The Big Bukowski

"question and answer"
he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer
night, running the blade of the knife
under his fingernails, smiling, thinking
of all the letters he had received
telling him that
the way he lived and wrote about
that--
it had kept them going when
all seemed
truly
hopeless.

putting the blade on the table, he
flicked it with a finger
and it whirled
in a flashing circle
under the light.

who the hell is going to save
me? he
thought.

as the knife stopped spinning
the answer came:
you're going to have to
save yourself.

still smiling,
a: he lit a
cigarette
b: he poured
another
drink
c: gave the blade
another
spin.

"This Bukowski makes me want to blow my fucking head off."

Disgusted, McDougal heaved the thick book of beatnick prose across the lawn.

I was, and still am, unsure of what led McDougal to beat poetry that summer, considering his ordinary literary diet consisted of the absurdist ramblings of Al Franken, Pol Pot, Saul Bellow, Newt Gingrich, and the backs of cereal boxes.

I kept my mouth shut though. Partially because I have learned over the years to never question McDougal, but mainly because he had pulled that .44 Magnum out of the shoulder holster that he always wore, even while swiming.

• (McDougal's pool is shaped like the number eight, incidentally. Or maybe it is the symbol for infinity ... I have never been quite sure. The two little islands in the middle are kind of neat though. The previous owner designed the pool. He was a big shot mathematician or physicist or something. He worked for the government creating either unbreakable codes or doomsday weapons, depending on who you ask. There is, however, one part of the story in which the details are always exactly the same. Whatever he was making, he got caught selling a little bit of it to the North Koreans. Before the FBI could take him in, he blew off the upper-right section of his skull with a .40 caliber handgun, while standing on the Northwest island of that pool. So McDougal was able to get the property super cheap.)

Which brought my mind back to the task at hand. I was still sitting directly across from a very large, drunk, and unstable man whose head was buzzing with filthy beatnik poetry. Whose fucking idea was it to give him that Bukowski anyway? It wasn't mine, that's for sure. Some woman, I'll bet.

McDougal was staggering across the lawn, waving the gun, rambling incoherently about methamphetamines, the man, the system, Jim Jones, and Uriah Heep. He alternately pointed the gun at his own head, then at me, then at the sky.

After several minutes of this, the big man finally stopped, walked up to me, and pointed his hand cannon at my head. At this range, the barrel of that gun did not look like the Holland Tunnel. For a moment, I considered using that simile in an attempt to strengthen my verse, but soon thought better. You deserve better. It just looked like a big fucking gun.

I wasn't afraid for my own safety though. I am a man of no consequence. Just an anonymous narrator, telling tales of The Great McDougal. If I were shot and killed, another would step in to take my place before McDougal had even finished wiping his prints off the gun and faking my suicide note. No, I was more concerned that McDougal would make good on his promise to do harm to himself. What a dull place the world would be without McDougal. The man is a legend for Christ's sake. He once stowed away on the space shuttle. He was personally responsible for starting the Falklands War. He was the 1982 International Shark Rodeo Grand Champion.

I guess I should have been a little bit concerned for my safety though. At the end of the day McDougal came out completely unscathed. I, on the other hand, lost three fingers and all the best parts of my left ear.