The Bell Tolls for No One by Charles Bukowski Page A

student in high school. I won’t have you talking bad about him.”
    â€œDamn it—this is the guy I chased down the street that night.”
    â€œYou son of a bitch, I won’t have you talking that way. Please leave.”
    Rena was really mad. I walked to the door, opened it, closed it, and I was gone. I got in my car and was half-way home on the freeway when I realized I had left my top coat back in her apartment.
    I pulled off the freeway, got it going the other way, and drove back. I parked and got out.
    I walked up to the apartment and was about to ring when I saw something through the curtain. Arnold and Rena were kissing, a long hard kiss. He had her down upon the sofa, her dress up around her hips, one of her breasts out, and she was grasping his penis in her hand.
    It looked exciting. I watched.
    She began to rub his joint. He lifted his head, sucked at her breast, then leaped back from the breast to the mouth, one of hands going down and pulling at her panties. Then I heard somebody coming down the walk and I pulled away from the curtain quickly and walked toward my car. A little drop of sweat rolled down my neck.
    I started the car and drove off. Hell—I could get the coat in the morning or they could keep it. As I drove off, though, I had the feeling that I would have liked to have watched the rest of that scene. It had to be good.
    That kid Arnold had a lot of technique. He should have—after watching me all those nights with Rena.

“A ll these guys,” he said, “walking around the room with just their shorts on, not naked but with their shorts on, some with hard-ons, some with half hard-ons, soft soft, walking around the room, saying, ‘I’m tough. I hate those goddamn fags. I’ll beat the shit out of a fag!’ They had a shit-thing going,” he said, “everybody liked to shit. Another thing they liked to do was run across the street naked from one house to another. One time a guy was running across the street naked with half a hard-on and hollering and there was this guy sitting in his car and the guy jumped up on the hood and shit on the windshield. The other guy didn’t know what to do.”
    â€œWell,” I said, “I guess he could have turned on his windshield wipers.”
    â€œAnother time this guy was an All-American tackle and he was fucking this girl with this shade open and about twenty-five or thirty guys were watching. Suddenly he stopped, got up on her and shit on her.”
    â€œWell,” I said, “it’s sexual, I guess. Then there are some guys who pay women to shit and piss on them. Then there are some guys who like to be shit and pissed-upon, spiritually. Not me. I’ve had enough. I ask kindness out of a woman but most American women can’t give it, not under the age of forty. For that matter, neither can men. But women are colder than men because it’s much easier for them to get picked up, fucked, possibly loved. I guess a lot of men go fag simply out of disgust.”
    â€œThe whorehouse,” he said, “has been a great saver of man’s spirit.”
    â€œAmen,” I said, “but where can a woman go? Even though it’s easier for them, it’s not always easier. There ought to be whorehouses for women too. Clit-licking guys with giant cocks and muscular bodies. But I suppose it’s all a matter of supply and demand. If women needed whorehouses badly enough they’d arrive.”
    â€œIt’s like you say, it’s too easy for them. A woman can walk into a bar and there will be twelve guys sitting there, ready to go, ready to fight over her. Where’s a bar a guy can walk into and have twelve women sitting there ready to fuck him, fight almost to the death for him?”
    â€œNowhere in America,” I said. “Nowhere in this land and in this time.”
    â€œWhat’s a man to do?” he asked.
    â€œNothing. Most men settle for 2nd or 3rd or