The next day Katherine phoned me. She said she had the tickets and would be landing at L.A. International Friday at 2:30 pm. “Katherine,” I said, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you...

The funeral was to be at 10:30 a.m. but it was already hot. I had on a cheap black suit, bought and fitted in a rush. It was my first new suit in years. I had located the son. We drove ...

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…

they’d come around and they’d ask “you finished your 2nd novel yet?” “no.”

I took Tanya to the airport the next afternoon. We had a drink in the same bar. The high-yellow wasn’t around; all that leg was with somebody else. “No. You love sex and there’s nothing...

here comes the fishhead singing here comes the baked potato in dra… here comes nothing to do all day l… here comes another night of no sle… here comes the phone ringing the w…

here comes the fishhead singing here comes the baked potato in dra… here comes nothing to do all day l… here comes another night of no sle… here comes the phone wringing the…

all I’ve ever known are whores, ex… madwomen. I see men with quiet, gentle women—I see them in the sup… I see them walking down the street… I see them in their apartments: pe…

I would, of course, prefer to be w… instead of with a photograph of an… to the sound of the anvil chorus a… girls kicking high, showing everyt… but I might as well be dead right…

between 2 and 5 p.m. any day and a… Wednesday, it’s 20% off for us old dogs approaching the sunset… it’s strange to be old and not fee… old

at exactly 12:00 midnight 1973-74 Los Angeles it began to rain on the palm leaves outside my window

The next day in bed I got tired of waiting for the airplanes and I found a large yellow notebook that had been meant for high school work. It was empty. I found a pen. I went to bed wit...

had it for a year, really put in lot of bedroom time, slept upright on two pillows to keep from coughing, all the blood drained from my head

a woman told a man when he got off a plane that I was dead. a magazine printed the fact that I was dead

The toughest in the station. Apartment houses with boxes that had scrubbed-out names or no names at all, under tiny lightbulbs in dark halls. Old ladies standing in halls, up and down t...