Charles Bukowski - Factotum

"The fingernails of a woman."

"Yeh?"

"Yeh. Timmy, I need a drink."

Timmy parked at the next bar. We went in and he ordered two bottles of beer.

"What kind of job you looking for?"

"Stockboy, shipping clerk, janitor."

"Listen, I got some money at home. I know a good bar in Inglewood. We can go there."

He was living with his mother. We went in and the old lady looked up from her newspaper: "Hank, don't you go getting Timmy drunk."

"How are you doing, Mrs. Hunter?"

"The last time you and Timmy went out you both ended up in jail."

Timmy put his books in the bedroom and came out. "Let's go," he said.

It was Hawaiian decor, crowded. A man was on the phone: "You got to have somebody come get the truck. I'm too drunk to drive. Yes, I know I've lost the goddamned job, just come and get the truck!"

Timmy bought, we both drank. His conversation was O.K. A young blonde was glancing over and showing me leg. Timmy talked on and on. He talked about City College: how we kept wine bottles in our locker; about Popoff and his wooden guns; about Popoff and his real guns; about how we shot the bottom out of a boat in Westlake Park and sank; about the time the students went on strike in the college gym…

The drinks kept coming. The young blonde girl left with someone else. The juke box played. Timmy talked on. It was getting dark. We were 86'd, walked down the street looking for another bar. It was 10 p.m. We could hardly stand up. The street was full of cars.

"Look Timmy, let's rest."

I saw it. A mortuary, like a colonial mansion, with floodlights, and a wide white staircase leading up to the porch.

Timmy and I went about halfway up the staircase. Then I carefully stretched him out on a step. I straightened his legs and put his arms neatly down by his sides. Then I stretched out in a similar position on the step below Timmy.

I woke up in a room. I was alone. It was just getting light. It was cold. I was in my shirtsleeves. I tried to think. I got up from the hard bunk, went to the window. It was barred. There was the Pacific Ocean. (Somehow I was in Malibu.) The jailor came along about an hour later, banging metal dishes and trays. He passed my breakfast through to me. I sat down and ate, listening to the ocean.

Forty-five minutes later I was taken outside. There was a gang of men standing handcuffed together on one long chain. I walked to the end and held out my hands. The guard said, "Not you." I got my own set of cuffs. Two officers put me in a squad car and we drove off.

We reached Culver City and parked in back of the courthouse. One of the policemen got out with me. We walked to the back way and sat down in the front row of the courtroom. The cop took the cuffs off. I didn't see Timmy anywhere. There was the usual long wait for the judge. My case was second.

"You are accused of public intoxication and of blocking traffic. Ten days or thirty dollars."

I pleaded guilty even though I didn't know what he meant about blocking traffic. The policemen took me downstairs, sat me in the back of the squad car. "You got off easy," he said. "You guys had traffic jammed up for a mile. It was the worst traffic jam in the history of the City of Inglewood."

Then he drove me to L.A. County jail.

That night my father arrived with the thirty dollars. As we left his eyes were moist. "You've disgraced your mother and myself," he said. It seemed they knew one of the policemen who had asked him, "Mr. Chinaski, what is your son doing here?"

"I was so ashamed. To think, my own son in prison."

We walked down to his car, got in. He drove off. He was still weeping. "It's bad enough you don't want to serve your country in time of War…"

"The shrink said I was unfit."

"My son, if it wasn't for the First World War I never would have met your mother and you never would have been born."

"Do you have a cigarette?"

"Now you've been jailed. A thing like this could kill your mother."

We passed some cheap bars on lower Broadway.

"Let's go in and catch a drink."

"What? You mean you'd dare drink right after getting out of jail for intoxication?"

"That's when you need a drink the most."

"Don't you ever tell your mother you wanted a drink right after getting out of jail," he warned me.

"I need a piece of ass too."

"What?"

"I said, I need a piece of ass too."

He nearly ran a red light. We drove in silence.

"By the way," he said finally, "I guess you know that the jail fine will be added to your room, board and laundry bill?"

I got a job in an auto parts warehouse just off Flower Street. The manager was a tall ugly man with no ass. He always told me whenever he fucked his wife the night before.

"I fucked my wife last night. Get that Williams Brothers order first."

"We're out of K-3 flanges."

"Backorder them."

I stamped "B.O." on the packing slip and invoice.

"I fucked my wife last night."

I taped up the Williams Brothers box, labeled it, weighed it, and affixed the necessary postage.

"It was pretty good too."

He had a sandy mustache, sandy hair and no ass.

"She pissed when she finished."

My bill for room, board, laundry, etc., was so high by this time that it took several paychecks to get even. I stayed until then and moved out right afterwards. I couldn't afford the rates at home.

I found a rooming house near my job. Moving wasn't hard. I only owned enough to half fill a suitcase…

Mama Strader was my landlady, a dyed redhead with a good figure, many gold teeth, and an aged boyfriend. She called me into the kitchen the first morning and said she'd pour me a whiskey if I would go out back and feed the chickens. I did and then I sat in the kitchen drinking with Mama and her boyfriend, Al. I was an hour late for work.

The second night there was a knock on my door. It was a fat woman in her mid-forties. She held a bottle of wine. "I live down the hall, my name's Martha. I hear you listening to that good music all the time. I thought I'd bring you a drink."

Martha walked in. She had on a loose green smock, and after a few wines she started showing me her legs.

"I've got good legs."

"I'm a leg man."

"Look higher."

Her legs were very white, fat, flabby, with bulging purple veins. Martha told me her story.

She was a whore. She made the bars off and on. Her main source of income was the owner of a department store. "He gives me money. I go into his store and take anything I want. The salespeople don't bother me. He's told them to leave me alone. He doesn't want his wife to know I'm a better fuck than she is."

Martha got up and turned on the radio. Loud. "I'm a good dancer," she said. "Watch me dance!"

She whirled in her green tent, kicking her legs. She wasn't so hot. Soon she had the smock up around her waist and was waving her behind in my face. The pink panties had a large hole over the right cheek. Then off came the smock and she was just in her panties. Next the panties were on the floor by the smock and she was doing a grind. Her triangle of cunt hair was almost hidden by her dangling, bouncing stomach.

Sweat was making her mascara run. Suddenly her eyes narrowed. I was sitting on the edge of the bed. She leapt on me before I could move. Her open mouth was pressed on mine. It tasted of spit and onions and stale wine and (I imagined) the sperm of four hundred men. She pushed her tongue into my mouth. It was thick with saliva, I gagged and pushed her off. She fell on her knees, tore open my zipper, and in a second my soft pecker was in her mouth. She sucked and bobbed. Martha had a small yellow ribbon in her short gray hair. There were warts and big brown moles on her neck and cheeks.