1970 7 of 8
DIARY 1486
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23. Up for sex, and John sticks around long enough for me to get the mail, and it's the packet of stamps from Mom from the Bahamas and Bermuda, and lots of others from her friend at work who gets mail from Columbia. Since most of them are mint, I decide to put the mint stamps into the album, and that takes a couple of hours, and I'm going to need stamp hinges, too. Get done with the stamps and the apartment is a mess, and I WANT to get back to the book, but I have the letters to write yet, and I think about getting to them, sorting the letters I've SAVED into the letters I have to WRITE, but I still don't get around to them (and now I have to catch up on my diary before I can get to the letters before I can get to the McGraw-Hill test before I can get to the book---WOW), because the phone rings from below and it's Joan, who's in the neighborhood and has a couple of hours to kill. She comes up about 4, having not had lunch, and she makes herself a sandwich, and I only have a piece of cheese, and that's it for me, having had scrambled eggs and nice pieces of raison bread toast for breakfast, and she talks about the non-Equity job she's taking under the name of Lacy Thomas for a couple of months in the south, about the boyfriend she has, about the new apartment and how bright it is and how much she needs curtain rods, but traverse rods won't do. Then it's about 6, she makes a few phone calls, I'm looking out the window at the sunset, deciding it's beautiful, but that the windows will have to be washed soon, and then she leaves for some sort of choir rehearsal which is helping her with her voice lessons, since she can't afford Ora Witte. John comes over after his class at 7:45 and we eat dinner, and we sit around and talk about the upcoming Monopoly game tomorrow evening with Art, since Bob's going out of town and Art loves to play, and then about 10 we'd been talking about going to the Beacon Baths, but John just suggests that we go around the corner to the Sauna, and I say fine, since I'd never been there before, and we decide to smoke before we leave at 10:15, and we get back at different times (see following pages), thoroughly worn out from it.
DIARY 1496
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24. Wake and laze around and laze around, touching lightly, and neither of us really feels like having sex, even though I didn't even get properly hard last night, and we finally crawled out of bed about 9:30. John started working on his editing in the living room, and I began to do the dishes, when he said he wouldn't mind AT ALL if I did them, after I had breakfast, and I was finished at 10:30, when I said I was sorry, but that he'd have to go into the bedroom because I was going to watch TV. Turned on "Spaceship to the Unknown," and it was the same old Flash Gordon vs. Ming the Merciless serial I'd seen complete AND abbreviated under another title, but felt simply too lethargic to admit having seen it, so I watched it again, scouring the sink, fixing up the apartment, and brushing my teeth during the intermissions. That was over at 12, and just after that John decided he had to go home because he was finished with his work, and he had to take care of his plants. I'd scoured the tub while he was here, and started cleaning up the house for the party here this evening, but then when he left, the day was so bright and warm outside that I figured it would be the perfect time to wash the windows, since it probably wouldn't rain much during the autumn, and there might be spectacular sunsets to be seen. So out with the paper towels and spray and did the bathroom, bedroom, and even the kitchen, with great success, and finished the living room about 4 pm, feeling very tired. Waxed the radiator cover, and finally John was back, about 4:30, and I finished dusting and vacuuming the apartment and got into the shower to wash my hair, and got everything about finished by 6:30, when Avi came a bit early and Art came a bit late. We decided to smoke a bit, since Avi was rather high when he came in (emphasized because John wanted to dry my hair with his fingers, and then threw me back on the bed with the vibrator and started doing me, and when the phone rang from downstairs at 6:25, I couldn't answer it because I was coming, and it blew his mind to be answered by a naked me when he rang the apartment knocker), and we had a riotous dinner at the Yangtze River (see following pages), and Monopoly game.
DIARY 1500
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25. We have sex in the morning and don't get out of bed until 11, which is a record for lateness! Read the Times and call for the weather report, and there's a 10% chance of rain, though the clouds are lowering fast and dark outside. John wants to go home, and will meet me at City Hall at 2:30 if the bicycle tour of lower New York is going to take place, and I'm to call Art to borrow his bicycle. But by 1:30 it's started to rain, so I begin on the puzzle and finish it by 4, when John Connolly calls, back from Spain, and asks me over at 5 for dinner. I say OK, and call John to "ask" him if I can be excused from meeting him at the Den for dinner, which we'd planned on. He says OK, so I shave and shower and subway uptown at 5, and John mentions his slides of Spain, so we look at them, aided by A.C. and Jim-Jim, and at 6:30 the phone rings and John's supposed to be at work at 7:45! So the evening's cancelled, we have his manicotti (or something that wasn't lasagna or cannelloni) and iced tea and lovely drippy cherry pie, and Jim-Jim's got a headache, so we three can't even play. I call John, but he's gone, as it turns out, to Danny's in Brooklyn Heights for THEIR dinner, and Avi, who's working on school things and has someone there, so there's nothing to do but to join Jim and John on their way south at 7:30, so I watch the end of "Company" filming, and "In this Corner, Joe Louis" for two hours, desperate to stop thinking about my dental appointment tomorrow, and at 10 leave for John's at 10:30, but see this cute tall leggy guy on a corner, ask him if he's out for a stroll, I say "I can't invite you to my friend's place, why don't you invite me up for coffee," so Bob Kunikoff does, but his mother calls, and I undress him except for shorts while he lolls on the floor, stoned, I think, and then I do him rather nicely, except that he doesn't like kissing, and then when his mother calls back at 11:20, we exchange addresses, he says he'll be sure to call me, and I leave for John's, waking him, and tell him all about what happened during the day, and he doesn't seem to mind it, except that I had to wake him up to get in. Kiss twice and fall asleep.
DIARY 1501
MONDAY, OCTOBER 26. Leave his place at 8:30 and get off the subway at 125th and St. Nicholas at 9:15, and walk leisurely across, rather happy that I'm not TERRIBLY disturbed about the upcoming appointment, and she concludes that I want ONLY the front tooth filled, which she does with three rather quick and semi-painful swats with the non-speed drill, and tell her to look at the others, and she finds two which need replacing from the back, so there has to be ANOTHER appointment next week, but I feel rather good walking away from it, thinking that next week will probably be easier: the worst part is sitting with mouth open, draining, waiting for the porcelain to dry enough to let me close my mouth. (Oh, yes, called Bill yesterday, since I'd neglected writing him a letter, saying it was OK for him to come, and he said he was leaving Houlton Tuesday, and would get here sometime between 2 and 6 pm on Wednesday, so there goes THAT part of a week). Subway home, and then gather everything together for going to the bank to get some more cash, buying tickets for the "Moody Blues," and going to get groceries. There's quite a line at Carnegie Hall, so I stop into Marlboro's to buy "Andromeda Strain" to pass the line-time, which goes very quickly, in fact I'm home about 3:30, and the book is interesting and goes so quickly that I read it through by 6:30. It's surprisingly full of SCIENCE, though there's not much in the line of characterization or sex, though there's a bit of humor, and the style is clipped and journalistically neat. Then John Connolly calls and says TONIGHT is fine for Canasta, so I get ready and call John and he says he'll be here after class anyway, and I subway up to John's at just the stroke of 8, we sit around and chat while Jim-Jim does the dishes, and then we play two games (with everyone who doesn't remember ANY of the rules, and supposedly A.C. is even messed up because he thought you had to have two ALWAYS to pick up the pot), and John and I win them both without any real competition from the two. I think they win about one out of each four or five games in the set. Over at 11 and I dash home by 11:25 to find John in bed already, being tired out from his class.
DIARY 1502
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27. We have very pleasant sex in the morning, and John gets down to his work, and for lack of anything to do, I begin to rework what starts as "Adirondack Autumn," and ends up as "Wildfall," checking back the words to make sure I haven't reused any of them, and decide that the word list is becoming AS important as the poem itself. I'd called yesterday to find that today was the last day for the double at the Embassy, and John leaves at 12:30, so I dash out madly just after he leaves to gulp down two Nedick's franks at the stand in the subway hallway, and get on the train, getting there just in time, puzzling over their strange custom of showing the last hour of the main feature from noon to 1, and then showing the sub-feature. Stand around in the lobby, not realizing that "The Comic" started, and watch Dick Van Dyke and a very aged Mickey Rooney and others like Carl Reiner and Jeff Donnell (whom I recognized as the nurse) in a rather tasteless movie about no comic in particular, but a very self-centered, lecherous one in general. "Getting Straight" was a very full movie, having plot and subplot and levels to the characters out of proportion to current movies. It seemed good in general, with Elliott Gould shacking up with a funny black and a ticklish Candice Bergman, who's finally learned how to act, and a lovely James Deany Robert Lyons plays the Nick Filbert, and nut who messes everything up, and new breaks-through in candidness "she'll blow you," he's back again, "Oh, ignore him, he has no conscience," and interesting thought that riots are sexually stimulating to those involved in them, that it's possible to "have had" activism, and to want to study, and then decide at the last oral that you DON'T fit in, and make fools of everyone, mashingly kissing a testing prof who insists that Caraway, or someone, has a gay letch on Great Gatsby, covering up for Fitzgerald's gayness. Out and home at 5, chilly in the cold, and home to dinner and wear gloves and scarf for the first time to the Brooklyn Academy for a poor "The Consort," boring "Caprichos," short "Cortege Parisien" to Spanish music, and another interminable "Early Songs." To John's, vermouth, and bed.
DIARY 1503
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28. Home at 9:15 to glance through Life Magazine, have breakfast, fix up the apartment a bit for Bill, and get down to work again on "Wildfall." Surprisingly, Bill arrives at 12:45, HAVING BEEN UNABLE TO SLEEP IN Portland, So he's been driving from 2:45 that morning, but doesn't feel sleepy. We sit around while I tell him more about our trip up to Maine, he talks about his trip down, we compare notes about the fine art of doing absolutely nothing, he tells me about his trip to the coast, seeing Tom, and I tell about John and Jeff and the Dance Theater friends, and about 3 he decides he wants a nap, and I've been typing, but stop that and again settle down to work on the poem, getting pretty close to finishing it, although I can't make the central scattered section spell out anything like "REAL," though I try very hard to do so. He's up about 6, having gotten up a couple times when Avi called to bend my ear for ages about the continuing feud between him and Evan (he called last night at 6:50, saying he'd only take 10 minutes, and I could barely get off the phone at 7:10, almost late for the subway). That takes about an hour, while I typewriter-whisk-broom off my box, which glows dustily in the setting sun, and then John calls while he's trying to sleep, too. We talk about where to eat, and decide on the Yangtze River, and I tell him about the high dinner we had there, and we get there at 6:30 and eat nicely and slowly, and he loves everything from the chicken almond ding (which isn't so hot) to the shrimp egg foo young (which isn't bad) and the lovely fried rice, which is nice. The French couple beside us talk to me in French about their quick stay at the Holiday Inn before returning to their country, and I assist them down Broadway and 42nd Street, and to the Grey Line the next day. Back about 8 and John's there, having been drinking, tired from dance class, and he's surprisingly faggoty, which both Bill and I notice, and he's to bed at 10:30, and Bill and I continue talking until about 11:15, about the power of the phallus, about writing journals as ways of getting things on paper, about reading, about his view of fate and God and "what will happen, will without struggle."
DIARY 1504
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29. Since John got to sleep at 10:30, we both wake at 6:20 am, and cuddle and cuddle and cuddle, and finally I go down on him and do him VERY very slowly, and he comes with enormous contortions and expressions (though silent) of pleasure at about 7:10, and then we cuddle again and he goes down on me, and I'm quite up and appreciative, and I come with great feeling, and we're still lying together when he has to get up at 8. He showers and Bill surprises him while exercising, and John's off to work, I have breakfast while Bill washes, then he has his crunchy granola and we chat while he maps out his business for the day, finding there are few things he can do over the telephone, and we talk more and he's out so I can finish typing (which I'm doing while he's here) the last versions of WILDFALL and its associated WORD-LIST for Elaine, and then I get down to typing, and with little difficulty I go through 15 pages, getting the Sauna incident down and the High dinner at Yangtze River, and up to the last weekend. Then Bill's back and we talk for a bit more about his purchases, and Ray Reyes had called, so he's coming over tonight, and Bill decided he'd be going to Howard's on Friday night, so he's getting to do all that he wants to do, except possibly seeing the free Marx Brothers with the Mill pass that Cyndy sent me. About 4 I took a shower to get my hair washed for the evening, since it was pretty greasy, having not been washed since Monday, and three days is just too long. He wants to eat at Angelo's, resting a bit on the floor before we leave at 5:45, and he gets the eggplant and I the pork scaloppini, and we're finished by 7, and I'm across town to take my records back in the last two hours of their dueness, and get into the Rockefeller Center subway station to find the D DOES stop there, and get to the Brooklyn Academy by 7:45, surprising John by being there so early, and he'd even given me my ticket so he wouldn't be concerned about my being late. "The Consort" is better now that I know what's doing, though I feel a Russian influence, which Deborah Jowett and John pooh-pooh, and "Intermezzo" is bad without Coll, even with Feld, and "At Midnight" is so-so. To John's.
DIARY 1505
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30. Up so tired that nothing happens, home at 9 to wake Bill up since Ray didn't leave until 4:30 that morning! He says he'll sleep more, if it's OK with me, so I go into the bedroom debating whether to bother him by going in for a book to read, and decide that THIS, at last, is the perfect time to work on the McGraw-Hill Copy-Editing Test, so I get it out, transfer the ideas from the scraps of paper, and go through it until about 11:30, when Bill gets up and I can go get the other books from McGraw-Hill to compare forms of footnotes and bibliographies, and then he and I chat a bit, and Marty calls to ask what I'm doing, and I say working on the test, and he said "Oh, I have nothing to do," hinting that he might want to come over. None of that! Bill manages to do nothing around here until 3:30, when he's supposed to leave for Howard's, and I continue with the test, getting over 150 errors located before stopping, and decide I've done enough for a bit, and get back to diary typing, and actually catch up to date again, and then I remember I have to get meat for John's dinner, so I go to the store to stock up on soft drinks and beer that everyone's drunk me out of, and more meat for John's diet, and get back to find that the cold water STILL isn't on, though the hot water came back on about 1, after Bill filled up the toilet hopper twice, first to get rid of his and Ray Reyes' pee-pee (after Bill went out to Horn and Hardart's for a coffee and roll for lunch and came back to shit), and I took a shower at 7, nursing the heating water so that I could rinse off without scalding myself, and ate steak and (having called Avi about Evan's possible leaving, since Avi won't apologize to him, and Arnie, to find he'd gotten back only Wednesday evening) meet John at 8 at the Joffrey for a very swinging "Trinity" with a sexy Gary Cryst, a moody "Still Point" with Dennis Wayne, happy to see him, a second-time-disappointing "Solarwind," and a completely RUINED "Viva Vivaldi!" with Francesca Corkle taking over Fuente's choreography unchanged! Home at 10:30 and Howard's over with Bill, talking and laughing to 12:30, aided by Wild Blackberry Mist and Bull's Blood.
DIARY 1506
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31. Wake at 4 or 5 and do John for an hour, then back to sleep, wondering how it came about, and then wake about 7:30, and John does ME with gusto, and then we're up at 8:30, finding that Bill's up, too. He takes off at 9:30 for the wedding, and we lay around and talk and eat breakfast and it's about all I can do to get off for Joan's rehearsal of "Lovers and Other Strangers" at Ontur Productions at 53rd and Broadway, where Mike is back, looking even more fully bearded than before, and Virginia is there with Jim Ducick (or someone) who graduated from Akron U in theater, but got there after I left. Pat is there too, looking fierce, and he admits to being stoned, and he's got no idea how he arrived. The four plays are quite funny, and it's one of the better things Joan's been in, even having to play a masculine type against a possibly-fey marine, but her old poor self when she has to play someone's Italian mother, slipping in and out of character and accent, particularly when she says "Oh, God" as a curse a la Davis, rather than a supplication to the deity she knows is there. That's finished about 3 pm, and get back to find that John couldn't work anymore and had to go out for a walk. I get started on refitting my costume (after calling to get the recorded announcement from the Park-Miller that the filmmakers festival WAS being held over, which was recommended by Howard), and cut a wider neck, which is a mistake, and put on tape which I'd just bought, which wasn't bad. Type one page to keep diary up to date. Also sprayed for roaches, who began dying by the dozens, and bought plates for under the plants and cups for under John's coffee maker. Bill got back about 5:30, and watched John and me dress for the party, and then about 6:30 we went down to the Fuji Sukiyaki, where we had Umani, without many mushrooms, the seaweed, which John liked, tempura, chicken sukiyaki in huge portion, beefsteak teriyaki, which wasn't so hot, and tatsuta-age, which no one but me liked, and I had soup, and Bill had rice and ice cream, for a total bill with tip of $18, which is six dishes and three sides for only three people. Back home to pack our costumes and go to Avi's at 8:30 (see following pages).
DIARY 1516
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1. Up about 10:30, feeling rather foggy after drinking and dancing and potting last night. Bill was up already at 10:30 and eating, and by the time John and I did each other (he did me, then jerked himself off, since he said, with a rueful grin, that my come had gone in through his nose and out through his mouth) and decided to go to his place for waffles, Bill didn't want to go, but would spend the day shopping in the Broome Street area for a pea jacket which he finally bought for $16. John and I subwayed to his place, I working on the puzzle in the meantime, and continued working on it while he made breakfast, and we finished about 1, I washing the dishes, and he said he wanted to bicycle, so we went down to the rental place to find them rented out, and I think of Arnie, and call him at Norma's, but he doesn't have one and doesn't know anyone who does, and I think of Bob Kunikoff, and he's on his way out, says it's broken, but confesses that it only needs the rear tire filled, so I wheel it down to Love Lane, and we're riding down under the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges to look at the warehouses and shoreline and the chateau of the Vice Admiral of the Eastern Sea Frontier, and tenements and churches and then into the Heights and lovely Willow Place, and then back to Bob's at 5, where I talk with Bob who was ALSO invited to Bob's for Halloween, but didn't go, since Bob was always after Bob's bod. Then to John's, where we have rum and orange, and to Danny's at 6:30 after smoking again. The place is rather nice, and the spread of hot chicken and cold salads is most impressive, and John treats me to dinner, since he has a dime. We can't find empty tables, so we sit on the stage, I'm so high that I can't quite control my fingers, fork, and plate, and dribble salad goop on my trousers, and drink one beer after another, but the effect isn't from the beer, only from the pot. John finishes, and says he's not feeling very well, and wants to go home, but I don't have to go with him: I can stay and watch the show. Bob comes and sits next to me, saying "Well, isn't that a surprise that we got rid of him so QUICK," and that starts the paranoid confusion (see following pages).
DIARY 1521
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2. After that horrendous night and dawn, I have to face John's assertion that he really doesn't feel very well, and won't be going in to work that day, but that he'll have to get up for groceries. I say I'll go for them, and he says "Fine, Bohack opens at 9 or 9:30," and then I tell him I have to get to the dentist's by 9:30, but say I can get it elsewhere, so he makes out an order, I dress and go out, having shaved and brushed my teeth as well as I could, and subway up to Rosey's, making it again at 9:20, this time to be ushered into a seat immediately. She takes after both back teeth with the electric, then with the manual one, and then starts filling them, only to take at me again with the slow drill twice, which was about one more time than I could bear. Again the age of mouthwide for the porcelain to dry, and she looks at the other teeth to say I seem to be fine, and I bow out, thanking her, saying "See you in six months." But there's no feeling of elation, I have too many things on my mind. Home at 10:45, pick up the mail, have breakfast, read bits of Scientific American, then finish the puzzle which I'd brought back with me, amused at the 11 times the number OF THE SQUARE goes into that square, and then I go into the bedroom and WORK ON THE McGRAW-HILL TEST, even to the point of finishing it, and I type up the final drafts and put everything into an envelope, ready for mailing this evening. John and I arrange to see the film, since he's feeling much better, and to fill up the time at 4:30, I call Cyndy, who wants to take a vacation to the islands somewhere, and Avi, who's been talking to Evan recently, so it seems he won't leave, and he hasn't found my waistband ring, and he tells me that he and David had a lovely scene on Saturday. Then I get in to shower, but not shave since I did it this morning, and get ready for the Los Angeles Amateur Film-Maker's Festival at the Park-Miller theater, which Howard talked up so much, and I'm to meet John there at 7:30, and actually get there at that time, not talking to a passing Rick Winter because I'm in a hurry, and I go inside when John's not there, to wait for him (see following pages).
DIARY 1524
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3. Wake about 7:15 to a sexed John, and I do him, and he does me, and last night, when I WANTED to be done, and thought about it, and ached for it, and then I woke early and played with myself, then dozed off, and that whole system of WANTING it was so nicely set up that he had no trouble doing me, and he watched as I oozed out painfully because he held it too tight, and then I reached down, he released his grip, and I shot up over my shoulder and onto the bed beside my head. It was great! He didn't feel it, and didn't believe it when I said the sheet was wet, so I purposefully left my shoulder wet, and THEN he felt it. Out of bed at 8, and he worked while I again read sections of the Scientific American, and made up a grocery list, and then Marty called and wanted me to go with him to a Brooklyn Dog Pound to get rid of Footsy, and John wanted to go home about three, so we agreed to meet downstairs at three. I typed 8 pages while John was doing his work, and then about noon he left, so I figured who I wanted to vote for, took Joan's wig (which I should have taken yesterday, but forgot) down to Ontur and squeezed it through the mail slot, went to vote for Goldberg and Ottinger and Olivieri (and was sad to hear that Rockefeller and Buckley got it the next morning), and then went for groceries, and home to eat, feeling sorry for John who was going to go to the doctor's tomorrow to see if he had hepatitis. Then it's 2:50 and I'm trying to figure what to do for 10 minutes, and John calls to say that he and Marty are downstairs, so I'm down, borrowing the projector from Marty while I'm there, and Footsy DOESN'T want into the car and trembles all the way into Brooklyn, and onto Nostrand between Park and Sterling, where Marty is convinced he should lie, to get Footsy a home as a 4-year-old terrier, rather than as an 8-year-old mutt. Back at 5, call Joe to remind him about tonight, then eat and shower and wash my hair, and up at 7 to "The Makroupolus Affair," which Maralin Niska acts and sings (what singing there is) quite well, and Corsaro gets the lion's share of applause for his effective staging. Joe's tired, so goes home, and I'm home at 10, bed at 11.
DIARY 1526
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4. John feels better and leaves at 8:30, and I start typing to catch up to date, and manage to get 13 pages done before I stop. Then the painter's due tomorrow, so I fix up the apartment for painting: take all the stuff off the tops of things and put them in one box in the hall closet, take all the paintings off the wall and laboriously scrape off the gummed strips which I'll never use again, and put them in another box in the hall closet. Take down the shades and blind from the kitchen and store them away, and then empty out the kitchen cabinets of dishes and groceries and supplies so that he'll be able to paint them, putting them in the packing boxes I handily saved in the closet, and putting the boxes in the bedroom closet. Remember to leave out some utensils for dinner, however, and leave the silverware and kitchen matches and table mats in still another box on the sofa, along with a separate pile of pots and pans and sink drainer and dish dryer. Thank goodness I don't have to empty the refrigerator! Then put the stuff from the bathroom into the two plastic wastebaskets and put those on top of the boxes in the bedroom closet, and stash things like the blender and toaster in various safe places in the closet, and replace the hall gray light with a strong one for painting, and take the flashing lights out of the bedroom fixture and put in two 100-watt bulbs for painting, and then make out a list of things I have to do the next day, like hiding the pot, as John recommended, and taking down the bedroom drapes and shades, and putting everything like lamps and chairs into the living room from the bedroom and bathroom. This all takes huge quantities of time, though I'm glad it's being done, and finally finish in time to shower (for the last time here in ages) and eat and subway down in pelting rain to NYU and the Kinetic Art series, which shows two films from the so-called Second Program in the Program 1. The hit is undoubtedly "Ego," by an Italian who isn't afraid of revealing his dream-content, and the women growing and fading in the atomic blast are fabulous. John goes to his place and I to mine, to work more, until about 1:30, putting things away.
DIARY 1527
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5. House phone rings at 7:25, and Josie says he's on his way to change and will be right up. I feel stoned from lack of sleep, and dress quickly and start finishing up the last bits of things, but he's up at 7:35, bitching about this being the last time he'll work in the building, that the scraping would take a day in itself, and that I should have had everything moved to the center of the bedroom. We take the drapes and shades down, then he helps me move everything into the center, covers everything up with enormous clean drop cloths, and he begins scraping at 8, and I adjourn to the living room for Scientific American readings, which this is a good chance to catch up with. He begins painting at 9:25, and I jot down his timing on a piece of an article clipped from Sci-Am, and then stop for a bit for breakfast, and he's finished with the bedroom at 11:25, starting on the bathroom, and then he says I can move the stuff from the living room into the bedroom at my pace. But the bathroom's finished at 12:30, and he's out to lunch and back at 12:45, and I haven't finished anything in the living room but getting all the flowers out. He helps me move stuff into the center, the big white bookcases and the record cabinet being the greatest headaches, and then I'm into the bedroom to read as he begins scraping at 1, and begins painting at 1:40. I'm again reading in the bedroom, not able to do anything until the paint dries, and he's finished at 3, and has everything wrapped up and is out of the apartment at 3:30, having put in a hard 8-hour day without being able to finish the bathroom radiator because it was hot (and he busted off the turn-off valve), or the kitchen or the living room windows, and he said someone would be up tomorrow morning to do it. I gasp at everything that has to be done, and begin by vacuuming the bedroom and putting things back in order there (which I did before moving in the living room stuff), and then into the living room to vacuum, discovering that I've lost the nut to the handle connection for the vacuum. Don't eat, but subway to Merce Cunningham's awful performance, which John and I disagree with, to his place for Wheatena.
DIARY 1530
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6. Argue into night (see next pages) and wake at 6:50, and get down to the subway at 7:05, but the A train is very late, the platform is very crowded, and the crush when the last car isn't on the train made the usual 9 am rush seem like the crowds encountered when crossing the Gobi Desert. Hasten to Josie at 7:45 to find that indeed the painter's arrived, but that he's changing, and that I should have called her to tell her to let him in if I didn't arrive in time. Upstairs and check to see that everything's OK for painting, and he's up, along with the supervisor, who tells me that HE has to get extra money from Walentis to pay off the painters, who need more than union scale, and that's the way things ARE, and Walentis can't declare this to the Rent Control Agency, thus doesn't necessarily get his 6.2% guaranteed income. I said I didn't understand, and he could only counter, showing me a roll of 5 dollar bills, that that's the way it WAS. I continue vacuuming the living room while he paints, and at 8 Mom calls to say that Rita's coming into New Jersey with a girlfriend to see her boyfriend in Carteret, who goes to Rutgers, and will be in to see me about 10 am, after calling to see if I'm in. Painter does the bathroom radiator, but it cracks and cakes when the heat comes up and makes a horrible smell. He's out about noon, and I watch "Strange Cargo" from 1 to 3, squinting in the sunlight because the shades aren't up yet, and then eat a sandwich for lunch, all available in the fridge, and gradually get the living room furniture moved back by myself, vacuuming as I go, and get into the bathroom to scrape the walls and put up the shower curtain and scrub the sink and the floor for some semblance of order, and put up the bedroom drapes, and read a bit of Sci-Am when I'm relaxing, and I still don't eat dinner when I have to meet Norma at 7:10, munching on a cheese sandwich, for the ride into Brooklyn for "Saved," where we meet John. It's a good show, and at 11:30 I buy two bottles of wine and my dinner and take it to John's, and we entertain Norma and Arnie until 2:30, while we talk and I eat steak and onion pie and we drink wine and eat tacos and herring and sesame crackers.
DIARY 1531
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7. Up about 9, and have lovely Baby Magic sex until 10, and I call Ceil to say that I'll be there about 12, and to let Rita in if she comes, and we have cereal for breakfast and I look through the Voice while he gets ready to drive into Dutton's, and we shop for plants and soil, and get a pot tray that turns out to be too small, and he lets me off at the Waverly and I subway up at noon to find no one's called or been there, so I put everything away that I'd gotten through the evening (including some neat books from Europe from Arnie), and have lunch, and at 2:30 there's a knock at the door and it's Rita and her friends Mary Farkas and Someone Toth, and they're all eager to have a look from the roof after ogling the apartment view, and they like it all. Down to start talking, and I suggest they try honey and plum wines, which they love, Rita finally taking the last of the honey with her, and then we progress to the Blackberry Mist and Crème de Noyeau, talking about their trip, fashions and hair styles, and I get them to looking at books (Mary picks out the Monet that Rita gave me), and then to Indian trinkets, the Taj model, the Japanese scroll, and other things, and they leave at 5, which is nice, since John calls to say he'll be late, about 6. He gets here and we eat and get out to the Joffrey, and he likes "Trinity" a bit more, "Time Cycle" is awful, and the finale of "Cakewalk" is nice and cheery. I'd been tired during "Time Cycle," wondering about going to Eddie's afterward, but when we looked through the map during the intermission and went to get the car, I felt better, a little worried because John seemed tired. Up the West Side Highway to the exit for 178th Street, which I say we should take, but John is bound elsewhere, and we wind up on some sort of section of the Belt Parkway which doesn't permit us to get off until we're well past 170th Street, and then we go down Jerome to 170th, and cruise along that until we finally hit Shakespeare, and John finds a place right there, and we're up to the apartment, which turns out to be crowded with undesirables, but after smoking, the party turns into quite a good one (see following pages) and we leave at 2.
DIARY 1537
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8. Up about 10 for breakfast, and Bob calls and we finally decide we'll not go bicycling, nor to the Cloisters, but to the Doris Duke gardens in Somerville, New Jersey. I have cereal and read a bit of the paper, and we leave at 11:45 to get down to Second Avenue at 12, and they join us and we're through the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey, talking about Merce Cunningham, and Art verifies a point by saying there's great turnover in the company's personnel because Merce doesn't cater to them as individuals. We talk about pot and turning on without it, and about the party last night, and other things, and I just barely glimpse the sign to the turnoff, and John hastily eats his tuna out of the can before the bus comes to take us to the greenhouses. There's a wait for the 3 pm tour, and we look at the magazines and the crackling fire and the views from the lodge windows, and then out into the kerosene-scented air for the series of twelve gardens, and beautiful gardens they were, with the best being the jungle, with the canopy of greenery completely obscuring the idea we were inside somewhere, and the Persian, with the lightness and white-tile cleanness of ambience. The French was lavish, with the intricate green trelliswork, and the Italian suitably decayed and the statues moss-covered. The Japanese and Chinese were great for moss growing, too, and the cactus garden and the orchids were mind boggling with their infinite varieties. The mottled maple was the hit, as was the peach-apricot scent of the olive blossoms. Out at 4, ravenous, and we stopped at a diner for huge antipastos, and I ate eight pats of butter with assorted buns and crackers. To John's, and we try John's stack of blocks puzzle and VERY tart daiquiris because he didn't have much rum, and then out at 7 to Danny's, where again we eat on the stage, and I have lots of fruit, because I haven't been eating very well due to the painting, and I feel that I need salads and fruits to build up my vanishing resources of vitamins and minerals. Drive them back into town on the way to Wooster Street and the Performing Garage, and a preview with Al Bennett of "Commune" (see next page), to his place to 12, and to John's.
DIARY 1539
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9. Back home at 9 to tackle the Times, and get the puzzle finished rather quickly by 1:30, and then it dawned on me that TODAY would be a good day to watch for the addresses on the quiz shows, so I started watching at 1:30 and watched until 4:30, having been through "Let's Make a Deal," the "Newlywed" and "Dating" Games, and the "Movie Game," not getting much out of it. Decided I had to get to the boxes in the closets, and put everything back into the kitchen cabinets, and things back onto the tops of things, leaving only the pictures to be put back on the walls and the bathroom cabinet to be cleaned. Washed the shelves and put everything back, actually throwing out some insect repellent from 1959, and some paregoric which had some brown precipitate from 1964. John's over at 7:45 with steak, and I only have hamburger, so he fries things in two different pans, and I feel stupid about it, but there it is. Then we get back into our conversation about Merce Cunningham, and he mentions that the sound volume of "Trinity" actually hurt his ears, and I came up with the idea that his own MIND mediated everything that he saw, and when we got into it farther, he could quote examples of how his mind mediated: he had owned a chair which was ugly to look at, but the most comfortable chair he had ever sat in. He got RID of that chair to get the chair he now had: less comfortable, he'd admit, but better looking, so he liked it better. (This all got started when he said he didn't like my apartment, and I admitted that having ANY pictures on the walls, and ANY flowers on the shelf, were all COMPROMISES that I made, so that people wouldn't feel that I was "missing something" by not having these things.) He also admitted to the fact that he ALSO didn't like a friend's apartment which was all very nice to LOOK at, but the furniture was uncomfortable. I said that it was his MIND that mediated between each input stimulus to his body and each output reaction he had to anything, and I tried to say that if he found many ways of LIKING something, it would be fine, but since he seemed to find many ways of DISLIKING something, he might want to look at (continued on the following page).
DIARY 1541
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10. Up to feel cuddly but not really sexy, and he starts in on his work while I take a paint scraper to the bedroom windows. Then I decide I can't do anything more until I scrape the living room windows, so I settle down to type six pages, and then it's 12:15 and he leaves for lunch with a French author of his at the Yangtze River, and I hasten to turn on TV to watch more programs, getting nothing from "Pay Cards" and "You Don't Say," finding "It's Your Bet" and "Words and Music" are in California, and then watch the "Newlywed Game" just to see the cute Italian stupido husband lose the game for them. This is finished at 2:30, and I have a sandwich without butter and without vegetable, simply because there isn't any, and I haven't gone out to get anything. Want to get to work to do things, but I put music on the record player, and get stuck looking through Scientific Americans, and go down for the mail and look through Life magazine while John's working, and when I'm finished washing the windows in the living room at 4, it's almost totally dark out because of the awful rain that's obscured everything for days, and then read more magazines and shower and eat dinner of awful enchiladas in a can, which I'll never get again, and out at 7:15 to see that Bill's sent my nuts and to get a subway to Brooklyn, the A again, and we're early for Merce Cunningham, and I actively dislike "Canfield" so much that I satirically applaud at one point, and boo loudly at the end. We move downstairs, talking about why I got so ANGRY with the piece, and during "Objects" which I enjoyed only because I talked to one of the four "tickers" who randomly furnished the sound for the piece, I figure it's just a WASTE of whatever talent Merce might have, his dancers' talent, and the time and money of the audience for a tiny cull-de-sac of self-defeating personal ideas in choreography, heightened by John's observation that his company probably would NOT survive after his death, as Graham's probably will. Back to John's at 10:30, and can't resist stopping for a hot fudge sundae in the balmy weather, now that the rain's stopped, and to his place feeling fine, fresh from a shower, with clean hair and shaved face, and we cuddle.
DIARY 1542
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11. So tired that John's out of bed without sex, but I get terribly horny in the subway and can't wait to get into my apartment, where I strip and get out the Tom drawings for tracings of rampant cocks spewing inhuman amounts of semen, and I come with enormous gusto and feeling, and then clean myself off and go into the living room at 10:15 to start cleaning butternuts, and then watch "Concentration," "Sale of the Century," "Hollywood Squares," "Jeopardy," and "Who, What or Where," until 1 pm, getting three addresses, and then going into the bedroom to categorize my responses, I look at the drawings and see that they're TERRIBLY sexy, and out comes my cock again and I jerk off AGAIN, trying to work on a second drawing, which I manage to get some of before I can't take it and jerk off, with a small splut of fluid, and then categorize the television programs that I'm going to send off for, and then figure I MUST do something today, since it's stopped raining, though still cloudy, and I get the shopping lists together and get out to Woolworth's for miscellaneous junk, along with a bottle of Noxon polish for 59¢, which shows up later at Finast for 47¢, and some lamp wiring wire which doesn't fit, unless I slice it in half, which just MAY work, since the OTHER wiring seemed to be halved. Then for groceries, and load up the fridge and eat very well. Avi called in the morning, and then Bob called in the afternoon, from when I called him last night, and then John Connolly called about 5, saying he'd forgotten to send out the invitations to his party TONIGHT for Bob Dash's opening at the Graham Gallery, and I said I'd ask John, but we'd probably be there. Fix up the apartment reasonably well, coming again as I put the stuff AWAY, and am in the shower at 7:30 when John comes in early to say that he DOES feel like going, and has marvelous mushrooms for his steak and my hamburger, and we eat that and a good salad for a change, and just before 9 we subway up to John's, John taking along a book so that he can read (and I didn't call Joe to berate him for not calling John and me to be with him and Elaine, who was up for her birthday but didn't call), and we meet Jack Herbert in the elevator (and subway) and (see following pages).
DIARY 1545
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12. John's out at 8:30, but I still feel LOUSY: nauseous, my eyes are sore, and I still feel that any sort of quick motion and I'd start throwing up. He gave me two aspirin and four capsules for breakfast and went off for work. I lay until 9:30, when the phone rang, and it was Marty, happy at a phone call from Westminster about writing notes and translations, and giving suggestions for other recordings, and then he said he was going to Boston tomorrow, and I thought I might want to go along, provided I could get in touch with Fred Clanaghan and Lisa Biebermann tonight. Then John called and I told him I was still feeling awful, and then went back to bed, not even caring about watching more TV programs. Then I was taking my temperature at 2 when Marty called from downstairs and said he just wanted to talk, and he came up and helped himself to some butternuts, and left at 3, when I took my temperature to find it was 98.3°, and then got back into bed. About 4 I got sexy again and got out the drawings and managed a rather weak orgasm, and then kept trying to see how I felt. John called at 5 to tell me about the program for that evening at Hunter, saying that I should call him at 7:30. I'd eaten two eggs right after Marty came, and felt rather good about that, and decided I'd eat the beef stew and see how I felt by 7:30, temperature at 7 had fallen to 98.1°, but I just didn't feel very well, so called both John and Marty to say that the whole thing was off. I didn't have the aching eyes, but I felt most comfortable in bed, and since it was rainy and windy out, and John insisted it might be a virus or early hepatitis, and thus I should get all the rest I can, I decided they might be right. John also suggested I smoke, which I didn't feel like I ought to, but I filled the bowl, lit it three times, coughing mightily each time, and lay down on the bed to watch the lights, but when I watched, then closed my eyes, I felt more dizzy than anytime that day, so I decided I could only shut the lights off and go to sleep, so I staggered around, feeling dizzy and tired and very bone-weary, shutting off the lights and getting ready for bed, and fell into bed, not really expecting to sleep, at 8:15. But I DID sleep through.
DIARY 1546
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13. John woke me at 9:30, and I felt nauseous from moving quickly to answer the phone, though my eyes no longer hurt. I sat up debating what to do, but the only thing that seemed interesting was going back to bed, but when I did, I didn't feel like staying, so I got up and watched "Concentration" for the address, "Sale of the Century" and got no address for contestants, "Hollywood Squares" just to pass the time (and to look at Kent McCord), "Pay Cards" and "You Don't Say" for no addresses, though Ruby Dee NOT being in "Boesman and Lena" and her husband about to direct "Cotton in Harlem" leads me to think that the two Channel 5 entries are types of reruns, and not actively searching for people. Then watch "It's Your Bet" to pass the time until "Let's Make a Deal," and then sit through the "Newlywed Game" and half the "Dating Game" until I shut it off in disgust at 3 pm. Felt like eating something after finishing the cereal, and had popcorn during a couple of the shows, then didn't feel like I had an appetite. Settle down to read another copy of Scientific American, and that puts me a bit under the weather, so I take my temperature, surprised to find it an ABOVE normal 98.9°, so I lay in bed for awhile, then John calls at 5 to say that his friends AREN'T coming into town, and he'll be here about 10 pm. I figure I have to get something done besides getting out the pictures and coming, which I do, so I put them away, put everything else away in the apartment, then feel like still doing something productive, so I sit down at the typewriter, and before I know it I've finished 14 pages, to start another pack of paper, and put another 80 pages into the folder and bring the table of contents up to date. Then I'm into the shower and wash my hair, and John calls at 8:30 to say he's leaving then, so I quickly eat tuna and salad and shave, and he's here at 9 to read the Voice while I look at another SciAm, and we both listen to WBAI talking to Club Orgy, harassed by the police for lewdness and obscenity for "mere sex acts" from 9:45 to 10:15, and then get to bed, having some trouble falling asleep, since I don't feel tired, but I figure we both drop off to sleep, after adjustments, at 10:45.
DIARY 1547
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14. Alarm rings at 7:20, and I do him rather desperately, since I'm still not up to the sustained efforts because of my illness, but it does feel good to feel myself as being significantly better. He goes off to work rather early, and I type one page to keep up to normal and then decide to read his articles in the publication by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and they're vaguely interesting, but the thing that hits me is the invitation to get quotes from their books and make a double-crostic out of them, and I find one form "Embers of the World" by Buchanan right in the magazine, and work on polishing the "Art Deco" lamp, and work on that until 3, when "Dead End" comes on, stylishly directed by William Wyler, from a screenplay by Lillian Hellman, and am surprised to see that the "Dead End Kids" must have gotten their name from being the kids in this movie, and Humphrey Bogart, Joel MacRae and Sylvia Sydney were rather lost in the shuffling kids. John comes in in the middle from work, and we chat for a bit and he goes in to take a nap while I watch the end of it, and then he comes out to watch the World Gymnastic Championships from Yugoslavia, and we're happy that a US girl won a silver medel, because that gives them an excuse to show some very snappy Japanese gymnasts going through their muscular motions. This ends at 6:30 and we shower and John works on the lamp and we dress and get out to the Yangtze River for a good combination meal of beef and snow peas, shrimp egg foo yung, and fried rice, and we're back to my place to get the rest of my pot for the party, and then we drive up to Fred Courtenay's, and he welcomes us with his bright eyes and lymphatically soft hairy body which reminds me strongly of Chuck's, and he dances away talking on the phone, and starts a three-way embrace on his little back porch which is interrupted by a neighbor from downstairs asking if the bulldog which he's about to leave loose in the back yard will defecate smellingly, and Fred assures him that "he doesn't do THAT," and he feeds him and dresses, still dancing and stretching. Bobby enters, cute but unappealing, at 9:30, and we drive up to Columbia to pick up Heather, finally getting to the party (see following pages).
DIARY 1552
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15. Up about 10:15 and start reading the Times, and John says he has a couple of articles he can do, and about 11:30 I eat breakfast and ask him what he wants to do for the day. It's very gray and rainy, and ideas of going down to Elaine's seemed impractical, so I called John to see about Canasta, but he called at 1 from work, saying he was sorry, "You know how much I like to play," and said he'd call later about the chances of coming Wednesday night. Called Avi but there was no one there, and I said I was perfectly content to sit and read the Times if HE was content to work, and so we passed the time until 4 by my doing the puzzles, and not reading the paper at all, and then he said he wanted to go home, and I decided to take "Quest for Certainty" along, since I'd had Joe's two books long enough, and we drove to his place and he began fussing with plants and cleaning window shades and the kitchen, and I read, and then we got over to Danny's for the third consecutive Sunday, to be disappointed by too-soft and tasteless frankfurters and buns and only potato salad to go along with it. The movie was the eternal "Star Is Born," so we had only to go back home to his place, where I called Joe for a recipe for nut bread, and while I continued reading, John did the baking, and I accused him of having nothing to do around HIS place, so he couldn't very well accuse MY place of having nothing for him to do. He seemed uncomfortable with that conversation, and he listened to a discussion of "The Groupies," and I said I'd seen it, and gave him the background in connection with Bob's place, and we talked about odds and ends of emotionalism and intellectualism in art and music (prompted by Stravinsky's ascetic string quartets), and that didn't go so well, and I bounced some of Dewey's ideas off him, but he disparaged them by saying that they were quite passé by now, having been suggested 40 years ago, and times had just changed so much by now, and he STILL didn't like philosophy, even when it was said to be able to DO something. We showered and got into bed about 11:15, the lights being turned off quickly, and we cuddled a bit and ate some dry nut bread.
DIARY 1553
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16. Up at 7:15 and I was paralyzed with fatigue, so he was up and dressed and we were out, he reporting on the steps that he would take to be at my place, as usual, with hamburger in hand. Home to get nothing in the mail, and decide I HAD to get back to correspondence, and at least managed to sort everything out and get the bills off to Rosey Sheik, Tarot, and the invitation to Automation House for Friday off, and this coupled with the two contest entries I send, I take them down to the mailbox at 11:45 to get them right off, and watch the quiz shows from 12 to 1, getting the address for "You Don't Say" CARDS, only, and it's in California, so that leaves only two to get: the NBC contestant address for "Sale of the Century," which is on at 11, and the (probably Hollywood) address of "Pay Cards" at 12. REALLY WANT, honestly, to get back to correspondence, but figure I should finish up the Center-Crostic, and get out the Scrabble tiles to try to figure out the last six words, and I'm rummaging through dictionaries and atlases and Bartlett's Quotations and still I can't get anything right, and I have lunch of nut bread, which John gave all to me, and WANT to leave it, but find that I've got one extra letter, and go through, seeming to find it's an extra "n," but can't find it for the life of me, and figure I must have made a mistake, and AGAIN find that it's an extra N, and finally find it and revise the last two words, which aren't very good, and decide at 7:15 that I REALLY have to stop, and shave and brush my teeth and fix the apartment up for John's arrival at 7:45, and have great thoughts about my failure (see following pages) to finish the puzzle the way I'd like to. John has the worms back again, and has another prescription to take, and showers and wears my bathing suit as we eat, and watch "The Mind of Man" on Channel 13 from 9-11 (see page AFTER page 1556), which is great, except that I have to leave to relieve my diarrhea gas, and it's all filled with the nut meats, so I figure the nut bread gave it to me, and he gets another recipe for banana bread, and we figure maybe we can make bread pudding, or better, brown betty, out of the loaf. He's into bed and I shower, and we're both sleeping by 11:30.
DIARY 1572
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17. Up at 7:20 and he does me with vibrator until 8, and gets up too quickly so that I can't use it on him, but grab him and he rubs himself off quickly against me so that he can be out at 8:45, when he has to be to get to Ford Foundation at 9:30 for another meeting for his grant. I'm down to get the mail and get some more stamps from Bill, and I decide to see just which ones I should have replaced with mints that he sent me, and then get to work making out a complete list of those I want mint, and interspersed with still trying to get the addresses I want from TV, that takes till 4 pm. Curse myself for devoting so much time to stamps, and get to work on the diary, finally catching up to date, and even get one letter-page done to Bill, incorporating all the stamps that I want from him at face value, and then tell John I want to watch the "Hamlet" on TV from 9-11, and he says he's already started on supper, so I suggest we watch it at Arnie's, and call him and find that he wants to watch it, and that Norma will be picking him up at 11, so it's perfect for all of us. Subway out to John's at 7:15, and we have good meatloaf with chili sauce, and we're to Arnie's just before 9, so that he can show us the lights in his room, the bedspread he had sent from Morocco, and the new bookshelves he had put up in the bedroom, and then we're into the living room with mead, which is stronger and heavier than the Japanese honey wine, to watch the quite stripped-down TV version, but Arnie said it was by the same guy who stripped down the Henry's for the "War of the Roses," and he takes out a lot of the minor characters and subplots, but some of the soliloquies are cut in places I don't see, and some stupid things, like the triple "Swear," which seem only silly, are left in, while things like Hamlet's "Speak the speech" is cut, and the grave scene is snipped drastically. John nods and nods and finally goes into the bedroom to nap during the last half of it, and Arnie gives me the text so that I can follow the cuts, and I get a bit of "This happened before," when I think of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being cut, and how much, and following word for word, and the silliness of it ALL. Out at 11:30 when Norma comes and to John's.
DIARY 1573
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18. Also got the Modern Art membership and four blocks of four of the four ecology stamps which look like poorer children's "paste-em" stamps from Arnie, and then since there was no reason to go home, I stay at John's, reading "The Quest for Certainty" until I got tired of reading, and then wrote the pages of "Philosophy Sketches" (DIARY 1565-1566), and looked a bit into the book about Ludwig Wittgenstein. Got out John's map of the city to see how to walk to the Brooklyn Academy, and took off for it about 10 to 2, after getting a call from him and finding I could eat the bacon and the eggs, which I did, and washed the dishes, and what with reading the Voice, it served to pass the time until the Academy, also looking at the Hungarian maps which John said I should look at. Walk down the main streets which are already decorated for Christmas, and it only takes about 20 minutes to walk to the Academy from John's. The guy doesn't even look at the name on Arnie's card, and I try to read a bit in the chattering audience, and watch "Blood and Sand," which has some very poorly edited bull-fighting scenes, and Valentino plays a surprisingly weak part, coming under the spell of Nita Naldi to the pain of Lila Lee (such names!), and dying in the bullring while the femme fatale shrugs her shoulders. Subway home at 4 and do some shopping for my dinner, since John will be bringing his, and read the mail and shower and shave, and John's here early at 7:15, and he showers and we eat just in time to let Bob in, who's early at 8:15, and I set up the projector to find that the film won't fit the camera, since Asher's films are super-8, and then Gene Davis gets here and I'm surprised to see that he's the same tall lanky one who was playing with himself on the rock in Central Park that nude Sunday afternoon, and he says that he has a projector and screen, and we all try to give him money, but both John and I only have $20's, and so he pays for the cab himself. We pass around a pipe, and Asher is looking more and more like Mario Papiri, which is good for anyone, and by the time Gene gets back, I'm just beginning to get high, and the rest of the evening is rather blurred (see following pages).
DIARY 1578
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19. Up with the feeling that I'm getting a cold, sore throat, extremely dry nose, and I reach for a cough drop, explaining to John how I feel, and he suggests I caught it from HIM, rather than from the nude scenes last night, and I felt inclined to agree with him. Lay in bed for a bit, feeling rather fatigued, but up about 9 to have breakfast and decide that the thing I really should do today is finish up the butternuts, which I settle down to do AFTER finishing typing the letter to Bill by 11, so that I can get in and watch for the addresses on the quiz shows. Start on the nuts, with a torn paper bag for a work area, a newspaper for dumping the shells when my lap gets full, and the metal bowl for a receptacle for the nutmeats. Sit through 1, and the show that comes on the movie is "The Private Life of Henry VIII," and decide I could do well to watch it, and do so until 3, and it's quite charming, and still the nuts aren't done, so I continue to watch the cartoons and lousy shows in the mid-afternoon until I'm done at 4, meanwhile getting the stuff off the lap to talk to John and to Marty, who's got record albums to read to me (he'd called me last night, and I was too high to listen to him), and I say I want about six of them, and he asks me to pick them up tonight, and I say OK. Then have lunch, rather late, and watch the sunset, which is rather breathtaking, with the sky all blue and purple and pink, and I finish the afternoon by fixing up the apartment, getting myself fixed up by showering and shaving and shampooing and shitting, and get a late dinner and decide it's too late to walk to the Guggenheim, so I catch a subway, which is well timed, so I'm there at 8:15 to stand with the crowd until they let us in to the constructed stage for the "Red Horse Animation" by the Mabou Mines company of La Mama, introduced by Ellen Stewart herself, and some of the effects are striking, but the audience is more beautiful, and it's over at 8:25, which feels like a theft of $3.95, and we walk along the reservoir in the clear evening up to Marty's, and his place is a mess because he's cleaning out, and when I see it's 9 record albums for a total of 36 records, my idea of paying him goes away. Bus home at 10:30. Bed at 11:15, John asleep, I sneak out at 11:30 to watch "Dead of Night" just GREATLY spooky, till 1:30.
DIARY 1579
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20. Up with a cold again, do John with vibrator, and sniffling into the bargain. Feeling quite depressed, so I just sit down after John leaves at 8:30 with the recorded version of "L'Elisir d'Amore" by Donizetti, and follow the score and the story until 11, figuring it was better than what I heard in Philly, but it still won't be one of my favorite operas, and determine that I'll have to lie to Marty: why should I take the effort with him to say that I DON'T like it, which will just make HIM feel bad and ME feel bad in DOING that, when it's much simpler to lie to him, since it really doesn't make that much difference? Then Arnie calls and says he'll be up about 1 for the film at the Modern, and I decide that's enough time to finish "The Quest for Certainty," and I get to the end of the book just before he rings the bell, and it's very nice timing, and I'm happy to be finished with the book of Joe's that I've had for so long. Arnie's in and talking about his friends and his dates and his ideas, and he's again getting quite boring, and I'm relieved when it's 1:30 and we have to get down to the film, "The Mystery of the Wax Museum." The first reels are in lovely tinted colors which make the browns and greens strikingly beautiful, but the flesh tones are either ghastly white or flushed pink. The story is good, the sets striking, particularly in the museum's basement, and the flip dialogue with the newspaper subplot is very funny, and the use of the word "junkie" is so contemporary as to be confusing for awhile. Out at 3:15, liking it, and Arnie wants to waste time, but the only thing I'll let him do is come shopping with me until 4, and get to typing, but it's only the notes for "Quest for Certainty," since I don't feel like writing letters. Dinner and down to meet John for the Kinetic Art show, of which the best is the second Kuri film, and "Leap," and a re-see of the good "Historia Naturae," and the Vaucherin film is just terribly boring. Art jokes about offering me the post of DTW Head Editor, but I think he's serious, prompted by John. Then drive up to Automation House to see the Gordon Mumma sound environments on three floors, and out at 11, bored with noise, and to my place.
DIARY 1580
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21. John works as I do dishes for the dinner tonight, and when he leaves for class I don't feel like doing anything, so I sit down with the last of Joe Easter's books, "The Art in Painting" by Albert Barnes, and get through the general section and skim through the specific section on painters and paintings by 3, and he's back surprisingly early, and I go out to finish buying the ribs for tonight, and go down to Marlboros to find (Bookmasters, rather) a Chinese cookbook and see how to cook egg drop soup and hoi-sin sauce, and back at 4 to see him napping, so I settle down with Scientific American, trying vainly to get through the encyclopedic September giant issue on "The Biosphere," and he's up at 4:30 to start giving me directions about cooking, and he says he wants to take a walk while buying the wine, and the sunset is again extraordinary, though he goes out before the colors reach their peak. I'm frustrated trying to mix the sauce and marinate the ribs and scrub the pans and rack all at the same time, and he says that we're going to be late. I work as quickly as I can, getting the ribs into the oven at 5:30, after making huge quantities of sauce, and the ribs make a little over two layers on the over-crowded baking rack. Then get started with the soup, and the soy sauce, not surprisingly, turns the whole thing rather dark, and the eggs are stirred in nicely with John's help, and Jeff brings over rosé, so we have John's honey wine for an aperitif while I struggle with the fried rice and the soup and turning the ribs and washing the dishes for the serving, and we sit down to eat at 6:45, and the soup is quite good, and the honey wine is finished and the rosé comes out, and the ribs are very tasty, being not what anyone except me expected, and Jeff found one that was underdone, otherwise they were fine, and everyone even liked the fried rice, leaving just two spoonfuls left of that and only one rib at the bottom of the pan, which I could have eaten. Cake and coffee for (tea, jasmine, rather) dessert, and it's 8 pm, and everyone washes and we hurry down for a cold, poker-ended "Edward II" by Marlowe, with a POOR Edward, and we're so cold and tired at 11:30 that we're only home to bed, me with a hot toddy like the one I made for myself last night, but with no honey, since I'd used it all in the hoi-sin sauce. Read a bit of the Times while sipping, and bed at 12:30.