Hollywood by Charles Bukowski Read Free Book Online Page A

and rock. And out there, sitting all by itself, upright, was a lone, discarded toilet. The lid was missing.
    “That’s nice,” I said, “kind of odd.”
    “These here people are ARTISTS,” said our realtor.
    We stepped back. I touched the curtain that covered the window. Where I touched it a piece of the curtain dropped away.
    “These here people are deep inside,” said Lila. “They just don’t bother with the ordinaries , you know.”
    We went upstairs and the stairway was solid, strangely so. It was good and true, and I felt a little better then, walking up there.
    All that there was in the bedroom was a waterbed but this one was full. It sat in the far corner, lonely by itself. One strange thing, there was a large swelling at one edge. It gave the impression of an explosion to come.
    The bathroom was tiled but the floor had gone unwashed for so long that the tiles had almost disappeared in the smear of dirt and footprints.
    The toilet was brown-crusted, forever. No ever changing that. There was crust upon crust upon crust. It was worse than any toilet I had ever seen in any dive, in any bar I had ever been in, and I began to gag at the memory of all those crappers and at the thought of this one here. I walked out for a moment, steadied myself, inhaled, made up my mind not to think about any of it, and then re-entered the bathroom.
    “Sorry,” I said.
    Lila understood. “Shit, pard,” she said. “It’s all right...”
    I didn’t look in the bathtub but did note that somebody had scrawled with various colored paints on the wall over the bathtub:
    IF TIM LEARY AIN’T GOD,
    THEN GOD IS DEAD.

    MY FATHER DIED IN THE
    ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE
    AND THE DEVIL HAS A
    PUSSY

    CHARLES LINDBERG WAS
    A
    COCKSUCKER
    There were a few other messages painted here and there but they were smeared and garbled and difficult to read.
    “I’m gonna let you two wander about, you know, so you can get the feel. Buying a home is a real head-shaker. I don’t want to rush you none.”
    Then Lila left. We heard her going down the stairway. Sarah and I stepped out into the hallway. Hanging near us, from a frayed rope, was an old rusted coffeepot.
    “Oh my god,” Sarah said suddenly, “my god!”
    “What is it?”
    “I’ve seen photos of this house before! I remember now! I thought it looked familiar!”
    “What? What is it?”
    “This is one of the houses where Charles Manson killed somebody!”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes, yes!”
    “Let’s get out of here...”
    We went on down the stairway. They were waiting for us down there: Lila, Darlene and Double Quartet.
    “Well,” asked Lila, “what do you think?”
    “I’ve got your card with your phone number,” I told her, “We can get in touch.”
    “If you people are artists,” said Darlene, “we can knock some off the price. We like artists. Are you artists?”
    “No,” I said. “Well, I’m not, anyhow.”
    “I can show you some more places,” said Lila.
    “No, no,” said Sarah, “we’ve seen enough today. We have to rest up.”
    We had to push past them, and all the time Double Quartet just kept smiling , smiling ...

11

    Back at my place there were two envelopes. While Sarah got a bottle of wine I opened one of the envelopes. It was a manuscript of some sort, with a covering note:
Chinaski! Piss on you! You were once a great writer! Now you suck! You’ve sold out! My grandmother writes better shit than you do! You’ve had your head up your asshole too long! I sent my stuff to your publisher and he sent back a letter. He said “Thank you for submitting but we are overstocked.” The prick, I’ll overstock his butthole! He gobbles shit for breakfast!
The great poets are ignored. They are afraid of the great poets! You were once a great poet but now you are only a band-aid covering a pus-hole! You gobble your own weenie under a sky of vomit! You’ve sold your balls to the butcher! You’ve killed the baby of your love! You are monkey stink! Forever