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1969 1 of 7

DIARY 160

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1. Cyndy's rushing around getting ready to leave, and I'm up at 10:30 to kiss her goodbye at 11, and watch Tournament of Roses Parade 11:30-1:30, then Mom calls to say "Marion Zolnerzak died last night. It's at Prentice-Hill, in this morning's paper, but the brothers will be making the arrangements, so I don't know when the funeral is." Grandma says she wouldn't go, and Rita's not going, so I tell Mom to send flowers in my name: Bob. Breakfast at 2 pm, type DIARY 115-136, meditate at 5, eat at 6 pm a bacon lunch, call Joe and Peter, and get no answer for Doug and Avi and Azak, and talk to Karen, who seems to put me off. Finish with DIARY 157-158, finally up to date with myself on the DIARY---HURRAY---and I'm pretty tired right now, even though it's only 10 pm, though I've done TYPING today. Takes about a half an hour to put everything in its place after typing, then decide I want to hear music, so I put on earphones and orgasm my way through Mahler, Saint-Saens, Strauss, "The Holy City," "MacArthur Park," the "Christmas Festival," Beethoven's 9th, "Pines of Rome," and "1812 Overture" ("1812 OVERTURN," HA), and it's midnight, and I'm hungry for popcorn, so I pop some and eat it during reading Mark Twain's "With the Indians," and to bed at 1.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2. Up at 10, which is pretty good, and meditate and exercise and eat breakfast and start on the windows, when Paul arrives at 12:30, earlier than I'd expected. We talk and talk about his and Kone's situation, my adventures with Rick and other Ohio data, my smoking with Cyndy, Laird's calling, and about my deeds with John Reed, and he talks about the swing of parties through Washington before Christmas, and his relief at getting into town. He makes a lunch date with Rudi, calls Walter Joseph, and I tell him about Norma, and he expresses interest, so I call her and she has to call back. We eat lunch, and I get some swipes in at the windows between his telephone calls. By then it's about 5, Norma has to call up tomorrow to see about her coming over, I've gotten a telegram about Grandpa's death from Grandma, with the funeral tomorrow at 3 pm, and later I call Mom to tell her, and she says the body's on view only tonight from 7-9 pm, so it was almost impossible that I get there to see him. Paul gets in touch with John Sung and another friend of his to come over tomorrow at 6 pm for drinks, and we begin the lengthy procedure of finding what restaurant to go to, he wanting Indian or Armenian, I ending up with Pearl's, Salum Sanctorun, Sweets, Hawaii Kai, the African Room, or Madame Romaine de Lyon, and we make reservations at Hawaii Kai. Walter calls again with further plans, and we all wash and get ready and are out at 7. The Luau dinner is only $6.95, and we get a coconut full of fruit, a puu-puu tray ($2.25 per person if not with the dinner) full of egg roll, spare ribs, Chinese snacks, liver wrapped in bacon, shrimp and crab flakes, and a blazing cauldron in the center. Then the soup, pretty and bland, a salad, and they don't have pig, so Paul gets Lobster and I get

Pages 161-166 missing

and where there's people, it can always be reduced to you and me, and that's just as simple as it can be." The silences between exchanges were growing longer and longer. I felt clear and relaxed after the orgasm, but I suspect poor Paul was falling asleep out of sheer weariness. I went to get another drink and found that it was ten minutes after five, so we got back into the cooling bed and fell asleep. I woke a number of hours later, impossible to tell in the darkened room, and moved around a bit to find Paul far on my side of the bed, undoubtedly awake.

DIARY 167

FRIDAY, JANUARY 3. I smiled at his being awake, the arms went back and forth for a few moments, and he turned again onto his left side, curled up and relaxed as he said he slept with Kone. "I never thought I'd be able to sleep in the same bed with a lover," he said, "but with Kone, I guess it had to be that way, and now I can do it." I thought a few thoughts about the matter of trust one person has in another, and moved into the back of Paul. He took my arm and wrapped it around him, my hand on his curly-haired chest. I felt unwilling to go back to sleep, and Paul's heart seemed unusually loud in his chest, so I suspected he wasn't ready for sleep either, and I moved my right hand down on his thigh, resting it there, feeling the firm length of muscle under his skin, and then moved my hand to the inside of his thigh, rubbing my thumb gently against his thick hair five or six times, each going infinitesimally closer to his crotch, and then I'd move my hand only a fraction of an inch, then go back to rubbing the thumb back and forth. I could feel myself stirring against his backside, and my breath got slightly louder. Closer and closer my thumb crept, the cat moving closer to the bird, the hand moving every so slightly, Paul resting quiet under my arm. After what must have been a number of minutes, my thumbnail touched the cold hardness of one of his testicles: I had reached the target. Gently I rubbed the area below the testicle, then, growing impatient, I moved upward to his balls, cradling them in my slowly moving fingers, and I moved upward a fraction of a hair and was gratified to feel the hard shaft of his cock rising upward from the balls.

Pages 168-170 missing

We chat about nothing in particular, except our life styles, until 6 pm, when we start getting ready for the guests of the evening. But Larry Anger doesn't arrive until 7, having been held up by some sort of delay on the subway, and I'm enthralled by this personage: slight and slender with well-fitting bell-bottoms that becomingly outline the hard edges of leg muscles slender under the fabric, a flamboyant shirt with a silk scarf around his neck, but above the neck, under the curly black hair, set into a lean angular face, and a pair of the most attractive eyes I've ever seen: dark and brilliant, with long lashes curling back out of his flawless light skin, they shine and glitter with the fleeting expressions over his face to produce a captivating look, and I'm amazed that Paul doesn't seem to have made it with him, except that he said he was "a sort of a snob," which might just mean that Paul tried to be friends, but Larry wasn't having any of it in Vientiane, but it should have been obvious that he was gay, because his voice tends to be used rather feyly, and his hands are all over the place, emphasizing his long, narrow proportions. John Soong (Sung) arrives at 8, unpleasantly pocked about the face, and his malady rather prevents him from being as pleasantly outgoing as Larry, and it turns out that Larry is the one who has to leave early, and John is joining us for dinner. Subway down to the Dumpling House, right next to 456, and have good pork and chicken and hot and sour soup, and then it's midnight and we part company, and I'm back home with Paul and into bed, and I don't think anything happens.

DIARY 171

SATURDAY, JANUARY 4. Laird had told me about Ozzie, but I'd forgotten about him until he called at 11 am, saying that he and a friend were staying at a hotel, and they'd like to get together. He mentioned he was going to brunch, and I said, "Fine, let me invite Paul and myself along," he agreed, and said he'd call us back when the arrangements were made. Paul and I dressed and got ready, and Oz called back to say that we were invited to Joe Elkin's and Bob Worthy's apartment on 58th Street! I was appalled at my presumption that invited us to a private apartment, but he assured us that everything was OK. We went shopping at Bookmasters and Marlboros for some books that Paul wanted, and got there at 1:15, and met Kevin and Mait and John, and another fellow who was just a bit too overweight to be pleasant. The Bloody Marys sat very well with me, and I seemed to excel at a certain type of bitchy repartee which I thought was very funny until Kevin thought to get back at ME, and I was wounded by some of his barbs, and decided that some of my remarks to OZ might not have been in too good a taste. The eggy, mushroomy, highly-seasoned omelet type brunch was very tasty, as were the hot buttered rolls, and finally when things broke up about 4, we were great friends, with the hosts, who took our names and addresses and said we must keep in touch. Back to the bookshop and wait for Walter Joseph's arrival about 5 pm, and we get taken to the Cafe Brittany for dinner rather early, though the place is still crowded, and the service still reasonably slow. The dinner lasts nicely until 7:15, when Walter and Paul have to take off for "The Boys in the Band," which Paul has heard from practically start to finish at the brunch, and I get back home to try to relax. However, Don Leventhal rings up from downstairs and wants to waste a few minutes, so I ask him up, and we chat until 9, and he leaves and they return at 9:30, and Walter regales us with tales of Greek boys had behind the Byzantine altars of temples on Hydra, with something put into the poor box afterward, and the lovely boy who gave him a holy picture after a week of sex in Rome, during which he'd accept nothing, wearing the same clothes, neatly pressed each day, and exquisitely clean. Then he leaves and Paul wants to see the Table Tops, and we're there, getting a table at 11:30, and the place doesn't get lively until 12 or 1, but then, when Paul asks some of his partners to dance with me, Jerry starts asking me, and we dance until 3, then cab home, chatting about the place, pleasantly tired.

DIARY 172

SUNDAY, JANUARY 5. Up on the late side, and Paul has to leave by 12, at which time Don calls and says he wants to sunbathe in my window, so he comes over at 1, and I read the Times and get dressed for the play, and Don leaves and Joe comes over at 2:30, and we're down for the 3 pm curtain for "House of Atreus," which is impressive with the masks and the moving statues and the cementy costumes, but the freak playing the two women is wearing with his voice, and the big-breasted washerwoman strikes strange notes of levity, so the production is flawed, and in fine, fails to leave the effect of a tragedy on us, except that they were so controlled by "fate" that that in itself was an enormous tragedy. Also how they reacted to joy (in the same way as to grief), was telling, too. I get back to finish up the newspapers and fix around the apartment, rather at odds ends after Paul's weekend, and I start reading some of "The Voyage Out," but it's not terribly interesting, and I have a little bit of dinner and get to bed at 11, worn out from the busy weekend.

DIARY 173

MONDAY, JANUARY 6. Up early, meditate and exercise and have breakfast, and decide that I have to finish washing the windows that I started washing the day Paul arrived, but left most of them undone. Decide to get after the kitchen window again, much to my dismay, because it seems to get harder rather than easier to push up and pull down. Then with the floor littered with junk, I scrub the bathroom and kitchen and sweep the floors, feeling finally caught up on everything, and even get the washing out. Read some more, but Virginia Woolf's tough going, and I can't take too much of her refined sensibilities at one time, and Don arrives to go with me to "The Sergeant," and Rod Steiger isn't bad, but John Phillip Law, despite the fact that his face is lovely and his eyes beautiful, they're expressionless and motionless and emotionless, and the main feeling is one of disappointment that such a beautiful person should be such a lousy actor. His face was even deader than it was as an angel. Borrow the projector from Eddie at the same time to project Larry's film, which I want to see, along with him. Bus back home and Don doesn't come up, so again I'm to bed early, catching up on sleep.

DIARY 174

TUESDAY, JANUARY 7. Up and meditate and exercise, and the telephone rings at 10:30, and it's Grandma, saying with tears in her voice that Dad is in the hospital and is very sick. "You no come to see Grandpa, that OK, but you only have one Daddy, and he sick now you come." So I say I'll come, and call to make arrangements for the flight, and have to get to the West Side airlines terminal by 11:45, and it's after 10:45. Throw stuff into a suitcase, the large one this time, since I can't pack very scientifically, and shave quickly and get out to the cab, and quickly to the terminal, the reputed hour trip taking exactly 20 minutes, which I guess is exceptional. Have a stomach-turning lunch at the airport, and search the paperback stands for something to read, but there's nothing there, so I'm onto the plane reasonably defenseless. Am pleased to find that the trip is something less than an hour to Pittsburg, and I get a copy of the New Yorker to while the time away. Reading does take my mind off the flight, and the takeoff is made easier by seeing the plane before sliding off to the left as it climbed, so when mine did that, I didn't mind it. There were clouds that we climbed above, and later clear spaces so I could see the roads and fields and hills below, all with a light dusting of snow, but I was enthralled again with flying, and the landing, though through clouds, was easy, and I began to feel better about it. The next plane was delayed getting up from Florida, though, so I got "Notions: Unlimited" by Sheckley, and read it. It was totally cloudy when the plane finally took off, and I read, and when the seat belts were fastened again when the pilot said we would be going through turbulence, I read the story entitled "Morning After," and the tale of adventure for the sake of adventure, and risk for the SAKE of risk and raising the adrenalin level inspires me to think that flying IS some sort of risk, and heaven knows I take few enough risks, and as I ADMITTED that it was a risk, and felt the plane lurch, and looked down on the

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and the eyes again went over to the side. Yet, on the off chance that he could hear me, but couldn't even control the motion of his eyes, I talked on a bit more, feeling silly, then we left the hospital about an hour after we'd arrived, having been told that Doctor Snyder was the house doctor in charge of his case, but he couldn't be reached until 9 am the next morning. I fretted about this, but could do nothing and so went home. We'd thought to see Grandma to take her to the hospital, but when we got home, we decided to eat, and Marion left, and Rita and I drove out to Grandma's only to talk. Back to Mom to talk just a bit, but I was feeling drained by the plane fears of the day, and bed at 11.

DIARY 176

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8. Wake about 9, and call Grandma about going to the hospital. Get there at 11 and meet Doctor Snyder, and he tries to get information about his previous operations, but Grandma says it was on the lungs, Mom thinks it was something about the bladder, someone else says it was about a tumor on the back, and everything's confused, so the doctor has to call the hospitals involved, and there's confusion there, and finally he says he can say nothing. It looks like a stroke, there's lots of jaundice, and he's bleeding rectally, though none of these three seem connected. He's paralyzed on the right side, which they say is better than on the left side, but they have no way of finding the extent of brain damage. They've arranged to take X-rays, but they don't think that will tell them anything. Stay until 11, and even the eye movements are restricted, since he's lying only on his left side, and he stares dully out from heavy lids. There are two pipes to his nose, now, one sending in oxygen. We leave at 11, when Grandma sees "We can't do nothing, we can't talk to him, they're doing everything they can." And we watch them feeding the others, and washing them, and giving them pills and injections, and checking the intravenous sugar solution. Back to Grandma's and she insists that I eat lunch with her, and I can't seem to refuse. She's got lovely ham from Kash from Grandpa's funeral, with a knife that's new and sharp enough to cut me the first time I use it. Eat this and a tomato and chicken soup with stars, and coffee and lovely coffee cake for dessert, and then we talk about any number of things, my just keeping her company, and leave at 4, saying that I'll be back tomorrow after calling the hospital to check on Dad's condition. I get home to dinner, and Rita goes out to Suzie's for some pre-made date, and Mom settles down again to talk with me about Mike, and how many times they had sex, and how much she enjoyed it with other men when she divorced Dad, and how much she loved it with Dad, and how she went into the living room when he was sleeping on the sofa and started playing up to him and he asked "What do YOU want?" and her reply was "What do you THINK?" She told me about how Dad hated to take baths, and how when she asked for the divorce, he came home at 4 am and cried over her and said "I'll even take a bath right NOW if you won't divorce me." Then she reminded me that she HAD been struck by him, but how he'd ram the table with a knife, or throw a chair down the basement steps to take out his anger. How he drank, and how the others in the group drank. On and on the tales went, until Rita got home at 12, and asked what we were talking about, and we couldn't reply, saying how bored we were with each other between gales of laughter. Bed quickly.

DIARY 177

THURSDAY, JANUARY 9. Rita decides to come along this morning, and we're at the hospital 10:30 to 12:30, though Dad looks somewhat better: He isn't quite so yellow, and they've taken away the oxygen again, though the doctor says his condition is still serious, and the nurse reveals that there isn't any critical list anymore, and that serious is as bad as they can get, which sort of colors the whole affair. Again back to Grandma's for lunch, and again we talk through to 4 pm, talking of her travels and early life, and how Rita's going to school, and Rita's early memories of that side of the family. I'd called Bob yesterday, and today he called to say that a group of us were going out to dinner together, so I borrowed Rita's car, after getting lengthy instructions about how to start it, and drove back out to Bob's getting there at 6:30, first, and George arrives and queenily looks over the preparation of the hors d'ouvres, and we're all laughing and joking, and Tim gets in, with his paunch looking not quite like the one that Milton said was the weightlifter, but he turns out to be that one, and after a couple of hours Tim has to leave, and finally Milton shows up, and we continue to drink and finally by 9:30 we're on our way out to Young's, where there's a cute Chuck waiting for us, and we sit the five of us down at a table and proceed to camp it up over the mediocre food. The high point of the meal were the dishes of apple butter and cottage cheese. We get to Mother's about 1, and I keep wanting to see Rick, but he's going to school, so I don't stand a chance. Look at the lovely painting on the wall, and give the owner my name so that he can check if the fellow wants to sell me something, and I talk with the long-haired Ed Jordan type for a long while, finding him the only interesting thing, and not so much so at that. Back to Bob's at 2 and the car doesn't start, so we try jumping it, and holding down the flutter valve, and he increases the speed of the idle, and finally it starts, though I'm absolutely FROZEN in the cold snow. Drive home with the heater on full blast, and get into bed cursing.

DIARY 178

FRIDAY, JANUARY 10. We'd decided not to go to the hospital today unless Dad's condition changed, and Grandma calls at 8 to say "Daddy worse, they call from the hospital and Daddy worse." So I rush to the hospital and we're there at 8:45, but he appears the same, though the doctor explains that basic reflexes have gone, and he lifts the eyelid and taps the eyeball and gets no response, which he says is the most basic human response. We're there until 10, and then Grandma's for breakfast, and eating with her has become sort of a contest to see how much food I can persuade here to get down, and how much sleep she's had, because she's taking the whole thing very hard, "Now that Grandpa's gone, I think now I can take care of your Daddy. I move me bed up to his side, so he can't get up. I say, 'you want to pee, pee in bed, I can't take you to the bathroom.'" "I can get new mattress, but I can't get new you father." Then she clouds up to cry, but very quickly she comes out of it, and the conversation passes on to some other topic. I leave at 1, and get home in time for lunch with Rita of franks and beans, and for a change go to Grandma's at 3:30, after her serial on TV, and about 4 pm Helen's in and insists that I go next door to see what their new apartments are like. James Edward is eternally with them, smiling his open-mouthed smile, and he's cute as a bug. Dixie, however, is a bitch with unquenchable urges to be fondled by whoever enters the room. The apartments are truly lush, with colored refrigerators and sinks and stoves set into Formica tile counters under wooden cabinets of dining room quality. The bathrooms are lovely, the windows are great, the layouts beautiful, everything done with a taste and eye to the perfect detail. Lovely. Back at 6 and get into a little argument with Mom, who refused to go out to see the Ballet, but Rita and I get out and buy tickets and sit in the second row for a charmingly amateur display of some few good females and nothing in the male line at all, except for a skinny guy, he DID manage to lift her, though the carry across the stage was unbelievably ludicrous. Mom's in a lousy mood, and I read Krishnamurti until 11, and I get out to Mother's to 1:30, refusing the fat guy who kept asking me to dance, mooning over the other people who were lovely, and bed at 2 am again.

DIARY 179

SATURDAY, JANUARY 11. Wake about 10 am and eat breakfast before calling the hospital and finding there's no change in Dad's condition. Call Grandma, and we decide to go tomorrow. Mom finally gives in to some games of Scrabble after lunch, and we play from 2-4, lulled by the sounds from Rita's record player and the new Beatle's album, so both of them got their wishes. Drive to Perkin's woods, and admire the peacocks and mule deer through the locked fences of the zoo, and have a jolting run-in with a fiercely beautiful bug-eyed cougar sitting regally in its pitifully small cage, licking the pads of his foot to keep them from freezing. Back by way of the Perkins House at 5 pm to find that it closes at 5 pm, and we see the new Perkins pool, but the day is very cold indeed. Chop suey for dinner. Try to get Mom out to a movie, but she doesn't want to go, feeling sorry for herself because she isn't the center of attraction, and Rita and I take off at 8 pm to see "Duffy" and "The Game is Over" at the Summit Drive-In, but the in-car heaters don't give off much heat, and the window has to be open to let in the speaker and the heater anyway, so we shiver through the show, gorging ourselves on popcorn and candy during the reasonably boring films. Back at 12:30, and Mom is stonily silent. I decide to take the risk and ask "Were there any phone calls?" She sits icily and then comes back with "What do you care?" Obviously I take it as she doesn't mean it, but she's said it, and I'm furious. Bed with a knot in my stomach, and at 12:30 the phone rings. I answer, and it's Rick, calling from the noisy bar, asking who I think it is, and I can't tell. "You know what I want to say to you." I can't say anything. "I'd like to see you tonight. "I just got in, and I can't possibly go out, though I'd like to." He goes on about how he's thought about me, and Bob's diatribe about how thoughtless and spoiled he is doesn't seem to make much difference as this young, quavering voice pours into my ears how much this young body wants to hold me. I have to hang up, as he apologizes, realizing that he's called at a bad time, and I get back to bed trembling at the results of the past hour, eating myself out for desire of Rick.

DIARY 180

SUNDAY, JANUARY 12. Up at 10:15 and shower and mass at 11, a bit late, so we all have to sit separately, and Mom blames it on me, but I sat in the car at the curb waiting for her. We have a rather silent dinner, and I get to the hospital 3-5 with grandma, but he's still the same, though again he's not so yellow. Charlie's gone from the bed across the way---to a rest-home they say, but if he died, would they tell the families of the people living, hanging, around him? Back home to eat dinner, and Mom irritates me with something, and I call her with great deliberation "You know, you're a BITCH." Of course she'd blow up about this, and threaten to cry, and threaten to hit me, and threaten to kill herself, and feel sorry for herself, and I felt stupid for doing it, but it was in me and it came out. The evening is terribly cold, and I sit in the chair sitting, thinking about nothing and everything and nothing, and the time passes and I read parts of Playboys, and then I have to go out for groceries since I forgot them after Grandma's, and get the stuff into the refrigerator just as Sue and Grandma (whom I picked up), and Marion and Henry and Gary arrive for the slide show that Sue puts on about her trip to Hawaii and through the west. It's as much my show as hers as I talk about all the views she has, and Henry has a few of Hawaii, and we drink the vinegary wine and have bugles and potato chips and pretzels, and I'm getting hungry since I didn't eat. They leave about 10:30, I eat a sandwich, and bed at 11:30.

DIARY 181

MONDAY, JANUARY 13. Up at 9 and come for the first time in over a week and write notes for the previous week, the bird chirping loudly in my ear. Breakfast, and at 11 Grandma calls and said "Daddy bad, we go right away." I get out to the car and we race there, Grandma crying in the car, and get through the hallways rapidly, and there's no one around, but the curtain around Dad's bed is closed. I look around, but no one's rushing up to say anything, so I pull the curtain and first see that there are no tubes from his nose, but the face is terribly yellow and sunken, the lips no longer puffed back from breathing through the mouth. I stare at the form under the sheet and it's obvious that he isn't breathing. Confused, I tell Grandma to stay there, and I go to the desk to be told that he IS dead. Back to Grandma, and, helpless, say that Dad's dead, and she bursts into tears, sitting in the chair inside the curtain for a moment, but I figure I'd better take her outside, and lead her out where the nurse joins us, and then Doctor Snyder joins us to say that he'd just finished his rounds about an hour before, and his condition was the same, then a nurse went in, and he was dead. He was dead before they called us on the telephone, but they can't tell of death over the phone. He asked if Grandma wanted anything, but she said no, and he said there were things to sign, a paper permitting an autopsy to determine the cause of death, a paper for belongings, and some information about the funeral home. When it was all finished, there was nothing more to do, and we left about 11:30. She still insists that I eat, and I find difficulty doing so, and so does she, but she chokes down some few mouthfuls, and I feel that's all I can do. Leave at 3, hoping she'll be OK, and call Mom and tell her, and she goes melodramatically "OHHH," but that's it. There's nothing to do around the house, and there's nothing to say, but after dinner there's a lot of good things on TV, from Cousteau on seals from 7:30-8:30, then the rest of Laugh-In, then the special on Jean-Claude Killy, and something else, and then I'm to bed at 11, after having called Larry to tell him, but that's all.

DIARY 182

TUESDAY, JANUARY 14. Wake at 9 and get to Grandma's at 10, waiting for Kash, and Mom's told me I'll have to search through everything, socks in shoes in the closet, under papers in drawers, under the carpets, in books, in mattresses, in old clothes, to find any extra cash he may have around, and Grandma insists that we have to look through, but I have to wait until Kash comes. Lunch comes and goes, and we wait, and talk, and it grows dark, and at 3 I call Pittsburgh to insure that they've left, but there's no answer, and we watch it snowing outside, and Grandma starts worrying all over again, but finally they drive in at 6, after I've eaten dinner, and Jennie eats something, and we're off to the funeral director's at 9 pm, and they want the expensive funeral "Just like dad had," and Grandma acquiesces, but I can't see the point to it, and tell them so, but Mr. Prentice continues to talk to Jennie, because in her he can see the same kind of opportunistic status-seeker that he is, and she ends with a dramatic statement that they'll pay for all of it if they have to. That colors the evening, and I tell Grandma that I'm worried about the hospital bill, he has no hospital insurance, and then we go up to the bedroom to root through things, and I find a nude boy and girl staring up at me from a book between National Geographics, and I hide it, intending to take it away, with a hideous combination of self-righteous desires to hide it from anyone else, and self-seeking desires to gratify my curiosity about the naked bodies in it. Downstairs and home, utterly tired from the whole business, and as much by talking to Grandma, trying to keep her occupied, trying to get her to eat, trying to do something for someone else which is so foreign to me, and to bed.

DIARY 183

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15. Sit around the house all morning, finishing Sheckley's "Notions: Unlimited," and reading a great deal of Krishnamurti, and get to Grandma's at 2, and Ted arrives at 2:30, and Kash and Jennie show up about then, and again we're off to the funeral home to say that the wake is that night and the funeral is tomorrow. The newspaper story had been telephoned in yesterday by me, and today there were additions to make to where he worked, and the photograph we selected was sent in also. I have to leave at 5 to get home to dinner and get the family to the wake, and at 7:30 we're into the room where the flowers are and Dad lies, naturally pink, since they put the other compound in which turns jaundiced people pink, but the mouth was set into a strange grinning smile which was totally uncharacteristic, and I thought of the teeth lying somewhere in the funeral home when Grandma made me give them to the Prentices, even though they'd used a mouth former for the wake. There was the flag that I was to have, and flowers from the three brothers, Grandma's on the casket, mine and Rita's above, and flowers from Henry and Helen and Jehovah's Witnesses. People came and went, and Rita looked terribly uncomfortable, crying at times, sitting alone and wretched at others. Marion and Henry ended conversing with Uncle Charles, and the whole thing seemed stupid and sterile, with the two Grandmothers nodding at each other in their black coats and black veiled hats. Finally the hours were over, and we left the place, and I say I absolutely have to get out of the house, and end up going to "Faces" alone, just for something to do to get out of the family situation. It was pretty good, but I felt desolate sitting alone in the audience, and the popcorn was drab.

DIARY 184

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16. Mom stays home for one hour, intending to stay out all day, but at 10 the house gets on her nerves and she's out to work. I have brunch and get out to Social Security in the IBM building at 1, and check that I'll get the $250 sent to the funeral home, and that Mom can't get benefits because she wasn't married to him for 20 years, only 18. Get to the Welfare Office when they refuse to give me an appointment over the telephone, and do absolutely nothing except make an appointment for the next meeting at 8:30 am tomorrow. I get angry with them, but there's nothing to be done. The funeral is at 3, and I dress in my solemn suit which I thought to take along and my somber tie, and the speech is terrible and the organ music worse, and there's almost no one there, but I'm glad. The cemetery is terribly cold, but we're out in the tent for only a few moments, and the grave is lowered into the crypt which the cemetery requires "so the ground won't sink," and I tuck the flag under my arm, feeling entirely numbed by the entire thing, disgusted with Mom talking of banalities from the back of the family car, after they assured her they wanted her to come along with them. Quickly it was over, and we were invited to their house, where the Porsley's had brought over a lovely set of covered dishes with sausage hamburgers, potato salad, boiled potatoes, baked beans, and cole slaw. It hit the spot, and we sat and talked till about 7 or 8, and then left for home. I'm in a terrible mood and the evening passes while I read more of Krishnamurti in a blue funk. Get to bed at 11 for lack of anything else in the world to do. Depression is setting in enormously deep.

DIARY 185

FRIDAY, JANUARY 17. Wake at 8 and get out to Welfare for my 8:30 appointment, and she asks all sorts of questions and I'm out at 9 and back home to read some more, but I've been through about all her Playboys and her records, and I call the Seavers to tell them the news, and I'm back to Grandma's between 2 and 5 with Rita, and we talk some more about what's going on, and finally I say goodbye, though I'm too chicken to make it perfectly clear to her that I'm leaving tomorrow, and that the extra commemorative cards that she wants will be brought out to her by Rita. We take the dishes back across the street to the people, and "It's just like heaven" with the stuffed birds, commemorative dishes, plastic flowers, framed pictures and photographs, serving trays and platters, antimacassars and knickknacks, souvenirs and albums and newspapers and scrolls and models and ashtrays filled every table and inch of wall space. The little dog is terribly frightened, not letting me touch its paw, and finally we're back to Grandma's, where I take the last of what I want: the scarf that I'd given him for Christmas (he was buried in the slippers), slightly dirty from two or three wearings, photographs of him, mainly with Rita, that I hadn't seen before, and some old Army patches and a copy of his baptismal certificate, which was passing as his birth certificate since there wasn't any of that from her midwife, and all the bills, giving her my address in the telephone book, telling her that she was to pay no bills, to send them to me, and that Mrs. Someone who could speak Polish would be out to talk with her about the application for welfare to help pay the hospital bill. Finally we left, where we could go home to dinner, and again I asked Mom to come with us, and again she said, "No." So Rita and I went to "Belle de Jour" by ourselves, and it was disappointing, she was SO stiff and unresponsive, and we got out in a driving rain to get home at 12 and start packing for the trip back home. Talk to Mom for a bit, and the argument isn't talked about: it's just remembered. To bed about 1, setting the alarm to get up in the morning: the only way to end the depression.

DIARY 186

SATURDAY, JANUARY 18. The alarm rings at 6:45, and Rita's up and out to start the car, and I kiss Mom goodbye and dash down to the bus at 7:30, buying the ticket in a sweat that the bus doesn't leave, but it doesn't leave at 7:30, nor at 7:40, nor at 7:50, but finally at that time the driver comes out and starts taking tickets, my suitcase is checked, and I kiss Rita and sit next to an Indian woman on the bus, which is practically filled by the time I get on last, having had to check my suitcase and fall out of line. The sky is turning blue as we drive north on Buchtel Avenue, and we seem to avoid the Ohio Turnpike, getting into Youngstown about 10, with the day still dreadfully dreary, and I move across to what must be the dirtiest window in the bus, but we've only to go to Pittsburgh, which we get to at 10:50, and I get something to eat before it leaves at 11:30 for the nonstop ride to New York. Get a window seat behind hippies across the way, with a beautiful guy, and two behind me, and across from two sailors, one small and sexy. The trip is slow, sometimes through fog which almost obscured everything beyond the edge of the road, and again I start counting down the hours. We stop for a half-hour at some place on the pike, and I get out for a hot fudge sundae and some candy that helps to pass the time. Time goes by, so slowly, and time can do so much, like get me to NYC by 6:30, and look for the suitcase, but it isn't there. Check in the luggage room, and it isn't there. Walk home, eager to be there, even if I don't have anything to carry. Get all the lovely mail, and male, from two weeks, and read everything, checking back to find the suitcase is still missing. Out to buy the Times at 11, and they still don't have it, and I'm beginning to worry about the $160 in the wallet in the suitcase. DAMN IT if it's gone. Read the Times quickly at 11:30. When finally I called Greyhound back about 11:45, they said they had the suitcase, so I got ready for bed, reading quite a bit of "The Homosexual in America," and coming again over the infinite goodness of the Tom drawings, getting to sleep in the cold apartment at 12:30.

DIARY 187

SUNDAY, JANUARY 19. Wake surprisingly early at 8:45, and laze until 9:30, when my hardening cock persuades me to come again, and I do, then get up and start fussing around the apartment, watching pieces of The Living Theater's "Mysteries" on Camera Three, then down to get suitcase and then I meditate for the first time in a long time, then eat breakfast of three eggs after throwing out much milk (like three quarts), and a half-can of green beans and a half-can of meatballs, but the yogurt still smells fresh and the raisin bread, as before is still palatable. Put records on and start the dishes, but find that there's no hot water, so I unpack and put many things away and finally figure out that all the machinations that Warren went through have truly left me with a $3 debit and somewhat over $6000 in the market, not counting the IBM stock. Call Joe and talk to him for a long time, then Cyndy calls to make sure I'm OK, and Eddie calls, and Avi calls, and I try to call Joan, and she calls me, then Joe Elkins calls for a party at his place Wednesday. Peter Ream doesn't answer, and there's no phone number listed for Allan Bettancourt. By then it's 6 and I meditate again and exercise in somewhat less than 16 minutes, which isn't bad for being away for two weeks, and right at the end of the exercise Joan calls, then Bonnie calls and I hear the other side of the story, and then I put laundry away and fix everything possible up in the apartment, and before getting down to anything else, I'm determined to type at least this one page for this day, so that I don't postpone the starting time any longer. That's the trouble with breaking even whatever little discipline I have, it takes me quite awhile to convince myself to get back to it: for instance, there's no real reason why I couldn't have started typing yesterday, except for sheer laziness. By this time the little day is exhausted, and so are my fingers, and I finish typing this required page by 8:15 pm. Get down to letters in ernest (earnest), and write Laird, Screw about Cinema 7 membership, the guarantee for the headphones, Paul, Mary Kingsolver, AMG for more nude Tom's, and the telephone bill, seven lovely pieces of mail. Talk to Azak and he says he'll "drop me a note" to get together with Jerry sometime later in the week, and I call Doug and say I might invite him over, but Peter still doesn't answer. Finish this by 11:15, and read the rest of "The Homosexual in America" over an apple and popcorn, and get to a cold bed at 1:15, warming myself with the heating pad because the water's still off.

DIARY 188

MONDAY, JANUARY 20.l Wake about 9 and laze until 9:45. Up to find the sexy fellow walking on the Blackfriar's roof. Since his first appearance about two months ago, I've watched him at odd times, even the time when he had some cronies of his on the roof, pointing to windows, talking and laughing about the people who were watching him, and once going through the motions of a huge masturbation, and I couldn't figure whether a girl was trying to egg him into masturbating, or a fellow was masturbating while watching him. I feel definitely aroused by his neatly combed black hair, his flawlessly smooth skin, the squareness of the face and jaw, with wide-set menacing eyes, which look sideways under a furrowed forehead at the various windows in his purview. Usually he wears baggy gray work coveralls, but today he wears a blue shirt open at the neck under a gray jacket zippered for only the bottom few inches. Under these covers are a pair of khaki trousers, reasonably fitted so that the shapes of his muscles in his legs are visible under the material, and from the back the cloth is stretched fairly tightly over large and meaty buttocks, showing appealingly as never before. How can one treat him? Show myself looking through my binoculars? Undress in front of the window and see if he's interested? Somehow ask him if he wants his cock sucked? Get a girl up here to attract him up? Take pictures of him? Blow him a kiss? The fantasies can get very involved. Finally decide to meditate, and the thought of time as a Moebius strip, and Arno as impenetrable are fetching ideas to add to this diary, and I again, demandingly, finish this page by 11 am. In fact look at a Moebius strip of time, and it DOES curve back on itself when a strip with AM next to PM is cut down the center, and it forms links twisted among themselves when cut again, but there's nothing startlingly relevant from the symbology. Breakfast finally and get down to dusting and sweeping the whole apartment, including bathroom and kitchen. Joan calls and says she'll be over later, and I actually get down to putting the Fern Garden into the fishbowl, ransacking the boxes from eastern Canada and the Camper Trip for rocks and colored stones and glass for décor. Fix the inside of the closet up a bit, and then I discover that the water's warm, so I take a shower and wash my head, just about in time for Joan and Freddie to arrive at 4 pm. I'm out to pick up laundry which isn't there (just like my suitcase!), and get groceries and take out cleaning and buy wine, then eat "lunch" at 5:30 while they listen to records and I try to teach Joan the "trips" game, which she messes up. We talk and laugh, especially when she answers the phone with a commanding "Yes!" and it turns out to be Regis DuVal asking me over tomorrow, and Freddie asks "Pops," then "Daddy?" and it turns out to be the wrong number. Everyone enjoys my earphones, but the buzz is getting more pronounced and I have to put the noise filter in almost continuously. They finally leave at 8, and then Bonnie calls and says we're going to "Dr. Coppelius" for a Wednesday matinee. I watch the last half of "Laugh-In," and actually, praise be!, get around to finding out what's causing the hi-fi buzz, and remedy it completely by taping the ground wire from the Dual to the Wollensack, which must be an effective ground. Then I listen to music, transfigured by beauty, until 11:30, when I have yogurt and cookies and milk for dinner while reading a bit of "The Voyage Out," and get to bed at 12:15, finally getting into some sort of swing.

DIARY 193

TUESDAY, JANUARY 21. Actually wake up at 8 am, and find to my disgust that the heat and water are off AGAIN. Lay under the covers shivering until 8:30, then up to snuffle into the ever-present glass, filling about a quarter of it, to meditate and get down to this immediately after, good for only 9:30. I exercise and eat breakfast, still early, and get everything together for shopping and get out for my haircut at 11, getting shoes shined, make a deposit to pay for Dad's bills, cancel the check that Bonnie lost for Joan to Ora Witte, buy Mahler's 5th and 8th at Marlboro, and get rubber feet for the folding chairs, and lots of cheap stationery. Home to call Joe to see if he wants to see Cinema 7, which he doesn't, to call Norma to see if she wants to have lunch with me Monday, which she does, to call Larry Anger, who isn't home, to call John Connolly for Cinema 7, but he isn't home in the afternoon. Laundry still hasn't shown up. Then I get busy and write out the checks for Dad's bills, and scrub the bathroom walls, surprisingly dirty. Wash dishes and wait for Joan to come over as she said, but she doesn't. Listen to the records and write letters to Don O'Shea and Lisa simply to preserve the symmetry of writing (mailing, actually) seven pieces of mail yesterday and six pieces of mail today, except that that obliges me to mail five pieces of mail tomorrow, and I'm not sure who to. Shower and shave to get a subway down to 28th and meet Regis DuVal at 6:45, and he's oleaginously obsequious, and thus rather uncertainly pleasant. We talk about Paul and Kone and ourselves and New York and the apartment situation and the restaurant situation, and he calls Jay Mansfield Askew to join us. Jay is bearded and teddibly Briddish, and we go to Italianissimo where I tell them about my book, Jay tells about his astral projection in the hospital after 36 injections of morphine in three weeks in a hospital with a block between his kidney and his liver, when he actually ascended through the ceiling, observed factually the ward above, and went above the hospital before he realized the gassy silver cord connecting him, and he returned through the ward above to his body, which the nurse had just pronounced dead. Regis tells about his dream at 3, which Jay scoffs at peremptorily, and we're out at 11, I to Regis', and leave at 12, getting to bed at 12:30.

DIARY 196

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22. Wake at 9:30, meditate, and type this by 10:30 am. Exercise and call Joan to find when we're going to meet for "Dr. Copellius," and there's telephoning among Bonnie and Joan and I, and we're going to meet at the theater at 2 pm. Fine. Decide that I don't have enough time for soaking my stamps, one of the things on my list, so I finish up the concert list from the programs, throwing away again a heap of programs. Bonnie enters at 1:30, when I'm not dressed and eating breakfast, and she joins me in some oatmeal and berates me for not noticing her red hair: red, blond, black, brown, blue, who cares? We leave at 1:45 and get to the theater at 2:10, to see a shivering, sore-footed Joan almost in tears in front of the theater. She sulks in another seat until intermission, then joins us, condemning herself for being so angry with us, while we apologize---rather I apologize. The movie is just perfectly lovely, despite Caj Selling's off-putting face and the incredibly variable lighting and sound, but the music and the dancing and the charm are undeniable. Joan's off early, and Bonnie and I stop in at the arresting Armenian Cathedral to listen to organ music and gape at the symmetry, scale, and stained glass inside. Out to walk to the Carriage House, where I'm refused entrance, but I meet Helen and talk to Joan, and then Bonnie grabs a cab to French and Company where she picks up some "Laugh-In" playbooks for herself and Norman, and then we're across the street to the Nataraj for the Bombay dinner, and the curry is adequate and the pomegranate juice is watered but tasty, and the only dessert, baklava, is properly cloying. Walk back here to talk more about her and Norman and her smoking, cooking, loving, and happiness, and I recommend that she listen in patience while he talks about former loves, and she should not regret that he had them (and thus, one day, might be able to say that he "had" her), but should appreciate his frankness, gentility, and openness. She leaves about 8:30, and I finally shave and shower, feeling weak from my coming cold, and buy a quart of vodka to take to Joe Elkin's and Bob Worthy's at 9:45. Dottie surprises me with her female presence, and Martin Caesen is grayingly lovely as an Episcopal Minister, as is Bob, and quite the most attractive person in the place, except that he seems to be taken. Talk, and give $10 to Negro, DIARY 195. Home to bed at 1 am.

DIARY 197

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23. Feel pretty bad when I get up, and it's all I can do to shave and shower before meeting him, because the cold is sort of wearing me out. Had hoped to get there about 11, but get there at 12 to find Herman in a meeting, so I return the slides to Chuck, who holds me for numberless minutes in an insipid recounting of his girl friend's experiences at a bank which refused to give her extra weeks off, forcing her to quit and be rehired each time, and then Ellen captures me to tell me she's been baptized a Christian (to which I reply "Mozzeltov!"), and is very happy about her new change. I make her read my poem, and she likes it, and I report to Natalie and Jeannie and Charlie and Gladys about my progress in writing (OH, YES, this morning I couldn't sleep, so I got out of bed at 3 am and began writing poetry, finishing at 5 am, reasonably satisfied with myself, thinking I might even type it up in good form and send it around to book publishers---and why not??). Then Herman's free and we get to HoHo's, talking about his working, his fears about my not working, and I decide I'm trying to influence as many people as I can by becoming a writer, and he doesn't accept that he could influence more people by quitting IBM and becoming a politician. We chat about our various activities, and Norm Fastenburg and Shaun Fox come over to talk with us, Shaun recommending some science-fiction books, and we get back to IBM. Talk longly with Michelle about animals and writing, and she and Barbara like the poems, too, but Herman and Gladys don't. Leave about 3 to shop for three paperback books ("Mindswap," "May Swenson," another Krishnamurti), pick up my cleaning, and get back to soak stamps. Watch "The Lions Are Free" on TV. This takes until 8:30, when I grab a quick dinner just before my guests for the evening arrive: Avi, Joe, and Doug, and Avi listens to earphones, Doug beats out Instant Insanity, and Joe amusedly observes the proceedings. Since he doesn't want to go to Cinema 7, I call John Connolly, who does. Regis doesn't show, as he could, and everyone leaves about 11:30, thanking me for a lovely evening. I'm still feeling poorly, so I don't even bother to clean up, just flop into bed.

DIARY 198

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24. Laze in bed until about 11, when I decide I have to get up to do SOMETHING, and I finish with the stamps, and rather weakly attempt to fix up the apartment. (Forgot these about yesterday: Patty called, very depressed in her voice, though she denied it---probably depression is the standard tone in her voice, and talked at length about the girl friend of hers "the nicest person in the world, gentle, kind, she'd do absolutely anything for anyone" who was mugged in her hallway and slashed across the face a number of times with a straight razor by some fiend. She's still in the state of shock after about a week, and Patty was torn up about it, and somehow seemed to expect me to be torn up about it, too. Then she had to get off the phone, and on the instant of hanging up, Joan called, even more depressed, and soon SHE got around to thoughts of killing herself: she was going to lose her job at the Carriage House, and she'd have to search for ANOTHER job; her rounds for acting were proving fruitless; Murray was breaking up with his wife, but the very evening he told the group that, he was very cold toward her, and she COULDN'T be convinced that she might be mistaken, he was DOWN on her from then on; she was tired of commuting out to Brooklyn on the damned subway (and she said "Here comes the beautiful Freddie" with malice in her voice, so she's put down by her roommate's beauty, talent, voice, and youth); she has absolutely no money or prospects of money; she has yet to find an apartment: how many years can I struggle and get nothing out of it? We talk on in this vein and I realize the futility of talking her OUT of it, so I demand that she see the foot doctor tomorrow, and telephone me then, giving her SOMETHING to look forward to). Then Joan shows up at 1, sitting around drinking grape soda, relaxing, just "soaking up the peace" as she put it. She leaves and I flop back into bed until 5, when I HAVE to wash my hair and get ready for John and Cinema 7. It's a camp waiting for the doors to open at 7:30 with a Broadway loaded with faggots, but the shows are reasonably good, with Joe D'Allesandro, Steve Buono (with strap), Brian Idol, Trapped, Gary Steele, Blood Bank, Johnny Stumps, and Psychedelic Monster. We don't stay for the WC Fields after. I'm FREEZING and to bed with 101.6 temperature.

DIARY 199

SATURDAY, JANUARY 25. Wake without a temperature and feel somewhat better, and when Mary Kingsolver doesn't call by noon, I call Arno and Azak to get no answer, and finally Avi says he'll go to the ballet with me. Work a bit more on the ballet programs and he's here at 2, and we walk down to a too-crowded "Grand Pas Espagnole," boring "Moments," livened by James Dunne and Dennis Wayne, a rather touching "After Eden," and a raucous, sexy, lively, funny "Souvenirs," which is NOT "Con Amore," as I had thought. Out at 5 and to MacGuinness' for hamburgs and franks, and then to Goody's, where he buys a number of records, and then I'm home to get a letter from Mary, saying she'll meet me at the theater at 1:30. Ohmigod. Try to call her, but she's not home. Call Peter and arrange to meet at Carnegie Recital Hall at 8:15 for "Moonchild and the Doomsday Trombone" and it's a goony jazz piece that attempts to incorporate a classically played oboe that breaks the mood of the jazz completely. Joe is there, surprisingly enough, and the two chat bitchily for a few moments, and then we're out at 10:30 to walk to Third where I go down to Stage 45, where Avi said he'd be. He's not there, but by midnight everyone in town seems to be. The dance floor is completely crowded when I finally get the nerve to ask the guy next to me to dance (he's only been frugging in place for the past half-hour, meaningfully keeping close to me, so that even when someone passes between us, we swing back together, touching lightly as if to assure each other we're still there. He introduces himself as Michael Harris, having changed his name from Michael Brett after the publication of "Death of a Hippie." He's desperate to find a place to stay tonight away from White Plains, and I'm certainly not inviting him here, since I have a cold, the sheets are lousy, and I feel like it's going to be a long night, but he says to be sure to get in touch with him "I like you: you may be gay, but you're not queer," and I know exactly what he means, though I wish he lived up to the epigram a bit more himself. Have no trouble catching a cab on Third Avenue at 1 am, buy the Times and read a bit while I have eggs, and bed.

DIARY 199

SUNDAY, JANUARY 26. Even though my temperature is down, I still feel lousy, particularly after working on the ballet programs for about two hours: I just have to lay back down about 2:30, and call Pat Burrell and say I can't possibly make it to his place at 4:30 as Joan invited me, I have to rest through my cold. Manage to get through most of the paper, however, and at 5:30 I'm back up to watch "Silent Song" with Milo O'Shea and a cute monk on 13, then Wild Kingdom, then a special on chromography, which process Joe would hate, since it tends to set up a reproduction as EVERY BIT AS GOOD as the original. Then at 8 I have to fall back into bed, call Mary Kingsolver to apologize, but about 9:30 I'm back up to finish "Mind Switch" by Damon Knight, rather unimaginative after the first idea, and rather colorless in description as compared to the brilliance of the ideas and landscapes of Sheckley. Then at 11 I watch Bindrim et al. with Susskind, and it's an entertaining program. Bed, fearing I'll not be able to sleep, but I do.

DIARY 200

MONDAY, JANUARY 27. Still feel reasonably down in the mouth, but get up, determined to get somewhat back to normal. Meditate at 10 am for the first time since Wednesday, and Doug calls to thank me for the party and tell me about "Feel It," as Avi called me last night, as did Regis, and as I shower Pete Graham calls for lunch on Thursday, and just as I'm going out the door, Patty calls, and I tell her to call me back, and I grab a cab down to Norma's at 12:45, and we go to Jenedi's for a good expensive Italian lunch. We talk about her envy of Betty Dodson's freedom and personality which attracts her circle of friends and I say I'm attracted to her because of her circle of friends and her erotic art. She describes her poor friend who gets so uninterested in living that he neglects eating, and finally begins to live with a family who put him onto a therapist to help with his anomie. Norma and he had had good sex the first time, but the second time he couldn't do anything, and felt terribly guilty about it, but she said, as usual, she got a bang out of talking and hugging, and she didn't mind they didn't do anything. I tell her about Paul, some of my troubles accepting my father's death, some of the hang-ups on the relations in Ohio, and we generally listen sympathetically to each other's ramblings. Walk home in the great cold at 3 pm, and with a certain degree of satisfaction finish this up to date at that time. About this time I get the terrible idea of checking all my yearly entries against all the movie, play, opera, ballet, concert, and other lists, and decide I just have to do it, starting immediately with 1951, 1952, 1956, and 1957, and then I get horribly backed up as I want to do this after I type the ballet list, but I can't type the ballet list until I get more typing paper. Get some of it done, anyway, and finally decide I have to get ready for Larry Anger's arrival at 8 pm. I shower and everything, and eat, and settle down to watch "Laugh-In" when the internal phone rings and Mr. Anger and a friend are on the way up, and I curse the friend until I open the door and am introduced to Bob Somethingorotherski [Oldakowski], a Pole of marvelous facial and bodily beauty. We watch "Laugh-In" when they exclaim about the goodness of my color (on the TV), and when we get down to the film, there's no good bulb, and a call to Eddie and a couple of stores fail to find a replacement, so they look over some of my magazines and Bob in particular opens his eyes wider over the Tom drawings. Then they listen to music for a long time, through ear-phones and without, and I invite Bob over later to listen to more, but he doesn't seem to take me up on it. They leave at 10:30, and I fantasy about Bob's presence here, and decide I don't even want to masturbate, but I do anyway, getting to bed about 1 am.

DIARY 201

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28. Up and meditate, though I still don't feel up to exercising, and get dressed to get out to buy two bulbs and notebook paper and pieces of groceries in the rain, and back to do a couple more years of the cross-referencing, figuring to take an enormous amount of time with all this. Continue to take time over nothing, and come again over the pictures from Tom, and coalesce various references I've made to lists of things done, and I close my mind to the fact that most of it is nonsense: when I finish, I'll have a complete reference to my life in a few pages, and think what I'll be able to do with THAT! Get finished in time for Joe to come at 8 for the Harkness Ballet. We watch part of the Arctic Odyssey, and leave for "Grand Pas Espagnole," "Moments," "Sebastian" (without costumes, and boy was it better with the shirtless boys!), and "Time Out of Mind" with a lovely Tomasson out of his depth in the Rhodes role. There's a scream in the Gentleman's room when a long blond wig under a fake leopard fur confronts us when we walk in, and everyone stands laughing at the urinals at the expressions on the faces. Again back and come and bed late, reading bits of "Voyage Out" even after Joe and I stop into Big Spender, older and crowded, and eat at McGuinesses.

DIARY 202

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29. Regis called last night, and I told him to come over tonight, and today Avi calls and says his roommate, Evan, is coming over, too, and when I told Joe about it last night, he wanted to come over, too, and them Michael Brett-Harris called during the day, and I invited him down, too, and then I called Arno, who said he'd be over after school at 10. I get through the day, late because I got up late about 10:30, and did absolutely nothing until 2, then ate breakfast and got down to the listing of ballets again, getting quite a lot of the concert and ballet pages typed, though there are a LOT of ballets, which I finally finish listing today. Then I get ready for the evening, make difficult because the heat is off, and only comes on at 6 so that I can quickly do the dishes to get glasses for the evening. Regis shows up first, and then Michael, who proceeds to monopolize the conversation, even when Joe shows up later. Avi and Evan arrive after 8:30, and by this time everyone's had their drink and we finally get off to Angelo's at 9. Avi is "Manic" to quote Joe, and the entire restaurant is let into our secrets as there's no attempt to get the tone of the conversation clean or the pitch of the conversation low (or down). It's a riotous meal, and by 10:30 I'm sorry we're missing Arno, but in he walks as we return to my place, Michael dropping out to go back to White Plains (though Avi on the telephone the next day revealed he came to the bar with them, and will be visiting Avi Friday night), and Avi and Evan going to the bar. The rest of the four of us come back up here to talk until 11:30, all finally leaving, saying they've enjoyed the evening, and indeed it did seem like rather a fun time. Again I don't feel like going to sleep, particularly since the apartment is freezing cold, so I pile on the blankets and get to bed about 2 am, cursing the lack of heat, cuddling up to the heating pad.

DIARY 203

THURSDAY, JANUARY 30. Wake about 10, boiling mad because of the heat, and type a notice which I put into the elevator, to find it taken down, to replace it, to find it taken down, and this goes on until later in the day I find the remains of the seventh copy of the note torn in large pieces on the floor, and that discourages me so much that I give up that idea. Can't even wash to get to lunch with Peter, but get there at 1:15 and we're out to Aki's for a longish meal over his break-up with his girl, my life at this point, his plans for graduate school, and then from 3 to 4 he's pulling back doors on the Model 91, showing me the internal circuitry of the IBM monster, with the help of the IBM salesman, and Mike Barrett, the former SBC operator who remembers me from so long ago, as does a programmer whose face and name are familiar, but I've forgotten them again---something like Sylvan Schley, or some other Jewish name. Back at 4 and find that there's beginning to be heat, so I can actually wash my hair, and I manage to bring the cross-checking up to January, 1963, and at the rate of about an hour and a half a year, there are two days of three years each left, and I'll be finished with THAT horrendous task (and ready to think of the next one to keep my away from the book). Peter calls and agitates to do something, so we agree to go to the 10:10 show of "The Sea-Gull," and I eat dinner up through that time, letting my hair dry, and then Bernie calls to confirm this weekend for his visit, Don calls about getting tickets to "Dionysus '69," and Patty calls to moan again about her girlfriend who got the slash across her face "for no reason" though I suspect that's not the case. Get off the phone quickly to get down to grab a cab to take the film and two bulbs across to Eddie, who wants the projector for Saturday, and keep the cab to the Plaza, where Peter was giving up hope on me. The movie is long but exceedingly colorful in the sunny Swedish countryside, and the David Warner-Vanessa Redgrave love interest is kooky enough to retain our attention, and then it's 12:40 and the show is over, Peter having survived his disgust at the couple sitting next to him who refused to wilt under his angry side-glances. Home to come agonizedly over the Tom drawings, now numbering 8, and bed at 2 am.

DIARY 204

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31. When I get out of bed at 10:30, I decide it's really time that I meditate, so I do so for the first time since Tuesday, and then Patty calls and says everything's relatively OK, and Joe calls to make arrangements for meeting him at the theatre tonight (finally the New York Spelling for theatre is beginning to get through to me, from sheer repetition in encountering it in making up my lists). Then I actually exercise before noon, for the first time in ages, and get down to the pitiful remnants of my oatmeal, and then there's nothing to do but my list cross-referencing, and I get down to that, stopping at 4 for some lunch, and then getting a call from Avi that tells me about his coming meeting with Michael, and add to that my proofreading of the 18 pages of the Ballet list, and suddenly the day is absolutely gone, and I still have from 1966-1969 to cross-reference, and that'll take quite a bit of tomorrow, and I have to get the apartment ready for the weekend ahead, Bernie being followed by Don O'Shea, down for some sort of convention. At this point it's coming up to 8 pm, and I have to leave in twenty minutes to meet Joe, which means I won't have time for dinner, but then having eaten at 4 pm, I'm really not ready for dinner. Anyway, the cold that I thought was brewing because of the additional cold nights in this crappy building seems to be forestalled, but there's still the strange nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach, probably from the barbaric usage of my eyes over the cross-referencing, and whenever I stop a concentrated spate of work my head spins and I feel slightly like throwing up. It might be constipation, but I try to go to the toilet and manage only a few pebble-stools, which seems to empty me, but does nothing for my nausea. Anyway, the exercises have begun again, and I can get on with those, at least after the weekend, which again promises to throw me off my advancing toward a schedule which I seem to have never gotten to in the first place. But this again goes to the end of the page, and I'm again up to date, and HAVE to keep this up, or I'll thoroughly forget everything of the nothing that happens to me. Manage to get down to meet Joe on time, and  "Moments" is the only poor part of a lovely evening which includes "Variations for Four Plus Four," a still fabulous "Canto Indio," and a "Monument for a Dead Boy" which I think is still good, but which Joe isn't pleased with. Out hungry afterwards and eat at Rincon Argentina, I have lovely sweetbreads, and bed at 1:30.

DIARY 205

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1. Up about 10, and again meditate (where I spill my snot-glass all over the rug and end up with a slight twinge in the head for having jerked out of the meditation so quickly to get toilet paper to wipe it up before it soaks into the rug), and exercise, and have breakfast and get down to the final fling at the cross-referencing, actually finishing with the remains of the years by 2:30, at which time I decide I have to get showered for Bernie's coming, so I move the telephone into the bathroom, and just finish drying myself and dressing when it does ring, and he's on his way up. Greet him rather discomfitedly, and he commands "Give me a hug, I need it," in the center of the living room floor, and we clinch while he makes those satisfied moans, though not particularly caring to feel my person, but the presence of someone who accepts his affection seems to satisfy him. We start a long conversation about his abortive love affair of two months, where they stayed in bed "for about 12 hours" for three weekends, his predilections for large-muscled Negroes who, when he teases them to arouse them and then makes no move to satisfy them, have no alternative but to roll him over and fuck him, regardless of how large they are, including his "Did you put all that into ME?" "With no trouble." And his relations which ended with "Don't DO that." "I can't HELP it," with the contracting cunt of an older prostitute which his brother had obtained for his use, for $15. I talk about Paul's and my encounter groups with Norma, and we decide that we've both had enough for a time from the group experience, though he's continuing on an individual basis, talking about his strange sexuality which only recently permitted anyone to touch his genitals: before, he'd experience actual physical pain if anyone even touched his genitals. I expressed amazement at this, and he retorted, rather proudly, "Oh, homosexuality is only a little part of the problems I have." As if I had no problems to compare to HIS problems. We're in the process of getting ready for Don Leventhal when he calls to say he's waiting for us downstairs at 6:30, so we subway down to Washington Square and walk across to Wooster, and the Performing Garage is at the other end of the long narrow street menaced by dark, shapeless, hulking warehouses, on which even the footsteps of the faggot following us down to the theatre take on enormous menace, and the "Is it a small cat or a large rat?" question is effectively answer by Don: "No, it's a SMALL rat." The theatre is locked, so we walk across Broome Street toward Ferrara's, past the St. Paul's looking hulk of the police station, and stop at Paulucci's to eat a mediocre dinner, and back to the theater to climb the stairs to the ticket office, then downstairs to stand in front of the door before it's opened by a long-haired girl in an antique fur, saying we'll be admitted one by one. I push toward the front and grab the second level of what turns into a tower-city of Thebes, and miss the whole gambit of "May I take you to your seat?" to be followed by an ass over teacup carry across the stage to the sometime applause of the by-now settling audience. It's chaotic and reasonably effective, with buckets of blood being used to great shock during the birth and death scenes, and the story of Dionysus comes back in gobbits prised from memory during the hectic play. Up at 11:30 to TableTops, which we enter about 12, and it's not crowded at all, but fills up enough by 1:30 that Bernie enjoys dancing, and Chris, with his wiry gamin hairdo, wins my heart and sympathy for his impossible situation, a mindless smile over a stocky pretty-boy body. We leave at 2:30, Bernie rambling on about the goodness of the evening, and we get, pajamaed, into bed, and again he demands his hug, and it gradually leads, though my motions, into some sort of manual release for him, but his skinny cock is hardly terribly pleasant, and his "I'm going to come now---I'm going to come very SOON now" seems unnecessarily telegraphic. We dry out lying there and finally fall asleep somewhat in the tiring neighborhood of 3:30.

DIARY 207

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2. Wake about 11:30 to make rapid repairs on our bodies, and he's heard about the Oak Room at the Plaza, so I suggest brunch at the Palm Court, and we stroll across the southern end of Central Park to a crowded room but a pleasant head-waiter who honors our reservation at 1 pm, and we have an enormously satisfying brunch for $3.95, though we're rather surprised when the bill comes, totaling $1.00 extra for each of the pairs of pastries we had for dessert. But with the refills of coffee and tea, we at least made up for the whole thing in service. By 2:30 he checks into the Oak Room to see what it looks like, and is more taken by the Oar Grille than the little bar facing the park. Walk south toward the theater, getting there just in time for the 3 pm performance, and "Madrigalesco" is depressingly like other Harkarvy ballets: too cluttered and too traditional to be more than passingly pallidly pleasant. The "Sylvia Pas de Deux" is danced not too spectacularly by Helgi Tomasson, though he's charming, and a bit better by Elizabeth Carroll, and "Time Out of Mind" is dramatic and well-lighted, with Wayne playing his red costume to the hilt, and the "Souvenirs" is again funny. We walk back up and he decided not to see Lincoln Center, and left at 6:30 for the 7 pm bus back to Philadelphia, with entreaty that I see him there, if I ever get down there. Back to "work" and type the restaurant list, which takes exactly two pages for the places, and just then Don arrives at 9 pm and WE proceed to talk through to 2 am about his job, my working and loafing, the philosophy of life and the changes in the Roman Catholic Church, and other details until we're both too tired to go on.

DIARY 207

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3. He's up and gone for a 9 am meeting, and I drag myself out of bed at 11, actually getting down to a meditation and an exercise, and I still feel inexplicably weak. I tackle the correspondence drawer for some part of the day, sending off some sort of message to Jean-Jacques, saying that even though I hoped April would be warm enough to swim in Spain, I would like to go, and could I spend a week in Paris prior to our motor-tour? Then Cyndy calls and says she'd LOVE to sublet. Then I sent off a couple bills, and by that time the rain had stopped and I was quite ready to put the laundry into the washer and go out for groceries, costing somewhat over $10. Get back and am putting them away at 5:30 when Don comes in, with a headache, so he takes an aspirin, I finish with the clothes, and he's up, recovered, willing to try a French restaurant to compare with Hetche's cooking, and we go to the Biarritz, which I'd forgotten had fresh flowers on the tables, and served a soup and appetizer and salad and dessert for the price of the meal, and our Semele de Veau in Bordelaise was extraordinarily good, though my mousse was grainy and not as good as Hetch's. We'd wanted to see "Laugh-In," but only got the last 15 minutes of that, and the first half hour of the "Americanization of Samoa" before we got out to walk over to "Joanna," which he wanted to see, picking up the projector and films from Eddie on the way, and the movie was more than good, it was great, with a lovely Negro love interest and the characterization of the count skillfully changing from fag to serious commentator on life and death. We walked back, chilling, in the driving wind, and settled down over drinks for more pieces of conversation, especially my promised trip to France and Spain, and what he'd found from the day's meetings, and again we got to bed at 2 am. I don't see how he can get up at 8 am in the morning.

DIARY 208

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4. Again I wake at 11, and decide to see the movies to see the new one Eddie added, but "The Waiter," all 15 minutes of it, is pretty lousy, without anyone coming, and the "Fable de Boccacio" is still multi-orgasmically engrossing. Something's wrong with the take-up reel, and I'm in the middle of rewinding the last flick when Don calls to say they're going museuming, would I like to join them? I agree to meet them at 2:15, and shave and wash and dress and grab two franks and an orange at Chock Full of Nuts and just make the appointment, and want to pick up a theater movie schedule. "Just a moment." "Let's see what's today." "You mean you've NEVER seen 'Things to Come??'" And by that time it's 2:22, and the film started at 2 with a 22 minute short, so we're down to see the flick, which they tend not to like, and it does get increasingly dated, particularly when we view the barbarous reign of Rudolph in 1967, at which point Wings over the World rescues everyone in sight. Out at 4 and tour the "Machine Age" exhibit, I not caring for the Bugatti, a classic from 1939, and the art is pretty poor, but we enjoy op-pop stuff of the floating red dust of the heart-pump light-beam, the TV sets with old movies, and the ball throwing machine, not to mention the revving battery when the coin is inserted. Out at 5 to the Gallery of Contemporary Arts for the Feel It show, and the streamers are chokingly fun, the found discs frightening and electrostatically shocking to pass through, but Don's disappointed, and the upstairs feel-things are reasonably unimaginative. Out at 6, having lost his friends, and since he's due at friends for dinner, we drop up to the Tower Suite for a drink and more talk about the "progress" being made by our "Civilization" and buy tickets to "Hadrian VII" and back home, where he relaxes and I change for Don to enter (after I grab a quick dinner here) at 8 for the concert at the Carnegie Hall. Szell conducts an impossibly fast last movement of Prokofiev's "Classical Symphony," James Oliver Buswell is plumply inept at Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto, a work of no great shakes, and the Brahms 4th is not terribly spectacular, though the audience and critics and not Don either went wild. It's over at 10:20 and I confide to him my yen for a Mayhew's Hot Fudge Sundae, so we walk there, have it (he doesn't care for his (I love mine), and walk back, and he comes back up to chat and leaves at 12, and I settle down for a few pages of "Voyage Out" before Don returns about 1:30, and we talk and AGAIN it's bed at 2 am. Yawn.

DIARY 210

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5. Again up at 11, and this time the projector shows the films well, and in coming with my torso lifted to light my cock in the light-frame from the film, the semen flies out and lands with a dull plop on the pillow next to my EAR, which must be some sort of record, but then it felt so GOOD, too. By the time I clean everything up it's about 1 pm, so I eat breakfast and decide I'll go out unshaven and smelling slightly, being bathless since Saturday, and the results of a number of comes stenching up the moist area under the cap of my cock, to get some endless errands done. To Marlboro's to find that every copy of Mahler's 8th seems to have no liner notes, to the bank to get cash and cash checks and deposit loot into my checking account, to the shoe shiners for shining shoes, to the post office for stamps, to Lincoln Center for "Prince Igor" tickets, and back home to get a call from Cyndy, who'd love to sublet my apartment during the last of March and April, while she gets used to her new job at Advanced Computer Techniques (where Joel Spiro and lately Jim Sood worked) at a 22% increase, while she looks for her new apartment and gets into the swing of the big town again. Amazing how quickly and neatly such things can be resolved. Europe, here I come!!! Decide I absolutely have to take a shower and wash my hair, so by 5 pm, when Don arrives, I'm clean for the first time in ages (4 days), and he goes out again to buy a turtle for Kathy, Joan arrives at 5:30 for more conversation while I look through Don's Times, and we make reservations at Mont San Michel, not quite so good for the price, but an enjoyable meal because WE enjoyed ourselves, and then down to a very mediocre "Hadrian VII," and we could only figure Alex MacCowan had a bad evening, since the play was never any great masterpiece to begin with. Back to drink and listen to records and talk some more, and we're actually to bed somewhat earlier, like at 1 am.

DIARY 210

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6. Don leaves at 8:45, and I finish reading "The Voyage Out" while Joan joins me for breakfast at 11:30, having seen the exhibit at the Hilton (and I didn't, it dawns on me), and leaves at 1, so that permits me to type these SIX pages (of 500?) by 2:30 pm NOW!! And DIARY 171-186 to 6:30, 22 pages today. Then I get down to lunch, and type DIARY 171-186, finishing up, at long length, the period of Dad's sickness, with poor feelings about the whole two week period, by 6:30. Peter calls to make arrangements for Saturday, and it's all I have time to do to eat and exercise and shower and shave in preparation for the trip to Avi's at 8:30. Get there about 8:45, and there's John Torres, whom Avi's been entangled with for so long, and he does rather impress me by his skill at Scrabble, his sincerity, his cuteness when he's rushed during the 30-second game, and his transparent kindness toward everyone who has any dealings with him. Evan is sexily dressed in a loose pullover and bell-bottom jeans, but he doesn't come across as sexy, though he seems to have a lovely bulk to his torso. There's something about his small nose and pugnacious jaw that is sort of off-putting. Avi shows off his new silk and velvet shower curtain and his green bed spread, and the new furniture arrangement which ludicrously puts the back of the sofa toward the entrance way, even more ridiculously to be canopied with a terribly drab gray-with-white-thread fabric. Scrabble goes nicely, and John has to leave early, and I get home by 12, feeling I have to do something else before getting to bed, so I finish May Swenson's "Half Dark, Half Light," which isn't bad, and she IS imaginative in her poetry, coming up with better flying similes, for example, than I seems to have been able to generate. Fall into bed about 2 am.

DIARY 211

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7. Wake at 11, amazed at my capabilities to sleep, and meditate and exercise, actually reaching 13.8 minutes for 25 push-ups at once. Breakfast and actually get down to the LSD novel, typing 9 pages of Ken,Fran,Jules and 8 pages of Ken,Jean. By this time Cyndy has called to say that she WILL take my apartment, and all seems well there, and that I might even join her in the islands, somewhere, and Don has called to accept an earlier invitation to see the films, and Eddie has called to say that I must have the films back that evening, and Larry has called to say that he's bringing a bottle of scotch and some other friends over, so I call Regis and Joe and Bob and ask them over, as well as Don for the regular show-time. Then I also washed dishes and ate lunch in that interval, too, when the typing got tough, which it did. And in the morning, first thing, I typed the PAGE SCHEDULE FOR TYPING in half an hour, but I really am determined to live up to my pledge of 500 pages by the time I leave for France and Spain, and even the thought of 1000 pages, rather evenly divided between the LSD novel and other things, is tempting, since I should certainly be able to do 20 pages per day for the fifty days between February 3 and March 24, one week before April, and whatever EXTRA I do on any day (like the 22 pages I did when I was really unused to typing on the first day) would permit me to leave earlier to Paris. And then there's always the week's vacation with Cyndy to be made up, also, and then yesterday I did only 17 pages---but aiming for 1000 will hopefully let me end up with at least 500, with which I would be deliriously happy. By then it's 6 pm and I have to sweep the floors and shower and eat dinner before the arrivals, and I dress most uncharacteristically in underwearless white bell bottoms and my blue-and-white striped polo shirt, and certainly during the evening I got a number of stares, but no remarks of either kind. Most distressing. Larry arrived alone at 8:45, looking even more beautiful than ever, seeming somewhat agitated alone with me, and then in a bunch arrives Don and his friend from Washington Larry, and Bob Oldakowski (which name I persuaded Larry to spell out for me, and it IS in the telephone book) and his friend Mike, who says I must absolutely meet his friend Leon. I get them ready with drinks and they demand the films, and Larry's is poor quality but nice in cock, and keeps rewinding most annoyingly. In the middle of the last film, at 10 pm, Joe and Bob arrive, and sit on the floor unintroduced until the interval, when they're talked around on a first name basis. Party lasts until 11:30, when I berate Bob for not calling for music, and give Mike my name and number for Leon. Then Eddie calls and I'm out until 1 returning his projector, and he insists on giving me $4 for one bulb, and I come once over the films before I return them, and once afterward, getting to bed at 2.

DIARY 255

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8. Again up at 11 for call from Regis, who had called but got no answer, strange, and meditate and exercise and breakfast at 2, this by 3.

Pages 214 through 254 missing

get the money to start that little antiques business you always wanted to start, you'll be presented with that lovely Victorian mansion down the block which you'd always wanted to own, which is now up for sale, and you'll get a new Mustang. He thought about it, decided he really did want the business, and sold everything and went home. Alas. The house which had been up for sale was sold before they could get to it, to someone else. Things were very bad, suddenly, in his father's business, and he really didn't think he could afford the money for the car. And then, sob, things were so bad economically in San Antonio, they really didn't think that now was the time to go into the antiques business. So he had to search for a job, and found one about 30 miles away from home, so he had to rise at 6 am, to get there at 8, and work through to 5, and get home at 7, and by the time he finished dinner, he was just too tired to do anything. And on the weekends, he was either recuperating from the fatigue of the previous week, or looking forward with dread to the coming week. And don't you think Momma didn't love that! Little boy just home ALL the time. And, John said, that wasn't the FIRST time something like that hadn't "come through," either. This fellow was 29, and it was about time that he discovered he had a life of his own, or else he had to accept the fact that he was dead, and leave it go at that, spending the rest of his life with Mommy. John had a somewhat similar situation, when his father got very ill just before he went into college, and he had to support the family, then his father died and he could go back to school, but his mother wanted him to be near her, but he managed to break free to the following extent: she comes to visit him for a month around Christmas every year, and that's as far as he'll let it go; of course, he DOES want to stay on the good side of her, because when she dies, he'll get a good chunk of cash. That's a pretty good reason? When we got to the hotel he invited me up, but I declined, saying I was tired, and hoping that the walk back hadn't completely worn him out. I didn't ask him up to my place, and bought the Times and read it until about 3 am, and bed.

DIARY 256

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9. Wake just before noon, to see that the prediction that Peter had heard and I had scoffed at, about snow, had come tremendously true. There was about four inches on the ground already, and it showed no sign of stopping. Gaze out at the beautiful scene for about an hour, and then Joe calls with tickets to the Theater de Lys for "An Evening with James Agee," and I call Azak as a good way to get back into his telephoning, and he asks me over for the afternoon, which is fine. Call Eddie and he says he has the film at the theater, so I shaved and showered and got out of the apartment about 2, when I encountered the adventures described in NEW YORK IN SNOW---DIARY 214-237. Chris is a lovely round-lense-glassed guy with a sort of squishy body, but possibly a good cock, and a lovely personality, and add to that he seemed somewhat taken with me, too. We chatted while I undressed and had tea, and Reve entered, and told us all about Marlene Dietrich's gown, and rubber suit, and pigtails pinned back from her face, and still looking better than her daughter Mala or Mara or whoever. Had to leave at 4:45 to get back to Carnegie Hall for the Portugal lecture, calling Peter to find that, in fact, he wouldn't be joining me, and trudge back in the still blustery snow, only to find that the film didn't get there. Home to watch "Stranger than Fiction," where they showed excerpts from films I'd seen, and "The View from Space," which had some good attempts to show what the revolution of the earth looked like from space, and then I had dinner, while catching up on all the Life magazines which had piled up in the backlog, and watched the Royal Shakespeare Company's TV version of "Midsummer Night's Dream," and Ian Holm and Ian Richardson were attractive as the nude Puck and Oberon, and Diana Rigg was familiar until I recognized her as Mrs. Peel, and David Warner was his same ugly person, and isn't it amazing how MANY things he's been in: the Henry V on TV, the Seagull, the Morgan, and any number of other things which didn't need his homely face at ALL. To bed at 11:30, type 4 pages, in agony, but can't sleep, so I toss and toss, and finally come, and it's still about 2 am when I fall asleep. Let's hope THIS doesn't happen too often!

DIARY 257

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10. The alarm gets me up in time for "Eagle and the Hawk" and has a surprisingly young and handsome Frederik March, an insipid Cary Grant, and Carole Lombard in a cameo role as "The Strange Woman." The high point was Voss, played by someone Manning, who was the downed German eagle with his blond hair falling out of his helmet about his muscled shoulders and chest, after the March Hawk brought him down. Then it's 11, and I meditate and exercise and eat breakfast, and am subject to the conflict: should I work, as I should, or do I want to go out for a walk in the snow, as I want to. I decide to do what I want to when the brilliance of the sun and the clarity of the air induces me to believe that this is literally one day in a month for beauty, and I do want to see what Central Park looks like. Again, this is all recorded in NEW YORK IN SNOW, and it takes from a lovely 1 pm to a fabulous 3:30 pm. Call Larry Anger and find he'll be home to receive the film even though Hatchi doesn't have to leave this week, and then decide that Azak might like to meet Larry (and to show the both of them that I, too, have attractive friends), and I call Azak and we arrange to meet on the back end of the southbound IRT local at 42nd Street, and then Cyndy calls and Avi calls about the instructions to get to the High School on Thursday, and then I'm late, but so is Azak, so it's OK. Stop at Larry's loud apartment, above a jukebox, and look at his Namath Llama rug and chat over Cokes, and we're off to find the Five Oaks newly closed on Monday, so we check the Deli, which looks crowded, then down to the omelet place which is closed till 9, and to the Yellow place, which is kitchen-less till 7, and back to the Deli, to catch Marian Seldes leaving, and get served by a delicious mustached thick fellow, and the food's better than Peter's Ideal. "Evening with James Agee" is stuffy at first, when they read rural Americana with dramatic English pauses and diction, and the movie clip from "Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" is stupidly funny, but the "Death in the Family" scene, and some bits from "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" are good, and Azak crows about it, and comes up here from 10-12, see DIARY 242-243, and I come again and get to bed at 2, again.

DIARY 258

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11. Oh, yesterday, I forgot, was the telephone conversation with Joe which is recorded in DIARY 238-241, which was quite a talk. Up at 10, and get ready for my haircut at 11, and I go to the paperback shop to find that they not only have "Letting Go" and "When She Was good," which I buy, but they have pre-publication copies of "Portnoy's Complaint," which I was getting the background to read. Hum. Home to read part of "Letting Go," and then I type quite a bit of New York in Snow, feeling very good to get THAT out of the way, going much faster than the 4 pages I'd agonized about on Sunday night, and then I stop for lunch, and read a bit more of the book, and then I record the talk with Joe, and the talk with Azak, and even the talk with my barber this morning, and by that time it's gotten quite dark, so I'm back in to read another hundred pages or so of "Letting Go," and no one telephones, and I don't telephone anyone, and I get back to the typewriter for more typing, this time the Slow Seduction of Bob Oldakowski, and then I'm back to dinner, and read up to about the middle of "Letting Go" before I get too tired, and have to go to bed. It's just terrible when a day goes as "well" as this one did, because there's absolutely nothing to type about. Everything happens in huge chunks of time, and there are no external events to spice up the day. All I do is work, though 36 pages today is an admirable total; all I need is eight more today, which I don't get, and I'll have typed 10 pages per day since the beginning of February. It appears that that 500 page goal might actually become a reality! Fantastische!! Get to bed about 12:30, but there's still a little trouble about sleeping: I keep worrying about what might happen to this apartment: destroying my writing, burning my typing, wrecking the work I've done so far. How stupid such thoughts are: of course, New York City could go up in atoms in a moment---but the greatest loss will HARDLY be the writings that I've devoted too little time to as it is. Finally fall asleep about 1:30, after counting backwards from fifty.

DIARY 258

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12. Try to call for an international drivers license, but discover it's Lincoln's birthday, and there's no answer. Alarm gets me up at 9:30 for "Now and Forever," a rather poorly done Cooper-Lombard flick about a couple of crooks who suddenly get Shirley Temple as a daughter. But then she's taken away from them, and he's thrown into jail. Strange plot, to be sure. Meditate and exercise, though I'm disappointed that I didn't break 13 minutes this morning: I'd gotten through to 13.2 yesterday, so I thought sure today would be the first of three checkout runs, and then I could start on the fabled level 5. But today I get it done in 13.8. Tomorrow I'll just have to REALLY push. Continue reading "Letting Go," and then I'm back to see what I'll type today, and spend a lot of time re-reading things, and decide I'll get into the Third Session. It's rather slow going, and I'm feeling sort of tied up about the whole thing, so I get ten pages done, and go back to "Letting Go." I call Joe to see if he wants to see "The Oscar," and I also call Don, just to see what he's doing, but it's no deal. Dick called about 11 to say that he couldn't meet me at the Biarritz, but he would sometime later. Have dinner and watch "The Oscar," terribly poor, and Joan calls and we chat for a bit, and it seems to me that I'm avoiding answering letters. Maybe it's the old Gladys Garabedian thing that "If there's nothing hanging over my head, I'll have nothing to do, and I might as well die." Could be? Read on into the night with "Letting Go," determined to get to the end, and I do, but again it's 2 am, and what happened to my resolution to get to bed early? But at least I haven't been jerking off so much, and I HAVE been getting pages typed, even if it was only the ten scheduled for today---all I have to do is type 18 pages tomorrow and I'll be all caught up with 10/day.