Eddie’s mother had horseteeth and I did too and I remember once we walked up a hill together on the way to the store and she said, “Henry, we both need braces for our teeth. We look awful!” I walked proudly up the hill with her and she had on a tight yellow print dress, flowered, and she had on high heels and she wiggled and her heels went
click, click, click
on the cement. I thought, I’m walking with Eddie’s mother and she’s walking with me and we’re walking up the hill together. That was all—I walked into the store to buy a loaf of bread for my parents and she purchased her things. That was all.
I liked to go to Eddie’s place. His mother always sat in a chair with a drink in her hand and she crossed her legs real high and you could see where the stockings ended and where the flesh began. I liked Eddie’s mother, she was a real lady. When I walked in she’d say, “Hi, Henry!” and smile and she wouldn’t pull her skirt down. Eddie’s father would say hello too. He was a big guy and he’d be sitting there with a drink in his hand too. Jobs weren’t easy to get in 1933 and besides, Eddie’s father couldn’t work. He’d been an aviator in World War I and had been shot down. He had wires in his arms instead of bone, and so he sat there and drank with Eddie’s mother. It was dark in there where they were drinking but Eddie’s mother laughed often.
Eddie and I made model airplanes, cheap balsa wood jobs. They wouldn’t fly, we just moved them through the air with our hands. Eddie had a Spad and I had a Fokker. We’d seen “Hell’s Angels” with Jean Harlow. I couldn’t see that Jean Harlow was any sexier than
Eddie’s mother. Of course, I didn’t talk about Eddie’s mother to Eddie. Then I noticed that Eugene started coming over. Eugene was another guy with a Spad but I could talk about Eddie’s mother to him. When we got the chance. We had some good dogfights—two Spads against a Fokker. I did the best I could but usually I got shot down. Whenever I got into a real bad spot I’d pull an Immelman. We read the old flying magazines,
Flying Aces
was best. I even wrote some letters to the editor which he answered. The Immelman, he wrote me, was almost impossible. The stress on the wings was just too great. But sometimes I had to use the Immelman, especially with a guy on my tail. It usually tore my wings off and I had to bail out.
When we got the chance away from Eddie we’d talk about Eddie’s mother.
“Jesus, she’s got
some
legs.”
“And she doesn’t mind showing them.”
“Watch out, here comes Eddie.”
Eddie had no idea we were talking about his mother that way. I was a little ashamed of it but I couldn’t help it. I certainly didn’t want him to think of my mother that way. Of course, my mother didn’t look like that. Nobody else’s mother looked like that. Maybe those horseteeth had something to do with it. I mean, you’d look and see the horseteeth and they were a bit yellow and then you’d look down and see those legs crossed high, one foot flicking and kicking. Yes, I had horseteeth too.
Well, Eugene and I kept going over there and having the dogfights and I’d do my Immelmans and my wings would get ripped off. Although we had another game and Eddie played that one too. We were stunt flyers and racers. We’d go out and take big chances but somehow we always made it back. Often we landed in our own front yards. We each had a house and we each had a wife and our wives would be waiting for us. We’d describe how our wives would be dressed. They didn’t wear much. Eugene’s wore the least. In fact, she had a dress with a big hole cut right into the front of it. She’d meet Eugene at the door that way. My wife wasn’t quite that bold, but she didn’t wear much either. We all made love all the time. We made love to our wives all the time. They just couldn’t get enough. While we were out stunting and racing and risking our lives they’d be in those houses waiting and waiting for us. And
they just loved us, they didn’t love anybody else. Sometimes we’d try to forget about them and go back to the dogfights. It was like Eddie said: when we were talking about women all we did was lay on the grass and we didn’t do anything else. The most we would do, Eddie would say, “Hey, I got one!” And then I’d roll off my belly and show him mine and then Eugene would show his. That’s how most of our afternoons went. Eddie’s mother and father would be in there drinking and once in a while we’d hear Eddie’s mother laugh.
One day Eugene and I went over there and we hollered for Eddie and Eddie didn’t come out. “Hey, Eddie, for Christ’s sake, come on out!” Eddie didn’t come out.
“Something’s wrong in there,” Eugene said, “I know there’s something wrong in there.”
“Maybe somebody got murdered.”
“We’d better look in there.”
“You think we should?”
“We’d better.”
The screen door pulled open and we walked in. It was as dark as usual. Then we heard a single word:
“
Shit
!”
Eddie’s mother was lying on the bed in the bedroom and she was drunk. Her legs were up and her dress had fallen way back. Eugene grabbed my arm. “Jesus, look at that!”
It looked good, my god it looked good but I was too scared to appreciate it. Suppose somebody came in and found us there looking? Her dress was way back and she was drunk, those thighs exposed, you could almost see the panties.
“Come on, Eugene, let’s get out of here!”
“No, let’s look. I want to look at her. Look at all that showing!”
It reminded me of the time I was hitchhiking and a woman picked me up. She had her skirt up high around her waist, well, almost up around her waist. I looked away, I looked down, and I was scared. She just talked to me as I looked through the windshield and I answered her questions, “Where are you going?” “Nice day, isn’t it?” But I was scared. I didn’t know what to do but I was afraid that if I did it, there’d be trouble, that she’d scream or call the police. So now and then I just sneaked a look and then I turned my eyes away. She finally let me out.
I was scared about Eddie’s mother too.
“Listen, Eugene, I’m leaving.”
“She’s drunk, she doesn’t even know we’re here.”
“Son of a bitch left,” she said from the bed. “Left and took the kid, my baby…”
“She’s talking,” I said.
“She’s knocked out,” said Eugene, “she doesn’t know what the hell.”
He moved toward the bed. “Watch this.”
He took her skirt and pulled it further back. He pulled it back so you could see the panties. They were pink.
“Eugene, I’m leaving!”
“Chicken!”
Eugene just stood there staring at her thighs and panties. He stood there a long time. Then he took out his cock. I heard Eddie’s mother moan. She shifted on the bed just a little. Eugene moved closer. Then he touched her thigh with the end of his cock. She moaned again. Then Eugene spurted. He shot his sperm all over her thigh and there seemed to be plenty of it. You could see it running down her leg. Then Eddie’s mother said, “
Shit
!” and she suddenly sat up in bed. Eugene ran past me out the door and I turned and ran too. Eugene ran into the icebox in the kitchen, bounced off and jumped out the screen door. I followed him and we ran down the street. We ran all the way to my house, down the driveway, and we ran into the garage and pulled the doors shut.
“You think she saw us?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I shot all over her pink panties.”
“You’re crazy. What’d you do it for?”
“I got hot. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help myself.”
“We’ll go to jail.”
“You didn’t do anything. I shot all over her leg.”
“I was watching.”
“Listen,” said Eugene, “I think I’ll go home.”
“All right, go on.”
I watched him walk up the driveway and then cross the street to his place. I walked out of the garage. I walked through the back porch and into my bedroom and I sat there and waited. Nobody was home. I went into the bathroom and locked the door and I thought about Eddie’s mother lying on the bed like that. Only I
imagined I got her pink panties off and I got it in. And she liked it…
I waited the rest of the afternoon and I waited all through dinner for something to happen but nothing happened. I went to my bedroom after dinner and sat there and waited. Then it was time to go to sleep and I lay there in bed and I waited. I heard my father snoring in the other room and I still waited. Then I slept.
The next day was Saturday and I saw Eugene on his front lawn with a beebee gun. There were two large palm trees in front of his house and he was trying to kill some of the sparrows who lived up there. He’d already gotten two of them. They had three cats and every time one of the sparrows fell to the grass, wings flopping, one of the cats would rush up and scoop him off.
“Nothing’s happened,” I said to Eugene.
“If it hasn’t happened by now, it won’t,” he said. “I should have fucked her. I’m sorry now I didn’t fuck her.”
He got another sparrow and down it came and a very fat grey cat with greenyellow eyes picked it up and was off with it behind the hedge. I walked back across the street to my place. My old man was waiting on the front porch. He looked angry. “Listen, I want you to get busy mowing the lawn!
Now
!”
I walked to the garage and pulled out the mower. First I mowed the driveway, then I went out to the front lawn. The mower was stiff and old and it was hard work. My old man stood there, looking angry, watching me, as I pushed the mower through the tangled grass.
The poet Victor Valoff was not a very good poet. He had a local reputation, was liked by the ladies and supported by his wife. He was continually giving readings at local bookstores and he was often heard on the Public Radio Station. He read in a loud and dramatic voice but the pitch never varied. Victor was always at climax. That’s what attracted the ladies, I guess. Certain of his lines, if taken separately, seemed to have power, but when all the lines were considered as a whole, you knew that Victor was saying nothing, only saying it loudly.
But Vicki, like most ladies, being easily charmed by fools, insisted upon hearing Valoff read. It was a hot Friday night in a Feminist-Lesbian-Revolutionary bookshop. No admission. Valoff read for free. And there would be a display of his art work after the reading. His art work was very modern. A stroke or two, usually red, and a bit of an epigram in a contrasting color. Some piece of wisdom would be inscribed on it like:
Green heaven come home to me,
I weep grey, gray, grey, gray…
Valoff was intelligent. He knew there were two ways to spell grey.
Photos of Tim Leary hung about. IMPEACH REAGAN signs. I didn’t mind the IMPEACH REAGAN signs. Valoff rose and walked to the platform, a half bottle of beer in his hand.
“Look,” said Vicki, “look at that face! How he has suffered!”
“Yeah,” I said, “and now I’m going to suffer.”
Valoff did have a fairly interesting face—compared to most poets. But compared to most poets almost everybody has.
Victor Valoff began:
“East of the Suez of my heart
begins a buzzing buzzing buzzing
sombre still, still sombre
and suddenly Summer comes home
straight on through like a
Quarterback sneak on the one yard line
of my heart!”
Victor screamed the last line and as he did so somebody near me said, “
Beautiful
!” It was a local feminist poet who had grown tired of blacks and now fucked a doberman in her bedroom. She had braided red hair, dull eyes, and played a mandolin while she read her work. Most of her work involved something about a dead baby’s footprint in the sand. She was married to a doctor who was never around (at least he had the good sense not to attend poetry readings). He gave her a large allowance to support her poetry and to feed the doberman.
Valoff continued:
“Docks and ducks and derivative day
Ferment behind my forehead
in a most unforgiving way
o, in a most unforgiving way.
I sway through the light and darkness…”
“I’ve got to agree with him there,” I told Vicki.
“Please be quiet,” she answered.
“With one thousand pistols and one
thousand hopes
I step onto the porch of my mind
to murder one thousand Popes!”
I found my half pint, uncapped it and took a good hit.
“Listen,” said Vicki, “you always get drunk at these readings. Can’t you contain yourself?”
“I get drunk at my own readings,” I said. “I can’t stand my stuff either.”
“
Gummed mercy
,” Valoff went on, “
that’s what we are, gummed mercy, gummed gummed gummed mercy
…”
“He’s going to say something about a raven,” I said.
“
Gummed mercy
,” continued Valoff, “
and the raven forevermore
…”
I laughed. Valoff recognized the laugh. He looked down at me. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “in the audience tonight we have the poet Henry Chinaski.”
Little hisses were heard. They knew me. “Sexist pig!” “Drunk!” “Motherfucker!” I took another drink. “Please continue, Victor,” I said. He did.
“…conditioned under the hump of valor
the ersatz imminent piddling rectangle is
no more than a gene in Genoa
a quadruplet Quetzalcoatal
and the Chink cries bittersweet and barbaric
into her muff!”
“It’s beautiful,” said Vicki, “but what’s he talking about?”
“He’s talking about eating pussy.”
“I thought so. He’s a beautiful man.”
“I hope he eats pussy better than he writes.”
“grief, christ, my grief,
that scum grief,
stars and stripes of grief,
waterfalls of grief
tides of grief,
grief at discount
everywhere…”
“‘That scum grief,’” I said, “I like that.”
“He’s stopped talking about eating pussy?”
“Yes, now he says he doesn’t feel good.”
“…a Baker’s dozen, a cousin’s cousin,
let in the streptomycin
and, propitious, gorge my
gonfalon.
I dream the carnival plasma
across frantic leather…”
“Now what’s he saying?” asked Vicki.
“He’s saying he’s getting ready to eat pussy again.”
“Again?”
Victor read some more and I drank some more. Then he called a ten minute intermission and the audience went up and gathered around the podium. Vicki went up too. It was hot in there and I walked out into the street to cool off. There was a bar a half block away. I got a beer. It wasn’t too crowded. There was a basketball game on tv. I watched the game. Of course, I didn’t care who won. My only thought was, my god, how they run up and down, up and down. I’ll bet their jockstraps are soaking wet, I’ll bet their assholes smell something awful. I had another beer and then walked back to the poetry hole. Valoff was already back on. I could hear him half a block down the street:
“Choke, Columbia, and the dead horses of
my soul
greet me at the gates
greet me sleeping, Historians
see this tenderest Past
leapt over with
geisha dreams, drilled dead with
importunity!”
I found my seat next to Vicki. “What’s he saying now?” she asked me.
“He’s really not saying very much. Basically what he’s saying is that he can’t sleep nights. He ought to find a job.”
“He’s saying he ought to find a job?”
“No, I’m saying that.”
“…the lemming and the falling star are
brothers, the contest of the lake
is the El Dorado of my
heart. come take my head, come take my
eyes, larrup me with larkspur…”
“Now what’s he saying?”
“He’s saying he needs a big fat woman to kick the shit out of him.”
“Don’t be funny. Does he really say that?”
“We both say that.”
“…I could eat the emptiness,
I could fire cartridges of love into the dark
I could beg India for your recessive
mulch…”
Well, Victor went on and on, and on. One sane person got up and walked out. The remainder of us stayed.
“…I say, drag the dead gods through the
crabgrass!
I say the palm is lucrative
I say, look, look, look
around us:
all love is ours
all life is ours
the sun is our dog at the end of a leash
there is nothing that can defeat us!
fuck the salmon!
we need only reach,
we need only drag ourselves out of
obvious graves,
the earth, the dirt,
the plaid hope of looming grafts to our very
senses. We have nothing to take and nothing to
give, we need only to
begin, begin, begin…!”
“Thank you very much,” said Victor Valoff, “for being here.”
The applause was very loud. They always applauded. Victor was immense in his glory. He lifted his same bottle of beer. He even managed to blush. Then he grinned, a very human grin. The ladies loved it. I took a last hit on my bottle of whiskey.
They were up around Victor. He was giving his autograph and answering questions. His art show would be next. I managed to get Vicki out of there and we walked along the street back to the car.
“He reads powerfully,” she said.
“Yes, he has a good voice.”
“What do you think of his work?”
“I think it’s pure.”
“I think you’re jealous.”
“Let’s stop here for a drink,” I said. “There’s a basketball game.”
“All right,” she said.
We were lucky. The game was still on. We sat down.
“Oh boy,” said Vicki, “look at the long legs on those guys!”
“Now you’re talking,” I said. “What’ll you have?”
“Scotch and soda.”
I ordered two scotch and sodas and we watched the game. Those guys ran up and down, up and down. Wonderful. They seemed very excited about something. The place was hardly crowded at all. It seemed the best part of the night.