“It began as a mistake.
It was Christmas season and I learned from the drunk up the hill,
who did the trick every Christmas, that they would hire damned
near anybody, and so I went and the next thing I knew I had this
leather sack on my back and was hiking around at my leisure.
What a job, I thought. Soft! They only gave you a block or 2
and if you managed to finish, the regular carrier would give you
another block to carry, or maybe you'd go back in and the soup
would give you another, but you just took your time and shoved
those Xmas cards in the slots.
I think it was my second day as a Christmas temp that this big
woman came out and walked around with me as I delivered letters.
What I mean by big was that her ass was big and her tits were
big and that she was big in all the right places. She seemed a bit
crazy but I kept looking at her body and I didn't care.
She talked and talked and talked. Then it came out. Her
husband was an officer on an island far away and she got lonely,
you know, and lived in this little house in back all by herself.
"What little house?" I asked.
She wrote the address on a piece of paper.
"I'm lonely too," I said, "I'll come by and we'll talk tonight."
I was shacked but the shack job was gone half the time, off
somewhere, and I was lonely all right. I was lonely for that big ass
standing beside me.”
—Charles Bukowski, Post Office
