The first graph

Below is the opening paragraph of Tom Waits and Charles Bukowski Fistfight in Hell. I’m posting it to give the world (by ‘world’ I mean the eight people who read this blog) a taste of what the book will be.

If someone with a ‘zine of any sort wants to publish this excerpt they should email nathanctyree [AT] gmail [DOT] com. They can have the entire first chapter if they want.

So, here it is:

“There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
-Albert Camus

I’ve got a bad liver and a broken heart

Kelli stands center stage. She grips the metal pole with her left hand and pauses for an instant. This is a caesura; a blank spot, designed to create tension. Her top has just come off, been tossed aside. Her firm, round breasts are on display, but she knows that those aren’t what the men want most. She scans them. The men. The outer tables are mostly frat boys, and young guys nursing over-priced drinks. Up close, in the perv seats, are older men; many with John Deere caps pulled down low on their heads. These men, their eyes speak loneliness, want, need. She is the object of that need and she knows it. At five feet ten inches she towers above the other girls that take the stage. She is thin, some willow’s erotic fantasy of what a willow should be, but with short spiky brown hair and deep eyes. The pause is enough. She swings one leg back and arches her back, then reaches with her hands to wrap them around the pole. Momentum does the rest and moves into a little swing, circling the pole. This is tease. This is her working the crowd. A few dollar bills are being tossed on the stage, but they are meaningless. She is just working the warm up; the opening act. In a minute she will take control. The music changes. A rap song with a deep, hard, driving beat stops and in the instant before the next starts she trusts her self upward and grabs the pole with both hands. In a motion that any gymnast would be proud of she tosses her legs above her head and slides slowly down the shiny pole, circling as she descends. When she takes her feet, balanced on clear heels, she sees that her supplicants are primed. Ready. She drops to her back on the stage and slides off her g-string in a move that seems to require no effort at all. He legs spread wide, showing her pussy to the front row, then she rolls herself over onto her stomach. Her body undulates ending with her ass in the air, her weight propped up on her knees with her legs spread wide enough to reveal her shaved pussy again. She can’t see them, but she knows that the men in the front row are staring hard and imagining touching it, licking it, fucking it. This is where she excels. Kelli stands, turns to face the men, makes eye contact with each one and sends the signal. Her eyes scream I want you. I want to fuck you. I want your dick deep inside me, pounding me, hammering me. I want your cum sprayed on my face. The bills: ones and fives, begin to fly. She moves to the edge of the stage to work the audience. She uses her tits to take a dollar from one guy’s mouth, which inflames the rest. Another man finds himself tugged by the shoulders until he is on his back on the stage with a five gripped in his teeth. Kelli mounts him, letting her tits rub against him, pushing until her flat stomach is against his face, then sliding back to take his money. She can see his little erection pressing against his dirty jeans and she knows that she owns these men. She is the first Cosmonaut surveying a dead kingdom from a thousand miles above. She is a weightless god ready to devour the souls of the mighty. She sees me at an outer table, and her eyes tell me that she disapproves. It’s not that I’m here watching her dance. I’ve done that a lot. It’s the glass of Maker’s Mark in my hand that bothers her. Of all the men in this smoke infested room, I am the only one that knows her true name. They all see her as Kelli. On stage she is Kelli. To a lot of friends she is Madge. She is Margaret on the dotted line. But in my heart she is always Maggie. I’m sorry Mr. Nabokov, but that’s how it is.

Tags: charles bukowski. whiskey, novels, sex, strippers, tom waits