1st navel draft/driving bigole’ pregnant pussy/sothern hospitality

by Snow Leopard

Posted to Action Poetry on 2004-06-03 09:15:00

WHAT I DID IN THE FIRST WEEK OF THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS! CLASS 3.C
driving with an old friend / a 32 stone pregnant female on the 6.31 from oxford
by Charles Bukowski
unedited scribbled notes


‘Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61.” – Bob Dylan

‘I seen a lot of women, but she never escaped my mind’ – Bob Dylan



I find my self
thinking about her
and her form
at strange times of day;
when waiting for bread
to toast with my right
hand hanging from
the left shoulder






I answered the phone on a sunny midday in June to hear Chris’ excited voice telling me that he’d be arriving to pick me up the next day at 12 to ‘hit’ the road for a few days. Wherever we liked. Wherever I liked. ‘Fine,’ I said ‘…Great.’ went back into the garden and lit a cigarette to try and take the edge off the hangover, the 4th in a row. I’d planned to rest for a day or two and then hit my own road, which was Cumbria bound- a week alone in the mountains for my thoughts to be alone with themselves. ‘Aw, fuck it’ I muttered outloud, ‘the devil works in mysterious ways.’
I heard the sound of an engine slowing and his car pulled up outside my window and I watched his big, all-teeth grin shining in the morning sun. He let out a triumphant ‘HOOO’ and quickly jumped out the car and I threw him the keys. He’d driven four hours from Oxford, which is no small feet for someone who had passed their test only the week before. He told me that he planned to drive us three (3) high speed hours back through Oxford where we would attend some lecture on Tibetan Buddhism (which I had to leave half way thru,) sleep (presumably in the car,) then head to the south (west) coast to enjoy the sea and go to a concert for which he had a ‘spare’ tickets.
I’d spent the morning with a few beers in the garden reading Bukowski stories and masturbating. But I still felt a needed to relax more after the week in Leeds, the first week of summer, where all we ever did was sit around on dusty couches and drink and smoke, and this time it had given me a cold. All I had in mind was more beers and more sun, just a few more days, alone, then a week in the countryside. I cooked us dinner, packed up a few clothes and books and left acknowledging my reluctance to leave the comfort of the house as i passed though the front door. ‘So, you got any girl friends who’ll like me?’ ‘No.’ ‘None? Don’t you know any girls?’ ‘No…Well, one’ ‘Ah. What’s she like?’ ‘Fat.’
But I couldn’t have said ‘no’ even if I had truly wanted to. He’d driven all that way. The only real problem I felt, was that now I would have less time in each minute to think of my Beloved. We tossed the things in the boot and put on the rolling stones. LOUD. Jumping-jack-flash, live- usually the perfect driving music, the best there is, usually- propels the car along- but not this day, today the notes slipped by and I didn’t feel at all like jumping, or even moving. He was 19 years old with shabby brown hair, loose corduroys and an old blue sweater. Neal Cassidy was his hero (who he tried to make himself like,) but, of course, Cassidy is a one-off and cannot be matched, not should anyone try to match him, or anybody else, for that matter. He stretched his voice to try and make it sound manly and he tried to talk fast and ‘spontaneously’ to sound cool and intelligent but it was just banal and/or confused. I noticed he was reluctant to use the rear-view mirror or indicate at junctions and this would surely be a problem, I thought. An amateur hippy teen driver who thought he was Neal Cassidy in James Deans’ body. Before we’d even made it to the ‘highway’ we’d narrowly avoided a head on high speed collision (because we were in the wrong lane), a terrified pedestrian walking her dog and several other cars and children. He drove fast (still,) very fast, but it was clear he was never quite in full control of the vehicle. His eyes were sleepy and he seldom had regard for, or knowledge of, any other cars except those immediately in front of the engine, he slouched and made fast turns, or slow ones, whatever the speed now he was too ‘relaxed’ for a new driver and was driving dangerously and I thought about death. He was a vaguely leftist, Kerouacian teen/young man and worked in his town of birth at his fathers printing shop. All I really consciously knew about him that day was that he liked people to know he read books and often sung lines to songs before the singer sung them, like he was tryin to impress someone. He had driven from Oxford to bring me home with him. His reactions were not quick enough to prevent a collision should the event arrive (and it was beginning to look like it would) (and this left a weak and fearful feeling sitting in the pit of my stomach.)
He was too eager and drove too fast, simply an amateur driver, and I told him so, ‘Why not try indicating or checking your mirror or checking for cars? You’re very hasty aren’t you?’ ‘Erm. Perhaps. But, er, well not rea…’ ‘…You are.’ ‘No I’m not.’
The neurotic maniac and I were heading for the petrol station; we pulled out onto the main road, again without indicating, and suddenly had to swerve violently out of the path of the oncoming convertible Mercedes M-class. Her hair is orange and she is a great storyteller. ‘You’re reckless’ I yelled at him. He said nothing and increased speed slightly, flying past a speed camera he didn’t care, or know, existed (I felt it flash.) ‘The best we can hope for now is to crash before we get to the highway so there’s less mess, eh?’ He just laughed as he would if he’d just received a compliment.
He was growing impatient as we pulled into the filling station. ‘I’m sick of this,’ he snarled ‘I can’t wait to get out of this goddam city. Wait until we get on that long High way and cut straight through the heart of this stinking country.’ Far away from my love, I thought…cut through the heart, yes, that’s what we’ll do. (It worried me whenever he said the word highway from then on.) After waiting fifteen minutes in a cue for the left pump (because he didn’t realise the pumps reached round the back of the car) I went into pay and bought tobacco and a bottle of water. ‘What number?’ ‘Number 2.’ She tapped the keyboard- ‘S’not finished yet, love.’ We looked round and saw Chris fumbling around with the hose. ‘Oh, yeah’ I said and bought some cigarettes to pass the time- he tapped the hose, dropped it, placed it awkwardly on top of the pump and shuffled into the car- ‘What number?’ ‘Number 2’ ‘Do you have a reward card? (her eyes lit up when she said reward, they somehow weren’t there) ‘No. Do you sell pens?’ ‘Do you sell pens?’ she asked the supervisor’ ‘No, love, sorry we don’t. Do you have a reward card?’ I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Chris was tapping his imaginary watch. I laughed. ‘No. I haven’t.’ I paid for the things and left the store, vacantly grinning to myself because I was going to tell Chris about the lady in the shop, hell, I was quite excited, it woulda been the most interesting point of conversation that day. The car was not in sight. ‘Where the fuck is he’ I muttered to myself. I walked round to the back of the building and as I was wondering how I would get home I saw the car pointed away from the road making tiny manoeuvres and loud gear shifts, hardly moving, more squirming. I got in an put on Neil Youngs ‘Sugar Mountain’, turning the volume down so he could couldn’t listen to the lyrics (be subconsciously healed by them) and could concentrate on the road. When she took me back to her place, after I told her I’d seen her in the book shop and was in love with her (she giggled romantically) I couldn’t help but slump, blind drunk, into her sofa, immobile, and just tried to stay awake, too far gone to speak or to listen. I bought her white flowers the next morning (because she had put a white flower in my hair.)
When we rolled onto the hard motorway I began feeling a little more relaxed- perhaps I was just in a bad mood because of lack of sleep, maybe I was being harsh on him and maybe I wasn’t going to die in a terrible car crash. But as soon as I tried to relax and forget the problem he would start whistling blues riffs out of tune, and every time he spoke or lifted his body to peer out of the window the car shifted uncontrollably into the edge of the next lane and he readjusted it as thought nothing had happened. ‘Jesus!’ I thought ‘I never pictured myself mangled in a car wreck before.’ He was a self-centred Buddhist, and maybe that’s why he didn’t realise we were so close to the traffic in the left lane (that I felt the cold metal of every car that passed scraping my shoulder-blade bone.) When the road was slightly more empty he swung in and out of all three lanes at will. I wished I was driving with Tom instead, his strict and maliciously neat driving rules seemed not only sensible but a luxury, not to mention his safe control at high speeds. I lit a joint and relaxed into the seat and just tried to point the car in a straight line with my mind, but a big lorry switched lanes in front of us and we had to swerve to miss it. I showed the driver my thumb as we passed below his window and I noticed him masturbating (probably thinking about the image of the traffic woman’s voice.) I tried to control the car with my mind. It was a sunny day in early summer and the heat had not been forecast, which made me pleased. It was a long and blue sky and we were driving south on the M6 through fields and cities every hour or ½ hour. The sun in the cedar groves in the wind. She wears Moroccan dresses and angora sweaters and had a ring in her lips- she had a way of moving and speaking that makes me think she had never, and could never, harm another human being (save, of course, by breaking their heart.)
Every minute took my body further from hers and the pain was actually like a kind of stretching. She has a profile that would make you or any man weep.
‘End Of Free Recovery Area’
He didn’t know things like that you weren’t allowed to overtake on the inside lane, or why, or what chevrons were, or why you had to keep two apart, and he probably didn’t care to know. Whenever I was thinking of turning the radio down he would lean forward and turn it up. I wished I were in the garden, or Italy, reading Kant. Whenever we were stuck in slow moving traffic if we were in the 2nd lane the right moved quickest and when we pulled into the right, yep; the first.
I got soppy, Chris was pissing me off just by being there, talking, and so was I. Once I had it all. I was a poet and a Buddhist with a sweet gallamyown, a keen intellect and a passionate will to live- I was an immortal poem and the world would be mine- I stuck homemade signs in buses listing the advantages of walking into town. I went busking for fun. Now all I do is get drunk whenever possible and try to stay alive for some reason. Al and Pete would be halfway to the jungle in Singapore by now (and then east coast Australia) and for the first time I wished I’d gone with them as planned. Al and I had once drunkenly discussed the philosophy of travel, I claiming one should be(come) happy where one is, get to know the geology, history etc. (during the same conversation I claimed to see ‘sex everywhere’) and that from an existentialist point of view there was no point in ‘travelling’- but he suggested an existentialist point of view could lead one to the contrary conclusion to move around and not stay in the same place. Why not, I thought- but anyway, same either way, right? (S’all relative.)
When my thoughts returned to the car I felt like I was outside myself watching us. The classic, everyday bodiless episode, you didn’t feel dead or alive and there was no telling how long it would last (or did last.)

yes I think it can be easily done
I generally responded to his comments with an uninterested nod or just said ‘Ah. Nice’
He wanted to smoke weed whilst he drove but I only passed it if he asked, (and he always did) so I always passed it, reluctantly, but never offered and I didn’t feel bad about it. As far as I was concerned I was saving my life as well as his. I tried not to think about the police, or about the weed or the monkey. It emerged that he’d been thrown out of the Krishnamurti commune he had been living in (as opposed to ‘leaving’) because he had been caught smoking and refused to stop. Driving, even being in the car with him felt like a terrible chore and gave me a constant fear of death, but still he goes faster, turns the volume louder, shrieks illogical peculiarities. Perhaps I got these negative feelings because I see many of my teenage ‘mistakes’ in him.
He had openly expressed an attraction towards me on a number of occasions…usually I didn’t think about it, we were buddies, good buddies and he never thought about making a pass, (we sat many a night together enjoying hours of still silence) but this day things were looking grim. Each tiny movement of her laughter broke my heart a thousand times. I didn’t mind taking a ‘superior’ stance on things; it seemed natural, (he was less reasonable than I thought I was,) and also novel because I rarely had the courage to so much as look another man in the eyes. (A man’s a man who looks a man right between the eyes.)
Before I knew it I’m strolling through an old village just outside Oxford, following his footsteps with one eye, scribbling poems with the other. It was good to be in an unfamiliar place. But like always whenever there was a moment for quiet reflection it was dead, and sometimes painful, and I reflected the passing time and absurd inanimacy. His speech often sounded odd and out of place because he was trying to invent Haikus and ‘quotes’ and when he passed locals (mainly strangers) they always found his greeting, and manner, very queer.
We strolled sleepily through Oxfords sleepy backstreets. Old, tall buildings. The girls were very clean and healthy looking, well kept, and also very well spoken. They say it’s the best university in the world. A piano played quietly in a cellar somewhere. We went to listen to a good jazz band with singer in a small backstreet place. We sat by the meandering river and drank 5% dry Japanese lagers and listened to the birds. The trees were still green with late spring and the sky was blue today in this goddamned year of our lord, two thousand and four A.D.
We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.
The lecture was lame and I was glad my coughing forced me to leave. The girls were more interesting to listen to, after all. We slept at Chris’ place and set off early next morning, back in the car, and headed for the surf in Newquay. The concert was good. The surf-chicks were very good. The sea was the sea, the way it always had been, and the moon was worn.
Newquay on bank holiday weekend was like Madi-Gras, a car show (inc. a hearse) and a water pistol convention all rolled into one- 85-90% of people (including women and children) were armed and were shooting to kill (no playing.) The streets swelled with flesh and the heat from the sun was getting very hot. We found a quiet stretch of beach by the rocks and lay on the sand in the yellow haze of the blue sun and watched the burning white flames on the waves and watched the surfers riding the flames and watched the half-naked surfer chicks (with the flames in their eyes, and hair.)
We drove back through Dartmoor and I watched the landscape and listened to the doors (‘riders on the storm’). We were driving to Stonehenge to smoke the £10 joint the dope fiend had bought (been sold) from a young black guy in oxford, who was hanging around the university campus waiting for a smartass sucker punk like Chris.
We drove through Bristol to pick up some weed off Tom who got in the car and gave Chris constant, official sounding driving instructions. And Tom was a giddy, midday drunk and me and me old pall took the piss out of Chris and his drinking! Heaven On Earth! Back in Oxford we saw a famous blues band with a female vocalist who was built like a man, like a bad omen, I threw up twice on the ride back to Chris’, in his friends parents’ car, once into half a kebab, once into the net of my shirt. I the morning I got most of my things together and snuck out the house (didn’t speak with either of his parents once but made a good crack about them- after getting drunk in the Buddhist film, being so old might go some way to explain why you’re such a clown and a looser with no discipline, he went for it, he went for me, and I whacked him.
She is there as I’m walking through a shaded grove of trees on Salisbury plain with a daisy in my hair! In traffic jams. when I hear birds playing. when I see someone bending over to tie their shoelace.
I shoulda just laid it to her straight, ‘Do you know where the park is?’ (Which I actually asked- I needed the quiet- and she smiled) ‘Yeah. It’s that way.’ She pointed like a renaissance painting. I thanked her and fled. (Would you like to have a smoke with me? I’m pretty hung-over so I wouldn’t make much sense, but it’ll be interesting, see!’ ‘Yeah, Why not!’ And we’d go and have the smoke and kiss and fuck behind bushes and she’d persuade me to stay the day and night!) (Or she’d see my sad face and eyes and ask sweetly ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ‘You are beautiful and I am hung-over.’) I fled. She completely engulfed my mind when I glimpsed the shadow of a young girl with mysterious red hair, holding up a mirror ball in front of her face, in a quiet courtyard, or when a single strand of a passing stranger’s hair fell into my lap, I saw her in the woman’s eyes whose pen I borrowed to write down this poem on a bench in a strange, unknown town.
I was mildly paranoid and still in the grip of a bad belly and head hangover when I went for the rush hour train (hopefully avoiding paying for a ticket.) I bumped into Toms sister on the way who I like and who likes me, but who’s got a boy friend- when our eyes met we both turned very red and took silly little steps and didn’t really face each other. We went to a café and caught up, talked politely. I should have told her about my crazy chauffer and how I’d even wished her brother was driving (even though he’s usually a pain in the ass when driving and always shouts at other motorists etc.) We had a few joints in the park in between her studying (geography) and I reading (the most beautiful woman in town- Buk.) and lying on the Grass.




I made it passed the first five stations, no problem- I was dry and home- if I was asked for my ticket now I would buy it from the last stop to the one before mine, which I gladly accepted wouldn’t be that expensive. I snoozed if the ticket collector passed (the tip of an old ticket sticking out of my book) and read for the rest of the journey or gazed out the window. I had vomit on my right shoe and in my hair from the night before [shit, must remember to shower] and all I wanted was to make it home, a smooth journey, with as few mishaps as possible (preferably none,) and be sitting in the garden with a beer by sunset. The train was passed half way, and pulled into a station, on time. A few people got on and off and out of the corner of my eye I saw a huge hunk of an object as high as the roof and wider than the isle, being pushed, approaching from behind my left shoulder. Why do these things have to happen to me? An enormous fat person stopped and sat down beside me. I didn’t look. I looked the other way. ‘This will certainly be a sizable obstacle’ I thought. I didn’t feel like talking (as I usually didn’t) but today I wasn’t worried about being considered unsociable or, if necessary, blunt or harsh. ‘Is this the train to Manchester’ asked a voice, strangely soft for a big guy. I turned my head to look at him and was looking into the eyes of a 50-year-old transvestite, and then towards the huge bulk of his midriff, which bothered me. I errmed as I looked away and had to try hard for a second not to laugh, or scream, whichever happened to come out, probably both. ‘Yes. It is.’ I said in a contrived, shaky voice. For several minutes I was terrified and in the grip of paralysis. I couldn’t see the shape of his figure because his dress/gown was huge, and out of the corner of my eye I could only make out a mass and it blocked my entire vision to the left (I thanked god for windows.) Without thinking about it I began recalling the momentary image of her face and piecing together the parts I had noticed; the pink lips, the gloves covering his hands, eyeliner eyes, long blonde ‘hair’ and a number of necklaces. The smell of his body odour persisted through the bottle and a half of cheap woman’s perfume. I thought the smell alone would be enough to kill me (perhaps generated in the more hefty attempt). He breathed through his nose like a fat man. (He resembled a giant and more severe member of ‘the league of gentlemen’ on channel 4, or any other comedy transvestites (all of ‘em!) crossed with homer simpson in the episode where he puts on enough weight to be considered ‘disabled’ and unfit for work and has to wear a big sheet/dress and a floppy sailors cap.) Normally I felt I could handle that sort of thing, but being in the mood I was, and he being the size he was (and obnoxiously eccentric) I felt the situation was completely unacceptable. I could feel the weight of his leg leaning gradually harder on my own. Was it a come-on? Should I move my leg? Will he be self-conscious of her size? How could he not be? I moved my leg and the pushing stopped.
I made sure my line of vision went nowhere near his. I was strict about this. If my eyes became his there was no telling what could happen and whilst I was lost in the encounter my basic motor processes may send me screaming down the isle, like an idiot, with some sort of laughter. There was something horrific about his deep eyes and the powder on his thick, clammy cheeks (that were largely dark shadows.) ‘Well,’ I though, ‘what the shit, we’re just two human beings who happen, because of fate, to be sitting side by side on the 18.31 train to Manchester. Get yourself together man and don’t show any signs of fear.’ I picked up a book and began reading and I noticed him do the same. But the shock was leaving my body and I quickly accustomed myself to what was happening. ‘Just keep away from the eyes and chest and remember that paranoia and freaks don’t exist.’ His book fell slowly and heavily as it sunk to the floor. His body entirely filled the space between his seat and the one in front, and then some- this was going to be tricky. I edged my feet aside to make a little room. He jerked his huge head a few centimetres forward and then collapsed back in one hopeless movement. It turned it’s face to speak. ‘Excuse me’ said the voice in an apologetic and seductive tone ‘Could you pick it up, I can’t in my condition… I’m pregnant.’ ‘Oh. Yes.’ I lent hesitantly toward his middle and craned my neck to avoid the baby and then the penis. ‘Thank you’ she moaned. ‘Is this ticket yours too’ I asked calmly, without looking up ‘Yes. Ohhh, well no- it’s my bookmark.’ For several minutes I was in the cold, harsh grip of paralysis, physical and mental collapse. I leant back in my seat and sighed inside. I tired in vain to remove the picture of the lifeless penis sitting motionless, in his hairy groin, which was right next to me, up against me. I wondered what was under the dress, it was too big to be all belly, there was something there (perhaps he said he was pregnant because he was too big to walk about easily or urinate easily and so when his waters broke he could be rushed off in an ambulance to a new dress.) I prayed, and prayed, that her waters didn’t break. About fifteen minutes passed after the book ‘fell’ and I had just about forgotten about everything to do with the woman except his gigantic presence, when he turned, slowly, and after pausing for a moment, said ‘Thank you for picking up the book.’ I mumbled something back like ‘Oh, welcome’ but now I truly afraid because this meant he was looking for conversation or that he thought he had found a friend(ly piece of ass,) either way I was fucked. I elected to be manly and less than polite if it spoke to me again. Presumably he hated ‘men’ so I sniffed at will and when the time came, was ready to be dismissive and crass. I pretended to sleep, folding up my jumper and turning to face the window, the open plains that stretched and stretched. All that air. I’d wake up with its head in my crotch or with it’s fists punching me in the crotch or it’s teeth biting down on my cock. I heard him unzip his handbag and for some reason I expected to feel, (even braced myself and shivered goosebumps into my arm,) the cold thin metal of a needle. I became silent. I felt something soft touch my arm and begin to move up and down, then in any direction, slowly and gently. It could have been her coat. It could have been her gloved hand. It was sickening and I felt like a prisoner. I ran through the escape plan in my head but the seat in front was occupied and the glass in the window was too thick to break- (there was certainly no way over/through the mountain of flesh.) I felt a strong beershit coming on. I clenched my cheeks together. I was crushed up against the window- I was doomed- the left side of my body was heat and the right cold. Does it prefer the taste of boys or girls? I wondered. Will I be eaten? My eyes remained sealed. I tried to think ‘What would Bukowski do, how would he handle it?’ I had barely finished asking myself this when I opened my eyes and saw a great expanse to my left and her absence. I felt relief, and also a kind of sadness. But I can’t remember which came first (or which remains.) I just wanted to be back in the car.






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