That night I gave another bad reading. I didn’t care. They didn’t care. If John Cage could get one thousand dollars for eating an apple, I’d accept $500 plus air fare for being a lemon....

We came in low over Kansas City, the pilot said the temperature was 20 degrees, and there I was in my thin California sports coat and shirt, lightweight pants, summer stockings, and hol...

are more beautiful than movie stars and they lounge on the lawn sunbathing

they laugh continually even when a board falls down and destroys a face or distorts a

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...

since my last name was Fuch, he sa… believe the school yard was tough:… powder down my neck, threw gravel… with rubber bands in class, and ou… me names, well, one name mainly, o…

This babe in the grandstand with dyed red hair kept leaning her breasts against me and talking about Gardena poker parlors

stew at noon, my dear; and look: the ants, the sawdust, the mica plants, the shadows of banks like bad jokes; do you think we’ll hear

It was 3 or 4 days before I had to fly to Houston to give a reading. I went to the track, drank at the track, and afterwards I went to a bar on Hollywood Boulevard. I went home at 9 or ...

boy, don’t come around here tellin… can’t cut it, that they’re pitching you low and insid… they are conspiring against you, that all you want is a chance but…

I paid this one’s fare all the way… to San Francisco then flew up to meet her at her br… and I got drunk and talked all night about a redhe…

Of all the guys left in the neighborhood, Frank was the nicest. We got to be friends, we got to going around together, we didn’t need the other guys much. They had more or less kicked F...

the schoolyard was a horror show:… freaks the beatings up against the wire f… our schoolmates watching glad that they were not the victim…

Two mornings later, at 4 am, somebody beat on the door. I let Tammie in. She sat down and I opened a couple of beers. “I’ve got bad breath, I have these two bad teeth. You can’t kiss me...