STRAIGHT
Again at a point I would be listening to the Vivaldi records, and I had the idea that the records were everlasting. At first there was one record above the record playing, and I limply manipulated Cyndy's wrist to see what time it was, and it was about twenty minutes to one, and somewhat later it was quarter to one, and somewhat later it was ten to one, but the idea of time was somehow central as it took on uncommon importance each time that idea returned to me on the loop. I kept wanting to ask "What Year Is This?" Wanting a factual answer to a factual question, hoping to attach some sort of truth, reality, concreteness to that number, but then the thought from Krishnamurti's book that there IS no truth, reality, or concreteness came to mind, and it was a fact, and I marveled at the perception of this man to write down such a fact, but instantly the fact was self-evident, and whether I belittled the thought now that I accepted, or whether I exalted the thought now that I knew precisely what he meant, the fact became, somehow, "in the past" and I had to scramble around for a new fact. "In the past" is taken to mean, somehow, that it was written down in a book, and suddenly I had a concept of every book I'd ever read, sitting on the shelves around me, and they became simultaneously very important (for I HAD read them) and terribly trivial (whatever I was, in sum, at the core, had, I thought then, absolutely positively nothing to DO with those books, and it didn't matter whether I had read one book, no books, or every book ever written, and again I felt the LSD-feeling of relief: books AREN'T important, they are simply NOT of any significance whatsoever, and so, somehow, they could be ignored, put behind me, and I could go on to something else. Again I was drawn back to the music, and as in the LSD again, it seemed that the music was absolutely FITTING to my mood, and then the revelation came that ANY music would be absolutely fitting (I remember distinctly knowing that I'd been HERE before) because NO music was absolutely fitting, and I could take any music and "fit" it into the experience, and could go on eternally, for the span of my life, listening to either the same music, or different music, or all the music, or none of the music, and it would make absolutely no difference, and THAT was the meaning of the staggering revelation "It doesn't make any difference, 'no, not even with Bach,'" and again, as I had visualized my bookshelves going off to infinity, stretching out and filling the room, with Cyndy, or anyone who happened to be with me at the time, sitting back with a little exasperated, patient, sigh, saying "Of course, Bob, it can be any way you want it to be." Meaning "If you want to fill up the room with books that you've read, or records that you've bought, you're perfectly free to, and you can do whatever you want, it really doesn't matter." But then the feeling of boredom would return, and I would sense that there was nothing being said in the room and I was boring my companion, and then I would fear to look at my companion, fearing to find that it would have been someone from a PREVIOUS experience --- but then EVERYONE would be in a previous experience, Esther and Betsy (whoever she was), and Joan and Pat, and Avi, and Bill, and Arno, and back at the hospital I could look up into John or Phil or Frank, or Dr. McLean's face, and I would know that everything since that particular person had been some sort of repetition, some sort of dream, and I was actually back at THAT point in time, and everything since then had been a dream, or a waste of time, or an illusion of the drug. But that person, whoever it was, was ONLY a person, a person just like myself, and if I'd ask them a question about truth, or a fact, or an opinion, they would give me a word as an answer, or a number, and it really wouldn't matter WHICH word or number they would give me, it would sound, on the one hand, like the RIGHT number, and I would again be seized with the fear that I HAD lived this before, or they would give me the WRONG number, or a surprising number, or an unexpected number, and I would grasp for a moment at the surprise, or the unexpectedness, and that feeling or comfort would immediately be replaced with the far more immense feeling that IT DIDN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE what the number or word of response was, it could just have been ANY word, ANY number, and it would have been an equally acceptable answer. Then I would feel half confused, half elated, fearing to go on, hoping that what I was building toward WAS true, but somehow the word true became twisted, and I'd taste the touch of the word "true" on my tongue, and the central idea that "THIS IS ALL WORDS" would come to mind, and I would know, without doubt, that words were useless, futile, fruitless. Then I'd collapse in my seat with my head in my hands, fingers clutching my face again, again ready to pull off the mask, seeing rays of light through my fingers, opening my eyes to see it was only light from the lamp across the room, and suddenly it was the idea of "ROOMS" that became the pivot point. Here I was in my living room on 309 West 57th Street, but suddenly THAT became immaterial (and how pregnant THAT word is, and even now the chains of associations are easing together into the grand chain which is the total universe, a chain which can be seen when it is realized that every thought, every word, every action, somehow FITS into every "prior" and "next" thought so perfectly that the words "prior" and "next" become inappropriate, and they're the SAME and IDENTICAL words and thoughts, and since they're the same, they all exist at the same instant (which would again return me to time), they become completely irrelevant since one is PRECISELY AS GOOD as another --- the simile of a maze in which, contrary to the normal pattern of mazes, there are TOO MANY connecting paths, rather than too few connecting paths, comes to mind, and seems apt. The pain, or beauty, or wonder, or fascination, or fear, comes not when one thought leads to another thought, but when one thought leads to ALL other thoughts, and all other thoughts are somehow, though different in content, the same thought because they ARE thoughts, and, being a thought, a thought is a thought, regardless of content, and this again could return me to WORDS) and IT DIDN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE whether I was here, or in the bedroom, or in the bathroom, or in the rooms at 320 East 70th, or in the rooms of Acid House, or in the shoddy bedroom in the Pennsylvania Hotel with Joan and the crew when this had happened before --- the rooms didn't make any difference. "What floor are we on?" And if the answer were 17, I'd accept it "Of course that's true" or I could reject it. "Let's go downstairs and play," and it would seem we were on the second floor, and I had the blinding realization that my life itself was some sort of progression, and it really didn't make any difference where I lived, the same things would happen. Before I lived on the ground floor in Akron, then for the longest time I lived on the third floor on 70th Street, then I lived on the 17th floor, and again the floor number turned merely into an abstract number, and it became unimportant which floor I was on. "But the floor does make a difference if you jump from the window." Is THAT why the idea of jumping is so common? It's common to every experience, and since my experience is everyone's experience, it WAS TRUE that merely my THINKING about jumping from the window as the ONLY "fact" which kept "jumping from the window" a possible action, and again I found myself on that forked path: this way was good and right and light, with warlessness and lack of pain, the other way was bad and wrong and dark and full of war and pain, and, INSTANTLY I KNEW, it made no difference, or rather there was only pain because I wanted there, somehow, to be pain. I'd go back to the soreness of my throat and think, OK, let's cure that, and I intensified the pain, hoping to bring it to a level of absurdity somehow and thus vanquish it, and again there seemed to be the sigh from my companion, and this time the sigh, in addition to being one of acceptance (if you want to be sick, go ahead and be sick, it doesn't make any difference to ME --- if you want to hurt, go ahead and hurt --- and the FREEDOM from pain inherent in this was marvelously beautiful), it was one of patience and love, and I swung back to the thought of love, and of the person beside me, and by this time I'd almost come to the conclusion that it didn't matter who was next to me --- it was a person, it COULD be any person, and it DIDN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE which person it was --- and there was the thought that I should, or could, or would, or had, love the person there, but somehow that thought was pushed back in time, and we were children sitting on the sofa, and someone was saying, "Don't play with each other," and I began to get an inkling that one's earlier life, people remonstrating for childish activity, DOES play an enormous part in adult neuroses. This feeling came back strongly later as I was urinating, and a whole host of childish admonitions came back: "Make sure you do it in the water," someone knocking on the door with impatience "What are you doing in there so long" (and this would lead back to thoughts of masturbation and homosexuality and having sex with whomever was with me, and again there was that realization: you could masturbate, or not, be homosexual or not, have sex with them, or not, depending on how you wanted to spend your time. Again it could be placed in terms of a paradox: the person beside me was at once the supreme authority and could give me permission to do anything in the world I wanted to do, could even ENABLE me to do anything in the world I wanted to do --- even to BEING anywhere I wanted to be, as when I toyed with the idea of asking Cyndy, "Would you say I was crazy (God --- and that TOO --- how that word leads off on another track) if I told you I was on a beach, lying in the sun, under palm trees, and when she'd ask "Where?" I was prepared to say The Islands, but I knew them to be Hawaii, but they were really Japan, and in THAT confusion, I would realize the other "liberation" I had in LSD, and realize that maps were immaterial, they didn't mean anything, they had nothing to do with fact, and the lines on the map could (if THEY wished, certainly I didn't care one way or the other) fly up in this pink ribbon effect of before, and the world would cease to have any significance, and there would be the roar of the ocean in my ears, and I'd think of myself on Manhattan---another island!, but EVERYTHING'S an island---with the Atlantic on one side, and the Pacific on the other---no, that's wrong, but what difference does it make?---and suddenly the whole city becomes immaterial. It didn't matter where I was, THAT'S why the rooms came into view: I could be in ANY apartment in the city, in ANY building, and on a vision of the shadowed skyline of New York, in the cracks in the realities, there was again that light in the background, and I tried to concentrate on the light, and the city became unimportant, but then I'd be drawn back into myself---there was another difficulty: I thought of "going along" with the sensations as a cop-out: after all, here I was higg on pot, and really bombing myself out of my mind, but the thought came back that I was only (?) reliving the loop that became embedded in my mind during the LSD experiences---so if I went along, I'd only embed the loop deeper. But if I "fought" the sensations, the revelations, the towering inconsequentiality of absolutely everything, I was fighting reality, the flow of life, "what IS." Difficulties here---as when I would try to think of something constant, something unchanging in the flux, and I would say, with enormous determination, "I". The "I" would stand solid for a few repeitions, and then it would slide into the "I-YIM" of the mantra of meditation, and there would be the revelation that maybe I'm only meditating, and I'm plumbing depths of myself while meditating, but it seems equally acceptable that the meditation is the life itself, and Watts' idea of God's dreaming all of us seemed perfectly true, and if God is dreaming us, and I am dreaming, I am God, and Sheckley's book came back and I am Melichrone, but as I tried to grab for the idea that when I read the book, the name Melichrone didn't seem familiar, or right, no respite was there, because again it came down to the printed page, and that's why I liked the book so much, because the book was ME, or I had written it, or, better, a person who was ALSO me had written it, and I would be drawn back either to the absurdity of the infinite bookcase or to the futility of expressing anything in words. About this time I'd have the urge to dash into the bedroom and type, but that seemed silly: if the infinite bookshelf was ridiculous, contributing to the mountain of print seems even less desirable. [And I get up from typing to urinate, and all the hundreds of ideas: having sex, cartoons, Albee, Beckett, the alphabet, numbers, people's names, people's heights or weights, old age, wrinkles, masks, wigs, insane asylums, nursery rhymes, blackboards, memorizing, nonsense rhymes, jokes, bugs: spiders, roaches, the cock turning into a rocket turning into a sequence from 2001 turning into games, contests, rules, competition, castration, masturbation, sore stomach, breaking my fingers, blue jeans, childhood, babyhood, rebirth, mother, father, children, religion, the Bible, reading, books, words, records, moving the record needle, Scott and Dual being names, and that's why things have names, the power of the mind, the people walking upstairs in this any-floored house, the constant inquiry: Is it light or dark outside, the thought of anger, Have we done this before? Have I gone to bed with you before? Are we related? But everyone's related because everyone IS everyone. Games in general turning into Games the film, turning into blood, and that's circulation, and we're in a cycle. How long is the cycle? What do you know about a cycle? I'm not feeling well. I'm dizzy. I'm frightened because I'm starting to concentrate on my breathing, and that's the only way I can die --- the only way to die is to WANT to die, and I don't want to die, but the only way to liberation is to NOT not want to die, and what book did I read that in, and back to books and records and repetition and pain, but there doesn't have to be pain, I can be young --- youth! And there's the sound of thunder in the distance as the sky readies to split, and (yes, as the sky get ready to LEAVE --- as a tree gets ready to LEAF --- that's JOKE, and what a stupid thing to devote BOOKS to, like JOKES, but the whole thing is a joke, and nothing is a joke, and the horrible involvement of the pot smoking session last night is as involved as this, and as simple as this, and in the complexity of everything lies its redemption: everything is SO complex that it automatically involves its opposite, and somehow both sides of everything cancels, so that nothing is in existence except that which is really in existence, and it seems I can see the whole of existence in a tangled thread, in Indra's net, which reflects each golden globe off each other golden globe, until the universe is filled with reflections of reflections, and that's Reflections in a Golden Eye, and that's why THAT book and movie were produced, and everything cycles back to everything else, and I can see all the movies I want and read all the books I want, and it doesn't make any difference. Is any one of these things important? Not when I can look at them, singly or in groups, and, looking, see that whether there's one of them, or some of them, or all of them, or none of them, it doesn't make any difference, so if it doesn't make any difference if there's ONE MORE OR LESS OF THEM, IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE IF THERE'S ALL OF THEM OR NONE OF THEM, so THAT, whatever it is, doesn't make any difference. So the books go, and the shows and operas and ballet go, and the names go, because what difference does it make what something is CALLED, and the individuals go, since it doesn't make any difference (I fear to look over to Cyndy's face, because she may be changed to Betsy or Joan, and her voice sounds sometimes like my chiding Aunt Helen's voice [and did I write that down before, and if so where, and I feel like telling Cyndy to go to my writing drawer and get me the page on which I said that before, but suddenly the writing drawer stretches out to infinity, and that becomes absurd, and I flounder for something that's not absurd, and absurd starts with the letter A, and I'm counting (that's numbers again) through the alphabet, but the numbers and alphabet aren't important, though [though, laughably --- ah, yes, there WAS the possibility of laughter, and of tears, too --- the experience, it seemed, encompassed all of human activity --- the phone just rang, and it was someone asking for Club Studio, and I said "You have the wrong number" so in some cases the numbers ARE important --- and suddenly the phone call seems enormously coincidental, to be able to relate ideas so exactly of the importance, in some cases, of numbers, and the unimportance, in other cases, of numbers, but clinging (there's something wrong with that word) to the ideas of last night, it really doesn't matter whether the phone call was important, or coincidental, it could have been anything, and that anything could have been taken for another hierarchy --- that's another loaded word, along with tiers --- tears? --- GOD --- and I feel like James Joyce, he's another author, with another name, and authors and names and books are unimportant, remember? [and I find my typing in seven levels of brackets and braces, and that's how the thinking was last night, when a thought would lead to a sub-thought, until I'd be looking at minutiae, only to find these trivia somehow symbolizing --- more than symbolizing, these tiny dots of thought would CONTAIN the physical universe --- and I'd whirl through the cycle at levels or sublevels which could take an instant or hours, depending on where I wanted to be, and where I wanted to be was in bed, but alone or with Cyndy, and that led back to sex, and relationship, and love, and again I'd grasp my face in my hands, my mind fumbling with words and ideas, letting them slip way and come back, whirling through time, which was also important --- I didn't have a watch on, and dreaded the instant when I would look at my wrist and find my watch THERE, a final proof, as if I needed it, that time sequences and material things were liable to be misjudged, and misinterpreted, and my mind could make mistakes, and what I had "known" turns out to be false, but THAT DIDN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENT, JUST AS NOTHING made any difference.], but I'd been through THAT loop before, so let's get back to the NEXT level, which I pick up at the "though" four lines from the bottom on the previous page] they were probably enormously important when I was a child, and memorizing them. I can't forget the line in my baby book, saying how quickly I learned the letters and words, and I might visualize myself in unknowing, uncomprehending desperation to learn what my parents wanted me to learn, to get some sign of approval or love from them, and I'd concentrate on the letters and numbers with an obsession which is simple to identify with the obsessions I have now, and again this leads me to rather believe the importance attached to childhood trauma, wince it seemed to recur so often in my thoughts during the pot experience.] (and now I'm out of that bracket, and am back at "Aunt Helen's voice" ten lines from the bottom on the page BEFORE last), and I somehow feel like I'm connected with Aunt Helen even further back than California, as if she comforted me during some accident or trauma, and she was speaking gently yet authoritatively to me, trying to reason with me and be sympathetic to me at the same time, and, to repeat, I fear to look over to Cyndy's face because she might BE my Aunt Helen, and I'm still a child, waking up from a bad dream, but why should SHE comfort me? But why should ANYONE want to comfort me? And I'm thrown into THAT loop, where people MAY be willing to help me if I'd just ASK them, and that leads to the thought "I AM important," but again I get the expression of a sigh beside me, and this time that same sort of sigh means "Of course, dear, you're important, or else you wouldn't be here, or I wouldn't be here," and that leads back to the LSD, and there's somehow the thought "Let me go out and come in again," but that seems silly, since it really doesn't matter how many times people come out or go in (which leads back to the sex loop again), and I may tie into the music again, and hear the sweetly repetitious loops of music, and think that something's wrong with my record player. "Sure, you can break your record player if you want to, but isn't that childish?" "I want to see fire." "Go ahead, light the matches, but diesn't (Dies Not?) (is EVERYTHING significant?) (IS nothing significant --- that's signifying --- etc) that seem foolish?" "You can really do anything you want to, including jumping from the window, but you don't HAVE to, but then, you don't DON'T have to, either." I grab my hands and look at them. Five fingers. Five? I could tear one off, and I can sense a sigh from Cyndy, and this sigh means, "Oh, Bob, I'm worried about you, and if you tear one of your fingers off, I'll REALLY start to worry." And this, too, is transparent absurdity. I must be going out of my mind. "Sure, you can go out of your mind if you want to," and a siren outside turns into the paddy wagon coming for me to take me to the insane asylum. ASYLUM! Is THAT what the word means? "You can spend your time in the nut hatch if you want to, but wouldn't you rather be doing something else?" And the smells come to mind, and that's the loop about showering, and soap, and shaving, and deodorants, and I can somehow see every level of cleanliness, and each seems more silly than the last. When I urinated, I had, or imagined I had, but that doesn't make any difference now, a drop of urine on my fingers when I finished, and I thought to wash it, but thought that was silly, since I'd just have to wash the sink, and I thought of Bradbury's story "The Fruit in the Bottom of the Bowl," and all cleanliness suddenly became as compulsive as that cleanliness. I could wipe it on my pants, but it'd be there on my pants. I could smell it, but that might leave a drop on my nose, and it would still be on my fingers, but everything seemed so silly, like brushing my teeth once a day, or twice a day, what did it matter? And exercising, that had something to do with muscles, and there was a loop in which I could be any size I wanted to be, but somehow the bulging muscles were associated with a childhood dream, and again a sigh from Cyndy indicated "Sure, you can have those muscles if you really WANT them, but doesn't it seem rather childish?" And I thought about Cyndy and her weight, but just as the size of my muscles didn't make any different in what she thought of me, obviously, transparently obviously, her weight didn't make any difference to me, and I thought of myself standing up, taller than she, and bowing to her, and simultaneously I was every possible height, and with the attainment of every possible height, the concept of height was meaningless, and people's height or weight didn't make any difference! I grasped this as a new truth, and went off into another loop.) (now I'm back to "difference" on the third previous page, twelve lines from the bottom) WHICH individual it is, it could just as well be one individual as another. But could it? I ask myself that about my homosexuality, and somehow Cyndy connects with some remark like "Do you worry about it much?" And that brings me back, or forward [but with back I must go into another loop: back was important at times, either going BACK in time, or the record going backward to prove to myself that I had control over the music, though for what earthly reason I would want control over the music --- I know why, because I thought I was inventing the music I was hearing, and as in the LSD, when I persuaded the music to stop, I knew I had reached a certain point, I feared to get to that point again, but I hadn't, because the music never went backward, or modulated from Vivaldi to Hindemith --- and I resisted the urge to turn the radio on, just to find something different, because I heard a sigh from Cyndy which said "You can do what you want, but hadn't we getter be getting on with it?" And I felt myself a bore, though it made no difference to me whether I was a bore or not, and anyway, we were both high on pot. Another "back" was somehow connected with the back of the sofa, as if it had to stay against the wall, or the living room became something I wasn't familiar with, because then I could lean back against the sofa and tip it over, falling backward against the wall, or falling forward and hitting my head against the coffee table, like in an auto accident, and somehow auto accidents attained a significance. As if I created them by thinking of bashing my own head against the wall or table, and I heard a scream of brakes outside, and I simultaneously feared (1) I would cause an accident outside, and (2) I was driving a car, had dozed off into an LSD trance, and was about to smash up my OWN car. But that passed when there was no crash outside, and I knew somehow that accidents were caused by people wanting them to happen, which immediately returned me to thought of my death. I could feel myself drawing breath in and out, and I knew that if I WANTED to stop breathing, I could. Then each passage through the loop seemed to be somehow connected to organs of the body: when I smelled smoke in the air, I felt like remarking to Cyndy: "Imagine all those confused alveoli down there with all this pot being inhaled." Then I could picture the smoke wafting through the passages of the lungs, and I suddenly recognized "Fantastic Voyage," and here was another movie and book (and TV program) which was influenced by what I was beginning to think of as a cosmic experience, waiting inside each person, since, still, in some way, I WAS every other person, though I seemed to have no trouble keeping my individuality throughout the pot experience (and that leads me again to the thing about LSD: LSD is supposed to liberate you from yourself; my experiences were very self-centered, even those which concerned MY relationships with my mother and father; so, as I asked myself within the trip when Arno was with me, "Am I on the drug, or am I not on the drug?" But the answer to that, as the answer to everything else, might as well be, "It doesn't make any difference," as it was then, too), I never confused myself with whomever was sitting to my right, though the personality of the person to my right changed as often as she sighed. At another point I remember a particularly intricate loop of thought growing smaller and smaller as I looked at it, until it changed into a heart valve, or something, and was put into its place in the body. I was led back to the image of the four-limbed and -headed puzzle piece more than once, and I figured this was an influence from childhood, when I played with picture puzzles to pass the time. With the idea of breathing, my memory went back to Canada, where I convinced myself that the only death I would find under LSD would be actual death, possibly by holding my breath. I asked Cyndy "What happens if I hold my breath?" She answered "Nothing, your body will take care of itself," but I didn't believe her. I both wanted her to stay close, to protect me, but then I visualized curling up with her on the sofa, but that would be too much like the Betsy-bit, and how many times did I need the Betsy-bit? The sofa led to the thought of a bed, and I started looking at the table, and at the chair across the way, and I leaned forward to stare at the corner of the yellow chair, and I remember distinctly: "The corner looked just like that, I entered there, and went up toward the center." Then I had some concept of my own strangeness, and lay back once more on the sofa. We checked the time again, and thankfully I still didn't have my wristwatch on, but even looking at the lineup of the record player, the tuner-amplifier with the telephone on top of it, and the tape recorder with the record player cover on top of IT, I got some insight as to the random ordering of objects, and how silly it was to think that ONCE A THING WAS PLACED, IT ALWAYS HAD TO STAY THERE. Every so often the radiators would clank, and this was also familiar, this tied in --- the noise seemed to fit. I would stretch my feet out on the table, and knock into things, and somehow this had happened before. Once, bending forward with my head in my hands, I caught a glimpse of the crystal ashtray and the wooden finished box for tic-tac-toe, and I thought of Huxley's theory that jewels were attractive because they reminded us of the lights and colors from a forgotten world we came from, and to which we would return after death. Then I went back to breathing, and I felt Cyndy watching me, checking to see that I breathed every so often. I began to think about death: I could jump out the window, but that would be suicide. I could slash my wrists when I went into the bathroom to urinate, but that would hurt. I almost wanted to die, but that was only in the drug sensation, and I wanted Cyndy or someone to guard me to insure that I wouldn't actually die. Insure! I thought of insurance and safeguards and seatbelts, and suddenly the idea of insurance, salary, working, the whole thing became ludicrous. About this time Cyndy inquired, in jest, "But then you don't have to go to work tomorrow, do you?" I thought she was reading my mind, as at another point when she said "Nothing is important anymore. Nothing means anything." Which was just as good a statement as my "What is real?" At another point I asked what music was, and Cyndy gave a reply in which, strangely, the word matrix was included, and suddenly I saw all the sciences ever offered in college, every science outlines in the enormous Encyclopedia Britannica, every science branched off that idea of a matrix, and every science was connected, and since it was all connected and written down in books, it was somehow unimportant. And Cyndy sighed, implying, "Yes, you can live in a world with science, or in a world without science, it doesn't make any difference. You can do as you wish." I thought of operations, of heart transplants, or organ regenerations, of graftings and cuttings, and somehow the whole things was unnecessary. People didn't have to be sick --- why was I here? Was I trying to escape from the flu? Flu? Flew? It was gone! I didn't have to worry about it, I wouldn't get it unless I WANTED it. It was only an invention of malingerers. At various times through the experience, stomach troubles, heart troubles, leg pains, ingrown toenails, all that came into it. At one point when I was ripping off my mask to see the supernal light, I felt my glasses, and someone said "Take off your glasses." But I had taken them off before when I was rubbing my face in perplexity, and I said "But I'm not wearing contact lenses." But it didn't make any difference. I remembered the thought when I took off my glasses, and I focused on the shrinking ashtray through my diminishing lens, and thought: "You can look at the world in whatever level of detail that you want, anytime, and glasses aren't really important, because you can never see all there is to see, anyway." Thoughts of fire passed through my mind: was the building on fire? Where were the fire escapes? But even that, death by fire, was a sort of put-on: it was part of the common experience, since I was experiencing it this evening, therefore it was nothing to worry about. I felt increasingly tired, and went over to the chair, feeling the need for sleep, yet dreading what tournaments with temptation might arise if I went alone to bed. Cyndy came and stood over me, trying to console me, and she kept saying that she was feeling better and better. Like a fool, I was so engrossed with myself I figured she was saying that only to make ME feel better and better, so I knew her to be lying, and didn't believe her, but didn't bother to ask her about it. Then I went into the bedroom, and leaned my head on the dresser, feeling very good to be there. I thought vaguely of vomiting, but that led me back to that impossible image from Canada: to convince myself I was alive, I would have shit into the bathtub and wallow in it just to prove that I was alive. The same image came back when I debated stuffing my head into the toilet into which I had just pissed. The thought was the same: "If you want to do it, go ahead and do it; I can't see what's to be gained from it, but if you want to do it, go ahead." I could see myself typing, and vomiting all over the sheets that I typed, and that seemed alien, or fitting, since most of the words, by that time, seemed only bits of refuse, anyway.) Getting back to the other half of the paradox started 11 pages back, Cyndy was at once the supreme authority, therefore supremely important and powerful, and at once the lowest, nothingest person, who didn't matter one bit, next to me. But both these had the same effect: I could do ANYTHING I wanted. I wanted the sun to come up, to show my power, because I was convinced that the planetary system was just as phony as the earth, and I kept asking if it was dark out, but it always was. I felt like going to sleep there on the sofa, but when I didn't get hung up on the chain sofa-settee-chair-bed-sleep, I would get hung up on the trust part of it. When Warren fell asleep in his home with me there, he turned it into a compliment for me: "I felt so comfortable with you that I could just fall asleep. You can't fall asleep with someone you don't trust." If that's so, I can recall only one easy time, with the fellow in the upper 80's, with whom I could fall asleep instantly; otherwise, I toss and turn until reasonably sure the other person is asleep (how/s that for controlling?) and then, guided by their regular breathing, I can fall asleep.
Then the music changed into a smooth progression, as if the notes were counting, as if the music was setting forth the scale, and again I was certain that the music fitted the situation perfectly, since I was thinking that numbers and letters were nothing, and should never have to be memorized. Which led me to a great idea for a story while meditating this morning: visualize a civilization in which there were no records, books, movies, absolutely no devices (another loaded word) (I'll get to it now: at one point I felt like saying to Cyndy "I'm tired and want to go to bed," and she might get angry with that because it might not be what SHE wanted, but then I didn't care what she wanted, and I was perfectly willing to be angry with her to make my point. Then I thought about the anger at the Aureon session, and had the idea that this was all sitting on the floor of the Circle H Ranch, and the entire group had spent this much time for me, and I was using up all this time, and they were trying to get me to do something: either cry or to wake up, or to get angry. I visualized myself hopping up on the coffee table and shouting at the top of my voice: I'm angry, I'M ANGRY. But that wouldn't work, and again Cyndy sighed, and the sigh said: "Sure, you can shout at the top of your lungs, if you want to, you can turn the music up full blast, it doesn't make any real difference, but do you really want to inconvenience so many other people?" And again I thought I was inconveniencing the people at Aureon, and I searched for something to do. Cry? "Sure," she sighed, "you can cry if you want to, but what good will that do?" Then during the walk this morning I saw an older boy crying to his mother, and figured if there was one way that one human being can manipulate another, it was by the use of tears: primarily the female influences the male this way, but the child the mother, the parent the child, the lover the lover, and the patient the therapist. I remember thinking back to the phrase "Peak Experience," since that was the new term that convinced me that Aureon was different from the LSD experience, and I figured I might be having a peak experience now, and maybe I should put on Mahler's Second for the chorus, but again there was the thought that I could wake the whole apartment building (whether it was 17 stories, 2 stories, or infinitely tall), but did I really want to do it? Probably by this time I was beginning to come out of it, and Cyndy spoke encouragingly about coming out of it herself, implying that I would be soon to follow. Soon I could do nothing but get to bed, and took my clothes off in a lump in the bedroom and took the sheets and pillow and pillow case in to Cyndy in the living room, and put a towel and washcloth out for her, and then I fell into bed, dreading that blackness which would change into the light of dawn: LIGHT, that was on the FIRST day. I Asked Cyndy how many times she'd been high and she said "Eight." It was an unexpected number to begin with, and I had the idea "Eight isn't such a large number, I'm pretty close to one, I don't have far to go." Whatever that meant. But then, upon rethinking, it seemed like the most normal number in the world. I thought of the five senses then, which tied in with five fingers, and since hearing had been disposed of when records and words went by the wayside, so I figured the other senses must be nonsensical, and I pressed my fingers in on my eyes, and Cyndy seemed to draw in her breath through clenched teeth as if to say, "You can poke your eyes out if you want to, but hadn't you better think about it first?" I thought about it and didn't poke out my eyes.) no devices at all in which to pass on memories. The only sounds would be an open-mouthed AAAAAAAAA. True, there could be some expression as in" AAAAAaaaaa, or aaaaaAAAAA or aaaAAAaaa, or AAAaaaAAA, but that would be all there was. Then the children would grow up knowing the PROOF of love rather than the word of love. They wouldn't have to memorize anything, they'd do what they FELT like doing and not what various creeds taught them to do. Very Krishnamurti. At another point, early on, I said some words to Cyndy, and they were very much the Bible and, with the saying of the word Bible, it became just another book, and we, not verbally, lamented the sorry state of religion. It just didn't make any difference. Nor did children make any difference: everyone was essentially ALONE. Not a depressing alone: far from it; a freedom unparalleled: only yourself to rely on for happiness, non-boredom. You could share yourself with others but essentially no one ELSE could produce happiness for YOU: you had to fend for yourself in that area. At another time I felt something on the back of my left wrist, held up against my head, and I somehow knew that it was a spider. This was quite far along in my level of abstracting: when I was hung up on the words hierarchy and tier --- EVERYTHING seemed arranged in hierarchies and levels, each set of details was subsumed under one of several categories, each set of categories was subsumed under major headings, and each major heading, more or less, vanished into nothing as it turned out to make ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE which way the decision, if there was any, went. From spider I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye in the kitchen, and I thought: roach! From spider and roach I went to flies, and figured I heard a buzzing bugging in the background (The Lord of the Flies!) and wondered why insects would come so "high" in the hierarchy. At another time I closed my eyes, and two red spots, one above the other, formed in my mind's eye, and my imagination put a tilted dog's head with the spots for eyes in my memory, and the dog changed to a wolf, to a cougar, to a lion, and suddenly that put the entire animal kingdom into its place. When things got particularly difficult, I would see everything as a joke, and would remonstrate with myself that jokes were hardly important, why, they even wrote BOOKS about jokes, and suddenly that made books as useless as ever before. When I put my head in my hands and saw my blue jeans, I was forcefully thrown back into childhood, and thought of youth, and that sunny grassland which I'd wanted to escape into in Canada. And somehow it was there, and possible, if I wanted it, but, without the feeling of "well, what do I DO there" coming back, I didn't want it --- or rationalized myself into not wanting it (though talking about rationalization at THIS time is ludicrous), and was merely content to know that I could be ANY AGE I wanted, as well as any height I wanted. I can't specifically recall any racial overtones, but I'm sure being any color I wanted would fit into here, also. When I couldn't move the record's music backward, and the records finally stopped, I concentrated on the record needle, seeing if my mind was powerful enough (since I could do anything I wanted) to move the needle onto the record. I re-thought about breaking records, and again there was the thought: sure, I could throw them all out the window if I really wanted to, but it might be hard on anyone walking below, some of the records I DO like, and what's the use of doing it in the first place, just to prove that it COULD be done? OF COURSE it could be done, so there's no need to prove it. Anything could be done, anything could be true, however, there are SOME givens: I AM WHAT I AM, and that's given at this moment. If I want to move somewhere else, I can move somewhere else. If I REALLY WANTED to go to bed with a girl, I would go to bed with a girl. If there was anything I really wanted to do, I could do it. What about flying in a plane? That gave me pause for awhile, one of the more difficult points, but somehow even that didn't cause me much pain (possibly because I knew there was no upcoming plane flight for me). I thought of an auto accident, or a train wreck, or a shipwreck, or a plane wreck, and somehow knew that the people caused it, and that made it seem acceptable: but then it happened, so it HAD to be acceptable. This was the sort of reasoning I tried to use on myself without avail before, only time will tell if this will be of any help now. I'm still not planning any trips. But the horizons were unlimited: at one point I remember thinking "I could even be a BEATLE." And Cyndy sighed and implied, "Yes, you could be a Beatle if you wanted to be, but isn't that rather tiresome?" And again the dichotomy between children and adults came to mind: only children had the energy to be Beatles, and I have the particular energy for a person of my age, and that could be any energy I wanted. I felt myself growing old on the sofa, thinking about old age and wrinkles and sagging skin and smells from all parts of the body. I even thought of the smells right there, and even debated going into the bathroom and giving myself a spray of deodorant, but just as the thought of taking a shower at that point was ludicrous, the thought of using deodorant at that point, or ever, seemed ludicrous, and I almost laughed at the idea of the fuss we go through on unnecessaries, even exercising. But, later, now, at I think about it, I'll still have to exercise. The life can't be lived COMPLETELY in the mind, and there IS something nice about having a pleasing body, nice for me, and nice for other people. Now of course that doesn't matter, and it's an indication that I'm typing this AFTER the pot session, rather than DURING the pot session, because then
(to D102)
CONTINUATION MISSING
DIARY 244 2/11/69
TALK WITH MY BARBER
I get my tri-weekly haircut and the door's closed and I have to enter through the hotel. "What happened? Did the whole thing fill up with snow?"
"It was icy. I put down some salt and I'm waiting for it to melt."
"Wasn't it a great day?"
"I couldn't get out for food, so I didn't have anything to eat. I usually eat out but there are three steps, then a landing, then three more steps, and the snow was above that and halfway up the door, so I couldn't go out."
"Where IS this?"
"Kew Gardens."
He clipped for awhile in silence, then continued talking.
"I didn't have anything to eat except dry cereal. I didn't have any milk because I can't drink milk --- because of the butterfat." A pause, clipping. "I have the dry cereal with juice."
"That must taste funny."
"Oh, I got used to it, it tastes pretty good." Another pause. "I see you have your laundry over there."
"Yeah, the Chinese laundry lost a bundle for me, first time that's happened."
"I always do my own stuff in the basement."
"This is shirts and sheets and stuff, for the Chinese laundry."
"I do my own shirts."
"You do? I used to do mine in school, but not any more."
"Yeah, on Sunday I clean the place up a bit and do my shirts. That lasts until 6 o'clock, then I go out for dinner, and I'm back at 8, and I watch TV until 10 or 11, and then I have to get to bed to get up at 6 in the morning to get in here. But I'm used to it."
"It's good to be used to a routine."
"Yeah, I keep pretty busy, and Sunday's the only day I have at home, so that's the only day I have to do the things I have to do. Otherwise I work every day."
"Yeah."
DIARY 253 2/69
RENT HASSLE
My note of February 3: I am not paying my rent for 4 heatless days this month. 4/31 of $178.25 = $23.00. 178.25 - 23.00 + 155.25 + 1.55 = $156.80 January rent. I most sincerely hope this need not happen again.
Their note of February 8: Had to replace new compressor and pump, same was not under our control. Expect check in full, Manager.
My note of February 13: Are you implying the compressor and pump were under MY control?? If you INCREASE services to me, you would INCREASE my rent --- therefore, if you DECREASE service to me, I will DECREASE my rent. You wait five days to respond to my note, I want five days to respond. And, gentlemen, how about a NOTE$ in the ELEVATOR next time this happens again so I can plan to MOVE to a HOTEL while the building is unheated. I, too, expect something in full. Service. Tenant.
Their note of February 17: We are returning your check to the sum of 156.80. Would appreciate a check for 179.80 for apt. 1703 which you occupy in above mentioned premises. If same is not received by return mail we will have to dispossess for same. Signed Angus Associated, Foster B. Pollack.
That evening, I talk to Joe who tells me that withholding rent monies is illegal.
The next morning I call Heating Complaints, who say also that withholding rent is illegal, and refer me to Rent Control for rumor of being able to stay in hotel and send landlord the bill. They say that's not true and that the ONLY recourse is to apply for a reduction in rent. I ask for papers.
My note of February 18, with check in full: Thank you for you individual, special, courtesy and charm. May you continue to have the type of success, with me and all your tenants, that you've so unremittingly sought. The End?
DIARY 417 6/27/69
MARTY
Marty had called with enormous enthusiasm to tell me about his acquisition of the rarest Lotte Lehman record, a recoding of "Robin Adair" and "All Alone (?)," for a trade and one of the seven Caruso Xenophones, one of the six he didn't have, for $300. He told me about the rarity of these seven, how three were really rare, how the most common had only about 20 known copies, how he was due to get the second rarest in August when his friend Marty went to Europe to pick up one of the seven known copies from "the owner, but not the collector," since the collector had died and his heirs were willing to get rid of it. Many of the rare copies are part of sets in institutions who would be scarcely expected to get rid of them, such as the Library of Congress and Yale University, and another complete set of seven had just been purchased by a collector for $3500, and that collector would be expected to ask at least $6-7000 for it at the next sale.
He said that since I was a collector, I would understand his excitement better than would Jerri, who could be happy because Marty was so happy but who couldn't understand the joy of the collector at the sense of completeness. "I don't collect matchbook covers, but if you told me you'd finally located a matchbook cover you'd been looking for for 23 years, I'd be excited for you." It takes a collector to know the feelings of one, as I observed sagely (parsleyly?).
I heard myself asking the next question and wondered about my putting it so vaguely, as if I were pushing for more information: "I suppose Jerri is less troubled with --- her problems (and why I put it in the plural I don't know)?"
"As far as the drinking is concerned (and at that point I knew I had stumbled onto something), there's no problem, she likes to have wine with dinner, but that's no real problem, I wouldn't mind if she wanted to have a bottle of wine with every dinner. But before it was more of a problem, she'd kill two bottles of wine on an evening all by herself, and this was after four or five martinis in the evening, and drinks for lunch, and three or four drinks after work. I was even beginning to worry about her physical condition," he said with a touch of incredulity in his voice. "I thought she might be physically hurting herself."
"But with the baby coming, she'd have more reason to be happy?"
"Yes, she feels much better now --- despite the sicknesses. With the baby in the position it's now in, it's pressed up against her lungs and so her oxygen intake becomes quite a bit less. Not only is she inhaling less oxygen, but the baby is using up some of it, too, so she fainted last night in the restaurant where we'd decided to have a good meal. In a couple of months the baby will move to a new position, so she'll be able to breathe more easily. Of course the baby will still be taking oxygen from her, but her body will have grown more accustomed to a lesser intake, so when the intake rises back toward normal, she'll be feeling much better." There was a slight pause, and I said nothing.
"But as far as the sexual frigidity is concerned," he said this calmly, as if he had discussed the problem with me in detail before, "it's just as bad. I'd be surprised if the average for our having sex was any greater than once every two months. I don't know how long I can take that."
I made some noncommittal statement. He was enjoying the talk and I couldn't think of anything to say.
"I really don't have it in mind to be unfaithful to her, but we've talked about it, and she even said it would make her feel a bit less guilty if I DID have another woman on the side. But this isn't what I want, she showers me with emotional affection, I couldn't be happier with that, but I just want some more of the physical affection."
"I'm so disgusted with contemporary morality. There's no real REASON why you should feel guilty about having someone on the side, but obviously you DO."
"I know. I keep telling myself there's really nothing wrong with it, but that doesn't help. I'd rather do it with Jerri than anyone else. I know it's just a physical act. It reminds me of my friend Pearl. We were talking about morality about two years ago and he said that even though he wasn't raised in anything like a religious family, and he certainly doesn't consider himself religious, he just wouldn't think of getting married unless it was a Jewish girl. It doesn't do him any good to tell himself that that's illogical, that's the way he feels, and that's all there is to it."
"I know what you mean."
"It's just the way we're brought up."
"There's nothing we can do about it, but we can hope that the next generation doesn't have as many hang-ups as we do. In fact, though I consider myself reasonably liberated, I even find it difficult to say what my first reaction was when you talked about being unfaithful to Jerri." I tried to say something, but there was a pause as I wrenched the words from my mind. "My reaction was that you should be unfaithful as soon as you could to Jerri, so that you could confront her with that fact and see what her actual reaction would be, now, before too much time has passed."
"There's no more reason, biologically, why I should be more unfaithful now than after two years. I'm sure there's a point beyond which the build-up just doesn't count."
"You're probably right, but there's no reason for you to be uncomfortable for two years when you could stop being uncomfortable after two months. It seems that as more and more time passes you'll feel more and more guilty at the time you decide TO be unfaithful to her. I'm assuming that you will be, which is a terrible thing to say, but that's what I feel."
"One thing that makes that difficult is the question of time. I just don't have the TIME to court someone. I don't have enough time to spend with Jerri, and with work, and with books, not to spend as much time as I want, so I certainly wouldn't have the time to find and court some girl that I'm going to have on the side."
Thoughts of Shoshanna and Joan and Cyndy and Regina flashed through my mind, but I quieted these thoughts, thinking they just wouldn't look right brought out into the conversation. Rather like last night when Joan and I were eating at Angelo's and she was saying how scarce pot was getting, due partly to the government's burning large fields of it in Mexico, partly to the Mafia's stockpiling huge quantities of it against the day when it will be scarce and they could make a bigger profit on their own supplies, with the side issue that they were also going to try harder pushing heroin, since that was even a bigger profit for the organization, hoping that people would turn in desperation to heroin if their pot supplies were cut off. I remember asking Joan who of her friends she thought would turn to heroin, and she mentioned Pat, who was the only one of her friends "unstable enough," as she put it, to fall for the more dangerous stuff. I had been thinking of Bonnie, but she pooh-poohed the idea by stating that as the daughter of a physician, Bonnie knew too well the physical aspects of becoming addicted to heroin, and that would be sufficient to keep her off it. When I insisted, Joan began wearing a worried look and later in the conversation checked back with "You really think Bonnie would take heroin if she couldn't get pot?" maybe as much to check on a future supply of heroin than anything else. But then she shook the idea off with the thought that Bonnie and Norman probably had enough to last through most shortages, anyway. It was just on the tip of my tongue to tell her that Joe knew where to get mescaline, but I thought of Joan blabbing to all her friends and news of the blab getting back to Joe, and when I began by saying "Joe know where to get," and I paused, looking at Joan's eager eyes and facile lips, "pot, ordinarily," I finished and she took it to be a normal climax, for she said dryly, "If he does, he's one of the few people I know who can, because no one in my circle of friends can get any, and no one in the circles that THEY touch on can get any either," she said, refraining from showing too much eagerness about getting any for herself. "If you have any, hold on to it," she said, possibly sarcastically, knowing that I was doing just that with the little bit I had, and contradicted her earlier statement: "We'll probably use up the rest of Helen's and mine on Saturday, with a blast with our friends. There's really no use keeping it all for yourself." Again her voice was dry and reasonably sarcastic.
I wanted to continue the conversation with Marty and suggested that maybe things would get better after she had the baby. "After all, she does have a reasonably legitimate excuse now for not having sex. She's pregnant, and she isn't feeling very well."
"But she didn't want to have sex before she was pregnant, either. I hope she'll change after she has the baby, but we'll just have to see about that. If she doesn't chance, I'll just go crazy; I just need it more often that that." Now as I'm typing, the terribly perverse idea occurs to me that he probably knows that I'm gay, and he might be gently feeling me out as a possible outlet for his frustrated sexual energies. The idea is much too sick to pursue, but there it is, for whatever it signifies.
We continue to complain about the current morality, and Marty continues to make good points about the difference between knowing logically all the facts about something, and still feeling something completely contraindicated by the facts. He doesn't really want to be unfaithful to Jerri, but he has the wisdom to realize that his body needs sexual outlets. "I feel that one of my best arguments for Jerri is that I need to have sex and want to have it with her. I fear that if I DO have someone on the side, she might react in one of two ways: it might make her feel more like having sex, but otherwise if she still doesn't feel like having sex, it might make her so comfortable with the knowledge that I'm having sex on the side, so that we'll end up having sex even LESS often, because my major argument FOR it will be gone."
"But there's no way of predicting how she'll react, and my only argument is that the sooner you confront her with the fact of your unfaithfulness, the sooner you'll know her actual reaction."
"But she might be disgusted with me and want to end the marriage. I wouldn't want that. That's why I'm worried about what having other sex might do to MY feelings. I might get involved with someone else, and THAT could be just as great a danger to the marriage as HER wanted to end it."
"That's one of the sad things about our morality: it equates having sex with loving someone. Jerri should certainly be made to understand, logically, that when you go to bed with someone, it's merely going to bed with them; you don't love them, you love her, that's why you're not leaving her, that's why you don't love them, you only have sex with them. But the way you and Jerri, and I too, have been brought up, if you go to bed with someone, you're being "unfaithful" to the one you love. It's like saying that eating in a Chinese restaurant is being "unfaithful" to the flag of the United States. It's just two different things, vaguely connectable in that the person who's performing the two actions is the same person, but the actions are just completely independent."
"Jerri's been so satisfying emotionally, it would take longer than I've known her to begin to build up an equal feeling for someone else. And that would be the only time she'd have reasons to be jealous."
"Exactly, but as you say, you can present all the facts, arrange all the arguments logically, present them all to the person, who intellectually might accept them and agree with them, and even openly support them, but still, though Jerri might intellectually agree, she MIGHT just plain FEEL like you've been some sort of monster and committed some sort of crime --- sin, worse yet --- and just not be able to forgive you. And kill a lovely marriage because of her stupid upbringing."
"Well, I'm not about to be unfaithful --- I'm too busy." There was a brief laugh and then he began to carry on a conversation with someone in the office. "I have to run now, Bob. I'll talk to you later."
When I hung up, I went back to transferring stamps from one album to the other, but I figured this would be the unique chance to do what I so wanted to do in Europe, namely, go to the electric typewriter after a great conversation and record it. I tried to blot it from my mind (it's too much WORK to type), but I remember the saying "These lazy guy would rather HAVE WRITTEN, than write," and do this, now. June 27, 1969.
DIARY 423 6/27/69
TELEPHONE
Maybe if I get some imaginative writing done, every chance comment and pun people laugh at, and every series of telephone conversations, won't seem so worthy of typing. Or else I have to begin taping telephone conversations and get bored with their lack of editing. Anyway, now's the time I feel like typing, so:
The comment I made with Joan, when she was complaining that Paul reeled off the names of all her men-friends when she refused to go with him to see "No Place to be Somebody" after she had agreed to go with me to see "DeSade Illustrated." She had just said "I don't even know how he knew about Murray --- well, I guess I told him about Murray when I first met him, and I suppose I DID tell him I went out with Joel in his camper --- " whereby I replied: "Joan, I'm SURE he heard it from you, you KNOW you've got the biggest mouth between here and him."
The comment I made to Marty when he telephoned and said, "Hi, how are you?" I replied "Hi, fine." And he laughed a comment about my stereophonic response.
Then I call Joe about how lousy the play was last night and about how I was thinking of not going to the party this evening, how I had debated having him call me at the switchboard and saying I have to leave. He asked "Why not?" and I said that if I really didn't want to go, I should simply not go rather than going only halfway. He was so unkind as to mention the film "Lola Montes" and I quickly said, "No, I guess I will be going to the party," but then I re-evaluated and decided that the only person I was punishing was myself: if I really thought the party was going to be a bomb, why should I go? Certainly not because I was that interested in keeping up the friendship with the Shoshans, and I DID want to see Lola Montes. "I changed my mind, we'll go."
"Think about it, and then call me back."
I called the 8th Street Playhouse and found that the showings were at 7 and 9, which made his quitting time fit in nicely, so I tried to call Joan to warn her that I wasn't coming, but there was no answer, so I called Shoshana's number. She answered. "I'm sorry, but I won't be able to make it to your party this evening." There's nothing like getting the sad news out in one foop.
"That's too bad," came her soprano voice, "why not?"
"A very good friend of mine from San Francisco is in town, passing through on his way to Europe, and I'm meeting him tonight."
"Why not invite him to the party, too. We'd love to have him."
Something I hadn't thought of! "No, I'm afraid that isn't the type of person for this party. You know, there are certain people who would fit into the party and certain ones who wouldn't, and he's one of the ones who wouldn't." I had the vague feeling that it sounded absolutely terrible, but there it was, I had done what I wanted to do.
"Marty said he might not be able to come, either," she said sadly. "Did you talk to him?"
Embroiled in one lie, I couldn't think of any reason forgetting messed up in another, so I said, "Yes, I talked to him this morning. He was so excited about getting some new records for his collection," and I sketched in a bit about Lotte Lehman and the Caruso Xenophones.
"Well, I'm sorry you can't make it," she said, at the end.
"I am too, but I'm sure there'll be another time," I said, awkwardly, and that was the end of the conversation. Then I called Joe and said I'd meet him at the Door Store between 8 and 8:30, called Joan back by dialing the number of the 8th Street Playhouse: "Oh, I'm sorry, I have the wrong number."
And called Joan. "I'm not going to the party this evening."
"Why not?" was asked in a puzzled, irritated voice.
Be perfectly honest," I said, debating whether or not be that, "I don't want to," and decided that honesty with Joan was best.
Why?"
"Frankly, I don't think they're the most interesting people in the world."
"That makes this day absolutely perfectly awful!"
"I take it Joel hasn't called you yet?"
She laughed but was still angry. "You can't do this to Bill and myself!"
"What do you mean by that? You like Shoshana and Andy, don't you?"
"But I don't know them very well. I didn't know they were awful."
"I didn't say they were awful. I just said they were --- I said that I didn't think they were the most interesting people in the world. That doesn't mean that YOU don't like them either!"
"But I invited Bill to the party and if he has a dreadful time, it'll be my fault because I invited him."
"If he has a dreadful time he has only himself to blame. Don't you think he has the balls to get up and leave if he's not having a good time?"
"I'm going to get Paul AND David to come along with me," she pouted, choosing not to answer my question. "I think it's terrible that you're leaving."
"I think it would be terrible if I went, knowing perfectly well that my chances of enjoying myself were pretty slim."
"But I'M going to be there, and Marty's going to be there, though I don't like HIM that much (I didn't mention that he probably wouldn't be there, either), and Bill's going to be there. That should be interesting." There was a pause, and since I obviously wasn't going to say anything, she asked, "And what ARE you going to be doing this evening?"
"If you want to know, I'm going to see Lola Montes."
"Who's she?"
"She's a movie playing down at the 8th Street Playhouse."
"I hate you!"
"That's all right. You're just jealous because you didn't think to cop out of the party first."
"That's awful --- I have to get off the phone."
"OK --- (jokingly) Have a good time this evening."
"I hate you."
"That's the way it goes." But I'm still laughing ingratiatingly, hopefully.
"That's OK. I still love you, anyway," she said, laughing softly, and she hung up.
DIARY 439 7/3/69
JOE'S FIGHT
Don Leventhal said that "The Wild Bunch" had gotten a great review in the New York Times and that since it was coming to the Trans-Lux East, he would like for us to see it frees, via Eddie. I said fine, and we went to Krakatoa on Monday and he called on Tuesday to say it would be a good day for the bunch, so I called Joe, who said he really didn't want to see the film but since it would be free, I should call him when we were going and he would decide then. He hemmed and hawed, and I thought that the fact that we were going to the last show, starting at 9:50, would put him off, but there was a humming silence as he mulled it over and he ended by saying, "OK, I'll go, meet you at your place at about 9 pm," and it was set.
We took off walking toward the theater about 9 and got there at 9:30 to pick up the slip in the box office, and Eddie looked around and motioned that we could go into the theater then. When we got downstairs, there were still twenty minutes left to the film, and we figured the "Blood Ballet" would go on then, and we went inside to watch it. They'd perfected exploding blood capsules, and the film was full of people getting shot in the shoulder, side, head, chest, gut, and legs, with blood arching, looping, gushing, spilling, flashing, exploding out of the reddened splotches on their skin or clothing. Yummy. After the ballet there was about ten more minutes of film, but everyone started out since obviously what they'd come for was over. At the intermission we got our seats, and as all the cute guys and gals began sitting down, I told Don about my fantasy of being stuck with the contents of a theater or an elevator or bus or subway car for the rest of time and mentioned that I wouldn't mind being stuck with this crew. He agreed that some of the people looked pretty humpy.
The show started, and the orchestra was almost completely filled except for three or four singles strewn through the auditorium. Someone next to Joe lit up a cigarette. I could see the flash of a match in the darkness with my peripheral vision, and I heard Joe say "There's no smoking in the theater." They made some remark back, and Joe threatened to get the usher, and they still didn't put out the cigarette, and he pushed across their knees to get the usher, at which point I could see a guy in a blue tee-shirt lean forward to put out his cigarette. When the tall Negro usher came back, of course there was no cigarette smoking. Others in the theater lit up during the show, but I didn't say anything and neither did Joe. Don in the middle was sort of surrounded by us and had no smoking neighbors.
Again the "Blood Ballet" was played out and the little colored girl next to me audibly moaned and groaned and squealed as each bullet found its mark, and the audience burst into scattered applause when it was over, delighted at the orgy of death. Then the person next to Joe struck up another cigarette.
Joe again told them to put it out, and by this time the audience was used to loud voices. They'd looked around at Joe the first time, and then three or four times some fellow two rows ahead and to the right of Joe turned around and said "Cut it out, will ya?" and it turned out that the colored guy behind him was rocking his chair back and forth with his knee, and he didn't stop for nobody. Now they looked around at Joe again as his opponent said again he wouldn't put out the cigarette and that Joe should mind his own business.
As Joe tells the story, he then leaned over to the girl and told her to put out the cigarette, whereat she blew smoke into his face. Don, at the same time, leaned over and contributed "You know, you really are a prick," in his best Bronx faggot voice. Joe swatted the cigarette out of the girl's hand, and her boy friend, saying that he had slapped her face, swung at Joe. He didn't say if it was the first blow, but quickly his pinky ring cut a deep Y-gash in Joe's right forehead, and blood began falling all over the place. I started toward the battle to help stop it, but when Joe's head twisted toward me with the smack of knuckles on skull, and I felt the rain of blood on my face, arms, and shirt, I backed away, disgusted that it had come to this, sick at Joe, and just wanting to be out of it.
Don at this time was also being pummeled, and he was grabbing desperately to get his glasses off before they were broken. The other couple had joined in the fray, and voices in the theater began screaming "Cut it out," and "Lights." The lights went up, removing the image from the screen, and from other parts of the theater came the demand for darkness and the continuation of the show, even though for all purposes it was already over.
When Joe felt that he'd been badly hurt, he saw red, rammed his head into the stomach of the fellow fighting him, and drove him all the way down the row into the aisle, where they lay grappling on the floor, as others came up to try to separate them. Don was in front of me, and as the lights came and went I could see the combatants meeting and separating, and they continued to curse at each other and then would lunge back into it. A tall Negro started separating people, and I got to the end of the row to see Joe sitting on an aisle seat, his head down on one hand, blood over his face. Don had gone up the aisle to get the manager, and someone began asking why the ushers hadn't come down to stop it sooner. By this time the movie was totally over and people began dispersing when it was obvious that the fight was over. A stranger went up to Joe and lifted him off his seat and took him back to the men's room, and I went out to the downstairs lobby to rejoin Don.
The audience was milling around, and one of the customers buttonholed the manager and demanded a free pass to see the rest of the film. When the manager said no, the customer attempted to give him an argument, but the manager flatly refused. I went into the men's room to see how Joe was, and the bleeding had stopped for the most part and he stood palely over the sink, holding a wet paper towel to his forehead, blood dripped down onto his shirt. I looked into the mirror to see I'd wiped my face clean, but there were easily a dozen drops on my shirt, a couple spots of caking blood on my arms, and my trousers were dotted in three or four places. I looked at Joe and shook my head, and he made some remark back, I guess about whether the people who had attacked him were being held, and I said the colored guy turned out to be an off-duty cop and had things under control.
The manager was persuading everyone to leave, taking down the names of the participants, and the tub in the white shirt was talking to a slim kid with glasses, "Don't you ever grab someone's arm when they're swinging. It's a good thing you're a nice kid or you would have been hurt."
"I was trying to stop the fight," said the kid openly.
"Yeah," bellowed the pig belligerently, "where would you be if I'd had a knife?"
"I guess you would have stabbed me, then," said the kid mildly, and the bull in the white sweater said nothing.
The two girls with the guys were standing about feigning amazement, saying that Joe had slapped the girl in the face, and the fellow in blue with a smudgy blood spot in the pit of his stomach, said his glasses had been broken in the battle. Finally the police arrived and tried to get some sense into the scene, and Joe came out of the bathroom. The two couples smoked almost continuously, though in fairness to them, I heard them remark to someone that they had tried to find seats in the balcony, where smoking was allowed, but it was full. The cops talked to Joe separately, and then to the others separately, and I couldn't resist going over the stating mildly "Ask them how many cigarettes they DID smoke, and how many times Joe asked them to put it out," when they gave the impression that this maniac had seriously molested the girl when she lit her first cigarette.
Names were taken down and the cop looked at the gash and said he'd have to go to a hospital. Time passed and one of the coops asked Joe if he were going to press charges. "You damn right," said Joe. The cop then told Joe how he had to go to the court in the driver's license building at 80 or 100 Centre Street, or somewhere like that, and he could do it in three days since he wanted to go to Philadelphia to a meeting of the Barnes' Board of Trustees, tomorrow. I asked the cop who was taking the evidence of the girl's face, and the cop said "You know and I know that's a cock and bull story to defend themselves. In court she won't be marked and your friend will have his scars." I wasn't satisfied, but I couldn't see anything to be gained by pressing my point. Finally the intern came with the ambulance, looked at Joe, and said he'd have to go along. Don and I crawled into the back, too, Don refusing my offer to let him go home, saying "I ride in ambulances any chance I can get," and we went up to Lenox Hill. They put Joe into a room right away, and Don and I discussed how much we liked the film. When we were tired of waiting, we asked for information and the doctor let us in to see Joe, who told us that he'd stopped counting the stitches after the first six and that the doctor had to ask the nurse how to do it, not that he had never done it but that he hadn't done it for about two years, and you forget that sort of thing. We also agreed to say we bought tickets and threw away the stubs rather than saying we got in through Eddie. Eddie said the manager SAW us going in and asked who we were, and Eddie said friends of his, but the manager either didn't remember what we looked like or didn't say anything to Eddie about it.
Then the nurse looked again at Joe and announced that it looked like his nose was broken. Fine. Went to have five or six X-rays taken, and sure enough it was. Again Joe couldn't go to the clinic because he wanted to be Philadelphia by 4:30, so he wanted to call as early as possible to see if they would take him, but he might see his private doctor. He'd also call his lawyer to decide whether to sue the theater AND the people, or just one, or what.
Taxied home with Joe and Don, and I walked home about 3 am. The next morning I talked to Joe and he said he'd go to his own doctor, and his nose was swollen and black but he could breathe and it didn't hurt. He also found that he would have to subpoena these people PERSONALLY, by going down to court and filling out a form and taking a cop and giving it TO the guy himself. I made sure Joe thought it was worth the effort, and he said he considered it a learning experience and was interested to see how it would come out.
When I talked to him last this morning (July 3), he said he was going down to get the subpoena and would go to his doctor from work this afternoon and that the Board of Trustees had been highly impressed by the fact that he came down even with a broken nose. I called Eddie and amazed him at the story, and I also was the first to let Joan and Avi and Cyndy in on the news, but Avi called Joe for more.