Every night was about the same. I’d drive along the coast looking for a place to have dinner. I wanted an expensive place that wasn’t too crowded. I developed a nose for those places. I...

at high noon at a small college near the beach sober the sweat running down my arms a spot of sweat on the table

watch you walking with your machin… ah, you’re too stupid to be cut li… you’re too stupid to let anything… the girls won’t use their knives o… they don’t want to

I was sitting next to a young girl who didn’t know her scheme very well. “Where does 2900 Roteford go?" she asked me. "Try throwing it to 33," I told her. “You say you’re from Kansas Ci...

I took Tammie. We got there a little early and went to a bar across the street. We got a table. “Now don’t drink too much, Hank. You know how you slur your words and miss your lines whe...

she’s young, she said, but look at me, I have pretty ankles, and look at my wrists, I have pret… wrists

looking out the window smoking rolled cigarettes drinking Sanka and watching the workers come on in

yesterday drunken Alice gave me a jar of fig jam and today she whistles

the men phone and ask me that. are you really Charles Bukowski the writer? they ask. I’m a sometimes writer, I say, most often I don’t do anything.

when I was in grammar school my parents were poor and in my lunch bag there was only a peanut butter sandwich.

Tammie came by that night. She appeared to be high on uppers. “I want some champagne,” she said. Then the phone rang. It was Lydia. “I just wondered how you were doing. ...” “You know D...

she wore a platinum blond wig and her face was rouged and powder… and she put the lipstick on making a huge painted mouth and her neck was wrinkled

The first three or four days at Mears-Starbuck were identical. In fact, similarity was a very dependable thing at Mears-Starbuck. The caste system was an accepted fact. There wasn’t a s...

the girls are coming home in their… and I sit by the window and watch. there’s a girl in a red dress driving a white car