Part 10 (2/2)

* In fact, he was almost 24 before he lost his virginity to a Philadelphia prost.i.tute.

11.

RED DEATH SUNSET BLOOD GLORY GALS.

Within weeks of meeting Cupcakes, Bukowski was besotted with her, hopelessly in love with a woman less than half his age who was quite indifferent to him. She laughed at his depressions, flirted with other men, vanished for days on end and then popped up again as though nothing had happened to find him in a funk of depression with a face like the Siege of Stalingrad.

'Cups, I can't do this any more,' he would say, miserably. 'It's tearing me apart.'

this time has finished me.

I feel like the German troops whipped by snow and the communists walking bent with newspapers stuffed into worn boots.

my plight is just as terrible.

maybe more so.

victory was so close victory was there.

as she stood before my mirror younger and more beautiful than any woman I had ever known combing yards and yards of red hair ('the retreat') Cupcakes was unimpressed by his love poems. They were doggerel, in her opinion, and she enjoyed tormenting Bukowski by parodying his work in a bored, sing-song voice: So I woke up in the morning and I puked in the toilet and then I shaved ...

'You see,' she said. 'I can write what you write, but better.'

'That's funny, Cups,' he said with a hollow laugh. 'Very funny, yeah. But we really have to end this.'

'Why?'

'Because it's killing me.'

'What are you talking about?' she asked, speaking as if he were a stupid child. 'You've watched too many soap operas.' She grabbed his hand and pulled him up from the sofa. 'Come on, let's go. Let's go to the track.' She had a way of jerking him out of his depressions. Some redhead magic.

They got in Bukowski's Volkswagen which now had a hole in the windscreen where Cupcakes had put her foot through it and drove to Hollywood Park to catch the first race. Cupcakes said to keep an eye on her because she sometimes wandered off when she was on pills and, sure enough, when he came back from placing his bet she was gone. He went to the ladies toilet, the first aid station and finally found her with another man.

The most any poet could do was write something about his beloved, and Bukowski wrote a whole book about Cupcakes, Scarlet, published in a limited edition by Black Sparrow Press. The four poems in the book show that l.u.s.t was a large part of the attraction he felt for her: when she walked in I grabbed her and pulled her to my lap.

I lifted my gla.s.s and told her, 'drink this.'

'oh,' she said, 'you've mixed wine with Jim Beam, you're gonna get nasty.'

'you henna your hair, don't you?'

'you don't look,' she said and stood up and pulled down her slacks and panties and the hair down there was the same as the hair up there.

('red up and down') In Cupcakes' own copy he wrote: 'For the girl who made me write these poems, for the girl who made me feel that feeling which comes so seldom in a lifetime.' He presented it to her as a token of his adoration, a book all about her. She barely looked at it. 'I didn't have a tremendous amount of respect for his writing,' she says. 'His poetry was often negative and not complimentary. I thought I was just fodder.' The book was tossed aside to get dusty and dog-eared, something she pulled out now and again to show friends.

Bukowski had to go away for a few days and tried to see Cupcakes to say goodbye, but she was nowhere to be found. He cruised Hollywood looking for her Camaro and, after he had been everywhere he could think of, he unhooked the Maltese military cross Grandfather Bukowski had given him it hung from the rear view mirror of the Volkswagen and draped it from the handle of her front door, as a sign that he had been trying to contact her.

I keep searching the streets for that blood-wine battles.h.i.+p she drives with a weak battery, and the doors hanging from broken hinges.

I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love.

a confused old man driving in the rain wondering where the good luck went.

('i made a mistake') Each time he heard the clicking of heels on the concrete path of his court, he stopped typing, hoping the sound would bring Cupcakes to him, but the women always pa.s.sed by. Whenever the telephone rang, it was like the excitement he felt when his horse was in among the leaders heading for the post, but he was not a winner. In the middle of the night he drove back to her bungalow and, seeing that the cross was still there, left a note: 1.30 a.m. Sunday morning Red death sunset blood glory gal Why is it that you are the one woman I have met who has not loved me entirely, madly and out of context? It confuses me. You must be my superior. Well, that's all right. I mean, if I can win 8 races out of 9 I can expect to be upset by a longshot.

Blubberboy Charley.

In the morning, when there was still no word, he went back and left a second note: Pam: I HATE YOU FOR NOT ADMITTING YOU LOVE ME.

you are acting like a stupid c.u.n.t.

Hangover remorse followed: Pam I didn't mean it. I still love you. It's just that you never show any feeling toward me, and Jesus Christ that sometimes cuts in pretty deep.

I don't mean to load myself on you. I'll work it out. It's just going to take me a bit of time to figure out what the h.e.l.l's happening. Hank And when she still didn't call: Pam Thanks a h.e.l.l of a lot of s.h.i.+t for nothing.

This behavior seemed excessive to Cupcakes, as it had to Linda King when Bukowski first fell for her. He was loving too pa.s.sionately, considering the very short time they'd been together. However, Cupcakes would come to regret that she hadn't appreciated the depth of his affection. 'I didn't take him seriously. I didn't take myself seriously. I was just carefree and elusive and everything that drives a man crazy,' she says. 'I was just a silly kid.' If Bukowski forced her to confront his feelings, if he tried to make her hear what she meant to him, she laughed it off. 'I would make light of it, change the subject, because I wasn't capable of loving anyone deeply, or getting attached to anyone then.'

They went to New York for a reading, booking into the room at the Chelsea Hotel where Janis Joplin had liked to stay, high above cacophonous West 23rd Street. It was one of the hottest days of the year and Cupcakes sat on the balcony to try and keep cool. Bukowski watched her from the bed, her red hair glowing in the late afternoon sun. He was feeling particularly close to her because she had fallen asleep on the flight over from Los Angeles, resting her head on his shoulder. He thought it was one of the most tender moments they had shared, even though he knew she had pa.s.sed out because she was stoned. He couldn't even wake her up for landing.

I looked at her enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I watched for some sign of breathing. They didn't move. I got up and found a steward ess.

'Please take your seat, sir. We are preparing to land.'

'Look, I'm worried. My girlfriend won't wake up.'

'Do you think she's dead?' she whispered.

(From: Women) 'You know, Cups, the nicest thing you have ever done, the moment I will always remember, is when you laid your head on my shoulder during our plane ride,' he said.

Cupcakes looked at him quizzically. 'I remember thinking, ”I can't deal with this; what do I do with this?” I was too young.' Instead of talking to him about his feelings, she decided to distract his attention. 'Look!' she shouted. 'NO HANDS!' She flung her arms out so she was balanced on the edge of the iron railing with nothing but the cheeks of her backside to stop herself falling. 'Wheeeeeeee!'

Bukowski saw that her eyes were glittery from pills and booze. 'Come on, Cups, come back in,' he coaxed her, like a dog. 'Get down now.'

'Wheeeeeeeee!'

Then she fell, just catching herself before spinning down into the garbage cans.

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