DIARY 1105 5/13/70
JONES BEACH
Park about 10:15, and the air is still cool so I decide not to take my shoes off and to wear my jacket, so John and I take off across the sand, he with his knapsack slung over his shoulders, I with the water jug. The sky is still hazy from the fumes from the city, and the water hasn't the energy to topple the tops of the waves, so the swells run slowly in to shore and weakly dump their little loads of foam upon the beach. The beach is dotted with fishermen, and the question "Catch anything yet?" is answered by a drawling "No, and to tell you the truth, I really don't expect to catch anything."
There are phallic metal tubes in the sand to hold the poles when the fisherman chooses to rest, immobile, in his folding chair and leave the fishing entirely up to God. In front of us, looking back constantly, are a pair of gay guys, carrying supplies for a week, the one on the left older, balding, yet still quite virile, the other younger one quite sexy with a swinging set of hips that become more sexy when he takes his jacket off and slings it over his seaward shoulder.
John remarks about the permanent fixture of the set of tires on the far beach, and it seems to mark the start of the gay section, about twenty minutes' walk from the parking lot. I'm getting tired of the pace, and both John and I continue to stride out as if fearing to indicate to the other that we're getting tired of walking in the soft dry or hard wet sand.
The two ahead of us turn off, looking back still, and John resolutely strides ahead. The beach ahead is almost empty except for almost invisible figures further up the beach, and he says that the city beaches start soon, indicating that wandering forever is not possible. Finally he turns up onto the sand, heading toward a stack of wood plants at the crest of a small rise, and we find a somewhat disheveled shelter, knee-high, for two people to lay in the nude and take in the sun.
He's discouraged about the ramshackle quality of the area, but we set our things down and proceed to tidy up the four stacks of wood that make up the periphery of the area, uncovering graphic line-drawings of boys getting fucked and mouths sucking cocks, all with excited drops of liquid portrayed shooting from appropriate orifices. There's a tension to the balls tight against the cock that is exciting, and we figure the place gains a certain charm by these "wall hangings."
We clean the little bits out of the center and John puts down his bedspread that had kept the sun from morning windows earlier, and we begin to undress. He gets out the baby oil, "for protection from the sun," and commands me to lie down and get oiled. I'm feeling rather self-conscious, since I haven't had a chance to scout out the neighborhood, have no idea who's passing by, and I don't even feel particularly sexy, but again he commands that I lie down, and I do so, spreading myself under the sun and his ministering hands, and find that as soon as a thin coat of oil is applied to my chest and stomach, the cock must be oiled, and oiled, and re-oiled. With a nervous grin, still not erect, I raise my head to see what he's doing. "Lie down," he commands in his best sadistic voice, and I smile weakly and drop my head back on the crunching sand under the bedspread.
With implacable fingers he kneads my cock, striving to bring it erect, and though I feel the sensations as pleasant and want them to continue, I still don't get hard, and I begin to sense that he wants to bring me to orgasm, so I begin writhing back and forth on the spread, reaching for his ever-hard cock, and he begins to go down on me, ignoring the oily taste in his mouth, and I squirm around into a sitting position, desperate for a diversionary action, and see a bathing-suited fellow passing, looking, not ten feet from us.
"I had the feeling we were being watched, and I was right." But John didn't accept my excuse for nervousness and threw me back down onto the coverlet. I finally couldn't stand his working over me, so I grabbed myself and began pumping away at my limp cock, and he stooped above me, urging me on, and I whacked away, trying to forget those dozens of people whom I pictured passing, trying to pinpoint my concentration on the welling feeling of orgasm in my groin, sweating under the sun, feeling the grains of sand being ground into my cock, leaving go for a moment and grasping it further from the head, nearer the base, my ass rising off the covers to squeeze all my energies into my prostate and out my cock.
John began breathing harder, dribbling oil over my chest and pinching my nipples, and I strained toward the orgasm, gasping from lack of breath, praying for that long final ascent from which there is no turning back without spewing semen, holding my breath in tension, and finally the blessed feeling tingled the outlying areas of my groin, gathered into a tighter circle, and I could relax, gasping, convulsively gripping my limp dick, and as I shot John cried out "Ah" and slapped my quivering ass and lowered himself to my body to feel the quivers and spasms of orgasm. Sucking air into my lungs, tensing and relaxing my legs, I felt the tension flow over my stomach and engulf my whole body, and then John's cock was in my mouth, oil and all, and I was wrestling him onto his back on the covers, feeling the sand between my moist fingers with disgust, wiping them on my clean back and legs just to get rid of the sand, and skinned his cock back and forth, back and forth, while he in turn strained under me for his climax. Quickly, he moaned louder, his cock expanded to full, tensing under the frayed coating of skin, and he collapsed around his navel, shooting warm semen into my mouth, and the new smoothness and lubrication of his flesh made me ease my motions, drawing out his vitality as he gasped quietly and more quietly, pulsing at the base of his cock, then utterly relaxing with his flaccid penis still being rolled around in my oily mouth.
After a few quiet moments of lying together, feeling pulses in hands and chests and cocks, we moved apart, smiling and kissing, and I asked how many people had looked in on us. "Oh, about half a dozen," he replied brightly. "One of them was cute, I thought he might join in, but he went away."
"Did they show that they enjoyed it---were excited by it?"
"Oh, yes," he said smiling down joyfully at me with his ol' Granny look of pleasure. "I enjoyed it too."
I grunted with half pleasure, half exhaustion, and we made the place somewhat neater and I surveyed the neighborhood. A blond in sunglasses and sexy blue jeans wandered past, seemingly disappointed that we'd finished, and climbed the rise next to us to find his own place under the sun.
John and I lay quietly for about half an hour, and then I felt that I had enough sun for awhile and was curious to see what else was going on. "Want to go for a walk?" OK, he said, and we put on our trunks and began dune hopping. People nearby weren't terribly attractive, and we passed the first group of reeds and saw an older blond head poking up from a wooden fortress at the crest of the hill. "Want to go up there?" asked John, "It's hard to find. Here, let me show you how to get there."
He led the way past the crest, then into the reeds and around the back, up and down a small depression and up the final few feet into the thickest part of the weeds, where there was a smaller cleared space surrounded with the driftwood, and I peered past John to see the tanned back of a 40-ish man with thinning blond hair, and craned further to see that he was naked, twisted around his waist so that we could see his relaxed cock, darker than his tanned skin, and he chatted with John in a strangely familiar way and I understood later that John had met him before out here. We smelled the broken candles of pine shoots, then went back down the path since I showed no interest in even talking with him.
Up and down the slopes we went, the sand warm under our feet, mixed with broken reeds and small sticks that sometimes caused the least bit of discomfort. There were two fat figures gathered around a knee-high playroom at the base of the slope, and John indicated that he knew the fellow sitting in the pen who had attracted him. "He was in our orgy club, I think he's a radio announcer," and I looked with pleasure at the square head with thick dark curly hair and large sexy mustache, and looked further down to broad dark shoulders sloping to large nicely shaped pectorals, narrowing to a cute hairy waist, and the rest was lost behind his horizontal palisade wall. We moved closer and he looked in our direction and smiled "Hi," and I returned it with enthusiasm, though the two red-skinned cherubs in too-brief suits looked at us as interlopers.
As I moved closer, I was disappointed to see that his legs were arranged so that his cock fell into their junction, so I could only see a bushy of curly pubic hair, the slightest suggestion of a pink piece of flesh lying within, and then the thick muscles of his thighs and calves completed the pleasant body. He didn't seem disposed to rise and greet us, as I half-wished he would, so we continued onward.
We passed fort after fort, woods after woods, but for the most part the clientele was either too young and new for interest, or too old and jaded for sexuality, and after about a half-hour we turned back, re-seeing all the old faces and a few new ones, and got back to where we started. John said he wanted to rest, and I decided, feeling vaguely interested, that I wanted to see what was happening in the woods, so I left him and wandered into the cool, pine-carpeted spaces under the bushes. Shadowed shapes moved back and forth and I saw the aging blond with the baggies had stripped to a briefer bikini, showing a body going to flesh, but his older companion was still unattractively "made-up" looking with his Joan Crawford eyebrows under a fringe of gray hair over too-large eyes that looked ringed with cosmetic black, so I avoided their area. Old men wandered through the area, and then I saw the thrusting ass of an old blond with trunks folded down below her ass, shoving her cock into the bristly jaws of someone older than she, and I turned away, vaguely disgusted.
I was just about to leave, convinced there was nothing I wanted, when a chunky body with nice bodily hair contours and tight green trunks came into the undergrowth and looked toward me. The face was rather tight and pushed-in looking, but the full beard and bushy mustache framed a mouth that was pouty and kissy, and the eyes were rather nice under hair that was even more full and curly than John's was. We exchanged glances and made to move together out of the mainstream of passersby, but they stuck to us, and after passing back and forth a few times, he stood alone to one side of the path, and I came up close and ran an appreciative hand along his shapely side and along the front of his packed trunks.
He looked at me shortly with a small smile, then put out both hands to my trunks, peeled them down, and took my soft cock into his mouth. I enjoyed looking down on the bobbing top of his curly hair, enjoying the sight of curly eyelashes and straight nose over brush of mustache, drawing back and plunging down, with my cock vanishing into his red-lipped mouth. I ran my hands over his shoulders, enjoying their heavy musculature and extending and contracting motions, and felt myself grow gently hard under his insistent sucking. He wrapped his firm hands around my thighs and investigated my ass, feeling into the crack and resting one hand there, serving as a sort of pedestal on which I sat, relaxing into his expert sucking.
But though it felt good, I felt very self-conscious and sensed that I was softer than I had been, and used the excuse of people passing by and watching to pull him up and say "It sure is crowded here" as an excuse for my lack of excitement. He smiled at me and allowed me to caress his body more fully, and then people moved away and I reached down to fondle his large-headed soft cock in his tight trunks. To help me, he reached down to undo the drawstrings, and I in my turn took down his shorts and tongued his soft cock into my drawing mouth. His thighs were marvelously thick and solid under my caress, and his ass was full and rounded and silken soft. He began getting harder at one point, and I enjoyed the jolts his head made in the back of my mouth, enlarging toward my throat, and I fondled the sack of his testicles as they tightened against his crotch, and he began swaying back and forth, enjoying my action. I continued for some length of time, and then it seemed that he, too, began to get softer, and I resorted to my hand when my jaws began to ache, and finally he pulled me to my feet with a deprecatory laugh, saying "We seem to be pretty much the same."
That idea struck me forcefully and I figured if we WERE the same, I could do what I really wanted to do, trusting to his gentle reaction, and caressed his body fully, dropped my lips into his neck, and then circled around to kiss him more fully on the mouth. His lips parted slightly with infinite tenderness and I felt full cushions of lips and mustache skillfully cupping my lips and tongue, and we kissed long and nicely, while we both manipulated each other's cocks.
When the kissing turned more explicitly sexual, he and I both seemed to come up, and I went down on him for another session while he seemed straining toward an orgasm, and then I saw his left hand motion toward someone, and I saw a thick upright cock coming out of my right vision, and his hand began fondling it, and on the left I saw, with some degree of surprise, a sharply defined cock from which all traces of pubic hair had been shaved. The cock on the right had red trunks down around the knees, and the hand went back and forth faster and faster, and the cock in my mouth began to grow in appreciation, and suddenly there was a jet, and another, and again, of creamy fluid squirting from the tip of that cock against my friend's leg, dripping down over his green trunks, and that figure moved away while the other shot into space, and I think part of it even dribbled down my back.
Then my friend bent over yet another cock that appeared, and he began sucking it, but when that cock came (belonging to the terribly thin one in yellow, whose whole body seemed to weigh less than his long meaty cock), he went soft again, and I, tired and sore of knee from kneeling on that sharp bed of pine needles, stood back up and wiped some of the come from his muscular thigh to transfer onto his cock. He did the same, and we both began to squirm toward orgasm, feeling each other grow hard in our hands, and I could wait no longer and went down on him again, and he reached up to get some sort of support from the pine branches around us, and went up on tiptoes, thighs straining, ass moving voluptuously under my guiding hand, and he groaned into orgasm while I sucked away, sucked away the fluid that spurted from his hard cock, and I sucked and eased and caressed it for a long time after he was finished, feeling the last tremors jerking his thick thighs up and down, feeling the tension in his enormous calves, running my hands up to feel his nice body hair and upstanding nipples, and then I stood and we kissed deeply, and he said I had a fabulous touch.
He tried going down on me again, and I truly wanted to give myself to him, but again people gathered around, and the only one I wanted to come more closely, a short compact bodybuilder in yellow trunks with a beautiful torso under a yellow-striped undershirt, moved quickly out of the woods. I fantasized having two cocks in my hand, fingering them while they came and I came and my friend got a hot mouthful of orgasm, but there was no one around that I enjoyed looking at, so I went down again and he seemed working too hard, so I brought him up with apologies, saying that I really didn't think it would work. He asked where I lived, and he said he lived in Jersey, but he came into the city a lot, and if I lived alone he'd look me up. I spelled my last name and he smiled and said HIS name was something like Michaelievitch, also Polish, and he asked me if I spoke Polish, and I said no, only a few choice curse words whose meanings I didn't know.
So we assured each other we'd get in touch again and I saw John standing up and waving at me. I went out a side exit and our paths crossed again, but John didn't see him, and wanted to see what he was like. We lay about a bit again, he reading a bit of "Art of Time," and we drank some of the tepid tasteless water from the jug, and I lay around a bit in the nude soaking up the sun.
I looked with pleasure on the Lufthansa guy laying in the sun near us, and John asked him up for a massage and did him very nicely, volunteering only the information that he had a "solid ass." I went down to the water to wade in the surf for a bit until my ankles got numb, and followed the gymnast down the beach until he vanished, coming again across the vaguely nice fellow in yellow whom I exchanged glances and hi's with before. Debated going up to the announcer, who was preening himself in blue bathing trunks while talking with someone else, but there were "lover's handles" on either side of his waist that detracted from his attractiveness when he was standing. The muscle builder settled down next to us, and then John went into the woods, to return quickly to say there was nothing doing in there. A bit later the kid in khaki shorts came past, and I saw from his strange posture and his shifty eyes that I didn't want him, but John did, so a strange game began.
"I'll go back into the woods," I said, "and you can have him up here." "OK," said John, smiling his smile, and I went nonchalantly down the path to the woods, but out of the corner of my eye realized that the kid was following me. I turned back to see John come from his shelter to wave me back, and then he went back. The kid kept looking at me, and I rather explicitly pointed to him, then waved to the shelter, and he misinterpreted me, smiled, and began walking toward me. I shook my head and he came up to me with a puzzled look. "No, no," I said as he reached my side. "You didn't understand. You were supposed to go into the shelter at the top of the hill."
He looked around and asked "But isn't it dangerous?"
"Don't worry about it," I said with an easy smile, "my friend is an expert, you'll be perfectly safe with him." And with that he turned and walked back up the hill.
I went back toward the bushes and saw the kid in black I'd seen before coming from the bushes and walking to the water to fill a plastic container, and I figured to follow him. He was lost for a bit in the turning bodies in the shadows, but then I saw him at the corner near the front and went toward him. He, looking at me, retreated backwards, looking shortly back to see where he was going, and sat down on a hump just at the edge of the trees. We began a ridiculous conversation about Sanctuary, living in the city, the weather, his car, his friends, and his body, and I insisted he take off his shirt.
"Man, if I smoke any more pot, I'll gain too much weight." He didn't look overweight, and I said so, and then wanted to know what he had inside the trousers, that were black corduroy tightly stretched across his crotch with the new-style visible white bottoms for contrast. "Do you have a place to go?" he inquired, squinting down the path at the passersby. "This is the only place there is," I said with some exasperation. "I know just what you mean, but don't worry, it's perfectly safe."
"Let's try over here," and he took off toward the highway, where I thought the cover would be too thick but close to the road was a dense cove of branches, really invisible from the passing cars, and with my back to the onlookers, vaguely protected. So he sat and lay down under my eyes, and I raised his shirt to see a cylindrical featureless body stretching up to uninteresting breasts, and then tackled the buttons to get down to the shorts, that he raised up off the pine needles so I could slip them off. A nice length of floppy cock lay across one leg, and without another word I slipped it into my mouth and began sucking.
He must have oiled himself before, since my spit quickly mixed with something else to form a milky emulsion around his cock hairs, and he got hard very quickly, grew to maximum hardness, and without a sign of any sort, had an orgasm that I first began to comprehend when I saw tiny blobs of white being torn from my mouth and landing on his tanned belly as I continued bobbing back and forth on his softening cock. I wasn't sure whether he'd come or not, and he raised up on his elbows and said, "They're all watching."
I tried squirming around for a view, but it was difficult as I didn't want to take his cock from my mouth. "I came already," he said, as if making sure, and it was what I needed. I stroked the softening cock a few more times, then laid it longly across his stomach, saying, "I know, but I thought you might want to come a second time." "Sometimes I do," he laughed, "but only after a couple of minutes." Then he fastened himself together, and again began talking about his car and his friend's car, and how he "didn't think it would make it," and insured he knew where I was going to be, and we both left the woods. John wasn't there, and then I saw him waving from the woods, and told me that the khaki shorts had been very nervous and came quickly without really lying down, and then had left in some panic.
Earlier in our walk down the sands, there was one fellow, not really too bad looking, stretched out completely in the nude, squinting up at us into the sun, with a semi-erection waving up toward the sky. John was about to do him when the Marine helicopter came chopping down the beach again, the guy sat up with one knee raised against the copter's binoculars' approach, and dropped a towel across his crotch, and then John lost interest. Just before we left, a cutie in brown like Encolpius from Satyricon lay down nearby, looking at us, but he didn't show any other interest.
So we walked back about 2:30, gazing in admiration at a lovely naturally hairy footballer's type body running in effortless ease near us, and looked at the somersaulting brown-suited guy and the large-chested open-shirted doll with his girl friends, and, vaguely burned, we left at 3PM.
DIARY 1157 6/19/70
POT AT SOUND BEACH
After the pipe burns down about halfway, the smoke gets much hotter and stronger, and I cough and choke and again get hung up in the asphyxiation syndrome. John suggests we go out on the roof, and I go through a dozen changes before deciding it's OK to do that, so we dress warmly, I put on my jacket, and we're onto the porch roof, wrapping the heavy canvas folds around our heads and bodies. I stare across the street at the evergreens with the light filtering through it, listening to the thunder, watching the sky lit with distant lightning, waiting for the storm to break in fury around us, wondering what form this trip will take: and then the leaves gently reveal themselves to have faces concealed in them! At first there's only a fierce lion's face staring straight out at me, but then it seems to change into a strongly-chinned woman's face, and that switches into a crouching lion much like the sphinx. I think to tell John to look at the head, but then I try as objectively as I can to think how I would describe the exact clump of leaves that formed the head, and found there was no focal point from which to stare: the head was undoubtedly there as far as I could see, but there was nothing terribly unique about any of the leaf formations that would make it undeniably a lion's head if I would describe it or point it out to John. So this is the form it would take, since I don't have music to go along with it. And the bright spaces in the leaves rather blur in my vision, so that it looks like each light spot is actually an eye, looking down to the side with a venomous yellow rim around it. The vision is so slight, but at the same time so distinct, that I finally feel that I'm seeing a visual hallucination. I continue to swim through the evening, and again get hung up on my breathing, contemplating falling to the floor in fatigue, but it's quite wet, and then my elbows are getting wet from being placed on the dripping railing. I inhale less and less frequently, and find my head bobbing forward as I relax completely, and then I feel dizzy and slightly nauseous and again go through the possibilities: I could shit right there, piss right there, throw up right there---and then I get hung up on the word THREW, as in "Threw up" from the idea that death could come so quickly in unpleasantly sudden ways, and I hear the water trickling down through the drain pipe beside my head, and think of the water going THROUGH the pipe, and then there's an electric wire, and I could see the electricity contacting the water and electrocuting me, and think of the electricity going THROUGH the wire (and I didn't even think for an instant about "Sesame Street"), and then of semen coursing THROUGH the cock, and think of "He THREW a ball," and through being finished, and threw pronounced like threu, for a thew or muscle, and I take a detour into muscles and figure that my musculature could be anything, John's could be anything, and it wouldn't make any difference! I again think of the LSD session, since I'd been writing about it just today, and the freshness of the air and the coolness of the rain and the sweetness of the smell from the fuzzy white tree below, and the drunk from the sherry and the high from the pot, and again I feel that the darkness of the sky will be ripped back and I'll SEE the light that lies in back of everything. Again I course through the possibilities: I could be happy or I could be unhappy, so I might as well choose to be happy. There is a slightly sobering moment as I think, "Well, if it's only THAT that makes me happy, it's a rather tenuous thing, and maybe this whole trip IS a bum trip, after all, and I think that there's still unplumbed areas of pessimism that I can get into. I continue thinking about THROUGH an intersection, and I just passed a stop sign, going where I shouldn't go, and I could just as well die out here on the terrace, but there are still lots of things that I'd like to do, so I'd rather not die, even though I HAVE done quite a bit of things. I entreat John's presence, but he's not as good a talisman as Bob, and I think of Bob again as being a somewhat ideal partner into the darker sides of pot, someone whom I can always trust to be right there with me, no matter where or how far out I may actually be. Really begin to feel dizzy standing up, and I figure I can vomit, but I should be in bed first. Say this to John, and then I get inside to find I have to piss, and decide lengthily that it's OK, piss for ages, expecting the non-working john to regurgitate some secrets for my blasting of the mind, though, again, I have the feeling that nothing SURPRISING would happen except my actual death, and since I wouldn't be around to be surprised about it, I really don't have to worry about it. Then I wash my teeth with John's brush, aware that this all seems to be taking a very long time, and then walk up the stairs to the ultimate realization that this, really, is the stairway that goes on forever, and I feel myself climbing each step, and can hear John behind me, so I feel I must hurry, but I know he'll understand, so I really don't have to. Get to the top, and he's faked out by my slowness, and he fumbles for the lamp, and I know enough to say, "Don't think I need it, I'm just very spaced out." He seems quite concerned about me, and when I get into the brightly lit green bedroom, there's so little there that I find it hard to evoke any sense of "This is all rooms" as I had a very easy time doing downstairs, since it was ACTUALLY raining and it was ACTUALLY a summer cottage, and it DID smell good. I told John again I was spaced out, and undressed meticulously, like being drunk, trying to be certain I do nothing silly, and then fall into bed, feeling very dizzy and very tired all at once. John's all over me kissing and caressing, and I figure he wants me to come, and again I get hung into the "life lived between two orgasms" syndrome, and feel that my whole BODY is a cock that could come, but I still have to get excited, and I marvel about the link of holding my breath to hasten the "petit mort" or orgasm, and holding my breath to actually die. After I come, I stop breathing, and John, lying on my chest, I sense to be uptight, and fantasize mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and he actually DOES kiss me to draw air in and out of my mouth, and I know my heart still beats, but I move my hands and sigh every so often to let him know I'm still aware of him. Fall asleep still quite high, floating off.
DIARY 1188 6/30/70
WHERE AM I NOW?
First of all, I'm drunk, with a frequency that I find disquieting. Avi dropped over and there just wasn't anything else to do but offer him a drink of a frozen daiquiri, and then we listened to new records until 3 and played chess almost until 4, my losing a fool's first game, winning a second, and he won the third, and left, leaving me with my feelings during the game.
My feelings during the game, sitting in the humidity, smelling myself, knowing I have to call Roger about the pig-fest, knowing I have to shower and get ready for making dinner, knowing I should be working on diary pages or letters, thinking "But I'm sitting here playing a GAME, and what difference does it make whether I win or lose. But the game is the game of LIVING, and have I already made the decision that it doesn't matter if I win or lose?" But is there anything like winning and losing when it comes to life? No, that's why life ISN'T a game, because there isn't anything to win except personal happiness (which no one can define but the individual) and nothing to lose except that.
I was happy when Avi came over, because he was a good occasion around which to waste time, but listening to the music, drinking the drink, refraining from offering him the pipe of pot (though he remarked about it and did everything but ask to smoke it), I knew that we would never be closer in the future than we have been in the past, and I found myself wondering "Then why spend the time with him at all." But the answer is evident: I'm "saving" him for the time that I'll need someone to pass the time with chess or Monopoly or cards, and at that time he'll come in very handy, very usefully, and I'll be glad I kept in touch with him. It's terrible, but that's a fact, isn't it.
The music is going on in the background, and now I'm reminded that I should be calling Marty to tell him about the pig-fest and about the "Comic Mozart" album, but I did call him and he wasn't home. Maybe he was screwing the babysitter. How awful I feel, and yet that's just across the borderline from feeling good. How often in the past few days I've sort of stopped (on the Promenade, at John's, at Sergio's, at Art and Bob's, in Central Park's Gay-In, here, even at Christopher's End, even at the Golden Bat) and asked myself "Am I happy?" and like the bubble that breaks when it lands on the scale to be weighed, the happiness that I had been feeling vanished with a tiny sprinkle in the face, and I'm left with what I am.
And what am I? I'm the product of my past, which I try to deny, determined by my habits and movements and learned ways of thinking, which I don't like to believe, and now it seems genuinely true that everything is predetermined: I act the way I act because I was brought up the way I was brought up, and nothing smacks of free will, everything is determined. At this point the fabled "What difference does it make?" comes up, and I can't think of the difference it would make: my life IS my life whether someone else or myself determines it, there's no changing the fact that I'm not leading someone ELSE'S life.
Now this typing has done for me what meditation used to do for me, or what reading a couple chapters of a book used to do for me: it's made me impatient to get down to something important: all the things I should be doing besides what I'm doing are crowding into my mind, and I feel compelled to stop this and start with that. So that's what I should always do: sit down and type "Where am I now?" and that will show me where I am (at this point, disgusted because I have so much to do, and I'm really not doing any of it, and now I WANT to do it, which this typing has led me into), and what I really want to do.
The only trouble is, I should come to that realization closer to the bottom of the page, because I'm still disciplined enough to determine to finish off the page, no matter what I'm talking about, and now I'm just about there, so I can wash dishes, call Marty, see about taking a shower, and otherwise get ready for the last ballet performance tonight.
DIARY 1191 7/6/70
LET IT COME
Never before have I so deliberately sat down at the typewriter with the intention of it acting as a catalyst for action.
As background: I typed the last "Where am I now?" on Tuesday, June 30, and either late Tuesday or early Wednesday I had some additional thoughts for it---it must have been Wednesday or even Thursday, since I didn't want to add it under the same day, and I didn't want two "Where am I now?" sections to come sequentially. The additional thoughts were "I could be schizo, yes I could, if I chose. I could be committed, but do I want to be?" This was an extension of the paranoia and "They'll take me to the hospital" fears of my trip in Marrakech. (Yes, it was sometime during this that I was typing my letter to Lisa.) Then I had another thought: "Suicides are committed by the PROUD, they think they will be 'permitted' to fly, or come back from death." (Yes, it was sometime during this that I was typing my letter to Elaine.)
So I wrote those two thoughts on a note, letting it remain for the next time I typed a "Where am I now?" somewhat after additional diary pages.
Then something happened. I forget what. I seem to recall coming back from a telephone call (but I can't remember if it was a direct product of the telephone call, if the call only prompted my memory, or if it was independent of the telephone call), and I wanted to make a notation in my calendar---but I was in a hurry and the calendar was buried somewhere in a stack on my desk (so it must have been before Thursday afternoon, because then I had my desktop in order). So I took that note, which I knew I would use, and added, in parentheses, something that looks like "SMASH TRASH CALL---Last week of July?" That "CALL" is actually in small letters, and could be call, coll, or cold---or cald.
Could "coll" be short for collection? Was I just writing so fast that I wanted to leave out the "S" and started with smah, rather than smash, and then corrected it by writing over the H with an S? Did I really intend to write "Last week of June" and get the months mixed up?
I thought about this on Thursday, when I started on the catching up on the diary, but I couldn't think what it meant. Then I started on the week-ago-Thursday diary page, and couldn't think what I did that day, so nothing much was done on Thursday. Then this morning, at Sound Beach, I came across the note again, asked John if he knew anything about it, and succeeded in getting myself even more frustrated trying to remember what it was.
Then I sat downstairs, cleaning out my ears, ruminating about the note. What did it mean? Who was it connected with? Was it something I had to do, or something someone was going to do with me? Was it even for this year---could it have been something from LAST July?
And it dawned on me that I was TRYING to get the answer, that I was STRAINING for the answer, and the parallel hit me of STRAINING for an orgasm, of STRIVING for a result, of TRYING to remember something: that's the very time that the answer, the orgasm, the memory---DOESN'T come.
I stopped cleaning my ears and thought about THAT. I remembered people whispering in my ears "Let it come," and my orgasm was easier when I stopped straining for it, began enjoying it, and "let myself" rise toward orgasm. I acknowledged that the memory comes when the search for the memory was finished. So I thought to myself, "Don't STRIVE for the memory, just let it come."
So I determined to go to the typewriter, use "Let it come" as the heading, and turn off my mind and let the thoughts wander, and maybe it WOULD come when I wasn't actively trying to find the ANSWER, but just idly trying to fill the page.
That's what I'm doing now, just typing to fill the page, wondering very indeterminately about "What does 'smash trash call---last week of July?' mean?"
John and I are due in Ithaca on July 31, which is in the last week in July, but John says he can remember nothing about it.
I typed letters to Elaine and Lisa, but I can't remember their saying anything about the last week in July, or my promising them anything by the last week in July. Paul's going to be leaving Madrid in the last week in July, but though Kone sent me a letter, there was nothing particularly about the last week in July. Avi might be going to California, possibly with Bill, sometime during the last week of July, but that brings no connection. There was nothing in connection with Art and Bob, nothing in connection with Bob R. about anything about a "collection." There were the names of the people that I wanted to jot down, like Tom (WAS it Tom?) C. that I met from the "House of Flowers" that I wanted to go to bed with, but he didn't, and he said he'd call me.
My apartment is supposed to be painted sometime during July, and I called them before I left to make sure they knew I wouldn't be home until July 13, so they couldn't paint my apartment until sometime after that. I want to get the rugs cleaned during that time, but that's no connection. Then Claude's dance class should be ending about the last week in July, and I really don't feel that I'm getting enough for my investment of time and money to continue it beyond that, but that brings no connection to mind.
But I'm really not COMPLETELY loosening my mind: I'm still mulling over the ideas: how do you smash it, what is the trash, IS it call or coll or cold, and why was there a question mark after the end of "Last week of July?"? But how does one completely loosen the mind? The thought of Aureon or Bucks County Seminar House and Grof comes through my mind. Nothing to do with Cyndy, or with Norma, or with Arnie, or with Azak. John says he has nothing to do with it, nor can I think of a connection with Marty.
I'm toying with the idea of saying to myself "Well, I honestly tried to remember what it was about." Maybe I could just write that phrase in on the Sunday (or the Monday?) of the last week of July on the calendar, and if someone reminds me of it, I can clarify it, or when someone tells me what it was---or tells me that I missed something---I can at least say to myself "Well, it was on my calendar, anyway." Maybe that's what I was really looking for: some way "out" of my dilemma---some way in which to "handle" this unsolved problem without FORCING myself more to look at what it might be.
What I was looking for in typing was relief from the problem. During the course of the typing, the idea of simply noting it on my calendar came to me. So I have just written "SMASH TRASH call this week? WHAT does this mean?" on Monday, July 27 (it seems proper to write it here, rather than Sunday, so there's SOMETHING operating), and I feel that I have all but exorcised the demon of worry about that.
I was looking for an excuse to stop thinking about it, and it seems that I found it. Of course, I'm also postponing the solution, because I haven't figured what it means. That's really what I was hoping for in the course of typing: that, unbidden, without the mind's active intervention, like the old "ach-phenomena" flash of recognition, when the forgotten name (dash, somehow DASH if connected with it---Arno's dog, from dog food? Laundry from laundry soap?) comes unbidden. I now have the thought to page through John's Village Voice, that it has something to do with tickets I wanted to order (Papp's Wars of the Roses will last only through July, is it that? There was a double feature of "Willie Boy is Here" and "Anne of a Thousand Days" at the Waverly that I WANTED to see that I missed---am I SO worried about missing something ELSE that I insist on finding what the note means? That's probably it.)
So I went down and thumbed through the Voice, vaguely expecting to come across something that, in my current frame of mind, would make it "worth while": "Oh, THAT'S why I wanted to red the Voice." But it didn't work. It just didn't work. This just didn't work. But I feel compelled to go on to just one more page, give myself just one more chance, see what will happen.
So I go on to the new page, and the thought of "What does the phrase mean?"---now forcefully dredged from the memory, to fall back into unimportance---flows out of my mind, and the uppermost thought now is that I'm wasting time typing this, that I want to get back to the diary, so I can get to the long narrations of the various weekends, so I can purge the memories from my mind, so that I can think unobstructedly (like I purged my mind of the phrase---but obviously it's not purged---or obviously it IS purged, but perversely I insist on pulling it up again by its balls), so that I can get back, finally, to "Acid House."
As I type the name, it strikes me that I DO want to finish it. There, so far, HAS been no "shock of recognition" in Laing's book to find that I'm schizoid. My thoughts to date have been "Wow, those people who are called schizoid really ARE sick, aren't they?"
There are two thoughts: a tinge of jealousy that I'm not THAT sick, a tinge of joy that the sickness that I DO have isn't so simple of definition. But I've gotten away from "Let it come."
So I sit, typing aimlessly, trying not to get into another "Where am I now?" when I'm in the "Let it Come." And it seems increasingly senseless, but I have to get to the bottom of the page.
Closer to the bottom of the page, and I want to get to other pages, but one page is just the same as any other page---so I want to get back to the book, so that they can publish it. The phrase had nothing to do with my resume for editing, nothing to do with getting any kind of money, nothing to do with Backster, or buying a bicycle, and now it's gone (though noted in the calendar), and (I can rationalize), the urge to GET to the typewriter has made me satisfied with the disposition of the phrase (not forgotten: put in its place), and now I can continue with the diary. [Handwritten at the bottom of the page:] See page 211!! (Friends of Central Park).
DIARY 1227 7/7/70
UFO
We'd been joking about watching falling stars, gazing in wonder at the fireflies that started sending signals in four-four time: dark, flash-flash-flash, and wondering why we'd seen no space satellites, and no new novas, either. We were crossing the parking clearing for Pickwick, having heard a human or animal ruminating at the anomalous heap in the center below, and we looking at the horizon against which the far trees were silhouetted.
I remarked "There's something," and we both looked at a star-like object, which wasn't twinkling, moving slowly across the sky. "Planes are supposed to have flashing lights," I said, knowing that they also have green or red lights, and aren't supposed to have unblinking white ones, or they WILL be taken for stars. This looked somewhat like the planet Venus, a tiny bit brighter than a star, and seeming not to twinkle.
"It moves too fast for a satellite," I observed, and John and I continued to watch in silence. I thought it might be a damaged firefly, flying close by, and slowly, but it drew near to some treetops about 200 feet away, and passed decidedly BEHIND the treetops. It was between 10:50 and 11PM, and though I'd toyed with the idea that a high jet trail might be still lit by the setting sun, this would have to be enormously high to still reflect sun TWO HOURS AFTER SUNSET, though the angle away from the sun was right for viewing that way.
The course had been steady and silent, and John said it might be a weather balloon, but then it began to slow in spots, as if approaching or receding, but it didn't change in apparent size or brightness, and as it sank lower and lower into the trees, it began to get dimmer: John said he thought it was going behind clouds, I said I thought it was fading off into the distance.
"Marsh gas," said John, with somewhat of a laugh. "We're just seeing hallucinations," I said, not knowing what else to say. "I'm glad we weren't high," I added. Somewhat later, we allowed ourselves to wonder what it WAS, and I toyed with the idea of buying a paper the next day, but didn't.
DIARY 1228 7/7/70
WHERE AM I NOW?
I've just taken the old mescaline capsule Joe E. gave me over a year ago, and it's just past 3:27PM on July 7, being a Tuesday. I wanted to type this BEFORE I took the capsule, but we went to the beach, just got back, and I wanted to take it at 3, so that its reputed 8 hour effect would be over by 11. So now it'll be more like 11:30
The atmosphere seems about right for it, except there are too many people too closely around, in case I want to yell something for the world to hear: there might be a problem if the world heard it. Also, there's no telephone, which might make me a little paranoid, but I suppose John could sweep me away in his little red VW in case anything went wrong.
I haven't showered yet, hoping to get a little high, then shower, then see what the beach looks like in the sunlight, maybe poke around a bit in the woods and grasses near the house, try some things like soda and sherry and grapes and peeling oranges, then maybe sit on the beach until sunset, watch the fireflies, and see what everything looks like.
What do I want from taking it? I think it's just curiosity, though I'm curious about more than just the effect. It might be thought of as the mildest test case possible of the goodness of the visions of LSD and the effects of pot. Will this throw me further out than pot and hash, yet not quite as far as LSD? Only time at this point will tell.
There's the slightest possibility that the capsule is no good: Joe had it for a time, no telling how long his predecessor had it, and I've had it over a year. The pink capsule with little white fricassee marks going through it seemed a bit worm-eaten at points, but there's more chance there's nothing GOOD in the capsule, than what's good has deteriorated.
I'm glad to be with John. I feel even more comfortable with him for long periods than I did with Bill, feel more confident (that's willing to confide) in him than I did with Arno. Pity there's no music around, since I'd like to listen to a few things, so I'll settle for the trees, the birds, and the sound of the tide going out and coming back in.
I think to take a pen and pencil with me wherever I go, so that I can jot down what strikes me, but if I write as well as I type, it's not going to be very readable. I feel the effects of the sun, but as I was lying there on the beach I felt myself breathing very deeply, as if already vaguely apprehensive about what was going to happen.
No matter how thoroughly I tell myself that things will go well, there's always the possibility that things go badly: either because of the contents of the pill, the contents of my head, or because of some flukey thing that might happen at any moment that might change the direction and setting of the day from sunny and cheerful to dark and depressing.
But I've taken it, and there's a certain sense of relaxation knowing that it's DONE, and I merely have to wait for what happens, rather than worrying about what MIGHT happen from the moment I've taken it. So probably this section is better written now than it would have been before, because I couldn't have done anything but tense myself up for it.
Certainly I realize that each paragraph of the last two pages has been quite exactly five lines: but the first three happened that way, and it's been very easy to make the rest of them fall into the pattern, sort of a natural poetry with a very long scansion, rather like Mahler with his very long phrases in his symphonies, that I got hung up in with LSD.
It's going to be different WITHOUT music, and IN the natural setting that's so recommended by all the authorities. And then it IS only mescaline, it's not LSD, and though the effects are supposed to be rather similar, LSD IS reputed to be by far the stronger of the two, and so---my mind's beginning to wander, and I feel that I'm rambling.
I hear the birds outside, the pump plunging away bringing up water for John's shower. I was fearful my cold might interfere with the trip, but the sun seemed to clear up my nose. My back is rather slouched in the chair---I sit upright---and there's a feeling of heaviness and weightiness on my neck and head and shoulders, but it may only be because I haven't showered.
Claude's class has been a nice start for typing these with a little more truth, since that "now" changes so much from moment to moment. My feelings now, where I am now, are quite different from what they were when I sat down to type. I feel the water in my stomach, and it feels to be bulging out with its weight and its density, and I think of the nausea that mescaline is supposed to cause more often than LSD (yes, I know I broke the five-line habit).
I look out and the birds are still singing, the sky is still green, the trees are still blue---no, there's something wrong there. But what's in a color? There's a cool breeze, and the slight feeling that the grapes have been a bit loosening, and I'll have to shit. Even that's an occasion when you're high: I usually feel like I'm pissing forever, or that I'm a baby on the pot, or something else unusual.
I wonder what the pebbles on the beach will look like, what I'll think of when I look at the waves rolling in from the Sound, what the fireflies will look light (yes---like) when they light up the woods. Also I wonder what clue words I'll find THIS time. Each time it's different. Sometimes a number, sometimes an action (throw), sometimes nonsense (shradie, shradi-eye, shradi-eye-eedie; Bach, Beethoven, Nimitz, and Kostelanetz; No Parking, Truth or Consequences, Thanks for Nothing, You're Kidding), and sometimes a phrase of a song leads to flying, dying, crying, or playing. (I know it doesn't rhyme.)
So I'm sitting marking time, that's what I'm doing. Am I afraid to close my eyes? No, because I might fall asleep and wake up in the middle of it, having missed the "getting into." Might I be afraid of that? Yes, I like to see where I'm going, what's around me, and, as far as is practical, what's going to happen to me. But not to excess: otherwise I'd never take mescaline, I'd never quit my job and try writing a book, I'd never take vacations to foreign places.
Maybe I'm hoping new insights will free me of my current fears. What are my current fears? I'm afraid of getting sick, but I take fairly good care of myself. I'm afraid of pain---but because of the old Lucy in Peanuts caption: "Pain HURTS!"
I'm not AFRAID of the future, but sometimes I wonder what it holds---wonder with something like an apprehension. When I found myself out at Sound Beach again, I rather thought, "What on earth will we DO with all that time?" but here it's almost the end of Tuesday, and there've been no notable dead areas yet. Haven't gotten to the book yet, but at least I've caught up with all the diary pages.
And there IS that book! I WOULD like to get it finished, but it does seem that I can think that ANYTHING has priority over it. Yes, I'm afraid that it might not be accepted, but I should be more afraid of having no money---no, I guess I just have the confidence that I can get another job, despite the fact that the economy is tightening up. Herman's group just got another half-million contract, for instance, and I could probably get a job there if I wanted. Then I could always send out the resume for book editing.
John passes by to ask "Anything yet?" and I shake my head no, and he looks disappointed. I stick my tongue out at him and he looks intently at it, saying it's a bit white. I say good, so long as it's not green with yellow dots. He announces that the final Ned Rorem article will NOT say "Ned Rorem was reared in Chicago." Whoops! And his lover wrote it, yet.
So I type on and on, and it's now been almost half an hour, and there's really nothing yet. Maybe I'm holding onto sanity by typing. So I've typed the four pages of "Where am I now?" that I wanted to type BEFORE the mescaline (almost typed LSD) experience, so now I can shut down the typewriter (while I can still type), and go down to take a shower, or look at the grass, or even shut my eyes, to see what happens when I let "IT" take over, and not demand that I do what I want to do---at least for NOW.