1969 7 of 7
DIARY 751
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17. Up early and Paul's gone, we breakfast and drive to the Museum of Science and Industry, sitting down to see the very end of some Melies films commemorating some centenary of his, and then we're upstairs to look over the "Life in Old America" exhibit, but I have absolutely no interest in museums, maybe being too tired, maybe having seen too much, maybe not seeing anything that I'm interested in, but I'm feeling uneasy and bored, so there's nothing Arnie wants to see, and we glance at the Foucault pendulum, shop about a bit in the store, where I buy books about a doll house and gems that I haven't seen, and a book about the museum which I intend to read at my leisure, and then we leave about 1. Through the suburbs looking for a decent place to eat, and finally go off the road to get some pastry at a bakery, and eat in a Chinese place which is only so-so, and then we're back on the road, trying desperately to think of things to talk about on the four-hour drive back to New York. Get in just as the sun is setting at 5, and he says the traffic is too bad for him to drive into the city, and I'm desperate to get home, and out of the car, refusing an invitation to stay at his place, and into the subway and home with enormous relief, expecting Rita in sometime after 5, but she doesn't get in. Read the mail and unpack, and then call Mom to find when Rita's coming, and she's coming in on the 12:30 pm plane tomorrow, and will call me from the station when she gets in. There's nothing much to say, and I tell her a bit about the Moratorium, and then I call Joe to talk to him for a bit, and laze about the apartment, glad to be back, having all sorts of things left to do, but one good thing about the trip back: with Arnie's suggestion I made up a long list of things for Rita to do, both afternoon and evening, for her vacation, and that took a lot of the time, and I even got some unusual suggestions from Arnie for things for Rita, and that alone made it a profitable trip back. It feels so good to crawl into bed alone after sleeping with someone else, and in a strange bed, for a few days. Smile to myself and relax and fall asleep, not even bothered by 57th Street.
DIARY 752
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18. Fix up the apartment in the morning, read a bit, and Rita arrives at 2, spreading her stuff over the apartment, talking about the cloudy flight, saying that everything is fine at home. Just in time to avoid searching for things to talk about, Joe arrives downstairs for no good reason, and he comes up to talk with us, and we make arrangements for lunch tomorrow at Le Cygne, since we bet that there would be no really terrible troubles, and I lost. He leaves and we talk about what restaurants we want to eat at, and decide on Steuben Tavern, so we shower and dress and walk down there. There's buffalo and venison and hare on the menu, but none of the rhinoceros or hippopotamus that I though would be there, so I decide to get the buffalo steak (with the memory of horse meat so fresh), and she gets the leg of rabbit. The buffalo steak is more tender than the horse, and somewhat tastier, but it's still a rather gross piece of meat, and the tenderized and pampered beef is just better, so I won't seem to have a replacement for beef as boar is such a tasty replacement for pork chops. Her rabbit is quite tough, but she doesn't send it back. The bread and cream cheese is good, the vegetables are passable, and we have something like banana splits for dessert which are good. Then she has to call Mom, and fools herself into thinking that the call is free, so I talk to her, but the operator rings back immediately, and the charges go to Rita's bill, and she handles it, since I just bow out of her business. Subway to Brooklyn and have front-row seats to the Harkness Ballet, and the pieces are good and the "Sylvia Pas de Deux" is absolutely great, Carroll and Tomasson seeming even to improve on the perfection they always had, growing in stature and brilliance into true greatness, and even Rita thinks it was quite a good evening, though I didn't really care for the "Opus Jazz," though the costumes were appealing. Then we're back home and I'm still feeling a bit tired, so she fixes up her bed in the living room and I'm in bed quickly, hardly hearing her as she finishes in the bathroom, going through the interminable fixing of the face, and I know how she feels, but only time can change the acne of the young to something else.
DIARY 753
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19. I actually sleep through till 11:45, though Rita got up and had some breakfast and did some reading quietly in the living room, letting me sleep, and it's just enough time for me to shave and dress, and Joe's here for the walk to Le Cygne. We pass Le Champignon and put that on a somewhat later list, and the place is small, not quite so spacious and flowery as La Grenouille, but the food is good and even better: I have some sort of veal with a white sauce, Rita has fabulous beef, and even Joe's fish is great, and we sail through the meal with glass after glass of wine, the service is very good, and Rita even gets two desserts. The bill is paid, we're nicely stuffed, and we glow out onto the sidewalks to see what New York has to offer. Stop at the Paley Park to show Rita the citified waterfall, and go next door to Creative Playthings, where Rita and Joe have a ball testing everything, and the light displays are working where they hadn't before, and the music buttons are charming with their plunky syncopation. Finish with that and pass by a Belgian chocolate display that I wonder how expensive it is, and go inside to chat a bit and get a brochure, and out to continue up to Tiffany's, where Walter is in the middle of a sale, and we chat, and then we part ways, Joe going home, we walk across 57th to get the Lexington Avenue subway down to the Village. I wanted to buy tickets to "Stomp" since they said they were sold out, and behold they have two for this evening, so we get them, over to "Your Own Thing" to get them to admit they have twofers, she's looking for jewelry and rings, so we shop, I buy a "Universe Calendar for the Year 1970" beautifully micro-photographed, and we get back for "Stomp," where a doll undressed right in front of Rita and strokes her face, yummy! It's fun, lively, and touching, and they manage a number of effects well, strikingly a plastic coverlet which is just on-turning. Then we're out in the rain to the Electric Circus, only $1 for admission, but even then there's no one there, we dance a bit, the groups are lousy, there are no franks and I'm getting hungry, and we leave at 2 am, starved, and grab a cab for home. I eat something quickly, and get to bed, cold and tired.
DIARY 754
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20. But not to bed: they're landing on the moon for the second time, and we watch it for a bit before Rita says she's going to bed, and I wheel the TV into the bedroom and get to work on the last of the stamps, while watching the schedule change from 4 am to 6 am for the telecast, and when they finally get out, the cameras don't work, and there's only the reporters, tired, to look at. Watch Glenn Swengros and his lovely body, and see the light outside, and decide that's quite enough, and fall into bed at 8 am. Sleep very well and too quickly, and wake at 1. The ballet is this evening, and we decide we'll go downtown to dine at Sweets, and there's not much time for anything else. She wants to eat deli, so we're down the street to the little place I've never been in, and have a pork special which is quite tasty, and she has a pastrami sandwich which takes her an actual timed hour to eat, and I sit and debate how I'm going to stand waiting for her to eat each meal of her stay. Subway down and look at some stamp shops, and I have a want list, and at random select a name and elevator to the sixth floor to find a guy who has everything, and will sell it to me only if I TAKE everything. His prices seem to be pretty good, so I finish buying the rest of the stamps of the UN except for the souvenir sheets, which is quite a nice feeling, except that when I put them into the album I get the even stronger feeling that it would be even MORE terrible if the album were lost now that the UN collection was so near complete. What strange fears us men have! Walk over in the biting cold to Sweets, and the fish is out of this world, and even the line is short we're eating so early. Great food and we're out in the cold again to the subway and get to the Alvin Ailey company in Brooklyn, this time in the third row, and there's Nancy Walker in the audience, and the dancing is not so good, but Michele someone is DeLavallade-like, which is very good indeed. Down to find a jam session going in the lobby, watch it for a long time, enjoying the spontaneity of the dancing and playing, and then out again into the cold for the subway, talking about the performance, and home to get into bed feeling that we're overdoing it a bit already.
DIARY 755
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21. Today we decide will be an art gallery day, and I telephone and persuade the Twofer guy to give us twofers for "Your Own Thing" if we come down and get them, and when we get there, we find they also are twofering "Play it Again, Sam" which Rita wanted to see, and we decide we can squeeze in a Saturday matinee. Walk down 45th Street looking for things, and Rita finds a stamp shop in which she buys a $5 packet of Spanish stamps for $4, but when I get home later and catalog them, she got no real bargain at all, but she wanted them for Susie, so that's her lookout. Pass the Cabana Carioca and I say that Brazilian food is fun, so we're upstairs to find the place full of Portuguese-speaking people, and the food is very tasty, so we have a ball, sitting atop the stand looking out over the street, remarking about the passersby, looking at the guys staring in at the topless dancers, talking, laughing, and we're out at 3, the last to leave, and the food was very good. Back down the street to the Broadhurst for tickets to "Sam," and walk up to Diamond Row, where we're both properly dazzled, most by the quarter of a million dollar price on a set of sapphire necklace, earring, bracelet and mucho diamonds. Walk along in the cold up to the Steinberg exhibit at 57th and 5th, but he's gotten into an "officially sealed" colorful phase of his art that I don't like, so we're quickly out and looking at the "Homage to Ingres" exhibit which is even worse, because he eliminates the lush detail and works only with the outlines, which are nothing special with Ingres. Rita is attracted to the Simbari show at the Findlay, and we walk up and down the luxurious townhouse looking at the neatly-colored putty-knife work. We'd also stopped in Brentano's to look at the games, toys, books, butterflies, shells, geodes, and to warm up a bit. Subway down again to the Village, eat pigs in the blanket on Tompkins Square, buy Mu tea, two kinds, and licorice tea, and to "Your Own Thing" in the first row, but the people are cute, the thing is fast, there's no intermission, and the crowd is enthusiastic. Back to listen to "Tommy" and it's not bad at all, and get to bed about 2, feeling slightly stretched out, but unthinking.
DIARY 756
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22. The morning is leisurely since we eat breakfast and Rita thumbs through my stamp album page by page as I do some last little sortings with stamps. We take too much time with that and have to have lunch here for speed, and then down to "Play it Again, Sam," and Woody Allen is feyly cute, the plot is fun, the lines are quick and amusing, and we enjoy the Broadway ambience after the off-Broadway looks we'd seen so far. Back home to relax and Avi calls and we have nothing to do this evening, and he suggests bowling, and there's nothing to do but that. Dress and out to Topkapi Palace for a delicious meal which both of us are enthusiastic about, and back to meet Avi and Joel sitting in the lobby waiting for us. Up here for a bit and Joel falls in love with my apartment, and then we taxi down to Madison Square Garden, wandering through the enormous lobbies and public areas, and directly into the bowling alley, and rent shoes and find an alley and have rather a good deal of fun trying to get back into condition, through my thumb isn't used to the stress of the ball. There are a lovely set of legs two alleys over, and I can't take my eyes off the beauty. Rita and Joel are distant and shy, but Avi and I camp it up and have fun. Down into the concourse later, poking into locked shops, and buy the Times and invite them back here. Put on some of the louder music, and everyone tries the earphones, and we decide to play Scrabble, and we're laughing and joking, and Joel seems to be moving closer to me, and I even play down the music, putting on pleasant things so that they'll understand that music doesn't have to be dreadfully loud, and everyone's feeling very well on soda pop, and Joel protests louder and louder how much he likes my place, how comfortable he feels here, and how much he'd like to be invited back. I make glittering evasions, and then they're gone by 2 am, and it's been another late but fun night. Rita still hasn't done anything about getting back, and I rather dread the thought of her extending her vacation beyond Monday, when she'd planned to plane back. But I'm not counting hours, and the idea of being alone only hits me when I get to bed after a long fun day.
DIARY 757
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23. She's decided on mass at St. John the Divine, so we get up unusually early, eat, and subway up to mass, getting in somewhat late at 11:10, but it's a very high mass, the sermon lasts ages, and it's only 12:20 when it's over, having played the Clarion trumpets a bit during the Offertory. Then we wait for the first tour, and it's nice, and we look at all the side chapels and the exhibit room and we're about ready to leave at 2:30. I recall the Butler Hall dining room when I see a list of restaurants, and we're both getting hungry, so we walk up there, looking down over Morningside Park, and it's pleasant and bright as we eat at the window, pointing out everything there is to see north over the Hudson, and the food is quite good and very filling, the service exemplary, and it's a pleasant way to spend Sunday afternoon. Out onto the roof to look southward, and then walk up to Riverside Church for the tower and the carillon recital at 3:30, lasting almost until 4, when the sun sinks out of sight into the clouds over New Jersey, and it begins getting colder and colder. We're down and out in the dark, and Rita admits to being completely exhausted, fearing her legs will give out, so we sit on a park bench and wait for the bus to go home, and there's nothing to do but sit at home and watch TV. I'd sort of wanted to talk with her about home life, but it seems I never got the chance, and whenever I tried directing the conversation there, she was very noncommittal about everything being OK, and she's feeling more independent with money coming in from her job, which she told me about in gratifying detail, but she's not got any idea of leaving home. She's content, reasonably so, where she is, and enjoying her new affluence, and it'll take her awhile to get uncomfortable and want something more. She can't see the reason behind investing in an apartment of her own when it's so cheap living at home, and she's contented with her own small room. We watch nothing in particular, simply as something to do, and we don't even get out the Scrabble or Monopoly as we would have before. Watch "War of the Worlds," and that goes up to 1, very interesting, and we both get to bed, her last night here. Rita and I ate at Angelo's. Joe called.
DIARY 758
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24. And because we wanted tickets for "Coco" we're up the earliest yet to get down to the line at 10 am, but there's no trouble getting standing room. Rita finally called last night for her reservation, and she's leaving at 5. After buying the tickets, we bus up to the Met for their New York 1940-1970 special exhibit, which is pretty dreadful, but Rita and Joe and I talk a lot about the paintings nicely, and then I want to see the Grotesque exhibit at the Whitney, and both of them dislike it, but I think it's rather fun, though very much S-M oriented, and Joe wants to see the Wildenstein Corot collection, so we walk down with him, and the guard lets us see a bit of it for free, and then we're quickly across the park, watching the ice skating for a bit, and Rita starts packing, I fuss with stamps some more, and she leaves as I catch her a cab, and she's saying she's had a ball. I come back upstairs and have two balls, my own, as I come furiously after having been celibate all week. Then it's time to dress and meet Joe and Avi to wander around looking for a place to eat, and we end up at China Gourmet, and then subway down to "Coco" watching the glittering audience arrive as we prop ourselves into our standing positions just off the side aisle. The salon is junky, the dressing rooms are sketchy, and Coco's apartment is lavish, and the rotating stage uses all three nicely. Katherine Hepburn is herself, crying, keening, carrying on, being sarcastic and biting, and strangely Lesbian with the young girl who wants to live with her, to the puzzlement of the guy. All the other actors are rather poor, the girl having terrible trouble with her voice, George Rose being wasted, Auberjonois funny with "Fiasco," the dance sequence terrible, Katie looking like a floppy-haired Myra Kinch, or whatever her name is. The costumes are confusing, some of the later "Coco" creations looking WORSE than the "lousy" things that were satirized in the beginning, so Beaton did NOT do a good job. Good show to see at a preview, cheaply in standing room, since there was a lot of talk about it, and it became "the thing to have seen" but not "the thing to see." We all part ways, and I'm back home to enjoy sleeping in an empty apartment.
DIARY 759
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25. Determined to re-start my exercises, since I hadn't done them since before Washington two weeks ago, and it feels good to have done them. Decide I have to get some things out of the way from my "to do" list, and get to the bank for money, down to the 69 cent shop to plow through all their records, but they have an almost invisible collection of classical, only the remnants from before, so I won't be back there for awhile. Then, pockets bulging with clippings from the super-sales this week from the Times, I'm into Korvettes and buy about 13 records, almost everything that I wanted to get except for a couple of things they didn't have, and it's quite a feeling of purchasement. Walk over to Goody's to pick up the "Mefistofele" that Korvette's had been out of, and the Harrison that they didn't have, and the Schubert that they didn't have, and I spent something like $50 for records, quite the most expensive lot of them all, but they were things that I really wanted good versions of. Back to the apartment and call Joe to invite him over to see "Foul" on TV, and they're pretty bad, but interesting. Then he's gone and I have the whole evening to myself, so I sort through various things that I have to do, and I begin typing up some of the notes from as far away as Maine. It was the first time back to the typewriter in some time, and my wrists and arms felt stiff from the lack of use. This was about the first time I began regretting not having kept up on the Diary, because at least that got me to the typewriter each day, at least each day I was in town, and that would have served to keep my arms in some sort of practice. And from my point of view, now, I know I was about to embark on a month of doing almost nothing, and I would find the time speeding by, having done nothing of note, but having nothing recorded from it, so I wouldn't even have any idea of what DID take up my time during the months I was unemployed, "enjoying myself" but having nothing to show for it. It felt good to be alone, with nothing terribly time-consuming stretching in front of me, since even the stamps were taking up less and less time. Typed until I was tired, and then fell into bed, probably coming ecstatically in the freedom of the empty apartment.
DIARY 760
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26. Start off the day brilliantly by doing exercises for the second straight day in a row (I do them so seldom, it's necessary to cheer about such small accomplishments). Work final bit with stamps, and see that I need only souvenir sheets to finish my United Nations collection, and one which I'd somehow missed, a current one. Then one of the records of Mefistofele I bought yesterday was terribly warped, so I had to take that back to Goody's for exchange, so I decided that this would be one of the final shopping days, and I made a record list of everything else I wanted, and a stamp list of everything I wanted, and set out to spend money. First to the stamp shop and get everything, even pricing the $110 souvenir sheet, but it's really too expensive, so I finish my United Nations collection except for that one small piece of very expensive paper, and it's simultaneously nice, for the accomplishment, and frightening, since it's so easily destroyed, either itself or MYself. Think about David Merrick and how badly he wants "Hello, Dolly" to beat "My Fair Lady" in the number of performances of a musical on Broadway, and it probably will, but it's being followed closely by "Fiddler on the Roof," only 200 performances behind Dolly, and by "Man of La Mancha," which is further out, but seems to have an even better chance of overtaking whichever ends up first. The point is, Merrick will probably feel the same empty feeling of hollow accomplishment for a moment that I feel when I finish the United Nations section of my album. Buy another $20 worth of records and get the list finished, then come back home and work on the NEXT music list, putting down things that have been in the back of my mind like the "Te Deum" of Bruckner and the "Song of the Forest," and the Berlioz "Symphonie Funebre," which Goody's didn't have and which heads the list. Home to listen to records for the entire rest of the day. Joe comes over in the evening to get something typed by me, and we watch the Royal Ballet's production of "Coppelia" on TV, and the evening ends very quietly. Listen to more music before it's time for bed, and probably come with the pictures, which I really come over.
DIARY 761
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27. Do exercises again and wash all the dishes which have been piling up for an enormous amount of time. It's Thanksgiving, but there's nothing scheduled for me to do, since everyone seems to be spending the day with someone else or alone, as I am. A cold hits suddenly and I feel rather dreadful and I'm about to throw out the Cue that I got for Rita's advent, and then I figure to bring my skeleton Cue up to date, and I decide that it's really too much to add to the old one, which is all pasted up anyway, because I've added a couple of issues to it already, and then I find there's another copy that I didn't even finish clipping out and pasting in, and I have three copies to choose from, and decide that since I have the time (since I don't feel like doing anything else), that what I'll do is cut out all the restaurants in the listing on their own little slip of paper and then stamp hinge them onto notebook sheets, leaving space for about a double expansion, and thus I can very easily replace old listings (and prices, generally) with new ones, add in new restaurants, and start a "dead file" for restaurants that I've been to and liked which have gone out of business. It starts very poorly, since there are no uncut pages for Nightclubs and Hotels and restaurants up to 14th Street from the middle issue, since I'd already pasted them in. Consequently, there are a lot of known places missing in these sections. Then when I get where I have three choices, the tracing back and forth (if I take this one from this list, I destroy these two on the back, but they're on this list, but then I destroy THAT one, and I have a copy of that, but I have to get ANOTHER from somewhere else), and it gets increasingly tedious, and the initial charm of doing it has worn off, and my right thumb is getting sore because it's pinching a nerve somewhere with the scissors, and I'm getting dizzy from doing it all with a cold, spitting into a glass which almost succeeds in filling up, dripping into a handkerchief on my lap, coughing, sneezing, and my eyes watering. Get most of the cutting done, putting all the slips into envelopes, but that doesn't last long.
DIARY 762
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28. Exercise even through the cold, but it seems one invariable truth that exercising clears my sinuses, and my head and body feel much better after I do them. Then why don't I do them more often? Because they bore me, wear me out, and I swear and gasp for breath doing them, thus they're not pleasant to look forward to. Don't feel like getting back to the restaurant list, but there are lots of other things I can waste time with: get started on the really dreadful mess in the hall closet, and decide that I really don't want the air conditioner back, and make a mental note to give it to Marty (but don't actually say it until sometime in early January). Figure all the empty boxes that I'm keeping in the closet should really be more available in the middle closet, and then I have to get to the clothes closet and finally switch my summer and winter clothes around, especially now since one of these days Darwin came in and took his clothes out, and my closets were once again entirely mine. One thing leads to another, but things get thrown away (not many things, because I'm more likely to find a different way of organizing which will permit me to keep things, than I am likely to throw things out). Get rid of a lot of rags and things I really don't need, and put a couple of sacks into the hallway to get them gone. Just rearranging things makes things neater, and I work and work on the middle closet, putting the Screws in a particular pile, resetting the games so that they're not almost broken in half, rearrange the bedding and the pillows and the stuff on the floor, and decide it's about time to get out the humidifier, even though it really hadn't been that dry, the humidity index didn't even get the chance to sink before 40%. Clean that out and get it going, and have the steam rising into the air pleasantly. When that's finished, decide it's time to clean out the overflowing files in the desk drawer, and use some of the boxes from the entry closet to contain some of the travel stuff that I'd put temporarily into the two small chests in the living room and bedroom, and get out of it at 7:30 to watch television to 10, and the place is in a shambles, but things are getting done very nicely.
DIARY 763
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29. Exercise again, and the cold is vaguely going, so it really wasn't that bad, and I bought cough syrup which tasted lousy, but I wanted to ward off the unpleasant dry hacking which seems to usually follow my colds, and the cough didn't come at all. Avi has been trying to get Bill Berkowitz into bed with Joe, and he finally thought of a way to lead up to it, so Joe calls me to invite me to Scrabble with them, and then Avi calls to say that Sally has also been invited along since she had nothing to do, but "it's OK, because she knows what the deal will be," and I laugh because it seems the worst possible arranging. Finish up the closets and am left with the scrapbook section of the desk drawer to file into the large filing cabinet, and that's done by 4, and everything is just about finished in the apartment, except for such minor things as dusting and sweeping and putting the bookcase together and doing the windows etcetcetc, and anything else which will come up that I will pounce upon as an excuse to waste some more time. Shower and wash my hair, having finally gotten to using some sort of shampoo aside from soap, since my hair seems to be getting farther and farther receding, and I've been itching, and it seems about time I started taking care of it, especially since Avi's so panicked that he's been willing to spend a number of dollars for some sort of strange treatments, and I decide I've been casual about it long enough. Eat and go to Joe's, and everyone's there, and Sally is a ball of laughter, except when she and Avi are at each other's throats for something. Bill is terribly quiet, but it seems easy enough for everyone (except for him and Joe, I'm sure) to forget what the evening is REALLY for. The Scrabble games are fun, Joe astounding everyone by putting down his seven letters the first time for a grand 100 points, discouraging everyone so that he wins finally by MORE than 100 points. We talk and drink, and finally at 11:30 I'm hungry and we call Victor's to find they're still open, and Bill decides to stay "for coffee," and we go off and laugh about the evening, having Sangria, and everyone gets terribly drunk and tired, but pleasantly so.
DIARY 764
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30. Have rather a hangover from the previous evening, but manage to get back to the restaurant list and finish cutting everything out, and get out the notebook paper and begin stamp-hinging the restaurants to the pages, hoping that the sections will come out something near to whole pages. Eat only breakfast and a very late lunch, and then it's time to get down to Joe and Bob's for cocktails, and I'm there after the local people who were there fairly late, but before the people from out of town, who were held up by the snow that began beautifully sifting down through the cold air in the evening, and I congratulated them for having the wit to have a cocktail party celebrating the first snowfall of the season. There are a few cuties there, but they seem to be attached to older, prosperous, settled gentlemen, and I would feel a real cock-teaser to talk to the ones I really wanted to talk to. Then a lovely fellow with square gold-framed glasses from Philly comes in, with cute crotch, and I can't resist, particularly when I find he's a computer operator. We talk away, and the thin fey one who'd been eyeing me lurches around very drunkenly trying to nip in on the conversation. Go out to the balcony for a breath of air, and he follows me out, accusing me of not wanting to pay attention to him, and I say that that's a fact, and go back inside. Joe shows me around, and it's a lovely duplex, with their bedroom separated from everything by their own apartment below. Perfection, and lovely views in three directions, though the snow cuts down visibility considerably. Ugly one sits at the floor of my couch and runs his hands up and down inside my trousers, but I ignore it, though secretly hoping everyone else notices. Then it's walking up to BJ's for a campy dinner, where ugly cruises a semi-hustler, throwing all of us into fits, when we're not ogling the darling waiter and ignoring dirty darts from adjoining tables. Wine flows, the food is fairly dreadful, but Joe and Bob are laughing fit to kill, and everyone's camping it up loudly, having a ball. I leave and get back about 11:45, watching the end of "Gorgo" on TV, and it WAS spectacular, and then "Adventures of Robin Hood," which points up a rather sad thing that I have a tendency to do: I'll sit down to the 11:30 movie, then switch channels during the commercials, possibly get involved with two movies, and then when one ends, I switch to the other and find another good movie has started, and I'm up until all the stations go out. See "From Here to Eternity" that way one of these evenings, just thinking I'll watch the Pearl Harbor sequences and watching it through to the end at 3 am, and I didn't even mark it on the calendar anywhere, but I sure know I did it, because I turned to the last few channels and found Channel 10 from Philadelphia which was just starting "FHTE" at about 2:30! There are always reasons for seeing the next one, too. For instance, "Adventures of Robin Hood" I know I saw just about when it was released in 1946 or so, when I was terribly young and impressionable, and was greatly influenced by Errol Flynn's dashing figure in the green tights, and when he dropped from a tree, blowing up the fringe and showing a goodly basket underneath, I had the exact same thrill I had when I was sitting in the theater when I was a cock-hungry kid. The red tunic and blond hair of Robin I recalled, too, and he had an even tighter leg and thigh than Flynn. I remembered it so well that it was the easiest thing in the world to sit there, transfixed by the tube, watching Claude Rains plotting as King John, marveling at the jewelry they wore, thinking how feminine Olivia De Havilland looked, looking at the glorious castles and tournaments and vaguely wishing someone like him would sweep down into Akron and take me off with him.
DIARY 765
MONDAY, DECEMBER 1. Got up late, somewhat about noon, and started putting the last of the restaurants into the book, and stopped for lunch, resting my weary legs and butt, and finished the entire section but for a few larger ones by 8 pm, when I flew to the television set to watch Laugh-In and CBS Playhouse, probably the N.Y. Rome thing with Maureen Stapleton and George C. Scott in dual roles. Thus starts another month of doing absolutely nothing, though the pressures are beginning to build to DO something, as soon as I finish all these OTHER things that I want to do.
DIARY 766
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2. Joe asks me over for dinner, and tells me about the rather sad affair with Bill: he's very kissy, as I thought he would be, has a nicer body than it looks from the outside (it's not as flabby as one would think, and rather nicely muscled, according to Joe), but is woefully ignorant about what he wants to do in bed. Wanted Joe to fuck him, but expressed pain, and then insisted on rimming Joe, which he did. Some people's taste! But the kissiness got through to me. Then he didn't want to stay, and left at some terribly early hour, like 3, saying he had to get back to his own bed for some reason (before the dawn strikes him and he turns into dust if he doesn't sleep on his Transylvanian pillow?). Arnie was in town and said he was coming over for the Forsyte Saga, so Joe knew I could only be there before 9. Finish the restaurant list, binding the whole pages into a black binder in a few days when they started getting crushed in the top drawer, and that's the end of that. Just a few issues of Cue later they did precisely what I feared: divided the 34th-59th sections into two, so all my work has to be redone for those two sections, and then later I find that sometime in September they will be coming out with a COMPLETE guide of about 30-40 pages in an issue, so I'll have to get it up to date by that time. Shop around for Cues at various times to get another contribution to the list, but miss the odd one, and don't want the even, and allow myself the luxury of forgetting about it: would only that I could do that more often! To Joe's for dinner at 6, and then we walk down here for the Forsyte Saga, and Arnie arrives, and we sit around talking for a bit, but Joe leaves quickly. I'm anxious for Arnie to listen to "Mefistofeles," and put it on, and it goes and goes, and we chat, and Arno calls and hears part of it, and we listen and then more records go on, and suddenly it's 2, and I'm ready to fall into bed, and he joins me, and we have vague sex, though I'm terribly tired, but he's terribly insistent, playing with me until I finally come up, and then something has to be done, so to get him off my back I just have to go down on him: even then he moans: I'm not tired!
DIARY 767
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3. We're up early and he cuddles, I doze back until about noon, and then we cuddle some more, and then it's up for breakfast, and he's still around, and we're sitting around with no clothes on. Sit and talk and look at each other, and I go down for the mail, and a few other things get done, but he's still here until 6, and the most adventurous thing we've done so far is to watch the sunset, and continue at the window talking about the buildings we see, what I'd seen going on in them, and we talk about wasting time, of which this day is a perfect example. Finally push him out about 6, since I'm supposed to meet Azak for dinner, and get the arrangements done, but I was suppose to go to his place for a drink, but finally when it looks like I won't be ready, ask him to come over here, and we agree to meet at the Topkapi Palace. He's such a strain, too, since I feel obliged to be witty and charming and joke-filled, and he seems to feel the same, talking about the fabulous restaurant just a short plane-flight from Istanbul, where I will have to come with him some day. The food is good even though he's not pleased with it, and we get to the Alwin Nikolais Ballet, but most of it is dreadful: he's treating this people even more like objects, but he's gone away from the charmingly fantastical costuming and is doing everything with lights. Unfortunately, it's all meant to be seen from stage level, and we're in the balcony, and that changes things, too, and there's only one good female dancer in the crowd, and all his wonderful talent has left him, except for the gimmick. Out at 10:30 and Azak invites me to his place, and we talk about his family, his mother whom he's supporting, and he complains and I say "Either STOP doing what you don't want to do, or admit you want to do it, accept, and stop worrying about it." To his place for drinks and more talk in that vein, and he begs me to set up a bridge game at his place on Sunday, and I agree, and I leave about 12, getting out totally swimming with drink and fall into a cab and come home, wondering what I'll do with such friends I have like Arnie and Azak, who seem to be such totally odd, unfathomable---maybe unmanageable?---people.
DIARY 768
Thursday, December 4. But the drunkenness allows me to fall asleep on the crucial night: the night before my first dental appointment! A couple of nights ago I had really a dreadful time getting to sleep, so tortured was I by thoughts of terrible pains and death by drowning, burning, cancer, and torture by drilling teeth and pulling fingernails and splitting bones. Actually feel my stomach knotting inside me as I dread these deaths, fear these pains, hate the dentist, and I have to take a couple of Compoz in order to fall asleep dreadfully late. But, as I say, this evening I have no trouble, and I'm up early and get to Rosey's early, even. Then there's another fellow before me, and I wait until 11:30, but it's only a cleaning, and she says there's something in the front she has to replace, but since she took X-rays, I have to come back anyway, and next time she'll be in a different place. The first time is finished, but I WILL have to come back a second time. The dread is not yet over. Down to Marlboro's and find another book of short stories by Algernon Blackwood, and read some of them, watch the last part of "Rainmaker" on TV, with Katherine Hepburn doing a rather sad job, and Burt Lancaster being everyman's seducer, and then meet Joe for the trip to Brooklyn for the American Ballet Theater. The first dance is a charming nothing, and then we move downstairs for a rather dreadful "Eternal Idol," with a sexy Ivan Nagy, or someone, and a rather colorless Cynthia Gregory, and then it's into "Elegy" which is the war-death thing with all the women in long dresses and nothing much else, except that Ted Kivitt is still beautiful. But there's no one in "Etudes," Ebellaar sweating dreadfully and making it look difficult, Young doing not much of anything besides having a nice body, and D'Antuono doing rather nicely but not having anything LIKE the flair of Toni Lander. But the music is still just about the most beautiful thing ever, despite the long build-up, and I get back to find that there IS a recording, so I have something to add to my recording list to get. Just when I get one thing done, something else builds up and becomes pressing, just as I always knew and feared.
DIARY 769
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5. Up at 10 to watch "Out of This World," thinking it's some sort of science-fiction with Veronica Lake immortal, but it's only Eddie Bracken with Bing Crosby's voice singing the song of the same name and an involved story of stupidity and some laughs, with a funny Cass Daily. Then watch "Night Has a Thousand Eyes," because Arnie said it was so good, and it's strange, with Edward G. Robinson being gifted with second sight, but it's rather formula, since you KNOW that the clocks are wrong at the end, that there's a lion on the grounds that no one's found, that she's going to be almost killed, and though you DON'T realize that the "darkness that he can't see beyond" is his own death, it's rather easy to swallow. It's rather well done, however. Read some more of the "Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre" by Blackwood, and wash dishes, and there's nothing else that I seem to have done today. Sometime in through here I cleaned out the bottom of the closet and started resorting some of my sex stuff, coming across books that I hadn't seen in a long time, and that led me to the bed and a long slow orgasm more than once during these days, I surely believe. The pressures are also building up here: the sex with Arnie just isn't terribly satisfying, and I keep thinking I'm about to go cruising, go to a bar, go to a bath or a sauna, but it never seems to be the proper time, and I never go, but the pressures to go are building. I stopped the exercises recently because I just felt not like doing them: I'd wake in the morning and lie in bed dreading getting out of bed because I should start with them. But then the longer I stayed in bed, the later it got, the more time I wasted, the more I hated myself, until finally I would get out of bed to get the mail or do something else, and then the time for exercising would be past, and I'd forget about it until the next morning, where the same thing would happen. But I'm getting back into shape, except for my chin, and so the exercises did me some good, even though I don't follow them through. But slowly and gradually the things I have in the back and the front of my mind to do are being done, and we'll see!
DIARY 770
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6. One of the last things is to sweep the apartment, now that I've dirtied the floor with sweepings from the closets and drawers, and I dust and get that done. But while I'm dusting, I get out the wax to do the tables, and I end up waxing almost everything over again, including the chest in the bedroom, which shines when I'm finished very nicely. Take care of a few other things, and then I'm ready for the bathroom. Scrub the tub very well, and I keep telling myself that I should do it more often, so as possibly to get rid of the yellow stains which have been on the bottom of it since year one, but I don't do it. The stains seem to be getting less, but as time goes on, it appears I only scour the tub about once every two months, and it takes quite a bit of rubbing to get down through the water scale. Then it's beautiful again for a few days, and then the drying metallic deposits in the water cloud the surfaces up again, my hair falls over the whole thing, and it's a mess for the next month and a half. I'm taking showers somewhat less nowadays, except that when I don't shower for three or four days, the scales (which must be some form of psoriasis) on the back of my neck get very itchy, and I can feel little scabs through the thick hair in the back; also, my ass gets worse and worse, until it is actually sore, and then there's instant relief when I wash, except that the wash cloth smells like a woman's menstrual rag. Then after a few day's constant washing, I'm no longer irritated there, but then I let lapse again, and it comes back. Another of those little things that change: I'd never dreamed I could feel tiny folds of flesh inside my ass hole, but there they are, and I soap them up well as I wash, and I gently try to ease them back inside. They feel very slippery, almost as if they were lips of some cunt, but I would dread the thought of trying to get fucked when they were there. But then I have been fucked when they were there, and I KNOW it hurts. Yet I can't seem to get rid of them, just as I can't quite seem to get used to contact lenses. I tried starting again with them just before Washington, but then stopped rather quickly.
DIARY 771
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7. Arnie came over at 10:30 last night, and we went out for the Times and shared pizza, and he even had some sort of remark to make of the pizza fellow's putting the five slices we ordered into a box rather than into a bag. We read through the Times, listening to records, and finally got to bed about 3. Now, back to the contact lenses: Then after Washington I started them again, laboriously wearing them for two hours at the beginning, and it did feel that I had to build up the callus again, since there was a good deal of irritation when I first put them in. Then it built slowly until it got to about 6 hours, and then I would tend to forget them at various times round Thanksgiving, which was a good trait, except that I never wore them out of the apartment. Then it would get to the point that glasses would feel strange on my eyes after having worn contacts: the so-called spectacle blur taking the route of doubled images and just plain lack of clarity for me. Then days when Arnie was here, or when I wouldn't wear them because I was seeing the dentist would pass, and I would consider them my vacation days, and finally just about the first of the year I was wearing them for over 12 hours, and so I figured I could change my strategy: I would wear them as often as I thought of them, both inside and out, and never go without them for so long as a week, so that I wouldn't have to start back from scratch again. That way I could wear them as much as I liked, when I liked, without losing my callus, and without having to worry about needing to wear glasses for reading afterwards, and finding it impossible. For the first time I wore the lenses to the baths when I went up with Paul to Mount Morris, and the clarity of vision was worth all the trouble building up the tolerance. Wouldn't go to baths again without them: but then I'm not often going to baths. Today, back to it, we wake at 8, and finally get out of bed at 12. He leaves at 1:30, having something to do, and I have been hooked by the Clark's defects list, and spend until 6 pm making up a US defects list that I want. Then to Azak's for bridge with Kenny and Regis, with Gabriel looking on in his French way.
DIARY 772
MONDAY, DECEMBER 8. Type the rest of the notes from Bill's in an effort to get my desktop cleared of things to do, and write a letter to Bill. Get so far as to sort through the House of Wesley arrivals and tags and advertisements and instructions and deaths and finish a list of everything that has died, and send off a final list to them, enabling me to put THAT hunk of stuff away, having sent the three or four tags off to Wesley, though since it's the end of my subscription, I can't really see why they would feel obliged to fill it: but it gets it done, and that's a good feeling. Arnie invites me over for dinner, since he has some hot chocolate sauce for me, and I get there at 7, we eat, and the chocolate is extremely good, but I might make a fool of myself by quibbling about details and not wanting to tell him that he DID succeed in finding the sauce I liked so well at Wesley Stinnit's in Maryland. He's also gotten what he thinks is a three-channel sound organ going, and I look at the write-up to find that it doesn't depend on frequencies, and we get to talking about Pope, and I figure that this evening I can at least get an introduction to the unseen faggot who lives across the hall. Since I really don't intend to get out to Arnie's any more, I might as well do everything I can while I'm there. We watch Laugh-In while he serves the chicken and beans and dessert, and then we watch something on Channel 13 about the Vietnamese War, and about 10:30 we get over to Pope's. I don't wonder Arnie didn't want me to meet the tall, aging, unpleasantly plump fellow with a fringe of hair and effeminate ways: he's no one to show off. His color organ is in Christmas lights about an opaque-doored bookcase which has colored forms within, which is a loser, but the frequency response is exactly what I want, and what I miss in Arnie's, and Pope puts on some clinky percussion pops thing that shows the light off very well. We talk for a bit, and then I say I'm tired, and we're back while he fusses more with volumes and levels, and he decides he'll have to get some additional pieces. We're to bed, having just a bit of sex, but the lighting effects off the aluminum foil really take the cake for the eve.
DIARY 773
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9. Up at 10 in time to watch "The Citadel," with a dour Roz Russell and a poor-rich-recovered Robert Donat. It had the scene I so well remembered of a baby being born dead then transferred into hot, then cold, then hot water until it started crying. Then I wanted to see the double in town, and he volunteered to drive me in, since he had to move some stuff out from the Island into Manhattan for the husband of an old lady-friend of his. We started by driving out to check the color-organ place he's recommended, but it was closed. Took three or four trips down the narrow stairs to load everything into the back seat, and then had a rather uncomfortable talk into town about the hippifyingly increasing population of New Mexico. Into town and double park while we unload, and everything takes so long I fear I'm going to miss lunch. But Arnie drops me off at a pizza place just near the show, and I say goodbye, lugging my manila bag containing the chocolate sauce (there goes my face) and some soap wands that he ludicrously gave me (to match the bar of soap he brought when he discovered he didn't like mine to shower with). Have a quick slice and get over to the 72nd Street Embassy for "The Party" which is a somewhat unfunny Peter Sellers things as an Indian, though the soapsuds at the climax were atrocious enough, and some of the kids were cute diving in and getting all sudsy, and "Last Summer," which had a strangely familiar kid and a truly ugly nude body of a girl who could look reasonably sexy when she was clothed. Rather ugly movie, almost getting the feeling of heat and saltwater and humidity too well. Sort of a desert saga filmed on Fire Island. Then I rush home and watch TV, part of the Forsytes again, from 8 to 11. Have another dreadful evening, having to take Compoz again, since I have to go back to the dentist's, and the only thing I can keep telling myself is that the X-rays will be OK and today will be my last visit: but she'll be filling a front one, and without Novocain, probably, and I toss and turn and write down some dreadful notes about feelings of impending pain and death. But then death is always impending for everyone, isn't it?
DIARY 774
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10. Today is Joe's birthday, but I'd forgotten when I made my dentist's appointment. Also, Rita's birthday is coming up, and so is Christmas, and I have everything on a nice list, but I haven't the foggiest notion what I'm going to do about it. Suffer through the morning waiting for the terribly late 1:30 appointment with Rosey, and I find the new place easily, so again I'm early, thumbing through a Realities to take my mind off the chair. In, and she breaks my heart with "Well, I was surprised to see you have some cavities," and she proceeds to numb me, taking an infernally long time with the needle, then saying it hurts less when it's done slowly. Then she works on the front ones, and I begin to squint with the pain when she's suddenly through, and then there's only the anguish of sitting with the water-withdrawer sucking away under my tongue as the fillings dry, and that's the end of it. But there's still the upper one to fill, still another appointment to live through, and she can't make it any earlier than 1:30, so I have no way out. Down on the subway feeling my cheek and thinking I look rather silly, and Cyndy calls to make final arrangements with me for Fritz Perls tonight. We meet at Hide at 6, and not many show up of the 8 she said would be with her, and we're four, but the girl and guy are rather nice, and we try all sorts of new things, and it's very tasty, though I still don't like saki. Get to the Sheraton and find a perfectly jammed room, and I take a seat at the side pillar, watching some poor slobs get put down thoroughly by a rather disgustingly Santa-Claus looking Perls, and I'm prepared to dislike him until he starts his "Instant Analysis" of volunteers from the floor, and some of his pauses, questions, and leads are so astoundingly astute that I grudgingly change my mind and have to admire the guy. Cyndy is cuddly and confused through the whole thing, not knowing which male friends she wants, and afterwards I say I'm tired and won't be coming for coffee, and she had to make her own decision about how she wanted to end the evening. It's snowing very hard, and the city is cold, and I get home to jerk off and fall asleep about 1:30.
DIARY 775
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11. Azak and I had made plans to see the General Counsel of the United Nations in session today, and I expected to be awakened by him at 10, so I was up at 9 and dressed and showered and shaved. But then he didn't call, and I tried calling him at home and there was no answer. This is fine because I wanted to watch "Trader Horn" anyway from 10-12, and there's still no news from him, so I settle down to stamps from 12-3, and he calls to say that he'd forgotten all about it, but that he wants to get together for bridge again on Sunday. Arnie calls and we talk for a long while, and mainly he tells me to watch the movie this evening, but I say I'm tired and don't really want him to come over. Joe calls and we decide that he wants to have Indian food, so we make arrangements for the Maharajah tomorrow night. Then there's nothing more to do, so I put the bookcase together and extract the things I want to put into it, and pile all the stuff rather at random on its shelves, until the time that I can arrange it. It's not definitely known that I did that at this particular time, because I didn't record it in my calendar, but it was finally done. Sort the books out according to size and pile them on the bottom, and then arrange all the wood and stones and souvenirs on the shelves, and it makes a nice arrangement, and people comment about it, particularly Dr. Dunlap, and it's easy for me to show off things that I've gotten, but there's still more to add to it, like money and that rubbing that I got in Bangkok. Watch "Bhowani Junction," and it's difficult to draw the line about nonviolence: it seems perfect, but the little bug who's interested in it just seems aching for squashing, and it DOES offer a front to the sick people who want to throw rocks. What CAN a police force do when rocks are thrown out of a "nonviolent" crowd? I guess the crowd has to be broken up, but it would be greatest just to squash the fellow that threw the rock, like throwing a rock back at him and making sure it HITS, as he wants his to hit. Pity there really can't be anything like absolute justice among fallible men. Bed after 2, because with the commercials, it lasts forever.
DIARY 780
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12. Get rid of some of the stack of letters I have to write, which stack has been sitting there for months, and write notes to the Landas and Marc, and write to Rita bout delaying her gift until Christmas. I still have a stack of things to do, all sitting on top of Allan's book, places to go, things to check out, and I start calling almost every week about the stupid set of glasses that I ordered with green stamps through Food Fair, and though I ordered them on October 30, there was no response through the month of November, and finally it just got to be almost a ritual to be told "No, we ordered them a number of times, but they are out of stock at the warehouse; there's nothing more I can do." So that's something on the list that can't be taken care of until someone ELSE does something. And because everything's sitting on top of the book, I think of it as a base for the list, rather than included on the list. And then there's the terrible task of getting everyone Christmas presents! But I get Joe's birthday off my mind by taking him to the Maharajah, happy that it was someplace HE wanted to go. I hadn't been there since I was going to Columbia, and they redecorated in the interim, and they have tablecloths and wall hangings and a better menu, including two special dinners that include almost everything on the ala carte side, so we get them, and a whole string of small dishes starts to come out, interspersed with strange beverages, and we have to have tastes of everything, and it's all rather exotic, particularly the vegetable fritters which are most tasty. At the beginning get the feeling that I will never be full, but when the main course comes, though there's not much of it, it manages to complete the space in the stomach, and we have coffee and sit around and talk, and when we walk out, satisfied and happy with the choice, it's about 11, and he invites me to his place for coffee, and we sit and talk, and it's a very peaceful way of giving him something for his birthday. For return, we talk about his planned dinner on Christmas Eve for me and Brian and Don, and it's nice to know I have someplace to go for that night.
DIARY 781
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13. Fuss with stamps most of the day, still with the United States blank spaces mainly, but also decided to clean out the stamp collection drawer, since I just threw most of the stuff into it, and the chemistry box is almost empty and taking up a lot of room, and there's very quickly no more room to pile things, and I can't find anything, so I take everything out and begin sorting through, and when I come to Canada, there are just too many to fit into the envelope, so I sort through all the Canadian stamps and put them all into order: there were many which I had already sorted out from Bill's collection, mainly the main sets of which I had so many hundreds of duplicates, and then there was the old XXX Canada box which I had filled up years ago when I bought the accumulation to soak off the papers. And it was a good feeling to draw together all these sources of Canadian stamps and put them all together and then put them into catalog number order according to shape, and jam them all into a plastic container. Briefly I look at some other countries for doing it, like Netherlands and Great Britain, but decide that the envelopes are enough, and that's the end of that. But the whole thing takes an incredible amount of time, and I every so often get the feeling of sitting in my high room, shuffling about worthless bits of paper, and it seems rather silly, but I've invested so heavily in it, it just seems I must keep up with it, though I completely cut down the mail orders except for Clark and Royal, and that makes it manageable. Put all the envelopes into one box, and all the empty glassine envelopes into another, and all the stamps yet to put into the album in another box, and there are lots of empty boxes still for various odds and ends, and things end up in rather nice order, with the stack of unsolicited companies on one side, where I'll assume they're mine after a number of months goes by without hearing from them, then I'll put them into the album, too, bonuses for getting a good name in the stamp world, and maybe killing my name so I can't send for any others: though I fantasize I'd like to get Frasek's offer again. To Avi's at 7 for "The Fixer" and "The Subject Was Roses" with Joe and Bill Berkowitz, a good double.
DIARY 782
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14. Watch "Mourning Becomes Electra," interrupted by a couple of telephone calls, and disturbed by the obvious cutting of the film into a series of set pieces of key scenes and dramatic encounters between the main people, which makes the whole thing seem stilted and awkward, but that's television. Read the Times and go through the stamp lists again, feeling rather silly, as there's nothing I'm really looking for, but it seems more a matter of habit than anything else, and then it keeps me from doing anything else. I have the urge to get to work on something constructive, but there are the Christmas holidays coming up, and I have the feeling there will be things doing then, particularly since Paul wrote to say he'd be coming up the day after Christmas, so that would have broken anything up, and I have the feeling there's no use starting in on anything (since it takes so much effort) and I won't have the time to carry through with. Arnie calls to come over, but I say no, but he recommends that I watch "The Trap" that evening, and I was curious about the recent movie with Rita Tushingham, and he says he doesn't think it was ever released in the states. It turns out to be a terrific thing about a mute Tushingham who gets married to a brutish Carol Reed, or whatever name Bill Sykes from "Oliver" had, and there are a number of really dreadful sequences as he gets attacked by wolves after being caught in his own trap, she had to go search for Indian doctors but finds none, then staggers back to cut off his leg herself, and then nurses him back to health. There are strange "evil" men around who add menace without really doing anything, but on the whole it's a lovely film, and the music during the credits and during the film is really great. Then I switch channels as I described before, and I see the start of "Just a Gigolo," and the lead man is really so dreadfully effeminate that I can't shut it off, and it's so bad it really isn't even camp, only embarrassing, yet I watch it through commercial after commercial, getting more and more tired, until finally it's through at 3 am and I stagger off to bed, having been caught!
DIARY 783
MONDAY, DECEMBER 15. Arnie calls about noon, getting me out of bed, and comes over about 2. We talk for a bit, but I decide I really have to do other things, and if he wants to waste time, I don't, so I do what I want to do, like typing letters to the Seavers and the Bernsteins, and that just about finishes the people I have to write to, and it's a good feeling. Much of yesterday was spent calling Regis to see about playing bridge at Azak's: but though both Azak and I agreed that we HAD set Sunday up for bridge, Kenny seemed to be right in that Regis didn't know about it, and that rather puts Azak off Regis. Kenny wanted to play early, but Regis wasn't there, and then he cancelled his date, and we could play late, but still Regis didn't show up, so I sat around listening to records between telephone calls, and we decided to play at my place tonight. Arnie just sticks around indefinitely, and then Azak comes over and we three go out to eat at Angelo's, along with Daniel, and Arnie leaves, and then Azak dismisses Daniel, saying loftily that the affair is over, even though Daniel doesn't know about it yet. Then in a minute there's a knock on the door, and there's Marvin and Burt Baker! Burt and I sit across from each other and exchange pregnant looks, and it's exactly as it was before: he's happily married and I find him attractive and he seems to find me attractive, but there's nothing to be done. Do I get attracted to men who are safe? Are safe men cock-teasers, flaunting their security? Well, it's a pleasant evening, since Marvin is an unostentatiously good teacher, and Azak and I learn quite a bit, and agree we should get together again, and I am happy that Burt's back, since we can get some Monopoly games going with Avi and others. But again there seems to be no possibility of making a definite date, partly because everyone wants to "be free," and because of the holidays coming up, when even though nothing should be planned, everyone wants to keep all the time free in case something DOES come up, and maybe it would be too frightening to admit that the entire season could go by and there wouldn't be ANYTHING special or interesting to do at ALL!
DIARY 784
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16. Soak stamps during the morning, and when I'm getting everything together that I have to still put into the album, I also get the few envelopes from DDR and Czechoslovakia and Armenia, or some place, that were left in the drawer, and I do and do and do, and finally every stamp which has yet to go into the albums is in the album, all the stamps are soaked, all the stamps are in order in the drawer, all the boxes are in place, and I heave a great sign of relief, since FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES THIS STAMP CYCLE IS OVER. Not that that doesn't mean that there might not be another stamp cycle. But at least this one is over, and a lengthy one is was, too, dating back to the stamps I bought in Europe last spring, which led me to buy a new album, which led into the approval rage, which led to completion of United Nations, which led to the effort to get space fillers for the United States, which led to disgust with stamps, which led to the completion experienced today. But book-reading goes in cycles, too, and for months I'll read nothing, and then for about a month I'll read a book or two per day, until I get tired of that, and my reading will lapse until the next cycle. Cycles, it's all in the cycles. Even writing has cycles, though February seems to be a good month for writing: I wrote the first draft of the novel then, and it seems it will be about then that I finish the second draft, since now (don't look at the date above) it's the middle of January, and there are still a few odds and ends I want to do, and will probably only get to the book in February. Decide I really have to start on Christmas cards, particularly the ones for overseas, and send seven of them out today, and get to Avi's dinner at 6, with Joe, to help him clear up the stuff he had bought and had donated for his "cousins' party" last Sunday. It's not bad, and we eat and talk, and then begin to play 3-D Scrabble, which is a bit of a bore, and end up with a regular game when everyone agrees it's too late to start a game of Monopoly. Back to watch "Dawn Patrol," and everyone goes off and gets killed, including David Niven and Gary Cooper.
DIARY 785
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17. Last week, one of the lists of "letters" to be sent out included the letter from the Aiken's which gave me the list of names of people interested in the Church of the Awakening. I keep seeing myself as some sort of Messiah (thanks to Peter Ream's Allan for giving me the idea), and starting my own religious group seems like a good place to start, so I sent out postcards saying that the first meeting would be tonight. The thought of gathering budding writers around me, or budding artists around me, or a gay group, or people interested in Aureon-like games, or a religious group, seems stronger and stronger, since in that way I can influence people outside myself, and they can "find out how wonderful I am" and maybe something can get started. It seems outlandish to talk about, but it's something I would like to have happen. The idea of a "salon" is very nice, and fantasies of getting cheap art which will grow into the "next rage," or talking to people who will become famous, and we'll all grow together into some enormous notoriety, and everyone will have to admit, "Well, it really started when Bob got a little group of us together, and---" And the idea of finding someone truly sexy in the group isn't bad, either. I was disappointed today when someone called to say he couldn't make it, and he just sounded dreadfully normal. The idea of finding the love of one's life knocking on the door is rather fetching, but not very likely. I keep thinking I want to go to the baths, but then I hear they've just been raided, so that squelches that thought. But there's the slight suspicion that no one may show up, so Cyndy has been aching, she says, for a chance to talk to me, and I invite her over, thinking of her as backup for the evening. Had the very last appointment with Rosey Shiek this afternoon, and I was so tense for it, I really couldn't even relax enough to feel gratified that it WAS over. That's really getting tense! Then Cyndy and I start talking, and no one DOES show up, and she talks about work, getting me to act as devil's advocate about her changing jobs, and she leaves at 12, after dinner in good Fortune Cookie.
DIARY 786
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18. For some strange reason, possibly because the list of things to do is getting shorter and shorter, I actually get out the novel and put in on the desk, correcting some of it, and going through the LSD writing and getting out what I think I'd like. This is rather shocking, but not too much comes of it, except that I can hint to Joe that I'm working on the book again, much to my pleasure, wishing it were true. Watch "Midnight," a rather amusing thing with Claudette Colbert masquerading as a countess to Don Ameche's count under the aegis of an aging John Barrymore, and then get all the rest of the Christmas cards out, having stamped and labeled them while Cyndy read all about the Church of the Awakening last night. Then Zen (see pages 657-662), something else I'd wanted to do, and finally got rid of, and it now amazes me to see that there are more than 100 pages between what I typed only less than a month ago about Zen and what I'm typing now, on the afternoon of January 16, 1970. Arnie wanted to come over this evening, but I told him I was going to the Zen meeting, and figured I had him out of my hair for another evening: he's just driving me up the wall with a surfeit of attention! Then the phone rings at 10, just minutes after I get home, and am eating dinner, and he says he was passing on the street downstairs and saw my light on, and couldn't resist calling, and he was downstairs and wanted to come up. I said I was debating saying no, and he says quite frankly, "Oh, please don't say no." So what can I say but yes? He comes up, and I finish eating, and he wanders over to the sink and rubs my back, saying that he likes to do it, but he says it so portentously that it really puts me off. Don't feel like going to bed, so we watch "The Actress" with a sobby Jean Simmons acting out a young Ruth Gordon, and it's rather soupy, with an irritating Spencer Tracy as the father. Then at one we're into bed, and he's all over me, finally arousing so that it's all I can do to do him, just to get him tired and to sleep. I try being irritable, but he's just refusing to be daunted, and I fall asleep with him awake.
DIARY 787
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19. We lie in bed all morning, and I put the shades up so that we at least get a bit of sun, and he's determined to stay the entire day again. He always says he's not sleepy at night, and I have the chance to see why today, because as I'm washing the windows and giving it up because the damned things get so streaked in the cold, and washing the dishes, and cleaning up the apartment, and reading more of the Blackwood book, finishing it, he's sitting tranquilly, sometimes looking through magazines or a book, and he buys "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and starts reading that, and then he sits on the sofa and dozes, once, twice, and again, as I fuss about the apartment paying no attention to him. Type the Zen pages, and quite a few other pages, feeling good because with Arnie in the apartment, I feel that I have to appear usefully busy, and get lots of things cleared away. He's still here and we have time to watch Anouilh's "Stranger without Luggage," and the guy is rather cute, and the idea of a person being able to just drop away his past is quite intriguing, as Ahouilh found it, and I kept wishing I could drop away Arnie. Watch something else, and then it's 10, and we're hungry, and decide to catch up on a restaurant, and the French place looks empty, the Japanese place he vetoes, so we end up at Patsy's and we have wine and the meal is pretty good, so it puts me in a rather sexy mood for the evening, but perversely I don't want to go home, and suggest the Candy Store, which he OKs with his wide-eyed, pursed-lipped, intense nod. It's not terribly crowded, and most of the people are dreadful, and the smoke is so bad at one point that Arnie leaves to sit on the car at the door and catch his breath before he faints. There's nothing really worthwhile except a plain-faced fellow standing next to me who turns out to be wearing a nicely tailored suit that fits over what looks to be spectacular body with firm legs and a good chest, but I finally get enough, and we're home, again rolling about in bed, but I push him away firmly because he SLEPT all day and I didn't, so we don't have sex.
DIARY 788
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20. Wake too early, and he's aroused from 9 am, and I just lie there, feeling like doing nothing. He fusses and fusses with me, and finally I get erect and have to do myself, because his fussing is only hurting me, and finally I strain into coming, feeling completely fagged out, and debating what on EARTH I can do with him. He's lying beside me on the bright bed, and I'm lying there on my back, completely relaxed, and he's brushing my chest, lightly, brushing, brushing, and then he rolls over on top of me, gives a slight downward thrust with his hips, and then groans at just the threshold of audibility and lays still. Has he come? I wait to feel the fluid, growing warm on the bodies, trickle down my side onto the sheet, but after a few moments there's no sensation of wetness at all, but I'm still curious. Move about a bit and he rolls back to the side, and I put my hand down there and it IS wet. "You came?!" I said, needing an interrabang. "Yes," he said, smiling and seeming pleased with himself. And then he went on to explain that he was feeling aroused since 9, and since it was somewhat past noon, he just felt he had to get the release, and he insisted that it was a pleasant orgasm. I didn't say anything, but noted my struggle with him because I didn't particularly feel attracted to him, and was flattered and amazed by the new turn things were taking. He would take care of me, and I didn't even have to take care of him anymore, since my mouth wasn't particularly watering for his cock anymore. He was surely doing everything he could to make our relationship simpler for me. But I was still determined to get out of it, but couldn't think how: how do you tell a person he bores you to death? He left at 2, having to do something with shelves for a girlfriend of his, and I again got to the windows, getting dirty and frustrated into the bargain, but they were done by 4, and looked great for the beautiful sunsets which we'd been having lately. The mail brought in stamps from Royal a week ago that I ignored, so I got down to them, and Clark replied, giving me more to do, and I made up the final US Want List until 11, and then I went down for pizza and the Times, until 3.
DIARY 789
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21. Decide that I'm not going to get anyone anything for Christmas, since it's obviously too late to send them anything, so I send checks to Grandmas, both of them, Rita, and write a long letter explaining everything to Mom, and that's the end of that, and I'm feeling that many things have gotten off my "to do" list. There are a few more things in my mailing stack, and I send thank-you notes to Marion for the box and excusing myself for sending nothing to the kids for Christmas (and they sent me a box of candy, imagine, for Christmas, and I'm just as happy I cut the kids off without anything), and I get the final note off to Don, thanking him for the billiard ball with the ! shadow, and the recipe, and then actually frame the drawing and hang it, and that ABSOLUTELY CLEARS OFF THE DESK OF THINGS TO MAIL, when I send off for two gay things from "The Advocate" which I'd bought last night from curiosity, and that's another great feeling. Watch "La Serva Padrona" in Italian with Anna Moffo on channel 47, and the color reception is pretty good, so I'm again pleased with my TV set, though the opera is nothing to rave about. Then I get down to something I'd been avoiding for ages: Allen's book! Read through a lot of it, taking notes about what I liked and didn't like, and type the first set of notes and then read it a second time to get more detailed notes, and am very happy to get such things done. When all the lists drop out of existence, I'll be very happy. Call Food Fare, but still the thing isn't there, and I'm snippy and say "Well, YOU'RE the businessman, if you have the time to devote to such garbage, that's exactly your business!" Things are fine around the apartment, and I type a few more pages, and then figure I'll be getting back to typing the Diary, since days that aren't recorded just seem to slip past, and maybe if I record all the nothings that I've done, I'll be led back to real writing more quickly. There is less and less keeping me from it, and it's even beginning to prey on my mind, so things seem to be coming to a point. But the TV list for the week is rather large, about 19 hours, a sticker!
DIARY 790
MONDAY, DECEMBER 22. Back to Allen's book again, and then some of the phone calls I want to make begin preying on my mind, so I call Cyndy and Joan and we talk, and then Arnie calls, to say goodbye because he'd going down to Florida to spend the week with his mother and sisters in Florida, and I feel very relieved to get him out of the way for awhile, and hope that the week away will put a damper on his urges to see me---and that after December is over, maybe he'll be able to find a job, and that will be the end of him. Cyndy's going away to Boston to spend the holidays with her folks up there, and Avi is going away with Sally to Puerto Rico on what promises to be hectic week, though at last report, she WASN'T going to take her dog, as she feared she might have to, but then the dog would have to stay for a week in quarantine, anyway. Call Norma, too, and she reports she only has two days to work this week and two days next week, and some companies have it nice. Then I decide it's the day I have to get back to typing, so I begin typing the diary back at September 16, and count out the pages and there's over 90 pages which have to be typed, and I have the fantasy of doing it all before Paul gets here, which would be about 30 or more pages per day, and when I get into the typing, it really seems that I might be able to do it, since I end up typing 28 (669-696) pages today! After that marathon, my fingers and arms are feeling sore, but there's nothing wrong with that, because I've done such a great job. Finish just in time for Laugh-In, and it's good, and then there are ads for a chesty Frankie Avalon in "For Those Who Think Young," and I'm seduced into seeing it because of the sexy dance numbers in bathing suits on the beach, and the people are all nice looking (except Bob Denver), and I eat and talk on the phone to Joe, and that's the end of that evening. Read a bit more of the book, then get to bed, mulling over giving Joe a check for $300 since the grille that he wanted so badly from John Gordon next door has been sold to someone else, and so I can't get it for him. Then it hits me to give Joan a year's allowance, and I type "Is It Charity" at 3 (see 716-721).
DIARY 791
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23. Up in the morning and call Joan, but she sounds so dreadful that the idea of listening to her complain about her life isn't the thing I want most in the world, and if I gave her anything, it would only help her torture herself into thinking she's an actress all the more. If I thought she could ACT, it might be different, but I don't think she can. I don't think Joe is the greatest painter of all times, either, but I think he has great talent, a good eye for color and "plasticity," and he has a chance of going somewhere. If Joan gets anywhere, it'll be a kooky fluke; if Joe gets anywhere, he'll get there by working very hard. Down for a haircut at 2, go to the Post Office, but they have nothing in the line of commemorative stamps, and seldom ever do, and then I'm back to type 20 more pages (697-716), and that's really spectacular, since I'm now only 40 pages out from finishing up to date with the Diary, and I can certainly do that tomorrow and Christmas, and then be ready for Paul's advent, and afterwards REALLY get down to business. Watch "The Nutcracker Ballet" on TV, the one made in Hungary with the great model city at the beginning and end, with Villella and McBride and hardly anyone else. Then I eat dinner and watch "The Spoilers" with John Wayne, Randolph Scott as a rather surprising villain, and Marlene Dietrich playing Marlene Dietrich with her cheeks sewn together. The fight at the end was one of the campiest ever, with the poor cutting taking their shirts off, putting them back on, tearing them again, and going on "for days" as Eddie would say. Then I want to watch the beginning of "The Wreck of the Mary Deare," which the Times says is good, and the typhoon is strictly studio stuff, but Charleton Heston is an absolutely muscular doll, and I flip back and forth to "Forty-Second Street," on at the same time, and the TV gets a workout until about 2, and it's a good thing there's nothing good on afterwards, or I'd been watching until 4. One day in here I think I actually got up at 7:45 when I wanted, but that was quickly put back to normal: but Paul always goes to bed early, so maybe I'll get into the habit during his visit after Xmas.
DIARY 792
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24. Only type 14 pages, so I'm falling a bit behind schedule, but 26 pages isn't so bad, and maybe I can do it tomorrow. Joe calls to say he'll only be working until 3, so if I want to come over early, I can, and I do so. Wash my hair to make the best appearance, and Joe's cooking a goose which caught on fire because of burning fat in the pan, so the apartment smells just great. There's a photo of a faggot and a poodle, and Joe says "That's Brian," so I'm not expecting the bright-eyed, lean-faced, pleasantly bodied guy who comes in with Don Mason. There's also the poodle, Little, who's just been clipped and is very cute and chipper, even if her head IS too small. We sit around and drink for awhile, and talk, and Brian is really quite cute, and Don looks as if he would have been devastating about 10 years ago, but it must be the fist-fucking, which Joe keeps talking about in awed whispers, that puts the lines and puffiness into his face. Brian keeps talking about how exhausted he is because he's rehearsing a new ballet with a girl, and it's all lifts, but if that kind of exercise can do that with someone who's well over 40, it's worth doing. They also get to talking about hair, and he's an advocate of pomping it, running his hands through his hair often, and it's not bad, though it's going bald in back, which he says he paints black when he goes on stage. They talk about reweaving, and say it's just a silly thing to do, since the hair can NEVER be washed afterwards, and it smells and gets dirty, and seems to be worse for the scalp than any other kind of treatment. It sounds dreadful, and I'm sort of glad I'd moved toward shampoo. The gooze (I keep DOING that) is very tasty, but Brian and I get the breast, and all the meat is there. It's good, and the dog is good, and the wine AND champagne are very good, so we all sit around and talk and talk, and it's a thoroughly delightful evening. It's beginning to snow, also, and it's a lovely white Christmas, and I can take credit for it because I washed my windows, probably. Then home at 1, because I want to catch the "Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" scene from "Great Ziegfeld," and I do, and watch the rest until 3.
DIARY 793
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25. I'd given Joe the check, and he asks if I want a new portrait of myself done, since he doesn't like the old portrait with the lush Renoir shirt. I say fine, but that means I have to get up at 11 to get over to Joe's to pose at 12 for him. But I have the feeling that I'm doing something for him, and I do it, and he paints while the sun is shining in, and then he says he wants to get Ben Weber to sign the record of his Piano Concerto which he got me for Christmas, and he phones him and we arrange to go over. Cynthia pops over, and she's pleasant and cheery, and then we're out into the gathering snow for Ben's, and there's a lively dog again, Patty, this time, who makes Ben's life even more miserable than Ben managed to make it. Joe assured me we wouldn't stay long, but then the Scriabin came out, then the pictures, then the Campari, and the talk went on and on, it got dark out, and by the time we left it was 6, and the snow was falling more and more heavily. We wandered down CPW without too many thoughts, and then there was John's and I telephoned and he invited us up. Conversation was strange, but he didn't want to join us, and Joe saw his apartment, which was about the main thing, and we left about 7, when Joe said he was hungry. Down to Harbin Inn for some not-so-good food, and I thought I saw some of the Mao's friends at the next table, but I couldn't begin to remember their names, so I didn't say anything to them. Then back to Joe's for drinks and talk, and about 11 I leave, and get back at 12, and can't resist watching just a bit of "Anchors Aweigh," and then it's 12 midnight, and I get into bed, but think about the day, and quickly up to type pages 736-745, and then get back to bed, once again feeling thankful that I don't have a job, and can thus indulge these odd typing whims that overtake me when I'm lying in bed. There seems to be no use trying to get to an "early-to-rise" habit, because it would just slip back into the late hours again, and I really do seem to be doing more typing after midnight, now that I'm convinced no one's bothered by the typing, and I have no reason NOT to type, since I'm not working.
DIARY 794
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26. Up at 9 to watch "The Legend of Robinson Caruso," and it's a truly dreadful thing with Horst Buchholz as Defoe's son and Romy Schneider as a maid in the house, and the troubles with the king and the manuscript and a couple of kids, and there's nothing about Caruso except some shots of surf at the beginning and end. Stupid! Paul arrives at 11, having been held up for an hour on the Metroliner, and we talk about what he's going to do here. Try to decide for a place for lunch, and when he says he's not hungry, decide to try La Crepe near 55th, and it's not at all crowded, almost every customer is speaking French, Paul is pleased by the handsome French waiter, talks with the cashier, and I send Charles' greetings to manager, who remembers him and thanks me. The streets are completely slushed over, since the Christmas snows are melting and freezing and the sewers aren't cleared of snow, and Paul finds a pair of boots outside which are drying, he's wearing my boots, and my rubbers are filled more than once. We begin walking up to 96th after he finds the fountain shops are closed and Walter's not working at Tiffany's today, and then catch a bus up. The Gallery of Erotic Art is the same as the United States of Erotica, which simplifies my list of things to do, and Bob Rozinek, who's in charge of it, is small and cute, and the exhibits are not very interesting, the small reproductions of Betty's things ridiculous at $30, and penis-pipes ludicrous at $20. The cunt-casting film is interesting, he gets out the snaps from the various openings, and I think he's great, particularly when talking about the "Coming Homosexual," and it's only when we leave at 4 that Paul says he was bored. Walk down Fifth to the Museum, and he buys some books in the bookshop, and we walk through the park home. I call Joe and we agree to go to his place for eating at the Turkish restaurant, but we get there to find it closed, and settle for the new Cleopatra on Broadway, and the food is even better than the first meals at Uncle Tonoose, and we have wine and drinks, then get back home at 11:30, and we go to bed without even kissing, and both fall quickly asleep.
DIARY 795
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27. He's up very early and moving about the apartment before I rouse myself, reading some of the books he bought, and then we have some cheese omelets and we're out again to his fountain shop. The prices are 40% off because they want to get rid of the last of the season, but they're still rather expensive, though $150 isn't outrageous. Then we subway up to the Mount Morris Baths, which he wants to see, and the stairs down look pretty cruddy, and the interior is cruddier still, the pot leading us to a tiny dressing room with fading paint and bare bulbs, and there aren't too many people around, let alone attractive people. Undress and wrap our towels around, not knowing what to do, and walk across the foot of the dorm with people sprawled alone on the beds, past the shallow swimming pool, and there are the showers, and around a corner is a hot room, which for lack of anything else to do, we enter, and then we see the steam from the steam room, and Paul's into that. I'm happy I wore my contacts, but they don't help in the steam room, since things are truly steamy in the dark close quarters, but it's better not to see. People all around, but no one's doing anything. I decide to get the sheet and lie on the bed outside, and watch someone doing someone else in the corner, and rimming them, and finally a cat with a towel around his head, sunglasses, and poppers comes up, I fondle him into a nice erection, and another comes on the right, gets refused poppers, and I handle him, and I'm hardly erect. He asks me to his room, but I say no, and watch some other things going on, and then back to the steam room, nothing, and someone lovely walks into the shower. I watch him, follow him into the steam room, fondle his chest, go down on him, and he's too long, but nice and hard, though small balls and nice body, then out, back and forth to bed and steam room, and there's nothing much more, and Paul gets done by a tall guy that I stroked for a bit, and lie around and sit and talk, and out to buy vodka for them, and eat in a posh good Frank's, then I'm down to the Guggenheim for the great McLaren film, check the new Royal mailing 7-8, we eat at Angelo's, smoke pot. WOW.
DIARY 796
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28. We talk about the session, I saying my "I don't trust you" meant "I am not a trusting person," not "You are not trustworthy." I tried to make him understand that the wracking sobs I cried when listening to the climax of "Mefistofele" were from "Arrestati, sei bello!" and not from anguish, but he didn't seem convinced, nor was I, recalling my "No, I guess I'm NOT very happy," admission to his question, "You don't sound very happy." Don't know about that. Then we're out of bed, and Paul calls John Soong over for brunch from 11-1, and Paul wants to go to the Brooklyn Museum, but I want to pose for Joe, so John is Paul's perfect accompaniment, and I call Joe to tell him I'm coming over, and I read "Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf last time, and this time I read "Journey to the East," by a rather impressive Hesse, and we sit around and talk, and then Paul gets back from the Museum, having accomplished what he wanted to WITHOUT me for the day, and I feel good about that. We talk, Paul looks at his paintings, they talk about iron, and we have dinner, quite good, and then we're back to the apartment, and Paul calls Walter and makes arrangements for lunch tomorrow, without even asking if I would want to go along, which I wouldn't so I'm grateful to him, and Marty had called, so I call him back, get the dope of his being out of a job and his son Christopher, and he invites me over to hear more from Mefistofele, and I agree to next Monday. Get off the phone at 11 to find that Paul's in bed, and when I undress and climb in next to him, there's hardly any contact, and we both fall asleep. I have no trouble getting to sleep, so maybe there's something comforting about having someone with me when I go off to sleep at odd times. If I were alone sleeping at 11, I probably couldn't, though probably the wind and drinks we had at Joe's had something to do with it, along with my exhausting episode the night before, which Paul and I don't talk about, though I made it clear that I had enough sense not to mention MY fear of going out the window, because I know he feared it, and we both had this mistrust of each other. "You might have gotten a knife and ATTACHED, or something."
DIARY 797
MONDAY, DECEMBER 29. Paul had remarked the vibrator cord under the bed, wanted to come with it, so I got it out, and he came very easily, then wanted to use it on me, but the touch exciting to him only teased me, so I put my hand down there and twisted and writhed and finally brought myself off, and was tired for the rest of the day. We hardly kissed at all. He had some errands he wanted to run, so he left at 10:30 while I was watching "Man from Down Under" with an amusing Charles Laughton, and it was probably one of the few fragments of film Paul had seen in his life, being one of the few people I know who doesn't like films AT ALL, are never tempted to see them, and won't attend them; consequently, they don't know anything about them, either. I get some things done around the apartment, like washing the dishes from the food that we had in, and then shower and wash my hair, and Paul still isn't back, so I clean up the apartment for the coming party: Joan called and invited me to cocktails with Doctor Dunlap, and I invited them here, not realizing it was for 4:30! Paul finally got in at 4, and packed quickly to catch the Metroliner at 5, and gave me a small Korean incense burner as a house gift before he left. Just as he left, Pat Burrell arrived, and we had a great talk, he finally admitting he was gay, and when Joan came, he seemed to admit more and more, especially with Joan's roommate, the faggot Bill Dremack, to egg him on and get him to talk about his older, richer friends with whom he'd lived for periods of time before they split for various reasons. Pat seemed more attractive, having his hair combed more naturally, having lost a lot of weight through sickness, and being more alert and vivacious. Everyone was drinking and well on the way to pleasantness when Dr. D, three other guys from Akron, and Carol Bhatnagar, who began talking about her husband Shyam, and she was married and had a kid by the guy Lois Cohen was so hot to have me meet! We talked on, people left for the theater, Dr. D. and I talked about my souvenirs, I told them about trips and LSD, and then we went down to Joan's at 10, where we smoked, ate, and I was bored, left at 12.
DIARY 798
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30. Arnie called at 12:15, wanting to come over, I said positively not, wouldn't think of it, and he moaned about how much he wanted to see me, had probably even gotten back from Florida sooner than planned because of me. This has got to stop! So I went to sleep after that call, and Joe called at 9:30, waking me, to say that he has to have a letter typed that day, so he comes over and I type it, and then he leaves for work, since he's been working at the Door Store every day for the past two weeks during school vacation. In the Sunday Times, read at Joe's after the painting session and he let me have the entertainment section, I found that there was a good double at the Symphony---the house of hits---and I walked up to see "Barefoot in the Park" in which I ended up hating the stupid character Jane Fonda was playing for her stupidity, and the silly character Robert Redford was playing for MARRYING her. "The Battle of Britain" was rather good in the air, showing people getting shot and burned and drowned, but that was about it. Back home and Joe comes over at 9, and we watch the Forsyte Saga, and then we get out to Angelo's, and Arnie says he'll meet us there, and we eat, then Joe goes home, and I don't want to go to bed with him, so in desperation I remark that Dick Cavett is back on TV, the one my sister likes so much, so we watch the program, and he's not terribly good, and then we're to bed. I feel tired, but he as usual doesn't, and he begins by exciting me, then keeps working away as I permit it, feeling like moving not a muscle, and then I finally get my hand down there to finish it, but he moves down to suck me, and he actually takes it and swallows it, for the first time since he took it and spit it back into my mouth so long ago. "That's the first time you came in my mouth" he intones, not precisely accurately, but it's another first, and he doesn't get satisfied that night, simply because I roll over and fall asleep. That's what I feel like doing, and that's what I do.
DIARY 799
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31. He has a surprise again in the morning, since he rubs me and rubs me, and then I roll onto my stomach and pull him over on me, and AGAIN he comes effortlessly, and he's really difficult to see the end of. Again he wants to stick around, and I do some reading, and get the idea for "Beyond" (pages 747-750), and type that, and let him read it, and he compares it with "2001," which is a rather flattering image for him to get, and then, not bothering to communicate what he's doing for New Year's Eve, this evening, he goes off. I call Joe and he wants to do some painting, even though it's after sundown, but there's still some light, so I get there at 4, and he paints for a bit, while I start on "Magic Mountain," and then we have dinner, then we're back here for "Cranko's Castle," which has the advantages of lovely nude boys almost down to the pubic hairs in the shower, and then back up to Bruce's for the New York's Eve gathering that I'd been invited to only last evening. Bruce lives in his studio, so it's all polished floor, one wall is mirrors, another wall is a barre and a ladder, the other wall is windows and a closet, and the other wall is a low bed, a doorway to the rest of the place: an entryway, a bathroom and a kitchen with the only storage in the place, and a desk at which he works. We start out with champagne and conversation, talking about dancing and Balanchine and sex and youth and gay life, and then we start on a Scrabble game, when midnight draws near. A better bottle of champagne comes out, the drinks get stronger, and then at midnight there's the sound of fireworks, and Bruce and Little take me up to the roof to see the skyrockets in Central Park, and there are slight eye-exchanges between us, and I think we find each other attractive. Then the games go on, and I win both of them, as I recall, and Bruce is really quite stupid, knowing only dance: and once you've danced in Akron, Ohio, as he has, you know dance! When it's over, Joe kisses everyone, but I'm not yet plastered enough to kiss the other two, though I want to, but fear that something might really start between Bruce and me, and he only wants sex every other day, and supposedly the only one he gets it from is Don. Oh, well. SO IT'S THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER DECADE, THE 1970'S. HAPPY NEW YEAR.