"Why?"

"It almost seemed like a fuck, maybe better."

"It didn't mean anything, it was just dancing."

"Suppose that I grabbed a woman on the street like that? Would music make it all right?"

"You don't understand. Each time I finished dancing I came back and sat down next to you."

"O.K., O.K.," I said, "wait a minute."

I puked up another gusher on somebody's dying brush. We walked down the hill out of the Echo Park district toward Hollywood Boulevard.

We got into the car. It started and we drove west down Hollywood toward Vermont.

"You know what we call guys like you?" asked Lydia.

"No."

"We call them," she said, "party-poopers."

7.

We came in low over Kansas City, the pilot said the temperature was 20 degrees, and there I was in my thin California sports coat and shirt, lightweight pants, summer stockings, and holes in my shoes. As we landed and taxied toward the ramp everybody was reaching for overcoats, gloves, hats, mufflers. I let them all get off and then climbed down the portable stairway. There was Frenchy leaning against a building and waiting. Frenchy taught drama and collected books, mostly mine. "Welcome to Kansas Shitty, Chinaski!" he said and handed me a bottle of tequila. I took a good gulp and followed him into the parking lot. I had no baggage, just a portfolio full of poems. The car was warm and pleasant and we passed the bottle.

The roadways were frozen over with ice.

"Not everybody can drive on this fucking kind of ice," said Frenchy. "You got to know what you're doing."

I opened the portfolio and began reading Frenchy a love poem Lydia had handed me at the airport: "... your purple cock curved like a . . .

". . . when I squeeze your pimples, bullets of puss like sperm ..."

"Oh SHIT!" hollered Frenchy. The car went into a spin. Frenchy worked at the steering wheel.

"Frenchy," I said, lifting the tequila bottle and taking a hit, "we're not going to make it."

We spun off the road and into a three foot ditch which divided the highway. I handed him the bottle.

We got out of the car and climbed out of the ditch. We thumbed passing cars, sharing what was left of the bottle. Finally a car stopped. A man in his mid-twenties, drunk, was at the wheel. "Where you fellows going?"

"A poetry reading," said Frenchy.

"A poetry reading?"

"Yeah, at the University."

"All right, get in."

He was a liquor salesman. The back seat of his car was packed with cases of beer.

"Have a beer," he said, "and get me one too."

He got us there. We drove right up into the campus center and parked on the lawn in front of the auditorium. We were only 15 minutes late. I got out, vomited, then we all walked in together. We had stopped for a pint of vodka to get me through the reading.

I read about 20 minutes, then put the poems down. "This shit bores me," I said, "let's talk to each other."

I ended up screaming things at the audience and they screamed back at me. That audience wasn't bad. They were doing it for free. After about another 30 minutes a couple of professors got me out of there. "We've got a room for you, Chinaski," one of them said, "in the women's dormitory."

"In the women's dorm?"

"That's right, a nice room."

... It was true. Up on the third floor. One of the profs had brought a fifth of whiskey. Another gave me a check for the reading, plus air fare, and we sat around and drank the whiskey and talked. I blacked out. When I came to everybody was gone and there was half a fifth left. I sat there drinking and thinking, hey, you're Chinaski, Chinaski the legend. You've got an image. Now you're in the women's dorm. Hundreds of women in this place, hundreds of them.

All I had on were my shorts and stockings. I walked out into the hall up to the nearest door. I knocked.

"Hey, I'm Henry Chinaski, the immortal writer! Open up! I wanna show you something!"

I heard the girls giggling.

"O.K. now," I said, "how many of you are in there? 2? 3? It doesn't matter. I can handle 3! No problem! Hear me? Open up! I have this HUGE purple thing! Listen, I'll beat on the door with it!"

I took my fist and beat on the door. They kept giggling.

"So. You're not going to let Chinaski in, eh? Well, FUCK YOU!"

I tried the next door. "Hey, girls! This is the best poet of the last 18 hundred years! Open the door! I'm gonna show you something! Sweet meat for your vaginal lips!"

I tried the next door.

I tried all the doors on that floor and then I walked down the stairway and worked all the doors on the second floor and then all the doors on the first. I had the whiskey with me and I got tired. It seemed like hours since I had left my room. I drank as I walked along. No luck.

I had forgotten where my room was, which floor it was on. All I wanted, finally, was to get back to my room. I tried all the doors again, this time silently, very conscious of my shorts and stockings. No luck. "The greatest men are the most alone."

Back on the third floor I twisted a doorknob and the door opened. There was my portfolio of poems . . . the empty drinking glasses, ashtrays full of cigarette stubs . . . my pants, my shirt, my shoes, my coat. It was a wonderful sight. I closed the door, sat down on the bed and finished the bottle of whiskey that I had been carrying with me.

I awakened. It was daylight. I was in a strange clean place with two beds, drapes, t.v., bath. It appeared to be a motel room. I got up and opened the door. There was snow and ice out there. I closed the door and looked around. There was no explanation. I had no idea where I was. I was terribly hung over and depressed. I reached for the telephone and placed a long distance call to Lydia in Los Angeles.

"Baby, I don't know where I am!"

"I thought you went to Kansas City?"

"I did. But now I don't know where I am, you understand? I opened the door and looked and there's nothing but frozen roads, ice, snow!"

"Where were you staying?"

"Last thing I remember I had a room in the women's dorm."

"Well, you probably made an ass out of yourself and they moved you to a motel. Don't worry. Somebody will show up to take care of you."

"Christ, don't you have any sympathy for my situation?"

"You made an ass out of yourself. You generally always make an ass out of yourself."

"What do you mean 'generally always'?"

"You're just a lousy drunk," Lydia said. "Take a warm shower."

She hung up.

I walked over to the bed and stretched out. It was a nice motel room but it lacked character. I'd be damned if I'd take a shower. I thought of turning on the t.v.

I slept finally. . . .

There was a knock on the door. Two bright young college boys stood there, ready to take me to the airport. I sat on the edge of the bed putting on my shoes. "We got time for a couple at the airport bar before take-off?" I asked.

"Sure, Mr. Chinaski," one of them said, "anything you want." "O.K." I said. "Then let's get the fuck out of here."

8.

I got back, made love to Lydia several times, got in a fight with her, and left L. A. International late one morning to give a reading in Arkansas. I was lucky enough to have a seat by myself. The flight captain announced himself, if I heard correctly, as Captain Winehead. When the stewardess came by I ordered a drink.

I was certain I knew one of the stewardesses. She lived in Long Beach, had read some of my books, had written me a letter enclosing her photo and phone number. I recognized her from the photo. I had never gotten around to meeting her but I called her a number of times and one drunken night we had screamed at each other over the phone.

She stood up front trying not to notice me as I stared at her behind and her calves and her breasts.

We had lunch, saw the Game of the Week, the after-lunch wine burned my throat, and I ordered two Bloody Marys.

When we got to Arkansas I transferred to a small two engine job. When the propellers started up the wings began to vibrate and shake. They looked like they might fall off. We lifted off and the stewardess asked if anybody wanted a drink. By then we all needed one. She staggered and wobbled up and down the aisle selling drinks. Then she said, loudly, "DRINK UP! WE'RE GOING TO LAND!" We drank up and landed. Fifteen minutes later we were up again. The stewardess asked if anybody wanted a drink. By then we all needed one. Then she said, loudly, "DRINK UP! WE'RE GOING TO LAND!"

Professor Peter James and his wife, Selma, were there to meet me. Selma looked like a movie starlet but with much more class.

"You're looking great," said Pete.

"Your wife's looking great."

"You've got two hours before the reading."

Pete drove to their place. It was a split-level house with the guestroom on the lower level. I was shown my bedroom, downstairs. "You want to eat?" Pete asked. "No, I feel like I'm going to vomit." We went upstairs.

Backstage, just before the reading, Pete filled a water pitcher with vodka and orange juice. "An old woman runs the readings. She'd cream in her panties if she knew you were drinking. She's a nice old girl but she still thinks poetry is about sunsets and doves in flight."

I went out and read. S.R.O. The luck was holding. They were like any other audience: they didn't know how to handle some of the good poems, and during others they laughed at the wrong times. I kept reading and pouring from the water pitcher.

"What's that you're drinking?"

"This," I said, "is orange juice mixed with life."

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

"I'm a virgin."

"Why did you seek to become a writer?"

"Next question, please."

I read some more. I told them I had flown in with Captain Winehead and had seen the Game of the Week. I told them that when I was in good spiritual shape I ate off one dish and then washed it immediately. I read some more poems. I read poems until the water pitcher was empty. Then I told them the reading was over. There was a bit of autographing and we went to a party at Pete's house. . . .

I did my Indian dance, my Belly dance and my Broken-Ass-in-the-Wind dance. It's hard to drink when you dance. And it's hard to dance when you drink. Peter knew what he was doing. He had couches and chairs lined up to separate the dancers from the drinkers. Each could go their own way without bothering the other.

Pete walked up. He looked around the room at the women. "Which one do you want?" he asked.

"Is it that easy?"

"It's just southern hospitality."

There was one I had noticed, older than the others, with protruding teeth. But her teeth protruded perfectly--pushing the lips out like an open passionate flower. I wanted my mouth on that mouth. She wore a short skirt and her pantyhose revealed good legs that kept crossing and uncrossing as she laughed and drank and tugged at her skirt which would just not stay down. I sat next to her. "I'm--" I started to say. . . .

"I know who you are. I was at your reading."

"Thanks. I'd like to eat your pussy. I've gotten pretty good at it. I'll drive you crazy."

"What do you think of Allen Ginsberg?"

"Look, don't get me off the track. I want your mouth, your legs, your ass."

"All right," she said.

"See you soon. I'm in the bedroom downstairs."

I got up, left her, had another drink. A young guy--at least 6 feet 6 inches tall--walked up to me. "Look, Chinaski, I don't believe all that shit about you living on skidrow and knowing all the dope dealers, pimps, whores, junkies, horse players, fighters and drunks. ..."

"It's partly true."

"Bullshit," he said and walked off. A literary critic.