sleep deprivation and stories of my bullshit youth

One of the only things I remember from my high school days (well, the one year of it to be exact) was that before I got thrown out of school I was minding my own business reading Bukowski one day only to have some english teacher come over to me, ask if I knew what a womanizing drunk he was and asked why I was reading such filth. I remember being stoked that she knew that much about him but only laughed her comment off and said something along the lines of “Of course I do! That’s why I can’t stop reading it!”.

Almost eight years later I was lending copies of his books to an older biker dude I met at the bar I worked at. He was incredibly nice, flirted with me incessantly, had the best tattoos and among the hordes of hideous men in the bar, was incredibly good looking as well (he’d also alternate black leather boots for black leather Converse which just made me like him even more). He’d play Sabbath and Motörhead songs for me on the jukebox while I worked and also had a few vintage bikes that were to die for along with a bright red Chevy Nova that was beyond words killer. Point is, the first time I lent him a Bukowski book he returned it a few days later with the words “well that was kind of a fucked up book” but then asked for more. I got off on the fact that he was reading the same dirty old man text that I had obsessed over for years. Long story short, nothing ever happened with the dude and I quit the bar job. Never a proper goodbye was said as it’s more my style to just disappear anyhow.

Anyway, I was looking up some stuff about Henry Miller the other day and came across this web site listing 100 things you may or may not know about Bukowski. I wish more of this came as a surprise to me but I’ve read far too many of his books to not know just about everything here. I’ve spent half my life collecting records and Buk books so I can safely be a snob about this. Anyway, my favorites are below, although one could really go on for days with amazing quotes + facts, you can read the rest of the 100 afterwards.

5. Bukowski refused to admit he was an alcoholic since, on occasion, he could refrain from drinking for up to a day.
17. Bukowski had a beer with Neal Cassady, the hero of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, just weeks before Cassady died in Mexico of a drug overdose. (one of the best stories)
33. On Work: “It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
37. In its obituary of the “poet laureate of skid row,” the Los Angeles Times used a photo of Mickey Rourke as Henry Chinaski in Barfly instead of a photo of Bukowski. (insanely fucked up)
38. Bukowski’s literary influences included Conrad Aiken, Sherwood Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio), Louis Ferdinand Celine, Catullus, Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from the Underground), John Fante (Ask the Dust), Knut Hamsun (Hunger), Ernest Hemingway (early writings), Robinson Jeffers (long poems), Ezra Pound and James Thurber. (wanna guess how many of these I ended up reading?)
44. Bukowski once called Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night the greatest book ever written. (as well as this one)
53. On Drinking: “Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.”
58. “The ideal conditions [for writing] are between 10 PM and 2 AM. Bottle of wine, smokes, radio on to classical music. I write 2 or 3 nights a week. It’s the best show in town.” (I couldn’t agree more)