Bukowski Meets Camus At A Bar

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If Camus and Bukowski met at a bar, it would go like this.

Charles Bukowski enters a bar on Hollywood Boulevard, staggers to one of the stools by the counter. There is a jukebox playing, the music mixing with the sound of a fan that doesn’t move the air that much. The barman, an old geezer in his seventies with crooked teeth and saggy eye bags, fidgets with a car key while leaning on the other side of the counter.

“Any chance of getting a drink here?” asks Bukowski.

The barman lifts his head and slowly makes his way to where Bukowski is sitting.

“Vodka 7, forget the lime.”

The barman takes a good 5 minutes and returns with the drink, still fidgeting with the car key in his other hand.

“Thank you, now please make me another while you are in motion.”

A man is sitting at a table staring at Bukowski. He is wearing a grey, three-piece suit and has a cigarette in his hand, a cup of coffee in the other. It seems like he has been studying Bukowski since he got into the bar.

“Nice day, isn’t it fellow?” asks Bukowski.

“Pardon?” said the other man in a French accent, while adjusting his glasses on his nose.

“Ah..never mind..”

“I’m getting depressed,” thought Bukowski to himself. “My life isn’t going anywhere. I need something, the flashing of lights, glamour, some damn thing. And here I am, talking to the dead.”

The man with the French accent walks to the jukebox, fishes in his pocket for some coins. A few moments later, a ballad fills the stale air of the bar.

“Listen, fellow, when was the last time you pulled down a pair of women’s panties?” asks Bukowski to him.

The man moves his head and points his finger at a stool nearby Bukowski’s, as if to ask permission to sit next to him.

“Ergg, sure…but I’m warning you, I’m interested in women!”

The man goes back to his table, picks up the coffee and the ashtray, and makes his way to the stool.

“Hallo, Sir. You must pardon my intrusion, but I couldn’t help but notice the notes and papers you are carrying with you as you entered the bar and walked towards the counter. Are you a writer or a journalist?”

“The fact that someone carries papers with some handwriting on it doesn’t make him or her, a writer or a journalist…and now to the questions that actually matters, what are you drinking there? Coffee? You can’t be drinking coffee and pretend to have a serious conversation with me, old man!”

Bukowski waves his hand at the barman and shouts: “Barista! Two vodka tonic please! One for me and one for the gentleman here!”

“What’s your name by the way, old man? And what the fuck is wrong with your accent, old man? Do you have a baguette stuck up your ass or what?”

“Albert, my name is Albert Camus.”

“Albert? Are you a butler, Albert? I’ve only met butlers named Albert…”

“I’m not, Sir. I write, I’m what people would call a journalist, I’m here on a field trip to inquire about American culture...”

The barman returns with the two drinks a few minutes later. “Barista is for those who work at coffee shops…” he whispers as he hands the two drinks.

“Listen, I’ll tell you a secret, American culture is rotting. Everyone is screwed. There is no winner. There are only apparent winners. We are all chasing after a lot of nothing. Day after day. Survival is the only necessity.”

“Is that your philosophy in life?

“My philosophy is think as little as possible.”

“Anything else?”

“When you can’t think of anything else to do, be kind.”

The two stayed silent for a good 30 seconds, drinking.

“Listen fellow, often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don’t want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has led me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others, I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta. And I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but…”

His talk was interrupted by a bunch of bohemian-looking group of youth being loud by the jukebox.

“You guys lower your voice or I’ll kick your ass, I’m trying to have a conversation here!” shouts Bukowski at them.

“All you have to do in their little world is be a writer or an artist or a ballet dancer and you can just sit or stand around, inhaling and exhaling, drinking wine, pretending you knew what the hell…what was I saying??”

“I can see from your notes you are a writer, Sir. I can recognize it from your handwriting. Is that your work then?”

Bukowski waved to the barman, the two fingers asking for other two drinks.

“Writing is never work for me. It has been the same for as long as I can remember: turn on the radio to a classical music station, light a cigarette or a cigar, open the bottle. The typer does the rest. All I have to do is be there. The whole process allows me to continue when life itself offers very little, when life itself is a horror show. There is always the typer to soothe me, to talk to me, to entertain me, to save my ass. Basically, that’s why I write: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself...”

“The absurd joy par excellence is creation. Art and nothing but art, said Nietzsche, we have art in order not to die of the truth.”

Silence fell in the bar again, the jukebox had stopped singing, the young group had left.

“We wait and wait. All of us. Don’t they know that waiting is one of the things that drives people crazy? People wait all their lives. They wait to live, they wait to die. They wait in line to buy toilet paper. They wait in line for money. And if they don’t have any money they wait in longer lines. You wait to go to sleep and then you wait to awaken. You wait to get married and you wait to get divorced. You wait for it to rain, you wait for it to stop. You wait to eat and then you wait to eat again. You wait in a shrink’s office with a bunch of psychos and you wonder if you are one.”

Camus, vividly enlivened by that sort of talk, cuts in while clutching on his glass:

“And then the stage set collapses. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement. Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. What follows is the gradual return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening. At the end of the awakening comes, in time, the consequence: suicide or recovery.

We love on the future: “tomorrow,” “later on,” “when you have made your way,” “you will understand when you are old enough.” Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it’s a matter of dying. Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty…”

The drinks arrived, the two clicked the glasses and drank.

B: “And then there’s just not enough glory and excitement to go around. Things quickly get drab and deadly. We awaken in the morning, kick our feet out from under the sheets, place them on the floor and think, ah, shit, what now? Getting out of bed in the morning is the same as facing the blank wall of the universe. Existence is not only absurd, it is plain hard work. Think of how many times you put on your underwear in a lifetime. It is appalling, it is disgusting, it is stupid.”

“We are all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of us aren’t even doing little things. We are vegetables. I am one of those. I don’t know what kind of vegetable I am. I feel like a turnip.”

Camus, now obviously drunk, replies: “Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined...”

“Ok now let’s get out of here, you fancy a steak at Musso’s, old man? Come along, let’s get depressed together.”

Bukowski rolls two 10 dollar bills and pushes them down the counter.

“Barista! You keep the change, have yourself a fine, meaningful day!”

Camus drapes his coat around his arm and staggers outside the bar with Bukowski, chuckling softly, likely because of the few drinks he just had, but also because he felt he had found a companion that day.

“Often the best parts of life are when you aren’t doing anything at all, just mulling it over, chewing on it. I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can’t be quite senseless because you are aware that it’s senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You know what I mean?…Oh shit, I got another ticket..”

They got into the WV Beetle and off they were to Hollywood.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Excerpts from “Pulp”, “Hollywood” and the “The Myth of Sisyphus” have been used to write this imaginary dialogue. Sometimes, seemingly opposite people, based on writing styles or social conduct, may be looking at life and its meaning from the exact same point of view.

These reflections are just the beginning of a much larger conversation. If you’re interested in exploring these ideas further, I’d love to hear your thoughts — schedule a call with me here.