Charles Bukowski Fiction Collection

I drank for the next week. I drank night and day and wrote 25 or 30 mournful poems about lost love.

I was in love again, I was in trouble….

“No, I got lost out of ignorance and fear. I am not a complete person—I’m a stunted city person. I am more or less a failed drizzling shit with absolutely nothing to offer.”
“Christ,” she said, “don’t you think I know that?”

I was lying on the bed in just my shorts, drunk, smoking, a drink on the chair. I was staring at the blue ceiling, not feeling or thinking about anything.

And yet women—good women—frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price. Either way I was lost. A strong man would give up both. I wasn’t strong. So I continued to struggle with women, with the idea of women.

I saw things working against me I simply became disgusted and withdrew. Lydia was different. She reacted.

Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It’s real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you’ve suddenly become an idiot. There’s no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.

“All right,” she said, “I won’t love you, I’ll almost love you. Will that be all right?”
“It’s much better than the other.”

I looked in the rear view mirror and saw her standing all alone in the moonlight, motionless in her blue negligee and panties. My gut began to twitch and roll. I felt ill, useless, sad. I was in love with her.

“Potential,” I said, “doesn’t mean a thing. You’ve got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.”