Jim reads 'Post Office and sets out to meet a fellow drunken poet.....

Jim Morrison’s growing beer and taco gut gently lifted and sunk with every snoring breath he took. He had his feet up on a table and his mouth hung open emitting long porcine grunts every three seconds. His belly, a stately, boozefatted hillock had gradually superseded his penis in order of importance and need for satiety; wine, beer and fried Mexican food plunged through his scorched oesophagus at a heavy rate and budding haemorrhoids hung from his anus. He felt his brain was slowing down; for a man of 27, he bore a remarkable resemblance to a middle-aged drunk. He moved slower and farted louder; he smoked cigarettes continually and wrote inchoate, overblown poetry; whilst his interested in the theory of rock & roll remained undimmed, his interest in its practise had waned considerably.
            The former Lizard King was sleeping off a bibulous lunch in a studio in LA on a balmy afternoon in 1971. On a table next to him was a paperback book that he’d finished reading before nodding out; the book had engrossed him from the first page and he read it in the course of the morning. 
       Two young women hovered at the door; they worked for the studio. They whispered.
“God! He’s so fat!”
“Why doesn’t he shave the beard off?”
“I’d still get it on with him though, wouldn’t you?”
“You think he could get it up? With all that he drinks?”
“He’s supposed to be an animal in bed”
“He certainly looks and sounds like one- a fucking pig!”
“Hey c’mon that’s a little cruel…”
One of them moved over and touched Morrison’s shoulder.
“Mr Morrison? Mr Morrison?”
He stirred, “..huh? Wha?”
“Mr Morrison, there’s a call for you.”
“Uh huh, yeah thanks.”
 He coughed, licked his lips, reached over and picked up a phone, whilst simultaneously setting light to a Marlboro.
“Morrison.”
“Hey Jim, Its Joe.”
“Joe man, any luck?”
“Yep, Bukowski lives right here in LA.”
“You got his address?”
“Yep, you got a pen?”
“I got a pencil.”
“Here it is…”

Morrison walked straight up to the front door and rang the bell. Nothing happened; it was a scuzzy looking bungalow and he would have been a surprise if the bell had worked; he felt a slight apprehension and his haemorrhoids itched. Scratching his haemorrhoids in public had become something of a phobia for Morrison; it required not merely a quick scratch or adjustment of the buttocks as in the case of the usual passing irritation of the ass. No, the haemorrhoid irritation, a profound, heartbreaking anal itch, required him to thrust his index finger against the area of his trouser directly above his asshole, force the digit in and waggle deliriously until the itch abated. Five or ten minutes later he would have to perform the whole manoevre again. It was the price he paid for a diet of liquor and junk food; Miller high life and pappy steam bread had fucked his ass.
   He knocked on the door. He heard some movement inside; a kind of clumsy slapping like someone walking drunk in flip-flops. He moved to the window, which was open.
“Hello?” he said, uncertainly.
There was definitely someone in there.
“Mr Bukowski?”
He heard a match scrape and flare.
“Hello? Sir?”
Silence.
Morrison’s ass started to itch again. He performed the index finger routine.
“What do you want?”
Suddenly there was a face in front of Morrison at the window. What a face; it struck Morrison as resembling some sort of rare breed of south American monkey that had had its facial hair removed in a laboratory experiment. Hooded eyes glared forward from a jowly, pitted face; atop a domed forehead, brown hair was slicked back. He looked as though he’d performed his morning ablutions- if he’d performed them at all- in corn oil, not water.
“What do you want?”
The voice was low and high, with a kind of twang hidden in the mix.
“Er hi, I’m Jim Morrison, and…”
“Yeah,”
“And I kinda just read your book, er… Post Office and”
“You like it?”
“I do. I sing with a band called the Doors and,”
“I heard of them.”
“Really?”
“They’re shit. Rock & roll’s shit”
“Hehehe, well….erm”
“You want to come in?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, if you want. Why not.”
 

“Poet huh?”
“Yeah, I’m more into that now than the band.”
They sat in a drab sitting room, Morrison drinking a can of beer and Bukowski- dressed in a stained dressing gown- with a cup of coffee.
“Hehehe. That’s nice.”
“You think I’m an idiot don’t you?”
“I haven’t got a very high opinion of rock and roll, no.”
“Well, it is getting rotten again. But hey man, I got a beard, that says something.”
“Hmmm.”
Bukowski got up and shuffled over to a record player, he dropped the needle onto the spinning vinyl.
“This I like,” he said, and shuffled back to his seat.
Lone strings filled the room.
“Its Strauss, the Blue Danube,” said Morrison, “I’m not a total philistine.”
“An der schonen blauen Donau, walzen.”
“Yeah”
“Are you rich Morrison?”
“I have money?”
“Your family rich?”
“Well, they’re not…poor.”
“Hmmm. I think it’s time for a beer.”
 
 
 

Two beers passed. The Emperor waltz was playing.
“LSD’s a crazy drug Hank. I’ve taken a goddamn lot of it.”
“You can’t say goddamn.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re under thirty. LSD eh? The big parade. What about women?”
“They’re great.”
“Yeah. How many you had?”
“Hehe how many women have I fucked?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t really know. A lot. I’ve probably been blown by more than I’ve actually fucked.”
“Hmmm.”
“You?”
“Enough,” Bukowski had lit a small cigar and offered one to Morrison.
“Thanks.”
“Shall we go out?”

They drove out to the track; for some reason ‘The Blue Danube’ was on the radio in the car and Morrison hummed along to it, whilst taking great slugs of beer. He decided to keep quiet; this guy was strange, but one thing was for sure: the guy was a genuine writer; reading Post Office had made Morrison realise the amount of sheer good fortune he’d had. Why, he here he was, an icon of the counterculture in his twenties, adored by women, no money worries, and singing songs about his personal pain. Pain? Post Office had opened a window onto another wilderness of pain, a look into the unfair, unjust, unlovely lives of the lost, poor and botched casualties of the American money machine.
      They hung around the bar, made bets and smoked. Bukowski didn’t say much. Morrison was betting between five and ten dollars a time, and losing. He’d never been near a race-track before. Bukowski was winning. Morrison watched him collect his winnings.
“Man, I’m no good at this.”
“I know. Try ten on that horse there.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Morrison placed the bet and had to scratch his ass feverishly.
“Haemorrhoids?” said Bukowski conversationally.
“Yeah, they ‘re hell man.”
“One of the worst. What have you got, the itch or the pain?”
“The itch.”
“The itch huh? I don’t know what’s worse, the itch or the pain. The itch could easily drive a man insane. I was in a rooming house down south just after the war, and the guy in the next room was up night after night with the itch. He tried all the patent medicines and preparations and none of ‘em worked. I used to get ‘em for him because he wouldn’t leave his room; It turned out later on that the FBI were after him for murdering his wife in Cincinnati. One night, in the middle of a storm, he knocked on my door. I was drinking a bottle of wine and writing a story about a waitress who has her leg amputated because her sailor boyfriend did a tattoo of his battleship on it with a cotton needle; it got infected and she lost her leg.”
The race finished; Morrison’s horse came last.
“Too bad,” said Bukowski, “I just won $110 dollars”
They ordered more beer.
“So, this guy in the next room?”
Bukowski lit a cheroot.
“Oh yeah the itch. So he’s knocked on my door, and his face was gray and haggard. It was a face that said ‘one more night like this and I don’t know what I’m going to do’. He was half drunk on spirits and shifting on the spot because of the itch. He said ‘Hank, you gotta help me. This itch, I think I’m gonna go insane. I can’t stand it any longer.’ So I said, ‘It’s hell isn’t it? It’s worse than toothache isn’t it?’, ‘Yeah!’ he said, ‘sweet Jesus its bad. You got to help me.’ ‘How? I said. He produced a steel coat hanger. ‘I’ve tried everything in that room to scratch my ass with. Everything, this is the only thing that I haven’t tried. I can’t get it in; it bends too easily.”
“Jesus,” said Morrison, dragging on his cigarette.
“So I said to the guy ‘You need the hospital.’ ‘No’ he says, ‘I can’t go. I- I can’t stand hospitals. I’ll give you money.’ ‘How much?’ I said, ‘Twenty.’ ‘Goodnight’ I said. He said ‘Okay, Okay, thirty, please.’ ‘all right drop your trousers.’ He dropped his trousers and parted his cheeks. Now, I was juiced up on the wine, which was lucky because the sight of his ass was a terrible thing. The guy had been scratching at it for days, using his hands and other implements. It was red raw, raw like raw steak and the anus was swollen twice its size. I looked at it, and coughed, and the cough turned into a gag, and then I was okay. ‘Quick,’ he said ‘it’s itching like hell’. I folded the hanger in half, so I had a kind of handle, I bent the hook out a little, then forced it in.”
Morrison took a hit of beer, “Jesus Christ. This is like fucking Burroughs man.”
“ It’s better than Burroughs boy; its real. So I force the coat hanger in and he started to scream and put his hand over his mouth. Then I began to scratch with the hook. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘that’s really good. That’s hitting the spot.’ So I’m scratching away with the coat hanger and he’s moaning like he’s getting sucked off. I’m forcing the coat hanger in and out with one hand and drinking wine with other, getting an action going with it; the radio was next to me so I switched it on. They were playing Eine Kleine Nachtmusic, you know, Mozart. Then his ass started to bleed, profusely. ‘You’re bleeding.’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about it, you’re doing fine.’ he said. ‘Yeah but its going all over the carpet.’ I dropped a Sears Roebuck catalogue on the floor to soak up the blood. ‘How long do you expect me to do this for?’ I asked him. ‘Just a little longer, please, this is the first relief I’ve had for days.’ I was getting annoyed. Then someone rapped on the door. ‘Yes’ I said. ‘I know what you two are doing in there. You sodomites! Sodomites! I’m calling the police!’ It was an old woman from down stairs. ‘I’m calling the police!’ Well, he stood up, with the coat hanger still in his ass, turned round and gave me twenty dollars. ‘Hey, we agreed thirty’ he moved towards the door in a funny little shuffle with his trousers round his ankles, ‘sorry, I made a mistake, I only had twenty. I got to go.’ I sat down and drank some more wine and smoked a cigarette; I could hear him in the next room moving around awkwardly like he still had the coat hanger up his ass. He probably did. He fell over something as well, which made me laugh. Then I heard him shuffle out, down the landing and clatter down the stairs and out the back way. I looked out the window; the radio was playing Bach and I could just see him in the yard, the rain was pouring down like a monsoon. I heard him climb over the fence and squelch down the alley through the mud.”
“What happened when the police arrived?”
“They didn’t. I don’t know why.”
Bukowski went off and placed another bet. Morrison dragged on cigarette. It occurred to him that the world was a history of private pain and someone like Bukowski had a raw, original, dispassionate take on it.
   They were both a little tipsy in the car on the way back. Morrison was drinking a can of Miller High Life a waving at girls through the window. He turned to Bukowski,
“Where now?”
“Morrison, I don’t know what you’re even doing with me. Shouldn’t you be out with the big parade? Taking LSD and turning the world inside out?”
“Listen man, your raps are a lot more interesting.”
“You know I don’t like people?”
“Well, I didn’t know, no.”
“I don’t.”
“Hell is other people huh? Sartre.”
“I was thinking that a hell of long time before I heard that he’d said it.”

They stopped at a bar near Bukowski’s place. 
“So,” said Bukowski, perched on a barstool and wiping beer foam off his lips, “recite some of your poetry.”
“I’d rather not man.”
“Okay. How’s your ass?”
“Itching like hell.”
They had two more beers and smoked cheroots. Morrison became aware of Bukowski’s mannerisms: his heavy breathing through his nose; the way he held a cheroot and a beer. These actions were ingrained in his body language; this man had been abusing himself for years.
“I once had a fight with a sailor in this bar,” said Bukowski.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He was drunk and I was drunk, and I was looking at his girl’s ass. I really wanted a piece of that. He came over and said, ‘buddy, you want to step outside?’ So we did. As soon as we got outside, I was gonna kick him in the balls real hard. Only thing was, as soon as we got outside, he kicked me in the balls. I went down. I thought I was gonna throw up. Then he said, ‘let that be a lesson to you.’ Hehehe ‘Let that be a lesson to you?’ Then he said, ‘Now I’m gonna kick her, where I kicked you, buddy.’”
They went to another bar. Morrison was now drunk and put some old rock & roll tunes on the jukebox.
“What did you do that for?” said Bukowski.
“Rock & Roll man,” slurred Morrison, “It’s what sets you free.”
“Heheheheeh.”
“What’s funny?”
“Rock & roll sets you free is funny. That’s fucking bullshit.”
“Its changed the world.”
“The world ain’t changed Morrison. Looks like it has but it hasn’t; never will.”
“Never will?”
“Never will. The furniture changes, the gadgets change, the salesmen change, the bullshit changes, people go running away with the big parades: LSD and rockets to the moon and colour TV and Elvis Presley everyone thinks hey, everything’s gonna get better. The world don’t change.”
“But people’s attitudes change. Look at my generation, we ain’t uptight like your’s.”
“Ain’t you? Your generation’s gonna turn out more uptight than mine. When it gets through growing its hair long and rolling around in mud, when it discovers money, its gonna sell out all its bullshit ideas for a dollar. Corporation men the lot of ‘em. They hate Nixon but they’ll have their own Nixon when the time comes.”
Jailhouse Rock came on the jukebox. Morrison jumped on a table and began to sing. The bar was practically empty except for a bunch of bikers at the far end; they turned and began to wolf whistle. Morrison swaggered around on the table.
“Warden threw party in the county jail!”
He stopped to perform the haemorrhoid scratching manoevre. A huge surly biker, sporting mutton chop whiskers, came down from the back of the bar and stood in front of Morrison, as the singer resumed his bawling.
“Hey Morrison! Jim Morrison?”
Morrison stopped singing.
“Yeah?”
“Get the fuck off that table and shut up. I don’t wanna hear it.”
Morrison started singing again. The biker grabbed his legs and dragged him off the table.
“I told you to shut the fuck up.”
The song finished.
“Why don’t you leave him alone?” said Bukowski through a cloud of cigar smoke.
The biker looked round.
“Oh Hi Hank. You know this faggot?”
“He knocked on my door this morning. He’s got haemorrhoids, which is punishment enough.”
The biker looked back at Morrison, “Your lucky day fucko.”
He swaggered off back down the bar. 
“You know that guy?”
“Yeah,” drawled Bukowski, “he lives in the house next to me. He has barbecues where everyone has to leave their guns and knuckle-dusters at the front door. He’s okay.”
 

They tottered up to Bukowski’s front door.
“You know something Morrison?”
“Hic- what?”
“I’m the greatest poet alive in America. And you’re an asshole.”
“Hank, you got it the wrong fucking way round man. I’m the greatest poet in America and you’re an asshole who writes about being drunk and fucked up and working for the US mail. You’re good but you ain’t the greatest poet in America.”
They were in Bukowski’s sitting room, drab and stained in the electric light; swaying and belligerent. Bukowski switched the radio on and Schubert was playing; he turned it right up. They opened more beer.
“I’m the greatest poet in America. Morrison, how many poems have you written?”
“I-I don’t know. A lot.”
“Like how many?”
“I just don’t know. Fifty maybe, maybe more.”
“Hehehe fifty, maybe more?”
“Yeah.”
Bukowski got up and staggered over to a cupboard.
“Hehehe ‘fifty, maybe more.’”
He opened the cupboard and began to take out bundles of neatly stacked typewritten paper; he turned and threw them at Morrison; then he got another bundle and threw it in the air; then another. Paper filled the room; the light typing paper gliding and whirling down, like a snowstorm.
Bukowski belched, long and hard.
“Every one a poem Morrison, every one a poem; and every one a good one.”
He staggered out of the room, went into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him.
Morrison looked around at the reams of paper lying around him; he could see the typewritten words of hundreds of poems. He tried to read one of them with one eye shut, but his head was spinning. Looking at Bukowski’s bedroom door he shouted:
“Asshole.”
He stood up uncertainly.
“Asshole. You’re an asshole Bukowski. You know that?”
Morrison stood and swayed; then he got his dick out and urinated on the sheets of paper.
“Fuckin’ best poet in America, hah!”
  Morrison put his dick away and barged through the front door and onto the street. He took a swig of beer and walked along.
“People are strange…” he murmured. He stopped, and scratched his ass frantically, them continued to walk. 
“People are strange…” he repeated. He stopped and scratched his ass again.