Then this blonde, about 19, with rimless glasses and a smile walked up. The smile never left. "I want to fuck you," she said. "It's your face."

"What about my face?"

"It's magnificent. I want to destroy your face with my cunt."

"It might be the other way around."

"Don't bet on it."

"You're right. Cunts are indestructible."

I went back to the couch and started playing with the legs of the one with the short skirt and moist flower lips whose name was Lillian.

The party ended and I went downstairs with Lilly. We undressed and sat propped against the pillows drinking vodka and vodka mix. There was a radio and the radio played. Lilly told me that she had worked for years to put her husband through college and then when he had gotten his professorship he had divorced her.

"That's shaggy," I said.

"You been married?"

"Yes."

"What happened?"

'"Mental cruelty,' according to the divorce papers."

"Was it true?" she asked.

"Of course: both ways."

I kissed Lilly. It was as good as I had imagined it would be. The flower mouth was open. We clasped, I sucked on her teeth. We broke.

"I think you," she said, looking at me with wide and beautiful eyes, "are one of the two or three best writers of today."

I switched off the bed lamp fast. I kissed her some more, played with her breasts and body, then went down on her. I was drunk, but I think I did O.K. But after that I couldn't do it the other way. I rode and rode and rode. I was hard but I couldn't come. Finally I rolled off and went to sleep. . . .

In the morning Lilly was flat on her back, snoring. I went to the bathroom, pissed, brushed my teeth and washed my face. Then I crawled back into bed. I turned her toward me and started playing with her parts. I am always very horny when hungover--not horny to eat but horny to blast. Fucking was the best cure for hangovers. It got all the parts ticking again. Her breath was so bad that I didn't want the flower mouth. I mounted. She gave a small groan. For me, it was very good. I don't think I gave her more than twenty strokes before I came.

After a while I heard her get up and walk to the bathroom. Lillian. By the time she came back I had turned my back to her and was nearly asleep.

After 15 minutes she got out of bed and began to dress.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I've got to get out of here. I've got to take my kids to school."

Lillian closed the door and ran up the stairway.

I got up, walked to the bathroom, and stared for a while at my face in the mirror.

At ten am I went upstairs for breakfast. I found Pete and Selma. Selma looked great. How did one get a Selma? The dogs of this world never ended up with a Selma. Dogs ended up with dogs. Selma served us breakfast. She was beautiful and one man owned her, a college professor. That was not quite right, somehow. Educated hotshot smoothies. Education was the new god, and educated men the new plantation masters.

"It was a damned good breakfast," I told them. "Thanks much."

"How was Lilly?" Pete asked.

"Lilly was very good."

"You've got to read again tonight, you know. It'll be at a smaller college, more conservative.

"All right. I'll be careful."

"What are you going to read?"

"Old stuff, I guess."

We finished our coffee and walked into the front room and sat down. The phone rang, Pete answered, talked, then turned to me. "Guy from the local paper wants to interview you. What'll I tell him?"

"Tell him all right."

Pete relayed the answer, then walked over and picked up my latest book and a pen. "I thought you might want to write something in this for Lilly."

I opened the book to the title page. "Dear Lilly," I wrote. "You will always be part of my life! . . .

Henry Chinaski."

9.

Lydia and I were always fighting. She was a flirt and it irritated me. When we ate out I was sure she was eyeballing some man across the room. When my male friends came by to visit and Lydia was there I could hear her conversation become intimate and sexual. She always sat very close to my friends, positioning herself as near them as possible. It was my drinking that irritated Lydia. She loved sex and my drinking got in the way of our lovemaking. "Either you're too drunk to do it at night or too sick to do it in the morning," she'd say. Lydia would go into a rage if I even drank a bottle of beer in front of her. We split up at least once a week-- "Forever"--but always managed to make up, somehow. She had finished sculpting my head and had given it to me. When we'd split I'd put the head in my car next to me on the front seat, drive it over to her place and leave it outside her door on the porch. Then I'd go to a phone booth, ring hervup and say, "Your goddamned head is outside the door!" That head went back and forth. . . .

We had just split again and I had dropped off the head. I was drinking, a free man again. I had a young friend, Bobby, a rather bland kid who worked in a porno bookstore and was a photographer on the side. He lived a couple of blocks away. Bobby was having trouble with himself and with his wife, Valerie. He phoned one evening and said he was bringing Valerie over to stay the night with me. It sounded fine. Valerie was 22, absolutely lovely, with long blond hair, mad blue eyes and a beautiful body. Like Lydia, she had also spent some time in a madhouse. After a while I heard them drive up on the lawn in front of my court. Valerie got out. I remembered Bobby telling me that when he first introduced Valerie to his parents they had commented on her dress--that they liked it very much--and she had said, "Yeah, well how about the rest of me?" She had pulled her dress up over her hips. And didn't have any panties on.

Valerie knocked. I heard Bobby drive off. I let her in. She looked fine. I poured two scotch and waters. Neither of us spoke. We drank those and I poured two more. After that I said, "Come on, let's make a bar." We got into my car. The Glue Machine was right around the corner. I had been 86'd earlier that week but nothing was said when we walked in. We got a table and ordered drinks. We still didn't talk. I just looked into those mad blue eyes. We were sitting side by side and I kissed her. Her mouth was cool and open. I kissed her again and our legs pressed together. Bobby had a nice wife. Bobby was crazy to pass her around.

We decided on dinner. We each ordered a steak and we drank and we kissed while we waited. The barmaid said, "Oh, you're in love!" and we both laughed. When the steaks came Valerie said, "I don't want to eat mine." "I don't want to eat mine either," I said.

We drank for another hour and then decided to go back to my place. As I drove the car up on the front lawn I saw a woman in the driveway. It was Lydia. She had an envelope in her hand. I got out of the car with Valerie and Lydia looked at us. "Who's that?" asked Valerie. "The woman I love," I told her.

"Who's the bitch?" screamed Lydia.

Valerie turned and ran down the sidewalk. I could hear her high heels on the pavement. "Come on in," I told Lydia. She followed me in.

"I came here to give this letter to you and it looks like I came at the right time. Who was she?"

"Bobby's wife. We're just friends."

"You were going to fuck her, weren't you?"

"Now look, I told her I love you."

"You were going to fuck her, weren't you?"

"Now look, baby ..."

Suddenly she shoved me. I was standing in front of the coffee table which was in front of the couch. I fell backward over the coffee table and into the space between the table and the couch. I heard the door slam. And as I got up I heard the engine of Lydia's car start. Then she drove off.

Son-of-a-bitch, I thought, one minute I've got two women and the next I've got none.

10.

I was surprised the next morning when April knocked on the door. April was the one on ATD who had been at Harry Ascot's party and who had left with the speed freak. It was 11 am. April came in and sat down.

"I've always admired your work," she said.

I got her a beer and got myself a beer.

"God is a hook in the sky," she said.

"All right," I said.

April was on the heavy side but not too fat. She had big hips and a large ass and her hair fell straight down. There was something about the size of her--rugged, like she could handle an ape. Her mental deficiency was attractive to me because she didn't play games. She crossed her legs, showing me enormous white flanks.

"I planted tomato seeds down in the basement of the apartment house I live in," she said.

"I'll take some when they come up," I said.

"I've never had a driver's license," April said. "My mother lives in New Jersey."

"My mother's dead," I said. I walked over and sat next to her on the couch. I grabbed her and kissed her. While I was kissing her she looked right into my eyes. I broke off. "Let's fuck," I said.

"I have an infection," said April.

"What?"

"It's sort of a fungus. Nothing serious."

"Could I catch it?"

"It's kind of a milky discharge."

"Could I catch it?"

"I don't think so."

"Let's fuck."

"I don't know if I want to fuck."

"It'll feel good. Let's go into the bedroom."

April walked into the bedroom and started taking off her clothes. I took mine off. We got under the sheets. I began playing with her parts and kissing her. I mounted her. It was very strange. As if her cunt ran from side to side. I knew I was in there, it felt like I was in there, but I kept slipping sideways, to the left. I kept humping. It was exciting like that. I finished and rolled off.

Later I drove her to her apartment and we went up. We talked for a long while and I left only after making note of the apartment number and the address. As I walked through the lobby I recognized the apartment house lock boxes. I had delivered mail there many times as a mailman. I went out to my car and drove off.

11.

Lydia had two children; Tonto, a boy of 8, and Lisa, the little girl of 5 who had interrupted our first fuck. We were together at the table one night eating dinner. Things were going well between Lydia and me and I stayed for dinner almost every night, then slept with Lydia and left about 11 am the next morning to go back to my place to check the mail and write. The children slept in the next room on a waterbed. It was an old, small house which Lydia rented from an ex-Japanese wrestler now into real estate. He was obviously interested in Lydia. That was all right. It was a nice old house.

"Tonto," I said as we were eating, "you know that when your mother screams at night I'm not beating her. You know who's really in trouble."

"Yes, I know."

"Then why don't you come in and help me?"

"Uh-uh. I know her."

"Listen, Hank," said Lydia, "don't turn my kids against me."

"He's the ugliest man in the world," said Lisa.

I liked Lisa. She was going to be a sexpot some day, a sexpot with personality.

After dinner Lydia and I went to our bedroom and stretched out. Lydia was into blackheads and pimples. I had a bad complexion. She moved the lamp down near my face and began. I liked it.

It made me tingle and sometimes I got a hard-on. Very intimate. Sometimes between squeezes Lydia would give me a kiss. She always worked on my face first and then moved on to my back and chest.

"You love me?"

"Yeh."

"Oooh, look at this one!"