Reflections of Buk at 100
When I was 16, my friends and I cruised Sunset Strip and brought back the LA
Free Press, which ran Charles Bukowski’s column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man. We sat inside a backyard plywood shed that one of the neighborhood fathers had built to keep us out of trouble. As we smoked Tareytons and drank Colt 45, we read the column out loud. It was an explosion of hookers, philosophers, madmen and racetrack junkies — my early education.
Fifteen years later, my girlfriend Jan was working at the Dew Drop Inn, a health food restaurant in South Redondo. One day, she mentioned that the owner, Linda Lee Beighle, was dating a poet named Charles Bukowski. There he was again.
A few months later, I visited the Dew Drop for lunch. Bukowski unexpectedly walked in, spitting venom because his Mac had somehow deleted a couple of new poems. Linda mentioned that I was a software guy.
“Are you any good?” he asked.
My father taught me always to say yes. A few hours later, the poems were back and we sat drinking red wine while he asked me questions about how computers might be used to predict winners at the racetrack.
In the fall of that year, Bukowski invited me over for the evening. Just the two of us and his beloved plastic goose with a light bulb inside. He uncorked the first bottle of red.
“You seem nervous, kid,” he said, pouring. I took a big drink. I was nervous. But after a few glasses, the night took off. We were laughing and drinking until 3 a.m. With a stubby Indian Beedi dangling from his lips, he flicked his butane lighter a few times. A flame suddenly shot up like a hissing blowtorch.
His left eyebrow sizzled and crackled as he jerked his head back and went, “Arrrrgh!”
Later, he told me that I danced with the goose on my head and recited a long raving monologue about sex and death and science. I don’t remember any of it, but he always did.
Hank’s reputation for wild drunken blowouts was real. But on any random evening, he was hard at work. One of his most important attributes was discipline. He wrote every day — sick, exhausted, hung over — it didn’t matter. He told me that he was like a spider building a web; it was in his DNA to pound the typer.
In a one-on-one encounter, Hank demanded your complete attention, even when he was drunk. Sitting on the couch in the living room, he would take a drink, then a drag and his eye would cut over at you — scrutinize you. There was no place to hide.
He was complex, outrageous and sensitive; loyal to his friends. When I was breaking up with Jan, he called to see how I was doing. He knew I was depressed and suggested that I come over for a drink. When I got there, Linda poured three glasses of good Cabernet. We talked for a while, and I told Hank that a literary agent had contacted me after I had some fiction published in Wired magazine. I asked him what he thought about agents.
He paused, took a long drag, and said: “Listen kid, the whole thing comes down to this: If you want to write, you’re going to write and you’d better write it your way. If you’re after money or fame or groupies, that’s something else. Then you’ll do it their way … and they will smash you down into a flattened turd.”
He took a big drink, then cut his eye over at me smiling and said, “Ring the bells of the city. The old man has spoken.”
Now that we have reached the Bukowski centenary, I think this is his lasting message: Your life may sometimes look like shit, but there is beauty in art. It can help us rise up from the miasma. Take the gamble. Do it on your own terms.
Michael D. Meloan’s work has appeared in
Wired, Huffington Post, Buzz, LA Weekly and in many anthologies. He was an interview subject in the documentaries Bukowski: Born Into This and
Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There. With Joe Frank, he co-wrote a number of radio shows that aired across the National Public Radio syndicate. He also co-authored the novel The Shroud with his brother, Steven.
A spark can set a whole forest on fire. Just a spark.
Save it.
The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it -- basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near
or with them.
An intellectual says a simple thing
in a hard way.
An artist says a hard thing in a
simple way.
What matters most is how well you walk through
the fire.