Charles Bukowski - Factotum

When I got into my room I remembered I had left my suitcase downstairs. I went down to fetch it. As I walked past Mrs. Adams' door the gasping sounds were much louder. I took my suitcase upstairs, threw it on the bed, then walked downstairs again and out into the night. I found a main boulevard a little to the north, walked into a grocery store and bought a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. I had a pocket knife and would be able to spread the peanut butter on the bread and have something to eat.

When I got back to the rooming house I stood in the hall and listened to Mr. Adams, and I thought, that's Death. Then I went up to my room and opened the jar of peanut butter and while listening to the death sounds from below I dug my fingers in. I ate it right off my fingers. It was great. Then I opened the bread. It was green and moldy and had a sharp sour smell. How could they sell bread like that? What kind of a place was Florida? I threw the bread on the floor, got undressed, turned out the light, pulled up the covers and lay there in the dark, listening.

In the morning it was very quiet and I thought, that's nice, they've taken him to the hospital or the morgue. Now maybe I'll be able to shit. I got dressed and went down the hallway to the bathroom and sure enough I did. Then I walked down to my room, got into bed and slept some more.

I was awakened by a knock on the door. I sat up and called, "Come in!" before I thought. It was a lady dressed entirely in green. The blouse was low-cut, the skirt was very tight. She looked like a movie star. She simply stood there looking at me for some time. I was sitting up, in my shorts, holding the blanket in front of me. Chinaski the great lover. If I was any kind of man, I thought, I would rape her, set her panties on fire, force her to follow me all over the world, make tears come to her eyes with my love letters written on light red tissue paper. Her features were indefinite, not at all like her body; there was the general round shape of her face, the eyes seemed to be searching mine but her hair was a bit messy and uncombed. She was in her mid-thirties. Something, however, was exciting her. "Mrs. Adams' husband died last night," she said. "Ah," I said, wondering if she felt as good about the noise stopping as I did.

"And we're taking up a collection to buy flowers for Mr. Adams' funeral."

"I don't think that flowers are meant for the dead who don't need them," I said rather lamely.

She hesitated. "We thought it would be a nice thing to do and I wondered if you would like to contribute?"

"I'd like to but I just arrived in Miami last night and I'm broke."

"Broke?"

"Looking for a job. I'm up against it, as they say. I've spent my last dime on a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. The bread was green, greener than your dress. I left it on the floor there and even the rats didn't touch it."

"Rats?"

"I don't know about your room."

"But when I talked to Mrs. Adams last evening I asked her about the new roomer-we're all kind of like a family here-and she said that you were a writer, that you wrote for magazines like _Esquire_ and _Atlantic Monthly_."

"Hell, I can't write. That's just conversation. It makes the landlady feel better. What I need is a job, any kind of job."

"Can't you contribute twenty-five cents? Twenty-five cents wouldn't hurt you."

"Honey, I need the twenty-five cents more than Mr. Adams does."

"Honor the dead, young man."

"Why not honor the living? I'm lonely and desperate and you look very lovely in your green dress."

She turned, walked out, walked down the hall, opened the door to her room, went in, closed the door, and I never saw her again.

The Florida State Department of Employment was a pleasant place. It wasn't as crowded as the Los Angeles office which was always full. It was my turn for a little good luck, not much, but a little. It was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

My name was called. The clerk had my card in front of him, the one I had filled out when entering. I had elaborated on my work experience in a creative way. Pros do that: you leave out the previous low-grade jobs and describe the better ones fully, also leaving out any mention of those blank stretches when you were alcoholic for six months and shacked with some woman just released from a madhouse or a bad marriage. Of course, since all my previous jobs were low-grade I left out the lower low-grade.

The clerk ran his fingers through his little card file. He pulled one out. "Ah, here's a job for you."

"Yes?"

He looked up. "Sanitation Worker."

"What?"

"Garbage man."

"I don't want it."

I shuddered at the thought of all that garbage, the morning hangovers, blacks laughing at me, the impossible weight of the cans, and me pukeing my guts into the orange rinds, coffee grounds, wet cigarette ashes, banana peels and the used tampax.

"What's the matter? Not good enough for you? It's 40 hours. And security. A lifetime of security."

"You take that job and I'll take yours."

Silence.

"I'm trained for this job."

"Are you? I spent two years in college. Is that a prerequisite to pick up garbage?"

"Well, what kind of job do you want?"

"Just keep flipping through your cards."

He flipped through his cards. Then he looked up. "We have nothing for you." He stamped the little book they'd given me and handed it back. "Contact us in seven days for further employment possibilities."

I found a job through the newspaper. I was hired by a clothing store but it wasn't in Miami it was in Miami Beach, and I had to take my hangover across the water each morning. The bus ran along a very narrow strip of cement that stood up out of the water with no guard-rail, no nothing; that's all there was to it. The bus driver leaned back and we roared along over this narrow cement strip surrounded by water and all the people in the bus, the twenty-five or forty or fifty-two people trusted him, but I never did. Sometimes it was a new driver, and I thought, how do they select these sons of bitches? There's deep water on both sides of us and with one error of judgement he'll kill us all. It was ridiculous. Suppose he had an argument with his wife that morning? Or cancer? Or visions of God? Bad teeth? Anything. He could do it. Dump us all. I knew that if I was driving that _I_ would consider the possibility or desirability of drowning everybody. And sometimes, after just such considerations, possibility turns into reality. For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter. The old story of good and evil. But none of the bus drivers ever dumped us. They were thinking instead of car payments, baseball scores, haircuts, vacations, enemas, family visits. There wasn't a real man in the whole shitload. I always got to work sick but safe. Which demonstrates why Schumann was more relative than Shostakovich…

I was hired as what they called the extra ball-bearing. The extra ball-bearing is the man who is simply turned loose without specific duties. He is supposed to know what to do after consulting some deep well of ancient instinct. Instinctively one is supposed to know what will best keep things running smoothly, best maintain the company, the Mother, and meet all her little needs which are irrational, continual and petty.