She Had a Tattoo
(...and a 1985 poem by Charles Bukowski)
By: Daniel Minsky
So, I was fucking this girl. What an incredible accomplishment. Not because it's a rarity (or isn't a rarity, as the case may be). I have long-since believed that in our day and age, this is the only deal really worth closing.
I have been to college. Excelled in situations. Friends? You should see my Facebook page. I have been there in person when my team won (and lost). I have landed a job or two. Landed - what a thing to say. I have been plenty principled. We know how to live life by our guts however.
So I raised myself on Bukowski and abandon. There is glory in the long night and the foggy afternoons that follow them. I have been in a movie of my own where the moments between the substance are what get shown. Here I am lying in bed with my arms raised over my head and wearing no shirt. Here I am walking home in the rain with a bit of the ole' mushroom feeling still kicking around. Here I am on a balcony, smoking a cigarette in the deep night of a Wednesday morning. Here I am at odds with the world but at peace with my in-between-the-battle face. There I go, staring out the window again – drunk. What about substance? Doesn't matter, we don't see it. Doesn't sell.
because it only takes 3 or 4 bad political leaders
or 3 or 4 artsy-fartsy creators to
set the natural course of human and life-evolvment
say
50 years
backwards...
She was hot enough. I mean, who doesn't have a good body these days? And I'm not talking about fat girls. My imagination is fantastically sharp. I have made much better the few things I've come to like. It is unrealistic and leads to some major disappointment - but not in the pursuit of sex. This always ends well. Even if it doesn't it does. You are doing good work – even if you end up ashamed and down on yourself or cold and hitting the streets in the blue light – it is always worthwhile.
I began negotiations as we usually do for only a rare few are exempt from the standard pretence that our true goals are not what interest us most. We spoke about whatever else. I got her to laugh. Then she spoke sincerely for a moment and I ran with that too, showing her I could be as deep as was necessary. Then we laughed some more. I put a fine point on a few things. She feigned a lack of interest. I feigned better. She wore a plaid shirt and was well spoken. My imagination boiled over.
“Your imagination is boiling over,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
...which may not seem much
but it's over half your life
in which you're not going to get to
hear, see, read, feel
sense
what you could have
which may not seem tragic to you
because it never occurred,...
And as for feeling shitty, well, that was the whole point. This was my thesis. All the more reason why, among the lies and the politics and the blogs and the free television and all the uncertainty of what to believe in – what a crazy, filled-up, Time Square type of life – I learnt to trust that which moved like a wave through my gut. Nothing more. In all the uncertainty, what I wanted from her was clear. Clear being a rare commodity. What I had to give to her was the only real thing I've ever had to give (even though I've given other things that people claim are meaningful, like a Christmas present, for instance).
There is no need to talk when you are screwing. At least not about screwing. These days, isn't that something? Isn't it otherworldly? From some other time? Doesn't it beat the hell out of the museum?
...but sometimes maybe when you're not feeling so
good at
night or in the morning or at
noon,
maybe what you feel lacking is
what should have been
there.
So we went back to her place and I saw all her candle-holders and decorated dresser-tops. She had come up with the curtains on her own. We got into it on the couch and accidentally dropped a couple unnecessary pillows on the floor. She had some music playing and we had finished a half-glass of red wine each from the bottle she had, already on the go.
Once in her bed she paused to head to the bathroom. “Don't go anywhere,” she said, smoothing her hair back behind her ears. I stood for a moment by the window in this stranger's apartment. This is where that well-spoken girl with the plaid shirt lives. These are her things. This is where she sleeps. There is no one here but her and I and we are about to fuck. Just like that. These were the moments of my movie. The rest of it didn't matter (even though I could hear it going on outside, somewhere far away).
When she came back things moved quickly. That's not to say that we didn't each take the time we needed in each stunning situation. I left her plaid shirt on albeit half unbuttoned and it was only when I was fucking her slowly from behind that she took it off. There, on her left shoulder, bisected by a bra strap was a black ink tattoo of the face of Charles Bukowski. His big, fat, ugly nose and bulbous brow and scratched-up skin, bristly beard and squinted eyes, looking off somewhere across her back with sad resolve. That face, such as it had been inked, will never smile again. No matter what.
...and I don't mean a blonde in
sheer pantyhose,
I'm talking about what gnaws at you
even when she's
there.
