Charles Bukowski's autobiographical fiction, Women: A Novel, was a difficult read. There were so many stories of meaningless sex with so many women. I felt ashamed and embarrassed. For him and myself and all men. More than a few times I thought, Oh shit! I've been kind of that way, too -- sometimes! I'm not too sure if he redeemed himself by admitting he was a fucking hyena. But the writing is brilliant and he certainly made me think. 

EXCERPTS

I had to taste women in order to really know them, to get inside of them. I could invent men in my mind because I was one, but women, for me, were almost impossible to fictionalize without first knowing them. So I explored them as best I could and I found human beings inside.

***

I had imagined myself special because I had come out of the factories at the age of 50 and become a poet. Hot shit. So I pissed on everybody just like those bosses and managers had pissed on me when I was helpless. It came to the same thing. I was a drunken spoiled rotten fucker with a very minor minor fame.

***

While men were watching professional football or drinking beer or bowling, they, the women, were thinking about us, concentrating, studying, deciding—whether to accept us, discard us, exchange us, kill us or whether simply to leave us. In the end it hardly mattered; no matter what they did, we ended up lonely and insane.

***

"You’re a sexy woman.” “Is that all you see in me?” “I see lots of that. Maybe I’ll see other things as we go along.” “Why do you want so many women?” “It was my childhood, you see. No love, no affection. And in my twenties and thirties there also was very little. I’m playing catch-up….” “Will you know when you’ve caught up?” “The feeling I have is that I’ll need at least one more lifetime.” “You’re so full of shit!” I laughed. “That’s why I write.”

***

There were no judgments to be made, yet out of necessity one had to select. Beyond good and evil was all right in theory, but to go on living one had to select: some were kinder than others, some were simply more interested in you, and sometimes the outwardly beautiful and inwardly cold were necessary, just for bloody, shitty kicks, like a bloody, shitty movie. The kinder ones fucked better, really, and after you were around them a while they seemed beautiful because they were.

***

Why always more women? What was I trying to do? New affairs were exciting but they were also hard work. The first kiss, the first fuck had some drama. People were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves. I would become less and less to them; they would mean less and less to me.

***

“What do you think of women?” she asked. “I’m not a thinker. Every woman is different. Basically they seem to be a combination of the best and the worst—both magic and terrible. I’m glad that they exist, however.” “How do you treat them?” “They are better to me than I am to them.” “Do you think that’s fair?” “Not fair, but that’s the way it is.” “You’re honest.” “Not quite.”

***

That night she drank half a bottle of red wine, good red wine, and she was sad and quiet. I knew she was connecting me with the racetrack people and the boxing crowd, and it was true, I was with them, I was one of them. Katherine knew that there was something about me that was not wholesome in the sense of wholesome is as wholesome does. I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. It didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand.

***

The thought of sex as something forbidden excited me beyond all reason. It was like one animal knifing another into submission.

***

What kind of shit was I? I could certainly play some nasty, unreal games. What was my motive? Was I trying to get even for something? Could I keep on telling myself that it was merely a matter of research, a simple study of the female? I was simply letting things happen without thinking about them. I wasn’t considering anything but my own selfish, cheap pleasure. I was like a spoiled high school kid. I was worse than any whore; a whore took your money and nothing more. I tinkered with lives and souls as if they were my playthings. How could I call myself a man? How could I write poems? What did I consist of? I was a bush-league de Sade, without his intellect. A murderer was more straightforward and honest than I was. Or a rapist. I didn’t want my soul played with, mocked, pissed on; I knew that much at any rate. I was truly no good. I could feel it as I walked up and down on the rug. No good. The worst part of it was that I passed myself off for exactly what I wasn’t—a good man. I was able to enter people’s lives because of their trust in me. I was doing my dirty work the easy way. I was writing The Love Tale of the Hyena.

***

Where did all the women come from? The supply was endless. Each one of them was individual, different. Their pussies were different, their kisses were different, their breasts were different, but no man could drink them all, there were too many of them, crossing their legs, driving men mad. What a feast!

***

Cecelia sat and watched us drink. I could see that I repulsed her. I ate meat. I had no god. I liked to fuck. Nature didn’t interest me. I never voted. I liked wars. Outer space bored me. Baseball bored me. History bored me. Zoos bored me.

***

I tried telling myself that feeling guilty was just a sickness of some sort. That it was men without guilt who made progress in life. Men who were able to lie, to cheat, men who knew all the shortcuts. Cortez. He didn’t fuck around. Neither did Vince Lombardi. But no matter how much I thought about it, I still felt bad. I decided to get it over with. I was ready. The confessional booth. I’d be a Catholic again. Get it on, off and out, then wait for forgiveness.

***

We stopped for liquor, ice and smokes, then went back to the apartment. Her one drink had Cecelia giggling and talking and she was explaining that animals had souls too. Nobody challenged her opinion. It was possible, we knew. What we weren’t sure of was if we had any.

***

Since I had been born a man, I craved women constantly, the lower the better. And yet women—good women—frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price. Either way I was lost. A strong man would give up both. I wasn’t strong. So I continued to struggle with women, with the idea of women.

***

People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

***

Glendoline pulled up a chair and started talking. She could talk. If she was a sphinx she could have talked, if she was a stone she could have talked. I wondered when she’d get tired and leave. Even after I stopped listening it was like being battered with tiny pingpong balls.

***

I raised the fifth of vodka and drank it straight. The Russians knew something.

***

That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

***

I was trapped in the mountains and woods with two crazy women. They took all the joy out of fucking by talking about it all the time. I liked to fuck too, but it wasn’t my religion. There were too many ridiculous and tragic things about it. People didn’t seem to know how to handle it. So they made a toy out of it. A toy that destroyed people.

***

How did a man know what to do? Generally, I decided, it was better to wait, if you had any feeling for the individual. If you hated her right off, it was better to fuck her right off; if you didn’t, it was better to wait, then fuck her and hate her later on.

***

She was mine. I was a conquering army, I was a rapist, I was her master, I was death.

***

Her legs were raised high in the air and as I caressed her I saw those slut-shoes on her feet, red heels jutting like stilettoes. Iris was in for another old-fashioned horse fuck. Love was for guitar players, Catholics and chess freaks. That bitch with her red shoes and long stockings—she deserved what she was going to get from me. I tried to rip her apart, I tried to split her in half. I watched that strange half-Indian face in the soft sunlight that filtered weakly through the blinds. It was like murder. I had her. There was no escape. I ripped and roared, slapped her across the face and nearly tore her in half. I was surprised that she was able to get up smiling and walk to the bathroom. She looked almost happy. Her shoes had come off and were lying by the side of the bed. My cock was still hard. I picked up one of the shoes and rubbed my cock with it. It felt great. Then I put the shoe back on the floor. When Iris came out of the bathroom still smiling, my cock went down.

***

I felt no sadness while driving her to L.A. International. The sex had been fine; there had been laughter. I could hardly remember a more civilized time, neither of us making any demands, yet there had been warmth, it had not been without feeling, dead meat coupled with dead meat. I detested that type of swinging, the Los Angeles, Hollywood, Bel Air, Malibu, Laguna Beach kind of sex. Strangers when you meet, strangers when you part—a gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each other. People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love. So they became swingers. The dead fucking the dead. There was no gamble or humor in their game—it was corpse fucking corpse.

***

I sat there holding the telephone to my ear. I was still naked. I looked down at my penis: you dirty son-of-a-bitch! Do you know all the heartache you cause with your dumb hunger?