More Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski, David Stephen Calonne Page B

woman.
    “Come on,” said Linda. “Follow me.”
    She had her dog with her. She was a good 15 yards ahead of me. “Listen,” I said, “I’ve been lost in the woods for eight hours. Don’t I even get a kiss?” She waited and I walked up. She turned her cheek and I kissed her on the cheek. Then she walked on ahead. “I’m mad at you. I been thinking about a lot of the things you’ve done and said and I got mad at you.”
    I walked along behind her, stumbling into holes, over rocks and fallen tree branches, into mudholes. “I thought I might die,” I said, “and I thought, well, at least I ate her pussy the last two nights we were together. It was the only comforting thought I had.”
    “I think you got lost on purpose. I found your notebook a couple of blocks from camp. You didn’t even leave a note. You always leave a note. I thought, well, he’s really mad. All you had to do was look up and you could have seen the camp. You never look up.”
    “Usually when I look up I don’t like what I see.”
    “You’re always so negative,” she said, “always so negative.”
    I followed along 15 yards behind. “I point things out to you, landmarks, but you don’t listen. You don’t listen to things, you don’t participate, you’re always so far off. Why didn’t you leave a note in your notebook?”
    “I didn’t get lost on purpose.”
    “I believe you did.”
    “No, not at all.”
    “Or I thought maybe you went over the mountain to get a drink. I thought maybe you’d gone mad for a drink.
    “Look, you’ve found me now, we’re back together, Jesus Christ . . .”
    We had to climb between and over old barbwire fences. I got stuck in one, three or four barbs stuck into the back of my shirt. My arm was too tired to reach up and pluck myself free. I just stood there between the strands. Linda waited. I couldn’t move. She walked back and lifted the top strand off my back and I got out and followed her.
    She was always just a little too far ahead and gaining. The dog bounded ahead of her. I followed Linda’s ass. I’d followed that beautiful ass for three years; I figured another mile and one half through the wilderness wouldn’t be entirely impossible. “Now you’ll have something to write about,” she said looking back.
    “Oh shit yes,” I said.
    The mountains and the trees and the mudholes and the rocks and the barbs and the ass and the dog and me were everywhere.

    I took Patricia to the fights at the Olympic, we were eight or nine rows back and began drinking beer. The opening amateur fights were the best, as usual, and it was hot in there and the beer was good. Patricia and I bet 50 cents each fight and let our loyalties be known, better and better known with each new beer.
    By the time the six-rounder came around we were screaming things like, “Kill ’im!” “Send ’im back to Japan! Remember Pearl Harbor!” “He couldn’t beat his grandmother’s wet panties with a fly swatter!”
    We screamed all through the six-rounder and through both 10-round feature matches. When it was over I was 50 cents ahead. I lit two cigars, gave one to Patricia and we walked out to her car.
    On the way in we got into an argument of some sort. What it was about I have since forgotten but I think it was something about which was the greater invention, the elevator or the escalator? She let me out in front of my place and I wandered back through the banana trees and the polluted fishpond and went up the back stairway to Apt. #24 where I found a pint of Grand-Dad in the refrig and lucked onto some Stravinsky on KFAC and sat about drinking and listening.
    Halfway through the bottle I remembered a lady in town who was reading the life story of Virginia Woolf. Now not everybody in Los Angeles sits around reading the life story of Virginia Woolf, especially an attractive lady with an eight-room apartment, good French wine and $400 a month alimony. I finished the Grand-Dad and decided to find out more about