all of their faces are dumped and burned in pain, wasted, like mine. I think, go punch out. slam it home. no good.

No good. I always dream of my perfect one. Well, I don’t mean that. just an ordinary little woman with nice knees and nice ankles who likes to put on high heels and nylons and drink and look at me from across the couch. and then, hours later, make love. Not a love to prove, just a love that has flowed into an easy evening. but most bitches are hunters, all the time gleaming gleaming, their cunts reaching forward like cages. ah, shit. can’t I get off this sex thing?

Your letter—the camels, the arabs—the everything—easy to see why the Israelites won the last war. I have always thought that man’s greatest inventions went like this:

1. The Bed.

2. The Shit and Piss disposal system (which, I understand, is beginning to back up, and fail).

3. The Atom Bomb.

4. The Hydrogen Bomb. and

5. the rubber. [* * *]

At the end of November 1969 Bukowski resigned his position in the U.S. Postal Service and, encouraged by a promise of regular advance royalties from John Martin, took the risk of living solely by his writing.

[To Carl Weissner]

[Mid-]November 1969

[* * *] anyhow, so yes, I can’t approach L.A. Freep, they hate my guts simply because of this and that and this and that, and various rumors, true and untrue, like I threatened to beat the shit out of a guy in a wheelchair one night…that’s true, but I was joking and when guys 30 years younger began to run out of the house because I said they were next, I wondered, why please these chicken-shits? so, with various other tales I could lay upon you, Carl, I am on the blacklist in this ass-sucking town, coteries town, big bloody cunt of nothing town….

also I am going crazy and can’t stand the post office job any longer. I have one of two choices—stay in the post office and go crazy (I have been there eleven years) or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I’ve decided to starve. so at the end of Nov. I am going to resign my job at the p.o. so I need YOUR HELP! [* * *]

my child-support bag is only $45 a month plus this and that, and I hope to find a cheaper place to live. [* * *]

have sold some good stories coming down from Evergreen to the sex mags, so there will be various sources of income made mostly off this old machine [* * *]