There is not enough time available in one lifetime to read all the books, articles and poems necessary to reasonably contend with the tragedy, carnage and savage corruption we inflict upon each other. Sometimes the reading comes too late to be much help. Bukowski’s tales of hard living, hard loving and hard drinking came to my conscientiousness well after I found the bottle and began my deviant journey. Alcohol was more readily available than Bukowski during my developing years. I’m not sure if my school even allowed a Bukowski book in the library, but we had beer in the bathrooms and flasks of alcohol at the football games. Welcome to the Heartland! But reading doesn’t necessarily lead to understanding, the ability to apply the knowledge or properly recognizing danger.
I was in Chino, west of Los Angeles in the early part of 2000. My friend Jason and I were taking refuge in a dull bar a chip shot away from the freeway. It was tucked into one end of an average Southern California strip mall. It was not a very memorable place. I remember that night only due to the manic poet that approached us and the inevitable result of our meeting. He was a reject with a fashion and personality featuring the deplorable mix of a beatnik, goth loser and aimless SoCal pothead. He was dressed in black, with dark mascara and a heavy trench coat. His dark hair was tossed about wildly, fixed in odd directions, like he’d been wearing a knit cap all day. Drool was leaking out one corner of his mouth and dripped from his chin. He spoke wild and fast, trying to rhyme the words at the end of each sentence. He sat down without asking and set a notepad on the table. As he spoke he flipped through the pages of the notebook, scribbling periodically. Old and still wet drool stains dotted the pages.
He came to this bar to be inspired. He was under the belief that his hero, Bukowski, was once a regular at this establishment. He told us stories about Bukowski doing back flips off the pool table, bar fights and former traditions of the bar. He rattled off a list of other famous regulars, but none of the names meant anything to me. Back then I knew very little about Bukowski other than the fact that he was a writer and a weird dude. I know this kid was bullshit, putting me on or possibly an idiot that just discovered meth, riding that uncontrolled surge of energy. It’d be a good month before he transformed into just another San Bernardino zombie, if he was lucky. His claim just didn’t add up for me. The strip mall was no more than five years old and the bar was boring without a shred of identity or individuality. Remove the pool table, darts boards and increase the lighting and you’d mistake the remaining space for a cafeteria in a corporate office. I still don’t know what bar if any that Bukowski frequented, but it would have to be a place with more character. Regardless, Jason and I had been seriously drunk for past 48 hours and our tempers were short, his especially.
My friend Jason is a Chicago boy with Italian heritage. He had the classic story of an abusive, alcoholic father and subdued mother. He didn’t speak much about it, he didn’t have to. We’ve all seen the after school special, but his parents didn’t define him. He was a street kid and there weren’t many opportunities for him. He joined the military to get away and naturally he chose the Marine Corps. When you grow up hard, you stick with it. Jason knew the works of Bukowski. I can’t imagine a street kid reading Bukowski between battles with other neighborhoods, but I’m from a different world. At any rate he knew more than me and this batshit poet combined.
It happened fast. My only warning was a violent, furious flash in Jason’s eyes. I’d seen it several times before. It’d actually been only a few hours since I’d last seen that flash, which resulted in our need to be in that bar hiding from the police. In an instant Jason was standing, fist clenched and extended out before him. The poet was sprawled out on the floor, mouth wide open, eyes rolled back and an horrifying amount of blood was streaming out his nose. He looked dead. Jason said nothing and calmly walked out the front door. I dropped a twenty dollar bill on the table to cover our tab and caught up to Jason. I remember hoping someone we knew would be along soon or we could find another place to hide before the police arrived. There were specific establishments that the police allowed fighting. We’d broken that rule twice in one night and only a block apart. Jason never told me why he hit him. It hardly mattered. The kid was annoying and that is all we needed in those days. We were invincible. I still am for the most part, but every man has his kryptonite. In a weird, twisted sense, Jason did that kid a favor. There’s only so much you can understand about the writings of Bukowski if you’ve never been beaten and left bloody on a bar floor. Or at a a minimum, delivered that treatment.
The years have changed me. I find myself enraged by the drunk college students downtown doing nothing nearly as violent or frequent as I had. It may have been that time and place in Southern California. It was fight or flee when the sun went down. We never fled. We were outsiders, not California punks. Skaters, skinheads, beaners, preps, white-boy pretend thugs, gangsta thugs, gooks—there was always someone to fight. It was fist first into the fray. Back your friends, no questions asked. It was never a debate of right or wrong. Might made right. We had our share of losses, but no one walked away from those brawls unscathed.
Other than the skinheads, I probably could have been friends or at least friendly with most of the guys we fought. We all needed the fight though. It filled a need and oddly enough it didn’t interfere too often with chasing girls. The girls would feign attempts to keep us out of the fight, but at the end they would drag our bloody stumps back to the car and care for our wounds. The fighting may have been their idea all along. I’ve hadn’t made that connection until now. Were they mothering us? Attempting to make us feel dependent upon their caring touch? Never underestimate the twisted and cunning abilities of women. They ruin us all eventually.