STRAIGHT
DIARY 4255 12/4/73
SCENE WITH MOM AT AIRPORT
I carry her bag off but say, "I have to get my stuff out of it because I'm NOT going!" "I'm not going either," she says. "I'll come to your place and stay a wee. That'll be a good vacation for me." "No, you're NOT coming to my place." "Why not?" she squeaks, tearing, chin trembling, and what do I do with her PAIN? "Because John's SICK!" I say with desperation, and she says, "So you gotta go NURSE him? Goon!" And then we're off to hear another announcement. But again she asks me why I'm not going, and I say that I haven't been GETTING headaches (she even went into a long thing about how Dad used to get them and Rita inherited them from him), and now I HAVE a headache. So she says the obvious: "So it's MY fault?" And I say "No, it's probably MY fault," knowing she's not about to investigate the logic of what I'm saying. I insist that she should GO to Russia, which she says she won't without me, but then they announce the hotel and that people can get their bags, so she agrees that it would be best to GO to the hotel and get back to Akron tomorrow (another point of her bugging me: 15 times she said, "If I could just get a half-hour's sleep, I'd be a new woman.") I carry her bags to the bus after the horrendous wait for them to come down the chute, and then there's no one to handle them and the bags keep getting jammed in the chute mouth, and finally I get them all together and tote them out to the bus and put them near the baggage place, and then she's away from me and into the door of the bus while I have an "I hope --- " hanging on the air. I'm convinced that she'll never speak to me again, that I'll never hear the end of it, all at the same time, and I'm too tired and too nerve-wracked to even care. I seemed to have said the worst things while telling myself that I really shouldn't get angry with her. I had to say it, but there was NO way to say it without hurting her, but I didn't know what to do with her hurt when she showed it --- and DID she show it, sobbing a number of times with hurt fury, voice catching again and again, even on the phone the next day when she'd BEEN asleep and IS going to Russia, but at least she's talking to me, and WILL stay on Friday night as planned --- provided I pick her up at the airport, to John's great disgust.
DIARY 4295 12/19/73
TALK WITH CYNDY
She said so many things that blew my mind I'll have to recall and number them.
1. She felt so at home at this farm in New Hampshire she felt she "belonged" there, and might move in with a guy she likes (non-sexually) if it settles down.
2. Another friend of hers did a life reading for her, saying (or someone ELSE said) that all reincarnations would have to be of the same sex --- nuts.
3. Told me about the Seth books, telling me to buy "The Seth Material" by Jane Roberts, out in paperback, about this extraterrestrial informant of Jane's.
4. Told me about her getting transcriptions of someone ELSE from the State of Washington, predictions from the late 50's that have come true, recent predictions that the world will end in 10 years from now, even before 1984, or maybe just be devastated so that VERY FEW people are left alive.
5. There ARE lots of things being said about the comet, how this is a pivotal time on earth, and the "decision" has already been made, and they try to help all they can but that might not be too much.
6. The Bermuda Triangle is one of a grid that holds the earth together, and forces are so strong there that the vanished people WERE SUCKED TO THE EARTH'S CORE.
7. That extraterrestrials have been preventing dangerous atomic tests, like one in an ocean trench; all their efforts characterized by a GREEN FLASH.
8. Hilda's meditation (and faith healing) takes place at St. Luke's Church on Hudson and Christopher on Thursdays at 6:45, through gate around back.
9. That Darwin is now heading his OWN computer services company and is VERY open and good.
10. That her grandmother was into mysticism long ago, writing "Out of the Silence."
11. That some new lecturer in Arica connected physics and mysticism, so I told her about Wheeler and his "magic needle" and as I said "Vortex," I thought of how the atom is only the VORTEX caused by the passage of this "hole" through the 4-D "net" that it uses to weave the tapestry of creation.
12. That SHE has been communicated with, though she doesn't like to talk about it.
13. That MANY people are needed to transmit knowledge from (1) various groups at various stages toward enlightenment from BEYOND the earth (2) various people died or to be born (or both) from the EARTH. My head WHIRLED!
DIARY 4398 2/1/74
DROR'S DINNER
He delights me by asking me to his place for dinner (though my mind, list-oriented, thinks only of the chance to cross something OFF the list!) and his apartment is VERY tiny, one small room with a sleeping loft, a cluttered, fairly dirty kitchen, and a bathroom that I don't even bother to look at, which is a tiny closet. He whips up a SMALL piece of hamburg with carrots and celery and spices, gets out his homemade oatmeal bread, which is quite good, but he has no milk and no butter so it's a rather dry meal with the cooked-to-John's-al-dente-consistency brown rice stewed up in spices. I disappoint him when I add salt, since he says he was hoping that his use of other spices would obviate the need for salt. We talk on about anything that comes into our heads: ACC, my current work, food, movies, his not have a TV, unemployment, the idea that if I get a choice of a REFEREE or a JUDGE at Small Claims Court, I should choose a JUDGE since only HIS decisions are appealable, the Art Deco show, the current political scene, violence in movies, and he's not even going to watch ANY movie with violence, even "Heavy Traffic," which I haven't even HEARD of in connection with violence. After we finish he plays the piano to me at 10:45, and he's so incredibly NEW at it that I'm amazed he even offered, and then went through a number of Bob Dylan pieces and George Harrison pieces, and the only really successful endeavors were the Boogie-Woogie pieces which were essentially two-fingered upper chords against a rolling single-noted decomposed chord in the harp-like lower register. When he ended, and I said I should be getting home at 11:15, he looks with a sort of breathlessness and says, "Want to stay?" He's been talking about "when I lived with Luisa" all evening, so I SUPPOSE he's straight, and he KNOWS I'm gay, so I wonder if he's saying he wants sex. There's an intense NEED coming from him, and my intuition (uncheckable, since I'll never ask him about it) is that he seems so SURFACE that he has few friends, and has fewer as time goes on, and he feels the need for something deeper, and seems to find some attraction to me, wanting something of affection from me, not necessarily sexual, but SOMETHING, which maybe even HE isn't quite certain about. But I don't think I want to put myself into it enough to find OUT.
DIARY 8395 3/23/74
WASHINGTONS FOR DINNER
Herman's parked illegally so he has to go right out and change the car to another place, and I start on the frozen daiquiris which he HAS had before, and it seems that his wedding WAS the last time I saw them. Chat about Joan Dublin who teaches with him, Daisy who gives me tickets, the reunion that Miriam Kaplan (who DIDN'T call Herman) told me about, and Herman's work with Golden Harmony, or something. They love the apartment and John's plants, and Nancy starts talking about her choral singing, which interests John, and they know people in common, Herman's co-teacher the husband of John's acquaintance the editor of Black Dance, or something. In to eat about 9, and the chili is a textureless flop, though they all like the salad and have lots of that, but I'm the only one to have more chili, and the mild is too mild and the hot is only barely an acceptable mild, though I put in three times at LEAST what the jar called for. John and Herman get into a long conversation about the state of modern communications, and I just don't care so long as they hit it off, and Nancy thinks a lot of the things John says are RIGHT ON, though I seem to detect some sort of condescension about "the black" in his tone, but they don't seem to be put off by it. I talk a bit about my travel business, John shows them the book, Nancy wants some cuttings, and we're over to the other apartment while John digs around, and they exclaim about the plants and the roominess of the place, and I'm thinking it might be the LAST party that I can show anyone the WHOLE apartment to. They don't seem interested in ANY of the foreign souvenirs. There are no dead periods, Herman and I fill each other in on whatever we want to know about the people left from SBC, and so the evening is rather a success, though I don't have the idea we'd want to see them again as I'd like to see Madge and Werner Meyer again, but this evening it seemed like JOHN was the center of conversation with his avant-gardism, so it may be that HE liked it even more than I did. His energies in cleaning up afterward amazed me, and it felt a relief for ONCE not to worry about the dishes. A pity the ice cream didn't solidify, but the NEXT day it was just perfectly ice CREAM, and it has GOT to be made with ALL cream or NOT at all.
DIARY 8475 4/18/74
AURA-CLEANING AT SYLVAN LEVY'S
The lobby-entrance apartment is jammed with people on chairs, so he motions me into the street-side room on a cushion while we listen to the tape. The Actualism reading, by Paul Schofeld, is rather over-volumed and grating, and it's a form of meditation (that I xeroxed from Nick's magazine) that involves "using the star that exists, nevertheless" about six inches over your head-center, bringing its radiance down over and enveloping your body, and then letting it withdraw after experiencing it in each of your seven chakras. There were some dolls in the audience, a lantern-jawed jeaned Italian most notably, that I would have liked to brush down, but I was "accosted" by an older, balding, paunchy, gray-looking friend of the host who had been there from the start (and his aura obviously hadn't benefited one bit). The ritual three brushes from the top of the head to the heel in the back, then from the neck to the shoulders and over the sides, under the arms, then over the arms, then from the front the same trio of trios, then from each side a trio on the arms --- and I'd forgotten the cross-underarm trio and down the side from the front and from the back, by far the most erotic of the lot, and he groaned/sighed gently as I "did" him. Oh, how his aura must have glowed from my touch. Then Nick waited around for the "clean-up" since all the "aura dust" is now tumbling about on the floor, and everyone agreed that there were too many people for a successful "do." I was GREATLY put off by the constant contradiction of the gentle husband by the pushy wife, who would say things, "Now, to ANSWER your question," to totally dismiss her husband. But their library was good. I glanced through a couple of Baba Ram Das books like "Seed," a mélange, and through "The Secret of the Golden Flower," which I'll have to get, and others, and then was introduced to the picture gallery that featured Sai Baba and Hilda and went on to Aurobindo, Sufi leaders, Ramana Maharshi (the most important man of the century), and Baba Ram Das's guru, and others. Didn't care for the woman pushing HER series of lectures, nor the, albeit joking, constant references by Sylvan to "we'll take your money" and "be sure to sign up for the course." Just not my cup of communion. Personalities MUCH too great --- maybe only that no one was willing to submit to MY personality. (see DIARY 8476)
DIARY 5/3/74
NOTES FROM RAM DAS TAPE FROM BILL
He recorded it on April 18th, saying that before the time change it used to be pitch dark at 4 pm. Ram Das has put out a 6-record set. Since the Ramayana takes about 8 hours to perform, I doubt Ram Das recorded it all on three sides of his records. Bill gets "good feelings" from them. Oh God, Bill, you DON'T have to be precise --- I would, honestly, have understood "last three sides" of the tape. I don't RECALL Dallae Hearn --- you DO meet the strangest names. Since I don't remember, that's one of the reasons I don't like tapes. "A fucking legion of guardian angels" you ARE blessed. "Don't care so much what you ARE as what you CAN be." YOU think this is good, I think this is bad: Krishnamurti; Browne. He has two mint copies of ALL the stamps I wanted but isn't willing to part with any beside 760 and 782. I sat and LAUGHED AND LAUGHED at your PAEAN to urination. I'm taking vitamin supplements now, WITH diet. Goodness of hugging and kissing as human contact --- cf. Murray Kaufman and Male Consciousness Raising. I want more information on the Unitarian course in "Human Sexuality." How to quickly index what you want (use my "Mythology" book). I AGREE with your emphasis on the importance of inner experiences of light. "I want YOU to share in MY liking Ram Das": Thank you, Bill. You: dump-picking; I'm doing book-picking, 30¢ per book.
RAM DAS: "Cut through our melodrama" but he's ALWAYS so melodramatic! Subtle thought of "If you don't like what I say, it's YOUR problem." With him I get mostly STUFF. Good: "If YOU are centered, your vibrations RESONATE with those of others, you become their optimum environment, helping THEM to center." His "far in" is shit; it's the CENTER: TOO far in and you PASS it! IF only work is ON yourself; why are you on WBAI? But, I guess, if he helps YOU, Bill, it's OK. FREE of attachment is love --- but NOT free of attachment to YOURSELF, because YOU are loving, you ARE NOT love --- or IS he? Hey, can I be the FIRST GAY GURU? "Why get high when you always come down? Clear away what MAKES you down!! "Bodhisatva vow" is terrible --- implies YOU'RE a bodhisatva. Three instructions: love everyone; serve everyone (BY loving everyone); and remember God (BY loving everyone).
He "isolates" himself in "Karma yoga." Find your own path --- Bhagavad-Gita, Holy Grail, Krishnamurti, Jung and Campbell! Marvelous if mothers who HAVE kids would LEAVE if they hate them, and people who LOVE kids would TAKE them. OFFERING is SHIT. Are you a parent? Want it? Yes, good, do it well; no, can you get OUT of it? Yes, do; No, WHY?? leads to ANYTHING: do you WANT it? No? Then STOP. YES? Then GO. If you WERE the other person, you WOULD do what he is DOING. But OUT the Indian terms (darma, karma, bakti, nirvana). This is the USA. It's too "in" or "initiated." "Don't put anything down, just build what's UP to you." [But you'd do well to DISTINGUISH WHY you think it's down so that OTHERS may identify with it.] Ideas are the WORLD'S, don't name-drop all the time. SERVICE is shit --- if you SERVE, you love THEM more than YOURSELF; serve them ONLY if it serves YOU even BETTER. NEED for ritual? Ritual stultifies. How about AMERICAN mantras??? "Don't get caught in being FINISHED, EXPERIENCE the PROCESS. You don't decide to give things up, they fall AWAY." EXPERIENCE what you LIKE and don't like." Ego is OK if you THINK it's OK!! WHY is selflessness so good, WHY is ego so BAD? If that causes TROUBLE, why pursue trouble? FUCK ego, id, superego --- there IS YOU. YOU talk, YOU act; YOU are OK!!! There IS an "I," there IS a "you," but US is grammatical; it doesn't exist. How EGO: "What OTHERS reject AS me is NOT me." Look Ram Das, I CAN reject YOU. "Imagine where THEY are if they REJECT you for LOVING them --- but maybe it says MORE about THEIR reading of the QUALITY of your LOVE. Don't love everyone --- maybe love everyone MORE than they love themselves. If anyone HATES themselves, you're only "obliged" to love them a LITTLE. "Two levels of consciousness" is nonsense. Biafra and Bangladesh are in NO WAY perfect, EXCEPT as some individuals there may be perfect.
DIARY 8644 5/31/74
TALK WITH WALT ABOUT STEVE
We both agree that Steve has a marvelous gift for selling, though Walt says it seems perceptively that even STEVE doesn't know how powerful it is, and Walt agrees with me that I'll cool on something and then Steve will get me FIRED UP AGAIN. HE wants the ideal job of setting up his own tours and being paid to go on them, and I say that's not so much different from MY dreams, and Steve goes into a long thing about "wanting to give the best lube job in the world, so you open up a station and sell gas, too, wouldn't you?" If it's not convincing, Steve at least makes it sound IMMEDIATE. AND he says we don't need all that money, only enough to pay the rent (about $250 a month if it's all together already) and someone to put up $10,000 for a month while IATA checks you out, and then you can give it back and rake the money off the streets. I keep talking about the BUBBLE that I see, but we both agree that if the LAWS change, Steve will ALWAYS be three steps ahead of them (even though he DOES seem to be subpoenaed before the Grand Jury --- he merely insists that he'll TALK, TALK, TALK), and Walt says that he'll call ANYONE a schmuck even if they're close enough to HEAR it! He said that poor Steve from the class was working free from about 6-9 in Claridge for 25% of the walk-in business commission and 50% of his personal commission and LOVING it. So all WE have to do is make a mistake like that and WE'RE out, too. He talks about the TRAVEL AGENTING book that he and John are writing, and I seem to get a piece of THAT if I want it. AND then he says IF I want to teach on Saturday or Sunday mornings, I can get the geography for travel class, too! So HE puts ALL KINDS of ideas in my head, SO many that I can't even READ on the subway back home, just sit in a mental stew, thinking of ALL the possibilities that are opening up. And that puts me in the state that I can't think of ANYTHING to do the whole next few days, putting me into an AWFUL mood, but I think I'm coming out of it now, and I'll just sort of follow along with Steve (since we can't do anything until Walt gets back from his trip ANYWAY, leaving July 7th), seeing how I'll work with him, and FINALLY he said he'd ask at El Al if THEY needed a genius like me. THAT kind of help I could REALLY use: THAT I might take!
DIARY 9258 1/26/75
TALK WITH MARTY
He's recording his program of odd Bizet operas now for its airing at 9:30 am on WBAI; he's worried about his Wednesday class at the New School from 5:55 to 7:55, which is up against Rise Stevens, Schyler Chapin, Beverly Sills, and others, and I tell him I'LL sign up for it for $90 if he needs another to add to the 8 he already has to make the required 10; he's frustrated at his $500-a-week job as a freelancer at RCA because he might be the first to go if someone looks at what little he's doing for them, and because his boss can't get HIS boss to stop the hiring freeze on executives. As a result, he enjoys being courted by Columbia, with whom he got in touch when he was doing a much praised final program on Richard Tucker, who died while I was away. THEN he talks about his employer, Ivan, at some computing firm who was once a singer and knows someone in "Bougainvillea," the investing company set up by lieutenants who left Bernie Cornfield when he was high, each with about $20,000,000. The idea is that 6 of these invest $1,000,000 in Marty's opera recording company. He says that London, Philipps and Angel make LOTS of money on opera, RCA doesn't because they're stupid and traditional, and that Columbia's about to go into opera to make money. Marty's drawn up plans that include 2 operas per year for three years (Bizet's "Don Procopio," someone's "Jewels of the Madonna," Mascagni's "Iris," Massenet's "Prophet," Thomas's "Hamlet," and when he can't think of the 6th I suggest Donizetti and he says Donizetti's "Poliuto.") and move into the black in the 32nd month. Planning to release in September and December, reaching the worst loss of $300,000 in August of 77 and turning to +$20,000 in October of 78. He's got it all drawn up and is willing to present it, including the fact that he wants 51% of the CONTROL and only a profit of X, leaving the investors a profit of 3X and a finder's fee of .3X, where X turns out to be 23.25582, 3X = 69.76746, and .3X = 6.97672. Would I ever love 6.9% of a Martin Sokol opera company! "Everyone" considers Marty second only to Boris Goldovsky as an expert, and Boris is "a dreamer, not a businessman." I mark on the bottom of the Village Voice, where I took the notes: CALL ROLF! He's also recording a live "Ruy Blas" on February 22 and will do a Donizetti WORLD PREMIERE OPERA.
DIARY 9358 3/5/75
BOB AND NINA ABOUT THEIR HOUSE-MOVING
She'd been saying they wanted to move for about two years, coming to a crescendo of activity in the past few weeks, and finally on Saturday they go out to a 10-room apartment for $40,000 and $400 per month rental on the second floor of a great building overlooking Prospect Park. Bob looks at the rooms, all bigger than the ones they have; thinks of the tax advantages of owing a co-op, which will make it quite affordable; feels about it as the logical next step up, away from the awful memories of the gallery; and cheers that it's carpeted and even painted so that their chocolate colored sofa and their purple-loving daughter will fit in perfectly --- and Nina says "No, I'm frightened." He'd tried talking to her for two days until his lips split in fever blisters and his stomach was knotted, and he filled out the application and gave it to Nina, saying that SHE would have to talk to the agent and tell him no --- at which point I said he was letting HER make the decision. He said it was exactly as her mother treated her father: he was a lovely person and loved his wife very much, but she always held him back because she'd grown up during the Depression and was always afraid to have him invest in anything for fear that the world would come to an end. "What if the world ends?" is essentially the question his mother-in-law asks that frightens Nina so much, and she says she'd rather stay in their $300 rental apartment that's falling apart on 96th and Park rather than move to a new place. Bob even says he doesn't like to pick on her size but says that maybe she feels her shortness should hold her back from advancing in life, too, but she's not going to hold HIM back. He even actually said that he felt like leaving her flat, right at that point, and I asked him to think about the answer to my question, "What would she do if you told her you were DOING it?" (since he knows how HE feels when she says she's NOT going to do it). So he says he'll call her, but when I call back the next day, his exchange at work seems to be affected by the phone-building fire and I can't find out what the results were. They'd also save $1700 per year because Alicia could go to free public school rather than private school in Manhattan; even an ARCHITECT said that the building was sound!
DIARY 9359 3/5/75
CALL FROM THE VILLAGE VOICE AUTHOR
He refuses to give his name but he's probably not very famous, having published only a book of short stories and a novel through Doubleday, whom he refuses to introduce me to, since he says HE'S trying to get things through there. He DOES offer me the name of his agent, who happens to be Theron Raines (but I check right NOW into my files, finding that he'd returned the first three chapters in April, 1971, saying that "the characters and plot just didn't hold my interest," so that implies that I shouldn't even bother to send it back in the form of NON-fiction), and he doesn't know Barbara Brimberg, but the coincidence is astounding. He says that it's not the best thing in the world to be represented by an agent in New Jersey. He says that he tried to get a number of stories published in literary magazines published as a book and they wouldn't do it, saying that they had to be published by the really BIG magazines (New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, Esquire) before they'd be eligible for that, and there goes my idea of breaking into novels by publishing a book of science fiction short stories. He agrees that the nonfiction market might be better than the faction, agrees that I should rewrite "Acid House" back to the original first-person point of view, and says that he'll try calling me back in the spring. He said he got about 75 responses to the ad, many of them from lunatics that he fears meeting on the street; saying that he's been having personal troubles with business finances, his marriage, and his writing, and thought that maybe being somewhat less selfish by putting in the ad and introducing people around would change his OWN luck, but said that even a woman who had published THREE novels was having trouble at the present time. He was amazed at my IBM experience, my nuclear science background, my copyediting and proofreading experience, and said that I should certainly break into print, since I'm 38 years old and have been trying so hard to far. I didn't have the heart to change his mind, but I was obviously right to ask for ADVICE (he said he knew lots of people but he didn't say anyone except Theron Raines) since that was all he was about to give. Even still, I hope he calls back and that we can get to meet eventually; after he answers more.
DIARY 9376 3/7/75
GEORGE ALLEN MEETING
He's drinking at the fountain and I say, "You'll never guess what I just pulled out of my files to take to McGraw-Hill as an example of my writing." He stares at me, trying to remember, and I remind him and he's happy to see me, except that he keeps wanting to get back to his seat early to read the program notes for the next ballet. He says that HE was fired from there about 6 months ago (or he left because he couldn't stand the strain of the type of writing AND the administration) and that Caroline Latham took over the project herself, hiring a few new people to work on it, including an editor who's a "quick study" who's had a science background AND can write it up well, so he'll finish the work. He said that the author was impossible to work with, turning back all the chapters he's worked so hard on for 8 months except 4, and 4 out of 26 for 8 months isn't so great. Then he said he'd become a recluse for 3 months to work out the emotional problems the job cause in his life, and then started going out and enjoying the city, though he didn't get to enough off-Broadway dance as he wanted to and hadn't written away to TDF for their discount tickets. He said that his phone was out in the Lower East Side because of the fire, but he took down my phone number and said he'd call me on Monday to make sure we were going to the Pennsylvania Ballet together on Thursday. He'd been to the ABT a number of times, seeing Baryshnikov once and Bujones a couple of times and enjoying "Don Quixote" and some other things, and tried to get to the Joffrey about three times per season but had seen "Viva Vivaldi" only twice and hadn't seen "The Clowns" yet either but would walk out every time they started dancing "Trinity." There was the same terrific appreciation he would show anytime I said anything funny, and he seemed to enjoy talking with me, ending up saying that he was glad to have run into me and we should get together more often. He was there alone in loose-fitting blue jeans, looking fairly fit but not sexy, and mentioned that he knew some of the dancers in the Louis Falco Company and had talked with some OTHER dancers, so he seems not to be completely out of the gay circle of New York.
DIARY 9377 3/7/75
MARCIA SIEGEL AND ?????? HARRIS TALK
She agreed that the first Monotones had been better than the second, but she says that it's an exercise in classicism, for which the dancers must have perfect line, and every movement must be performed perfectly. "That Robert Thomas never has his weight under him properly, so he has to balance himself by throwing out a hip or moving a foot or something, and that's totally against the idea of classicism." She didn't seem impressed by DeAngelo but said this may have been the first time she's performed in Monotones. She DID remember the Royal's production as being better. Then we met Someone Harris, writer for the Ballet Review and Musical World and other publications, which was his real love aside from his job as a teacher at Bennington. He and she downgraded Arpino completely, saying that everything he did was the worst possible trash, in a class with Bejart and Cranko. I asked if they had any difference of opinion between "Eugene Onegin" and "Carmen," and Marcia said that she didn't bother to make distinctions between two such pieces of garbage, while Harris said, "Well, if the doctor ask you, you CAN observe differences in different bowel movements." But he even thought Cranko might be a step above Bejart, who might be a step above Arpino, who was the real basement. I insisted I'd still like "Kettentanz" and they both assured me that they were talking from their own point of view (Marcia even said that she was writing a defense of Balanchine's "Don Quixote," which he didn't like), and that I could have my own opinion. He's seen the Bolshoi in London, said that Maximova had totally become a machine for dancing, losing her womanly charm completely; that "Spartacus" was a piece of garbage and that "Ivan" would probably be worse though he hadn't seen it, and that many of the ballerinas could hold their own with superb craftsmanship but that the whole program was essentially a disaster, ribbing Clive Barnes for liking most of what they didn't. He hated "Jeu de Cartes," too, except when Babilee leaped across the stage, and laughed when I referred to Terry, he said "Terry And/Or." I was totally amused at their agreeing to their "I couldn't POSSIBLY like that sort of thing" attitudes.
DIARY 9659 6/14/75
LLOYD MOORE'S "MOLESTATION"
Jack says that they had worked on Memorial Day at IBM and were coming home about 5 pm. A friend had driven them to the George Washington Bridge subway stop and Lloyd was standing in the front window to watch the track interchanges. A Puerto Rican woman with two pre-teenage kids came up and wanted the kids to look out, then she wanted to look out, and at one point Lloyd even offered to pick up the girl, who was complaining that she couldn't see out the window. Then they got to the 96th Street station and the woman accused Lloyd of putting his hand on her ass! MTA police soon got the cops, who handcuffed Lloyd and took everyone to the police station. At some point Lloyd told the policemen that he was gay, so why should he molest the woman? This was the first I'd heard that word from either Jack or Lloyd, and it was probably the first time that it would have been important enough to mention. A court date was set for today, and Lloyd showed up but the woman didn't. "Molestation" is a charge that needs NO corroborative witnesses at all, and the thought passed through their minds to check how many times she may have accused someone, since if she accused Lloyd, she could have accused others; however, she seemed surprised that she had to go to the station, so maybe she didn't know anything about it. Anyway, she still has two weeks in which to re-schedule a court date, and Lloyd will still have to show up. He could get from 15 days to a year sentencing for it if he's found guilty. She also accused him of being drunk, but Lloyd said that he absolutely wasn't, and demanded that a drunkenness test be given him at the station, but they wouldn't do it --- one of the most disturbing aspects of the whole thing. Also, the lawyer, when told that Lloyd had said he was gay, insisted that the trial be before a judge and NOT before a jury and that he wasn't to bring it up again unless he was SPECIFICALLY asked about it. In this age of enlightenment there are still such things hanging around! Jack said Lloyd was "taking it well" and able to laugh about it; he'd have no record if he wasn't convicted; he'd had no arrests in the past; but he was sure he was quite worried about it, and just the idea that such things HAPPEN was enough to put another black mark against New York City!
DIARY 9688 6/19/75
MEETING CHARLES TEKEYAN
And would he SHIT if he knew I was using his name! He first-off observed that Brooklyn Heights was very gay, I was probably a homosexual, but that didn't matter because it didn't bother him and doesn't everybody have a little bit of that in him anyway? Sit on a bench and I feed him "Needs": Doesn't like "drowned corpses," he'd say "drowned bodies"; "Middle of the Forest" he likes for its simplicity, likes the silence of two people not talking; "Connoisseur" he says is good but it lacks a certain punch, I should have been sharper in my satire, and I should show him "OIs." "NY Subway" he likes, begins to say I'm a good writer. "Ultimate Mandate" he says is good, why did they turn it down? I don't know. "Living Cosmos" he says is "intelligent" and he's impressed. He leafs through the bunch to the agents, went through a list, saying that only about 6 would even be ACCEPTING of stuff from new people. Oh. He doesn't care for "Quadrilogues," though he thought "Needs" could be "shaped like poetry" and sent to "Epoch," one of the better literary magazines. "Some award I'm trying for wants to know what magazines I've been published in: that's where the real work is going. Commercial magazines are just for businessmen and they don't care about that." Oh. He skips Manali so I don't show him Enryakuji. He reads the first 4 pages of "Acid House," saying that it's better than the outline, which sounds formal and contrived and constructed, but he hated the adjectives in the first few paragraphs. Didn't think my Babbitt-Brighton-meets Ozymiranda fantasy would have a chance unless it came from overseas. Thought my travel experiences fascinating as a way of meeting and traveling with people, but didn't think that a Gay Underground" book would sell very well. I told him about "John" but he seemed to consider it a limited story. He said that "everyone had a novel in him" and that I should tell about my coming to NYC and what happened to me here, without elaborating, without thinking about where it's going or what it's saying (see DIARY 9689). I tell him about my decisions about college and graduate school, and he says I should start there, and that I can send copies of the first 25 or so pages to him. "Write two pages per day and by the fall you'll have a book." He was friendly enough, turned on by a tittiful jogger, said he lived in Upper Manhattan, gave me his name (Armenian) finally, and a box number, and said goodbye as if he meant it.
DIARY 9693 6/20/95
CYNTHIA'S WILD LIFE
Though she's now living in a GREAT 3-bedroom apartment on the 26th floor of 254 East 68th, looking over ALL the buildings of her past in the city (we watch a GREAT purple-green thunderstorm and the fireball of the setting sun looking like an H-bomb over New Jersey and then a rosy sunset to boot), she complains about having no money. But throwing the I Ching she kept getting "The Wanderer," and then Darwin gave her a free plane ticket to Jamaica, where she freaked out by getting money when she needed it, a taxi when there was none around, and phone calls at JUST the right times. Her wanderings between her family in Boston and California, Findhorn, Arica, other computer work, seemed totally bizarre. Her breakup with Jerry (?) Crawford took a lot out of her, she was on weight-watchers for the third time, had gotten a broken foot, wanted to go to Washington and ended up in a plane that came to New York, where she decided, "OK, then I'll go to NYC!" She feels a tremendous energy, both positive and negative, here, and now she's recalled her childhood, has been willing to be controlled by outside events IF that's what SHE has to do, and had gotten letters from Arica, phone calls from her sister to baby sit, and telegrams from her parents at JUST the right times. She concluded by saying that she'd gotten no information about her name (she felt that she was Cynthia now, no longer Cyndy) except that she'll be getting MARRIED again, and that 1975 is a CRITICAL year: either we develop a new layer of consciousness or the human race is doomed, and she doesn't care for Lilly, but Arica is coming up with FAR more powerful tools because PEOPLE are developing so fast, and it seems to HER that it might be the millennium rather than Armageddon, and I get shivers a number of times talking to her. She didn't say I shouldn't take est, but thought Arica was much better, but put me off talking about her "new 40-day session," a new 5-day plan for only $50, new weeks of various works, and weekly sessions for other reasons. There just seems to be a DEPARTMENT store of techniques when I want a SPECIALTY STORE of the-most-help-in-the-least-time. She says I can cut OUT of est and get my money back even on the FOURTH day, and I debate using Gurdjieff's "sly man" to DO that, using est as they use people. Leave her feeling DIZZY, again, with possibilities and potential, but the I Ching is confusing, to say the least.
DIARY 9755 7/3/75
CHARLES TEKEYAN
Call the NY Public Library information number to see if there are any of his book in print, but there's only something by Ellie Tekian. Then she goes to the general files and finds that he was born in 1926, that the Donnell branch DID have a copy of "Hot Boys and Cold Girls," written in 1954, published by Beekman Press, listed then at 17 E. 48th, but it's not even listed in the 70-71 LMP, and then "Revelation of a Disappearing Man" is by Doubleday from 1971. Then there are private printings of "Long Climax" and "New York is All Ours and Other Stories" from 1953-1956. So he's REALLY not much of an author (how my ideas CHANGE: years ago I would have been DELIGHTED to have published as much; now I know that it's possible to have published as much, be totally unknown [but still worry enough about "reputation" to keep one's name a secret], and be rather unhappy, as he seems to be.
DIARY 10004 9/9/75
MOM TALKS ABOUT GRANDMA'S DYING
Mom's conversation is REALLY sad: "So we went in and talked to Mom and she didn't want to get herself dirty by throwing up, she was always so clean, and she looked so old and just the other week she was talking to Marion --- I was talking to Marion at lunch, she and Henry had $12 lunches of course, but I only had a salad and soup --- I paid for my own, naturally, I don't depend on anyone --- and she's always been afraid of dying, but lately she's been talking about it. She always wore makeup and had to be dressed up all the time --- I'd call and she'd say, "You can't come over, I'm not dressed," and she'd be dressed of course --- anyway, they took X-rays and there's NOTHING wrong with her heart --- my doctor said I had a very strong heart, too, and she said that it might have been some fish that she ate when we went out to Iacomini's --- I had the shrimp and it was OK, but Rita --- well, that doesn't matter. Helen was there --- she's so pushy, pushed me out of the way when the doctor came in, but I said, "I'm the OLDEST daughter," and Helen was right there, but she took Mom to the hospital, so she's all right, SHE'S all right. But Marion told me --- now, don't YOU tell anyone --- that Grandma must have a LOT of MONEY, and we have to know about that because I really think she isn't going to come out of that hospital --- she hates hospitals, saying that once she goes in she'll never come out, but I say, "Mom, I went to the hospital 6 or 7 times and always came out" --- Did you know that Helen had --- how many inches Rita? --- five or six inches taken out of her colon because of cancer? --- she doesn't talk about it --- but I say she's going to die but we try to keep it from her. What was I saying? Oh, Marion said she put all her money in Henry's name --- she was going to put it in my name but thought about it and my name's Zolnerzak and she thought it'd be better to keep it with someone with the same last name, so I said OK, Henry's not going to do anything bad with it, but Marion said there's probably a lot, and inheritance taxes --- you know, you can't take it out until she dies --- what an awful way to talk, she's NOT going to die because who would I have LEFT --- the only reason I LIVE is for my Mom, and I said I'd rather die before SHE did --- no one ELSE loves me (and she starts crying), and she pays the papergirl and lets Rita in and we finally stop talking after I'm wrung out from about ten minutes on the PHONE!
DIARY 10053 9/20/75
TALK WITH MARTY
Firstly, Regina's BACK with Mike because he'd had 10 (as opposed to the usual 6) electroshock treatments that left him totally disoriented (one woman, he says, was so disoriented she went out the 15th floor WINDOW instead of the door when she was going to the store), and she's with him while he's starting classes at Stony Brook. Then he was let go from his plush do-nothing job at RCA last week and he's searching for something else, not quite with Columbia yet, though eventually he hopes to help them with their opera department, but he might go into teaching himself. I tell him about Cathy's 5 and Madge's 1 kid, he asks about Herman and Mozelle, saying that he saw Joan Bennett that HE used to work with and she's "totally white." He remembers the Korean, Lee, who couldn't say skillurel (squirrel) and paid his suit-bill from Hong Kong quickly because he didn't want to become "an international suit case," and that Carol Diedrich's married with a kid. He's not suggesting repertory and singing engagements for the dynamite baritone from the "Ruy Blas," who's an airline's freelance navigator who can fly when he pleases; neat. He's looking to get a stable of 10, each of whom give him 10%, and he makes more than they: he 100%, they 90%. Christopher's going to be an electrical wizard, understanding radio and television and telephone already, and Jerri tells him to leave his tooth for the PLUG fairy since he loves plugs more than anything in the world. He tells me about Bob Brier, his parapsychology teacher at the New School, and the out-of-body experiment in which the dog yapped happily and wagged its tail when his master's SPIRIT came into the room. I tell him about est but he doesn't seem interested, though he's intrigued with MY list of jobs. He's going to operas a lot, recording his program, and looking for people to manage, and might even manage the vocal-artists section of a going instrumentalists-from-Russia organization that, except for Hurok, is the only organization with an "in" in Russia. But he's got to get a good-money job QUICK to pay for his mortgage, his mother, his child, and himself (good thing he's got HEALTH). So I've caught up with him and he with me in an hour: would that MORE friends were as easy and timeless as that to handle!
DIARY 10113 10/12/75
LONG TALK WITH JOAN
She's glad I've called, everyone left about three, Faith Geer had done public relations with Tony Scully's "Three Black Sheep" or whatever at Lincoln Center so they knew and liked each other, and Terese took them all home. She's had a bad time with all her gay boyfriends: she KNOWS they're gay but she keeps thinking that she might be able to change them (my story) and she also thinks (her story) that if Paul ever meets Tony Scully, they'll fall madly in love: Paul will FORCE it because she feels he's jealous of the time of hers Tony takes already in est. I think it's rather silly but Joan's concerned enough about it to tell me about it. She also didn't want to invite Louie and wouldn't let Louie invite Tony over to his place because THEY would fall in love. Then she called early Sunday morning to say that Paul had gone to Florida ("fucking on the beach" if one believes HER) for a vacation and called early in the morning to say that he'll be staying down there for awhile, leaving HER to do all the collating of the 12 scripts of 140 pages each, and she's done all the typing and has the feeling that HE'S done all the creative work and she's done whatever creative work she could AND (and I keep telling her to drop the est "and") all the clerical work. She's very pissed and I listen to her for about an hour, which is about half as long as I listened to her the previous night. She thanks me a lot but I feel that I haven't gotten really that much out of it except for this page. She talks about how she's not liking the director that Paul picked out (she's black, was supposed to have called on Friday and didn't, doesn't have a phone, would get a reading at the American Place Theater, but Joan says she'd MUCH rather it be more black), and saw another one that pleases her more with his work on farce and melodrama. I said she may have CREATED that in order to CHANGE the director. Then we finally get to talking about other things (actually, we talked a lot about me on Saturday, too, but MOST of the two hours was about her), and we let each other go do what we wanted to do. And she DOESN'T like Bob, who takes her dancing, sometimes to gay bars, but he's a bore, and she was pissed at the pretty blonde from downstairs taking Larry, the only eligible bachelor, away to dance at her party, too. Anyway, she'll get nothing from ME.
DIARY 10209 11/8/75
THE ESSENCE OF MY MOTHER
So difficult to capture the essence of my mother: 1) no UNVOICED thoughts: it's impossible for her to be quiet: driving down a street she keeps up a CONSTANT stream of personal recollections, visual associations, or digs at various people. 2) No LINEAR thought: telling a story ("Denny's changed") I had LITERALLY to ask 3 times how he's changed, she went from his parents to the wedding to Rita's personality to her own views to totally extraneous matters. 3) PERSONAL comments: comb your hair, don't frown, don't move your hands when you talk, coat's too big, take your hat off, don't stand there --- CONSTANT negative comments about me. 4) Constant NEGATIVITY: always the bad side: poor, awful, evil, ugly, noisy, unpleasant, coarse, obscene. 5) CONSTANT repetition: not voiced once but AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. 6) Stupidity: wears no coat and complains it's cold; goes to good restaurant on Friday night and complains of lines; drives near center line and complains about cars driving too close to her. 7) Coarseness: niggers, Jews, whores, "one of your kind," her "marbles" from ass, Helen's kids, Grandma's vomit and shit. 8) Constant QUESTIONS: watching TV: who's that, what'd she say, what year is it, why do they do that, this is silly, that's good, he's bad, etc. 9) REFUSAL to be changed: I TOLD her to wear a coat; I want to listen, not talk; I don't want to talk about that; you shouldn't say that --- all these comments from me bring SCREAMS of rage from her. 10) CONSTANT superfluity: take toast suggested FIVE times; more milk FOUR times; brings out applesauce and olives and milk and ice cream and syrup and jelly and mustard and catsup and mayonnaise when I'm having CEREAL. 11) Order: put coat there, turn it down, look at this, move over here, tell me this, put that away, that's not the place for that, don't do that, don't think that, don't ever say that. 12) CONSTANT deprecation: that's silly, she spends too much, that's ugly, he's dumb, I can't stand her, Rita takes six hours to take a bath and wash her hair. 13) I know him, I know her, he looks like Elliott Gould (not at all , but he was a DOLL to look at with HUGE legs and BIG crotch and a football-player friend), he's Mr. Hreha from Herbrick, he's Mr. Fox from Dad's store, ETC.
DIARY 10211 11/8/75
MORE NOTES ON MOM
Her constant verbal BARRAGE makes me impatient with what she says that's GOOD; her constant questions make her PERCEPTIVE questions irritating --- and of course it says something about her need for attention. And thus her constant "Cocoa says two or three teaspoons, I don't care if you have four, but I use one because it's VERY sweet." But it seems to me that SHE of ALL people is TOTALLY herself --- she thinks of herself, talks of herself, totally AS herself, not tempered by who she's with or what she's doing. Then she's inconsistent: "We're have a meal for lunch on Sunday." "I'd like sandwiches because I'm having a meal with Henry and Marion that night." "No, Rita goes to Denny's and only has sandwiches for supper, so we have to have a big meal." So I prepare myself for a big meal and we have sandwiches for Sunday lunch. "I'm going out all day Monday," and then she's IN all day Monday. She leaves without telling anyone where she's going on Sunday (and getting madder than hell at Rita when she says, "And where was the car?" when Mom lies and says she was just upstairs) and then explodes when I don't leave a note saying where I'M going. I tell Marion and Henry I'm having trouble with Mom and won't be seeing them Sunday evening; then Mom says that I was at Larry's on Sunday without saying ANYTHING about why I might have been there or why I stayed an extra day. She'll say "Let's go," and then have three last-minute chores to take care of while I'm standing around waiting for her. She'll insist on going to church on Sunday but then somehow All Saint's Day goes past and Rita's excused from going to church. And I KEEP thinking back to the plane to Moscow (which HELEN said I caused, more power TO her!) where I tell the guy to stop smoking and Mom says that he should smoke, that I'm silly, and then AGAIN proceeds to curse him out for smoking. Then she'll say she's never speaking, then lay on the sofa and talk for two hours about things and things and things, then not say goodnight to me when I go upstairs. And asks me what I want for breakfast the next morning. No sign of apology, though she'll admit to Rita that she's made an ass of herself --- and Helen says she hurts her so much she HAS to hurt back, and Marion freely admits that Mom's her own worst enemy, and I HATED myself when I'm like her in any of the innumerable way in which I AM like her!
DIARY 10214 11/8/75
TALK WITH RITA
Rita's crying about the situation in general, and she says that Mom's just "showing off" because I'm home and says for the fifth time that she knows how to shut her off. I ask about Denny and she says, "He knows that her bark is worse than her bite, he likes her, can joke with her, can put up with her, and knows when to let her alone." I admit that I come home once in FOUR years (as it turns out, or three years 10.5 months!) and expect things to change for ME and MY taste, which is silly, and I get a definite feeling of BEING an outsider, HAVING no control over the family situation, and bursting in with topics that I definitely have no RIGHT to talk about, like my insistence, without even THINKING of it, that Grandma should be let go home, not even THINKING that she's not able to WALK yet! Mom's talked about Rita's migraines, and I feel sorry for her, too, and her face is still acne-ridden, which MUST be psychosomatic with the emotional stress, and she still has very difficult periods (one of which started today) and various other problems that will be cleared up ONLY after she leaves HOME. Mom WILL be lonely without her, but she IS adjusting to retired life: traveling, playing bingo, going to the races, playing cards, gardening in the summer, and will be able to survive when Rita leaves. Rita pays $120 a month, likes the way Mom puts food on the table, and can fend for herself. Mom keeps talking about how much she's worried about being robbed, and then the black next door doesn't help matters when he says that HE'S moving because the neighborhood is going down! Mom wants to buy the cute Benji-dog that lives next door, and she'll probably turn into a dog lover because there's nothing else that would love her back the way SHE is. I later tell Rita (while I'm washing dishes when she leaves) that "I want you to know, that I know, you've always loved me," and she doesn't even HEAR it but gets the idea and says "I love you too." So, finally, I admit to being a fool, not being able to let Mom alone as she IS, and Rita doesn't CONDEMN me for trying to change her, but certainly doesn't BACK me in doing it, and ART surprises me greatly when he says it's GOOD the way I want "movement" with Mom, and he's just willing to let the relationship between him and HIS Mom stagnate in the "just friends" place where it's been for the last 15 or so years.
DIARY 10218 11/8/75
FINAL UNDERSTANDING WITH MOM
I kept saying that I should leave her alone, but I couldn't, because I kept seeing ME in her. She didn't respond, talking about other things. I said that I didn't mind HER but I DID mind what she SAID, and she seems to have come to the conclusion that I couldn't go to Russia with her because I couldn't stand being with her --- and I let that stand. I say that I feel awful when she comes to New York, and she said (I think truthfully, though I don't really press it for fear of what it may lead to) that she didn't CARE about that: what was there to see in New York anyway, and if she came it would be with some tour that would stay in a hotel that she'd take with some friends of hers. So I seemed to be permanently off the hook as a host without really getting INTO it. I made it clear that I made an ass of myself by coming once very four years and trying to change things around, and she said she didn't like being made a fool of, and I refrained from saying the first thing that popped into my head: "But you SHOULD be told when you're being a fool, since no one ELSE seems to be able to do it!" But that wouldn't have worked either: she's surrounded by people who KNOW her now and know me too, I guess, and I'll leave Henry and Marion and Helen and Grandma to the lines of "Oh, come on, Emma, you know that's not true" or "the way it is" or "the right thing to say," and she'll keep ON making an ass of herself. I kissed her goodbye EVER so slightly and didn't hug Rita, either, since she remarked that I hadn't hugged HER and HAD hugged Rita when I met her in the office. Then when I got home I replayed her last message thinking it was a NEW one, so I called her on Tuesday, talking with her, saying that she'll be coming out of the hospital soon and they'll move her directly into a nursing home so that the Medicare will continue to apply, and we talked agreeably and it seemed that things were back to "normal": not exactly where I'd LIKE them to be but where SHE obviously like them to be: cordial, not loving yet not NOT loving; not terribly close --- maybe so it won't hurt HER so much when I don't come home but once in four years --- and not screaming or silent. And my "plans" didn't work because I was thinking only of ME and nothing of her.
DIARY 10416 12/17/75
DROR'S MESSAGE
--- if you leave a message for me, NOW." And there's a long pause, and then, questioningly, Dror says, "Now?! Oh, uh, hello, Bob, this is Dror, um, you don't have to call me back at the moment [as if I COULD], um, however, the message is that the cookies [poppers from Rolf] were VERY GOOD and everybody had a NICE TIME, and as a matter of fact they were EXCELLENT, better than expected. So, um, as far as the, uh, design job goes --- WELL, of course that's always pending, never know if that'll ever come through the mill, but, um, just wanted to let you know about the BAKERY---stuff, and um, uh, the uh, COFFEE CLUB says that, uh, they --- might want, uh, a lot MORE cookies, and uh, I'll let you KNOW [voice rises and almost squeaks and cracks] if, uh, if that's the case, OK? [crash] OK. Ta-TA!
DIARY 10467 12/31/75
TALK WITH LEONARD ORR ABOUT HIS BOOK
Talked before about being organized versus saying everything at once, and he said he would rather BE ORGANIZED. I got the idea that his anecdotes and stories were as important (and probably more voluminous) than his actual data, so I suggested that, for example, the LEFT-hand page be for the ANECDOTES (with one typeface), while the RIGHT-hand page be for the data (with a different typeface). Then I said that the pages could be regular paragraphs in format, OR the affirmations, aphorisms, and important sentences could be SET APART or the page. Lots of white space to set them off (and to balance the fact that there's less PRINT on the right-hand page). Then some of the "odd points" could be handled with question and answer format (since some important things came up in the questions form the floor in almost every seminar). All these things he said sounded like a good idea. I'd neglected to mention that some of the aphorisms and affirmations could be printed on a separate page at the beginning of each chapter as in the Gurdjieff book, "Teachings," but I'm sure he'd like that, too. He said that this company was printing THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE TAPE I HAVE VERBATIM, which confused me since I thought that a book on physical immortality was the first he wanted to work on, but he said he wanted to see what I'd do with what I have on the tape, WITHOUT getting fill-in or supplementary information. Also, I had the idea that it would be good to have APPENDIXES for supplementary TECHNICAL and scientific data (info about people dying as their same-sex parent died, about the increase of lifespan, about Biblical explanations, etc), which I didn't mention to him. So the CORE of the book would be SIMPLE, with the other stuff AROUND it. Also thought of the "two-page summary," then "ten-page outline," then "100-page book" system that I'd thought of for "Throwback." The point is to make it READABLE, IMMEDIATELY ACCESSIBLE, and TRANSPARENTLY SIMPLE TO REFERENCE. I thought of telling him to hire someone like the fellow from Crebos to design typefaces, chapter headings, number styles, and paragraph layouts, but didn't. He also asked me to send a page of EMOTIONAL (not mental, so I tell myself) reactions to what he's said, and I said I WOULD send him THAT.
DIARY 10474 1/2/76
LEONARD ORR, PERSONALLY
He freely admits that his mother didn't want to have him, and he's had nothing good to say about his father and usually talks about parents and "Wait for the bastards to die." He talks of the time that he owned nine houses, NINE houses, and yet had no friends at all, no one who would call him on the telephone (and there's still something like that in him, despite the fact that he dawdles breasty brainless babes on his knee during the break in the seminars). He sold the houses, read some books, and decided to be paid for reading these kinds of books, though I'm sure at THIS time he doesn't have a chance to read those kinds of books. He doesn't seem to have any family, talking about women as cruddy relationships that only gave him the opportunity for free primal therapeutic screaming. His nephew keeps calling him an ugly bastard, which he surely doesn't like, and yet he's moving back to Walton, where he was born, with the farm that he and Robin Condon bought between the two of them. He freely talked about the guy who was paralyzed when he went to bed with Diane at the farm, and she blushed so badly and said something, so that it seemed clear that she didn't like being talked about. Heaven gives US the ideas that it seems he might have "If, even, it ISN'T true, it can't hurt you to believe it," or "You're right about that until you're dead, and then who cares if you're proven wrong?" He's obviously a bang and almost no thanks fucker in bed, shows a terrible pot in his belly when he sits with his poor posture in his chair, and with his concentration on teeth and eyes, he must have bad both of them, admitting to poor astigmatic lenses which "come and go," though sometimes he can't read off nametags. He's THOROUGHLY money-oriented and is at the point where he knows the answers to ALL the questions, so since he isn't flappable he doesn't have any way to appear as human and seems totally BORED with delivering the same lecture over and over, and his talk about retiring and giving Theta Seminars to someone else doesn't sound like the talk of someone who likes what he's doing. And saying he's 25 when he looks at least 35 is embarrassing, to say the least, even on the tape when he says, "Oh, you must be laughing because LAST year's birthday had me at 25." He's got the answers to EVERYTHING except his own happiness and how to get at THAT!
DIARY 10928 5/11/76
PHONE WITH MOM
After all the hassle about forgetting her birthday, trying to call during the week before Mother's Day, carrying around the letter and check and doing nothing about it, I FINALLY, after exercising, decided to call Mom at 7:30 this evening after getting a postcard from her FROM LONDON, where she'd been from 4/30 to 5/8, and I was so DELIGHTED that I may have found a way out that I called, said I got the card, and she expressed surprise that it was so early: no one else had gotten them yet, mailed 5/7. Then she asked if I'd gone to Florida, and I said no, that I'd been tied up with Dennis, and she immediately asked if I knew that Lord Snowden was gay and that's why Princess Margaret divorced him, that she would have been better off marrying Peter Townsend, and that England was talking about Snowden as "a gay." Then she said that I shouldn't tell Rita about it because "Denny would read the letter and his mother's VERY religious," and I said that I was SENDING it to Rita and that her husband should know the same about me that SHE does, and what she tells HIS mother is THEIR business, and then Mom tried her typical dirt by saying that "Rita says different things to me than she says to you about your life," and I just ignore that as soon as I write it down. Then she gets started on Grandma, saying that Helen's having no more to do with her after June 1, and it'll be up Edward, Mom, and Henry. Grandma was there all day today, wearing out Mom walking to the garage and napping on the sofa, saying she wasn't sleeping. Mom insists she won't live more than 10 years, will travel because "she has more than enough money," but that she wants to live to "be a grandmother and see the year 2000," saying that Dennis wants 6 children, Rita wants none because she's afraid, but that they're not "starting" until two years have passed, though Rita should start quick enough because she's 28 already. THEN Mom says that Grandma "sent her blood pressure up 150 degrees, she has high blood pressure and SHE cold have a stroke anytime" by saying when SHE was 18 or 19, working in the store, too tired to do the dishes, and Grandma says she'll shoot Mom, and Mom asking "WERE THERE BULLETS IN THE GUN?" and Edward, who was 5, remembering that Grandpa DID keep a gun by the register in the store, but when Mom insisted she didn't remember, Grandma fuzzed off by saying, "Don't pay attention to it. I just made it up." And they say it doesn't run in the family??
DIARY 11395 10/28/76
GEORGE ALLEN'S PROBLEMS
By coincidence I call Tom Aloisi this morning and he says George Allen had come in but REFUSED the work he had. When I called George, he said that in the past he's gotten INTO long jobs (for Latham, too) and then DIDN'T do them because he was preoccupied with his ideas that he wants to read, draw, photograph, take classes in, and indulge his great interests in ARCHITECTURE. I said I had the same thing in writing. He said that it was destructive for him, since he couldn't get a job where he wanted, so he had to settle for a half-day job (every day) at a daycare center, where at least he was "with people" and the jobs he had to do came in such a natural way that he had no trouble handling them. But for longer-range things, not in his interests, he couldn't get down to them. "I just go out and get drunk," he admitted ruefully with a slight laugh. I left it that I'd let him call ME when he finally got everything together and found that he'd be able to be recommended for freelance work, since he himself admitted that he wasn't a reliable person at this point. I didn't inquire about his private life: how he supported himself, whether there were sexual problems connected with it, how long he'd been doing this to himself, when he thought he'd get out of it, but he said he really appreciated my being in contact with him and that he'd call me to let me know when I could go back to mentioning him. He said he felt "torn apart," which accurately mirrored how I was feeling at this point: knowing I wanted to write and not having time, knowing I had to finish the Pediatrics index and simply NOT doing it, wanting to indulge in getting things off the DO list and the book list but wanting to stay at home so that I could work, wanting to be with Dennis but glad to have some independence, keeping lists of places I want to go and things I want to do yet not really having time to do them all. Then, on a deeper level, wanting to ACT as if I'm enlightened, as I am, but keeping getting hung up on things that really weren't WORTHY of me, like sitting staring at the wall, which is what ART says he does when he has too much to do and too little time to do it in. So I'm as bad as everyone else, which is a real pity to admit.
DIARY 11712 3/11/77
GRISWOLDS OFF ON THE LASH TURKIYE
The bag I'm carrying is VERY heavy and the temperature's up above 70 degrees, so it's warm. At the gate it turns out that the ship's been moved so it's good we've got a car to take us down to 37th. John chortled over the pictures he made Mack take of our trek along the warehouses and behind mounds of dirt. Up the large gangway to the huge ship and get escorted by a ditzy Spanish woman who leads us way in the wrong direction before turning us around and leading aright. The guy takes us up and down and through, having to leave the dolly behind when the passage is too narrow for the bags, and I get two again. There seem to be LOTS of cabins but they're still the only passengers. A Spanish steward fusses around, and they have two rooms with a bath between but can share a bed (somewhat bigger than Dennis's) if they have to. Then we're up top to watch the HUGE crane tootling along its tracks picking containers out of the water off the stern, trundling it down the length of the ship, and placing them atop each other to block the view to the rear. John loves the flying bridge on either side over the water, and we go atop the bridge for a look around --- foggy day due to the heat but the Statue of Liberty glows greenly through the smog. Then down to the cabin about 11:45 and the steward says we four can go down for lunch, and it's down three flights to the "Crew's Dining Room" of about 8 tables, one of which is the Captain's, and we have BLT (Betsy), haddock (John; he crows about his "first meal on a ship"), and pork (me and Mack) with mashed rutabaga (like a combination of squash and potato that's not terribly flavorful) and Bavarian cabbage (which John says has bacon in it but it's only the stripes in the cabbage), along with a clam chowder that's merely adequate, a bread pudding with congealed fruit salad sauce, and milk. Not bad, and it's a neat free meal for taking them to the subway (and paying for their subway tokens, as I did). Betsy leads us to the wrong exit (the opposite gangway) and John pushes through the engine room (very clean, very loud, and very impressive, going down at least three floors from where we cross) to the other side, where we sign off the ship. I trek to the back to look at it and we walk along waving and have to cut through a warehouse to bypass the closed 36th Street exit, back to 29th Street, and to the subway, again catching it quickly. But it's a HUGE ship, rather more drab surroundings than mine, and they're paying $55/day/person, MORE than I paid(?).
DIARY 11744 3/20/77
MOM'S 12-HOUR VISIT TO NYC
She's puffing from her walk down from the RCA building and panicked about the Chinaman "who wanted to snatch my purse" on 46th Street. On the subway she says Dennis doesn't look as good as John, that I look awful, and that the graffiti is terrible. Home and she puffs from walking again, almost not making it up the steps, looks at the difference in the apartment from when John and I shared it, and says she'll sleep in MY bed tonight. Then she's tired, tired, tried, so she naps. After dinner she complains about not knowing what she wants out of life: "I retired saying I was going to start to live, but I don't know what I want." "I travel but want to be home in two weeks; come close in bingo and get nervous when I don't win, but everyone wins around me." She itches from nerves, can't wear tight clothing or she breaks out from nerves, and complains that Grandma complains, doesn't listen to reason, hurts people's feelings, and feels unloved, without for a moment extrapolating to herself. The woman upstairs walks too loud, they play music that she complains about, and says my sink is dirty. It's cold in the room until the radiators come on, and then she bitches about the sound of the water. Thinks John is so handsome, kisses him, but doesn't go for Dennis when he so visibly wants to kiss her. Edward is so bad with blacks, she no longer accepts her "causing" my gayness, but why do I like to go to bed with men? She hates the bus but the plane is too expensive. I get a jolt when she calls at 2:30 to say she's still at South Ferry: the bus broke down. Complains about the tour leader but is sweetness to him when we meet. She keeps insisting I should take off my hat when greeting her companions but I don't want to. Her bags are too heavy but she demands that I give her a pillow to carry along. She's taking me to dinner for my birthday but doesn't want to take Dennis, then says she paid for over half with $10 since she didn't drink much of the wine. But she wants to give up half her $89 bus fare and spend almost that much to fly back to Akron. Helen's awful, Marion's lazy, Henry's overworked, Edward's two-faced, and the androgyny test is wrong because my masculine was higher than her feminine as HERS was, and she's not possibly that masculine, oh no. Thank god she gets a good night's sleep and leaves on Sunday AM. My hair's getting gray, my urine smells (though she laughs at her farts as she leaves the room and goes "Phew!"); the shelf in the bathroom is dirty, and UGH, the hair on the edge of the tub. Me to Dennis about Mom: You can never underestimate her powers of insincerity.
DIARY 11772 3/29/77
UGLY AUDIENCE FOR "LIPSTICK" AND "MARATHON MAN"
The audience doesn't EXACTLY cheer the rape but it's interested in seeing what will happen, hoping the camera won't turn away, and it hoots when the seams between reels show, thanks to what seems to be a completely incompetent projectionist. It laughs with the jury at some of the tactics during the trail but there's no applause when he gets off: when justice is SO set up it can't be jeered, I suppose? The film is EXCELLENT in showing how the "victim" gets all the shit from the crowd and the photographers, while the accused is smiled at and allowed to smile triumphantly. Perry King is insipid as the lover, Margaux Hemingway reminds me of the woman upstairs, and Chris Sarandan is coolly evil as the rapist. The shouts and applause for the shooting, particularly the shooting in the groin, is sickening. Then in "Marathon Man" there isn't shouting during the torture, but when the gang goes to rob the apartment and holds off William Devane, the audience is VOCALLY laughing and applauding. There are awed gasps at the diamonds, and "GET HIM" for each of the killings: no suspicion that the case could ever be taken to court and get a fair trial, yet when they applaud the killing of the wrongdoers and applaud the wrongdoers with compassion, do they make the CONNECTION that they're asking to be killed THEMSELVES? The whole theater full of --- whatever the name of the guy was who wanted to be executed by the state? Then I wrench away the sweater and bag from the seat next to mine in disgust when a woman wants to sit RIGHT there, and then glare at her when she opens coffee to sip during the performance. On the other side, I asked a guy with some aspiration when he's going to finish cleaning his teeth and he asks, "What?" with such idiocy that it's obviously unconscious and he WON'T stop. Then I'm at the head of the aisle watching people putting out cigarettes and stomping lit matches into the carpeted floor, the seat I'm sitting in is shredded, and I shout "Move" and then lance out to grab an arm and hiss, "Move over PLEASE" to the person, who thankfully didn't throw a punch at me, though the people sitting around looked at me as if I were a manifestation of the evil of the movie, which I was, coupled with guilt over being THERE rather than WORKING. Felt so bad about it I didn't even tell Actualism about it, until something Michael said reminded me of it, and then I just talked about the "dark" place I was in and recognizing the inversion of Love-of-all into True Hatred.
DIARY 11883 4/28/77
TALK WITH MS. WATSON
I hear the cat galumphing and try to ignore it, as I'd tried to ignore her music earlier when I was doing my index, as I tried to ignore the party downstairs. But when she started HAMMERING in the kitchen, I phoned at 12:10 and said, "WHAT are you doing?" and again she said I shouldn't call when I'm so negative and furious, and I insist I would NEVER want to call her if I didn't have to, and then she went on to say that I bothered HER with my typewriter and my "primitive musical instrument" (and when I tell Dennis about that this morning he gets a good laugh about it, so it's good that he didn't take it as a measure of the QUALITY of his voice as he hoots and shoo-oo-oos). She said she had nothing to do with the party downstairs and couldn't I stop being so HORRIBLE and saying such NASTY things, that she wishes I could listen to my own voice, and I rather quietly point out that it's SHE who should listen to the loaded words SHE'S using, and she rather changes the subject. She says she'll call me when I bother her, and I sit and almost rehearse what I'll say when she calls about the typewriter: "This is something that I MUST do to support myself, and I take CARE to not type before 9 am or after 11 pm, for HER convenience and the people downstairs. And the people DOWNSTAIRS never complain about ME, and though they're noisier than SHE is, I get less noise because I'm ABOVE them --- it's ALWAYS worse for the person who lives BELOW, which is something that she just can't GET because she lives on the TOP. I MUST work to live, but she hardly HAS to have a cat to survive, nor does she have to feed the birds so that they shit all over MY fire escape, nor does she have to REPAIR something at MIDNIGHT, which I'd never THINK of doing. AND I have no trouble getting along with the touchy sisters who run this place, which she obviously DOES have trouble doing, and THEY like me and don't like HER, so what does THAT say about our respective toleration and acceptance of people around us? But I doubt that she'll ever call; she said she's now "meditating" (I'm sure some outmoded second-rate meditation in line with the type of MUSIC she likes to listen to), and I probably wouldn't DREAM of telling her I have anything to do with something as far above her as Actualism, which might give HER some insight into her actions.