Hold On Read online



  Hold On

  By Ryan Frawley

  Copyright 2011 Ryan Frawley

  agony sometimes changes

  form

  but

  it never ceases for

  anybody.*

  She smiled at me

  across the street

  as if we already

  knew each other

  were lovers

  had been for some

  time.

  I smiled too

  (though I worried I might be out of practice)

  and we grinned like dogs

  at each other

  across the street

  until the lights changed

  and we could cross.

  We stopped in the middle of the road.

  “nice eyes” she said.

  Women always like my eyes

  (but they are not usually this forward.)

  “you wanna grab a coffee?” I asked.

  “sure” she smiled.

  She smiled a lot.

  Then.

  Yellow light streaks on the damp pavement. At least the rain has stopped. But it’s cold, cold. She wraps her coat around herself tightly, as though it might make a difference. The motel is just across the road. But she stays put, shivering as she stands in the doorway darkness of a dollar store. A train hums at the station behind her. Oily black clouds slide across the sky, and the moon glows, yellow and jaundiced like the buzzing neon all around her. She is far away from home, and the world is big and old and mean. She closes her eyes. And then, she starts swaying. With no one to see and no music, she sings softly, deep in her throat, a song he had played to her, a long time ago. Who was it by? It’s hard to be cold and alone and far from home. But she danced to the music of memory as the night swept around her.

  She liked:

  Vladimir Nabokov, John Steinbeck, Robert De Niro, Douglas Coupland, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Anais Nin, Samuel Beckett, Kanye West, Margaret Atwood, Tupac Shakur, Sofia Coppola, David Bowie, Peter Sellers, Yasujiro Ozu, Catherine Breillat, Tom Stoppard, Tori Amos, Albert Camus, William Faulkner, Leonard Cohen.

  Lots of those

  people

  I don’t like

  but some I do

  and it’s the small details that matter

  in the end.

  I introduced her to

  some valuable things

  like

  Tom Waits

  Bob Dylan

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Martin Scorsese

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  and

  Charles Bukowski

  I have always been an evangelist

  for the things I love

  and lots of people don’t like that

  but some people

  are like her

  and they do.

  I don’t know very much about anything

  but I know

  what I love

  and what I hate.

  We talked about different things

  what we liked

  what we didn’t like

  and the wounds we had suffered.

  There is nothing to be gained from women below twenty

  (she was twenty two)

  Young women may look good

  but they have not suffered

  enough

  to understand anything.

  She understood.

  Everything.

  He was a mess. All the things that had once appealed to her about him now repelled her. It was always this way. He was hardly the first loser she had fallen for. But he was, perhaps, the most extreme example. Certainly, she had never felt for anyone what she felt for him. Certainly, she had never tried so hard with anyone as she had with him. But it hadn’t worked. Whatever she tried just wasn’t enough. Sometimes she just wanted to scream at him, You’re not Charles fucking Bukowski! There’s only one Bukowski, and he’s dead. The world doesn’t need another Hank. Stop drinking so much! Stop living in these awful hotels! Stop sabotaging your own life! Following in another’s footsteps is no more real, no more artistically valid than becoming an accountant or a bank manager.

  But he was in love with self destruction, more so than he was ever in love with her. As the train pulled away from the platform, and her old life dissolved into a series of blurred images half-glimpsed through a scarred window, she fiddled absentmindedly with a crude metal ring on her thumb. She was doing the right thing, leaving all this behind, going on to brighter things. But sometimes, you can’t believe in your own victory parade.

  Hank was right

  Being drunk and writing

  Beats being with any woman

  No matter who

  she is.

  I had nothing

  To offer

  by the standards of those

  Who value a man

  by the numbers he commands.

  But I gave her what I had

  Passion

  Pain

  Reality

  or the crumbs of it

  that were mine to give

  and

  for the first time in my life

  it seemed I had found someone

  for whom this nothing

  might be enough.

  With her I was a genius

  of some rare kind

  and I would rather have been

  me

  with her

  than any of the immortal poets.

  Fuck other people’s ideas

  of what is desirable

  necessary

  worthy, because

  they are not me.

  Fuck living for stories

  Forget about how it looks

  from the outside

  because I am not outside of this.

  Live like you

  not some skewed image

  of your misunderstood heroes.

  The sun shone on the day she left him, pale through sheets of cloud. Tears blurred her vision. She knew it had to be this way. It wasn’t as though they argued all the time, or anything like that. It was just that, slowly, they had grown apart. He was too self-absorbed, too self-destructive. He was too wrapped up in his own image of himself to see what she needed. Yes, he was passionate about his art, about the things he liked, and at first she had loved that. But – he was a little too passionate. His various obsessions, that had once seemed so real and interesting to her, consumed him until he had no room left in his heart for anything else. Least of all her. And the drinking – why wouldn’t he stop drinking? He had been drunk even then, she knew, as she left him. And in a way, that had made it easier. Still, there was a big part of her that hoped he would come out of his room, follow her, talk to her, convince her to stay. But she knew he never would. Because Bukowski wouldn’t have.

  I lived in a sleazy

  hotel

  in the worst part

  of town

  And I felt ashamed to bring her there.

  She had two roommates

  (both men. I drank their beer

  they didn’t say anything

  about it.)

  We found ways to be together

  in her room

  in mine

  in parks

  at her friend’s houses

  once, in the bathroom

  of a restaurant

  (she paid.)

  I had a beautiful knife at the time

  four inches long

  wicked lightflashing blade.

  She didn’t like it

  didn’t see why I should

  have such a thing

  want such a thing.

  I ground the blade down

  until it was smooth

  sawed off the handle

  hammered the metal into a ring
>
  gave it to her

  she wore it on

  her thumb.

  He was a vicious bastard at times.

  He drank all the time, and when he was drunk, the meanness would pour out of him. He’d tear at anyone who tried to reach out to him. And of course, the only one who was there consistently was her. Sometimes, it got too much for her.

  “Look at you, standing there” he hissed, the drink slurring his words. “Yeah, I know…I know what you’re thinking. You’re gonna leave, like they all do. Gonna leave. Go on, then – leave!”

  “What are you talking about?” she protested. “When did I say I was going to leave? I put up with your bullshit all the fucking time, and I don’t even complain, but there’s only so much I can take.”

  “Oh! Oh! Ho! Threatening me now? You lousy bitch, you think, you think you’re so fucking special that I, I, I can’t fucking live without you?”

  “Jesus, why are you being such a prick tonight?” she asked.

  “Who is he? Eh? Who is he?”

  “Who is who? What are you talking about?”

  “You know…you fucking know what I’m talking about. Don’t lie to me!”

  “You sound like a madman, you drunken piece of shit!”

  “You’ve found someone else. I know...don’t fucking lie to me!”

  She left when he threw the bottle at her, and she never should have gone back. That should have been the last straw. But they had been through so much together. She loved him. It had seemed worth one last shot.

  “WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS DRUNK?”

  she screamed

  “WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DRINK ALL THE TIME?

  YOU DON’T DO ANYTHING

  JUST SIT THERE

  DRUNK!”

  but it’s not true

  sometimes I write poems

  like this one

  “YOUR POEMS SUCK!”

  “Maybe” I said

  “but I’m a damn good drunk.”

  The guy in the next room hammered

  on the paper-thin wall

  and shouted.

  I threw a beer bottle

  it looped in the air

  shone like a fish

  in the light

  and smashed against the wall.

  He stopped hammering.

  “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?

  YOU CRAZY BASTARD!”

  She left.

  I opened another beer

  Drank

  Drank again.

  The silence seemed to vibrate in the small room as it filled up the space where a moment before, his words had hung in a rain of silver and gold.

  “Wow” she said. “Great poem” she said.

  But it wasn’t what Bukowski had written that she thought of as she watched streaks of sunlight wash against the walls, slant across his cheek, kindle his three day beard into an inverted halo. It was the fire in his eyes as he spoke, the depth of emotion in his voice, the power that he found in the words of another. He was swept up by it as he read, elevated far beyond this shabby room in this shabby part of town, lifted into another world. And he had wanted to take her with him. It made her feel privileged. He was unlike anyone she had ever known before.

  Hank would have left it at that

  He wouldn’t have

  seen her again

  written about her

  again

  there would be some other

  woman

  some other drunken night

  life would go on

  but that’s not how it went

  with us.

  We made it up

  “I just want you to do something

  with your life

  I don’t want you to waste

  what you have”

  and I knew she didn’t understand

  everything I had tried to teach her

  like

  the future is a myth

  life is now

  all the great poets wrote best

  when they were writing

  for their lives

  poverty is the price you pay

  and hope the gods

  accept it

  cigarettes taste better

  at night.

  “Don’t worry

  I’ll get published

  things will be better.”

  But we both stopped

  believing

  She stopped

  hoping.

  She looked away, looked back again. He was still smiling at her across the street. It was definitely her that he was looking at. No doubt about it. His hair was messy, but in a good way, like he’d just got out of bed. Like they’d just woken up together. Those glasses looked cool. They suited him. Shame about his shoes.

  The lights changed. They walked towards each other, ten paces, pistols drawn, to the barricades. He stopped in front of her. Behind his glasses, his eyes seemed to glow, clear and bright, lit from within by pain and joy.

  “Hi” he said.

  “Hi” she said. “Nice eyes.” And she couldn’t believe what she was saying.

  “You wanna grab a coffee?” He smiled as though he already knew the answer, and whatever strange impulse she had been following so far pushed her on.

  “Sure” she smiled.

  There were no more

  drunken rows

  but one day

  she came to me

  and she was dressed a certain way

  like she was wearing armour

  (women have a uniform, I have noticed

  they put it on

  when they leave.)

  “I don’t think we can

  go on”

  she said

  “I don’t think I can

  deal with this anymore.”

  I was drunk.

  “Deal with what?”

  I asked.

  “with you

  with your problems

  you need to take better care of yourself

  maybe then you can think

  about someone else.”

  the room still smelled

  of her

  for days after she left.

  I gave a month’s notice

  and moved out in two weeks.

  *taken from for the concerned by Charles Bukowski

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