US BY GREYHOUND TRIP 1963 8 of 10
THURSDAY, MAY 2, Yesterday I got rooked out of the Mount Evan's tour not because there weren't enough for the trip, but because there were too many; there were seven in the car so I couldn't go, and later, neither could Lilian, that would have been nine and they could have taken two cars, but they have a rather cavalier attitude toward people taking their tours, as demonstrated the next day when the Swiss fellow told off all concerned that their manners were horrible, their speech was intolerant, and the politeness was nonexistent and bound to ruin business, but he took the tour anyway --- what else can one do? They call me and I get there early and find I've forgotten my book and pen, so I tell them to wait for five minutes and in ten minutes I'm back from the Y ready to go. This busy day I don't get much reading in, except for a few hours after the tour and before dinner that I chip away at the increasingly boring "Guns of August." Liliane Simonds is sitting in the front seat, and an older married couple in the back, so the car is quite comfortable. Barrel south with the driver trying to get a word in edgewise as we chatter away the four of us, and see where a Studebaker has rolled over onto the middle strip, and get down to the USAF Academy, pleasant buildings in a magnificent setting. The church is inaccessible because they're fixing leaks and the museum isn't nearly finished, but the model room is pleasant and we get a large colored magazine about the whole place. Further south to the Garden of the Gods and a good view from the roof: to the front, of the red daggers poking up from the yellow soil and green trees, and to the rear, a pine clutching for dear life at rock fragments to hold itself to a sheer cliff. Back into car to stop at Steamboat Rock and Balancing Rock, which no longer balances since it has steel pins in two places and concrete around the entire base. Stop in some stupid tourist town for a cafeteria lunch, and I get Liliane's address in case I ever get to Switzerland when she's there --- she doesn't know where she's going next. The Will Rogers Singing Monument is nice on a hillside, but I doubt that Lawrence Welk stuff would be anyone's choice of singing. Broadmoor is very pleasant and Lil and I walk sweepingly around its pool, lounge in its colorful public areas, and get brochures of prices. Up the mountain to the memorial and a frozen water pipe giving the illusion of a spring, and nude Indians and trappers decorating the murals at the inner rooms which aren't filled with Rogers and Wiley Post's photographs. Down to the zoo [Diana Guenon, black with white clean bib, yellow brow ridge, carmine glossy back, ending at the base of the tail, and yellow-orange on the inside of the hind legs.] and the girls don't like snakes and the man sleeps, so we're quickly down slope and birds were pleasant as they flew about open rooms. Into car and barrel north again, Liliane and I in back seat, she advancing, I holding ground. She brings up the Exodus, and I say I'll take her, and later suggest dinner. I get back to Y to find the sport jacket I'd given to cleaners is not there. Made fuss with attendant, he calls laundry and makes fuss with operator and she says she'll call him and tell him to call me when he gets home, but I get no call and go to wait in plush Hilton lobby in dirty shoes, baggy cords, sweaty sweater and wrinkled raincoat over my arms. We exit to Duffy's for tough steak --- what do you expect for $4.50, plus tip, for two? In at 7:45 and leave at 9:15 after pleasant talk and unpleasant thought of drinking ice water after eating quantities of fondue and having an indigestible ball of hard cheese sitting in your stomach. Walk to Exodus and there's a mediocre solo male and a lively trio with one particularly cute drink of water with severe crewcut and serious intent face as he makes pleasant sounds on his banjo. SUCH a cute boy, but I hypocritically agree when Lil says he looks too serious --- I wouldn't have him any other way. We sit through round twice, and the $1 each cover charge is worth it, and the $1.25 bucket of beer is more than adequate --- I drank about 2/3 of it in about five glasses. Fellow with wide-spread eyes, who looked intently at me in the Y cafeteria, was there with a girl, too --- seems to be the thing to do. Some of the jokes are over her head. "Even Bess went to Sweden to get hung," but the singing is pleasantly typical and we leave happy. [Bonn --- road down Rhine to Dusseldorf. Frankfort am Main --- try Munich.] [Marty: Does Joanne know any "Welsh trilling songs" (?) The Ash Grove?] Jabber back to the hotel and I swear she expects some sort of pass, and stares rather blankly as I say goodbye to her under the hotel marquee without even touching her, physically or emotionally. Back to the hotel pleased to have been able to talk to someone pleasant at length, even if it WAS only a girl. Bed about 1, smiling and tired. [The situation in Denver gets almost ludicrous. I can remember no town in which I've stayed more than one day that I've had such phenomenally bad luck with bars: not only have I been unsuccessful with them, I haven't even been able to FIND them. And the people living at the Y, with a few notable but seemingly unattainable exceptions, are horrible, particularly the glum-faced, slouched, crewcut fink I've seen passing in the hall a number of times, took a shower with on Thursday, and met again in the john on Friday. Despite this it seems that I continue to stay on from day to day, lured by two things: the continuous leaving of various tours around the Rocky Mountains, and the realization that I'd gotten ahead of my schedule and might have to spend a week in Akron, or get back to NYC early. Both seem unpleasant. Also, there's no doubt but that my enthusiasm for the trip has flagged, if not vanished completely. It's only with the greatest of difficulty that I pull myself off to museums, and even the idea of moving on to another city seems unappealing. So I stay on, and read quite a bit, and seem to avoid writing, possibly since it might remind me of the uneventful passage of time. As a vacation it's hardly soothing my nerves: it seems my nerves are caused by a cause I carry with myself rather than by a cause at work or in NYC. The nerves are still there, worse when I cannot make up my mind on something to DO. When I feel I SHOULD be doing something, all the while I perform the substitute action I'm nervous, lack concentration, and generally work myself into a lather. And then I DO it, while experiencing a nervous release almost equivalent to an orgasm, and the cycle begins again. If I find that the end of my trip is hurried, I suspect subconsciously, I'll probably survive it better because I'll be worrying about GETTING to and through the final cities, rather than think about getting to NYC. I'll put off thinking about that until it's almost on me, and then it'll come almost as a pleasant surprise. An analogy between the trip and life, and NYC arrival and death comes to mind, but is tenuous.]
FRIDAY, MAY 3. Up and tell the midget behind the laundry counter to call and make sure my jacket is back tonight. Get the call that the Mount Evans tour is going, and again we have six and the driver in a fairly crowded car. Find that one of the fellows is from Switzerland, and also from Berne, and I tell him about Liliane, and as we make a coffee stop he calls her at the Hilton and talks about "Fantastique" and their stories are remarkably the same. Come over here to work, she in hotels, he in drugs. Both stopped in Canada, Montreal and Toronto, but neither of them got to Quebec. They both worked in New York, but both lived in New Jersey, he in Bergen, she in (?) at Palisades, level with 40th Street. Both commuted to work and had little time to enjoy NYC. Both decided to fly across the country in short hops, both to Chicago, both to Denver, he intended to fly to Salt Lake City, she to take a bus. They would both end up in San Francisco and hope to get down to LA and the Southwest. Both had gone to Florida for a few weeks, were glad they saw it, but wouldn't want to see it again. Liliane didn't know if she wanted to continue on around the world --- she'd been gone a year and a half, six months in New York. He was precisely the same, but had to get back to Switzerland in a short time. Both had done quite a bit of traveling in Europe, and thought the US was wonderful, but too big to conveniently get across. Both compared the Rockies with the Alps, deciding they were as high, but the Alps were steeper, had a 6500-foot timberline as opposed to one at 10,500 feet, and the valleys there were lower, all of which combined to make the Alps LOOK higher, though many of them were even smaller. Both agreed Switzerland had nothing at ALL like the broad rolling plains that Denver had stretched to the east of the city. We barreled north to the Big Thompson Canyon, and we all went mica hunting. Up to the end to the squalid community of Estes Park, and I almost got blown off the top of a mountain [From nowhere save on high rocks can you watch the long uninterrupted flight of birds. I sat on a rock, out past the trees, and the wind flew in my face and up my trouser leg straight from the Pacific, and the sun burned on my head and warmed my hands with beams from the fires of heaven. A huge black bird, flying more backward than forward, side-slipped down the wind-slope. I felt myself nudged sideways off the rock, and the play between solid bone and solid rock, between flesh and fabric, jostled and slipped back and forth.]. Everyone was scheduled to eat at a dumpy coffee shop place and I didn't feel like eating and went toward the Incline, which was closed, and continued up through the lots of private cottages, and past "No Trespassing" signs up to the top of the foothills nearest town. Sit buffeted [There's Mt. Evans. "Oh, that was in the paper this morning. They conquered it." "No, that was EVEREST."] [14-16 tons of sugar beets/acre? Not absurdly high?] [Best store by a dam site.] [Brue spluce tlee.] [Elkhorn Lodge, rates include room, food, and horse.] [Holstein and Jersey for milk cows. For Black Angus and Herefords, when females are born, they are sold as quickly as possible for veal, and males grow to beef cattle. Graze on range, then to feeder lots for grain for quality for three months.] [My trip was a SEARS CATALOG; my trip was a LIFE.] [Texas, Arizona, parts of California and Kansas, speed limit is 80.] [I might know, at this point, how people go out of their minds.] by the wind and look out over the ice-cold, ice-topped mountains in the Rocky Mountain Park. Rattle down sheer cliffs, wracking my feet and setting off rock cascades, and walk through yards and streets to eat a lousy French-dip sandwich and a clotted hot fudge sundae and get back in car, where two Germanic fellows are spitting away at each other. It seems impolite to speak in a native tongue in a foreign country, but I'm sure I would do the same simply for the convenience of success of thought communication. Mountains rise up right from the road, and the limousine develops trouble and we make a point to stop on a downgrade for a Franciscan monastery tucked high in the hills, looking like a posh Swiss chalet (quel tongue-twistaire). Down the St. Verrain Canyon and rocks and trees and babbly brooks. Stop at the end, again, for gas, and we have to coast past Boulder because "streets are narrow and we would have to stop many times and most of the roads are uphill." It would seem that somewhat less than half would be uphill, since some are BOUND to be level. No arguing with the driver. Fly back to town and I get back to dusty book rack to buy "Perelandra." Back to read that through, back to the Swift's for a last steak, and long look at the short Greek short-order cook, and bed rather early.
SATURDAY, MAY 4. Up late, for the bus doesn't leave till 12:30. Read a bit of "Guns of August" and sort junk out and pack and down to the cafeteria for brunch, where the complete bizarrity of the crew in the Y gets me [Grotesquerie, grotesquerie, hideous grotesquerie: the Y seems to attract them, the fellow who moves wide-legged, as if walking on stilts, has the crushed face of a dwarf. His arms are masterpieces of deformity. They seem jointless until it appears that the bone of the elbow is in front and not in back, so his arm's shortness is accentuated by the wrongness of the hingeing. His hands are clubs, his fingers sticks, and the gold ring he wears covers about half the length of his fingers. He grasps coins in the creases between two fingers, a dime barely fits but a nickel would not. He bends to get his fingers into his pockets and splashes change on the counter to sort it out. Hardly has this surprise passed when Herman, sitting down the way with soup dripping off his chin, gets up to pay his bill and shows a shirt and undershirt with dried blood on it and his unshaven chin has scabs here and there. He begs an extra pack of crackers, then comes back later for a glass of milk, which he crumples crackers into and eats with a spoon. A fellow sits across the way, terribly balding, and it looks as if his sincere face is drawn underneath his chin. He looks across at me and I feel defiled by his gaze, pinned back against a corner by his stare, and a claustrophobic fear of being closed in with monsters knots my stomach and the food goes down slowly, the potato chips crumple to dry sand, and the lukewarm milk helps not at all. Then the dwarf from the counter walks in, his head only appearing above the counter. Chin-face grins down with Roquefort dressing at the corners of his mouth. Figure bobs by outside --- his legs must differ in length by more than a foot. Hideous women loiter in the halls, a terribly old man shuffles past, mucus dripping from his nose, lips trembling, eyes unblinking fixed ahead. Even outside, where I breathe air and hope it's the end, I see the pinched fellow who looks as if he might have had his right armpit grafted to his right hip. I had a bizarre desire to see him naked: would there be a scar, accordion wrinkles of skin, or would it all be smooth and featureless? Just down the block a couple walked, a tall emaciated figure of a man, the level of whose shoulders made about a 15 angle with a level horizon. He walked hand in hand with a short fat girl, whole knees touched while her feet were six inches apart. He smiled down on her with an angular, pinched, oddly attractive face and she smiled up at him with a puffy, bulbous, oddly attractive face. Love can find beauty in even the most deformed.] [I had downed Perelandra in one gulp as the gas accumulates in my stomach, partly due to not eating, partly due to sitting on my spine.]. The ride up to Cheyenne is quite familiar, except that we stop in many small towns and I gape at western habits of clothes and cock teasing. The mountains follow docilely along the road, and the sky is greatly clouded except over the peaks, so there are incredible vistas of low ceiling grays and at the edge of view, black-appearing fringes vanishing into brilliant white peaks, where the sun hits them so many miles away. Small clouds, at different levels from the overcast, are lit sun-bright and in some cases look like celestial mountain ranges exceeding the height of breathable air on this thin-skinned planet. Then the hills die out to few peaks, and the plains recapture the state as I cross from Colorado into Wyoming and quickly thereafter reach Cheyenne. Pile out at the tiny bus station by the railroad tracks and buy a paper to find that the most important thing happening to the town is that they're about to put tickets on sale for the two-month distant Cheyenne rodeo. Check the phone book against the map for the location of the Y, and it's so far away I don't even bother to call to see if they have living quarters. Recall that the Plains Hotel lounge was one of the places on my list, so I walk a block and a half across the tracks to that hostelry, and inquire for a cheap room, just to save myself the fuss of walking to the Y and walking back very early the next morning. With bath is $5.75, she says, without bath is $3.50. I request the $3.50. She bangs for the bell oldman and I see my chance and say I'll take the key and bag up. Begins a comedy. I ring old lady-operated elevator and get up to room. Chase coffee-drinking, chain-smoking maids out of the room, delighted to find a large closet, horrified to find a large bathroom. I pick up the phone and ask for the room clerk. "This IS the room clerk." "What is the rate for this room you just put me in." "Oh, I gave you the wrong key, didn't I?" she said blandly. "I'll send the bellboy up with another key." Fine. I wait around, take suitcase to new room, wait around, and get back to the old-lady operated elevator to head off the bellboy --- damned if I'm going to tip for THAT. (The distance from New York increases the delicacy of feelings about tips. Westerners are probably mortified at the wrath, explicit, which greets an inferior tip in NYC. However, this works the other way, because tip-grabbers in the West make only the slightest deliberate grimace, enough to shake and cow an equally delicate Westerner possibly, but the New Yorker, used to violence, hardly notices it at all, and if he does, has no trouble avoiding and ignoring it.) Down to the desk, and the girl looks up to say, "Oh, he just left with it." Turn back to the elevator, frowning, and as she looks at me quizzically for the third time, I ask if there's another elevator. Yes, natch. Out of elevator and into hall, and little old black man passes and looks at me, holds out key. Thanks, I say brusquely, and unlock door to find suitcase now sitting in room. THIS room has no bath --- it doesn't even have a closet, only two hangers on hooks on the solitary door. I don't unpack, merely get comfortable, extract "Guns of August," meander down hall to slam open door to room in which little old lady plays rock and roll too loud on her transistor (she follows me down hall, waggling her fingers at me, smiling hurtfully. She stopped playing it, though), and later down to eat a meal in the coffee shop since the dining room is reserved. The bar is TV'd, and almost empty. The lounge is plush with old married couples (man-woman married) sitting at tables, so it's back upstairs to finish "Guns of August" and leave a call for 5:30. Bed is double and awfully comfortable. First time in a hotel (alone) for awhile, and it feels good. Found no evidence of anyone in the hotel who I could have wanted to write in the floor john both the requests and the acceptances for getting one's cock sucked.
SUNDAY, MAY 5. Woke a bit before the phone rang and I washed a bit in the sink, and closed the suitcase and took off about 6:05 for the terminal, thinking to maybe catch breakfast before bus leaves at 6:30, but as I enter they announce boarding, and at 6:15 the first section (with by far the livelier crew) pulls out of the station. Grouped around are loquacious people, to somewhat make up for the fact there are no window seats left, and the aisle seat I choose is next to an OLD man who seems to resent me as much as I resent HIM. To left a veddy English woman in swollen paw-feet and a lavender suit to match her complexion talked away. In front of her were two girls, one fat and married and cheerful, the other thin and single and glum. They were traveling with the fat foreign-looking girl who shared the seat in front of me with a short trim, gloss-haired fellow who got included in their group. In front of them were two fellows, one older and wry, the other younger and possessor of a series of Army Laffs, Cartoon Cavalcades, Mads, Cracked, Looney, Crazy, etc. plus a pocket book of the torrid love type. This menage à six tossed quarrels, jokes, personal digs, and animosities around, and all three girls were fast fallen in love with the dark handsome fellow. If his trousers hadn't been so unstylishly baggy and low hung, I would have sworn he was the type to be gay. The road changes from moderately interesting to uninteresting (as I doze and miss the continental divide at Tipton) and stopping at Laramie for breakfast and Rawlins for snack and Rock Springs for lunch doesn't help much [Wyoming, just west of Cheyenne, looks like frozen ocean --- rolling and featureless. Further on, rocks pop up and the analogy fairly endures if you visualize foam at the wave crest.] ["Sure I know him; we went to different schools together."] [Very quickly trees and snow were added to the landscape as we neared the top of Cheyenne Pass.] [Medicine Bend National Forest seemed an arbitrary patch of Wyoming rolling hills and trees and caves.] [Gee, what luck, since we leave Cheyenne fifteen minutes early, we get a fifteen-minute rest stop in Laramie. Gosh, I get out of bus and buy best postcard I can find (Second Street with J.C. Penny's) and go to next street and, wow, see a basket case sitting on his board on rollers on the corner. Boy, back to bus and out of Laramie.] ["No, I'm staying there. Didn't take the $99 because it wasn't worth it. Last time I went I stayed nine years, next time I stayed seven years." "Oh, you don't run back and forth, do you?" "No."] [Kid: "Where's the hound on the bus." "That's a different bus." "Hope you got a GUARD on the bus," he shouted.] [Really disgusting to see these huge diesel trucks barreling along with highway, stack belching odious black smoke that lingers along the highway as a gray, irritating smog.] [Pass a Pacific Fruit Express train roaring east with five engines to a fifty-car train. Snow level appeared to be 6500-7000 feet. Mrs. Malaprop, in the back, annoyed, "Isn't that aggregating?" Possessive, plump girl sitting (and grinning and panting) next to cute fellow. Lies down to sleep and with at least a dozen movements insists that the coat she pulls over herself covers him to an extent: his leg, his thigh, his arm. Decrepit signs leading to "Billy the Kid, Wyoming" with African Lions, Mynah Bird, Heart Owl, Porcupine, Rattlesnakes, leather goods, film sale, and then a blasted ruin with a plaster stegosaurus with whitewash peeling off, grazing in the junkyard. On other side of wreck, the same decrepit signs were facing the other direction. Haystacks, which for some reason are enclosed by six-foot wooden fences, wood touching (to keep cows away?), loaded, look like Russian huts with thatched roofs. I wouldn't have suspected southern Wyoming to be so boring. I can see why prophylactics would have a "receptacle tip," but isn't it a bit sick to advertise it as "nipple end?" And also sick to say it comes up to standards required by US FOOD and Drug Act? Almost feel guilty in Rawlins. I had them HEAT the 20 roll, had two pats of butter and water, and left no tip. NYC is good training for tipping. "Oh, look at all the sheep." "Yes, we get all our fur coats from that."] [See ad for "Point of Rocks, Wyo." And later sign for "Rocky Point." West of Rock Springs things livened for awhile, buttes and roads hewn out of rock. Then south of Thunderbird appeared snowcapped peaks again. Gee, Evanston has Colombo Hall, Union Pacific Old Times' Club #20. Echo Reservoir, with its huge expanse of silver-blue water, would almost have been a great shock if not for the manmade inclined curve which could only be a dam which swung into view as the bus pulled off the main (?) road to Salt Lake City. The water was clean and fresh looking, and the boats and swimmers lining the shore seemed a good indication of spring, even through the trees had put forth nary a leaf. Truck drivers: "Most of them are clean, but the long haulers get grubby --- unshaven, greasy overalls, but most of 'em are pretty straight guys, pretty straight guys." Rather disgusting in a small, previously picturesque valley to see two remains of old roads.]. Some of the huge vistas rolling down into the canyons of Wyoming were familiar from my trip west over ten years before (what a long time ago) and the mountains reappeared to the south as we crossed over to Utah. The canyons of the Wasatch that I remember so vividly from my other trip (remember noting simply, "I saw God" in the tourbook for that chaotic ride through darkened roads and towering rock just this side of Salt Lake City). These are just beginning to rise when we turn off another road and see Echo Dam and the lake behind it. The sun is going down and the shadows are long as we rumble through steep canyons with snow still on the shadowed slopes. We come around a corner and lying below us seems to be the entire city of Salt Lake, shimmering in the late evening haze so it's difficult to tell where the city ends and the sea begins. The neighborhood we drive through is very pleasant, the canyons are still much in evidence and the houses are built right up on the slopes and thus have occasion for yards and flowers and set-back houses and large picture windows giving out on glorious views of the spread valley. Ride down through these pleasant suburbs into the heart of the city, and then it becomes clear that SLC has a slum area, too, and that's right around the Greyhound station. Out of the bus as the friends of flight, the acquaintances through exodus, the comrades in busmanship break their ties and go their varied directions, as different as Los Angeles and San Francisco, though the English woman surprises all by saying she'll stay in town a few days. I recover (never see her again in city) and get to phone book to look for the Y. The address is quite far, and I phone to check accommodations --- there are none. It later turns out that the old one had no rooms (or had been torn down) and that the new one was just officially opened that day, but full services were not to be allowed until two weeks later. Back to the desk to ask for the schedule to Idaho Falls (Ashton), and be discouraged from going into the park. "There's snow on the ground, there won't be anyone there --- you'll be lucky if there's six people per day going into the park --- it's all still closed, won't open until June 15." I later asked him for a good cheap hotel, and he shrugged his shoulders and suggested the Marion, across the street. It's a two-story hotel above a coffee shop, so I look at it and pass it by. Remembered passing hotels down that same street, so I walked down that way. First was the Hotel Rex. I should have been warned by the frayed carpet on the stairway and the mere fact that the lobby was on the second floor. But I lugged my suitcase up and wondered why they hadn't put on the lights. There was no one behind the counter, but sitting on chairs and filling the sofa were greasy looking young hoods and hoary old men, all talking together. They stopped and looked at me, just like a nightmare, and a dog raced over and started barking high and harsh at me. I noticed now a sign over the desk "No Vacancy" and backed down the stairs with pursed lips and knees that were a bit shaky. Some bum and his slut looked at me strangely as I came out; even without a tie, simply a white shirt under a sport jacked --- and particularly, I felt, with glasses on, I was simply too dressed up. Looked around in near desperation again and the Hotel Temple Square, across from the Greyhound, the Temple, and above the Trailways, caught my eye. Lugged my case over and asked for a room, but they only had a bath for $5.75. Picked up some new Gray Line brochures and asked if she knew any $3-4 hotels. She suggested the Marion, but didn't know anything about it, then mentioned the Carleton, 2 blocks down, with rooms in that price range. I thanked her and started lugging. The blocks are longer in SLC, about 6-7 to a mile, I found out later. The sun sloped down the streets and by the time I reached it I was sweating and ready to stop almost anywhere. The lobby was filled with old ladies and the desk clerk, an old man, was an old lady himself and I figured them all Mormons, and remembered someone saying to me, "Most of them are Mormons, you'll see what I mean." Waited while he put Ed Sullivan on, then asked for a $3 room. He looked and smiled and said he had one left. Bought a paper with a dime, then gave a dime to a woman who'd "lost" hers in the machine without realizing that it was 20 on Sunday. Pulled the elevator door sideways and also the spring gate and, clunking the wall a few times and barking my shins, I got into the elevator and rode up to 3. Only time I rode the elevator after that was for Mrs. Wasserman. Room was an extremely pleasant corner room with closet and dresser and two beds and rocker and two windows facing front and one facing side, where a fat slob of a mother kept giving a wolf-whistle from her third floor porch and her lisping daughter tried vainly to imitate her. This kept up for about an hour while I read the paper, decided to stay in town for the Ballet Gala starting Tuesday with Jacques d'Amboise and Violette Verdy, and found nothing else of interest in town. Phonebook-checked the bars and found a listing for the Beeline, but not the Beehive. One is not there and the other is just down Main Street. It's now about 9, and I'm starved, so out to check on bars. Turn corner on Main and THERE'S the Beehive. Walk down to the other and find entertainment and couples going in. Walk back up to the flickering "Broiler" sign on the Beehive, and get in just as a tall, pleasant, handsome suited fellow entered from the other direction. Ordered Coors on draft and sat next to him in almost empty bar. They served no food on Sunday. I asked my "friend" where I could get dinner and he suggested Hotel Utah, then promptly left. Pity. I thought he was interested --- I was. Out after the one glass and the Hotel Utah coffee shop was just closing. Walk down the next street. The broiler again hits my eye but I pass it and wander around three more blocks without finding anything better and finding much worse. Up to Greyhound to find perfunctory cruising only decidedly low life, and buy "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" which I'd just read about as being good. Back to the broiler and a real doll (girl!) takes my order and says "twenty minutes" for the chicken. I read, and in ten minutes she has the chicken there. It's good and I ask for another bun and butter and she gives it to me with delightful banter. Her taffy blond hair is swept into a beehive (state symbol) on top of her small pretty head. Her face is naturally made up, and I even notice she's got a nice figure under the translucent dress, and wears no slip. She sits down in the last booth to eat, and I feel torn to go back and sit and eat and talk with her. I rehearse stupid conversations, and think she has no time, she's being watched, she'd think I was fresh, and why did I want a GIRL, anyhow? So I sat and looked and ate. [Fellow in hotel next door stands at desk in jeans, boots, and cowboy hat, and that's all. Why couldn't I stay THERE. If the Beehive is gay, no one wants to admit it.] Queers came in and out in tight pants, and as I left, the fellow I'd asked in the Beehive passed me. I waited at corner and he walked down, idled, started walking back. I crossed street and he was surely following. I walked past construction site and stopped with "Say, Hotel Utah was closed" as opening gambit when he should pass me. I waited and grew cold as the wind tore into me and messed my hair, and he never did come past. Strange city. Back into Beehive and cute fellow was sitting drinking. We both started to say something at the same time, and I thought "This was it." We talked and talked: I was on a trip, was with IBM, he was studying to be a lawyer. We talked about automatic precedent searching. He talked about Nevada and SLC, and about his wife who was in a hospital with some unknown blood disease. Oh. We drank and he ordered me one and I ordered him one and talked about where I was staying, and he had to get back. We drank about ten between us, and he WAS very nice, and he left. I sat stupidly, and another fairly good-looking fellow sat down, but was very drunk and grinned at me as if he knew what I was, knew what HE was, too, but because the bar was full of his friends, he would (COULD) have nothing to do with me. He left with them. I left just before 1, rather high, but very low in spirits. To bed then at 1.
MONDAY, MAY 6. Up and move mirror from wall and tilt it to look down on myself in chair and do it the long slow way with gusto. Finished "Ivan" in that position, bedspread over bed, dreading the possibility that someone might come in without knocking. Finish about 11, take shower when room was free (tried it twice before) and eat at Walgreens, numb with sight of construction man [As for sightseeing in Salt Lake City, I could have stood all day and watched the tall, rangy, tanned, muscular, lithe, handsome, strong, tight-jeaned fellow stop traffic with his stop sign to let in the trucks to the ZCMI construction job on Temple. Is a general characteristic of a college town the great number of motorcycles and motor scooters used for transportation by the young "look-like-they-might-be-eligibles"? Monday is beautiful and sunny and warm, and I sit inside and read. Tuesday dawns cloudy and I debate touring, but walk to tour office and pass it to go to Greyhound to buy newspapers, but pass Temple Square Hotel and see a paper lying on the couch and the door's open, so I get in and find the weather map indicates cloudy today, showers possibly in the mountains, but the rainy area is working southeast from the northwest, and might be worse tomorrow if it moves. Tour: During Depression, NO Mormon or state or government relief --- they have their OWN. Each block 10 acres, seven blocks to one mile. 10,000 pipes in organ, 110 stops, 5 manuals, seats 8000 people. 2,000,000 Mormons in world. Brigham Young laid out the huge streets --- 100 feet wide and 16 feet for sidewalks. Mormons build, own and operate Hotel Utah. Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institute --- ZCMI, established by Brigham Young, 1868. ALL trees and shrubs in Salt Lake City are transplanted. Brigham Young had 19 wives, 56 kids. Wasatch "high and shining peaks" is western start of Rockies.]. Ravaged book rack and can find nothing to read, so I try the Mormon bookshop and even THERE I can find nothing. Figure I might as well read, too late to take the city tour, nothing else to do. Try another bookshop before I get to the swell environs of ZCMI and blow myself to four books. Notice that it's almost 12 and see people going into Temple Square and remember that the organ recitals are at noon. Walk across street as main doors close, but a plump usher motions toward a side door, hands me a program, and then closes that door. It's one of those soundproof-booth-type things, and I can't get a good look at the auditorium. The wood housing the huge pipes on display looked dark with age, and the strange carving made the whole look vaguely construction-work-like and mechanistic against the almost silver cast of the ceiling. The amphitheater was spotted with people, and they just finished the introduction. The speaker system was very good, in fact, it may have been the choice of pieces or the organist, but the sound, amplified, sounded definitely bigger and certainly more triumphant in the booth. Maybe the perfect acoustics swallowed the sound after the instant blast, and the small room knocked it around a bit and made it seem louder. The choice of music was good for the bells and whistles of the organ, and the ending was loudly rousy --- though by this time, mercifully, most of the people had filed out of the soundproof booth and I was alone, except for the tall tan blond who came back for his forgotten sunglasses. Out at the end, surprised to hear applause, and wanted to make this a regular part of my stay. It felt so GOOD to hear classical music after so long an abstinence. Back to the apartment (why did I choose THAT word?) and began reading "The Inheritors." The day was warm and sunny, so I opened windows and settled down in the bright (every color that was not wood or carpet was white) room. "The Inheritors" was good, though it answered its basic question about $12 billion inherited dollars by saying that $6 billion was in the Ford Foundation. The rest of it WAS spent rather casually, but the taxes took much of it. Regretted Getty hadn't inherited it, and so rated only a mention. Finished about 6, and dove right into "Status Seekers." Moved the chair between the beds and took the shade off the lamp for light, and warmed my feet by tucking them under the mattress. Read till last 100 pages at 10 pm, and out to find the Beehive STILL wasn't serving food --- this time it was too late. Drank a beer --- good it was a different bartender and barboy, and out to search desperately for place to eat. End up in a dumpy grille with a fat bloody-aproned fellow with burn-scarred arms giving me my greasy hamburger and glass of milk. They didn't have anything else to eat that I could see. Everyone in the place had coffee, and they had a few moldy looking pieces of pie. The sandwich drips combined blood and grease onto the plate, and as I pay bill he takes plate and dumps it into garbage, on top of which is a pure white box. The blood and grease run obscenely down the side of the box. [The plate containing grease, blood, and pickle remains was plopped into the waste on top of the back of a white box, and the red-gray streaks from the bloody grease ran out in a starburst.] Back to room and finish "Status Seekers" and tumble into bed about 11, worn from reading.
TUESDAY, MAY 7. Pay for another day and have breakfast at Walgreens and pay for complete city tour with $10.50. Start with whole group around Temple Square and up to the State Capitol for a great view around the city and good interior [Silk Queen's Velvet, 16,000 threads/square inch!! Had to get Queen of England's permission to buy this. 1170 yards, now $100,000. How much sightseeing depends on a few juxtapositions: the people you're with, the season of the year, the temperature, the tours available, the bars open, the rain, clouds, the hotel, the streets you choose to walk along, the cultural and social events that happen to take place, the movies, the way the bus enters the town, the weekend or weekday, etc.] [Deseret: Egyptian for "thrift and industry." Georgia marble must be awfully dense --- solid 25-foot columns, about two feet in diameter, at 1000 pounds a foot.] [Even the amount of wind, or the time of day at which a particular sight is seen, or the type of young men seen on streets, in bus stations, particularly in hotels and Y's, on cycles and motors, on construction gangs, and, oh yes, in bed. Even the way things "fall into schedule." Brigham Young built FIRST hydroelectric plant in WEST to power the ORGAN. Where DO all the people in VA hospitals come from??] [Photos: Girl and boy very lightly holding hands, actually he's only holding her finger, and she's in rocking chair, going back and forth, so her finger is pulled, slacked, pulled, slacked.]. Then separate and seven of us (I and driver only males) take off on city tour. Stop at new "This is the place" monument, and take off up Cottonwood Canyon. The day is cloudy, which makes peaks look more ominous, but I can't remember where I've seen more VISIBLE signs of mountain building as here, where the bare elements of the mountain peaks seem visible, pointing to the sky, crushing each other in order to get out of the way of the immense pressures below. Storm Mountain is a granite chaos of tumbled rock, sheer cliffs, rushing streams, and pines hanging on wherever possible and impossible. The bus tears up the slope and we're into snow, and some of the heaps on cabins are four and five feet high, and from the gorges around houses it's evident that much has melted. To the Brighton ski area and I volunteer for the $1 ski lift to the top, and they cater to my sense of the majestic by draping huge flannel-lined, tarpaulin-outside capes, with only squared-off shoulders and arm straps inside. I wrap myself up and feel kingly and ready to face the quick blasts of wind whipping about at 9000 feet. The sun comes and goes, and the clouds are piled high and dark in tumbled masses. The silence, the lift, the possible risk of failure are all exhilarating and I face about at the top, smiling, as the women praise the view. Down too quickly to a pleasant meal at Mount Majestic Manor with nice Mrs. Vessalago and a quiet girl that I stupidly think said Brooklyn when she said she lived in Berkeley. Up to peak-roofed, glass-windowed dining room and back to bus after good dinner (with menu on scroll and linen napkins) for $1.50. Out the same way and the Canyon still entrances. Across the south city to the lost city of Bingham, ripped from canyon walls when the mine had to grow. Rooms can still be seen, in plaster and paint, which had to be hewn from the rock cliffs. The houses look like scaly monsters with their pebbly textured copper roofs. The mine IS BIG [Oak Brush has oil on tiny leaves, and will burn fiercely in canyons. Mount Majestic Manor and Lodge and Ski Lift nice at end of Cottonwood Canyon. Bingham gets 90% of the copper from ore, even though ore is only .79% copper, and 2/3 amount removed is waste. Thus to get 16 pounds of copper, must move 6000 pounds of matter. Supplies 22% of US copper; two billion tons of matter have been removed since 1906. 270,000 tons of matter moved per day. Gold and molybdenum as byproducts are second largest source in world. 2160 feet from bottom to rim, covers 1000 acres. 2750 persons work in mine. They've gotten BEYOND the top to the east, and just to the top on the west. Thus what started as a digging in a canyon will now flatten out and get rapidly lower and wider. The canyon to the north will run into more hills, but the south will only hit Bingham, which has been moved.], but the blasting is slight, of course, since they must keep all the wiring and tracking intact for all the many levels (dozens) to get to the bottom, and there are dark pools beside the newly dug tunnel. The leeching operation running over iron stampings from cans, possibly more impressive than the mine itself, really a "hole in the ground." North to the foundries near the shore of Salt Lake, and I dip my hand into the water and let it dry and there is a VISIBLE salt coat that I can FEEL, as I move. Happy that the showers are working, I would have hated to lick it all off. The tailing pond might qualify for the largest land object (dam lakes are huge, of course) made by man. Simply immense. I feel sleepy and sad on the way back, and the day is still dim. Back to room and decide to walk to the University for the Gala. Snow mountains in the distance all the way, and climb the hill to find a nicely-packed campus. Ask girl for hall, and get tickets to two consecutive nights, fairly good balcony seats. Look for place to eat and there doesn't seem to BE any, so end up with two donuts and milk [Girl in Spudnut shop casually reaches up and fills her cup with root beer when the waitress isn't looking.] at a Spudnut shop (only while typing does it dawn on me I really should have asked a student were the students would be eating). Back to the campus wall and wail about the males [How unendurably difficult it must be to be gay and permanently associated with a college. Here the male sexuality reaches its greatest peaks, with the conscious knowledge of how he looks good, whether in tennis shorts, short-short khakis, cut-down blue jeans, either with grayed slit edge or rolled up twice to make it the tighter, or regular shorts --- with tee-shirts, or white shirts open four buttons, or sweatshirts with the sleeves hacked off --- with white shoes and white socks, with absolutely fabulous color combinations: particularly the tan dark blond who's tan-next hair is straw white, the rest is crisp wheat, and the gold glows next to the red-brown tan, and the fantastically blue eyes have that black ring around their clear circle, and set into a flawlessly white ball. Do teachers gradually get used to this eternal passing of such great, though transient, very transient in HIS eyes --- maybe a class, maybe only passing in the halls --- beauty? Bill talks less and less about the general run of kids and ends up with one or two in each class that he raves about --- maybe in a way this is worse. Like when I kick myself in bars for looking at too many people and not concentrating on one --- how could any ONE realize I was interested? So I say I should concentrate, as Bill is doing. But then the intent is obvious, and if nothing happens it isn't a nebulous "my fault," but it's a direct "HE didn't want to." This might be worse --- and then it usually becomes obvious to others that the interest is there, and THAT'S unfortunate in a classroom. Pity poor Dr. Glennon, caught sucking in the park, whom I'd certainly suspected before, simply the expression on his face when he talked to Bob Perrine, the captain of the football team, and a completely idiotically beautiful person. And the day, during Engineer's Week, that he came in in jeans, I thought James T. would flip. It seems that somehow I expect cruising to be different when I'm on vacation. While I work I want to do many different things, but I can't because I'm held in check by the routine. On vacation there is no routine, thus I can to a great extent do what I want to do, but somehow I expect this also to carry through in sexual "conquest." Obviously this won't be true at all --- just because I'm on vacation it doesn't mean I can go to bed with anyone I want. Sadly it's even proven true that the absolute anonymity I enjoy in different towns does not work to my advantage; I'm still reluctant to talk with anyone --- that's because I carry WITH me on vacation not my routine, but MYSELF, and THAT'S what prevents me from getting everyone I want. Just like when I was going to college, when I don't have the opportunity to do what I wanted, I wanted to do all sorts of things, notably exercise to regain fitness (no longer a question of merely keeping fit), and writing. I signed up for the Famous Writers School to give myself a push in the direction of REAL writing, then negate it by going on vacation. I'm sure there will be conflicts when I get back. "Should I write creatively, or should I, much more simply, transcribe my notebooks?" I fear this will hang over my head for a good long time. But now I yearn to write creatively, yet I can't even restrict myself to keeping up the diary --- at the present I'm over two weeks behind (15 days, Tuesday to Tuesday), the longest in a long time.]. Into the hall and stare at the crotch of the tight-suited, tight-haired fellow who sees me looking, but his thoughts are just as much of a mystery to him as mine are to him. Return one ticket when I find they've changed the schedule. Ballet is QUITE good, quite UNEXPECTEDLY good, which makes it even better [Blue Tournament SPECTACULARLY good, the epitome of splendor a quartet, three fellows and a girl, going through a magnificently intricate series of spins for the girl, two fellows on each arm and one in back, the two with the arms switching arms in mid-spin, or even better, switching over to back, then going one to two to three with a hand, back, hand. Then a lift, and one going under, around to back, another lift, and third steps between on a leg-above-head lift, walks a few steps, then lowers her down on a toe. Frabjous. The stateliness of Handel's music matched perfectly with the magnificent movement of point, throw out arms and throw head back, then raise leg ahead before coming down to repeat with other leg. Magnificent ensembles and wonderful lifts by an amazingly poised, accomplished and gifted university troupe, coupled with good music played well and a bright bouncy moving brilliant turn of choreography, beautiful costumes, though the first quick sight of the girls in short medieval veils and short skirts over leotards was a bit abrupt, but the gentlemen (looking unpleasantly like the girls) were perfectly costumed, particularly a white turtle-neck sweater effect under a vest with puffed sleeves going down to a short tunic with contrasting gore and tights. A most spectacular 22-minute ballet, to music which deserves such a treatment. Balanchine with his "Figure in the Carpet" should never see this production, I dislike blood. Even the sixteen blue banners appearing for the first tableau (though cutting perilously close to the empty splendor of "Camelot") works, and the trio holds the ballerina aloft in a disdain for gravity. The Adagio from Thais was quite a disappointment, but I hardly know where to lay the blame. The music is insipid, start there, then the choreography was hardly inspired, and even technically the pair suffered in comparison with the young ones. Violette Verdy came up with some beautifully fluid movements in the beginning, but Jacques d'Amboise, who choreographed and danced, seemed merely a poseur, and the action was more fitting for the pantomime sections of the Sleeping Beauty. The audience burst into unwarranted applause when they did a fairly eye-catching but hardly difficult passing and arm-to-arm catch with him swinging her around very much like something you'd see in Ice Capades. Then he tried something difficult and flubbed it, it must have been his fault. She went into an arabesque held by him in front, then he lowered her gently onto himself and lay way back with her on top; she went up into a splendid boy (oh boy, bow), relying simply on her chest, shoulders and arms, the rest curved brilliantly upward, then he proposed to lower her slowly to the floor, and he must have slipped, for she came crashing to the floor and the audience gasped concern for her legs and feet. They finished and bowed, but it was a fairly low point. Toxcatl was cheered by the audience, but it turned out to smack of late Balanchine, a lot of display, odd atonal music (quite good in parts, but merely loud in others), and the choreography at times looked stolen from "Little House of Uncle Thomas" with pseudo-Oriental movements and Egyptian arm and head movements. But the dancing was much on the line of stamping, and the group movements were hardly inspired, merely a series of tableaux.] [I am inretsingently opposed!!]. Con Amore was cute and fun, as only youth in sheer mad exuberance can make it. Out in a glow and walk back, stopping in the Joker for a sandwich and watch the mysterious antics around the pinball machines: all balls go at once, and the fellow keeps calling out numbers, and every so often he gives the girl $1 and she clicks something under the counter. Needless to say (sigh) the boys were ALL cute. To bed floating on the ballet.