He ought to check out Charles Bukowski. Back in 1982, it was the night before the Graduate Record Exam, something like the SAT but for grad school, and I was looking for something to do that wasn’t related to the test. Some friends told me that Bukowski was doing a reading on campus that evening. I got stuck doing something or other in the Chemistry Department at Emory in Atlanta (actually Decatur, right across the tracks from the CDC), looked at my watch, saw that it was 15 minutes until the reading ended. I had a choice – walk in and catch the last 10 minutes and maybe get some of the wine and cheese on offer after the talk – or say the hell with it and go home. So I figured, what the hell, why not, so I walked over and walked in late. He was finishing up, and then most of the audience went home, except for a bunch of English profs, me and a few friends, and Bukowski, who stayed to scarf up the wine and cheese. Well, that lasted for about 15 minutes, when Bukowski asked me “Where does a man get a real drink around here?” – he probably noticed my artless entrance. And of course, the answer was easy – “Jaggers, it’s right across the street” and so our group headed out, English profs and wine and cheese and literary theory just had no appeal for him – or us. A real drink was a boilermaker – a shot of whiskey chased by a glass of cold beer… It was 9 pm when we headed over, I figured on staying for an hour and going home, waking up in good shape to take the test. Yeah, right. I ordered a Jagger burger with cheese and fries, figuring that that would blunt the effect of the alcohol and if I’d left at 10 pm, it would have. He was a spellbinding conversationalist, the next time I looked at my watch it was 11 pm. I got up, told him I had to go, and why, and he said “Stick around, kid, don’t worry, you’ll do fine”. Turned out he knew a lot about Kansas City, especially the area around Union Station and the bars just up the hill, which I knew as well – and Kelly’s in Westport, which was in what used to be Jim Bridger’s old dry goods store – the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails started right outside the front door. Anyhow, we wound up closing the place down at two in the morning. I had had a memorable time – it’s 41 years on, and I remember it as if it were a movie. I made it home, set the alarm clock, holding on to the walls to slow down the spinning, woke up 15 minutes after the alarm went off, walked into the test still with the spins – 20 minutes late, and finished three hours later, stone cold sober, no hangover. Got the results back, Bukowski was right, I blew it away, averaged in the 95th percentile, good enough to get into MENSA – and grad school at the University of Florida… Check this out – https://bukowski.net/

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