy mouth thick with scarlet lipstick and I came between two unopened cartons with the air full of cinders and with her back pressed against the filthy splintering boxcar wall in the merciful dark.

We all doubled up as both stock and shipping clerks. We each filled and shipped our own orders. Management was all for pinpointing errors. And since only one man was responsible for each order from start to finish, there was no way to pass the buck. Three or four goofed up orders and you were out.

Bums and indolents, all of us working there realized our days were numbered. So we relaxed and waited for them to find out how inept we were. Meanwhile, we lived with the system, gave them a few honest hours, and drank together at night.

There were three of us. Me. And a guy called Hector Gonzalves-tall, stooped, placid. He had a lovely Mexican wife who lived with him in a large double bed on upper Hill Street. I know because I went out with him one night and we drank beer and I frightened Hector's wife. Hector and I had walked in after a drunken evening in the bars and I pulled her out of bed and kissed her in front of Hector. I figured I could out-duke him. All I had to do was to keep an eye out for the steel. I finally apologized to both of them for being such an asshole. I could hardly blame her then for not warming to me and I never went back.

The third was Alabam, a small-time thief. He stole rear-view mirrors, screws and bolts, screwdrivers, light bulbs, reflectors, horns, batteries. He stole womens' panties and bedsheets off of clotheslines, rugs out of hallways. He'd go to the markets and buy a bag of potatos, but at the bottom of the sack he'd have steaks, slices of ham, cans of anchovies. He went by the name of George Fellows. George had a nasty habit: he'd drink with me and when I was almost to the point of helplessness, he'd attack me. He wanted badly to whip my ass but he was a thin fellow and cowardly to boot. I always managed to rouse myself enough to give him a few to the gut and the side of the head which would send him bounding and staggering down the stairway, usually with some small stolen item in his pocket-my washrag, a can opener, an alarm clock, my pen, a can of pepper, or perhaps a pair of scissors.

The manager of the bike warehouse, Mr. Hansen, was red-faced, sombre, green-tongued from sucking Clorets to get the whiskey off his breath. One day he called me into the office.

"Listen, Henry, those two boys are pretty dumb, aren't they?"

"They're all right."

"But, I mean, Hector especially… he is dumb, really. Oh, I mean, he's _all right_, but I mean, do you think he'll ever make it?"

"Hector is all right, sir."

"You mean it?"

"Of course."

"That Alabam. He's got weasel-eyes. He probably steals six dozen bike pedals a month, don't you think?"

"I don't think so, sir. I've never seen him take anything."

"Chinaski?"

"Yes, sir?"

"I'm giving you a ten dollar a week raise."

"Thank you, sir." We shook hands. That's when I realized that he and Alabam were in cahoots and splitting it right down the middle.

Jan was an excellent fuck. She'd had two children but she was a most excellent fuck. We had met at an open air lunch counter-I was spending my last fifty cents on a greasy hamburger-and we struck up a conversation. She bought me a beer, gave me her phone number, and three days later I moved in to her apartment.

She had a tight pussy and she took it like it was a knife that was killing her. She reminded me of a butterfat little piglet. There was enough meanness and hostility in her to make me feel that with each thrust I was paying her back for her ill-temper. She'd had one ovary removed and claimed that she couldn't get pregnant; for only one ovary she responded generously.

Jan looked a lot like Laura-only she was leaner and prettier, with shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes. She was strange; she was always hot in the morning with her hangovers. I was not so hot in the mornings with mine. I was a night man. But at night she was always screaming and throwing things at me: telephones, telephone books, bottles, glasses (full and empty), radios, purses, guitars, ashtrays, dictionaries, broken watch bands, alarm clocks… She was an unusual woman. But one thing I could always count on, she wanted to fuck in the mornings, very much. And I had my bicycle warehouse.

Watching the clock on a typical morning, I'd give her the first one, me gagging and spewing just a bit, trying to hide it; then getting heated, coming, rolling off. "There, now," I'd say, "I'm going to be fifteen minutes late." And she'd trot off to the bathroom, happy as a bird, clean herself, poop, look at the hair under her arms, look in the mirror, worry more about age than death, then trot and get between the sheets again as I climbed into my stained shorts, to the noise of the traffic outside on Third Street, rolling east.

"Come on back to bed, daddy," she'd say.

"Look, I just got a ten dollar raise."

"We don't have to do anything. Just lay down here beside me."

"Oh shit, kid."

"Please! Just five minutes."

"Oh, fuck."

I'd get back in. She'd pull the covers back and grab my balls. Then she'd grab my penis. "Oh, he's _so_ cute!"

I'd be thinking, I wonder when I can get out of here? "Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"Do you mind if I kiss him?"

"No."

I heard and felt the kisses, then felt little licks. Then I forgot all about the bicycle warehouse. Then I heard her ripping up a newspaper. I felt something being fitted over the tip of my dick. "Look," she said.

I sat up. Jan had fashioned a little paper hat and fitted it over the head of my dick. Around the brim was a little yellow ribbon. The thing stood fairly tall.

"Oh, isn't he _cute_?" she asked me.

"_He?_ That's _me_."

"Oh no, that isn't you, that's _him_, you have nothing to do with him."

"I don't?"

"No. Do you mind if I kiss him again?"