Literary hangovers, brought to you by Bukowski

Location: Budapest, VII District
Date: February 25, 2011
Adventure #47

It is another gray, snowy day in Budapest, yet I am quite content indoors. I just discovered Massolit, a lovely book store and cafe in Budapest that serves as a glorious Art Deco time warp with Wifi. With a black and white marble checked floor supporting sturdy wooden furniture, over-sized chairs that could hold two of me, and Ella Fitzgerald's finest tunes playing - I feel I have found another home away from home. So now, I am enjoying a delicious brownie and cappuccino and pausing from work.
This is a popular venue for my literati friends, with whom I have done many performances recently, including a "Write Like Bukowski" contest at a local dive bar. For those who don't know him, Charles Bukowski was a poet and author who lived in California and developed kind of a cult-following thanks to his rough, truthful prose and his reputation as the "laureate of American low-life." Given that he was a misogynistic alcoholic with a gambling addiction, writing in his style was a leap outside my creative comfort zone, which is why I welcomed the challenge to release my gritty side.

For the competition, winners could win a bottle of whiskey or a ham on rye sandwich (which happens to be the name of one of Bukowski's novels) for doing the best impression of the curmudgeon or writing most like him. My fellow Bukos were impressive, ranging from the gruff, drunk, explicit and love struck - and even included a participant who had met Bukowski multiple times in California. Although I didn't win any prizes against my unruly competition, I earned a lot of laughs from pieces like this where I tapped into Bukowski's pessimistic spirit with this true story:

Halloween

I stepped in dog crap while swaggering home from the bars on Halloween -

a typical Budapest plague -

so I left my boot outside my front door to clean in the morning.

The next day my German, middle-aged neighbor asked if I got any treats in my shoe,

thinking American Halloween is like St. Nicolas Day,

and I left my boot outside in hopes it would be filled with chocolate

for being such a good girl.

All I could say was

sometimes you get a treat,

but most the time you get tricks.

The next morning after my show, I smelled like I had just stepped out of an airport smoking lounge - even my poetry paper reeked of cigarettes - and my head hurt from drinking too much cheap beer. I think my poetic hangover was exactly what Bukowski would have wanted as a tribute.