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| _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Charles Bukowski's Clock
by G. Rhydian Morgan
Saturday, December 22, 2007
by G. Rhydian Morgan
Saturday, December 22, 2007
| CONTACT THE LIZARD |
The sound would have woken the entire building. But I
had thrown the clock against the wall at the first ring of
its bell. No, it didn’t ring or buzz or bleep, it SCREAMED -
GET OUT OF BED YOU NO GOOD LAZY FUCK - but before it could
finish I had picked it up, thrown and broken it. The dreams
of a twenty-four hour rage dashed against the wall. It lay on
the floor and occasionally ticked. Each tick sounded like a
whine or a groan. It was like an animal in its death throes
gasping its last. I knew I should get up. It was a new day, a
whole new world, etceteras, etceteras, fucking etceteras. And
in this whole new world it was the same old story. Getting
up, going out to find work that did not exist in the vain
hope of ‘earning my day’. Some times it seemed quieter,
simpler to reach the ground by stepping out of the window
instead of into the lift but every day some thing or some
body would come along and change my mind.
“Can’t you shut that fucking thing off?” The voice
next door shouted seconds too late to be relevant and just
late enough to irritate.
“Fuck you! At least SOME THING works around here!” I
picked up the clock with mock sympathy, an
‘ahdidhehurtyourfeelings’ touch, but it was dead. It didn’t
click, it didn’t tick and didn’t tock. It just sat there
telling me it was still time to get up but it wasn’t. It was
minutes later. It didn’t even rattle like a broken clock
should. It just lay in my hands, dead. Dead time.
I gave it an indecent burial under the bed and lay
down again above it. Staring at the ceiling I wished I had a
beer or a bottle of wine or some thing that would rake my
throat less than last night’s whiskey. But I didn’t. All I
was left with was my bed, my whiskey and my dead time. And
nothing, nothing to do. I could lie there until an addiction
made me move, until my body cried out for something it wanted
that I didn’t have and couldn’t say ‘no’. Until that moment
of craving so intense it becomes painful I could stare at the
faces I had created in the pattern of cracks on the ceiling
and imagine the conversations of Alfred Hitchcock and
Aristotle. Everything was going fine until the director was a
little indiscreet about the second book of the Poetics and
the philosopher without laughing turned his back. I had to
ask what had been said. I hadn’t been paying much attention
at the time. Hitch explained.
“I only told him he had no sense of humour.” He had
to leave then. He didn’t want this to be more than a cameo.
My mind grew bored with playing these games so I
searched for a solution to my problems. The easiest thing to
do was lie there and do nothing. But it wasn’t a solution.
The woman I was living with had left the bed to go and find
food and I rolled into the now cold space she had left and
reached for the bottle. I drank long and slow with a loud
hard swallow and each time I gulped the whiskey jumped up in
the bottle and down again. It forced itself into my mouth.
Two packs, different brands, of cigarettes lay on the table.
I reached for the stronger and took one, unsure about whether
to smoke it. I wished I had a television, a book, a record to
play. Any thing that would be less effort for my brain than
thinking but there was nothing. I had four walls and the
noises of the world, awake outside my window. An uncaring bed
that I pummelled and punched into an uncomfortable
submission. Still it made me feel as though I was lying on
upturned ants that shuffled me back and forth on a thousand
tiny feet to give me daymares. I drank more in an attempt to
send my body back into sleep now it was too late to do
anything worthwhile. I hoped one of the other tenants would
jump from their window, just for the hell of it. Common as it
was, it still raised a laugh and if they went past my window
too fast to be identified then a whole day could be wasted
trying to piece their jigsaw puzzle body back together. But I
knew that today nothing would happen to lift me from my
glorious depths.
I pulled on my trousers without bothering to find
shorts that some body had given me in another story and lay
back on the bed, waiting. I wanted some thing or some body to
come along, a purpose that would stand up and say, Hey, I’ll
be your life, but there was nothing. Meaningless ideas filled
my head and then three cigarettes and all the whiskey later I
knew what I would do. I reached under the bed for the dead
clock. I looked at it and decided to take it to see the
Reanimator. That wasn’t his real name, of course. It wasn’t
even a nickname. I just made it up because he was good at
fixing things we all thought were dead. His nickname was
Hank. No body knew his real name. Whenever you asked him what
was his name he just said, “People call me Hank.” And because
no body knew what else to call him every body did. He got the
Hank name from always reading Bukowski and saying things
like, “I’m a real life Henry Chinaski.” He didn’t realise
most, if not all of Henry Chinaski was real but he went on
saying it anyway. He even got himself a job sorting the mail
but things had changed since Bukowski’s time and Hank could
not cut the mustard. He spent his days screwing and drinking,
smoking cigars and listening to classical programmes on the
radio. All most of us in the building did was drink and screw
but with Hank it was like a religion. He once confessed to me
in a moment of extreme drunkenness that he didn’t even like
classical music. He was a jazz man. But he listened to
classical because he was a real life Henry Chinaski.
Hank lived in the apartment two floors below and I
pulled on a T-shirt while waiting for the lift which never
came. I thought two cigarettes was long enough to wait and
took the stairs. The smooth concrete was ice cold on the
soles of my bare feet. Although I was used to walking without
shoes and my feet were pretty inured to sharp objects the
calluses could never protect against the extremes of
temperature and I was glad to get back in the hall way and on
to carpet, however thin and worn. A knock on Hank’s door was
answered almost immediately by the man and he stood to one
side to allow me to enter. He had on a pair of shorts and
asked if I thought his legs were as good and as strong as
Chinaski’s. I took the chair he offered without replying and
nodded my assent to a beer. He handed me the bottle and sank
his bulk into the chair opposite mine. We raised bottles and
drank.
Whoever Hank had been screwing when I knocked came in
from the bedroom. She looked good. She was in her underwear
and her hair was down and when she walked her ass wiggled. It
made me think of two apples just a little too ripe in the
bottom of a cotton bag wriggling against each other as they
were carried from the grocery store to the fruit bowl. May be
we could get together some time, when the woman I was living
with was out looking for food. Those apples were all the food
I needed.
“So. What can I do for you? Or were you just bord
sitting up there with nothing but your right hand?”
“Well, a little. But I broke my clock. There’s
nothing so bad as going slowly insane when you don’t know how
long you’ve been doing it.”
He held out his hand. “Let me look at it. I’m sure we
can get it going again.”
I handed him the clock. He turned it over and over in
his hands. Alternately whistling and shaking his head he
looked like a car mechanic about to tell you it was going to
be a lengthy job and certainly wouldn’t be cheap. I didn’t
mind all the charade. Hank never asked for more than a half
bottle of whiskey or a couple of cigars for anything. But he
liked to make you feel like he was doing you a real favour
and not fixing some shitty clock that you could replace for
the same cost. Finally he stopped the routine and spoke.
“This shouldn’t take long.” He smiled and walked into
the bedroom. That was another thing of Hank’s. He never let
you see exactly what he did to fix anything. He figured that
if it went wrong again you would have to come back. Which was
true. If I could fix the thing myself I wouldn’t be here.
Hank wouldn’t get his half bottle of whiskey or his couple of
cigars. But if I wasn’t here I wouldn’t have seen her and she
was worth a couple of cigars.
She went to the kitchen and came back with a beer of
her own. She stood in the doorway, smiling.
“Where is he?”
I gestured with a thumb. “Bedroom.”
She nodded and walked towards me. She put her beer on
the table at the side of my chair and sat on my lap. Her back
was facing the bedroom door. She smelt good. The light
perfume of post coitus was still on her skin. I buried my
face in the nape of her neck, holding her hair in one hand
and kissing it. With the other I pulled hard on her shoulder,
forcing her on to me so she could feel the arousal through my
trousers. Reaching inside she grabbed me with slender
fingers, guided me through the opening of my fly and slid
onto me in one fluid movement. She was still warm and silken
inside from her earlier mating and she glided back and forth
with pure ease of motion. Every time I tried to add my own
impetus to the rhythm she stopped me. This was her trip. In
no way was I to play an active part. I was a vibrator with a
mouth and I let myself be used like a willing toy. I felt
the familiar tension and knew that this pleasure would not
last long. She sensed it too. Her movements grew more violent
and I came. There was no shame in finishing so quickly. With
Hank only one room away we did not have the luxury of time
and as soon as she felt my orgasm she relaxed and stood,
leaving me to dress my self. She refastened her bra and
picked up her beer. I fell stupidly, hopelessly in love. As
an afterthought she leaned over and kissed me. A long slow
kiss on the mouth, the first time our lips had met. And then
she smiled and wiggled her way back to the kitchen. I sat
with open mouth wondering whether to believe what just
happened and Hank walked back in. He was carrying the clock
which was now ticking.
“Here you go. Healthy as ever.” He handed me the
clock. I looked at it and almost screamed.
“What do you mean, ‘healthy’? I can SEE the fucking
minute hand moving. This is the fastest clock I EVER saw…”
“I know. Isn’t it great? I shortened the spring.
Bukowski did that to one of his clocks once. I remember from
one of his stories. I wish I could keep it.”
I thought about offering to trade it for the woman
but said nothing. I wasn’t sure she would appreciate being
treated that way and I knew the woman I was living with would
not think it such a good deal and I was DAMN sure Hank would
have beaten the shit out of me if he knew what had happened
while he was in the bedroom so I mumbled, “It’s fine.”
“Just buy me a drink next time we’re out and we’ll
call it quits.” Which was fine by me because we NEVER went
out, any of us. I finished my beer and thanked Hank for his
friendship. I called goodbye to the goddess in the kitchen
whose name I did not know and I walked up the cold stone
steps to my apartment.
The woman I was living with had come back from
finding food.
“Where did you go?”
“Hank’s. I broke the alarm clock and he fixed it for
me.” I held out the clock for her to see. She didn’t look.
“What time is it?”
“I have no idea. He shortened the spring and now it
goes much too fast. You can SEE the fucking minute hand
moving!… Still I guess artificial time is better than
nothing.”
“You’ll probably have to wind it every four hours.”
She started putting vegetables away in the cupboards.
“How the FUCK can you KNOW some thing like that?!”
She turned to me, holding two apples. “I read it
somewhere… in a short story by Charles Bukowski.”
had thrown the clock against the wall at the first ring of
its bell. No, it didn’t ring or buzz or bleep, it SCREAMED -
GET OUT OF BED YOU NO GOOD LAZY FUCK - but before it could
finish I had picked it up, thrown and broken it. The dreams
of a twenty-four hour rage dashed against the wall. It lay on
the floor and occasionally ticked. Each tick sounded like a
whine or a groan. It was like an animal in its death throes
gasping its last. I knew I should get up. It was a new day, a
whole new world, etceteras, etceteras, fucking etceteras. And
in this whole new world it was the same old story. Getting
up, going out to find work that did not exist in the vain
hope of ‘earning my day’. Some times it seemed quieter,
simpler to reach the ground by stepping out of the window
instead of into the lift but every day some thing or some
body would come along and change my mind.
“Can’t you shut that fucking thing off?” The voice
next door shouted seconds too late to be relevant and just
late enough to irritate.
“Fuck you! At least SOME THING works around here!” I
picked up the clock with mock sympathy, an
‘ahdidhehurtyourfeelings’ touch, but it was dead. It didn’t
click, it didn’t tick and didn’t tock. It just sat there
telling me it was still time to get up but it wasn’t. It was
minutes later. It didn’t even rattle like a broken clock
should. It just lay in my hands, dead. Dead time.
I gave it an indecent burial under the bed and lay
down again above it. Staring at the ceiling I wished I had a
beer or a bottle of wine or some thing that would rake my
throat less than last night’s whiskey. But I didn’t. All I
was left with was my bed, my whiskey and my dead time. And
nothing, nothing to do. I could lie there until an addiction
made me move, until my body cried out for something it wanted
that I didn’t have and couldn’t say ‘no’. Until that moment
of craving so intense it becomes painful I could stare at the
faces I had created in the pattern of cracks on the ceiling
and imagine the conversations of Alfred Hitchcock and
Aristotle. Everything was going fine until the director was a
little indiscreet about the second book of the Poetics and
the philosopher without laughing turned his back. I had to
ask what had been said. I hadn’t been paying much attention
at the time. Hitch explained.
“I only told him he had no sense of humour.” He had
to leave then. He didn’t want this to be more than a cameo.
My mind grew bored with playing these games so I
searched for a solution to my problems. The easiest thing to
do was lie there and do nothing. But it wasn’t a solution.
The woman I was living with had left the bed to go and find
food and I rolled into the now cold space she had left and
reached for the bottle. I drank long and slow with a loud
hard swallow and each time I gulped the whiskey jumped up in
the bottle and down again. It forced itself into my mouth.
Two packs, different brands, of cigarettes lay on the table.
I reached for the stronger and took one, unsure about whether
to smoke it. I wished I had a television, a book, a record to
play. Any thing that would be less effort for my brain than
thinking but there was nothing. I had four walls and the
noises of the world, awake outside my window. An uncaring bed
that I pummelled and punched into an uncomfortable
submission. Still it made me feel as though I was lying on
upturned ants that shuffled me back and forth on a thousand
tiny feet to give me daymares. I drank more in an attempt to
send my body back into sleep now it was too late to do
anything worthwhile. I hoped one of the other tenants would
jump from their window, just for the hell of it. Common as it
was, it still raised a laugh and if they went past my window
too fast to be identified then a whole day could be wasted
trying to piece their jigsaw puzzle body back together. But I
knew that today nothing would happen to lift me from my
glorious depths.
I pulled on my trousers without bothering to find
shorts that some body had given me in another story and lay
back on the bed, waiting. I wanted some thing or some body to
come along, a purpose that would stand up and say, Hey, I’ll
be your life, but there was nothing. Meaningless ideas filled
my head and then three cigarettes and all the whiskey later I
knew what I would do. I reached under the bed for the dead
clock. I looked at it and decided to take it to see the
Reanimator. That wasn’t his real name, of course. It wasn’t
even a nickname. I just made it up because he was good at
fixing things we all thought were dead. His nickname was
Hank. No body knew his real name. Whenever you asked him what
was his name he just said, “People call me Hank.” And because
no body knew what else to call him every body did. He got the
Hank name from always reading Bukowski and saying things
like, “I’m a real life Henry Chinaski.” He didn’t realise
most, if not all of Henry Chinaski was real but he went on
saying it anyway. He even got himself a job sorting the mail
but things had changed since Bukowski’s time and Hank could
not cut the mustard. He spent his days screwing and drinking,
smoking cigars and listening to classical programmes on the
radio. All most of us in the building did was drink and screw
but with Hank it was like a religion. He once confessed to me
in a moment of extreme drunkenness that he didn’t even like
classical music. He was a jazz man. But he listened to
classical because he was a real life Henry Chinaski.
Hank lived in the apartment two floors below and I
pulled on a T-shirt while waiting for the lift which never
came. I thought two cigarettes was long enough to wait and
took the stairs. The smooth concrete was ice cold on the
soles of my bare feet. Although I was used to walking without
shoes and my feet were pretty inured to sharp objects the
calluses could never protect against the extremes of
temperature and I was glad to get back in the hall way and on
to carpet, however thin and worn. A knock on Hank’s door was
answered almost immediately by the man and he stood to one
side to allow me to enter. He had on a pair of shorts and
asked if I thought his legs were as good and as strong as
Chinaski’s. I took the chair he offered without replying and
nodded my assent to a beer. He handed me the bottle and sank
his bulk into the chair opposite mine. We raised bottles and
drank.
Whoever Hank had been screwing when I knocked came in
from the bedroom. She looked good. She was in her underwear
and her hair was down and when she walked her ass wiggled. It
made me think of two apples just a little too ripe in the
bottom of a cotton bag wriggling against each other as they
were carried from the grocery store to the fruit bowl. May be
we could get together some time, when the woman I was living
with was out looking for food. Those apples were all the food
I needed.
“So. What can I do for you? Or were you just bord
sitting up there with nothing but your right hand?”
“Well, a little. But I broke my clock. There’s
nothing so bad as going slowly insane when you don’t know how
long you’ve been doing it.”
He held out his hand. “Let me look at it. I’m sure we
can get it going again.”
I handed him the clock. He turned it over and over in
his hands. Alternately whistling and shaking his head he
looked like a car mechanic about to tell you it was going to
be a lengthy job and certainly wouldn’t be cheap. I didn’t
mind all the charade. Hank never asked for more than a half
bottle of whiskey or a couple of cigars for anything. But he
liked to make you feel like he was doing you a real favour
and not fixing some shitty clock that you could replace for
the same cost. Finally he stopped the routine and spoke.
“This shouldn’t take long.” He smiled and walked into
the bedroom. That was another thing of Hank’s. He never let
you see exactly what he did to fix anything. He figured that
if it went wrong again you would have to come back. Which was
true. If I could fix the thing myself I wouldn’t be here.
Hank wouldn’t get his half bottle of whiskey or his couple of
cigars. But if I wasn’t here I wouldn’t have seen her and she
was worth a couple of cigars.
She went to the kitchen and came back with a beer of
her own. She stood in the doorway, smiling.
“Where is he?”
I gestured with a thumb. “Bedroom.”
She nodded and walked towards me. She put her beer on
the table at the side of my chair and sat on my lap. Her back
was facing the bedroom door. She smelt good. The light
perfume of post coitus was still on her skin. I buried my
face in the nape of her neck, holding her hair in one hand
and kissing it. With the other I pulled hard on her shoulder,
forcing her on to me so she could feel the arousal through my
trousers. Reaching inside she grabbed me with slender
fingers, guided me through the opening of my fly and slid
onto me in one fluid movement. She was still warm and silken
inside from her earlier mating and she glided back and forth
with pure ease of motion. Every time I tried to add my own
impetus to the rhythm she stopped me. This was her trip. In
no way was I to play an active part. I was a vibrator with a
mouth and I let myself be used like a willing toy. I felt
the familiar tension and knew that this pleasure would not
last long. She sensed it too. Her movements grew more violent
and I came. There was no shame in finishing so quickly. With
Hank only one room away we did not have the luxury of time
and as soon as she felt my orgasm she relaxed and stood,
leaving me to dress my self. She refastened her bra and
picked up her beer. I fell stupidly, hopelessly in love. As
an afterthought she leaned over and kissed me. A long slow
kiss on the mouth, the first time our lips had met. And then
she smiled and wiggled her way back to the kitchen. I sat
with open mouth wondering whether to believe what just
happened and Hank walked back in. He was carrying the clock
which was now ticking.
“Here you go. Healthy as ever.” He handed me the
clock. I looked at it and almost screamed.
“What do you mean, ‘healthy’? I can SEE the fucking
minute hand moving. This is the fastest clock I EVER saw…”
“I know. Isn’t it great? I shortened the spring.
Bukowski did that to one of his clocks once. I remember from
one of his stories. I wish I could keep it.”
I thought about offering to trade it for the woman
but said nothing. I wasn’t sure she would appreciate being
treated that way and I knew the woman I was living with would
not think it such a good deal and I was DAMN sure Hank would
have beaten the shit out of me if he knew what had happened
while he was in the bedroom so I mumbled, “It’s fine.”
“Just buy me a drink next time we’re out and we’ll
call it quits.” Which was fine by me because we NEVER went
out, any of us. I finished my beer and thanked Hank for his
friendship. I called goodbye to the goddess in the kitchen
whose name I did not know and I walked up the cold stone
steps to my apartment.
The woman I was living with had come back from
finding food.
“Where did you go?”
“Hank’s. I broke the alarm clock and he fixed it for
me.” I held out the clock for her to see. She didn’t look.
“What time is it?”
“I have no idea. He shortened the spring and now it
goes much too fast. You can SEE the fucking minute hand
moving!… Still I guess artificial time is better than
nothing.”
“You’ll probably have to wind it every four hours.”
She started putting vegetables away in the cupboards.
“How the FUCK can you KNOW some thing like that?!”
She turned to me, holding two apples. “I read it
somewhere… in a short story by Charles Bukowski.”
| Updated at least 26½ times a day |
FIN
© lizardmagazine.com, 2007