The Greatest Literary Prick of Our Times
An excerpt from Chapter 24 of the new biography
At 10:30, he got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and vomited. He was 47 years old and still had a couple months unemployment compensation coming. Although it was six years since he had last slept with a woman, he still masturbated frequently, using an old shoehorn, bacon grease, and a Squeegie doll. It was a trick he learned from Henry Miller, who was a great writer, too, but he felt his work picked up where Miller left off.
His kitchen table/work desk was littered with 17 tall cans of Schlitz Malt, a pint of I.W. Harper’s, and a half-pint of Popov. “I did some good work last night,” he thought, as he looked across the smog-filled Los Angeles morning air into the courtyard of the motel-style slum complex next door (a mirror image of his own building), where some Mexican rugrats where making an unholy racket running their Big Wheels over the neighborhood cats. He put a sheet in the typewriter and began.
“At 10:30, I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and vomited. I was 47 years old and still had a couple months unemployment compensation coming. Although it was six years since I last slept with a woman, I still masturbated frequently, using an old shoehorn, bacon grease, and a Squeegie doll. It was a trick I learned from Henry Miller, who was a great writer, too, but I felt my work picked up where Miller left off.”
“This is the FUCKING STUFF, Jack” he chortled in wonderment of his own talent, when the buzzer went off. It was his landlady, Jessica Sue Huorflees, who had dragged herself away from her usual post at the slime-ridden pool where she’d been sunning her stretch marks to harass him about the back rent. Her platinum blond wig, bad teeth, and sagging tits and ass (doing unalterable damage to her black string bikini) all made him glad he’d already had his morning retch. “It’s the 18th, for God’s sake—” she started, but he was ready.
“Shit, you know I’m good for it. I’m as dependable as the Federal Government, and you know how fucked up they are, but they always pay off. The checks will be in Friday. So we’ll be all even then.”
“Christ, I hope so. You know, I could boot you out and rent this dump to a family of 16 illegal aliens for twice the rent. Those little beaners know how to pull their weight.”
“Yeah, yeah—Friday for sure, Jessica,” and he closed the door. In the refrigerator was still almost a half bottle of Night Train, and, pouring himself a glass, he got back to work.
“Yeah, yeah—Friday for sure, Jessica,” I said, while the hot Los Angeles sun burnt through the front of my robe. I still had the remnants of my morning erection, and with the hot sun and my perverse interest in mortified female flesh, the purple head of my engorged member came peeking through the folds.
“You know, you’re not built bad for an old, broken-down wino,” said Jessica, giving my blue-veined battering ram a caress as she slid into my apartment. “You’re a real fucking slob, did you know that?” she said, giving her property a glance before she got down on her knees to work me over. She was properly amazed at the dimensions the old divining rod reached, “Jesus, is that all yours?”
I laid her out on the sofa, home of a thousand cigarette butts, and fished out one of her tits from the swimsuit. It was like holding a huge piece of blood pudding. Her bottom was down. I put it in. I put it in again. It was like the Taj Mahal in there. “Oh god, oh gaawwdd,” she squalled, “I guess maybe Friday would be o.k.”
He had written so long and well that he figured he deserved a break. Plus, he was out of Night Train. He went to the corner liquor store, run by a middle-aged Chinese couple who sometimes gave him credit. As he walked into the store, he saw the couple’s 86-year-old mother down on her knees scrubbing the floor, as usual. “I guess it makes her feel useful,” he thought, as he accidentally stepped on one of her fingers, making the sound of a snapping breadstick. The old woman didn’t make a peep. “Inscrutable bastards, these Chinks,” he reflected, as he got a couple of six-packs, a fifth of Old Grandad, a bottle of M/D 20/20, a handful of 12-cent cigars, and a beefstick.
“This should hold me ‘til this evening,” he said at the counter. “Put it on my tab—Friday is collection day, for sure.”
He was tired of the four walls of his apartment, so, after dropping the groceries, he walked to the corner bar. They let him run a tab there. It was late afternoon. The bar wasn’t crowded—only a few regulars staring blindly at the tv or rolling dice for drinks. Looking at the blank, beaten faces, he felt a wave of revulsion swirl through his body and settle in his gut where it formed a tight knot. He hated people. And yet, sometimes he had an urge to be amongst them, if only to remind himself that he hated them. It was a paradox. He was as full of paradoxes as a $5 Tijuana whore was of crabs. That was why he was such a great writer. You know, the profundity thing.
Sitting at the end of the bar was a woman. She was far too classy for this shithole. Maybe she had needed a drink bad and stopped at the first dump she came to at the freeway off-ramp. Late 30’s, but the tits were still holding up. Good ass, trim figure. Dressed in expensive good taste, not too much jewelry but what was there was the real thing. Hair cut short in a trendy, new-wave style and expertly frosted. He sat down next to her. “Whiskey and soda and another of whatever the lady’s having. Add it to the tab—Friday I’ll settle for sure.”
“Friday, my ass!” roared the bartender. “You already owe me $219.67. And since when the fuck did you start buying other people drinks with imaginary money?”
The woman peeled a fifty from her purse. “Forget it, I’ve got it,” she said. She turned to him. “I know you from the picture on your book, Pustulant Scabs Cover My Soul and Anus & Other Love Sonnets. I cried when I finished it.” She took a sip of her Bacardi on the rocks. “You look worse in person. Your face looks like it’s been hit repeatedly with a waffle iron. A dirty waffle iron. With grease and pieces of burnt stuff on it. Yet, sensitive. With an undercurrent of vulnerability that could tear the heart out of a woman.”
“Yeah, I’ve been told that.”
“Listen, I’m an agent for MCA. I think I can help you. Drink up and let’s get out of here.” They finished their drink in silence. Outside in the parking lot she went to the Mercedes and unlocked the door. They were driving west on Sunset Blvd., then getting in an elevator and getting off at a suite on the 35th floor. It was like a dream.
We walked in her office. Three of my apartments could have fit in it. Hundreds of feet below us the Strip could be seen through plate glass. She sat on the edge of a huge marble-top desk and crossed her legs. Her legs were good. I got down and started kissing her knees. She groaned and lay back on the desk. I nibbled my way up to her thighs.
“I usually handle rock stars,” she said. “Bowie, Jagger, Johnny Rivers. But I think you’re ripe for that audience. You don’t realize it, but you’re a God to the young people.” I ripped off her panties. There weren’t even any shit stains. Like I said, class. I ran the bridge of my nose along the lips of her cunt. It was oozing, like fresh-heated doughnut glaze. With my thumbs I gently opened the petals of her flower. “Squish, squish,” it said. The clit popped out like a small, flaming tongue. I met it, tongue to tongue, then sucked it between my teeth roughly.
“Sweet Jesus,” she screamed. “Listen, I have a beach house in Malibu. Come live with me. You’ll never want for a thing, I promise you, oh, ooh, there again, baby. Oh, CHRIST—”
I went down on her again and again while she writhed like a wounded earthworm, knocking telephones and 8×10 glossies off the desk with every orgasm. My front was covered with cum and spit from my eyebrows to my belt buckle. Hours went by, it seemed. Suddenly, my mind went far away. For the first time in years, I thought of my friend, Harry.
“Harry had been a prizefighter, a postal worker, a wino, a computer programmer, the head of public relations for AT&T, a pimp, a merchant marine, an agent for the FBI, a slave trader in Tangier, a phone-in astrologer, a newspaper delivery boy, and Professor of Humanities at Columbia. He wrote the second-best prose coming out of America. There is no need to mention who wrote the best. I’ll always remember the last time I saw him. I was taking out the garbage when I heard the sound of retching from the alley. It was Harry, lying in the gutter with a drunken hooker, alternately slugging from a bottle of brandy and spitting blood through the holes in his mouth where several recently missing teeth had been. Harry looked good—better than I’d seen him for 10 years.
Back at my place, I got her in the mouth while Harry fucked her in the ass. After that, we sat up drinking port wine and hatching our plan to bring the literary establishment to its knees.
“Who are you guys?” asked the woman, rinsing my jism off her teeth with some Gallo.
“I’m Norman Mailer,” said Harry. “And this is my friend, Truman Capote.” Then, Harry took the mouth while I reamed her out. It was a good night.
The next morning, Harry went to the hospital and died. “Poor bastard,” I thought when I heard the news. “It’s always the great ones that go. Oh well, less competition for me.” After all, it was a rough game we had gotten into.
Thinking of Harry’s last words, I stopped licking her cunt. Is this what I wanted? To be a sell-out? To live in a beautiful cage? To have a life of comfort and ease with no responsibilities except eating pussy day and night?
“Honey, what’s the matter?” she said.
“Sorry, baby, but I just can’t make it. It’s just the way I am. Someday, I hope you’ll understand.”
“Nooo!” she screamed, and leapt off the desk toward me. Her legs were too weak to support her, and she fell on her face. Still, she crawled toward me, clawing wildly at my shoes as I headed toward the door. “Please, no, don’t leave. Everything I have—it’s yours. Don’t go—I love you…”
On the bus ride home, he stared out the window into the approaching dusk. In his lap was a torn-up job application—night watchman for the MCA building. “I can help you,” she had said. Women, he thought. They have a thousand ways to kill a man. Especially if he’s a real man. And the greatest living writer in the world.
Horror Sleaze Trash 