Free Women by Charles Bukowski

I’m going up and sit with the pilot!”
    “O.K.”
    So we took off and Dee Dee was up there sitting with the pilot. I could see her talking away. She did enjoy life or she appeared to. Lately it didn’t mean much to me—I mean her excited and happy reaction to life—it irritated me somewhat, but mostly it left me without feeling. It didn’t even bore me.
    We flew and we landed, the landing was rough, we swung low along some cliffs and bounced and the spray went up. It was something like being in a speed boat. Then we taxied to another dock and Dee Dee came back and told me all about the seaplane and the pilot, and the conversation. There was a big piece cut out of the floor up there, and she’d asked the pilot, “Is this thing safe?” and he had answered, “Damned if I know.”
    Dee Dee had gotten us a hotel room right on the shore, on the top floor. There was no refrigeration so she got a plastic tub and packed ice in it for my beer. There was a black and white t. v. and a bathroom. Class.
    We went for a walk along the shore. The tourists were of two types—either very young or very old. The old walked about in pairs, man and woman, in their sandals and dark shades and straw hats and walking shorts and wildly-colored shirts. They were fat and pale with blue veins in their legs and their faces were puffed and white in the sun. They sagged everywhere, folds and pouches of skin hung from their cheekbones and under their jowls.
    The young were slim, and seemed made of smooth rubber. The girls had no breasts and tiny behinds and the boys had tender soft faces and grinned and blushed and laughed. But they all seemed contented, young high school people and old people. There was very little for them to do, but they lounged in the sun and seemed fulfilled.
    Dee Dee went into the shops. She was delighted with the shops, buying beads, ashtrays, toy dogs, postcards, necklaces, figurines, and seemed happy with everything. “Oooh, look!” She talked to the shop owners. She seemed to like them. She promised one lady that she would write when she got back to the mainland. They had a mutual friend—a man who played percussion in a rock band.
    Dee Dee bought a cage with two love birds and we went back to the hotel. I opened a beer and turned on the t.v. The selection was limited.
    “Let’s go for another walk,” said Dee Dee. “It’s so lovely outside.”
    “I’m going to sit here and rest,” I said.
    “You don’t mind if I go without you?”
    “It’s all right.”
    She kissed me and left. I turned off the t.v. and opened another beer. Nothing to do on this island but get drunk. I walked to the window. On the beach below Dee Dee was sitting next to a young man, talking happily, smiling and gesturing with her hands. The young man grinned back. It felt good not to be part of that sort of thing. I was glad I wasn’t in love, that I wasn’t happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.
    They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.
    Dee Dee was gone 2 or 3 hours. I looked at some t. v. and typed 2 or 3 poems on a portable typer. Love poems—about Lydia. I hid them in my suitcase. I drank some more beer.
    Then Dee Dee knocked and entered. “Oh, I had the most wonderful time! First I went on the glass-bottom boat. We could see all the different fish in the sea, everything! Then I found another boat that takes people out to where their boats are moored. This young man let me ride for hours for a dollar! His back was sunburned and I rubbed it with lotion. He was terribly burned. We took people out to their boats. And you should have seen the people on those boats! Mostly old men, craggy old men, with young girls. The young girls all wore boots and were drunk and on dope, strung-out, moaning. Some of the old guys had young boys, but most of them had young girls, sometimes two