Having much luck with Dirty Old Man stories—some mag in Chicago bought reprint rights to 4 stories via Essex House for $250. [* * *] Just for kicks, one night, I didn’t go to work, sat at typer, wrote thing, 7 typewritten pages, 45 minutes, called “The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, Calif.” Some sex mag says it’s worth $150 to me upon publication. But the beautiful thing is that I have not had to compromise my style. The post office may yet be told to go kiss its own ass. If it weren’t for the child-support thing, I’d tell them now.

Meanwhile, certain poets drop around, mostly bad ones, complaining that they are misunderstood, blocked-off, black-listed, and some of it is true, but some of the fellows have simply forgotten how to write, or don’t write, or pretend to, or play the Poet-game as a spiritual right to continual handouts from everywhere—$$$$, sex, adulation. and sometimes I get a little cruel, maybe jealous because they are living off the fat while I am hitting a time-clock, I tell them to try the steel mills and get their backbones back, but they pale at this—Christ, their little souls couldn’t stand it. So, I relent, let off, get them some beers and listen to them, and next out come their poems—which most of them read to me out LOUD. They think that this improves the work.

And I say, no, I don’t like it.

then they get pissed. after eating up the only 2 or 3 hours I have to do what I wish to do.

Then I tell them, look, man, I have to shit, shave, eat, make the fucking job.

And they leave off for someplace else, saying, “Hey, Marty, let me have a twenty. You know, that Bukowski, he’s a rotten son of a bitch…”

I can stand one poet a week but when they begin to arrive 7 days a week I begin to go a little crazy. listening to them, I can’t even do the simple things—like—go to the laundry—get that one extra hour sleep I need—dump the garbage—get the stink out of the sink, the ring out of the bathtub, all the shit off the floor. and then come the others—the admirers—worse than the poets—with their drinks—and their softness and their ladies—you can’t insult them—everything you say—no matter how vile—is funny. You could whip the whole roomful of them but they sicken you so you drink and drink and drink and drink, while all the time there’s this idea in the center of your brain—the typewriter sits there. you can’t make their women; they are fascinating and fascinated but frightened. What shit.

so I miss two or three days work, they don’t fire me, I make no excuses and old black cunts press their flanks against me hardhard hard, say, “Where ya been, Hank?”

“Drunk,” I say.