Kid Stardust on the Porterhouse (Unabridged)

A short story from The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories

"They had led me down steps, 4 floors down and it had gotten colder and colder and the floors had been covered with a sheen of blood, green floors, green walls.

"I had explained my job - which was to push a button and then through this hole in the wall there was a noise like the crushing of fullbacks or elephants falling in hay, and here it came - something dead, a lot of it, bloody, and he showed me, you take it and throw it on the truck and then push the button and another one comes along, then he walked away, when he did I took off my smock, my tin hat, by boots (issued 3 size too small) and walked up the stairway and out of there....

"...I managed to open the door and get up inside the cab. It had a soft leather seat and the seat felt so good that I knew if I didn't fight it I would soon be asleep."

A brutal personal treatise on the need for work, even the most menial - and the need for dignity.

OBIE winner Will Patton (Remember the Titans, The Good Wife, Armageddon) recreates Bukowski in his visceral prime, along with every eye-popping character in his life, each adversary, lover, and stranger in a lost city.