"How much?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

He leaned back again. "You must understand that those of us in government service must maintain certain standards."

Not really feeling guilty of anything, I didn't answer.

I waited.

Oh, where are you, boys? Kafka, where are you? Lorca, shot in the dirty road, where are you? Hemingway, claiming he was being tailed by the C.I.A. and n.o.body believing him but mea"

The, old distinguished well-rested non-beetpicking gray turned around and reached into a small and well-varnished cabinet behind him and pulled out six or seven copies of Open p.u.s.s.y.

He threw them upon his desk like stinking siffed and raped t.u.r.ds. He tapped them with one of his non-lemonpulling hands.

"We are led to believe that YOU are the writer of these columns a" Notes of a Dirty Old Man."

"Yeh."

"What do you have to say about these columns?"

"Nothing."

"Do you call this writing?

"It's the best that I can do."

"Well, I'm supporting two sons who are now taking journalism at the best of colleges, and I HOPE-"

He tapped the sheets, the stinking t.u.r.d sheets, with the bot-tom of his ringed and un-factoried and un-jailed hand and said: "I hope that my sons never turn out to write like YOU do!"

"They won't," I promised him.

"Mr. Bukowski, I think that the interview is finished."

"Yeah," I said. I lit a cig, stood up, scratched my beer-gut and walked out.

The second interview was sooner than I expected. I was hard at work a" of course a" at one of my important menial tasks when the speaker boomed: "Henry Charles Bukowski, report to the Tour superintendent's office!"

I dropped my important task, got a treavel form from the local screw and walked on over to the office. The Tour-Soup's male secretary, an old gray flab, looked me over.

"Are you Charles Bukowski?" he asked me, quite disappointed.

"Yeh, man."

"Please follow me."

I followed him. It was a large building. We went down several stairways and down around a long hall and then into a large dark room that entered into another large and very dark room. Two men were sitting there at the end of a table that must have been seventy-five feet long. They sat under a lone lamp. And at the end of the table sat this single chair a" for me.

"You may enter," said the secretary. Then he shorted out.

I walked in. The two men stood up. Here we were under one lamp in the dark. For some reason, I thought of all the a.s.sa.s.sina-tions.

Then I thought, this is America, daddy, Hitler is dead. Or is he? "Bukowski?"

"Yeh."

They both shook hands with me.

"Sit down."

Groovy, baby.

"This is Mr. - - - - from Washington," said the other guy who was one of the local topdogt.u.r.ds.

I didn't say anything. It was a nice lamp. Made of human skin?

Mr. Washington did the talking. He had a portfolio with quite a few papers within.

"Now, Mr. Bukowski-"

"Yeh?"

"Your age is forty-eight and you've been employed by the United States Government for eleven years."

"Yeh."

"You were married to your first wife two and a half years, divorced, and you married your present wife when? We'd like the date."

"No date. No marriage."

"You have a child!"

"Yeh."

"How old?"

"Four."

"You're not married?"

"No."

"Do you pay child support?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"About standard."

Then he leaned back and we sat there. The three of us said nothing for a good four or five minutes.

Then a stack of the underground newspaper Open p.u.s.s.y appeared.

"Do you write these columns? Notes of a Dirty Old Man?" Mr. Washington asked.

"Yeh."

He handed a copy to Mr. Los Angeles.

"Have you seen this one?"

"No, no, I haven't"

Across the top of the column was a walking c.o.c.k with legs, a huge HUGE walking c.o.c.k with legs. The story was about a male friend of mine I had screwed in the a.s.s by mistake, while drunk, believing that it was one of my girlfriends. It took me two weeks to finally force my friend to leave my place. It was a true story.

"Do you call this writing?" Mr. Washington asked.

"I don't know about the writing. But I thought it was a very funny story. Didn't you think it was humorous?"

"But this-this ill.u.s.tration across the top of the story?"

"The walking c.o.c.k?"

"Yes."

"I didn't draw it."

"You have nothing to do with the selection of ill.u.s.trations?"

"The paper is put together on Tuesday nights."

"And you are not there on Tuesday nights?"

"I am supposed to be here on Tuesday nights."

They waited some time, going through Open p.u.s.s.y, looking at my columns.

"You know," said Mr. Washington, tapping the Open p.u.s.s.ies again with his hand, "you would have been all right if you had kept writing poetry, but when you began writing this stuff-" He again tapped the Open p.u.s.s.ies.

I waited two minutes and thirty seconds. Then I asked: "Are we to consider the postal officials as the new critics of literature?"

"Oh, no no," said Mr. Washington, "we didn't mean that." I sat and waited.

"There is a certain conduct expected of postal employees. You are in the Public Eye. You are to be an example of exemplary behavior."

"It appears to me," I said, "that you are threatening my freedom of expression with a resultant loss of employment. The A.C.L.U. might be interested."

"We'd still prefer you didn't write the column."

"Gentleman, there comes a time in each man's life when he must choose to stand or run. I choose to stand."

Their silence.

Wait.

Wait.

The shuffling of Open p.u.s.s.ies.

Then Mr. Washington: "Mr. Bukowski?"

"Yeh?"

Are you going to write any more columns about the Post Office?"

I had written one about them which I thought was more humorous than demeaning a" but then, maybe my mind was twisted.

I let them wait this time. Then I answered. "Not unless you make it necessary for me to do so."

Then they waited. It was kind of an interrogation chess game where you hoped the other man would make the wrong move: blurt out his p.a.w.ns, knights, bishops, king, his queen, his guts. (And meanwhile, as you read this, here goes my G.o.dd.a.m.ned job. Groovy, baby. Send dollars for beer and wreaths to The Charles Bukowski Rehabilitation Fund at-) Mr. Washington stood up.

Mr. Los Angeles stood up.

Mr. Washington said: "I think that the interview is over."

Mr. Washington said: "Meanwhile, don't jump off of any bridges-"

(Strange: I hadn't even thought about it.) "-we haven't had a case like this in ten years." (In ten years? Who was the last poor sucker?) "So?" I asked.

"Mr. Bukowski," said Mr. Los Angeles, "report back to your position."

I really had an unquieting time (or is it disquieting?) trying to find my way back to the work floor from that underground Kafka-esqueish maze, and when I did, here all my subnormal fellow workers (good p.r.i.c.ks all) started chirping at me: "Hey, baby, where ya been?"

"What'd they want, daddieo?"

"You knocked up another black chick, big daddy?"

I gave them the Silence. One learns from dear old Uncle Sammy.

They kept chirping and flipping and fingering their mental a.s.sholes. They were really frightened. I was Old Kool and if they could break Old Kool they could break any of them.

"They wanted to make me Postmaster," I told them.

"And what happened, daddieo?"

"I told them to jam a hot t.u.r.d up their siffed-up s.n.a.t.c.h."