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It’s 2 am and she’s laid out as beautiful as a poet’s holy vision right there on my sofa, the most perfect vision I have ever dreamed.And I touch her and run my hands over her sleeping form, feeling like I’ve just touched an angel.

And I can die happy now, because, just for today there is peace and fulfillment and beauty in my eyes and hands and mind. Gloria a Deus.

She wakes me up out of a deep slumber, hissing like the devil, yelling, spitting like a pissed off Bobcat, hurling curses and deranged demands across the room like an infant dictator throwing dangerous toys in a very bad mood.

“Hungry! Where’s the food you ijiot? Why you never got nothing for eating in this e’shit place, e’stupid?”

I’d only woken up for a piss. I even crept across the room ever so silently so as not to disturb the sleeping crack monster, knowing instinctively the havoc that would dredge up from Below.

But it was no use.Just as I got halfway across the room on tiptoes, BAM!

It all started, the insults flying like bullets in a favela drug war, the idiot chatter of the TV ringing in my sore brain now like a fire alarm and I’m awake. Shit.

I look at my watch and it’s 7 in the morning. Shit.

Narcisa.

I ask myself for the thousandth time why I put up with it, keep eating her shit.

But I already know the answers and they are many and they are complex and, worst of all, they are quiite understandable and valid.

I’ve even written and published an entire book in my obsessive, desperate attempt to come to terms with why a poet would willingly subject himself to being “pussywhipped by the eternal muse”, as my old friend Ratso Sloman wrote in a blurb after reading “Our Lady of Ashes.”

But then I think, if it was good enough for old Bukowski, well what the fuck, right?

I recently watched a great documentry about my old literary mentor and drinking buddy. And therein I learned that he too was a glutton for a good, old-fashioned pussywhippin’.

I highly recommend that film. I don’t remember the name of it or who made it or any of that shit and I’m in Brazil so I won’t be able to find out, I got no internet here and could care less…

But… it’s in a yellow box and it’s worth a look I think. Anyway, it’s too bad I was too young at the time I was hanging out with Buk to even think of asking him about all this muse-pussywhipping shit…But It didn’t seem like any big issue at the time… And we were both too drunk mostly, anyway.

Whatever…And as long as I’m name dropping here… (Isn’t that what your supposed to do in a fucking internet blog?)…I dunno if its just another odd little Narcisa ‘coincidence’, but when dealing with an eternal muse - pussywhipper or not- I find it best not to assume too much, an assumption being the mother of a fuck up… or a crack baby, whatever… Gibby Hayes, are you reading this?

Pay attention!

Coincidence. What is that anyway?

A nickname for Infinite Intelligence at work. Whatever..Anyway, it is odd that, out of 59 million songs on my iPod, which, miraculously, she still hasn’t broken or burned to a crisp or dropped in the toilet or lost or sold for more crack, probably because I have learned to sleep with one eye open and, like any good lion tamer, I NEVER turn my back on her….

But anyway, out of 59 million possible songs on the iPod, its quite the ol’ coinkidink that she keeps playing my old homeboy Iggy’s memorable album “Avenue B” over and over again and again and again.

Shit!

It’s like the universe reminding me I’m not the only one who’s had to jump through these fiery ass hoops for the sake of art - or young pussy…Is there any difference, I ask you?

Really… Aint that what all the songs are about?

Think about it and lemme know….

But, back to whatever point I was making, If you don’t know that album, you should…

Especially if you’re bored or perverted or vouyeristic enough to be reading THIS shit!!

Avenue B

“Avenue B”, while, of course NOT his most rockin’ work, or anything like that, IS brother Iggy at his most human and honest and accessible and… vulnerable. And that’s saying a lot when it comes to an artist like Iggy - not that there are any other artists like him that I know of.

But I do know he will greatly appreciate “Our Lady of Ashes” and relate to much of it- as you will see if you listen to “Avenue B”.

Yeh baby, we’ve all been there, and those who ain’t been there yet, enjoy it while you can, cuz you suckers are all going there too, if not in this life, then in the next.

So get ready for a good old fashioned cunt-flaying, whoever you are, take it from me…

And, after all, if it’s been good enough for all the great minds of history, from Adam to Napoleon on down the line, then it’s good enough for me- just like that old time religion, boys!

But TWICE as much FUN!

And pretty good exercise for body, mind and soul for folks who don’t get out much- and I’m not so much talking about pussywhipping as I am the whole wonderful world of sex and pussy itself - fun for the whole goddamn family, can’t get enough of that stuff!

Especially if it happens to be the right size, shape, color, texture and vibrational field… All of which my darlin’ Narcisa just happens to be for me - homicidal psychotic crack whore or not!

Which all boils down to one simple equation: I am FUCKED!!!

Just for today…Which brings us to another baffling question, kids…Is it better to be fucked and know it? Or to be secretly cornholed in your sleep?

I’ve always subscribed to the belief that the worst fucking is always the one ya don’t know yer getting.Just as the most insidious form of slavery is where the slave thinks he’s free - which seems to be the case with, oh, about 98 percent of the human race.

All that having been said, I prefer to know that I’m fucked, and even know just WHO I’m getting fucked by, and, if possible, why.

When it comes to why, I have a few theories. But it mostly all boils down to this:

Like the good Dr. Freud said, “If it ain’t one thing, its the mother.”I don’t think that’s an exact quote, but you get the idea, right, boys?

Yes, my dear old mom was an insane and beautiful, charming, charismatic hopeless alcoholic… a bitterly abusive, violent female enigma, who, nonetheless, had enough going for her in the pussy department to have fucked and seduced her merry way right to the top of the Hollywood food-chain, back in the day, ending up holding the eternal pussy-cat-o-nine-tails over such illustrious asses as Billy Wilder, Artie Shaw and Caesar Pavese, the great Italian poet- not to mention a venerable A-list of the most powerful studio executives, way way back in the good old glory days of Hollywood.

MY MOTHER

And even with all that, her once promising career as an upcoming starlet was deep-sixed along with the rest of her life by the dark, unrelenting curses of alcoholism and drug addiction… and an even more insideous addiction and lifelong flirtation with the bottomless pit of disillusion and eternal sorrow known as the American Dream.

All this morbid drama played out right before my young impressionable eyes before I was old enough to know I was alive.

My first childhood memories, in fact, are a surrealistic montage of awful scenes of alcohol-fueled ultra bloody violence, suicide and assorted human tragedy.

So is it really any fucking wonder I’d eventually end up living and loving my way into full-blown recreation of all that crazy shit? Maybe as a means of unconsciously looking back, deep down into the festering wounds of childhood.

Hopefully as some sort of a cathartic experience or spiritual epiphany, right boys?

Cuz otherwise it would all be just way too morbid and senseless and creepy to endure - at least if not for all the great SEX!!!

That’s definitely the bait in the old mousetrap, boys!

And a whole lot more!

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.

NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção - registrados na Biblioteca Nacional como ficção com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência.As vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

I decided to post this week’s weekly blurb with a little bit of history. Underneath the blurb you will see an excerpt from Jonathan’s other memoir Scabvendor, which might give a little insight on their relationship…

“Jonathan Shaw is a fucked-off hunk of shit. A fish asshole cunt-sucker!”
- Charles Bukowski (1978)

A NIGHT WITH BUKOWSKI

The root problems of the writer are personality problems.- John Gardner

Stubby fingers pounding away at an old Royal typewriter. Classical music playing from a radio on a kitchen counter next to an empty whiskey bottle… Bukowski is sitting at a cramped breakfast nook by a window in his kitchen, wearing a wife-beater and boxer shorts, writing. He moves his head in a strange rhythm to the music, like a prizefighter, bobbing and weaving in a motion so subtle, only the benevolent spirits of his poetry respond…

He stops typing just long enough to fish a half-smoked cigar out of an overflowing ashtray, surrounded by a dozen empty Miller beer bottles. He shoves the cigar stub into his battered, junkyard face, lights it, and resumes his work. He hears a timid knock on the living room door…

“Go’waaay!”, he shouts automatically, as he types on.
Several short raps on the window beside him get his attention.
“Who arrre yaaaa, whaddya waaant?” he growls.
“Hey, I’m sorry to bother ya”, I say. “I write for the Free Press…”
Bukowski mumbles distractedly.
Standing on the dirty concrete porch, I talk to the window, playing my last card, “… I got some beer…”

Bukowski starts to say something, then stops, editing himself. He surveys the empty beer bottles standing like little ghosts around his typewriter. Finally he speaks, in a weary, W.C. Fields-like drawl. “Yeahh, alriiight… just hold onnnaa minnit.” He pounds out a last line and stops. He grabs a dirty kitchen towel off the counter, throws it over his work, and gets up. The big man steps into a pair of ratty slippers and walks, slouching, across the little living room to the door.

I’m standing on the porch, looking down at the cement… hallowed ground. No welcome mat. Shivering nervously shifting my weight from foot to foot, holding the heavy case of beer. It feels cold in my hands in the summer air that smells of cat piss and night-blooming jasmine. I hear classical music playing behind Bukowski’s window. A baby cries and a television blares from apartments across the courtyard. A gunshot pops off in the distance… Awkward as a schoolboy on a blind date, I stand by the dirty screen door and wait…

Suddenly, the door opens and Bukowski’s big, battered face is there before me. I’m standing in the presence of Genius… and it looks like it’s about to knock me flat on my ass.

Without ceremony, Bukowski reaches into the cardboard box I’m holding like a temple offering. He casually extracts a can of beer and cracks it open. Without giving me another look, he turns and disappears into the little bungalow. My eyes scan the cement porch, my brown leather boots, the cuffs of my dirty jeans…

“Jeee-sus, kid, ya just gonna staaaand out there? Bring it in-siiiide,” he drawls from the darkened room. I step over the threshold.

Later, I’m sitting around a cheap coffee table covered with empty cans. An empty pint bottle of whiskey sits on Bukowski’s end like a captured Queen in a chess match. A pile of my poetry sits out on the table between us. I reach into the empty cardboard box and crack open the last can of beer.

“Heeey, giii-me thaat”, Bukowski protests. I ignore him, drinking the beer.
“Soooo, yer a wriiiiiter, haaah?” he says finally.

I pass the half-finished can over. Bukowski takes it and guzzles it down. He burps.

“Weeeelll”, he says, looking drunk and rather nasty now. “If yer a wriiiter, what ya do is ya wriiiite, get it? What ya don’t do is sit aroooouund taaalking abooouuut wriiiting with other guys who wriiiite. You wriiiite. And then, ya wriiiite some moooore. That’s it, baby. But… if ya got nothing to saaaaay, then youre just another bum with a ten dollar typer, with alotta taaaalk, and shit for braaiiins… And, to be brutally honest, Jono, yoooou impress me as a self-conscious punk who needs to do some liiiiiving…”
“Who you callin’ a punk? Ya old fart…” I hear myself say, instantly regretting it. Too late…
“YOU! YA LITTLE CUNT LICKIN, FISH LIPPED MOMMA’S BOY. PUNK. PUNK. PUUUUUNNNNK!!!”
“Motherfucker”, I yell, rising to my feet, fast, knocking beer cans off the table.
“Yeeeaahhh, I fucked your mother. And I’ll fuck you too, fish fucker,” Bukowski taunts, coming at me like a train.

Drunk and crazed, I take a swing at him and feel my fist connect with the rough, bearded skin of his face. Not phased, Bukowski clobbers me in the ear. I see stars. Now it’s two of us, drunken poets, trading drunken blows, I taste blood in my mouth and keep hitting him. But Bukowski is getting the best of me, pounding away with those big, red, ugly mitts.

I crouch low, defending my face, and try to head butt him in the gut, but he grabs me like a bear, and we both wrestle to the floor, toppling over the coffee table which cracks and splinters. I’m rolling round on the dirty wall-to-wall carpet in a spinning chaos of beer cans, pages of poetry flying, pissed and gasping like some savage, lumbering beast of old, an ugly, deformed, drunken puppet, breaking everything in it’s terrible path…

Finally, breathing hard, bloody and sweating we both stop, laughing hysterically…

“Geeeeez, kid”, he says finally, “ya fiiiight just liiike a giiiirl I useta fuck in a toiiii-let…”
“Was that before, or after she shit in yer mouth?” I snap back.
“Shit, I shiiiit bigger than you… Look at my beautiful cofffeeeee taaa-ble. You oooowe me for that, ya little shit…”

We end the night sitting on the floor, drinking, trading insults, reading poetry, and toasting to each other’s speedy demise as the sun rises, emerging like a punch-drunk sea monster over the smoggy purgatory of Bukowski’s doomed Los Angeles…

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.

It’s eight in the morning and I got nothing to do with my life and that’s the truth, and Narcisa’s been up driving nails into my head for days now and it’s raining and I give up and give up and give up again.

I’ve told her everything I know or tried to anyway, I’ve pointed out all the exit routes I know in answer to her little song “can you show me the exit to this shit world?”Yeh, I’ve given her all the information I got, delivered the goods, all the lectures, read her all the books, taken her to all the meetings and the clinics and doctors, cried all the tears, prayed all the prayers - and still she won’t give up, she cannot admit defeat and she’s living in a swirling hell of memory and torment and her goddamned ego will not cannot fucking let go and this is Hell.I am there and she is there and we are there again and again and again forever. Shit shit shit.

Today she came and woke me up again from a sound sleep at seven in the morning again, of course, and I’m thinking is this really what it takes to live as an artist? Is this really what old Bukowski meant when he told me some 35 years ago to fuck off and get a life? Is this a fucking life I’ve got here or just some nightmare replication of Past life karmic retribution?

So here I am again again again standing in the doorway in my underwear as she creeps in trembling and crying toxic crack tears saying some other crackhead aquaintence from the Casa Verde, or from hell (same thing) followed her in the street all the way to the favela and tried to steal her drugs and she punched him in the face and he tried to kill her and I just shake my head thinking what a life, is this what Bukowski was talking about? Shit… It’s the second time already this week she’s come slithering in like this, the other night it was the same thing, she’s getting worse fast I’m thinking… Just a couple of nights ago I remember she’d been wandering around the dark metro station in the middle of the night- God knows why. With Narcisa there is no why, no why not, it just is. So some guy followed her and grabbed her and tried to drag her into the bushes. She managed to escape and call me and I got on my motorcycle and went to get her and when I said let’s ride around and find the bastard and see how he likes getting his head hammered in, I already knew it was useless, that it really wasn’t any person or human power that was stalking her now through the dark streets of Catete now, but incarnate spirits of the damned that her very soul sickness was attracting to her as the inevitable consequence of her own steadfast refusal to give up and throw in the towel and just accept all the help that’s been trying to ger through to her for years as she stumbles and struggles down the crooked path to hell that’s been laid out for her. Like it was laid out for me, for all of us who, like Narcisa were simply born into this world of torture and betrayal with the Devil’s dick up our asses..

I told her again and again that she was no different than so many others, than me and if I’d found a way out then she could too but she’s just never wanted to hear it so that’s that and she’s sealed her fate again another day, another night of pounding fear and torment. She just stood there in the middle of my room and put her arms out like Jesus on the cross above her old drooling sedated mother’s bed of nails and broken dreams and said

“This is me, Cigano. This is my life.. I am born to this, born to be a whore, a begger, a bum, a loser. I got nothing. I don’t WANT nothing! Only thing I want is for feel pleasure! I only wan’ it the Sensation and the feeling, Cigano, got it? Feeling. Sensation. I don’ wanna think or talk or listen to anybody opinion or stupid e’story ’bout nothing! I only wan’ it the feeling, Cigano, the most extreme feeling and sensation, got it? That’s it, nothing more! I am the whore, an’ I only want to give it the pleasure to the man and I only wan’ you give me the money so I can take the drugs and enjoy it the life, that is the plesure for the Narcisa and that’s all I wan’ from the life, got it? That’s it!” 

I just looked at her with sadness and pity, the way you look at some terrible tragic disaster and shook my head and said nothing as she took off her shorts again and laid back on my sofa and spread her legs for me, for my pleasure and for hers. Shit..

A half hour later she left, saying, “I no going back to the Casa Verde no more. Now if you wan’ for look me, I gonna be up on the favela for e’smoke in there.” I knew how dangerous it is up there and I knew she didn’t care and I just shook my head again as I watched her leave and I wondered again if today would finally be her last day in this shit world she hates among the living she hates but sometimes longs to be one of because of the ’sensations’ she’s so hungry for.

A few hours later I woke up bleary-eyed and stumbled down to my motorcycle and rode across town for my noon apointment with Dona Marta, the elderly gypsy spirit medium who’s been advising me from the very start of this madness. After waiting awhile in her living room and smoking two cigarettes to wake up, a young gypsy girl came in from the back and told me Dona Marta would see me now. I walked into her little ‘consultorio’ and she stood and greeted me warmly with a kiss on both cheeks, then we sat down. She looked into a clear crystal glass of water sitting on the table between us and watched the movie, telling me about my life. The first thing she said was:

“You’re very worried about the girl. You should be. She’s had many crises, and drug relapses, and now she is going down very fast.”

She was quiet for a moment, looking deep into the water in the glass. Finally she shook her head and spoke.

“The outcome is not good, my son. She is not long for this world, poor thing.”

I just sat there as I had done many times before and I cried. As she spoke on. “You have loved her and been a true friend to her soul. And she has really tried to love you too and let herself be loved. But it is just too much for her. It is too late for her now. She has given up on this world and now she only wants it to end. She really does want to die. It is what she really wants - and she will have what she wants.”

I sat there crying softly as she spoke, cried and cried because I knew it was true. I could see it in Narcisa’s eyes, her body language, her whole demeanor, I could smell it in her hair - she is giving up the fight. And not in any way she could come back from to find recovery like I had done. She had simply layed down her sword and her shield on the battlefield of her life and lay down and spread her legs in defeat for the enemy, for the Grim Reaper’s final cold embrace to come and lift her spirit out of this body, this life, to show her where’s the exit to this shit world at last.

Poor Narcisa. She really never had a chance here.

THE BEACH 

Now as I sit here on the beach with my friend Tonico at day’s end, I think of how I would like to take Narcisa’s unrepentant, self-righteous asshole Born-Again Christian mother out into the woods and tie her to a tree and pour sugar water over her and watch the big red ants and other jungle insects slowly eat her alive while yelling in her fat, stupid face,”Where’s your fucking Jesus now you stupid cunt. Now you think about what you did to your children you crooked old cow! Now you think of Narcisa, the sweet innocent child you destroyed, you heartless old cunt! This is for Narcisa!” I am yelling as I watch the big jungle ants crawling all over her stupid face, biting eating devouring her corrupt flesh as she screms and cries. And then I spit right in her eye and walk away…

Narcisa’s almost dead at the end of the last four day run and still she wants to keep going - she asked for food though which was a sign she was about to crash and I put some downs in her soup and watched her go out. Not before she almost tore her skin off scratching at her detoxing poisoned hide, complaining and bitching and lamenting her bitter existence. She wakes up thirty hours later - incredibly I too manage to sleep a full twenty-five hours too, and I haven’t been up for days smoking crack - maybe its all the sex and close proximity with her insane tweeked out energy - whatever- but the sleep is always welcome.

Of course she wakes up bitching and insulting me but I’ve gotten wise to her tricks and I know she’s just trying to get me to pay her to leave. Of course I always offer her an alternative, but she wants no part of it. She’s got the TV on, watching some stupid yankee sitcom and she says “Take me with you when you go to the states next time, Cigano” then I just can’t take it anymore and I tell her,

“That’s up to you. If you want to go anywhere with me besides bed, you would have to quit what your doing and get recovery - like this I ain’t taking you anywhere and you know it. Its all up to you.”

Then the shit starts… “When it’s time for me to dance for you and be the wild crazy sex maniac whore, then you like it, but now you complain and you want me to stop…”

“No, I didn’t say I want you to stop baby - I just said you’d have to stop if you wanna do anything more with me than this - of course I like a wild crazy whore, whaddya think. I’m a man. What man doesn’t like that shit? But that doesn’t Make me an idiot whose gonna marry one and carry some sick monkey around the world to fuck up my life too.. My name ain’t John Gold baby” I laughed, rubbing salt in for her. “You wanna run with a big dog, you’re gonna have to get down off the porch, baby… That’s up to you”.

 After that she just told me to shut it and take her to the spot and I did.

When I gave her a mercy 20, which I thought was pretty generous being that I hadn’t had a fuck in days and had been feeding and taking care of her like a crippled mutt, she groaned and complained a bit and I just laughed and she shut up pretty fast. She knew. That must be the worst part for her.

I went for a ride down by the beach and looked at all the other stupid slaves like me and her milling around on their Sunday leisure too stupid and stunned by beer and sunshine and football to even think of their plight and I wondered who’s worse off them or Narcisa? And for a moment I even felt pretty fortunate…

An hour later she called all shook up and crazed and begged me to go get her out of there and I told her to walk down to the Paderia Santo Amaro - ten minutes later I picked her up and she said she wanted to go back to my place and “take a pill and smoke a joint and ‘relax‘” and I saw she was bad off, all jittery and pallid in a cold sweat so I gave it my best shot and tried talking to her for awhile while I rode her around. She had no choice but to listen to another of my lectures. I just said I was constantly trying to show her a way out but I couldn’t do anything to help if she didn’t want it.

“If you like this arrangement baby, you the fucked up crack whore and me the sicko sober john, its ok for me- I’m not the one whose throwing his life away at the end of this little drama. The fact I’m even wasting my breath trying to show you a way out is a simple act of love… That’s God, baby, not me. Don’t you think its a real coincidence that God would put somebody like me right in front of you who’s living proof that an addict can recover? I don’t have to try and help you, ya know. If I just wanted a good time girl to fuck around with, I could sure do better than you, don’t you think? There’s a gang of fucked up whores on every street corner for a guy like me to have his fun with - but friendship, love and respect, that’s a lot harder to come across. If you don’t think so, just keep going. You’re gonna have to learn the value of things the hard way I guess. Too bad, but its on you, so don’t blame me. You’re making your bed and you can sleep in it.”

She finally got me to take her home and then of course she only wanted to take off her clothes and get fucked and leave. Its a funny thing, cuz I could feel that by fucking her, I was giving her something more, I was giving her my life force, my energy, my love and something more - something vital, something human. She clung to me like a drowning man holding a life preserver as I fucked her and she moaned and ghasped like I’d hardly ever noticed and her pussy was sopping wet and I could just tell there’s something powerful going on when I fuck her, beyond the power of thousands of words and stories and opinions and theories I could offer her…

I still don’t know what the fuck is going on, maybe she’s digging the hole to the bottom with me, cuz after opening herself up to somebody the way she has to me, there’s no way its not gonna hurt when I step off again - and I will have to and she knows it and I know it and maybe that’s just the road to recovery or death, whichever comes first. I should know better than anyone just how dark it has to get before the dawn’s light can shine into the heart of a junkie- I’ve been there. Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos neste site são contos de ficção - registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa vivo ou morta se trata de pura coincidência.As vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.