Why can’t people just be normal when you see them. Just fucking say hello for Christ’s sake. Now I’m carrying this weird awkward memory around as I try to order at the god damn coffee shop; it is inhibiting my ability to hit on my server. I’m at the ATM. I’m in profile, unmistakable from the sidewalk, intent on my deposit. I turn to leave and sidling up to the next machine is you, Olivia, turning your head to the side in hopes that I don’t see you. Because there are so many other ginger chicks with mammoth jugs out there wearing that same dress you wore on our first date. You’re with a dude, maybe that’s the issue. Or you’re just a weirdo.
Well, God damn, you look good. Like you reverse aged. I forgot that you have good skin. I was reading this morning, the foreword to a book of Charles Bukowski’s, and it mentioned some Latin title I hadn’t known was his. It was your tattoo. So that’s where you got it. You were a Bukowski fan, I thought. So that’s why you liked me. I’m the shitty version of him, but then, not nearly as ugly. A good compromise for a date. I didn’t know his work when we went out.
I read that and I thought: shit, she was hot, I should call her. She’s a good writer. She has big titties and she can fuck. Why did I let that go. I should call her. I was thinking all of this this morning after not thinking about you for two years. Then I see you at the god damn ATM and you’re weird.
What the fuck is with God. Coincidences of this level are clearly meant to tell me something. But if you’re going to drop some hint about Olivia and make me think about her fondly, and then put her on the fucking street with me fifteen minutes later, can you not have her be alone? Can you fucking have her be interested in talking to me? Even God can’t make an attractive woman go out by herself. Also, why does God work in stupid trivial coincidences like some shit out of Seinfeld.
Anyway, I don’t know if you read this, but if you do, call me. We’ll forget about this ATM unpleasantness and I’ll take you for a drink. As you saw, I’m flush with cash.
delicioustacos 
ok its official I have to study Charles Bukowski. “What the fuck is with God” fuck that, what the fuck is with Bukowski? and how have i been oblivious? You wanna be a Thompson, Hemingway, Bukowski
Banging Bill Burroughs lived to 83
You’re fa- (You’re a)
-mous and (fucking)
you’re rich (dickhead)
quit acting like a bitch
And no one likes you!
What the fuck are you talking about?
Oh my.
I was not a fan of Factotum. There, I said it.
But god damn, his fucking poetry is brilliant.
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmWZOsVtqR0[/video]
Why would you be reluctant to say it? I don’t think he was that good a writer of prose. I think the cult following he has isn’t so much for literary merit/admiration as it is for the lifestyle he led and the image he portrayed. That’s why he appeals to Punk Rockers and Flaky Echo Park hipster chicks who fancy themselves modern day beatniks; they think he was some sort of counterculture hero: “He never conformed, maaan. Bukowski refused to be a slave to the system.” No, he was a slave to the bottle instead. Which is worse? The concepts that people seem to take as Bukowski’s “life philosophy” were just self-serving justifications for his alcoholism. The unyielding nihilism; the claims that the alcohol was necessary to fuel the creative process; that the alcohol was needed to still the demons, or dull his keen sensibility and perception of all the misery and injustice in the world – all of that bullshit is amusing to addicts, because you hear the same thing in NA meetings coming from construction workers and fucking tow truck drivers. I wrote about this in another post. For the addict, the right to their drink or drug of choice must be preserved at all costs.
The pick-up artist/manosphere types call this the “rationalization hamster”. But it seems like they only use it when referring to women’s
behavior, as if they’re not spinning their own fucked up, maladjusted hamster wheels constantly. Here’s how Bukowski’s hamster wheel went: as a writer and poet, I am a sensitive guy. But I am also a man, and real men don’t give into their sensitivities. Only pussies do that. Therefore I drink. How else can I face the horror of this desperate existence that is modern life?
I think what pisses me off the most about his writing is the romanticized and glorified image of addiction. I think it was reckless… look, I’m sure Bukowski didn’t write to tell anybody how to live, but I’ll bet there are people who read his shit and try to live like he did. If you go up to Kensington and Allegheny in North Philly you can watch some of the newly transplanted Fishtown hipsters getting off the El to go cop their
dope. Like they’re living out their own little Bukowski novel, or their own version of “Trainspotting”, you know what I mean? You get the idea that they made a conscious decision to become heroin addicts, like they thought it would be an adventure, a good experience, like they thought moving to Fishtown would be an adventure. I don’t know. I picture them playing “Velvet Underground” records while they’re mixing up their dope, you know? I see some of them at 12 step meetings around the city, but I never really talk to them enough to get to know their story. Meetings are cliquish, like prison yards. Most likely I’m wrong, the reasons are the same for pretty much every addict – it’s what the fuck they’re wired to do.
What you don’t get from reading Bukowski is a realistic depiction of the existence – I don’t think you can quite call it living – of addicts and alcoholics that’s a thousand times more miserable and desperate than that of any working stiff. Not to mention twice as hard.
I am not a writer, but I will try to tell an anecdote that depicts what addiction really is:
I had a daily routine for getting high.(just as I had a daily routine for drinking somewhat similar to DT’s after I traded in the heroin for methadone, and then traded the methadone in for a daily cocktail of suboxone, alcohol and Klonopin) I wouldn’t quite call it a ritual, the word ritual suggests some kind of sanctity………………
.
Never mind. This was a poorly thought out comment. Maybe those Fishtown hipsters do have slightly different reasons driving them to addiction. So what? We all look pretty much the same nodding out with our head in our lap.
And you can’t really compare heroin addiction to alcoholism, it’s a whole different beast, so the anecdote wouldn’t really be fitting. Alcoholics can usually function on a marginally competent level for a long period of time, their whole lives sometimes. My grandfather didn’t stop drinking until he started getting stomach ulcers from it in his 60s, and even then he never completely stopped, just cut back drastically.
Bukowski is entertaining, if nothing else.
and i fucked that link up. Oh vey.
One thing about Bukowski fans is that they use the phrase “god damn” a lot, in an unconscious homage I guess, considering he tended to use it often. When I see someone utilize it in their writing, 7 times out of 10 they are Bukowski fans. (The other 3 are Salinger fans. Sometimes they overlap.)
Or they’re just writing in vernacular.
I didn’t even realize he used that phrase that often.