You know, I was just looking at some old pay stubs, and it turns out that I worked at LACMA with Bukowski's father too. I was the Airflow Design Specialist. I activated a complex and sophisticated battery of electric fans when the temperature got too hot. And I had to monitor the fans too, throughout the day.
Bukowski Sr. handed out pamphlets, as I recall, and mopped up puke and urine on the days the kids came from the schools in the surrounding neighborhoods. He would sing as he mopped, a song that said he wrote himself. He always sang it in a very bad Irish accent. Went something like, "Cry me a moppy rag o' shame/bag me up like a dime store trollop/take me out to the ballgame/give me ass a wallop!" And he would get to the last line and laugh and laugh and we would all stare at him.
I remember taking Bukowski Sr. out for a beer one night after work, and he started crying. I hit him in the face with a beer mug and told him to stop acting like a dame, and he snapped out of it. Then when I turned my back on him, he hit me over the head with a flashlight and kicked my knees from the side to take me down. As he fell on top of me, I reached for the legs of a bar stool and managed to bring it down hard, across his back. He yelped, and I took the opportunity to jump up and kick him repeatedly in the neck. We went back and forth like that for a few minutes, then I stopped because I was thirsty, and I said, "Bukowski, I'm going to the bar for a drink. Don't follow me and don't try to stop me." And he didn't.
The next day at the museum he showed up wearing ladies sunglasses and white tape across his nose. I laughed at him and he choked back a tear and said, "Leave me alone, I'm an artist."
Well I felt so sorry for the poor schmuck that I left him alone. The next day I saw him drive by the museum in a milk truck. He still had the ladies sunglasses on, and three cats sat in the open door, licking the air.
Don't know what to make of that, but that's how it happened, and I will swear out an affidavit maintaining it is so.