Pages 26 through 52
DIARY 5078
GIRL CHARACTERS
1. Girl in elevator reading book with another under her arm. Companion: "You're reading TWO books?" Girl: "No, they're the same book." And they were.
2. Two young models, with pointed shoes and lesbian overtones, tapping toes in the post office with their model-splayed stances.
3. She wandered through the party looking like a short-wave portable with raised antenna with her twelve-inch cigarette holder.
4. The daughter hurts the mother: WHO TAUGHT HER HOW TO HURT?
5. Beady-eyed probe-nosed girl cornering back-leaning fellow into glass corner of hall as she drills a point home with leering lip and stare-eyed eyebrows.
6. A girl in a cab grimacing at herself in her mirror.
7. Girl walking down street in 40 weather remarking (in Bermudas), "Oh, it's too cold for serenading tonight in the park."
8. The girl ran up the apron of the stage, pushed away the matronly coquette, and hoisted herself alongside her idol, snuggled her head to his chest, and a moment later, the song was muffled by a kiss.
9. The girl in the painting looked very much like she'd just come from church on Ash Wednesday.
10. Short ugly girl bobs down street in sneakers, gesticulating at Mercedes at curb with fists in raincoat pockets, making flourishes, while ugly boy walking with her grins at me in forgive-asking embarrassment.
11. The girls in their party dresses, with their same-color shoes and purses, sat in the movie theater.
12. "I lost my lens." The pretty little girl stared at the ceiling of the elevator. "Either that or I've got a thumbprint." She blinked wildly, "I've lost it." She lowered her head into her cupped palm. A tiny disk fell out. "No, I didn't."
13. The small girl with the wave of long yellow hair and the light green dress walked gracefully to her first row seat at the Metropolitan Opera House, and every other occupant of that first row, without exception, turned towards her in loving admiration.
DIARY 5079
PERSONAL CHARACTERS
1. "Hey, mister, if I told you what I want, would you buy me a sandwich?" "No." Man following me into deli on Madison Avenue.
2. When I talk to hyper-sweet, super-smooth, extra-fast Eastern Airlines hostess for reservations on three flights, I'm as agonizedly exhausted as being in the SUN all day.
3. Sitting in the airlines seat, reading, I knocked the catch of my tray, which flopped obediently into service position behind my magazine. I pulled aside the book and stared uncomprehendingly at the strange appurtenance staring up at me. Then, recognizing, I grunted and flipped it back up.
4. I was so tired that the fractional G of the rising elevator almost prostrated me.
5. I was so exhausted from the previous night that when the alarm rang the next morning, I picked up the trembling alarm clock and stared at it for a moment, wondering what it was and what I was to do with it.
6. At the Bleecker Tavern I was the eye of health in the tornado of decay.
7. I looked and looked and looked at people, as if I studied them long enough, I would come to know them personally.
8. I saw the typical man backing into the wind, trying to lower a wind-inverted umbrella.
9. I slumped nude on the sofa, eating cake. When I finished, I idly picked the crumbs off the top of my stomach. Some had rolled down into my pubic hair, where it was more difficult to pick out, like lice. "What a good reason for sitting directly on the side of the spine," I thought, "Since then I wouldn't have to fish it out of that long hair at the end of the torso." I picked crosswise, crossing lower and lower, and when I dropped them onto the crumpled aluminum foil in which the cake had been wrapped, I thought they SOUNDED like lice dropping onto a piece of paper, after I had picked them off. When I had finished, a small scattering of crumbs and hair stuck to bits of the icing which had come off on the foil. This stayed on the sofa for two days, gradually being pushed more and more to the side, as I ate more and more while I read.
DIARY 5080
MANHATTAN CHILDREN
1. Kids talking: "The password is blood."
2. Two little girls: One: "Let's play 'Mommy'." Other (shouting): "Not it!"
3. CANOEING (October, 1962) Group of fellows changing places with the paddlers, shouting of their prowess.
4. Every so often as canoes close, "Hey, Louis, watch your hand," to the fellows in the enemy canoes.
5. Shouts of "Hey, let's ram them broadside" in fun, followed by silent seconds of furious, fruitless paddling.
6. Fellows in two canoes having a marvelous time splashing each other with their paddles, standing in their boats.
7. A boat of five screaming girls, trying to get attention.
8. Lone silent fellows butterflying efficiently past.
9. Lines of photographers and envious watchers on the shores of CP Lake.
10. The children came into the room with "boo" written all over their faces.
11. Manhattan Halloween: A little boy crouched in a doorway, triumphantly counting his loot. A tiny stack of penny candy on a corner, with not an owner in sight. A three-year-old negress, suspended between father and mother, in an ultra-soigné green taffeta dress and lavender hat, complete with veil. Bands of brigands with lipstick and charcoal on their faces, begging coin on the street. The more children you see, the more elaborate the costume, the more futile seems the pathetic effort to enjoy children's joys in an essentially adult city filled with children.
12. "Her ain't talkin' to we, cause us's doesn't belong to she."
13. Little boy in red Glouster coat struggling with heavy door blocked by books against his foot. His breathed "thank you" as I hold the door open.
14. The lost, loving, desperate look of a pallid, baggy-eyed boy walking down the street with a little dog in his arms.
15. Colored boys hop on back of bus, driver gets out and shouts, "Get off there."
16. Boys clenching jukebox like a pinball machine, almost as if he were expecting action and bells.
DIARY 5081
SUBWAY CHARACTERS
1. She had the hard, muscled legs of one who walked much on streets.
2. "Larry loves Alice" in a heart, with "loves" crossed out and "is dependent on" written in---found in a subway station at 116th St. at Columbia University.
3. The subway rider played piano scales on his crossed ankles on his knees.
4. Little girl sipping soda from a paper cup, periling two nuns sitting next to her, who gave the undulating red liquid sidelong glances below their black cotton above their white starched bibs.
5. Old lady in subway seriously debating items of interest to herself.
6. Man in subway greedily pulls foil from a chocolate bar and hungrily chews it down.
7. Fellow on subway, getting up, exclaiming: "Oh SHIT," grabbing fragments of his trousers up around him, showing pink backs of legs and white shorts where ENTIRE seat has been cut away. Also, many seats in that subway car had been slit. Coincidence only?
8. Sounds heard around the prone body of a man in a subway passageway: "His respiratory glands just aren't working." Sound of saliva between tongue and roof of mouth. During artificial respiration: "He's breathing now and he wasn't before." Shirt disarrayed, greenish tinge to newly barbered head, orangish cast to blood. Redhead, fat in high heels, gave out a soft "Oh."
9. She wore basic black, and her skirt was quite short. Her makeup was basic too, which is to indicate that it didn't exist. Her pimply sleazy black dress caught under her breasts and they lunged forward and downward like ponderous bags under eyes. Her legs, showing from an inch above her knees down to her also basically black pumps, were too thin to support the illusion begun by the breasts. Her hair was blond straw, each strand meticulously misplaced upon her head. Her lashless face and lipstickless lips gave the impression of a painted woman taken into the exclusive club on the East Side, who had been requested to scrub before sex, and whose only emblem of trade was the half-dozen jangly bracelets on her right wrist. I wonder if she'd used turpentine on the face?
DIARY 5082
MISCELLANEOUS QUOTATIONS
1. "If you had a brain you'd take it out and play with it."
2. Conversation: a: "nnnnnnnn." B: (Silence). A: "You listening?"
B: (Silence). A: "Are you listening to me?" B: (Silence, pause) "Yes."
3. "This luxury, round-the-world flight is only $1800!" "One-way?"
4. "Ugh, I'm a horrible monster. I'm going to eat you alive." "Fix your hair, dear."
5. "Ohh, hoo, hoo." "Are you lost?" The little girl sounded desperately sad and clutched her crotch. "Wait a minute." And the passersby looked equally and desperately around. "Patty, Patty." "Mommy!"
6. "Bought new socks and they got holes in 'em already." "Why did you wear you spiked shoes inside out?"
7. Same waiter, in Quebec, in five seconds; "Un autre cafe pour madam?" and "Waddaya gonnahav fadinna?"
8. "Oh, such darling baby blue eyes," referring to a baby.
9. "Does that candy store on the corner sell candy?" "No, I don't think so."
10. "Remember that the last lobster I had cost $175." Heard on street.
11. Woman passing silk shoes: "Gee, how do you polish shoes like those?"
12. "She IS? Secure?? Oh, in her JOB, you mean."
13. I trip over crack in sidewalk and two elderly men in front of me spin around: "Just we was talking. It happened to me last week," said one.
14. "Your argument isn't new, your argument is the argument everyone uses who's opposed to that."
15. Graffiti on 16th Street and Second Avenue: "I like you all to God."
16. "Ah, ha ha," to woman stepping in front of me at the cab-curb. "Do you WANT it?" she asked rudely. "No," I said, as I saw another one coming.
17. Sign in snow on house steps; "We love you."
18. Mike Mao: "You should sit quietly on a boat and listen to the call of nature."
19. Bob Maldonado comes up with "You better don't" and "Crockpot."
20. "Thirteen years! Why this dog lived in that house before that landlady even came to America."
DIARY 5083
RESTAURANT CHARACTERS
1. He scooped the small bag off the floor, and, on impulse, blew it up and popped it with an eardrum-spinning blash. He smiled and stirred his chili.
2. He reached for the pepper, then knocked it over, then shook it onto the napkin, then onto the back of his hand, then he turned his hand over and shook it into his palm. Only them had he the courage to sprinkle his soup.
3. The fellow who orders a toasted roll and strips off the top, meticulously removes the soft core, down to the outer crust, scraping away with his fingernails.
4. The fellow who looks at his tray of food as if he didn't quite know what to do with it. Bewildered he fiddled with his napkin, his spoon, his fork. He stirred his coffee, and poured salt on his potatoes before tasting them.
5. The son looked abstractedly away, chewing by habit, manipulating the food with his tongue, drawing it in from the space between the teeth and the cheeks, chewing the steak to a brown cud. The father meanwhile stared, fixedly, at the son. The son glanced momentarily at the father, then quickly down at the plate. They avoided exchanges of looks whenever possible, and spoke softly without bothering to look at the person to whom they were speaking.
6. Waitress tries to make sundae, but frosted cream dispenser seems empty, so she turns away in despair, her thick glasses glinting. A few moments later she passes it and discovers a pyramid of custard, which one more blob will overflow. One more glob and the pinnacle topples onto the tray. Lady with protognatious jaw says, "Look, it's overflowing." But girl is gone and proto looks helplessly about as tray gets littered. Cheery bustle about as egg-sized drops lurch from pinnacle to tray to floor. Proto snags myopic, and indicates broken dike. She turns, plumps handle down, switches switch off, and looks about her in presbyopic exasperation. (Happening in a California Kitchen across from the Manger Annapolis in D.C.)
DIARY 5225
MISCELLANEOUS HUMOR
1. They kinda shoulda supposed to do what they hadda.
2. She might be marvelously adjusted, but how much FUN is she?
3. What did he do, spit on his shoe? Or did somebody spit on it for him?
4. The shipping procedure is the worst procedure in the plant, or, if it WAS a procedure, it would be.
5. Marvelous picture: revolving door "Open" but man, unseeing, wanders in, pushes the door around, and walks in. He moved the open space around.
6. You'd have sex---male and female, that is.
7. What about tramp steamers? Well, her friends, the tramps, are coming back in a week.
8. She was so poor, she was wearing someone else's space shoes.
9. We're going down the path to production!
10. She was built like a very SMALL brick shithouse.
11. She was a pleasant, slightly balding girl.
12. How scarce ARE hens' teeth?
13. A woman in a girdle isn't always isothermal.
14. No matter how you look at it, the world revolves around a wet hairy hole.
15. Two-Bin system of ordering. When one bin empties, fill it from the other bin and order enough to fill the first bin. Tube in, tube out.
16. I was most impressed, to say the least.
17. If you hold on a second, he'll be here in a minute.
18. We laughed in their faces, tactfully.
19. The dog was so muffled in an oversized sweater that he could hardly walk without falling on his watery-eyed face.
20. Now THAT'S a PURE hybrid.
21. The SPIRIT is willing; but, damn it, the FLESH is willing, too.
22. I don't know what it's all about, how could I say I was enjoying it?
23. Every two weeks they got a 12-month forecast!
24. EVERYTHING he said was verbal.
25. When he flashes back, he gets repetitive. Not only does he get repetitive, he says the same thing.
26. Hashish is illegal, smoke tea and see.
27. Mistype in display book for McGraw-Hill: That's an example of impulse boying.
DIARY 5226
EXTRAORDINARILY FUNNY QUOTES
1. Sunny Simon on telephone: "Did you beat the meat?" Pause. "Did you beat the meat?" Pause. "I told the grocer you'd be home before he brought the groceries and meat over."
2. Miriam Kaplan on PDQ-5: I want to go down on the machine and try every combination and get further into the data.
3. Bill: I had a bowl of something for lunch, but I won't go into details NOW.
4. Sheila: I gotta check up and see the lay of the land.
5. Me: Do you want that reasonably soon?" Murray (winking): "No, unreasonably soon."
6. Cathy: And we sat there for two hours, watching the baby.
7. Me: I can summarize Singapore in one sentence: I've never SEEN Singapore.
8. Mozelle: You said that with a "but" all over your face.
9. Kathy Sullivan: "Is Phil Schafer there?" "No, he isn't." Pause. Muffled: "Is that Phil Schafer over there?" Distant: "No." "No, he isn't." Giggle.
10. Kathy Sullivan: What ass has been using my typewriter---and who's been playing with my expand?
11. Marty, Walt and Art reading, and Art shouts: "Goddam it, I've got sand in my cherry." In his Manhattan cocktail cherry, that is.
12. Marty Sokol: I'm going to miss you, like a leper.
13. Joan: She's a very pretty nice girl.
14. Joan: I keep taking pills for vitamins, but vitamins aren't what I need, but what I need they don't have pills for.
15. Joan: "Came back with Gus and Becky Pappas. She was in my class." "What was her maiden name?" "Pappas---Gus is her brother."
16. Joan: They live in a very circumcised world.
17. Me: "I'm going to a partly." Joan: "An almost?" "Take the 'l' out." "A most?" "Get the 'l' OUT."
18. Me: "To be blunt, do you have algae in your toilet?" Joan: "Tell me who he is, and I'll be GLAD to tell you if I have him in my toilet."
19. Bergensfjord---you know, that ship sponsored by the Fjord Foundation.
20. "How's the weather?" "Calm, cool, and dry." "Oh (simper), just like my underarms."
21. "Shan't I?" "Yes, you certainly shan!"
DIARY 5227
HILARIOUS QUOTES FROM STRANGERS
1. Mayflower Coffee Shop: "Could we share a donut?" "Sure, call over a third person and you can split it three ways, I don't care."
2. "Waddya want? I gave you as many answers (to the same question) as I COULD."
3. Parting of Su Wu and Li Ling inspired: "And this is a famous---" "Didn't the MOUNTAINS symbolize---" "Not at all!"
4. On broadcast announcement for Joan Sutherland's final aria of Traviata: "She's just been told he's coming as fast as he can from a broad to her bedside."
5. Omter,ossopm diromg Wagmer's [Well, that's SUPPOSED to be:] Intermission during Wagner's "Rienzi:" "That's being sung in Italian, isn't it?" "No, German." "Oh, I THOUGHT it was either Italian or German."
6. Woman next to me: "Would you know it, we get long hair and SHE has short hair (about some movie star). (Movie star, hell, about Mary McCarthy.)
7. The girl and boy fluttered hands together high above their heads, taken from "Judith," and she squealed shrilly, "OH, that was FUN, let's do it again."
9. "Yeah, that's a good suit to wear on a rainy day. WEAR it on a rainy day, a DARK rainy day."
10. "I like this bitter lemon." "Wassa matta, you're not regular?"
11. "This is an intermittent model mobile: it clunks every 45 minutes."
12. Comment about an opera; "It's not performed very often---it's on a Russian theme---and the music is not too familiar."
13. "No brown betty?" he asked of the colored waiter. "I'll have the raspberry tart."
14. "Focus, focus," and a querulous voice, "Both of us?"
15. "Gare d'Est? What's E-S-T?" "Is."
16. Woman tasting Cherry Heering: "Oh, it has gin in it."
17. "Does anyone have a light gray---?" "They one they just dropped?" "Yes, that's ours."
18. "If her dress was any lower, it would fall off on her." Comment at opening of Bolshoi Ballet at Madison Square Garden.
19. "Good girls are best in bed."
20. "No one's insulting you, stupid."
DIARY 5228
FUNNY THINGS ABOUT GOING OUT IN NEW YORK
1. It was one of THOSE mornings. The IBM electric clock showed it was [MISSING DIAGRAM] o'clock. I must be AWFULLY late for work.
2. At the end of the Harry Smith movie (color patterns to Beatle music) and bad one (pre-Vanderbeek animations), the bald tied man walked out, talked with someone (bald? tied? you must have been looking in the mirror), and came back with "The latest Warhol, it's been on fifteen minutes."
3. At Carnegie Hall, in IMPRESSIVE silence in Bruckner's Third Symphony, the ears, empty and receptive, are promptly filled with a sneeze or a cough. AND the music that concludes, boisterously, DUM, dadumpty dumpty dun, da dum dum dum, da DA da DAAAAA! Ah-choo!!!
4. Someone should write a "Symphony for Audience and Orchestra."
5. Two men in hall, one elevator button up, one down. Elevator stops, both get on. Door closes, and as it goes up, hear a silent "Oh."
6. "A church with two colored windows." "There were no bloodstains on her anywhere." Lines recited by the colored narrator that sounded awfully silly during the "Ballad of Sad Cafe" by Carson McCullers, adapted by Edward Albee for the stage.
7. Met Opera: Guards held flaming torches, which unfortunately looked like immense tulips.
8. Lunching at Chock Full o Nuts, and there's a strange scraping squeaking that appears to be coming from the revolving door, revolving now, but nothing appears to be off center, or a fox tail not caught in the side. Out pops a plumpish lady in brown, looking like a refugee on short vacation from a nun's habit. More sacrosanct lips and eyes have never been seen outside a wimple, and the chin had the distinctive irritated marks that could only have one possible impossible source, a mad necking session with a long-ago shaved man. She smiled redly, hands clasped against her chest as she bowed into the room. "I came through the door backward." She sat across from me, smiling, and I couldn't help grinning back at her. If I were a 19-year-old boy, it wouldn't be so bad. I laughed outright. "I pushed the wrong way and I was too far in to get back out, so I came through." Thankfully, waiter interposed his bulk and hid my now embarrassed laugh. It was just TOO funny.
DIARY 5229
FUNNY QUOTES FROM PEOPLE AND PLACES
1. Line from Ruddigore: "Saved by the Union Jock." "Next to myself I like my union BVD's best."
2. Isaac Asimov on the Four Ages of Man: speech and fire; writing and civilization, printing and science; forget it.
3. NY Times headline: June 18, 1965: "Peace Offensive."
4. H.L. Mencken on Warren Harding's inaugural address: "It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh."
5. Life Magazine: As Alice Dalgliesh, author, editor and critic of children's books puts it: "Last year, everyone ate ALL his dinner and went to bed with no argument. Children went to bed, Bunnies and bears and pussycats went to bed. Everyone went to bed. It was stupefying."
6. 1960 was the year that the Passion Play at Oberammergau got bad reviews.
7. Oliver Jensen's version of the Gettysburg address as it might have been delivered at an Eisenhower press conference: "We have to make up our minds right here and now as I see it, that they didn't put out all that blood, perspiration and---well---that they didn't just make a dry run here, and that all of us here, under God, that is, the God of our choice, shall beef up this idea about freedom and liberty and those kind of arrangements, and that government of all individuals, by all individuals, and for the individuals, shall not pass out of the world-picture."
8. Menu at IBM for Halloween: Witches Cauldron Celery Soup 10; Haunted House Flounder Fillet 45; Baked Halloween Macaroni and Cheese 35; Hob Goblin's Turkey Sandwich with Dressing 45; Sleepy Hollow Potatoes 10; Spooky Spinach 10; Black Magic Tomatoes 10.
9. Label on a Wine Bottle: In France the Beaujolais wine-amateur prefers to drink same young. Many renowned restaurants serves it in "Cruchon" whence the brand "Le Cruchon" under which we are offering a very fruitfully wine, which can be consummated during the meal with pleasure and satisfaction. Park-Benziger and Company, New York.
DIARY 5230
FUNNY LINES IN PRINT AND WRITING
1. Motion picture, copyright by Eternal Films, Limited.
2. Sign on a subway wall: "Excuse me ladies, this means you, fatso. Do you with your dual understanding, and with all cincerity beleive in Einsteins theroy of relativity? If you do, smoke LUCKYS and pull down your dress."
3. The Dig Design and Talent Shop on McDougal Street.
4. There's an "Assistant to Miss Partridge" on the program, but there's no Miss Partridge.
5. Hombre wine: only 48 a pint, 97 for a full quart.
6. The Stairway to Stardom Belly Dancing Studio on West 53rd between 7th and 8th.
7. Soiled for event of ease only [DIAGRAMS MISSING](on Latex Prophylactic dispenser).
8. Graffiti on subway poster: "A drum, a drum; Macbeth doth come."
9. Graffiti in Germantown: "Hans is a nut." In subway; "Brooklyn is foul."
10. INDECENT also [DIAGRAM MISSING] misleading sign on Tivoli marquee.
"Art of Burlesque"
11. "Wanted WAITREES / English and Spanish / Not mush experience." A sign in a restaurant on 8th Avenue in the 50's.
12. 23 New Street: "Eat em and cheat em" Seeburg's buffet.
13. Sign in cab with Y covered up: "Take your property."
14. Institute of Gravitational Strain Pathology, on Third Avenue in 70s.
15. Chronology of the Splendid Century: 1667: Completion of St. Peters; 1688: Completion of Versailles; 1651: Hobbes Leviathan; 1678: Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; 1667: Milton's Paradise Lost; 1670: Racine's Phedre; 1682: Halley's Comet.
16. White neon sign on the streets of Baltimore: GODISLOVE.
17. Sign on Metallurgy Hot Cell in Brookhaven "Please do not feed the alphas."
18. Sign seen: "September 30, God Loves You." No other day?
19. Graffiti near Jim's in Babylon: "Stan is immensely cool" "Mockeries of Geelaland."
20. "I'm sorry, all saddle dot---later, please," Hilarious message when trying (third time) to get a Centrex number of Poughkeepsie. First it rattled, clicked, paused, and gave dial tone. Second time it rattled, gave a vocal gasp, then died.
DIARY 5231
CARTOONS AND JOKES
1. Cartoon: Pygmy wizard looking at sky through pipe held by workman.
2. Cartoon: Woman with long scarf used as a head wrapping, tied under her neck and falling down in front of her, her hands wrapped up in the material like a matching muff.
3. Cartoon: A blind man with a cane tapping, riding a bicycle.
4. Cartoon: Fellow elegantly walking, using umbrella like a cane, and tip gets caught in grating, pulling him up unceremoniously.
5. Cartoon: Watermelons and Antelopes, on a sign with a door open in front of the C.
6. Cartoon: Cop, on a scooter, buzzing along a path at 11:15 pm in Central Park, SINGING, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," over and over. HA.
7. Cartoon: The window decorator---emaciated dummies being dressed in the latest styles by a dowdy window dresser of incredibly round proportions, frowsy hair, dirty fingers, the absolute feminine antithesis of the models.
8. "Father O'Malley, my husband is going to bed with my son, my daughter's on the street, I'm pregnant by another man, my mother has killed my father and eaten him, and my aunt masturbates all day. What should I do??" "Fine, fine, Mrs. Finnegan, sure and I'll see you in church on Sunday."
9. "He was going to be 25, but then he gave it up."
10. "Hello, mother dear---in a laundry" (?)
11. It was 1977, the year of the great breakthrough in the moviemaking industry, they found an effective cosmetic to make vaccination scars disappear for Biblical epics.
12. A red head is the toilet in a Russian ship.
13. The woman 77-22-55; god, what dance does SHE do? She doesn't dance, she just crawls out on stage and tries to stand up!
14. What's the meaning of THIS (Bouquet of roses from cunt): "Read the card, read the card."
15. Two classic joke fluffs, told at the SAME lunch at the Boulevard: Mozelle: Mary and Joseph were on this donkey riding toward Bethlehem and Joseph tripped and fell and said "Jesus Christ" and Mary said "That's what we'll call the donkey." Immense laughter. Cathy: "What do they do with old bowling balls? Make rosaries for Catholics---no, for Catholic ELEPHANTS."
DIARY 5232
FUN WITH WORDS
1. Above and beyond into Beove and Abond.
2. Put aside your life (knife).Everyone was sent running to the seats (streets).
3. Surge and forge ahead becomes furge and sorge ahead
4. Bunk-Boolean functions (Bunk came from B of Boolean+unc of functions)---lovely slip.
5. Not on your (l)wife.
6. Which came (f)wirst.
7. He wore an old priest's hassock (cassock).
8. Conversation in an elevator about EASTREN airlines.
9. Quote from Barbara Sugarman: His thinking was felonious.
10. Whore-shit.
11. A-bomb-nable.
12. Un soupcon de shit.
13. Thundermug = Bedpan, in Montana.
14. ILLINOIS, stand in FRONT in CENTER. (What does THIS mean???)
15. He was an all-around phony---sort of a stereophony.
16. Air raid backward is diarrhea.
17. Has anyone ever/Called Sacheveral Sitwell Satch?/Lit a fire/with the Paris "Match"?//Has no one never/Proven a case of ants in pants??//Thought of the "ran" that lies in France??//Hasn't anyone?
18. We saw Canada's biggest "semen" factory. 8 million barrels. "How do you pronounce it?" he asked. Not much difference, but enough, with CEMENT.
19. She shall have Muzak wherever she goes.
20. Two Chermans talking on Phone, and zaying R or L, und dey zay L, ass in Ludvig.
21. He felt phraseworthy that particular evening.
22. Joan's marvel: Just watch Finney's MOVEMENTS (in "Luther", constipated).
23. He was held captive by the hideous Wallocks.
24. His right-hand red-head (red bed?)
25. I go to the bank for a $10 foreign money order: "How much is that?" "Ten dollars and firty cents." "HOW much?" I peer in at him. He peers out at me. "Ten dollars and FIRty cents." I pause, and get out a quarter and a nickel, and I sigh with relief and leave when he accepts it.
DIARY 5233
PERSONAL ATTEMPTS AT HUMOR
1. They had bad taste and a faultless sense for showing it.
2. A bore is someone who doesn't talk about me constantly.
3. I wanted a magnet to pull all the artifacts into a heap in the corner of the case.
4. I have an automatic toaster that pops up even when it's NOT plugged in (ALL do it).
5. You're old the day you DON'T count how many stories a new building has gone up.
6. I'm a perfect bachelor. I can reach every part of my back to scratch it.
7. I drank my coffee, thought "Agh, that tastes awful," then looked down to wonder why my wooden spoon was still wrapped. Of course, I hadn't stirred it. and THEN I saw the two unused sugar packets.
8. "Come live with me, and be my slut, and we will all the senses glut," etc.
9. From Mensa: Why NOT have octal base number system. Time into octal, alphabetic symbols in octal. And thus rationalize the typewriter. If we don't watch out, the nuclear explosion will BEAT the population explosion AND the information explosion.
10. And underneath her curlers, she has wimples in her hair.
11. Absurd coincidence: Bill and I meet C. Ray Smith at 168th Street station, bound for Howard's, and C Ray is missing his middle overcoat button, I'm missing MINE, and Bill's duffel coat's middle peg loop has BROKEN, so he can't button the middle.
12. "Ah, but I've got an ace up my ... " and I stopped, embarrassed, because the only word I could think of was "hole."
13. For first luncheon at ToBo's have French Onion Soup, English London Broil, Italian Spumoni. What? No egg roll??
14. I'm sure, if they'd been counting, they'd wondered about my laundry bag: 1 handkerchief, five towels, two washcloths, three pair of pajamas, three undershirts, one pair of undershorts (February, 1964).
15. Would an optimist or a pessimist be more likely to duck his head in going through a low doorway?
16. How complex: Laird, a New Zealander, calls from Pittsburgh and says Frank Eckerman, Londoner, is in Hong Kong. I'd met Frank in New York, when he was living in Montreal, through Laird, when he was living in Philadelphia, who'd met him in Los Angeles, way back when I was living in Akron.
DIARY 5254
JOTTINGS
The audience snickered at attempts at seriousness. The attempt brought up the chaos of contemporary life, and fiction becoming grotesque as it tried to put contemporary life on paper. But since the audience obviously attempted to SEARCH for the ludicrous in order to laugh at it, the author, in an attempt to please the vastest audience (since each person in the audience snickered at DIFFERENT things) tried to portray the greatest grotesquerie. It might even seem that the chief characteristic of the American is HUMOR. Texan and Jew and Negro make their claim to acceptance through humor. Molly Goldberg and Dick Gregory would hardly succeed as other than humorists. Thus an author tries to win readers through humor. Tennessee Williams through SICK humor. We steer clear of accuracy and distort the grotesque. Nichols and May are examples. Once
everu tjree uears sp,etjomg omterestomg ja++e
every three years something interesting happens to someone; now should art describe THAT in writing or should it describe what happens once a day, such as cleaning teeth, dressing, eating, getting into bed? Nothing seems exempt from a sheath of grotesque humor, witness the list of operas invented for Leontyne Price: Samson and Jemima, Ring of the Nigger Woman, Mammy Butterfly, Good Solder's Schvatza, Simon Bucknigger, La Schvatza del Destino, Lucia de Blackamoor, and Tan Hauser, and Ah eat a, and Tales of Harlem.
DIARY 5255
February, 1964
JOTTINGS
I sat in Mayflower Coffee Shop, desperately looking through menu that had nothing I liked. Two old ladies, gray and well dressed, ordered coffee and donuts. The coffee came, colored so that the white of the cup could be seen to the extent of an eighth of an inch before vanishing. "The coffee's not very strong here?" And she tapped the rim, possibly thinking that magically she could darken the color from black brown to black black brown. Then she bounced her fork off the donut, saying they weren't very fresh. She drank the coffee and said "Oh, that's ersatz," pause, "That's awfully ersatz." And talking about food and good cooking (both were excellent cooks, self-proclaiming) and I ordered a salad and a bacon and egg sandwich. The salad came trimmed with black, like a children's coloring book exercise, and they resumed "Can't do anything to a salad or an egg." "Not, not a boiled egg." "No, nor a fried one, either." And the egg was greasy and the bacon over-fried. The dressing in an cellulose cup came in for comment. She talked toward me and I laughed inside. "What was the name of the water that you drink in France? You can't drink the water, so you have to spend a dime to get a bottle of that whenever you want a drink. You can't drink wine all the time. Oh, what was the name of that bottled water?" The other woman suggested names, and as she was talking over at me, trying to get on my good side by praising the choice I had made of food, I longer to shout across to her "Pschitt" which I think was the name of the water, but what if that was a brand of milk?
DIARY 5256
NEW YORK SUBWAY
THE STATION WAS DARK, that was the first thing that struck you. The ordinary illumination of the IRT had been replaced by a foggier yellowish bulb on the IND at 116th St. The pillars, contrasting from the crisp black and white, or the newly minted copper color, was the color of curdled cream and old wounds, a leprous, blotchy run that looked like worm-eaten wood. The between-track supports had partitions strung intermittently between them, and it was impossible to tell whether the white paint was peeling off, or the dark paint was becoming moldy in the damp. It was subtly cold, too, but you could smell the cold, rather than feel it. It smelled like a room which had been recently been used for a sweaty, urine-scented orgy, and then opened to the cold air, yet the smell residue remained, cold, yet innately hot and fetid. The "clientele" was noticeably different, being completely Negro---the only white faces I saw were those in an express which whisked past on the opposite track, as if not deigning to stop in the cold-smelly station. The attendant, like the unknowns strolling about on the platform, all were Negro. I had reverted to my original status as a hopeless minority on a planet predominately colored, whether yellow, or black, or brown. However, I didn't feel uncomfortable, I doubt if I would have felt uneasy even if I had been a woman, but then---I couldn't be sure. A brown woman in a brown coat crept up behind a brown man in a gray coat and murmured a few words. The gray coat whirled and an immense grin lighted his features, and a mirthful "He, he, he" bubbled down the platform. They were old friends. And now, talking in their quick gabble, three Puerto Ricans entered the station---looking faintly similar in color, yet their voices proclaimed their not-so-slight differences. And now, to make my feeling of minority complete, a Chinese woman, black hair flawlessly in place, neatly dressed in a navy coat and black pumps, leaned gracefully against a pillar. And the curiosity was the same, a nattily dressed teenager, or perhaps older, looking spiffy in his new black fedora and glossy cordovans, stood in a brace; against a wall close by me, turning his head in my direction every so often. Any move he made, any shift in his feet, and he edged closer to my writing desk, a weighing machine that told me I weighed 2 pounds in my penniless state---and the "Over 500 Questions and Answers" and "Questions changed frequently," sign on the top had a blankness that spoke not of pennilessness but a complete absence. How often must you change a state of nothingness? Three expresses passed in all, and the wrong local. Then, again, in a stop and a start, another local, again the wrong one, passed and I began to wonder whether my local was running. If the next local was wrong, I'd take it to the next express station and try to transfer then to the Concourse line. Off the second local stepped an uneasy looking white face, topped by a flaming red hat---he looked at me several times before he clicked through the exit turnstile. With the passing of another express I discovered that the smell wasn't actually IN the station, but was carried into the station by the passing trains. Possibly it was the breeze caused by their passing which stirred up the smell, causing it to rush out of the minute crevices and crannies into which it had settled, and was whisked into the nose again by the tumult of the passing whirlwind. Another wrong local and a trip to 135th St., strangely enough holding predominantly white faces---the majority of the colored races were Puerto Rican. This time even the scale was new, though the lights retained their insufficient yellow cast, although there were about five times MORE of them. Assured of the passing of a proper local, I stepped on the scale and began again. This had, wonder of deceit, a multi-slotted façade into which you dropped the penny according to your month of birth, each slot being conducted into the same cavernous maw. The weight scale was decoratively blocked off, so, penniless, I had no idea now much I weighed. The fortune section was covered and whether the cover concealed another black pit, or actual "dated" fortunes, I had no way of knowing. The waiting time lengthened---the "every ten minutes" for the Concourse local seemed long indeed. I determined to take another shuttle ride---this time on the Concourse express, one of which I let go by, to the preceding express station. But the next preceding one was 161st, and I saw no advantage. So an express Concourse swept past untaken. I would probably have to be bludgeoned by the passage of half a dozen A locals before I realized that something was wrong on the local Sunday scheduling that they hadn't bothered to tell the lone door-closer about.
It was 12:30 am on Monday night on the uptown BMT platform at Times Square; it was the time of the sweepers who had wet even the wooden signs, which dripped on me as I passed, the first, beneath them. The angry dry coarse voice of a woman was raised behind me and I noticed people on the downtown platform looking behind me. "C'mon, Martha, let's go, can't stay here," and the cop shoved a black woman, dressed in black, only the bottoms of her feet pale as they slapped in and out of her sockless shoes as she walked. She mumbled loudly, rolling along before the blue storm, something violent about, "Put me in jail, throw me in jail." An old man, one step between respectability and bumdom, remarked, "Every God-damned night."
I remembered the woman in the red orange skirt and chartreuse sweater who walked on varicose-veined legs into the stopped car, shoving mottled hands clasping a Playbill face down against her bag. Utterly alone, utterly plain and quiet-looking, utterly dejected and discouraged. I thought of the violinist and guitarist playing the song from "Never on Sunday" in the 70th Street area on Saturday. And then the Negro woman wandered back, mumbling incoherently, and behind me the metal lip of the trash box flipped back and forth as I refrained looking at her. In a couple of minutes her voice faded away and then the policeman again, two voices raised, then the two faded into the eternal electric glow of the subway platforms that NEVER see the light of day, inhabited by people whose pallidity proclaim they were born and will die there, worm-like, in the tunnels under the great city.
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