listen, he said, you ever seen a b… bucket? no, I told him. well, what happens is that now and… will climb up on top of the others

you came out, she said, and then you kicked this guy’s car and then you threw yourself into a… you crushed the whole bush,

Well, I took the scheme sheet and I related everything to sex and age. This guy lived in this house with 3 women. He belt-whipped one (her name was the name of the street and her age th...

Three or four days later I found her note and phoned Debra. She said, “Come on over.” She gave me the directions to Playa del Rey and I drove over. She had a small rented house with a f...

They had me in the counselor’s office in one of the back rooms of the second floor. “Let me see how you look, Chinaski.” He looked at me. “All right, Mr. Chinaski, we’d like to know whe...

up in northern California he stood in the pulpit and had been reading for some time he had been reading poems about nature and the goodness

I had agreed to give a reading up north. It was the afternoon before the reading and I was sitting in an apartment at the Holiday Inn drinking beer with Joe Washington, the promoter, an...

sit on this bench and look at the sea and the freaks and the lovers. need new eyes a new mouth new pillows, a new woman.

he talked about Steinbeck and Tho… wrote like a cross between the two… and I lived in a hotel on Figuero… close to the bars and he lived further uptown in a s…

That evening after dinner Joanna produced some mescaline. “You ever tried this stuff?” Joanna had some paints and brushes and paper spread on the table. Then I remembered she was an art...

crud, he said, hauling it out of the water, what is it? a Hollow-Back June Whale, I said… no, said a guy standing by us on t…

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...