I have been doing my artists dates for the last six weeks, and up until now I enjoyed them, from the planning to the doing. For two hours out of every week I take my temperamental creator out on the town, for what might be considered “quality time.” If this sounds suspiciously like inner child banter forgive me for it is actually much more like bribery. If I take her to see Reservoir Dogs again she might actually agree to do some work on a novel. If not, my creativity is replaced with symptoms of Ebstein Barr, Chronic Fatigue, and fantasies of a glamorous career as a court stenographer. She seemed appeased by my bribery and I occasionally enjoyed our time together. But that’s before you. Now that you know about our relationship you will judge where I take my artist. Where before if I took her on a Denny’s style date, it didn’t matter, but now you will know and think I don’t love my artist. So I have to take her on a Le Cirque style date. This created pressure and a block. Before I just had writers block and now I have artist date block.
When I asked my artist what she wanted to do on our date, “Something really different….I know,” she said. “I want to go to Green Hills Memorial Park.” “That is a really stupid idea.” I countered, “We need to do something grand in scale to show how much I value you. Maybe we can jump into a boxcar and take the train up north and fly back, that would be really cool. Kerouac like” “No.” My artist said. “I want to go to Green Hills” “Sorry”, I told her again. “I know, we’ll go to Bristol Farms and buy $10 a pound Chinese cherries and we’ll go to Portuguese Bend and spit them into the ocean. Seems very literary” “I don’t want to.” She rebuffed, with her usual indolence “Green Hills!” The way she said it that time I knew she was about to leave me. She’s done it before. Before I’d know it we’d be going through our books and CD’s trying to remember which one of us likes Philip Glass.
“Okay the cemetery it is. What do you want to do at the cemetery?” “I want to go visit Charles Bukowski.” She demanded. I exhaled deeply at her drippy sentimental plan. “And I want to take him a beer. I want to drink a beer with Bukowski.” “But we don’t drink beer.” I countered and then silently thought with that winy attitude she was probably developmentally too young to drink alcoholic beverages. “Well I want to, If you don’t take me I am going to go on strike and you’ll be left alone, afternoons filled with ennui, Oprah, Court TV, and napping.” So I bought two beers, one for her, one for Bukowski, and none for me cause I was driving. She took along her tracing paper, black chalk, and Ham on Rye (the book, not the sandwich). I hid all of her things in my backpack, I was afraid they might throw me in jail for bringing beer into a cemetery (What as I going to use for my excuse? My artist made me do it!)
Once inside the cemetery office I asked for a map to his grave. “Oh” said the woman who looked like she was born to work in a mortuary. “We get lots of visitors for Mr. Bukowski. One of our directors will help you if you’ll just come into the office.” I leafed through brochures on my post-life options. Much more than just plots and cremations were being sold. So many choices: standing mausoleums, benches, statues and more. A young woman entered whose self-streaked hair, rugged complexion, and enthusiasm surprised me. “Hi, I’m the funeral director, Evie.” She was way too perky, she could have just as easily said, “Hi, my name is Julie McCoy and I am you’re cruise director. How can I help you?” What happened to somber men in black suits? Death isn’t what it used to be.
“I am here to visit Charles Bukowski.” I didn’t know what to say. I had trouble-saying visit, as it made him sound alive. I couldn’t decide if it was the right word. I considered “see” but I wasn’t actually going to see him and “pay my respects” seemed like something an old person would say, people who say “dope” for drugs and “brazier” for bra. I just can’t use those phrases without being a smart ass and I can’t be a smart ass in a funeral home. (Funeral parlor is another one of those old person words). “Great!” She replied with a startling enthusiasm. I found myself hoping she turned that volume down for people who had newly departed family members and only turned on that perky personality full blast for non-essential visitors such as myself.
She drew me a map to Bukowski’s final resting place, which was more of a memento of the day than a useful guide to finding the grave. Since I’m hopeless with directions, even as she was explaining it, I knew it would be an adventure for me to find him and it was. Bukowski, C, Ocean View, 190, 3 across, 7 down. Are those directions or a crossword puzzle?
We found him with a very cheery and bright “Spring Bouquet” lying at the bottom of his headstone, something that came from a FTD florist. A bouquet that is in a catalog that florists all across the country make every day, item # 3456, $29.95, there is a template for this bouquet so every one looks the same, no two are different. If you order one in Akron or in Tampa you will get the exact same bouquet with the exact same number of yellow carnations, white mums and pink tulips. Nothing natural or wild remains in the flower when it is placed in the bouquet the life is stripped away. It was everything that Bukoswki was not and it lay over his drying bones and yet I did not have the courage to remove them, for they could have been a well meaning token from someone who loved him and they did not have the symbolic horror for them they had for me. They were too much for me to bear, in defense my artist quickly got to work.
She opened Hank’s beer and gave it to him and guzzled her own getting some on my blouse in the process. She carefully rubbed over the marker with chalk black pastels, paying special attention to the words, “Don’t try.” His grave offers instructions to the living and a motto of the man just as descriptive of Bukowski as would be a headstone reading, “Loving Father and Husband.” There was the outline of a boxing glove on Bukowski’s grave in the midst of a jab as kinesthetic contrast to the carved placid mountain scene on the grave of the woman next to him.
When done with the rubbing my artist sat back and contemplated all the usual things you contemplate at the plot of a literary legend. (She made me promise not to tell you all of her ruminations; she thought you might accuse her of sentimentality and hero worship that would be more appropriate at the grave of a romantic poet).
As she did all that, I looked at the view Bukowski would never see, of trees framing the skyline of the Vincent Thomas Bridge. From where the three of us sat you couldn’t see the ugliness, the grime, and the deterioration of his city. The monotony of the local obscured by the fog of distant cities of equal mediocrity; knowing, as I look there, I do not want to be there any more than I want to be at the place I call home and yet I want to be no place else but here, here with her and here with death, sitting on the green hills that made me sneeze and made me think thoughts that made me dizzy, that made me want to eat a meal of hearty tuberose vegetables and brown stoc
ks, to hear the voice of another and have them say words that proved I was here and real and have them say thinks like, “I will see you in January,” indicating I have a future that is guaranteed.
Under me was lifeless decay: rotting bones, worms, and perhaps even maggots and yet all I saw was beauty. “Let’s go,” the artist said, and we did, and so we walked and then the beer went to her head and she tried to tell me in a manic rush of future tense all the plans she had for me, my art, and for my work. She was down right giddy. My mood had turned and everything looked so different and she didn’t even seem to notice.
This post was originally posted in November 2007 as “The Artist’s Date With Death.”
