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1970 6 of 8

DIARY 1375

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. He's up and out of bed at 7, and I'm too lazy to move until 8:30, partly because of the disappointment of his leaving me, partly because I really don't have anything to do. He hasn't read my outline yet, so after breakfast I see what books Bill's reading and start into "Powers that Be," which John finds is a Dutton book, and I find interesting. Onto the road about 11, into Canada and down route 2, picking up a hitchhiker from British Columbia who's on his way to Europe for the autumn, and then down side routes through camping areas and down route 3 to lunch of fish and chips at 1 in Harvey or Hector or someone, and continue down the boring countryside to St. Stephen, which I think is as pretty as St. Andrew, but it isn't, so we're across to Calais, being asked many questions and having the trunk searched at customs, and then down route 1, stopping at the St. Croix Island overlook, where the tide is going out at the rate of 10 inches every 15 seconds, and I find it eternally fascinating, while John seems a bit impatient with the whole thing, though the hulk being almost on dry land when we left, having been in the middle of the water when we got there, caused him a double-take. Down 1 and John admits it's deadly boring, so I start driving at route 189, turning down 191, going off on a bumpy road only to be stopped by a "Keep out, Owner in Residence" sign just before the ocean, and continue down to Cutler, which is beautiful with its wharves high and drying, and the mud flats going on forever in the river delta. Through Machias and down the Machiasport peninsula to Starboard, stopping ON the ocean floor at high tide, and over the shingle to low-tide point, over seaweed covered rocks to watch snails in tide pools, shiver in the raw wind, then back to the car and up to find Helen's crowded and Ship and Shore offering cocktails, so John has raw swordfish which he loves and I overcooked liver which is tasty with onions, and we leave just after 8, going up 192 through the deserted dark, stopping three times to look at the stars, and John's exhausted "almost to insanity" as I finish driving up 1 by 11:15, and we fall into bed at once.

DIARY 1376

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. He's up and out of bed at 7, I at 7:10 to shower. He remarks about my taking a shower and cleaning my teeth, and I frankly state that I'm not interested in him leaping out of bed without doing anything every morning, and he grins in shame and admits that that's a sweet thing for me to say. I wander around the house after catching up on the three pages I needed to do to catch up on the diary, and get drawn back to the pile of maps that I started looking through to find back roads through Canada and Maine, and turn them over until I come to a map of the Bible-lands, and immediately get re-interested in finding where the Garden of Eden is. Locate a Bible (along with five others) in the barn and find them described as the "Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates," and try to trace out the configuration which would result if the Hiddekel is the Tigris and the Gihon is the Araxes, which starts somewhere in there, but the Euphrates coils around the Tigris, so I decide to look into the old National Geographics to see what I can find, and spend time looking up Asia Minor, Bible lands, the Garden of Eden (which traditionally is located between the Tigris and Euphrates just north of Baghdad), and Armenia, and Charlie and his girlfriend interrupt to see Bill, but he's not here, and John unplugs the vibrator from the exercise room just in time. Then we decide to take a drive in the brilliant afternoon, John packs a lunch, we drive down to Island Falls on 95, over to Crystal and Patten, and past Shin Pond the road falls to what John won't do more than 15 mph on, and we rattle up the road and finally decide to stop for lunch at the Seboeis River campground, where John strips and we rock-walk for quite a bit, doing each other in the warm sun, and then up the more horrible side road to Scraggly Lake, which takes about an hour to do the 12 miles, and we look across, watching loons water ski with hooting, then I drive back, he rigid with apprehension all the way, and we're back the same road, home at 5, we eat the first batch of boeuf bourguignon, then get VERY high smoking in front of the fire, John and I whack each other off to the point of soreness, and we're in bed by 9:30, early.

DIARY 1377

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. He's up and out, but I'm rubby from the previous evening's activity, so I don't care, and decide to make an outline of what happened, since so many things took place, and sit down to outline them, but get hung up writing about the "Minnow's shadows climbing up the shale walls," and get started with a poem which I work on and on until it's about 2 and I read it to John, and he insists that it's better without my intellectualizing all over it, and he wants a copy that's almost purely emotional, so I type that up for him. I start reading more of "Powers that Be," taking notes for later, and search through Bill's books until I find the correct word "cephalopods" for the creatures I was reminded of, and called Hutch to fix the water heater, and then John wanted more groceries, so I went off to the store while he went to get the car fixed, but it couldn't be done right away, so he drove me back home. Got into the major portion of the remaining beef burgundy, and it's better the second night, and each night I get the task of making the salad. After the drive yesterday, and during the drive, too, we had a long talk about how much work he had to get done and how little time he had to do it in, and he even let me read one of the articles to pass on the computerized section for understandability. I said I wanted to see "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" tonight, and so he soaked the last little bit of popcorn left over from the last time, and we literally searched high and low to find where Bill may have kept his supply, but we didn't find it, getting into old drawers and finding lots of OTHER things, but no popcorn. Drove to the movies and we noticed (as in the paper) that Ricker students were in town, because the lobby was filled with guys, and a terribly handsome fellow in sloppy jeans was there with two obviously faggot types, and we looked at him, but no response was forthcoming. John hated the film, and his sighs of impatience and groans of incompetence made it distasteful to ME, but it was a perfectly acceptable escape film with muscly Jim Fransiscus being mightily nice to look at. Home at 10:15 to begin preparations for tomorrow's climb, and bed at 10:30.

DIARY 1378

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4. Wake at 5:30 at the alarm, and find it raining. We start cuddling, and I can't resist the impulse to go down on him, and do him every so gently that he can relax into an orgasm, which he does very satisfactorily, then we doze off to 8, when we cuddle and HE does ME very nicely, and then we're in bed until 9:30, when I do him again with the vibrator, running my tongue lightly around the rim of his head and he literally SHOOTS into my mouth so that I can feel the jet against my palate. We lie a bit longer and then MUST get out of bed. Breakfast on bacon and eggs, though the stove ruins that, and then I get down to the dishes and we decide to start south THIS morning, rather than Saturday. So he begins packing, and I finish the dishes, putting them away, and then starts the long trial of putting everything back where it was, shutting off all the switches, and at last, just after noon, putting the garbage into the car and the key back into an envelope to take back to Millar's Barn, for Bill, and I see a trash can across from it, and dump garbage and coffee grounds all around the back of the car, and we're down 95 in heavy traffic, stopping south of Alton to eat the egg salad sandwiches and yogurt about 3, and then we stop in Bangor where he buys a Spirograph (OH, YES, found THAT last night, and had an absolute BALL with it before dinner) for Jeremy, and go down 1A in even heavier traffic to Ellsworth, where we check into Bancroft's Motor Court for $10 a night, then continue down to cross to Mount Desert Island, down 102 to like Somesville and stop at the Acadia Mountain trail down to Echo Lake, which is fogged in, but we swing out on a rope, enjoy the silence and the forests, then swing down to Fernald Cove where we get a map, then down to Manset and Seawall, where we look at tide pools, I finding a starfish, and down the Wonderland trail in the growing dark, looking at the sea, soaking in the quiet and the beauty, coming up with the "Wonderland Christmas Pageant" which goes on forever, then back to the car to drive up, mistake a turn and go back the SAME way to a lobster pound in Trenton for 3 lobsters at 3 pounds for $5.30 with butter and tax, and sexy sex in bed until 10.

DIARY 1379

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5. Up at 7 and leave a note and $10.50 for the next night's stay, since we'll spend the day in Acadia, and find a breakfast place on route 3 that everyone seems to discover after us, and start the park circuit, seeing a Dorr Mountain trail, we follow it through positively idyllic glades out of Disneyland, then it meets a stream, which we follow upstream along meticulously hewn and blocked-out pathways, and we admire the rock plaque to Flore MacChesney Schwartz, or someone like that, to whom her friends dedicated this trail. The walk becomes a climb, and our legs begin to hurt, John laughing at my breathlessness, and the stream goes under the rocks and a blanket of moss which is incredibly peaceful. Up the slope to a cutoff for Cadillac, and we decide for Dorr, and find all kinds of mushrooms to look at, and on the slopes find them covered with blueberries, and they're all over the top, and we guzzle them, waving across to the autoed troops on Cadillac, looking down through the fog to the invisible further shores, and about 10:30 decide to start down. It's tiring going down, but we started that trail, too, passing two guys, then a family of five, then a guy and a gal, all bound for the top, then two more guys. Back to the car in great relief, eating the Hershey bar for energy, then drive down to Anemone Cave, which John doesn't even come down to, and there are three shirtless dolls sitting on a wet ledge, but the tide's high, so no pools. Back to have John admit he's exhausted from the climb, and try to find Thunder Hole, and I go all along the rocks practically back to Sand Beach, loving the attack of the waves on the rocks, then into the car after John has a nap and FIND Thunder Hole, listen a bit, and down to Otter Point, around the rich section at Seal Harbor, lunch at the Otter Cliffs, up Cadillac Mountain to strange spume-fog over the Porcupine Islands, the three lovely guys, and John's hungry and thirsty, to Bar Harbor for beer and wine, back down to Anemone Cave, John joins me for small anemones, back to Thunder Hole, where we get VERY wet by a surprise wave, back along 3 and Somes Sound, pass the restaurant, BACK, it's closed, stop at AWFUL 4 R's at 8, bed at 9:30.

DIARY 1380

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. Out at 10 to 9 after showering and packing, back through Ellsworth for the last time, down through Surrey and East Blue Hill on 176, and down 175 past palatial gates entering vast estates overlooking Mount Desert Island, and find no place to eat, down to Haven and Brooklin and Sargentville, across a spindly elegant suspension bridge to Deer Isle, and down to Stonington, which is everyone's image of a Maine village overlooking a cliffy seacoast and harbor with little boats, and we gaze and gaze at the sight, to be drawn to ask for a restaurant by our stomachs, and it's 10:30 when we eat, sharing an order of pancakes, filling up on bacon and eggs and orange juice and coffee. Out at 11:30, deciding we can't make it to Round Pond by 1, and quickly up 175 through Brooksville and Penobscot, John rushing like crazy, and at 12:30 we call from Bucksport, then down rather quickly through Camden and Rockland, to be enchanted by Thomaston, driving around and around the little streets, looking and looking at all the old houses, and I'm about getting my fill of it all, and we dash on down past Waldoboro, and start down 32, roaring again, I'm driving, and we get dizzily into the parking lot at the General Store at Round Pond at 2:35, and Igor drives his VW microbus over little roads, finally swooping down a steep declivity to a one-room+kitchen+bathroom+storage room house on the brink of an old quarry, with all of Muscongus Bay spread before us. Talk and laugh and play with the Spirograph ourselves, since they left Jeremy at home, and talk about the weather, Maine, books, music, grants, Dr. Anina Brandt, and a bit of everyone's background, and then about 6 we get down to the lobster stew, and even the scallops are so tender I can eat them nicely, and the blackberry pie for dessert is great, being partly stewed and partly fresh blackberries all mixed together on a non-existent crust. Talk John into leaving at 8, and we go back on 129 to route 1, which we follow all the way through Brunswick and Portland, turn off at Ogunquit at Bald Head Cliff, for expensive Cliff House, down ALL 1A to Kittery, FINALLY find room at Mobil at 11:45!!

DIARY 1381

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7. Wake early and cuddle nicely and do each other, shower, and again look for breakfast in Rye, which we're near, but some place is closed as early as 10, which we think is silly, and we're on to Exeter, where we find a place which feeds us nicely, and we drive around and around Philips Exeter Academy, looking at the starkly modern gym, the additions to fine old houses, the architecture of the town, and then we follow 101 West (and John says this trip can be called the 202/101 trip), avoiding Manchester on 193, stop at Cumbres in Dublin to find no one to ask questions of, after buying peaches and tomatoes nearby, and on through Keene and Brattleboro. There, John, tired of curving country roads, takes us down 91 for a number of miles, until we get off the highway at Northampton, where he wants to stop for coffee and I want something to eat, so we stop at Whopperburger, which is awful, but he has his coffee and we have our food, and then drive down 66, which curves and toils through Huntington and Blandford and Otis and Monterey, and we finally get to Great Barrington, where we take off down a somewhat straighter route 7, but the roads are still full of little parades with plugs at the head of them, as Chuck Coe pointed out to me, and even John gets exasperated at them sometimes. I'm doing very badly on the shift, not seeming to be able to remember ANY of the feels from one shift to another, so there's whizzing of the engine and grinding of gears and John's continual "Lower gear!" until I'm quite tense. He takes over then, and we continue down 7 and the Housatonic area, then I drive for awhile, and we're off onto 84, and then he gets lost until finally we find ourselves on the Saw Mill, somehow, and he takes over and we finish our drive down to New York just as the sun is AGAIN setting behind the Palisades as we piddle down past the George Washington Bridge, maybe two or three minutes behind the sun-time with my mother a few Sunday's ago. Stop at my place at 7:30 for the mail, and Roger calls for dinner, I call Marty, Roger arrives with Beedies and we eat pizza in Angelo's, Marty calls, John drives Roger to 14th and we to his place for the two Don's!

DIARY 1382

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8. They're out by 7:30, we come, and he sweats around fixing up the place from his week away, and about 10:30, after reading all his Voices, I decide to get home to look at all my mail, and the Times that I scrounged from the basement last night. Home at 11:15, having some cereal, and I begin reading the Times, tearing up the puzzles and flushing them down the toilet when I get to them because I want to get something DONE today. But I read the Look article on Garbo at 65, which goes on and says nothing much, aside from her address, of CONCRETE fact, look through the Playboy, which is old enough to have been read at Rita's, but I read the jokes anyway, and continue to plow through the Times; I'm supposed to go to the bank because I have no money, but Bob calls and Marty calls, and I call Avi at home and Joe at work, and suddenly it's 4, and I've done really nothing. Read all mail. John's supposed to be here for dinner, so I call him and SAY I've done nothing, and he gets here at 6, and we have wine and talk about his job, and his problems with getting funds from Ford and the National Endowment, and then we're out to eat at Evening Star, strange breast of veal, and I don't even have a hot fudge sundae for dessert because I'm down to about $1 in change from the washing money, and I have to get cereal for his morning breakfast. From 10-11 I watched the end of "White Witch Doctor" on TV, and from 7:30-8:30 we suffered through Kenneth Clark to watch "Civilization" preview on Channel 4, after which we went out to eat, none too soon, since the Star, which is supposed to close at 10, closed at 9:15 on a slow evening. Fast Venus-set. He's brought the Voice, which he says he wants to read, so I take the opportunity and start putting things away around the apartment, having given the plants another watering from their extreme dryness. And I think they're going to pull through. Put the condenser into the slide projector and debate showing slides, but he says he's tired, so he takes his evening sherry and crawls into bed, which I've put new sheets on, but can't put a new pillow case on, because I don't have a clean one. He laughs about my doing absolutely NOTHING all day, but still says he envies me.

DIARY 1383

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9. One thing I DID do yesterday, triumphantly, was to exercise on Level 1 again, doing it in about a minute and a half under the limit, which I did again today for level 2, having a bit rougher time to it, definitely feeling strained and winded after the running in place. Watched "Cover Girl" from 9-11 with Rita Hayworth getting everything but almost losing Gene Kelly, who was cute, but not ever really sexy, and I get my money together and get down to the bank to put everything in the checking account or in my pocket, and down to check the number for the Vaughan Williams at Goody's. Marty called and called again, finally coming over at 12:30 to talk about his separation, and I'm impressed with the fact that Jerri seems to be losing her mind: accusing him of laying down the law and never making any decisions at the same time, waking the baby, then saying "Take him a minute" and going off to read a book, breaking down at work and coming home early to consume 3 bottles of wine, a bottle of Compoz, and a box of candy, and then not wanting to sleep with him. Eddie calls and I tell him to call back, and John calls about coming over tonight, since Joe's having Avi to dinner, and can't have us over. Marty and I talk on till just before 3, when I chase him out, and then really put things away, including his shaving stuff, which he can't pick up until his car, which has wrecked brakes, is fixed. Start to look for information about copy reading, and look through EB and FW and Businessman's Handbook and dictionaries, finding little, and finally come upon "A Manual of Style," which I settle down to skim through, and it's just what I need. Do a rough first reading of the test from McGraw-Hill, and then re-watch "The Unseen World" with text by Asimov, while eating a canned chicken dinner just before John comes over at 9. We watch the Carol Channing special, which is a disaster, I call Joe for tomorrow and Saturday, and John says "We have to talk about sex," and says we have too many orgasms, as if affection demanded them and he'd rather have some drive left toward me and FOR me, so we shouldn't assume we HAVE to come, and I tell him I've been going down on him literally in self-defense. Have popcorn. Great talk, bed at 11.

DIARY 1384

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10. He's up and out, having had the fan on merely to keep OUT the noise from the streets that kept him awake last night before, and disturbed him while I was doing him, and led him to the talk of last night. We cuddle and cuddle and I DON'T go down on him, but he goes down on ME, and does it so nicely and gently that I'm up most of the time, and come with glorious gusto, feeling great. I don't have time for exercises after breakfast, because I'm out at 9:40 and down to the Astor, which invites the public to "Spend a Day with Clint Eastwood," and I'm the second person into the theater, to see "For a Fistful of Dollars" at 10 precisely, "For a Few Dollars More" at 11:38, "Hang 'em High," pretty good, at 1:50, and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" at 3:40, getting out at 6:23, for a total time of just under 8½ hours. Pick up the laundry and buy some groceries, and home just after 7, calling Joe and Avi and John to say we'll make it 8:30 because Joe's not home. I finally get some sort of dinner gulped down and out to subway up at 8:30 and to Joe's, where we drink the wine John's brought, get down on the floor to follow Joe's trip through France, taking notes (see next page) about the places to see, look through Webster's Third International for the list of words from the McGraw-Hill test that I quickly copied down before leaving, and get back to talk about Avi and traveling and leave at 11, when John says he's tired. Wait in a subway station hot but filled with attractive guys, particularly a tee-shirted deep-chested shortie in a University of Buffalo monogram and nicely-fitting pants, and a baskety black with leather fringes partially obscuring the bulge in his gray flannel trousers. Big basket sits across from us, obscured by the rush getting on at 66th from Lincoln Center, a couple of cuties in THAT lot, and then we're home at 8:30, and I'm too tired even to shower, mainly because the poinsettia is sitting in the tub where I took it to try in a final attempt to get rid of the roaches. Been spraying for four days and there are still bugs crawling across the floor, and last night even one on the bed that thankfully John didn't see. He says to declare WAR on them.

DIARY 1397

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11. We neck, not very well, and I go down on him, and he comes with great difficulty, and I don't feel like coming, so he's off to work. I'm down for the mail and get more sex stuff, and get everything out of the closet and sort things into three piles: envelopes with my name on them WITHOUT anything gay about them, that I can throw into the hall trash, things WITHOUT my name on them, that are gay, that I can throw into the trash basket outside (which I do when go to the store for milk), and stuff that I want to keep, which I later separate into Dressed, but worth keeping, Undressed, old stuff, and Undressed, new stuff. While going through it, some of the stuff I hadn't looked at for a long time became quite exciting, and I found myself jerking off once, then twice, and then when I was in the process of putting it all away, about 1 pm, I actually had enough pressure left to get out the best stuff and go at it a third time, feeling rather foolish as I did so. Then decide I have to get to typing, and type 11 pages, getting caught up to date, again, on the diary, putting the pages into the book so that I'll have room for all the sheets in the new packet of paper, since I used the old packet to trace the boundaries of the Tigris, Euphrates, and Araxes Rivers at Bill's. Get out to cash the IBM dividend check, and then eat and dress and shower and get down to the Zodiac, which is empty at first, so we detour to the Triangle for a bit until 12, and back to a still-empty place, but the back room starts going, and then there are a couple of couples on the roof, and things get quite interesting (see next pages), and we leave about 2:15. It's now ten days since I've done anything on the diary, and I have great difficulties remembering what happened, having to phone John to recall what happened last Sunday (the Whitney exhibit), and I even have trouble filling one page, witness this digression. I thought I'd be able to do a lot of work when Rita was off at galleries and museums, but most of the time I'm with her, and even when I'm here alone, there are things like reading the Times and catching upon correspondence that take time away from that.

DIARY 1402

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12. Wake up to find it a glorious morning, so we're off to Jones Beach rather than John's working, and it's extraordinarily clear on the beach, and my eyes are hurting since I couldn't find my sunglasses. Got stoned and had fun on the beach (see next pages) and we had to leave at 2 so that John could get back and do some more shopping for the dinner tonight for Joe and Jeff. He made up a half-gallon of daiquiris at my recommendation, and Joe came on time and Jeff was a bit late, so that we met him downstairs, where he surprised us by wearing contact lenses, which detracted from his eyes, and by shaving his facial hair, which made him look quite a bit younger. Walked down to the Promenade, where Jeff showed us the flyer for his programs at the Brooklyn Academy, and he talked about his dancing, and John talked about our trip up to Maine, and I filled Jeff in on the fact that we stayed at Bill Hyde's, who was Tom DeGunst's friend. Sunset took place about 7:15 in brilliant hues of gold and amber and scarlet and violet, and Joe admitted that they hadn't even named some of the colors in that beautiful sky. We sat and actually finished all the drinks, so all of us were feeling very good, and I had to grab the keys and actually shit in my pants from some kind of quick runs which puzzled me, so I had to clean out the back of my blue jeans and spray some household spray around so that I wouldn't overwhelm everyone with the shit smell. Meet them on the way back, and John's meal of linguini and meat sauce, huge Greek salad---no, it was a bacon and ham quiche, I think---was very good, and then the four of us sat in the living room and went through a discussion that roamed through art and criticism and newspapers and publishing and the pasts and futures of the people in the room, and it seemed like a very successful evening---so successful, in fact, that Joe didn't even think of leaving until just before midnight, which was unusual for him, who habitually gets to bed at 11. Jeff and Joe leave together, after Jeff's been lying on the floor almost inviting someone to jump on him, though John later says that he specialized in the very young. We talk about the pleasant evening, and bed.

DIARY 1407

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13. Wake late and have nice sex, then I scan the Times while he's making our breakfast omelet, and we go in to his office at 11, where I read the rest of the Times and get inroads done on the puzzles, finishing the puns and anagrams, starting the regular one. Then at 2:30 we close up and go uptown to look for a parking place around 75th and Madison for the Soleri exhibit which Art and Bob want to see. They're late, but we have a ball watching the people passing in and out, ringing the Soleri bells which are hanging in the lobby, meeting friends, cruising. They're in at 3:30, and we go into the exhibit, which is poorly hung and very crowded, so that one gets the impression that the actual architecture would be crowded-seeming, too. Also, some of the materials used in the models is of poor quality, straight lines aren't straight, so there's no architectural fineness about them, and they end of looking sloppy and poorly thought-out. We're tired of the whole thing by 5, and we decide to stroll in Central Park, and the fountain is absolutely filled with people, and we get hot dogs and eat on the grass, what there is left of it, turning our heads like hunting dogs whenever we smell the faint whiff of pot coming from some of the groups seated around us. Doze and argue and watch the park being torn apart, commenting about some of the cuties that pass, and it's getting close to 7, and John wants to go down to the Den for their dinner, so we're into the car to drive them home, and they invite him in, and to my surprise, he accepts, so we have to sit through a conversation about how much Bob dislikes people who come to dinner without a gift, and there we are, eating peanuts and soy kernels, drinking bloody marys that are putting me out of my mind, and we sit down to their dinner of linguini and meat sauce, and a tiny salad by John's standards, and a good dessert which I forget. Then they get out the slides of their California trip, with some bought ones of California and the Grand Canyon, and we sit around talking and before we know it's midnight and after, so we thank them and leave, I promising them a free pass to "Performance," which I'll have to remember to take them. To John's.

DIARY 1408

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14. Get home just in time to have Marty call to fill me in on his situation with Jerri and the seemingly coming divorce, and he calls LATER in the day to say that he was supposed to pick her up for the 3:30 appointment he made when he was last here, and he GOT LOST on the way to pick her up, and so many of the other conversations on the phone during the day were so striking that I wrote Communications that Be, on Diary 1388-1389, I was so impressed with them. After Marty hangs up I decide to stay at the phone and call Bob, and he asks again about the 16mm projector, so I call Claude, and we talk and set it up for Thursday noon, and then talk to Bob again, then call Cyndy and talk for a long time, and then Rita tried to get me through the weekend, and when I got home this morning I found a note in my box saying to call either Mom or Rita, and since it was just minutes before 9, I tried to get someone at home, then failed and called Mom at work, and she said Rita was trying to get me because she wanted to come to New York on Wednesday. Rita then called in the evening, asking if it was OK, and I said yes, even though John and I had had such a conversation about how I shouldn't feel guilty about letting my family fend for themselves in NYC (why should they wreck my life for two weeks out of every years for THEIR pleasure when I get very little out of it?) (but I DO---but the conversation with John went on for some time). Then Marc Schmitz called, saying he was staying at the New Yorker, and he wanted to renew the acquaintance we made in Fez, and I fantasize about how he's going to look, and the kind of fabulous sex we're going to have, and he seems already to be a success here, to hear him speak. Then it's rather close to the evening, calling John to say that Rita's coming, filling him in on all the other conversations, and I have time only for lunch and dinner while watching "Laugh-In," and John comes in about 8:30, and is bored with the TV, so he crawls into bed, and we go out for a walk, in desperation, and it's very hot and tacky, and we look into smut shops (see next page, 1410) on 42nd and 9th, and then back home at 10:30, and we cuddle and shower and talk and sleep.

DIARY 1411

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15. John's off to the Ford Foundation by 10, and I turn TV on for "Crime without Passion," with an electrifying prologue with the windblown fates springing up from pools of blood and screaming through the air over New York, and a perfectly AWFUL Margo. I'm back into exercising, and though I want to do it twice yesterday to begin catching up with a daily schedule, I only did it once yesterday, but managed to do it twice today, though it was really a pain. Type two pages about the communications of yesterday, and sorted through stuff I had to do before Rita came, including making a list of things for her to do and things for ME to do while she's entertaining herself. But I don't feel like DOING anything, because I want her to see what a MESS the place is, and then have me fix it up as she's here, so she can see I have things to do. Shower and meet John at the corner of 6th and 57th at 5, and we walk down to the Gotham Gallery for the party for Ned Rorem's book "Critical Pieces," and it's jammed when we get there, get vodka tonics and look at the stuff on the wall, and then John waits in line to talk to Rorem, saying he'll know his name, since he told Boosey and Hawkes "Vinton's coming through his dictionary," but when John mentions his name there's an agitated blank on Rorem's face, then John introduces me, asks if he's back from the island, and he said he couldn't stay more than seven weeks, and I asked what he was coming back to NYC for, and he replied that he didn't like to stay ANYWHERE for long periods of time, and then someone else came up, John went for a refill, and I joined him, then we left. Subway to get his car, then drive to the Brooklyn Academy to meet Joe and Azak and see an hour's lecture-demonstration by Maurice Bejart, whom Azak and I love, and John and Joe hate, and we talk about it over dinner at the Mexican restaurant, after John gets lost in Brooklyn. They leave for home without going to John's, and John sees light at Jeff's, so we're over there to see how he's fixed up the two lower floors and the garden, and he tells of how much he loved Portugal, so I give him Walter Joseph's name, and we're out, very tired, at 11:30, and bed at John's.

DIARY 1412

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16. Home to get a call from Marty that the talk tonight ISN'T cancelled, as he feared it would be when he blew up at Jerri for assuming he would be babysitter while she went out on dates, but that it should be about 8:45. I stagger through the first set of exercises, determined to catch up, interrupted by that phone call, and then get down to doing nothing much, like reading Life magazines, watching the beautiful man scene from "The Eagle and the Hawk," vaguely wishing there were some other TV movies that I could watch, eating breakfast, then getting down to the even more torturous second set of exercises at noon, panting and gasping, but getting through them, hoping to teach myself that I should do them EVERY day, and not let them slip (but, I ask myself now, wouldn't I be satisfied with, say, only FIVE times a week, rather than EVERY day, which I'll be BOUND to miss on one or both weekend days when staying with John (though he would love to see me doing them) or off on some trip? We'll see). Call Bob and Claude back and forth to settle the 16mm filming for tomorrow, and I check the last flight, figuring Rita will be in after 9 or 10, and then fix myself up for Marc's coming, after groaning painfully through the THIRD set of exercises at 3, probably the most exercising I've done in one day, and I'm quite sore from it, hoping I don't get diarrhea from the exertion in the hot room. Marc arrives (see Diary 1389-1396), and I arrive at Marty's about 8:50. Billy finally gets the hint that we want to talk alone, and Jerri finally settles with my coffee and sugar, everyone has cigarettes, and we begin to talk, awkwardly at first, but things get brewing when Jerri confesses she really DOESN'T love Marty, and he's hurt, and we get into questions of hurting, saying truthful things, I bringing in examples from John's and my relationship, and I begin to sympathize with Marty, because Jerri seems inconsistent, irrational, willing to pursue tiny details and points of semantics, but obscuring the major issues, and refusing to conclude ANYTHING against her point, even though to Marty and me the refutation of her ideas seems complete. Call Rita, she's there, I leave at 11, bed at 1.

DIARY 1412A

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. Set the alarm for 10, but up at 9:15 to exercise and even to type 5 pages before Rita gets out of bed at 10. I set up the addresses of the Whitney and Bloomingdales for her, and am late into the subway, getting to the Rent Commission meeting at 11:20 (see next page). Out at 12:45 and grab subway up (after mistakenly going down first) to Claude's, and I'm five minutes late, making joke (like the one I made with Rita this morning, talking about a double peature, then correcting to double ficture) about really getting back into the swing of Claude's classes, when I was ALWAYS five minutes late. The films roll, and they're awful schizoid things about the mild-mannered sculptor sawing plastic dolls into limbs, then grimacing under a steel helmet with machine gun while going through a mock war. One sequence with an Etruscan-like mask over a gaping mouth, and a scene with a neon tube coming out of someone's short-fly, were about the only interesting things, otherwise, we agreed, it would be a film that a psychiatrist would love to see. Walk over to look at the Legend Shop, which has some good stuff, and at the closed Love Museum, and I'm late for Marc's call at 3, and Rita's still out. Marc calls at 4:15, saying 5 pm at Bob's is fine, then Rita comes in and I call Bob to find that Nina will be in, so I take Rita by cab up to Bob's, and she and I try the water bed, which gurgles fetchingly, or feels like John's stomach when he's lying down, and we enjoy it, but Alicia gets the greatest kick out of it. Marc's posters by Rimbaud are pretty good, but the others are sort of sicky, and Bob gives me a poster from Betty's exhibit which I leave with the Village Voice which Rita bought at the Ramble Restaurant, where Bob says we can eat, and Hans and Marc and Rita and I joke through ordering and eating, and we have to rush to get to "Satyricon," which Eddie will phone in passes for, and I write a note for Hans and Marc for "Performance," wrap up the cheesecake, and we dash down Madison to find John's already in, and it's not quite so good the second time around, and John drives Rita home and then takes me to his place, where I feel guilty about the puzzled look on Rita's face about my leaving.

DIARY 1414

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18. Back at 9, waking Rita, up, and quickly write Bill and send him $10 check for phone bill, and intend to get out to buy tickets, but the phone rings and rings and Marty takes up enormous amounts of time, and finally Rita and I check State Theater to see there's no "Mephistofeles," Opera House to get two $5.50 lousy seats for Monday's "Tales of Hoffman," get the schedule for the free Lincoln Center Film Festival, seeing part of a W.C. Fields short into the bargain, and buy Rita's ticket for the French Film on Saturday afternoon, and then it's getting close to 1, when we have a lunch reservation at Le Biarritz, and we're up to change and down to wait for about 20 minutes in the crowded place, and my tomate farcie is farcied with liverish hamburger that I'd complain about if MOM made, and her veal was good at the tip and tough at the bottom, rather like pieces of connected tongue, and we were out about 2:45, completely stuffed, and subway up to the Museum of Natural History to roam through the dinosaurs, look at the gem and rock collection, wander through New York Forests to get to the sea and fish exhibit, and that lasted until closing time at 5, and Rita was content to have some yogurt and postpone dinner until after the Claude Kipnis Mime Theater performance to which John got us house seats from Boosey and Hawkes this evening. We taxied there in incipient rain, getting a single ticket for Rita, and the place is so empty that we can sit together, in front of a tall bleached blond with bare-belled feet and a strung-together red jersey dress of great revealing ugliness, and the mime show was a bit of a bore, derived muchly from Marcel Marceau, and the "drunk in a bottle" effect of the hands was good, but the "Magnificent Mandarin" was a terrible disappointment, and the music was lousy. Only the hanging was a neat trick, but that at the end of a poorish evening wasn't good enough. Rita's finally hungry, so we get John to drop us at Angelo's, and we have good pizza, though the sausage has gristle in it, and we're out at 11:45, which I judge is too late to call Norma for us to see her apartment, so we don't, but go home and talk for a bit about not much, getting to bed at 1.

DIARY 1415

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19. Up early again to exercise and type three pages, and I play a bit of "Mefistofeles" for her, and a bit of "Hoffman," and she tried to record some Simon and Garfunkel on the tape recorder she bought this morning, but it's pretty lousy through the microphone. Decide to lunch at Ginger Man, and she has rather boring beef bourguignon, and I a tasty fruit and cottage cheese platter with two kinds of mangoes, raspberries, blueberries, fresh pineapple, pitted plums, grapes, and strawberries, which are all pretty good, and two cute guys with wedding bands sit across from us and cruise me through the meal. In general I seem to get more looks than Rita, though a few disappoint me by looking gay and yet looking at her as we walk down the street. Over to meet John just before 2, and the film is VERY poorly put together, lacking even necessary titles, though the film was shorter than the announced running time of 132 minutes, and the short about Langlois just went on and on, and was pretty dreadful, but John stayed for the whole thing, then took off, planning to meet us at 8:15, and we got home to think of where we were going to eat, and I showed her my Cue book, and she selected the Beirut, which was still open, and we got there for all the appetizers, which she didn't care for, and for the combination platter, which was all very good for only $4.25, and still we had to rush, gulping down our desserts and dashing out for the cab down to St. Peter's on 20th Street, and we were greeted by three dolls of guys who insisted I'd been there before, and I said no, but secretly wished I HAD been there, and had had them, too, especially a very tall, very broad-shouldered guy with nicely fitting trousers and a straight looking face who seemed very interested in the theater. Sat in choir stalls beside the already-there John, and "The Twelve-Pound Look" by Peter Pan's James M. Barrie was dated and cute, but I hated the acting, and "Discover America" was far more contemporary and far better, being very funny, even though it WAS written by a woman. Tell Rita that John's made "arrangements" to drive me somewhere again this evening (detour to Triangle and meet Salvadore -- a fist-fucking millionaire with a roommate---and to look at the trucks), and I'm to his place for a pleasant cuddle.

DIARY 1416

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20. Phone Rita at 8 to say we're going to the beach, but she insists on her boat trip around the island, so John and I pack up the knapsack, he with his can of salmon which is his week's diet at Azak's recommendation, along with 3/4 lbs of hamburger with maybe some raw mushrooms, and all the salad he can eat, and we're there by 9:30. I almost get taken in by the cops (see following pages), and then I wake John so that we can leave at 3, getting stuck in terribly traffic and getting to his place just three or four minutes before 5, and I'm taking a shower, expecting her to show up any minute, when the phone rings and she's just gotten OFF the boat, and what should she do now? I figure she can get here by 6, and that'll be OK, so John showers and we talk and he has his dinner, and she gets there by 6:30, having gotten lost in getting back to 57th, because she wanted to change clothes. She's starved, so we go to the Promenade Restaurant for a quick dinner which takes her 45 minutes, and then we zip down to the Promenade, which is really only the view which she'd seen from the ship, though there are thousands of tiny flecks of violet underneath each tiny cloud, so the sunset is worth seeing, and then we split up in order to head John off at the pass, and meet at the car to drive into the city. That driving is quite a bit clearer, showing her AGAIN a circuit of the island, and we park on 94th just before 8, to see one of the rare lines at the Thalia. The SRO sign in the window discourages John, and he takes off (to have sex a couple of times in the trucks), but Rita and I get good positions at the side of the back, and she gets a seat in about 5 minutes, and I sit on her armrest, and we move up a row about 10 minutes later, so it's all done very easily. "Coconuts" is just too zany, with the why-a-duck, the bidding up of Chico, and horrid songs by the two romantic leads (one of which looks like Nixon), but "Duck Soup" is better, with Harpo cutting off everything in sight, though the war-is-fun sentiments look a bit brutal today, but it was a much funnier film. We're out at 11 and subway home in the still hot evening, and for many of these days it's been up into the 90's, strangely.

DIARY 1423

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21. Up and exercise, having missed yesterday, and type two quick pages, but Rita's into the bedroom at all times when I'm typing, and though she might not ACTIVELY SEEK to read what I'm writing, I fear that "John" or "sex" or "cock" might catch her eye, and she'd know what I was writing without even reading it. After my exercise I say we might as well listen to "Tales of Hoffman" and get through the first half before she jumps into the shower and goes out to buy her tape recorder. I read the Times along with her for most of the morning, and when I start working the double-crostic she asks "Can I watch you?" and sits down next to me, telling me what I can find in standard reference works, questioning me about how much of my expertise comes from practice, and she's out before I've finished, but I do finally finish it and get to work on the crossword, which Avi had talked about at dinner (so I'm now talking about Tuesday), and finish THAT, too. She stops in at the Museum of Modern Art, but the Information exhibit is closed, and I'm on the phone most of the day, and decide to have dinner at Larre's, and then Avi calls at 5:30, and he can't ask us over tomorrow, and anyway we've been invited to dinner at Joe's, but he'll join us at Larre's, and I'm quick in and out of the shower, and the phone rings to say that THREE young men are on their way up, and it's Avi and his friend David Khouri, looking more attractive than ever with somewhat longer hair, and his house-friend Bob Jessky, who's done up in boots and jeans and a headband, and we all take off for Larre's, where I recommend everyone have the kidneys and sweetbreads, and my chicken is edible (oh, yes, and we had lunch at the Kobe Restaurant, which was almost empty because they seem to have just raised their prices, and the solitary luncher across from us aroused my sympathy, though he personally may have been the happiest person in the world), but the kidneys are tough and burnt. We're out at 7:40, and Avi insists on treating Rita to a taxi ride up to Lincoln Center, and the crowd is dressy, maybe including Celeste Holm, and we enjoy the long opera, the short intermissions, and reasonably good singing. To John's at 12:15.

DIARY 1424

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22. Up and exercise, and Avi calls to cancel for this afternoon, so I call John and he wants to see "Performance" again, so I arrange for us to see the 6 pm showing, even though I can't get through to Eddie. Bob calls and wants a guy and gal for a 1 pm photographing of the waterbed, and I call Joan and Alex, but they can't do it, both having calls for 1 (ha ha). TODAY'S the day I do the puzzle (see yesterday's diary notation) and she leaves at 12:30 after eating a quick lunch for her Revlon appointment. I'd done one exercise, in the morning, to make up for Sunday, and at 3 I decided to do the second, finishing just as she comes in, so I pause and wash and get out to see that she really hasn't changed much, only to have her eyebrows plucked, her hair made higher and squarer, and nothing done with makeup texture or coloring, which is too bad, and nothing said about her face, except for the guy who wanted her to come back another day for another treatment. We talk through the afternoon, and out at 5:15 to get her a frank at Howard Johnson's on Lex, and into the theater. Eddie's late, but the tall black lets us in, and we enjoy it, I even more than the first time, and I really think it could be one of the additions to my "20 best" list for the last few years. Out at 8 and wander across 63rd Street, looking at the fancy houses, enjoying momentarily the closing of Madison Avenue for the evening strolls, and into the park, through the zoo, up the deserted mall, down to the fountain where a nut was making his dog chase a rattling tin can, and around to the lake, where we sat biding time for Joe's dinner at 9:15, and we bought Almaden wine, which he had, and had small bloody marys (Rita only the blood), and sat down for tender, acceptable tasty mussels in good cream sauce, and tender red snapper with onions, and a tartly-dressed salad, and absolutely fabulous crème caramel for dessert. Joe's got another incomparable dish again. Talk about his painting and books and Rita's trip and Jeff's dance program, and we're into the subway at 11:30, I hand her my book, John gets on a number 2, Rita (asking me why I didn't take John's train), and I get on ANOTHER #2, rapping and having to go out onto the street to be recognized before John lets me in.

DIARY 1425

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23. I've begun counting the days, meals, hours as far back as Saturday, and this is finally the last day of Rita's stay! Feel so strongly about her leaving that I don't even bother to exercise (OH, YES, she said she didn't want me returning until 9, so yesterday I got back at 9, and walked up CPW to 63rd, watching people pass, and though there was a little cruising, there wasn't enough to make it worthwhile), so this morning there was trouble on the subway (see 1427, after next page ), and I didn't get to the park until 9:30, so I sat around Columbus Circle and watched what would be a great idea for a play (see following page, 1428). In at 10:15, and she was awake already, trying out her tape recorder, and I suggested she return it, and she said that's what she was planning to do. I'm down again for milk for breakfast, and she's out to return it, so I can get down to typing and actually finish ten pages while she comes back (still with it, but with a jack to make it easier). It's about 1:30, so there's not enough time to take in any movies, and she just wants lunch, so I suggest the Autopub, and call Norma to find she's at the factory today, so we can't pay her a visit, and we walk across to the subterranean metallic factory-looking place with strange décor but very expensive mediocre food. The last bit was the dim bulbs in the racing helmets, and the drive-in movie looked like an audio-visual classroom with forks instead of pencils as required utensils. Back to find the power cut 10% and the automatic elevator not running, and get Larry to take us and 4 others up in a garbagy service elevator, and down at 4:10 to put her into a cab and I'M FREE!!! Subway down to see "Our Hospitality," "Coney Island," and "The Scarecrow" at the Buster Keaton Film Festival at the Elgin (see following pages, 1429-1430), out at 6:30, and subway up to have a roast beef sandwich for dinner and meet John at 7:50 for "Journey to Jerusalem" and a very effective "The Red and the White" (see NEXT page, 1426), and we left at 10:30, coming here for John to find the ice cubes absolutely frozen in place, and I shower, but don't shave, and the evening is rather cool, but I don't know why, we'll talk about it.

DIARY 1431

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24. Have the strangest dreams about empty bottles and a play (see next page, 1432), and then at 7 I'm awake and cuddling with John, and he seems rather turned off, and, doing what I think I do, he reaches for the vibrator and started working on me. I didn't feel like coming, but I struggled and strained until finally there was nothing else I COULD do to repay both our efforts, much as I wanted to stop. Then he confessed that my bed had caused him a sore back and lack of sleep, since he had to wake up each time he turned over, or he would fall out of bed. I took over the vibrator to give his back a massage as he flexed himself around his knees and hips, and he said it felt better. Set out breakfast, but he said he was having only juice. I got down to typing quite a bit, wanting to catch up before eating breakfast, but I was getting starved and had two exercise sessions to do to make up for yesterday, so I did one, sweating copiously, and had breakfast about 10:30, and got straight back to typing. Finished up the day doing 17 pages, and then exercised again just before lunch, feeling very tired, but glad to have caught up, both on exercising AND on diary, almost. Called yesterday to see that the check WAS sent from Dreyfus, and checked the mail, but it wasn't there. Called Goody's and they finally HAD the "Sea Symphony," and called Arno and Azak to ask them about going to the Keaton films, and called Avi, who said David just called by chance, but they had sex Monday, very nicely, and that Bob Jessky was interested in me. Down about 4:30 to the second program at the Keaton Festival (see following page, 1433), for "Sherlock Jr," "One Week," "Cops," and "The Boat." Out just before 7, and up to Goody's to find "Sea Symphony" and the Glazunov I wanted, and walk home to listen to them, getting a call from Avi, and then cooked supper and watched "The Dirty Dozen," pretty good, on TV, while John came, though he was tired and didn't want to, at 10:30 and was in bed at 12, after I'd showered when the film was over fifty minutes after it announced its finish at 11. Couldn't sleep, so I got up and scribbled some night notes (see pages after, 1434-1435), feeling somewhat better, and slept about 1.

DIARY 1436

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25. I do John VERY slowly from 7, and massage his back again. After he leaves I get back to typing, and type ten pages, actually getting caught up to date again (but that's short lived, since I'm typing THIS a week after that Friday, on another Friday, and I'm seven days behind already). That seems to take a very long time, what with going down for the mail, eating breakfast and lunch, and fussing around, and before I know it, it's time to get ready to get to John's, NOT EVEN having the time to go down to the Keaton Festival as I wanted to do, although it feels good to know that I have a choice of TWO dates left to see it in. To Brooklyn Heights at 4:45 and buy cream and roast soy beans and wine, and take the lasagna out of the refrigerator and make the salad, then settle down to the Voice by the time John arrives at 6:30. He gets ready for company and Rudy Perez comes in at 7, and we sit and talk about his dance course at the Cubiculo, which doesn't sound at all interesting to me (nor do I qualify as being the professional he WANTS in the class, either), and I get the decided impression that here's someone who's never done anything, never been really a success, operating in a field that he's not really MEANT for (he's too tight for being a dancer), and "looking forward to whatever happens to me" in going into a dance-therapy-movement-acting-choreographing free-for-all at the Cubiculo. And John talks pretentiously about aims and tendencies and critics as if HE were the center of the dance world, and not merely a person with an opinion---and a somewhat narrow one. Then Phillip Ramey comes in, and he's a doll, and we talk about other things, settle down to dinner, with a lovely strawberry pie for dessert, which Phil can't have, since it seems he didn't know we were invited for dinner, and then we talk some more, going down to the Promenade to enjoy the open air, and Phillip is also pretentious, dropping Copland's name a dozen times, and he has to go to a number of performances because Lenny asked him to be there, and we've drunk drinks and lots of a foul-tasting wine that I got, so everyone's pleasantly high, and we walk them to subways at 12 and talk until about 1.

DIARY 1437

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26. Up at 8 and find it's a lovely day, so we're out of bed without any activity whatsoever and drive out to Jones Beach (see following pages). It's all of 5 when we get back to the car, and race to his place by 6 for a shower and then he makes himself his diet of 3/4 pound of ground meat and warms the lasagna up for me, and we finish the salad from last night, and then we're into town to meet Rudy and Jeff at 8:15 for "Dracula: Sabbat." Get rather poor seats, but I'm on the aisle, so it's not bad. A friend of John's from Tsi-Dun, Quaid Smith, looks in and says we should stay around for the orgy at the end, and the production is a rather audience-stirring combination of Dracula and the Black Mass, and the audience laughs with nervousness as a doll is torn apart (what would they have done if a baby was used?), and there was horrified silence as the woman shrieked up "If Christ is powerful, let him destroy me now, blast my body into black ash." There's a dreadful silence, and then everyone burst into laughter. Duane Tucker was a beautiful Dracula/Devil, naked most of the time except for a black g-string from which his left ball hung naked, and then he was stripped completely and a huge phallus attached (which the audience also laughed at), he really looked entirely spectacular, with his mask of a smooth whiteness. Jeff and Rudy and even John made asses of themselves by commenting loudly, shouting, "It's a raid" when the procession started down the hall. There were things wrong (for instance, they should have decided once and for all whether they wanted those in white to be serious, camp, or hypocritical, which they could have been any of, but it was disturbing to have them each in their turn), and I chewed them out afterwards, and even Jeff apologized to John for doing it so vocally. The orgy was pink-lit and completely naked, and three guys walked away with swinging erections when it was finished, the real sign of artistic truth, and the audience would have been pleased, I'm sure, to see real sex starting. This is ONE chorus that I'd love to be a "member" of. Down to Christopher St. and the trucks, to re-meet Andy, and John comes again, and we're home about 2, very tired.

DIARY 1441

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27. We're here, that is, and not out of bed until 11. I start on the Times, and John has only juice for breakfast, and I make myself some scrambled eggs, and then we're both reading the Times, I even getting started on the puzzle, and he says, since the weather is awful and rainy, that he wouldn't mind seeing the Keaton Festival, so we're down to get there at 1:50, and there's a crowd under the marquee, and it's not until 2:15 that everyone's inside and the film starts. The balcony is rather empty and there's not much going on in the back, so it's not difficult for me to heed my own advice: "You have to concentrate on the film, not on the cruising, or you'll miss much of the humor." I'd seen "Seven Chances" somewhere before, somehow I think on the West Coast, and the rock-rolling sequence is the only memorable scene except for the hundreds of brides, and we're out at 4:30 to get back to my place and re-dress for Norma's party, which we get to at 6, being about the only ones there beside Arnie and Betty and Miriam, the pretty-faced girl who's Norma's assistant. Then Ted, the big bearded sadist from the bar scene, shows up with skin-tight leather pants and a Captain America blond named Allan, whom John takes to and talks about music with. Betty and Ted get into a talk about sex and masturbation, and I join them for awhile, then talk with Arnie about what he should see in Morocco, then with Miriam for awhile, all the while eating whatever I can get my hands on. We're out by 9:30, and drive back to his place, and it's still raining, so we sit around and talk about what I don't remember, except I sort of think he's around fixing things up and doing things with plants, and I'm sitting reading the Voice and whatever else I can get my hands on. We're into bed about 10:30, and lie there talking and not even being sexually aroused, and he brings up the fact that Rita and Mom have been here to my DISlike many times as an illustration of the idea that I'm quite sick. Pretty bad. I'm beginning to feel some sort of blisters on my wrist, and John says he's come down with poison ivy on the balls, which he says at first is an allergy, and goes to bed with trunks on.

DIARY 1442

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28. Home to greet Josie, back from vacation, and I've bought the Cue with the restaurant list, and begin looking through it. Get back to the Times puzzle and essentially finish it, though some of the words are really ridiculous, and I fuss with the bathtub, making it somewhat more presentable, and last Friday I actually got down to Goody's when they actually had a copy of "Sea Symphony" on hand, and today I listened to it all the way through, and it wasn't so good. Spend most of the morning shopping for groceries, and making 4-people chili for this evening, when Art and Bob are coming over to talk about the weekend trip before the Adirondacks. The chili is a real scene, and I'm defrosting the refrigerator at the same time, so there's all sorts of things to do, and I have the last of the lamb chops for lunch, since they're defrosted perforce, and they've been in there for over two weeks. Get everything finished when it's time to stand on line at 3:45 for the Lincoln Center free films and there's such a small line that I see the Norkin exhibit in the hall, and get out at 4:15 and there's still room left when the audience is admitted to the hand-painted films by Melies, and they're real masterpieces, absolutely true in color and outline, and actual technicolor back in the 1900's. And still there are films of his that I haven't seen! It's only 75 minutes, so out at 5:50 to stand right at the first ten of the line for the hand-tinted films which comes in the next program. Start to read the "Aristos," but there's too much talk around me to concentrate, especially from the goon in front who puts a camera angle and viewfinder on EVERYTHING, and the sun is going down in glorious natural color, so I stare up at that, watching planes and gulls vanish into the clouds and brilliance, and then it's 7, and the tinted films are quite inferior to Melies, both in color and in plot, and Herbier's "El Dorado" is rather effective, but not a color film by any stretch of the imagination. Out at 8:45 and home to meet Bob and John, we eat dinner, and Art comes in at 10, and HE eats, and we all smoke, I get STONED (see next page), John falls asleep on the sofa, bed at 11:30.

DIARY 1444

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29. He does me, but it's with the vibrator, and I'm soft. Begin to get itches all around the scrotum, and John's started using calamine lotion, and I tell him about MY itches tonight after the movie, so it seems we're connected in itchy agony. Looking through Cue I discovered that today was the last day for the double feature at the Art, and figured it would start at 12:30, so at 11:45 I've gotten everything done but eating, and get into the subway prepared for a long walk, interspersed with pizza eating for some sort of sustenance, but it's just right there, and the admission is only $1, but the theater is strange because they've completely redone the mezzanine to eliminate ALL entrances to the balcony, which is an inaccessible passion pit, I guess, and the paint is peeling and cracked, the screen is blotched, and next door someone is undergoing major renovation, and there's the sound of hammering against one of the walls echoing in the vast acoustical box of the theater. "Patton" is quite good, and George C. Scott has actually made the idea of a "universal fighter" alive and viable, and his chewing out of the coward actually makes sense, even though there's ABSOLUTELY NO QUESTION about our right to make the war in the first place. True, IF you're going to fight, you should fight WELL, but there might be no need to fight IN THE FIRST PLACE! Even the battle scenes are well done, and the personalities aren't the stereotyped usuals. Rommel looked like one of the major HEROES of the film, as did the German intelligence officer who knew more about Patton than HE did. "Take the Money and Run" is rather stupid, though there are some funny gimmicks in it, but Woody's humor is just too FLUFFY for my tastes. Thank goodness I didn't spend the money on the play. John's here at 7, and we go down to the Elgin by his car for "The General" and two shorts, and the basement is full of lovely people, especially the guy in the tight red shirt, but though there are lots of overtures as we sit in the last row, nothing really comes off except a lot of distractions, but then I'd seen the movie already. Drive to his place for the evening, and again we talk lots before going, suited, to bed.

DIARY 1445

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30. Again nothing happens with sex, since I feel so COMPLETELY exhausted for some reason. But then it's partly the frustration of WANTING to do something (now that I can't do it), and not having the time in which to do it. Back home and get started with the restaurant list, giving in to my urge to find how many are expensive and how many are inexpensive, the two extremes, and out of 555 there are only 50 IN the two extremes, twice as many inexpensive as expensive, and the MOST expensive comes out to be the stupid Empire Room, which has a show, or The Leopard, of the non-show places, with a prix-fixe of $15 to $17.50. This takes until 1, by which time I'm hungry, so I eat, going through old Lifes, and then I sit around wondering what to do. Try calling Azak and Cyndy and others, including Joe, for the tickets we're going to miss by being away next week, but no one wants them. Moon about what to do next, and decide that the stamps are the logical next step, since it's too late to go to the Ford Foundation and pick up the umbrella which Azak said his secretary didn't get, and which turns out to be MY umbrella which John borrowed when he went there. Speaking of Foundations, the National Foundation for the Arts finally decided to reply to my letter, saying they didn't know if they were going to support individual writers this fiscal year, but if they would, they'd let me know. Get into stamps, and do the laundry in the meantime, checking for the mail in the middle and getting nothing, and get all the stamps out on the sheet, and mess around fixing up other things in the apartment while waiting for them to dry, and then John shows up as a surprise at 7:15, since he spent all evening with a writer, missing his class, and he didn't want to go home, because "then I wouldn't have seen you at All today." We watch George Szell from four years ago, I work on the stamps through to completion (earlier in the afternoon I went through the mint US that Bill sent, putting 7 copies in my mint dupe collection, then tearing up the others into neatly usable current postage boxes), and he smokes to get to sleep easily with his itch, and I crawl in with him at 10:30, a record.

DIARY 1446

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1. Another month! Yesterday I took the sheet off the art calendar, but I DIDN'T take the turn of the page on the little engagement calendar, so I MISSED (DAMN!) the appointment with Kwawer at 2. Decided that I really had to vacuum the carpets, but before that I had to dust, but before that I had to clean the bathroom floor, but before that I had to scour the tub, but before that I had to clean the walls, so I got to work and cleaned the walls, scoured the sink and the tub, put the socks in to wash, since I'd need them for the trip, and then when I was finished with the bathroom settled down to the lunch that my stomach so wanted. Then I dusted, and vacuumed the floors, and by this time it was 4, but I still wanted to get the umbrella, so I took my trousers to the cleaners, took an enormous bundle around to the Chinese laundry, and walked down to 50th to catch the crosstown bus, which took only 20 minutes to get across from 9th to 2nd. Pick up the umbrella, then to the library, where I found an old Sat Eve Post article on Mystery Hill, which seems to date from colonial times, found NOTHING about Devil's Triangle, where so many ships and planes were lost between the Bahamas and Florida, found that the Encyclopedia of U.S. Government Benefits had very little about grants, was told that there WAS a Science Citation Index in the library, that the film catalogs would come from Donnell Branch, if at all, and that there was such a thing as Foundation News, coming out bimonthly, from the Foundation Library Service in New York. This takes me to 6:45, and I want to get home at 7, but pass up a subway to 6th and 57th to wait for one to 8th and 57th, but wait all of 15 minutes, and then it's jammed. This IS a lousy city for subways, and getting worse. Home to watch TV and "The Homosexual," with friends Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols, and send out some bills, getting my checking account from $650 to $9 in about two minutes, and John comes over and I eat lasagna while watching "From the House of the Dead" by Janacek from Dostoyevsky, and John insists he doesn't like it, which is sad news to me, and I shower and put on his Ivy-Dry and we're in bed at 11:30 to talk.

DIARY 1448

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2. No one has sex because of ivy, and I read the Voice to 10. Then I decide I have to catch up with my diary, and type 11 pages, which does catch me up to date, and I start getting things together for the Adirondacks, figuring I won't take along a calendar or a typewriter, but will keep notes about the days' activities for typing when I get back. Then go through my mail and decide I MUST get things out to Mom about her boat trip, saying that I won't be around when she leaves, and I MAY not be around when she gets back here, though I may be here about noon. Wash dishes in a rush, and finish old food. Call and find that Bob would be willing to use the tickets I have to the Joffrey on Saturday, and mail them off to him, making up an envelope to get the Martha Graham tickets to Azak from John, and then settle down with "River" to get a long letter off to Elaine about the last two issues, and to send her the two versions of "Maineriver." This takes me up to the deadline, and all I can do is put the rest of the stuff away, arrange with Harold to water my flowers, and shower and eat and get onto the subway at 7:30, which is much too late for the Graham performance. Get there just at 8, and the line stretches out to the street, but I first see Bob Malchie, who's bought me a ticket, bless him, and Art is in line getting other seats for them, and Mike Mao sweeps by also trying to get tickets. We're into the seat and it starts only at 8:25, with a nicely varied "El Penitente," and I begin to appreciate her later stuff more, knowing her earlier stuff. "Deaths and Entrances" goes on forever after I talk with Mike and find he's going to Yale, and then Doré Schary presents Martha Graham with a medal from NYC, and she says she's NOT retiring from dance, and rambles on about shells and miniskirts and discipline and life, and going off to live on a Greek island. Then "Every Soul is a Circus" is pleasantly funny, and we drive back to John's (when he can find the way), and then there's a busy evening as he makes everyone's beds, and Art and Bob wander around nude, seeming to want to start something, but we're in bed by 12, telling Art we're getting up at 6, but actually setting the alarm for 6:30, but he still insists he's going to be asleep.

DIARY 1449

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3. And he is, moping around the house, and we get out about 7:30, nobody doing anything except fuss, and we're off to the Harlem River Drive and up the Saw Mill in rather poor, cool weather, and onto the Interstate until we hit route 7 at Danbury, where we have a long breakfast in an awful diner, then start driving up the Housatonic. It's still rather foggy, and when I see the little road up Mount Greylock, there are gray clouds filling most of the valleys, but we can vaguely see what we think is Adams below, and we stop along the way to look out over the top, then get to the top, see the terrible, closed War Memorial at the top, then into the lodge, pleasant but empty, where we have hot chocolate and more talk, then continue the drive up, getting slightly lost, and it starts raining heavily, and Bob and Art strive to keep the conversation going, and it's a bit of a strain in the car, John keeping quiet because he's concentrating on driving in the awful downpour. Get into East Dover as it's getting close to 5, and try a couple of places but decide we can do still better, and finally stop at the Four Seasons, which has a quadruple with two double beds for just $18, and the whole bill comes to $19.45 for the four of us. The room is small, and we all settle in, I finding the Monopoly game in the reading room, and everyone's busy shaving and taking showers, and Art and I start playing a game of Monopoly, and it goes from the start toward him, but finally I get a monopoly of the green ones, and though I'm deeply in mortgage for the first couple hours, finally I begin to get even and even build a few houses, which he never lands on, but all the property is gone and he has no monopoly at all. Then we're leaving at 7:45, and get to the restaurant over back roads at 8:15, and seated at 8:45. The onion soup is cold, John asks for more of the highly delicate salad dressing, my duck is flambéed twice, is still fatty and not the tenderest, and the guy smoking a cigar (see next page) is a real pain, so in all I liked the Newfane Inn better (the dying trout in the pond didn't help either, nor the fact we had to ask for more rolls, and got only French bread), back to hotel, I win Monopoly game, bed at 12:45.

DIARY 1451

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4. Up at 7:05, lazily, for a bright and sunny day, and drive through more small towns, and pass through Jamaica, seeing the restaurant advertised, and we stop and sit around the front table and have the biggest breakfast of them all, with eggs and bacon and pancakes, and Bob and John even have more breakfast after we're finished. Then we're out to wander down the streets, looking into the stark neat church, down to the stream through the streets lined with colorful trees, and Bob takes pictures right and left, and we even spot a baby calf which we all remark about while he urinates for what seems like five minutes. We're up to the Green Mountains, and the rain comes again for a bit, but not as bad as yesterday, and we drive through towns looking at their cemeteries while John gets gas, and finally we're into Lake George at 3, have a quick lunch before they get on the bus, and they're off at 3:30 and we're over route 28, stopping beside the small, sparkly Hudson River to have a talk about anger, and then drive up the rather boring road to Blue Mountain Lake, and down the dirt road to Hemlock Hall at 5, and we immediately settle in, taking and dividing the drawers and shelf space, and get everything put away by 6, when we're out to look through the full and well-used bookshelves about the sights to be seen in the neighborhood, and talk to a few of the people, and about 7 we decide we're hungry, and John noticed the place back along the highway, so we're out and back along the boring road to Cedar Rock Inn, which is almost empty, except for a noisy table of women talking about getting drunk and their hair fixed and their teeth adjusted, and I say THAT'S what would be so awful about living in such a small town, and I have the pork chops and John the lamb chops, and they're not terribly bad, and we're back up the endless road, catching a glimpse of a sliver of a moon for the first time, getting back at 8:30, and I look through the Eliot Porter book on the Adirondacks, getting lots of names of places I'd like to see, and then we're into the bedroom, John to start on "Dracula," and I still reading "The Aristo," which it seems will never end. Leave shades up, and get to sleep at 10.

DIARY 1452

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5. Wake at 6:30, but it's pitch black outside, and get up at 7, but it's still gray outside. Get seated at the large table in the old dining room with the Griswolds, the Hoyts (whom it took awhile to identify the bald-headed partner of as "Curly"), the young canoers and another couple. Walk down to the dock to look at the lake before breakfast. Drive up to Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake after leaving at 9:30, and to the Ampersand parking lot at 10:30, and to top at 12:30, a rough climb because of the wetness everywhere, and the need to clamber up tree roots and over rocks and around new trails necessitated by landslides. Rest for a bit at the rangers' shack, and peek inside, and wonder why the old trail was closed, and take a bit of a drink from the stream, and then up to the top to be absolutely flabbergasted by the view to the rear, then stepping to the summit to see that the view goes around for 360°, and includes some snow-capped peaks that we think is Marcy at first, but turns out to be Algonquin, with Whiteface, with the road to the top, in the north. The clouds are varied and colorful, and when we're sitting in the sun it's quite warm and pleasant, but when the clouds hide the sun's heat and the winds tear across the bald peak, it's very cold, emphasized by the wet clamminess of the long johns I'm wearing. We look through binoculars and start down at 1:45, and get to the car at 3:45, and it's taken as long to get down as to get up, and the fronts of my feet are sore from stepping frontward down the trail, and John says it should be taken backward. Back to Hemlock Hall at 5, and John takes a nice long bath to get rid of his poison ivy itch and his soreness all at once. Dinner at the RIGHT table with the two Cleveland couples and a couple from Rochester who have been coming almost as long as it's been open, for 20 years. The menu is lamb and apple pie and cheese for dessert, and the couple next to us avows that the desserts and entire menu has been constant each week for the past 10 years, and it seems to be so. I take a bath (pity there's no shower) and read "The Aristos" while John reads more of "Dracula," but I'm tired and shut out my light at 9:45.

DIARY 1453

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6. Wake again to a dark 6:30, and lay until a gray 7:15. Breakfast at the big table with the two Cleveland couples and fat lady from Rochester (who was from New Philadelphia, Ohio), and her husband, and then down to a canoe at 9:30, John having predicted that today would warm up and be windless. He starts in the back, bragging about his S-stroke that propels the boat where it should go regardless of which side he's paddling on, and I continually feel him back-paddling in the rear, which strikes me as silly, but I seem to be pulling harder than he, since no matter whether I'm in the front or the rear, rowing on the right or the left, whichever direction I'm rowing in has the upper hand, and he has to adjust to that. We get across Blue Mountain Lake and to the island directly across, with all its Eagle Nest signs, and around the right side of it, between it and Long Island, and then make for an orange float way down the length of it, and we find we're directed to a very pretty road-bridge over a narrow quiet channel, and we go silently through, admiring the scenery and vistas, and we're suddenly on Engle Lake, and go quickly across that, looking at the monstrous house appearing piece by piece between the trees, and the many outlying houses and boat docks and tennis courts, but no signs of people. Through a longish channel, where we detour to the side to look at rotting logs and clean bottoms, then to Utawana Lake, where we stop to survey a wind-blown airplane hanger, John fantasizing cops and spies at every turn. Back down the side to stop at a log, gather dozens of mushrooms, then further to a lean-to, where we get more mushrooms and he builds a fire, and finally to the dam and portage spot at the end. Start back at 3, feeling tired, and feel even MORE tired, and finally the hanger is in sight and passed, the channel seems to go on forever, I get more and more tired, unable to paddle on the left side for fatigue, and he has to take me most of the rest of the way, as I'm aching and dying from the pain and the stiffness. The grayness piles up except for an "eye of God" on Blue Mountain. Back at 5:30, rest to 6, dinner at left table with parents and mother and two loud kids to 7, rest to 8, VERY sore, Hoyt and "Webb's mother-in-law's" slides to 9:30, read lots and bed at 10:40, exhausted.

DIARY 1454

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7. Wake at 7, darkish, up at 7:30, and write ALL this as notes until 8. Breakfast at far right table with birdwatcher woman and husband from Glen Cove, young internist and wide-eyed wife from Ithaca, and couple from Pennsylvania. Down to the cloudy lake before breakfast, and then drive through hazy beautiful morning. The trees along the road stand like infinitely distant pillars of some huge incense-filled temple, through the haze of which the pillars seem to stretch to the sky, dark in the shadows above. The perspective lines change quickly as the car moves, and the lines of shadow come sweeping down and past us like negative searchlights from the face of the sun. It floats in a gray-pink orb through the low fog banks, and it's obvious there are no clouds above, only the low, thinning fog. Drive along the road at 10, and through the pine forests on the right, with the sun behind, there are vistas of moist, dripping cathedrals of pine air and sun, with striking contrasts of dry, almost steamy heat in the sun, and shadowed, bathroom-like dankness as of eternal murk in the corners of the trees away from the sun. The road clears up, but we're still driving at 11, and there are still patches of light fog in the woods when the sun hits them right. We drive up the rocky road to Elk Lake, stopping to walk in the golden yellow light of the birches and elders when John can't resist stopping, and we park and go over the bridge and I stop to get orientation from a helpful woman in a cabin, and John's dismayed by a couple sitting with a transistor radio looking at a chipmunk. We pass a couple of people, amateur strollers, and we walk along, I gathering maple leaves this time, and we leave things behind, strike off through the marshes, and find a deserted tiny island from which John strips and risks a swim in the frigid water, and I watch salamanders (see following page) in the water. He wants to do me, but I can't see it, and say so, and we're back at 3:15, down the 2.2 miles to Marcy Landing, and drive Blue Ridge and back to the lodge at 5:30 again, I watch sunset and THEN go in to dinner with young couple from St. Louis, canoeing couple from Monday AM, and couple who loved National Parks. Canoe in moonlight with flashlight and sleeping John to 9:20, talk to Griswolds and Hoyts, bed at 10:40.

DIARY 1456

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8. Wakened by breakfast noises at 8 from the dining room, and we're out for the last breakfast of the Hoyts, and decide we'll not have dinner in, and go to Avalanche Lake, so we tell the waitress that, and bid farewell to the Griswolds, who promise to send help if we're not back before too late, Leave at 9:30 and get to Adirondak Loj about 11, and don't even see the building and take off across the wet trail to Marcy Dam, stopping on the way to look at a stream tumbling over granite and marble rocks, and sign in our destination to Avalanche Lake in the ranger's shelter, feeling very impressive about having to do so. Pass a cute guy and his girlfriend and a chattery old man in another lean-to, and we're up the crumbling log paths and black-mud-wet bypaths, feeling an extreme chill when we pass between enormous rocks that suck the heat from our bodies, and we climb and descend and finally see the rock wall ahead of us, and there's Avalanche Lake, with a boat dock in which the canoes are unfortunately chained. Along the base and find the "Hitch-Up-Matilda" on log pylons, and the water is quite clear, and when John jumps in, he says it's absolutely the coldest water he's ever encountered, having to get out very quickly and dry himself in the sun, which is at the same time creeping across the sheer glaciated face of Mt. Colden. The three campers come talking across the lake in a rowboat, and we go along a bit more to find another bridge, but it's close to 3, and we have to get back. I start gathering leaves again, and the walk back is enormously long, and twilight falls and we walk up and down, up and down, up and down, getting off the trail and back on, dreaming never to see the car again, and finally we're into the car at 5:45, and taking off down the road, stop for a glorious sunset between ALL the Adirondack peaks from 6 to 6:30, and then through the "Neoned" towns until about 7:30, when he hit the Riverside Restaurant, and I have the sirloin steak, since I'm so hungry and tired, and John feels cheated with the shrimp cocktail for $1.50 with four tiny shrimp, and the chef's salad for $1.50 with not much more. Back at 9, tired, and talk long to the Griswolds, laughing about the trip, and bed quickly.

DIARY 1457

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9. We give my address to the Griswolds for when they're coming to NYC during the first of December, and I'm cursing the fates that put us at the center table with the family of two kids again, though the table across the way has a BABY. The place will never be the same. We're looking for someplace to go, and John sees the Mail boat sign at 9:55, and I say let's try to make it, so we barrel down to Raquette Lake, but can't even find the dock, let alone the boat, and stop at some Brown Cottages for a rate sheet and a nice view of the lake, then pass through Blue Mountain again and down to the turn-off to the Cedar River Flow, and the leaves are very colorful, but everything's forbidden and posted, and we get to the lake at the end to find another dam across which we can drive, a couple of women with their babies, and we walk into the forest with blankets and are disturbed by three campers across the lake. But that doesn't stop John when he wants to do me (as he did me yesterday with the Baby Magic), and I strain for release while the spiders and ants and dragonflies and biting flies make it miserable for me. Lay naked in the sun for a bit, looking with sadness at his spreading poison ivy, and we're into town where he wants gas, and we have ice cream, and I find that "Magister Ludi" is out in paperback, and I'd wondered what to read next, since I finally FINISHED "The Aristos" last night, so I buy that. Drive back into town myself, and he says he's feeling better about it, and we'd had a LONG talk on the way up yesterday about how I treat people (see next page) at the table when I want to watch the sunset, so we're back and sit on the lawn, and when I say I'm going down to the dock, I assume he KNOWS I'm going down for the sunset, and when I'm in at 6:30, he and the women are staring at me balefully, and he says that he's very upset AGAIN, but this is after I'd gone back to the room and found him missing, and I take a canoe out again to enjoy the moon and the perfectly still night, and get what I consider another insight (see following pages), and then get back to try to read, but we AGAIN talk for a couple of hours, and though we make up before going to sleep about 11:30, it's still in the air.

DIARY 1462

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10. The last breakfast, and I'm finding it's none too soon!! I'm tired with the same questions, tired of the people, tired of climbing and boating, ready at least to go on to new territory, if not exactly chafing to go home. Pack the car and say goodbye to a weepy lady I'd offended, in John's terms, before, and drive straight east, going through Moriah, and across the bridge into Vermont and to Bristol, and across the Lincoln Gap which had been recommended to us, and we find the road steep but paved, and there's little traffic, so on the way down we stop to look at the cloudy view, take a piss, and amble up the hill to look into the green-yellow canopy of leaves, watching them float down through the air, listening to nothing, and I spy thin black stems like tiny catkins of pussywillow, and John picks a bunch for the hall decoration. Drive looking for a place to stay, and Randolph's the next large town, but stop in two places and find them both full, and ask directions at an information center, getting directed down the hill, and the next place takes us in, for only $9 for the evening, and it's a fairly nice room, and we put the trunks in and take off again to see what we can see, stopping in a Mobil station to see the only four-star restaurant is way down in Manchester and inaccessible, so we choose Sugarbush as next choice, trying to take a side road which turns into a dead-end, and we're bounding over roads worse than any since Nova Scotia, and at one point end up in a Jersey cow farmyard, and at another find it peters out beneath us until it's obviously not what we want. Back to the main road and NOW find it, and by the time we get across, it's getting toward sunset, and John wants to see Sugarbush, so we drive directly north, find that the Inn is full, and so is the dining room and so we're up to the Village, where we make reservations at the International Villa, sip sherry at an outdoor table until 6:30, and go inside where he makes me a banana daiquiri, and I order the CHOPPED sirloin to get the REAL sirloin, which I send back after he assures me I'll only be charged for chopped. And then they don't charge for John's wine, so it's a cheap meal. Back to shower and read and bed at 10.

DIARY 1463

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11. Up early, and it's cloudy, and we're into the car and stop at some elegant hill-view restaurant for endless cups of coffee while waiting for the bacon and eggs. And then we continue down route 100, and it's still foggy, seeming not to want to clear, and we pass through many quiet small towns, across streams, over bridges, and the color gets dimmer as the fog thickens, but by the time we cross into Massachusetts just after Readsboro, where we stop for gas, it's gotten bright again, and I tell John to be on the lookout for a PEACH, which is a pink/orange combination of great beauty, when the sun shines through certain maple leaves. We transfer to route 8, which is pleasant, taking us past dams which are being built and filled, so that their huge construction is very evident, but there aren't great lakes collected there yet, and down to the Saw Mill, and he said he ordered the sunset, but couldn't order the fog to be gone, and so at 6:15 we're driving to my place, up to water the plants, and then down to watch some of the dancing boys at the Tool Box, and I stand around drinking beer and almost think myself into being high from the music and the dancing and the lots of cute guys standing around, and then John wants to leave, since their dinner doesn't seem near ready, so I wrap my sweater around my beer bottle and we walk down to the Den, and in just a few minutes the spaghetti and meat balls and salad are being served, and we eat without paying for anything, and then leave for the trucks. I wander into the back, but it's very tight, and awful old men are the only ones who are reaching out for me, so I go to the side and see the women passing, the dates looking inquisitively at their fellows, and I'm annoyed with John for being able to have sex, and not telling ME about it, and I brood about it while sitting on the side of a trash bin across the street, debating asking to be taken home, since I want to read BOTH this Sunday's and last Sunday's Times which I found in the basement, and want to read "Magister Ludi," but then I decide I'm being silly and irrational, so I wait for John to come out, express my disgust with the group scene at the trucks, and he said HE didn't do anything, either. Bed.

DIARY 1465

MONDAY, OCTOBER 12. Back to find I'd missed typing the Bible (see next page), having left John's very early, in fact just after he got up, and getting here at 8. I'd seen in the paper that the Apollo was playing a double feature of "Boys in the Band" (which turned out to be WORSE than the play, since they took up so much time focusing on other faces laughing to give the audience time to laugh, but it certainly revealed to me, and the audience, how MUCH of the gay guys' time is spent CRUISING, LOOKING at people in order to find SOMEONE---THAT'S the ONE better thing about the film) and "Something for Everyone," which might be a combination of "The Servant" and "Theorema," but it seemed to have been made without any trace of underlying theme, since it had no thought, only mere spectacle of bodies and love affairs and Michael York, who was terribly sexy. Out feeling hungry, so I get a frank and orange (NEVER again, with the watery orange and awful frank) at Nedicks and walk down 8th to the Elgin, stopping for AWFUL pizza in a chromy place, and then in desperation getting a toasted Danish and Coke in a coffee shop across from the theater, getting in at 3:20. "The Three Ages" was classic, and had started, "The Butcher Boy" wasn't very good, with little Keaton, and "The High Sign" was appropriately hectic, and since there seemed to be no one to bother me, I decided to stay around and re-watch most of "The Three Ages," which is really one of the best. Out at 6 and subway home to find enough in the refrigerator and with a can of Spam, to have dinner, and then leave at 7:30 to John's supposed to get there at 8, but the subway just left, so I don't get there until 8:30, and he's already mixing the almond chocolate butterballs, and I mix and mix, and we sit and talk as it cools, then ball them onto the cookie sheet, bake them, put them out to cool, and bake three sheets in all, and sit around and talk about my feeling from the previous evening, and I was willing to say I was being silly, and John was willing to say that HE would be very glad when the poison ivy went, too. So we got into bed with minimal cuddling, and slept apart, since he had some new marks on one leg, and I still didn't want to catch anything. Feeling quite tired.

DIARY 1466

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13. Again leave early and home at 8:30, and start the puzzles from the Times directly that I get back, and I'd seen that the quote for the double-crostic was something about Burns, and that helped a bit, so I did it quite quickly, and then the short phrases one was a bit more difficult, particularly when SKIPTHEWHOLETHING was originally through as
                  SAIDTHEWHELEPHANT, SHOWING how only six letters difference out of 17 can cause quite a shift of meaning. But I had a solution to check, and didn't need it. Then went right into the Puns and Anagrams, which went also quickly, but the puzzle was quite a puzzler, and I had to get out the dictionary, the encyclopedia, and various other references to finish it. Had stopped for some sort of breakfast in the morning, while reading one of the innumerable readable articles from the two magazines, and finally finished with the last puzzle at 1. When I got back from the Adirondack vacation, I wanted to catch up with the diary as quickly as possible, so that I could get on to the McGraw-Hill editing test and re-typing "Acid House" for Meredith, but the first day back was taken up with movies, and this day is taken up with the puzzles and the Times. Read it, having lunch, and Marty calls from 203 to say that Jerri's giving up on her boyfriend, and is willing to try things HIS way. Good, and this includes a marriage counselor and AA. John calls from Boosey to say he's finished at 3, and he comes over at 3:30 and takes a nap, and I fix apartment before he comes, finally getting unpacked from the week away, and then when he wakes at 5:15, I'm out for groceries, borrowing $2 from him so I'll have enough to buy him steak for dinner. After dinner Cyndy calls, then Walter Joseph calls, and we bus over to Automation House at 8:45 for "Still Life," which I read as "There's life YET," "Silver Seconds," which I interpret as remnants, but I can't do anything with _ _ _ _, unless it's a dirty 4-letter work, their 4th thing! There's too much audience and too little performance, and we're out at 11 and walk home, feeling rather tired, and we can't even find very much to talk about. Brush teeth again on John's insistence, and we get to bed to chat for a bit, then the light goes out and we fall asleep.

DIARY 1467

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14. John goes without breakfast for his diet, and I put out most of last week's Times in the trash, and continue to read the Times, and when I'm finished go down to check the mail, and my telephone call yesterday to Warren bore fruit, since the check is in the mail TODAY. Decide that the souvenir drawer is too full, so I take everything out and begin sorting it into piles like movies and programs, ticket stubs, personal, throw away, scrapbook, and miscellaneous, and one huge stack of matchbook covers. This latter stack causes me trouble, because when I take out the top drawer to put the ticket stubs and matchbook covers away, it's getting pretty crowded too, and so I decide the only thing to do is inaugurate a matchbook shoebox, and I get them all together and sort through into three piles for New York City, other USA, and one stack with two small sub-piles: one for Canada, one for overseas. This all takes until 1:30, and then I'm out to cash the check, taking other things along, like the McGraw-Hill test for xeroxing, the checks for Gay for xeroxing, and then I buy a telephone book for Roger, now that I have the money, and a refill for myself, and go buy meat and other groceries I didn't buy yesterday now that I have the money, and around the corner for the huge pile of laundry, and almost break both arms getting the two heavy bundles back home. Decide that I have to retype all the hand-written pages of the phone book, and it's a real pain, getting very disgusted with it after awhile, but I've started, so I have to finish, and I'm done in time to put on the pork chops and get into the shower, and John comes at 7:40, but doesn't feel like joining me at the Olivieri meeting, so I go alone to the Ayalas, in 16B of 240 CPS, a nice apartment, and the hostess remembers my name, which is nice, and Olivieri has a handout which I criticize as not sufficiently differentiating between HARD drugs like heroin and SOFT drugs like aspirin and pot. Home at 9:30 during the first break, and John's reading Hesse's "Indian Life" and we talk about my high/non-high feelings, and I say I'm high again, and I come to some realizations about him (see next page) and we get to bed at 11:30.

DIARY 1469

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15. I start reading Life while John leaves, and continue until I finish a couple of issues, almost being caught up to date on them, too. Then Bart Wilson calls at 11, saying he's a friend of Laird's, and he wants to talk to me about drugs, and will take me to lunch at the Brasserie. John's taken the umbrella, and it's raining, but I agree to go anyway, and while thinking about referring him to Roger, I call Roger to see if he's still there (he is), to see if Alan Vaughan's friend got in touch with him (he didn't), to tell him he has an address book (he's glad), and to say we have to get together, and that he doesn't mind my giving out his name and phone number (particularly if they don't call him). Leave at 11:30, have awful troubles finding taxis in the rain, finally get one going up 8th, and the traffic is so bad, I leave him at 56th and Park and walk the rest of the way to 53rd between Park and Lexington. He's annoyed, but mollified when I say I left at 11:30. We get the last table for 2, he recommends everything I get, and it's not all that good, but the daiquiri and wine loosen my tongue, and we're talking about my acid trips, he's interested in hearing that time seems so much slower for me, and also interested in Hollywood Hospital, and I get his permission to write to Lisa to tell her that LSD is something stored in the liver, and when it gives out sugar, it can also give out acid, causing a re-trip up to six weeks after. Walk back, deciding to stop at the Modern Art, but they don't have a complete catalog, only a catalog of circulating films, and I go to the Donnell to find they have nothing for the Cinemateque, and then get another library card and borrow two record sets, and get home at 3. John's left stamps downstairs, and I look at them, call him, talk to Bob 4-5 about his depression and not doing anything, write checks to New York University for the Kinetic Art series, pay the rent, write for $1 to Spec-T, write Gay, and NY Telephone mutilated card. Hot water's back, so I shower at 6, watch "Civilization" from 6:30-7:30, John picks me up for Keaton's "Navigator," "Balloonatic," "Goat," and nothing happens, and we're back to his place to have BODY CONTACT finally!

DIARY 1470

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16. He does me very nicely, and I'm home to get the sex book from Denmark which is so bad that it doesn't even excite me. Call Joe to invite him to John's party, and he says we can get tickets for him tonight, and then I'm into the drawers to put everything back in order for catching up with, even though it's now been about a week since I've been back, and I haven't even begun to catch up on the diary backlog yet. Determine to get down to typing, but I only manage to get 4 pages done, and then I eat lunch and get down to the Elgin at 2:14 missing the start of "The Blacksmith," which is very funny, and then there's fun stuff going on (see next pages), and I miss the beginning of "Go West," so when I'm back up at 3:20, I stay through the whole show again, finishing up at 5:20, even though the fellow I sit next to at the end doesn't respond to me at all. Home to eat and pack a small bag for John's for the weekend, and then when I look at the flyer for Jeff's program while writing a note for Mom, I see that the performance is at 8 pm. Phone John quickly, who says he's on his way, and I dash down, getting to the Academy at 7:55, and the crowd is very small, and we get good seats, and second row seats for tomorrow night. "The Glade" is very sexy, the leather-thong costumes being sexier, I'm sure, than complete nudity, and the lighting and motion is quite beautiful on the two magnificent bodies. "Winesburg, Ohio" is nice with Jeff's "Anticipation" and Deborah Jowitt's conversion from an old hair-up woman to a young hair-down lass, but the bedroom scene is pure Graham, and I didn't quite understand the applause for Rudy Perez in "Queer," except that the audience must have been full of his students. The whole thing is over at 10, and I say we shouldn't go backstage, since that won't leave us anything to talk about TOMORROW night. To John's, and he's already got most of the house fixed up for the party tomorrow night, and again it feels good to see that his poison ivy has gone down far enough that we can have full head-to-toe contact, with the attendant squeezing and sucking and kissing, and not have to worry about infecting hundreds of square inches of flesh with the itchy curse of blister.

DIARY 1474

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17. Up quite late, at 8:30, and dress and get to the empty supermarket. John selects the vegetables and coffee and edibles, and I push the cart. There's no line, and the bill's under $20, which is nice, and we carry it home in the blustering wind and cold moisture in the autumn air. We get started: he trusses the 21-pound turkey while I peel the carrots and celery and cauliflower for the mayonnaise-curry dip, and then about 11 Mom calls, saying she's home, has won $300 on the ship's pool for passing Ambrose Lightship, and will treat us all to lunch. Call the Copter Club and Tower Suite, but they're closed for lunch, and the Rainbow Room accepts us and turtleneck sweaters. Call back and meet them there at 1:15, and they don't let "John" in, and I make a scene, but it does no good. Into the Concourse and call "Top of the Sixes" and they accept us, and we're up for not so good a meal with drinks and desserts, coming to $28 in all, and that's the end of THAT at 3:15. Back to John's, and more shopping for Arabic bread, a gallon and a fifth of wine, fruit, figs and olives and walnuts, and back to peel the onions, green peppers, lettuce and endless radishes for the huge salad, ending with tomatoes and cheese and anchovies later on, and that's all there is to do. John starts sweeping the apartment for one last time, and I shower, washing my hair, and then he naps while I read part of "Magister Ludi," and then he's up, showers, and we're off to the Academy at 7:45, meeting Joe, and Bob introduces me to someone who's moving to LA for a year, who likes hearing I liked it better than SF. "The Glade" is even better a second time, but "Statement" is not so hot, and Aaron Osborne is the only good thing about "Resonances." Again over at 10, and we dash home for quick arrivals, who help with things, and Joe's recruited for the kitchen and for the turkey, and I finish the salad, dash out for more wine, and then settle into the luxury of eating. Most of the girls are searching and whimsically fey, most of the guys are gay and self-entertaining, and I talk with Richard Bennett, whom I don't remember from before, get bored with Ze'eva Cohen's husband, into the bedroom, talk to Bob, everyone leaves at 12, GREAT!

DIARY 1475

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18. Did the dishes and cleaned up until 1:30, slept to 8:30 again, sexed nicely, and then out for a walk on the windy clear Promenade, sucking in the clear-lit city, watching the whitecaps from the ripping tide, buy the Times and a quart of milk, have breakfast, and settle down to read the Times while John sweeps, puts things away, and does a bit of work. We'd thought of taking the Prospect Park tour, or bicycle riding in that park, but it was too windy, we decided, so we stayed inside, and John took a nap while I went through all the Times' puzzles with only a dictionary and a desk encyclopedia to help me. This was all finished at 4, and then we sat around and read some more until we decided we'd see the 6 pm showing at the Elgin. I want to see "Abduction from the Seraglio" on TV at 10, so I pack my stuff into the car and we take off for the Keaton "Battling Butler," and again there seems to be nothing doing: a lot of action, a lot of people, but no actual accomplishment of sex. We're surprised out of our minds when, just as we're about to leave, they start passing out free ice cream, and even the ice-passer is amazed at how no one will take him up on his free offer. Out and down to the Den, and they start serving the soupy lasagna promptly at 8:30, and the crowd is as awful as the food, so we're ready to leave at 9, and John wants to see the Triangle, driving since it's on the way. Hardly anyone there is nice looking, though this is certainly where the crowd is, but the two old lovers from WSDG are there in the spotlight camping it up, and the few cute ones won't even look at me, so I'm bored, and John helps me drink the beer that I brought over from the Den so I wouldn't have to buy another one here. Then he says he's really feeling very sleepy, and it's not JUST the sick feeling from the Elgin, which I've now had the last three times I went there: vaguely headachy, nauseous, feverish, chilled, dry-throated, exactly like I'm coming down with a cold. I debate, asking him if he would MIND if I went home, and he says "Yes, but you can if you want to," and I decide I really don't want to. To his place, and he doesn't even want to read, so we cuddle for a bit, and the light's off about 10:45, early.

DIARY 1476

MONDAY OCTOBER 19. Back home at 9, and telephone to get the schedule for the movies. I'm still trying to catch up with the diary and the mailing and my apartment from the week I was away, and it's now a week AFTER that and I haven't even begun. Fix the last bit of the apartment up, and watch "Hostages" on TV, which they say is about Lidice, but it's only 27 hostages held, with William Bendix playing a ridiculous sabotage leader, and Luise Rainer smiling at the damnedest times as the daughter of a collaborator. That's from 10-11:50, and I hurry through the dishes before catching the subway up to the Surrey, on Mount Eden Avenue off Grand Concourse, for "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever," with a fabulously singing and acting Barbra Streisand and an awful Yves Montand, and a great plot, with good mystical overtones and a great natural job by Jack Nicholson as the hippie former-brother of hers, and "True Grit," where John Wayne runs the gamut of emotions from laconic anger to laconic hatred, and Kim Darby has a nice boyish face and one of the most feminine minces on record. But the scenery was nice, all blue brooks and yellow birches and snowy mountains, which got snowier through the movie: were they saying something about John Wayne? Out at 5:15 and into the supermarket to get more meat for John's coming over at 8, and I shower and make a salad, and he's here at 7:30, and we eat while watching "Laugh-In," and we're talking about a dinner he wants to have with Jeff on Friday, but he can't get to Jeff, and Walter is in bed with a cold and won't make it this week, and Joe and Bob are taken up, too, so there go those plans. Called Avi, but he wasn't home, which was nice for me to say when he called later in the evening. John wants his back massaged, so I get out the unit and crawl all over him doing his back until my fingers hurt, then rolled him over and did his front, gradually, guess what? Concentrating on his cock, and I try using the vibrating chrome knob on the end, setting up pressures with my fingers, and he strains and grunts and enjoys, and shoots for days, later saying that there's a strange soreness from just inside the urethra, probably from the orgasm method, and we neck and sleep.

DIARY 1477

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20. He's out at 8:30, after doing me VERY slowly and neatly, and I'm immediately into "Magister Ludi," and don't put it down until I finish it about 11:30. It's good, but like all Hesse's books, they end rather not as happily or tragically as one would foresee, but on a strange downturn from the most dramatic possible ending. Maybe it's just like life, or maybe he can't write convincingly about death because he hasn't died yet. Fuss around with the apartment and washing socks, and then it's time for TV from 1-3 and the Marx Brothers in "Night at the Opera" which is strange without any dubbed laughter and the silence of an apartment. Lunch during it, water the plants, and then I'm ready to type, sitting down in an agony of "don't want to," and get a couple pages typed, and then down for the mail, then another couple pages typed, and I call for a dentist's appointment (something ELSE terrible to look forward to). Then Joe calls and says he really doesn't want the book, and then I feel compelled to look in EB to find all I can about Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann and Novalis, who doesn't seem to have been translated into English yet, and make out a list of the "most" books I have (see next page), and feel very achy in the shoulders as I type, but it keeps going, keeps going, even though I have all the diversions I can stand, including washing out the socks, and finally I finish, with 14 pages typed, and I'm even starting on a new packet of paper, so I put the old sheets into the notebook, and bring the table of contents page up to date, and then it's time for me to put on the pork chops, shower, shave, eat, brush my teeth twice in preparation for the dentist, and get too late on the subway for the Elgin, getting there at 8:05, but it hasn't started yet, and we see "College," "Day-Dreams," and "The Frozen North," the last two with indecipherable Czech subtitles, which makes them somewhat less enjoyable, except that they are funny in themselves, and John goes after the guy with the beard, I'm cruised by a hand on my knee from in front, and from the cute-cocked guy on the left, but nothing happens, and we leave at 10, he wants to go to his place, we drink some vermouth, bed at 11:30.

DIARY 1479

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21. Home at 9, no sex, get a lovely filled River packet which includes the slogan I sent back last time: it WAS meant for me to keep. Then I get back to typing, and I actually catch up to date with 13 pages, and that by only 12:15! Feel great about that, then sort through the letters I have to write and put them in order, have lunch, and it's time to catch the first show of the last show I haven't seen of the Keaton series, and I get down to the Elgin at 2 to see "Steamboat Bill, Jr.," "Out West," and "The Electric House" and have a nice trick (see next page), and then back at 4 to draft and type an answer to the Rent Control Office, and that sends me searching for the copy of the letter I originally sent in August, and that leads me to sort out my letter drawer and decide that I should really sort out my letter drawer in my FILE. So I look in and decide to separate the letters with the black dividers, and get out the old batch that I used when I have a full drawer and then some fully filled with programs, laboriously tore off all the old stickers, so I wouldn't get that dread disease "sticker build-up," and put on new ones (having to use more than before, which is nice) with the names on, and get involved in sifting through the old stuff. Read quite a bit of it, and find the time passing quickly by, loathe to see it go, and by the time I've finished reading Jean-Jacques' "Historie de Voyage," it's just after 7, so I jump into the shower, brush my teeth, shave, and fix myself two scrambled eggs for breakfast-like dinner, which fills me up fine, and dash uptown to the New York State Theater for "Roberto Devereux," and I like Sills' singing, but John is ranting about how the 20th century will never hear the true bel canto of the 18th, and how he'd rather not hear another opera again, and I counter with my old argument that I'd rather see something POORLY done than not see it at ALL, and there the discussion ends. Admittedly, the last note rather stridently escaped from Sills' tired throat, but the sets were "tasteful," to quote the biddies in the back row, the costumes great, and the singing quite nice for most of the way. Home at 11:30, cuddle briefly in the cold bed, and sleep.

DIARY 1485

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22. John leaves at 8:30 and I immediately tackle the ticket stub problem, and then decide to clean out the souvenir drawer, and sort everything into large and small souvenir booklets (NO, I did this last Wednesday, the 14th), so I SORT out the tickets into price ranges, which takes an enormous amount of time, fingers cramping at the wrist from the strange pinching motion practiced for hours at a time, and sort them into the old envelopes, adding them up, and finding out that from $1000 (very nearly) in 1960, to $2000 (just about) in 1964, I've only gotten to $4000 (a little over) in 1970. Put the drawer away and it's about 2:30, so I settle for a quick lunch and then get down to type up 6 pages, including the page for yesterday, which is the second day in a row, but that streak doesn't last long, since THIS page is obviously a week behind schedule, and of course for no good reason. Marty calls asking for the gay films, since Jerri wants to see them, and she and he talked about who they'd like to participate with, and who they'd like to have watching them, and we talked for a long time about why I liked guys and why Marty liked girls, and he said that as far as HE knew, neither of them had been to bed with anything other than one of the opposite sex at a time. Back to the letter file and sort out dates, which thankfully is easy for the huge pile of Bill's stuff, which I even subdivide into yearly stacks, and some of his yearly stacks are bigger than most of the other complete correspondences. Finish just in time to get some quick dinner and get down to the City Center for the free Joffrey tickets that John got, and Fuente is the Miller, so the whole thing is whole classes better than the one with Verso in it, and much to my joy they're doing "Secret Places," and Dermot Burke is fine and Donna Cowan is even finer, being a brilliantly precise and cool dancer with all the grace and even more elegance than Lisa Bradley. Very fine dancing and choreography. "The Clowns" is even better, but John didn't stay for it, and he was in bed when I got in, but we cuddled a bit when I crawled into bed, and felt very good falling asleep with his apparatus in my hands once more.