Novel

Monday, February 28

In Women, Charles Bukowski has just finished writing his first book, Post Office, and is beginning to appear at poetry readings as a featured speaker. He gets a lot of strange pussy.

It is, if not provided for him, by his host, at least readily available.

Women throw themselves at him.

He seems to associate strange pussy with poetry readings, or with being a full-time writer; in the last four years he worked the night shift at the post office he hadn't gotten laid once.

He was terrified of not making it. So many years of living in dingy apartments, rooming houses, once he lived in a cardboard box. Would he end up like his hero, John Fante? Broke and out of print?

A lot of writers die broke. Leave their survivors with their debts.

He wrote Post Office in 21 days. Now he was writing Women.

Brew quit his job to promote a book and write two more books, about doing that.

He wasn't terrified.

When his money ran out, he'd get a job.

Well, he was nervous.

What was he nervous about?

Strange pussy.

If he started reading at poetry readings, and was out and about, during the day, and out of town, on weekends, with no one to check on his comings and goings, and women started throwing themselves at him, would he have the strength to character to say to them, "Gee, ma'am, I thank you for the offer, much obliged, but I am a happily married man, who does not play around on his wife. Come back when I'm a widower."

No sense worrying about what hasn't happened yet. And might not happen.

Brew was going to Tallahassee Friday for a book conference.

But he was not a panelist, just a spectator. A face in the crowd.

An old guy.

An old guy nobody'd heard of.

Nothing to worry about.

Lawrence Block and his wife Lynn taught a seminar together called Write for Your Life. They lived in Fort Myers Beach, at the time, and taught the class there. Brew drove over to take the class with a former co-worker at IBM who wrote short stories for romance magazines in the voice of a black female. He was a white male. An old white male. Divorced. So I guess he had sex with strangers, when he could.

He had taken the class before, but you got a reduced rate, to take it again, and you might have gotten a reduced rate to get a friend to take the course. He might be a triple-dipper.

Did he have a roving eye, in the course? Was a writing seminar on solving the emotional problems that were holding you back, from success, in your writing career, a good place to pick up women?

Nelson Algren said never to sleep with anyone whose problems were worse than your own. Writers are fucked-up people, and unsuccessful writers are even more fucked up than someone at an AA meeting.

Getting involved romantically with someone you meet in AA is not a good bet, statistically. You're both crippled.

Sometimes two halves don't make a whole, they make a fourth. They add up to a quarter. They subtract.

Brew didn't get as much out of the course as he might have because he was too stubborn. Too set in his ways to see things from a new perspective.

You were supposed to identify what was blocking you, causing you to stumble, to trip yourself up, then turn it around into an affirmation, and make it work for you.

Brew thought that his work was overly negative, and gloomy. He called one book CURSED BY FATE. He thought he was doomed.

But it wasn't just a subjective feeling. He really was doomed.

No one had done what he had set out to do, which was to have a career writing books that attacked the writing establishment.

Well, maybe Henry Miller had.

To succeed, Brew would have to tone the writing down, and he couldn't do that without feeling like he had compromised his integrity in order to advance in his career.

Brew wrote about vocation and career in conflict. It was his theme. To change his theme was a renunciation, an abdication, the coward's way out.

Brew would just have to write through it, disappear up his asshole and hope he came out the other side, write about what Emerson said is the first thing we ask when we meet someone new, namely, "How does that man earn a blameless livlihood, without dishonest customs?" Ask it of himself each day, when he sprang to the easel of a morning.

So Brew had found out what was wrong, saw what he had to do to fix it, resolved not to. Now, all he had to do was make peace with himself and accept the consequences of his decision.

If he could tell himself, "Hey, this is my fate, I might as well love it, embrace it," maybe he could be serene, tranquil, get rid of the jealousy and anger and despair.

Outlast it.

Outlast his enemies.

Brew sent Larry Block a copy of Open Book and he very kindly wrote a blurb for it, which Brew used, in Forty.

Jack Saunders is an American original and his life is an open book. His dedication and commitment are evident throughout, and his abundant energy enlivens every page.

Brew would rather be an American original than an American master, because American master implies recognition by the academy, whereas an American original can be an outsider.

And he'd rather have energy, commitment, and dedication than polish, or what the academy in Cézanne's day called finish, and Cézanne called "finish of fools."

You can't brag about resisting temptation if you never were tempted.

Brew didn't have a roving eye.

He was a happily married man.

If a woman made a pass at Brew, he wouldn't recognize it for what it was.

Women flirted with him all the time, and he just thought they were being friendly.

He was out of the running. Not a player.

Also, his marriage was as strong as ever. He shared what was happening to him with Brenda. She was happy for him.

If he was unfaithful, then he'd have to keep a secret.

He would be ashamed.

No piece of ass was worth damaging the trust that builds up in a long marriage.

He didn't want to have to tell her and he didn't want to have to not tell her. Not doing the crime was easier for Brew than doing the time.

It was a habit.

Plus, he looked down on adulterers.

He couldn't look down on them if he was one.

And he didn't have that many people to look down on.

Successful writers, college professors, business majors, fundamentalist preachers. Politicians.