AD: Tell me about your relationship with Bukowski.

JS: Well, I remember the first time I went over there and met him we got in a big fucking fist-fight in his living room cuz he insulted something I’d written that I’d brought over there to show him (laughs)… We were both mad drunk and he said something that really pissed me off, told me my writing was weak and to just go fuck off and get a life, and, well, I just took a swing at him and we ended up dookin’ it out right there in his fucking living room, whatever… Boy, was I disappointed!! (laughs)…

Link to SuicideGirls story about JS and Bukowski

Well, after that we just sort of bonded and he eventually said some much kinder things about my work over time. We sorta got to be friends, but he never really let up on his original theme with me. Fuck off. Get a life, kid… I was really writing a lot at the time. Mostly a lot of sorta self-indulgent tragic poetry and short stories which I rarely finished. It was very unfocused writing, but I guess it had a certain raw impact on some levels… I actually just dug up a whole box of that old shit after all these years and now Heartworm’s hopefully gonna publish it as a sort of retrospective, this book made up of all this old stuff I wrote way back then in the 70’s. But I digress… anyway, Bukowski actually read some of those poems and he even told me some of it wasn’t total trash — which, coming from that guy, was a real boost to me as a young writer….

So I would have to say that honestly Bukowski was a very important early influence on my writing — and my life too in a lot of ways, just for having known him and sorta gotten his blessing in an off handed way right from the start… Looking back at it now, like when he told me to go fuck off and get a life that first time, well that shit was some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten as a writer… even if we did get in a punch up over it at the time (laughs)… And it’s kinda ironic that it would turn out to be one of the only pieces of advice I’ve ever taken too (laughs)… cuz shortly after that I wound up doing exactly what he suggested without knowing it at the time, cuz I gave up writing and went out and… I got a life. A really fucked up, dysfunctional life (laughs), but like Mark Twain said, it’s all grist for the mill, and that seems especially relevant now since I somehow survived it all and finally even found my way back into writing…

At least I’ve got a few stories to write about now, that’s for sure… The more I think about it, maybe that’s like the whole essence of whatever Bukowski was trying to impart to me when he told me to fuck off and get a life, God love him…

Recently, right after we published the first unedited draft of Narcisa, some fucking egghead art critic who will remain unnamed here, read it and sent me this long, wordy email comparing my work to Bukowski’s… but not in a nice way, ya know? This guy — who ironically can’t write a fucking grocery list without fucking it up with all kinds of incomprehensible linguistic acrobatics and shit — actually had the balls to declare that Bukowski wasn’t a very good writer. Jesus!! Then he went and compared my work to Bukowski’s in this really bitchy, pseudo academic snobby tone… At first it sorta pissed me off… but then when I considered the source and the overall absurdity of his assessment of one of our greatest modern writers, I realized it was actually more like a sorta offhanded compliment… cuz it would seem there’s really a certain old-boy snobbery among certain segments of the literary academia, not unlike the jealous old whore undercurrent in the tattoo world where you pop out of the woodwork with something new and they’re all running around clucking like hens like, “who does he think he is calling himself a writer? Why he’s never even been to school!” (laughs).

Well, Bukowski was one of the first real modern champions at saying fuck you to all that kinda stuck-up academic shit while totally writing circles around these pedantic educated fools and just hanging in there until he finally got his props…. anyway, we hung out pretty regularly for awhile back then on and off before I fell pray to heroin addiction and disappeared into a dark hole… I wrote a chapter in my memoir, Scabvender about that first meeting with Bukowski, which basically sums up the overall character of our whole relationship in this one little scene…. Then I got all strung out on drugs and stopped going over there to drink and bullshit with him and that was that… I never saw the guy again. But he always seemed to be there somewhere in the back of my mind, egging me on, telling me to just go out and get a fucking life when I finally pulled a spike outa my arm and packed a little overnight bag and took off hitchiking across Mexico… I guess first impressions really are lasting, at least when they involve great minds like that.

Fucking Bukowski. One of the greatest writers who ever lived! I feel really fortunate to have known the man. What a huge fucking blessing…

to be continued.