The Captain Is Out to Lunch (8 page)

We're probably as good now as those bastards back then were. And some of the young are thinking of me as I thought of them. I know, I get letters. I read them and throw them away. These are the towering Nineties. There's the next line. And the line after that. Until there are no more.

Yeah. One more cigarete. Then I think I'll take a bath and go to sleep.

Bad day at the track. On the drive in, I always mull over which system I am going to use. I must have 6 or 7. And I certainly picked the wrong one. Still, I will never lose my ass and my mind at the track. I just don't bet that much. Years of poverty have made me wary. Even my winning days are hardly stupendous. Yet, I'd rather be right than wrong, especially when you give up hours of your life. One can feel time actually being murdered out there. Today, they were approaching the gate for the 2nd race. There were still 3 minutes to go and the horses and riders were slowly approaching. For some reason, ti seemed an agonizingly long time for me. When you're in your 70's it hurts more to have somebody pissing on your time. Of course, I know, I had put myself into a position to be pissed upon.

I used to go to the night greyhound races in Arizona. Now, they knew what they were doing there. Just turn your back to get a drink and there was another race going off. No 30 minute waiting periods. Zip, zip, they ran them one after the other. It was refreshing. The night air was cold and the action was continuous. You didn't believe that somebody was trying to saw off your balls between races. And after it was all over, you weren't worn down. You could drink the remainder of the night and fight with your girlfriend.

But at the horse races it's hell. I stay isolated. I don't talk to anybody. That helps. Well, the mutuel clerks know me. I've got to go to the windows, use my voice. Over the years, they get to know you. And most of them are fairly decent people. I think that their years of dealing with humanity has given them certain insights. For instance, they know that most of the human race is one large piece of crap. Still, I also keep my distance from the mutuel clerks. By keeping counsel with myself, I get an edge. I could stay home and do this. I could lock the door and fiddle with paints or something. But somehow, I've got to get out, and make sure that almost all humanity is still a large piece of crap. As if they would change! Hey, baby, I've got to be crazy. Yet there is something out there, I mean, I don't think about dying out there, for example, you feel too stupid being out there to be able to think. I've taken a notebook, thought, well, I'll write a few things between races. Impossible. The air is flat and heavy, we are all voluntary members of a concentration camp. When I get home, then I can muse about dying. Just a little. Not too much. I don't worry about dying or feel sorry about dying. It just seems like a lousy job. When? Next Wednesday night? Or when I'm asleep? Or because of the next horrible hangover? Traffic accident? It's a load, it's something that's got to be done. And I'm going out without the God-belief. That'll be good, I can face it head on. It's something you have to do like putting your shoes on in the morning. I think I'm going to miss writing. Writing is better than drinking. And writing while you're drinking, that's always made the walls dance. Maybe there's a hell, what? All the poets will be there reading their works and I will have to listen. I will be drowned in their peening vanity, their overflowing self-esteem. If there is a hell, that will be my hell: poet after poet reading on and on...

Anyway, a particularly bad day. This system that usually worked didn't work. The gods shuffle the deck. Time is mutilated and you are a fool. But time is made to be wasted. What are you going to do about it? You can't always be roaring full steam. You stop and you go. You hit a high and then you fall into a black pit. do you have a cat? Or cats? They sleep, baby. They can sleep 2% hours a day and they look beautiful They know that there's nothing to get excited about. The next meal. And a little something to kill now and then. When I'm being torn by the forces, I just look at one or more of my cats. There are 9 of them. I just look at one of them sleeping or half-sleeping and I relax. Writing is also my cat. Writing lets me face it. It chills me out. For a while anyhow. Then my wires get crossed and I have to do it all over again. I can't understand writers who decide to stop writing. How do they chill out?

Well, the track was dull and deathly out there today but here I am back home and I'll be there tomorrow, most probably. How do I manage it?

Some of it is the power of routine, a power that holds most of us. A place to go, a thing to do. We are trained from th beginning. Move out, get into it. Maybe there's something interesting out there? What an ignorant dream. It's like when I used to pick up women in bars. I'd think, maybe this is the one. Another routine. Yet, even during the sex act, I'd think, this is another routine. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I felt ridiculous but I went ahead anyhow. What else could I do? Well, I should have crawled off and said, "Look, baby, we are being very foolish here. We are just tools of nature.“

"What do you mean?“

"I mean, baby, you ever watched two flies fucking or something like that?“

"YOU'RE CRAZY! I'M GETTING OUT OF HERE!“

We can't examine ourselves too closely or we'll stop living, stop doing everything. Like the wise men who just sit on a rock and don't move. I don't know if that's so wise either. They discard the obvious but something makes them discard it. In a sense, they are one-fly-fucking. There's no escape, action or inaction. We just have to write ourselves off as a loss: any move on the on the board leads to checkmate.

So, it was a bad day at the track today, I got a bad taste in the mouth of my soul. But I'll go tomorrow. I'm afraid not to. Because when I get back the words crawling across this computer screen really fascinate my weary ass. I leave it so that I can come back to it. Of course, of course. That's it. Isn't it?

I have probably written more and better in the past 2 years than at any time in my life. It's as if from over 5 decades of doing it, I might have gotten close to really doing it. Yet, in the past 2 months I have begun to feel a weariness. The weariness is mostly physical, yet it's also a touch spiritual. It could be that I am ready to go into decline. It's a horrible thought, of course, The ideal was to continue until the moment of my death, not to fade away. In 1989 I overcame TB. This year it has been an eye operation that has not as yet worked out. And a painful right let, ankle, foot. Small things. Bits of skin cancer. Death nipping at my heels, letting me know. I'm and old fart, that's all. Well, I couldn't drink myself to death. I came close but I didn't. Now I deserve to live with what is left.

So, I haven't written for 3 nights. Should I go mad? Even at my lowest times I can feel the words bubbling inside of me, getting ready. I am not in a contest. I never wanted it, that's all. And I had to get the word down the way I wanted it, that's all. And I had to get the words down or be overcome by something worse than death. Words not as precious things but as necessary things.

Yet when I begin to doubt my ability to work the word I simply read another writer and then I know that I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself: to do it right, with power and force and delight and gamble. Otherwise, forget it.

I have been wise enough to remain isolated. Visitors to this house are rare. My 9 cats run like mad when a human arrives. And my wife, too, is getting to be more and more like me. I don't want this for her. It's natural for me. But for Linda, no. I'm glad when she takes the car and goes off to some gathering. After all, I have my go-damned racetrack. I can always write about the racetrack, that great empty hole of nowhere. I go there to sacrifice myself, to mutilate the hours, to murder them. The hours must be killed. While you are waiting. The perfect hours must be killed. While you are waiting. The perfect hours are the ones at this machine. But you must have impefect hours to get perfect hours. You must kill ten hours to make two hours live. What you must be careful of is not to kill ALL the hours, ALL the years.

You fix yourself up to be a writer by doing the instinctive things which feed you and the word, which protect you against death in life. For each, it changes. Once for me it meant very heavy drinking, drinking to the point of madness. It sharpened the word for me, brought it out. And I needed danger. I needed to put myself into dangerous situations. With men. With women. With automobiles. With gambling. With starvation. With anything. It fed the word. I had decades of that. Now it has changed. What I need now is more subtle, more invisible. It's a feeling in the air. Words spoken, words heard. Things seen. I still need a few drinks. But I am now into nuances and shadows. I am fed words by things that I am hardly aware of. This is good. I write a different kind of crap now. Some have noticed.

"You have broken through,“ is mainly what they tell me.

I am aware of what they sense. I feel it too. The words have gotten simpler yet warmer, darker. I am being fed from new sources. Being near death is energizing. I have all the advantages. I can see and feel things that are hidden from the young. I have gone from the power of youth to the power of age. There will be no decline. Uh uh. Now, pardon me, I must got to be, it's 12:55 a.m. Talking the night off. Have your laugh while you can...

Well, I've been 72 years old for 8 days and nights now and I'll never be able to say that again.

It's been a bad couple of months. Weary. Physically and spiritually. Death means nothing. It's walking around with your ass dragging, it's when the words don't come flying form the machine, there's the gyp.

Now in my lower lip and under the lower lip, there is a large puffiness. And I have no energy. I didn't go to the track today. I just stayed in bed. Tired, tired. The Sunday crowds at the track are the worst. I have problems with the human face. I find it very difficult to look at. I find the sum total of each person's life written there and it is a horrible sight. When one sees thousands of faces in one day, it's tiring from the top of the head to the toes. And all through the gut. Sundays are so crowded. It's amateur day. They scream and curse. They rage. Then they go limp and leave, broke. What did they expect?

I had a cataract operation on my right eye a few months ago. The operation was not nearly as simple as the misinformation I gathered from people who claimed to have had eye operations. I heard my wife talking to ther mother on the telephone: "You say it was over in a few minutes? And that you drove your car home afterwards?“ Another old guy told me, "Oh it's nothing, it's over in a flash and you just go about your business as normal.“ Others spoke about the operation in an off-hand manner. It was a walk in the park. Now, I didn't ask for any of these people for information about the operation, they just came out with it. And after a while, I began to believe it. Although I still wonder how a thing as delicate as the eye could be treated more or less like cutting a toenail.

On my first visit to the doctor, he examined the eye and said that I needed an operation.

"O.k.,“ I said, "let's do it.“

"What?“ he asked.

"Let's do it now. Let's rock and roll!“

"Wait,“ he said, "first we must make an appointment with a hospital. Then there are other preparations. First, we want to show you a movie about the operation. It's only about 15 minutes long.“

"The operation?“

"No, the movies.“

What happens is that they take out the complete lens of the eye and replace it with an artifical lens. The lens is stitched in and the eye must adjust and recover. After about 3 weeks the stitches are removed. It's no walk in the park and the operation takes much longer than "a couple of minutes.“

Anyhow, after it was all over, my wife's mother said it was probably an after-operational procedure she was thinking of. And the old guy? I asked him, "How long did it take for your sight to really get better after your eye operation?“ 

"I'm not so sure I had an operation,“ he said.

Maybe I got this fat lip from drinking from the cat's water bowl?

I feel a little better tonight. Six days a week at the racetrack can burn anybody out. Try is some time. Then come in and work on your novel.

Or maybe death is giving me some signs?

The other day I was thinking about the world without me. There is the world going on doing what it does. And I'm not there. Very odd. Think of the garbage truck coming by and picking up the garbage and I'm not there. Or the newspaper sits in the drive and I'm not there to pick it up. Impossible. And worse, some time after I'm dead, I'm going to be truly discovered. All those who were afraid of me or hated me when I was alive will suddenly embrace me. My words will be everywhere. Clubs and societies will be formed. It will be sickening. A movie will be made of my life. I will be made a much more courageous and talented man tahn I am. Much more. It will be enough to make the gods puke. The human race exaggerates everything: its heroes, its enemies, its importance.

The fuckers. There, I feel better. God-damned human race. There, I feel better.

The night is cooling off. Maybe I'll pay the gas bill. I remember in south central L.A. they shot a lady named Love for not paying her gas bill. The co. wanted to shut it off. Forget what with. Maybe a shovel. Cops came. Don't remember how it worked. Think she reached for something in her apron. They shot and killed her.

All right, all right, I'll pay the gas bill.

I worry about my novel. It's about a detective. But I keep getting him into these almost impossible situations and then I have to work him out. I sometimes think about how to get him out while I'm at the racetrack. And I know that my editor-publisher is curious. Maybe he thinks the work isn't literary. I say that anything I do is literary even if I try not to make it literary. He should trust me by now. Well, if he doesn't want it, I'll unload it elsewhere. It will sell as well as anything I've written, not because it's better but because it's just as good and my crazy readers are ready for it.