The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories

Are there good governments and bad governments? No, there are only bad governments and worse governments.

Even the stove and the refrigerator looked human, I mean good human - they seemed to have arms and voices and they said, hang around, kid, it's good here, it can be very good here.

She had chosen me and it was as simple as that.

I got my hands under the breasts, lifted them. Tons of meat. Meat without mouth or eye. MEAT MEAT MEAT. i slammed it into my mouth and flew into heaven.

I went into the crapper and took myself a beautiful beershit. Then I went to bed, jacked off, and slept.

Two bulls fighting for the cow. And a bony one at that. But in America the loser oftentimes got the cow. Mother instinct? Better wallet? Longer dick? God knows what.…

Oh, you’ve got a sweet voice, baby, such a sad sad sweet voice, I’d like to fuck you, I thought.

I bought two tall six-packs of Schlitz and went back to my place and drank down the requiem.

But I gave the girl my address and phone number, thinking we might make it on the springs. (Harriet, you never arrived.)

But it’s all the little people, Buk, the twenty-five-buck-a-week guys who gave up everything to keep the thing going. The guys with cardboard in their shoes. The guys who slept on the floor.

They kept chirping and flipping and fingering their mental assholes.

It was con; my mind was blank; I only wanted a halfpint of Grandad and six or seven tall cool beers . . .

At lunchtime (10:24 p.m.) I went out and bought the L.A. Times.

So I drank every night after work, alone, up at my place and I had enough left for a day at the track on Saturday, and life was simple and without too much pain. Maybe without too much reason, but getting away from pain was reasonable enough.

...there comes a time in each man's life when he must choose to stand or run. I choose to stand.