A Day At The Shooting Range With Charles Bukowski

 

It was a beautiful sunny day. Gun shots rang out through the mountain tops and there he stood my hero. He took a sip from a warm beer can as the overspill dripped down his beard and onto his sweaty shirt that rose above his sun burnt belly. His hair slicked back and his eyes squinted through the sunlight. It was truly amazing what a beautiful creature god could create after obviously throwing together whatever leftovers he had available.

“Great day isn’t it Chuck?”

“It’s a s****y day. I’ve never understood what people find in this nature jazz. It’s so boring and the air. Jesus! It’s too damn fresh! I miss L.A. Give me the smog baby.” He replied loading a handful of fresh shells.

“Pull!” The skeet shot into the air as he pulled the shotgun to his shoulder and took aim.

“This is for the damn post office!” The skeet exploded and the dust filled the air.

“This is for the damn four horse! That f*****g four horse and all my money!” The second skeet exploded and he continued. “For Frances! And Linda, that cheating w***e!”

A small group had begun gathering as he settled down to take another drink. Finishing off the can he threw it to the ground reached in the ice chest and retrieved a fresh one. He looked like a hostile creature, a caged animal eyeing the crowd. He pulled the gun into the air while taking a drink.

“One of you fuckers wanna go?” The crowd quickly dispersed.

“Jesus man, take it easy. Don’t make such a scene.” I sat down on the bench beside him and grabbed a beer from the chest.

“That’s your problem kid. You got no spine. I’ve read your writing, nothing but junkies and retards chasing the sun with nets. You’ve never lost anything have you? That’s what makes a good writer, loss. You need the pain, the heartbreak.”

“You can write about love without the heartbreak.” I took a drink and wiped my mouth on my shirt.

“Yeah, but it’s boring. Nobody wants to hear that. People want to hear how s****y life is, the real deal. Let me tell you something about love kid. Love is like a good beer s**t. You spend all this time working on it. You have your ups and downs, pain and pleasure. Then when you’re done you step back and admire it. You’ve put all this time into creating something beautiful and you almost feel guilty flushing it but it’s inevitable.”

He continued rambling on about beer s***s and how cheap smokes were on the drive through the mountains while my eyes wandered across the hilltops. Sweat ran from my head down my neck past my collar and collected beneath my polo as I sat now focused back on my enlightening companion.

“You got a hero kid?”

“Kurt Vonnegut.”

“Kurt Vonnegut was a schmuck. Who did he think he was with that hair? Did he think he was the f*****g Einstein of the literary world? And did you see those paintings? I bought a painting off Kurt one time just to hang in my bathroom so I could piss on it before every s**t. Everybody thinks they’re an artist.”

“Well who is a hero Chuck?”

“That’s the problem kid. They’re all dead. There isn’t any Jesse James left. They’ve all been replaced by Paris Hilton. Society would rather worship people who do absolutely nothing. Hell I don’t know why people like me. All I do is drink and cuss over a type writer.”

I sat pondering for a moment over Chuck’s logic. All heroes are dead. You can’t be a true writer without loss or heartache. Love is like a good beer s**t. Still thinking I lifted the shotgun to my lap while he stood to grab another beer from the ice chest. As he turned I got up from the bench and brought the gun to my shoulder aiming it at his back. He opened the fresh beer and turned to look at me. Gun now aimed at his gut, he took a deep gulp whipped his mouth with his hand and grinned before I unloaded the cartridge in his stomach. I lowered the gun and sat back down. As I sat there sipping my beer I couldn’t help but think, all my heroes were all now finally dead and I’ve had my loss. I’m going to be one of the greats. Bukowski would be proud.

Reviews

[Crowley]

Really cool scenario "love is a good beer s**t" is so something I could hear Dennis Hopper saying in the mini movie for this. Good writing, and good dialogue. May have liked it more if it were a bit longer so that I could get to know CB a little more as someone who doen't know much about him. Thanks, good read.

[Stephanie]

Wow. This story had some of the most foul and grossest comparisons I've ever read, but it was super good! It has such an empathetic feel and the end..... well. I'm glad that guy went. He was blah blah blah about everything. He let his pain turn him into a grump. I think someone is really strong when they can go through pain and still smile every morning. Then there was the theme of "All heroes are dead". The main character didn't believe that, maybe until the end when he killed the guy. I could go on and on about this, it's such a conversation starter. But in short, I think this was a really well written and clever story that teaches us all a lesson. Great job :)

-Stephanie

[SR Urie]

Hey Nathan.
Interesting write, thanks for sharing. Bukowski was a unique writer who espressed himself honestly and with precision to his negative attitude about life. He focussed on the uglier facets of life, stressed them because of all the experience he had firsthand. His work is an excellent example of cutting to the chase of a situation and shocking the reader with ugliness, and using symbolism in an unpleasant way to pull the masks off the facade of society that he saw from his perspective. Try to keep in mind that Bukowski was not one of the more read or celebrated writers; I only heard about the man in the last five years or so. Whether his negative attitudism becomes popular in the future remains to be seen. For me I believe there are better things to talk about, let alone think about, when I put my name on a story that hopefully people will read and take a seed of supposed wisdom or emotion or remembered youth.
Again, Bukowski was a hell of a writer, unique in his own class of literary giants. But so is King, Vonnegart, McMullers, and Miller. What class of literary success do you want to be remembered in, my friend?

BZ

[Mark]

I just back from Wiki, trying to find out who CB is/was, and learned more about the willful acceptance of sorrow than I ever hoped to know. A queer sort of hero, who would want to emulate such as he? An interesting write, however; funny that CB died of leukemia, a blood disorder, and it's a LACK of blood disorder that your antihero afflicts him with! I don't get the reason why your kid wantd to kill him--there was an outtake from Ebert's interview where CB said he'd had a decade-long suicide dream, would go to bars to try and get into fights, to try to get dead; is your proto picking up on this, and is this the kind of lifer OR death you'd find desireable?

[Pax Analog]

Ah, nothin' like a savagely droll gesture.

Something vaguely Japanese about the "honor slaying" of the fictive Bukowski 'cause he gruffly asserts all the heroes are dead, hence your narrative "I"'s obligation to blow the beloved curmudgeon away.

Amusing footnote: You used a shotgun for your fantasy slaying, and there's an ad for a double shotgun case on this page. Go figure.

Sensibility-wise, it's about the ironies of savagery. There's more integrity in some savagery than the polite wussification of the planet held hostage by bloated necktie people mismanaging paper storms.

Good work. One could conjure a whole series with gritty writers or suchlike.

[Stephanie990]

I enjoyed reading this story. Such magnificent writting and good details. i loved how you capture my attention here and the dialogue was just very eye-catching. I think was well-written and that the character just seems to have question on how to be a good writter. Great story as always.

[Jason]

Great storytelling here. I love the talent that lies within your words, and your attention to detail is wonderful.... I truly enjoyed reading this, thank you very much for sharing.

[great banbu]

u captured the great bukowski wonderfully! a brilliant write!

[Flo_writer]

I liked the storytelling here. I only wish this was longer. I felt the ending was sudden and didn't really make sense to me. I get that you were going for the surprise yet twisted ending but I don't think you needed that here. However, I thought this was still a good story, and given more detail and more of a structured conclusion quite possibly...Awesome.

[Call Me Cash]

You are an exceptional writer. All of your stories are visually stimulating, thought provoking and amusing without being forced!