1970 2 of 8
DIARY 867
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16. Up At noon and just about to settle down to do nothing when Bob calls and says Richard Etts is doing a casting for the Homosexual Show, and he needs some bodies, so he gives me the address and instructs me on the entry procedure: there's a buzzer above the door hinge on the right, buzz that, then go back out the door to watch for the keys thrown down from the window, and use the key with the tape to open the obstinate door, then come up the stairs. Say I'll be there in half an hour, but showering and shaving takes more time, and grab a cab and get down to the dingy loft. The system works, and Richard even thinks to wrap the keys in a napkin to make them easier to catch, which I do. See Diary 912-921. Get there at 1:15, and leave at 6, and get back home to mope around, lonely already, until John arrives at 8. We're both hungry and he doesn't want much to eat, so we're out to Angelo's, and I stock up on chicken cacciatore and bread, while he has the calamari, and it's not at all bad, when they had neither the stuffed eggplant nor the stuffed artichokes. He seems to be accusing me of not having been in love, and we get into a long discussion (see Diary 922-923), not really caring who hears, and leave at 9:30, full of talk and food. Back to listen to "Mefistofeles," but from his first position of liking opera to his final position of disliking most of them that he'd heard, he wasn't much impressed by "Mefistofeles," but we still tussled on the sofa until he was bored of listening, and then we went into the bedroom and had a ball rolling about the bed, and I managed to come again, though I had to get him off twice to get him off my back. We lay nestled together listening to the music, but after I got up to turn the stack over, the motions became slower and slower, and when the records ended about midnight, he didn't move, having fallen asleep. I waited for a bit, debating what to do, then got into the living room to shut everything off, waking him, and we didn't say anything about the opera, just cuddled a bit more until we both fell asleep in the cold room, and I set the alarm so he'd wake at 8 in time to get to the office.
DIARY 868
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17. We both woke about 7 and did each other, and I shut the alarm off well before it was to ring at 8. We lazed around a bit talking about sex and cocks, and came up again and really strained to get each other off, and I was really beginning to feel sore about coming so much: twice Sat night, three times Sun morning, one myself and one with Bob Sunday night, which made EIGHT in a short 20-hour period on Sunday, and then three more times on Monday afternoon with Bob and Richard, three more times this morning with John, making it 14 comes in just a bit over two days! Then we went into the living room to have some toast and tea, and we listened to more music, looked outside at the buildings, and then settled down on the sunny sofa for a very voluptuous time, and when we got tired of playing with each other, and he drove me out of my mind by using just a slightly wrong sucking motion, and my legs were beginning to cramp for the strain of coming off so often, I finally in desperation grabbed myself and jerked off frantically, while he did the same to himself, using strange jerk-jerk-jerk, pause, jerk-jerk-jerk which I'd noticed Bob using before, in order to get maximum arousal. By this time we were both stretched to the limit, and we just continued to laze around the sofa touching each other and kissing, and then he got dressed about noon, and threatened to get hard again before he left. I got myself together to get down to the bank before the haircut, finally with some money in my pocket, and then walked up Broadway at a good clip to see the last day's showing of "Alice's Restaurant," rather disappointing except for a great remarriage scene and a sexy poor jerk who died from an overdose of heroin, someone doll named Pat(?) MacClanathan, but Arlo's UGLY!! Then "The Paper Lion," and I get hung up with Mike Lucci and Mike Weger and lots of enormous bodies, and Plympton really WAS stupid to do the things he did, but look at the publicity he got! Dash back to watch TV from 7:30-9, and then down to not meet Azak for "Downhill Racer:" pretty people, lousy story, good ski shots in slow motion, and "Pretty Poison," so so. Bed tired at 2.
DIARY 869
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18. Up at 10:30 and remember too late that I wanted to re-watch "Lil Abner," and tune in the end to see a bit of the guys who were turned into "cold beautiful perfect specimens" by Yokumberry Juice, and then re-watch "Supernatural," not being for the life of me able to remember what it was about, having seen it in 1966, and it's Carole Lombard being possessed by the electrocuted murderess to kill her traitor-lover, and Randolph Scott as her nothing-booby lover. (Sorry, this all happened on Thursday, these two films.) Today, I watched "Aloma of the South Seas" strictly for the camp purpose of seeing Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall in their sarongs, and the volcanic eruptions were handled nicely, and even the bits of comedy weren't bad. Then I just left it on, based on the Wallace Beery craze of late, to see "Viva Villa," and he played exactly the same character, loving a man, stupid, doing the right thing at all times, klutzy, and loving the girls to distraction. Not too bad. Bill calls and says he'll be here for WSDG, and I call Norma, and she'll be here too. Bill forgot my Moody Blues record, and at 7:10, Norma rings from downstairs, and we walk to Fuji to have a good meal of the Tatsuta-Age, dried seaweed which I've had my fill of, beef sukiyaki which had very little meat in it, and Tonkatsu, good breaded pork cutlets in a great sauce, and even the tempura to start with was very tasty, and to make the evening better, they forgot to charge us for one dish. Get to the "Ladies" discussion at 9:10, and it's over before we know it, and Marie and we get into a discussion about sex afterward. Norma likes the place and Bill likes Norma, and the plump blond guy asks me to dance, and it seems to go on forever, and the fellow I wanted to dance with gets taken up, and we leave at 11, Bill driving us both to where we can get home, and I stop in to look for Farb's "Man's Rise," but not finding it, settle for a book of Bloch short stories, and read them all that evening, and they're quite dreadful, being nothing like the Lovecraft or Bierce classics. And it's 2 am and again I get to bed, having spent time to get to bed late.
DIARY 870
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19. See "Lil Abner" and "Supernatural" (see above) till 1 pm, and decide that the floors really have to be vacuumed again after the party. Have nothing planned for this evening, but Joe calls and says he wants to see "La Malade Imaginaire" by the Comedie Francaise tonight, and Cyndy calls and says she'll be over, and Margaret calls and says that Bill left the Moody Blues record downstairs, and then Joe calls back and says he wants to get good tickets, so I dash to the ticket office and pick up three $6.95 seats, since Joe wants to really SEE it, and these are 6th row center first balcony. Back in a dash to begin to shave, pick up the record, and Cyndy's in, and we chat about her new job with Herman and her coming trip to New Hampshire while I shave and brush my teeth, deodorize my undershirt, and change in front of her, forgetting I have torn shorts on, and the remarks about the beneficial difference between my baggy green corduroys and tight blue bells. Bus up with her to Joe's, and Avi shows up in bells, too, but blue jeans, and I make a remark he doesn't like, and he completely hates the ticket price, yet refuses to let me sell it to someone else and buy a cheaper one for himself. Joe's steak is underdone but tasty, and his green noodles with clam sauce is a shock to Avi, and the salad is the only thing we all like unqualifiedly. Walk down to the theater along Broadway and get in in time to buy a book, which I read, and can understand enough to follow the plot, but the first act is quite long, and Avi belches enormously, then leaves at the end of the first act, to get home and vomit and spend a terribly sleepless night, from the cooking, we can only assume, though I and Joe have no ill effects. The second act is shorter, the choreography is terrible, and I call Azak afterwards to find that he's just about to have coffee with his publisher-lover, and they'll end up in sex too late to have me over, so it'll be some other time. Joe comes over for tea and cake, leaving at midnight, and to keep myself awake until the typical hour of 2, I finish reading Jnana Yoga, not bad, but a lot of junk.
DIARY 871
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20. Lois Cohen calls in the early morning and we talk for a long time on her nickel about Ram Dass, Shyam, coming down to her place, and personal things, and when she starts talking about "Boys in the Band," I tell her that's my scene, too, so she can take off to the Bahamas and think about THAT. Then I reread "Boys in the Band" to see the extent of the hero's breakdown, and he just has to stop torturing himself about being gay. Joe and I and others torture ourselves about other things, but certainly not about being gay. Since the vacuuming was left only partly finished yesterday, I finish everything today, and the place is finally in order. Bob and I agree to meet at the artist's place at 8 pm, and Azak and I talk back and forth, and Avi calls and wants to know when he can go to bed with Bob, and Evan calls and talks for an hour, and the time vanishes until dinner and shower and I'm late getting down to meet Bob, but he's inside and not freezing, so I feel better. Adolph does feet only, except for an ass-shoe sitting on a heel which could very easily be changed into a cock-head being propped by a heel, but they don't seem to like that. A pair of anxious feet against a distant horizon is both Adolph's and my favorite, but he didn't follow it up. Kelly paints, and another girl who lives with her did a Berenice Catherwood (or whatever her name is) type painting on the far wall, and Bob selects seven he likes and then finesses Adolph into bringing them to the gallery himself. Then it's 9 pm and Bob asks "What next?" I call Azak but he's about to eat, and we can't come over for an hour. Call Avi, who's taken the key and toothbrush down to Ronnie, to symbolize their breakup, and he's not home. Only alternative is to get to my place, and we start smoking and I put on the Moody Blues, and for a change HE'S the sensitive one, and I drive him all over the bed with gales of laughter as I touch and prod and poke him after he comes, and he seems to enjoy it enormously. Later it gets cold, we use poppers, and we're under the blankets to form a tent and come again, and I feel very unsexy, but manage to jerk myself off once, and he comes twice, bed at 2.
DIARY 872
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21. Up at 10:30 and decide what to do today, and call John Kim to come over. He arrives about 11:30, sooner than I would have thought possible. I open the door and he has a lovely face, sort of a combination of the squareness of Fred Sun's with the pug nose and delicacy of Madge, and I can tell from his expression that I don't appeal to him, and he even admits that I'm not "what he expected." I put on some "Hair" when he expresses no wish for any type of music, and Avi calls and I talk to him, giving John Dali and space pictures to look at, but he's interested in neither, and other calls, and Avi even calls back when I'm talking to Eddie (who says I shouldn't miss his current show, why did I miss "Last of the Mobile Hot Shots"?, they're getting the Woodstock film for 3 hours for $5, and he tells me about Al Dickinson and the strip bar, and I call him for information), and John Kim probably thinks I'm the whore of all time, especially since I describe the Zodiac and the party foursome, and he doesn't like group sex at all, has lived mainly with straight people, is confused about what he wants, seems to desire to meet someone "accidentally" with whom he can live for the rest of his life, preferably without working, since he hasn't, doesn't like it, and prefers someone else to take care of him. I touch him again and again, and he says he doesn't like kissing or necking, likes my apartment, but certainly doesn't like me. I talk about myself and my outward-goingness, and he accepts my touching and my crème de cacao, and Joe calls about the Guide Bleu to France, so when John says he must leave at 3, I walk him across the park through the ice rink and the zoo, pick up the book and he says "I'll call you," and I'll just wait until he does, since I see no reason to get in touch with him again, since he wouldn't even come to a party. Walk back looking for "Man's Rise," but it's nowhere. Back to eat, talk to Avi and Evan about maybe going out, watch the end of "Samson and Delilah" on TV until 11, get out for the Times, do the puzzle until 2:30, and certainly don't feel like going out, and crawl into bed, cold and tired, at 3 am.
DIARY 888
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22. Exhausted, and out of bed at 12:30! Read Times more, and check the stamp section against my want list, and I don't feel like doing anything, so I read articles I'm really not interested in in the Magazine section, and then decide I really must use the time to catch up on my diary, and cross off the two weeks that I'm behind, and then actually type out the two weeks that I was behind, and it's rough going, because I really didn't do anything other than the events listed in the calendar, and I try to remember what I did during the days, but I really can't. These last few days have been beautiful: warm, clear skies, a lovely breeze, but I haven't gone out at all except for short errands and walking to places I'm going, so I don't even enjoy the first few spring-like (but deceptive, for it isn't spring) days. Feel good to finish the diary, and I even write letters to Doug Conner in Yale, and I send off a deposit for the two modern concepts seminars at Buck's County, after spending a lot of time on the telephone seeing if some friends would like to see them, too, hopefully one of the friends with a car, too. Read a bit in "Varieties of Religious Experience" to pass the time, and then it's getting late and I shower and prepare for John's coming after the opera. He arrives about quarter to 11, we chat for a bit, and then the clothes come off and we loll on the sofa drinking beer, and then into the bedroom where I don't feel like coming up, but we lay around and talk, and he tries to get me up, but I just don't feel like touching myself and I don't feel particularly sexy, even though I hadn't had anything since Bob on Friday. We lay in each other's arms with the light on, and he dozes off into a sleep, at least I think so, since his arms progressively relax, his breathing gets more deep and regular, but it continues to follow mine (or mine follows his), and my arms relax, too, as I try to INDUCE sleep, and he might be doing the same thing. But then he starts snoring gently, and I lay for a bit until I think it's really sleep, and then I wake him to turn the light off and pull the bathroom shade at 12:30, and we fall asleep quickly.
DIARY 889
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23. Wake quite early at 9, and I'm quite up, and the sex play and kissing quite quickly leads to a rousing erection for me, and the downness of the night is forgotten, and he goes down on me and rather rapidly, for me, I come, and it feels quite good. Then I tackle him by doing him, and he eases into it rather well, though I do have to resort to using my hand for a bit, but it's a good come. We lie together, happy, and he says he's hungry about 10, and is ready to go out for breakfast, and I volunteer "scrambled eggs with cheese, I really can't call it an omelet," and we have juice and toast and omelet and tea, and we sit touching legs and arms at the table, then adjourn to the sofa. He's still thirsty, and he has Pepsi while I lay on his lap and look at the sun through the bubbles and the rootbeer-red fluid, and it's so great I put him down to look at it. It gets warmer and warmer, and I open the window and push the table aside and we lay on the floor, listening to "Turangalila," and he likes it, and we listen to it, and sex gently, and we get hard and soft and enjoy looking at each other. Before we got to the floor, we got each other excited by kissing and talking about sex, and we go down on each other, but because of the strange leg angles (on tables, half on the floor) I can't quite come, so I end up jerking myself off, and he swings upward to stand above me, towering over me in the sun, and jerks off onto my chest, and then I come mightily, considering it's the second time of the day, and we smile at each other and kiss, and I weakly go into the bathroom for a towel. Then we're on the floor, and have the sex described in DIARY 882-887. Finally he leaves at 3, and I fix the place up and sit around, exhausted. Try calling people, and only get Azak, who invites me for dinner, and wash and get there at 6:45, to find Jim Hazel coming, nervous from a stickup with knife and gun in his hallway, and we have another omelet and cab to Eddie's for "Sleeping Car Murder," quite good, with a cute detective killer, and "Left-Handed Gun," good only for Paul Newman. Back to Azak's till 1, walk home and listen AGAIN to "Turangalila" till 3, bed tired.
DIARY 890
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24. Up at 11 and decide that since I started my exercises again on Sunday, and missed them on Monday, but I really wanted to get back reasonably quickly to levels three, four and five, where the benefits are, though I was rather sore from what I did, including the new way of doing the running-in-place, with my arms way up at my sides and alternating with my feet, as if I were climbing a wide-stepped ladder, which makes me quite tired and out of breath and appears to affect my sides in a good tensing way, I decide to make up for yesterday today. So I do the first set of exercises just before noon, and then dress, determined to do another set later. Again get back to "Varieties" and it's really quite an excellent book, rather staggering considering it was about 70 years old, and it says the same things I'm finding out today. Then Arnie calls and talks, and he's right in the neighborhood (what a coincidence!), so I ask him over. Wanted to do the windows and some writing today, but that's over with. He comes over about 2, and we talk about his slow departure from Joan, his new-found sexual partner in Norma (though neither of us mention her party Friday night), and I talk a bit about Bob and John, and we talk lengthily about Joe's portrait of me, I show him Joe's other things, and we spend time staring out the window when we can think of nothing to say. He's not changed much, and invites me to some films at NYU tomorrow, and at 5 I leave him to do my second set of exercises, and shower and shave and finish fixing everything up by 6, when Harvey comes. He still wants only me, and he's not hungry, but he wants a shower, but only to excite me, and his seeming preference for anal activities turns me off. Finally in the bed, after talking about all sorts of things, he goes down on me and surprise, I get excited, and go down on him, and he comes very quickly, nicely, and he says he wanted us to come together, and I groan about Bob and John as his competition, and he regrets coming so easily, which I compliment him on. At 10:30 we're out of bed and I coax him out to Angelo's where we eat well, and he leaves me at 11:30. I read a bit, but wine puts me in bed at 12:30!!
DIARY 891
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25. Marty wakes me by calling at 9:45, then Joe calls and says he'll be over to pick up the book, I catch up with my diary again, having only three pages to type this time, thank goodness, and he's over to show me great framing for $10 at Schneider's, then I type a letter from him to the Mainline Times, and he leaves about 12, and I get shaved and showered and exercised and out at 1, after getting a free copy of the "Velikivsky Affair" from FOSMOS, to subway down to Dr. Jacques Durand-Dassier's place for an hour interview for a gay group therapy session on Thursday, except that I have to ask Marty out from dinner. So Friday there's John's dance program, Ben Weber's concert, and Norma's party, Saturday there's Azak's dinner and John's dance, Thursday there's Marty's and the group, Wednesday there was WSDG and opera, Tuesday Harvey, Monday Azak, Sunday John, for quite a busy week. Also Marty calls and asks me for a favor for Friday during the day, to work with him, and then Avi calls for a movie during the day on Thursday, and after Durand's, I walk over to NYU for a showing of Kenneth Clark's "Civilization" episode "Grandeur and Obedience" about the Vatican, Catholicism, and Baroque art, and that's THAT day, and Arnie came over on Tuesday during the day, John was here till 3 pm Monday, and only Sunday day was free so I could catch up on the diary. Such business!!! Clark's thing is rather entertaining, a long 50 minutes, but a pain to see each one separately, even though free. Joe and I ride back uptown at 5, and I settle down with "Varieties," eat dinner, and bought FOUR paperbacks before I got home, which will keep me busy for a bit, too. Bob arrives at 7:40, and we walk up to the opera, and Del Piva is adequate, but no Sills, Lo Monaco has a cold, and is replaced by de Virgilio for the last act, they don't do the first scene, and only a campy elevator operator and friends of Bob's made the evening interesting. Back here at 11:45 for tea and cake, he looks through my pornographic stuff (not slides), and then we smoke, he hands me off once rather nicely. I strain for a second, "Tommy" ends and he leaves at 1:30, I read a bit, tired, bed at 2 am.
DIARY 931
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26. Avi wakes me at 8 to see the show, I call Joan, and Joan says she'd really rather have the dinner at Marty's sometime next week, and then I wait to get in touch with Marty's maid to say that it won't be tonight, but we'll decide when later, and just before I leave to the group therapy session, Marty calls and says they've cancelled his holiday tomorrow and so he can't meet me at the library as we'd planned. This sits very well with me, since it seems that everything's happening, but I really don't have time to do anything about it. Catch up on the diary today, but little suspect that the next time I'll be able to type a page of the diary itself is March 6, and so much has happened since then that there are 40 pages separating Wednesday from Thursday, and many intervening pages of things that just had to be recorded for posterity. I call to check the schedule at the theater for "Wild Horses of Fire," which Avi called me about, but it's the first day of their new films, and we've managed to just miss them. Then Avi calls and I fill him in on what's happening, and he fills me in on what's happening with him and Bob, and he's very disturbed about the grandmother-brother relationship, and he adds one thing that Bob neglected to tell me, and it gives me a bit of a twinge: maybe because I didn't expect it between Avi and him so soon, maybe because I felt a bit of jealousy, maybe because he said it to Avi far quicker than he said it to me, but he told Avi that he loved him. I think the thing that annoyed me most was the fact that BOB didn't tell me that, AVI did. They're seeing each other tomorrow night, and he's afraid of what will happen, mainly because he sees me in the middle of him and Bob, but I absolutely encourage him to forget about me, I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself! We can't think of anything else to do during the day, since that was the final set of shows that I wanted to see, but it's 4 pm already and the group therapy is at 8. I shower and shave and do whatever I have to do to make myself beautiful, including wearing the scarf that Sam later says is so tacky. See GROUP THERAPY and STEFAN.
DIARY 932
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27. After Stefan left at 1:30, I staggered around the apartment cleaning it up a bit, calling Joe to arrange to meet at 120 Claremont for the concert, and then Cyndy calls, wanting to do something this weekend, but it's all taken, and I ask her to dinner tonight, telling her about the concert, but she says she doesn't feel like eating. I get some few things done around the apartment and at 5:30 she rings from downstairs: she's changed her mind and would like to talk. She talks about Don and her friends here and I talk about Bob and John and my friends here, and we talk about mutual friends at work, and I leave her to shower and shave and then prepare dinner of chops, and she agrees she could have a sandwich, and she moans about being alone tonight, so I call Norma and get her an invitation to the party. She leaves and I'm rather late up to the concert, but so is Joe, so we're in for a pleasant "Incidental Music to Midsummer Night's Dream," a short, slow-starting, pleasantly-ending "Dedication" by Ben Weber, about which he says "He was dying anyway, so I just decided to kill him off at the end." Joe and I chat during intermission, and get back to a lousy Delius "Briggs Fair" and a so-so Stravinsky "Firebird," with nice climactic moments. Subway down to Norma's by 11, and Cyndy and Grant and Betty are there, I don't recognize Paul, though his wife entertains with her multi-headed, variably-heated omni-directional shower, while we decline her invitation to share right then, and Jackie is beautiful and interested in acid, and I tell her all sorts of things, and Grant and I talk about the West Side Discussion Group, someone else and I talk about LSD production and the cis- and trans-elements and the "elixir" to change one to the other. Betty is strange, so I avoid her, and Norma and Arnie are obviously together, and the girl Aries and I talk together for a bit, and Joe's tired and we both leave at 2:15, having drunk mainly No-Cal Ginger Ale for most of the evening, but the hit was really the luscious chocolate cake that Arnie brought, and Romy really isn't that beautiful. Subway home and very tired into bed at 3.
DIARY 933
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28. John calls to try to cancel the day at Jones Beach, but I insist I'd REALLY like to go, so I meet him outside his dance class at 1:15, he eats a sandwich he bought for lunch, and we're into the lousy traffic bound for the island. Talk is stilted as most of his intelligence goes toward driving, but he makes it clear he's angry about my telling him about all my tricks, and he gives me the out of permitting me to say I was just "sharing" my experiences with him, just as I felt Bob's experiences with Avi made Bob somewhat better for MY experience with him. I began to see John as a person with problems and hang-ups for the first time, and we both decided we were similar in being reluctant to praise someone for their beauty or their pleasantness, and even more reluctant to ACCEPT that kind of praise. We felt closer and closer as the conversation went on, but I didn't even think about how he fit in with Bob, and he didn't mention Bob at all in the conversation. We got out to the island about 3, and the first sight was the best: the off-shore breeze was blowing back the tops of the waves into a fine high spray, and in the ultimate clarity of the afternoon, the low sun caught the spray and transformed each plume into a brilliant rainbow, and each wave was a glimpse of another world: transient, colorful, beautiful. We walked and talked, holding hands where there was no one around, lying back against boards in clefts of the dunes out of the chilling wind, allowing the sun to warm and make us lazy, as it had the previous Monday. We lapsed into silence, decided to go, lost the rainbows, got back into the car about 4:30, and drove cursing traffic back to the city. I'm glad I didn't have to drive, but I enjoyed it enormously. To his place about 6, for a beautiful sunset over Manhattan, then tried to get into the closed Armenian place and settled for "In Old Mexico" which was very tasty and good, though his squid in ink was a bit much. Into town about 9 for "Rags" by a cute friend and "Cheap Imitations" of Satie by John Cage, and we left, bored, at 11, and got back to listen to the radio and have sex in the living room, then tumbled into bed to get to sleep quickly.
DIARY 934
SUNDAY, MARCH 1. Wake early and have sex, and laze about in the morning grayness, then he makes lovely buckwheat waffles and great coffee, and we sit and eat and talk and touch each other and feel very good about the whole thing. OH, yesterday, after the beach, I forgot we had a marvelous pine-oil bath, where I came most excruciatingly and he didn't, but it was about the height of sensuality. I try to get through about the nude bar, but there's no answer, and finally we're dressed and into town for the SRM opening, but the place is very small, the only one I know there is Charlotte, she assured me they're opening tomorrow as usual, and we leave, checking to find Joe's not home, and get down to Cyndy's, who's hurt her leg and couldn't join us for the opening she wanted to go to. We sat on the floor and drank wine and ate rye-krisp and talked and talked about sex and sex and sex, and it grew dark outside and at 7 I just had to call Avi, and he was annoyed with me because they were trying to get me, and he leaves at 7:15 for the gallery and we leave to eat at the Fine and Shapiro Deli, and John charms us by paying for it, and we get the sandwiched car out to the gallery at about 8:45. Avi is at the door and I replace Bob by checking people out, and there are lots of people who look important, many more who look merely phony, and I chat with Betty and Azak and Dwayne and John and Cyndy and try to help Bob, who's frantically rushing about, looking terribly nervous, and not enjoying it a bit. Arthur Mitchell is about the peak of "people," though some are lovely in leather, and I talk to Fernando when he identifies himself as the cock with the ring. "You want to see it?" "Yes," and it was as simple as that. I felt inside his leather clothing to see how hot it was, and his body and demeanor were very pleasant indeed. I sat at the table at the end, talked to the cute guard, talked with some of the artists, took a puff of John Weiner's joint, and recognized Lige and Jack, and Dick Leitsch and Bob Amsel, and we three and Bob closed the gallery by talking, and I saw the lovely Ranchero set of 8 photos for $8, bought it, and jerked off twice for the first time since January 21st, watching "Hiawatha," thanks to Bob's sex.
DIARY 947
MONDAY, MARCH 2. Bed at 3, exhausted from banging myself, and Bob calls and asks me to come over so we can talk about the opening and about Avi. I get there about 1 and again break my fast to have a tasteless salami sandwich on white bread and a Pepsi with him, and though one or two people call, including Avi, for which he was waiting (rather, HE called Avi when Avi didn't call by 5), there's nothing to do but put away the coat rack and play with the baby for a bit after Nina comes home, and the second time she does remember my name. Bob says he's going out for supper, and Nina gets annoyed and gets him to promise he'll be home early, but he doesn't get home before 3 am, see STUPEFYING DAY!. We get out to the Katz Gallery opening of someone Krauss, and it's nothing but plastic objects into which Avi immediately reads Phallus, and into which Betty reads, more appropriately, Clit. Betty is there, and Bob introduces me to the beautiful Jocelyn Kress, and we have a nice conversation, and then Avi and I take to the champagne and talk and drink and strike up conversation with the dreadful people around. They want me to come up with a place to eat afterwards, but thankfully I remember that "Boulevard de Paris" is closed on Monday, so we walk across to Larre's, which is happily not crowded, and we sit near the kitchen so the service is superb, as is the sweetbreads in sauce Nicoise that I get. I don't even mind the membranes because the sauce was so good and the breads were so very tender. Appetizer and soup and salad and dessert and tea, and we walk over to my place for conversation, and have the conversation described earlier, and after Avi hangs up about quarter to 3, I sit down and jot down notes on what happened, because I have yet to encounter a situation in which two people changed so radically. I sat and thought about the way I look at things, and figured I hadn't changed too much, and more importantly, really didn't FEEL like changing. To bed, drained, at 4 am.
DIARY 948
TUESDAY, MARCH 3. We'd agreed before that I would work in the gallery, and I called just before 11 and said I would be there, and got there just after 12. Carlin was on his cross, but he came down and chatted with us, looking silvery in his black cape, when the place was empty, but later on in the afternoon it wasn't empty too often, and I got the feeling I WAS helping Bob out by taking care of calls and bells while he chatted with customers. He proved me wrong in one thing: I said it was poor taste to put up a bowl with the label "Contributions Accepted," but at the end of the day, not counting the seeding he did with dollars and quarters, there was a profit of $10 in the till, probably more than he actually made in real sales through the day. There was a lot of sightseeing, a lot more price-asking, and he was overjoyed about the reviews it was going to get, and the fact that there was word-of-mouth about "The Homosexual" going around already. Customers got thickest at 6, and they even stayed a bit after, then Carlin and I shared a cab home, and he's a rather attractive person, and we had a nice talk. Quickly get out to meet John in the subway station at 7:30, and down to the Minetta Tavern for a reasonable meal which I insist I pay for, and we feel very comfortable together after I completely fill his ears with the doings of last evening, but he has reason to feel better, now that Bob is effectively removed from competing with him. Walk over to NYU and enter the middle of "Agape" and the slide show and colors are one of the best yet, the music is very effective, and the twenty-foot high welded aluminum sonic earth volumes are a striking success, increased by resting your ears against them to hear the bloops and bleeps, and particularly "Raisen" into which you can climb up to a gold-fringed red velvet settee with a variable-light crystal chandelier and gold-rimmed shelves. Lots of fun, and it would be good to get, with the rock-oratorio style of Song of Songs. Walk through Washington Square Park and meet Azak coming from "Criminals," and we go to the Soda Shoppe for Azak's first sundae, and I have a banana split, and John comes back with me, I do him, and put him off until the morning, and we fall asleep as he wishes at 1.
DIARY 949
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4. Up at 7:30 to get John off to work, I do a bit of catching up with typing, and then Joe calls and says he has typing to do, and do I want to see another installment of "Civilization." OK, I meet him there for a ludicrous thing comparing Bach's mathematical music to the ornate elaborations of Baroque art, and Mr. Kenneth Clark thinks entirely too much of his person, so I decide to skip the rest. Back up here and have a very long talk about love, and Joe accuses me of not feeling anything, and I repeat many of the things I said during "Stupefying Day!". We can agree on a number of things: Love is basically mutual honesty and trust, the span of time which love occupies seems to be important to us, and self-deception is a point to be looked into more thoroughly, since how can one person be honest if he's deceiving himself? We drink tea and talk as it gets dim, and Joe comes up with the necessity of pain, but pursuing it, I get the idea that SINCE time and space don't exist, SINCE we are all one, but only playing the game, waking up would involved DYING, and that should be the greatest pleasure, but we fear it and avoid it. If we were to be COMPLETELY HAPPY we would kill ourselves, but we fear what might come "after," and ACTUALLY PREFER THE PAIN OF LIVING TO THE JOY OF DYING. This seems very true, and as I explain it, my voice chokes up and my eyes fill with tears. Joe thinks I've had some sort of release to realize that I wanted love, but I got the feeling that I may "actually" have loved many people in the past, I just wouldn't let myself admit to it. Not only can the future be joyous, but even the past, seen at the right angle, can also be joyous, except for the self-deception. Finally at 5 Joe begins typing, and I shower and shave and John calls and I finish typing for Joe at 6, then I eat and get down for "Victor" with John, which I don't like at first, and make the mistake of telling John so, but when I find out it's "historic" and "avant-garde" I like it better. Drive to his place, talk lots, drink wine, undress for bed, have sex, and fall asleep at 1 am.
DIARY 950
THURSDAY, MARCH 5. Up well before 7 for tumbling sex, then subway back here even before 9 am, beating the mail into the slot for the first time in ages. Get some more typing done, and then down to the mail about 10, and find the stamps from David Chassy, and quite a bargain they are, and get busy getting a new want list for the United States, and it actually comes to something like $65 at Chassy's lowest prices to finish out the list. Now I plan to take HIS prices to 55th Street and hope to get them for even LESS. Quite a deal. Finish just about in time for Azak to come over at 12:30 for the preview showing of Bob Weiner's thing, and I tell Bob I can't work in the gallery because I AM going there. Get to Movielab and it's a plush studio, but the "Groupie" flick is about gals who pursue the fellows in the rock groups, and though there are lots of tits and snatches, there are no cocks (Bob is straight) and the high point of the film is a sequence done in Bob's gallery which I didn't recognize, but wanted to by saying "Gee, that looks like a great apartment." Get out about 3 and walk Azak over toward Jensen's, and get to work again on the diary, typing pages 895-916, for a good 22 pages. But there's still a lot to go before the marathon will change me. Joan drops over about 5 and talks on the phone, then I get ready and we bus up to Marty's, taking a half gallon of Almaden red wine which we manage to finish by the end of the evening. Jerri and Joan talk in the kitchen, Marty and I talk about "Norma" and "Ariadne" and other operas and Sills, and then dinner is served and we talk about getting rid of their cats, Joan's witch tendencies, Jerri's families' hang-ups, people at work, financial difficulties, and Joan assumes they know I'm gay, but I say "They don't know," Jerri comes up with "Don't know WHAT?" and I say "Don't know that I'm gay, but you might have known that," which doesn't get any response. Joan's tired, worried about her upcoming showcase, so we leave just before 11, but she's taken by the baby, and we talk about them, too, and Charles William's books, and the Tarot bar and Joan's inviting us down for meatloaf. Settle into bed by reading start of Peter Farb's book till 2, eating diet-breaking cashews, too.
DIARY 972
FRIDAY, MARCH 6. Up at 10:30 and exercise for Sunday, exercise for Monday at noon, exercise for Tuesday at 1:30, and for Wednesday at 3, but by that time I've rubbed a sore spot on my upper buttocks, and that will bother me all through the marathon, when the tight blue jeans compressed my cheeks, forcing them in on the tender spot, and for a week and then some afterwards, when the scab will finally be found inside my shorts which I was wearing to prevent my inadvertently messing up the bed. Completely exhausted after the last two times, but it almost brought me up to date, and I feel on the whole good about it. Also determine to finish the things that I have to catch up on the diary to today, and finally do so at page 950 by about 5! Feel very good about this, then dash out to try on various pairs of blue jeans at the junky store down on 8th Avenue, but they're $7, more expensive than the same ones advertised for $5.95 (they later went up to $6.50) right next door, but I'd gotten it into my head that they were expensive after seeing the $2 price tag on the Basque beret I bought for 95¢ on 14th Street. Home and wear them around, and the thirty waist fits just perfectly: I have been losing weight. Get ready, including eating, and get down to the marathon at 8 to find the table groaning with food, and some people straggle in a bit late. The go-around is rather uninteresting, and nothing happens to make the evening any better. I get very tired bout 3 am, and even debate leaving, but then Hank sobs in Tom's arms, and that wakes me up a bit. But things don't get better: Sam's hollered at for his constant trips to the food table, everyone distracts by eating and drinking and taking trips to the john, and then when Jacques asks "Does anyone have a feeling?" everyone immediately examines themselves intellectually for a feeling, and everyone wonders where all the feelings are. He also tries the "Lie on the floor and kick like a baby" technique which I dislike, but Tom seems to get a lot out of it, screaming like an animal in a trap when the freedom hits him. Burr and Cal have both freaked out in their corners, practically going to sleep, and I actually nod off, too.
DIARY 973
SATURDAY, MARCH 7. It staggers on till 10:30, when we break, I cab home, hit the bed, setting the alarm for 1 pm for the eclipse, and the alarm wakes me out of a sound sleep. Watch the TV program and lower the window to catch the image through a hole in cardboard, but the brightness only lowers for a few moments, looking like a stormy afternoon, and most other places the cloud-cover wrecks the TV show, and I get back to bed at 2, having set the alarm for 6, since we're supposed to get back at 6:30. Up without eating anything, hoping the table will be full, and it still is. Debated telling everyone what I thought of them, and I did: Tom, just a substitute therapist, and when later he says he didn't relate to me, I can FEEL our antagonisms; Ron, you're Jacques' patsy when it comes to working, though he later reacts to other people in such a GREAT way that I apologize to him later. John works again a bit, and George has troubles, and Sverra is at the brink of tears, Burr looks a bit more alive, but refuses to work, and Cal is left in a sorry state of his own making, and even Jacques broke down and sobbed about "How hard it all is," and the only thing I felt for him was embarrassment. The food lasted very well, someone having to go out for more soda only about midnight. Sam is a bit better, but not much, and that's the lot. Lots want to quit at 2, some plump for 4, and we compromise at 3, finally getting through at 3:30, with a special go-around for Sverra and me, and some of the comments on me are telling: I try to usurp authority in the group, I've been very perceptive, though I do make mistakes, Ron has the wit to see I consider myself superior to the others in the group (I think this is the most important thing: I don't even consider any of the group ATTRACTIVE except for Sverra, who rather turns me off lately, and for George, who seems so desirous of strength, but couldn't turn to ANYONE in the group for strength except CAL to hug, and that was sort of the nadir of the group). I cab home, buying the Times, and actually read through some of it, in order to get tired enough to get to bed at 4:45, checking out the window to see dawn, but it's not up yet.
DIARY 974
SUNDAY, MARCH 8. Wake at 1, feeling rather recuperated after a bit more than eight hours sleep, and then I get down to the Times in earnest, stopping off to have some Cream of Wheat, and then work both the puzzle and the double-crostic, and by that time it's time to get down to Joan's for the "Painting Party and Pot" which I typed as DIARY 953-969, so there's nothing to say on this page except to delineate my general unhappiness about smoking pot. Smoke Friday and Saturday, January 23-24, then build it up to Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the next week, really too much, and the first week of February is also Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, too much. But again the next week is maximum with Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. Monday, February 15, I blew my mind with kif, which makes that a busy week though I didn't smoke again till Friday. The last week of February it was only Wednesday. The first week of March it was only Tuesday, helping at Bob's, and the second week had the fantastic paint party at Joan's on Sunday, March 8, and we smoked before the orgy on Wednesday, the 11th. Next Sunday, the 15th, we all turned on for the "Wizard of Oz," and that week was made two when I smoked again at the gallery on Friday. Then again this Sunday (what is this about Sunday?) the 22nd. So the MOST was three consecutive days the last week of January, but the longest stretch WITHOUT was only four days at the start of the last week in February, and five days from February 26-March 2, and again only four days from March 16-19. Most of these were thanks to Bob (dates January 23-February 25, with 14 sexual episodes, with 14 smoking episodes, though one with Bob was without, and the one where Bill got sick was without Bob) (though with John it's been 17 sex, with dates from February 14-March 23, though a couple are evening/morning).
DIARY 974
MONDAY, MARCH 9. Get home at 10 after subwaying up from Mike's place (and now that stupid second hole above the last hole, permitting this paper to be used for double-holed as well as triple-holed binders, caused me to take the paper out too soon, and I count the lines to find that this is line 30 way down here, so it seems this paper is SMALLER, too) and am still rather spaced out so there's nothing I can think of doing but putting on "Norma" and listening to it, but after the first two sides I really feel awful and lay down on the sofa and relax for awhile, and then I feel I have to type about the lovely people I thought I saw on the subway, so I type OH LORD I LOVE THE BEAUTY OF THY HOUSE, even though I can't find the quote that I was thinking of, on DIARY 951-952, and then I type up PAINTING PARTY AND POT as DIARY 953-969, and that's nineteen pages for today, which makes me feel good. John says he'll meet me at Pete's Tavern at 7:30, but it's 7:45 before he arrives, and I get the idea that Pete's has quite a few gay guy couples eating there, and it's rather pleasant, but John has clams, which are awful, and I have a veal parmigiana that's pretty good, and we're up to the play, only to see his friend the director standing in the doorway complaining that an actress called in only half an hour before to say that she was so sick she couldn't go on, so the performance is cancelled. We commiserate with him for a bit, and wait around for him to join us for cocktails, but he says he has to get somewhere else, so we're off to the subway and up to my place, and we lay on the sofa and I put on Wagner, but though John is terribly sexed and tries very hard to be sexy, I just don't feel anything more than a generalized sensuality which feels very good to hold him and touch him, but I just don't feel like getting erect. The music is quite sensuous, but it's really not such an orgasm, unless you really program your movements to it, which I don't want to take the trouble to do. So we lay on the sofa until about 11, when John finally says he's had enough, so then we go into the bed, and he tries to fool around some more, but when I don't respond, he's seemingly happy enough to roll off to the side and let us both get some sleep, since I still beg that I have to catch up with all the sleep I lost around the marathon, which we talk about, and I've almost decided I've had enough of it, and we both fall asleep about 11:30.
DIARY 976
TUESDAY, MARCH 10. Up at 7 to have sex with him, finally, and I admit to him that I usually find it more pleasant to have sex in the morning. He showers and shaves with the stuff he brought along in a smart briefcase, and then is off to work about 8:30, and I stay in bed. I listen to "Norma" for one last time through the day, and call Joe and he's at work, but he'll meet me at Larre's at 6:30, which he does, and he doesn't like any of the food, saying it's just dreadful, and I really don't agree with him, but at least we won't be eating there anymore. Then we walk up to the "Norma," and the seats are quite good, and it gets off to a bad start when Sutherland doesn't take the high note on "il mieto" that I remember Callas did on the recording, and then I'm onto Marty's chain of thought that bel canto means a long flowing line, and I'm disappointed when Sutherland speeds it up to make it easier for her. It's adequately done, but it has none of the breathtaking quality it could have had had she slowed it down considerably. Horne comes up with some tremendously spectacular swoops from high notes to full-throated auditorium-filling low notes in instants, and some of her solos are really the high part of the opera. Bergonzi isn't as good as Marty would have him made out to be, but when he called me the following day to ask about the performance, he suggested "Bergonzi was too fine and finished a singer" for the dynamic duo of Sutherland and Horne. But he's a lousy actor, of tiny stature, and doesn't nearly carry his own weight on the stage, let alone someone of the combined weights of Sutherland and Horne, billowing in what Joe calls "Venetian" costumes with yards and yards of flowing pleats. Their duets are sheer spectacle, going into double trills in perfect pitch and tempo, magnificent and once-in-a-lifetime duets, and the audience was quite appreciative, but they really didn't go out of their minds. Joe and I talked quite a bit during intermission, and he said "I'll see you tomorrow," and I forgot for the moment we'd also bought tickets to "Satyricon."
DIARY 983
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11. Also, Marty wanted me to help him at the library with his Caruso book, but I said I was going to Lois' on Wednesday, and couldn't. Remember I have tickets to the "Satyricon" about 12, and call Joe, and he said he expected me to call him. Say I want to get there early to be sure of getting a good seat, and we're there at 1:45, looking at the odd audience, talking about the opera last night, and then the film starts, and it's full of pretty people who even can act rather well, and it's quite a study of decadence and degeneracy, and an amusing story about a woman who hands her dead husband's body to save her current lover's life, and I poke Joe and say, "See, I TOLD you the important thing is HOW LONG love lasts." There are other good things about it, and I think of many revelations, such as DEATH DYING, which is quite a jolt, and about the goodness of being gay, and other things which I forget, but I'll be seeing it again, so I'll take better notes then. We're out at 4:25, and we look at an audience who looks quite as bizarre as the cast, and Evan was there at 9:45 and said the audience was TRULY weird. Back to wash up and change and get to John's about 6, and then Mike Shamus and Calvin come in, and Mike is rather familiar, and it's not until the next day that I decide that Peter Ream had mentioned him before, and maybe I'd even been in his shop on 59th. Cal is on a diet, so he doesn't eat, and so the three of us eat as the fourth one watches, and then we're smoking pot from his pipe and I'm beginning to swim way out, comfortable that I'm with John, and happy at the though that both Mike and Cal seem to be enjoying my company. I tell John I really want to go to the orgy, and John agrees that we can go to see what it's like, and in case we're not pleased by it, we can leave. So we leave the apartment about 8:15 and walk through the cold streets until 8:20, and then inside for the tale told in DIARY 977-982, and out about 11:30, back to John's and I'm about coming down, and since he's come twice, he needn't come again, and we cuddle and talk about it, and we both feel quite comfortable with each other, and we're dozing entwined, and then we move somewhat further apart in order to fall asleep.
DIARY 984
THURSDAY, MARCH 12. On Tuesday I tried calling Lois but her line was busy and busy, so I take the opportunity to see the two-hour bus schedule and find to my amazement that there's a ONE hour train schedule, and for only $2.75, too, and then Lois calls me and says she's been trying to get ME, and what do I know about the RIVER. That's quite a jolt, and she arranges to meet me at the station. I do almost nothing all day except read around the apartment, writing nothing, talking on the telephone, and then pack about 3 to get down to the terminal at 3:30, forgetting underwear, and onto the train at 4 to find there's a 10¢ premium for tickets bought on the train. There's a cute fellow sitting across from me, but I read a couple pages of the Laing book, but watch the rain falling outside and ignoring the fellow sitting next to me who tries to make conversation. Train gets in on time and there's Lois in her cruddy green car, and she looks as I remembered her, and we talk about Elaine and Shyam and Ram Dass and how much she likes him, and then we're to her house where I talk with her daughter, her other daughter comes in which her former husband, we sit around trying to impress each other, talking about computers and business and books and writing and acid and tennis and marriage, and we sit down to dinner quickly, for he's in a rush, and then we're out in the driving rain down to Princeton for a frame house converted into an ashram, and Shyam and I make no contact at all: he smokes, is nervous, refuses to look me in the eye, can't seem to think of what to say, and I sort of take Lois under my wing and say, "Everything's OK, you can like him, but I don't have to like him, right?" and we decide both she AND I are higher than he is. Chant and drink some soda, and then into the kitchen where we watch Shyam and his guru eating, and it's rather unpleasant, and I feel like an interloper, which I am, and Lois talks with her friends and I'm turned off by the looks of the whole thing. She stays as long as she wants, and I let her have her lead, and then we leave about 11, driving back until about midnight, and we sit around and talk (see next page).
DIARY 990
FRIDAY, MARCH 13. Wakened by two telephone calls, then dress and shower, talk to her about her relations with many other men in her bedroom, where she makes it obvious she's wearing nothing beneath the covers, and then some friend comes in who's nervous about the divorce she's getting today, and we drive off to Pettie School to pick up her son Mark, and sadly he has as big a pot as his father, but he's cute enough, though woefully un-hip in his conversation and vocabulary. We stop in a lunchroom to eat, and I have fish, and get back to their place where he galumphs up and down the split-level stairs, she asks me to decorate the place and I think of Joe (who thinks of his sister), and about 2 we're off to the station (I forget my jacket and the book in her closet), and I sit around, vaguely wanting something to read, but there's nothing anywhere worthwhile, and get on the train about 3 and get home to let out a load of diarrhea, which I think may be caused by the water change in New Jersey, or maybe the strange chicken and wine for dinner, or the fish that noon, and then I put things away and read the mail and get ready to go to John's for dinner again, and his friends are supposed to arrive at 7, but get there at 7:50, being stuck on the subway for an hour, and Ken, the dancer and choreographer, is open and rather cute, and Sergio is charming, reserved, and seemingly quite intelligent, and his good looks grow on one, and the dinner of noodles buried under a clammy clam sauce is disquieting for me, but I eat it all. Drive over to the cold dance theater on 20th, and most of the program is rather poor, but the audience, particularly the squarely handsome, large handed, bright-eyed giant farmer type who seemed to know everyone, is nice, we have coffee upstairs and I meet Jeff Duncan, now a businessman and entrepreneur, and we five drive up to my place to talk until 12, when Sergio and Ken have to catch a bus back to DC, though they want to move to NYC, which we talk about at length, and Jeff finally gets the hint to leave, and John and I laugh about how three of us, except for John and Sergio, have neck chains on which I was so tentative about wearing. Shit again.
DIARY 991
SATURDAY, MARCH 14. John has to leave fairly early to get into work for a few hours before his dance class, and I remain in bed, tired, having gotten up about 6 am to shit again very unpleasantly, and I roll over to catch some more sleep, and about 10 am I move my knee and encounter a slimy wetness, and I roll the covers back to find I've actually shit all over the bed! Out in disgust and strip the bed, washing it out as much as possible in the sink, then taking everything downstairs to wash them, and thank goodness everything is working, and I spray the damp mattress, hoping the smell will go away, and it seems to. Dry everything and put it right back on the bed, hoping it won't happen again. Down to buy a bottle of Kaopectate, taking two or three doses, but still the shits come, but I feel reasonably well after dinner and before Joe and Bob's party. John comes over, I got him an invitation, as a farmer with a green thumb, with blue coveralls with nothing underneath, and a zipper that works from the bottom and the top, and I spent a good part of the day getting my fatigues pressed, and go completely in green. We get there early, and Tom and Rink come in, and we four talk about Switzerland and how awful it is for a foreigner to live there, his liking of the US in his stays with Swissair, he's from Holland, we talk about Rio and other travels, and Tom rather tries me and John by asking "Are you lovers?" and neither John nor I can say yes, but I tell him we're seeing where the relationship ends, and Tom limps his braced foot over to a chair where an old disgusting fellow comforts him with a drink. Prizes are awarded, and I get a terribly phallic green shillelagh, the best of the lot. Food is rather dreadful, and I get more and more uncomfortable, shitting a load in their bathroom, and at midnight, after dessert, I say to John we should leave, and we do, I apologize for feeling badly, cuddle, and he leaves and I to bed. I wear underwear in the hopes of catching anything that might happen, and I shit at 2 before I get to bed, reading the Times a bit, but feeling rather awful, get up at 6 to shit, and then up at 10 to shit again.
DIARY 992
SUNDAY, MARCH 15. By the time I shit again at 1:30, dreading the fact that it's getting even more often than the 4 hour schedule I was on, I run out of Kaopectate. John and I wanted to go on a picnic, but it's raining and very cold out, so that would have fallen through anyway. He talks about the Nicholas Roerich Museum up on 107th, or somewhere, and he drives in, after refusing the idea that we walk there, and we get up there at 2:30 in time to look at his "you are there" evocations of the Himalayas and India and sunsets and lotus-lands, which Joe would hate for their pictorial qualities, and there's a cello and piano recital by someone for his dead wife, which a chewy-gummed old lady with a mod slip-in slip-out watch on insists on applauding for, saying indignantly "Well, you SHOULD applaud," when someone shushes her. The pieces are dreadfully played, and we leave during the intermission, cruising down Columbus to find a drug store which sells cheap Kaopectate, and we get home about 4:30 and I shit again, and then John has to go home to change, I seem to remember, and I fix the place up a bit, having gotten pretzel sticks and groceries yesterday for the onslaught, before Lou and Phil knock on the door at 5, having mistaken the time of the performance, and we talk about travels to India and Japan and South America, too, and then Joan and Stewart and Evan show up at 6, and John is here too (maybe he DID stay?) and we (Yes, in talking with him, it seems he DID stay) begin watching "Wizard of Oz," passing the pipe around with rather good stuff, and Evan's brought over three chocolate bars, I get out the pretzel sticks, they go rather quickly, and then I pass around some other things like the salami cheese, which I don't care for, and candies, and we get high and I'm taking each platitude of "Wizard" as God's truth, very spaced out. Evan and Phil collect money and go out for food, getting back in 45 minutes with junk, and I furnish bread and baloney and cheese for sandwiches, and the production of "David Copperfield" is confusing, they leave at 10, Evan stays on till 10:30, and I read a bit of the Times and then fall into bed rather early, still high.
DIARY 993
MONDAY, MARCH 16. Shit last night mightily, then at 6 am and at 9 am and at noon, and I've finished a second bottle of Kaopectate and it's not done me a bit of good. Call Joe to get the address of his doctor, and make an appointment with Doctor Schiffman. Then the phone rings and it's Eizo Motohashi, a friend of Paul's who wants some place in NYC to store his paintings, so I ask him to come over, and he's cute and cuddly, saying that he enjoys affection and knowing someone, and he caresses my shoulder and arm and tit, and reads my palm, transferring his sweating palms to mine to say that I'm nervous, and we talk about his painting and Japan and palmistry, and finally at 4 I say I really must leave to get down to the doctor's, and he says he'll be in touch with me, leaving me his address in DC. I subway down to a lovely office and a spectacular icon-wall filled with mortars and pestles and bronzes and brasses, and a good comforting doctor who says I have no temperature so it couldn't be connected with the flu, and prescribes me Lomotil, which he says shot up in value with the astronauts plugged it, and I go across the street to get it, then subway up to New York State Theater to find they have no returns for tomorrow's "Mefistofele," but, surprise, they have two for the last performance Sunday matinee. Call Mom back and find she didn't stay very long in Florida, only from Thursday to Sunday, and she likes her lot and she'd going to buy a small house for $8000 and retire down there in two years ... fine, but what's she going to do to pass the time? She seems to have forgotten about her anger with me that morning she called and I was so dense. Talked to Grandma about the weather and the mail strike, then Rita got on the phone and we talked about records and about travels, and she's not taking the Round-the-World yet, thank goodness. Feeling pretty lousy with the shits, though it stops completely this evening when I took the Lomotil twice, once in the pharmacy at 5, once just before bed at midnight, so I risk going to bed without the underwear on, hoping I won't shit all over the place and mess it up again. What a sickness!
DIARY 994
TUESDAY, MARCH 17. Take one pill in the morning, hoping it's about over, but somewhat after the one pill in the afternoon I shit again, and it's still diarrhea, so I take another pill and get back to the two pill scheme, which I'd stopped too soon. Remember to cancel the haircut with Frank at the Woodward just at 2:15, and do so, saying I'll call him for another appointment, but the next one I call in about three or four weeks will be the Bart that John speaks so highly of. And if he doesn't work after three or four haircuts, I can then go to the one who doesn't do so well with Azak's hair, even though he's even more expensive than the $7.50 that John's guy charges. Call Cyndy and tell her I won't be coming down for lunch with her, since I feel so lousy, and then check my wallet to find that I have only $3 in singles! Call a number of people including Joe and John and Azak, who calls me to say that he HASN'T gone away on vacation as he'd planned, but he's staying in the city, and enjoying it very much. I say, yes, I know how much you can enjoy the city, but decide I'll just have to go to the opera by myself. John calls from Boosey and Hawkes and I invite him over since he's in the neighborhood and he wants to waste some time before going off to his dance class, so he comes over, but I don't find I have no money until after he leaves at 5:30. Take 16 quarters and try the cleaners, who says no, and Gristede's, who does it for singles, and at least I can pay for one ticket. Get to the box office at 5:45 to find they'd turned in 6 tickets between 4:30 and 5, which the first guy missed, but then six and four tickets came in and I was at the front of the line by 6:30. Then at 6:45 a woman came in with a single in the third ring for $5.50, and I bought it and skipped back home for dinner and got back for the 8:15 opera, building it up for the German woman who'd never heard it before, and delighted over seeing DiVirgilio's name in place of Nagy's, and Cruz-Romo is even better than the first, and talk with Tom Thompson who has reservations, but except for the orchestra, which is not quite as electric as before, I think it's a great performance, even without John.
DIARY 995
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18. Down to get to the bank to get some money, and find no mail because of a wildcat strike of the mail workers that began today. Get checks cashed at the bank and stop at the bookstore and pick up the "Satyricon," which I start immediately I get back, and there's Peter Farb's book on the Indian, and I buy Celine's "Castle to Castle," and McLuhan's thing on Media, and a Bertrand Russell book of Essays, now that he's dead, and somewhere in here I even actually finish "Varieties of Religious Experience," which it seems I've been reading for about a year. So now I have lot of things to read. Can't resist starting the "Satyricon," and it's not quite as good as the movie, and the homosexuality is rather unexcitingly written. Clean the inside of the windows because I can't stand looking out through the crud anymore, from all the smoking and from the fuming furnace which I wish they'd fix, because there are big black streaks coming in the front doorway, and the bathroom walls just won't stay clean. Then Norma calls and says she's staining and won't make it to the witch lecture tonight, and John calls and decides he doesn't want to go to the Dallapiccola retrospective, but DOES want to go to the lecture, so suddenly I'm going, and I call Evan to remind him, and he'll join us, and call Lou, who hasn't seen Joan, but he suggests I call Bill Dremak for Mike's number, and she's at Bill's for dinner, and agrees to join us. I grab a quick dinner and Evan comes down, and typical for Wednesday and WSDG night, it's snowing and raining very hard. We get our handwriting samples in, then Joan and Mike arrive, and John comes in, and Dr. Leo Louis Martello treats us to an enlightening and bitchy commentary about people and handwriting and personality, and Joan gets him to sign her book, and we have coffee and everyone leaves, having enjoyed it, and John and I drive back to his place in Brooklyn, since I'm feeling a bit better, having not shit once today, which is quite a relief, since it's finally through, though I take my pills with me, just in case. He smiles and I say I'm worried, I just might be falling in love with him. Nice.
DIARY 996
THURSDAY, MARCH 19. Wake at 6 am and sex for awhile, then back into town exhausted at 9, then flop into bed until about noon, but there's no recurrence of the shits, and I defecate once, and it's somewhat solid, though still smells to high heaven and is that strange yellow color. Arnie calls from somewhere around town and suggests the Russian 70 exhibit of photographs at the Gallery of Modern Art, now know as the New York Cultural Center, and when I hear it's free, I figure it's OK. He comes and gives me a couple of articles he's saved for me, something about Anthos, something about Bob's gallery, something about a Jewish Institute for Togetherness, and then I can't take him anymore and suggest we get out to the exhibit. It goes on for four floors, much of it rather the same, much of it uninspired, except for a few sports shots, some rather nice nudes, including a frigid pair from the back sitting on an ice floe, and a nice kind of polarization producing an etching effect of a snowy forest, but there's not too much that's great, though some of the volcanoes are fetching, and there's a shot of a rocket streaking ABOVE the clouds which is quite electrifying. Make sure he doesn't come back up with me, and he insists that I call him and "Let's keep in touch." OK, we'll see. Get down to the group at a time that I hope is early, and meet a fellow who was there last week who reports about the terrible hassle with Burr, who stalked out with an argument against Jacques, and how sad Jacques was about it, and Cal didn't show up, and we fear he's missing. Also a Korean or Indonesian is there, for the first time, and the two additions are certainly not any great shakes. Jacques is disturbed when he arrives, so I decide not to tell him until after, and not to bring it up in the group, since there are a few people who want to work, including Cal, who ends up being forgotten by Jacques, lousy. I tell Jacques no, privately, afterwards, and he's angry but I think doesn't show it, and he says he'll send me a bill, and I subway uptown, feeling rather sorry about stopping it, but happy about the free evening it will give me for John.
DIARY 997
FRIDAY, MARCH 20. Up at 8:45 and get ready for Bob's gallery, and Carlin arrives shortly after me, the baby falls on her head on the floor, sending Nina into near-tears, and Bob rushes around organizing everything, and the guy from Newsweek doesn't show up, and the first people come in at 11:30, and things are slow, so I recommend we eat before Liberace shows up at 1, and we do, and it gets busier, but Libby fails to show. Bob returns at 1:30, eats, we take care of the gallery, then he passes around the pipe, and I get very spaced out, fantasizing that the next person who comes in will be someone who'll fall in love with me, and THAT doesn't work out. He also uses the opportunity to question me about him and Avi, and I say that yes, he DID hurt me when he talked to me that evening, particularly about not wanting to be with me that Wednesday night. He says I shouldn't be feeling hurt, that we're still as close as ever, and he asks me if I still love him, and I say I'm not really sure, I'll have to think about it. We both agree I'm happy to be working things out with John, and that Avi has a lot of problems about seeing other people at the same time he's seeing Bob, while Bob isn't seeing anyone else. Bob still doesn't hit me as being honest, but I can't bring myself to tell him that. He's just too much of an opportunist, even to giving Carlin only $2 from the till, but nothing the second Saturday, and probably nothing tomorrow, either. Carlin tells me about the president of Weyerhauser and his other trips and tricks, shows me photos of his other works, and wonders where to go from here, and I suggest the "Purchaser" sculptures, which entitles the purchaser to place HIMSELF into an idea photographed and conceived by Carlin, but that doesn't go over. Things are quiet so I leave at 4 and float home, feeling very high. Eat separately and meet Joe at the ballet at 8:15, and "Cello Concerto" seems shorter and drab without Blankshine, "Animus" has such dreadful music I can hardly see the dance, "Confetti" is smartly amusing and fun, I'd like to see it again, "Clowns" is dreadful though.
DIARY 998
SATURDAY, MARCH 21. Joe wakes me at 9 to say he's bringing over his Sibelius paper for me to type for him today, since he's going to Philly tomorrow, and then Bob calls at 10:30 to beg me to work for him at the gallery, but I say I have to type the paper, and then call Avi and talk to him about why he said no to Bob, also, and I remark that I might charge him $10 for the day, and that annoys Avi, who says I don't charge Joe for typing. It's not at all the same thing. It's a lovely day outside, and I'm feeling energetic enough to finish vacuuming the apartment, which I'd started so long before, which had been such a mess after the Wizard party and all their eating, and when I finish with that I do the outside of the windows, having clean ones for the first time in ages, and I'm feeling rather tired, but have to get to the paper. Joe calls at 5 asking if it's finished, and I say it's not, so he can't come and pick it up after work. Azak might come over, but I call him and he's busy, and call Avi and ask him to come over, too, and he's disturbed when he finds Azak isn't coming over, for some reason. I finish typing the paper about 8:15, and proofread it just in time for Joe and Avi to arrive at 8:30, and they listen to the Moody Blues recording that Rita sent me for my birthday, and Joe reads the paper, and they sit for just a bit, talking uncomfortably, and leave early at 10. I get down to buy the Times, and get back to read everything except the inner part of the entertainment section by 12:15 when John calls to say that his dinner party is over and he's waiting for my arrival. Subway out rather quickly, getting there before 1, and he serves me some blanc mange in a glass, which is very filling, though the gelatin didn't gel, and he cleans the mess up from his partridge, we listen to music for a bit, and then we caress and manage to make each other come before falling asleep almost in each other's arms by 1:30. He's managed to get enough accustomed to us that he whispers "I think I love you, too" into my ear, and one of the marvels of the relationship is how we both seem to want it, be afraid of it, and go at the same pace.
DIARY 999
SUNDAY, MARCH 22. Wake up briefly at 6:30, and fall back asleep until 8, when we wake and cuddle and talk and kiss briefly, then doze until 10, when we repeat the same thing, maybe this time even coming, and then finally get out of bed at 1. He wants to know what to do today, and I find the weather too dreadful to pull out the sheet about the Tarrytown vicinity exhibits, and suggest the Tibetan Museum, which doesn't open until April, and then I'm reminded of the Staten Island Zoo and the snake feeding at 3, and suggest that, so we're dressed and drive out onto the crowded expressways to the island. Get lost a couple of times but make it there by 2:45, look at the monkeys and leopards and the lovely fish exhibits, and then it's 3:30 and we watch mambas and rattlers and boa constrictors engulp, more or less slowly, one even from the rear, which I'd never seen before, larger or smaller black and white mice. Even watch two snakes strike at each other while battling over one mouse, and John is gratified when he reports to the keeper that "The big one took it away from the little one" and is told "That's OK, the little one's had two already." Stay around there until 4, looking at the birds and at the fish, then back to the car and I'm starved, insisting on something to eat, so we stop in the little town square and go into a pizza place that has no pizza, and I have an egg salad sandwich and he has beef and peppers, and that fills the stomach for getting back to his place. He cooks the partridge for 8:30, and goes out for ice cream for the last of the hot fudge sauce, and we smoke after the shrimp soup (he's GOT to stop making so much of seafood) and the filling partridge with yummy pine nut, partridge liver, bread, truffle and mushroom filling, braised endive, and we ignore the salad when I'm stuffed. Smoke a pipeful and I get high, and the hot fudge sundae is absolutely delightful, and during the "Pines of Rome" we wallow in Baby Lotion on the floor, but I'm not quite there, and I suck his balls as he comes to cover my top half, and I hand myself off furiously covering my bottom half, and we get to bed at 11:30 absolutely exhausted.
DIARY 1000
MONDAY, MARCH 23. I made the remark about having exhausted every possibility: eaten good food until full, drunk his brand of whiskey sours until drunk, satiated on hot fudge sundae, inhaled pot, sexed until exhausted, and then drank water to ward off the coming dry night, and even had a good shit. There just was nothing more left to do after kissing and hugging and getting ready for sleep. Wake at 6:30 for another terribly straining sex session, but we really seem to enjoy doing it, and he brings in orange juice as I catch the last bit of snooze before we leave for his office at 8:15, and I find that the mail strike is STILL on, despite news to the contrary. Don't really feel like doing anything, since I still seem to be very high, and manage to do a couple of pages of the diary, but that's all I can feel like doing. Finish the "Satyricon" and enjoy that, and then put on "Ariadne" to listen to it, and discover it's just the kind of love debate Avi and Bob and I have been having, and Joe and I have been discussing. It builds to a very nice climax of music, and I'm hungry through the day, so I eat and eat and eat, breakfast of Cream of Wheat, lunch of omelet and cereal, and dinner of a rather small piece of steak which might be a bit beyond repair after having been frozen and defrosted for three days. I'd meant to eat it Saturday, but had gotten pizza with the Times instead. Watch the first half hour of Laugh-In and "Seconds" with a very dramatic introduction to the idea of a second life, and a chilling climax where the cranial drill gave him a cerebral hemorrhage for another "accident." From the lack of sleep last night, I had no trouble going to bed about 11:30 and sleeping through to the next morning. But I still had this strange sensation of being high: it was TODAY that I finished the vacuuming, and each motion seemed strangely detached from each other motion, I couldn't be sure of having seen or having done anything, VERY odd indeed!
DIARY 1003
TUESDAY, MARCH 24. Feel somewhat better from a good night's sleep, and (again this damn second hole confused me into thinking I was at the bottom of the page, and in a rage I put the page back in and type absolutely anything across the bottom merely to fill it up before going on with the diary). Read a bit of Celine's "Castle to Castle," which starts rather dreadfully, and Azak comes over at 11 to listen with me to "Ariadne," which sounds even better a second time, and Joan calls and says she wants to come over, and does so just at the end of "Ariadne." Azak has to leave to look at some desks, and Joan and I walk out with him to get down to the Knoedler Gallery on 57th to see the Dali exhibit, and it's pretty dreadful except for one of the cylinder mirror drawings in which a rather normal looking fly/insect is transformed into a perfectly diabolical devil's face, and I give my name and address, curious as to what the price might be. Back and eat a hot dog with Joan before she collapses, and watch a fag try to pick up a little old lady with red lips, blue hair, and silver horn-rimmed glasses. Joan tells me about her blue floor, and my green rug remnant will do perfectly awfully for her, and she takes it, also taking note that Marty has her photos, which by coincidence he called and told me today. Get out at 7 for dinner and canasta at Azak's, having determined that neither John nor Avi will be joining us, and there's a sign in the elevator that the boiler will be off today, and they're coming to fix it tomorrow. Get to Azak's and John arrives at 7:30, we kiss and talk, then have Azak's oniony quiche lorraine followed by broiled chicken in a butter sauce with broccoli, then a salad and rum-raison ice cream, and then we start one game, but John refuses to concentrate, and we end up talking about chains and Avi's interest in being hurt, his relationship with Cliff, which I call masochistic to Azak because he's saying he won't go to bed with him, through he wants to, and John calls Azak a sadist because he ENJOYS telling the guy no and being a cock-teaser. John says he might know someone to give Azak a talking to and even demonstration, which we all might like. Then Azak leaves without a word of explanation at 11:30, and we subway to Brooklyn, where we cuddle a bit on the sofa and get to bed, I being impressed by his handling of my horrid gaffe proposing a dinner/ticket "trade."
DIARY 1004
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25. Get back from John's at 9, and take the cards out of my pocket and decide on a game of solitaire, and it turns into a two-deck game of 10x10, then goes to 11x11, which works out nicely, and then to 12x12, which isn't so good, and I play game after game of 11x11, telling myself I should stop, but not being able to. John calls and talks, Harvey calls, back from vacation, and talks, Eddie calls and talks and says he WILL get the books, and as a result I look for more to throw away and spend about an hour reading the underlined parts of Norman Brown's "Life against Death," deciding to add it to my shelf of "important books," but can't add any to my stack of books for Eddie. Then back to the cards for more solitaire, cursing myself for getting stuck in THIS gambit again. Norma calls and we talk a long time about "saying what you feel when you feel it" and make a date for lunch next Wednesday, and then I play a long game of War with two decks, then more solitaire, then try a game of "Up and Down with 7's to Start," and then a few more games of solitaire, and I've got a headache, it's getting dark outside, I'm cursing myself, my stomach is actually paining me, I take my temperature and it's only 97.9 degrees, and debate calling Schiffman about it, but Norma says that's typical for someone who's not very active, and then it's cold in the apartment without heat, too. Eat breakfast and lunch of bacon and brownies, and defrost a steak for dinner, and finally at dark, about 5:30, put the cards into the closet with feeling of great relief, though the day was a complete waste, and get down to typing ten pages of old diary stuff and GROUP SEX WITH JOHN, and feel rather good for having gotten down to it. It's awfully cold and I sit and shiver with a heating pad, even looking at "Hee-Haw" to see what it's like and channel switching, but finding nothing, and don't feel at all like reading. Just don't feel like doing a darn thing elsewise, so I leave underwear on, wash in cold water, put on pajamas and robe, and flop into bed with the heating pad at 11 pm, warm up the bed rather quickly, shut off the heating pad and fall asleep with no trouble.
DIARY 1005
THURSDAY, MARCH 26. Wake at 10, feeling almost warm, but there still isn't any heat, so I dress warmly, am hungry for breakfast but I haven't any milk, so I get groceries and a few drugs (this was yesterday, I forgot), today I get out to take the cleaning out, since John's supposed to sleep here tonight after the Joffrey tickets he got free for us, and stop in at the florist's to send a tulip plant or a gardenia to Mom in General Hospital, saying "Happy Easter, Happy Recovery, and Eat Well, Love, Bob," and get back to read a bit more of "Castle to Castle," really awful, find the first bit of mail after the mail strike has been called after a bit over a week, and find a note in the elevator saying that the boiler crews have been fired, so we should call the city and complain, and I tell John about it, and he says his dance class has been cancelled, so he'll go home, drive back to the city, and I can stay with him tonight. What a great guy he is! Back to typing somewhat easier and catch up with a lot of stuff, almost catching up to date, getting 17 pages done, and feeling particularly good as I type page 999 and page 1000. Then decide I really should give Eddie more books, so I scour through all the shelves and find the five which I then read through and extracted onto BOOKS THROWN AWAY, on DIARY 1001-1002, to complete the 17 pages. Then Bonnie calls, ostensibly asking for Joannie's whereabouts, but I talk to her for a half hour about how she really SHOULD work on the chair, do his shirts, and make something of a useful person of herself around the house, provided she DOES like Norman and would prefer staying with him to going to the movies with some of her girlfriends. She really does build up trivia, but I tell her I absolutely understand about being taken up with doing nothing, witness playing Solitaire all day yesterday! Work a lot on Domino problems in the Scientific American, broil a tough steak and get out to a lifeless "Three-Cornered Hat," a still-good "Confetti," and a better "Clowns" as seen from the orchestra, last row, just in front of a gasping ballet-rat audience and Uthoff and Bradley. Then over in the rain to the car and John's.
DIARY 1010
FRIDAY, MARCH 27. Back home at 9, work for over an hour on domino problems, then it's time to get ready for Lutece with Azak, but I'd wanted to wear my tweed jacket, but discover that's the one I left with Lois, and so I must wear the suit-jacket blazer over my flowing hair which I just washed. Take too much time prettying myself up and am late getting to Azak, who's sitting in the lobby looking perfectly elegant. He has the brioche de brochette, the veal scallopine, and the apple tart, which I take half of, but he won't take any piece of my custard, almond and cinnamon tart because he can't stand custard, almond, and cinnamon. I started with the patés, which are pretty good, but I'll stop having them now, and the chicken en croute, filled with a lovely stuffing under the crust, and perfectly tender chicken breast. The Beaujolais festival is going on, with hot cheese rolls and special wine for $6, but I don't like Beaujolais, since Azak says it's exquisite. He loves the whole meal, and we finish rather quickly by 2, he seeing someone he'd been to bed with, some fellow who's RCA's representative in Italy, who keeps cruising us, and David Merrick with some pretty blond superstar who looks a bit like a young Marlene Dietrich. Then we're into the hunting shop next door, where Azak prices elephant boots and belts, then across to the boutique where the guy says elegantly "All our trousers have straight legs, we don't carry those vulgar bell-bottoms." Azak murmurs "I see," and we walk up Third to look into a couple of shops, then we part at 57th, he to see John Guessner, I to stagger back home, type six pages up to DIARY 1009, and then begin to tackle the correspondence pile by writing to Bill, Paul, Don, and Lois, feeling very good about that. The heat STILL isn't on, so I call John and invite myself over, and he arranged to drive up 8th to 56th and pick me up on the corner after his stint with Dance Theater Workshop, and he does so, we stop to get ice cream and chocolate sauce, have a good sundae, then we strip and he gets out Abolene cream and gives me a lovely massage, but I'm limp, and we talk about it some, and I'm very sorry about it, but he is too, so it's nice.
DIARY 1011
SATURDAY, MARCH 28. Up early, then fall back asleep, then up at 8 and have lovely sex until about 9, and he gets busy making absolutely perfect omelets with truffles, except the truffles don't taste too very strongly, by using his special omelet pan, jiggling it continuously so the bubbles don't form and "it's lighter" as he describes it, and folding it over perfectly so that it's the classic three-fold. Then there's juice and his strong filtered coffee, which I'm learning, to his delight, to drink without sugar and milk, and buckwheat muffins, which are rather heavy and hard, but go well with the truffle omelet. I get at the dishes while he dresses, and then he has to go in to work, and I stay around to read a bit of Farb's Indians before taking off at 1:15 to take an entirely different subway all the way up to Bob's (standing all that way, too) at 2, and there's an enormous crowd almost continuously there, and Nina tells me all about the party last night, with the "Omelet King" and the chapel with the lightshow and spotlights, the 500 guests, all of them gay and just strikingly beautiful, in every kind of clothes, with the elegance of the house of the New York representative of Christian Dior. Carlin is sometimes down even while customers are there, because the day is too long for him, and I refuse the offer to smoke. Then some absolute beauty comes in, whom I find does the posing for the lovely bodies of Crowl, and he's got beautiful eyes, skin, face, muscles, ass, body, personality, hair, posture, sexiness, box, clothes, and he's just too much to believe, even shaking hands when he leaves. How marvelous it would be to go to bed with him, but what a self-conscious nothing anyone in bed with HIM must feel! We chat through the day, I read Look about drugs, and then it's 6, ride home with Carlin, write a letter to Mom and then phone Rita at 9 to ask about the operation on Mom on Tuesday, then get the Times and read it all except the theater section when John calls, meets me on the corner, and we go to Mike's, where I swear I've been before, take a vodka, refuse pot, and at 12:15 we're to the "Club Jim" which is a flop, and bed at 2:30.
DIARY 1018
SUNDAY, MARCH 29. (GOOFED: I subwayed to John's on the 27th, that corner meeting was before Club Jim on the 28th. Also, the omelet and the muffins were this morning, yesterday there were the buckwheat pancakes which were so very tasty and hearty. Such a delight to have breakfast at Johns!) It's been hailing after the rain all morning, and finally it turns into actual snow, coming down in enormous wet flakes, and we get into the car and onto the busy West Side Highway and slog through the really wet territory to find an enormous line waiting for the first box office offering of tickets for the Royal Ballet, and we're ten minutes early for the "Mefistofele," and I tell John the plot of the opera between the acts, and do a rather good job of it, since he doesn't ask me any questions during the performance. Nagy is back in the part, but he's not nearly so bad this time, but no DiGiuseppe, Cruz-Roma isn't quite as good as before, and the music is still stupendous, but I wish they could amplify it more. We have a long talk about "what Boito would have wanted" on the way in, and a talk about how good an opera it is after. He's going to the "Carmina Burana" this evening, and I buy a ticket during intermission, and we're both fagged out by the end of the opera. It's still snowing, very hard by this time, about two inches on the ground, and we cuddle under his umbrella. He's hungry and I think of the Morning Star, so we're down there for veal breast, pretty good with a rich gravy, and he has fresh squash, which makes me change my puny green beans for that, and we're out by 5:15 to flop into bed, rather chilly, but with the heating pad and each other, we're soon warm. Tom Thompson calls at 6 to invite me somewhere, and just before we leave at 7 John Connolly calls to invite me to dinner and canasta, but I can't do it, and we're out in the cold again, and he actually likes the ballet done by the Pennsylvania Ballet, which is a nice alternative if they can't get DeLavallade and Company, and we move downstairs for it, having a neat third row center seat for the whole ballet. Even "Oedipus Rex" seemed rather good with John sitting behind me. Then to his place for cuddle and bed.
DIARY 1019
MONDAY, MARCH 30. Wake tired and subway home and read the Times and work the puzzle, and Joe enters and we're off to Lutece, walking gingerly through the snowy streets, and I tell him the Beaujolais was not to my taste, and the head waiter (an older one than the cute eyebrowed one that took care of Azak and me) came with a Bordeaux which was rather heavy and heady, and by the end of the meal I was wishing for a lighter, tarter Beaujolais just for contrast. I started out with the Soupe de Vollaile, which was rather tasteless, but with bits of what tasted like sausage but what Joe said was strained chicken breast, and little bits of dried beef in the bottom of the dish. Joe started out with some fish dish which I didn't like, though I tasted it, and then I had the kidneys and he had something else in the fish family, and it was good. For dessert he had fix or six of the most enormous strawberries in captivity, with a cream sauce, and I had the caramel custard with the Bavaroise sauce, really very tasty. We sat and talked until about 2:45, and then Joe looked into the same windows that Azak did, and he wanted to see the Milky Way, so we walked all the way up Third, to find it gone from 68th Street, only at the 8th Street. We decided not to go down, and walked across the park. By that time I was thoroughly exhausted, thinking definitely something must be wrong with me. I absolutely decided I have to check back with the doctor and have an amoeba test: something HAD to be wrong with me. Back home about 4:30, and by the time I finished with the Times and the mail, it was 7, and I phoned Mom, to hear she's coming home on Friday, the flower I sent was lovely, Mom and Rita were there, and we talked for about fifteen minutes. Then I didn't need to eat, and subwayed to John's at 8, telling him all about the meal, arranging to take HIM next week. We talked about opera and the dance, then he gave me the massage I mistakenly described as happening last Friday (it didn't, since I got there about midnight last Friday), and we talked long and long about our mutual sex hang-ups, and fell asleep very close, feeling good about the relationship.
DIARY 1020
TUESDAY, MARCH 31. Subway back home (yesterday I picked up a mirror, today I looked rather wistfully at the same trash-heap, but there was nothing interesting there) and again do nothing through the morning until Eddie calls and says he overslept his dentist's appointment, and he'll be over at 1 so we can get to the 3 pm movie. He hasn't eaten, so I prepare some cream of potato soup and some toasted sandwiches for us, and we eat and talk and I show him the Colt drawings, having forgotten that he dislikes muscled men and drawings, so he's not impressed. He picks up the books I'd sorted out for him, but in the bus up to 72nd the bag rips and he stops into a Food Fair, asking how much a shopping bag would cost, and the girl frowns and says he can have one free. We stroll up Madison to 85th Street, and he cruises the cute proprietors of a lamp shop, comes over a Grecian torso in a shop window, and we enjoy the walk up, getting there just in time for the film to start in a theater filled with talking kids and even louder parents. The film goes on too long, boring in parts, completely unconnected, though there are rather fantastic Italian churches drawn in arty washes for a Beethoven piano concerto and a nice ice skating fantasy for Snoopy, but the main plot about the spelling bee is unnecessarily traumatic. Out and walk him over to the subway, and then I walk back west and again walk across the park, stopping to look at some very cute people in the ramble, and I study the leafless trees, and the only sign of spring is in the yellowing branches of the willow across the small pond, but everywhere else is snow and slush, though green grass is beginning to peep up, and the people are certainly out in large numbers. Home to get dinner and begin watching a TV program about Fellini which I don't want to leave, and get to Carnegie Recital Hall to a worried John just at 8:30, but we have reserved seats for the viola recital, and some of it isn't bad, though there seem to be errors and uncertainties about the Bach Suite, which is the only thing I know: much of the rest is just stupidity. Heat is STILL off, so to John's for cuddling and bed at 12.