A Beer With Buk The Puke

Charles Bukowski and I are stumbling into one of those dark lit, cigarette-stained dive bars where the beautiful and damned and ugly go to raise a glass to giving up on everything. One man with his face hidden by a black ballcap sits at the end of the bar, leaning against death, staring into his tall cold and gold beer like he might find peace of mind at the bottom of the round, when he's really just watering the dark seed of his own insanity. Willing himself into believing it will work out any different than half-baked fever dreams hatched up with some liquid courage that dry up under the bleak hungover sunrise of another day back on the grind, chasing a paycheck at half speed. A young gone woman with sad blue eyes that could drown you if you look into 'em too long without a lifesaver spelled out as a-l-c-o-h-o-l, dances and moans against the bar's dusty jukebox. She put on the Rolling Stones, and they're deep into singing about how you can't always get what you want. Nope, you can't. But you can wash up here, carried in on the Tide of the Disillusioned, and get drunk enough to learn it doesn't matter, or even worse, believe it does and is within reach.

Bukowski growls and barks at the tall, bearded, bartender who has long black hair that falls down to his shoulders and looks like he's some tormented Messiah of the Underworld. This is our underworld, our chosen hell. It's nice, no ventilation, halitosis in the air that could be another lost soul kicking the bucket behind the locked bathroom stall door cause the powder they railed had a little something more they never saw coming. Oh well, it's all gone to hell. Pull up a seat and grab a whiskey! Yes, yes, here we are. Bukowski and I found decent enough company in each other while we sit at our stools and squint our eyes, and curse the heavens. The glow of the beer under the sun escaping through the window is heaven enough for us. He's really on one now. He's ordered his sixth green bottle of Heineken. We've been here for 30 minutes. I don't know where he finds the room. His eyes are almost closed, while his blinks might be drunken naps, before he wakes himself up to take another sip. I'm clenching my barstool with a white-knuckled grip, falling off the face of the earth, and drinking with a reckless bloodthirsty abandon like enough whiskey might make me forget about how fucked up we are. Don't close your eyes now, or the spins will kickstart. Bukowski's going on about the music of the crowd, how people make him sick, and the pity he feels for those folk that never go truly crazy, and what terrible lives they must lead as a result. You know, the ones who don't just wake up, but jump out of bed, with a healthy pink glow of well rested vitality painted on their faces, no hangovers, shakes, dark hedonistic cravings like another bump off the key when nobody's looking, just an empty white sandy beach mind of complacency. To show up on time with a hot, steaming coffee -- room for almondmilk -- and a full tank of gas with a paycheck looming on the horizon is enough for them. Maybe they invest, diversify their portfolio, save for decades later, smile stubbornly through quarterly meetings, meet friends for a reasonable sole cocktail once every few weeks when they really cut loose, and all the while get caught up in the blur of riding down a straight-edged life never given over to the jagged, jarring tumbles off the cliff of insanity.

Bukowski and I have taken a tumble or two. He managed to find insanity and forge his art, his word, the way, as the flames danced around him, and his insides shriveled up, and he shot blood from every hole in his body uncontrollably. The doctors told him he could never drink again in that time, and the first thing he did when he got out, was to grab a sixer. And he's never stopped. And along the way he's lit up the blank page with words of raw and bloody truth about the darker sides of life that anyone would've crossed the street to get away from. I look over at him, and he's silently weeping. Tears falling slow down his face. He could be the happiest or saddest monster alive. I grab the bartender's attention, and before I can order up another round, he's grabbed a bottle of whiskey off the shelf, opened it, and left it in front of us. He's either trying to kill us faster or numb the pain as we freefall from sanity once more...