Hank And Jamie Grow Up

I went to see “Bukowski: Born Into This” tonight. Until today, I was unfamiliar with Charles Bukowski, except as a name. I started to read Post Office, planning on slogging through the first 50 pages before I saw the film. I nearly always expect these famous authors, these oft bandied names, to be a struggle to connect with, that I’ll have to slough through a swamp of strangeness to find the treasure of their touted brilliance. But I find, more often than not, that what I expected to be a long haul, is a delightful experience. I think this is because I tried so many of them when I was younger. Hemingway, Ferlingetti, Neruda, Conrad. I could not wrap my little head around them. It wasn’t a matter of understanding the words. I was probably well-read enough at 12 or so to have just read these works. But I just couldn’t make sense of what these crazy old people were saying. As I get older, I’m finding that the books, and music as well, that left a foreign and confused taste in my mouth, that gave me the idea that most “literature” was not all it was cracked up to be, are finally making sense. It’s like a code has been cracked, vision clearing, as muddied words and sounds that I know must hold meaning, gradually and unexpectedly do. It’s a most “delicious” (as my Bamma would say) feeling of finally being admitted to a club. Is it just because I’m older now? Or did I pass through a magic portal somewhere? Did something I do or endure make the scales drop from my eyes?

Anyway, I was 30 pages into Post Office before I knew it. I ended up getting through half the book before I got too antsy and had to leave Barnes and Noble. (Would you believe that the library doesn’t have hardly any Bukowski? Not just that it’s checked out, they don’t even have it in the catalogue.) I went to the movie with an eager spirit, ready to get to know the man I’d just fallen in love with. (Though of course, “love is a mist that burns off in the morning” . . . or something like that)

And it was wonderful. It was a wonderful movie, and he’s an incredible man. I’m so excited to devour all his works as soon as possible. To be able to read his stuff with the kind of insight that movie allowed, that is a rare opportunity that I am fucking thrilled to take.

But one part, one part broke my spirit and nearly hardened my heart against the man. It was some footage of him with his wife. A director had come to their San Pedro home in the ‘80s to make a documentary, and Bukowski was, characteristically, drunk. The two of them (her name is Linda) were sitting on the sofa and I don’t remember exactly what was being said, but somehow, he got riled up against her. He began to basically pick a fight with her. He began to say how he didn’t want her anymore, how if she was gonna go spend her time with other people and not him, he didn’t want her at all. That she was a bitch, a fucking bitch, and he was glad to be rid of her. His face, so far only showing righteous anger, sensitivity, insight, humor, showed only childish fury. He ranted on, humiliating and hurting his wife in front of rolling cameras. Finally, he lashed out. He kicked her. Kicked her with both feet, off the couch. “Bitch!” he spat.

I turned my face away from the screen. Tears, a sob, fought to come out. I couldn’t see that, couldn’t take it. I think I gasped when he kicked her, said “no” horrifiedly aloud. Whenever I see fighting like that, raised voices and names called, a face with that look that tells you all sense has left it’s owner and all there is is hate behind it, whether it’s real life or just a movie, oh god, I’m back there. Back in that bedroom, that apartment, those hissing, crushing words. This is why I don’t see a lot of movies, like, story movies. And why I don’t see them in theaters. At home, I can turn it off, walk away, distract myself until that part is over. But there, in that dark and full theater, I was pinned in those memories until the clip was over. It’s happened before, in a movie theater, some actor screaming at an actress and a terrorized sob in my throat. I don’t remember what movie it was, but I’d gone by myself. I probably tried to forget.

And I do, I do forget. As soon as that clip was over, the memories were gone. But while I heard that tone in Bukowski’s voice, the horrible montage of all those fights played vividly and chokingly before my mind’s eye. I tried to recall them as the movie played on, but they’d retracted back out of reach, into my suppressed subconscious that doesn’t want to deal with what happened, doesn’t want to relive those pains. But I must. I must reclaim that part of me, the part of me that once knew how to stoically stand in the face of senseless rage, the part that was crumpled like a paper sack by all that happened.

I know I’ll have to write about it. I think I’d like to share it. But I don’t know just how to do that, how to dig in and pull that out.

Maybe, if I can figure that out, I can look back and see what portal I passed through. At what point I began to grow up.