Pink Elephant Liquor on N. Western Ave. is where Bukowski used to get his booze when he lived in East Hollywood. To my mind, it is the only pink liquor store in L.A., although I could be wrong. Here the tour takes a “beer break,” and a long line wraps around the store as we all get something to keep us going. This writer chooses a 40 oz. of Heineken. Gulping it under the burning L.A. sun in a dirty parking lot feels like redemption, ice-cold and smooth as sin. Then, in a moment that dances by like a butterfly, a title comes to me: “Stare Into the Sun (Until it Makes Sense).” I don’t know what it means or what to use it for, but it comes to me and stays with me. Stare Into the Sun (Until it Makes Sense).

The Royal Palms, on South Westlake Avenue, is where Bukowski lived briefly with one of his main muses, Jane Cooney Baker. Their tumultuous and passionate relationship was depicted in the 1987 film Barfly. As with any other place he stayed, Bukowski wrote, drank, fought and fucked here until being evicted for the millionth time. Since his eviction—and not without a heavy dose of irony—the Royal Palms has become a rehabilitation clinic for alcoholics and drugs addicts. Upon entering the lobby, we’re overcome with strange looks from men who have all owned real-estate on Rock-Bottom at some point in their lives. Among them, possibly, our next brilliant poet?

Four hours after we departed, the tour drops us back off at Philippe’s. This is a terrible way to simplify the tour, filled with so much wit and insight into not only Bukowski, but lost parts of Los Angeles. I come to learn on a visceral level just how superficial the city-planners are. A good 90% of Bukowski’s L.A. has been demolished and turned into parking lots or bee-hive apartment buildings. With no regard for its own history, L.A. has managed to eat itself alive decade after decade. Now, only a few Bukowski-era structures stand—lone survivors of an endless (and somehow forgotten) war.

For all intents and purposes, the story should end here. But it can’t end here. Not yet. The tour didn’t have time to visit Musso and Frank’s on Hollywood Blvd, one of Bukowski’s favorite restaurants / watering holes when he could afford it. His favorite bartender, Ruben, still serves up cocktails behind the counter. I am told he doesn’t mind sharing a story or two about one of his more famous customers.

It becomes clear to me, as I drive through the madness of Hollywood Blvd. on a Saturday night, that when Disney takes over Iraq, it will look just like this: Hot, dirty, crowded, police and fire engines flashing, music blaring, neon buzzing – Third World Glamour.

In the middle of this chaos, sits Musso & Frank’s. Open since 1919, you can feel every second of the establishment’s ninety years in business. I just know that when the last light has been turned off and the door is locked tight, that the ghosts of hundreds of pimps, prostitutes, gangsters, movie stars, and wannabes haunt the booths, winding stairs and narrow halls of the building. It must be like a spirit orgy after-hours, and Bukowski just might be in the middle of it all, humping away in the ethereal glow of swirling souls.

Ruben is a robust Mexican with graying hair and the trademark red jacket with a black tie. The vast dining room is filled with mostly older clientele, and I saddle up at the spacious bar, wondering if Bukowski ever sat on this stool. I introduce myself to Ruben, explaining my assignment, and he jovially asks me what I’ll have to drink.

“What would Bukowski have?”

“Scotch on the rocks, or vodka martinis,” Ruben says with his strong accent. “Then he would switch to sweet wines.”

Feeling classy in old Hollywood, I order a vodka martini with extra olives. One can never have too many olives. As Ruben makes it, I ask about his story.

“I jumped the border into New Mexico when I was sixteen (Ruben has long-since become a naturalized citizen). I wandered for fours days alone without anything. Random people took pity and fed me bread and water. I ate watermelons from fields. Eventually I ended up in Los Angeles. There were jobs back in those days. Not like today. You could go down the street and work here, work there. I have been working here since 1967.”

Ruben slides my martini over, and it’s impeccable. I sip it, relishing each playful zing, and ask him what his first impressions of Bukowski were.

“I asked him what he did and he asked me what I thought he did. I didn’t know. But I told him, ‘You’re always drunk, with beautiful women, you eat steaks and pay with cash. So you must be a pimp.’ He didn’t like that. He got very pissed off about that.”

Over the years Ruben and “Hank” became friends, and it was not uncommon for Ruben to drive him home when he got too drunk to drive. “He would pass out as soon as we got in my car, but I never had to carry him. He would walk on his own. He was a very strong man.”

Next to the women in his life, Bukowski’s bartender is the person who would have known him best. After all, he didn’t go to churches, only bars, so Ruben might as well have been Bukowski’s priest. I ask Ruben about the man as he remembers him.

“Did you ever hear his laugh? He didn’t laugh from here (his mouth) he laughed from here (his belly). A loud, deep laugh. Very rare.” Ruben paused from wiping a glass with a rag. “I saw him when he was broke, and I saw him when he was rich. Always the same. Money never changed him. I respected him for that.”

Then Ruben looks elsewhere, momentarily escaping back to a better time: “There will never be another like him.”

This story ends where Bukowski’s did: The Green Hills Memorial Park cemetery in San Pedro, California. The Sunday traffic moves with me down the 405 to the 110. Strange to think Bukowski’s bones are just forty minutes south of where I do my drinking and writing. A flower shop greets me as I pull into the grounds. Feeling sentimental, I decide I will place flowers on one of my hero’s graves.

If you ever come to this place for a non-tragic reason, you will be lucky to find Carol behind the counter—a youthful-looking Asian woman with a heart of gold. She helps me choose a simple arrangement and when I don’t have the cash to pay for it (no cards accepted) she’s kind enough to give them to me for free. Such generosity is unheard of in 2009, so I retrieve the latest copy of FORTH Magazine from my car and humbly offer it to her. She accepts it graciously and thanks me for giving her something to read during her long and lonely hours tending life in a place of death.

Henry Charles Bukowski Jr. (Hank) is forever nestled in the rolling green hills of the Ocean View section of the cemetery. With a highlighted map from Carol, I traverse the grounds, walking past names and lives I will never know. His grave is flat and simple, unlike the man buried therein. A simple illustration of a generic boxer with his fists raised in battle evokes the spirit of the late, great writer. “Don’t try” are Bukowski’s final words to the world, and the meaning is open to interpretation.

“So we finally meet,” I tell him.

I place the flowers in the holder and regard a postcard from Kentucky with a single cigarette being held down by a horseshoe—a gift from admirers. Who knows what strangers will one day stand over our graves? I kneel down and gently pat the headstone with affection, musing over Bukowski’s last laugh: “Don’t try,” he says. No matter how old, how ugly, drunk, broke, lost, or loveless, “Don’t try.” Do. Do it with everything you’ve got.

Stare into the sun until it makes sense.