Within a Sky Full of Earth

Chapter One

I was 50 years old and hadn't been to bed with a woman for four years. I had no women friends. I looked at them as I passed them arning and with a sense of futility. I masturbated regularly, but the idea of having a relationship with a woman even on non-sexual terms was beyond my imagination. I had a 6 year old daughter born out of wedlock. She lived with her mother and I paid child support. I had been married years before at the age Of 35. That marriage lasted two and one half years. My wife divorced me. I had been in love only once. She had died of acute alcoholism. She died at 48 when I was 38. My wife had been 12 years younger than I. I believe that she too is dead now, although I'm not sure. She wrote me a long letter each Christmas for 6 years after the divorce. I never responded....

I'm not sure when I first saw Lydia Vance. It was about 6 years ago and I had just quit a twelve year job as a postal clerk and was trying to be a writer. I was terrified and drank more than ever. I was attempting my first novel. I drank a pint of whiske and two six packs of beer each night while writing. I smoked chyeap cigars and typed and drank and listened to classical music on the radio until dawn. I set a goal of ten pages a night but I never knew until the next day how many pages I had written. I'd get up in the morning, vomit, then walk to the front room and look on the couch to see how many pages were there. I always exceeded my ten. Sometimes there were 17, 18, 23, 25 pages. Of course, the work of each night had to be cleaned up or thrown away. It took me twenty-one nights to write my first novel.
"Women, A Novel" by Charles Bukowski (1978)
Publisher: Ecco - Harper Collins [reprint 2007] ISBN: 9780061177590