Cranky Is The New Perky

When I am blue like right now (or have a case of the mean reds) there are two writers I reach for, often simultaneously, their works worn and stained and dogeared with random bits of detritus stuck in as bookmarks:  Bukowski (the poetry) and Fitzgerald (the short stories).  On the surface the one thing they share is the love/hate relationship they have with alcohol.  FSF is the romantic fatalist, the king of poetic obsession.  Bukowski is much darker, his attitude toward women much more obscene and violent, but I always suspected it was the same longing and idealism, just turned inward, thwarted and bitter.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my early and forever loves.  In the Fitzgerald vs. Hemingway catfight I am always Team FSF.  My dad taught me to love FSF, and in reading him I get the sense of my dad as a younger man, thrilled by the beauty of words and love.  My relationship with him would take years of blogging and extended psychiatric counsel to unravel and analyze, but on books and music we can always find something to talk about.  You have to admire a 67 year old who loves The Smiths first album (the only good one) and who goes to see The Pogues at 9:30 (staying up much later than his usual post-Law and Order re-run bedtime).  We argue the superiority of The Great Gatsby (him) over Tender Is The Night (me).  For a couple of years Jonathan Yardley (the critic) lived on our street and we dared each other to knock on his door and ask him to settle that dispute, as well as some (now forgotten) point of contention over For Esme, With Love and Squalor.  This is to us as vital a debate as Sticky Fingers versus Exile on Main Street, or Blonde on Blonde versus Highway 61 Revisited.  For Fathers Day I am getting him a Drive by Truckers cd and Yaz’s Greatest Hits.

My first Bukowski was given to me by Hannah’s dad, a copy of Factotum inscribed “to Jessica with great affection”.  He knew it was something my angry 16 year old self needed and would understand.  He also took us to our first sushi meal, made a salad of street treebox picked mixed greens, and made a feast at which course was composed of organs, which my gothic little heart loved.  He also made us turn off the Rolling Stones when they came on the radio, saying they were satanic, which only increased their fascination value.

My affair with Bukowski was nurtured by the two chronic and unrepentant alcoholics I lived with from 18 to 20.  They also taught me to love Black Sabbath, Celine, Artaud, and Camus.  In between they would get insanely drunk and in fits of paranoia stockpile by hiding the liquor from each other.  After more drinking they would forget they had hidden it and would accuse each other of stealing the alcohol and then in desperation make a run for more.  Days or weeks later we would find a half empty 5^th of Odessa Vodka behind some books, in a drawer, behind the unused china.  The one time in two years I used the oven I nearly blew the place up: nestled lovingly underneath the racks was a plastic bottle of cheap gin.  

I am still missing my copy of “Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame” lent to someone who never returned it (there is a select circle of hell for those people who steal books).  I think as a belated birthday present to myself I will replace it and let it rest on its rightful place on the shelf next to The Collected Stories and This Side of Paradise, to be reached for again and again in a real or emotional three a.m. state.

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