In the morning I awakened, sickened. I looked at Mindy, naked next to me. Even then, after all the drinking, she was a miracle. Never had I known a young girl so beautiful and at the same time so gentle and intelligent. Where were her men? Where had they failed?

I went into the bathroom and tried to get cleaned up. I gagged on Lavoris. I shaved and put on some shaving lotion. I wet my hair and combed it. I went to the refrigerator, took a 7-UP, drank it down.

I went back to the bed and climbed in. Mindy was warm, her body was warm. She seemed to be asleep. I liked that. I rubbed my lips against hers, softly. My cock rose. I felt her breasts against me. I took one and sucked on it. I felt the nipple harden. Mindy stirred. I reached down and felt along her belly, down towards the cunt. I began rubbing her cunt, easily.

It's like making a rosebud open, I thought. This has meaning. This is good. It's like two insects in a garden moving slowly towards each other. The male works his slow magic. The female slowly opens. I like it, I like it. Two bugs. Mindy is opening, she is getting wet. She is beautiful. Then I mounted her. I slid it in, my mouth on hers.

27.

We drank all day and that night I tried again to make love to Mindy. I was astounded and dismayed to find she had a large pussy. An extra large pussy. I hadn't noticed it the night before. That was a tragedy. Woman's greatest sin. I worked and I worked. Mindy lay there as if she was enjoying it. I hoped to god she was. I began to sweat. My back ached. I was dizzy, sick. Her pussy seemed to get larger. I couldn't feel anything. It was like trying to fuck a large, loose paper bag. I was just barely touching the sides of her cunt. It was agony, it was relentless work without a reward. I felt damned. I didn't want to hurt her feelings. I desperately wanted to come. It wasn't just the drinking. I performed better than most when drinking. I heard my heart. I felt my heart. I felt it in my chest. I felt it in my throat. I felt it in my head. I couldn't bear it. I rolled off with a gasp.

"Sorry, Mindy, Jesus Christ, I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Hank," she said.

I rolled over on my stomach. I stank with sweat. I got up and poured two drinks. We sat upright in bed and drank the drinks, side by side. I couldn't understand how I had managed to come the first time. We had a problem. All that beauty, all that gentleness, all that goodness, and we had a problem. I was unable to tell Mindy what it was. I didn't know how to tell her she had a big cunt. Maybe nobody had ever told her.

"It will be better when I'm not drinking so much," I told her.

"Please don't worry, Hank."

"O.K.".

We went to sleep or we pretended to go to sleep. Finally I did. . . .

28.

Mindy stayed about a week. I introduced her to my friends. We went places. But nothing was resolved. I couldn't climax. She didn't seem to mind. It was strange.

Around 10:45 PM one evening Mindy was drinking in the front room and reading a magazine. 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.

There was a knock on the front door.

Mindy said, "Should I get it?"

"Sure," I said, "go ahead."

I heard Mindy open the door. Then I heard Lydia's voice.

"I just came over to check out my competition."

Oh, I thought, this is nice. I'll get up and pour them both a drink, we'll all drink together and talk. I like my women to understand each other.

Then I heard Lydia say: "You're acute little thing, aren't you?"

Then I heard Mindy scream. And Lydia screamed. I heard scuffling, grunts, bodies flying. Furniture was upset. Mindy screamed again--the scream of one being attacked. Lydia screamed--the tigress at the kill. I leaped out of bed. I was going to separate them. I ran into the front room in my shorts. It was a hair-pulling, spitting, scratching, mad scene. I ran over to pull them apart. I stumbled over one of my shoes on the rug, fell heavily. Mindy ran out the door with Lydia right behind. They ran down the walk toward the street. I heard another scream.

Several minutes passed. I got up and closed the door. Evidently Mindy had gotten away because suddenly Lydia walked in. She sat down in a chair near the door. She looked at me.

"I'm sorry. I've pissed myself."

It was true. There was a dark stain in her crotch and one pant leg was soaked.

"It's all right," I said.

I poured Lydia a drink and she sat there holding it in her hand. I couldn't hold my drink in my hand. No one spoke. A short time later there was a knock on the door. I got up in my shorts and opened it. My huge, white, flabby belly hung out over the top of the shorts. Two policemen stood at the door.

"Hello," I said.

"We're answering a disturbance of the peace call."

"Just a little family argument," I said.

"We've got some details," said the cop standing closest to me. "There are two women."

"There usually are," I said.

"All right," said the first cop. "I just want to ask you one question."

"O.K.".

"Which of the two women do you want?"

"I'll take that one." I pointed to Lydia sitting in the chair, all pissed over herself.

"All right, sir, are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

The cops walked off and there I was with Lydia again.

29.

The phone rang the next morning. Lydia had gone back to her place. It was Bobby, the kid who lived in the next block and worked in the porno bookstore. "Mindy's down here. She wants you to come and talk to her."

"All right."

I walked over with 3 bottles of beer. Mindy was dressed in high heels and a black see-through outfit from Frederick's. It resembled a doll's dress and you could see her black panties. There was no brassiere. Valerie wasn't around. I sat down and twisted the beer caps off, passed the bottles.

"Are you going back to Lydia, Hank?" Mindy asked.

"Sorry, yes. I'm back."

"That was rotten, what happened. I thought you and Lydia were finished?"

"I thought we were. Those things are very strange."

"All my clothes are down at your place. I'll have to come get them."

"Of course."

"Are you sure she's gone?"

"Yes."

"She acts like a bull, that woman, she acts like a dyke."

"I don't think she is."

Mindy got up to go to the bathroom. Bobby looked at me. "I fucked her," he said. "Don't blame her. She had no other place to go."

"I don't blame her."

"Valerie took her to Frederick's to cheer her up. Got her a new outfit."

Mindy came out of the bathroom. She'd been crying.

"Mindy," I said, "I've got to go."

"I'll be down later for my clothes."

I got up and walked out the door. Mindy followed me out there. "Hold me," she said.

I held her. She was crying.

"You're never going to forget me . . . never!"

I walked back to my place thinking, I wonder if Bobby fucked Mindy? Bobby and Valerie were into lots of strange new things. I didn't care for their lack of common feeling. It was the way they did everything without any show of emotion. The same way another person might yawn or boil a potato.

30.

To pacify Lydia I agreed to go to Muleshead, Utah. Her sister was camping in the mountains. The sisters actually owned much of the land. It had been inherited from their father. Glendoline, one of the sisters, had a tent pitched in the woods. She was writing a novel, The Wild Woman of the Mountains. The other sisters were to arrive any day. Lydia and I arrived first. We had a pup tent. We squeezed in there the first night and the mosquitoes squeezed in with us. It was terrible.

The next morning we sat around the campfire. Glendoline and Lydia cooked breakfast. I had purchased $40 worth of groceries which included several 6-packs of beer. I had them cooling in a mountain spring. We finished breakfast. I helped with the dishes and then Glendoline brought out her novel and read to us. It wasn't really bad, but it was very unprofessional and needed a lot of polishing. Glendoline presumed that the reader was as fascinated by her life as she was--which was a deadly mistake. The other deadly mistakes she had made were too numerous to mention.

I walked to the spring and came back with 3 bottles of beer. The girls said no, they didn't want any. They were very anti-beer. We discussed Glendoline's novel. I figured that anybody who would read their novel aloud to others had to be suspect. If that wasn't the old kiss of death, nothing was.

The conversation shifted and the girls started chatting about men, parties, dancing, and sex. Glendoline had a high, excited voice, and laughed nervously, laughed constantly. She was in her mid-forties, quite fat and very sloppy. Besides that, just like me, she was simply ugly.

Glendoline must have talked non-stop for over an hour, entirely about sex. I began to get dizzy. She waved her arms over her head, "I'M THE WILD WOMAN OF THE MOUNTAINS! O WHERE O WHERE IS THE MAN, THE REAL MAN WITH THE COURAGE TO TAKE ME?"

Well, he's certainly not here, I thought.

I looked at Lydia. "Let's go for a walk."

"No," she said, "I want to read this book." It was called Love and Orgasm: A Revolutionary Guide to Sexual Fulfillment. "All right," I said, "I'll take a walk then."

I walked up to the mountain spring. I reached in for another beer, opened it and sat there drinking. I was trapped in the mountains and woods with two crazy women. They took all the joy out of fucking by talking about it all the time. I liked to fuck too, but it wasn't my religion. There were too many ridiculous and tragic things about it. People didn't seem to know how to handle it. So they made a toy out of it. A toy that destroyed people.

The main thing, I decided, was to find the right woman. But how? I had a red notebook and a pen with me. I scribbled a meditative poem into it. Then I walked up to the lake. Vance Pastures, the place was called. The sisters owned most of it. I had to take a shit. I took off my pants and squatted in the brush with the flies and the mosquitoes. I'd take the conveniences of the city any time. I had to wipe with leaves. I walked over to the lake and stuck one foot in the water. It was ice cold.

Be a man, old man. Enter.

My skin was ivory white. I felt very old, very soft. I moved out into the ice water. I went in up to my waist, then I took a deep breath and leaped forward. I was all the way in! The mud swirled up from the bottom and got into my ears, my mouth, my hair. I stood there in the muddy water, my teeth chattering.

I waited a long time for the water to settle and clear. Then I walked back out. I got dressed and made my way along the edge of the lake. When I got to the end of the lake I heard a sound like that of a waterfall. I went into a forest, moving toward the sound. I had to climb around some rocks across a gully. The sound came closer and closer. The flies and mosquitoes swarmed all over me. The flies were large and angry and hungry, much larger than city flies, and they knew a meal when they saw one.

I pushed my way through some thick brush and there it was: my first real honest-to-Christ waterfall. The water just poured down the mountain and over a rocky ledge. It was beautiful. It kept coming and coming. That water was coming from somewhere. And it was running off somewhere. There were 3 or 4 streams that probably led to the lake.

Finally I got tired of watching it and decided to go back. I also decided to take a different route back, a shortcut. I worked my way down to the opposite side of the lake and cut off toward camp. I knew about where it was. I still had my red notebook. I stopped and wrote another poem, less meditative, then I went on. I kept walking. The camp didn't appear. I walked some more. I looked around for the lake. I couldn't find the lake, I didn't know where it was. Suddenly it hit me: I was LOST. Those horny sex bitches had driven me out of my mind and now I was LOST. I looked around. There was the backdrop of mountains and all around me were trees and brush. There was no center, no starting point, no connection between anything. I felt fear, real fear. Why had I let them take me out of my city, my Los Angeles? A man could call a cab there, he could telephone. There were reasonable solutions to reasonable problems.

Vance Pastures stretched out around me for miles and miles. I threw away my red notebook. What a way for a writer to die! I could see it in the newspaper: HENRY CHINASKI, MINOR.

POET, FOUND DEAD IN.

UTAH WOODS.

Henry Chinaski, former post office clerk turned writer, was found in a decomposed state yesterday afternoon by forest ranger W. K. Brooks Jr. Also found near the remains was a small red notebook which evidently contained Mr. Chinaski's last written work.

I walked on. Soon I was in a soggy area full of water. Every now and then one of my legs would sink to the knee in the bog and I'd have to haul myself out.

I came to a barbed wire fence. I knew immediately that I shouldn't climb the fence. I knew that it was the wrong thing to do, but there seemed no alternative. I climbed over the fence and stood there, cupped both hands around my mouth and screamed: "LYDIA!"

There was no answer.