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Events, Places, and Things

 

DIARY 8622
5/22/74

HARLEM HOSPITAL FOLLIES

First there's the entrance pass, no one knows Eryol's number, but finally I get a pass. The elevator is slow, slow, slow, and though I'm 10 minutes late, Azak's 15 minutes late, with Rita Alain, or someone, his "cousin." I ask, "Is she a blood cousin?" and he says "Of course." Then phones and says "My wife had some tests last time, she's here now; OK, she'll come back Friday." He takes two ampoules of blood from one vein before it dries up, then goes to the other arm; later she comes back with one ampoule clotted, so I have to go to her and let her gets slide smears from a prick in my fingertip. Then he insists on my having coffee, talks for five minutes about the sterilized cups and TEN minutes about a beige calendar-sheet holder. He shares his office with a physician-technician he says is making 3 times what he makes, wants someone for $3.25 an hour to correlate cancer slides for prediction in Harlem, I recommend John, and another fellow runs around belching because he's had his larynx removed because of cancer. It's also artificial coffee, Sweet-and-Low, and Cremora for a totally artificial cup of coffee, which he insists I have, though it's 11:10 and he said he'd had a meeting at 11. Then he wants to send me home, but I remind him of the urinalysis and the head X-rays. He searches for five minutes for a beaker for my urine, and then sits and praises the black for her "simplicity but meticulous work" as she lists numbers, finishes so she can take me down to X-ray after asking someone else what floor it's on. She gives the card to the nurse and waves elaborate goodbyes in the hall, and I sit next to a yellow-splotched-legged old lady with sandbag skin until my name is called and I follow a black to a room with a slab-topped coffin on which I lie with my head in about five different positions: chin, forehead, crown, back, and side down, while he steps away for the click and shirr of machinery below my head, automatically changing the plates and, one hopes, shielding the rays from the floor BELOW. Azak complained about the OTHER doctor doing nothing, but AZAK treated private patients all morning ("No, he doesn't have a clinic card"---meaningfully). And old blacks sit visibly decaying in wheelchairs in the halls.

DIARY 8642
5/31/74

TALK WITH FRAN AT TRIP AND TRAVEL

She's an open friendly type, reminding me of the stability and forcefulness and odd humor of Ginny Croft, says that she'd worked for Claridge for two years before she and her sister and an uncle opened this place at a cost of $30,000, and she said it would be about five years before they recovered that [Steve said they went wild with decorating, even to carpeting in the bathroom and a loaded, silvered, ready-to-serve dinner ready in the fridge at all times---at least they like where they work]. She seemed to panic when any business at all came her way, talked of the number of trips that she'd sold that she had to refund when the TOUR didn't go out (she said that only 2 of about 50 of the $475 trips to India actually WENT!!!), and she had to cry and refund the money. [Steve said she was stupid in not selling insurance with the tickets, throwing away good commission money, and in not following his advice in other things, and that she was TOO honest to ever try ANYTHING wrong.] We instantly hit it off when we AGREED that when the traveler didn't want anything sold to them but the plane ticket, they shouldn't have anything sold to them but the plane ticket, no matter WHAT Steve's selling force would tend to make him do. [He mentioned that he put a lot of business in there: he never wanted to handle his own friends and relatives, so he'd send them to her: "Write a check for $650 to El Al," and he hands HER a check for $715 from some rabbi who gave it to him, and she has an instant commission. If Steve's FOR you, you really have to work HARD not to make money, is the implication ALL around. She likes her outside sales rep handler [Steve says he gets 1% of ALL their business, which is crazy---and he's stupid]. She DOESN'T particularly push, DOES worry too much, DOESN'T act like she knows very much, but then Steve only knew ABOUT her when he offered the business to her: me and Walt he knows better. But she'll make out cards for me, talks to Moses Hill on the phone, and Steve chews me out for not looking around the premises, which I'll have to do next time, if there IS a next time what I go in. Pick up a GREAT Africa and India and Columbia book, get GREAT information, and leave with Steve for class.

DIARY 8708
7/1/74

BAR ROUND DURING GAY PRIDE WEEK

Out about 11, walking down 14th while Bob Grossman looks about wide-eyed at the streets, saying "You couldn't choose an EMPTIER street?" Down to the pier between 12th and 10th somewhere, into the dark maw, stumble up steps to some of the side rooms, flickeringly lit by struck matches, but then someone says that the cops have been past twice already this evening, and as there's another general panicky exodus, we leave too. Into the Peter Rabbit and meet David Sears, who's VERY high and smiley and dancey, so we dance a bit, laugh, but I'm unimpressed with its smallness, and I don't see how Eddie got the idea it was such a FRIENDLY place. Bob wants to leave and Paul to stay, so I want to see Bob's Ty's, so we're up to Christopher to be AMAZED at the crowded open cruising, with some neat people, and in to the JAMMED Ty's, where the pretties just stare at each other, but then Bob, being prettier than anyone, DOES get into conversation with someone he likes, so it looks like a successful evening with HIM. Paul and I decide to leave, and I'd mentioned the Roadhouse, so we go past there (oh, I'd also stopped into the Ramrod, on the West Side Highway just south of 10th and Peter Rabbit, and it looked like all the rest of the leather bars), and it's dimmer but somehow more friendly, and some of the people look very nice, so I'm positively impressed, and also impressed by the fact that ALL the bars have the NGTF sign up in them. Then we're to Paul's car near 14th and drive over to Uncle Charlie's South, and it was really one of the nice crowds of the evening, but though I tried making myself available-looking, no one talked to me except a fatter younger awful guy in the pool room, and I couldn't even get an exchange of GLANCES with anyone that was prettier. Wander around from room to room, Paul says he way have something working, and I THINK I don't see him go out, but when I go check; he's gone, and his car is gone, so he's got my jacket and the Mattachine Times, and it's a good thing I took the keys out of my jacket before I left the car, or I don't know WHAT I would have done. Out at 3, walk across a deserted 42nd Street to see what 8th Avenue is like, and (SEE DIARY 8709) then home at 3:45 to come.

DIARY 8709
7/1/74

TIMES SQUARE AT 3:30 AM

Haven't seen it so late in ages, so I walk along to see what is and what isn't open. Even such a rudimentary place as Nedicks is closed, so the only food places are the jammed Kentucky Fried Chicken place and various of the tiny endwise food stands and the Julius shop. The last of the shows are barricading their ticket booths and shackling their front doors, and there are a few bright 24-hour theaters, but they don't look terribly busy. Bums are staring vacantly in at lit stairways in locked buildings, and some doorways already have their sleeping vagrant snoring away, to block ingress to the building until the maintenance staff kicks them out of the way at dawn. Many of the 42nd Street movie houses are showing black films that are just leaving out the last show, so the streets are filled with high-heeled black couples looking for a final snack before piling into their Caddies or the subway for the trip --- probably not to home, but to some after-hours place, since they hardly seem tired. The few whites on the street are even scruffier than before, but there are a FEW couples who are neatly dressed enough to look out of place, and there are few actual beggars. But even the cheapie clothing stores and record shops and porno shops are closed, some of which I'd thought would stay open all night. The TVs are stared at openly by the idlers sitting on the car fenders on the street, and there's lots of searching after sex among the passersby. But it's not even the place to stop and watch the crowd: it's so much the same that it gets quickly uninteresting, and there are not even any cops, except on the corners, to keep people moving. I walk from 7th to 8th to 7th, and then down the stairs to the crowded subway platforms, where the cars slide in bearing mainly a burden of sleeping, nodding passengers in groups of four or six, with only one wide-awake enough to watch for the stop. There are also a number of slack-mouthed children for various reasons, and then the few dirty-clothed workers looking with sullen anger at the party-makers, but they have to be working, tired because of their twisted schedules, never really working, never really sleeping, and it's not something I'd like to do EVERY weekend night.

DIARY 8711
7/4/74

GAY PRIDE MARCH

Self-conscious in my tight green pullover and short-less white pants, but when I get off the subway at 14th, there are already people walking down to Christopher with their shirts off and in high-cut shorts, so I feel OK. See Richard crossing the street, groups lined up on the side streets, find where the NGTF will be, find that WSDG and Mattachine has a VERY small turnout, so I just stand at the corner, then at the head of the parade, watching the TVs in green sequins with real snakes, or in black velvet with gold sprinkles on their chests, or with bright red lipstick under their mustaches, and with flowing gowns from India or the 20s. A VERY tall person from New Jersey broke up the crew by asking "Atlantic City IS in New Jersey isn't it?" in her terribly skinny legs with enormous clown-like shoes on and a skinny black tutu-type tube with black sequins --- she should have NO trouble seeing over EVERYONE in the crowd. Jean was the Grand Marshall, officious red-armbanded people raced around being ineffectual, and I saw the first of many looks at the stern-faced short but BEAUTIFULLY built guy with the overhanging tits and flawless abdominals who ended up posing on the side of the slope next to the band shell, and I couldn't take my EYES off him, or the way his black leather partner kept pawing his body. There were other unforgettables: the blond couple, one more beautiful than the other, the Indian with the crotch-slung half-off fatigue suit, the duo from the baths that I liked the more muscled of and Bob liked the taller, prettier-faced one. Waved hello to Eddie and Richard and Andres Ramer who'd found someone to kiss in the gay synagogue group. The Catholic group was amazing, the Westchester Mothers of Gays got the most applause, someone from the women's groups was divisive and booed at the band shell, and Jean let HER have it, some of the singers were good, others bad; I felt the sun blasting on my neck, and was sorry to see Rich Wandel carrying the rolled-up Mattachine sign into the area, Mattachine having to be announced MUCH later by the commentator from WBAI who told us that Martin Luther King's mother had been shot down in the Ebenezer Baptist Church. What madness! Crowd overestimated at 43,000, but it WAS something to be done, chatted with Vernon for a time, looked at the pimpled back of a muscle builder, some GREAT bicyclists, and in general ate my heart out for being me.

DIARY 8722
7/5/74

FLYING SAUCERS ON THE PROMENADE

We're looking over Governor's Island and there's a moving sequence of lights below a center red light that slowly detached itself from the island. As it moves upward it really DOES appear like there are portholes of yellow light that are slowly rotating beneath a central red light, and I can't get "Uri" out of my mind, wondering if I'm the only one who's seeing it (though I'm nicely stoned for the fireworks), and then fathers of children with a shaky calm in their voice point and say "It looks like a flying saucer, doesn't it?" And I think how MARVELOUS it would be for the people from wherever to choose the Fourth of July to land somewhere, and I try to visualize what the mixed panic and elation there would be on the crowded Promenade if it DID appear to be landing. I urge it to come closer, wondering what it IS, and it sweeps out around the bay to the south, more and more people staring at it, and then it flies immediately overhead, and it turns out that it's NOT a Goodyear blimp, as I'd first thought, NOR some sort of captive balloon with writing moving across its side, but a monoplane or even a BIPLANE with its lower wing wired for messages, and it spells out "Golden Radio, WCBS, something on the dial" and the crowd chants the phrases, more to reassure itself that it's terrestrial, I think, then anything else. Earlier, there's been an orange light suspended in the sky for a long time, people saying "It's NOT a star," which set the stage for the saucer, and it turned out to BE the landing lights of a plane flying very slowly. The LAST firework was the best, a four-stage-up followed by a huge ball of dandelion fluff, and then the display from Manhattan went on and on until well past 11:15. I cruised up and down, rubbed elbows with some cuties in the firework-watching crowd, but they moved away, tried some of the people on the benches, but as usual the awful ones looked at me and the pretty ones DIDN'T look at me, and I almost found my eyes CLOSING about midnight, and though I rather desperately WANTED cock, I didn't even go home and jerk off, I was so tired. But the CUTE ones no more look at me with ANY interest than I look at the OLD people with any interest. Disgusting.

DIARY 8724
7/5/74

MARVELOUS RAINSTORM

About 3:20 the clouds had gathered and large drops started falling as I took down the curtain around the French doors and shut them. Quickly it started raining very hard, so hard that I closed the bathroom window and shut off the typewriter to watch what was happening. Suds flowed off the building roof to the south, as if they'd scrubbed the roof and improperly rinsed, and now the rain was doing the rinsing. In the back yards the tree of heaven was being tossed about, bending up the lighter green sides of its leaves, and sheets of rain could be seen driving whitely past the rain-wet bricks of the garage in back. Lightning came more and more frequently until it seemed to be a continuous roll, deeper in tone until it got so close that it was really the sharp high sound of a handclap. The overfilled downspouts sent waterfalls onto the tree stump below, and then came the rattle on the panes that could only be caused by hail, and I watched the tiny white spheres bouncing off the blacktop roofs next door. I sat in the chair and felt the cooling breezes come in through the window, and though the temperature sank only from 89Ε to 85Ε, the humidity actually rose from 50 to 60%, though in all it felt cooler, except in the study where the heat of the bulb created an island of warmth around the typewriter. The improperly drained patio next door became a lake, and the drenched curtains from the garage-house flapped heavily in the winds. Bright flashes again lit the sky, and where the sky had brightened after the initial downpour, it again grew dark as if the storm were circling back, and even AFTER I thought it would be too late to get out a microphone to record the lovely thunder, the storm came BACK again in force, again rattling with hail, though I could see very little of it, and again the downspouts jetting into the gardens below. The rug inside the door was wet from shattering raindrops, and the humidity formed on the windows from the inside, dripping as in winter with the temperature difference between inside and out. And then the rain faded to a continuous torrent as I sat down to type this page at 3:50, but the half-hour's storm was one of the most impressive I've even heard and watched.

DIARY 8735
7/10/74

CONEY ISLAND WITH BOB GROSSMAN

We watched the action of the Tornado, saw that the Hurricane was torn down, and though we SAW the "Hole of Hell" as the wall that lowers the floor, Bob decided he really didn't want to go on it, so when they left we walked down to find that the Thunderbolt was still closed, so we went to the Jumbo Jet at the end, waking up the attendant, and Bob hadn't had a chance to see it in action, which was fun, because his big eyes got wider and wider as we rolled up the hill and then swooped down around the loops, and he said he'd loved THAT, too. [Avi the next day heard from his parents that even though his father was afraid of heights and his mother was about 8 months gone with Avi, THEY enjoyed the roller coaster!] Then on the "Tornado" with five crazy kids literally STANDING in the front, and they were chased off the ride, so I guess it was LEGITIMATELY dangerous. Bob didn't want any more rides, saying they were too expensive at 75, so we took our second ride on the Cyclone, not quite as good as the first, and then walked along the boardwalk to Shore Parkway, up to Brighton, and along under the El to Brighton 8th, or about there, and looked for restaurants, and went back to the Seagull, where he had borscht that he didn't like, I picked herring that came without cream; his chicken dipped in honey was OK, my fried sole was hard and flavorless, the broccoli too salty, the French fries good, and the pineapple pie acceptable, but for $3.94, it was LOT OF FOOD, and we felt full from that and the five glasses of water both drank, and got out at 8:55 to see a boardwalk JAMMED with people from the apartments with their folding chairs and knitting and families, just like Miami Beach, and we walked toward Shore Parkway in time to see the first of GOOD fireworks, that Bob didn't like because we were too far away, though I couldn't seem to make him REALIZE that. Left at 9:30, even I was feeling pretty hot and uncomfortable by that time, but I still stood in the doorway and watched the formerly unridden F train making its way through ABSOLUTELY dreadful residential districts in the heart of Brooklyn, waited for an A train on the same platform, and got home TIRED to shower my sticky skin at 11 pm, and wash that salt right out of my hair.

DIARY 8740
7/12/74

EVENING IN THE VILLAGE

I'm sort of thirsty, so when Bob suggests we get a drink, I say we should go west to the Village, and we walk toward Ty's saying how much we liked the movie. Stop in at the Studio Bookshop, where the only new thing I'd like to see is the Gallery issue with Bruno in it, and that's the very issue that they don't have. To Ty's, and it's even more crowded than on a weekend, so I wait for eight people to go to the single john before ordering my beer, and we stand around and ogle the less beautiful people, though there's a clean blond who I later see talking to a scruffy young man, and a dark-haired fellow with a sexy big nose that I talk to later, but he doesn't want to invite me to his place since he has to get up at 7 am to go to the beach. We finish the beer and decide to check out Julius's, but when we go over there, passing the enormous crowds of Christopher Street, we find that it's closed at 2, and then we walk back to the Ninth Circle, which is crowded, it's true, but the crowd, isn't very nice at all, so we walk through to the over-loud backroom and then walk out to the corner, where Bob says he'll get a cab, and who walks up the street but Jack Seelye, and we talk for about 15 minutes about the after-images of Wushu, various other ballet companies, and I recommend the Armenian again to him, and then he walks off and I decide since I'm out so LATE I might as well see what Christopher Street is like this late, and it's more empty than before, thought there are still crowds before the bars, and the black who's chatted nicely with me before talks to me again, but he's just not attractive enough, so I walk down to the littered park at the foot of the street and it already has its nightly quota of sleeping bums, no one attractive, so I walk up the street, populated more with patrolling police cars than pedestrians, and wait for a few moments outside the subway to see a big-armed short fellow trying to pick up two kids, and then see the black still across the street, decide he might get the wrong idea seeing me standing there, and get down to the station to wait a long time for the local, then a long time for the express, and get home at 3:30, tired, having read a lot, disgusted with myself for finding no one after taking so much time. At least the air's getting cooler.

DIARY 8767
7/18/74

CHEESECAKE BUSINESS FOLDS

Tom says that Mrs. Ritz is bothered by an inspector called by someone ONCE A DAY for the past week about the illegal food-making concerns in her basement, but then Mrs. Ritz says that Tom wanted HIM out of the basement so that he could put his office on his side, Tom said that Mrs. Ritz is crazy and probably paid some black to phone Arnie and say "If you don't get out of the Cheesecake Factory in a few days, you're going to find your Cheesecake Factory DESTROYED. This is Mr. MacGOO." The police seem to imply that Arnie doesn't have a leg to stand on, and Sol keeps saying that Arnie should have TOLD the police to arrest him, and that Mrs. Ritz would have backed down because she realized it would be false arrest to keep someone away from HIS OWN business, and that a verbal lease for a couple of months was just as binding as a written one. Accusations and counter-accusations flowed across the board, and I got out a blue folding chair and sat down while everyone shouted at each other, and I sort of felt sorry for the cops for being drawn into the middle of it, but THEN I kept being obsessed with the idea that the TRUTH and the JUSTICE of the matter had nothing whatsoEVER to do with the LEGALITIES of the matter, and Arnie's going to lose over $2000 in cash fixing up the place and all his TIME (though he keeps trying to convince himself that he was really getting tired of the business ANYWAY by that time), and I shudder to think what would have happened if Arnie and Bob Grossman and I had bought out Tom's business for $25,000, and then probably TOM could have been the one to make the phone calls, and Arnie seemed to think that it was TOM, not Mrs. Ritz, who's taken his two mixers, his two lights and refrigerator (which he paid him for) and his Phonemate, in which case the $200 check wasn't covering ANYTHING, but Tom Kron can probably think to himself that he has a clear conscience as far as Arnie's concerned, and when he tried to break locks, Arnie suggests they cut the bell wires, and Tom gloats and says "You've just redeemed yourself, I can respect you again," because Arnie came out with an idea lousy enough to have been THOUGHT of by Tom Kron. How HAPPY I was then that I didn't get INVOLVED in it anymore than helping Arnie OUT of his mess.

DIARY 8823
8/10/74

GREAT ADVENTURE PARK

From notes: 12:50: llamas, antelopes, elk, deer. The pens are quite narrow, so there's no place for them to flee to, so some of them are really ludicrously close to the road. Thankfully he has air conditioning, so we're not sweltering in the not-too-hot day. 1:00: 15-20 RHINOS, lots of little elephants, GREAT herds of Asiatic goats. 1:10: Oryx, eland, zebra, gnu, hartebeest, zebras, buffalo, zebras crossing road, LOTS of pretty LITTLE ones, tinamou, BEAUTIFUL little ones, wildebeest, 10 or more giraffes, vultures, geese, water buffalo, white and colored peacocks, nilgai, sika deer, fabulous antelope collection. 1:25: lions; 1:27: BEARS cuffing each other in the water, climbing tress, rolling about the hillocks like furry marbles. 1:29: empty; 1:30, more bears; 1:31: geese, swan lake, PALE flamingos; 1:35: more lions, pauses to hold up traffic. 1:40: four black leopards in a pen to get them used to the traffic; 1:43: tigers, GREAT chased by truck, 1:49: swans, goats, camels, sika deer, LOTS of camels and BIG goats; 2:00: baboons and monkeys; 2:07, out. I worry that we're going out the exit, but we pull into what turns out to be parking lot 3b, almost farthest away from the entrance, and he's relieved the car didn't overheat, sorry he didn't bring shorts, attracted by the cute boys, and sorry about the crowds, especially since a woman rides past on the tram saying "DON'T go in, don't spend your money." But we had already. Push in front of the line to get in, 2:15, go to the john and have some water, past the four pavilions of Souvenirs, Fairy Tales, International Bazaar, and Past and Present, which we don't go into, look at the trampoline basketball game at the Happening, like the Carousel, walk through the castles of the Garden of Marvels and look at the Koi Pond filled with a YELLOW perch and bigger goldfish, listening to the roar of the heater in the Balloonland balloon, past the kiddy rides in Riderama, up to the enormous Giant Wheel, and by 3:00 I want to eat, the Gingerbread Fancy doesn't have a line outside as Yum-Yum Palace did, and in to the BEAUTIFUL white-cane and hanging-pot décor, but the prices are expensive and I don't want to blow it, so I get a baked sole (hard and dry) with lots of French fries, a little cole slaw, good lime-froth pie, good 8 oz beer for 85, and he has just a sundae for his "diet" lunch, and at 3:45 we nose into the Aqua spectacle to hear that it's crowded, see the top and bottom of the 100-foot dive, walk past the wild flowers, stop at the music he likes at the bandstand (and a GREAT little combo was playing good music we could hear from the porch of the Gingerbread Fancy, which they were still fencing up by hauling up white curlicues as we sat and ate), saw the non-working Flume ride, he heard some ragtime band while I went into the airy stuffiness of Super Tepee, and at 4 I insist on standing in line for the Runaway Train, and he said that he had a faulty heart and had never been on a roller coaster before, but it wasn't VERY fast or VERY tumbly, and he ended up actually LIKING it, and we were off at 4:55, less than the hour he'd predicted. I suggest we stick around for the Arena show, since we're here, at 5:30, so we're around the under-construction Conestoga Wagon, into the pretty "Best of the West" restaurant that we should have eaten dinner at, and he gives quarters for "Shoot-Out" which is fun with light guns and LOTS of action. Boats and Antique Cars not running, either. Into the Arena as it opens at 5:15, and there are knights in armor jousting choreographically with wooden poles, a lady in a blue gown on a HIGHLY prancing gray horse who went backward, too, and a stagecoach robbery thwarted by a girl sheriff, and the start was the Tartars with disappearing boxes, whips, hang-off-horse riders, and a black master. Then a chariot race stunned the audience by having one TIP OVER, rolling its driver out on his padded legs, and it ended with the 100-foot swing poles where they all CHANGED PARTNERS, which was spectacular, and it was all over at 6 pm, just exactly a half-hour. Figure we won't be able to walk across to the Aqua show at 6:30, so he consents to ride on the Sky Ride, high above the green horizons of trees and the beautiful yellow wheel, great striped tent-like pavilions, and we RIDE the wheel after 10 minutes, I ride the Pretty Monster (Octopus) while he gets his glasses, we ride the Flying Wave, fun, and get on line for the Aqua show at 8, seeing it from 8:30 to 8:50, no high dive at night, 9 on line at Yum-Yum Palace, arguing, 9:45 eat, 10:10 leave. The $2.25 salad and cheese plate with a one-half pound hamburger added for $2.65 is good.

DIARY 8826
8/10/74

ETHEL AND MICHAEL AT THE FACTORIA

Remark that Bob ALWAYS seems to choose tschatchka-y places like this, and I say that we should have gone to my place on 9th Avenue after I taste the pizza. We'd been cruising a sexy number with an older woman above, and the woman asks down how the pizza is, we say the sausage is sparse she should get the whole thing, when she tastes it she says "Angelo's, on 9th and 57th, is the best place in town for pizza." After just telling Bob he should think positively, this is a GREAT boot for me, so we shout back and forth and laugh, and we start comparing names: they're in the travel business, she with Knickerbocker and knows Arthur Wagner; he with Ask Mr. Foster and BOB and he knows a mutual friend. They talk about London gay bars while we talk about travel to India and why I shouldn't go into the business, then we get onto ballet and he says "What do you think of Cynthia?" and we have ANOTHER common love, and he says that I should GO to try to get a ticket for the Baryshnikov evening at the American Ballet Theater on Friday, but I say that that would be trying TOO hard to press my luck with getting tickets. We seem to have so much to say together that Ethel Lefkowitz and I try to think of a place to have coffee or a drink, and I come up with Nirvana, that none of them had been to, so we're out about 11:10 and up to the penthouse to get seated right in the center looking out over the rather dim streets, and everyone likes the place and the décor, though the drinks are $1.95 apiece. We sip slowly and talk about India, ballet, New York, travel, Rudolf Nureyev's ass, Nora Kaye, Arnie Bernstein, Anthony Blum in her apartment building, Dowell and Sibley of the Royal, various dancers from the Festival Ballet that I should see, various plane flights, London luck by Ethel and meeting people, Orissa good looks, rents, and getting together next week to go to Angelo's. I'm getting tired, finished my drink, and then they see that it's almost 1, they all get up and leave, Bob takes off East, and we three walk west to look into Rumplemeyers, talk about the city, and I leave them at 1:15 to just catch a SECOND downtown local, find the cars OPEN, thankfully, for the Times Square crowd, and home at 2:10, feeling the one-half liter of wine with the pizza (that was too thick, good cheese, not enough sausage), and the daiquiri in Nirvana. Bob's smile was still lopsided, but he wasn't so self-aware.

DIARY 8851
8/22/74

FABULOUS EVENING AT CONEY ISLAND

Apologize to Eddie and Bobby for making them wait, and they'd actually made the ride in 35 minutes, getting there at 7, so they'd eaten and gone on some rides and wandered around a bit before getting to the corner to meet me. But Michael isn't there, and I worry that I told him that Stillwell Avenue ran as Surf Avenue actually does, in front of the park, and fear he may have gotten tied up somewhere else. But he doesn't show up, I debate calling Ask Mr. Foster on Ethel to see if he'd called in lost, but at 8 we shrug and say "He MAY have gotten here at 7:30, looked for ME, thought he missed me, and wandered into the park by himself, and we might see him later." Eddie wants to smoke and I suggest the Wonder Wheel, so we walk over there, I having called Eddie and told him that the evening was on ME, and he agreed, so I pay $1.20 from a $10 bill to get on, and we light up as we leave the ground, all of us worried about the openwork of the door joining the side of the car, and as we smoke Bobby shouts that the car is stuck on its ramp, but then it thunders down the slope and loops up, and as we're smoking I have the awful feeling that the cars are all BELOW us and we're swinging the wrong way, or swinging too late, and really tense up inside until it moves down the track. Eddie hides the joint under his Voice as we go around, and then relights on the second round, and the wheel continues to move as we swing around the loop that continues to move, and the motion is HUGELY accented, so we're swinging and swinging and SWINGING. Also, there had been some door-bangs from the ground as we looped, and I could have SWORN that the track was coming apart, and next time we'd just go THROUGH or get STUCK in some awful way. We were all TRULY paranoid about it. Then down to the ground and THERE'S THE SMILING FACE OF MICHAEL SULLIVAN WAITING FOR ME at the exit to the Wonder Wheel! I'm truly flabbergasted, asking how he managed to find us, and he said the subway was VERY slow, he'd only gotten there at 8, come to the grounds, and thought he saw me going up in the wheel, so he waited for me to come down. I asked if he had any idea how BIG the park was that he could do this so easily, and he seemed to take no notice of the chances AGAINST his finding me so EASILY. Then we went back on, ostensibly to give him a ride, but to smoke a second joint, which Bobby has some of, but Michael smilingly confesses that he doesn't smoke very much, and he's smoking a cigarette, and he's wearing an undershirt that exposes his puff-chest with smooth freckled skin, and his open smile and easy ESP talents are quite winning, as is his charm and laughing fears about some of the rides. Finishing the second joint, we're ready for more rides, so we're down to the Cyclone, waiting about four rides for the front seat, but people a few seats back keep jumping into the front seat, so finally we're into the fourth seat, Eddie complaining, and they're behind us, and we go around, each hill seeming to take an AGE, and it seems more than ever that the thing is about to leave the tracks, and the ride just goes ON and ON. Off thinking to get the front seats, but the guys in front of us get there first, so we're off, Eddie grumbling. Then we're around to the Hell Hole, and Michael comes in with us until he's made aware what kind of a ride it IS, and then he bolts for the door and moves to watch us from the top, and the ride IS quite wild: the floor drops away just BEFORE you're tacked to the wall, so you slide down a bit, then when it gets going, the lights go off and strobe flashes of black light come on, and the faces across from me flicker, and I get the fantasy that I'm REFLECTING each of them, becoming them for an instant, and the faces flicker in and out of focus as we whirl in a circle. Then the floor doesn't come back UP to us, the forces lessen and we slide down to meet the floor, and some of the kids flatten their feet and arms on the walls so that they're literally floating above everyone's heads until the last possible moment, when they almost fall FORWARD because the rotations have reduced so much. Then down toward the Jumbo Jet and Eddie wants to try the water-filled balloon race, and I pay for him and me, and I WIN, and there's no ticket, only glasses, which Eddie doesn't want, and then Michael finally expresses interest in the red white and blue "American" glass, which he takes with him for the rest of the evening. We stop at the Hurricane and Eddie says it's too small and Michael simply doesn't want to come, so Bobby and I are into the second seat, and this seems even longer than the Cyclone, hill after hill after hill, sweeping around in circles, and then HE pays for us to go on a second time, getting into the front seat, and we crouch down like taking motion pictures of the thing, and our backsides swing through the air as we go. Out and Eddie wants to ride on the pile-driver looping planes that I'd gotten sick on at Palisades, and he and Bobby get swung around, and Michael and I stand below and marvel at the DRIVE the sadistic machines seem to show to the poor riders. Then to the Jumbo Jet, and AGAIN Michael refuses to come up, saying "Around?" with such beauty and innocence when I say that it's like a roller coaster except that it goes around, and his self-effacing smiles are really getting to me, and I could feel that I was beginning to fall a bit for the open, friendly, rather simple and charming Londoner. Then to a section [oh, on the Jumbo Jet Eddie was swinging around to sit BACKWARD in the seat, and Bobby and I kept AT him to move back until he DID, and I was quite relieved when he did, as HE was when he'd ridden on the thing. Then off to the chair swings at the side, Michael and I next to each other on the outside, and we went a couple revolutions with our hands ostentatiously clasped for the crowds to see, and again my heart built a charge of affection toward him. [Guys on the ground delighted in grabbing girls' feet and swinging them in quick circles about their chains.] Then off to a new ride section, things a-building (a funhouse and a high-seated circular ride that I couldn't figure out), and we watched the super-octopus that looped the cars high on three rings of six cars each, and Bobby and Eddie went on it, me paying, while Michael and I went over and Michael was again so gentle and loving with a horse that my heart quite went out to him. Eddie had tried some more games when we were on the Hurricane, so HE had six glasses to carry around, shifting them to us when he rode. Then we wanted to smoke again, and Eddie insisted that we could go up some side street, so we walked up, saw a parking lot under the subway tracks and went back there to take out a joint, when suddenly we heard policemen's voices just on the other side of the fence, and Eddie loudly said "Oh, the fireworks are about to start," and we walked to the entrance, feeling VERY paranoid, past the cops, expecting them to stop us at any moment, but we just went past them. Then toward the boardwalk and Eddie saw the shadows underneath, figuring that even if the smoke DID rise, it'd take so long for people above to communicate "pot" to the cops that we'd be finished. So we stood in the darkness, passing around the joint, and when I held about the last third, having had two tokes, there was the flash of light from police flashlights right ON us, so I just dropped the butt and walked straight and quickly out to the sand, again expecting a hand on my shoulder, but I mingled with the crowd and finally Eddie came up and asked what I did with the joint, and I just said "I dropped it," since they'd already said before that was the thing to do: they couldn't arrest you if it was on the ground, since they couldn't prove you'd held it. Then the fireworks started, and we moved out onto the beach, crowded, but empty where we were, and they were nice, some quite bright, some very high and huge, and then Eddie lit a joint right there and we passed it around, hurrying a bit when the last big display went on after about 15 minutes and people started passing us, but that was the last, and later we saw blacks openly smoking in large groups of people, so we were probably overly paranoid, but we'll remember the cop-brushes for a long time. Then we wander back to the Hell Hole and Michael goes on it this time, and I can see his face drawn into a rictus of nervous laughter, hoping desperately that he won't be sick, and he isn't. We all go on the Bobsled, also, and I'm sorry I hadn't taken Michael on my lap for it. We'd also ridden many, many times on Dodgem's, and I'd whacked my knee almost hard enough to shatter a bone on the steering column, so after that I rode in a bent position. Paid for many of their (Michael's and Bobby's) rides, and Michael was grateful since he'd not brought much money along, since he'd had no advance warning of going, and the rides were quite expensive. I bought a HUGE stick of cotton candy for 50, and bought franks and chips for various people at times, and when we were leaving we bought fudge and cashews and nuts to eat on the subway back, actually finishing all of it. We caught the D train back, Bobby and Eddie and I getting off at Atlantic Avenue while Michael continued on to 4th Street to get the A that would take him to 8th Avenue, closer to 10th Avenue and 50th, where he lives, and the Lexington platform was closed, but Bobby got a Lexington train on the 7th Avenue platform before we finally got the third train, a 7th Avenue, I getting off at Clark Street, Eddie riding home. I'd taken some Dramamine beforehand, but felt no twinges of sickness on any of the rides, so I really should have pushed myself a little bit more to see if I COULD survive some of the rougher rides, just to test my limits. Eddie said that he had fun, Bobby seemed to like it, and Michael beamed his freckled smile and said he liked the evening a lot. Eddie's grass was so good that I felt stoned through the NEXT day, too. Immediately made out a list of expenditures: $44 out with me, $19 back, so I spent $25 in all [OH, forgot the CARS and the attendant WHACKING a black with a BAT, and the BATTLE then]:

1.50 E&M on Cyclone
2.00 E&M on Cars
2.25 E&M&M on Jumbo Jet
1.20 E&M on Wonder Wheel
1.20 E&M on Wonder Wheel
.50 E&M & me winds glass
.25 for E game
3.00 2 (E&M & M&M) on Hell Hole
1.50 B&M on Hurricane (he $1)
1.50 E&M on Bobsled
1.00 E&M on Swings
1.00 First Dodgem
1.25 Second and Third Dodgem
.50 Cotton Candy
1.00 Franks and chips
.20 Cashews
.50 E Frank
1.50 E&B on loop plane
.75 E&B on octopus/loop
.75 E on something else
.75 M on something else
.50 M on Dodgem

$11.20 on E, paying for Chinatown
Rabbi Jacob (+Arnie)
Flesh Gordon (+Bob)
Camelot
Woodstock
2001
Frankenstein
Zardoz 2x (+Bob)
Last Tango (+John)
Sinbad

15 here, at LEAST 23, so I "pay" Eddie less than 50¢ APIECE! So we can do it AGAIN!

DIARY 8859
8/23/74

FOOD BILLS LIVING ALONE

Had decided to collect my Bohack food slips to see how the standard of living had changed from 57th Street, when it would be about $10 per week for food, and for the period March 25th, when I move in and buy groceries for myself, to August 25, which makes exactly 154 days, 22 weeks, or 5 months, I have essentially (since Food Stamps made it necessary that I pay for two classes of food when I bought, for example, beer) 21 slips, or about one a week, for a total of $299.45, which is VERY close to $2.00 per day (actually $1.95), or $14.00 per week (actually $13.62), or $60.00 per month (actually $59.89). Then I figure I miss breakfast about one day out of four, and for the same ratio I either miss lunch or eat out, and the same for supper, so living at home one might spend $2.50 per day, $17.50 per week, or $75 per month for food, though this certainly isn't eating luxuriantly. In fact, it's just about 15¢ for lunch of cereal, though it's doubled if I have peaches in it, surely less than 85¢ or 70¢ (though it goes up if I have fruit with it) for the tuna fish lunch, which means that I spend just about $1 for breakfast and lunch, which leaves $1.50 for dinner, sounding about right, about $1+ for the meat, and the rest is vegetables or apple sauce or wine (no, wine slips are NOT included from Bohack, so THAT would increase it about $5 per month), so it's possible to live very cheaply, surely not like that woman who lived in the subways and had to eat out and found herself spending more than $160 for food! Over $5 a day is eating in some fairly decent restaurants if one skimps on breakfast and lunch. In a couple of years it might be quite different, if the economy slides further into inflation, or if I'm living in another city, or if I'm living with someone (or if someone's supporting me, or if I get rich enough from writing that I don't have to worry about how much I spend on food every day). And again I feel the urge to get to the bottom of the page, sweating in my seat because it's raining out and I can't have the door open, and the humidity is about 90%, and I fear that the apartment is just going to rot out from under me one of these days in this awful summer heat.

DIARY 8905
9/10/74

MR. AMERICA CONTEST

Lots of muscle-builder kids with little crotches in the audience, and a lot of the gone-to-fat older ones and lots of screaming women, too. VERY few gay people in the audience except for some leather numbers. Upstairs by stairs when the elevator doesn't come, and find that it hasn't started yet when we slip into our extreme side seats at 8:35, so it's VERY good that we weren't here on time, since Bob was exasperated waiting for the start at 8:45 in the heat of the auditorium, which was jammed, and they announced that 1000 people were waiting around outside, not able to get tickets. If I go to the Felt Forum, better get seats earlier. Starting with teenage Mr. America, with some real cuties, though with none of the great bulk, and consequently none of the experience and sexiness. and then to the over-40, with someone Santiago obviously the best of them all at 43, still a peak-of-muscularity body since I think he's the one with his own studio, and then to the women, surely culminating in the incredible breasts of the final entrant, and then the typical "first one out" not being ready since they seem to bring them OUT from the worst to the best. But some of the Mr. America candidates are truly lovely, with their olive colored oiled skins, their skimpy thin-silk crotch covers over (some) nicely defined cocks and balls (though most were unprepossessing lumps), and some of the beautifully mustached faces were so incongruously lovely atop their tank bodies that it was almost a shame that they'd done so much. Some went for grace and beauty of motion, however, and it was a delight to watch them through the binoculars when Bob wasn't hogging them, and magnifying the TV screen was best for getting an eyeful of tit and crotch. Peter Lupus was there, turning Bob on, but Burt Reynolds sent only a telegram. Sergio Oliva (not very built) made a ranting speech against Joe Weider and Arnold Schwarzenegger (I'm not against him, though, he kept insisting), and then there was an intermission, the contest for Mr. World with Rick Wayne taking second, and though Bob wanted to leave he sure used my glasses for the second half, too, and about five of the bodies and faces we'd have given quite a bit to have after the show.

DIARY 8909
9/10/74

PORTOBELLO ROAD FAIR

Can't really believe that the entire midtown traffic was due to the fair, but when we look west down 46th and see a black MASS of people jamming the street (we didn't realize that the side streets were used for the fair, too), we figure that it could have caused the jam-up. Arnie's delighted to find a parking space, and we walk across 42nd to see a solid mass of people at 42nd and Vanderbilt. In gradually, finding that the foreshortening effect on a crowd always makes it look worse on a periphery than it is when you get into it, and move around: Bob actually wants to look at some of the antiques, but many of the dealers are from the states, or have 201 phone area codes, and Bob says that most of the prices are really outrageous. There are people lining the ramp of the roadway over Vanderbilt looking down, and we think that might be a good idea until we get into the crush at 43rd Street, with the bandstand going on with pipers, people going in and out, and mainly OLDER people grimly pushing each other through the crowd, knowing for a fact that THEY are important and everyone else is just there to be pushed aside. Remark to Bob that this says something about New Yorkers: advertise ANYTHING that's a bit different, a bit kicky, and they'll come out in the tens of thousands just to SEE it, and Bob suggests it might be held over, and someone else said that there had been a great deal of selling way BEFORE the place officially opened at 11. Out to Madison to watch all the milling people from the side, then up to 47th to watch some handkerchief dancers and walk south to 45th, not really that crowded, and Bob gets to look at a few more stands, we see some devastating papas with kids in tow and BEAUTIFUL faces and crotches, and I fantasize beautiful faces to be Mel's, but no one has cutoff blue jeans, and we laugh at our descriptions that are all below the waist, and you can't even SEE waists in this shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Off to the side streets for an array of junk furniture and bibelots, and I said that most people would be glad to get rid of this junk, and Bob retorts, "How do you think they GET all of it?" But who's interested in more STUFF, more junk, more clutter --- I look at the people and we leave about 4, me content that it's a success, but liking the people MORE than stuff.

DIARY 8938
9/18/74

ZUM-ZUM PEOPLE

[First sheet of the NEW, SMALL paper! And to get 30 lines, I have to type to the very BOTTOM of the page, so there's not room for ANOTHER line to fit.]

First there's the guy across who schlups and schlips and schlobbers over his coffee, looking up at me almost guiltily, asking if the second cup isn't free when the sign on the waitress says precisely that the second cup is 15¢. Second there's the guy next to me, mustached and jerk-off thin, obviously living alone and having no one to talk to except the guy behind the counter, and there's an endless string of questions about the relative merit of the butterscotch pudding and the cheesecake, going into its history, the bakers, the two pieces he had the other day, and the manager seems so willing to indulge him that when I look somewhat askance at him, he looks at ME as if there were something wrong.

Third there are the sexy ones: the guy sitting across the way with his curly hair and frizzy mustache and level, soulful, beautiful eyes looking at me. When the mailman with his plucked eyebrows and magnificent body in tight blue jeans comes in I wish the earth were free enough so that I could tell him how beautiful I thought he was, beside the fact that he's suffering from a too-long day of work, looks weary and unloved. Then there's the lovely fellow sitting in the row behind me with the black, who's also so beautiful I hope they're lovers. Then the people on the street: the black looking in and talking loudly at no one, except that the passersby stare at him in wonderment. Cute boys AND bods rushing nowhere, looking in, Chinese fellow studying the menu as if it were written in a language he didn't understand, which might possibly be the case.

But there was an openness, a loveliness about the crowd that for a moment made me wish that I was living in the Village so that I could soak in the atmosphere of carefree loving and acceptance all the time. The waitresses were pleasant, too, and the manager let the older woman next to me NOT leave her driver's license so that she could go home to get the 11 that she owed them, and the manager made the bill less --- quite a place!

DIARY 8945
9/18/74

TRAVEL DYNAMICS ORIENTATION

Glenn Davis is a balding, curved-eyebrow heavy probably homosexual in a red blazer and very sloppy olive bells with ugly cuffs. He sat outside and chatted with me about half an hour as Polly fretted about answering telephones and chaperoning someone who looked like the owners' mother with some granddaughter running around smiling at everyone. Glenn said that he had only four weeks left with the company so he really didn't care what he did in the line of work, so he sat and chatted with me. Gave me a background about how the idea of escorts wasn't mentioned in the literature, it was a "freebie" so the tips tended to be low for that reason and for the reason that these were professional people going on a "training" trip. He said that I'd be into the place again before the trip to pick up some flight bags, but that he'd be carrying most of them to the plane for me. He emphasized that the woman on the boat would know everything, and everything of more than ordinary occurrence would be handled by Jetter Tours in Athens, which happened to be partly owned by the company. We joked about the lack of organization, but when I joked the same way with Polly, Glenn hastened to say "I didn't say anything about THAT," so they must be undergoing a reorganization --- or an organization, since Polly said she was a department of one and everyone else was a guide. The two groups had gone from something like 38 and 48 down to 14 and 14 --- it was 48 down to 24 last Tuesday, and between Tuesday and Tuesday ten more had cancelled. But he insisted that it would still be too expensive to combine the two tours, so the chances were still good that I'd be leaving with them. He'd worked with Four Winds (who keeps the same tour guides 10-15 years, and they get fabulous tips) and some other companies, but wouldn't tell me where he was going next. Polly seemed very happy with me, saying that she hoped I got fabulous comments so that she could quickly send me out on another trip. It seemed they kept repeating things that they KNEW to make up for what they didn't know (how the extra days were going to be spent around Salonika, for instance). He talked about the luxury of the Stella Solaris, and all I find I have plans for are the Oceanis and the Maris, so I should get THOSE plans, too.

DIARY 8998
10/12/74

DIME SAVINGS BANK ALA JACQUES TATI

Incredible crowds of people: for $100 you get a choice of a blanket, a set of stainless steel; for $250, something else, all the way to $1000. Enormous lines before stations A and B, everyone getting into the one at the DOOR, no one going to the ones in back. Huge open-fronted box set in the middle of one wall to handle the gifts, and one passer-out SHOUTS at a fat middle aged woman "Lady, they're all the SAME; here, this is the one you gave back to me in the first place, THEY'RE ALL THE SAME." And she goes talking merrily along. Children are fretful standing beside their mothers, swinging on the red plush ropes separating lines, sitting on the stanchions, dropping Crackerjacks on the floor and then "coyly" pretending to put the dirty stuff in their mouths to see Mama jump. String wrapping some of the packages being handed out begins to tangle around the legs of the shoppers, and coats are pulled up, people are pushed together, people trip and stumble. Enormously long boxes contain portable vacuum cleaners, and no one has any idea how they're going to get a rotisserie home without pausing in the middle of the floor to unwrap lengths of their own string to produce a carryable object. Old men peer owlishly through glasses to make sure no one's getting in front of them. Then, at the busiest, the computers break down, and some woman's voice rises above the general susurrus: "Oh, the machines ALWAYS break down, they're NEVER working right." All that would be needed would be some dogs, some teenagers eating lunches from McDonalds, and someone passing out free cheese to produce complete chaos. A pretty girl handing out brochures looked at the crowd and was never seen again. Fat old ladies stood on tiptoes, knotting obscene calf muscles to try to see farther back into the gift room --- and one of the guys was a doll. People shuffled unhappily from one line to another, comparing the comparative value of the "prizes," as they called them, and people were getting MANY chairs though the "rules" said that wasn't possible. Guards looked completely flustered, people's tempers broke, people whacked with badly carried packages, and the floor was probably a mess --- and this whole thing was advertised to continue until October 29: THREE WEEKS AWAY!

DIARY 9002
10/13/74

SECOND WINE AND CHEESE FESTIVAL

Only about 500 people in at the start, and they were actually leaving large pieces of cheese and loaves of French bread around so that people could cut their own hunks out! Few of the wines were really being started yet, and for all the touting of "three floors" since one was a sales and performance area and the other was a lecture area, it was still the same floor as before, and actually the exhibits seemed more spread out, so there may have been FEWER participants. Eddie pointed to the back of someone wearing a purple suit saying "Didn't we go to Coney Island with him?" and it's Michael, flabbergasted to see us there (I surely DO run into him in lots of places: Spaghetti Factory, the opera, the ballet, and here), and coming around with us to enjoy wines and cheeses and a tiny bit of sausage from Akron, Ohio's dairy farmland. My first sample was Raphael aperitif, quite good, and then the Bon Sol rosé was not special and the Riesling was too dry. Michael amused me by trying to appear the expert in THIS area too. He'd been invited as part of an Air France presentation, and they gave him the tickets for the wines free. La Ina sherry tasted poor, but the service was good: dipping a metal test-tube-on-a-stick into the hole in the top of a barrel, he swung the tube into the air, starting to pour from about a foot away to about three feet away into a glass, and once I saw him cut it off perfectly, though lately he started dribbling on the carpet, which must surely end a TERRIBLE mess. White Mateus was fair, not as good as their rosé; Carmel Chemin Blanc is nicer than expected from Israel, Taylor Lake Country White is ALMOST as good as Widmer's Lake Niagara; Kir, white wine and cassis, is VERY good; Takara Plum wine is almost an apricot taste; and Ecu Royal and Tea = Sherpa (as in "Slurp a Sherpa") was their answer to Sangria, and I thought it didn't taste bad at ALL. Lots of cheese around, even to servers moving around with trayfuls, no lines in front of the wine until the Gekkeikan plum and saké were sampled, and I didn't even look through the rudimentary program until the subway later. Didn't apply for anything, but you have to fill out a card to present for your tickets, a great way to continue their mailing list: and THIS is the best time and place to SEE it.

DIARY 9004
10/13/74

BODYBUILDING CHAMPIONSHIP

Some devastatingly built guys are waiting for entry along with the married couples and the kids looking forward to a life of body loving. See a "Sold Out" sign inside but they say they have plenty of tickets, and get a section 211, front row, that's ludicrous for $10, and obviously only the NEXT-to-side section was $8.50 and the tiny SIDE was the only $7.50. The ushers are all ripping off everyone for an extra buck to get seats downstairs, but I'm content to sit and read until 8:05, when it starts with George Carter and the Music City Junction, seeming to assume that an audience interested in weight lifting is interested in country music, a connection I don't quite get. Starting at 8:30 the beauties come on: Dale McManus with a lovely lithe muscularity and Someone Rodriquez in the shorts; Bob Birdsong, Roger Collard, and the BEAUTIFUL Robert Smith in the middle; the even more striking Dennis Gable and the handsome Jeff Smith with a 50" chest and a 29½" waist in the heavies. [Largest arm size stated was 21" and biggest chest was 52", but many could have been bigger without quoting sizes.] Franco Columbu lifted 645 lbs, tired from his flight from Japan, and Mario Manzini furnished a hyper-riot, klutzy, hype-miked "escape" act that got the booing it so richly deserted. "Mr. America" obviously can't be used, so they call it "the American Body-Building Championship," and the feud still seems to be continuing, with exhortations to stop --- I guess they've gotten all they wanted, including a letter from President Ford and from the Olympics committee. Ed Juliani won short; Collard, Kune, and Birdsong (1) won middle; Modjuluski, Patrick, and Saluski won tall, and Birdsong became Mr. America. For Mr. World: short cuties were Ed Corney and John Maldonado, who works as "a computer program for the government," and the 3-2-1 order was Gilchrist, Maldonado, and Corney. Medium beauty was Skip Robinson: winners were Burnet, Robinson, and Green, a black. Tall seemed only to have Bill Grant, and winners were Suk, Katwaru (cute) and Bill Grant, who swept most of the "special" away except for legs and posing, which went to Corney, and the best poser before was the BEAUTIFUL Dennis Gable.

DIARY 9005
10/13/74

BODYBUILDING CHAMPIONSHIP

Mr. Olympia had only two in the under-200 pound class: the sexy Frank Zane and the absolutely peak of bulkiness Franco Columbu, who won. The over-200 pound class was Lou Ferrigno, totally appealing, though with his lopsided shoulder and smaller calves, he was thoroughly routed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a dazzling product of the Weider brothers, undoubtedly Mr. Olympia. The Miss Americana contest was mercifully brief, with the same big-busted Kelly Someone as "Most Shapely," which obviously means "biggest tits," and someone who looked suspiciously like a gal who posed in "Muscle" as the Miss Americana. From 8:25 to 11:25, an eye-popping show, somewhat better than the other one, staged at the less colorful Hunter Auditorium. Courtney Brown has a navel that stood out like a red ping pong ball until he sucked it in, and I guess it must be a hernia? There were actually fewer contestants, it seemed, than the other, and the other had more of the beautiful-people manliness of beard and mustache, but for the sheer bulk at the top, this had to win with the four contestants for Mr. Olympia. No other sport seems to offer so transparent a study of male competitive emotion: showing off their BODIES, they stare out at the audience, almost blushing if the applause is great, surprised and repeating if it's better than they expected, puzzled and hurt when they settle into their best pose and the audience sits quietly --- surely someone 37 takes courage to get up and pose, KNOWING that he's not as handsome or bulging as his competition, but maybe ALSO knowing that they're not going to reward him JUST for tenacity in their calling. Rotund former lifters clumped about the audience, though some of the budding teenagers seemed better than many on the stage, and some of the chests were so utterly appealing that I had to tell myself that it was "look but don't touch." A campy threesome sat behind me in leather and glitter, and some international organization with the acronym GIAT got laughter when they thought it was "GAY." Lots of commerciality, lots of beef, very few crotches, though some were marvelously displayed. But some of the beauties were heart wrenching: HOW I'd love to caress them!

DIARY 9040
10/31/74

GRAHAM GROSS'S RESEARCH

He blows my mind when he says he's been doing Kirlian photography experiments, and tells me a few new things: 1) the cut-leaf "still there" is a kind of hoax: it only shows up when the leaf is photographed on the SAME PLASTIC PLATE into which its form has been etched slightly. When they tried to show the same effect by showing the fields going ACROSS a cut, he duplicated the same effect with two pieces of tinfoil: the corona discharge (which is what it is) fills in the gap. 2) He says that there are two kinds of discharge: a spot discharge and a streamer discharge from a positive or negative (I'm not sure which is which --- but could the spots be the BASE of the streamers of the corona going "into" the skin??) field, and he says that the more heavily ionized the air, the greater the effect, and I brought up the SciAm point that the air is more heavily ionized at the ocean, and he says they haven't looked at that. 3) Colors come from various molecules in the air being ionized: the blue light is from the nitrogen in the air, other colors can be produced in other atmospheres. Also, colors can be due to the vaporization of elements on the object photographed itself: sprays on the leaves, perspiration on the fingertips. He had enough money for 6 months, and they extended his research for 21 more months, and there was the great coincidence that he wrote the letter proposing to the Committee for Advanced Research, or whatever it is that he has a friend on, research on Kirlian photography THE SAME DAY that his friend's boss came in and said "Why don't we look at Kirlian photography?" He said he'd read "Physic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain" and couldn't think of any other ideas to propose, but that he WAS looking for other things to have LTS do. He supervises a physicist and a team in New Jersey somewhere, and had proposed another project that his boss didn't like, so now some OTHER company has a big contract in investigating something else: oh, yes, SUPER-sensory facilities: hearing things that wouldn't ORDINARILY be heard, seeing colors, etc. Now maybe I could look through something and propose a project to Graham that he could get money on? There's much interest in seeing if these ESP skills can be TAUGHT, and I'd love to be involved in them, even if only as a guinea pig!

DIARY 9045
11/2/74

HALLOWEEN PARTY AT ALICE'S

Avi is the balloon man at the door, and I notice with amusement that the rather unisexual dance crews have taken sexist views in their costuming: the women are all ultra-feminine in much makeup (except Alice, who's wearing a black spade beard and jeans) and long flowing dresses, even to a jeweled black cat, while the men are pirates or farmers or dancers of obvious maleness. Put the wine on top of the fridge because it's full, and John's baked brownies that are very good, so I have two of them and a cookie, and after having two pipes of the grass I brought, shared with John, I take a few tokes of a joint that's going around, but still having had only three glasses of wine, I don't know why I conked out so fully. The rock group was quite good, at one point going into a kind of a drone that the group picked up on and started clapping in rhythm and stamping on the floor in a GREAT improvisation of dance movements. The flailing of the arms and legs and heads seemed so nicely controlled because most of them were dancers that it was a pleasure to watch their smiling faces and bobbing bodies. Jose was high on LSD, which explains his swooping motions along the dance floor, and when he read my sign he quite literally ripped it from my chest and then didn't read it. Alice said it was better without the sign. The guy in blue jean shorts atop a white-orange clown suit kept leaping dramatically through the crowd, but everyone managed to stay out of his way. A couple of the single gals found me out and tried to make conversation, but the music was so loud and at the end I was so spaced out they lost interest. When I got dizzy I made my way to the chair and sat down, and lost consciousness until 3:15, when John nudged me and said it was time to go. I groggily got to my feet, got my jacket, and stood swaying until we went down, then sat on the steps waiting, while others whispered sympathy, and it took all my control to say I was OK. To the car, sitting quietly trying to keep well while John accelerated and decelerated with a vengeance, and he left Kai out his side, I said goodnight, and then we went silently home, feeling relief at the bridge, he found a place to park fairly quickly, I said "Go ahead" and I followed, head down, behind him, thanking him for his help when I got to the door, stripped quickly, and fell into bed (after washing off my makeup)

DIARY 9081
11/20/74

FINISHED WITH STAMPS

Starting two weeks ago on Wednesday, through yesterday, Tuesday, fourteen complete days were occupied with stamps though the three days on which I didn't touch them reduced the total to 11 days, between 100-150 hours on stamps in total, with NO time devoted to anything beside maintenance: getting groceries, telephoning, cleaning. And now that I'm finished, all the other things that I've been putting off (particularly correspondence) are right on the tip of my mind, and when I sift through the Times and the Voice last night I seem to come up with an INCREDIBLE number of places I want to go and things I want to see in the next few weeks. At last (I tell myself) I can get back to the writing, particularly the "Babbitt Brighton" series that seems to have been stewing and accumulating a lot of ideas while I've been fondling the perforated pieces of paper with colorful pictures on them and listening to tape after tape after record. But then the Do-list items are beginning to prey on my mind, so I'll finish those FIRST, then by that time it'll be time to go off on another trip for TDI, and I won't have any free time until I get back in March, and by then I'll be 39 and will again have great cause to wonder where all the time's gone and what I've been doing with it. I again think of the New York characters idea, with me as the main character, since I'm convinced that NO ONE leads quite the life I do (though I suppose everyone says that) and I'm eager to write it up ala New York to see just how interesting it DOES look. Interestingly, last night over dinner I was talking to Bob Grossman about my relatives and my stay in California, the first time I'd done that, and it occurs that maybe I don't know anything about his family because he knows nothing about MINE. I suppose we've been curiously reticent about this, since we met at Tsi-Dun and subsequently mostly for sex or for seeing things, and we'd never really gotten to the point where we just sit and TALK with each other about what we were, are, and want to be. But now that I'm looking forward to doing more THINGS (like seeing the Open Eye with him on Friday, and inviting him (after his hints) for Thanksgiving dinner NEXT Thursday) we might even (dare I hope it?) end up back in bed together --- or at LEAST jerking OFF together!

DIARY 9134
12/9/74

TRAVEL DYNAMICS DAY

When I find it's going to be a total business day, I feel a bit miffed that there's no CHANCE of pay, though I'm there for about 5 hours and get only a $4 lunch out of it. Dr. Finby talked through the entire lunch (he didn't eat his crepe until it was stone cold) about how TDI Tour Escorts should treat S&S as an equal company with TDI, since they're "interrelated," but he recoils at my question about making their interrelationship clear in the brochures and in their dealings with the clients. Silly to go through the whole thing without either of the brothers there. Ron comes up with a set of statements that he admits sounds corny about acting as members of "a big family" and the theme is continued when Pat gives us orientation. With the hospitality desk to be manned, decorations to be set up and taken down (it's nice when the organization hasn't chartered the whole boat and then considers the Escorts as general flunkies for the ship), things to be carted back and forth, lots of announcements to be made on the plane, and this trip will be significantly different from the others--- though I'm surprised to hear that there will be TDI people waiting for me in EVERY city that I pass through collecting the people on my charter flights. Ron turns out to be somewhat better, even slapping his face EXACTLY like Bob Grossman when he said something nasty about someone, saying "Did I say THAT?" Arnie said he reminded him of John, but agreed that Ron and Bob both seem to be conscious of the impression they're making on everyone all the time. Arnie called after I got home, saying that Polly said there might be a chance I'm NOT going to South America, and he thought he wouldn't tell me, and then did. I said it was just as well, I'd gotten to the point where I was "SURE" I was going, and such sureness with a company like Travel Dynamics is simply impossible until I've left. So, as I told Arnie, it taught me a lesson. Still haven't heard anything. It seems more like a JOB now, and I seem more like I'm working for them, and some of the bloom has gone, though it would have had to happen sometime. But Arnie's note about the government of Ecuador not permitting a Greek ship line to go off to the Galapagos after this year makes me sort of WANT to see them, while possible.

DIARY 9199
1/1/74

NEW YEAR'S EVE IN HORN AND HARDART'S

The entranceway is almost totally balloons, and it's nice to present the engraved invitations (no, checking shows them to be merely printed) and be admitted to an open area surrounded with tables FILLED with confetti, "champagne party poppers," streamers, hooters, but no hats, knowing that almost no one would wear them. The lightshow was almost nonexistent, only two strobe lights, and the decorations were rather minimal, the host saying that the people who were supposed to come and decorate hadn't. Check the coats for 50¢ and there are the vats of grapefruit juice, soda, and what is supposed to be champagne. We select a table and roam around until people start arriving at 11:45, and he barely meets my lips when HE initiates the New Year's kiss at 12, after dancing a few times. Costumed freaks show up in Japanese kimonos, silver capes, riding habits, and many designs of work suits that can be zipped in and out of. Shirts came off early and I'd hoped for trousers, too, but that never happened before 2, when we were tired enough to leave. Poppers and grass went around quite freely, and I felt rather stupid smoking my bidis. One guy was totally stoned and wandered around the entire evening with heavy-lidded eyes thrusting his hands above his head and then trying to pull his scalp down around his ears. The gray-pink sweater with the devastating ass danced nicely, some blacks had incredible crotches of blotched blue-and-white denim, and some professional-looking dancers turned with balletic rapidity and went through a series of Broadway-type steps that seemed not to repeat too often. Bob ogled ugly girls in black, bleached blond, who danced with the host, and admitted that some of the guys I liked were groovy, including the one who looked like the star of "Zabriskie Point," now in jail for trying to rob a bank with a pistol. The music was loud, but not too; the people were loud, but not too; the booze took effect, but not too; but certainly $12.50 was too much, and as Bob moaned "They couldn't even hire a Colt model to act as Baby New Year." We kept smelling smoke but nothing happened, no one got sick, no one fought, but no one stayed very long either: at 2, almost everyone who had been there when we arrived had left, and we were glad it stopped raining.

DIARY 9534
4/18/75

MAX ERNST EXHIBIT

Not QUITE sure why I'm doing this page, except that something that I looked at from 2:30 to 3:45, paid $1 for, and debated buying a $15.96 catalog from, not to mention the fact that it was something that I read about and was interested enough in to GO to, seem to be adequate rationalizations. Up to the top to stuff that starts in 1903, or so, but nothing gives his dates. Rather boring and uninspired until a great "Ravening Bird" or whatever, in vivid colors and white-toothed bird-mouth screaming. Then in the early 40s he starts what the "docent" calls his "decalcomania" period, where he put paint on glass and stuck it on the canvas until it got sticky, and then pulled it away and worked on it. I asked if he'd used anything like sponge or other materials for different textures, and she merely said it was possible. LOVELY stuff, the sort of detailed monster-flower-fantasy stuff in bright colors that I'd like to do, and his "Voix Angelica" seemed a marvelous epitome of his entire career. He got sloppier, darker, and less interesting after about 1948, but I was surprised to see his dates continue up into the 70s, and he's still alive and living back in Paris. Was amused to find that the current Gala Dali used to be married to Paul Eluard. Wanted to buy a catalog, but $16 seemed a bit much. Looked at other books, and a $25 modern art book had some of his best, along with some others that were nice, but I still debated buying such a thing for SO much money, only to put it on a shelf with dozens of others like it, and hardly referring to it. Seems that my reviews like this might be more valuable than the catalog itself. Lots of his things together show that he had only ONE period that appealed to me (and later things appealed only if he used the same technique, which he DID return to, as if it were a favorite of his, too), and the rest of it seemed mere talented scribbling of no great originality. Might be depressing to see all of ANYONE in this way, except the giants like Picasso, of whom the museum had a respectable collection in his permanent wing, though I just went through quickly in order to see it again. The catalogs left on sale seemed to indicate that they hadn't had many interesting exhibits that I'd missed, and again the inner architecture seems anti-picture and pro-architecture.

DIARY 9537
4/18/75

WEST 12/12 WEST

Didn't recognize Eddie from the skating party at the door, and he called me John to start with. Arnie and I got in, found George and Karen, his wife, and Kirsten, looking great in a black suit with silver-lamé blouse, her blond hair curled on top of her head. They chatted with us, pointedly NOT seeing the cock on the Club Baths ad, the kissing and hugging of the guys, and even looked away when the slides from the Renaissance were showing someone without his shirt --- or someone's bare ass. George seemed always in some sort of special communion with Karen to shield him from the gazes of the men, and Arnie said that he'd probably feel he couldn't compete. Hell, I couldn't! The guys were lovely, smoking grass (which Harry was also worried about), muscled, still tanned, and young and beautiful for the most part. I paid $3 for membership in order to join the West 12 club free, and the crowd used the dance floor to the best. They left about 11, after the slides, and I went upstairs to find John Hood passing around poppers, drank some white wine until it ran out, was introduced to a sexy Paul Graham whom Bob says has a lover, and looked at the guys downstairs taking off their shirts and dancing with wonderful prancing motions under the red/green flashing lights and the slightly used but VERY effective strobe lights. The sound system was great and the flowing from one record to another usually most effective. There was cruising and meeting, but I felt so outclassed by everyone there that I couldn't do anything, though Arnie talked to Vincent from St. Thomas and was meeting him after Bette Midler the next evening. I chatted with a few who seemed friendly in the upper bar, looked into the side room with mats conveniently spread around the floor, found they didn't have much in the line of johns, and drank Coke and ginger ale when the wine ran out. Missed a chance for a free pass to the club, got the cold shoulder when trying to talk to Eddie, got friendly vibes from Harry, whom Arnie asked if he could go along on Thanksgiving, the Daphne described good, and they decided that George would put up with ANYTHING in his greed to get some money for himself and TDI, and would probably not even SEE what they didn't want to see about the gayness and the grass. Arnie thought my being there was good for my possible future usage by TDI. Let's hope so.

DIARY 9549
4/22/75

AUDIENCE REACTION TO THE GODFATHER, PART II

Arnie said to watch for the applause, and there's a bit in places that are disgusting, but when he slaps his wife for saying she didn't have a miscarriage but an abortion, the audience of old men and blacks break out into cheering. Ghastly! They also applaud the killing of his enemies, but never applaud the killing of people he's reluctant to kill, like his brother, who tried to get HIM killed. And then there's some kid in the audience who simply insists on talking and screaming in his normal voice, and no one seems disturbed enough to do anything like complaining about it. Then he starts crying and crying and crying, filling the lobby and theater with his bawls, and some few look around, but no one would think of complaining: they're all inured to it, and expect me to be, too. Then a hat comes sailing down from the balcony, landing in the row in front of me, people are talking and rattling cellophane and tapping their steel-tipped shoes (female) on the floor next to me. A black sits in front slupping with his lips and teeth around candy, sneakered foot on the seatback in front of him, insolently looking around to make sure everyone's accepting, no one's staring, everyone's noticing him. Snoring, laughing at the serious times, not laughing at the jokes, the audience is again a class that would appall me to be caught on a desert island with, and the thought flits through my head "It might even get to be a DELIGHT and a RELIEF to leave this world to the people who have made it into such a shithouse." Again the feeling of wanting to get away, or at LEAST go upward from the $1.75 I spent for this one to see it at a first-run movie house where there wouldn't be SUCH an audience (no, only the RICH teenagers threatening violence and the rich matrons jangling their jewelry and talking under their flyaway wigs, as they were with stage whispers during the Manuel Alum performance at the Leperq Space). So it MAY be "What am I doing in this theater?" but these people ARE in my WORLD, and the people who DON'T want to have any contact with them aren't even AWARE of their ugliness, in their riding of cabs and private cars, and their surprise about what's going on in the world may be even MORE extreme than MINE: I at least SEE what the alternatives are!

DIARY 9587
5/14/75

LASERIUM AND NUDES IN ONE EVENING

Odd combination, but the nudes surprisingly included a Quaintance painting owned by Reverend Robert Wells, and the gal who does the nude guys. The cockiest one was the one visible free downstairs, by a woman, of four pink nudes at a beach. Lots of tits and pubic hair, some VERY graphic, and some old men with big dangles, and an astoundingly lifelike woman just standing there (shivering) near some beautiful Greek gods by Benjamin West. But the whole thing took only a half-hour to see, from 5 to 5:30, and so I went down to see the film to kill the rest of the time. The vaunted crowds at Laserium didn't show up, so I bought the three tickets and then stood in line with Arnie and John to get seats in front of a trio of girls who'd seen it about five times before, so they clapped in rhythm to the music, exclaimed, "Oh, I like this part," and acted more obnoxious than guys. If this is women's lib, shove it. They played "Tubular Bells" in the guitar version, which didn't sound so hot, during the prelude, and then had a much longer "Fanfare for the Common Man" by Copland that whatever TV program used. Brian Bassett, the laserist, wasn't that good, but some of the graceful motions of the Lissajou figures were neat, particularly as the red, green, yellow, blue circles separated from each other. The colors have that grainy quality of laser light, so they're not activating something else, they're sending off the colors directly. The idea of having the stars behind was more distracting than not, but it added to a feeling of cosmicity. The music was some good, some bad, and the audience seemed to applaud for everything, except when a particularly gripping or comic twist, like quirky twists of fineness knobs to make the figures do tangos, would get instant response from the audience. It would be good to go stoned, but I was most impressed by the fact that this was the START of something, and it could supplement traditional movies, nightclub lightshows, and other entertainments fully as much as the Moog has now infected almost everything, to the point where I'd probably want to get a unit if they're for sale for less than $500, just as I'll probably get a videotape machine if the catalog includes some of the goodies that I'll start keeping a list of on DIARY 9588.

 

 

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